The Mutt

Chapter One

"What's the last thing you remember?"

The question drops into the dark stillness of my brain, disturbing ripples of memory. I'm always being asked this question. Or similar ones. What's the first thing you remember? And then what happened? And then what happened? And then what? Do you remember anything at all?

As if memory was linear. As if it could be listed, first to last. Just the question puts me in two or three time periods at once, none of them very distinct from each other because, fuck if all hospital rooms and cells and torture chambers don't look almost exactly the same. At least as far as I remember.

The last thing? This is the question, isn't it? Time in the silvery world is meaningless. I blink three times and I might be in three different places, one right after the other. With my eyes closed, I could be in a grave, in a cave, in a cell. What does it mean - the last thing? Does it mean the most recent or really does it mean the oldest thing - the final memory in a string of memories, that I might have dropped behind me? Maybe not in the order of when they actually occurred, but in the order I dropped them - what is the last thing?

"She hit me," I say, trying not to let the saliva gathering in my mouth distort the words.

"Why did she hit you?"

I blink.

One. I bend on one knee, my fist balled shut and pressed against my mouth, as rain pours down my face.

Two. I bend on one knee, my arm stretched out before me - my pale skin mottled by the criss-crossing branches and the soft green light that filters through the leaves. I am tempting fate by tempting the wolf … but ...

Three. I am on two knees, hard on the floor, my head ringing, while the oven roars next to me and the water pours over the rim of the gutters and down the spout.

Is that it? The last thing I remember?

There is a long silence.

I open my eyes, and the light is a silver ball above me. I visualize it as a memory - a glowing orb containing some measure of enlightenment, if I can just reach for it. I put my hand up to it and my fingers break the light into pieces. Another one gone.

Then there is a sigh.

I shade my eyes, so that I can block the glare and focus on my questioner. I see the gray uniform, the chopped hair and dull expression, and by that I know - vaguely - where I am. "All around District 12 -." I begin, but it is impossible to continue. I can't figure out how to tell this particular story - what about it is real, and what I only imagined. There are roadblocks on the way to the truth: the stories they told to deceive me - and the creatures that guard the shadows, swallow the paths, burn everything alive. I swallow, then start coughing, my saliva having slid down my windpipe.

My coughs echo in the blank, white room. I look down at my left arm. At the three tubes sticking out of it. At the numerous needle tracks up and down the inside of the arm. And I am reminded that when I am questioned, I - must - answer.

"Can you go on?"

I nod. "There was always this one mutt. It wouldn't stay in the woods. It kept sneaking in, slipping through the fence. I … I always wanted to see it, to see that it was real. Then one day." I stop, squint, and try to pull up the memory. I can feel my heart start to race. "One day, it was in the backyard, rooting for trash. And I - and I - I fed it bread."

A long silence. I tense, anticipating the blows to come - or the stabs or the stings; when my answers don't satisfy, pain comes shortly after, in one form or another.

My breathing quickens. I blink and I am somewhere else. Somewhere similar. But the man bending over me wears white and his hair is like a thick, silver mane. "I've told you already, a million times! It looks like ... sometimes it looks like … sometimes … why won't you listen to me? You think you're safe here, but you're not, you're not - not if it's roaming around here, free!"

I feel the saliva rise in my mouth again and hear the beeping sound that mimics the racing beat of my heart. A cold, pinching sensation on my left arm and the cold flow of the drug they use to keep me sedated, easy prey for the mutt, who I can't seem to get rid of no matter where I go.

"Why did she hit you?"

My head feels heavy, my eyelids droop. "For feeding the mutt," I confess.

.

.

The strands falling around me steadily lose their form and texture, droplets elongating and lightening, and soon enough I am showered in shimmering threads of silver, touching my skin but lightly. There is almost no sensation - I barely feel anything - no temperature, no pain - no emotion.

I am vaguely aware that I am outside and the landscape around me is broken and damaged: perfectly preserved destruction. Jagged piles of rocks, mounds of ashes. One skeleton stands erect in the earth, alone among the rubble. An omen. A landmark.

