DISTRICT 11
BLAKE AND LILLIAN
The sharp barbed wire that fashions as rope tying me to a chair cuts into my wrist violently. Despite the intensity of my pain, I will not give my captors the satisfaction of my screams. Their newest victims are me; Blake Blackstone, and a little girl named Lillian Walters. Lillian gave into their will a while ago, and I can still hear her whimpering nearby the spot where I sit. She is only twelve and just came to this hell hole.
Our captors are disgusting people who adopt children from foster homes and torture them. With the new Hunger Games occurring, they have thought of new horrors for us to encounter. The Treaty of Treason allowed for children to add their names to a reaping more times as "tesserae". The kidnappers made Lillian and I both sign up for tesserae 111 times, the maximum allowed. If our names aren't pulled then I will be surprised. Honestly I'm okay with it…I would rather possibly die than stay here. Lillian isn't as optimistic; when signing up for tesserae, she was violently crying and saying she didn't want to go in. I will admit that the games do sound brutal; especially for a 12 year old. But for someone like me, tortured and beaten since I was 8, I see it as a rescue crew. The only nerve-wracking part is that I am 18, and if I don't get selected this year, I will rot in this house.
When I first walked through the doorway of this house, I never expected that I would not see the sunlight ever again. 10 years later, I am locked in the basement with barbed wire digging into me while I sit on a rough chair.
The basement smells just like blood. The walls and floors hold memories that I would rather forget. Memories of being beaten deep into the night, and sliced up to the point where I am almost lucky to be alive. The irony in that is that I am nowhere near lucky to be alive. On the contrary I would much rather be lying deep in the ground dead.
Like a rescuing hand, the absence of noise pulls me from my thoughts. Lillian is no longer crying, which means she is either dead or escaped. I squint in the darkness and see her moving, and I know she has escaped. My heart races with anticipation.
"Lily?" I whisper into the darkness. I take a quick shallow breath as her hands cover my mouth.
She whispers quietly, "Don't make a noise, I'm going to cut you out." My heart beats faster as the possibility of escape is real. After several long grueling minutes that involve sharp fast cuts on my skin, I am free from the chair of my childhood. It feels as if Lily has cut me free from not only the chair, but my horrible past. I can't think of anything momentarily except for worry. If Lily and I were caught, I would surely be killed. Lily begins to climb the stairs but I pull her backwards.
"The basement has an exit somewhere, find that instead" I whisper as quietly as I can so that she can still hear it. She nods her head in understanding and we begin to search in the dark. Slight noises from upstairs cause us to begin to move more frantically and nervously. In my frantic search for an exit, I knock over a can that I remember all too well. This causes a flashback into my childhood.
It had been a horrible day, with almost 7 beatings. My captors were in between other children, so I was alone. I could tell from their tone and aggressiveness that they were in a horrible mood. My dinner for that day was merely two moldy looking pieces of bread.
While being beaten with a brick, my captor became too angry and her hand to bloody that the brick flew from her hand. It flew back and smacked her husband in the foot. After a large bit of anger he pushed her aside and dumped a substance of the same thing I just spilt on the floor onto my stomach and face.
Pulling my mind out of the memory before it fully engorges me, I search frantically for the next thing I remember. Matches. My fingers locate the box just as Lily finds an exit.
"OVER HERE HURRY BLAKE!" She frantically shouts.
My fingers fumble over their task, gripping a match between my thumb and index finger; I slide it along the striker of the matchbox and let it fly. The gasoline that coats the floor accepts the fire as a gift, and spreads it into the entire basement. The room of my childhood quickly begins to burn much like my skin did so long ago. I smile and laugh loudly, hoping that my captors will be locked into this house. I run to the exit and take Lillian's hand as we run outside. We both quickly stop moving. What we see is unbearable, especially for me. I don't have time to take it in, the beauty of the earth. The land everywhere around us is coated in a fluffy flurry of white snow. The first snow I have seen in 10 years.
With our hands still coated in blood from the previous night, we go to the care center of District 11 where they take care of us. We give our names and tell them our stories. They are able to share with us that the jail cell that we escaped from burned down, with the two inside never found. As Lily and I join hands in the foster home, we know that our joy will not be long lived, because there is one thing that we cannot fix. Our names are in the reaping bowl 111 times.
Approaching the reaping area, Lily and I are both fully aware of what is going to happen. One if not both of us will be going into these games. When we take our spots in the sections, it is bittersweet. We are free children, but not as free as we should be.
When the mayor approaches the girls bowl, my stomach contorts.
The name is read aloud, "Lillian Walters." And she walks up to the stage. She looks so innocent, not like a girl who was brave enough to escape kidnappers.
When the mayor lowers his hand into the boy's bowl, I stand up tall and hear the name. "Blake Blackstone."
Despite the fact that we knew this was going to happen, it still hurts so bad to have just tasted freedom and already have it ripped away in the worst way possible. Lillian and I are going into the Hunger Games, where we will once again be tortured until we either die or escape.