When I have the dream, it's always the same. I can rewind, pause, fast forward at will. I can look around the rooms and know exactly what's going to be there, because nearly one year ago, I was there. The one thing I can't do is stop it from happening.
I'm standing in the Lisker apartment's living room, and the broadcast is on. Lindo, Quilla and Rivassa, like me, are glued to the forest on the screen. Even though it's light here and all across Panem, the forest is completely dark. Like all things in the Arena, the Gamemakers control night and day.
A squirrel chatters in one of the trees. An owl hoots. A young woman with bruises on her face and leaves in her hair tiptoes through the moss. Her olive-green jacket is so torn that the number 8 on her shoulder is barely distinguishable. A branch cracks somewhere in the distance, and her eyes dart left, right, left again. Seeing no other tributes, she silently crawls forward.
She abruptly stops and raises her right hand to her face. It's smeared with fresh, red blood. The leaves, the moss, the branches on the ground are sticky. She looks up.
"Ah!" She shouts. She recoils, scrambling backwards on the ground. The camera pulls away from her to show Panem what she has seen. Something is hanging from the tree. Something, which a few hours ago might have once been recognizable as someone, but that time is long gone.
"My..." The girl retches and throws up. The thing in the tree's skin lies in bloody strips on the ground below it. It is completely naked, hanging by its arms, its shoulders long dislocated. Quilla covers Rivassa's eyes.
"Why hasn't the hovercraft come to pick that up?" the girl from District 8 gasps between heaves.
The thing in the tree blinks. Its mouth opens. Closes.
"You're alive," she whispers in a combination of pity and disgust. "Who are you?"
She bends down. A shredded jacket lies in the bloody mess below the thing-person. She spreads the jacket out, looking for some way to identify the thing. The number on the shoulder. 5.
Instantly we hear cries from the apartments above us, below us, around us. Rivassa screams and runs down the hall into her room. Lindo grips the arm of the couch. The veins in his pale hand stand out like lines on a map.
On the screen. "Do you want me to get you down?" the girl from 8 says, tears in her eyes. The thing barely nods. She climbs up the tree and saws through the ropes tying the thing's wrists to the low limb. Its feet are only hanging about a foot above the ground, but it collapses as soon as it hits the moss.
"What did - who - "
The thing slowly raises two fingers. District 2. The girl this year from 2 is unhinged. She's already slashed a twelve-year-old's eyes open and set him at the entrance of a wolf's den. The Gamemakers will arrange a convenient accident for her later.
"Here, I'll help you," the girl from 8 whispers. "My dad's a doctor." She slams the thing's shoulders into place. It shakes its head. Not enough. She is crying now.
"Can you walk?" she asks, though she knows what the answer will be.
The thing shakes its head. It points. Its legs are shattered. "Please..." the thing rattles. "Make it stop."
The girl from 8 nods, her hands shaking. She pulls a long knife from her belt and tests the blade on her own finger. Not sharp enough. She pulls a stone from her pocket and begins to run it down the blade.
"Mother," the thing says slowly, under the grating of the sharpener. "Father. Rivassa." Quilla's hands clutch her heart. Rivassa has appeared again, behind the couch. She says what we all are saying, everyone in District 5, saying in our hearts.
"Matias," she breathes.
"Shan," the thing that was called Matias whispers. "I love you all. I love you so much."
The girl tests the blade again. Sharp. She looks at him. "Please," he says.
Her hands, slick with blood. They find his jugular vein. I can't look away.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm sorry."
Her arm, off camera, moves. He goes limp. Blood on her jacket, on the ground, everywhere. She closes his eyes. The hovercraft is already there. She stands watching as the claw descends from the sky and lifts the body into the craft's belly.
And the knocking starts. "Shan!" The voices are screaming for me. "Shan! Shan!"
That's when I always wake up and I'm lying in my bed next to Rivassa and the knocking on the door is not the neighbors waiting to scream and weep and sympathize. It's just Quilla knocking to get us up for school and Matias is dead again and I have to get up with the taste of blood in my mouth where I've bitten my tongue.