boy versus world 𖤓 d10 suite { emerson }

Post by d8a lucia ✃ valentine ✁ tris on Oct 22, 2023 14:17:13 GMT -5

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When Emerson comes to, he wonders if he's still trapped inside the simulation. His body feels as heavy as his mind does, the softness of the bed beneath him threatening to swallow him whole — like an island sinking beneath the waves. Anxiety traces its fingertips along his jaw, makes his brow furrow and his lips start to tremble, but he remains where he lies. He is a fly wrapped up in the silk of a spider web, waiting to be devoured.

Confronting his fears has done nothing to take them away. Inside his head, he replays the images that have haunted him for so long. A pile of corpses who each look as familiar as they do unknowable. Ice monkeys howling in the treetops, latch crabs lumbering across the sand, dangers that come in all shapes and sizes. He can hear the whistle of a penny spinning on its side, the squelch of blood pooling on the ground. This is his legacy — to know with certainty that some essence of death will follow him wherever he goes. Like a long shadow.

Once he finally gains the strength to pull himself up into a sitting position, he stares at the white glow of static that brightens the room. The television flickers as he glances at his surroundings in an attempt to center himself — the feel of the soft cover beneath his fingertips grounds him in reality, but the empty bed across from him triggers his unease, no sign of his district partner anywhere to be seen. "Hank?" he asks with a low voice, the gravel of just waking up giving his cautious tone a sharp edge. "Anyone?"

Numbers are counting down behind his anxious thoughts, his feet meeting the cold ground as he rises to stand. The seal of the Capitol looms within the grayscale static, an inky black brand glaring at him. He glares back at it, heart racing inside his chest, hands curling into fists as his sides. Signs of nightlife are obvious just beyond the window, the cloudiness of fatigue still keeping him in its grips. He doesn't want to be here. All he wants is to escape, to evade, to go home. But then a voice begins to speak, one that he recognizes, and all the wisps of hair across his body stand on end.

"The 95th Hunger Games will begin... now."

This is the line that sends him reeling, fumbling backwards a few steps. He waits for the nightmare to change, for the scene to shift, but this all feels real in a way that he cannot deny. Every aspect of his bedroom is true to life, proving once more that this is not a simulation. The oversized sweater he took off before going to sleep is still crumpled on the nightstand, and the magazine he had been reading remains opened on the page where he left off. The first thought that grips him is this: I am not ready.

But no amount of time would have solved that feeling. He doesn't know how he is supposed to feel prepared to slaughter innocent lives, or to run from those who plan to end his own. It feels unnatural, disturbing, a bubbling nausea that settles in his gut. But then he thinks about his grandfather and Saffron, the eerie silence that is only broken by the sound of the TV. He ignores the uniform that is neatly folded at the foot of his bed, taking the sweater in his hands and dressing himself quickly, staying in his lounge pants. He needs guidance, but he knows that being told what to do isn't going to magically will him to perform it.

His family made him promise that he would do everything in his power to come home again; but with a push against the door and a few steps out into the living space, he now has to come face to face with the undeniable truth. The Games have begun, and there is no more time for contemplation. "Paw, are you there?" He speaks to the night with hope at the edge of his voice, a black stone sinking into the dark depths of the sea. "Saffron, Andal?" There is no answer save for the adrenaline that rises in him like a crescendo.

The true nightmare has only just begun.

^{{ fox }}

{ part one }