Break The Rules But Be Smart About It: The Second Quarter quell

chapter thirteen

Tick tick boom.

The knife's blades are long; they go pierce right through Ajax's throat, like a pair of needles. Two knives are going in two different directions... like an X.

Fauna died with a knife through her throat, and so did Ajax, little did it know.... Who's next?

My hand, shaking. My body, skating, my anxiety, trembling.

As I look at Ajax's dead body, I place it on the glass, and I frown. No, tears come out.

A sense of guilt runs through my body like a pinched nerve, my best friend.... dead. Ajax and I grew up together. We were brothers from other mothers. If you saw Ajax, well, I was bound to be on his side doing something obviously dumb.... We would play ball after school, and if one o bus kicked the ball too high, Ajax would be the one to attempt climbing the house and get most likely yelled at by gran.

His death makes me aggravated and pissed. I just stand there looking at him. I cannot pass through, so all I can do is look at his frail body on the ground and his dark eyes wide open but a puddle of blood surrounding him. The anthem plays, and the light shines Ajax's picture when he was roughly 26 pounds heavier and good looking, not the mutt that the capital had turned him into. I look up to the sky, and one tear falls from my left eye. Ajax is dead. I glance at Ajax for a final time and whisper,

"bye, stupid."

And leave. All I can think of is, "It's the left... are you are ajax.... I'll go left, you go right, simple.... Fine..." then BOOM!. The whole scene replays in my head, but I wish I could cry. I wish I could give ajax a goodbye he deserved, but I tolerate death as if we were as simple and ordinary as us humans breathing air or swallowing our spit. Gosh, I hate myself, I hate myself for allowing this... for being so vulnerable to the capitol. I torment myself because of it.

Did Ajax commit suicide?...... I ask myself. "No, he couldn't have," I say to myself as I make a left turn, But did he? In a way, he was a capital Mutt, probably hadn't eaten in days, likely dehydrated, and maybe just maybe if he had a sponsor, he probably got medicine or something stupid in that sense because eventually, we heal. But did He, Did Ajax commit suicide, or was it an honest mistake?. Was Ajax's death an honest mistake? Something the capitol pulled out to torture Maysillee...or me. The game-makers had to do. They just had to kill Ajax, they killed Ajax, but they leave an 8-year-old girl capital game. I don't wish death upon anybody, but if the ending comes down to a little girl and somebody else, the capitol is going to have a show. The capital might be saving Her for a show, or she just might be really good. But Ajax? Touring him like that? Ajax has always had a powerful presence....He would be the one when he would walk into training and make everyone's heads turn and make girls blush... but now I couldn't feel his presence. Moreover, a slug could feel his presence. I can't imagine it, but I was there, all weak and disorganized in his head, so lost and out of place...

I reach the end of the maze, still limping. Its wooden walls disappear as if they were never there, and there I am, where I began, in a dessert...the blazing hot wind smashes against my face, and boy, I didn't miss this part of the arena. The whole arena circles... I run down to the bottom, and with my index finger, I write on the hot sand a picture of what I think the arena looks like, but frankly, I don't know where each fazes ends and starts. I "reach the end," but I don't know where the future is. But wait. the end usually happens when something terrible has happened to me, something that Either scar me, mentally makes me weak or both of them combined. Either death, of someone or I get damaged physically. I lost Fauna. Therefore that counted in the Eden as my mental block, in the sand I got Burt, my physical block... the whole thing leads on and on and on, and on it, all piles against each other... all of it comes together. But what if I don't let that mental block or physical block affect me, break the rules but be smart about it. OF COURSE.