² MANIA ─ catching fire

[ 001 ] old wounds

SOME MONTHS AGO

UNDER THE SEARING PRESS OF THE HARSH, white fluorescent lighting, Alecto stood in the centre of the combat ring, burning arms guarding her face from an invisible opponent, pounding into the punching bag.

Sweat glistened on her skin, pouring down her temples in rivers from the exertion as her fists land powerful blows on the punching bag hanging from the ceiling on a single chain. It rattles and echoes ominously throughout the space like shackles being dragged over concrete as each vehement sucker-punch sends a shockwave rippling through the bag. Even though the whole interior of the training facility is air-conditioned, the nefarious humidity still clings to her like gossamer, smothering her pores. Renegade strands of her white-blonde hair stuck to her face, escaped from the tight ponytail pulling at the back of her head. The dirt-streaked strips of white fabric wrapped around her wrists and hands were stained with patches of her own blood around the knuckles.

In the first week after winning the Hunger Games, her father had converted the basement of his new house into a training room. He'd once told her it was just to keep himself fit, so he wouldn't die early from letting himself go too much. But Alecto knew that wasn't true. She could hear him sometimes, in the middle of the night, fists pounding against the punching bag, rattling on its chain like a bag of coins being violently shaken. He'd built this makeshift training room to keep himself busy. Because the feeling of fighting an invisible opponent, of punching and punching until your knuckles bled and the screaming pain of burning muscles was the only thing you could feel, of clocking into a perpetual motion machine, letting instinct take over so your body could operate on muscle memory, meant you could shut off your thoughts for however long you could go.

And shutting off your thoughts meant that the nightmares, all of the things you'd rather leave behind, all the fragmented memories littering the floor of your mind like broken glass you couldn't pick up or risk slicing your palms open on—for that moment, you could sweep all of that under the rug. Nobody comes back from the Games whole. They did what they could to avoid feeling the weight of the missing pieces. They did what they could to get by. To move on.

The pain was familiar. Alecto appreciated familiarity. Too much had changed too fast, the world kept spinning, time kept running, the rug beneath her feet kept slipping. So she kept hitting. Kept moving. Punching and punching, gritted teeth grinding together, blood roaring in her ears, slamming her knee against an invisible target, a warrior with no war.

The punching bag twisted and jerked wildly, its assailant quick as a bullet and twice as lethal. Her continuous assault drove dust particles out from the straining seams in tiny bursts of pyroclastic flow. Anyone could tell that this bag wouldn't be able to last the night. Everything was built to break eventually. Her energy is waning slowly, but she wills herself to keep moving. To squash the nightmares storm-clouding in her head. To cut a clear path through her mind so she can focus on now. A strange repose in this electrostatic silence spread through her veins in the rhythmic thud thud thud of her fists slamming angrily against the bag.

When her father descended the steps into the basement, he'd caught her pounding into the punching bag with her fists and elbows and knees with a savage ferocity. Her teeth were bared and her hair was plastered to her face like she was ready to murder someone.

"Come upstairs," her father said, bracing his palms against the railing as he gazed down at his daughter. Pausing her assault, Alecto read the stoic tension to his pursed lips. Solemn-eyed and tight-lipped, he cocked his head towards the door of the basement. "They're reading the card for this year's Quarter Quell."

Alecto nodded, but she didn't move. Didn't take her eyes off her father, who looked more exhausted each day that went by, who aged ten years with every blink, who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders just like his namesake. Even when the storm was over, the shadows in his face wouldn't leave. The deal with the Games was this: they'd be safe, they wouldn't have to suffer anymore, they'd be free. Of course, it didn't pan out like that. Truth was, they were bound in more shackles than they were before their victory days. It killed her that those afflictions weren't physical, manifested in something corporeal, something she could cut to ribbons or put bulletholes through to solve the problem once and for all. No, this was something insidious that resided in the both of them. Manifested in nightmares and memories and a paranoia that won't go away.