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There was something serene about the way the glass glittered the tile floor. The lights caught off of the shards in just the right way, sending a kaleidoscope of noxious colors onto the walls. Blood ran freely from her knuckles, like thick scarlet ribbons snaking around her wrists. The air was filled with a silence that permeated her skin, saturating her in a calmness like the eye of a hurricane. Her hands were throbbing. Her flesh had been carved open by blades of silver.
Plume held her trembling fingers underneath the violent spray of the faucet for half an hour before the blood finally stopped flowing. The wounds had clotted, turning even more mangled and discolored than before. Some new ones peppered her skin, and some of the older ones had opened up.
She sat on the edge of her bed for a long while, waiting for tiredness to hit her. The room was freezing cold and the shutter of the air conditioner reminded her of the rattling of bones. The hair on her arms was sticking up on its end, but she couldn't tell if that was the cause of the frigid temperature or the process of ruminating on her impending demise. It seemed rather comedic in a way. The one thing that she was always terrified of happening (which would be the rebirthing of unearthly trauma, one that she relived every single night when the shadows got too close to her heart and the cold sunk too deep into her sinewed ligaments) was now coming back into effect. She was less of a human and more of a memory. She was forever trapped in the limbo between life and death, running sluggishly away from the serrated blades of her past that were sawing ever-closer to her pounding feet.
Figuring that she wasn't going to get any sleep that night, Plume let a breathy sigh escape her lips. She mustered up the courage to stand up from the plush bed, wrapping her pajamas closer to her small form. She hooked her fingers under her armpits in an attempt to generate warmth before exiting the room.
The train was as silent as the grave. The only lights guiding her passage to the living room were small, rectangular bulbs built into the ground on the side of the hallway. Her feet ached in protest against the abnormally freezing floorboards. Plume blew her hair out of her face as she sat down on the couch, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table.
At night, everything seemed much tamer. Right then, there were no cameras being shoved down her throat (at least that she was aware of) and she wasn't being bombarded with invasive questions from arrogant newscasters and escorts. Instead of noise, she was greeted by a blissful silence.
But silence also came with its curses. The more that she sat there, the more her mind began to speak to balance out the noise. Plume wrapped her body inward.
You will die, Plume. You've never been good enough. You only survived your Games because the adrenaline pushed you to do unspeakable crimes. You are no better than the Capitol people. You've killed for the sake of entertainment. And you know what you'll do in these Games? You'll tear down everybody you care about because you're selfish. You'd rather kill than be killed, and that shows how weak you are. You will kill Aries before he has the chance to kill you.
