Intros 7: Our Inner Selves

Konani Phoebe Sowka, 15, District Five Female, One Week Before the Reapings

I find myself clutching one of Mom's scarves, huddling down in the barebones kitchen seat, nibbling on bread that's been stale for days, kissing the necklace and praying to the higher power above.

Fuck, why do I always get this worried?

It's an easy answer really.

I would probably ramble if I had anyone to ramble to. But Akira, Brecht, and Ziv are exhausted after a long day of work, I would hate to wake them up and deprive them of their much needed rest, I can hear the raucous snores of the younger boys in the room over, and God knows I can't tell any of this to Clara. Ten-year-olds shouldn't have to hear of this sort of thing.

I pull myself further into Mom's scarf, and it gives me warmth in the drafty kitchen, void of air conditioning. That is a luxury only the rich can afford. Even though I only knew her until I was five, I feel like she would have been a good listener. She was always so comforting. It makes me feel a bit stronger, a bit like her, to wear her clothes. The first time it felt like a bit of a violation, but Akira told me that she would have cried to see me in them. These are the only kind of girly things I like.

When I tried on the dress it sagged so far down Akira had to tie the tops, and it still is very big on me. I'm only a bit over one hundred pounds, and five foot five to boot. One of the many perks of having seven siblings, but I wouldn't trade any one of them for the world.

We only have each other, now.

"Konani?"

Ziv walks in from the hallway, his hair tousled and eyes with purple circles under them, rubbing his eyes.

"What are you doing up this late, sis?"

I feel horrible for waking him up. "Sorry, sorry, I just couldn't sleep. I didn't mean to wake you up, go back to bed."

Ziv chuckles and takes the chair next to me. "You're worried about something."

I would ask how he knew, but Ziv always knows, and I always know when it comes to what Ziv is thinking. Even though he's two years older than me, it's like we're the twins of the family instead of me and Taiki. We've always been closest to each other.

Ziv pokes me playfully.

"Come on. What is it?"

"I think you know."

It goes without saying we're all worried.

"I just can't bear the thought of losing one of them. Sherwood, Robert, Taiki. You."

"Me too. Especially about you."

Akira and Brecht have both graduated from Reaping age, Brecht just last year and they took tesserae out for us every year, but now the torch has passed on to Ziv. He has fourteen slips in the glass bowl.

I'm lucky, I'm not a big provider for the family. Me and Taiki are the oldest in the family that are still in school. Akira and Brecht had to leave at fourtenn and eleven to take care of the family after he left. We don't call him Dad anymore, we hate his guts. We call him Thomas. He's not our father.

Brecht is still very bitter about it. He had the highest grades in his entire class and was on track for a job as an office worker, or even better, a scientist. Thomas made that impossible when he left.

With Mom dead of childbirth and Thomas gone, all we had was ourselves. Each other. And I never want to fall apart.

We sit in silence for a while, both lost in thought.

Finally, Ziv says, "You probably shouldn't be eating that bread."

"I'm hungry and there's nothing else."

"Well, you shouldn't have let Taiki have your bird, then."

"I wasn't hungry, then, I didn't have an appetite. I was too worried. You know how worried I get this time of year. I can't stand it, Ziv. I can't stand it. I can't stand the thought of someone I love going into the Hunger Games, of someone that I love dying. I can't stand the thought of any child, and brother or sister or daughter or son dying, and that family losing them, forever. I can't stand it!"

Ziv sighs. "I can't stand it either, Konani, but you just woke up the entire house."

"Oh no, shit…"

"Konani said a potty word," says Clara, tugging on Akira's shirt to move her faster. She giggles and looks as though she never went to sleep in the first place.

"Seriously, Konani?" Robert says as he scratches his head and fumbles around for a comb.

"I'm so sorry, everybody, I just couldn't sleep, and I got worked up, and I didn't mean to."

Akira laughs and pats me on the back. "It's okay Konani, don't beat yourself up about it. None of us could sleep much anyway."

It's true, the bags under Akira's, Brecht's, Ziv's, Taiki's, Robert's, Sherwood's, and Clara's eyes have not gotten any lighter. Yet they all smile at me, and their anger is only temporary, playful anger, tiny annoyance.

And all of a sudden, I feel my eyes starting to wet. Because I cannot comprehend the thought of losing any of them. I don't care about anyone but them in this moment.

Akira and Ziv lean in to hug me from either side. They're both crying too, or close to it. Everyone else joins in. And the tears keep coming.

