The Third Annual Writer's Game: Roots

Veni Vidi Vici | Leo Tolstoy

With a sigh, Leo Tolstoy traced a confusing pattern into the dust on the ground beneath him. He squinted in the sunlight that shone down and reflected off the solar panel fields of District Five, before edging back beneath the tree so that the meager cover of leaves could shield him. It had taken him many hours of aimless wandering in order to find a single solitary tree within District Five but Leo had been willing to spare the time – he had plenty of time for aimless wandering now.

Alone, he pulled his knees to his chest and looked out onto the area that he was expect to call home. The tree – his tree – was only a few metres from the fence that separated District Five from whatever waited for them outside of their border. Somehow, its seedling had managed to grow some distance away from others of its kind and it had manage to root in the rough ground of the industrial district.

Leo had never believed it was possible to feel an emotional connection to a plant, but each time he came to sit beside the tree he was beginning to feel more and more in touch with how it would feel. Rooted and therefore forever trapped in a place where he really did not belong, Leo had no idea how he was expected to grow. He felt constrained and trapped even though he had fought for a promise of freedom.

In Panem, freedom was only an illusion.

Leo had never felt free in District Five. Its endless factories were barely visible against the persistent grey sky, reminiscent of the dark metal bars on a cage. There was never a strain of birdsong to float along on the breeze, but rather the noises of machinery and metal upon metal. It was always cold, and it was always inescapable.

Except, Leo had managed to escape it for a handful of days. The memory was still fresh in his mind and refused to leave even if he had wished it to. He looked upon his time as a tribute with almost a fond sense of nostalgia, seeing it now as a time where he had been able to even taste the sense of being free to make a decision, to choose exactly how he wanted to spend his time. There was no factory to work in or reaping to attend, no endless daily routine that drowned out creativity in a roar of monotony.

He looked down at the nonsensical patterns he had traced in the dry dust beneath him, watching the slight breeze blur what he had created. Some of the lines formed images that were recognisable, such as the twisted and gnarled branches of an ancient tree or the beams of sun when they were strong enough to pierce through a thick ground. Others, however, required far more interpretation in order to try and work out their meanings – Leo stared at them until they made sense, the shapes blurring through his eyes into a picture that meant something to him.

There was a single straight line, meeting perpendicular with another before running off into a thick rectangle. For a long moment, it meant absolutely nothing other than being the reminder of Leo's absent-minded creativity when he was left alone with his thoughts. Then, it soon swam into a familiar shape: a sword.

Or, rather, a knife. The line representing the blade was too short to be a sword and Leo liked to think that he had finally learnt to distinguish the difference after spending so much time with each weapon. Even though a knife had been his weapon of choice, he had become fairly well acquainted with a sword in the final few moments of the Games.

Leo knew his way with a blade just as easily as he knew his own family – he could remember the exact weight in his hands as he clasped his fist around the cold wooden handle, or the way that it carved through the air before effortlessly slicing through flesh in order to inflict as much damage as possible. The blood would stain the weapon, but it was a small price to pay for the adrenaline and rush that came from a kill.

Blood would stain anything it touched with a permanent mark, impossible to remove with any amount of pressure or water. Leo swore that he could still see the crimson coating his pale hands even though it had been a long time since he had last seen blood spill over them.

It had been his own blood – maybe it just stained more.

The most recent moment in which Leo had seen the attractive ark of a weapon carving through the air had not been his own knife – he had never been that graceful with his weapon anyway, preferring to get the job done as violently as possible rather than focusing on the art – but instead had been a sword in the hands of another girl. He could not remember her face, but then it has been obscured in the mud and grime that came with such a long time locked with in the arena. In fact, Leo could not remember most of the time that he had spent in the final fight of those Games.

He could remember the pain. That was unforgettable.

It was like a feeling of burning, as if someone had taken the pure essence of fire and plunged it deep into your skin without even giving you chance to scream. The feeling of metal piercing your flesh was a sensation that Leo did not want repeated, but it was not as bad as he had expected it to be. Whenever he had killed someone, they had always screamed and kicked and thrashed as if they were feeling the most intense agony. For Leo, death had actually been quite peaceful. It had been interesting to experience life from the point of view of prey rather than as the predator.

He had not screamed, which was probably a fact that had shocked his murderer. He might even have smiled although he could not remember each tiny detail of those final moments. Leo could, however, picture the blue sky that had surrounded him, alongside the gentle whisper of wind through green leaves and the stretched shadows of trees that stood like soldiers. There was birdsong, the gentle whistling of a blackbird that hopped from branch to branch nearby and simply observed the action from a safe distance. There was even sunlight, warming and comforting on his skin even as it was slashed apart with a sharp blade.

Leo's memory of his death was filled with the things that he had missed from District Five, the smallest natural pleasures that you did not realise were being withheld until you spent some time surrounded by them. He had no regret over his own death, which was a pleasant surprise. Becoming a victor would have been a nice touch, but it felt almost like asking for too much after being given the chance to escape the dismal District Five for even just a few days. Leo was even sure that he would not have been welcomed back as warmly as he had been if he had come back alive, still stained with the blood of the innocent. He had enjoyed their deaths, but no one else seemed particularly enamored with it.

Instead, someone else would bear that guilt and those names. They would spend each night screaming from the nightmares, and then each day being faced with the cold glances of hatred which accompanied the looks given to someone who had become successful through the painful downfall of others. Leo felt no real remorse for what he had done but he had not grasped exactly how much it would grow, overwhelming him until it reached a day where he could take it no more. The burden of victor was not his to bear.

Instead, he had something else which was almost as painful. He had been released from the title of murderer, but forced back into the world that he had grown so desperate to escape. After death, he had been promised the idea of heaven but Leo believed he had already experienced that. There was something that he liked about the sensation of murder accompanied by sweet bird song, or pushing someone beneath the rapids in a river to the chorus of wind and insects buzzing around the damp air. For Leo, his idea of heaven was simply the arena.

Now, he was in District Five. He was surrounded by the grey factory buildings which had overtaken his childhood and overshadowed his future. He was forever blinded by the glinting of solar panels and deafened by the animalistic roar of old machinery. He was forever alone, misunderstood, forgotten and longing for just the simple wish of freedom, and he was stuck in that moment for the rest of time. He could only find solace in a single tree, a sapling that had grown the wrong side of the fence just like Leo.

This was truly hell.