When Devil Goats Attack [A/S/D/E vs. 3 Hircusxes]

All alone
Even when I was a child
I've always known
There was something
To be frightened of

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Once, in a chemical haze, I dreamt there were canyons in my hands, lifelines carved into my palms as deep as anything. That day, I almost believed in myself; it takes something more than an architect to create phenomena like that. Staring cautiously at the voids, the only thing that saved me from falling endlessly into the dark of them was the decision to go around, because while they were deep, they were not wide, and that made them a certain kind of easy to navigate. I didn't know then just how short they were or maybe I'd have taken the opportunity to lose myself in them before now.

The irony isn't lost on me, how the end of my life is also the beginning. For years I've lived for the sake of my sister, going through the motions of a human being — eating just enough to stay alive, pretending to sleep, feigning consciousness as I swallowed pill after pill to trick my mind into something almost like thinking — in an effort to help her life become different, better than mine. I can't recall one time I ever considered what I wished for myself, the kinds of moments and events I wanted to fill my days with. There were the cravings of addiction, of course, but that's a different kind of wanting; those are the greedy demands of an insatiable parasite residing within your veins, an otherness that turns violently abusive when ignored.

This is different: a realization, a revelation, a reinvention. Calliope is so far away that even my memories find it difficult to see her. I can't live for something that isn't there, although I've certainly tried. With no drugs to lose myself in and no family to support, the only thing I have left in this arena is my shell of a body. It could have been so easy to stop there, to accept that I'd lost everything just by being here and that I had nothing left to live for — easy if everyone around me had also accepted my flippant attitude toward existence, that I was a long lost cause without hope of redemption. Instead I was confronted with anger, repercussions for my behavior (or lack thereof), and expectations that seemed to imply that yes, Aesop Bloom, you are a goddamn human being and you better start acting like it while you still can.

Denver's lecture after the Bloodbath, that perpetual judgment in Mace's eyes, the way Alexander's silent efficiency acts as an example to be followed, Sundra's slap that did far more than a crowbar ever could — no one ever bothered before. You don't waste effort on a lost cause; you brush them off and maybe even give them a sigh if you're feeling generous that day. I'm not sure what I did to be worthy of things like emotion and acknowledgment, but I'll spend the rest of my life figuring it out. Now that I've discovered I'm worth something to other people, it has started me wondering what I'm worth to myself. I'm going to die, I know this with the only certainty I've got left in me, but I have seconds and minutes remaining to live, maybe even hours or days. No matter how I break it down, I still have a little bit of the same thing: Time.

And I could see it coming
From the edge of the room
Creeping in the streetlight
Holding my hand in the pale gloom
Can you see it coming now?

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Sundra's hand is solid and undeniable in my own. How I've managed to literally hold onto a hallucination is beyond me — it's not unusual for my imagination to creep in on reality, but this is all kinds of backwards. I'm trying not to over-think it, worried that the wrong thought could be enough to shake the one that's keeping her here. It's a precarious balance, like the weight of objects thrown in the air while juggling so they'll fall back into your hands just right, the kind of delicate chain reaction that you have to wield with a sixth sense because if you tend it too closely, your own paranoia will set everything off. Still, even if I can redirect my conscious thoughts, my subconscious is tugging at tendons and bones, attempting to grip her hand so tightly that the lifelines across my palm might merge with hers and allow us enough to live a lifetime together, instead of two fragments cut short. My belief in fate doesn't stretch so far as to justify the kind of deaths that have been laid out for Sundra and I, for my blood brothers, for any of the twenty-three violent ends playing out in this place. We deserve more, all of us, even if I never knew it before now.

No words pass between us as we walk, but there is an entire future happening in the space between Sundra and I's imaginations and in it all things are possible. We grow older with each step — hopefully not so old that she has grown wise enough to regret me, although that day seems inevitable either way — footprints recording our someday-histories across the snow, writing legends for children we will never have to remember us by. Our families must be watching us on television screens faraway, perplexed because they don't realize that in our minds the Districts — boundaries, divides, distance — have ceased to exist, that the Wies and Blooms are sharing one place and one time. Impossible is just a word, a slur of sound the same as any other. Today doesn't belong to it. Today belongs to us and we are tenacious time travelers, we have places to go and we're getting there now. Our parents might be disappointed that we're not slitting each other's throats, muttering that we don't know the first thing about love, and they're right. We never had the chance. This isn't love between us; this is life.

But this understanding was difficult enough to reach with each other, much less the rest of Panem. The words "I have fallen in life with Sundra Wie" wouldn't make any more sense to someone else than the thought that my fingers should be wrapped this tightly around her throat, not her hand, makes to me. Maybe impossibility does still hold some sway over me today in that respect, because for all the weapons within my rucksack, I'm not capable of using a one of them against her. In fact, I'm barely capable of using them at all, but I'm learning that expectations are powerful things that can spur my hands to do the unthinkable.

As if summoned by the thought, a trio of pale furred mutts seem to shimmer against the snow. Sundra breaks our bond to greet a girl who is little more than the vague blur of a memory to me — a flickering familiarity that never quite settles into focus — and I would stop her from letting go, stubbornly hold onto her until she was tugged back to me like the snap of an elastic band stretched too far, but the approaching mutts have reminded me what worries are. This awareness might be more dangerous than the white fox-goats themselves, as the reality of the situation sends my thoughts reeling and the carefully balanced weights of the imaginary world we had been creating are sent tumbling off-course. Our life is falling apart in the face of pending death and so my hand doesn't reach out after her, but for the switchblade in my rucksack, desperate with expectation. Quickly, I also pull the bow and arrows from my pack and toss them in her direction. They land at her toes in a moment of deja vu, but lack the showmanship and emotional grace of the water jug. This gift is not an offering left at the alter of humanity, but a prayer of the damned. I want to tell her to stay back, to run away, but the words won't come and I settle for hoping the implied distance of the weapon says it for me. The panic is clear in my eyes as I shake my head at her before turning to face our newfound opponents, switchblade clenched in my fist, pressing itself insistently into the lifelines of my palm.


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