thanatophobia the hunger games

01

EVERYTHING WAS COVERED in a golden halo of sunlight. The wind tousled the wheat making the beige fields into an ocean of golden waves. It was almost peaceful, the perfect night if it weren't for the weight of tomorrow pushing my spirits down. I sat with my knees to my chest, watching the sun set in silence, the glow of the sun turning into the glow of the moon.

Footsteps broke me out of the trance the fields had put me in. I turned toward the sound and saw a face I recognized, a smile washing over my face as I nodded to the brunette girl in acknowledgment.

"Isn't it beautiful?" I sighed, looking to my best friend who had sat down beside me

"Wish we could just pause time and keep this moment" she replied wistfully, a sad expression clouding her face.

If we could pause time here the world would be a better place, a calmer place, but I'm not a genie and time goes on. I hadn't let myself think about tomorrow until now, the thoughts came rushing towards me in a frenzied panic. I took a deep breath and turned towards Cleave who had took to braiding strands of wheat into her hair.

"We'll be fine" I whisper, looking out to the horizon where the last sliver of sun was falling below the hills. "It wont be us"

I was speaking to her, but in reality I was just trying to convince myself. I wasn't afraid of the games, I had befriended them years ago when I had no idea if my brother was coming home, but I was afraid of loosing yet another person in my life to the horrors of the arena. Cleave was my best friend, had been since we were too young to understand what world we were brought into. I couldn't loose her like I lost Grist. There are no victors in the games, only survivors, and the price of surviving was too high to pay.

"We'll be fine..." I repeat as the sun is swallowed by darkness.

𓆩♡𓆪

It was dark, a swirling murky abyss with no end and no beginning. No start and no finish. Just complete darkness.

I felt my mind being tugged in fourteen different directions as the inky nothingness took over, pulled me under, drowning me from the inside out. My lungs were filled with the caliginous poison that surrounded me as I tried to escape the beast that would bring me a fatal end. I felt it after me, I felt the monster chasing me as I clawed my way out of the deep hole that sucked me farther and farther down into its cold, disgusting grasp. There was no escape. There was no end.

I was stuck.

Until I wasn't.

The cool air fueled my almost rabid breathing as I sat up, startled awake from the nightmare I had. Slowly opening my eyes, my body almost refused to diminish its fear, too blanched and anxious to calm down, so I shut them again and tried desperately to slow my breathing. As I laid there, I circled over the events and chaos that the wraith that haunted my sleep brought upon me, not completely sure where the insolent thing had come from. There was no telling whether or not the creature had been born of my own fear or my intuition, but I knew it had come at such a time for a reason.

Unable to fall back asleep, I resentfully sat up and looked around my large room. Before Grist had won the Games, our house was nothing more than a two room shack. With half dilapidated walls and dirt floors, it hadn't been much to look at, but his winnings came with many perks- and costs; and before we knew it, we had moved into a four bedroom mansion right in the center of Victors Village.

The mansion had been a nice change of scenery from that wooden shanty we used to live in. With light colored walls and natural sunlight coming through the many windows, the whole house seemed to glow like the grain covered fields in the early hours of the morning. It was a strange sensation to walk through a door and know you wouldn't freeze, starve or die of some sort of hygiene related sickness. The comfort that the mansion came with was ironic considering the horrid nightmare of an experience Grist had gone through to earn our new residence.

I sighed audibly and slowly slipped out of bed, my feet hitting smooth, cool hardwood instead of the disgusting dirt they used to. With one last glance around the room, I snuck over to the door and quietly opened it, trying with everything inside of me to make no sound. As I opened the door it let out a slight creak, making me cringe as I slipped out. I silently crept down the stairs, attempting to try and not trip on the steps and i finally made it down without harming my feet. With a glance out one of the many windows in our house, I took a mental note of the time, the color of the sky indicating that it was probably past midnight. Even though it was extremely late, I still didn't feel tired at all. Maybe it was the nightmare from earlier, or the anticipation of Reaping day tomorrow, but something was keeping me on edge.

𓆩♡𓆪

I had been laying outside for nearly two hours, my mind focusing on nothing in particular as I stared straight at the stars. Even though I knew I needed to rest, my mind couldn't concentrate on the trivial things like sleep. It was going a million miles an hour, fixating on the apprehension of tomorrow's events. I wished so desperately that I could skip ahead and forget all about the reaping and the games, but I had no way to do that, instead here I sat, anticipating something horrible to happen tomorrow and knowing I won't be able to stop it- whatever it is.

𓆩♡𓆪

It was warm, so warm that I felt a thick layer of sweat already beading at my brow. My eyes fluttered open, trying my hardest not to be blinded by the sun that shone directly in my face; the same sun that was likely causing my body to be overheated right now. Using the back of my palm, I lazily wiped the sweat from my brow and sat up, my whole body protesting in pain. The lawn chair I had chosen to fall asleep on was the farthest thing from comfortable, causing my entire body to feel sore and drowsy. As I sat there nonchalantly staring at the sky, I suddenly realized what day it was.

Reaping day...

With those two words replaying in my head, I jolted out of the chair and raced inside, unsure of the time, but almost completely sure I was late. At the speed of lightning, I was able to throw on my reaping day dress: an annoying mid length getup with pretty shade of muted red covered in golden stitched flowers. I remember picking it out when my distaste for dresses was less severe, but now that I saw it on me, I cringed at the sight. Realizing how much time I had spent internally regurgitating at my reflection, I ran to my bathroom with only one thing on my mind: hair.

My hair was a constant annoyance that never seemed to do anything but irritate me. It was as if it's only goal in life was to anger me to the point of almost ripping it out- which is something i've never been above doing. And as I stood here glaring at my reflection, my feelings toward this inanimate frustration were no less intense. The blonde curls were wild and tangled with a mind of there own, causing me to wince as I pulled the brush through them. Taking a deep breath, I readied myself for the coming pain and dragged the brush through the blonde frizz on my head, ripping out more than a few strands as i did.

After a few minutes of pain, I decided my hair was about as brushed as it was going to get and set the comb down. Glancing at myself once more, I did a small spin and quickly ran down the stairs, hoping that the clock didn't betray me with a time that made me late. I saw the time and sighed with relief, a satisfied grin pulling at the corners of my mouth.

I heard a throat clear from somewhere across the room making me glance over toward the sound. My brown eyes met a pair of green ones and I grinned at the sight of my brother wearing his 'Sunday best'.

"Grist... Is that you?" I said in mocking disbelief, a betraying giggle leaving my lips.  He rolled his eyes and chuckled, doing a small spin to show off his nice clothes. Even though Grist was a victor- too old to even have his name drawn, he still had to dress nice. As if the games weren't enough, every year since he's won, he's had to travel all the way back to the Capitol just to mentor another tribute. Every year he's gone to the Capitol with a small sense of hope and two Tributes, but comes back with a larger sense of grief, and the guilt of their deaths. I wanted to help him more than anything, but what could I do? I could never understand what the games had done to him... the toll it had taken on his mentality- his perspective on life itself. His glass half full became a glass half empty, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.

My thoughts were interrupted by Grist's voice, "Rye, you ready to go?" The way he spoke made me feel like he didn't want me to be ready... made me feel like he somehow felt the same way as I did: that something horribly bad would happen.

But even with that afterthought, I still nodded my head in reply, hesitantly starting toward the door, ready to accept whatever fate the universe decided to bring me.