Inferno: A Hunger Games Fanfic

Chapter 28

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I'm too numb to do anything but stare at the tiny droplets of water, zig- zagging down the window. Lepus is gone.

He's gone.

It's impossible to comprehend, but it's true, it's real. He is dead. I will never again hear his voice, or watch him care for Emily. I try to believe that he's gone somewhere, perhaps to heaven or some kind of afterlife. That it isn't all over. But part of me knows that all that's left of him is a shell, and it's just behind the door I'm leaning on. Tears rush down my face, mimicing the rain the gamemakers so cruelly decided with hold until there was a fatality. I should get up. I should collect the water pouring from the sky. But I can't. I can't do anything but did here and mourn. I don't want to be here. I want it to end. I want to get out. My eyes flicker to the door Lepus lies behind and I'm tempted. To follow him. To end it.

Luckily, Emily bursts in at that moment.

"I heard..." she takes in my tear-marked face and looks at the locked door nearby, her worst fear confirmed, "I heard a cannon. Lepus. Lepus ." She breaks down sobbing by the door. I can't bear to see her in such pain. I stand up and sidle towards her, ready to comfort her, to console her with my words, but they die in my mouth. Instead I just hold her, and together we grieve.

A few minutes later, as the years begin to stop a little, I suggest we go outside and collect some water. Emily refuses to come at first, not wanting to leave Lepus, but I soon talk her round, telling her that Lepus would have died in vain if we didn't take this opportunity to collect water.

The water is cool and soft on my skin and it's nice on my eyes - which were burning from the crying. We hold out out water bottles, using our arms and anything as funnels. Soon we have several litres of water and have drunk some for ourselves.

Now I can think more clearly, I realise something. No hovercraft has picked Lepus up yet. This strikes me as odd until I realise that can't get into the house. Which means we'll have to move him ourself.

I leave Emily with the task of collecting flowers and go upstairs. I don't know what to expect. I can't work out what happened to him. It must have been painful, judging by the screams but, exactly what ended his life?

This question is answered as soon as I open the door. A strong acidic smell assaults my nose, so powerful I can taste it. I hear a dripping and discover the shower is still slightly on. I put a corner of a nearby, blood-soaked towel under it. It sizzles and a hole is burned through. Acid. Definitely. He managed to turn most of the shower of when he realised, but it wasn't quick enough. The acid tore his body and burnt him until it reached an organ or he lost too much blood or something, I suppose. I saw his body - now reduced to a bloody mess as I came in but couldn't bare to look properly. Now I do.

I gag as soon as I look. It's disgusting. Blood and flesh; still slightly bubbling in some places. Bone sticking out where all the skin and tissue was burnt away. Empty eye sockets and only small patches of hair. The faint hiss of the substance as it continues to eat away at his body. My eye sting from both the acid and the horror of seeing this.  I can taste the blood in my mouth. I know this image will be plastered in my nightmares for the rest of my life. But I have a job to do.

I rip a duvet cover from the next room and hurry back to the bathroom. Carefully avoiding the leaking shower i attempt to pick up Lepus and put him in the duvet. My hands slide in the gore and sting from the acid still on him. I heave and slide for ten minutes while attempting to move him, somehow miraculously missing the deathly trail of shower acid until I finally get him inside. My clothes and hands and face are covered in blood and blister a little from traces of acid. But the hardest part is over.

With barely a glance a the the duvet and close the bathroom door. I don't want Emily to see. I don't doubt that she heard the screams but this, it would be too much. I call her up to help me move Lepus and a dozen minutes later he's out in the rain, for the last time. Emily and I throw petals onto his poor substitute of a coffin and with tears running down our face we say goodbye.

Then holding hands we walk away, and the hovercraft ensures he's truly away and out of the arena. We walk to the house, each hoping that our escape from this hell will happen while we are still breathing. And perhaps it will. There are only 7 of us left.

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