Hello there. This here is a one-shot about one of my favourite characters, Finnick Odair. Set when he is 16, and being sold by President Snow. I don't usually write in present tense or first person, so I apologise if there are any grammatical mistakes. Enjoy, and please review :)

The beast looms above me: a silhouette, black and hulking and monstrous, with its hunched back and thick, fleshy swell of muscle highlighted against the gentle moonlight. The only part of the figure which betrays its humanity are the heavy hands which clutch the hilt of the figure's weapon like it's the only thing the tribute has in the whole world. It probably is.

The smooth, elegant spire of metal sprawling high above me shines bright silver, and I can't help but be reminded of the masts of fishing boats moored back home. Only their surface isn't tainted with blood. It's a crimson drip from the smeared sword, smashing, revoltingly wet and warm, onto my lips that brings me to my senses, and jolts me out of the terror which encapsulates me like the icy stabbing sensation of drowning in frozen water.

I leap to the side, and feel the cool whistle of air against the back of my neck, starting at the powerful thud as the sword buries itself in the thick mud I had lay in just a moment ago. The tribute's furious, ape-like scream as his weapon misses its mark makes me flinch. I feel the sword soar into the air above me, ready to take my life. I feel his cloth, burial clothes, underneath my skin as I grab at him desperately, my other hand guiding my trident to victory. I feel the sickening warmth gush over my hands, my wrists, as the soft flesh of a nameless tribute yields to the lethal points of what is an extension of my own arm.

Three razor sharp points against one, hardly seems fair. There's an ancient phrase which my grandfather told me: alls fair in love and war. But this fatal hold this tribute and I are locked in is neither; this is part of a game, one of pure, pointless murder.

Something strange happens. The dark stream of blood winding round my calloused fingers quickly becomes a scarlet river, and when I look down I realise I am standing in a torrent of lucid warmth, red liquid slipping through my clothes, burning every inch of the skin beneath my waist. The current becomes stronger, and though I fight, planting my feet (which have been ripped from their solid, protective boots) firmly into the mud, I soon feel my grip on earth torn from me, and I crash into the waves.

A great, unnatural cloud has smothered the moonlight, and I am plunged into a blind darkness as hot, slippery liquid surges into my mouth. I retch, desperately flailing my arms to keep myself from being swept away, sucked into the impenetrable blackness. My hands catch something large and soft, and I realise with horror that the corpse of the innocent boy whom I had just killed is being shoved into me by the current, his weight forcing me under, trying to avenge his own death. I push at him, try to swim away so the body can pass by me, but his lifeless limbs, already rotting away, fold around me in a deathly cold embrace.

Every part of my being thrashes desperately to get away, to escape from this living hell, but I am helpless, dragged by the current of a flood which I created. My senses are assailed by the stench of something horrifyingly familiar, like from an ancient nightmare: the mutant mixture of roses and blood. Deep booms echo all around me, shake me to the core, so loud I can almost feel the cold, metal nose of the cannon on my neck. I feel the icy smoothness and sharp angles of the boy's skeleton digging into my skin, puncturing my flesh, as his dead weight forces my face closer to the pulsing throb of the river. I splutter as my lungs violently react to the fresh blood, which slides revoltingly down my throat, leaving behind it a thick slime which reminds me of slug trails, and I feel my chest tighten as less and less air breezes through my lungs at every breath…

I am suddenly thrust back into my body, and I realise only with a little relief that it was just a nightmare. Because it had started off as a flashback. Because the nightmares never truly end, even when I'm awake.

Feeling vulnerable lying on my back, I rise so I'm leaning up on my elbows as the fogginess of sleep fades from my mind and I try to gather my bearings. I never realised how much I appreciated being in the same place, waking up in my own room, with the familiar shapes of my desk and wardrobe and clothes (that I could never quite be bothered to put away) to greet me. Because for the past few weeks I had dragged myself from fitful sleep, hungry for comfort, something to tether me to this earth, and have found only unfamiliar forms, too many shadows, the touch of a stranger's plump, perverse limbs clanking with jewellery.

This morning (though by the blinding, pointed numbers on the clock I see its closer to night), I find myself in a room almost as large as my old home all those miles away, with sequins smothering every inch of shocking pink wall which isn't already coated with photos, slapped on like tiles from the floor to the ceiling. Some are of Capitol people, odd creatures with rainbow skin, hair and clothes, each with some grotesque or simply ridiculous 'beauty feature'. Men with a piercing gouging every available cell of skin, women with caricature bodies, children grinning with dimples stapled with cat whiskers.

But mostly the faces of mentors, escorts, stylists, and of course tributes have been chopped meticulously from magazines and tacked to the wall. Murderers and their assistants; interesting choice of decoration. I spot my own eyes staring back at me several times, and feel watched, surrounded. I wonder if it bothers the owner of this room that every action is being judged by the unforgiving gaze of skeletal children who have been brutally murdered.

Speaking of which, I glance at the woman (whose name escapes me) sprawled beside me, face buried in the rich fabric covering the bed, which spans the width of the room. I will never understand why people in the Capitol feel the need to own such large beds. It's not like they need it, even where the people I…see have husbands or lovers, it always crosses my mind how at least four could fit easily in a bed only used by two. But that is the Capitol all over. Wasteful, greedy, ungrateful, unthinking.

