olive mortuus ㅇ district twelve} done

o l i v e  m o r t u u s

There are no good people in District Twelve. To be human is a luxury when food can barely find it's place in the pit of my stomach and I know what it's like to be too hungry to care where the money comes from. I know that feeling so well that sometimes I can feel nothing but the sting and the stench of blood up my nostrils and I think that in the end it is all worth it. I don't have to think about it if I can sleep and I can only sleep if I'm well fed. Maybe some of my sisters enjoy it, the blood on their hands, but I think most of us just want to survive. 

There are no people in District Twelve. We are opportunists. We are survivors. And I know those aren't bad things to be. Really, I don't have much of a problem with our business. It's fun to play pretend, to run around in a mask and scribble upon the clipboards attached to rickety old cots. I like to copy the big words my sisters so often spout off, folding my arms across my chest and puffing out my cheeks. 

Mom says I look like chipmunk when I do that. 

Jokes on her because I think chipmunks can be very intimidating. I ran into one when I was climbing a tree a few years back and it chased me half a mile before I managed to lose the little shit. (And I can say shit because it's not really a bad word... I checked.) 

I'm dangerous too, even if I don't look it. People's bodies sell for a lot of money. I don't know how much they're worth but judging by the stench of our basement I'd say like at least twenty whole dollars. That's enough to buy for everyone and our family has like a million people in it so that's a lot of money. 

Maybe my sisters think I'm kind of useless because I'm so young. I haven't quite hit my growth spurt... or really grown at all. Mom says it's okay and that I'm just a late bloomer and that I shouldn't worry all the other boys in my class have grown tall and pretty. So I don't but maybe I do just a little bit. 

It's stupid to worry about something like that when we're almost always in danger of starving to death. Then again, it's so much easier to fuss over myself in a dirty mirror than worry about the way my stomach seems intent on forcing its way out of my throat. And sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we'd been born somewhere else, anywhere else. If we had simply gotten lucky enough to be born into a wealthy District One family and to be trapped away in one of those pretty houses I always see on television. 

Maybe I'd even be one of the careers that I so often have nightmares about. The ones with blood on their hands, with droplets crawling down their cheeks. No matter how hard I try I cannot get the gore that stains our television screens out of my mind. I'm not good with that, with scary stuff. One time I walked in on one of my sisters carving the heart out of a dead man and I was throwing up into the toilet for at least an hour. 

Since then I haven't been able to sleep in the dark. My nightmares consist of the dead coming to life, lumbering toward me with gaping holes in their bodies with their brains dripping from their noses. And they are angry about what we have taken. They scream and groan and dig their fingers into my skin, trying to replace their emptiness with what is mine. 

I can't stand the night. It turns us all deaf and dumb, robs us of what we need most and I cannot help the shivers that feel like claws up my back every time I am left alone with only the blackness as company. 

So mom always lights a candle before I go to bed. 

Orange light to chase the monsters away. The bad ones, anyway.