elizabeth manford. / district 2

You were happy once.

If you close your eyes and slow your breathing, if you calm your mind and settle your bones, you can almost smell the kitchen in your old house. You can almost see your mother with her hair pinned up and an apron tied around her waist, spatula in hand as she flips pancakes on the stove. You can almost hear your older brothers laughing and joking while they set the table. You can almost feel the arms of your father wrapping around you tightly as he kisses the top of your head on the way out the door, coffee still lingering on his breath.

But sometimes—if you can't control it, those memories as they flood in during this temporary stillness you've allowed yourself—it turns to ash right before your eyes.

You watch in horror as the picture perfect life you once led starts to burn along the edges. The flame from the stove roars and curls up your mother's arms, along her chest, and up across her face until there's nothing left but bones and dust.

Tears stream down your cheeks as the inferno jumps across the counter and engulfs your brothers, swirling like something inhuman and demonic around them until they're consumed into nothingness.

Your heart pounds in your chest as that very same flame chases down your father at the front door. But it never touches you. 

Never.

Because you were the only one who made it out. Little twelve-year-old you, the only survivor in the worst house fire Two has seen in nearly five years. 

This is where you live now, though. In a perpetual state of reliving hell, far more in tune with that pain you thought you buried so deep than you would ever want to admit. Your mother used to say it was because you're a cancer. Ruled by the moon and the tides she has dominion over. Your mood changes at the drop of a hat any time that pain creeps up.

The truth is you're an emotional girl, that is, when you allow your mask of perfectly placed apathy to slip. Which is rare in and of itself, but it is then that anyone can see your true self. What you feel is, in the simplest of terms, everything. And it causes your mood to shift and change at the drop of a hat, going from happy as a fucking clam to raging against the machine in a matter of seconds.

Your new 'family' says that makes you an asset, and it's why they took you in and slapped the Strauss name right over your father's. It's also why you're still alive to this day. Since the day your family died, you have been something of an open wound, still gaping and gushing blood; like a limb that's been severed and yet you can still feel it there—you can still feel them, mama and papa, Harry and Brian—dangling and dead.

But deep down, beneath your newfound dismissiveness and callous tendencies, you are still that sensitive little creature; one who lost any sense of a home, and as a result you find yourself craving attention and validation, taking to those who offer it to you, like the Monfords, like a rabid dog takes to measly scraps on the ground.

It made slicing Keira's throat so easy, the look of unconditional love on your new parents' faces as you clawed your way to victory. It made not being reaped—not fulfilling your destiny in this newfound family—all worth it. Because in this new house, there is only one rule: win or die. 

Not only did it prove you're worthy of something akin to love, it showed you that swallowing your pain makes you all the more stronger. Joy be damned; all you want now is to thrive. Your family may be dead and Keira may be six feet under now, but you aren't. And that's all that matters now.

Yes, you were happy once; were lovely, were naïve, were poised for a life without burden.

But that was a long, long time ago.

You made it out, now all you have to do is survive.