If you recognise it, it's not mine.
It was a Quarter Quell that year, a year where in rememberance of the rebel uprising fifty years ago, two boys and two girls from each district would be sent to the arena. At the reaping, they called the girls first. A girl from the Seam. A girl I had seen in school, Maysilee Donner. She always wore a gold mockingjay pin. Later, I found out that she'd taken it for a token. A thirteen year old boy. No volunteers for any of them. Then me. As I walked to the stage, I remember thinking, it's OK, I'm strong, I can fight a bit. But I also knew that I probably wouldn't come home. The last victor was before I was born, and she died a few years ago. At the Justice Building I said my goodbyes to my parents, my brother, my girlfriend. And then I was on the train, speeding away from everything I knew.
In the Capitol, the only time I really felt present was when I was training, practising, learning to survive. Everything else, the prep team, the food, the chariot ride, seemed to happen to someone else. In my private session, I threw some knives, beat up a dummy or two. Half the gamemakers ignored me, half watched bits of it before telling me to go. And then, the interviews. Caesar looked freakishly identical to last year, except with dark green hair. I hated him, despised them all. Once, many, many generations ago, people would see children dying and want to do something about it. Not sit and cheer on the murderer. So I was sarcastic, not caring about the audience. Not difficult.
And as I rose into the arena, eyes dazzled by sunlight, the first thing I registered was a sweet, fresh smell. And then a mountain, a dark pine wood and the Cornucopia, shining gold in the centre of the meadow underneath the blue sky. I wanted to step off my plate, run for the woods, but I knew what would happen. So I forced myself to wait, to take in the large circle of blinking teenagers around me. As the gong went, I ran as hard as I could to the Cornucopia, grabbing a handful of knives and a large black backpack. As the others approached, I took off for the woods. Eighteen of us died that day. The other boy and Seam girl from Twelve. All from Six. Two boys from Nine. So many more. Thirty of us left. And one would make it home. Some others decided to hide in the woods. I spied on them, and found information. One girl drank from the clear water in the streams, and died soon after. A boy was tripped into a bush of brightly coloured flowers and choked to death in minutes. I was attacked by a pack of fluffy golden squirrels, and the butterflies turned out to have painful stings. A few days in, the beautiful mountain erupted into a volcano. It took out a lot of tributes, reducing the career pack and confining everyone to the forest. There were thirteen of us left. Me, Maysilee, a handful of Careers, a scattering of others.
One day I was attacked by three of the Careers. I killed two of them, but the third overpowered me. As he prepared to cut my throat, he collapsed to the ground, dead. With a small dart in his neck. I rolled to my feet, waiting for the next attack, and Maysilee Donner stepped out from behind a tree. "We'd live longer with two of us" she said. And I had to agree to have an ally. She told me how she grabbed a small pack from a tribute who ran past her as she began to escape. It had a blowgun with twenty-four darts. She dipped them in the streams, the flowers, the bright fruits on the trees. I wasn't the only one who noticed that everything was poisonous here. As the pool of tributes dwindled, we kept heading in the same direction. Always keeping the mountain at our backs. Eventually Maysilee wanted to know why. So I explained, how the arena had to end somewhere. I just had to find the edge, and maybe escape. Maysilee didn't argue, and after we hacked our way through a thick hedge with a blowtorch from a dead career and finally reached the top of a large cliff, there were just 5 of us left. As we sat staring over the edge, Maysilee broke off from our alliance. She said it shouldn't come down to just the two of us, and as she walked away, a small pebble fell over the edge of the cliff. And flew right up again. I threw a rock over the edge. I heard a faint buzz and the rock landed back in my hands. I didn't know how, but this could perhaps help me somehow. At any rate, I knew something the others didn't. And that's when I heard the screams. A young girl's, coming from behind me. Maysilee. I leapt up and ran down the hill, but I was too late. I arrived in a copse of willow trees to watch her fall under a flock of bright pink birds with long narrow beaks. One stabbed her throat and then they're gone, leaving me to run to the dying girl on the ground, hold her shaking hand until the cannon fires. Within the day, two more die. A boy from Five and a girl from Ten. Just me now, me and a girl from One. I walked to the Cornucopia, to that bright open meadow. And there she was. Bigger than me, and just as fast. As we fought, me with a knife, her with an axe, I gouged out her left eye and she slashed a hole in my stomach. We ended up with me staggering towards my cliff, holding myself together, with her chasing me armed with an axe. As I collapsed at the edge, she threw the axe. It missed, falling into what seemed to be an abyss. She clamped a hand to her empty socket, planning to outlast me, but then I hear that faint buzz, bend my head down, see her remaining eye widen in shock. The last things I hear before I black out are a gasp, a sickening thud, a cannon. And a burst of trumpets.
That was all 24 years ago. I was 16. Since then I have watched forty-six children die, year after year. I tried to help, at first. But it was hard, impossible, on my own. Eventually I started drinking, to try and erase my nightmares. But I know that they will never go away, that all these people, Maysilee, the girl from One, everyone else I saw die, will be with me forever. A few weeks after I was crowned, my parents and my girlfriend were murdered. It was my fault, because of my trick with the forcefield. The Capitol thought I was trouble. They could have been right, but over the years I have deteriorated into a lonely drunken man living alone in a fancy house. The only living victor of District 12. This might change though, this year. These two are different. The boy seems strong, about average. But the girl, Katniss Everdeen. I remember watching her slowly starve. But she's alive. Alive, and she has Maysilee's pin.