Boldness is a mask for fear, however great - John Dryden

Rose Eveleth

Aged 18

Victor of the Second Games

Has anyone ever told you how hard it is to force food down your throat when you just want to choke and cough it all up? That's about how it feels right now. Just knowing that tomorrow all those kids are going to come in, all 50 of them. Isn't it bad enough that we've had to kill, to cut open other innocents just to survive?

Apparently not. We must prepare others for the same fate. All you can do is distance yourself and close your eyes and pretend like none of it's real.

They say I'm the sanest of the Victors. I mean, come on. I'm hot, I've got the body, I work it. I mean yeah, all the sly flirtations and whispered insinuations are fun and all…but I think the reason I've still got my sanity mainly intact is because I cut myself off before it was too late. I never let myself grow close. I live in my own little world where everything's picture-perfect and although I'm empty, it doesn't matter. Why be an actual person when you can just be a pretty face?

The first Games were the worst. I wasn't sure what to feel at that time. I was thirteen but I was…disconnected. You see these things on the television and they don't seem real, they're not because they don't affect you. I watched the most gruesome deaths but to me, it was all surreal.

I watched as Luciana St. Clare, a tiny thing of twelve, was proclaimed the Victor of the First Games. She hid, she stole supplies, she was what they never saw coming. But by that stage, she was already too far gone that she wasn't the same girl they'd shoved into the arena. Of course, watching it, all I saw was a wide-eyed, dark-haired frightened child. It still didn't seem real to me.

Then it was my turn. How I got there is still a blur, but I remember once I'd forced down the panic, I knew exactly what tactic to play. I was fourteen then but I could easily have passed for several years older. I had the curvy body of a girl in her late teens and I already knew that I was stunning.

Confidence about my good looks quickly morphed into arrogance. Perhaps they thought I was going to be like the pretty girl in the horror movies, the one who panicked and ran away only to have her face slashed open. Not me. My pride and my beauty would be my victory.

That was when I first met Lulu St. Clare. Try as I might, I could feel nothing for her but pity and irritation. She hardly spoke. I soon found out about the drugs she pumped through her system to keep her from feeling. That was when the disdain kicked in, and when I knew that I would never have anything in common with Lulu. I tried to get through to her but I was met with a silent wall every time, a dead end.

Then the Games began. I had nothing but a small knife I managed to scavenge at the very beginning. I watched them all die around me. I heard their screams, smelt their blood on the wind. And I panicked. I knew I didn't want that to happen to me. So I cut myself off from everything I knew and stuck to my plan.

I used my natural charm to my advantage. I befriended the girls; I made them feel special, like they were part of some kind of secret. I flirted with the boys, a subtle wink, a sly suggestion here and there. Basically I was a coward. I knew I wasn't strong enough to stick them with my knife during the day so while they slept in the night, I carved open their throats and left them to bleed.

I know. I probably seem like a heartless killer and perhaps I am. But my heart was still slamming painfully in my chest when I bloodied them. I didn't want death. All I wanted to do was survive and I knew that I didn't stand a chance against some of the muscular boys and athletic girls. So night became my only ally…there were no screams. Everything was done in complete silence. They could almost have been sleeping forever.

But not everyone killed like I did. I remember watching a boy, perhaps my age, have his head smashed open by a rock. I remember a girl – she was so young, so small – having her throat crushed. Some of the deaths were…horrific. I wanted to lose myself and screams until my vocal chords tore to shreds. Instead, I became cold. I focused.

It was my last opponent that broke me. He was a hulking southern boy, driven mad just after the bloodbath. He must have been…seventeen, eighteen? I tried my best to seduce him but my efforts were doomed to fail. He forced me down to the ground and started to rip my clothes off.

I could have closed my eyes and let myself drift into oblivion... but that wasn't me. I had come this far and I wasn't willing to give up. So despite his heavy weight pressed down on me and the fact that he'd been trying to push down my pants, I flailed and, in a panic, somehow managed to snap his neck. And as I rolled his body off me, pulled my clothes on and myself together, struggling not to cry or throw up, I became the Victor of the Second Games.

They all saw me as a little whore, a seductive minx who had nearly got her own back. I bet a lot of them were disappointed that I had won, or that the southern boy hadn't managed to rape me. They wanted a slut? Fine. I wasn't Rose Eveleth who had come with a plan to seduce. I was completely the flirt they wanted me to be. Who would ever want someone who had tried to seduce boys on live television? No matter what I did, I would always be the whore. So I condemned myself to it.

