red. — canvas v oswald, day six.

a rotoscope

The rabbit
She's cold.
An icy breath gasps out of the hole in her chest as Oz pries it open. He stares into it. Vaguely, he can see his reflection warped across the icy sinew. He peers at her face. Still pretty to him. But the blood's gone still beneath the skin, and now she looks stiff, frozen. Strange.
"Were you scared when you died?" he asks her, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

The sky
It's cold.
The blood's poured out of her crumpled body and stained the ground, warming it instead. When she tries to raise her arms and bring heat into her lungs, she finds herself immobilised. Even the aftershocks of death have fizzled out. She can only look wildly around, eyes moving side to side in a frenzy.
And finally, resting, staring, unblinking, at her company.
"Were you scared when you died?"
A trivial question; and what a waste. She tries to laugh, something light and airy and familiar of the girl she used to be - but it comes out broken and gargled.
She speaks without moving her lips.
"Not scared." Not like she thought she would be. "It just feels like floating.”

The rabbit
It's not her anymore. When they took the heat out of her, they changed what she was. Her voice isn't hers. It used to be so warm and light. Now it's as though it's locked up tight within herself. Hiding from the world.
"That's so weird. I thought it'd be heavy. Like you're a bug getting crushed underneath someone's boot."
He considers her. His reflection inside of her.
"What if I brought you back down?"

The sky
She has half a mind to laugh at the boy in front of her. Naive and soft, seeing the world in vivid colour rather than the greys of reality, and this is how she would have wanted to remember her unborn child.
She wonders who they would have become.
Has to settle for the next best thing.
"What if I brought you back down?"
Suspended far above the ground, it's an impossible feat. She says as much. "I don't think you can."
There's nothing anyone can do for her now.

The rabbit
He doesn't look at her face as she speaks. He can't. It's too cold, it sends chills down his blood. He looks at the reflection of himself inside of her. It moves as she speaks. As though her voice is his.
"No!" He won't condone it. Not after what the Monster did to her. "There's gotta be something!"
He looks around. Blood like shattered glass litters the ground. Her blood. They feel like ice between his fingers and crumbles as he collects them. But he gathers it all within a heartbeat, holds it close to his chest, so that the sound of his heartbeat can warm it up. He runs to her. Tries to assemble the pieces of blood in her chest as though they're puzzle pieces.
"It's not fair," he whispers to her, wanting desperately to explain. "It's not fair."

The sky
Her spilled blood slips through the cracks of his clasped hands, but it doesn’t stain his skin. The faint glow of red can’t touch him, for he’s not yet a dead boy.
He stays clean and whole and untarnished as he tries to put her broken pieces back together. The colour flows freely with the contact as her chest becomes a blossoming crimson mess.
“It’s not fair, it’s not fair…”
She watches him sadly as he grows frantic, desperate to make her whole again. She tries to feel his warmth as she leans into his touch, but there’s nothing but a wall of Winter to meet her in the middle.
She is so tired.
“Stop.” She tries to still his movements with a hand lain over his, but it falls through the air. Fitting, for the ghost she has become. She cannot touch; she doesn’t feel.
But despite the frost, she burns.
“Don’t waste your time on me. You can’t save me.”
Nobody has ever been able to.
“It’s okay.”
Diamond eyes and falling tears. Light refracted in the shining world.
Please.
“You have to save yourself now.”
The words catch in the air as the blood in her chest rises up, up. It coats her throat in the sticky substance. She is too late to close her mouth; she feels the rivulets at the corners of her lips spill over as she closes her eyes in defeat.

The rabbit
The pieces won't fit. Too jagged; they clink against each other, round edges trying to slip into triangular ones. Won't fit. Nothing fits anymore. Yet still, he tries. Because he needs here here. When she was alive, things had been so much better. Her skin had been soft and warm; her smile the sweetest he'd ever seen. And Peter was still there, and Esther too, though he hadn't known her very well -- and he had not known that Monsters roamed the Earth. It was as though her presence was the sunlight, warm and glistering, keeping at bay the vampires and the werewolves.

And now the sun is set, and they rage beneath the death-pale moonlight.

He cannot let her go, he cannot let the idea of her go, the idea of any of them, the love of them--

Her hand falls over his. Beautiful, slender hand. It feels like the cold breath of winter, but he remembers the warmth of it. "Stop," she whispers to him, her voice rasping. But how can he stop. He still grips her blood. How can he stop. "Don't waste your time on me." But he--! "You can't save me."

