Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Final Note on Beckett Malen

AN ENDING BEFOREHAND:
"BECKETT MALEN WAS A HERO."

Innocence. It is the one thing we are all born with, the one thing that is possible to retain throughout the years. We can not keep our physical characteristics. We begin as a shriveled little prune, covered in blood, and we end as a shriveled slightly-larger prune, and if we're lucky, we don't end up covered in blood. I was not as lucky as those old shriveled up prunes.

But that's besides the point. Innocence. It can be tarnished, yes, like mine was. I've done things I'm not proud of. I've stolen, robbed others, I've beaten people black and blue. That was before I met Corradhin. Innocent Corradhin, untarnished by me. But then we did meet, and he became just as bad as I was. Some might say he became worse. Some might say he handed his innocence over to me. We had switched roles, Corradhin and I. Maybe if he hadn't have said anything when he saw me pickpocketing in the poorest part of the district, I would've kept my ways and he would've kept his own. He would remain innocent.

But we did meet, and there's nothing that can change that. And no matter how much I may regret befriending him, I can never say I didn't enjoy the time we spent together. I can scream and yell at the top of my lungs how much I hate him, how much I wish he'd just die, but they'd all be lies. Every single last one of them. And somewhere, in the deepest corner of my mind, the deepest trenches in my heart, I know that his would be lies, too. He's done it before, and believe me when I say it's scary. I've seen him at his darkest moments, in the darkest alley's, doing the darkest of deeds.

And I kept every single one of those deed's a secret. I never knew why I did until I came to the arena. I had developed an attachment, and unhealthy attachment, a destructive attachment.

I like to think it's because I stole his innocence away, just like I used to do on a day to day basis with material things. I had dug my claws into his chest and ripped it away from him, a pulsating, beating, tangible lump of innocence, dripping with the purest of liquids. And then, I consumed it, I deposited it inside me, hogged it all for myself.

I was selfish. Always have been. I've just gotten very good at hiding it, even hiding it from myself at times. But the simple fact would always come back, whether at night, during the day, anywhere.

I'm here to say that I'm done being selfish. I'm done stealing away innocence. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. It only takes one seemingly insignificant child to hand me the resolve to end the turmoil once and for all. But this child is anything but insignificant, he has a heart of gold, he still retains the pulsating innocence. Everywhere I've gone, each person I've seen, spoken to, known, have all been tarnished, stained. Not him. Not Wiley.

And that's exactly why I did what I did. It's exactly why I stare at him for the longest time from across the clearing, staring past all the names he'd marked in the snow. I've been conflicted for the longest time, bouncing back and forth between good and evil, life and death, sane and crazed. I've seen both. I've been good, I've been evil. I've lived, I've died. I've been completely sane, and I've gone utterly crazed.

In the moment I pull the blade from my pocket, I am neither good nor bad, dead nor alive, sane nor crazed. I am just me. Beckett Malen. The loving boy from District 4. The conflicted man from the Hunger Games.

Beckett Malen. Tarnished innocence. I've wasted Corradhin's gift to me. But I am still given the choice to do one last thing with it, so that I haven't made him that way in vain. I've fought for years before coming to this damned arena. I've fought with a constant urgency, pulling myself through trundles of fear, since arriving.