Nightmare
"Come on, Jo!" Aspen calls, running ahead of her. She puts on an extra burst of speed, bolstered by fear, to catch up with her best friend, to quiet him so that the Careers don't hear.
"Wait!" She hisses, grabbing his shoulder and clapping her hand over his mouth. Heart pounding, she drags him behind a boulder. "Shhh!" She knows they're coming. "Don't…move…"
They sit there, as still as death while the pack of killers tramp by. Then, when they're almost gone, Aspen coughs. There's a stampede of running feet and a flashing blade, and then blackness.
Johanna Mason sits up in bed, screaming as though she has actually returned to the arena. "Just a nightmare," she breathes, relaxing again. She can still see the blood, hear the shrieks. She's not sure why she's so terrified by the dreams, since they never actually kill her. Yet.
Falling back to sleep is not going to be easy, obviously. If she's honest with herself, Johanna doesn't want to. But the Victory Tour starts tomorrow. The citizens of the Capitol will want to see her up and about, energized. She's not interested in pleasing them, but she knows there will be consequences if she can't be satisfactory.
With quick, alert steps, she crosses to the bathroom and opens the cabinet. Everything in her new house has impeccable uniformity, all clean and shiny. In the bathroom especially, the metal is perfectly white. There's no diversity whatsoever.
Johanna pops the lid on a remedial pill bottle, swallowing two tablets dry. She settles back into the huge, fluffy mattress as the medicines sink in, her fear subsiding.