I hear him scream. I toss and turn, unable to sit still, knowing he is being tortured somewhere. Yet I don't wake. I can't. My vision is fuzzy; I see only shapes and shadows. Then, bursting from the gloom, is his face. Those soft golden curls gently leaning over his forehead, his square jaw, the curvature of his nose, the slight redness on his cheeks, his bright, cheerful, beautiful blue eyes. They are still the same beautiful eyes as before; but their brightness is gone. Extinguished. Put out. Killed. Just like they are slowly doing to him: killing him. Torturing him. Torturing me. I don't know who is hurting more; him because of the excruciating pain or me because I am being forced to watch him being tortured.
You can't control dreams. Or nightmares. I try to tear my eyes away from his face, try to push it all away. I can't deal with this. Not now. But, as said before, you can't control nightmares. Suddenly the whole scene comes into focus. Sharp, crisp. I feel as if I could reach out and touch his golden curls. Twirl one in my finger. Run my hand down his beautiful face. But I can't.
His face is distorted with pain. A thick red welt runs the length of his left cheek. Blood splatters the rest. I scream his name, but he doesn't hear me. He doesn't know I'm there; I'm not there, though. I'm only watching from my bed. Safe. Safely in torture because I must live through the nightmare of watching them torture him. He shuts his eyes as tight as possible as a tear squeezes out. A small tear, like a tiny falling diamond. A small bit of beauty in the death scene. He can still cry; at least they haven't taken that from him. His feelings. Emotions. At least some of them are left, I hope.
He's in a small room, like a cell. It's all stone; the walls, ceiling, and unbearingly small. One wall is the exception; bars run from top to bottom of them. They hum faintly with electricity. He trembles in their wake, lying, moaning on the cold, hard floor. A portion of one of the walls suddenly drops down, revealing a long, white hallway. A tall, cruel looking man in a white uniform steps up to him. The man holds something in his hand, but I can't quite make it out.
The boy on the floor cries out, "No! Stop- you can't! Please..." He fades out into silence, except for the faint moan. Then the man raises his hand as the wall slides shut. It's a syringe. Long and fatal, filled with a sickly yellowish clear colored liquid. The boy screams again as the man inches it closer and closer to him. The boy's eyes blaze open, but they are dead, lifeless. His pupils expand frighteningly, almost covering the whole blue colored part, but almost instantly return to a normal size. The man laughs, the menacing noise echoing throughout the halls. Across it I hear another scream, a young woman's. The sound of water splashing. Then a sharp zap. Another scream. In an adjoining cell, a gaunt, red-haired man steps between the bars to see what is being done to the boy. But he gets too close and the bars electrocute him. He jerks back, a searing red mark scorching across his chest. He doesn't seem to notice. Another man in white apparel runs up to him and jabs him again and again, forcing him to the back of the cell. He doesn't stir, motionless.
Focusing back on the boy, I see the man's hand and the syringe moving closer. The boy jerks to the side as the man jabs sharply downward. The syringe misses and instead impales him in the shoulder instead of his arm. His head lifts up instantly to where I can see him clearly. His pupils dilate to an alarming size, almost covering all the color. They continue to expand and retract at frightening rates. I try to rip my eyes away from it, but I can't. I can't control it. I can only watch in terror. He screams out again, a tortured sound of a dying creature.
The man laughs and leaves the room from the same way he came. The boy on the floor moans and thrashes, screams and makes guttaral noises of pure pain. It kills me to watch him, but I can't stop. I can't control my nightmare that I know must be actually happening, somewhere.
He screams again, loudly, painfully, wrenching my heart straight from my body. I yell his name, reach for him, but I can't touch him. No matter how tantalizingly close my fingertips get to his face, I can't touch him. He struggles to get up, then falls back down onto his side, screaming in torture. His screams, torture to my ears, but this turns into a coughing fit. His body shakes and spasms as blood spurts from his mouth. He screams again, shrinking back from some unseen enemy. "Stop! No! No- no! Please, stop! Don't-" A rough looking man from the hallway silences him with a sharp jab from a long stick, vibrating with electricity. The boy jerks upright, but falls instantly. He is silent for a second or two before the poison has a hold of him again.
Screaming and thrashing about, he reaches forward. I stretch toward him, but his fingers are just out of reach. I scream his name as he crashes about, rolling on the floor. I yell his name again and again. He screams again and again.
He cries out something else: "Katniss! No! Stop! No-" I shrink back from him in fear, not knowing why he is afraid of me. But another man comes into his cell then. He has another syringe, this one bigger and longer. He shoves it roughly into the boy's arm and pushes the sickly liquid into him. The boy thrashes and screams, the noise too torturous to bear any longer. I scream back, trying to make him hear me, see me, anything, but I know I'm not actually there. The man leaves, leaving the boy's twisting body lying on the floor. His muscles twitch in involuntary spasms as the poison seizes him and begins to attack his nervous system and other parts.
"Katniss! Sto- no! Stop! Don't- no!" His desparation tears at my heart and I try to cover my eyes but I can't. He starts sobbing, but, heartwrenching cries as blood and body acids begin to pour profusely from various wounds covering his whole body. I can't bear watching him hurt like this. But I can't get away from it. I scream his name. Another man from outside the bars shoots him again and again with short, succinct jabs of electricity, persuading the blood to come further. He screams. I scream and I know that it's all my fault. If I hadn't ever pulled out those berries in the first place... if I had just died instead, he wouldn't be like this now... All of it, all my fault. I can't watch any longer. But I can't tear my eyes away. My nightmare haunts me as I try to stop it, try to wake up from the monstrosities that I know I brought on the boy.
I hadn't meant any of it- I didn't know this many people would get hurt. No one was supposed to get hurt. Least of all him. But here he was, lying on the floor that I created, being hurt and tortured, dying.
No one was supposed to get hurt. No one was supposed to die. Yet everyone is being hurt. And in the end, everyone will die anyways. And it will be all my fault. Just like the tortured, twisted, thrashing, screaming body of the boy with the bread lying in front of me on the scarlet stained floors. I did this. I am killing the boy with the bread.