dmitri kostas ; two ; 1st hunger games ; fin

dmitri kostas ; two ; 1st hunger games ; fin Aug 30, 2019 1:01:55 GMT -5

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Post by MATTIO on Aug 30, 2019 1:01:55 GMT -5

dmitri kostas

Friends always ask how you are holding up, if you are doing okay. The truth of the matter is that no one ever answers with sincerity. Life stories and ordeals that send the mind into chaos always seem to be locked up tight behind closed doors. People’s anger and emotion are cloaked with an effortless response: I’m holding up just fine. Yep, I’m doing alright.

But when confronted with a newly worded version, I gave a different response.

{“How can you be so happy?”}

“How can I what?”

{“Be so happy? You know, in times like this?”}

The rebellion, out of all of the districts, probably affected Two the least. There were some in Two who even sided with the Capitol as the few rebels morphed into armies overnight. Most people I’d talked to wanted to throw tables, start fires, and cause chaos. Tensions spread like fire, and most of my friends were highly flammable. And many of them paid the price.

“I’m not happy. I’m just content.”

I could never understand why everyone is so hellbent on a revolution in the streets. People are just going to die with a coin toss chance of actually seeing structural change for the districts. My family has worked around stone mining since I can remember. It might be tenuous, boring, or challenging, but at least it manages to get us through to the next day.

That’s what all of the people in the rebellion fail to understand. The routine is disrupted in a very risky way, and everyone is going to suffer for it. It’s like they thought that they could pull a rabbit out of a hat, but they got a whole heap of nothingness instead.

“Content enough.”

I cut ties with anyone who acted in the interest of the rebels. It was bound to happen. You know, the Capitol coming to the districts to put it down. If I stood by any of their sides, it might just get me shot by association. Deservedly so, too. Any chance that I was a threat, the Capitol probably would have shot me just to be safe. And I don’t blame them.

It’s challenging, trying to disappear from society, but when others are pissed and you are content, it is just best to stay away before you grow angry too. That’s what my family did. Mom, Dad, my brothers Nikolai and Nero. We stayed at home most of the time, only leaving the house if we desperately needed someone. If the rest of District Two forgot about us, odds were that the chaos when the Capitol came, they’d forget us too. The Kostas’s simply wanted to survive the inevitable destruction of the districts.

At first, all we wanted to do was survive. But soon we found out that trying to remain neutral wouldn’t work. It’s as if two massive armies are coming in from opposite ends, and they meet at your village. Collateral damage is bound to hurt you unless you give aid to a side.

Dad, kind and cautious with the soldiers from the Capitol, allowed some of them a place to stay in our home while the rebellion was being put out throughout the district. That was perhaps the time that I felt the safest. Soldiers, with big guns and batons, only a room away. I gave up my room for them and instead slept (or tried to sleep) with my younger brothers in their room. The chaos, as close as just across the street, was hard to escape or ignore. But I felt as if I had an army to protect me, my parents, and my brothers. While they were all fighting, and getting shot, we remained in our bubble.

Content, because when push comes to shove, being content can be just good enough.

The soldiers that the Capitol sent, although daunting, weren’t discrete. They came and went, fulfilling their duties against the rebellion. District Two’s rebellion cells weren’t nearly as large as the other districts so I’ve come to understand. While places like Thirteen and Eight and Eleven had a landslide of rebels in their midst, Two was less supportive. What we failed to show in number, though, Two made up for with cut-throat fighters. And those fighters weren’t too fond of residents in Two trying to play both sides.

From what I understand, a few of the rebels were watching our home. They watched as my father unlocked the door for the soldiers, letting them come and go as they pleased. Harboring soldiers from the Capitol was a crime by their standards, and it wouldn’t go unpunished

I was teaching little Niko a trick to tying his own shoe in the upstairs bedroom when the window from the kitchen shattered. And screams. First Dad, then Mom. Niko and Nero went to the corner and I went to the door, pushing their dresser up against the wall. The armies that marched on opposite sides finally met at my doorstep.

For at least a minute, we waited in silence. The soldiers that we gave protection to weren’t far away, and when they’d returned, one was calling out my name.

{“Dmitri?”}

I pulled the dresser back and went slowly down the stairs, eyes half shut because I was too afraid to see what might have happened.

Figures came into my sight one by one. The soldiers that stayed in the home held onto the rebels that invaded tightly by the wrists. A bloody knife stood upright in the wooden kitchen table. A gun dropped far away on the other side of the room. Dad, whimpering in pain, and Mom, lifeless.

The rebels had deemed my parents as traitors to the cause. And had the soldiers not returned as fast as they did, they might have determined my brothers and me to be traitors as well.

{“They’ll be made an example soon, Dmitri. I promise you.”}

Mom was shot, and Dad was stabbed. These two people took them from me, and I wasn’t allowed to have a bite out of them.

One of the soldiers took the man out as he muttered some curses at me and my dad who was bleeding against the stairwell.

“Can I? Can I make an example out of one of them?” My eyes looked at the girl, a face that I’d trained myself to forget over the past few weeks. “Can I shoot her?”

It was obviously against protocol to do so, but he nodded, handing me his gun and beating her until she was on the ground as a stationary target.

He gave a head-nod of approval.

“Did you really think this would make you happy, friend?”

The rebel was the same girl who challenged me about my ‘happiness.’

No response.

“If this is how you make happiness, by killing people and unleashing chaos, then I think I’m fine to just be content.”

And so I shot her, not once but twice, one for each of my parents that they hurt.

Content.

Content with the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality.

Content with the side he took.

Content with his hatred for any type of rebel.