Livia gritted her teeth as Venia, a woman with aqua hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows, yanked a strip of fabric from her leg tearing out the hair beneath it.
"Sorry!", she piped in her silly Capitol accent, "You're just so hairy!"
Why did they speak in such a high pitch?
Why do their jaws barely open when they talk?
Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they're asking a question?
Odd vowels, clipped words, and always a hiss on the letter s.
no wonder it was impossible not to mimic them.
Venia made what was supposed to be a sympathetic face, "Good news, though. This is the last one. Ready?"
Livia got a grip on the edges of the table she was seated on and nodded.
The final swathe of her leg hair was uprooted in a painful jerk.
She'd been in the Remake Center for more than three hours and she still hadn't met her stylist.
Apparently he had no interest in seeing her until Venia and the other members of her prep team had addressed some obvious problems.
This had included scrubbing down her body with a gritty loam that had removed not only dirt but at least three layers of skin, turning her nails into uniform shapes, and primarily, ridding her body of hair.
Her legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of her eyebrows had been stripped of the muff, leaving her like a plucked bird, ready for roasting.
She didn't like it.
Her skin felt sore and tingly and intensely vulnerable.
But she listened to Brutus- no objection had crossed her lips.
"You're doing very well", said some guy named Flavius. He gave his orange corkscrew locks a shake and applied a fresh coat of purple lipstick to his mouth, "If there's one thing we can't stand, it's a whiner. Grease her down!"
Venia and Octavia, a plump woman whose entire body had been dyed a pale shade of pea green, rubbed Livia down with a lotion that first stung but then soothed her raw skin.
Then they pulled her from the table and removed the thin robe she had been allowed to wear off and on.
Livia stood there, completely naked, as the three circled her, wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair.
Livia knew she should be embarrassed, but they were so unlike people that she was no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around her feet.
The three stepped back and admired their work.
"Excellent! You almost look like a human being now!" Flavius said, and they all laughed.
Livia forced her lips up into a smile to show how grateful she was.
"Thank you", Livia said sweetly, "I don't have much cause to look nice where I come from."
YOU ARE READING
The Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark (1)
FanfictionLivia really thought it was just a game.
