Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 7 ♢ What's Done is Done (KE)

THE HANGING TREE GAMES: REVISITED - SEMIFINALS

Kassia had never minded the sight of body laying small and fractured beneath her feet. It'd been conditioned by her training peers, little slideshow clips of the dead and the bloody; by clip number one, she'd stared at the ceiling of her room all night, restless, but by the fiftieth, she could easily glance at the sight of bone protruding from flesh without flinching. Perhaps that's what made this whole ordeal easier. Perhaps that's why volunteering had been anticipated and cheered for. Cosima'd always been better at survival skills, but she couldn't stand the sight of blood, which took her out of the running and made room for the one and only.

Needless to say, it had become an emotionless aspect of the games.

And yet here she stood, towering and seething with feeling. It was painful and harsh, ducking behind ribs, tying up lungs, pulling muscles tight. And it beat, too, it beat a thunderous rage against the chambers of her heart as she stood there sucking in, sucking out, and looking down.

Lip twitch, finger itch-

A knife lifted from its place on the belt and failed to glisten. It reflected nothing - not Kassia's flushed face, not the bottom of the dry pool. Nothing. She knew only what she felt: anger and a pulsing ache at the base of her scalp. There were ghost hands tugging and pulling at the strands. It was a disgusting phantom yank.

Nose scrunch, bone crunch-

She became her own phantom, grabbing up a chunk of hair and bringing the knife to it. How dare he touch me? They connected and with a stinging stretch of hair and skin, she began to saw through, no reluctance in aggressively hacking away. How dare he lie? It took quite a while, but eventually an extensive lock of blonde fell to the concrete, and from there, satisfaction rose. How dare he?

The knife rose a second time, ready to work at another thick chunk, but a voice thundered in, footsteps echoing - a call of "what the hell, Kass?!" that went ignored with a narrowing of her brow.

But Aeneas'd crossed the delicate distance they had, and before she could saw off another curl he took up the wrist holding the blade, a tight squeeze of palm on arm that was meant to shake her out of this funk, but didn't. She knew very little of her own reaction aside from the fact that she struggled, that he grabbed up her other wrist, and that she screamed against too tight a hold. It was pain of a different kind; exterior and deep, running red.

Eye flick, blood thick-

The knife slipped and clattered into the bottom of the pool, sliding to rest beside Demoniaco. Usually, Kassia'd throw a fit over the loss of a weapon, but she didn't even care; instead, she stumbled off to collapse backwards into a poolside chair to watch red spill and accentuate white, like rubies on fogged crystal.

Energy and adrenaline fled the second her rear settled on plastic; there wasn't any room for anger, not anymore, only the crushing weight of exhaustion and flip-flops of mild and severe stinging. Hell, she couldn't even be pissed at Aeneas for literally semi-fighting her. And

And we bleed, bleed, bleed, bleed.

"Annie, this doesn't look good." The gash felt deep - like it'd scraped bone - and the flesh appeared upturned, as though it might fall out of her skin any second. Nausea came, went. "Not good at all."

Too occupied was she with the coloration of crimson on a weak pallor that Aeneas's second blanch of the morning went unnoticed, the quick parting of his lips as he saw injury fall apart. Detachment swirled and sleep seduced but never sat down for a drink - no, I insist, talk with me!