Death is Patient

All Must Die

Fedya wasn't one of the dead. I'd held my breath as the faces flashed past. Fourteen of us were dead already. I was lucky I was alive, yet I was already in the top ten. The little girl among the careers was dead. So was the twelve-year-old from the Lumber district. Alive were the careers, five of them, Fedya, Me, the girl from district seven, and both of the tributes from district eleven.

I spend all the energy I have left to block the door with as much heavy furniture as possible. I draw the curtains and place a vase I find precariously on the windowsill so it'll fall if someone tries to break in. I try the tap in the kitchen, stupidly hoping my luck will remain, but it doesn't make a sound. No water. I was starting to get really thirsty and hungry. I cross my legs and sit on the couch, quietly eating my nuts and raisins. It wasn't enough - it was far from enough, really, but it would have to do.

My ear hurt. I couldn't stop reaching up to touch it despite knowing I shouldn't. I'd looked at it in the mirror in the bathroom. The entire top part was missing and my face and neck were caked in blood. No wonder I couldn't think of much but the pain. It was crusted over and the skin around it was red. I try the tap in the bathroom, too, but it's as empty as the one in the kitchen. There's not much I can do but leave it be.

I lay down in the couch. I should catch some sleep - I'm exhausted - but the never-ending stream of adrenaline through my bloodstream, and the pain in my ear, travelling in lines down my neck, across my face, up over my scalp keeps me awake. It was throbbing, pulsating with my heartbeat.

Once I'd laid there for a while, a beep wakes me up with start.

I look around wildly, but no one is in the room with me. The beep continues. It's got a faint melody to it, but I can't place where it's coming from. I scan the room. The TV isn't on. There, in the corner of my field of vision, blinks a light. Behind the bars of the ventilation I'd hidden in earlier.

I approach carefully, getting up onto the dresser beneath it to peek inside. There's a rectangular, long box inside it. It's beeping at me. I remove the grid and pick it up, getting down without using my hands to place the box on the dresser. It opens by itself with the sound of a tiny hydraulic press. Inside, a bottle of water and a little note. I unfold it.

Wash the wound

-Cecelia

I do as I'm told. As I wash my ear, still in pain, I bite down on my lip and try not to cry out at the pain. I send Cecelia a thankful thought, wondering where she is and what she's doing. Perhaps she's sat in front of the TV with Koltander, a protective hand placed on her stomach like she's imagining I'm the child she'll raise when it's older. It brings me some peace, thinking someone worries for me. I imagine Fedya hidden somewhere, thinking about me. I need to find him, but I don't know how. Has he found somewhere to hide? Has he killed anyone? Maybe one of us has a chance. I'll have to kill someone. To maximize his chances of survival. I don't want to, but it's the truth.

I think about the ventilator shaft and what a good hiding spot it'd been. They hadn't at all considered that I was there.

Maybe that was the key. I save some of the water for drinking, leaving my neck and shirt still caked in blood but my ear as clean as it can be, retreating quickly to the living room.

I watch the room from the door. Yes. I could set traps in here. One by the door, one in the middle of the living room, one by the window, one in the kitchen... There were lamps in the ceiling and old art on the walls I could use as anchor points. It could work.

As the plan took its shape in my head, I paced the room like a madwoman. I looked for anchor points, i checked the floor and the metal stakes in my backpack, how thick the rope was, how brittle the walls were. I imagined myself setting the trap. A trip wire along the ground, a rope closing around the feet of the intruder. A heavy object falling out of the window, my victim suddenly in the air. Yes.

Despite being tired and needing sleep, I get to work. I can sleep when I'm dead , which will be soon anyway. Instead I get to work setting my trap. Once it's done, the sun is already coming up. Or, well, at least the artificial sun in this arena seems to be deciding it to be morning. Exhausted, I sit down and stare at my creation. The trip wire by the floor is close to invisible thanks to the fishing wire I'd found at the bottom of the backpack, the rope that's meant to sweep the person off of their feet hidden just beneath the couch until it's its time. Another rope, hidden under the TV bench, to wrap around the victim's neck - not tight enough to kill, I don't think, but enough for them not to be able to move down to open the knot around their legs.

