Thanks for clicking - and hopefully reading.
So I'm obviously still continuing my 'challenge' for myself - to invent back stories to some of the background characters in the Hunger Games. This one might be the last one for a while; since writing these takes up time that I should really, really be using for doing something productive. Like homework.
So once all the spring-homework-craze blows over, I'll see if I'll continue this challenge.
Anyways, not to bother you any longer - to the story!
Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins is the creator and owner of The Hunger Games.
She was good at what she did; deft, swift fingers that never made a mistake.
Sewing patterns day after day after day, hours on end. But Cecilia never minded, in fact, she quite liked it.
Her fingers were fast and nimble, sewing patterns that repeated over and over again. But she liked it, liked the patterns that never ended, that didn't quite have a beginning or an end. She liked how she always knew what was coming next.
Normalcy, Cecilia decides. That's what she likes. Normalcy - and predictability.
And even though as each year passes, one more boy and one more girl leaves the factory forever, Cecilia keeps on sewing. Because it's normal, predicted, that one boy and one boy will leave every year to participate in the annual Hunger Games.
They never come back.
And yes, the Hunger Games terrorizes Cecilia each year; her sweating palms during the Reapings, her ashen face while she watches friends and fellow workers die onscreen.
But it's predicted. District 8 tributes never come back. She knows that.
But once the Reapings are done, and the Games have ended, Cecilia would return to her sewing in the factory, return to the life that she will have and always had.
It's her last year, last year having her name in that Reaping bowl for the Hunger Games. Her name's in there only seven times - she never had to get the tesserae - and that year, she's quite happy to attend the Reapings. Because it's her last time, and after that, she's free from the grasp of the Capitol - she's no longer required to play their sick games.
On her way to the Reapings, she thinks about all she will do once her name is no longer in the Reaping bowl. Get married. Have children. Knit gnarled scarves for her grandchildren.
But all of her dreams are halted to a permanent stop when her name is drawn from the Reaping bowl.
And no, this wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
Cecilia was to live to an old age, knit mittens for her children and teach them how to sew.
Or, that's what she wanted.
And she's taken to the Capitol, gussied up and paraded like a dog, then thrown into the arena like a piece of trash.
And Cecilia's terrified; simply because this was not normal and normalcy and predictability is all she's ever used to.
It's what takes her mind off of things. Of all the what-ifs and all the fears. Of the starvation in the people's eyes, or the desperation in their voices. It's what keeps her grounded.
But in the arena, all the normalcy of her life in District 8 is stripped away and thrown far, far away.
She sees the hungry looks in the tribute's faces. She sees the gleaming weapons in front of them. She knows that they are hungry for the kill, and the weapons will simply be their fork and knives to eat them alive one by one.
And no, this isn't normal, not at all.
Cecilia does the only thing that any normal person would do in that situation: run away.
That year, it was all sand and heat and barely any trees.
Barely any water. Barely any cover.
Nowhere to hide.
But somehow, Cecilia manages to find a tiny puddle to drink from and barely sleeps at all. When she does, she sleeps with one eye open, both ears peeled, and a stick in her hand - it's all she could find.
She stumbles upon the carcass of a dead something - she's scared and she's not used to this, no, not at all - and she trades her stick for the curving bones of the dead animal. She carries as much as she can, but she's weak from not eating for days, and she's sweaty and thirsty and hot and she wants to go home, back to her normal life, but she already knows she's past that point.
And no, this isn't normal, not at all.
She wants to give up, lie down, starve to death or die from dehydration. District 8 tributes never came home. It was almost expected. There was no use in trying. But something, something in the distance, stops her each time.
District 8. Her parents. A boy her age. A needle and thread. Children that looked like her.
She thought it was just a mirage; she was delusional from the lack of water and heat.
But no, it wasn't her brain malfunctioning. It was the thirst for a normal life that she planned before being Reaped, the song that calls her back home. It's the voice in her head that says things will be normal once again.
And it's what keeps her going.