The pieces of blood slips out his fingers.

He knows. The world's been swallowed up by monsters. There was nothing he could do to stop it -- only live with it. If there's a point in living with it.

He looks down at her face. At the glister in her eyes as see-through pearls roll down her cheeks, catching the light and refracting it in Nakom rainbows.-- Beautiful soul, beautiful soul. At the quiet lips that murmur coaxing words -- "You have to save yourself now."

That single command gives him every reason to live with the monsters. Every single tear is his reason to live with the monsters. Even the line of blood that oozes from the corner of her mouth. That is his reason to live with the monsters.

The world is made up of humans and monsters. The humans are beautiful: they are strange, but they fill the air with brassy laughter and hold one another when their hearts hurt. Their bodies are symmetrical and mostly perfect, in their way. They must be protected from the monsters. And when the monsters tarnish that beauty, that beauty must be avenged.

The world is built to be beautiful. It is what was expected when it was first conceived in a godhead’s womb.

He lifts his small hand to wipe the delicate tears away – but he feels only the cold of her fading flesh. All the same. He curves his hand to the roundness of her cheek, only for the meaning of the touch, not so much the sensation of it. He leans forward, brings his mouth to her forehead, as he had while saying farewell to his mother, so many centuries ago.

“You’re beautiful, Celeste.”

An animation

The last thing Oz hears in his dreams is Mrs. Priscilla screaming: “We need you HERE!” And then his eyes bulge open. In his dark brown eyes is the white spot of the sun as it bares down. The eyes blink, wince. Glance from side to side.

Iron bars spotted with rust rise around him. Beyond them is the glitter of the scrapyard with its rolling junk heaps and – the horizon. Gasping, Oz springs, staring down into what is at least a ten foot drop.

He flings his head back up. Ellis! Cages surround him now, he realizes, all suspended by cages spotted with rust, each one carrying a tribute and their mech. He thinks he sees Nowles. The guy Peter had a crush on. But not Ellis.

Ellis!

His heart stops. He needs Ellis. Ellis needs him. They can’t protect each other now.

He runs his hands across his shorts, panting. He already knows what’s happening, it’s not hard to figure out.

They were all about to punch down.

No. His eyes and mouth close. He breathes in through the nose, out the mouth. Just punch up…

He’d made it this far.

He hears the chains snap. He feels the familiar sensation of his stomach floating into his chest as he plummets. But he’s so used to falling by now he hardly even notices.

He’s too busy thinking.

If he could face Parker Lachlan in the Bloodbath of all things and survive, he can do this.
He’d get punched down on, and then he would punch up.
He’ll kill whatever monsters he has to. He will not hesitate this time.
He’ll find Ellis. Protect him. Kill whoever might hurt him.
He’ll get through this.
He has to.

The cage bars snap beneath Frog-legs’ bulk as it lands, throwing up a thick amber cloud of sand. The landing jolts Oz more than the fall, the force pushing his head down for a moment. He raises it, rolls his stiff shoulders uncomfortably.

The first thing he sees on the ground is his own face, stabbed through by a piece of scrap. Then another image of his face. Another. Some draped around wire, or plastered to an old piece of rusty junk, or littering the sand or being tossed around by the wind. All him – with Frog-legs posed in the background. His name at the top, written in gun-metal blue, with harsh smooth lines. Like he was some kind of comic book character. Problem is, even in his own promotional picture, he looks like he’s wincing.

Oz maneuvers Frog-legs around – crunch. Blinking, he raises the mech’s foot. Pieces of an action figure lay warped and snapped in the dirt, still trapped in the dented plastic of its packaging. Labeled by his nickname, now torn and partially obscured by scattered grains of sand.

“What the fuck?!” he sputters. Maybe a few weeks ago, this would have thrilled him. Now he stares at these effigies of him and chokes. He didn’t even know that the Hunger Games tributes got merchandise – they sure as hell never made it down to Nine. Were these even freaking real?!

…So that’s what they are to the Capitol. Not humans. Not even soldiers. Just little flickers of instinct and imagination for them to fetishize, assign their impulses to, worship but not actually.

