A/N: Another shorty! My excuse: I HATE TIME. Enjoy, and I'll try - I will try - to do better next time!

There's a girl, in a house, with a brown hair and milky blue eyes that wander off into their own little world. She's a hatter, and the maddest of them all. She's spacey, and when she's not in her own world, with rainbows and rhymes and nothing but good times, she's volatile because the real world is so painful—too painful for this poor, mad girl to handle—that she goes insane and gets violent to block it out.

Her parents and her brother try to help, but they don't exist in her imaginary world, one of a little kid's mindset even though she's thirteen. With those milky eyes that pray for someone to help her even when she doesn't know it, she looks around her world—and that's not what she sees. She doesn't see the anger and the suffering and the torture. Or when she does, she's too off the edge to drink it into her fake world.

This girl—so skinny, as she's of the poorest—is named Alicia.

It's a shame, too. She's so pretty. She'd be so pretty, and so many can see it, if she weren't psycho—if she weren't another girl than the one people see. She's not Alicia Ludwig, the girl who lives in Panem and is about to come face-to-face with her second reaping. She's Alicia Ludwig, the queen of Alicialand, where there's always a rainbow and she always get what she wants and she never starves, because that's not allowed in her dreamland. Pain does not exist. She erased its existence long ago when she began working as a hatter, approximately when she was nine and modeling off of her mother. Her mother soon got a better job, but poor little Alicia didn't.

Hatters use mercury in their processing. All those feather caps and diamond-studded party headwear that the Capitol takes for granted rotted a District Eight person's mind, robbed them of their true thoughts and being, ripping it from their brain and sending it into the depths of mercury, which destroys the brain. It ripped this girl—this girl that could be so beautiful in mind and being—of her beauty and replaced it with some insane person's mind that was trapped in the mercury. Because this girl, so lost and never to be found, can't be the Alicia Ludwig the world once knew. It's impossible.

…

Alicia wakes up on the morning of the reaping from a nightmare—or was it a dream? It's hard to tell. She looks around her bedroom with a cheery smile and swings her legs off the bed. Then she stands up and walks bouncily over to her door. She opens it and skips down the hallway to the bathroom, where she pats her hair but does not brush it, and smears the cheap, inexpensive toothpaste that the Ludwigs got a hold of on a stroke of luck onto a toothbrush, but does not use either of them.

Then she wanders back to her room and lies down to sleep for another hour.

…

When she wakes up for good, she wanders around her room until she stands before her closet. Alicia opens the door and looks through it, until she finds a pretty green gown that's very pretty; she has to giggle because she's sure it'll be gorgeous on her. In reality, it's grungy and way too small for her, but green as day, you have to give her that. If this were a test of colors, she'd ace it entirely.

But it's not. It's life, and that's the one thing where Alicia's gone a little askew. And it's not because of any bad choices. It's because of where she decided to work.

Alicia takes her pajamas off and then puts her dress on, putting a matted clump of dark brown hair behind her ears. She takes a few steps in her white sneakers that she wore to bed and didn't take off when dressing or undressing, almost as though they were high heels. Then she elegantly steps out of her bedroom, escaping to the rest of the house, particularly the kitchen, because she's famished.

"Good morning, Alicia," her mother says to her.

"Adorning this morning with a warning," Alicia mumbles, and it's poetic to her. That's what she wants to be. Or, no, she's a hatter. Oops. She giggles out loud to her own jumble of thoughts.

"You look positively fabulous," Alicia hears her brother say. He really says: "Alicia, that dress is too small for you..."

She does this all the time. She hears what people say, but before she can understand, she translates it into what she wants to hear in her world, because to her, the dress is flawless. She is flawless. She's not mad or violent or so skinny that if she had enough food, she'd die because her small stomach couldn't handle it.

"Sit down for breakfast," Alicia's mother tells her, scolding Dodge quietly so Alicia doesn't hear. Dodge the girl's eight-year-old brother who is scared of his older sister but never voices the worriment when she's around.

