Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Seven: Songs For A Better World /SF - Orion Osmont

Night and day didn't  bother to distinguish between themselves in the cold depths of the  caves. Surely the sun's light reached parts of the cavern near the  surface during the daytime, but the surface was far away from wherever I  was, and these tunnels were in a perpetual state of twilight. Although  there was enough light to see for about a hundred yards in front of me,  there wasn't much else. For all I knew, I was continuously one hundred  and one yards behind the girl from One.

Balling my hand up into  fists, I rubbed my eyes. I was almost certain that I had never been more  tired. If I wanted to, I could stop, lean up against a wall, close my  eyes, and let sleep embrace me. My eyelids grew heavy just thinking  about that, and I had to pinch myself to keep from drifting too far  away. Falling asleep was something I couldn't do, not since the cave-in  had occurred, not since my arm had been reduced to a pulpy mess.

The physical wounds, I  remembered, weren't the only ones that the miners from the cave-ins  suffered. The one who sat at the edge of the Meadow, whose physical  wounds seemed no worse than our fathers, would interrupt our playing  every once in a while with his screams. Bloodcurdling cries for help  would erupt from him, as though he thought he was still in the mine, as  though he thought he would never get out again.

Or worse, we would see  him crying as he sat alone, a flask of alcohol none of us were keen  enough to identify, talking to someone or something that wasn't there.  His words were only understands to him, muddled grouch the thick haze of  his drink.

Once. he was brave or  reckless enough to come up to Oleander and I, and he spoke to us. "When  you kids get home, you tell Micah that I'm sorry for what I did," his  begging was more fervent than any of the other beggars, who usually only  begged for food. "And take this, it's to make up for what I took." Two  strips of jerky and a large roll sat in his hands, enough for a meal but  not much else.

Mom had been outraged  when told her about it, but we never found out why. The next day, we  found the old man dead, a bullet through his head, and a Peacekeeper.  Finally his mental wounds showed themselves physically.

I was worried that I'd  have to wait much longer for anything of the sort to happen to me, or  else it would happen immediately, not giving the wounds a chance to heal  at all.

A man appeared at the  edge of my vision, and I paused for a moment. If I remembered correctly,  which I believed I did, I was the only boy left in the arena, and one  of the older tributes left at that. Nervously, I edged closer to the  unidentified man. If he was a tribute I had forgotten about, I could get  rid of him now. I could get one step closer to going home, to sleeping  without having to worry about the dreams that would follow me.

"Osmont," the man  yelled, his words slurring as he turned back around. Smiling, his teeth  were crooked and yellow, and the terrible scent of his breath seemed to  be almost visible. The man from the Meadow, the man whose life my  grandfather had saved, "I have a present for you," he said even louder,  and I thought he would attract everyone from the general area. He held  his hand out, some jerky and a roll in his hands.

I reached out to take  it, but his hand seemed to disappear, replaced with a girl, much smaller  than I was. Her wrists seemed to be no bigger around than a stick, her  hair as flimsy as the grass that grew in the Meadow. The only thing  about her that didn't seem weak or broken was her smile, and the song  that came from her lips. Even then, it seemed as though her mouth was  unable to form the words to the tune, a sort of ethereal melody escaping  from her lips. She waved at me, inviting me to join in with her song.  Opening my mouth to sing along, because I was certain that I knew the  melody, I watched as she evaporated before me.

My heart rate quickened,  fear almost tangibly pumping through my veins. Just as day and night  bled into each other in the arena, until one was impossible to separate  from the other, reality and fantasy has blurred together. I was in a  dream, only the dream was my reality. Everything was about to go  terribly wrong, and there would be no way for me to escape from it. I  pinched my neck, harder each time, desperately hoping that reality would  separate itself from these visions, and that I would be taken with it.

It seemed to be to no  avail though, neither pinching myself nor running away seemed to deter  the visions, the one ever-changing figure that always stood before me.  My mentor stood before me one moment, promising me that I could make it  out alive if I only paid attention to him. "Do whatever it takes to  escape," he said, unable or unwilling to speak above a soft whisper.

Escape from the Games,  escape from the visions, what difference was there really, I asked  myself. The vision of my mentor stayed though, even when I had convinced  myself that he wasn't real. They wouldn't take him into the Games, they  couldn't. And even if they took him in, he'd be scared out of his mind.  He'd be screaming, running all over the place until he ran into someone  or something else, until he had killed everyone or someone had killed  him.

I didn't have to kill  anyone to escape from the visions though, falling asleep would do enough  to escape from the ever-changing people. Taking in a deep breath, I  managed to convince myself that sleep couldn't bring any hallucinations  worse than the ones I was experiencing right then. Sure, these didn't  try and rip me limb from limb, or hold me underwater until my lungs were  filled. But these visions promised good, a good that I knew couldn't  be.

I decided that these  visions were worse than my dreams could ever be. After all, it was  easier for me to convince myself that the dreams weren't real.

So, backing myself into a  corner, I forced myself to close my eyes, blocking out anything from  the outside. I blocked out the stinging sensation in my arm, and the  voice of my mentor, which persisted even stronger now that the visions  were gone. I blocked out the metallic scent of blood, and the putrid  smell of rotting flesh. Eventually, sleep blocked everything out for me,  and replaced them with things that were much more sinister.