{save me from the dark} /open

Cassandra Hearsh

Uncertainty prevents me from striding over to the other tributes, striking up small talk with them like they've chose to do with each other. I know it's strategic to plan alliances and all that jazz ahead of time, but I doubt I'll strike any luck with the others. Looks like it's going to be a lonely week or two.

The first thing that catches my eye are the machines pushed off in the corner. Machines with buttons on a blockey head, a padded sort of running track below? Benches with weights. Several towering steel mechanisms with elastic rope attached, a sticker on the side describing how to use it and what exactly the exercise targets. And then the weapons and practice dummies on the other side. Rubber and life-like, racks of deadly looking blades and maces hang behind them, instructors standing at the ready. Piquing my interest is a display of knives off toward the right. Carefully making my way over, I offer a brisk greeting to the middle-aged man standing in front of the rack, hands clasped tightly behind his back. His face is a mask of calm, but it's obvious in the way he twitches and the way he keeps bouncing on the balls of his feet that he's been waiting for someone to come along and ask about his station.

"So, uh... What is this?"

He gives a brief lecture on the art of knife throwing before handing me one of them, carefully holding it at the hilt. I try as hard as I can to mimic the movements he had just demonstrated, successfully getting the pointy end into the stomach of the dummy with a nice, hard thud sound. The instructor nods, but steps forward to show where I went wrong. I soon grow frustrated, tired of hearing him tell me about how my stance is sloppy, how I'm not making correct eye contact, how I should just go ahead and kill myself now and save the others trouble, with my lack of skill.

About twenty minutes pass and I sink the blade right where he marked, burying the knife to the hilt in hard rubber and synthetic intestines. I giggle at the man's face, a complete look of shock as he examines my work, informing me if the dummy were a live human being, I would have just performed an instant kill shot. He nods his consent, and allows me to practice a few more times before sending me off on my way to another station.

I stand dumbly in the middle of the wrestling mats, praying to whatever dear god may lie above the infinite skies that someone does show, and someone doesn't.