Sunshine - A Hunger Games Story

19| Schemes

I feel numb.

Once I was surrounded by people I could trust, making me almost forget that people were trying to kill us. Now I wouldn't be able to, no matter how hard I try. Images of death and the gore of reality wait for me behind my eyelids.

Everyone —I guess it's just Henri and I— are on edge. The girl from two is still out there. The dipstick gang has to still be around the mountains, hiding like cowards, but the threat is still there. With both Henri and I needing sleep, no one is up to watch out. The thought haunts me from the back of my mind.

In a room with flaking blue wallpaper and a small blanket bunched up in the corner. I stand in my room, the oak floorboards cold under my bare feet.

I'm in my pajamas: a large stained white t-shirt that hangs loosely off my starved frame and old cloth shorts. My hands are covered in dark red blood. Startled, I look up to the wall and find a mirror. My copper-red hair looks dark brown in the lighting, along with what seems to be mud plastered against it. My face looks paler than normal. With dark bags under my eyes and solid black eyes, I look like a ghost.

Startled, I jumped back and hit the wall right behind me. Feeling with my hands, eyes still fixed on the mirror, I find the door handle. I quickly fling the door open and close it behind me as I exit to the hallway.

My hands fly up to my face to see if I actually look that way. Before they get the chance, my brain stops my hands from touching anything with the blood that coats them.

Looking down the hallway of my lifelong home, I see something piled under the table. It's too dark to tell what's there, so I make my way over.

Unlike normal, the floor doesn't creak. All of my surroundings are covered in a haze, but my mind ignores that thought.

Kneeling down onto all fours, I peek under the table. Still nothing is visible enough for me to make out. I reach out to feel the clutter. Freezing cold but squishy, a sickening feeling that has me yanking my hand away. Too much like a living, or dead, organism. Before I am able to fully retract my hand, something grabs my wrist. The cold bony fingers wrap tightly around my left wrist turning it numb.

Another undead hand grabs my hair and pulls. I try hard to yank myself away from their grasps, but they seem to have grown super strength.

I tug back once more. Suddenly, I fall through the floor and through the ceiling, landing on the edge of the kitchen table. I hit the wood at an odd angle, causing my back to bruise and tumble painfully onto the floor.

Because I know what waits for me under the table, I scurry away. My back hits the unnatural squishy wall and I pull my knees to my chest.

Like a big teddy bear, the wall curls around me, engulfing me in a soft safe-feeling as if protecting me.

Before the wall can fully surround me, cold slick hands grab me and pull me out. The once dark room is now filled with an eerie glow. Isaac, Dominic, Theo, and Tyson all stand there, skin decayed and shrunken around their bones, flaps of flesh hanging off their bodies in various places, and eyes bleeding across their dark skin.

I can't move. When trying to turn and run, my body is frozen in place. My brothers' and friend's zombie hands claw at my flesh and I can only stay frozen in terror.

My eyes fly open, but my body is still frozen in fear. I will myself to move my fingers, but my brain's fear stops any other movement. I can almost feel the hands swiping at my face or running up my back.

After an hour or so, my fear wears off. The sun starts rising and Henri starts stirring. I convinced myself that the dream was just my imagination. I'm not going to be scared before I go. That's not what my family deserves.