Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 1 ~ Imogen's Glass World (IX)

What happens when the world goes dark? There's no light.

What happens when everyone is shooed away, corralled into cells for the night? It gets lonely.

What happens when you're forced to leave everything you love behind? You get desperate.

The White Rabbit should really stuff that pocket-watch of his under a pillow before I find him, because I'm getting desperate to snatch it up and smash it against these walls. It's been precisely four hours, three minutes, and thirty-four seconds since the Capitol dismissed us to rest, and that clock - the only reason I know how long I've been here - has kept me awake the entire time.

It's too dark to see the clock, of course. The incessant ticking has been filling my brain, pounding against my skull, a painful reminder of where I am, the situation that awaits me, and how impatient I can get.

Impatience drives people crazy at some point or another. Take a look at prisoners, at people locked up in asylums. Really, institutions like that only make things worse. And as I lay here, all I can think is, How am I not in an institution already? I've been told more than once I belong there...I think. Conversations are hazy, always have been, always will be. Not that I'm complaining. Add dwelling to the impatience, and you've got yourself one dangerous concoction.

I take a look around, eyes burning holes into the void that surrounds me. And then I laugh. Because this room is a cell without bars, a padded room with nothing stopping me from bashing my head against the wall. Ah, now there's an idea, hot-shot. The sudden idea is almost enough to pull me out of the sheets so I can see if it'd actually work. Almost. Something tells me I wouldn't die and royally fuck up the games, but just end up with a bloody face and awful concussion. How embarrassing would it be to pass out before the timer went off?

I'm not too fond of blowing up, anyway. But is anyone?

A soft chuckle escapes me, but it's cut short when a flash of light erupts in the room. I don't scream, but the sheets find themselves being choked out by my desperate hands. If I jinxed this, if I'm actually gonna blow up, I'm so gonna possess whoever set this up.  

And then, as fast as it appears, it's gone, and I'm left to wallow in the darkness again.

I'm smart enough to know it's not a trick of the light. Still, I wave it off as a move meant to rile me up. That, or the lights overhead are acting up and I might very well explode. Whatever. I'm too tired to give a fuck. Once I roll to my side, comfort settles in. For the first time, sleep is a possibility. Pillows engulf my face in softness, blankets fit snug around my body, and finally, finally, my eyes drift to a close. The room is perfectly silent, not a sound to disrupt this moment of drifting peace.

Ten seconds later it finally processes that it is silent and the thing that's kept me awake finally shut up.

The ticking stopped, and now I'm wide awake.

Another flash of light streaks across the room, this time twice consecutively like Morse Code reduced to light. Dot dot. Any dashes?

I rip the covers off my legs and fling the sheets to the floor in my haste to sit up. Silence is water, and it fills the gap in the room in a flood. I'm fully capable of counting on my own, so that's what I do. One, two, buckle my shoe, three, four -

Another flash of light. It lasts longer this time, trailing the floor and landing on the wall to the right of the bed. Whoever's messing around, I'm gonna find them, and my foot is going right up their ass for this. It's not a threat. It's a fact. Might as well engrave it in stone. Yeah, this pricks tombstone.