Hey guys. Cjborange here, with my second SYOT! The rules and form are on my profile for anybody who would like to submit. The prologue is pretty short; consider checking out my last SYOT (completed, yay!) if you want to sample a bit more of my writing. I hope you enjoy this creepy, mysterious prologue. And I hope I wrote it well enough to get you all to submit tributes :D
Shattered: The 113th Hunger Games
Fear.
It is the most basic and the most primitive aspect of the human condition. It embodies everything bad and everything terrible the human race has ever seen. Fear is growth, fear is change, fear is the desire to survive and the desire to gain another day.
That's why it's such a powerful tool. Fear is such a versatile weapon that it can be used for most any purpose. It can cut deeper than any knife.
Convince someone that they are powerless against the terrors against them, and you have complete, undivided control over their actions. Make somebody afraid and they sacrifice every fiber of their individuality in the sick, twisted name of your intent.
Throughout the happiest moments of human life, fear never leaves. Fear is like a bug that takes hold of the human body and digs into the skin with claws too powerful to pry off. You can try to ignore it to the best of your ability. You can turn your head so that you don't have to look at its ugly, spiny legs. But it will always be there with you. Always.
Terror. Uncertainty. Dread. Panic. Horror. Alarm.
No wonder we have so many words to describe it.
Silvanus Rustellar knew of fear when he signed the Hunger Games into law. He knew of fear when he gathered up the first group of twenty-four innocent children. He knew of fear when he carried them to the Capitol and watched them kill each other with a sick grin on his face.
Coriolanus Snow knew of fear when he slipped a bit of poison into Silvanus' drink at an elaborate dinner party. He knew of fear when he watched everybody at the table go pale and then limp in a matter of seconds.
Ahenobarbus Lock, the current president of Panem, knows of fear. And he plans to use it to its absolute fullest potential this time around.
This man will watch as the tributes ascend into a dark, rocky arena. That's the only thing they'll be able to tell at first. Then they'll start to feel the freezing cold rain pouring down in sheets. Every single drop draws the resolve and the life force out of them. The air tingles and whispers with a thousand different things. Terrible things. Things that make them want to curl up and cry and wait for death to claim them, whether it takes minutes or years.
As the tributes scatter across the arena, they will face their worst fears. They will relive their worst memories. They will literally be sent spiraling down into the deepest, darkest regions of their subconscious. They will know a kind of terror they didn't even know existed. The kind of animal instinct to fight or flee or do anything it takes to survive.
A certain Pixel Watt knew this terror thirty years prior. She knew it when she fled from the bloodbath, the screams of the defenseless kids ringing behind her. She knew it when she watched the huge canine mutt tear the girl from 2 in half. She knew it when she truly realized that those memories would never leave her.
In this new landscape where their deepest nightmares have been willed into solid reality, only one victor will emerge with their life. But they won't be the same person. Not by any stretch of the imagination. They will be a pane of shattered glass taped back together to the point that it can stand without buckling. But nobody will ever be able to see into it.
Their new personality will be unrecognizable. They will be changed in every manner of the phrase and they will never go back to how they once were.
Who will brave the horrors of the one-hundred thirteenth Hunger Games, and who will shatter, everything that makes them them carried away by the wind to a terrible place of hopelessness and fear?
Time will tell.
Again, I really hope this was good. Please check out my profile if you want to submit :D