Reaping: District Five

(I decided that for districts where both tributes are bloodbathers, I'll write from the perspective of a mentor. Wish me luck.)

Nebula Foraker

The sun slides through the slits in my blinds in the morning, drawing me from my restless sleep. It's too bright. The yellows and oranges harass my eyes, permeating through the millimeters of skin protecting my eyes. It's too harsh.

Suddenly, I am not in my bed. I am hiding in a cave, away from the direct rays of the nearest star to Earth. The air is hot—so, so hot—that this is the only way to get any relief. But I know it won't last forever. Rock retains heat. Eventually, it will be hotter in my cave than it is outside, and I will literally be baked to death. But there's nothing I can do, because the heat of the sun is already too intense for me to survive the trip outside.

There is only one other tribute left alive. I honestly don't know how he is. Maybe it's because he's used to radiation from the sun, being from District Four. It doesn't really matter, though. One of us is going to die, and the game makers are trying to make sure that it's a good scene for the audience.

My breathing starts to rise in frequency. From my perch, I can see the boy. He's so much bigger than me, and he's so much more deadly, that I'm a bit surprised he hasn't killed me yet. It's only a matter of time before he kills me with his bare hands. Before he returns to his district a victor.

But I can see that he's acting oddly. He's pressing his hands against his forehead. He's covering his eyes. Blisters sprout up from his reddening skin. He is starting to bleed on his back, where he is getting the most sun. He collapses onto the black stone ground and begins screaming. I can hear the sizzling, smell his flesh burning, from where I am. I want to cry, I want to scream and run away. Run all the way back to district five, and then keep going until I find whatever I know must exist beyond Panem.

Instead, I am planted in my spot, listening to the death-screams of a eighteen-year-old boy, and trying not to panic as my hiding spot becomes incrementally less bearable.

Eventually, his cries become whines, and his whines become whimpers. They cut off at some point, and just when I'm thinking that he might outlast me, because my own hiding space is rapidly approaching fatal temperature, his cannon goes off.

This is when I do the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life.

I look.

Before the hovercraft takes him away, I can see that he is literally fried to the ground. His body resembles cooked meat. Something on his face has melted. His body is bubbling. I look, and look, and look, until finally the Capitol scrapes his body off of the ground. I keep staring, but now I am staring at the manufactured, deadly sun. I keep my gaze even after I feel searing pain begin. My hovercraft comes for me, but I hear it. I don't see it, because I have gone blind.

This is when I begin screaming.

I yell, thrashing in my bed sheets, cursing the world that let the last thing I ever saw be the dead, cooked body of a young man. I scream until my husband comes into the room, shaking me awake. He has not slept in the same bed as me since our honeymoon, because I would hurt him whenever I went into my terrors.

"Neb, neb, wake up Neb, it was only a dream," his soothing, lilting voice calls.

I rip my eyes open, but it brings no relief. In fact, it lets more light in and makes everything worse.

I hyperventilate now, and do not stop until I feel a frigid, wet towel pressing against my sweaty cheek. My husband's soft hands place sunglasses on my face, and he proceeds to wipe the sweat from the nape of my neck, my shoulders, my hands. Everywhere he wipes, he kisses. He was careful to run ice across his lips before doing this, because the first time he ever kissed me, I nearly broke his nose when I flinched away from his body heat.

The care my husband, Seismo Foraker, takes when dealing with me is the reason I decided to accept his proposal. I didn't think it was wise to ever get married. I am too damaged to be a partner to anyone in anything. But Seismo loved me before I became an emotional and physical cripple. When I miraculously came back alive, he claimed that he was too overjoyed that I was still there to care that I was damaged. I didn't think I could make it on my own, anyway.

"You have to go to the Reaping, today," he tells me, carefully, knowing that this could set me off. I'm too tired from my last fit, though.

I nod, pushing myself up out of the bed. Seismo takes my hand and guides me to the bar I had installed next to my closet. It helps me keep my balance when Seismo does things like putting on my shoes for me.

"What do you want to wear today?" he asks, falsely jovial. He does this on days when I'm particularly sensitive. I appreciate the gesture, but the false note to his voice just makes me feel guilty for upsetting him.

"My gold blouse with the red skirt."

"Shoes?"

"The gold ones that match the blouse." One of the adjustments Seismo had to make for my blindness was developing a sense of style. I have to trust his eye for what makes me look nice, or what doesn't. He has to explain if the fabric is matte, if the color is vibrant or muted, if a shirt is blousy in the right places. He pretends it's not difficult, but for all I know, I look like a clown to all of Panem. But I couldn't care less, because he's kind enough to try.

He helps me take of my nightclothes and replace them with the outfit I chose. He buttons my shirt for me, keeping a running commentary of how beautiful I am.

"Do I have any gray hairs?" I ask him. This is a regular occurrence. Sometimes I ask him if I have any wrinkles, but today it's gray hairs.

"Not a one," he says sweetly. I've begun to think he's lying, because my mother's hair was almost entirely gray by the time she was forty, and I'm forty-two, but I accept his statement.

Ever since the Capitol told me that my vision would never be restored—that my eyes were almost entirely composed of scar tissue—Seismo has been my eyes.

After he brushes out my presumably grizzled hair and pins it behind my head.

"Are you ready to go?" he asks me.

"Yes, dear," I say.

After numerous tumbles down the stairs, Seismo realized that I am not capable of descending them alone, so now he always guides me down. He hands my cane to me and guides me out of our house in Victor's Village.

He assures me our home, like me, is beautiful. Based on my decades-old-memories of these buildings, I am more comfortable taking his word on this matter.

