𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄: 𝐓𝐈𝐄-𝐈𝐍𝐒 || Four Supplementary Stories

Eustace | 4

"And for our female tribute…"

Eustace barely even remembered climbing the stairs up to the stage in the deathly silence of the town square, as if the tightly packed audience had held its breath in unison, stealing the air from his own lungs. He barely remembered why he was standing next to the round, bubbly girl with the dyed pea-green skin as her squeaking voice boomed over the loudspeakers, already calling out the next name under an overcast sky which had been threatening rain since dawn.

"Jill Pole."

The words dropped like a stone into his gut.

No, this was all moving too fast. He hadn't even had time to hope for one foolish fraction of a second that it wasn't her.

Of course it was her.

A dozen bug-eyed cameras leered from every available vantage point, as if preparing to swoop down and gobble her straight out of the crowd the moment she showed herself.

But she stepped out timidly into the open path, and nothing moved.

No one moved.

Her face only flicked onto the massive screen across the square, brown eyes already beginning to well with huge, shining tears as she walked, stiff and stilted, up to the raised wooden platform.

"Come on up, dearie," cooed the intolerably magnified Kiki Maenad, "don't be shy."

The screen cut to a wide angle as Pole turned tremulously to face the square, and the Escort's chubby hands tugged her closer, squeezing her shoulders in commendation as the first tear fell.

“There, there, how very brave.”

The crowd let out its breath.

They were all safe for another year.

And then the whispering started, the low rush of unintelligible murmurs rippling over the sea of faces as they turned to each other or glanced sharply up at Eustace, his own paper-white face displayed on screen now as the entirety of his nervous system lit up at once, heart racing, shoulders stiff, fists clenched.

“Is that Harold Scrubb's son?” hissed someone in the row of folding chairs behind him, presumably one of the committee members or past victors seated at the back of the stage, but he barely heard it as his eyes fell on the Fourteens section.

Davy Ellis grinned in spiteful triumph, drawing a finger provocatively across his throat, and any fleeting hope that he might not have been chosen suddenly seemed idiotic beyond belief.

The moment he'd challenged that boy in the hallway was the moment he'd sealed his fate, whether he knew it then or not.

And yet he could only stand frozen, as if his skeleton had turned to steel and held him rigid like a puppet. As if his body and brain were acting entirely of their own accord, unable even to muster a glare in return as his pounding heart threatened to burst free of its cage, hatred and terror boiling silently like black bile in the back of his throat as the Escort's booming giggle cut through the suffocating atmosphere.

"Now, shake hands you two!"

He set his jaw and turned with every ounce of nerve-shattering effort to face Pole.

The one real person here.

Tears streamed silently down to her trembling chin, perfectly combed bangs framing her face like a china doll, shining and pink as the Escort stepped back to give them room.

He extended his hand first.

She avoided his eyes deliberately, but watched his hand for several moments before reluctantly, tremulously reaching out to meet it, clasping his long, knobby, calloused fingers in her own small, pale ones.