the pantheon of doubt: lorenzo, day 7

"Sorry, I don't mean to..." 

It was the last thing he heard before taking his last step. He had tried to run off again, as if the ginger girl next him getting stabbed would make any type of distraction. He tried to keep it together, hold his skin together like wet clothes. Scortched and torn and beaten, please, just give me a week, just one day- just top eight, send an interview back to the orphanage. Give him just enough time to do something important, he was a pathetic thing when he died.

Collapsed on the floor, he was always on the run- even before the games. Most people are. Something about facing death has a way to seep all your past regrets and guilt back to the forefront of your mind: do I really want to die like this? Did I deserve this life I had? Lorenzo, often enough, told himself yes. He didn't deserve to be terrified of his own exhales, blame every heavy foot step for the reason he would be killed in the next twenty four hours.

A part of him wanted to play champion, pretend that he'd make it all the way and bring pride back to his district. They started the day at twelve, it's only one more day until he can say that maybe he made Mace get some form of hope, that maybe the orphanage would be rooting for him but he died in nothing but his shallow grave, he sees it as his eyes begin to close.

Him, running circles and achieving nothing. The seeker's bury him alive,
he's dying- ever slowly.

And the roots will plant in his skin and bury through his pores, leaves will travel through his veins and sprout in his mouth. He blinks and dirt grains flake in his eyelashes, Mace stares at him while he is buried, the base of a flower keeping his throat open as he gasps for air. A girl takes a second look at him before he feels stems rooting him to the ground- she feels sympathy, but not fear.

Lorenzo imagines this is God.

Why did you kill me- not to the kids, but to god. His eyes peeled to the skyline as if to watch God make his judgement, the same way he pretends to understand why Mace watches him rot, to be given back to nature as if he never deserved to leave the ground to begin with. Maybe he was made of dirt all along, and he was never meant for anything besides to die, to become food for hellebore and pansies.

He imagines windflowers will bloom through his eyes,
Saffron will not care that he died.

The wind kisses his skin, it is cold and he hears Quest fall as well. He only knows the tribute as another tribute, he isn't given time to regret never learning anyone's name. He isn't given time, for all he ever did was run. 

And it feels like gradual momentum, as if he's in a box of water, constantly trying to stay above the waterline. It threatens to drown him, and he reaches out for someone he's never seen before- "don't," the question never makes it. Is this it? It can't be, he thrashes against the waves, sea foaming at the mouth and spitting mud. 

A bad reaction, truthfully.

"Shit, is this one gonna stabilize," his head hits the surgical table. The fourteenth in the room, another stranger in the crowd of ghosts and veins protrude from his neck as his arms slap against the sterile table. A gasp for air, he feels almost he's being worn on a unicorn's pierce. A sharp pinch in his neck and a choking, the pit of his stomach upchucking and sitting in his throat. 

The medical team is concerned for an hour of waiting, working between the newest four tributes joining the vault. Worried of the state of their pay checks, assuring that each tribute is brought back as neatly as possible, they hope for a 100% success rate.

The tributes just hope for their lives.

Their masks stay on as Lorenzo's spasms calm, "he'll make it," his brain calms. The gashes of his skin stapled and stitched together and he'd come to itch his cheek open again when the time comes. He's never been able to resist the itch to tear off band-aids and scabs. 

Eventually, the drugs wear off, and all that remains is the boy himself. Lorenzo wakes up from his dream all the same, anxiety holding his neck like a noose and it tingles the hair on his neck. He panics, eyes trained on the ceiling with his mouth open: it's too much.

The sounds of the other tributes,
the equipment, the itch of his seams

"fuck," me, kill me, kill me, he begins to pound his fist into the surgical table as he regains control over his limbs. The kids will come back, and so will the birds and the roots and the high tide, he'll drown while the birds pick out his eyeballs and he can't blink any more. Not since he died, he feel like he can't blink at all. It's a new brand of fear: being alive.

One blink and he'll be out again, he won't come back. He holds his eyes open, his chest heaving as the doctors make their way over again. "No, no," a raven again flocks over his head, he's unable to blink. They have to eat his eyes and he knows that, the doctor's restrain him as he beats against the table. "They're gonna eat me-"

"Lorenzo, listen,"

"make sure he doesn't go into shock."

"They're going to EAT ME.
THEY WILL KILL ME."