I think that's why the other Victors hate me so much. I have at least the semblance of normality going on. I hide so well the shattered girl behind the mask that the mask has become fixed to me, and I can't take it off. Inside, something inside keeps screaming and screaming for what can never be. I want to return to the way I was. But the screams remain silent. I won't let them out. Someone has to b e sane.

I was barely fifteen when the Third Games rolled around. By that stage, I had taken the girl I had once been and drowned her in the cemented reputation of being a flirt. Jared Klerk…I remember him vividly. He was eighteen at the time, but I was instantly all over him, and all of the rest of the boys who were remotely good-looking.

Why? Who knows? It was like by that time, I'd lost the ability to feel anything. Lulu needed her drugs for all of that, but not me. I was cold without even trying.

Jared was always hot-headed. He was a total country hick and immediately got around to fighting the city kids. I'd see his fists clenching and unclenching, and then I'd just know instinctively that someone was about to get punched. I was hitting on him even before the Games started, but somehow I knew. I knew he would win.

He cared nothing for me, of course. Jared would smirk at the attention. He'd get possessive when any other guy came near me. But he didn't care. I knew that I was nothing to him, that he had as little respect for me as most other people have for dirt. Of course, by that stage, I was beyond what anyone thought of me.

The only person I could rely on was myself. The Games had taught me that lesson and I had learned well. While Jared and Lulu started their little freak show like we could all be friends and live happily ever after, I was dealing with the hard reality. I hid too. I just hid so well that no one could possibly find me when I did.

When the Games started, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was watching all over again what happened to me. The first deaths had me clutching at Lulu's small frame and trying to ignore the silent tears that streamed down my cheeks. Of course, Lulu was drugged out of her mind. At least she wasn't high that day, or else I'd have felt the need to slap some sense into her. I curled in on myself, watching the horrors of the Games unfold, and it wasn't just a television show any longer. This was my nightmare.

When Jared won, he wasn't like Lulu and I at first. He was happy with the fame and the fortune and the empty title of Victor. I fawned over him as usual but I soon learned that, even out of the arena, Jared couldn't control his anger. On his nineteenth birthday, I had the last slice of strawberry cheesecake. He confronted me about it and beat me black and blue. I think that was the only time I lost control, showed any weakness.

I still remember pushing myself up off the kitchen floor, every time to be met with his fist. But everyone just watched in stony silence. They could have been statues. Jared probably could have killed me and still, the cold silence wouldn't have been broken. I had never wanted to scream as much as I did then, if only to shatter the quiet.

I was sixteen when the Fourth Games crept up on me. I have to admit that I overlooked Ryder Fletcher. Sure, he was gorgeous, a total sex god…but I thought a pretty face like that couldn't win. Yes, me of all people, who had won precisely using the advantages of my pretty face. Perhaps it was the fact that Ryder quickly became completely and utterly insane.

I thought Lulu was bad, with her swings from screaming fits, to total highs, to sullen silence. That was before I met Ryder. He was completely psychotic, with alter-egos, hallucinations…you name it, he had it. It scared me to watch him lose his cool because, unlike Lulu, it wasn't any kind of drugs causing this sort of mania. He was paranoid pretty much from the word go and then through the entire Games, killing anyone who he came across or else sleeping the rest of the time after he was poisoned by a snake bite.

This time around, when the gong sounded, I could handle it. It was still a terrible thing to witness but the wounds I'd sustained from my own Games were starting to heal. The scars would never fade, but I could bear them. It was Jared this time around who started to freak out, howling and shouting out death threats. I tried to calm him down once but he punched me so hard there was a bruise on my cheekbone for two weeks. Needless to say, I didn't try a second time.

So there we were by the Fifth Games last year: a drug addict, a psycho, a walking madhouse…and me. We were all a mess. Lulu and Ryder were in their own little world of insanity, and I welcomed them to it. They were in isolation mode. Even when the kids came in for us to mentor them – and what were we supposed to tell them? To embrace their imminent deaths? – Ryder and Lulu were off doing their own thing. I suppose that's crazy-people love for you.

Jared was actually good with the kids. The country ones, that was. He was willing to help them out, tell them what to do. I just bluntly told the girls to follow my lead. Not that it would get them anywhere. Some attractive brunette had tried my tactic in the Fourth Games and had been immediately decapitated. Maybe it only works once, or maybe only if you're Rose Eveleth.

Of course, I just did my usual. Slept with Jared a couple of times, some other people, flirted with the boys, went downtown and tried to club the Games out of my system. Not that you really can. It's stuck with you. No matter where you go or what you do, it's always there, and it haunts you.