"Well," says Brecht, "I guess we're up for the day."

The walk back from school is a long one. We live in the slums of District Five, the biggest concentration spot of poor people in the district, and all of the schools are at least on the edges of middle-class society. By the judgement of Akira and Brecht, thought, the eight-mile trek is a worthwhile one.

A girl waves to me as I walk up front, holding Clara's hand. I know her from school, but I can't remember her name. Something with a B. She motions me over, as if to talk, but I shake my head politely and gesture back to Taiki, Sherwood, and Robert behind me, and to Clara at my side. She nods.

I don't really have time for anything other than this. My family is my life. I never really even talk to anyone else more than say a few times a week. Sometimes, deep down in there, I fantasize about something more. Maybe a boy, or a group of friends, or something like that. Or even a nice neighbor. Nobody ever really leaves their house in fear of gangsters and ruffians in the evening.

Nevertheless, life goes on, and even though it's tough, I love it. I love my family. I would stay with them forever. It's us against the world.

I'll be fine if no one else really ever gets to know me. Gets to see me. Seven others is enough.

But possibly, someday. Maybe when one of us gets a big factory job. We're a smart bunch. Maybe we could end up being a bit more fortunate. Maybe there could be a world out there bigger than just the projects of District Five. Maybe then.

A girl can dream.

Nerissa Doppler, 18, District Three Female, One Week Before the Reaping

No one can every really appreciate the beauty of film, except for me. The beautiful framing and colors and dialogue, the poetry, the pictures, the image. The glory and the inspiration, the meanings you must dig deep to find, the intertwining meaning, the subtle darkness, the goriness, the meaning of it all. Truly the ancient films were works of art. Now it has been reduced to the sappy, shallow soaps, the exaggerated, fake drama.

Tonight is a night spent like many another, slaving over the printer, the computer, the photos, the developer, the television. Searching, searching, searching, for that stroke of inspiration, that shining ray of light that floats into the darkened room and ignites fire. No, the fire has already been ignited. The light that tosses wood into the flame and doses the world in kerosene.

I pant as I take my eyes off of the printer and stare up at the pictures above. The dying bird, my precious little secret diamond. The wilting rose that was once so cherry red and brimming with life that withers slowly to gray frame by frame.

No one understands the true beauty of it all. Death. The great red being.

Nevertheless, those in the great big colorful city admire it, talk about it, respect it. My first big break. They don't know my name yet, but they will.

I can hear Mommy creeping about past the door of my bedroom and try to hold as still as a corpse. She can't know I'm doing this, neither can Daddy. They wouldn't understand why.

They try to chain me, tell me to go one path, but they have no real control over me and deep down they know it, though they coddle themselves by ingraining it so far into themselves that I'm their perfect little shining star that they don't even know it. I have no future designing stupid hearing aids. Who needs to hear anyway? The real beauty of film, of life, is seeing it.

'Don't go that way,', they tell me.

'You'll end up like Daddy,', they say.

'We couldn't bear the thought of it,', they say as they implore me to conforms to their pleas.

"No." I utter it out in a low, guttural growl under the noises of the coffee machine. I laugh.

They just don't understand. They don't know me at all. They don't see that I'm not as weak, not as bound to mediocrity as Daddy was. I'm going to be a superstar. I'm going to be spectacular. It is going to be spectacular.

The best.

I will have them all under my thumb, the whole world. I will educate them, those inferior pawns in my master complex.

Friends aren't real, only devices used to frame your life as something you want it to be.

Those inferior humans that have never truly realized the beauty of death that has captured my intense fascination.

And so, I must show them, somehow, must make a masterpiece of my own. That is why I sit here now in my obsession and my planning, contemplating over how to bring my dream, my creation, into reality, onto the television screens and the eyes of everyone.

No one will ever truly understand why I must document it all.

And what other outlet then the gift of the almighty Capital, the Hunger Games. I can be the starlet they already think that I am, the leading actress in a monumental, tear jerking, intriguing, multi-layered documentary of death itself.

And they'll all eat it up, the Capital, Panem, like everybody eats it up. Mommy, Daddy, adults, classmates. I can fool anyone. After all, they are inferior.

But at least for the lucky ones their deaths will be shown in the documentary. Their biggest claim to fame.

The floorboards of the stairs begin to creak as Mommy makes her way up the old mahogany staircase.

What will she think? I don't care. Their so called poor baby girl, mixed up, confused. Of course, that is part of the whole narrative. Every film has to tell a story.

