They come /back/ [Crest standalone]

Some Song for thought

In Memory of Hannah O'Leary.

Words etched into the wall by my hand.

Seventeen years old.

I'm carving mercilessly, not a care in a world.

Died in the 71st Hunger Games.

The knife is an extension of me, carving her memory in my bedroom wall. Because that's all she is now, nothing but a bitter memory that may or may not fade into the darkness. I carve and carve her little memory onto my wall but at the end of the day even this writing will fade... just like her. She hasn't gone yet but she'll go, slowly but surely she'll go, just another face in a collage of the deceased. That day she was a face in a sky, just another face in the sky of the fallen. She ain't coming back.

The tears were an unstoppable tidal wave. I couldn't stop them, prevent them, or even predict them; they just happened. Once they started they wouldn't stop. There's no tap handle that I can turn to make them stop. There's no plug to stop the water from spilling out. There's no damn that I can use to block the tears from running and running and running. They just kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling.
Drip.

Drip.

Drip.
I feel the warm moisture once again and the knife begins shaking in my white knuckles.
No... No!

Drip.

Salty bitter rain hits my wooden floorboards, leaving the imprint - a permanent reminder that I'm a sad, pathetic, little boy. I begin shaking, trembling so much I stick the point of my knife into the wall just so I can stop. Nothing but a memory... A memory. It escapes my lips like a thief in the night. A sob. There's no holding it back now.

They come flooding in, uncontrollable and untamable. Why? Why? Why? Why? I don't even have the courage to let the words leave my lips. Why's and what-ifs reflects off my mind like light off a mirror. Hundreds of thousands of why's and what-ifs linger and stay there.

Why her?

The other tributes, the horrible monsters who came for my brother instead got my sister. They surrounded her like a hoard of vultures. Ripping and tearing at her flesh with steel, riddling her body with the remains of a thousand steely kisses. I wanted to reach into the television screen. I wanted to scream and her and shake her, ask what she's doing, why she isn't fighting, or running, or something. I reached for the television screen but instead all I felt was a screen. Hannah was a million miles away. Dying.

What-if?

What if she fought harder? What if she ran away? My sister would still share the same air as me. My sister would still walk, and talk, and laugh, and fight. She could've followed in Colgate's footsteps.

"You-you... you could have b-b-been a..." I cut myself off, can't even finish my childish sentence. Just another fantasy I had, just another idea that could never have come true.

The knife comes out... then goes back in.

A yell of agony (despair, anger) leaves my lips at the sight of it. It goes out, then it goes back in. Pure agony incarnate burns, searing my brain and leaving my senses shattered.

""Please, do not mourn me. Do not cry for my broken body and lifted soul in the dark hours of the nights you have left.

"How dare you?!" I scream into oblivion.

How could I not mourn? How could I not? How could I... I...

The knife is raised with another horrible scream and is plunged right back in.

It's not fair. It's not fair that I'm not allowed to mourn cos that is what she said. How could she? How could she just...

"Everyone better keep their chins up after I'm gone, because I won't be there to yell at you if you don't."

My chin's on my chest. Can't she see? Can't she see that's all a sordid lie? Chin up... Chin up... Chin up.

I'm spurred on, the knife leaves and re-enters, drawing another cry of agony from me.

Fuck you brother and your chin up. It was all a lie wasn't it? You just said that as a lie - a stupid gimmick.

Laughter.

Mockery.

Jeers.

Chin up meant nothing.

"Because I won't be there to yell at you if you don't."

Yes. Gone. A memory.

Don't you see Hannah? It was all a lie? Our hero lied to us.

"The sun, when you see it rise . . . that is the light of hope. Know that I will be within its arms."

"LIAR!"

How could you lie to me Hannah? How could you lie to us all? You won't be in a the sun, you won't be in some camp fire singing songs with the dead. You won't be watching over me, or Scope, or Colgate, or anyone else. You won't stand up to the bullies. You won't help me stitch up Pirate when he gets some kind of rip. You won't see me go through puberty, or grow, or live. You won't see it.

You'll just rot.

I can't see it. I can't see her in some kind of heavenly field with all the good people.

All I see are maggots in her sockets.

Her mutilated body.

Her bones resting in a box, never to return.

"And this. This is my perihelion; I have never been so close to the warmth of hope."

"There is no hope."

The knife is raised, with a fresh cry of searing pain it re-enters.

Fuck you Colgate for feeding me lies.

You made me believe.

You made Hannah believe.

And you made her a... a...

I try to stand but only end up falling back, staring in shock and pain and my maimed, destroyed, wounded....

Wall.

It was just my wall.

The holes stare at me in mockery, sordid mockery of my grief, at this deceived little boy who had no courage and who lost his sister... And his brother is a liar. I can't help but smile and chuckle through the force field of grief-stricken tears.

It senses it... with it's eye-shaped holes I created.

Do it... Coward.

They lied... She lied... They all lied.

Coward.

I bring the knife up, staring at it's razor sharp, shiny, lethal point. So silver, so sharp so... so... True. Just like my aim.

Spineless...

It's steely kiss touches me.

Everything's a blur of crimson agony.

One, long, blood-curdling scream tears through my throat and fills the house.