Rotting wood }} Cait!Blitz

[k!ah]

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My life was something of a joke, really. It was something that was just a torment, a torture device at its finest. I often wandered why I continued on, why I didn't just… stop. But then I remembered that there was actually people out here who had it worse than me, believe it or not. A boo dying from cancer might not be the worst thing in this shit whole. I had no home, I lvdd on the streets and I was missing a good half of my leg because of cancer… But despite all that I knew that people had it worse out there… I knew that people who were younger than me… they were dying and there was nothing I could do about it.

Lexi had told me that I was to attend my appointment today, but fuck her, I didn't need the hospital to tell me that I was dying, I already knew. So instead of making that longer painful hobble to the hospital I grasped my cane tightly and wandered down an empty alley way, my mind racing over the times when I had been able to run down this very street, the times when the cancer had not eaten away at me, when I had been free almost, free from the grasp of death.

Sighing I push the memories to the back of my mind, why remember such beautiful times? Why remember times that I knew would never repeat. My face twists with disgust as I look down, my eyes seating for two feet, only finding one. My eyes run up the wooded cane that I had used for years, the cane that was frayed and slippered at the bottom. It was nothing special, it was just a scrape that I had found on the edge of the road.

My life was a joke, a joke that I was sick of laughing at.

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Augustus O'Sullivan

Rotting away from the inside out.

template by Anzie

[Cait]

D E C E M B E R .

My story is a sad excuse for a life.

I’ve always known that, each step I take another sentence scribbled into the tattered old book that is my novel. Each chapter is just as dismal as the last, and I look to the future chapters with nothing but dread. I already know things won’t be getting better.

The last traces of Winter were slowly disappearing from the streets of District 6, yet as I hobbled along, looking down at my feet, I noticed the discolouration running up my ankles, from my toes, symbolising that the suffering was not over just yet.

Walking gave me time to think. Time to reflect on a life not worth looking back on. But what else was there to occupy a dying child’s mind? Orphanages, filthy streets, crowded dinner tables with strangers who insisted I call them ‘family’ – that was the life I had known.

During the day, shadows that weren’t there followed me, and at night, the nightmares would ravage me and tear apart all signs of sanity. After the Reaping, things became worse. Much worse. And each night since, the image of a young blond girl closing her eyes one final time has been replayed, over and over and over, and all I can think is that it was me, it was me, I killed her…

Nobody cared about me.

They’d seen me hoisted onto a pedestal at the last Reaping, watched me cower with their greedy eyes, before I had fallen back into the shadows where I could not be seen anymore. Even now, the streets have been deserted, and once again, I am alone.

I almost miss the days in the orphanage. At least then I wasn’t constantly on my own. At least then there were people to look after me and make sure I was okay. At least then I had a reason to be happy.

A slight shuffling up ahead causes my ears to prick up curiously, but all I see is a shadowy figure hobbling down the street. As broken as me. But what did it matter? He would walk past without a second glance – like every other wretched soul who had passed me by.

Nobody cared about me. And I still couldn’t determine whether that was a good thing or not.

[k!ah]

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Should I laugh? Laugh at how pathetic I was? Boys my age wanted to be tough, to be strong to impress that girl that they had eyes on… I wanted to like that, I wanted to be able to break a brick with my hand or shoot a goal through that all basketball hoop. But I couldnt, I was too weak, to pathetic. No one wold ever look at me with those eyes that I desired so much. Eyes that were filled with love, with admiration- what was there to admire about me? I was rubbish, left to die on the streets covered in grime and dirt.

Only once had there been someone who looked at me with eyes of love, of admiration… but she was long gone now death taking her away before I even got the chance to tell her… to tell her that I loved her. I didn't want to be hurt like that again- but yet I still yearned to be close to someone. But never again would I allow myself to get close enough to anyone, I couldn't allow anyone to feel the slightest bit of anything towards me because I knew that I would just end up hurting them- like I was hurt that so many years ago.

Pathetic. Rubbish. Weak. Useless.

Thats what I told myself, because if I believed it I would want to be alone, let no one come near me. If I was weak, no one would need me. If I was pathetic no one would want me. If I was unless my life would be pointless.

I pul my gaze away from my cane and look down the street. Soot flew freely in the air making everything seem like you were looking though a dirty window. This was district 6. A place full of dirt, grime, pollution. It was cleaner in the center of the district, the place where the people who survived lived, but out here on the outskirts it was like a rubbish tip, a place for unwanted chemicals.


My eyes catch movement in the distance. I begin to shuffle forwards. Maybe I should avoid the person ahead, I would only get in there way… But the closer I get the more prominent the figure becomes. It was a girl, and I knew her- everyone would no her. It was the one who was saved. Here in District 6 not many people were saved from the games, but this girl was… she had gotten a second chance at life.

“how does it feel?”

My voice is nothing but a whisper on the wind.

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Augustus O'Sullivan

Rotting away from the inside out.

template by Anzie

[Cait]

D E C E M B E R .

