The Bloodbath: Part I [11am EST]

let the stars be my eyes then
unchain the knuckles & latches, unbutton my wrists
my skin is so thin you can see the black holes within
my eyes so clear they light up the sky

I watched the stars that night. We sat out on the balcony peering up at them and the dying city lights and the cars racing by on the neon strips of street. The Capitol was a strange place; it was brighter than District Six, and yet somehow, it was colder. There were remnants of my sisters here, too, only they were heavier, because this is where they wore their death sentences. They stayed in the same rooms as Elettra and I, probably slept in the same beds.

Did I stand where they did when I watched the stars with Elettra?

Before going out to the balcony, I tucked Iris into her bed and kissed her goodnight as I did back in Six. And as I turned away with a bleeding heart, I wondered if that was the last time I would have the privilege of saying goodnight to her. Spending time with my family isn't a privilege to others, but to me, a girl whose loved ones are always ripped from their grasp, it is.

I didn't say much that night; I had already said everything I needed to say, and Elettra already knew that I had sworn to protect her and Iridium. But I did say one last thing — the most important of them all.

"Elettra?" I said, reaching for her hand. My fingers closed around hers tightly, and I wondered if it was the last time I'd get to hold her.

"Promise me that we'll never be like our parents." Rosie and Enzo smile back at me from the newspaper in my head, guns in their hands and the devil dancing in their eyes. "I don't want that to happen to us and — and Iris can't see us that way."

No one knows about our parents like we do.

"No matter who we have to kill in the Arena, just promise me . . ." I don't see them when I look into the mirror; and I never want to.

She turns to meet my eyes with her own. "I promise to never let you go." Elettra turns the question around at me rather than answering mine, and the realization sinks in that she may not want to promise me that, because she does not know who she will become in the Arena to keep Iris and I alive. As much I want to pry and ask again, I don't want to ruin what could be our last night together.

So I don't; I just squeeze her hand a little bit tighter and turn my gaze back to the blanket of silver stars above our heads.

- - -

When my stylist dresses me that next morning, I nearly gag.

"The outfits were a bit gaudy, but don't worry! I fixed them a bit for you, and you can remove what you'd like, I suppose."

The girl who stares back at me in the mirror is detached from who I see myself as. I am dressed in a lavender pinafore dress, the least horrid part of the uniform, with a gold speedo as underwear beneath the full skirt. Over the dress is a black cashmere cardigan that reaches a little more than halfway down my arms. Around my neck is a bolo tie with a green gem ornament, and a flag cape of Cricket Antoinette's face. A bag with the 72nd map imprinted on its side is slung on my shoulder, and there's a black bowler hat over my hair, which is tied into a long french braid.

Lastly, and worst of all, is a fake mustache stuck to my upper lip. I scowl when my eyes catch it on my face, and immediately rip it off and throw it on the ground.

"These go, too," I say, and toss the bowler hat, bolo tie, and cape onto the floor. "Sorry," I add quickly to my stylist, "but I don't like them."

"No, I don't blame you," the stylist says with a shrug. "It looks better this way! I like the dress with your token," she points to my neck, where a pendant of a glass violin hangs on a thin leather strip. I had made it myself long ago when Jequirity died to remember her — it had sat on my dresser for years collecting dust until Reaping Day.

"Now, you should probably step into —"

"Yeah, I got it," I say halfheartedly and step into the entrance chamber. The glass closes around me, and I immediately feel even more like a bird in a cage. I close my eyes as the chamber rises into the Arena, trying to keep my frazzled nerves from splitting and going haywire. But then I realize in the darkness that I do not fear for myself that I will die the moment I step into that Arena — but that my sisters will.

My heart does not beat for me.

I open my eyes and light pours into my vision, but more than it should, like I am too close to the sun. But just as I look up to see that it truly is the sun, or the recreation of it, right above me, I am plummeting from the chamber and into the air.

There is no gong, and if there is, I cannot hear it over the screams that rip my own throat apart and pierce into my ears. I'm not the only one yelling for their life and flailing their arms helplessly, unable to grab onto anything to save themselves. Iris and Elettra are not far from me, but not matter how hard I try to swim through the sky like it's water, I cannot get any closer to them.

As we fall further and further through the clouds, my ears begin to go numb from the combination of the roaring, my own shrieks, and the other tributes' screams.

But then I notice that some tributes are missing; I do not see Brooke Destin or Helios Delacroix, some of the tributes my sisters and I became acquainted with.

"Wait — where's Brooke and Helios?!" I below to Elettra, but my words get lost in the wind.

So this is how I die, then, I think —

SMACK!

My body is crushed against a hard surface, and something hard but malleable whacks my face upon impact. When I look up, I see a fin, perhaps from a — dolphin?

No. Not a dolphin.

And my hear sinks within my chest.

The creature I have landed on, or rather, has caught me, is a shark. An enormous great white shark that probably has enough teeth to rip me into a thousand pieces with one bite. And although my descent onto the ground is smoother now, my screams, more frantic from the shock of riding on a shark, do not cease.

I turn my head to the side to see that other sea creatures have appeared to catch the other tributes, a dolphin for Elettra, sea horses for some others. But of course, I get the shark. Of course.

A few more moments of screaming and roaring wind, and the shark sets me down onto not the ground, but a roof of a house, elevated somehow into the air. I roll onto the ground and hesitate for a moment, still in a daze with my head whirling from the prior events. But I quickly find my feet and begin to run into chaos with the rest of the tributes.

But before us is a Cornucopia of, not food or supplies or useful things, but blunt weapons and different colored crayons. Crayons, yes. No water, no bags, just crayons.

"This has to be a joke!" I exclaim, moving towards my sisters.

"You've got to be kidding me."

& sometimes i'll blend into the silicone veil
& enter this world again as a ghost
beauty is poisonous, disruptive
oh heaven must be an iron rose unfolding