As the world around me fills with the sparkling silver threads, I can no longer navigate, so I stop and bend down, putting my fingers to the dust. It is hardening now, solidifying into permanence, but I break away a handful of it. I close my fist over the dirt, close my eyes. Then, after a moment in which I reflect that I know of nothing to say or even to think - no mourning cry, no benediction comes to me - I put my fist to my mouth and kiss my own fingers, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then I let the dirt and ashes fall to the earth, and that is when it comes to me - a lullaby from so deep down inside my own past that the voice singing it is strange and unfamiliar.

Deep in the meadow, under the willow

A bed of grass, a soft green pillow

I shake this away - this song mocks me with the reminder of a world that is no more. And, vaguely, the associative emotions stir below the surface - guilt and sorrow, anger and blame. Muffled, faint.

I lift my face up to the storm of silver strings. And slowly, steadily, sensation returns - the swirls of the cool wind, the drops of water streaming down my face. The pain. A sore knee. Burnt fingers.

Burnt fingers.

There is a crash and a flash - thunder and lightning so close they are nearly on top of each other. Time to settle in, to hide away from the other Tributes and let innocent things blossom in the darkness … time to move, to get out of the rain; to take shelter from the weather - and from emotions, too, and memories. I don't know. I don't know. It's not possible to live in all these times at once, and yet, when the sky shimmers with silver, the barriers fall - present, past, future - and it's impossible to tell.

Here your dreams are sweet, and tomorrow brings them true

Here is the place where I love you ...

.

.

.

"Stop!"

.

.

.

Wake up, Peeta.

I jolt awake at the sound of a disembodied voice. There's no privacy in this place. The lights go on and off on a timer. The dark glass on the wall facing me is clearly a one-way window so that I can be observed at any time, by anyone. They keep saying they've rescued me. People say things.

Yes, I'm no longer in a Capitol cell, but if I've been rescued, why am I also being punished? Strapped to this bed almost constantly; fed drugs all day long, without consent, let alone understanding. Three times a day, they let me out of the bed, my hands cuffed, and take me to a sad, green-tiled bathroom, to shit and shower on their schedule. This is familiar and the sight of the tiles and the silver knobs triggers - something. It makes me resist them, screaming. I find that I am strong - stronger than I ever was. I can feel the muscles in my arms harden, like tree roots they are and I could kill them, effortlessly, if they didn't keep stabbing me with needles. They swarm me and there are too many of them. The stingers jab. Jab - jab - jab - and everything swirls, slows down and stops.

Then, when I'm lucid enough to listen, I am made to talk. Again. Just like before, they want stories from me - but stories in reverse. This time, it is not that the girl transforms into the mutt and my perspective shifts - this time, it is that my perspective needs to shift and the mutt transform back into the girl.

But they misunderstand the power of persuasion. My heart had given me these warnings long before I was taken - the Capitol forced me to face them, that is all. One can avoid the truth for a long time - glance sidelong at it so that you don't have to look it in the eye. But once it is seen - once it is acknowledged - no honest force can send it back into the shadows. So they use drugs and under the influence they try to make me recant my "lies" about the mutt. Make me admit to the sickening attraction I used to have for it. But I am done with that, and for good. Though I have left some loose ends ….

"You have a visitor this morning, Peeta," says the voice.

I clench my hands in frustration. I both fear and desire that they will bring it to me, again. It hasn't revealed its true form to them yet, so all my arguments and protestations fall on deaf ears. But I am helpless and so I nod, and wait for the worst.

The girl who enters the room is not what I'm expecting. At first I just see the braid, and I panic for a moment before I realize the color is all wrong. The braid is wrong, too, though, so I stare and stare.

"Peeta?" says the girl in a voice as familiar as her face - that is, somehow known to me, but not quite remembered. "Peeta, it's Delly. From home."

Abruptly, memories sharp as needles flood my head. They are not whole memories, but they feel so much more real than the shiny droplets that confuse me. I see a round little girl with bright curls, making a face at me across the classroom. Twisting her curls and smiling up at my dad until she got the extra cookie that her mother would never need to know about. Insisting that Mr. Alecorn's math problems - about the amount of extracted coal passing this way and that on trains - were not hard or boring at all. Admitting to kissing Sammy behind the shed near the track. Sobbing in a room with me before I was sent off to the Capitol the first time.

