Johanna: What Really Happened
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with HUNGER GAMES. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)
History is written by the victors - Anonymous
Here there is no why - Primo Levi, quoting a concentration camp guard in World War II
I'm going to die. I know I'm gonna die. And I can't even die with any dignity.
I knew I was doomed when I started crying during the interview with Caesar Flickermann, begging for sympathy. All the bastards and bitches of the Capitol, the ones who invested in tributes in the Games, wrote me off as a loser. I was not going to get any sponsors.
Jack, my district partner, told me up front not to expect any help from him. He was going to concentrate on saving his own ass, and I was responsible for mine. My mentor had pretty much written me off as well. No girl from District 7 had ever won in the history of the Games. He concentrated on helping Jack survive. After all, mentors are supposed to be even-handed, but it's a conflict of interest. Inevitably they favor one tribute over the other.
When I saw that the arena was one of the favorite styles – a thick forest - I became more hopeful. I was from District 7; I was familiar with woodlands and had been trained in woodcraft. But would that be enough to offset my disadvantages?
It seemed so at first. Familiar with how forests were laid out, I managed to find a pond of seemingly clean water, and I drank my full in case I did not get another chance. But then the Careers came up and decided that the pond would make a good spot for a camp. I managed to conceal myself among some nearby trees, and tried not to make a move or a sound that might attract their attention.
My metabolism wouldn't stay still, though. Over the hours, all that water made its way through my body to my bladder. By the time that the Careers decided to move away en masse and I was able to emerge from my hiding place, I had wet my pants.
I spent several hours looking for another hiding place, embarrassed and uncomfortable. At home I would have a change of clothes; here I was stuck with the clothes that were on my back when I entered the arena, and they were soiled. I wondered if the Capitol audience, if they were watching, could tell what had happened.. I suppose that this sort of thing happens rather often in the Games, but you don't hear much of it in the broadcasts. Not lurid enough, I suppose.
Finally my forestry skills help me find another pond. This time the whole area seems to be well hidden from view. I look around to make sure that I am invisible to other tributes, and I take my clothes off, washing both myself and the linens. Unfortunately there is no easy way to dry the clothes, so I spread them out in the sun and crouch nearby, naked. I wonder if the Capitol audience can see me, and decide that I can't do anything about it. When you know that you'll probably die in a place, the rest of the world becomes unreal and irrelevant.
"Well well, what have we here?" says a sudden male voice behind me. I get up and spin around, at the same time trying to hide myself as best as I can. It's one of the Careers, wearing a huge knapsack on his back of goodies from the Cornucopia, and I'm stark naked. "A girl, and all undressed and ready for –"
"Please. If you want to kill me, go ahead and do it. But please don't –"
"Here there is no 'please'. There is doing what you have the power to do." He lunged at me.
I turn and run, realizing that I present a lurid spectacle, both to him and to whoever may be watching in the Capitol. At one point I stop hearing the footsteps behind me and turn to see if he is given up. Instead, he is right on my tail and lunges at me again, and I fall painfully on my back, with him on top.
I flail wildly, and my right hand brushes a fallen tree limb half a meter away. Even in the crisis, my forestry skills still work. By feel and heft I can tell that it's a hard and heavy piece of word, and I've been wielding axes for years. So I grasp it, and bend my elbow quickly to deploy it in one quick motion. It bangs him on the head, and he stops moving. I push him off, and I'm trying to tell if he's still alive when the cannon goes off and answers my question: no.
I open his knapsack – everything here is the property of the Cornucopia and belongs to whoever can grab it. It has several knives, more food than I've seen since entering the arena, and even one of those special spectacles that help one see at night. Enough to give me a fighting chance for the rest of the Games—
0-0-0-0
"So, Johanna, that was the most dramatic turnaround I've ever seen," says Caesar Flickermann. "At the beginning you seemed almost helpless, and yet you won the Games this year. The first Girl Victor from District 7! How do you explain it?"
I flash a frozen smile while I think of what to say. They had just shown a clip of me nude, with my breasts and torso pixeled out, whimpering "Please, if you want to kill me, go ahead and do it." I think there's an unpixelated version of it somewhere in the archives. It's the last thing I want people to think about, the image of the terrified naked girl.
So I smirk and say, "Actually, Caesar, I planned it all."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. Call it a stealth campaign. Act helpless so that nobody will target me, or if they do find me, everybody will underestimate me. Then WHAM! That's one less enemy. And since the tributes weren't watching the Games from outside, like the Capitol audience, and didn't see me killing their predecessors, they were caught off guard each time. I even pulled the helpless-and-naked trick a couple of times, as everybody saw on the television. Being seen naked doesn't bother me."
At least it doesn't bother me now, now that it's saved my life a couple of times.
0-0-0
So, Katniss, the attached memoir is the real story. I've only shown it to a few people. You can show it to Peeta, but I think I can trust you not to let it go any further. I've managed to go down in history not as Johanna-Mason-the-Wuss, or Johanna-Mason-of-the-Bare-Ass, but Johanna Mason the Cunning Victor, and I want to keep it that way.
THE END