Broken Pieces: Part 1

Chapter 9: Peeta's POV:

My head hurts all the time now, and I can't remember anything except the visions. It feels like bugs crawling through my head and it never goes away. I bang my head against the wall to make the pain go away a little. Johanna tries to talk to me, but I ignore her. My mind swarms with nightmares every night and day, but they are worse. SO much worse. I wake up screaming and thrashing every morning. It takes me hours to calm myself down. Each nightmare is basically the same though. I need to find her. She has done this to me. She has killed my family and everyone I love. Now I must kill her, even if it's the last thing I do. Guards come and beat me every day telling me this. I cry for someone to hear me, but no one comes. I have no visitors except President snow and the guards who beat these thoughts into my skull. The needles and pills are put in me every day during these meetings. Needles and pills....needles and pills....needles and pills. I live in a blur that never clears, a fog that never lifts. My mind is mush and my thoughts are fried. Every day I pray that death will take me, because I can't take this anymore....no more. Today, I look at the handle on the door and think it looks pretty high from the ground. I could get the rope off my hands, tie it around my neck and to the handle. A quick and easy death. It's so tempting and I take the bait. I drag myself over to the handle and begin to work my hands with the rope around my wrists. I manage to get enough rope off and free them. They have burn marks, cuts, scrapes, and bruises covering every inch of them. I tie a nose and slip the rope over my head, and take a deep breath. I push myself up and tie the other end of the rope to the handle. "One.." A voice that sounds nothing like my own escapes from my lips. It is a voice of a broken person. Raspy and tired. "Two..." I breathe. Suddenly, my headache clears for a moment. In that moment, I see a memory. Katniss and I are holding berries in our hands, nightlock I think. We are next to the shining cornucopia of the 74th hunger games. I reach out and caress her cheek and run my hand down her braid. "Together?" I ask. She looks at me and smiles. "Together." She replies. "One...two..." My headache returns and I'm back in my cell. I take the rope off my neck and rip it off the door handle. Collapsing onto the floor, I cry. I try to hold on to this memory for as long as possible, because I know it's real. I've been forced to forget how much I love her, and I hate myself for it. "I'm sorry Katniss...I'm so sorry..." I cry into my hands. My headache eventually wipes this memory away, turning it into something horrible again. I sit on the floor, forgetting why I was crying, and stand up. I have to kill....kill....Katniss. She killed my family and the ones that I love. She destroyed....everything that was mine. Now, I must make her pay.