51. Four names still haunt me. Day and night. The birds attacking Maysilee never fade no matter if I'm walking the streets of the path to and from the town from Victor's Village where I live alone (the drunk fuck mentor of mine drinking himself into permanent oblivion not long after the Victory Tour, knowing that he could leave behind me to take on his role) or if I'm in my house at night-the worst part of the day. The screams enter my head every time I pass the room that was my brother or mother's for the nine days that they actually lived here in this house with me before Snow killed them to make an example of me.
I don't ever dare going near the Seam where my girl lived with her family. They'll never forgive me anyway for being the cause of her demise. Not that I blame them. I blame myself for that too. And the Capitol. She did nothing wrong but call me her boyfriend and it was the end of her.
It doesn't help that it's that time of year again. The Reaping. Unlike every other seventeen year old in the district, I'm safe from the bowl. Everyone else is too but the two Seam kids chosen, the girl a classmate of mine when I actually went to school and the boy a fourteen year old. Both are as starving and smudged gray from the smog as I was last year.
I attempt to help them but even I know it's no use. They both die in the bloodbath as most do from our district and I find myself locked alone on District 12's floor, the old wiley flamboyant man that calls himself 12's escort leaving me in 'peace' for the remainder of my time in the Capitol.
No one is there to greet me when I come home on the train, as expected. I go back to Victor's Village alone.
52. This would have been my last year of the reaping regardless of my Victor status or not. It's perhaps the first time in maybe a month I've left the solemn ghost town I call my neighborhood, only leaving when it's necessary. I've taken to going to the Hob on occasion to buy some disgusting liquor from an old man there. I even pay him extra because I have nothing better to do with the Capitol's money. In fact, I keep a bottle in my bag that's all ready for the train ride. I take sips every so often. Or really, when I wake up from a nightmare. The screams around the house have faded a bit, but the nightmares haven't. I don't know if they ever will.
The two Seam kids look to me for help. One even gets a seven as the training score, but they only make it to day two before the Career pack finds them. The other died in the bloodbath as usual. I go back to my floor and sip at my bottle of liquor, before it's empty again. But I don't go home empty handed. I swiped a few bottles of good stuff from the floor before leaving this year, and this time I go back home with two friends that will keep me warm until I have to go back to the crap at the Hob.
53. The two bottles I brought back from the Training Center lasted about a week. I had forgotten that all of my old buddies that no longer talked to me, the vast majority of my class at school was now out and in the real world. That meant the mines for the Seam boys and either beginning to marry or find piss poor jobs for the girls. All it took was one look at the gray ashy faces of my once friends as they came out of their ten hour shifts on my way to the Hob for me to remember.
The worst part of it was that I was in a sick, twisted way…jealous of them. At least they were normal. At least they didn't have nightmares of killing people or others being killed because of them. At least they had girls to go back home to, families that loved them. I had nothing. My only poor excuse for a family was my mother's brother, and he was no uncle to me. He made that clear enough when I came back from the Games, kept my cousins far away from me. I was alone.
The Capitol had finally done it. They had made me yearn for a life I should have had, a mining life. That very thought drove me to drink what was left of the bottles I had brought back with me and send me back to the Hob for more. Hell, it didn't even taste as bad anymore. The bitter vile taste of the homemade alcohol was sugar compared to the taste the Capitol had left in my mind.
This time I came to the Reaping tipsy, and I must say that it was the best idea I've had for it ever. I didn't even particularly care who was reaped. They didn't really want my help anyway, just wanted to stuff as much food down their starving throats before they died.
They did in the bloodbath. This time instead of going back to my floor, however, I ran into another Victor at the bar nearest to the Mentor Room. A guy named Chaff with one hand that won a few years before me. I stare for a minute before he realizes and gives me a glare.
"Either fuck off or sit down and drink to having two hands, bitch." He calls to me in a disgruntled, drunk tone. I'd go away except for the twinkle in his eyes, the dare challenging me to call him out.
"Well if I'm a bitch you're a one handed slut." I reply as I sit down and motion for the bartender, taking the bottle from him and drinking straight from it before he can bother pouring it into a glass. Chaff takes the bottle from me and drinks from it himself before giving me a half smile, and in that moment I swear I made a new best friend.
Who needs a mining life when you have Victors that understand you?
54. This year, much thanks to liquor, went by in something of a blur. The new mayor thanks to his dad dying and leaving this shit district to his leadership got married to Maysilee's twin. As the only living Victor of this place I was invited and required to go by basically law even though it was the last place I wanted to be besides maybe the Capitol or an arena again. It's like seeing my nightmares live.
Her twin seemed to be practically no better off than me on that front despite it being her own toasting. I suspect she'd be better off if she had alcohol. Certainly that's how I got through it. I was generally left alone to drain a bottle of fine liquor brought in from the Capitol for the event and swiped a few more on my way out.
This year I forgo tipsy and go to the Reaping straight drunk. That idiot escort clearly doesn't approve but I don't care, my only thoughts getting me through that I'm going to get the good stuff on the train and see Chaff and a few others when I get to the Capitol. Halfway through the train ride there I remember that I'm actually supposed to help the tributes.
It's a Townie boy and a Seam girl. They seem to want my help until I accidentally pour my bottle into the kid's hair, and then they don't like me at all. Call me a piss drunk and a sorry excuse for a mentor and Victor. It doesn't bother me much.
I barely remember that they exist until day four when the girl dies from lack of water in the desert landscape. Even if I wanted to I don't have enough sponsor money for her anyway to have sent something. She only got a three as a training score if I can remember correctly. In the end does it really matter though? No one likes me in the district anyway. People here do.
55. There's rebellion in the air. They started whispering it to me last year, but this year I've actually done something about it. I dug out a little old cellar in the woods behind Victor's Village, making certain it was nice and secretive. Got papers there about District 13, plans we hope to enact. The only real progress we can make together is coded messages over the phonelines during the year, but it's here in the Capitol that we can really make something happen.
Not that anything has yet. District 13 is building up an army, but to the vast majority of the population they are still noexistant. We need to figure out a way to start a rebellion to end the Hunger Games. Hasn't fifty five years been enough?
Chaff took me to a secret meeting of Victors that want to help, those I distinctly remember being Beetee from District 3 who surprisingly got a winner this year in his strange girl Wiress and the kid from seven who won a few years back, Blight. We want to fight. But in the end, we just toss things around before Chaff and I end up on my floor drinking away, wishing we didn't have to be here every year. Wishing we never had to leave.
Victors have a cruel life, but at least most have someone else who understands at home. I'm alone. But I know it's me who has to try harder. Maybe if I actually get a tribute with a fighting chance I'll try and bring them home if only so I have someone who understands.