Nightmare

Peeta Mellark, age 16

The dream comes back every so often- usually more often as the Reaping day draws near. And every time it does, it's the same, with small variations in color and length.

It's reaping day. I know this as soon as I see the rows of people pouring in the streets, converging to the spot in the middle of town- the main square. I can't help it as I get pulled in by the crowd, pushed and prodded so there is no way to move but forward. I try to get away, pushing against the people flanking me, elbowing them as they get closer, shouting at them to let me pass. But all they do is to move closer until I can barely put one leg in front of the other. I feel like I'm drowning in this sea of people, the fear that starts building in my chest enhancing the awful feeling.

And then we suddenly come to a stop. Everything is quiet except the clonk-clock of high-heeled shoes on cobbled floor. They sound closer and closer, a sense of approaching doom in their uniformity.

By now fear has given way to full-fledged panic, and I try to fight my way out of the unyielding crowd. This is usually the time when I notice the people are faceless. They're all different shapes and sizes but their faces are like skin-colored canvases, with no features drawn on them. I try to scream, but my chest won't help me- it's unmoving like the faceless statues that surround me, it's only purpose now being to cage my booming heart, which threatens to break out any moment.

I see the stage in front of me it's filled with white shapes holding guns- a peacekeeper firing squad. A shrill voice fills my dream, high, piercing and horribly amused, as it speaks the dreadful capitol saying "Happy hunger games and may the odds be ever in your favor!" I'm frantic now. I launch myself at the things around me. Punching, twisting, shoving, scratching. But everything I do is useless. It's like I'm trapped in a mass of dough- soft, deceitfully yielding and mercilessly flexible. And then I hear my name being called out in the same terrible voice and I realize there is no use in fighting any more.

I have been reaped. I am going to die.

And just like that, the shapes around me dissolve into nothing and I am left standing alone in the middle of the main square, peacekeeper guns trailed on my heart.

This is how the dream usually goes.

Not tonight, though. Tonight the cold capitol voice speaks out a name different from my own. The one name I dread being called out more than my own- Katniss Everdeen. I look around wildly, trying to find her among the slowly receding shapes. No no no no no…my numb mind can't think of anything else except that this can't happen. Not to her.

I finally see her on the other side of the square. She's so tiny and thin and almost hunched over…like that time I found her in the rain, behind my parents' bakery. She looks at me with those gray eyes of hers, eyes that never met mine in real life for more than fleeting glances. I see the pain on her face, the sorrow the despair and I can almost feel the smell of rain and burned bread mixed with mud. I'm over powered by a sense of guilt. I never should have acted like that. I should have been brave- like her- and handed her the bread.

Brave…She can't die! I won't let her.

"I volunteer!" I shout with all my strength but the sound is trapped in my head. Nothing comes out from my frantically moving lips. Her eyes are still locked with mine, pleading, asking for my help, help that I am so willing but can't give as I hear the guns being cocked somewhere to my left.

She then turns away from me, towards the sound, facing the stage and her imminent death. She doesn't cry. Instead, she straightens her back and lifts her chin as if defying the shooting squad aiming at her.

I jerk awake, with sounds of gunshots booming in my ears. Or maybe it's just the heart pounding in my chest and my hand and my ears.

I always wake up sweaty and scared, but this time I can taste something else mixed in with the wetness on my face, something bitter and I realize that this time I was crying.

I try to calm myself down. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Not real. Not real…but could be real.

My eyes pop open at the thought. Definitely could be real. She's from the Seam. She's fatherless. She almost starved to death once…She risks her life in more ways than one hunting in the forest beyond the fence. Why wouldn't she risk it in the Reaping? I have 5 slips this year and they seems like such impossible, insurmountable odds. How many times will her name be in this year? Ten, fifteen, twenty? I can't bring myself to go higher. What if she gets reaped this year? What if in a month's time she will get whisked away to the Capitol. What if in two month time her bloody, mangled body will come home in a wooden box? I will never get a chance to talk to her. To apologize. To tell her how amazing she is, how beautiful and brave, and how I admire her for that. How, for the last almost 11 years, I have been following her every move, cherish her every word, how many rare they turned out to be…praying for one of her smiles…

I have to talk to her. Tomorrow, at school, I will go up to her and tell her…

Tell her what? What could I possibly say to her? I, a merchant boy who she probably forgot even existed, who threw bread at her one day like he would throw it to the pigs, who knows nothing about her, really, except for what he pieced together over the years, from stolen glances at school, or fragments of stories other people told about her.

Her pleading look from my dream is burned behind my eyelids and I know it will keep hunting the nights that will come. And just like that I realize it doesn't matter what I say to her; it can be something related to homework, or the squirrel she sold my father last Sunday, or her sister's perfect goat cheese that I've had for breakfast.

I'm good with words. I'm good with people. I will figure something out. In any case, tomorrow is the day when I will finally talk to Katniss Everdeen.