Monsters. An entire city of the undead, with their necrotic fingers jabbed in the world.

He sees them now, rising up out of the dirt. Creatures that wrap and coil themselves around whatever they can get purchase, huge screens for faces. Disgusting, the way they droop and cling – the strange hissing sounds they make as their screens flicker white and black specks. They turn to him, one synchronized motion. Acknowledging him. Holding up the poster of him. Suddenly, the static clears.

There’s Esther, a twisted ball of flesh in the sand.
And Peter, blood spurting out his eyes.
And Celeste.

He stares into it. At the image of himself. As he vomits at the sight of Esther’s mangled body. As his eyes widen and glaze over with fear as he throws himself at Parker Lachlan, Celeste’s blood at his feet. At his bloodless expression as he turns and sees the cost of his failure, his hesitation – Peter crumpling to the ground.

He thinks he ought to look away and he does not. He knows they’re mocking him. “Look, look at this goofy little kid, thinks he ought to try to win! He can’t do anything to help his friends, how can he help himself.”

Fuck ‘em, Oz.

He stares, to show the monsters that he’s brave enough to face what they have in store. He’ll face it and chew on it and spit it in their eyes. He’s tired of them.

The sand’s turned blood-red.

A wall of red light bursts out around the Capitol’s monsters, blotting the world for one moment with its sharp light before settling and becoming transparent. There – the very center of the field – a trophy rises into the sky.

“God fucking damn,” Oz breathes.

They’re doing it. They’re killing them. All of them? At once? In one day?

His hands tighten around Frog-legs’ controls. The knuckles turn white.

Fuck ‘em, Oz.

Kill who you need to.
Find Ellis.
Fuck the Gamemakers in the ass somehow.

“WE HAVE AN AMAZING SHOW LINED UP FOR YOU TODAY!”

White light slashes through. Oz turns suddenly, to the other side of the red dome. The light falls across another boy. The Hope kid.

"STARTING WITH THE RED COURT, IN OUR FIRST CORNER, COMING TO US ALL THE WAY FROM DISTRICT EIGHT, IT'S CANVAS HOPE!!"

The screens change. Some of them close-ups of Canvas face’s as he peers down at the ground (sad eyes, Oz notices). Some of the scenes playing footage of Capitolites gathered together in a dense crowd, cheering, thrusting their hands into the air, chanting his name.

"AND HIS OPPONENT... COMING ALL THE WAY FROM DISTRICT NINE, IT'S OSWALD TOVE!"

The spot-light brightens around his mech. The harsh light pierces Oz’s eyes. The screens now shift to his face – his wandering, squinting eyes as he looks around, taking it all in. The others, the ones displaying the Capitol, shift, too.

He sees District Nine.

The district square. Everyone packed in like sardines, faces turned up. The entire district seems paralyzed, yet Oz can still hear the track of the Capitolite crowd cheering him on. And then the close-ups. Mya and Snuff, standing close together, Mya’s hand curled around Snuff’s arms. His mother. Hand wrapped around her mouth, eyes curled, as though about to cry.

They’re watching him.

The scream of a firework. It explodes overhead.

“BEGIN!”

Oz blinks as Canvas shoots into the air, shooting down. The sound of a glass cracking, a hole appearing in the windshield – warm, sticky blood rolling down Oz’s shoulder, his arm.

Fuck.

If he had just moved a little to the right, he would have ended up like Peter.

NO HESITATION.

He slams his hands down onto the buttons – Frog-legs’ rocket boosters roar and flare, he rockets into the air. A scream rises from his diaphragm, edged and ragged, the roar of an animal ready to kill for its territory as his cannons blast.

There are only Ellis and Oswald. All else are monsters.

doodlings

Oswald Tove is a terrible friend.

In his heart and mind, he never left Mya and Snuff. Not in the sense that they were with him, emotionally, but that he was with them. Like his mind had invited itself to be with them. Not really to speak with them, but to watch them, and watch them only. As though they had cast him away, and now he lay on the sidelines. As his mind went back to those energetic days at the Loft, with the laughter bouncing off the squiggly-lined walls. As it tracks the pattern of their final words to him.

“Why?”

“They’ll crush you, man!”

