mal. d12m.

I was so goddamn hungry that I was one reaping away from joining the Peacekeepers.

Turns out fate had other plans for me. And when they called my name I grinned like an idiot, let them drag me out of the crowd and flung me onto the stage - even when my weak knees buckled and I landed face-first on the concrete I kept smiling.

Everyone thinks of this as a death sentence but for me it was a meal ticket, having shut up shop for three months since Pa got sick and the supply trains kept dwindling with every carriage we robbed. I was so deliriously famished that I laughed as a white glove dragged me upwards to look down at the misshapen crowd, blood drooling down my chin from a split lip. Truth is I woulda gotten it from a Keeper anyway, would have tried to rob them when I wrote my name down. At least I'm getting a free meal out of this wound.

Or so I thought. I know beggars can't be choosers, but plain crackers and browning apples? Really? I could find this in the garbage bins behind the justice building. I didn't say anything, just scoffed down the food like a ravenous animal, but I'm giving my life up for their little carnival and this is the best they could offer?

I bet those District Two fuckers have roast dinner and red wine.

They said my family would be compensated. I fucking doubt it, but even they would agree that my life is worth less than a half-empty bag of rice. My sister would turn up her nose at me, go running off to her husband - who the fuck gets married in a war, huh? And now her own brother's still being conscripted long after they stopped firing bullets into our walls just for wanting to be fed. She's got a little boy now, two years old and pinching pennies in another Seam shack like the one we grew up in yet he's as chubby as a merchant's kid. Who has a child in this new world order huh? Madness.

Well, I hope little nephew likes rice. Courtesy of your dead Uncle Mal!