The anchor of love||| Johanna Mason

just like chess

It was a game of moves and counter-moves from then on. I woke up and started planning. Planning for the eventual death of multiple people, myself included. Having never expected to get as far as I had, I expected to die in the blood bath, forgotten in an unfamiliar place. Never dwelling on who would miss me; I felt no need. My aunt was good people, taking me in the way she had done. Yet she didn't love me, nor did I her. There was a mutual agreement: as long as I earned enough to keep my stay, I was welcome under her roof. I was sure that in the eyes of her husband, there was now one less mouth to feed. One less child to wine, one less person to worry about caring for and losing to the reaping. After all, he cared little for me, one less person to lose.

With only three days of training, one couldn't go to waste. It was planning moves like playing chess, always considering the person in front of me as someone who considered me a threat, (even if nobody may have thought me one) who was after my king. The king being my life. My queen, my only real knowledge on anatomy, where to stab for real effect, that and the observations I was making of the other players.

I planned around the incompetencies, hoping my brain was enough of a resource to counteract having a mentor who didn't know his left from his rights most days, who had already given up on me and, as I later learnt, Brey, my district partner. I learnt that I had to think for myself. I looked at past games in my free time, and I knew the chances of survival were lost on me, but the hope of returning out of sheer stubbornness had started to grow like a wilted tree never giving up on life. I found that training was bearable, something not to look forward to, but to pay apt attention, the way Auntie always scolded me for not doing in class. So, I did.

I listened to the assigned trainers for each station and learned new skills. Held nearly every weapon with shaking hands, feeling them out. Learning how to strike, jab and stab woth different obstacles in my way, battling off the laughs from the trained tributes from 1,2 and 4. Their looks like they had already won the games, their sheer arrogance and distain for others life that was apart from their little deadly wannabe killer clique.

The knives felt the most at home in my hands, years of butchering meat for capital consumption made them feel right, the heavier ones made with outstanding quality for my hands to hold with assurance of knowledge; most like extensions of my arms. Having had basic training for my job lined up for the year after my 17th birthday made me knowledgeable in ways to hold them and areas to hit with them. As, after all, I was supposed to work in the slaughter house, killing the animals for the capital. Sometimes we were allowed the off cuts for free if nobody else claimed them or they were no use for the capital. I spent hours simply observing, learning their tricks of the other players, what moves they make how ruthless they were in the actions in assurance of knowing the best move to kill and maim. Learning where the trained tributes sent their knives, arrows and spears and what places they frequently hit. Knowing them to be the deadliest places on the human body. Their moves were calculated cold and efficient, mine in comparison were novice, the knives thrown were off target, the jabs made were never string enough to penetrate deep enough in the body to kill. I was beyond scared for the arena, watching them move with logical ruthlessness.

I remained perfectly unremarkable throughout the whole experience, rapidly going from station to station, trying to absorb everything like my life depended on it; just like the other tributes, I was swiftly attempting to think of anything that could save my life, I spent hours on the shelter and knot tying station, absorbing everything I could in the short amount of time the capital gave us to learn. I remember now that anger that consumed the hope that was growing in my core, dwindling it like water on a fire, I felt hopeless in my ability to consume the appropriate amount of knowledge in the limited amount of time.

Dinners were taken in silence, glares thrown arounf like knifes in the arena. Deadly in their accuracy and always hitting their target, in my case. James. He often arrived late, drunk and chatting happily as if I was not ready to walk breezily into my death. H e sat happy, ready to kill me with indifference, kill my district partner with lack of care. Happier to chat about Haymitch Abernathy, the drunk mentor from 12, and their latest chat than strategies of survival. Ways to help tributes, I blamed him for the lack of victors brought home, not understanding his actions as a way of protecting the tributes he views as his charge, letting them die instead of living the life of a sole victor. His selfishness was something I dodnt recognise then, I know now that it was a way to cope, yet I held it against him then, strongly with an iron grip I hated the man who sat opposite me at dinner, happily chatting away as my life hung on the balance. Literally.

I hated every minute in the capital, eating food that would have taken me days to prepare even just the raw ingredients for, many days after to cook it itself. Watching the parties of anticipation pass by me through the windows, parties about me and the 23 others who were set to be sent to the slaughter house in less than 5 days, yet excluded we sat apart. Just another way we were kept separated away from the upper-class citizens, those who hold themselves on a moral high ground while watching us lower people face our deaths. Prepare to die, have our name reduced to a bet, a score, a rating of our talents that limit us thoroughly.

No, I hated the capital. Still do. Thoroughly, with a being that sat at my core like a rotting tree, leaves on the floor like in autumn, falling graciously to the ground to rot. The beauty of the season I felt at home was once again ruined for me, the rotting infrastructure of the capital in its typical mix of colours was a mock of nature, like a rabbit pretending not to be prey, rot pretending to bloom, a juxtaposition of beauty to the world of nothingness.

The capital for me, was in one word decaying. Right to its core. Deep down the rot lies, never to be unearthed or removed. Watching the celebrations through that large window cemented my hate for the institutional ignorance and oblivion that they inhabited in their minds.

I left. Left dinner and never took it again after that night with them. I needn't have relationships this late woth my district partner, I had a day left of training. Then my score would be taken reducing e to a number out of 12. Never again I sat at that table. I took dinner in my room, spent time on the roof letting myself enjoy the breeze that reminded myself of home so deeply that it created a longing to return, just once. Even though I knew that option to be unavailable, I longed, needed to see the long flowing grass in the breeze, hear the cattle make their noise as they awoke. Missed the smell of the feed, missed hefting about sacks of feed over my shoulder, the physically exhausting quality of manual labour that was only acted in for achievement of money, livelihood.

The peace I earned on the roof was fast dissipating, I was followed every time I went, James or my district partner, Brey. Also seeking out any remembrance of home. Of peace before the games, or after for James. Everything I found was sullied by others. My peace removed, my knowledge shared, any advantage taken.

I was going to die, doe with hope in my soul and dread in my heart. It was a fact I believed so thoroughly it consumed my being a lot.