effie this, i'm outta here // effie DP

There’s something utterly destroying about being in the Games. For years, I’ve sent off children to their deaths, never to be seen again. Each year, another little boy and girl has cried in their train cars and walked out of dinners and sobbed over training scores. I’ve heard every moment of it. I have to. Part of my job is to make them presentable, to make sure they don’t look like the wrecks they truly are. It was never something to be proud of, really. None of my own ever won. District Twelve always had shoddy chances of victory. I had been assigned the least likely to win and every year they succeeded in matching expectations.

Then Katniss and Peeta changed everything.

I’ll never really understand how much they changed everything. They were just my little Victors. Finally, I had Victors. Two of them. In love. Living and breathing. I had Haymitch too. There were nights were he would go on and on about how sickening their acting is when he sees the opposite side of the picture: complete disarray. I chose not to look at the other side, but let him tell me. I chose to see his flip side instead. He was always open about it. He had nothing but the drink in his hand and the shirt on his back, until Katniss and Peeta came in. He was their mentor, their guide. He had his roles to play, just like I did mine. I suppose we were sort of a family then. It’s a wonder it ever happened, what with my perk and his surly grunting.

Here, being in these Games, I’ve seen it all first hand. I’ve felt the victory of killing another and surviving another day. I’ve felt the pain of being targeted. I’ve seen how easy it is to admit things you’ve been ignoring for years. His hand in mine is warm as we pull away. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time now. Here, we have a different sort of family. Me, him, the cat. If I could freeze time, I would. Instead, I take off running, letting his hand slip from mine as I take off into the dark house of mirrors, trying to find a way out. The taunting of the other tributes booms across the mirrored surfaces I skim against, echoing in my ears. Feet move behind me, jogging to keep up, and I keep running until there is nowhere left to go.

The mirrors are all angled to create a circular room, reflections bouncing off of each one of them until I’m surrounded by hundreds of me. I spin slowly, taking it all in, before my eyes stop and lock with my mirror self’s. It’s all wrong. The right eye is missing, skin sagging from brittle bone and slipping from the contours of cheeks and jaw. There are tears in it, showing straight through to the black that remains of what is inside. It’s rotten to the core. My eyes slip down to take in the absurd clown costume, noticing how it rips and frays over spindled limbs of pale, dying flesh. A shiver runs up my spine at the stump of a right leg that is left. Her spear is chipped and splintering, the silver tip missing. It’s only a walking stick, now. Nothing left of the glory of killing people for the sake of survival. These Games… This is what is left, now. For a moment, I lean forward to touch my hand to the reflection’s, noting bones and sallow skin.

Shattering glass grazes my skin as I stumble back, the image of me coming alive and limping forward. Her hand drops to her side, a knife slipping from her sleeve and it is then that it clicks. The Games does not give you family. It does not bring you happiness. It only brings your death. No one lives after being contained in this hell. There is only downward to go. The knife is just as ragged as my copy, raising in a haphazard slicing motion towards me.

I scream.

There is nothing else to be done when your eyes are being taken from you and your leg is towed away as well. There is only silence around me. My voice carries louder and louder until it breaks off altogether into hushed sobs. No, there is nothing for me here, anymore. Not even in the footsteps that draw closer with each passing second.