Retribution

I think, as I stretch out in my comfortable queen size bed. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and look at the alarm clock. I turn it off and stand up to stretch some more. I grab my towel and robe and walk to the master bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. I turn on the shower and let the water warm up a little. Even in Victor’s Village the hot water takes a little to warm up, especially now that I am the only one using the pipes now. I peel off my sleeping clothes and step into the warm water. For about five minutes I let the water just pound over my head and wake me up. After that time I finally realize what day it is, Reaping Day.

“Oh shit,” I exclaim to no one in particular.

This day brings back so many painful memories. The day my life changed forever and not in a good way. The day I was ripped from my home forced to kill to stay alive. The day, for ten years after, I still dread. So many years have passed and already so much death, more than anyone should have to go through in a lifetime. The only one still alive that I care about is Prim, and she is safe with her Capitol husband. They met when he came to talk about the games one day and were soon married. I wasn’t overly comfortable with it but I saw two positives to it. One, she was the happiest I had ever seen her the day he proposed, and nobody could harm a Gamemaker’s wife. Everyone else was gone though, well except Effie. My mother died of an incurable disease called Fast Acting Cancer Syndrome or FACS for short. It is a mutated version of cancer but the t-cells regenerate and mutate more rapidly so any medicine wouldn’t work on it. Gale died in a mining accident a couple years after my games, we had grown apart, he didn’t believe me on the whole fake romance thing, so he never spoke to me. Which is fine, I never really loved him anyway. Haymitch overdosed on alcohol on the ride home from the last games where two sixteen year olds had been reaped from our district and suffered quite gruesome...