But the heat and lack of water only makes the tributes delusional and dizzy, and that's no fun for the Capitol. They send rabid hyenas to brighten up the place; paint the arena with blood.
And no, it wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
And many die, but if they don't, they're scratched beyond recognition. It's no use if they lived through the attack, because the wounds are so deep that they'd be dead in a matter of days.
Cecilia is one of the few who survive the attack. She manages to fight them off with the sturdy bones she found, but she, like every other remaining tribute, are bleeding within an inch of their lives.
And while the tributes die slowly, cannons ringing throughout the week like a grotesque funeral percussion, Cecilia does the only thing she's been doing for her whole life.
Sew.
She finds the smallest, thinnest bone from her meager collection of the dead animal's bones. She unravels the remaining thread from her worn shirt and ties it to the end of the bone.
Cecilia braces herself for the pain, braces herself for the gut-wrenching feeling of the bone piercing through her skin. But she hardly feels it through the throbbing pain of her the cuts marring her body.
And so she slowly sews herself together - and no, it's not normal, not at all - her fingers sure and quick. Years of practice has given her a steady hand, though she sews through flesh and blood. The blood stops flowing and the pain dulls slightly, and Cecilia manages to lie on the bloodstained dry ground without her organs spilling out.
One by one, the tributes lose their blood and die, their cannons ringing throughout the arena.
Cecelia's holding onto life; even though she's not bleeding to death, she needs water now or else she'll die of dehydration - and she can barely move at all.
She can only pray that the other tributes die quick, and that she somehow manages to outlive them all.
And no, it's not normal, not at all.
Her own stitches are what keeps her alive until the last tribute collapses only a hundred meters away from her. He was close, ready to spear Cecilia to death, but he's been holding on past his time and he does not have the stitches to stop the organs from falling out.
And Cecilia watches as the boy dies, blood spilling to the floor and painting the arena red the way the Capitol wanted.
And somehow, Cecilia has won the Hunger Games; last one standing, to be returned home as one of the few victors of District 8.
And no, it wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
So they stitch her back up right and they give her enough water to drown a city. Cecilia goes home, back to her life, back to District 8.
But normalcy is shattered, because she now lives in a big home and no longer has to sew and now no one will talk to her.
And she cries, because all she wanted to do in life was to sew and meet a nice boy and get married and have children and be normal.
She scrabbles desperately at the strings of her disintegrating normal life, crying when they slip and fall away.
And she stays at home and sew, because that's the last thing from her old life that she has left. She wishes she could stitch back her broken life, stitch back her dreams and somehow make them come true.
Cecilia sews, day and night, because it's the only thing grounding her. The only thing stopping her from thinking about the hyenas and their crazy eyes and sharp claws and rabid breath and cruel laugh. The hyenas come to her when she sleeps, they laugh at her while she lies, bleeding. But sewing makes the hyenas go away, and it grounds her and keeps her sane.
No, this isn't normal, not at all.
And she thinks that she really did it, really did stitch her life back together when she meets this beautiful boy at the factory when she goes to visit.
Things were normal again, or at least according to plan when the boy tells her he loves and she tells him the same.
Cecilia's happy when they're married, because she truly loves this boy, truly loves the way he holds her and makes her feel alright, makes her feel normal again.
Though the boy has to comfort her every night when the hyenas come after her, Cecilia thinks that her life was slowly returning back to normalcy. It starts acquiring a routine, a schedule that she is more than happy to follow.
And Cecilia has three children, three beautiful children who smile and laugh and banish away any thoughts of laughing hyenas or dry ground painted with red. They are the light of her life, and she manages to knit three pairs of mittens for them, one for each.
And her life is normal. And it is predictable. And Cecilia is happy.
Cecilia sews and sews; while her husband works and her children play, Cecilia sews. And as the years pass, she sews back together her broken dreams and shattered soul.
Slowly, painstakingly, Cecilia stitches back together her life.
And then, just as the job was done and Cecilia was happy; her life back in order, the thread weak and new but holding her life together, she's Reaped for a second time.
