vita | capitol | fin

Life is strange sometimes.

All around me, things change. People move and they grow, the world twists and turns, things happen which I did not expect to happen. People leave. They leave me in a state of confusion and I don't like it, not one bit - but I'm just a little girl; what could I possibly have to say? I wish life never changed. I wish I could stay on the rug forever and never face any change but things around me are changing and I have to change as well. Only I don't want to.

I'm stuck in the past.

She tucks me in, her soft words calming me even when I lie on a rug that scratches against my pale flesh. She gives me food and warmth, and in return I stay here, with the other children that surround me. I don't think much of life before I came here. It all seems to be a monochrome, a blurred shape far, far in the distance even when it was only mere months ago. Life. I don't understand the meaning anymore, or if there was a meaning in the first place. People ask me what I want but I can't reply, all I want is to stay on the rug, they can't move me off the rug. I have to stay on the rug until she returns. I must never leave the rug. Or else I'll have failed her. She won't be pleased if she comes back and finds that I am not in my usual spot on the rug, and even when the others are moving around and speaking in frantic voices and people are screaming, they're shouting at me to get up, just get up and move already but I can't, I'm frozen, frozen in time like the sudden cold of the room has reached my heart.

The nights are different now. When I'm not tucked in, I mean. I can't find the will to sleep properly when I haven't had a caring, gentle hand swept gently over my forehead and fingers running through my white blonde hair. Now I must do it myself, but it doesn't feel the same. My fingers are short and chubby, hers were long, elegant and manicured red. Crimson, like the colour of...what is it again? Blood. I cut myself once by accident and I bled. The sticky red liquid escaped through the cut in my skin and I didn't know what it was. I frantically asked Mama but she wasn't there.

Then I realised it was a dream.

I haven't bled since.

"Vita." Someone is calling my name. "Vita." I look up as the tone turns sharper. My vision focuses onto the face of Polly. I haven't seen Polly since she told us some strange news which I'm not really sure what it was, but everybody freaked out. I don't know what she was on about. What are Hunger Games? I don't know what 'dead' means either. I'm scared to ask the other kids in case they don't want me to ask. I stare at Polly and I want to ask questions.

Instead, I ask- "When will you tuck me in again?"

She laughs and presses her hand on top of my head, ruffling the light locks. "As soon as the game is over, my angel." And she kisses my forehead and fades away and I wake up on the same rug I've been on since she left, in the same spot. It's my spot and nobody can move me from it. Polly only visits in my dreams, and she disappears almost as quickly as she appears. I miss having someone to talk to. All I do now is fight whoever tries to move me. I don't need to be fixed or changed. I'm not a doll. I keep saying it, over and over again. I'm not broken. I'm not a doll. Don't fix me. Don't change me. I'm not a doll. Not. A. Doll. I used to have dolls, many of them. One time I was walking down the streets of the Capitol when the doll fell and cracked her head against the pavement. Mama got her fixed. Sometimes I miss Mama. She made everything seem so easy. Something breaks, you fix it.

Fixing humans isn't the same. It doesn't work like that. You can't just patch humans up and they're fixed - they're more complicated, they have memories and their minds work like clocks. Tick, tock, tick, tock. That's the sound of the clock ticking, an obnoxious sound, tick, tock, inhale, exhale. That's how I pass my days. I listen to the clock.

Maybe one day I can tick-tock my way to freedom.

"Vita, you must move. Do you really want to lie down and wait for death?" Polly's back, and she looks more stern now. Like a mother when her child refuses to do something she asks of them. I look up, opening my eyes lazily. Her face comes into vision, one I once thought of like a mother's face. "I don't understand, Polly," I say, my voice a quiet mumble yet audible in the silence of my dream. "I don't know what death is. I don't even know what life is." My hands find her leg and I wrap my arms around it, and water falls from my eyes. Mama told me that's called 'crying' and people do it when they're sad. Am I sad? I really can't tell. I'm just a dumb little girl. I don't know what life is, what death is, what emotions or feelings are, and what's happening. It seems everyone knows. Everyone except me.

She looks like she almost pities me. She looks down at me, a shrivelled up coward at her feet, and crouches down to reach my level, gently pulling my arms from her legs and taking my chin in her gentle hand, lifting my pale face to level hers, forcing my teary eyes to meet hers. "You will discover what life is. As long as you play the game." She releases my chin, and I rub it. She held it a little too hard, as if she's straining, trying to keep some kind of anger under control. "Now go, Vita. Go and win."

"I don't wanna play this game!"

She disappears again before I can finish the sentence, but I finish it anyway. There's no point in ending it abruptly when it's the truth. Somehow, shouting out the truth makes me feel satisfied.

Polly always says my eyes are the purest blue she's ever seen. She cups my face, my delicate creamy skin and tells me I have eyes like an angel. Maybe that's where the nickname first came from, my eye colour. Purest of blue. Lips ripest of pink. Cheeks hollow, eyes hollow. And the lightest blonde hair that falls around my shoulders. I'm the smallest of all the children here, if you don't count the baby, and I'm the youngest (again, not counting the baby). I like to wear pink; it's a pretty colour, and so childish and nice. People say it's girly, so why shouldn't I wear it? I'm a girl. Though I like blue just as much. It's the pure colour, like Polly says, the colour of my eyes. I also like green, the colour of nature; though I haven't seen nature since they took me. I miss it sometimes, green leaves and blades of dew-covered grass, summer mornings and winter nights. The red and brown leaves in autumn, the birds chirping and singing their melodies in spring.

Now all I hear is screaming and crying, and I'm so confused.

I don't understand anything.

Maybe it's better that way.

~~~

"Beautiful," she says, sitting behind me and moving to the side a little to check her work in the mirror. I stare blankly at the reflection - my usually dry and lifeless hair is now curled, vibrant, happy. The curls bounce around my shoulders and an unnatural glow surrounds them. She's painted my face with something she calls makeup, and it feels itchy and heavy. She hands me the hairbrush and tells me to make some last minute adjustments before we leave.

I don't know where we're going, but I hope it's somewhere nice.

When it's time, she takes my hand and leads me out of the house. We walk down the streets and head to wherever we're going. I don't know where it is, but there's a mass of people in the audience and there are blurs of whites and blues and reds and oranges and vibrant colours, oh so vibrant, and that's when I see the woman in the audience.

Her eyes, harsh. Unforgiving. Yet there's a slight edge of care and warmth to them, like a distinct orange glow within a yellow flame, followed by the icy blue at the bottom of the flame, cold, dangerous, wary. I'm wary, but I also feel drawn to it. They welcome me, and envelop me.

I take a few steps, then a few more, further and further to meet my fate.

And that's when the fantasy stops and hell begins.

~~~

She calls me a dreamer. She braids my hair and she pats my head and tucks me into bed and she sits with me, on the spot on the rug, my spot, our spot, and then she tells me to go to sleep. She caresses my forehead with her palm and the back of her hand, one after the other in that order and then soon her weight is lifted from the blanket and I feel light. Weightless. I'm just a small girl, a tiny little insect in this great big world. 

The world doesn't feel so big anymore.

Her eyes don't look so warm anymore.

Too harsh. Unforgiving. Merciless. She's evil. But she's home. I don't know what home is.

~~~

I don't know where I'm going, but it doesn't look very nice.