alistair {district one} done

My parents didn't much care for freedom. No, they favored control and regiment as we'd then have no choice but to squeeze ourselves into the perfect mold they'd created (no matter the bones we broke along the way.) There are eight of us, I neither the youngest nor oldest. An insignificant middle child with five others. Not even that title was mine to own. Perhaps because any sense of individuality was beaten out of us, not with fists but empty threats and sharp glares. (The oldest no longer has a chance to bring glory to our name, the youngest is too weak to do the same. It's better to be in the middle.) We weren't expected - weren't allowed - to stand out. In a line we'd march, as familiar with one another as strangers, to a classroom where we'd listen because that is all we knew how to do. And I was the shining star.

I wasn't particularly intelligent. The grades I received were average at best, but no one cared about those. Intelligence was necessary for strategy and that was all. We'd go over strategy every day, we'd eat only what mother packed for us that day. (Always something green and tasteless with something lean and stringy on the side). Every morning we stepped upon a scale and if the number was unsatisfactory we'd be forced to drink a disgusting mixture or be refused a meal altogether. Once, when I'd only started school, I asked mother what the colorful foods that other children seemed to enjoy were. She got the most disgusted, disappointed look as she grabbed my shoulders and told me that she thought her best son would know better than to ask such a stupid question because mother always did what was best for her baby. I didn't get an answer and I didn't ask again because she made me feel so small and stupid with her tone.

More than anything, I wanted her to keep calling me the best son and so I kept training. I was a natural, of sorts and it inflated my ego. I felt big and strong although I was neither. There was swagger in my step and everyone bowed below me because I was better than them. At least, I wanted to be. I wanted to be the best. Wanted my parents to smile at me and gasp when my name was pulled from that glass ball. I wanted them to tell me that they knew I'd come back and that these were my games. That I'd make them proud. I trained until my body ached and trained some more because that's what I was meant to do. I did it all for them and none for me. Come to think of it, I don't even know what I want now and certainly not then. It didn't matter, it still doesn't.

There were always bruises on the balls of my feet. Bright purple marks that embedded themselves in my flesh from hard training. The movement became second nature, the leaps and the kicks, the preparing and the slashes. It was easy to sink a blade into the cloth covering humanoid figures. And when I think back to it, the days all blur together. I cannot tell one from the other because they were all the same. I'd wake and eat and train and sleep. It was all that mattered, all I'd ever known. And I remember how terribly I wanted to ask the kids who always sat across from me, the other quiet kids who I barely spared a glance because I was so much bigger and better, why they so looked forward to meal time and the fragrant foods they loved.

When I grew older I learned the names of the snacks. Foods my mother insisted would make me bigger or sick, foods that she didn't like and so neither did I. (I wasn't given much choice in the matter as she ripped a package from my fingers and told me I didn't want that. I hadn't the heart to tell her I really, really did.)

And the taller I became the more the walls closed in on me. The house, the siblings that were as good as strangers, my parents... they acted as though nothing had changed. It never occurred to me that, perhaps, it was I who did the changing. My head grew bigger with every praise, with every hug my mother gave me and with every stony glare she gave my housemates. Oh yes, I was mommy and daddy's pride and joy. Everyone knew it because I'd never allow them to forget. Not with the cocky grin I adorned while stomping through the house and ensuring everyone knew I was there.

I'd saunter into the training gym and dare anybody to face me and when they did I'd beat them down. I yearned to be the best, obsessing over every stance I learned. Repetitive motions occupied hours of my time. The obsession was fueled by the desperate need of praise. And the better I became the harder I felt it was to please them. So I kept trying and trying and trying and-

They were older than me. Eighteen, maybe nineteen, way past their reaping prime with bitter faces and mischievous grins. I didn't see that. I saw new people to impress, to coax praise from, so I smiled and showed off in front of the crowd and they fed my ego readily. Mother allowed little free time in between studies but I soon spent all of it with them. They taught me how to fight dirty. Taught me how to intimidate and manipulate, they taught everything they knew because they were certain I could become the best. (Oh how wonderful it felt basking in their praise.) Maybe I knew what I was doing was wrong, but it felt too good to stop.

And one day they tore me down. Pulled me away from practice and braced my shoulders, with sharp tongues they told me I would never be the best. That there was no way to know if I could even survive what I'd spent my life training for. They called me awful things, told me I'd disappointed them. It felt like they were pulling my fingernails off with each word. A kind of pain I wasn't used to, one that had no actual wound. And then they held me when I burst into tears right there, unable to hold them by simply digging my teeth into my lip. It wasn't over yet, they insisted, exchanging a grin between themselves as they looked at me with eyes dark as the night. "The only way you know if you're actually good enough, is to do it."

I didn't have to ask what it was. There was a reason we sunk blades into humanoid figures. The people on screen didn't die from nothing, oh no, they were killed. That's what I'd have to do. To prove I was enough to the only friends I'd ever have. (The only friends who would have me.) Something about that made my hands shake. I was supposed to be a killer, I was supposed to be ready because then they wouldn't look at me with those eyes lit with disappointment. I couldn't stand their disappointment. But I put it off. I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. (And I am a failure.)