To Come of Age - The 18th Annual Hunger Games
"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Coriander "Cori" Rivets, 16.
Winner of the 17th Annual Hunger Games.
District Six.
Six months.
Six months and fresh wounds appear daily on my wrists, six months and their cries are seared into my brain, replaying their agony on a continuous loop. Six months and the Capitol is far from done with me. Even now, their cameras are making their way to my pathetic little district, their stylists are invading my home. I guess they are my prep team now, assigned to make me look halfway decent, to hide my flaws. They poke my ribs, commenting on my too skinny frame, laughing as though I am not even in the same home.
Same as it ever was.
"Coriander, my dear, we simple must do something about your skin," Agrippina proclaims, running her fingers down my cheek before I yank myself away. "And your hair is so oily and flat...like a little Seam child."
Her voice is like glass, her touch like venom; each equally as grating.
"Do I have to do this?" I beg, running my fingers along a particularly rough scar that follows my veins down my left wrist. "Can't you be sent in my place?"
Her laughter is worse than both her touch and normal speaking voice. "But of course I can't, child. Was it I that captured the heart of Panem with my cunning and wit? It is you that they love right now, child. Bring me that girl, the one that had us all waiting on baited breath for you to attack that brutish boy from Two."
Cunning and wit. I scoff to myself. Along with the bounce in my step, my ability to look family members in eyes, and a night of dreamless sleep, they are things about myself that no longer exist.
"We start with showing you off to all of Panem, remind them of all you accomplished," she continues, running her dark blue fingernails through my listless hair. "It isn't a very long segment, just something we can use as filler before the real fun starts." Her laughter makes my ears ring. "We will begin in Twelve and work our way through each district until you arrive back at the Capitol, for a celebration in your honor and a final interview with Gaius Flickerman. Isn't that exciting?"
As exciting as spending all my time here with you.
"Pallas should be here any-" she ignores the jolting of my body as my door swings open, slamming hard against the wall behind it. "Pallas, darling...so good of you to arrive."
Pallas Chino was once a designer to the President himself, before downgrading himself to head stylist of such a down-played District such as my own. Colorful feathers adorn his chestnut-colored locks, which flow down longer than my own, sweeping the small of his back. He dresses in a style much more in tune with nature than gems and gold, like Agrippina and the rest of the sheep blundering through the streets of the Capitol. His voice is less high pitched than hers as well, which makes me gravitate more towards him out of protection for my ears. He is a silver lining in this hellish situation.
Bringing up the rear was his trio of bumbling assistants, known as a prep team...despite neither prepping, nor working as a team. Pallas prefers to work mostly alone, leaving Plump, Perky, and Purple with nothing to do but make me presentable for him, which they quickly drug me in the direction of my large upstairs bathroom to do.
"These fingernails, darling!" Perky (I refuse to learn their real names) groaned, rolling his pure white eyes. "You've been biting them again. And this hair...what have you been doing with yourself since The Capitol?"
Oh, I don't know...killing other teenagers to secure my own survival, dealing with the consistent nightmares of said feats, trying to maintain eye contact with people long enough to be engaging...the usual.
With a scoop of her hand, Plump had a hold of my wrist like it was a delicious chocolate candy. "Love...there are better ways to deal with your...issues."
Just as quickly as she grabbed my arm, I pull it away. "What business of it is yours? Pop come more goop on me, dazzle me up, and toss me to the hungry wolves."
A pang of guilt hits me hard as her eyes brim with tears. Of the three, the short and stout member had always had my best interests at heart, so to speak. When she noticed that I coward at the touch of the male members of the prep team, it was she that bathed me, wiping what she saw as years of dirt from my skin with soft hands and even offered to help me change into Pallas's creations, despite being told by him to leave. She made sure to stand up for me when Steam mocked my Training Score of a pathetic 4 and defended my awkward interview with Gaius. Even Pallas pretended as if nothing at all was happening around him when it came to Steam, and why should he - Steam will forever be the same bully of a boy this District made him into before they shoved him into these games, just as I will always be the broken little girl I was before my name was picked out of that bowl.
"I'm sorry, I just...the nights are hard." I don't meet her gaze. "What does Pallas have in mind?"
District Twelve was harder than I had thought.
