The Bloodbath

[antigone boyé | attack #7| ----]
act ii. scene iii.

persephone. you’re right.

chorus. a clarion call.

persephone. i did help people, but i don't think i tried hard enough. i could've done more.

(antigone lowers her sword for a moment, and stares over at her opponent – now too harsh a word – perhaps combatant would be better?)

choragus. she’s not evil. anger stoked to rage a burning fire crackles at the sound of her voice; her words soothe, press down the flames to embers. there is truth there, wiggling out from underneath the earth to grow. and you wonder, could a girl like this have known you?

chorus. antigone wonders if the girl’s mother ever took a hot comb to her hair, pulled out the curls and kinks, and pressed through to leave it straight. or if she got to choose just how she looked, how she dressed, how she’d be able to greet the fields.

choragus. you can’t picture what it must’ve been like, barefoot in fields surrounded by green and gold. the soft moss growing or high grass to hide behind. you hadn’t thought much of district eleven at all, other than the old maps they used to show in school. it seemed like a place where folks were left to bake in the sun, until they became brittle and cracked to pieces.

chorus. but now antigone felt she could’ve been wrong; perhaps in a space where they taught how things should grow would be the perfect spot to learn what mattered to living things.

choragus. she’s jealous then, the girl had a life that could be about helping others, that she or her family had enough to spend energy helping others. or that whatever help they gave was out of affection rather than need.

persephone. i had an easy life. maybe that's why i'm here.

(antigone holds her sword up again, eyes narrowed)

chorus. the words sit bitter in the back of antigone’s throat. she tastes the copper in her mouth and knows that this can’t be true.

antigone. not the reason. just a symptom.

(she looks out at the crowd, at the girl who won last year, at the faces of men and women who she’d have rather put a bullet through)

antigone. it’s a disease, you know. none of us got the cure right, though.

choragus. when the boy sings, she thinks about how lazrus used to talk about freedom. he saw it the same as coins in pocket, had been taught that boys like him were either more or less free. it became measured, coveted, and now, rewarded. death to twenty-three and life for one. freedom under their boots, and after the districts could live as best they could for the rest of the year. and maybe some of them were tired of fighting, you know you had been, too.

chorus. but you’d only ever wanted to feel a part of something. wasn’t that right, antigone? you ran away from home at thirteen, and what did you know about freedom? or politics? or war? but you knew your brothers. you knew that sleeping with them under the stars, even in the heavy rain or snow, was better than the slow and steady shuffle toward nowhere at all.

choragus. your wounded heart would never be mended by this girl’s words, and running her through wouldn’t stitch you back together. for the first time you don’t know what to think, if there’s anything that you should do aside from be alive, and breathe.

(antigone does her best to square up to persephone, blood oozing down her arm and back, overalls drenched)

antigone. i think it’s that – we get taught so much about what they want, what they need, we never think about ourselves, or each other. aside from what we’re supposed to do.

choragus. antigone reckons her time is short, but she hopes if the girl lived she’d recognize the plight of girls like her. that they weren’t fighting for the sake of death and carnage. that girls like antigone dreamt of a morning where she woke with agency. one where the brightest days were still in front of her, of her family. where freedom was air and stars and sky; all around them, stretching out forever.

antigone. i don’t want to kill you anymore.

(she is quiet for a moment, among the sound of flesh torn asunder)

antigone. but i still want to have good days. not just a last day. not here.

[antigone boyé attacks d11f persephone vega with a sword]
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[result: 1199 -- Block -- 0.0 damage (Sword)]