Dying Isn't An Option ~ Fan-Fiction

Dear diary,
Tomorrow’s the day we venture forth into the dreaded arena. Me and my allies, we can make it through this hell. Even if our own lives depend on it, we will get one of us out of here. We can do this if we work together so we better try and work together a little better.
From Glint

But, of course, life isn’t as simple as that. I’m in the training centre with my allies, listening as they discuss our plans and tactics. “Head into the bloodbath at each other’s sides, and grab some weapons, and maybe a backpack to save picking up all the separate food. Fend off tributes with our weapons of choice. Mine is a spear.” I stare at the ground. “Mine’s a knife,” I murmur, and I have to repeat it several times before they hear me.

“A knife. We need knives, a spear…” He goes around the group. It’s settled. We need knives, a spear, a bow, a sword, and a mace. Then we can guarantee that everyone will be comfortable. “You’re all responsible to get at least one weapon and one other item of choice,” the boy says, looking down at the inked writing on his hand. “We can’t share a packet of dried fruit and some crackers between us. We need to be decked out with food, armour, weapons and the like.”

Suddenly, the Careers walk towards us. There’s a girl with blonde hair from One who looks like the least of a target from the pack. But the girl from Two looks terrifying. Her stylist placed blood red lipstick on her lips, and she looks like she drinks blood for breakfast. Who knows, maybe she does, to get herself bloodthirsty and ready to kill. “Aw, are this lickle alliance making plans?” the girl from Two asks in a fake sweet voice. “Too bad they won’t survive the bloodbath,” the boy from One chimes in. “Yeah, we’ll get them, you just wait,” the girl from Four adds with a sneaky grin. “I’ll happily tie one up and burn them alive later in the night,” the boy from Two says.

We’re scared. I’m just the lowly girl from District Nine. I have no power against the Careers, none whatsoever, even with a knife they’ll over-power me. “I challenge you all. Who wants to face me in a knife competition? Who can score the most kills in five minutes? Winner means that we’ll spare you in the arena,” the girl from Two says, a knife already in her hand. I look at the knife station. Oh, how I’ve longed to grab those sharp blades and throw. I’ve longed to touch the blades, to feel the metal against my hands, and to throw them forwards at the target, and watch it sink into its throat. How easy it would be to beat this girl, but my mentor’s instructions are to steer clear of my strong points…

“Sure,” I say, speaking up for the first time in front of these monstrous creatures. “I will.” My allies gasp and complain, but I step towards one station. The girl from Two airily steps towards hers. “Ready, set, throw!” I throw the knife, aiming for the neck. My knife slams into its throat just as hers pierces the heart. We’re even. One all. One of the other tributes outside of our alliances is keeping score. We continue, the pressure racing up. My heart thuds to the beat that the knives keep slamming against the fabric. Rip, rip, slam, rip, whoosh as the knife flies towards the target and slaughters it. Then the girl from Two is counting down from five, four, three, two…

I continue, determined. Whereas the girl is too busy counting to focus on throwing. She slows down, and I carry on at an alarming pace. Then she tells me to stop. I face the boy from District Eleven, who was scoring us. “Elektra from Two got…198 kills of the dummy. Glint from District Nine got…215 kills of the dummy. Congratulations.” I’ve beaten her. I’ve beaten the girl from Two in a knife race. And she flushes with rage and spits in my face. Just as she throws herself towards me, I duck and she face-plants the training centre floor.

“No fighting!” barks a Peacekeeper, taking the girl and marching her back to her apartment. “And no more training for you for the rest of the day!” I stifle a laugh, then remember where I am. The Careers glare at me. “We may spare you for the bloodbath, but after that, the games will bloody begin for real.” Then they turn on the boy from District Eleven, taunting him, challenging him. They have nothing better to do than show off and suck the confidence from other tributes. “Wow, you’ve saved our lives practically,” my alliance says. “But you’re too big a threat. Get away from us now.”

