Chapter 11: Beaten and Bruised
The Hunger Games are like that. When you're down, they kick you in the face until you are broken. Then, if you try to get back up, they shove you down and pull out the axe to finish the job. The only way you win is if you're the one holding the axe.
My eyes fluttered open on what I guessed was the afternoon of the next day. In despair, I wished that I could black out again and never wake up. My skin was burned, my breaths hurt, one of my wrists were dislocated, and my mouth ached for water. From my position, I could see the gleam of the cornucopia in the blazing sun, as well as the alliance's camp in front of it. A rise of smoke came from their fire and I could smell food. Oh, how my stomach churned.
The field grass tickled my nose and I could feel grasshoppers nibbling on my hair. A few crows hung around my general area, no doubt attracted to my virtual carcass. Their caws panged my already throbbing head. I was glad that at least Amber's kick hadn't broken my nose.
Even without that, I had never been in so much pain. Back at home in District 7, I had had only two very memorable wounds that I could remember, aside from my daily scratches and bruises.
The first time I was 14 and had been cutting cardboard. In my very rare time off from school and work, I was a creator. I drew, I wrote, and I also crafted with thrown away materials like cardboard to make things like fantastical armor. I was doing this outside, surrounded by scraps of board and containers of homemade sap glue, trying to poke out eye holes in a helmet with a rusty serrated kitchen knife. The cardboard was thick, so I held the back with one hand and pushed the knife with the other. Suddenly, it ran through and sliced the end of my pointer finger. With a yelp of pain I shoved it in my mouth and went to put it in mud. Until it healed, I had kept it coated with mud to keep it from hurting or opening up.
The second time I memorably injured myself was only a year ago. I had been making beans over the stove for dinner in a mid-sized pot. When they were done, I put my hands on the rubber rim and lifted it up. The steam had smarted my fingers with its underestimated sear and I had dropped the pot. Fumbling it to save the contents from the dusty, dirty floor, it turned over onto my hands. I had cried out as the contents had spilled onto and covered my entire right hand and half of my left. In panic I let go of the pot and desperately shook off the beans that were scalding my skin. My mother had rushed in and we ran together to the outside pump where we washed the rest of the boiling food off.
I had breathed a deep sigh of relief when the freezing water had met my skin, and for the entire afternoon I had kept my hands in a bucket of cold liquid. They were fine the next day, and later there were only four or so spots that blistered and peeled. A year later, the small patches are a noticable shade darker than my skin and I think they'll remain as burn scars.
I hate burns, they are the worst wound to me. They keep their pain and heat and there's little you can do but wait And cover them in coldness. I'm just glad I didn't initially scream and instead calmly handled the situation. I didn't cry either.
Despite the fact that none of my current pain came from blade severed skin, the combination of minor afflictions was just as bad. Amber was right, death would've been easy. I was burned by the sun, scathed by the dry grass, beaten and bruised, dying for water and starving for food. Somehow though, I was still alive. 12 people had died and 11 remained, not including me. Now it was day four and I had been knocked out for half of it and yesterday afternoon and night.
With apprehensioon, I realized that Andrew could've died and I wouldn't know it! No, I refused to believe that. If he had, I was sure that Amber would be over here mocking me, and she wasn't. Surely a canon shot would've woken me. Yes, it would have, but, then again, I had been unconscious, not asleep. Still, I had to believe that he was living and that I had to keep going for him.
Maybe he was in the woods, finding food and keeping alert. I bet that he was in a tree too; we had discussed that they were good hiding places. Even though we weren't seasoned climbers (pines are painful to deal with), neither of us were especially big or heavy, which made sense to take advantage of. However, I was secretly terrified of heights.
A quiet part of me wished that Andrew was nearby and waiting for his chance to come out and get me. If he was though, wouldn't he have done it last night? Or some night? There were two reasons for why I thought he hadn't, the first being the noise that dry grass would make with his footsteps, and the second being the noise dragging my body through the grass would make. Both would certainly alert the careers. So maybe he was lying in wait for an opportunity, like the pack going off to hunt. With nine other tributes remaining, they might do that.
Lemongrass also had to still be alive. I barely knew her at all, but I somehow trusted her and hoped that the spear I had handed her had served her well. I doubted that she was close. My gesture of alliance hardly made us friends and I knew that she could handle herself perfectly fine.
I myself hadn't even made it to the woods because I had been stuck at the site of the cornucopia since the Hunger Games began. If anything, I would die from the pecks of crows, tired of waiting for my carcass.
As I dully looked past the camp of the alliance to the never-changing sky, I curiously saw a rising bank of dark clouds. As the afternoon turned evening, they blotted out the setting sun and there was a peel of ominous thunder.
The game makers controlled all aspects of the arena -wind, temperature, day, night, weather, - and this was no pretty lightning show. There was going to be rain, lots of it. Most likely flash flooding, I thought as I surveyed the land and realized that I had been dumped in a dip in the land. With no other tribute deaths all day since Onyx (as far as I knew from yesterday), it was plain and obvious that this was to finish me off. I was helpless as the first spats of rain began to pelt my face.
