Rotting wood }} Cait!Blitz

My story is a sad excuse for a life.

I’ve always known that, each step I take another sentence scribbled into the tattered old book that is my novel. Each chapter is just as dismal as the last, and I look to the future chapters with nothing but dread. I already know things won’t be getting better.

The last traces of Winter were slowly disappearing from the streets of District 6, yet as I hobbled along, looking down at my feet, I noticed the discolouration running up my ankles, from my toes, symbolising that the suffering was not over just yet.

Walking gave me time to think. Time to reflect on a life not worth looking back on. But what else was there to occupy a dying child’s mind? Orphanages, filthy streets, crowded dinner tables with strangers who insisted I call them ‘family’ – that was the life I had known.

During the day, shadows that weren’t there followed me, and at night, the nightmares would ravage me and tear apart all signs of sanity. After the Reaping, things became worse. Much worse. And each night since, the image of a young blond girl closing her eyes one final time has been replayed, over and over and over, and all I can think is that it was me, it was me, I killed her…

Nobody cared about me.

They’d seen me hoisted onto a pedestal at the last Reaping, watched me cower with their greedy eyes, before I had fallen back into the shadows where I could not be seen anymore. Even now, the streets have been deserted, and once again, I am alone.

I almost miss the days in the orphanage. At least then I wasn’t constantly on my own. At least then there were people to look after me and make sure I was okay. At least then I had a reason to be happy.

A slight shuffling up ahead causes my ears to prick up curiously, but all I see is a shadowy figure hobbling down the street. As broken as me. But what did it matter? He would walk past without a second glance – like every other wretched soul who had passed me by.

Nobody cared about me. And I still couldn’t determine whether that was a good thing or not.

I want to run. I want to turn around and run away from this street, from my misery – but most of all, from the boy approaching me. He doesn’t know me, and he won’t say anything as he walks past. Nobody ever did. But as I take another step, and he takes another step, and we become closer, his face is no longer shrouded in darkness and I am scared. I am scared, because I know he is different.

His face is gaunt, and the bags under his eyes tell a tale of woe and sadness – crippling unhappiness, perhaps even more so than mine. That, in itself, is terrifying.

A part of me sympathises with this figure who I barely know. I wish to take away his pain and suffering and the baggage he carries with him everywhere he goes – whatever it may be – so that he is no longer burdened. But there is another part of me that wishes to do the very same thing, but for a different reason entirely. I want to stop his pain, because pain is mine and should not belong to anyone else. I do not want to share, and the realisation grips me so tightly I feel like I am choking, a monster rising within and forming like a lump in the back of my throat.

And immediately, I falter. I shrink away, and I stop.

The wind howls in my ears as his words are carried along the breeze. I strain to listen, not wanting to take a step further, still deciding whether to keep walking or whether to turn and run far away.

I try to reply – ask him what he means, why he cares, why he has stolen the pain and suffering that should belong to me – but it is impossible. All I can muster is a hoarse croak.

Already, I feel myself slowly slipping away. Once again.

In front of me, the boy stops, and I am grateful. The distance between us is comfortable, but still unsettling. The tension pierces my heart and I struggle even more to breathe as my head becomes foggy and my eyes lose their focus.

But why?

Because he knows me.

Nobody ever saw me. Nobody ever knew me. Yet here we were – him trying to make conversation, me trying to stop myself from fleeing right there.

His voice raises an octave as he fights over the wind, and I hear him speak more words to me.

He infuriates me.

‘It wasn’t a second chance,’ I growl. ‘I wanted to go – dammit, I wanted to go! But I –’

But what?

Can you bring yourself to tell him why?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you were scared?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you aren’t enough?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you could never stand to disappoint a whole District, when it already kills you every day when you disappoint yourself?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go simply because you didn’t want to die?

I look down again, refusing to meet the stranger’s eyes. I am retreating back into my shell of quietness and innocence – forcing myself to become the December I once was. But the truth was, she wasn’t here anymore.

‘Horrible.’ It’s horrible.

If only I had the strength to make something out of my life. Perhaps then, it would be bearable.