The Writer Games | Once In A Lifetime & World Edition

An Image Is Worth A Thousand Words: Perdu Pion

Filius extends his arms,  gesturing to the ornately guided frames behind him with open palms. The  tributes themselves are weary, tugging their sleeves to cover up cuts,  spewing with pus and embedded with infection; Brushing the charred dirt  from their forehead with an exasperated breath. We eye our competitors  in distrust, my eyes flit past every single one of them. Even Conner  leaning against my shoulder, standing warily on one leg.

Not Megan. She wasn't  there. She was in the sky, her synthetic smile beaming out of the  synthetic light onto the synthetic representation of our world; my home.  Teeming with the synthetic people showing off their synthetic face. All  to lock off what is inside. They all see what they want to see from  past knowledge or future dreams and ignore the tortures of today. Megan  was not always going to die, it wasn't inevitable. These games aren't  inevitable. It's just that nobody tries to stop it they see the gruesome  deaths on a screen and drown it down with a...

Blink.

As the group of  competitors slowly realized their unanimous vouch for tranquility, we  nervously turned away from each other's scabbards and turned towards the  pictures hung on the wall. One instantly stood out at each of us. Every  tribute stood frozen in their footsteps, mesmerized by the hypnotic  effect each work had on us.

I walk closer to mine,  my dirty fingernails tracing along the layers of sepia paint my eyes  flitting across the canvas. The pungent skunk of the stale paper clogged  my nose. I read the caption along the bottom "The End". The end of my  fear, my torture in these games, my life?

I look at the remains of  the back of my hand, comparing it to the grotesques fists lunging from  beneath the bed. My mouth creaks open, just enough to allow my wispy  mumbling into the cool air.

"Am I that? The monster or the man?"

With the dirt on my  finger I scrawl a question mark after "The End". The mud runs through  the paint but the grimy inquiry still stares back at me as if I was  supposed to answer it myself.

Is the monster  Agoraphobia, pulling me back into the darkness. Every time I try to walk  out in nags at my leg, keeping me inclosed. The transparent barrier  invading the door way, pleading at me not to go outside.

"Stay inside", it would  scream, sending my hands over my ears in attempt to subdue the  encompassing pain. And the light weaving through the screen door would  blur my vision and set bouts of flashes into my eyes. Blinding me just  as I was about to see. The wind howls into the house. My mouth instantly  parches like sandpaper as the breeze coats my tongue. Then the door  slams back shut, on it's own accord, encouraging my cowardice. The kids  gather round the spectacle.

Pointing.

Laughing.

All I can do is stare from the iron- barred window and watch.

Blinking.

They go and tell their friends, I try to tell my parents.

My mind reverts back to  the the work in front of me, the gothic style chilling my spine. A lone  tear curls around my nose before falling onto my shoe. The globule  shattered flinging pieces onto my leg and the bottom of my ragged pant  leg.

A clamor erupts beside  me attracting all eyes to the sound like a magnet. Aleksander's sweaty  hair is pressed against the wall and his fist is hanging through the  portrait of an empty carriage. What must have been his allies huddled  around him, putting a sturdy hand on his back. The rest of us just spare  up a fleeting glance of sympathy and turn back to our own problems.

I look back to the  caption and the crude, self-made question mark imposing on me. Now the  mud has dripped along the groves and looks more like an exclamation  point. The picture itself yells into my conscious screaming at me to do  something to take my own life and earn control of it because this is the  end!

I turn around and walk  past Filius then directly towards the door. Conner stumbles away from  his own picture and starts up to follow me, but gets caught up in the  stupor overtaking him.

I pass through the  doorway, ignoring the screams that never came, ignoring the eyes boring  into the back of my head and the hushed whispering gossip of the wind.  The sun sprouts out from the clouds and flashes into my eyes, when the  pain dulls a sudden clarity is added to the world. I can see every  particle that made up the universe. The everlasting universe! That I am a  part of and no walls are holding me in from the world and the horizon  goes forever and never closes in on me.

I could die; I am humiliating myself, but I don't care, I hope all the cameras are pointed at me.

"I don't care what you think of me! You will all be dead! You're synthetic! Fake! I will not bow down to you!"

I look at the clouds, my mouth strangling itself in a holler, my voice crackles as it screams and yearns for a breath.

I collapse to the  ground, crushing the grass beneath my heavy back, it feels so go to lay  down without a care. The rolling green hills remind me of home, a home I  haven't seen in a very long time. For years I shrouded my vision of the  wide wilderness with a blindfold.

Now, sitting in this synthetically perfect grass I feel like I am finally cured.

Maybe I am.

Blink.

When my eyes reopen I am  surprised to see Conner looking down at me, a smug grin ploying at his  lips. My eyes catch his fingers, flittering along the hilt of his sword,  threatening to unsheathe it.

"H-have you...come to  kill me?" I splutter the inquiry, barely more than a breath. "No; But I  could have, and so could have anyone else. Are you trying to get  yourself killed?"

I stand up, dusting of my pants and begin to walk away, "I'm not suicidal, I just wish I was never born; There's a difference!"