Funny how words can become crossroads. Immediately, from that day forward, he’d gone down a path that signaled abandonment. In a single sentence, Snuff had pressed his shoe down on Oswald and stomped him out. In a way, he felt killed before he even stepped onto the train. To think that a friend, a brother, would simply figure him for dead…

But now Oz knows what fear is. What death looks like, beyond a television screen.

Before, while watching the Games, he preferred to just simply not pay attention. Rather like when Esther’s face appeared during one of the anthems. Hide his face behind a notebook and draw and draw to the sounds of children screaming and flesh rending, knowing with each twitchy, spastic motion that someday this could be him.

Would be him.

And in that way, death wasn’t very real to Oz, though he thought he would prefer it all the same. An escape that must be escaped from. Living and dying seemed much the same, except that at least living ends.

And if he were Snuff, and Snuff were him, he would have said the same thing. “They’ll crush you! Run, run as fast as you can, do not stop, do not look back, save yourself and only yourself!” For the same reason that Oswald refused to say Snuff’s name at the reaping.

And, in a way, that was what he had told Snuff, when he broke their pact.

Because he loves Snuff, and Snuff loves him.

He saw it in Snuff’s eyes as he gazed upon him one last time at the Justice Building. But Oz didn’t realize what it was he saw, at the same.

He sees it now, on the abomination’s hissing television screens, as he dodges Canvas Hope’s next attack.

Oswald Tove never left his friends, and his friends never left him. They were always with him, as he had always been with them.

Ellis showed him that, and Ellis didn’t even know that. How he made him remember, with total honesty, beneath the harsh blaring light of what Oz knows now, the truth of what had happened between him and Snuff.

Ellis, who must be found and protected. Because he’s the only one left.

an animation

These motherfuckers always have to taunt you, don’t they? . “I’m the best and you’re not, blahblahblah!” Yeah, it’s not like you could freaking die any moment now, freaking freakazoid.

“So, uh, which one of us got a three in the PTSs again?” Oz mutters. Not so much to play into Canvas’ stupid game, but more out of the hope it’ll shut him up. “Yeah, keep coping.”

Another thing that separates the human from the monster: this whole notion that the Games are like some schoolyard athletic competition. The taunting, attempt at posturing, complete disregard for others’ mortality and their own. It was disgusting. The jack-asses that killed Esther and Celeste were the same way. Play-acting apotheosis, rubbing it in the lowly “mortal’s” faces as hard as they can before their own bones splinter and they spit out their own blood.

Oz raises his cannon again.

“Fucking moron,” he spits out, voice oily with disgust.

BOOM.

A fierce, burning force slams into Oswald’s back. He can’t tell if it’s a force or a noise – they seem intertwined. He only knows that he’s flying up and forward, that Frog-legs’ carapace is hot to the touch and stings his hands as grope at Frog-legs’ controls, that Canvas is growing larger and larger and larger—

Gasping, he positions Frog-legs’ knife mechanism in front of itself–

And for less than a heartbeat, he thinks he sees human eyes peer into his. But he can’t tell if it’s Canvas’ eyes or his reflection in Canvas’ windshield – it all blurs together. Like two water-colors mixing, becoming a different color.

He wraps Frog-legs' arm around Canvas' neck, now that they've slammed into each other. Maybe, at a shorter distance, Oz could control him better.

A comic

The boy’s bathroom at school. Dark; the motion activated lights have gone off. Underneath one of the stalls, someone looking underneath can find a figure curled up by the toilet. The sounds of crying echo against the tiled walls.

The creak of the bathroom door. Snuff enters through an aisle of light. The lights shudder on with a hum.

SNUFF: Oz?

The sobbing stops. Room falls silent for a moment.

SNUFF: [pushing open the stalls as he goes] Oz, it’s me.

He comes across a locked one. Peeks underneath it. Sees the curled up figure.

SNUFF: Oz…

No response. Well, he can’t get inside any other way. Snuff crawls underneath the stall door.

Oz realizes what Snuff is doing and flinches, tear-stained eyes going wide, forgetting they’re supposed to be crying.

OZ: Dude, what the fuck?!
SNUFF: [halfway through] The door was locked.
OZ: [hastily wiping at his eyes] For a reason!
SNUFF: Sorry.

Snuff reaches his hand out to Oz.
SNUFF: Mya and I have something cool to show you.

An animation

The boy from Eight is going nuts.

He takes Oz’s insults and he doesn’t try to justify himself. He takes them in as his identity. Relishes them, basks in their glow.

