Mockingjay: Peeta's Story

Eight

Days pass, forming into lonely nights. Nightmares attack my mind violently each night. People, mostly doctors, come into my room every few hours or so to check on me, make sure I haven't gone completely mad. One of the dark days was different. 

Only two doctors come into my room, strapping me to a chair and turning the lights low. While they strap me, I feel a needle puncture my arm and memories of the Capitol flood my mind. As the memories start to cease, I notice a video beginning to play out on the wall in front of me. 

"Did I ever tell you about how I got Prim's goat?" Katniss. Me. In what seems to be.... a cave. The cave. The games. I feel my body start to shake at the sight of her, but then I feel a pinch and my body suddenly calms.

Katniss sits above me, telling me about how she sold some old locket of her mother's so she could get something for her sister's birthday. What rushes my mind is the idea of why she isn't killing me. Why hasn't she slit my throat yet? Why didn't I ever see this in the Capitol? The pinch in my arm reappears and I calm again.

Katniss continues with her story, not leaving anything out. She begins to describe the way the little thing looked and it appears in my mind. Small, half a shoulder mauled off, and white with black patches. Katniss doesn't forget to mention the pink ribbon she bought and tied around the goat's neck. 

Suddenly, the footage ends and I can feel everyone staring at me, the people in the room, and the ones behind the wall, all waiting for my reaction. I sit in silence for what seems like forever. 

Why was Katniss telling me about the goat? Was she just trying to distract me, so she could kill me off later? What did she get from telling me about the goat? 

"What happened to the goat?" I say. My voice is hoarse from my screaming. The man looks down at his clipboard, writing something down before facing me again.

"We don't know." They unstrap me, turn on the lights, and disappear out of the room.

I'm left alone for days, confusion and terror facing off against each other in my head. I feel the terror winning as I stand, clutching my head as flashes of memories attack my vision. The games. The goat. Katniss. The Capitol. Everything screams at me in my head. 

I can't hold it in anymore, so I let out a loud, hollow, rage-filled scream. My throat and lungs burn as the screams erupt from them. I don't care who hears them, I just need to let it out. I can't fight it anymore, not the memories, not the nightmares infused with terror that spurs just at the thought or mention of her, the Girl on Fire.

My knuckles are bloody and broken from slamming them in the walls around me and I feel my body shaking, not just the outer layer, but everything in between. Nothing makes sense anymore. It seems as if everyone and everything wants me dead; they all want me dead. What is real and what isn't conflict inside my head, like the color of the walls, or the memories of the arena. The goat Katniss gave her sister... I don't know if I've fallen in love with a monster, a mutt, or if that's what Snow wants me to think. Like he's trained me to think. He's trained me to be the monster, to hate myself.

I inch my way back to the bed against the wall, closing my eyes and listing the things I do know about myself.

My name is.. is Peeta, Peeta Mellark. I'm eighteen years old. My home is District 12. District 12 was destroyed. Destroyed by her. By the Mockingjay! 

"No, not by her. Not by Katniss, by Snow... By the Capitol." I say aloud to myself, shaking the fear out of my body and listing again. 

I was in the 74th and 75th Hunger Games. I won the 74th games with Katniss. I was supposed to die for her in the Quarter Quell. She tried to kill me. She wanted me dead. She was no better than the Monkeys who ripped the Morphlings' throat open!