purgatory {patricia&cricket}

I feel dirty, and a scalding hot shower is doing little to wash the sins off of my back. I've been here before; my head resting on the porcelain bricked wall as water burns against my shoulders, steaming up the acrylic panels that surround me. No matter how long I stand here enduring the relentless torrent of searing heat, I can't get clean.

My hair is dripping onto the bathroom tiles as I step out of the cubicle and reach for a fresh towel. With both hands I rub it vigorously over my scalp and down my arms, feeling the friction beginning to dry out my freckled skin.

Still not clean.

I feel the cool morning air blow in from the open window, tickling the back of my neck as I wrap the towel around myself and move into the large bedroom of my fifth-floor living quarters. The television crackles away, showing a 'best bits' reel of all the reaping drama, followed by a series of tacky commercials.

I've been getting up early to help the girls train. I can't teach them how to hold a sword, or wield an axe, but I can show them how to fight - and I mean fight. Contrary to what the career districts will tell you, it's far more about mentality than technique.

Music blares as the screen flashes various colours, licking the walls of my bedroom magenta and yellow. I flick on a bedside lamp to mute the colours and watch as a Capitolite interviewer sits down with a face I'm familiar with.

In between questions she pauses and starts speaking strangely, name-dropping brands and promoting new products. I laugh with disbelief as I watch Cricket Antoinette peddling the latest capitol trends in between games topics. Despite her ascension to Gamemaker, she is still their marionette.

Well, once a performer, always a performer, I suppose.

I silence her with a press of my thumb and go about brushing my teeth and changing into nylon training gear. I am already late - if I'm not down there early enough the capitol-appointed trainers get funny with me. Victors don't typically mentor their tributes physically like me - there's a few rules I have to adhere to, including but not limited to: staying away from foreign tributes, keeping distance from training stations, and being out by midday.

The elevator takes me down five levels to the ground floor, and from there I just retrace the same steps I've taken every year for twenty years, following the ghosts that I left behind along the way.

The hall is empty - a grand expanse of vinyl flooring covered in stretches of thylene rubber. On the far end I can make out a few trainers setting up the climbing ropes - from here they are miniature army men moving their ant-like limbs, busy little worker ants.

I head to the spot where I usually set up, out of the way and mostly out of sight - the rear side of the first aid stations. On my way past, I swipe some bandages and painkillers, the former in case of injuries, the latter because I'm old.

I stop in my tracks as I see Cricket walking by, not on television but here in the flesh. First time I've seen her in years, maybe in a decade. I'm like a deer in headlights - move god damn it, idiot girl. I blink twice, trying to shake off the anxiety that has suddenly gripped me.

It's twenty years ago again and I'm a bright-eyed young girl at the door of an older victor, ready to be shown the wonders of district two.

It's ten years ago and I'm a spiteful, angry young woman finding out that someone she admired is now running the same shit-show that we both had to endure and survive.

It's five years ago and I'm a mess, recovering from the consequences of speaking out against the capitol, speaking out against the gamemakers.

It's now, and I've got three seconds to say something before it's too late.

But what is there to say? I don't even blame her anymore, do I? She's a career. She always will be. They're just wired different.

I used to think I hated her, hated what she had ascended to, but I don't. Seeing her on the television before, knowing that she's still just a piece of the game like me, almost made me pity her. I must be getting old and tired to be handing out pity.

I guess these days I'm just all out of hate to give.

Two seconds.

"Cricket."