I've rigged another one in the window in case someone tries to climb inside. That one might just choke someone to death if they don't get themself out of it quick enough. I've rigged the rope and the trip wire so that if someone opens the window, the rope will pull down over their head, tugged downward by the heavy armchair, currently precariously balanced on its back legs, held up only by the rope.

I bite my tongue. I'd found a crowbar in the kitchen that hadn't been there before. Probably placed by someone outside the arena. I knew what it was there for. It wasn't meant to help me pry open any doors. I just wonder if I'll be able to use it as my current, malevolent, self-appointed gods intended.

I have to do it. If not for me, then to give Fedya the chance of surviving.

With the nuts I've eaten churning in my stomach, I make myself out through the door and down the stairs. Right on cue, I hear running footsteps down the street. As if my gods above knew what was happening. I imagine them, sitting in a big, stark white, oval room. In my mind all of them have sharply groomed beards and odd hair colours. They sit watching me and the other tributes with their lips pursed, nodding like they're thinking about something profound. How I should die, who should go where. They get to use their masterminds to concoct the most profound, evil creatures to rip me to shreds. They play with us down here like dolls in a dollhouse, destined to die some sort of vicious death, usually more bloody than the dolls'.

I snap out of it as the steps come closer and throw the door open. A couple hundred feet away the girl from district seven comes running. For a moment, it's unclear to me what she's running from, until I see the black shadows along the walls. For a moment, I know she realizes her odds are better if she comes to me than stays outside with them. She doesn't know about the traps. I feel my stomach wrench again, make eye contact with her, turn around and run.

It goes as planned. When I'm at the top of the stairs, I hear her slam the door shut. I realize I won't have time to hide in the ventilator shaft like I planned. The footsteps behind me are faster than I expected - she's tall, is she taking two steps at a time? The door slams open and I force myself into the corner. For a moment I'm unsure if I'm prey or predator. All I can hope is that the tripwire works. If it doesn't, I'll be dead.

I look into her eyes. She looks at me with some kind of hysteria in her eyes, the whites of them visible all around her irises. She's got crusted blood on the side of her head and is panting like she's in pain. She stares at me. I stare back. She doesn't look human to me. She moves jaggedly when she walks toward me, doesn't blink as she brandishes a knife. I imagine it plunging into the soft flesh of my stomach, turning, ripping my intestines apart, my liver from the wall of my abdomen.

She steps on the tripwire. I watch the trap I've made kick into gear - it only takes a few seconds. Her legs are pulled out from under her, the other rope snaps across her neck. She gasps and pulls at it.

I know what I have to do. My hand feels less than my own when I slowly wrap cold fingers around the handle of the crowbar that had shown up. The iron is cold against them, to the point where it feels hot. The girl doesn't look as unhinged anymore. Just terrified. She trashes and pulls at the ropes. I conjure Fedya's face before me. For him. I'll do it for him.

I swing as hard as I can. It's not hard. I'm not strong. She lets out a yelp, but she's not dead. I hit again, and again. And again.

It takes a long time. Minutes, hours maybe. I can't tell. She can't see or speak or smell but she's still alive when I'm too exhausted to continue. I lean on the crowbar, trying to catch my breath. My face is slick with something. Sweat, tears, I don't know. My body isn't my own anymore, now completely alien to me. Her whimpers of pain turn into gurgles. I imagine the gurgles are pleading with me to kill her. They taunt me. You've already been too weak to give her a clean death. Now you're too weak to even kill her. What's Fedya going to say when she kills him?

I lift the crowbar. It's covered in blood and strings of flesh. Between the prongs a tooth is lodged. I swing downward. I hear the cannon. I throw up on her corpse.