I let out a deep, rattling breath as I hear the door to the master bedroom slowly shut.

I can't sleep, and I know it. I'm too filled with emotion, with adrenaline, with excitement. A filmmaker mustn't be too easily tired.

In the kitchen I make myself a nice cup of caffeinated coffee, black as the night outside, and sip it hurriedly. I've always been a bit less conscious than most when it comes to pain, especially burns.

It isn't like the coffee is to rescue me from impending drowsiness. I never get tired. More to pump up my awareness and adrenaline. This is only the first part of a routine I do every night.

First is the coffee, and next I creep over to the knife rack. Mommy and Daddy would be so shocked if they knew, but nevertheless, a girl has got to train.

I can't just go in expecting it to be all easy and sunshine and roses, can I.

Next I slip out the back door to the patio where I lay food scraps for matted-furred, trashy kitties that overpopulate District Three. Like always, one is at the bowl, only concerned with food.

As I prowl closer, it looks up at me, and I don't feel any empathy for it behind my mask, my façade. I put on an inviting demeanor and reach my hand out as if to pet the disgusting creature.

It jolts as I put my hand out on its bony neck, but it does not move. I snap its neck in one beautiful, precise, motion. It falls, limp and innocent, and its hind legs drag across the ground pitifully, an expression of something like curiosity mingled with greediness on its face.

I feel no sympathy for this cat, in all of its poetic beauty. Nor did I feel sympathy for the bird or the rose. Just pawns in my master plan.

I slowly take the cat inside and hang it by its scruffy neck on the coat rack. This is where the real fun comes in. The freedom and openness, and the creativity, the opportunity to do something beautiful to this cat rest in my hands.

One slash across the neck. A swift jab into the gut. Blood pours out of the things jugular and throat trickling down the tangled fur and landing in an accumulating pool at my feet. I'll clean it up later. All part of the image.

More and more and more and more swift and shrewd slashes and cuts. It brings me pleasure.

And finally, the blood has soaked my bare feet and the kitty is drained. Nothing personal, just worthy practice.

Because one day, I will show them all. I will create my masterpiece. Betrayal. Near death. Romance. Beauty. Sadness. Victory. Everything that a film needs.

Mine will be talked about for the rest of eternity.

Arlo Maddox, 17, District Two Male, A Week Before the Reaping

Push.

The glint from the silver sword temporarily blinds me as I swing it at Father. He punches me in the gut. I stumble back and fall onto my butt. Father swings his cutlass, pausing an inch from my neck.

The look that he gives me signifies his disappointment, his anger.

I don't give a damn.

"You worthless little shit, that should have been easy," he says, kicking me in the head as he withdraws his sword and the world spins around me before it collides with the mat. "I was going easy on you, punk!"

From where I am I can see Alessia, sideways, looking upon me with disdain from the bench as she absentmindedly ripps the feathers off of a dead bird she killed somewhere out on the property.

"Loser," she mouths at me.

I flip her a different bird.

I glare at him with the fiery hatred that one would look upon the devil himself with.

"Why are you sweating so hard then, huh?" I ask him. "Why do you have that cut on your shoulder, huh?

I slam the side of my sword into his exposed ankle as he goes for another kick, and as he recoils point my sword at his gut. I have just won the fight.

"You motherfucker."

"Don't hate the player, hate the game."

"Aaaaarrrggghh!" With one more vicious kick he sends me back on my back as I try to get up. "Don't you dare be smug with me, you bastard! Don't you dare talk like that to a victor! You will never be stronger than me, never! You will never be like me! You need to be strong! You will die in that arena and I will say good riddance to you, burden, worthless, waste of a son!"

"Good." I quickly bounce up using my feet. "I don't want to."

As I turn to walk away Father reaches and grabs my hair, pulling me back to his eye level.

"We aren't done here yet."

He snatches my sword and points to the dummies in the corner. "Get them ready."

Minutes later I am going with all of my might against these dummies.

Push.

My arms are burning, my palms are raw from the rubberized handles of the weapons we have been training with for countless hours. I swing my sword recklessly. I don't have the effort to push any further. I've been doing this for an hour.

"Give me a break!" I scream at my Father, currently instructing Alessia on how to properly torture someone by pressing your thumb on the center of their nervous system in the neck.

"No breaks in the arena!"

My back is aching, my arms burning. I haven't eaten since breakfast and night has fallen. I can't spend my days just wasting away in the basement of Father's mansion, putting in work for something I cannot and will not ever do.

