𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games Sequel

three

☆ CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT! ☆
028. the world from a box

|| SUCKER FOR PAIN ||
❝I torture you, take
my hand through the
flames, I torture you,
I'm a slave to your
games.❞

➳➳

THE SCREAMS I heard from my room were defined, like shadows that collected faces the more they hovered by the light.

It was strange how I could pin each scream, each pitch, to someone that I knew within seconds of the sound ringing out within my small cage. I could train the syllables to the people who bothered to pronounce the full words, and those that couldn't even finish a single shout when they were pushed so far it sounded like they were about to crack. I could tell how close they became by the length of the drawl and the volume, and I could tell by the exhaustion that no matter who it was that was screaming, they weren't saying a word.

I wasn't sure what was worse; the pain and torture that occurred just outside while I sat completely healed, or the knowledge that it was me that brought them here.

Or maybe, it was neither.

Perhaps the very worst part was that I knew it was coming. With each set of footsteps, and each turning of a door I withdrew into myself until there was nothing left but the voices that I foolishly thought had gone- until my cage was filled with more people then I had ever had around me in my life. And then, as the footsteps started again and another whisper rounded the corner, yet another would appear before I could crawl up a little bit more- only they kept getting worse.

It was friends to begin with. Like they were there to leave traces of hope in the sounds of people actually moving around without having to exclaim a death, or about how little they poked me with a pile full of accusations I could never match. They sent me smiles, occasionally in the darkest hours I felt them braiding my hair until I glanced around and saw the scrawny straws that replaced my hair that once bounced with volume. But when it happened next, I would believe it over and over without fail.

Then, Carmella and Evelyn turned into allies, and after that people that weren't even dead.

And then, when I couldn't even tell if it was the night or morning when the boots scratched the floor- enemy's taunted my very existence.

This time, and I heard two pairs follow up the hallway it was Atlas that stepped into the light. Even after all this time, his green eyes and tanned skin was in the highest definition my eyes could muster, and the slit that should of killed him was instead just one large white scar running across a face and neck that should of been lifeless. He smiled with teeth whiter than his skin should of been, and he laughed with a harshness I didn't think existed.