A/N: Hey all! Sorry it's been like a month, but the bloodbath REALLY took the piss out of me, enormous, multifaceted monstrosity of a chapter it is. And, of course, the school year started, which occupied quite a bit of my time. But rest assured this story WILL continue trucking on and hopefully at a bit of a quicker rate, too! Now, no more ramble and preamble, it's time for DAY 1!
Cajsa Varis, District 8 Female
The air is, in itself, tension. Tension is what coils and uncoils in my gut, the smell of the carpeting beneath my feet. Futura feels it too- I can tell by how short her breaths air.
I used to teach Ronja breathing exercises before it got to be too much, or close to too much. She would begin to pant, swear pouring down her waxy skin, and I could nearly taste the acid on her tongue. Her tiny chest would swell and contract, concave and convex, wax and wane as her heart-rate sped up. A dying rabbit of a girl. I would rub her back and tell her to breathe in through her mouth, fill herself with air until she feels ready to pop like a balloon. Then, exhale, deflate, collapse in upon yourself.
It forced her body to calm down, and her mind could slow with this advice as well. I'm not exactly going to whisper meaningless platitudes and greeting-card reassurances to Futura or give her a back massage, but I can lend her the advice.
"Breathe in, slowly. Through your mouth." I say, as calmly as I can manage. She blinks up at me in confusion, then wordlessly shrugs her shoulder. Slowly, she begins to breathe, her lips parting and closing, chest rising and falling. After a tense minute, she finally stops. A faint smile blemishes her stone-cold visage for a millisecond, and then it passes like a summer storm. "Thanks."
…
My train of thought is off the rails.
"You can cry. You know, if you want to…" My voice trails off at Futura's incredulous glance, my regret carved in her furrowed brow. "I…" She cuts me off coldly, words flint-sharp but carrying all the wrong connotations. "Sure. Why not. Let the waterworks go un-maintained." Her eyes, though, are lizard-like in their dryness.
But I appreciate the sentiment.
After a fueled minute and a half of stone-eyed awkwardness, Futura climbs to her feet, one sweaty hand pressed flat against the smooth, reflective surface of the mirror, the other hand absentmindedly rubbing circles into her forehead.
"Well, now that we've successfully cried our eyes out, come to terms with our emotions and overcome our repression, let's go find Crystaille."
Heavenly Aquarius, District 7 Female
Inexplicable pain dilutes and refines inside of me. After all, my only pain should be from my slightly twisted ankle stained delicate shades of gray and violet I'd only seen before in hallucinations, but my gut and head are both killing me, thankfully not literally.
Teryn grabbed a knapsack, a pitchfork, and a tarp while I watched her back, and on the way out (and into this all too familiar labyrinth of reflections and pinched pale faces don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it don't even think in the slightest) I managed to snag a heavy backpack. It weighed me down slightly while running, but the supplies inside and the protection it would offer my previously dangerously exposed back spurred me into taking the risk. The cost outweighs the risk. The end justifies the means. It's just economics.
I'm not thinking about backpacks anymore.
How many key components can you remove and replace from Theseus's ship before it stops being his ship and becomes a different ship entirely?
Does it ever?
I shake my head. Now's not the time for inapplicable thought experiences. I can grapple with my mortality later. (if there is a later do i want a later) Right now, I need to pay attention.
Teryn's got our two fundamental goodie bags unzipped, the tarp and pitchfork discarded in the corner for now. "Already… hello Panem and welcome to my unboxing video!" She says sardonically, and in my mind I imagine invisible cams swiveling towards her, bright and alert. She begins to reveal the contents of her tiny knapsack. "All right, we've got a pocketknife, a canteen of water- score!- a tin of sardines; could be worse, some bandages and two apples." As she says two apples, she tosses one to me. "Should we waste our food like that?" I venture. She shrugs. "It's fresh produce. Should spoil after a while anyways, so why not?" I hesitate, and then shrug my shoulders listlessly, feeling my will unravel. I bit into an apple.
We finish our apples with such similar timing that it seems nigh synchronized. The cores end up in the now-desolated knapsack, and we move onto the backpack. "Hey, do you want to open it?" Teryn says offhandedly. I'm about to accept her offer at face value, when I see the pious look in her eyes, and I remember something she told me during a late-night strategy rendezvous.
"When I pity someone, or sense that when someone is scared, I loosen up. Can't fuckin help it- It's like all of the strings holding me up, keeping me tense and collected, snap at the same time."
Well, I guess that settles it. I'm darkly, horrifyingly pitiable. I don't mind much- but this confirms something for me.
If I rake my fingernails down my face, acting like the screeching rape victim and pre-emptive morphling junkie everyone thinks me to be, she WILL try and stop me.
In any situation that isn't this one, I don't know whether or not that's a particularly reassuring thought.