They’ve – they’ve kicked me out? Out of my own alliance? “You’re first on my list,” I screech at the boy from District Eight, then turn around and walk towards the gauntlet. I’ve gone for a different tactic now. Train like a Career. I don’t care what my mentor says.
I put my best into the session at the gauntlet. It takes about four attempts before I complete the course in a record-beating time. Gosh, I’m good at this lark, I just realized. My alliance stares at me, wishing they never said that. I walk towards the Careers. “You want a kill, right?” They nod. “More than one,” the boy from Two says gruffly.

“Well, I’ll offer you a number of kills. I’ll exchange every one of my allies in return for a spot in your alliance,” I say. “Nah, we can kill ‘em anyway,” the girl from One says. “Get away from us, scum, we don’t need your kind around here.” I stare, gob-smacked. They turn down a load of kills because they don’t like me? What an idiot. They’ll pay. In the bloodbath, they may kill me – but no, they’ll be in the range of my knives. I can win this thing.

As I scare them all (the other tributes, I mean, not the Careers) with my throwing knives, many of the tributes have deemed me a threat. I am happy with this, because my goal is to train like a Career and act like one, even without an alliance. Tomorrow was the big day, and today was drawing to an end. I watch as the sun sets. I am perched on the seat by the window at my apartment, watching the silvery moon that slowly made its way up to the sky. Sometime, I must fall asleep, because soon I wake up in the exact same position. My prep team arrive and they squeal. “It’s your big day!” they screech, and I wonder how they get through the day, what thoughts erupt in their minds, what they do to occupy themselves other than paint their bodies bright green or dye their hair or buy wigs and get their skin tattooed and watch the Games. Do they spend their whole time on fashion?

My prep team is Valentine, who has fuchsia coloured skin and wig specially for these Games, and she has blood red lipstick. It’s a trend since the Gamemaker announced he’d try to make this the bloodiest, goriest Games so far. Very re-assuring. My district partner is sitting up, awake. We’ve been friends for a while, ever since the Reaping when I discovered we’d led similar lives. Both our siblings had been reaped in a previous game and had both died. They’d been allied, and in love. To this day, I’m not sure whether it was just a strategy to make the Capitol sponsor them, or whether they meant it when they whispered ‘I love you’ in hushed whispers at sunset.

Soon, I’m ready. It’s time.

60 seconds. The time is ticking, and it’s one minute until the tributes are released to the arena. I look around me – some kind of forest clearing, but I can see the lake. The Careers will invade that lake, for sure.

50 seconds left.

40 seconds left.

30 seconds left.

20 seconds left.

At 10 seconds, I feel queasy. My ex-alliance are nodding to each other, quietly putting the cherry on top of their plan. I’ll destroy that plan for them.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Then the gong sounds and I sprint towards the Cornucopia, where all the supplies are. Knives! Oh, how I’ve longed to get my hands on those- Just as I’m reaching out to grab them, my ex-ally pushes me to one side and grabs them. My vision blurs, and I see him give the knives to his new ally. Oh, trust them! I pick up a backpack and realize it contains a knife. Thank goodness for that. I take out the knife and run towards them, and they back off. The new girl to that alliance holds her knives, but as she throws, I catch each one by the handle.

“Can’t throw a knife, then?” I ask, teasingly preparing to throw one of the ones she missed. Then I do throw, and it finds a home inside her throat. She sinks to the ground and I scoop up all her remaining knives, then run out of there. The forest seems to go on forever. But then I realize, I have an empty water bottle. Whilst the Careers are invading the Cornucopia, I have to get water. I can’t survive without it. I run towards the lake, not taking the short-cut through the Cornucopia but instead going around through the trees. I can see the Cornucopia, but the people within it cannot see me. Most of them are dead. The Careers are killing off the few who are left and picking up items.

The lake! I’ve been dying to get there. Another tribute (the girl from District Twelve?) is there, but she’s just filled her bottle and she sees me and runs. Water is my top priority, not killing the girl from Twelve. The poorest district always deserves a chance, so I’ve given her one. I use an iodine tablet to purify the water, as the salt and the grit needs to be drained out. It’s one of my few iodine tablets, but I’ll have to use it. I just want to know where Drake, my district partner, is. Has he died courtesy of the bloodbath? Or is he out there, possibly wounded but still alive? I have to get to him. I seal the cap on top of the bottle – no point in wasting water, because I drank some this morning.

