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It was late May. The flowers had started to bloom, the once decayed soil finally agreeing with our crops; that was the issue with District 12, it was dying.
The people, the architecture, the land, we are being killed. It's a laughable statement really. They are seen as gracious, for letting us live out our short spans of life, they could execute the lot of us on the spot.
Only they wouldn't.
We are needed, we are the sheep, sheared to clothe the greedy hand that feeds us. Feed is an exaggeration, everyone I know is starved. Some, those naive few, still believe in the myth of being saved, it's pathetic. Every dismal version of this tale ends the same; with us being slaughtered.
Man is a moral animal. You can persuade a human to commit any heinous act, only once you have convinced them it is moral. It's conditioning at its finest. People like us, we are eaten alive and assured that we do not bare teeth.
That is where they made their first mistake.
I bite.
They rob us of our lives, we could be human. Just the notion of that, it's absurd, they take our hearts and our humanity and expect us to just roll over and accept it. The most poignant part of it is that we have. We've accepted. We've died.
My name, the burden that trails behind me as I breathe, is in 38 times today. 12 more than last year; if there is a God, he must fucking hate children. I'd caught Tanzin Xanthus consoling her elder sister, the Xanthus family had always been on the lowest end of the economy, their parents had been "disposed" of years ago, a lack of compliance supposedly.
Mother called it a tragedy, the Xanthus' called it a target, intentional and precise. I suppose it was both. They were always a touch too risky, and went a bit too far. I can scarcely remember them now, my only recollection is a large deer, and lots of laughter.
Their demise left Rhoswen Xanthus with only one option, tesserae. It was her last year, she had turned 18 the previous October, this would be her last reaping. The last time she would wait in line and feel her blood run cold with dread, as our leery escort would drip their long, slender fingers into the god-fearing bowl and kill someone with the words excreted from their mouth.
I try not to remember the names.
I used to, they'd eat me alive, the tributes stolen from us, their deadened skin rotting, they are maggots inside me, burrowing away at my flesh, the envy of my defying life killing them more than the games ever did.
I don't think I've had a chance to be alive. Not yet, no, I imagine the sweet relief of death from this limbo of suffering will liberate me before anything changes. Rhoswen would agree, her name is in 24 more times than my own, the odds are in neither of our favours.
This year is different. We all knew, it had been announced publicly, the second Quarter Quell would be unlike the first. The first was 25 years ago, when my own mother was scarcely out of the reaping pool, where President Snow announced that each district would vote their tributes in. Sadistic freak.
