Bon Appetit {Feast, Day 5}

Sleep is a valuable this late in the Games. It can make you or break you, depending on how much or little you get. Every minute of sleep counts, but too long of a nap and those minutes count against you. Each passing grain in the hour glass (though, the hour glass isn’t nearly as bad as the red sanded beast of the 60th Games) counts against you, whether you like it or not. With each passing moment, it becomes more and more likely that I’ll lose, or that I’ll win. My heart thumps painfully in my chest, trying hard to deny the surge of selfishness that rushes through me at the thought of going home. I want it. I would kill for it, but I can’t. If I go home and Penelope lies beneath the ocean for the rest of my life, I would never forgive myself and neither would Noah. I would be damned beyond help. That doesn’t mean the dreams and hopes of it aren’t nice. Last night I’d dreamt that I went home, Penelope holding my hand and our district cheering us on before we’d kissed. It had seemed so real. I could almost taste the sea on her lips and the sun on her skin. Then, I woke up. The reality I faced was a sore cheek from rolling onto a pointed shell and an aching body as I stood. My aggravation grows as a loud blaring trumpet is blown in the air, my eyes wildly searching for who must be playing around with a conch shell or something, but there is nothing. All I see are my sleepy alliance members, their faces equally drawn and peeved as we all wake up.

"Congratulations on your longevity! You've made it to the top eleven; only ten more have to die before you make it home…”

I groan low in my throat, stretching and letting the popping of my joints block out the annoying rattle of the announcer. I’ve grown tired of games, their pomp and circumstance giving me a raging headache to add to my current list of bodily ailments. It seems like no matter what we do, there is always something waiting to drag us down, something waiting just beyond the corner of the castle to strike us where we least want it. I want nothing more to be curled up in my dirty bed at home, inside a tiny shack along the borders of our town in District Four, and dig into the afterlives of those around me for the rest of my forsaken life. Nothing had ever sounded better, not after I’d killed a girl and had to fight snakes and slept upon piles of sharp shells; not after I’d been forced to watch people die before me at the hands of my sister and ally and brother (because I’ve only ever made hammocks with my brothers upon old trees and towering seashell walls); not after I’d felt the anxiety of not knowing if it was safe to sleep at night for fear that I might die. After so many years of looking for an exit from the hell I’d been raised in, I’d finally found it, only to be desperate to return. I’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire and I wanted nothing more than to climb back into the pan as quickly as possible. Maybe, just maybe, there is hope. My ear just barely catches the word Feast before my attention is drawn again. There haven’t been any Feasts in the recent years. The promise of new items doesn’t sound too bad, especially not if my alliance is there. We were solid enough at the Bloodbath. With most of the tributes meeting up again, hopefully a few more people will fall. It sickens me that that thought is now normal in my head.

Our alliance is a quiet group, in general. We don’t talk much, when it comes down to it. We do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said. Once, I almost wished that those snakes had killed us right then and there. I would rather die than have to kill one of the girls or the boy who stands beside me. They, in their silence and solidarity, have become my makeshift family of the sea, an extension of myself. Without them, I wouldn’t exist. At least, I wouldn’t exist any longer. Had they not been my allies against all odds, I would have died in the Bloodbath without a question. I would have been gone before I’d arrive. Maybe I would have even been facing the Kraken myself at this very moment. I can hear it raging in the distance beyond the shore, it’s angry bubbling growls calling across the sand and shaking through my bones. I was the Kraken on the shore as a child, waving my arm tentacles and legs and lashing out at everyone and everything. I know that feeling of rage and a want to destroy everything in sight. Part of me must have a death wish, my body stilling to listen to the Kraken’s cries one last time, because part of me is begging to go after it and see the creature of myth with my own eyes. I shake my head as I reprimand myself under my breath, stealing into the Seaweed Room quietly together.

Once, one of the graves we’d been pilfering had been underground for a bit of a long period of time. We had missed it somehow, but when we’d come across the gravestone, we’d known we’d never hit it. It was the most difficult dig we’d ever had to do. The dirt had compacted and grass has begun to grow over it and the water had helped to glue it together, not to mention I was only fourteen and still getting used to the process of digging up dirt that had been shoveled in with the intention of staying down. Graves weren’t meant to be revisited, not in the way we’d done it. They weren’t supposed to be reopened and sat in with shovels and dirty hands trying to pry open nails that had begun to rust against the damp wood. After what seemed like hours of pulling nails out of holes and trying to shove the lid out of the way in the spitting rain, we finally did it. However, the sight we’d met was why we then made the rule to never miss a new grave. The corpse inside no longer looked like it was sleeping. It was paler than snow and colder than ice, chilled to the bone. Its hair was disheveled and growing longer, its teeth yellowed and faded, and there, where an eye should have been, was an empty socket filled with little squirming maggots that refused to stop moving long enough for us to get our job done without vomiting. I didn’t sleep for days after that dig, refusing to go to the graveyard until Jude finally forced me back into the dirt.

As the other tributes start to slip into the room among seaweed and slime, my heart stops. One of the boys before me is my nightmare come true, though I only catch a glimpse of him for a moment. He wasn’t the shining boy I’d remembered from the party nor the savage attacker from the Bloodbath, but a walking corpse, his brother’s corpse, though they didn’t look a thing alike. He looked different, but we all did at this point, five days into this blasted fight and even the strongest of the strong, the pride-filled girl from district one had been torn down and mauled – these games hadn’t been easy for anyone it seemed, I was no exception. But it’s slowly become a question of how long will I be torn down before I become another victim of this sand-filled kingdom.