Bonfire of the Misfits [Avalanchers Day 1.5]
Feb 12, 2018 10:21:24 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2018 10:21:24 GMT -5
Gillian Imberline
You’d always remember the sound.
Akin to an overripe tomato slipping from the counter and smacking on the tiled floor of your mother’s kitchen, the squelch of Apollo’s skull would haunt each of your remaining nightmares (replacing the giant clown you once believed to have lived under your bed). Then there was the matter of bone fragments and blood that had splattered across your sapphire shirt, or that her body had trapped you in the snow for several heartbeats before you could roll out from underneath. Did a minute or just seconds pass before others pounced, slicing up your face and nipping at your thighs? All of it was a swirl of motion, you couldn’t remember if a scream escaped your lips after blood poured from your cheek.
It had been an accident—you wanted to tell C’rizz, his blade at the ready for you—but the words were caught between your tongue and throat, tangled together amidst the shouts ringing out across the cornucopia. Perhaps that’s what he meant by not fearing death; it was a lot easier not to be afraid if twenty-three others fell before you did. Culpability came with age, you reasoned—growing up here meant you could only be guilty, tied to the sins of those that rose and fell around you.
Looking past your attackers, Mercy was encircled by tributes, sharks taking bites right and left. Raven dodged and turned, too quick for them. You angled to run, not because you thought it was the smart thing to do in the moment, but because fear washed over you in waves (just what could you do to help them now?).
Another sound—the pop of Gabriel’s knee—and you froze. Oh poop. Leaving then was as palatable as sour milk on a hot summer’s day. So, against better judgment, you took off running full tilt, sliding through the snow (past Maisie’s kicking crampons). Whatever courage remained spilled over into a final act of defiance.
Wrapping yourself around Gabe, you did your best to remember how you’d won the three-legged race last summer, and hop, skipped, and jumped out of the cornucopia.
You didn’t remember how long or what direction you all headed in, to be honest. They had tried to teach you the best ways to tell north and south in the training center, but that had been the day after Gabriel had given you something from Justice Fray’s personal stash, and your head throbbed so badly you could barely see straight. You glimpsed to a field of standing ice flowers and toward a gnarled patch of trees, and decided it was often better to go where things were ugly (because what was beautiful drew attention from too many tributes). Lungs burning, you pressed onward to the trees.
When the adrenaline started to wear off, you became distinctly aware of the fact that Gabriel was actually quite heavy, that your face was comfortably numb, and that all of this was absolutely crazy. In between gasps of breath, you explained to Gabriel, “It just feels like everything hurts. I got a cut on my cheek, and there's snow in my boots... I feel like this has been the worst day of my life, except it's also probably one of the last days of my life...” There were tributes that relished and glorified this experience, and in your mind, they were absolutely nuts.
'Well, if this is the worst day of your life, that means tomorrow's gonna be better, isn't it?' He tried logic with you, which would have been well and good if you weren’t running for your lives.
"Tomorrow's gonna be better? They don't even have showers or toilet paper here!” You always wondered why no one ever talked about the logistics of such things while fighting to the death. Aside from facing people that wanted to flay you both, the prospect of not having a hot shower for more than twenty-four hours made you ready to stab a knife through someone’s eye. And just where were you supposed to do the unmentionable when there wasn’t a single square of two-ply? You’d be sure to talk about that later for any sponsors who were listening.
Of course a boy wouldn’t understand what it was like. He probably spent all day picking his nose and running around naked with his friends playing practical jokes. Were you picturing Gabe naked?! You shifted your weight onto your foot, breath ragged and body heavy. All of it made you angry, but worse still, you felt tears forming in the corners of your eyes. Everyone would see you crying like a baby over your fortune—as though you’d asked for any of this.
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing... I mean I never know what I'm doing but this is about a hundred times worse..." Trees swallowed up your shadows as you pressed through the thicket, your voice echoing. Was anyone else dealing with this as badly as you were? You bet that Vesper was slaying anyone that got in her way. And here you were, sniveling like a child into the snow. You wiped a hand across your face, and muffled another cry. Down into the snow you went, on hands and knees, a mix of snot and tears.
"I'm gonna do the only thing that helped me think in the training center... can you help me?" You stood up from your knees and moved to start collecting small pieces of kindling. Cannon fire sounded and you dropped a set of logs onto the ground, eyes wide and body stiff. You didn’t care about having made it out of the bloodbath, or that so many had fallen. All you wanted was to lay down and wake up in your own bed, underneath cotton sheets and cuddling with a stuffed bunny—but instead of letting the thought linger, you turned to pushing together the pieces of wood into a pile.
You reasoned it would get attention. A thick cloud of smoke drifted upward, and a steady fire roared in the pyre. The repetitive motion of tossing more and more logs atop blaze calmed your nerves; you had barely noticed Raven come from the shadows (unscathed, thank ripred). You paused to stare into the fire, and hoped that the others would chalk up the tears to all the smoke that was forming due to the wetness of the logs.
"I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel. I slipped on ice and now she's gone forever. And there are twenty people out there that want to cut me to pieces... and I can't stop freaking shivering." What would your parents think watching you take the life of a girl you barely knew? Worse still, why was it that instead of deep sadness, you could only find anger burning underneath, threatening to boil to the surface? It wasn’t fair—getting pulled from district eight, that you had no useful skills, no friends (even your district partner hated you), and you would likely freeze to death—what kind of life was this supposed to be?
