Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Eight: The Rebirth /F - Hettie Burris [4]

The floors were swept.  The kitchen was in array. Nothing had changed except for the missing  sound of voices. The only evidence of haste was of the chairs in the  kitchen toppled, it was the only evidence that people had been living  there. No plates were strewn about for the simple fact that money was  hard to come by. Clothing was folded neatly on the faded couch. Hettie  trailed her aged fingers across the fabric, feeling the memories seep  into her. The window was darkened, blackened at the edges. Still, she  could see the empty house beside her. She had visited already, seen the  destruction. Two lives in that house, one bright and one whom she had  never gotten to see.

They were killed by greed. Her greed.

Her life had been repaid  in the devastation she had returned to. When she had entered the other  house, a shotgun had rested on his lap, carelessly thrown down after his  life was sucked away. The babe lay in the makeshift crib. No one had  come to bury her. There was no time. Hettie had stared down, wondering  what would have been different had Esther not come to her. Her children,  Esther's children, would not be parentless, would not be gone or  forgotten. Time washes away the memories, but Hettie never wanted to  forget any of them.

When she had  meticulously searched their home, she had returned to her own. Walking  among the ruins of her past life, wondering what was left. They still  had not returned. Her footsteps pattered along the cracked tile. She  opened the flimsy back door, stepping outside, the wind blowing through  her hair which had not been cared for in several days. There was no  point. The cameras had left now, and every day it was the same thing,  the same routine.

She could still smell  the char. Outside, tendrils of smoke still rose from far off in the  fields, fires that had not yet been extinguished. If she closed her  eyes, though, she could forget about that, she could imagine herself  back where it all began. Still, the lingering smell of scorched field  and scorched body inched its way inside her nostrils, filling her with  heightening fear as she tore her eyes open. The image of laughter and  tiny feet running around was shattered. Instead stood an empty field,  scorched, burned away as though it was never there. In a same manner,  she herself felt the same. She had not seen a soul in Eleven. During her  Victory Tour she had been escorted away from the stage because the fire  was raging.

She turned away, walking  inside her home. She had told them she did not want the Victor's house.  They had insisted, they always did. But a big house with no one inside  it was too lonely, too useless, to Hettie. She moved into her tiny  bedroom. She could smell her husband in the room, could feel his arm  wrapped around her, resting his head on her shoulder. It was like he was  there, so close to her. She begged him desperately to show her a sign  that one of her babies be alright. He didn't respond though, and she  knew he never would. It was the memories that kept her going, yet the  memories that brought her down.

Her fingers trailed the  thin sheets of her bed. Heat was a given in Eleven, the sheets were one  thing people didn't have to spend much on. They weren't a necessity to  many. Many a cool summer night she had given her own blanket to her  children. Now, she wondered who was there to protect them, to shield  them from whoever and wherever they were? Her fingers trailed the  stitching, her mind wandering in forlorn abandonment until she felt  something unfamiliar touch her hand. She pulled away the sheet,  stripping it from the bed to reveal an unknown. It was folded, a single  piece of paper folded into a square.

Hettie didn't realize  her hands were shaking until she brought the paper to her eyes. Her  heart was hammering in her chest. With careful, apprehensive, moves, she  unfolded the paper, listening to the sound of it crumple against the  stark quietness of the rest of the house. Her eyes scanned it, skimming  the words, but there were only a few. Scrawled in a hurry, there were  the names:

Esau Borden Zinnia. Gone.

Briar Huck Lucy. Run. Hide.

Briony Me. Hide.

All of a sudden, Hettie  could feel her breathing obstruct. She could see the flames licking away  at the fields and stripping away the sustenance while people ran. Their  screams as the flames grew around them. Her son, strong and powerful,  working in the field, taking care of Borden and Zinnia for his  grandmother. The flames would have come fast. She could feel the heat  beating down. It was dry, no doubt it was dry Maybe Zinnia and Huck were  laughing. They were jokers. But then it came. The flames. They started  across the field, a dropped match igniting dried husk. There was no  time. They hadn't seen it coming until they were running and the flames  were beating them.

Hettie wondered if their  bodies were recovered. She doubted they were. Her memories were all  that was left, and through the tears that dripped onto the page she felt  her chest go heavy. Still, four children, now hers, may still be out  there, and Hettie wiped away the tears. Crying did not solve anything,  she knew that. It didn't help her in the arena, and it wouldn't help her  now.

She blocked out any  further thoughts of the past, of Dove or the games or anything related  to the fire. Now, it was time to discover her children and her mother,  the people most dependent on stability. She rose from the bed. Briar,  Huck, and Lucy-they were not in the vicinity, tat Hettie knew. They were  smart, partners in crime, and if there was danger, they would go to far  reaches to escape it. Still, such devastation left Hettie wondering  how. Maybe they were in the hospital, on their last dying breath,  knowing that their mother was home safely. She shook the thought away,  squeezing the paper in her hand.

It left Briony to be  found. She knew her mother. She would never let the littlest go away  alone, to run with the possibility of danger at every turn.
She'd be  here somewhere, maybe there'd be food there, maybe she would be safe.  Her mother was an intelligent woman, and Hettie needed to figure out  where she would have hidden her child from the dangers of fire. There  was no subsection of the house beneath the ground, nor at Esther's  house. There was a cooler, of course, but it was hard to access, much  less for such an old woman as her mother. But there was the possibility,  and Hettie was filled with excitement as she raced out of the room, her  breathing rushed as she felt elation soar through her veins, hope  flooding her mind as she thought of reuniting with her child.

She slammed the screen  door open. Her mother would have known she was back, would've known the  devastation left. Her mother always had the intuition, was always  smarter than her opponent. Hettie had learned everything from her: how  to be strong and resilient. The cellar was small, but there was a trap  door around the side of the house. Hettie tore around the sparse grass,  tearing open like a feral animal the trap door. It wasn't deep, and  below she saw her. Matted hair and sucking her thumb. She had been  crying. How long had she been down there? Two, three days? There were  food crumbs around but there was nothing left.

Hettie felt tears stream  down her face as she reached down to pick up hr baby, her child. She  was okay, she was safe. Briony opened her large brown hair. She was not  Hettie's child, but at that moment, Hettie loved her for all the world.  Briony took her thin thumb out from her mouth. Her eyes were lazy as her  breathing was shallow. She coughed.

"Mama?" The words came out small, like a mouse.

Hettie sobbed for joy.  "Yes, Briony, it's me. It's me, you're safe. We're safe now." Though the  fire had ruined nearly everything, ravishing through the grasses and  fields and down the wooden houses, here they were: Hettie and Briony,  safe.

"Mama? They're gone. Grammy an' sissy's an' 'em. All gone."

Briony closed her eyes  then, her head dropped against Hettie's shoulder. She looked peaceful,  so serene in her slumber. Hettie gently shook her. "Let's get us inside,  how 'bout it, baby girl?" The girl didn't move. Hettie stared down at  the sleeping figure in her arms, no larger than a toddler. "Briony?"
Hettie gently shook her. And then harder. And harder until she fell to her knees and sobbed. They were gone.

Scorched bodies filled  her nose, wrapped around her as though she could never escape. Life had  dealt her a pack of cards and death had cheated. She had escaped him but  he had taken his revenge. He had repaid her tenfold, the pain weighing  down on Hettie as she screamed to the heavens. No one heard her, and no  one would. Some people have happy endings. Some people don't.