Written for the Caesar's Palace Monthly Oneshot Challenge, month of March. The prompt for the challenge is below.
Beta-ed by Catching Fireflies, who actually puts up with my writing. :)
"I spend my night dancing with my own shadow;
and it holds me and it never lets me go."
- from "Slow and Steady" by Of Monsters and Men
What a wretched sight she seemed to be.
Johanna sat on her wide bed, curled up like a stray animal in a harsh rain, her formerly styled brown hair stringy and limp around her shoulders. Her skin was blotchy from tears- tears that she spent every night willing out of her so she could practice her 'weak-and-frightened' act. She was smiling into her pillow. She was getting better at this acting thing.
A bright night-light was on at the corner of her temporary room. "I'm afraid of the dark," Johanna had said tremulously to her escort during her first night in the Capitol, faked tears pooling in her eyes. Her escort, an irritatingly cheerful man with a silver wig, had fallen for her act right away, and, out of the "goodness of his heart", he had a night-light installed in her room.
She always kept it on, for one sensible reason and one unfathomable reason. The sensible reason was so she could keep up her act of the weak little girl, Johanna kept the night-light on, in case the escort happened to peek in to check if she was getting sufficient sleep. But she also kept the night-light lit because it made her hopeful. The little light was fighting valiantly against all of the dark shadows that lurked in the room, and it held its own. It reminded Johanna of herself: she was to fight alone against twenty-three people that wanted her dead. She hoped she would be like the night-light and win against the shadows.
Johanna brushed off her face, dried tear-trails on her cheeks. She was glad for them. When she came to the Capitol, she hadn't been such a good actress, and her tears had looked a bit faked at times. Now she could burst into tears at the slightest provocation. She practiced her tearful image every night by forcing herself to tears. Her crying made the Careers sneer at her, and her hands itched to make them pay with a good hard chop of her ax. But she had to wait, she had to bide her time.
Unfortunately, 'biding her time' meant sitting in her room crying a lot. It also meant that, when the other tributes were in the streets of the Capitol, speaking to potential sponsors, she had to stay in her room. Johanna had slipped out of her act that night to beg her escort to let her go talk to sponsors. "You poor dear," her escort said, his wig flashing like a million sharpened swords. "No, you don't want to go out there! It's noisy, and not a safe environment for a darling like you. Let us adults handle it, Johanna. Stay in your room and get some rest." So in order to keep her facade, Johanna nodded with wide, innocent eyes and walked back to her room, silently fuming.
She had thrown her window open, and she could hear the laughter ricocheting through the streets like bullets. Music seemed to shake the foundations of the Training Center, and the eerie sound of thousands of people cheering hit Johanna's' ears: "Hun-ger Games! Hun-ger Games!" Johanna stood up and looked out her window with a scowl. She didn't even think she could measure how much she despised the Capitolians and their eagerness at seeing so many children slain in front of them. But she wished she was out on the streets, chatting with them. They were detestable, but Capitol sponsors would be a huge advantage in the arena.
On the street below Johanna, men and women in their brightly-colored clothing spun and twirled in a mad dance that took up the whole street. The black-clothed specks that Johanna assumed were the tributes danced among the Capitolians, twirling and spinning happily, seeming so cheerful on what would be the eve of many of their deaths. The Capitolians liked that, though- Johanna knew. Her weak, trembling, frightened act hadn't won her any favor, and the crowd looked bored at the end of her interview. But the Careers had laughed and joked with Caesar Flickerman, and they surely earned a good amount of sponsors.
Maybe it was for her own good that she wasn't partying with the Capitolians, but Johanna felt isolated and lonely as she watched all the people dancing below her. She glanced at her night-light again. You can make it, it seemed to say, its glowing light merry and strong.
Johanna could hear the pulsing rhythm of music below her, and it began to cheer her up. Experimentally, she spun round on the cold tile of her floor in time to the music, her sock-encased feet slipping around clumsily. She moved her twirling to the beat of the music, adding some jumping and hand movements. She was sure she looked ridiculous, but she kept dancing until the song ended.
When a new song sounded, it was a slower, more romantic song. Johanna held her arms out to an invisible partner, and began to waltz with the air, a smile on her face, her nightgown swishing around her ankles. She hoped there weren't any cameras in the room. Johanna knew she must look quite odd. But it cheered her- she didn't need to dance with a partner out on the streets, like her fellow tributes were doing. She was fine on her own, in her lonely, shadowy room. She was independent- even if she looked insane.
She didn't know it, but down on the street, the Capitolians had stopped dancing. They were looking up at Johanna's dancing silhouette in her window, their hollow hearts touched by the 'weak little girl' dancing all alone.