places I dont belong [d8 train]

[cameron]

little bill cubs


No one came to visit him in the justice building. He wasn't surprised.

Little Bill stood by the window and stared out, straining his eye to see past the district square, past the markets, past the town homes and families strolling down cobblestone and returning to their every day duties to try and find his own home, his quaint little house on the hill with his field full of sheep awaiting his return. Awaiting something that would never come, something they wouldn't understand. Though it was too far for his already blurred vision, their multicolored coats outside his view, he didn't move from the window until his escort peeled him back from the thick glass and led him down the hall and out the justice building, onto the train and to the district eight car where Eloise was already waiting. Where Eloise was sitting, mindless and unblinking, their eyes blank and trained on the windows just as his own had been minutes before. Little Bill sat down across from them, but they didn't pay attention, or maybe they didn't care enough to bother. He looked at them and listened to the clock tick on the wall behind him, again, and again, and again, and-

He stood abruptly, nerves tangled 'round his throat, restricting blood like he'd so often done with butcher's twine, and began pacing as the train took off. The rattling of tin pans and trays, the silence of his new partner, the roar of his own thoughts and pain compounded on top each other, and before it picked up too much speed he slung open the sliding door, raced up the ladder, and gazed out over the roof of the train.

Just as it pulled away from the district he saw the outskirts of his field, saw the distant wool of his family, and a tear fell from his eye.

[goat]

The boy who had been reaped was tall. He towered a good foot over you, maybe even a foot and a half. You felt like you had seen him before, but you had no interest in approaching him. He was going to die. You were going to die, too. There was no point in making a connection with someone if it was going to be rendered meaningless in a short week.

You were sitting against a window, waiting for the train to start moving. The reaping scene outside the train station had dissolved and now things were returning to normal— storefronts opened, women swept entryways, cats scurried around people’s legs. Your sister was probably still crying. She had sobbed the entire time you were in the Justice Building, holding you as tight as she could, and she kept telling you to do whatever it took to come home, and you wished you could tell her nothing you could do would be good enough, but you couldn’t. It would crush her, even more so than she’d already been.

There was a rustling in front of you, and you shifted your head to see the boy sitting in front of you. William, his name was, or Bill, or something like that, whatever. You weren’t the expert on people’s names. You weren’t the expert on anything. You blinked at him, once, twice, before turning your attention back to the window. The train finally began chugging away from the station, and the sights you had grown used to your entire life grew smaller and smaller, never to be seen again.

Bill stood, the sudden motion making you flinch. He went off somewhere and you, suddenly fearing being left alone in that big shiny train car, scrambled out of your seat to follow. You followed him out to the limbo between train cars, where he was half up a ladder that was there for who knows what reason. Clearly not this. It seemed he hadn’t noticed you had come out, so you balled your hand into a fist and knocked on his calf to get his attention.