Abel Collingwood
District 12 Male, 16
1 hour before training
It's morning, and any other normal person would have abandoned this frantic search, just based on the statistical improbability of anything of importance being missed.
But I'm not normal, and that's why I'm stuck here.
I've paced around the room at least a dozen times, scrutinizing every irregularity, every crack, every spindle of wood that is out of place.
My irrational brain just keeps on droning on and on around the fact that my brother must have left something here.
That's why I'm here, right?
That's why I fucking volunteered for this, along with a myriad of other insane small things that made my mind bubble over in that one crucial moment of my existence.
My little brother Knox was the sweetest and kindest human being in the entirety of Panem, but that didn't prevent him from being reaped and cut down like an animal, two years ago.
When I came to visit him to say goodbye, he was so resigned to his fate, so wise and pragmatic about it I remember being in awe.
I was never quite like that.
There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but I kept it all buried.
He had held it together, for our parents' sake, even though he was so young and that just made it so much worse, I think. In retrospect, I believe that is one of the reasons we were never really able to heal properly, as a family, and I've come to accept the fact that when I went in, this might as well break both my parents for good.
It's heartbreaking to see a thirteen-year old accept death so easily.
It's almost sacrilegious that I'm here now, having signed my own death contract, when I could have easily done the same two years ago and saved Knox. I should have protected him. He always had so much more potential to contribute to our society than I ever did, but I couldn't bring myself to move when the escort called his name.
I guess that's what I can attribute the tortured gymnastics and paralyzing dread my mind cycles through, at the prospect of the Reaping for the past while.
Call it a delayed reaction, two years too late.
When I visited Knox, it was the second time I went into the Justice building, the first time being exactly three years prior when I said goodbye to Eudora. My best friend hadn't even lasted a day, and her parents divorced within that same year. It wasn't easy for me, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when Knox was taken.
Life took a pretty shitty turn, right about then.
I realize that I have only an hour left before training starts, but I keep pacing around my sleeping quarters. A lot of clothes are discarded on the floor, and the upturned bed-stand lies uselessly near my foot, and I nudge it, as though that's going to help it reveal its secrets to me. As though it still holds some metaphorical piece of Knox inside it, which will help me connect with my brother again, albeit briefly.
More than anything, I wish I could see him again to tell him that I was the one who stole his favorite slingshot and that it wasn't lost, as I had led him to believe. It's crazy how interactions boil down to simple things like that.
He had been so upset, so genuinely distraught at the loss of his toy and I never had the courage to own up to the fact that I was just plain jealous and took it. I never owned up to it and that shit fucking hurts, when the person is gone.
I even helped him look for it, and consoled him when he realized it was gone for good.
I was such a coward too, because I never even played with it afterwards. For some reason, that one lie is what pushed me over the edge every time I thought about him in the months after his death. I buried his slingshot far away, in the woods surrounding District 12, never admitting this to anyone, so it's yet another memory that weighs me down.
This whole situation exemplifies the main difference between me and Knox. Despite having only one year of difference, I was always meaner, more aloof, more grounded. A bad liar with bad intentions.
Knox wore his heart on his sleeve, and I don't doubt for a second that he wholeheartedly believed me, despite me being full of shit.
I wasn't even a good liar, and yet he never doubted me.
That's what makes it all the more tragic.
The thought that he died never knowing where his slingshot went haunts me even now, but it's gotten easier with time.
Maybe it got easier because the sadness was overshadowed by the fear that the next name called would be mine.
That's the thing about me…
I am by no means a believer in a higher power or in magic or all that other bullshit the small groups of marginalized people in our country adhere to.
But the fact still stands that I'm cursed, somehow, and I've taken down all the people I care about with me.
So, last night, in one final attempt at redemption, or perhaps adrenaline-fuelled madness, I got the idea that maybe Knox left something for me. Maybe he knew about the slingshot and was just indulging in my bullshit, and maybe I could find something, anything really, that could give me an indication that I wasn't as awful as I thought I was.
That he still thought of me as a worthy brother, even in his final days spent in this room.
Maybe that's why the fear and paranoia gripped my mind until I caved in and came here, in order to discover something that led me on the path to recovery and self-care.