And no, it wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
In that second, that moment her name is called to participate in the third Quarter Quell, the 75th Hunger Games, her hopes, her dreams, her life shatters back into a million pieces.
For years, she's been meticulously and agonizingly sewing back together the remains of her old life. And now, just as she's pieced back together the remains, the Capitol rips years of work to shreds in a second.
But Cecilia steps up into the stage and her children run up to her. They know what's going to happen. They know what she's been called for. Such sweet, smart children that Cecilia created.
They cling onto her and they cry and the beg her to not go, to stay, even though they know she cannot.
"Don't worry, my darlings. Mummy's just going to the Games. You'll see mummy again."
But they beg and they plead and they cry and they yell, I don't want you to play these Games, and Cecilia can do nothing but hush and soothe them and try not to break into even smaller pieces.
Her husband - her beautiful, kind, sweet husband - has to help her pry her children off of her legs.
Cecilia tells her children to be good, to be the good, darling children she's raised, and she kisses and comforts her husband and she tells him she loves him, forever.
And they take Cecilia away for the second time back to the Capitol. Her children scream and beg and her husband cries silently and the hyenas laugh, and Cecilia sews.
She tries to sew together what's left of her, sew back her sanity and sew back what she can.
And they force her to parade around for the second time, make her smile and wave for the crowd.
And no, this isn't normal, not at all.
This wasn't the normal that Cecilia had so meticulously remade; this was the abnormal that stole away every last bit of her.
And Cecilia watches and she sees twenty-three other tributes - victors - who have killed and slaughtered and maimed, and who may kill her after all she's done to survive and live the life she's always wanted.
But some of them are good, some are good people who have just simply done bad things - bad things that they were forced to do.
But then they all join hands, heads raised high, connected as people who have fought and killed and have broken down, and Cecilia believes that they are all good.
And no, this wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
Cecilia didn't expect everybody to join together, everybody to join together as one, but they do, and even though it's unexpected and unpredictable and Cecilia detests unpredicted things, Cecilia has hope.
But then they're thrown into this water and jungle arena and everybody's dying and everybody's killing, and Cecilia wishes that everybody would lie down their weapons and just stop.
She stares at the broken, bloody bodies and she knows that this is one thing she cannot sew back together.
The hyenas in her mind laugh and howl and scratch at her limbs, and Cecilia makes up her mind.
She will not move, will not run, will not pick up a weapon and kill.
It's not normal of her; it's unpredicted of her, but she will not kill and she will not play this Game twice and no one can make her.
She's angry; she's a good mother and a loving wife and she will not let her children and husband watch her with blood on her hands.
And no, this wasn't predicted, no, not at all.
Cecilia stands still as a rock, unmoving, even as Brutus charges at her.
She does not run away even as Brutus snaps her limbs one by one, cuts her open and makes her bleed. She's unmoving even though the pain rushes through her like a broken dam, even though she knows it's suicide to have not run.
Brutus is finished with her, and she's bloody and broken and crying. Blood, along with the hope, seeps out of Cecilia's body as she dies slowly.
Her cannon rings, loud and clear like a bullet in the silence.
Her body is broken and mangled by Brutus, but the Capitol has tore through the careful stitches in her heart and mind that kept her sane. The stitches that she has spent most of her life painstakingly sewing back together, the stitches that saved her life and gave her a normal life. Broken. Shredded. By the Capitol.
They send her body back to her family in pieces, and there are some things that you just cannot fix.
And everyone mourns and cries, for maybe she could have lived if she had just ran away or even killed to survive; perhaps she could have been part of the rebellion now.
But she didn't.
And no, this wasn't predicted, and no, this wasn't normal of her, no, not at all; but it was the right thing to do.
Thanks for reading!
I don't know if you can tell, but I'm not too big on writing dialogue. I often force myself to make the characters say something, but it often ends up disastrous. Instead, this time, I've decided that for these 'challenges' probably won't include too much talking. So, I apologize for that.
Any questions? Comments? Feedback? Please, please feel free to share because I would really like to see/hear what you guys all think about this story.
Thanks again!