And for what? “To walk out of here,” he says. In a way, Oz can understand that. He wants to go home too. He wants to be a child again. Kiss his mother goodnight – God, he wants to be in his mother’s arms again – see his friends. Be happy. Be allowed to live, as much as a Niner can live.

But a Niner can live. His friends showed him that. Can live well, and happily – in their tough, ragged, sorrowful way.

They showed him so much happiness, despite the sorrow of living.

And he never realized that until now.

Something tightens in his throat.

He threw away his entire life, and he never even noticed until it was too late.

But they all were treating their own lives like garbage. Canvas, in his lunacy. And the others’, too. So happy to accept that they were the Capitol’s, so eager to jump into the fray and taste each other’s blood.

He could understand wanting to go home. He could understand the pain and terror of the situation. It was the way they relished the situation that disgusted him. That made them lizard-like to him. Canvas tries to redirect the insult onto Oz – but Oz doesn’t take it. He’s not the one who’s been actively trying to kill people. Who relishes in the violence he’s seen.

When he attacked Parker Lachlan at the Bloodbath, he knew exactly what he had done. He had hurt someone. As surprising as it had been, Oz took it for what it was. Violence. Nothing more, nothing less. It didn’t deserve the aggrandizement that Canvas wishes violence had. Celeste had died. Parker had paid her penance for killing her – and still survived. That was all. Only a lizard would take that in and accept it.

“So that’s your choice,” Oz leaves Canvas with that. “That’s who you want to be for the rest of your life.”

The bitch is too far gone. Too far up the Capitol’s ass. He likes the way it shelters him. Makes him forget he ought to cry, Oz supposes.

Monster’s too strong in that mech. Frog-legs is too clumsy and heavy compared to Canvas’. A frog versus an eagle– of course it wasn’t going to work. And Eight’s diving in for another attack.

Bring the fight to him–!

Make it human. Remove the mechanized monstrosities out of the equation.

Quickly, he snatches up Fun Gun, belts its bandelier around his chest. Checks that the pocket-knife is in his pocket – it is – there’s the bulge.

The monster’s swooping in closer. It’s metal wings casts a sweeping shadow over the sand–

Now.

In one motion, Frog-legs’ rocket booster flares to life as the mech bends its knees, tenses, leaps into the air. The next, Frog-legs’ dagger swings in the air, its cockpit comes open. Oz leaps atop the dashboard, propels himself forward, his body arching in a C, hands held high over his head. The blast of gunfire– Oz’s chest slamming into the mech’s foot, body curling around it as his leg suddenly burns, feels like it could fall off, tears spring to his eyes and he vomits out breath and a quiet choked word:

“Mama...!”

A sketch

Oz sways, and the world sways with him.

Beneath him is the net below the training center’s climbing bars, casting a matrixed silhouette on the floor beneath. Above him are his arms as they tremble, weak, being pulled from their sockets – fingers wilting – the climbing bars seem so high to him – the ledge pulls farther and farther away.

He can hear his heartbeat, thinks he can feel its pulse in his trembling arms.

He’s going to fall.

An animation

The instructor at the climbing arms had taught him not to let his legs dangle. Brace the core, hold the thighs firm, angle the legs a little. Don’t let your body control you, be in control of your body.

He grits his teeth, casts his dewey gaze up, into the light that splinters off of Canvas’ mech suit. Frog-legs has fallen back to the ground and now remains still, listless. With luck, Canvas hasn’t noticed yet – with luck, he’s confused, maybe wondering if his bullets had been true.

God, Oz could use some luck!

Oz reaches up, finding holds in the armor’s of chinks, pulling himself up, careful not to put too much weight on the wounded leg.

“You’re the sort of person who gives up.”

No.

Not anymore.

There’s the slit in the mech’s windscreen. Easy to put his hand beneath it, pull it up, crawl in – especially for someone as small as Oz.

And now he’s eye-to-eye with Canvas Hope.

“Boo–” he wraps his legs around Canvas’ waist, flings his arm around his neck, double-locking himself tight “-- monster.”

Oz seizes Fun Gun, presses the trigger as he aims it into Eight’s face. A cloud of glitter and pale blue paint bursts into the cockpit, filling it, puffing against the glass of Eight’s windscreen, obscuring the view within.