"I just want to make a giant fire and burn every single last freaking thing."
You’d always remember the sound.
Akin to an overripe tomato slipping from the counter and smacking on the tiled floor of your mother’s kitchen, the squelch of Apollo’s skull would haunt each of your remaining nightmares (replacing the giant clown you once believed to have lived under your bed). Then there was the matter of bone fragments and blood that had splattered across your sapphire shirt, or that her body had trapped you in the snow for several heartbeats before you could roll out from underneath. Did a minute or just seconds pass before others pounced, slicing up your face and nipping at your thighs? All of it was a swirl of motion, you couldn’t remember if a scream escaped your lips after blood poured from your cheek.
It had been an accident—you wanted to tell C’rizz, his blade at the ready for you—but the words were caught between your tongue and throat, tangled together amidst the shouts ringing out across the cornucopia. Perhaps that’s what he meant by not fearing death; it was a lot easier not to be afraid if twenty-three others fell before you did. Culpability came with age, you reasoned—growing up here meant you could only be guilty, tied to the sins of those that rose and fell around you.
Looking past your attackers, Mercy was encircled by tributes, sharks taking bites right and left. Raven dodged and turned, too quick for them. You angled to run, not because you thought it was the smart thing to do in the moment, but because fear washed over you in waves (just what could you do to help them now?).
Another sound—the pop of Gabriel’s knee—and you froze. Oh poop. Leaving then was as palatable as sour milk on a hot summer’s day. So, against better judgment, you took off running full tilt, sliding through the snow (past Maisie’s kicking crampons). Whatever courage remained spilled over into a final act of defiance.
Wrapping yourself around Gabe, you did your best to remember how you’d won the three-legged race last summer, and hop, skipped, and jumped out of the cornucopia.
You didn’t remember how long or what direction you all headed in, to be honest. They had tried to teach you the best ways to tell north and south in the training center, but that had been the day after Gabriel had given you something from Justice Fray’s personal stash, and your head throbbed so badly you could barely see straight. You glimpsed to a field of standing ice flowers and toward a gnarled patch of trees, and decided it was often better to go where things were ugly (because what was beautiful drew attention from too many tributes). Lungs burning, you pressed onward to the trees.
When the adrenaline started to wear off, you became distinctly aware of the fact that Gabriel was actually quite heavy, that your face was comfortably numb, and that all of this was absolutely crazy. In between gasps of breath, you explained to Gabriel, “It just feels like everything hurts. I got a cut on my cheek, and there's snow in my boots... I feel like this has been the worst day of my life, except it's also probably one of the last days of my life...” There were tributes that relished and glorified this experience, and in your mind, they were absolutely nuts.
'Well, if this is the worst day of your life, that means tomorrow's gonna be better, isn't it?' He tried logic with you, which would have been well and good if you weren’t running for your lives.
"Tomorrow's gonna be better? They don't even have showers or toilet paper here!” You always wondered why no one ever talked about the logistics of such things while fighting to the death. Aside from facing people that wanted to flay you both, the prospect of not having a hot shower for more than twenty-four hours made you ready to stab a knife through someone’s eye. And just where were you supposed to do the unmentionable when there wasn’t a single square of two-ply? You’d be sure to talk about that later for any sponsors who were listening.
Of course a boy wouldn’t understand what it was like. He probably spent all day picking his nose and running around naked with his friends playing practical jokes. Were you picturing Gabe naked?! You shifted your weight onto your foot, breath ragged and body heavy. All of it made you angry, but worse still, you felt tears forming in the corners of your eyes. Everyone would see you crying like a baby over your fortune—as though you’d asked for any of this.
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing... I mean I never know what I'm doing but this is about a hundred times worse..." Trees swallowed up your shadows as you pressed through the thicket, your voice echoing. Was anyone else dealing with this as badly as you were? You bet that Vesper was slaying anyone that got in her way. And here you were, sniveling like a child into the snow. You wiped a hand across your face, and muffled another cry. Down into the snow you went, on hands and knees, a mix of snot and tears.
"I'm gonna do the only thing that helped me think in the training center... can you help me?" You stood up from your knees and moved to start collecting small pieces of kindling. Cannon fire sounded and you dropped a set of logs onto the ground, eyes wide and body stiff. You didn’t care about having made it out of the bloodbath, or that so many had fallen. All you wanted was to lay down and wake up in your own bed, underneath cotton sheets and cuddling with a stuffed bunny—but instead of letting the thought linger, you turned to pushing together the pieces of wood into a pile.
You reasoned it would get attention. A thick cloud of smoke drifted upward, and a steady fire roared in the pyre. The repetitive motion of tossing more and more logs atop blaze calmed your nerves; you had barely noticed Raven come from the shadows (unscathed, thank ripred). You paused to stare into the fire, and hoped that the others would chalk up the tears to all the smoke that was forming due to the wetness of the logs.
"I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel. I slipped on ice and now she's gone forever. And there are twenty people out there that want to cut me to pieces... and I can't stop freaking shivering." What would your parents think watching you take the life of a girl you barely knew? Worse still, why was it that instead of deep sadness, you could only find anger burning underneath, threatening to boil to the surface? It wasn’t fair—getting pulled from district eight, that you had no useful skills, no friends (even your district partner hated you), and you would likely freeze to death—what kind of life was this supposed to be?
"I just want to make a giant fire and burn every single last freaking thing."
⚜
