I volunteered because it was right, not because I wanted to so much. People think that but really all I wanted was to save the life of some poor kid that lived in the slums and was surviving on tesserae. Besides, I was trained, ready to go and I would survive unlike the other boy who walked with a limp and had glasses so thick they could have been soda bottles. I had only ever tasted soda once; before I went to the training academy and those sorts of sugary pleasures were forbidden. All pleasures were forbidden all we were supposed to know was violence and deprivation, the Center's way of making us ready for the games. If we never knew what it was like to love anyone and treat them with kindness we would have no problem slaughtering other kids in the arena. If we never knew what it was like to eat a huge meal, only canned food and packaged meats we would be able to survive on the supplies the game makers provided us with. Otherwise we survived on vitamins and protein shakes that tasted like chalk., even when we went to the Capitol as tributes. The Training Center produces twisted human beings focused on nothing but killing because it is the only thing that they have been taught is allowed to be pleasurable. We were taught to rejoice at the sight of blood, to laugh in the face of someone's dying gasps. It wasn't until later that we found out it was all a lie; that watching someone else die doesn't bring about the elation it's supposed to.
When the buzzer went off signaling the start of the bloodbath I jetted off of my podium and flew to the Cornucopia. I grabbed a short sword on a belt and strapped it to my waist but I didn't plan on using it. I had a different plan. I would be the ultimate Career, people would remember me. I planned on killing with my bare hands. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a girl grab a large knife from a pile stacked to my left. I ran to her, grabbed her around the throat and quickly broke her neck. One down. I ran into the melee going on around me and grabbed another tribute who was trying to scrounge up food and stuff it into a pack. I shoved him to the ground and put my boot on his troat, stomped, and his windpipe was crushed. Two down. My last kill was the girl from District 7, a brown haired girl with a fierce look in her eyes. I would see that look many years later when another brown haired girl went on a killing spree after pretending to be a terrified weakling the week before the games. I didn't know it but the girl I strangled to death, the girl that made me realize that killing wasn't really a joyous or noble thing to do had a baby girl at home that she would never return to. My third victim's daughter would turn out to be one of the most brutal and cunning tributes of all time and would become famous for deceiving the Capitol, the Districts, even her mentor Blight into thinking she was a weak waste of space.
The girl I killed though, the mother of the insidious trickster Johanna Mason she was a fighter from the beginning. She ran into the Cornucopia with no fear but I took her down. I sat on top of her small body and squeezed the life out of her. At first she clawed at my hands, trying to get them off of her throat but she couldn't. I looked straight into her eyes the whole time and I saw no fear, just a deep sadness. The last words she breathed out were "my little girl," and held up her arm, showing me the bracelet she was wearing and then she went limp. I was pretty sure that she was asking me to get the bracelet to her daughter. That was the moment I felt shame. I started doubting myself when she whispered those words but I pushed the feeling away. I shouldn't feel ashamed for doing what I came here to do. I was here to kill, that's what everyone at home wanted me to do so it was a good thing right? The only concession I made to my feelings was to tear the bracelet on her arm off, stuffing it in my pocket. If she had a little girl I would send the bracelet back to her. It was a simple wooden heart on a leather cord that had the name Johanna carved into the back of it. I assumed it was the name of the little girl she had been talking about. I couldn't believe they sent a tribute into the games who had a child. What was the Capitol thinking? What were the people in her District thinking? Why did no one volunteer for her? What did I just do? In District 2 anyone with a small child would never be sent into the games; neither would a twelve year old, a handicapped child, or a weak one. There were always trained volunteers ready to go.
