Falling// [Leviathans vs. 2 Pitfall Lizards]

Simon Karnes

The shock has subsided.

After staggering around for the rest of the day with my only focus on the pain of losing my foot, Rowan, and my dignity as I use both Stella and Kiena as human crutches, everything that has happened has finally sunk in. Rowan is dead, my foot is gone, and I’m a completely helpless cripple who is of no real use to anyone.

I should be angry. I mean, I’m always angry. I killed my little sister because she didn’t know how to pronounce a word correctly for Ripred’s sake. Now I’ve lost everything and a limb and not even a smidge of rage has made it’s way to my surface. I think I’m just too tired. By the time we stumble onto a train (something I vehemently did not want to get on but really had no other choice with my bum leg and broken hand) I simply throw my full bag of supplies off of my shoulder and flop down face first into on the cushioned seats.

I had only dreams of bright flashes, heavy breathing, and distant explosions. I wake up to the rhythmic click-clack-click-clack of the train rolling over the rails. A dull light washes over me as the train begins to slow to a halt; I slept straight through the anthem.

I groan as I sit up, my face peeling off the seat cushion I had passed out on, a small pool of drool remaining. When train jolts to a stop and the doors slide open I move slowly, rustling through my bag for a few of my knives. My hand falls on the book instead. I pause before the ramp that has extended over the wide gap between the train and solid ground as my heart and chest twist and constrict painfully.

It’s Esmeralda’s book. Not just some book random book of fairytales off the endless shelves of some Capitol library sent in here to taunt me - her book. The blood stains and tattered cover … she sent this in here. I pull it out of my bad and stare at the cover; I smile. I ache to pull her engagement ring out of my pocket but know better. There are surely cameras everywhere and for all I know Esmeralda could be sitting up and watching this livestream of horror.

Better if she finds the ring on my body when I return home and pass it off as just some trinket in her mind. Better for me not to look at what could’ve been over and over again and focus on … anything else.

I slide the book back into my bag and exchange it for the knives and begin staggering down the ramp, my prosthetic-mostly-metal-and-leather leg clanking awkwardly against the ramp no matter how quiet I try to be. Odds are I’ve alerted everyone in the area of our arrival. I slip on the last bit of ramp as the drizzle makes it slick and end up sliding onto solid ground. “Fuck,” I mutter, grabbing my fake leg and moving it into a position so that I can stand.

I shrug away the help and struggle to my feet on my own.

Rain patters on the ground and leaks through my thick hair to my scalp as I begin walking into the rolling landscape speckled with what seems like endless ropes of powerlines. I keep my eyes focused on the ground in front of me. “Watch for mines,” I warn, though it’s more of a fear I’ve now acquired. I avoid every suspicious mound in the ground no matter how harmless.

What have I become?

My eyebrows furrow and my jaw clenches. Ripred I’m such a fucking useless, wuss. I clench my empty hand into a fist when my prosthetic falls awkwardly and grinds against the burns on my leg. Stupid leg, stupid mine, stupid fucking Capitol. I grind my teeth in frustration and my eyes squeeze shut. When I open them again a huge lizard has popped out of the ground like a daisy already lashing out at Kiena.

I throw one of my knives just before a stinging pain bursts through my arm.

Simon Karnes

I think I missed. I can’t be sure as I wrestle with another one of the damn things able to shove it off only after one of Kiena’s knives cuts deep into it’s leg. When I look up Stella is pulling her spear out of the other lizard’s leg. I wipe the bit of spattered blood off of my face and scramble as quickly as possible to my feet foot - choosing to balance mostly on the one still attached to my body.

I search the ground frantically for the knives I had dropped in an attempt to avoid another attack from the beasts. I scoop them up, one by one, holding them in my hand like a full hand of cards. I can only hope I was dealt a winning hand.

But let’s be honest here - when has that ever happened?

I stagger to the last knife that lays in the dust; it shimmers, holding droplets of rain like the flower petals in the fields back home or the Esmeralda’s eyelashes that night we went out in the pouring rain to visit her parent’s graves. I reach without looking, sure my hand will find it’s way to the blade. I look over my shoulder, ready to let loose another blade. Just aim for the one attacking St---

---

“Hey!”

My Dad’s hand appears on my shoulder as he stops me.

“Can you take these back to your Mom? I gotta finish up on some chores.”

I nod and take the basket full of wildflowers from him and turn back on the path towards home, beginning to whistle again.

“Oh, and don’t forget to feed the horses!” He shouts back over his shoulder as he runs away from me.

“Got it!” I shout back; I begin whistling again only once the sound of his footsteps has disappeared.

