Anise Haeffle, District Eleven female (18)
It wasn't a normal Games this time. Titian hand-picked twenty-four of us for his special personal Games he got for whatever reason (surely something horrible). There must have been some spark of goodness in him because the one pattern I noticed in the otherwise random jumble of Tributes was that none of us was younger than fifteen years old. I was overwhelmed with relief that no little children were going to die but it also weirdly robbed me of a purpose. Titian had picked only strong and capable Tributes. I was actually one of the weakest ones in my opinion. There was no one for me to protect and I didn't know what to do without that purpose.
I knew Titian's Games would be bad. It was worse than anything I imagined. I learned what things would be like when Jayla and Gabriel fell from the platform and spikes thudded through their skin, far enough to kill them but not far enough to prevent them from twitching and moaning for far too long. I felt guilty for how many points I'd scored in the first round. I hadn't thought I'd be one of the safe ones.
I don't want to win, I thought sickly. I don't even want to be alive.
It must have been survival instincts that gave me the next impulse. I found myself casting around for some reason to stay alive, searching through memories and my knowledge of the world and looking for anything that would anchor me to this life. There had to be something I could do with my life to make it worthwhile. It only took a moment for me to land on it and I knew immediately when I did.
I'm going to be a foster mother. I thought back to all the abandoned and frightened children I'd grown up with in the orphanage. Many of them weren't even legally adoptable, since they were orphans in name only, their parents either abusive or swallowed up by drugs. Those children had no hope of ever living anywhere but a crowded and hungry orphanage- unless someone could bypass the adoption laws by fostering them. I thought of those children and my heart swelled with love past the fear that had overtaken me.
I'm going to take care of them, I thought as I waded into a writhing pit of snakes and snatched a disc from the mouth of a grass snake. I held a rat in my hand and knew I'd lose my mind if I tried to eat it. But the children needed me and they needed me to stay sane. I bit down on squirming raw flesh and I put the memory down in some deep place where it would never show and would never scare my children. I did lose a bit of my sanity that day, but I kept it to a private part of me that no one would ever see.
When the Battle Royale came it was over almost before it started. Fable and Jessie were released ahead of me and before I was even called to leave the building they'd killed two people. I never even left my desk.
I never spoke of The Long Walk after it happened. If I did I knew I'd lose the rest of my sanity. At night I dreamed of Eleanor emptying out from inside, of Ferrari throwing a rock and breaking Titian's nose before he shot her in the gut, of May convulsing on the ground and the guttural sounds she made. I didn't remember much about my own experience. After the first twenty-four hours everything faded into a twilight state where I was walking but also kind of sleeping. The pain started as an ember and grew into pulsating waves of agony that thrummed like a plucked string. After a while I lost track of my body and I experienced the walk as a disembodied soul tethered to earth by something stronger than death. I remembered putting one foot in front of the other in a hypnotic rhythm and chanting along with each step in my head.
They need a mother. They need a mother. They need a mother. They need a mother...