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The 19th Hunger Games are those of stories. Most of them don’t tell much but loss and death, and all of them are left behind in the arena, carried out on corpses’ dead lips.*It is the story of Mats, the tall man from district seven, with his resigned eyes and his calm calm voice smothering the sheer panic of all around him – just his own, that he could not quench. He lied awake the first few nights, blindly staring up at the ceiling, shaking apart on the inside in fear, thinking back on those he left behind and how it is likely they will witness what he will become in the arena, oh, what will be? The impossibility of it all chews through his heart, and not even the thought of the quiet eternity of the forests of his home bring security.
He finds it in the quiet stories of the sea he gets told after a few days, of the waves crashing against shores, the stories of water like a mirror going on until the horizon, unbroken, unimaginable for someone like him who has only known forests his whole life. He cannot picture this, just as he was unable to picture this man.
It is probably the reason he is unable to picture dying, burning up like a forest wildfire spreading through his body, charring him, and it is pain, it is an eternity compressed into a few moments –
Until Benedikt takes mercy and thrusts his spear through Mats’ heart.*It is the story of Benedikt, the man from district four, who planned to become mayor, who planned to become married to his girlfriend – but when his name is called out, he barely has time to promise her he’ll love her, but he will not marry her, and she shall denounce his name, so as to not draw the Capitol’s attention to her. There is not time to say more, and it feels as if his insides are tangled up in a net, struggling for air and drowning, when he is carried away to the train.
When he arrives at the Capitol, he cannot muster up the strength neither to worry nor to fear, because he knows with an eerily calm he’ll die. There’s no doubt on his mind he will, and he feels as if he has died already, he probably died when his name got called out and he heard his family’s screams and begging – that was the moment he died, and now his shell walks on.
A few days later he meets Mats, and somehow he feels the need to tell him of home, to tell him of the sea, because suddenly it feels unbearable not to tell someone of home. As if it would suddenly stop to exist if he took it to his grave without telling. And Mats listens, and in turn he shares his own home, and it is a bit soothing to share those stories. It’s just them, no greedy Capitol people forcing them to doll up and playact, to amuse them with dying.
Shortly after entering the arena, Benedikt loses Mats from his eyes, but he doesn’t see his face in the night sky, so it is okay.
He sees Mats two days later, lying and next to a shallow puddle, with blue lips, his brown eyes impossibly wide, staring at him as if begging him for mercy – he makes noises like a dying animal – and Benedikt does it, feeling awful.
Seven hours later, shortly before the cannons, he is caught by an arrow to the throat, a lucky shot. After a few moments, it is sealed and his face shines in that night as well.*It is the story of Philipp, the man from district two who had a wonderful wife and two even more wonderful children back at home he cannot stop thinking about. His tongue sticks in his throat, and he does not get out a single word after he said goodbye to them – he is all too heavily aware of the fact that even the slightest slip up endangers them and this is paralyzing him. For himself, he is not afraid, he is just one of twenty four people, his chances are ridiculously low, so his fate is sealed, basically. But his family, oh, how easy it would be for the Capitol to hurt them, to kill them for Philipp’s mistake – how is he presumed to live on? How can he bear this thought that he might have brought doom upon his wife? His children? His children that are too young to understand why he had to go, how could he risk this?
And a long, drawn out death would be even more awful. It would give them hope, it would strengthen their prayers, he knows this, he can almost picture Claudia with tear tracks on her face, praying for him to come back to her and kiss her once again. He wishes he could, but he loves her so much, so he will not hurt her, if he can help it. He can’t, because he’s in the Arena and expected to fight for his life.
He won’t. He’ll fight for his family, so they cannot be hurt – he cannot do that from here, he can only just keep the hurt to the smallest amount. That’s the only thing he can do, and it makes him cry at the dead of night, when no one can hear him. Then he cries for his family, for all the things he will miss. He will miss his daughter’s first words, her first steps. Of both his children, he will never know how they will grow up – oh, they will become great people, that he does not doubt, not even once, Claudia will make sure of that. But how will his daughter look when she found someone she will be happy with? And his son, how will he look when he will be happy with someone? What will they become? There are myriads of possibilities, and now Philipp will never witness them. He’s away from them, forever, and he can only try to make it fast so they have just that bit more of time to heal from his loss.
It’s what makes him step off the cylinders before the time is up.