I want to run. I want to turn around and run away from this street, from my misery – but most of all, from the boy approaching me. He doesn’t know me, and he won’t say anything as he walks past. Nobody ever did. But as I take another step, and he takes another step, and we become closer, his face is no longer shrouded in darkness and I am scared. I am scared, because I know he is different.

His face is gaunt, and the bags under his eyes tell a tale of woe and sadness – crippling unhappiness, perhaps even more so than mine. That, in itself, is terrifying.

A part of me sympathises with this figure who I barely know. I wish to take away his pain and suffering and the baggage he carries with him everywhere he goes – whatever it may be – so that he is no longer burdened. But there is another part of me that wishes to do the very same thing, but for a different reason entirely. I want to stop his pain, because pain is mine and should not belong to anyone else. I do not want to share, and the realisation grips me so tightly I feel like I am choking, a monster rising within and forming like a lump in the back of my throat.

And immediately, I falter. I shrink away, and I stop.

The wind howls in my ears as his words are carried along the breeze. I strain to listen, not wanting to take a step further, still deciding whether to keep walking or whether to turn and run far away.

I try to reply – ask him what he means, why he cares, why he has stolen the pain and suffering that should belong to me – but it is impossible. All I can muster is a hoarse croak.

Already, I feel myself slowly slipping away. Once again.

[k!ah]

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How did it feel? I knew how it felt. I was on my second chance. They had chopped off half my leg so that I could have my second chance at living, at breathing at making this world a place that I could call home. Home. I had no place I could call home, I was a wanderer in this district, Lexi was the only family I had left and yet how long had it been since I had seen her? Since she had come back to our alley way? She had promised me, promised to take care of me… she had made me make promises that I would go to my appointments… but how did she expect me to follow through when she couldn't even managed to tell me that she was ok, that she was alive, that she was well. She was the only one, the only one that had a place in my heart… but ever so slowly she was losing that place, losing my trust, my love.

I come to a stop, my foot and cane no longer shuffling along the ground. At first I couldn't bring myself to look at the girl, ashamed of the question that I had suddenly thrown at her. It had been wrong- but I wanted to know. Did she feel better than I did about a second chance? Did she take it for granted, want to keep on living? How did she feel?

I see her face twist almost as though she is trying to answer, but nothing but a crooked crock makes it from her lips. Should I feel sorry for her? Her face was sad, her eyes almost mirroring the pain and suffering in me. Should I feel anything for this girl? Cause I don't. I was as cold as stow, a wall between me and my heart. “How does it feel... to have a second chance?” I ask once again, this time my voice raising above the breeze. I wanted to know, I had to know- was she the same as me?

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Augustus O'Sullivan

Rotting away from the inside out.

template by Anzie

[Cait]

D E C E M B E R .

In front of me, the boy stops, and I am grateful. The distance between us is comfortable, but still unsettling. The tension pierces my heart and I struggle even more to breathe as my head becomes foggy and my eyes lose their focus.

But why?

Because he knows me.

Nobody ever saw me. Nobody ever knew me. Yet here we were – him trying to make conversation, me trying to stop myself from fleeing right there.

His voice raises an octave as he fights over the wind, and I hear him speak more words to me.

He infuriates me.

‘It wasn’t a second chance,’ I growl. ‘I wanted to go – dammit, I wanted to go! But I –’

But what?

Can you bring yourself to tell him why?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you were scared?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you aren’t enough?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go because you could never stand to disappoint a whole District, when it already kills you every day when you disappoint yourself?

Can you bring yourself to tell him that you didn’t go simply because you didn’t want to die?

I look down again, refusing to meet the stranger’s eyes. I am retreating back into my shell of quietness and innocence – forcing myself to become the December I once was. But the truth was, she wasn’t here anymore.

‘Horrible.’ It’s horrible.

If only I had the strength to make something out of my life. Perhaps then, it would be bearable.

[k!ah]

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I flinch, the growl that escapes the girls lips hurts. I hadn't meant her to get angry, I hadn't meant to intrude…. I had just wanted to know. She tells me that she had wanted to go, had she water t die? Had she wanted to take that chance in the games, take that chance to end her life- or was I reading this whole situation wrong. I look away from the girl, my eyes finding the ground. Maybe I should of kept on walking, I shouldn't have looked back…

“Horrible.”

The words catch my ears and my heart stops. Horrible. The word hit home. It was horrible, horrible for a worthless, piece of shit like myself. Horrible. That is exactly what my life was,t his second chance. I couldn't run, I could barrel all the distance of to town without feeling weak, faint. What was my point of breathing? I was a sick boy, one who was just and empty shell rotting from the inside out. I knew, I knew that the cancer than ha been dormant for a while now was alive- and it was not taking this chance for granted. It was eating way at me little by little, taking away everything that I was, and tuning me into nothing but a rotting meat sack.

“Horrible,” I repeat, my voice small. “Horrible is defiantly one way t describe it…”

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Augustus O'Sullivan

Rotting away from the inside out.

template by Anzie