During the rest of my games I made sure that I didn't look into the eyes of any of the other tributes that I killed and that I did it fast. I didn't want to see their souls leaving their body and I definetly didn't want them to say anything. I was already feeling guilty for killing someone's mother and I couldn't get the image of a motherless baby girl out of my head. I had a little sister, what if it had been my mother that died and she was left alone?I didn't know exactly why I cared except that my mother and my sister were the only people in the world that had ever been who were kind to me. I always refused to acknowledge their efforts though because I was not supposed to have feelings, and I sure as hell was not supposed to love someone. But I wondered after the girl died if maybe I did in fact love my mother. I was pretty sure I loved my sister. I had from the moment I laid eyes on her. But that wasn't allowed so I never let myself think about it.
I killed six other tributes during the games, one more during the bloodbath and the other five during the following three weeks that I was in the arena. I came home a Victor, the ultimate Victor who killed with nothing but his bare hands. Great right? Except maybe it was easier to throw a spear through someone from a distance than to feel them struggle against you. I was a mentor for 17 years before I saw the brown eyes that haunted my dreams staring at me across the room as I loaded my tributes onto their chariot for their ride through the square. I nearly jumped out of my skin but I glared back in the direction of the girl who was dressed as some sort of tree sprite or something. She held my gaze and I wondered if she was the baby that had been left motherless all those years before. I watched her closely in training and she appeared to be nothing but a lost cause. She wasn't strong like the girl I suspected was her mother. I asked Blight if he knew anything about her family and he told me that she had done nothing but cry since she had been reaped and had said nothing about her family. The information that had been supplied by the Capitol about her was only that her mother had died in a previous games and that she lived with her father and grandmother.
The night of the interviews she confirmed my suspicions. She cried and told Cesar how her mother had been killed when she was a baby and that she wished she could have known her. Then she held up her arm and showed the audience the bracelet she was wearing. "This was my mother's token during her games, it has my name carved on the back of it and now it's my token too." Then she looked right at me and I swear that I was again looking into the eyes of the girl who made me doubt myself and all that I had been taught to believe in.
I watched the bloodbath holding my breath, hoping that this weakling child of a girl I had killed would not run into the fight. She didn't; she ran away. Three days later she watched as another tribute was cut down by the boy I was mentoring. She had lured the dead boy to his death by acting as live bait. She attracted his attention from her hiding place high in the trees and then pretended to be running away from him. He fell for her trick and ran through the forest following her as she flew through the trees. Being a District 7 tribute she was familiar with climbing and moving through trees. The children there worked with the lumber jacks, scaling the trees and tossing down any debris or loose branches that could fall on the tree cutters as their axes struck the tree trunks. Johanna led the boy straight toward the Careers who were hunting not too far away. From her vantage point she could see them, the unlucky boy could not.
When the boy was dead the Career pack left him where he lay, not even bothering to take the axe he carried with them as they had a whole pile of weapons back at the Cornucopia. Johanna had been counting on this and as soon as they were a safe distance away she scampered down the tree she was in and snatched up the axe. That was the moment she changed. Suddenly the sniveling, terrified little girl that I had seen so far disappeared and a stone cold killer was suddenly looking out at me through the monitor screens in the mentor booth. She pulled her long brown ponytail over her shoulder and cut through her hair with the axe blade. Her remaining hair hung in ragged disarray around her face. I didn't understand for a moment but then I realized that she didn't want anyone to be able to grab her hair and use it as a means of holding onto her. It was a deliberate, calculated move and so everything else had been as well. She let the competition think she was weak so that they wouldn't bother with her until the end. Smart girl.
I watched over the next few days as she rampaged through the arena, splitting open the heads and abdomens of her opponents. The last tribute was the boy I mentored. Of course it was. They fought for almost an hour and when she struck the final blow she screamed "Just die you District 2 Fucker!" But she wasn't really talking to him, she was looking straight at a camera and she knew I would be watching my tribute being hacked to pieces. She stood there, covered in my tribute's blood and smiled an evil smile. "You don't win this time Two," she hissed. Killing the male District 2 tribute had been her revenge for taking her mother. She didn't yet realize that it would never be good enough; that she had killed someone from Two but it wasn't me.