His face is the first in the night sky.*It is the story of Manuel, the career from district one, who unexpectedly fell in love before the arena. In his whole life, he was prepared for every possibility – he knows his ways around most weapons, and he has taken so many survival and weapon making courses, he can survive everything thrown at him. That has been his reality, so he doesn’t even bat an eye when his name is called. It is an honour to serve his district, and he has good chances to win this, he is aware of that. His performances have been in the top five of all students. He is prepared.
When he says goodbye, it is short, and his parents smile at him, although a bit teary eyed, and make him promise to win. For the district, they say officially, but he can read them and knows what they ask of him. They are afraid he might die. So he kisses them goodbye and calmly tells them he’ll win.
But that promise starts festering when he sees the man from district twelve. Brash, angry, like simmering coal, threatening to burn everything it touches. Manuel does not understand him, and when he listens to him telling stories about his family, his small brother, how he cannot die, Manuel starts reconsidering his own promise. For him, for a start, it is the way the man from district twelve has phrased it. He cannot die. Not: He will win. No. He cannot die. As if there was the possibility to survive without winning. As if he didn’t care at all for winning. It is very strange.
It also irritates Manuel, which probably explains why he is trading thinly veiled barbs and insults with this man, and it is amusing him, and the man as well, considering the twitching of his lips when Manuel quips back. Quite refreshing, seeing as no one has acted this way with him before, no one dared to, and Manuel probably would have just ignored them anyways. But this man just marches past Manuel’s securities and protective walls and buries himself somewhere deep in the soft parts of his heart. There is no other explanation for it why it makes Manuel happy, something that shouldn’t make him happy, especially not now and here.
But it does, so much, and when this man, Kevin, catches him the night before they are all sent to the arena, and tells him about his younger brother, Lenny, how he’s back home in district twelve, and how he’s now all alone and how Kevin had promised to protect him and – and if Manuel could look out for him after he won this? Kevin’s face is blotchy, but he’s not crying, he’s determined – and Manuel agrees, a sick feeling churning in his stomach.
On the dot a week later he shoves Kevin into the tiny cavern that is just big enough to protect one person from the rain that eats away all organic matter. He doesn’t even think when he does it and he doesn’t doubt his decision, not even when Kevin is screaming murder at him for doing this – and holding him inside that cave. But Manuel can’t really let go, can he, because then Kevin would die, too, and that’s unthinkable. – He only regrets that he has to break the promises he’s given. He is, however, very glad he has to die neither in silence nor alone. It is calming and it makes it hurt less, inside his head at least.
His face is the only one on that night.*The longest story is the one of the victor from district twelve – mostly, because it is ongoing and didn’t end in the arena. He didn’t say a lot when he was picked up, drenched in mottled blood from district one’s blood and other bodily matter. He didn’t say a lot when they redressed and interviewed him, asked him probing questions about the other district’s selfless sacrifice. His answers are monosyllables, and his brown eyes are – there, but not completely. He is nothing of the spitfire that was sent into the arena.
But the Capitol could not care less, they enjoy the story of him and district one’s tribute, the romance of it, the sacrifice, and it gives them warm shudders.
Kevin mainly ignores them and shoulders his meagre belongings: he has asked for Manuel’s double axe, because it was about the last thing left of him. His ask probably was viewed as a last flare of a broken heart, and he was granted. Now he has an axe and no idea what to do with it, because he has no idea what to do with weapons, he has never owned one, unless a knife for killing hares counts as one. That was the only weapon he had ever wielded, and even that was Before. And now he has an axe. It is madness.
But he couldn’t just leave it behind, because then he wouldn’t have anything left of it. And he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand why Manuel had done it, it is just – Kevin has no words for it, but when he sees his younger brother running towards him, screaming his name, he feels alien inside his own skin. It should not have been Manuel that had been eaten away by the rain - it should have been him, why wasn’t it him, Manuel had promised him to save Lenny, so why had Manuel done this, Kevin doesn’t understand. So he just hugs his younger brother, and his mother, and his father, and he tries to be their son, but he knows he failed when his parents share a look and gently nudge him upstairs to his brand new bed in their brand new home in the Victor’s Village.
And Kevin sleeps and dreams and still does not understand why it is him that is here. It should not have been him. He’s just a miner’s son, a miner himself, and now he’s living in luxury.
Next to his bed lies the axe.