The Fourth Annual Writer Games: Canon

The Quell | Males

District Two – Maur Verrill

There's a simplicity to death.

This Maur knows from the Peacekeeper--his eyes were a broken gray, bloodied by broken glass, and his skin was a ghastly white, burgundy painted almost beautifully across his neck. He was peaceful in death; Moire was too. The bones in his thigh had jutted out, a mess of burnt flesh and dried blood, and his fingers were still, the anxiety that had kept them awake having finally met its end. Though there are small, unique details associated with each of their deaths--the Peacekeeper's shattered helmet, Moire's carmine lips--it's all a simple affair, really: in death, there is nothing. Both Moire and the Peacekeeper are gone.

And Maur doesn't want to be gone.

The sky is sunlit, and though ribbons of orange and red dance so fiercely across it, it's still difficult to tell when it's day and when it's night. Time is difficult in the arena like that--the hours feel long, but the sky never seems to change and Maur doesn't know what day it is. The anthem has played once, Maur remembers, but he's certain that it's played a time or two when his eyes were closed. He'll never know the truth unless he leaves the arena with a real, working heart, beating fast and hard in time with the victory that he'll wear on his face, in his palms, and everywhere.

The pack Maur took off Moire's corpse doesn't have much. The knife is dulled and dusted in dirt and ash. There's a bit of food too, but what's food in the Hunger Games? Nothing.

Ash buries the brittle grass in a thick layer of a futile black, the water that fell with it in last night's rain having long since sunk into the dirt and the underground. Maur leans against ashen bark, wood scorched not once, but twice, by the recent fire. His back is tender, shoulders hunched together, as the skin above his spine stings at the kiss of the sulfur-touched air. It's red and hot, and Maur's too afraid to look--the fire got him good, he knows, and he'll wonder if that'll be the last thing to ever get him good like that.

A wince mars his face as he throws his shoulders back, skin squeezing painfully at his spine. His palms are clammy with sweat, and his skin is pale and mottled at his wrist. The uneven, irregular colors creep up his forearm to his elbow, and then to shoulder. It's spreading quickly, and Maur wonders if it's sickness. It's hard to breathe, and the ash-laden air hangs heavy in his lungs, sinking through his chest and pulling at his legs with a force as strong as gravity as his muscles fall prey to exhaustion. It's hard to think too--his throat is dry and burning and his head pounds fast and hard in time with pain's melody.

He reaches into his pack, fingers digging for the package of crackers that he got from Moire's corpse. The package is half open, the plastic torn messily and cracker crumbs have escaped, littering the inside of the pack. He slips a piece of the cracker out of the packet, salt and crumbs crumbling into his palm, but before he puts it into his mouth, he notices the black creeping from the sides of the cracker. It's moist to touch and Maur drops it, shock pulling his eyebrows upwards. The rest of the crackers are in a similar state--the wet, black substance has devoured the package in fungus or something more awful.

There's movement to his left, and as he turns, his eyes catch a bit of dark hair vanishing behind a tree. He exhales heavily, aching fingers dropping the crackers before reaching upwards to massage his forehead. The skin is hot there, too hot, and beads of sweat line his hairline, skin blistering with sunburn and something more--is it fever?

The brambles rustle, and Maur jerks his head to look. It's a boy caught in a mess of a shrub, dark-hair laden with ash and long, burn-filled legs caught in the brambles. Blood paints his face, trickling from a cut on his cheek; it flows from his chest, where a deep gash extends from his shoulder to his waist. The red dribbles down his clothes, his skin, his knife. It splashes on the dirt and ash, mixing with it until it's a dark red-brown. A six is stitched into his shoulder, but it's painted in watery ash and the fabric just below it has been torn and cut and wrecked until it is is a mess of dark threads. Fintan Bailey.