That year's Victor was a little African-American girl called Ash Lee. She became afraid of everything. A tiny spider in the corner would send her screaming out of the room. It might have been funny if it wasn't actually so serious. She stayed away from me, from the freak show. They think I'm the only sane one, just because I don't need treatment. Maybe I am sane. I don't know what I am anymore.

Then there's the Victor Party. I still remember it from last year, before we had tiny Ash running around cowering if we so much as raised a hand. Lulu was completely high, singing something that I don't think was even in English. She later went into a shouting fit, thumping her fists on the table, before vomiting all over her pretty green Gucci dress. What a shame. The dress would have cost a lot of money.

Ryder went into schizophrenic mode and crawled under the table, rocking to himself. Jared drank way too much beer and became volatile, smashing several glasses. I just sat through the whole thing, making flirtatious conversations with the inebriated Jared and completely ignoring Lulu. Completely ignoring the reality of what was to come, I suppose.

This year I'm wearing a slinky, spangled aqua dress that brings out my eyes and shows off my figure. That's not to mention the three-inch heels that totally complete the outfit. Once I'm down priming my eyes with some charcoal-coloured mascara and electric blue eyeliner, I saunter downstairs to the dining room to where everyone is already waiting. Of course, I have to appear fashionably late.

"Sorry," I smile dazzlingly as I enter the room, clicking over to sit beside Jared. "I had to fix up my hair, it was a mess."

In reality, I was preparing for a night that's bound to be a mess, just like the rest of our lives. Not that the President or the freak show or anyone else actually cares. Jared's eyes devour my figure before he turns his attention on the beef tortillas in front of him. Across the table, Ash is shaking hard, her eyes round with fear as she observes the huge bread knife in the middle of the table.

I roll my eyes and glance across at Ryder who is picking at his food with a stony face. I decide to go for a reaction and reach out to place my hand on top of his. He immediately goes into Steve mode, his eyes becoming cold and hard as he withdraws his hand quickly from my reach. Lulu is mildly content tonight, watching me with a dazed expression on her face.

"What's the matter, Ryder?" Jared mocks, taking another sip of his half-finished beer, "I thought it was Ash who was scared of everything."

Ryder glares and I swear I hear him growl, his eyes darting towards Lulu's fork since he has only been given a rubber baby spoon. I withdraw my hand, instead placing it on Jared's leg. As usual, he's completely comfortable with my advances, chewing happily at a carrot stick as I tap my fingers on his thigh. Lulu reaches across for a chicken drumstick, making Ash nearly jump out of her skin. Mad, honestly, the lot of them.

No one speaks. The place is silent as a graveyard, although I'd say a funeral would be more cheerful. I lean over, giving Ryder a good view down the front of my dress, which of course he doesn't appreciate, and go to offer Ash a hunk of bread, but she flinches away from me. I sigh heavily and sit back down, resuming my finger-tapping on Jared's leg.

Lulu chooses this moment to reach across the table and take the last carrot stick, the china bowl clinking as she withdraws her hand from this. Jared snaps to attention, lunging across and grabbing Lulu's wrist, twisting until she's forced to drop the carrot stick on the glass table. Jared's expression is one of fury.

"That was the last carrot stick!"

Jared isn't normally aggressive with Lulu. Okay, he's aggressive with everyone, but they normally tend to get along. I guess the stress of the Sixth Games must be creeping up on him. He doesn't have the chance to do or say anything else, because Ryder snarls and lunges across the table at him, smashing glasses and plates as he tackles him to the floor.

That's when the fists start flying. Ryder and Jared roll around in a flurry of violence, while everyone up at the table keeps eating like this is a normal event. Animals, that's what we are. Wild animals, and they're trying to keep us tamed, but it won't work. Cages and leashes might, but we'll never be who we once were.

Normally at this time I take my cue to leave, but instead of sauntering from the room, I click over and deliver a swift kick to Jared's ribs with my heels, knocking him off Ryder. He's stunned for a moment, before he comes at me with a roar, slamming me against the wall. I flinch as he slaps me, before I try and talk some sense into him.

"Jared…babe, let's just go get you cleaned up, okay? There's glass all over you."

I wrinkle my nose at his ruined suit, brushing the glass off his shirt. There are cuts all over his face and arms. Jared is breathing heavily, but the anger starts to fade from his eyes. Not because of me. He doesn't care about me enough for that. He growls and tugs away from me, but consents to be lead out of the room. I spare one last glance into the room to see Lulu helping Ryder up from the ground.

Maybe Jared will be up for a striptease, maybe something even more. All I know is that I need to drown myself, and I don't mean in the sense of a bubble bath.

Maddie, Lulu, Ryder, Ashlee and Taryn