It is too warm when I am outside. I don't like summer for this reason. Seismo has brought a bag of ice, though. He hands a cube to me when I hold my hand out expectantly.

We walk to the end of the cul-de-sac that forms the Victors' community, and my cane touches the toe of someone's shoe. A kind male voice laughs.

"Watch where you put that thing, Nebula, you could poke my eye out," he tells me, still chuckling. "It wouldn't be a good idea to send our tributes in with two blind mentors, would it?"

Orion Levits was the first tribute I ever brought home. It was my third time being a mentor, and it was twenty years ago. He is helping me mentor this year, and I am glad, because I don't get along well with the other living victor from our district.

"I'd appreciate it if you would be more polite to my wife, Orion," Seismo says, rather sternly.

"You'd still be able to see with one eye, Orion. Unless the feeling came across me to poke the other out as well," I joke. I hope that it shows Seismo that I'm not as sensitive as he believes me to be.

"Relax. You know Neb's in good hands with me."

"Right," Seismo says, unconvincingly. My husband drops my hand without the eyes. I hear the rustling of the bag of ice as it is passed off, and Orion takes my newly free hand gently.

Orion isn't as gentle when guiding me, but he's not as persistently cautious as my husband, and I usually appreciate the levity.

When Seismo's footsteps begin in the opposite direction of ours, Orion whispers in my ear, "Let's go find out which lambs are headed to the slaughter this year."

Orion Levits

I've been in love with Nebula Winslowe since she saved my life in the arena by sending me a strain of super-bacteria. The cure could be extracted from a type of plant that was abundant in the arena. When I infected whatever water sources I could find with the pathogens, snacking on shrubbery the entire time, the remaining tributes died horrible deaths within hours.

When Nebula Winslowe became Nebula Foraker, I was only happy for her because Seismo made her happy and took care of her. It killed almost as much of me to see her marry another man as it did to take another person's life.

Even though her formerly brown hair is heavily streaked with gray, and even though her crow's feet grow more pronounced by the week because of how frequently she squeezes her eyes shut, I still think she's the most beautiful woman I've ever known. It makes me sick to know that I will never be allowed to wake her from the nightmares that I know she has. It makes me sick to know she will never wake me from my own.

She sighs at my latest of many rebellious comments.

"Talking like that will get you in trouble some day, Orion," she says, faking disapproval.

I grin at her, knowing she won't be able to be angry at my dismissive attitude. She's never been able to be angry at me.

"Right, of course," I reply, with deeply affected seriousness.

We are early for the Reaping, as we are supposed to be. I assist Nebula up the stairs and help her sit down in her chair. We chat briefly with the mayor, watching as the crowd grows.

Beamer Juestis, a fifty-five year old victor, shows up twenty minutes later than he was supposed to, and I can tell he's hung over by the way he flinches when our manic district escort launches a tirade against him.

"Aw, what does it matter? I'm not even a mentor this year."

"It's the image of propriety! What will the children think? Why would any of them volunteer when they run the chance of having a mentor like you?" she screeches, wagging her fingers, with formidably long fingernails, at Beamer.

"Why would any of them volunteer at all?" I roar before I can stop myself. This is it. No way to backtrack, no way to spin this off in a positive manner. My only sense of accomplishment is the stricken look on our escort's face.

"Well, for ho-honor and r-riches," she stutters. I snort in disgust.

Nebula looks in my direction (she's not looking directly at me, which I used to be unnerved by, but I've grown used to it) and squeezes my hand. My anger melts away entirely.

Still upset, the escort decides to begin the Reaping.

"Hello, District Five!" she calls, her high-pitched squeal belying her shaken insides.

No one says hello back.

"Well, this is sure to be another exciting Hunger Games! Let's begin, shall we?"

More silence. Nebula takes her hand out of mine, and taps on my leg. I don't understand why until I see that her mouth is moving rapidly, and he breathing is approaching dangerous rates. I realize that I'm still holding her bag of ice—now significantly melted—and I press it against her hand so she knows that it's there. She takes it with a relieved breath, and I return my attention to the proceedings.

"Let's begin with the ladies!" she cries. Her fingernails are a major hindrance as she tries to grab a slip of paper.

Finally, she succeeds. "Jushia Fulstead!" she cries.

I small girl from the fifteens makes her way to the stage. She has tears falling from her eyes, but she is not sobbing, which is more than I can say for any of her predecessors. As she stares out to the audience, the escort clacks loudly to fish out a slip for the males.

"Karvick Passa!"

This one is eighteen, but he certainly doesn't look it. He walks to the stage in a daze, and turns to face his district partner. I've become so desensitized to Nebula's idiosyncrasies that I don't realized he's blind until I see his slim cane. The crowd groans in shock and anger. They, like me, wonder why the Capitol would ever condemn a cripple to death.

Instinctively, I reach out for Nebula's hand. I can feel my eyes begin to smart. Jushia's silent tears have become sobs now that she sees who else must die.

The only person who isn't upset by the display is our district escort. She's too busy making comments about how diverse these Games will be, and that they're sure to be the best ever.

I could kill her.

Nebula grips my sleeve, tugging on it and pulling me closer to her.

"What's the matter?" she asks me guardedly.

It takes me several tries, opening and closing my mouth, before I think I can answer.

"He's blind," I say.

A small cry escapes her, and she shoves her hands into her bag of ice. She takes off her sunglasses so she can press some of the chunks to her eyelids.

As they melt, I can't tell which if the tracks of water on the face are from the ice and which are from her tears.

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Deadline 5/7

John F. Kennedy is known as the youngest AMERICAN president to have ever been elected. When one AMERICAN president, however, first took office, he was younger than Kennedy was when he was elected. Which president was it?