Viola Brune was nothing more than Bloodbath fodder in the making, despite being one of the oldest tributes in the arena. Her body was barely more than skin and bones, which quickly made sense when I made eye contact with her siblings as they huddled together on a platform in a sea of olive-skinned people. There are seven children in total, ranging in age of about fifteen down to four, tops and behind them barely stands an older gentleman, propped up by a thick tree branched fashioned into a crutch that is placed under his right armpit. Behind me, I hear Steam cracking jokes with Agrippina about putting down the family like the mangy dogs that they were and it takes everything in me to stay on point and tell the family about how I remember their sister as someone that put her all into training, despite placing a pitiful twenty-third out of twenty four.
Abel Callahan's mother stands alone on her platform, her eyes burning in an anger I can completely understand. With his boyish charm and good looks, Abel was a shoe-in to break their District's long streak of Hunger Games failures, but he himself made one fatal mistake - he put his trust in me. Together, we ran for our lives, dodging attacks from the pair from Two as made it their mission to snuff us out. In a critical moment we split up, each of us picking a direction in the bowels of the sewers, only to have our plan backfire on him.
It was never me they wanted, just the beautiful boy that threatened to steal away all of their sponsors.
During the recap of the games, they forced me to watch as the girl drove her sword through his stomach, spilling its contents. Through tears I watched as the boy stomped on his face long after his cannon sounded, his blonde curls covered in brain matter. I ran from the stage, barely holding the contents of my stomach as it spilled through my clenched fingers. Even know, I get the same taste of bile in my mouth whenever his death flashes before my eyes. I can't even imagine what it was like for her to watch her only child suffer like that.
I barely made it through Agrippina's prepared speech before it happened all over again.
Steam's laughter ran out as I made a mad dash into the Justice Center, but the crowd was thankfully silent.
The Districts that followed were a mixture of emotions.
District Eleven held no feelings for me, as I barely interacted with them. District Ten was slightly worse, mainly due to the ages of those chosen. At thirteen and fourteen, both had been the youngest tributes and some of the earliest to die. Neither of them managed a training score higher than my own and were quickly forgotten when compared to the other, more qualified tributes. By District Eight, I was barely sleeping and meals were less than a bowl of porridge and buttered toast; by Five I couldn't hide the new self-inflicted wounds that appeared on my belly and thighs. In District Four, I was assigned a female Peacekeeper to keep me from becoming the second suicide linked to the Games.
And then, Three came.
Trace Watts and Solaris Mayhew were paired up from the beginning; friends before their names were picked. Their interviews had the Capitol in tears, knowing that only one of them had the chance of making it home again. Promises were made to keep their respective family's fed if the other won, and with their brains, everyone thought they'd both find a way to make it out alive. No one was shocked when they made it to the finale ten, then surpassed the finale five...
Trace was easy to kill, his throat opening up like a wide smile as I drug my knife across his skin. He never heard me coming as he worked to turn the plates we rose up on into electrical weapons. My finale showdown with Solaris, however, was another story. We fought hard, trading blow after blow, each of us getting more than a few lucky shots in on the other as the Gamemakers locked us down in the center hub of the sewer system were had been thrust into. Through tears, Solaris managed to drive her hunting knife into my shoulder blade, but it wasn't enough to keep me from turning my own blade on her, plunging it through her stomach with one hard thrust - the twist of the blade sealing the deal.
Spending the next few hours covered in her blood is why I have a compulsion to constantly keep my skin clean.
"Do you want to know how I take the edge off of?" Steam asks, finally doing his job as my Mentor.
I refuse to move from the fetal position on the bed. "Alcohol. We all know it, we can smell it on you before you enter the room."
His laughter is hardy and he says nothing as he leaves a small blue box on the corner of my bed. Inside, I find a vial of bluish liquid and a needle. Morphling.
District Six's dirty little secret.
A/N: Yes, I know I didn't finish my last story...there is no reason to put your trust in me this time around. However, I want to give this another go, so here I am. For those of you that don't get it, this is a SYOT story, or Submit Your Own Tribute. I am ONLY accepting via PM (don't even bother doing it via Review). Also, I want to give everyone a chance, so for the moment, I am only doing one per person and it's not first come, first serve...I want to see what I get and go from there. Things could change in the future, so keep an eye on my Bio Page for all details on this story, as well as the Template for tributes to follow. Also, it would be awesome to see what you all think of this chapter, so drop a Review please and thank you!