❝ it is sometimes an
appropriate response to
reality to go insane ❞
──⭒─⭑─⭒──
In which an innocent girl finds herself
trapped in an arena with monsters and
her only hope is to claw her way out.
──...
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𝕱or most people, they never had to face their fears. If you were scared of deep water, you simply did not enter the sea. If you were afraid of heights, then you did not go to high places. But, if you were afraid of death, then there was nothing that you could do.
Death was an inevitability, something that most of us had come to terms with long before we ever saw a human experience it.
When I was four, I had watched my father help a cow give birth, only to find out that the calf was a stillborn. I didn't remember much of it, just that the calf's large dark eyes had been staring unseeingly above it and that it's tongue lolled from it's mouth. When you worked with animals, this was something that you became used to swiftly.
I didn't see a human die until I turned eight. It had been one of the elders that had helped look after my mother when she was young. We had all stood around her bedside, watching as death hovered above her and waited to take her beyond. It was quick and simple. The elderly woman took a deep breath, and then there was nothing.
It was peaceful and I could not understand why people were so scared of death. It seemed soft and warm.
It wasn't until I was ten that I understood why people were scared of death. My parents had never told me, keeping the truth from me for as long as they could before I had to find out. I had watched with horror as children, mere children, beat each other to death with a variety of objects, trying to win a game.
It had come down to two careers, one from district two and another from district four. They'd fought and it looked like the girl was going to lose, until she dove into the water, clambered up beside the Cornucopia, threw her trident at the boy's chest and then beat him to death with a rock until the cannon went off.
I had felt sick, watching as the cameras zoomed in onto the sixteen year old's face as she let her head hang low.
It was only then that I truly began to understand the horrors that came with death, the fear of being picked to take part in a fight to the death with limited chances of success. I hadn't noticed that the event I was dragged to once a year, a few days after my birthday, was the same one that picked children to fight.
When I reached twelve years old, I was forced to stand with my classmates, waiting to hear who would be picked from the age groups to stand and represent their District. It was something that no one wished to happen to them, each person hoping that it would be passed off to the next person despite how guilty that made us feel.
Then, with each year that passed, we would sit and watch as people we knew were butchered in fairly horrific ways for the entertainment of the Capitol.
Every year, I had watched and prayed, hoping for it to never be me and so far, I had been lucky. My name had not been called, and as I entered my final year, I could only hope that this luck continued onwards. As soon as this fateful day was completed, I could relax until such a time as my own children were called forth to participate.