I suddenly find the air in the room stifling, the heat pumping through ugly radiators in the corner so distant from the cool breezes that constantly drifted through the modest house I used to share with my parents. The presence of the woman, sharing the odd colours, distinctive features and ignorant curiosity that I saw in the brightly plumed birds wandering the fields in my games, troubles me. The sound of her snuffled snorts makes me jump, and the sight of her hands makes my skin crawl as I remember how those same hands had travelled over me in darkness bathed in pink, the blood red nails – more like claws – pricking the golden surface of my skin. That night, as always, hot and frenzied and messy and frightening, just like the bloodbath at the Cornucopia.

And like the Cornucopia, I know that I have to grab what I need and get out of here as quickly as I can. So I throw off the silken sheets and leap off the bed, whipping round, alarmed, when the woman moans. I stand, still as a corpse, glaring at her bare body striped with luminous orange, and praying she won't wake up. I really can't handle having to tug on my camera face, spit out stupid jokes and empty laughs. Flirt though I feel disgusted at their manufactured eyes, dark and sparkling with lust. Match their smiles, theirs so large I worry they'll try to swallow me whole. Resort to grabbing onto something to restrain myself from the instinctive reaction to back away from these creatures who inch closer, like predators which have cornered their prey to mercilessly devour it.

Thankfully, the woman remains asleep as she heaves her body over so she is facing me, her arm landing over the empty space I had just occupied, as if a subconscious part of her wants to seize me and trap me in her grasp. Satisfied she hasn't woken up, I gather my clothes, flung carelessly round the bed, and slip into them, then turn and hurry towards long, velvet curtains through which I can see the light of a promising expanse of window. My suspicions are proved correct when I pull back the heavy, plum fabric to reveal two glass doors lying between my prison and a balcony, which appears to be made of wooden planks, but on closer inspection it is too bright, too perfect, too fresh to be anything from nature.

The room I am in is coated in a dim glow, but as soon as I open the curtains the place is flooded with the electric luminescence of the city, that cold brightness which impales your eyes from every direction: decorative studs embedded on the pavement; lamps posted like guards in strict formation every few metres; flamboyant, opulent structures sitting atop of buildings like vultures upon a dead branch. My glance snaps back to the woman, worried the light might have roused her from her slumber, but she hasn't stirred. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, I know from experience that people in the Capitol are very good at sleeping: they can fall into a such a deep unconsciousness you'd swear they were in a coma, and stay there until way after the day has broken. Not an earthquake could stir them. And they must be used to the endless brightness, in this world where night is day, where they oppose nature by taunting the night stars with millions of their own unsightly little yellow bulbs, in order to satisfy their bizarre ways.

As I fumble for an exasperatingly long time with the latch, I wonder what has become of my fingers, once so nimble with the joints flexed by years of working with finicky knots, hands recently used to make strangers scream, to the symphony of cannon-fire, or to the whine of a silly high-pitched Capitol accent. I'm near smashing the damn glass by the time I manage to finally loosen the golden latch and push the doors open, my joints aching and blood pooling round my nails, which are perfect now I've been threatened by my prep team to never bite them again.

I stumble out gratefully, wiping my hands on my trousers, which mould constrictively around my legs, making me feel uncomfortable as I realise how much I want to have a shower, or heck, I'll settle for sprinting around in the rain, just to wash away the sticky, sweaty layer that coats my skin like filthy grime from the pits of the coal mines in Twelve. Like always, I feel so…unclean, impure. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I could peel off this shell, so that people would not think I was so beautiful, so I would not have to feel so disgusted with the skin I am forced to wear.

I stand there, leaning against the balcony railing with my eyes closed, trying to block out the incessant thump of music rattling the windows a few houses down the street, and the impatient blare of horns slicing the air from the road far down below. The cool wind, blowing gently against my uncovered arms, causes lines of goose bumps to form, but I find the breeze peaceful, refreshing, and I relish the opportunity to capture a rare moment immersed in nature within this artificial jail block.

I allow myself to forget the people, who are barely people at all, who press in all around me, and make myself believe that for a second, I am all alone on the beach at home, safe, with my family and my friends, and surrounded by those things which I always took for granted, but which in the Games I had longed for more than life itself. The crash of waves, the sky alive with stars, the feeling of belonging, of knowing and being proud of exactly who and what I am.

Then I open my eyes and remember that I'm trapped in a stranger's house miles and miles away from my own, obligating to repugnant midnight rituals just so that there still is a home when I get back.

Not for the first time, I wish I was dead, eased from life by a weapon too large for the desperate yet unwilling hands which grasp it. But some undulating force, like the hazy horizon sliced by the fierce waves of the sea, stops me from tipping myself from this balcony, unburdened by the sharp barrier of a force field. It's the hope that someday my life will have purpose, that I will one day be able to look in the mirror without fear or shame or disgust, that one day I'll be safe from the Hunger Games forever.

I have the feeling I will be waiting a long time for that day.