The Hunger Games ~ Peeta's POV

Chapter 15

"Wanna taste, Lover Boy?" he says innocently, his eyes glowing like embers as he licks the thick, red blood off of the black, crusty knife. I don't know if my scream is real or in my dream, but I don't care.

Dreams like these, with Katniss being tortured to the death, or my own body repeatedly being ripped apart, replay themselves over and over again as I sleep. Then, one time, I see nothing. I pry open one eye suspiciously, as if not believing that I'm actually awake for good. I could have been asleep for years and I wouldn't have known. I'm still in the same spot I was when I drifted away, and I look around for anything out of the ordinary. Nope, this is totally real. I let out a sigh of relief. The wind gusts around me, and I shiver as it wraps around my icy cold body.

Remembering my leg, I look down to see how bad it is, rolling up the pant leg. The blood has completely made the fabric stick to my wound, so bad that I can't even pull it off of it. As I examine it closely, I see where exactly where I was hurt. I may not be a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that there was a major artery right there. I look at my grubby nails and hands, disgusted, as I probe the tender spots of where I was stabbed. I hate being dirty. It makes me feel like garbage.

I lean over and retch again where I did a day or so before, making me feel awful. Feeling a bit unstable from the previous day's events and after major loss of blood, I reach into my pack for some water and food, and see that my bottle is half empty, and I only have enough food to keep me alive for about a day, at the most. Crap. I need to go find some food or something. Hunting is totally out of my options, end of discussion. With my leg like this, I doubt I'll even be able to find a more decent shelter.

I drag myself over to the little stream that was there the other day, making little animal noises from the pain, and grunt as I turn myself around to splash some water on my face. I look down and see a grungy looking boy with a dirty face and matted, muddy blonde hair. There's little splatters of blood here and there, and I wonder who's some of it is, other than mine. It feels more like I'm looking at someone else than myself right now. My Tracker Jacker wounds are huge, red, and the size of a plum.

Whenever I got stung by a bee when I was little, I had Mom or Dad pull out the stinger. Hopefully, that will help the stings, because how different can they be? I pluck all four stingers out of all four stings and splash a little water on them, too. I try to clean up my messed up leg, but I give up. It's too much work, and it's already sort of stuck onto the fabric, so that if I try to take my pants off to wash them, it starts to sting, and then bleed some more. Eventually, I just give up.

Then the thought occurs to me. Am I going to die like this? I hope not. After all I have been through, I think it would be really stupid and really painful to bleed to death, because I think I'm getting there. My wound hasn't even scabbed over, has it? Is that healthy? I don't think so, since I've probably been out for at least twenty four hours. These last few days might be very painful as I either bleed or starve to death. A knife to the back would have been so much more generous of Cato. But then again, when has he ever been generous?

I notice that the sun is going down and I'm going to have to find shelter within the area. How am I supposed to find shelter like this? Where am I going to hide? Up in a tree is out of the question, and I have have no idea where to look. I see a mound of a couple of rocks that I can't see over, and, hoping to find somewhere to stay, I begin inching myself in that direction. The pain is starting to set in a little more now, and my muscles are stiff and my whole body aches. It takes all I've got to drag myself over in that general direction, and even more to go over the rocks. I hit my leg on something hard, and now it's bleeding again, this time on the rocks. If I'm going to hide in the area, I have to cover my tracks, so I try to scrub it away with my hand, but it only makes smear prints. Sighing, I leave it, mentally remembering to come back later and cover it with some mud, even though it will probably just wash away all of my efforts.

After heaving myself painfully over the rocks, I glance around, still lying on the ground. There's not much to see but more of the river, and there's only a bush or two, dotted with little pink berries. They look like raspberries, but I can't quite remember. Oh, well. If I don't eat, then I'm going to die, anyways. So, I drag my limp leg and what's left of me over to the bush. I start picking them, one by one, and start putting them in a container that I just happened to find in my pack. It's really relaxing, actually, just picking berries and putting them in my bag. Probably the first relaxing thing I've done in... Maybe a week? Is that how long we've been here? It might have only been a few days, but it feels like much longer. I'm shocked that I'm still alive.

I lean myself back against a rock, my hands folded behind my head, and pop a couple of berries into my mouth. I bite down, and the skin explodes as the sweet, tangy juices come out onto my tongue. I swallow, expecting the worst, but nothing happens. Oh, well. If something bad takes into effect later, then I don't want to die on an empty stomach. I nibble on the berries, watching the sun go down past the trees. I almost wonder if it's the same sun that I used to watch at home, with my dad on a warm summer night, but then I stop myself.

I made a pact with myself earlier not to think of home. It will only make this harder for me, and my stupid head is making this really difficult.

Remembering that I have no shelter, I pack the berries back up. I recall training, when we saw the guy that worked on shelter. But he wasn't the idea that stuck out. It was the camouflage lady, who showed us how to hide ourselves if worse came to worst. And I think that this is worst.

I refill my water bottle with water, and put it back into my pack. I position my supplies so that they are within reach of my hands, and pat it down onto the ground as flat as I can. I start by coating it with mud, and then using it as a sort of paste to glue the leaves, twigs, and brambles on. As soon as I'm sure that it looks just as much like the ground as, well, the ground, then I start on hiding myself.

The only way to make myself flat enough to pass as a muddy, leafy bank would be to dig myself in, so that's what I do. I trace the outline of my body in the mud with my finger and then try to pull myself away from it as gently as I can, as not to mess it up, letting low moans escape my lips when my leg stings. I dig a hollow out inside of the outline about 3/4's of a foot deep, taking about a half an hour to make sure that I have it exactly perfect. Then, as gingerly as possible, I ease myself into the hollow. I start by hiding my legs first, glopping slabs of mud down onto me to use as a base for the camouflage, gently on my leg, making it as smooth and natural as I can. Then, I try and put some leaves and pine needles on there, the whole ones, to go on first. I crunch up some more leaves and pine needles to fill in the little cracks and such. I dab little bits of mud and dirt on there to give it a more natural feel to it. I do this to the entire rest of my body, including my face, and even some of the places you would forget to add camouflage to, like to my hair, inside my ears, or my eyelids.

When I feel I am finally done with my masterpiece, the sun has already been set for a long time. Despite the fact that I have probably been out for several days, I am extremely tired, so I settle in for the night, with hopefully a lot of rest and better dreams to look forward to.