Writers Games: Ghost

Finals Entry: Cassia de Monroe

"I'm so terribly sorry it has to come to this. These aren't my Games anymore, I'm not in control. I wish it could be different. Good luck, may the odds- no, I'm sorry. I can't." And with that, she's gone. I'm staring at an empty sky and trying to absorb the fact that Cassie has just turned the Games on their head in the worst possible way. Aconite has lost control of our little world and now... Now there's only Cassie's world. A nightmare world. 

But it doesn't matter. I'm not going to play Cassie's games anymore. I am done with that. If she wants me dead, so be it. I was done playing by her rules the moment I started. I just hadn't worked up the courage to quit until now. It hadn't mattered until now. I will not play these games. I will not be a pawn. Viper had said much the same things when she was still around, terrible things. But that was and always will be the difference between her and I. Viper was all talk when it came to being above the Games, she was a killer just like the others. I have truly given up on being a murderer. 

Five minutes into my self-proclaimed neutral-state, I hear the noise. It sounds like a voice and it sounds like a whimper and like a shout all in the same burst of noise. Just like I always do when I hear something that startles me, I whirl around to look for the source of it. When I see it, my blood freezes. Turns to icy sludge in my veins and almost stops pumping entirely. I'm frozen, I'm a statue. I'm back in my first Games where I gave up in a situation much like this, in a despair much like this one after Viper's death. It doesn't make sense. My body is just stopped. 

They're there. The ghosts. All of them. Luka, Marina, Stasia, my parents. Ren. Viper. Caspian. They stand in this crooked line behind me with eerie kinds of smiles on their faces and bloodstains on their ghostly clothes. Though I'm sitting, it doesn't stop me from staggering backwards onto my back and screeching like a banshee. Their voices explode into being in my head, joining Caspian's as memories run through my mind in a warped loop. This is wrong, this is not right. Not right at all. Hot tears burn my cheeks as I will the hallucinations to go away, will them to leave me be. They always go away when I ask. 

But they're still there when I open my eyes, still there and watching. 

"Poor little Cassia. You've made it so far only to struggle now?" Luka's voice is that of the nightmare version of him that has been created by too many Gamemakers. This is not my brother, this is not him. Not him. 

"You were always the weak one, Cassia. You were never the one that was supposed to win. Our poor family tree didn't need you to besmirch it. It's too bad they had to have too much to drink, too bad they made you. Accident." Marina is more like herself, giggling coldly and speaking in harsh tones that make her seem so inhuman that it hurts. So Marina that it hurts terribly. Her words hurt so badly but I don't move. I just listen.

"You thought we cared, I think that's the funniest thing. It's what made it so fun to mess with you. I heard it myself that they didn't care about you. They loved me more and I wasn't even their blood." Stasia hadn't had a mean bone in her body. The idea that she could say such horrid things to me is appalling, though I know that they're false. This isn't her. It can't be her. She's dead. They're all dead.

"I always loved them more. I never wanted you, you were just a mistake. I was glad when you were gone." Mother speaks first, her voice rising above a whisper for the first time in a long time. She was always quiet to the point of silence, my mother. She was the opposite of me and she always resented that. But she didn't hate me, that's a lie.

"It was never easy to be the father of a mad girl. They laugh, you know. Why couldn't you have been like Marina? She was always so much better, why couldn't you have been like her? I was always so proud of her. But you? You were nothing." Father, like Marina, sounds like himself. He and I were never friends. There was no lost love between us. But I didn't mind, I didn't care. Until now. Hearing the words makes them so much worse. So much.