My idea of a happy ending for a contestant of the Hunger Games is death.

I knew that tommorrow, twenty-three kids would be chosen to die, and one would be chosen to be forever just like me. I'm always so fucking depressed I can never be able to get out of this position I'm in, sleeping with a knife in my hand every night as if something is coming to get me. And I'm sure I have a reason to be so paranoid. The Capitol is coming to get me, I feel.

I was only sixteen years old when I was picked. They called 'Haymitch Abernathy', and I wasn't surprised. I was a Seam kid, father dead, dropping out of school and working to support my mother and little brother. It disgusted me, how all those career tributes from the richer districts acutally volunteered to be a tribute, to die. It disgusted me even more when I actually won. I fought and killed those people for what? Nothing. Two weeks after I thought it was all over, my life's purpose was taken away from me...My little brother, Isaac, and my mother, and my girl. They had nothing to do with what I did. And they had so much more to live for than I did.

My eyes fight my fatigued body's will to sleep. I can't. Not tonight. Every night, I had to relive the Games over and over and over again. But the night before the victims were chosen...that was the worst night of all for me.

The memories drift through my head like clouds, and I take a swig of alcohol, closing my eyes. Me. Holding Maysilee's bloody hand as her good innermost will drifts away from this earth forever and her heart beats rapidly making a failed attempt to stay alive. I think of how I could have stayed with her and this never would have happened, and I wouldn't have had to be the last thing she saw on her last few minutes on this earth. Hopefully, then, I'd have died in peace with myself, or maybe, if she and I had been the last ones left, I'd have shot my brains out so that she could live on. And I remember, coming home one day. My mother, Isaac, and Felicity...all nailed to a wall, all bloody. Isaac was cut so bad that only the upper part of his body was nailed to the wall, his legs on the floor...

I make a little choked-up sound in the back of my throat. I remember something else:

'Haymitch, do you think that since you're the victor of the Hunger Games, we'll have a better life now?' Isaac asks me as we casually sit on the couch, watching on the television about how I was the second winner of the Hunger Games ever.

'Gee, Isaac, I don't know,' I say to him sarcastically, 'We're undoubtedly richer, people in District 12 view me better...and nobody'll fuck with the brother of the champion.'

Isaac, who was only five, said, 'But you have to know, Haymitch. You're my big brother.'

I hope they all die. So they'll be rid of the awful life ahead of them. So that they won't be like me.

This is in Haymitch's POV. I named Haymitch's little brother and girlfriend myself. I think everybody should love Haymitch as much as I do. I heart you, Haymitch :) Hope you enjoyed.