"Nope." I say. "G-go ahead." Teryn gives me a strange look, less brimming with unspoken pity than her previous, but strange all the same. Without further preamble she begins to take out the items, one by one, and I in turn begin to catalogue them in my head. "Two more water canteens, a sleeping bag- just one, that's unfortunate, some cheese and crackers, a jar of… peanut butter? What the fuck? Well, whatever. Ooh, a machete! A pad of paper and a ballpoint pen, and… a magic 8 ball? How is this piece of shit going to help us out?"
"Hand it over," I say. She tosses it, a neat underhand to contrast with her fumbled overhand from the apple socking, and I catch it. "Will you be useful to us?" I address my question to the ball, and Teryn snorts.
I shake.
No matter what you do, by the time you remove the first component, it's a different boat. And replacing it won't make it the same boat again.
"It says… better not tell you now."
"What a crock of shit!"
Blair Harcourt, District 10 Male
Alone, alone, alone. Not alone enough? Have some loneliness sprinkled on top!
The mirror-clad halls twist and wind, serpentine in their complexity. My token, The Ice-Queen In The Mouse is frigid in my sweaty hands, much like the content of the reading material itself. It's also the only thing I took out of the bloodbath, too consumed by fear to bother running for the Cornucopia, too much like the titular mouse to want for anything but my immediate survival.
And maybe some nonlethal company. Some nonlethal company would be great right now.
It's times like these I wish I hadn't buried myself into books so deeply. It gave me a temporary escape, but look at me now. I'm in the Hunger Games.
Although that probably isn't because of my unquenchable thirst for literature, now that I think about it.
Still, maybe my people skills wouldn't be such a fixer-upper now. Maybe I'd have some allies to watch my back, like Crystaille or the littlies or literally everyone/anyone else that isn't a sadist. Maybe, maybe maybe. Not only do I have to deal with endless paths of smoke and funhouse mirrors, now I've got a rabbit hole of infinite hypotheticals to follow.
MAYBE my mom wouldn't be dead. MAYBE the boy from twelve wouldn't have been shot in the foot like wandering cattle. MAYBE I wouldn't be such a hopeless recluse. MAYBE I would have a harem and economic stability. If… if what? Logically I know it's not my fault, all of these were out of my sphere of control. But there's a butterfly effect in play, and I'm not a time traveler.
It's impossible to know. For want of a nail, for naught of a nail. It's impossible to know.
I bang into another goddamn mirror, and that's when I hear them.
"Where's all the fucking prey at?" A voice, loud and arrogant. My blood turns to liquid nitrogen. I cannot BELIEVE I've managed to keep my bladder under control at this point. "I don't know. Why, it's almost like the outliers don't want to be murdered." Another voice. Low, dry, and sarcastic, but indisputably feminine. I bite down hard on my tongue and imagine the horrible sensation that dying must be like, all of my neurons firing off at once in a fireworks display of cranial activity and then nothing, more nothing, and even more nothing. Forever.
That's when I begin to run.
Right into the Careers.
The girl from four immediately spins me around, with the delicate motions of a dancer but the physique of a barbarian and the intent of an assassin. She pins me against the back-scraping velvet partitioning two mirrors. I squirm and bite, but her hands are heavy and strong and maliciously focused. "Alright. Time to get this over with."
"I claim kill." Her district partner says immediately, a shit-eating grin on his face. I imagine those pearly whites sinking themselves into my jugular. She glowers at him. "You'd just make it messy." "Than I'll have 'im." Says the gruff brute from two. "So would you!" She scolds. All my hopes are draining away, and my body deflates with it. They squabble for half a minute more and then-
I feel a sharp prick in my throat. Then I feel a truck run me over.
Not literally, but that's frightening close to the sensation. Horrible, incredible, indescribable pain (oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god), then shock, (did I really get hit by a truck) then a terrifying, zen numbness (whatcha gonna do when you get hit by a truck. it's like that, guys. it's like that, guys. it's like that guys. you see it, right guys? it's like that, guys.)
Faintly, I hear a yell of outrage. A shadowed shape pushes apart the now fuming hulks from 2 and 4 and absentmindedly brushes the fem-Goliath away from my body. This causes me to droop and fall to the ground like a wilting flower, painfully slow and ruinous. The hazy figure, now identifiable as the greasy, emancipated, hyperfocused girl from 2, (like the ice queen looks just like the ice queen) leans down and pulls out the knife lodged in my now-desolated neck, nonchalantly wiping it off on her jacket. Putrid oxygen hits the roof of my throat, and the blood begins to pour as my body hits the floor. "You're acting like little kids, calling dibs and waiting for your turn. If you want the goddamn kill, come and get it."
Ready or not, here I come!
Chablis Brochetto, District 1 Female
"Come one, come all, Capitolites and District dwellers alike. Have you ever heard of Theseus and the Minotaur?"
