The Beast

I am currently running for my life.

I can hear the deafening thud of my footsteps on the dry ground, and a high pitched whip-whip as blades of long grass swish past my ears as I run. It was the right choice to choose the meadow to conceal myself, but the wrong choice because all sense of direction was lost.

To where I was running to didn't concern me so much as long as what I was running from didn't find me. That what is a blood thirsty mutant the Capitol created and set loose on the outskirts of the twelve districts of Panem. A mixture of wolf and mole DNA, the Capitol had created a successful hunter, not for wild game, but for humans.

Humans, like me, that wanted to escape the arduous life inside a small district. I live in District 12, known as the Seam to its inhabitants, since we were the farthest from the Capitol. Our main export is coal and the Capitol is always in constant demand for the condensed carbon to power its own needs. There were only a handful of other trades besides coal mining that existed in the Seam, but they were strictly inherited by the children of the families of bakers or blacksmiths. My family was no exception.

My father has been working in the coal mines since the age of eighteen. He said he was able to find work there because he had grown too old to participate in a national event known as the Hunger Games. Every child between the age of twelve and eighteen are eligible to be drawn as a tribute to the Hunger Games. Two from each district is chosen, one boy and one girl. Once your name is drawn, it is an obligation that you walk towards that stage and accept your role as tribute from your district. There is a possibility that a volunteer may take your place, but the majority is generally too afraid to step forward. So instead you are thrown into an arena to fight to the death against twenty-three other participants, almost synonymous to myself who threw me into this meadow to fight to escape.

The mutant's claws resemble those of a mole, but have the durability of platinum; the pointed ends are sharp enough they could pierce through muscle and bone with little effort. A flower shaped nose whose petals are actually hypersensitive skin made to detect scents, and at night, body heat, blooms out over the snout of the creature. He is blind like a mole, the only feature the geneticists at the Capitol couldn't perfect, but his hearing can pick up the whip-whip whisper of the blades of grass as I run past them. A gray blur gripping at the dry ground in pursuit of one thing.

Me.

Early in the morning, I was hunting in the woods for my family and the rest of the district because food is scarce. The Capitol limits food rations to each district and the families that live there to avoid another famine, like the Great Famine of Panem in the year 3020, forty years ago. However, it's like the famine never really ended. People die of starvation every day, but the Capitol refuses to believe this. They think they're helping their fellow citizens, when in fact they know nothing about each district except for the products they produce. Ironically, to add to the death toll, out of the twenty-four participants in the Districts Hunger Games, only one survives. I wasn't kidding when I said they fight to the death, I just forgot to mention that only one walks away victorious. It's no meager prize either: a generous food supply to last you and your family until the last one of that generation dies, and a wealthy salary to boot. In addition, your name becomes forever a part of history, but it has little effect to the winner when life is short and food is scarce.

How short my life will be if the wolf-mole mutant, catches up to me, tears me limb from limb while I slowly feel the pangs of pain my nerve endings produce as they are severed. I hope that the creature goes for my neck first so my misery can be ended rather quickly.

I'm still disoriented as I run through the meadow. I begin to panic as more thoughts begin to surface. What if I'm going in circles and eventually I run into the beast? What will my family think when I don't return home? How will I keep providing for citizens of the district? These thoughts, at first faint whispers in the crevices of my mind, are now shouting at me, their words mixing and images blurring. My mind is so preoccupied that I don't notice the sound of the galloping thump of the beast's paws on the dry earth has stopped.

I keep running, until I break the edge of the meadow that leads into the woods. I'm far from the fence surrounding District 12, but all that doesn't matter to me because I climb at least 30 feet up into a tree before I register my surroundings. I look into the meadow and search for some movement of the long blades of grass to signify where the beast is. Everything is eerily quiet. I can feel the pulse of my blood surging throughout my whole body, and hear the irregular beating of my heart as it circulates the blood. I dare not breathe through my mouth, to pant so that I can cool myself down after running for who knows how long. Instead, I take slow and deliberate breathes through my nose, all the while training my ears to pick up any sounds.

There.

To my left I hear branches slowly cracking and breaking under heavy weight. Can the beasts climb trees now? Have they adapted to not only cover ground but above ground as well? I hold my breath and slowly turn my head in the direction of the noise. I shouldn't have because it confirms my biggest fear. Although blind to the world, the beasts' super-human ability to feel even the air in those flowery petal noses has allowed them to climb the trees without having to see the branches.

My heart pace quickens (if that was already possible since I hadn't fully recovered from running through the meadow), but I stand still, hoping that the 40 foot distance between us is enough for me to either make a getaway, or for my scent to dissolve in the air before it carries over to the beast. I'm in luck, the wind is blowing my scent away from the beast but I don't sigh in relief. It can still hear me.