you won't catch me around here {ajax and william}

A j a x

One moment I’m spinning, sailing, falling through the air like a brick, and the next I’m jolting awake in my bloodstained sheets – soiled by nights of leaky bandages and poor wash jobs – to the sound of that ear-splitting morning bell. It’s the bell that signals sunrise and breakfast and another day in this miserable shithole, but I know better than to and sink back into my mattress, tempting as it is. So I sit up, stretch, and listen to my vertebrae pop like kernels, bones creaking as I shift off the bed and run a hand through my mussy hair. It feels like I got doused in oil. Showers are a privilege here; they don’t want to waste their precious water on us worms, so we only get a shower every few days. Unless we fight, of course. Then we can have as much ice water as we want. They don’t want us stinking the place up with the perfume of the dead.

As far as I know, I don’t have any fights today. My plans are to sit on my bony ass and endure another day. We run like clockwork. I’m a machine that eats, sleeps, pisses, and fights, and I do nothing in-between. I occasionally watch the other slaves socialize with one another. Some sob, others light up the room with their fake laughter. It makes me uncomfortable. I’m so empty, I don’t have room for any of it. What’s the point? The numbers dwindle every day. After a new shipment of Avoxes it’s like a school in here, especially in the cafeteria where all of the pale, terrified faces are either too nauseous to eat or stuffing their faces like the world is going to end. I don’t memorize names or appearances because most of them die. Very few of us are considered “veterans.”

I’m two birthdays in. I’m twenty and my life is complete shit. Death will claim me any day now, but I don’t have the guts to finish myself off. A mutt will inevitably do the dirty work for me. I’ve heard of people offing themselves before – letting the mutts devour them, for instance. I can’t do something reckless like that. The pain I could probably deal with, but it’s the survival instinct that tethers me. Even though this life is pointless and hopeless, I fight anyway. I survive anyway. I hate this life but I can’t die, not yet. It has to be against my will, I guess. That’s one consistency in my life that I can’t shake off. Loss against my will, arrest against my will, sex against my will, slavery against my will. Destiny says I won’t have any power in my death

Breakfast tastes like cardboard. The chefs here can’t cook eggs for shit, and the bread feels stale. I chew it mechanically and swallow until my stomach churns in submission. The lemonade makes me gag, so I pass on that poor excuse of a beverage and go for a piss in the bathroom. They shuffle the lot back to their cells – except for me and a few others, the ones who earned their spots at the top of the hierarchy. We’re allowed to wander in the lounge and watch the fights from a high location. I snatch a cup of peaches before I go. Assholes won’t notice, they never pay any attention to me. I’m the quiet one.

Sometimes I watch the fights and sometimes I don’t. You get sick of watching people get ripped in half by giant teeth, but there also isn’t much else to do. Today it starts off morbid; the first boy loses his leg and climbs the rock prop. He leaves a trail of blood in his wake and the mutt doesn’t hesitate. It catches his ankle in its jaws and drags him down kicking and screaming, then chews on his torso until he bleeds out. The audience is wild and deafening. I yawn and rub crust out of my eyes.

One of the veterans appears next. Bill, or something like that. Some smiley kids that looks like mutt bait but survives every battle he’s in. I’m pretty sure he was here when I first arrived, I can’t remember. I was too hot-headed and bursting at the seams back then. There was too much rage to contain, and I ended up channeling that into my mutt fights. Obviously that’s a useful tactic, but it makes you careless at the same time. Look at the scar on my back, for instance. Wider than my arm from shoulder to spine. I’ve got an equally nasty one on my thigh, too. The scar tissue feels rubbery in some places, and silky in others. Completely inconsistent and grotesque, but my captors try their best to show them off in skimpy uniforms.

Bill wins again. Nobody is surprised, but the crowd roars anyway. I’m tapping the lid of my peach cup when the kid comes waltzing in with a goofy smile on his face. What is wrong with him? I always see him talking to the new shipments and smiling like the world is a garden instead of a shithole. He makes the newbies feel too much comfort. They can’t be careless in a place like this. They’ll die immediately, and the only reaction they’ll receive is a rabid cheer from the Capitolites.

Bill has a gash on his head, still bleeding pretty badly by the looks of it. He smiles through it anyway, and I can’t help but think he’s a trooper. Stupid, but a trooper nonetheless. He walks by me and compels me to offer my peach up. I don’t want the peaches anyway, they’re always a bit too tangy. I hold out my hand.