"Delly," I gasp. "Delly, it's you."

She's thinner and paler, and her curls are gone. But she's here.

"Yes!" she says, smiling and edging closer to my bed. "How do you feel?"

"Awful," I say. "Where are we? What's happened?"

She pauses to lick her lips. "Well … we're in District 13."

This again. It can't be real. I know that there are only 12 districts and the Capitol - that is all that makes up Panem. Anything more than that is therefore false and sinister - designed to deceive and confuse me. "That's what those people have been saying. But it makes no sense. Why aren't we home?"

The girl's face clouds and I can see her struggle to decide how much of the truth to tell me. Anger - cold and acidic - starts to flow through me in response to her hesitation. I am so very, very done with all the lies.

"There was … an accident," she says at last. "I miss home badly, too. I was only just thinking about those chalk drawings we used to do on the paving stones. Yours were so wonderful. Remember when you made each one a different animal?"

The images flicker through my head, but they are not of drawings. I see a pig in a pen, a yellow cat perched on a porch railing. "Yeah," I say, dismissively. "You said … about an accident?" This part makes no sense. The worst "accident" that could befall 12 is a mine accident, and that could hardly devastate the whole district, small and fragile though it might be.

"It was bad. No one - could stay."

Fear strikes me now, and it is a companion to the anger, entwining itself with it, merging to it. I hear the echo of a voice. District 12 is gone. The Capitol destroyed it, as soon as the Quell ended.

And a darker, contradictory voice. Katniss Everdeen destroyed it ...

As my lips start to tremble, Delly continues, "But I know you're going to like it here, Peeta. The people have been really nice to us. There's always food and clean clothes, and school's much more interesting."

School. More memories, not as sharp. The window lit up like a glowing square over the singing child. NO, not that one …. As my mind tries to detach from it, I just barely catch the memory of a blond boy, taller than me. He's dressed in gym shorts and a tank top. He crouches in the starting stance and smirks at me as the coach begins the countdown …1, 2, 3, 4.

"Why hasn't my family come to see me?" I ask.

"They can't," says Delly, tears now starting in her eyes. "A lot of people didn't get out of 12. So we'll have to make a new life here. I'm sure they could use a good baker. Do you remember when your father used to let us make dough girls and boys?"

Another fuzzy memory. The camera swoops over the smoking, broken remains of what once had been a town. For just a second, I see with my own eyes what my torturers had promised me would come to pass. And then the mutt appears, standing tall among the ruins, surveying what she - what it - what she had done.

"There was a fire," I say, and this memory - this knowledge - is crystal clear. In my dreams - both waking and sleeping - I have not only seen it, but I have been there: I have held the ashes of my home in my hands. There is no escaping this truth - the very worst truth of all.

"Yes," she whispers.

I cling to anger, because without it there is nothing but a horrible void. "Twelve burned down, didn't it?" I demand. "Because of her. Because of Katniss!" I spit out the name, and my mind loops around in confused circles. The two predominant forms of the mutt merge and separate almost before my eyes. My heart rate starts to rise again, and my leg muscles stiffen so that I know that the right leg - the whole leg, the one that wasn't chewed off by the mutt - will seize up with cramps soon.

"Oh, no, Peeta. It wasn't her fault."

"Did she tell you that?" I scoff.

"She didn't have to. I was -."

"Because she's lying! She's a liar! You can't believe anything she says! She's some kind of mutt the Capitol created to use against the rest of us!"

Delly starts backing away from me, back towards the door. "No, Peeta, she's not a-."

"Don't trust her, Delly," I say, hearing the rise of my voice, but powerless to control it. "I did, and she tried to kill me. She killed my friends, my family. Don't even go near her! She's a mutt!"

Delly vanishes out the door, but I keep on yelling out the truth, anyway. Hoping that someone - someone not deaf to it - will finally pay heed to the warning, the one thing I brought back, intact, from the Capitol.

I scream and scream until the inevitable happens: my arm grows cold, and the blackness washes over my eyes. But this is nothing. Nothing to what I have already been through.