Red Mist

Katniss's head was about to explode. At least that's what it felt like. She was not aware of much trough the pounding headache and the burning fever that wracked her body. Faces floated in and out of the haze that was her vision, some may have actually been there. There were people like Prim and Rue, but most predominately, Gale.

He was everywhere. He smiled and he laughed and he said her name over and over. But then the vision changed. Gale faded from sight and the blurry haze he had floated in was replaced by a red mist that swirled and churned in a violent, destructive manner.

New faces appeared in this terrifying venue. They were the faces of those who had gone to places Katniss could not follow. Rue. Her father. Peeta. But unlike Gale, they were not laughing or smiling. No, they were dying. Over and over and over till Katniss felt she would die herself from the pure grief that suffused her. Over and over she watched their lives end in a brutal testament to the hardships inflicted upon the districts by the capitol. This is what it meant to be a citizen of Panem. And there was nothing she could do but watch… and suffer.

Rue's death was the easiest to watch. Katniss had been there. She knew what happened and how it happened. There was a script that the death followed. So she knew what to expect. Rue screamed, Katniss ran to her, saw the spear, and killed the boy. Simple. Familiar. Excruciating, but familiar.

Her father's on the other hand, had happened had happened deep in the mines of district twelve. Katniss didn't know exactly what had happened so her imagination filled in the blanks.

She stood behind her father in a cold, dank tunnel, his body coated in coal dust and drenched in sweat. He was unaware of his daughter as he walked down the mine shaft. This was where the story kept changing. This part always played the same but what followed was different in every repetition of the death. He screamed his lungs out as his body burned to a crisp from the natural gas his torch ignited. Cave fish stripped his bones of their flesh after the tunnel flooded. A coworker bashed his brains in. the air disappeared and he suffered silently in the ensuing vacuum. Ribs punctured lungs and heart as they were crushed inwards from the weight of a cave-in.

The ways a miner could die were as many as the stars, and Katniss watched every single one inflicted on her father. Just one would've broken and ordinary girl. But Katniss was stronger than that. She retained her sanity. For the time being.

After the last death had finished it ugly work, Katniss's vision dimmed till all was black and as if her eyes had been pulled from their sockets. Adversely, her ears were functioning extraordinarily. This might have been a blessing considering her blinded state. That is, if there had been anything pleasant to hear. There were no singing birds, nor gurgling streams. Nothing to warm Katniss's heart or bring a smile to her lips. No, there was only the sobbing.

It was a whimpering, desolate sound, the kind that can only be issued by the throat of a man who has had his spirit broken and his soul devoured. Even with as much suffering as she had seen, Katniss shuddered to think of what could break someone so completely. Nothing would please her more than to cover her ears and run as far from the sound as she could.

But then the man screamed.

The piercing cry echoed and reverberated as if it were reaching her from the other end of a long passage of tunnel. It punctured her heart and shattered her concentration. Katniss had heard many screams in the past year, this one should not affect her so much, but this one was different. It was familiar. It belonged to someone she knew. Someone she loved.

She immediately stood up and half crawled half stumbled half ran toward the owner of the scream. She was correct in the assumption that he was at the other end of a tunnel. Unfortunately, it was not a straight tunnel, and Katniss kept slamming into as she forged blindly onward. Twenty minutes of this chaotic run later and alight appeared ahead. The screaming had stopped and been replaced by the pitiful whimpering.

Katniss reached the end of the tunnel and found a small ball of flame suspended in front of an unimposing wooden door, from behind which issued all the pain she had heard. It was with trembling hands that she opened the door. The first thing she noticed was how bright and modern the room behind it was. The tunnel had been primitively hewn from stone and the door from simple wood, but the room was all steel and glass and plastic. It resembled a cross between an operating room and a tool shed. The differences being that none of the tools would be found in any shed in the districts of Panem.

The walls were covered in every possible device designed for causing pain. Everything from Iron Maidens to Cattle Prods. Bamboo Splinters to Electrodes that would literally suck the life out of you. Torture Racks, syringes filled with sinister liquids, maces, axes knives, needles, acid, radioactive material. The list went on and on. The only section of wall that was not covered in instruments of pain was the part that contained the operating room portion. Instead of on the floor where it should have been, the steel operating table hung on the wall. Strapped to it Crucifixion Style, was Peeta. His head hung loosely on shoulders that slumped, defeated. The horror he had endured were clearly evident on his body. His fingernails were missing. Blood leaked from the follicles where his hair had been pulled out. Pink foam dribbled from his mouth. Empty eye sockets gaped at Katniss. "I will submit" was carved into his head. His entire body was a lattice of scars and open wounds.

But the greatest horror was what they had done to his torso. Katniss couldn't see the outside of Peeta's chest. But she had an intimate view of the inside. Hi sternum had been split and his ribs broken so they opened like hinges and revealed Peeta's inner workings. The tubes entering his head seemed to be keeping Peeta alive so Katniss could see every beat of his heart as it sent blood to his mutilated body. All her experience in gore and pain and suffering couldn't prepare Katniss for this atrocity. So she did the natural thing. She screamed, fell over, and hurled.

Cowering on the floor soaked in her vomit and Peeta's blood, Katniss was only dimly aware of the door opening behind her. She was aware though, of the pinch of a needle entering her neck. Then… she was aware of nothing as the red mist again filled her vision.

When she woke she was in the same room, but this time, she hung on a table next to Peeta, immobilized.