SILENCE!' hissed Caroline Bingley. Caroline's 'S-es' were unnecessarily long. Like the warning noise of a nest of vipers.
The most noteworthy thing about Caroline today was that she was wearing a swan. A real one. On her head. It was swirling down there, its dead eyes staring, its orange beak fully intact, and sometimes sort of hitting her in the face. Caroline had climbed the slippery social ladder, and now, not without some difficulty, was climbing up a sort of makeshift ladder leaning against a sort of makeshift podium, shaking a swan out of her face.
It was from this podium that she was to reap for Meryton, now known as District M. She smiled very slightly, undetectably, as her hard green eyes fixed on the large glass bowl containing so many exciting pieces of small folded paper. Soon she would plunge her long Aristocratic fingers into this particular bowl and secure the fate of one man and one woman.
This would herald the start of their participation in The Hunger Games.
These could be persons even from her own class, the Gentry, as per the new rules that had been introduced. That's if you could call these scarecrows the Bennets actual Gentry. They certainly weren't aristocrats. The Mother! Relatives in Cheapside. And Lydia their youngest was like something from a traveling circus. Caroline groaned inwardly. Lydia Bennet was a full showcase of disgrace, a magnet for scandal, an unruly child who had been so imprudent so reckless and imperious to run away with Wickham the disgraced son of Mr Darcy's steward! Caroline could only sneer. And that man Collins! Caroline's words escaped her.
But there was one other name she disliked still more than either Mrs Bennet or Lydia. And for a moment, Caroline allowed herself to think only with restrained pleasure that the name of Elizabeth Bennet was inside this bowl!
Should Elizabeth Bennet have the misfortune to be reaped this morning; should she, moreover, have the misfortune to perish in the Hunger Games, well, she, Caroline, didn't ever like to tempt fate, but people did die in the Hunger Games - yes they did - and wouldn't this mean that Darcy was free?
Darcy was the love of Caroline's life. He had been snatched away from her grasp by an impertinent woman from an embarrassingly disgraceful family.
And Caroline had never forgotten.
YOU ARE READING
Tales of Disturbance
科幻A young teenage girl, haunted by the memories of her father's execution, attempts to escape a cruel regime by night. A solitary woman, abandoned by her husband, inadvertently plays into the cruel hands of 'the state'. In another totalitarian regime...