Alicia does as she's told, smiling at her parents who have already began eating their meager breakfast, which is surprisingly small, especially for reaping day. One buttered piece of burnt raisin bread. It's not even toast; it's just burnt bread. It looks like someone meant to toast it, failed, through it out, and the Ludwigs fished it out of the trash.

Alicia hardly notices. It's got a funny taste, is all. She gobbles it, trying to savor it, and then swallows down her glass of tap water that is probably just one bacterium away from being poisonous. This does not quench her hunger, but she shrugs it off simply because she thinks she's ready to face the day and befriend a bird. Or a leaf.

A worm! She had forgotten about her pet worm Jim the Tim Bob. Junior prince and head of Worm Headquarters. She wonders if the worm is still alive.

No, she doesn't want to go befriend some filthy little mud creature. She decides she won't.

"We must leave for the reaping in ten minutes," the Dodge family mother says quietly. Alicia smiles and walks outside. Ten minutes is enough to do something, right?

There's someone outside on their lawn, where Alicia wants to go do whatever she feels like. That's her place he took. He can't do that! Fury bubbles up in her and the happy, spacey girl that picked out the too-small green dress falls away, leaving the violent girl who strikes out rather than face the world as it is; she uses violence and anger to wash away at the world when it comes in to view.

She runs at him, a noise rising from the back of her throat. As she lets it out, she jumps at the boy, and he screeches. Alicia covers his mouth and just starts pummeling him. Tears stream down her face as she kicks and slaps and pinches and bites; instead of more enraged, back-of-throat noises, she lets out a choked sobbing sound. Her father comes out, unbeknownst to her, and rips her off of the boy; Henry Ludwig calling out apologies as the bruised boy runs away, sobbing relentlessly. Alicia cries, too.

But then she "wakes up." She was awake the whole time, but she doesn't remember attacking the poor boy named Khaki Delaware. If she went back to her volatile state, then she'd remember; she'd remember every detail of hitting him and cursing under her breath and hearing his sobs as he ran away. But Alicia, with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, bounces up. "What's going on?"

She staggers off before getting an answer.

…

At the reaping, she cringes away from the shock when getting signed in, but doesn't make a fuss. Thank goodness. Her family might already be in dear trouble from her episode earlier.

She steps into her group with the rest of the Thirteens. Her heart is one of the stillest in the square, because of course, she only hardly gets this; she doesn't know to feel the fear. Hell, she probably thinks winning the reaping is like getting to go to a palace and becoming the new ruler of Panem. That would be fun. Alicia would like that a lot.

The mayor rambles.

Alicia listens, but it's translated into words of gorgeousness, not war and anger and pain.

Then the escort steps up, looking almost pretty, Alicia thinks, but she's a bit too…bright.

"This is our chance, District Eight! Welcome, welcome, welcome, you all, to our chance to bring pride to the district and show the country that District Eight is strong," the escort says, smiling widely. "Today we'll draw the names of the tribute—the three tributes this year—to win the Games and bring back pride and food and prizes. Let us begin."

The woman puts her hand in the large glass bowl with all of its names and surprises and death sentences. She draws just one—just one—unlucky name: "Amelia Axton."

A girl with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as snow steps up to the stage, and no one is pleased for this poor twelve-year-old. But a boy steps up and yells, "I, Daniel Axton, volunteer!"

"Oh, she's—and you're a he…" The escort looks down at the podium, flipping through papers. "Oh, okay. Yes, you may volunteer, due to the fact that genders don't matter for these Games…" The escort nods and smiles, waiting for the boy to join her up on the stage.

Now, somewhat baffled and uncomfortable, the escort congratulates Daniel Axton and moves on.

She calls a name, and Alicia hears it. She waits a little bit before meandering staggeringly up to the stage, for the escort said, "Alicia Ludwig."

Next is the poor sap called Damon Grey, who, with wide eyes, comes up to the stage and then simply…freezes.

Before any of them know it, they're shaking hands and being escorted to what could very well be the last time they see any of their family members again. But Alicia doesn't even know that.