"No? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details. I'm sure you have more important scenes to drink in. Career drama, maybe? Or perhaps the fallout from the death of whoever set that cannon off. I can't be the only one telling a story."
"But I'm the only one concentrating on the juicy bits. And I know you like your juicy bits."
"Rewind, back to Ancient Greece and the prosperous city of Crete, ruled by King Minos and Queen Pasiphae. Apparently, one of the two did something to incur the wrath of fate, or maybe love, because Pasiphae was cursed to fall for a bull. She got her bestiality on and ended up bearing a grotesque child- the Minotaur, half-bull, half-man, and all depravity. King Minos nearly died from embarrassment, but at the last second changed his mind- someone else could die for it instead. Minos hid the Minotaur in a Labyrinth constructed by his imprisoned personal inventor Daedalus, a construction so complicated that no one who went in there would come out alive. Minos began to use the Minotaur as garbage disposal for his enemies- throwing political dissenters in an inescapable labyrinth with only a big-ass Minotaur for company is a pretty efficient way of taking out the trash."
"One day, a young prince called Theseus- no one important- decided he was going to be a sacrifice for the Minotaur in hopes of killing it. Seeing as King Minos didn't usually get a lot of people VOLUNTEERING for the position, he let Theseus in, unknowing of his ulterior motivations. Or maybe he just didn't give a shit."
"Before he went in, Theseus met Princess Ariadne, King Minos's daughter. They fell madly in love in record time, and she gave him a ball of thread. If he ventured into the Labyrinth with it, he could mark sections he'd already been in with a sliver of thread and find a path straight to the Minotaur. Without it, he'd be dead in record time."
"You understand what I'm trying to say, right? Without the thread, he'd be dead in record time."
"Without the thread-"
"Ah! There it is, the ever-pleasing ding of the sponsor gift. And I have a feeling I know what it is. Anyways, thank you, my loyal audience. I won't be able to do this without you."
End of Day 1.
Eulogies:
17th: Blair Harcourt, District 10 Male- Knifed by Venie Hadley [D2]
Blaaaaair! You were dope, dude. Your crippling social anxiety/fear of confrontation and the ways in which you were self-aware about it really struck a chord within me, and I may have implanted a little bit of my naturally sardonic spirit in you- sorry for that. Your submitter, Indium2000, is no longer reading, but if they were I apologize if Blair came off as a bit OOC! If it's any consolation, he was truly a gem to write and I'm sorry I killed him so early. I truly am a cruel and relentless master. Your love for books also rung a bell- being a bookworm is one of the few things I feel comfortable bragging about because I know for sure that it's true. Books are the one true escape, am I right. We did have very different tastes though. Also, you're dead and I'm not, so that's another pretty major difference. But we're not here to talk about me, we're here to talk about YOU! Your contradictory shyness and sarcasm was a blast to explore and all the literary motifs were just a delight! You may have groused a bit in the privacy of your own mind, but you were still very nice and compassionate, and certainly didn't deserve to bleed out while people argue over who has the right to kill you. Don't worry, Venie will get her just desserts… or will she? Who knows? Certainly not me. You'll finally muster up the courage to talk to Alicia and Henry in heaven! I'm the author, so if I say it, it's canon. Another totally cool fact- in this world, it's totally canon that everyone's molecules are made up of live fire ants and cheez wiz. Cause I says it is. ;)
A/N: Just noticed it now, but this chapter involves quite the overabundance of Theseus. I assure you, that was not intentional. If you didn't know, Theseus's boat is a thought experiment. How many pieces of an object (the default being Theseus's boat) can you replace before it becomes a different boat? And is it even a different boat at all? It's a thought experiment, meaning there isn't a conclusive answer. It's just something to ponder, along the lines of the Trolley Problem and Schrodinger's Cat. My personal stance on it is that no matter how many components you replace, it's still the same boat. As you can see, Heavenly's is quite different, likely due to our very different experiences. I've been kind of obsessed with thought experiments lately, and really wanted to include one in SOMETHING. Schrodinger's cat is a good literary tool because it's so versatile and can be applied to so many different situations, but it's kind of overdone so I went with good old Theseus instead. I didn't pick the Wolves and Sheep puzzle because that's actually a very racist metaphor for systemic genocide (yikes) and I'm not even going to touch the "needs of the many" issue that arises with the Trolley Problem and the Surgery problem, no matter how applicable it may be to Heavenly's situation cuz I hardly know what my OWN stance is, lmao. One more thing- This wasn't ALL that happened on day one. I'm not showing it because I'm lazy, but some other relevant shit happened too, and I'll allude to it on Day 2. But rest assured there were no other deaths. I'm not mean enough to leave you in THAT much suspense.
See you at Day 2!