Grain & Blood | A Hunger Games collection

System Overload: Chapter Six

Iris

This isn't the Hunger Games. I can't just kill people. I can't throw plates at their heads. This is real life, and in real life, I have to control myself. But this is real life, and in real life, people die.

I have about a minute until someone comes rushing in to stop me, and a minute is definitely long enough to kill someone. One of the shards from the floor is big enough to act as a knife, so I grab it and start slashing deep into Kamalyn's arm, down from her elbow to her wrist. She's out cold, and it's like I'm in the arena again, but this time the roles are reversed and I'm killing her. I just start stabbing her wherever, the blood pooling on the floor, coating my hands in sticky, warm red.

Another shard from the floor is somehow in my hand and I keep smashing it into her skin, smiling as the blood seeps out. I slash open her forehead, laughing and slitting my own open as people run into the room, and I keep stabbing her. She can die. I don't care.

"Put your hands above your head!" Two men with guns and a woman with a shot of some kind of knock out drug are standing in the doorway, but I don't care. I smash the shard into my arm again, and laugh while turning to face them.

"Be careful, she can throw them," the woman warns. I laugh again, and draw my arm back. The first shard hits one of the men with a gun, and clearly has gone through his clothing. Blood starts turning his clothes red, and I throw my other shard at the woman, it lands in her arm and in a few seconds they're both on the floor. The other gunman pulls off his helmet and lowers his gun like I'm not about to end his life.

"I'm not going to kill you," He says, and somehow I recognise his face.

"Who are you?" I ask. My eyes are filling up with blood and I feel like I might die too.

"Come with me,"

"You need to get out."

"Someone needs to help these people."

"You're dying."

"Come with me,"

He keeps urging me to move, to leave, but I'm not going until I hear Kamalyn's cannon. Eventually he slides the needle of whatever drug into my arm and shoots on the plunger.

When I wake up, I'm lying in a bed, and my arm and forehead are hurting. When I run my finger along them, the wounds that I inflicted on myself are stitched up.

"Iris?"

"Yeah? I'm guessing I'm in the deepest crap ever?"

"No, actually, you're getting pretty much away with it."

"Oh, okay. Awesome."

"But I do want to know why you decided to do what you did."

"I also want to know why you didn't kill me on the spot when I injured the other ones with you, and why I'm not in trouble."

He sighs. "You aren't in trouble, because it was about three days ago that you saw this world again after being dead, and everyone just assumes that you're going mental after that. And I didn't kill you because why should I?"

"Because I was a f*cking threat?"

"Aren't we all at some point?"

After a moment of silence, I decide that I am going to answer his question.

"She was being a b*tch about my attempts to keep my brother alive, so I threw the plates at her head, then started stabbing sh*t because I wanted her dead, then you barged in and I felt threatened and I was kinda out of control at that point, so I threw shards at your colleagues. Then you tried to get me out and I think I was just waiting for her cannon to sound. That was an arena thing that is pretty much in my head for life. And you put that thing in my arm and then I zonked out."

"Yeah, uh- I don't think you'll be pleased to know that she's alive."

"She's alive? After all the hell I went through to kill her?"

"I'm afraid so."

I sigh and smash my fist into my head. "Who even are you?"

"I'm nobody." He seems to be hiding something but I won't press it. "Do you want to talk about anything?"

"Yes, I do."

My head takes me back to a time in the arena when I was watching him die. Watching his life end. And for the first time, I cry about it.

"I was- I just- I called out and he didn't answer, I called again and-" I'm choking on the first sentence. "I called again, and he screamed for help. If I was any closer he would have been fine but-"

I take a deep breath and continue again.

"I found him in our camp just as the axe was swung into his stomach. There was nothing I could do. I killed the boy with the axe, the only revenge I got. But he kept dying on the floor. I said goodbye, told him I loved him, begged him to stay, but it was- it was no good. Less than a minute later he- he- he-"

I can't stop crying, trying to choke out the last word through my tears.

"He died. Robin- Robin died."

Another early morning upload, which can't be good for my sleep but here we are. I'll bring facts or memes back in at some point but atm I'm just trying to sort my life and get into a steady upload schedule, get used to uploading and stuff. Meh. And it's school starting again in September so I'll need to figure my life before that. One week streak which isn't the forty days it was but it's still good.

-Katherine