I can’t eat the food yet because I’ve already eaten today. I guess I should just eat when I’m almost starved to death. I can’t waste the little supply of food and drink I have. I hear footsteps, and I count about how many people are coming. Six, possibly seven. The Careers are heading this way. I shove the bottle into my bag and run, determined to survive. At least I filled the bottle to the brim, it could last me a while.

I haven’t looked much inside my bag, all I know is that there’s a little bit of food, some knives and the full water bottle. I’m set to go on this hike, perhaps the lake there isn’t the only source of water. I have to find the other one, if there is one. I’m determined to get there before any tribute, so if they do find it, I can throw a knife.

Back in my district, my mother farmed grain in our garden. She hated the grain farms that were open to the public, so she made her living stealing the seeds from the public farms and planting them in our own garden. We had our own private grain farm, to make flat bread so we wouldn’t always go to bed with empty stomachs.

During the Games, we’d sit inside and watch the gruesome terror erupting. I hope Mother hasn’t let Chrissie watch – I don’t want her to see me die. But if I win, Chrissie cannot watch the recap video either. I don’t want her to see how I’ve ruthlessly murdered that girl, I think she was from District Three, who had replaced me in the alliance. All it took was a flick of my wrist to murder someone. I feel guilt evolving inside me as night falls.

I am tired of walking but there isn’t much choice. All I can do is carry on. But time flew by, because soon the unmistakeable sound of the anthem fills the arena. I look up into the sky, and a floating picture turns up. First it shows the girl I killed in the morning. Then the boy from her district. The boy from District Five. Both from Six, and Seven. The boy from Eight. The next image displayed is the girl from Ten, so I’m relieved that Drake survived. Then the boy from Ten, both from Eleven, and then the anthem blacks out.

Twelve dead. That’s exactly half killed in the bloodbath. I wonder who will die next. Maybe the girl from Twelve, who I saw collecting water at the lake. She has food, she has water, and there was an axe lying next to her in the scenario I noticed. She was decked out, and alive. Drake’s alive somewhere too. I remember I’m out in the open, where anyone can see me. I remember learning to climb trees when I was little, with my father. I pace the area until I find a tree that only people of my ability can climb. I climb it, although even for me it’s a struggle. I slip numerous times but make it to the top. Then I perch on a branch, entwined in some leaves to cover me. It’s a perfect hiding spot. I’ll only ever have to get down to go hunting- go hunting! With my knives, I could easily hunt. I’d just have to find the right animals.

It’s almost midnight now, and I’m sitting upright in the tree, hidden, waiting for game. I haven’t hunted much, but District 9 used to hunt rare wildlife, so it must be running in the blood somewhere. Then I see a rabbit. I hop down from the tree silently, then when I’m at a decent distance from the ground, I throw the knife. The rabbit has no time to hop away before the razor sharp blade has pierced its eye. I jump from the low distance I’m at and pick it up. Then I wonder how I could cook it. Starting a fire is too risky. I climb back up, thinking about what I could do. I pick a leaf and chew on it absent-mindedly, then just shove the rabbit inside the bag and decide I’ll think of the solution when I’m hungry enough to eat the rabbit.

Sleep never takes me. I lie awake in the tree. I hope I don’t fall off. Maybe there’s something useful in my bag. Aha! A ball of string! Enough to tie me to the branch, seeing as I have a flat stomach and the branch is only just heavy enough to hold my weight. I strap myself to the branch and hope the weight of the string doesn’t send it downwards. It doesn’t, though, so I nestle into the branch and close my eyes.

I am woken up by a cannon. My eyes widen. Could it have been Drake’s? Perhaps. It’s afternoon, so I’ll have to wait a few hours for the anthem to discover who. It’s the second day – has it really been this long? It seems like only a minute ago I was preparing to run to the Cornucopia. I unstrap myself from the tree, and I climb back down, tucking the string back into the bag.