So instead of sleeping through the night, I dislodged wood boards, with a hope of seeing a scribbled message assuring me Knox thought of me, when he stayed here before being put into the terrible arena where he met his demise. I looked through all the drawers, imagining that the next one was going to reveal a secret letter Knox stashed away for me to find.
After hours of searching, making up patterns where there were none, I am certain of one thing.
I'm spiralling.
My life literally has no meaning, and it never did, because I'm either going to die here or I'll win and die when I'm eighty, the memory of all the people that died buried with me.
Somehow, I thought that finding some sign of my brother would quell these terrible thoughts inside my head, but the distinct and utter lack of Knox in this room that I know he stayed in makes matters so much worse. It's like they erased him, after he died, and that might just happen to me, as well.
Year after year, I witnessed the reapings take someone I know.
And now, I'm stuck in this continued storyline that doesn't seem real but it is. It's achingly real.
I approach the large cabinet that I inspected at length during the night and punch it, out of anger. My hand throbs, but I punch again, with the other, because it helps release the tension inside my chest.
I look at myself in the large mirror in the room, and it's like I am transcending this experience, because I'm back at the Reaping. Our escort Yuli takes his time stalking towards all the potential male tribute names scattered within the crystalline bowl that costs more to produce than my family's combined earnings for three months. Every year for the past while, it's been like that: I knew it was going to be me.
I just knew it, as well as I knew that Knox was going to die from the spear that punctured his left lung and tore his heart to ribbons. And then I wasn't reaped, and another year of gut-twisting paranoia ensued.
This year is different, though. Our escort Yuli reaches into the bowl, his long spiderlike fingers extending at an excruciatingly slow pace. I know it's going to be my name on that white paper he takes forever to grasp between the pads of his fingers. Come on. I almost dare him to do it, because this is it. It has to be.
It's like every detail is magnified, my breathing slowing, forming invisible clouds in front of me as while I wait for Yuli to sentence me to die.
He calls out for Axel Lithgow, but that can't be right, because I know that he is calling me up on stage. Because what's the point of fucking living if I'm just going to be reaped the next year, or the one after that?
The boy whose name is so scarily similar to mine has nothing to worry about, because I reach forward, volunteer, and walk up, because that was my destiny all along. My wretched destiny to be driven to near-insanity where I was aware of the fact that every step I took brought me closer to being stuck in this awful room.
I didn't tell anyone I was going to volunteer.
In fact, I didn't ever think I would, until maybe three microseconds before the words escaped my lips. I always just assumed I'd be reaped.
My parents didn't understand what happened. I didn't fully understand it either, and waves of regret came crashing down on me when I wrapped my brain around what I had just done.
Axel was called up, but I took his place… for what? For an internal moment of "I told you so" before I was shipped off to die with the rest of the tributes?
My dad was livid.
My mother was broken.
But they didn't understand what was going on in my brain. They were adults, and all they had to live with was the sadness and grief that have intricately wrapped themselves around our family like some parasitic vine that slowly chokes the life out of you. They were grieving, but they did not have to live with the guilt that I bore every day after my brother's death, and the crippling fear that someday, I'd be next.
At least now I knew.
I had always known, and I had taken matters into my own hands. An ever-present voice in my head tells me that I brought this all on myself. It's true, and the fact that I couldn't be stronger, mentally, is probably the worst realization of all.
My dad kept asking over and over if it was something he did… I know he saw the look in my eyes as I stepped on stage.
The thing is… it's nothing anyone did.
The simple answer is that I just am fucked up like this.
These moments leading up to my volunteering… I was myself, but it was also as though I was stuck in some fractured glass universe where across the different reflections, I was all those kids from District 12 reaped before me.
All these years ago, I was my best friend Eudora, twelve and terrified. I was Knox, just two years past, thirteen and dead three days in. I was the boy whose name I didn't even know, who stood in front of me last reaping and collapsed into me as his name was repeated over the rusty speakers across District 12's Main Square. Sometimes I imagined that just his proximity to my cursed self was enough to get him reaped. I was Axel, whose name was only one letter away from mine, and anyone would tell me that's just a fucking coincidence, but is it really?
