Nydia Mophie D2

When I remember, I never get everything. It comes and goes. My memory, I mean. I've never had everything. Sometimes I wake up, and I've forgotten everything all over again. I know who the people are, though. Those people who won't show me their face. They talk to me all the time, and they tell me what to do. I listen to them when I'm alone. I'm alone so often. The people I see lock me in here. In this box. Its a big box. I can move. I can stretch, and jump, and sing. But it is very dark.

I am afraid of the dark.


Sometimes they take me out of here, out of the box. I've been here for a long time, maybe since I was born. No - not quite that long. I was five, I think. My parents died and instead of going to the community home the neighbors took me across town to the people I'm with now. The first thing they did was give me new clothes. It was a lot more than I was used to. I remember a curtain being used to make my dress. Once I disappeared behind their doors, though, I felt so many new textures. There was the velvet, the satin, the vibrant colors that made my eyes hurt. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to look. The young woman played with my hair for forever, and when I opened my eyes again, I knew I was beautiful.

I was thin, but my skin was pale and smooth and my hair was raven black. It was long and straight, and fell well past my waist. I had piercing blue eyes, and a little rabbit nose. I had strangely thin lips, and a mouth a bit too narrow, but if I opened my mouth slightly and stretched the corners of my mouth back I could make it look almost pretty. I have always been short and gaunt, my limbs hanging loosely by my sides, but we ignored it. All that mattered was what I could do. I've gotten taller, and more muscular. Other than that I look just the same.

The young woman became my mother, and she taught me. We would go into the box together and she would pull on my legs and my arms, and push on my back until I could stand on my own in the graceful manner she paraded around in. After a while, we began to teach each other.Six years after I first met her, after spending almost sixteen hours a day every day with her in that little room, she left. I never saw her again. I was alone.

But not forever. It was only a week in the room alone, in reality. Soon others were coming, and I filled the time by doing for them what she did for me. They always left, though, very quickly. Like specks in the wind. One of the men who kept me in the room told me to teach them faster.

My first day out of the building was my first Reaping. Only one of the men went with me, and he dropped me off in my section and got me back before the Reaped tributes had even entered the Justice Building. I found myself wishing I could go with them. I no longer didn't mind the little room.

When I told them this when we got back, I also received my first beating. I became so quiet after that. I don't enjoy talking very much anymore, nonetheless doing anything other than stretching out or walking in circles. I like to see how dizzy I can get myself. The men keep me in the box with no light almost all the time now. On Reaping day, once a year, I almost want to go back inside. Light hurts my eyes.

During the first week alone I became so claustrophobic I nearly suffocated during an anxiety attack. But eventually that stopped, and the boredom started. I got back to stretching. I couldn't see what I was doing, but I knew I was improving. When the silence started to become too much, I filled it. When the food dropped out of the hole in the ceiling, and the spoons hit my head, I would grab it and start banging them against each other. I started to sing. When I grew tired of that I stopped.

I never was able to get myself to stop eating. I tried, I really wanted to die. This was about the time I was fourteen. I couldn't do it, though. I would be almost there, until I'd give in and pig out on all the food I'd accumulated. I started to talk to myself. All the time. Sometimes I would get louder, and sometimes I would be so quiet I could barely hear myself. I tried different accents. Then I started to sing.

I'm not sure if it sounded good or not, but it scared me. My voice sounded different to me than before, when I let out tunes. I had to make everything up at first, and it sounded strange. I could taste words, like I tasted the bread I was given. It made my mouth dry, sometimes, and I needed more water than what the tap in the corner normally gave me.

When I was fifteen, someone opened a door, and took me out of the room. There was so much movement, and I couldn't see anything but a shining bright light in my face. Someone gave me a sheet, and I covered my eyes with it. I was no longer with those same people as before. That was all I knew. I also knew things would never be the same for me.

I was blind, beyond repair as some told me. Now that I think back, if they had handled it correctly there might have been a chance, at first. But my eyes have not seen proper light in six years, I don't think now is a good time to try again. I went to live in the community home this time around, and there other girls fought me. I was weak, so weak, and I will always be weaker than everyone else, but I was still nimble.