Drip. Drip. Drip. The endless dripping. She wanted it to stop. Why didn't it stop? Why did it torment her?
Her fingers glided across the smooth wet floor, the remnants of her torture earlier in the day. They encountered a metal tube protruding from the wall and she shuddered, pulling away and curling into a ball. The shocks would come back. They always came back, water falling from the ceiling and dousing her freshly, the electricity rocketing along the metal piping and through her. Maybe this time they would use too much and she would be knocked out, or maybe even die. That was all she wanted. To die.
Her spirit had been crushed long ago. Back in the first days of her captivity, when she fought back and tried to escape. All attempts had been met by the whip, that horrible barbed thing she had grown to hate. Her back was still shredded from the lashes, unable to heal in the constant dank, dirty water.
She couldn't even remember her own name anymore. There was no point in it, in these Capitol jails, from which she would never escape. She was simply referred to as "prisoner", "you" or a variety of insulting nicknames. One hand scrabbled at her stubbly hair, shaved short when she first arrived. The other curled around her legs, tucked into her body.
She should remember her name. Maybe that was the key, to keeping her sanity.
The thought made her laugh out loud, a hysterical keening sound that echoed off the walls. Sanity! She was too far gone for sanity. But surely, if she was insane, she wouldn't know she was insane. Well, she must be sane then. Definitely still sane. Of course she was.
But her name... Maybe it would help. Give her something to cling to in the pain. Something to remember. She rocked back and forth, trying to remember, repeating "name, name, name" over and over to herself in a cracked whisper. Something beginning with 'G'. No, not 'G'. Something similar... 'J'?
That must be it. 'J' something. 'Ja'... 'Je'... 'Jo'! That was it! It began with 'Jo', and it was long. She remembered it was long. A memory of someone saying her name swam back through the mist of memory. "Jo-mm-mm", she heard, the other syllables blocked out by a haze of what sounded like static. Three syllables. Jo-something-something.
Johanna. The name suddenly appeared in her mind, accompanied by a flood of memories and images all associated with the name. Her bloodshot eyes widened, then closed tightly. She let out a short sigh of relief, relaxing slightly. Just as she began to lose herself in her memories, to forget for the first time what she was going through, a creaking groan cut through the silence and a cascade of water flooded over her, and she screamed in terror of what was to come in the next painful minutes.
Well, I promised more Hunger Games, and you've got it. Kinda morbid, really messed up and probably too much like my own imagination for comfort, but hey. I'm a writer. It's my job.