World So Cold {Oliver's Death}

The beautiful, towering, redwood trees that surrounded me seemed to become all that much taller as my frail, broken body crashed to the ground.

Oliver Wren is dead. That's what they'll tell the world when all of this is done and over with. I should have known that that would end up being the case.

When the enormous sloth beast's claw collided with my skull, I could feel every aspect of the pain that I could have imagined I was supposed to feel as it was crushed in from the side. The breaking, crunching and shattering of bones all happened at once, causing one, terrible, unsettling and rather indescribable sound. Or, perhaps the sound wasn't exactly indescribable, but it certainly wasn't a sound that I ever would have had the desire to describe to anybody, had there even been anyone there with my in my dying moments. Hell, I doubt that, even with someone there, I would've chosen that as my first thing to say.

What no one tells you about death is that, no matter how instantaneous it can seem from the outside, it feels like it takes centuries on the inside. It started with everything just slowing down, bit by bit. The sloth's arm lifted slowly, it seemed, but my effort to dodge its movement was even slower- almost nonexistent, it seemed to me. I wondered if it seemed that way to those watching me on the live broadcast that played on every single working television in the whole of Panem.

When its arm started to swing, the motion seemed never-ending, yet still completely and utterly unavoidable altogether. Before I could even scream, shout or let out a little yelp, the left side of my head was met with the force of the creature's paw and claws. Everything seemed to have frozen in time, and a look of sheer terror was plastered on my face, as if my body had known it was the end a split second before I'd come to that realization myself. It should have been completely obvious that I was going to die, as soon as I set foot on that stage at the reaping. If not, I should have realized it when I entered the arena. No? Not even when Faux died? How oblivious could I possibly have been to not have realized it by then?

For some reason, I, Oliver Wren, the frail boy from District Eight, didn't even realize it was the end when I initially left my allies. It didn't even come to me when I first laid eyes on the monstrosity of a sloth that would actually end up being the one to take me out of the world of the living and into the realm of the dead.

As the claws and paw of the immense being hit me in the side of the head, the force caused my neck to whip harshly to the side, and I could have sworn that, had I been hit any harder, it would have snapped, too. Honestly, in my final moments, I was surprised that I could move my head to look up at the sky of dark, gray clouds. It was gloomy, and I could feel it. The fact that my demise was so near was so obvious at this point that I was really quite surprised that it hadn't been clear to me when I took my first look at the clouds in the sky after opening my eyes when I woke up that morning.

It was a warm day (if I had to guess, at least 70 degrees) that would have been quite beautiful if it weren't for the fact that it came along with dark, cloudy skies. It was almost guaranteed that it would be raining later that day, if not soon thereafter. I could just tell. The weather hinted at it too much for that not to be the case. Would the Capitol pick up my lifeless body before the raindrops hit my pale cheeks?

I could never be sure. I'd be long gone by then.

I tried to breathe the best that I possibly could as I lie there, life starting to leave my body, but it was a true struggle, every individual breath shaky and broken. My knee started to scream in pain again, reminding me that it, too, was broken like my skull. The only two injuries that I'd actually sustained in this place were ones that were probably worse that some of the tributes had had to experience at all, so far. I'd wondered if Shy Aubergine, the killer of my friend, Faux Rhodes, had been struck even once yet. If only I'd been able to get my hands on him before this sloth interrupted my life... he wouldn't be standing any longer.

He wouldn't be breathing any longer, either. I just had to hope that Fiona and Carmen would never forgive him, either. He didn't deserve to be forgiven, much less befriended. I don't know how I would've felt, if I ever had a way to find out, perhaps upon meeting back up with my friends in some form of afterlife if they didn't make it out of the arena alive, that they'd teamed up with him or something. I don't know how I'd be able to react to that without a form of rage filling my body.

Was I supposed to feel angry about something when I was dying, even if I didn't know if it were true, or if it would ever even become a thing that was true? It might not even ever be a real thing, but it irked my in my seemingly-eternal final moments as I left the world.

Things were starting to fade out a bit faster, now, and I knew it was almost the end. So many thoughts were racing in my mind now. Most of them, however, were about Jory. How would Jory feel about my death? Did he hate me for what I had become in the arena? Did he still love me and care for me as he saw the life leave my body on his television screen? Would he care that I was gone? Would he be sad, or would he be grateful that he no longer had to suffer through being associated with me?

I couldn't let bad thoughts be my last thoughts, though, so I tried to focus on the one good thing that I could think of. If there was actually some type of an afterlife, I'd be seeing Faux again, and I could apologize to him for what I'd done. I could make things right again.

"I'll be there soon, Faux," I whispered.

My body started to feel as if it were sinking and my soul were rising up. These were my final moments. These were the last moments of Oliver Wren's life.

It was time to say goodbye to the world I'd lived in for so long. It was time to say goodbye to a world so cold.

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1157 words