forgotten like an old song {d a n y e l} solo

i can feel it now that you've gone
i have made you all that i want
i know you're keeping to your own sound
you're running out of sight when the light goes down

I wonder if they were trying to create something. When they put a twelve year old boy in a room on his own and locked the door, not letting him out for another six years, did they have an outcome in mind? Did they know what I would become, or was I an experiment? I don't know which truth is worse. I feel like a creation that burns in the heart of reality. I just want to be human, but everywhere I turn I see evidence that I am not real. I am artificial.

Were they trying to create a monster? That's what I see whenever I look at myself. I am so full of anger and remorse, and it gets the better of me. I wander these streets so very lost, but not afraid. I'm a Frankenstein's monster, placing one foot in front of the other but going nowhere, because there's nowhere to go. I have no direction. I have no purpose.

Perhaps they were trying to create a survivor. I've done pretty well at that since breaking out from the institution. I have found shelter in places I wouldn't have thought of if I hadn't been trained to survive in the Games. They've been hunting me down for months, but never found a trace that I'm still alive. They have themselves to blame for that. I walk forwards, hoping that it will take me forwards, but I still feel like I'm standing still. No home, no hope, just existence. And what a sorry existence it is.

I am wrapped in the drabbed clothes of someone from the outer Districts, which puts me right out of place in District One. It's cold on the streets, and I need to stay warm. They've put Peacekeepers in the Victor's village now. They must have caught on that someone was in Opal's house, 'cause every time I go there I see white suited soldiers outside. No refuge there anymore, even without the Peacekeepers. I no longer belong in that house. Opal Earnest. I grit my teeth thinking about her leaving One, only to never return. Her life is so pure that sometimes I think she is attracted to the broken lives of others. Why Potato? Because he's going to die. Because he has no hope. She likes that, I think. What other reason could there be for being so close to the doomed and the damned?

She doesn't need me anymore. Do I need her? When she found me I was at an absolute low point. She helped me recover. I've ruined that by falling back into oblivion. I know she could help me get back on my feet again. She'd give me a purpose. I need her now more than ever, and where is she? Enjoying the spoils of marriage.
"Watch it, pal!" Someone grunts at me as I shoulder barge through the mass of commuters. Saying nothing I dip my head and press onwards. To where? Ripred knows. I just keep moving and hope I end up somewhere better than where I am currently. I have become nothing more than driftwood.

I'm fucking happy for her. She's been through the works. She had just as many bad nights as I did, waking up screaming until I comforted her, like she did to me when I had terrors. She's killed more people than I have, and have more of a negative affect on her than mine does. She deserves to be happy, even if her version of happiness is marrying a boy being sent to his death. How can I resent that? He is everything I am not, apparently. He is everything I can never be - Normal.

Were they trying to create a winner? Because all I've done since I broke out of the institution is lose. I have lost more than I ever had, and then I've kept on losing what I hold dear. The concept of loss is burned into me, branding me. My first loss caused me to break through a two inch steel door and kill a man. I lost my family, I lost my reputation, my ambition. I lost Opal Shore. I am a loser. If they were trying to create a winner, they failed. I've never won a thing in my life.

I think about killing myself all the time. If there is absolutely no purpose then why continue? What is there to move onto? I guess it's just not in my coding to do that. I'm a survivor. They got that right, at least. I wish my thoughts were my own, and not indoctrinated words put in my head by fucking scientists. Loser.

She walks straight past me, and my head turns so fast in disbelief. Am I going mad? I spin on my heel, people in the crowd pushing past me. She is swallowed up by the mass of people, so I swim against the tide desperately. It cannot be. Impossible.

Two years since they took her away. No, two years since she left. I know the truth. I broke into the head office and read the reports on me. I know she was employed to make me fall in love. She was acting, and I fell for it. I fell for her. I was just sixteen for fuck's sake. She was my world, and then she vanished. Why? To teach me what it is to lose what you care about.

Love is a distraction.

The thought still burns in my mind, like they designed it to. I can't shake it. I can't force it away. It's there, written in stone. I have to now convince myself that none of it was real. Kari was a lie, invented by those sick bastards and reinforced by her.

"KARI!" I scream, grabbing fully grown men and throwing them to the ground in a desperate attempt to get to her. I loved her. She was my everything. A sad part of me clings to that. I cling to the slight possibility that she's real, and not an invention. That girl who taught me so much, she had to be real. Some of it had to be. I see her again, a few meters ahead. I push past, deaf to the protests of the people I shove left and right.
"KARI!"

I grab her and throw her to the ground. She screams as we hit the concrete together. People around us gasp, moving back. Some move forwards to intervene. I pull out the pistol from my belt.
"GET BACK!" I command. The crowd edges back, forming a circle around Kari and I.
"D-Dan?" She scrambles on her palms, trying to escape from the monster I have become. No. I grab her leg tight and pull her closer to me, pointing the gun now at her.

She is to blame. Oh yes, I haven't forgotten how she left. She left me on my own. How could she do that. How could she leave me knowing that I'd be in isolation for another two years. I painted those clean white walls with my blood. I wrote her name in red, again and again. I wrote liar and bitch. I loved her and lost her, and now I'm a monster.

"That fear in your eyes, is that acting?" I ask her, pressing the gun to her head, "Are you acting now? Huh?"
She makes a desperate noise, tears running black mascara down her face. So fake. She was always fake. She was never who I thought she was. But then I look at her, and I'm certain she's the same.

It is absolutely her. She has the same bewitching blue eyes and cute sandy hair. She is every bit as beautiful as I remember. I loved her. Maybe some part of me still does. I want to forgive her and be with her all over again, but how weak would I be if I let myself do that? She doesn't even feel the same. She is an actress. Is Kari even her real name? My finger trembles over the trigger, my eyes stinging with tears. I would have killed for her, but now I could kill her. I have to kill her. It's the only way to make this all okay.

It hits me.

"I know what you were trying to make me, you and all the others," my voice trembles, "you were trying to make me a killer!"
Trying to make me think that killing was okay. Trying to convince me that killing was natural, and a resolution to one's problems, so that when I was thrown into the arena I would not hesitate to kill every person I laid eyes on.

"Well, guess what?" I pull the gun away from her head. I refuse to conform the their ideals. I refuse to kill anyone.
"You failed."

When bodies swallow her up and comfort her from the ordeal, I feel no hate towards her, only satisfaction. For once in my life, I won. I won't let them decide who I am. I beat their system and made my own decision. I don't care when a Peacekeeper drives his reinforced fist into my abdomen. I don't care when others use tasers to send jolts of electricity through my body. I don't care when they tell me I'm going to get a hundred lashes across my back. I don't care when they tell me I'm going to the detention centre for ten years.

I didn't kill her. I made my own decision. That's enough of a direction for me.