Somedays I come down here at night after Father and Alessia are asleep and contemplate taking up a sword and slitting my wrists just to end it all, to not die in that arena how Father wants me to.

I can't take this any longer, or I couldn't, if not for him.

"Stop it," I tell myself. Push those feelings down. It could never happen.

I go on for another hour until finally Father tells me it is time to stop. He shakes his head when he does so. "Still aren't ready. Going to embarrass us all."

Alessia shoots me a smug, evil look as she skips up the stairs. Daddy's little psychopath. I want to see her tortured in the Games the same way she does to birds. And people.

I feel no love for my family.

My arms are so tired, I feel like I am lifting fifty-pound weights as I eat bite after bite after bite of chicken, beef, pork, more meats of varying varieties, and beans, carrots, and more vegetables I don't even care about. He can't expect that I'll have gained that much in just a week.

Fuck. Just a week!

I don't want to do this. I don't have it in me to, I can't kill someone. I hate this. It's horrible.

I go up to my room after dinner, my legs complaining, and fall like a sack of bricks onto my bed, at which point I quickly go to sleep.

It's happening. All around me screams pervade the air as the bodies of teenagers fall to the bloody ground. A frenzy is swirling around me, swirling and swirling, and havoc is wreaked.

And now a little girl runs at me holding a knife, and I hold my sword out, but I can't do this, I can't kill her.

And all of a sudden the tiny girls is on top of me, and now she is Alessia, looking into my eyes as she carves out my heart bit by bit. Slash by slash. And she rips it out and shows it to me, and I can still hear it beating.

Thump, thump, thump.

Louder.

Thump-thump-thump-thump!

That isn't my heart. The pounding on the window arouses me and I go to investigate who.

Galen stands waiting for me outside.

I feel all of a sudden completely calm, a sharp contrast from my terror minutes ago.

Galen looks into my green eyes. His are mesmerizing, green and blue with flecks of magnificent gold, with dark curls that frame his face.

I finally realize he is motioning for me to pull up the window.

"Sorry," I say to him, poking my head out. "Why are you here?"

"Couldn't sleep, midnight stroll. I heard screaming so I pounded on the door to see if you were okay."

"You really shouldn't be taking midnight strolls, they're dangerous, you could get caught out after curfew."

"That's why I do them in the Victor's Village."

Him saying this gives me a certain urge of happiness, of breaking the rules, of defying Father.

"Sorry, I was just having a bad dream."

"Hmmm, that's good, glad it wasn't something worse."

We both just stand there for a few seconds in silence, looking at each other.

Finally, I break the silence. "Well…" I take a look at my clock. It says one fifteen in the morning. "I better get back to bed, another full day of training tomorrow."

"Okay, see you around, Arlo." He pauses as he waves and walks off. "By the way, congratulations about being chosen! I heard from some of my friends."

Of-course, Galen doesn't go to the Academy.

"Thanks."

"Good luck."

With that, he walks off. But the way he looks at me, I think he knows what I'm really thinking. And I think he likes me too.

But it could never happen, and I have to keep telling myself that. I can't make it out of that goddamn arena. At least it will be better than the hell that I live in here, right now.

But somedays I wish I could be something more than just a generic career cadet who will go down probably as either the one that's always killed by mutations days in or the one embarrassingly killed in the bloodbath that comes along every three or four years or so.

I don't want to die. I don't want anyone to die. I want to live.

But yet I have to kill to survive. And I don't know if I'm good enough to let myself die so others can win. I don't know if I am able to not just not kill but die for someone else. Because there will be someone in that arena who should live, who needs to live more than I do.

I've lost myself in all of this training, this is what Father did to me. I feel tears accumulating in my eyes, and I curl up into a ball on the bed and cry like I do every other night. There is one person I want to kill.

Hello again, all who have read to the end of the chapter! What did you think? I know, I know, another prolonged update, but I really am a procrastinator at heart, and I think chapters with a lot of thought put into them are better than concise, quickly churned out ones. Thank you to Paradigm of Writing for Nerissa, curiousclove for Konani, and justanothersadbean for Arlo.

Please tell me all of your thoughts on this chapter in the reviews. Here are the questions:

How many brothers does Konani have?

Are you excited to see any of these three, and why? Tell me what you predict and want to see from them.

So long and have a nice day and night to all of you who read through the chapter. The last intros are coming up soon :D! Then we are finally getting into the entertaining stuff. I can't wait until then!

-Mills