Death is kind of a new thing for me.

It isn't how I thought it would be. I didn't think I'd be stuck, having to watch the moment life was ripped from my body, over and over again. I thought it would happen once and then it would just be over with, you know?

But apparently not. Apparently, whatever I did in life (and what did I do, by the way?) was enough to condemn me to an eternity of being stuck here, in this horrible place, watching Cato snap my neck again… and again… and again. Time seems to both speed up and slow down – I see the moments directly before and after my death as if they are happening at the same time my neck is snapped. I see Katniss and Tiny from Eleven build fires to lure away the Careers. I see the redhead from Five, sifting through the ashes of the supply pile and laughing. I see Katniss let the arrow fly – find its mark – the apples tumble down – the mines do what they were supposed to. I watch Cato wrap his hands around my throat, again and again and again.

If this is the afterlife, I want my money back.

After what must be the hundredth time – and it is the hundredth, I was counting – of watching the moment I died, I am suddenly able to lift my feet from the ground and walk. They seem to do it of their own accord. I don't know where they're taking me at first. I go through the forest, and there's that little one from Eleven, looking in confusion at the mirror of herself with a spear in her stomach – there's the girl from One, watching herself thrash around on the ground, her mouth open in a scream I can't hear, her beautiful face marred with stings and three times its usual size – there's the girl from Eight, watching herself be cut up by the Careers, watching the boy from Twelve's act of kindness, in her opinion, as he slits her throat and sends her away.

Are they dying, or are they dead? Am I dying, or am I dead?

I should be scared, I know. But I can't seem to feel it. There's relief for sure – I'm not the only one stuck here, I didn't do anything bad enough to sentence me to this place forever – but mostly I'm confused. Why? Why are we all still here, watching ourselves die? It hardly seems fair. We didn't ask to be sent here.

Well, maybe the Careers did, but they don't count.

My feet are still going. I ask them to stop, but they do not obey.

When I see the familiar golden glint of the Cornucopia through the trees, it's almost enough for me to unstick them from the ground and flee to the other side of the arena. But then reality kicks in. I'm dead, and it seems that everyone else here is too. I can't die a second time, so what the hell do I have to be afraid of?

They finally see me. It's the girl from Five, the one with the hard-to-miss red hair, who sees me first. It doesn't surprise me. She never seemed to miss anything in training. The corner of her mouth turns up, in a nervous smile, and she elbows the boy from Five, who's sitting next to her, their backs against the golden metal. It's then I notice everyone who's there. The Careers, sitting on one side, their faces mutinous. And everyone else, some of whom seem to have accepted their fate, others who look almost as angry as the Careers.

Cautiously – after making sure no-one's about to jump up and impale me – I sit down next to Evy, my poor district partner, who died the very first day. I don't know how she died, but I guess it doesn't really matter now. "What's going on?" I ask her quietly.

She shrugs. "Nobody knows. But we're stuck here, for whatever reason. None of us can move on."

I notice then that not everyone is here. "Where's the two from Twelve?" They're not here, or the Boy from Eleven, or Cato. Cato, who doomed me to this place.

"I guess they won. Or they're not dead yet. But they're not here."

"Why?"

"How should I know?" She glares at me then, and I remember the girl I didn't really know in school – the girl who sulked around corners when she didn't get away. The girl before the one who broke into a million tiny pieces the moment her name was called. "We're all in the same boat here."

We sit there for a while. I try counting, but stop after two thousand – there doesn't seem to be any point to it, you see. Time doesn't seem to exist here. Everything that has happened or will happen seems to be happening at once. I'm counting for no good reason except to give me something to focus on. Not long after I stop – although maybe it was a century after I stopped, I don't know – the redhead from Five stands up. She begins to walk around the Cornucopia, to the side of the Careers. Her district partner stands up, grabs her sleeve, tries to tug her back down. "No, Poppy, don't!"

She tugs her sleeve out of his grip. "Who cares? We're dead. What are they going to do, stab me? I don't think so."

I jump up and peek around the side, desperate to see what happens next. Five – Poppy, I guess – walks up to Clove. And offers her hand.

Predictably, Clove slaps it away. "Who the hell do you think you are, Five? Aren't you scared?"

"No," Poppy says simply. "I'm dead. There's no reason for me to hate you. Or be scared. It won't achieve anything." She looks up, and for a moment her eyes seem to bore into my eyes before I realise that most of the others are here too, peeking around the corner in an attempt to avoid the Careers. Fear for no good reason. "We're here for a reason, and if we don't put our fears aside and figure it out, we'll be here forever."

What she does next is so crazy, so incomprehensible that it seems like the most logical thing in the world. She grabs Clove's hand and pulls the other girl to her feet, their strength evenly matched despite Clove's years of training. Maybe here that doesn't matter. I guess we're all equals in the sense that we're all dead. Clove stares at her, her eyes angry, her shoulders tense, but Poppy only stares back. And then she begins to laugh. It's the same laugh she laughed over the ashes – although maybe not the same. There's no fear in it, or hope – it's a truly neutral laugh. A somewhat crazy laugh. A laugh that seems perfectly fitting for whatever crappy afterlife this is.

Her laugh is picked up by the Mockingjays. They imitate it, turn it into music, and as they sing, Poppy begins to fade. It's gradual – first she seems a little paler, then she seems green as the grass behind her – and then she's barely anything more than a silhouette. The outline of Poppy.

And then she's gone.

Clove's jaw drops in confusion. She stared at the spot Poppy had stood only moments ago, and then looks at the hand Poppy had grabbed. It would have been comical if I weren't just as confused as she.

I back away from the corner. Slide down against the Cornucopia. Look at the equally confused face of Evy.

Poppy's district partner looks much the same as I feel – maybe even worse. I'm reminded that he knew Poppy, after all, maybe had some idea of who she was before the arena. I don't know.

It feels strange, not knowing things. I used to be the top of every class. I had a scholarship, at only fifteen, to District Three's only university – the only hope any of us had to escape the cold and the hunger and the boredom of our previous lives. I was smart. I was the smartest. I believed myself to know everything, up until the moment my name was called. That was when I realised I didn't know anything. I didn't know what would happen next. I didn't know how to live. I didn't know about anything outside the safe little bubble I had constructed for myself, of school and friends and work and family. I didn't know how it was possible for my name, my five slips among the thousands, to be called. The statistics had as good as promised me it wouldn't happen. I know now that I don't know.

Anything. At all. Ever.

It's almost funny. I don't know anything. I'm dead. Poppy was too, and then she disappeared, maybe she's gone to the true afterlife, maybe this is purgatory – I don't know.

I understand, now. I know why Poppy was laughing. The absurdity of it all. This isn't a real place. It's a pitstop on the way to heaven… or to hell… or whatever comes next, comes after death. The people around me might be here to, might be real – and they might not be. They might be a figment of my imagination, something my brain made up in the few seconds I lived after my neck broke – a fantasy created by my twitching, dying brain, an answer of the circumstance to comfort me before I finished dying.

It doesn't matter.

I start to laugh.