The Author Games: Literature

Katelyn 'Kate' Dodger's End

Katelyn Dodger was dead.

She had often wondered what dying felt like. At first, it was nothing but simple curiosity – a childlike fascination about what lay in the great beyond – but ever since her name had been called at the Reaping, gradually, it had turned into a common thought. What else could you expect an eighteen-year-old teenager to think? Her mind was constantly bombarded with questions about death, from when she first stepped off the pedestal to where she lay now. What would one see last before being swept away, across that infamous line separating the living from the dead? Would there be a guardian angel looking kindly over her shoulder, ready to take her by the hand? Would there be a bright, shining light at the end of the tunnel, to guide her way into paradise? Or was there no heaven and no hell, just nothing. Nothing waiting for her after she'd breathed her last breath. Nothing to look forward too, nothing to fear.

Perhaps that was her biggest fear – that her life would've meant nothing. That her death was simply the wheel turning, as it had been, since the beginning of time. Yet, now, as she lay underneath what could only be the rubble of her house, Katelyn Dodger was beginning to wonder if being nothing was truly that bad at all.

There was nothing but darkness around her – a suffocating blackness that choked the life out of every living, breathing thing. She could feel, but only because every nerve in her body had been sliced in two and set on fire. Every twitch, every shudder, every gargled attempt to speak sent coils of fire wrapping around her heart, burning it – burning it to the core. She'd experienced her own fair share of both physical and internal pain in The Hunger Games – from being cut to murdering her own mother – but this. This was something else. This was the type of pain that one could never recover from. This was the type of pain that made one want to scream out their agony, only to find that they can't. Oh, how badly Katelyn Dodger wanted to scream. How badly she wanted to be nothing, to fade into oblivion, for even if she would be wiped from existence, at least there would not be pain.

She was supposed to go down a fighter, but the truth is that she's no warrior.

Katelyn Dodger was just a girl.

A tired, broken girl.

A girl who wasn't going to win The Hunger Games, or go down fighting, after all.

She settled herself in a position where she could at least breathe without feeling like having been stabbed a thousand times in the lungs, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. After all, wasn't this the end? She would lie here and wait, with blood oozing out of her dust-coated skin, until death and his minions came to take her away. Time passed – a second, a minute, an hour – and when Katelyn Dodger finally felt a pair of arms heave her upwards and out of her confined cage of shattered concrete and wood, she wanted to check the non-existent watch on her wrist and say to the Grim Reaper himself, "You're late."

Weren't you supposed to take me eons ago?

But she didn't. She kept her eyes shut. There was someone murmuring, a great hubbub of mingled voices, and then her body being set on a hard, smooth surface. Her heartbeat began to quicken when someone began to tap on her shoulder, and then shaking it roughly. This couldn't be death, could it? This couldn't be the end.

So she opened her eyes, exposing her delicate pupils to the harsh glare of sunlight, and blinked as she struggled to sit up. There was a man wearing a robe of white – no, hang on, not a robe, a coat – who seemed to be trying to soothe her with words she did not understand. But Kate did not want to be soothed. No, instead, she let her eyes rake over what remained of a town – demolished buildings, smoking carts, a warped wheel belonging to a now-destroyed bicycle. And the bodies, lining up the charred sidewalks. Hundreds of them, it seemed, rows upon rows. The dusty sheets could hide their faces but not their blood – and it was through their blood did Katelyn Dodger notice something different about one of the corpses. A hand, poking out from underneath the covers. A girl's hand, delicate and smooth, skin pale as milk and blood a blinding scarlet.

Some spark of realization ignited inside of her. It was as if she knew who that hand belonged to, the name of the deceased. Despite the white-coat man's pleas for her to either sit or lie down, Kate pushed herself up, stumbling to her feet. Her muscles shrieked in agony and she collapsed on one knee, but it did not matter. The hand mattered. The hand and the sheets and the blood. Somehow she managed to make her way over to that particular body without anyone stopping her. Perhaps nobody was meant to. After all, she realized, for the first time since her house had been knocked out of the sky, she was still just another pawn in The Hunger Games.

The thought made her stop, but only for a second. This could be a simulation. This could be a dream. But there was a familiar sensation about the cadaver lying stiff and still beside her, and before she knew it, one shaking hand had reached up and flung the bloody sheet off of the body, before clasping over her mouth to suppress a scream.

Aspen Kinsley had always been a petite girl, but when her skin was ashen and shrunken against her bones, it made her look smaller than ever. Her eyes – once beautiful and bright, sharp and determined – were now near colorless and stared into nothing. Further examination of her corpse revealed a gash across her abdomen that would've no doubt taken her life immediately, and her left hand was still curled around a dagger that she had been holding. Her lips were chapped and still dripped blood. Her hair framed a halo around her head.

"Oh god," she stumbled back, a mixture of emotions churning inside of her – a ticking time bomb ready to explode. Dread settled in her heart, and immediately, she threw herself at the body next to Aspen, near ripping the sheet off of the still form of Esther Tehnos. Katelyn knew the girl only by name, never having interacted with her during the Games, but she knew well enough that this pale, withered, lifeless thing had a home that had been destroyed, just like hers. She had a life that had been ripped away, just like hers. She most likely had a family who prayed to anyone who would listen every day for her to return home, just like hers. She had a mother who would die for her, just like hers.

Oh my god, Mom.

Like with Aspen, she didn't even bother to cover up Esther's cut, mangled face. There was fear coursing through her veins now, not pain. She followed the sidewalk, half limping, half running, scanning for anything that reminded her of her family, her friends, and most of all, her mother. She saw the bloodstained face of Rosella Van Carter as her body was loaded into a cart, and the body of the District Thirteen girl whom Aspen had stuck her blade while they worked to work out the riddle. She saw all the dead faces and dead eyes of the tributes reaped into the Games – all the boys and girls whose mothers were currently constructing coffins for their children, planning their funerals. She saw all those who died and became nothing, until she came to an abrupt stop before a fresh body being laid out onto the sidewalk to rest, and this time, the coils of fire around her heart squeezed so tight that it burst into pieces.

Catherine Dodger had never looked so peaceful. Even in death there was a soft smile painted on her face, as if she had greeted her end with nothing but joy and serenity in her heart. Her eyes were closed, her hands neatly folded across her stomach, and one could almost mistake her for being asleep if nothing for the piece of shrapnel that poked out of the side of her neck. A moan tore itself out of her throat as she crawled closer, tears already streaking down her cheeks, cautiously pushing her mother's shoulders in a futile attempt to wake her up. "Mom," she choked out, shaking her shoulders, shaking her body, panic and disbelief washing over her so that her voice rose to a scream, "Mom!"

But there was no reply.

Last time, it had been different. Last time, it was the ring controlling her, and the rage that compelled her to kill Catherine Dodger was not her own. It had all been a blur of red and black, going by in a flash, but this time, there was nothing speeding up time. There was no ring influencing her mind. There was just her mother's body and the bleeding sky, for even the sunset appeared to have suffered in the wake of so many casualties. Colors of red, orange and gold painted the clouds, a rupture in heaven, a crack in the face of time and space. Because Catherine Dodger was not supposed to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.

"Mom," she said, and buried her face on Catherine Dodger's chest, letting her tears soak through the droplets of blood scattered on her shirt. "God, wake up, Mom."

The Gamemakers had scored their final victory.

Death had reaped again.

For it didn't matter if Katelyn Dodger reigned triumphant.

Because Katelyn Dodger was dead.