Author Games: Panem Entangled

When Stabbed By A Knife | Entries 1-6

District 1 Male: Morgan Ruidhir

Morgan could count the moments in which he had ever felt fear on one hand. Fear came rarely to him, as rarely as illness and unhappiness did in his golden world. Some would believe him lucky, sheltered from the trials of the world in such a way. But perhaps a lack of fear was part of his nature—the more joyfully he tackled the challenges that faced him, and the brighter he shone, the more untouched by shadow he would become.

But he had felt fear, a few times. He remembered his sister Junice plummeting from the boughs of an apple tree years ago, when he and Junice had been eight and seven respectively. From across five flowerbeds of the community garden, Morgan had spotted that tiny silhouette in the corner of his vision, framed by the yellow light of morning as it had fallen. In a fraction of an instant, Morgan had been seized by panic. It had stiffened his limbs, sent ice through his veins, clouded his sight; it had choked him, and he had been unable to breathe. He couldn't even cross the garden to catch Junice, or fail to catch Junice, or tend to her injuries as soon as she received them. He could only stand on a plot of earth fifty feet away, staring at that small spot in the air where Junice's silhouette had blocked out the sky.

When Morgan was afraid, he was consumed. This was the tradeoff for feeling fear so rarely—it would never come to him meekly, mollified by the optimism and good sense he normally harbored. When fear came to Morgan, it came to him as terror, and it destroyed him every time.

Standing in his transport tube beneath the Arena, Morgan was not afraid yet. He was nervous, certainly; nerves had always manifested as a part of his restless energy, more eagerness than trepidation. Today, the nerves sparked in Morgan's hands and feet, blindly urging him to run and fight. But there was nowhere to run inside of the tube, and the only person Morgan could fight was his own reflection in the fiberglass walls. Instead, he stood obediently and watched as the transport tube door slid shut in front of him.

He was sealed inside the tube now. From the preparation room, his stylist, an orange-haired, strong-chinned woman named Praxis, smiled emptily at Morgan and waggled her fingers in a sort-of-wave. Though he'd spent days steeped in Capitol culture, the absence of any perceivable energy in Capitol citizens still disoriented Morgan. Looking at Praxis now, he was reminded of someone he'd known back in One, a young woman who had worked behind the counter of a pastry shop. The pastry woman had looked almost exactly like Praxis (a little less orange, maybe), but she'd given off an energy. Talking to her had felt dreamy, ethereal, like the melting of candy floss in one's mouth. Conversely, talking to Praxis felt like talking to empty space. She simpered and smiled and flitted about the room like an exaggeration of a person, but Morgan felt nothing from her. The sensation was dizzying and unpleasant.

Even more dizzying was the sudden jolt under Morgan's feet, the accompanying whirring and movement upward. He was rising now, and the platform on which he stood was being propelled into the tube. Praxis was waving from the preparation room, but all of it—the little gray room, Praxis and her orange beehive hair, the last vestige of the Capitol—was gone in the span of a few seconds. Then there was only metal and darkness.

Morgan's nerves had steadily grown from the moment he'd entered the tube, and now they buzzed in his limbs with an electric power. Like the whirring machinery powering the transport tube, his nerves were struggling to drive him forward. He desperately needed to do something. Fast-paced scenes from the training center, both the one in the Capitol and the larger facility back home, flooded his mind; this was what his body wanted him to do, fight just as he'd practiced. Muscle memory whispered the proper sequences in the back of his mind—duck from the punches, steal their balance, knock them out—but the time hadn't come for that yet. He would do all those things, but he needed to wait.