I don't own Hunger Games.
He told me to hide, and I did because the terror was beating so loudly in my veins that I thought everyone back in District 4 could hear it.
I must have been mad. To think that I could volunteer for the Games. To think that I could survive the odds. To think I could have won.
I had been strong, before my platform rose. I'd even hidden my fear during the Career alliance, and held my spear with confidence, hoping to trick even myself.
I am no killer, despite my training, that I now know.
So I hide when the snake comes for us- the coward and the fool.
I am the coward.
He was the fool.
He was a fool not to hide. He was a fool to come with me when I ran from the Career camp that night. He was a fool to fight, because he died.
The snake's grin is malicious, and I quiver in the ferns, so afraid that I can't stop trembling. The blood is pounding in my ears, and it's so loud that I can't hear what he says to my district partner. But, I make out that grin, and the way his hand slithers toward his sword.
If his smile was malicious than the look in his cold blue eyes as he unsheathes his blade is something too evil for words.
It makes my blood scream, and my breathing to sound all too loud.
I open my mouth when I see the moonlight glint off the shiny metal of the sword, but I am far too late to call a warning to my district partner because the snake's blade is already moving.
It slices my district partner's head from his shoulders.
It happened so fast that only when his body slumps to the ground do I know it has happened.
My horror blinds all else and I only just clamp my hands over my mouth in time to silence the scream that would be my demise. My fingers shake and my stomach rolls in a way that reminds me distinctly of sea sickness. My mind screams to run, run, run, but I don't. I do not move. I do not breathe. I do nothing but stare at my district partner's lifeless corpse and the way his blood runs thickly out of his neck, racing across the dirt as his killer blends back into the forest with a different kind of smile on his face.
A satisfied one.
My head rolls with dizziness and my hands are cold and sweaty, but it is not until I notice that my district partner's blood has reached his decapitated head that I twist my face into the green ferns and vomit up the contents of my stomach.
Because his eyes -eyes that I have known my whole life it seems- are staring right at me, penetrating to my very soul.
His lifeless gaze is clouded over, but it feels like an accusation nonetheless -one that I can't bear to admit that I deserve.
A coward hides while the snake kills the fool.
It is my story and it loops through my head as I tear through the forest, sick and scared, with burning wet trails streaming down my face. The roots rise out of the soil and rip at my ankles, as if they know that I should be pulled down into the earth with them -to rot for my faint-hearted ways.
A coward hides while the snake kills the fool.
The branches slash at my skin, but I push on because my mouth tastes like shame and I can feel his eyes on me, even now.
A coward hides while the snake kills the fool.
The rocks bite at my hands as I climb, but I can't stop now -I won't. My throat is horse from panting and screaming, but I don't even remember shrieking. All I remember are those mud brown eyes and the blood-stained dirt and the horror that sunk into my head and spread into my spine.
As if I'd ever had one. I'm a spineless creature. A coward. A weakling.
But not the victim. Not this time, at least.
It should have been me. That snake of a boy should have killed me.
He still should.
But, I'm too afraid to die.
A coward hides while the snake kills the fool.
The air is clear up here, in the mountains, far away from the dirt that his blood had stained and the forest that had harbored the snake. My screams and sobs are distant, even to me -though my throat grows too weak to speak after a few hours.
A coward hides while the snake kills the fool.
Time doesn't mean much anymore. I count the days, not in hours, but hunger. The hours, not in minutes, but in thirst. I count the minutes, not in seconds, but in fear and guilt.
Fear is everywhere, and it presses down on me until I clutch myself and whimper and cry.
I fear the fool is after me. I fear he will grip my throat with his cold, rotting hands and I will have to stare at the stump of his neck as I die for not saving him.
In my sleep he is waiting with the snake, and they both try to kill me. Most times they succeed.
A new story spins it's way through my mind.
The fool and the snake kill the coward.
Madness is in my bones, my voice, my blood. It's sunken into my skin and into my mind.
I am terrified, and I see his eyes everywhere I look.
The fool and the snake kill the coward.
When the water comes I've forgotten my own name. I've forgotten what my mother looks like. I've forgotten my father, my brother, my home. I've forgotten what it feels like to be full, and what it feels like to drink water.
I haven't forgotten the way the air smells in District 4 -crisp and salty. I haven't forgotten the way his blood raced across the dirt. I haven't forgotten the lap of the water against my skin. I haven't forgotten the snake. I haven't forgotten the feeling of sand under my feet. I haven't forgotten his eyes.
I wish I had. I wish I'd forgotten everything.
Because then, I'd have forgotten how to swim, and I could have drowned in that cruel arena like I had deserved.
If I had drowned, then I could have stopped seeing those dead eyes every time I closed my own. If I had drowned, I could have avoided a thousand nightmares. If I had drowned, I wouldn't be a mad woman who lives in fear of a boy long dead- be it one with a blade or a stump for a neck. If I had drowned I wouldn't have remembered anything at all.
If I had drowned, then maybe he wouldn't be in love with me -since there would be no me to love. I don't deserve love. I certainly don't deserve his. He could have a thousand others, and yet he chooses me. He'd be happier without me. He deserves to be happy.
If I had drowned, he would be happy.
And I might be too.