Garden of Eden

Chapter 27

I wake up once but decide that it is still too early for my shift. Closing my eyes again, I allow myself to sleep some more.

Haymitch eventually wakes me and that is when I sit up, rubbing the sleep for my eyes.

Haymitch lies down and is soon sleeping. I turn my attention to the seemingly pitch black woods, drawing my knife and scanning the area.

Nothing to see, I soon let my mind wander. In doing so, I come to realise that we have been in the arena for fourteen days now. It has been exactly a fortnight ago since we first stepped foot into this poison paradise.

It has been a very long two weeks.

I begin to wonder how much longer we will be in the arena for, choosing not to dwell on the fact that four people will be dead before the fifth can escape.

As the night progresses, I alternate between sitting down and pacing about the area, even climbing trees to keep myself awake.

When it is light enough, I take out each letter from yesterday and reread them.

Dawn arrives and Haymitch wakes up to me still huddled over the letters.

"Don't dwell too much on those," he advises. "Remember what Konrad said."

"Right," I say, putting them away. "I was just using them to keep myself awake."

We decide to eat half the remaining boar meat and to have one drop biscuit each, seeing as how the meat alone won't be enough to sustain us. Lastly, we drink some more water before leaving.

While we walk, I take sips from a 600ml bottle, the other one having gone completely empty since breakfast.

As we trek through a clearing, we spot a brown rabbit of good size at the other end. I am almost sorry to see Haymitch's knife lodge itself unexpectedly in one of its eye, until I remember we are almost completely out of food.

We walk over to the corpse of the rabbit.

I think Haymitch is going to gut and skin the rabbit and so am completely caught off guard when he says that I should give it a go.

"You've seen me do it twice now," he is saying. "You should have a general idea of what to do."

"A rabbit is no different in structure and anatomy to a raccoon," he continues when he sees that I am about to protest. "You'll be fine."

And so with great reluctance, I begin by putting my hunting knife into the rabbit under Haymitch's watchful eyes.

I drag the knife down its soft body and cringe internally when blood starts pouring out.

Then I am gutting and disposing of the pieces we don't want under Haymitch's guidance.

Next I use the side of the opening as a starting point to skin the rabbit just as I saw Haymitch do with the raccoon. I have a little trouble with the head and skull for a while but fortunately he patiently guides me through that process as well.

Finally done with gutting and skinning, the last thing I do spilt the meat in half.

"How was that?" I ask, handing Haymitch a piece.

He takes and inspects it thoroughly.

And suddenly I'm back in shop class, presenting my teacher with the finished piece of work and waiting for him to inspect and give me a mark for it.

Haymitch looks up at me and nods in approval. "Not bad," he remarks.

I smile in relief.

Together, we get a small cooking fire started and are soon roasting our halves of the rabbit.