Maybe it's fatalistic of me, but it was always meant to be me. It wasn't meant to be Knox, but that's how life got me here, so I guess it's all part of some weird grander plan, if there even exists such a thing.
Life just kept gnawing and gnawing at the fringes until something snapped.
I realize now it might have been my sanity, because if we analyse all the parameters, I volunteered to die.
And that's a fucking distressing thought, when I confront it head-on.
I pass a hand on my face, wiping away the sweat that sprung up on my forehead.
More likely than not, I'm hyperventilating, because I can practically feel my heart beating out of my chest. The idea of actually facing my actions sounds more daunting than ever, since I need to head out to train with the other tributes, and here's the cherry on top…
I realize it sounds completely crazy, but I am increasingly aware of the fact that the unsettling feeling that never left me for the past four years, has vanished.
Meeting the people I will kill and potentially be killed by stresses me out less than spending another year waiting for the next Reaping to come along, and to me, that speaks volumes about my state of mind when I volunteered.
Imagine that kind of fear gnawing at your brain until you feel like you're losing it?
Our escort didn't even remember who Knox was, or at the very least, he didn't seem to care. I wanted to tell him that it only happened 2 fucking years ago, he must remember because anyone in their right mind would remember a sweet kid like Knox.
But these people are not in their right mind…
Yuli seemed more excited about me volunteering than anything else, blabbering about sponsors and media attention.
What kind of fucked up society do we live in, where people like me are driven to the brink of madness, and celebrated for it?
My eyes flee my face to survey the room once more, for any sign of my dead brother.
It's a futile endeavor, I realize, now that my brain slowed down a little and the huge gaping holes in my logic are exposed. I guess that in some weird romanticized version of these events, I would have thought that he knew I'd be coming in after him, and he'd leave me clues to find.
But as I said, there's nothing new that I haven't looked over a dozen times.
There is no forgiveness to be found, in this room or anywhere else.
It sounds insane even to me, now.
I look back into the mirror and see a boy-turned-man. My eyes are pools of regret, but I square my shoulders and my eyes become flinty.
Whether life fucked me up, or I was screwed from the beginning, I don't know.
All I do know is that the choking feeling of helplessness is gone and it has been replaced with something far more sinister, numbing and resolute. It is liberating, despite the fact that I lost everything I've ever known.
I'm here now, so I might as well make the best of it.
And if making the best of it means surviving this hellhole while my brother failed, well, in a dog-eat-dog world like ours, I'm ready for it.
I know for a fact my inner demons will come back to haunt me, once this is over, regardless of the outcome.
The difference is that now, surrounded by enemies, my mind feels free.
More free than ever since my tears silently flowed down my face, while my mother screamed at our tiny television screen for little Knox to run for it, instead of bravely facing the Career that finished him off.
The seeds of doubt and paranoia might have planted when my best friend Eudora was taken to compete in the Games even before I was eligible, but my brother's death was what enabled these seeds to grow.
And by volunteering, I cut down these insidious thoughts, for better or for worse.
I've been shackled to this fear for so long, that a change of pace seems refreshing, so it'll be what it'll be.
Either way, I am ready and scared of something real this time around, and being scared means I want to survive.
That means I am still human, not an animal plagued by a fear it doesn't understand.
As long as I hold onto this new fear and this will to live, there is still hope out there for me.
Notes: It's been so long guys! I've missed writing, so I hope this chapter was worth the wait. Abel from District 12 is one damaged boy, but we still love him. Next up is the last tribute from this line up…the beautiful, the dangerous and the coy Sparkle! Also here's to celebrating reaching 100K! Yay!
Please let me know if you're still reading this, because it's getting harder and harder to write for me (the story is planned out and I AM finishing it, but going through the motions of writing 3-4K every week like clockwork just seems more daunting as more things pile up in uni), so any support, whether PM, review or other is appreciated! That includes any advice, criticism or prediction on what is going to happen next. I literally live off reviews, I am a self-professed review addict. Plz indulge me thx baiiii.
In other news, happy belated Halloween to everyone! #Halloweengate in my part of the world.
Hope you had a great week, and I'll post the next chapter very soon, in order to compensate for the long wait.
Peace and love.