Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Seven: The Flood /SF - Vivienne Bright

With every drop of water  that patters harmlessly against the parched ground, I sift through my  foggy mind to try and remember a time when it did not rain.

It's been eight days  since the raging storm ravaged the earth. Eight days since a twisted  knife quelled the furious sky. All that remains now is the slow dripping  of water which has continued ever since, though it has yet to quench  the thirst of the scarred earth.

Surely, rain has never  been this ineffective? No matter how long it falls around me, it's never  enough to cleanse me of scarlet memories and I can't ever quite scrape  off the blood on my hands.

Sometimes, if I really  try, I can manage to work free a couple of flakes of dried blood, but it  only leaves a watery stain behind on my skin. Though constant, the  water is neither enough to rid me completely of a reddish tint, nor of  the appearance of death.

I've not run into anyone  since the storm, except for those who stand in my way in the stretches  of time I still lose to my battered mind. I might have accepted the  weight of my actions under the circumstances, but even I can recognise  that the lack of regret in my nightmares is enough to suggest that  something is not quite right.

I choose not to dwell on  the idea that perhaps nothing about my time in the arena has been  completely right and I even convince myself that my mind was always  fraying at the seams, anyway.

It's still ravaged by  memories steeped in blood, of course, though the perspective has changed  a little. A line of the people I once loved stand in the garden this  place once was and I bring each of them to their knees with a knife,  weeding out the scourge of life on this wretched little planet.

A skull-faced man  wearing a shroud of darkness always rests his will on my shoulders,  whispering cold commands that I follow in a voice as lifeless as the  desert I find myself trapped in.

My parents scream out  with burnt lungs and my grandmother falls with the same ragged breath  she spent her whole life clinging onto. Death has a wicked kind of grin  that grows every time I cut one of them down.

With each kill, he moves  further away from me. When I can no longer see his grin, it is  reflected back at me, gleaming in the gory smiles I cut into the throats  of Mercury and the girl with the boils.

When even their crooked, red smiles fade away, I am returned to a night I never thought I'd relive.

I am nearly central to  the half-circle of tributes staring out into a sea of luminous colour  and the ludicrous fashions of the Capitol. They cheer for us all until  Death chases us down, still on stage. With every fallen tribute, he  places a cape of the darkest black around their shoulders, like an  insulting medal of participation given to those who strove so hard to  bring the ultimate prize back to their families.

They were sentimental  fools to think they could ever win without paying the cost. They died  before they even got the chance to lose it all - to lose something, at  least, in the same way that those of us who remain have lost.

Yet I have to wonder; if I had to play any part of these Games differently, would I?

I couldn't.

Even if I'd ever truly  believed that Mercury had been real, there's no way that she'd have been  able to live while I was still breathing. No one can win these Games  without playing dirty and I simply needed to at least try to win - even  if it meant losing my best friend.

Except she wasn't, was she? No, she couldn't have been.

Any attachment to a  person that constitutes them being a best friend couldn't ever be  sacrificed so selfishly. Or perhaps the matter at hand is that I'm just  not a decent person.