oscar reeves | ten | fin

Grandpa says I am a master of distraction, I always find a way of making an hour in the day disappear which should have been used for work. It is hard not letting this motor mouth run away with me, especially now that it is the only thing that doesn’t bring me pain. It is hard not to reminisce the days where everything functioned together. Where happiness once filled the chambers inside my head, all that overflows within it now is suffering and regret from that one single action. Just one little move I made and I was the cause of my own collapse.

The stick I carry, a permanent reminder of that one silly mistake. One second now leaves an eternal mark on my appearance. Grandpa says we should trade places, the stereotype of an old man and his stick but it is his grandson the one that is carrying it. Each movement is as painful as he last, the support from the stick is enough to catch my feet as they battle the aches in my back. Every where I walk, I am hunched over slightly, never will I stand tall with pride again. 

There are no pictures of them, but grandpa says I have taken my looks from both of my parents. Father’s brown eyes and mother’s short height. I own no memories of them but every time I see my reflection in the stream out in the fields, I can imagine them looking back up at me and both with their arms around my shoulders, proud as ever about the son that they left behind. Of course, that would be true before the accident, before I decided to shatter my life before it had even properly started.

Despite it all, along with the stick, I carry a weight of grit. Each day is a battle, physically and with concerns of my grandparents. ”I can do it grandpa!” A lie that I keep telling myself, it is the persuasion to get me out of bed every morning. ”Today is the day!” And yet it still hasn’t come, a whole three-hundred and sixty-five days later and not one of them has been the day. Each one has been spent in the place that I want to escape. I know it is coming, I will be out there with my grandpa, being the heir that I promised to be.

Really, my body does not match my mind, not now that I destroyed it. There are more barriers than just the physical ones, the determination is slippery, and it is so easy to lose grip. Every time grandpa declines my assistance, I am left behind in a foggy world. A recluse in the four walls of my grandparent’s farmhouse. Once so popular, the friends that were so tight with me have faded away. Memories of childhood adventures, it is hard not to reminisce the good old days. And so I am left behind in the kitchen as grandpa and my sister go off to work, all but with the memories in my head as company.

This motor mouth of mine, my only use of it is with my family. I’d dare myself to step outside and use it on the world. Preach new ideas on where the District could go, even knock on Mayor Emberstatt’s door with a new proposed policy. Grandpa says despite it all, I could run for that seat when the time comes. But what District wants a cripple like me as mayor? Speeches are easy to deliver but I am not strong enough to carry the weight of all the resident’s needs.

All I can do is set goals that are far more likely to be reached than the dreams that float around in my head. Somewhere out there is a cure for my pain and the only likely place is the Capitol. There is no chance of me ever getting a ticket there, other than the slip of paper that is pulled from the glass bowl each year. Grandpa could only afford one doctor for the diagnosis, even after granny pleaded for a second opinion. My only treatment is resting but after a year of it, none of the symptoms have gone away,

Father was taken by illness before my younger sister was born, mother died while delivering her into the world. I was only two years old, their loss meant nothing to me then and since, I have only had tears once over their loss. Now I live with my mother’s parents and they have done my parents justice by bringing us up right. Enough food on our plates and clothes repaired that have been torn by the bramble bushes at the end of the fields. A divided life of work, education and play, enough to secure a settled life in the future.

As soon as I could walk, grandpa had me leading the quieter horses. My family are arable farmers, they feed Panem’s animals and the supply the vegetables to accompany the star piece of any Capitol dish. Grandpa tends to his acres of fields on horseback, a tradition that has been carried from one heir to the other. Of course, the bug bit me and grandpa broke a yearling for me when I was nine years old and together we went through our education. A chestnut filly that I christened Bramble, a quick little thing that I cared for so dearly…

I should have treated her like an animal and not like a toy. Kids from other ranches take their quickest steeds to the streets, hooves hitting concrete before heading to the dirt tracks. Grandpa despises of it, ”They shouldn’t be doing that on the hard ground, it’ll ruin their legs!” But I was hypnotised by peer pressure, one race won and I was addicted. Fifteen years old and I dared to clear the stone wall to take a shortcut back to the finishing line at one of the boy’s ranches. Bramble was not a jumper. Over she sent, rotating in the air, her body crushing me as she landed and the twist in her neck from the impact ended it all.

I couldn’t feel my legs and I was stuck in my bed for three months, unidentified damage to my back and now my horse is buried in the farthest field.

Just for one bite of glory and now at sixteen years old, my body feels seventy. I promised to take the ranch off of grandpa’s hands, give him to time to live out his life in rest but I am attracted to disappointment. No only have I let myself down but the people that volunteered to give me a life out of an orphanage.

The Capitol has my cure and there is only one way to get the ticket on that train over there…