The doctors attempt to hold his arms down, to cut the momentum. Lorenzo can't run, they hold his arms down and he can't move, can't run, the tide rises in his neck and he bits his lip. His guts pour into his head, he can't feel the table beneath him- just the blood in his toes. The acid in his mouth, his eyes tear up before he throws himself to the side of the bed as far as he can. 

He tries his hardest to vomit on the floor, resisting being pulled down in place. 

It helps a little. The nerves remain, but he's able to control his breathing again. "Lorenzo-?
Are you ready?"

Fuck. 

He pants, the smell of bile stinging his nose but there isn't enough energy to pick himself up. Are you ready, Lorenzo? There's nothing in his vision, just a priceless glaze and the seafoam and the birds are picking at his skin. He's nothing but bait, God eats away at him and he-

Mace?

"Where is Mace?" There's a boiling in his mind, as if his head's filled with nothing but hot steam. A tea boiler screams and exhaustion settles, "I need Mace, I can't die without asking him he told me not to die- I'm not fuckin ready, I can't do this." He's never been a cute crier, snot running through his upper lip as fat, ugly sobs leave his mouth, a child in fear. 

"I don't fucking want to!"

"Lorenzo-"

"I'll fucking kill you!"

Lies. But he notices the room, the equipment, the folds of the cloth stall- one doctor passes a light into his eye. "Did I... win?" A standard of three doctors help him up, "it's okay to be confused," Lorenzo can't hold attention. He looks at the wounds of his body, one doctor works on covering a needle hold on his wrist. 

There's nothing he can do but lay limp again, play it smart. For a second, he pretends that he learned anything from Mace. Is it still in the Games? Is this something that occurs every night, and they just work his mind to forget it? 

Maybe he collapsed and the other eight managed to die while he was asleep- but he hears them. Or they going to kill him again, "please, don't kill me-"

They respond, he doesn't hear. 

Lorenzo, as always, doesn't understand, can't comprehend the situation ahead of him. It's painfully clean, besides the bits of him that exist outside his body: blood and bile and tears and snot, as if his body craves to fall apart as well. To just separate and die, allow himself to fall apart at the hinges and let his skull roll down the hallway into the other room. A nurse cleans up his face and he's unable to close his mouth. 

"Lorenzo, can you hear me?"

"I- you won't kill me?" He asks his mother.

"No, we are doing quite the opposite, Lorenzo. You've been unconscious since you fell in the arena..." please, make this easy. It's hard to focus on the words of the doctor, the beeping of the machine next to him catching his attention more than anything. It's so consistent, almost the same as his breathing. Two rhythms, he recognizes, but his eyes remain on the machine. 

I am alive. 

It's less peaceful than being dead, and he squeezes his eyes shut - "are you following me?" - until they begin to tear up. It's a blinding darkness, trying to imagine himself anywhere but in this room. Maybe he was better off dead, they're going to chop off my tongue and turn me into an Avox. 

They're not letting me home.

They're gonna kill me.

"If you do not cooperate, we will administer more morphling."

If I do not cooperate, they will administer more morphling.

"I... understand." On the least complicated way possible, he understands that he will be sedated if he doesn't calm down. They reassure him that he's not dying, which is a plus. His mind is thirty minutes ahead of where his body is, skipping and wondering how protected he should keep himself. Where is he going next, who is taking him?

Is it over?

Somehow, that scares him more. That it isn't over, that there will always be one more step, one more complication in his life; he is tempted to plead for death. Bits his lip, choke down one last tear, everyone is alive. The game continues, "I need you to keep up, okay, Lorenzo?"

He's always been a fast kid. Fast to run alone, fast to call it quits on the people in his life- fast to lay down and accept death. A sprint along a field, he feels the wind blow between the rows of the field and it's almost as if it's just another sentence. The gust against his legs, "you'll never make it," beckoning almost. The wind will trip him and grab him and drag him in again, he buries himself up against a wall and will hear God wait for him. He should be dead- does he deserve to die?

I need to die, "I am trying."

"Very good, the sooner you are relaxed, the sooner we can move on."

He is ashamed, almost. To be caught dead, he smiles meekly. He got caught, and no one dies pridefully. Everyone has seen his dead body except for him, he wishes he could stand above it. Almost as if it's an entirely different person: Lorenzo Pevek is dead, and this boy is someone else.

"I think I would like that, yeah."

"Good, because you still have a long way to go."