I hand the basket to my Mom, her face lighting up as she scoops the flowers from the basket and holds them to her face. She’s glowing - her fair skin, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, her smile. Glowing. Beautiful, actually. Well, y’know, for a Mom.

Sam brings her a vase and sets it in front of her before rushing off with a hatchet in hand ready to increase our wood stockpile no doubt. She doesn’t forget to punch me in the arm on her way out. “You’re it, brotha,” is all she says before the screen door swings shut behind her.

Summer and Spike scream through the kitchen, chasing each other around the kitchen table, an intricate dance as they fly around legs and shoes before racing out of the kitchen again. I see Seymour and Sadie through the window above the sink where Mom is bent over cutting the wildflowers and plopping them into the vase.

I sit at the table and admire the sunset.

“Hey honey,” my Dad says as he wraps his arms around my Mom’s waist, putting his chin on her shoulder. “You need to shave,” is her reply. I smile.

“Oh what, too scratchy for Sal my Gal?”

“Your ‘Gal’ will stop being your gal if it gets any scratchier,” she is laughing, the sarcasm in her voice apparent.

“You frustrate me,” he says , turning her around at the hips so she looks at him. The smirk on her face and the raised eyebrow are playful.

“You irritate me,” she scoffs before smiling.

And they kiss. And I feign gagging, my young mind still fearing girls and cooties.

But even in that awkward pre-teen age I know that what they have is exactly what I want.

---

My eyes flutter open and I can’t breathe. I’m on my back, staring at the sky as rain pours down and beads on my face. I try to get up but my body won’t do what I tell it to. I only feel my legs and arms spasming uncontrollably. My chest aches, my arm feels like it is on fire, and there is a really weird smell in the air. Like burnt bacon.

I don’t know how long it is - seconds, minutes, hours - but when I finally will myself to move, all I can do is raise my head. My arm looks like it is smoking. The flesh is peeling away at my hand and from the inside of my elbow. My good leg doesn’t look so good anymore either, nor does it feel good---well, it doesn’t feel anything actually. I gasp for air, my chest still aching with a ferocity even greater than my not a foot ever did. It hurts to breathe.

When my muscles finally start doing what they are told and I make it into a sitting position, I see Stella lying on the ground, lizards encroaching, and Kiena working to fend them both off. I stay sitting, seeing as neither of my legs are worth having, my lungs don’t feel like breathing air, and my arm looks like an electric current shot into my palm and out my elbow.

I reach with my broken hand to one of my knives nearby and will all of the accuracy and force I can muster I throw it in the direction of the mutts.

Simon Karnes

I fall onto my side with only the lizards screeches and hisses to gauge how well my blade hit. As far as I can tell---Fucking Ripred my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut as I grimace in pain, curling into a ball on the ground as the pain seems to radiate through my heart, lungs, stomach. I take a the shakiest of breathes, my lungs protesting every bit of it. I feel like I’m being strangled and suffocated by some invisible force all at the same time.

I open my eyes, looking down at the foot I don’t have and the leg I can’t feel. My leg---the flesh and skin are burnt away, peeling like a bad sunburn and charred like a pie you leave in the oven too long. But the smell… it’s enough to make me wretch. But that takes too much energy and too much movement and effort. All I can do is stare into the distance and let my eyes follow the seemingly endless expanse of wires and columns that hold them.

I curse, or at least move my lips to form a curse word, though I don’t hear any sound come out of my mouth. It’s time for me to die, isn’t it? This is how I’m going to die. Curled up on the ground, a hopeless wimp, electrocuted and devoured by a pair of lizards. This is it?

I take another breathe and roll onto my back. I could just lay here. Just stare at the sky until it’s all over. It could almost be peaceful. Better than anything my sister ever got. She died staring at a crumbing ceiling. The overcast sky was much too generous for the likes of me. But I was done trying to move. Everything ached. My nub, my arm, my head, my chest, my lungs, all of it. Except for the leg I couldn’t feel. I’d just be a burden now, I think to myself hearing the clamor of my allies and the lizards nearby. Not just a limping burden but a burden that need to be dragged everywhere. A useless piece of shit. I move my lips but I don’t have enough air in my lungs to make the words come out.

“Die. Just die.”

But instead I'm being dragged upwards, my feet falling beneath me though I can only tell because I see them beneath me. I see Kiena's eyes, where her pain is obvious.

“We won't win this fight,” she gasps, clearly in pain. Blood trails behind her. I see Stella buying us time as we turn to leave, each of us leaning pretty heavily on one another (though I am still the heavier load as both my legs refuse to work.) “We need to get out of here.”

I just gasp and nod. Gasp and nod.