The Other Side of Eden
Prologue: Dead On Arrival
"It was the roar of the crowd that gave me heartache to sing
It was a lie when they smiled and said 'You won't feel a thing'"
~from "Disenchanted" by My Chemical Romance
It's deafeningly loud. The cheers. Too loud. Too harsh. Too... sickening.
I woke up strapped to a hospital bed two days ago, tubes in my nose to help me breathe and an IV in my arm to sedate the pain of the injuries inflicted upon my body in the 74th Annual Hunger Games by the arena and my fellow tributes, all of whom are now dead. The first few moments of consciousness, as I had glanced around the sterile white room in confusion and fear, were possibly worse than any other few moments of my life because I knew that, by my hand, twenty-three innocents were dead.
Not your fault; it's theirs, I chide myself as I plaster a fake smile onto my lips and answer Caesar Flickerman's enthusiastic greetings as Haymitch has directed me to answer them.
"Remember sweetheart," he said right before he went on stage, "you're still in the Games, so play."
Yes, I am still in the Games, even though my arena days are over.
Caesar's horrifyingly vibrant blue hair is distracting me as I try to match his light banter and answer his prying questions as naturally as I possibly can, swallowing the vomit that threatens to come forth from my mouth as the audience begins clapping when the screen behind us starts to play the recap of my Hunger Games, my hell.
It seems impossibly long, even if it is a mere three hours, it seems like eternity. My feet curl up to my body on my chair, and my fingers shake as I clutch at my arms, nails digging into skin. I am numb to the physical pain, instead delving into the dark place that was my world the past several weeks (and would be forever more), giving into the emotional and mental stress it brings me. I don't know how I make it through the "movie." It is a miracle that I am not in tears and running off the stage away to my room up on the 12th floor of the Training Center by the time it is finally, mercifully, over.
And so the questions continue. Caesar senses my detachment (and possibly my waning sanity as well), and tries to open me up and, when that fails, simply carries on with his show as usual. Except, even the rambunctious spectators in the crowd below the stage are getting bored quickly with my bland answers and their lack of detail. The anthem plays fairly quickly after, and I glare at the symbol of our pathetic country as it plays, loathing myself. Loathing them. Loathing life. Love. Loss. And everything else that has made it impossible for me to at least act alive.
No one speaks to me on the elevator ride up to the 12th floor (well, Effie attempts at conversation, but the silence stretches when she's ignored, as Effie often is), and I'm allowed to walk with a labored step to the confines of my room, which was never actually mine. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, still wearing the beautiful dress Cinna designed, the well done makeup on my face courtesy of my prep team, and the glamorous red heels; my sleep is often disturbed by the nightmares I had anticipated.
The nightmares consist of a mix of my life in District 12, the horror of my Hunger Games, and other horrible, unmentionable things produced by the innermost masochistic workings of my mind. I toss and I turn and I cry and I scream, but I make it to the dawn's light streaming through my windows, by some long overdue miracle.
But Effie is soon there to ruin the sun's brief promise of a better time ahead of me, proclaiming this another "Big, big, big day!"
I move through the days after the first interview as a ghost, a zombie with the number seventy-four plastered to my back. More interviews. More dresses. More deafening crowds that I secretly wish to let burn in the deepest pits of hell. More pretending I'm someone I am not. More playing the role the Capitol wants me the play, because, after all, it's their game. Of course it is.
Their extravagant banquets with their foreign dishes make me sick to the core, thinking of the starving slums of home. Their fancy machinery leaves me wanting to smash it with the side of one of my own bows, not their golden ones. Their clothes make me grip my own in utter disgust with myself for abiding by their dress code. Their personalities are so fake that I wonder if they are all secretly robots programmed to annoy the living shit out of me. The Capitol repulses me in every possible way.
Not to mention the sadistic nature these people have about them. And that they find nothing wrong with what they are doing, that they enjoy the show of it all, infuriates me to no end. I would happily kill them all if that were at all possible, never mind the illegality of it. One day, I swear, I will have President Snow's head decapitated from his body and placed on a plaque above the entrance to our Justice Building back home.
But no. Of course, that is impossible. The option of fight, of fighting back isn't in my reach. I can't. Even if I could, it's not as if I'd win, but at least I'd have sent a message and proved something to myself.
The depression and fear of what I've lived through and the pain and guilt of being the one to come out of the arena, even if I visit it every night while I sleep and sometimes during the daylight hours, is there constantly and consistently, lurking in the corners of my mind away from wandering eyes. Survivor's guilt, I've heard it diagnosed before.
It's not your fault, Katniss... not your's...
The only time I find a somewhat established peace is when I am with other so-called "victors" or under the clouded influence of the alcohol Haymitch so graciously is willing to spare. The other victors seem to have a grasp of my hell, as I have a grasp of their's. Most don't accept me; I don't ask them to. But they are there, and that's all that I can ask.
We're sent back to District 12, Haymitch and I, after the last buzz of excitement for the 74th Hunger Games fades, but it doesn't feel like home, just another battlefield. But really, isn't that what my poor little district has always been? I walk the streets without purpose, dreading returning to my house in the Victor's Village. I hunt for no reason other than habit, giving all the game to Gale and his family. I talk to people only when necessary, because I don't want to tell anymore lies, and, if I spoke truth, I know no one would understand.
However, by the time the Victory Tour rolls around, I am considerably better. I am more myself. And though it is extremely taxing to see the faces of the families of those I have killed, the children who might have been here if I wasn't, I am miraculously able to move on. Because that's what Katniss Everdeen does: fights the demons and moves on when they've been suppressed enough to finally be able to move on.
My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. And this is the story of how I survived my shitty life.