A Magical Nightmare
Prologue – Part II
'Once Upon A time…'
Emerald scratched his head absentmindedly, his dark brown eyes fixated on the old book lying on his desk. After spending way too many hours reading, the dark circles under his tired eyes were starting to have dark circles, too. He would have given anything for another theme. Spring, death, zombies, spiders – Heck, even butterflies.
Anything, but fairytales.
Unfortunately, there was no way to change that. The President had given him simple, but clear instructions. That was the only saying he had in the whole thing, and of course, he had to make things extremely difficult for his Head Gamemaker.
One month had passed since Rosalinda – The President's secretary – had handed him the book. At first, he had felt desperate. Reading had never been his thing. But that was child's play compared to what he had to do with the information the book contained.
On second thought, throwing the book at a tribute suddenly seemed like a good idea. After all, that thing weighted a good seven pounds. It might kill a weak tribute if thrown properly. But still, he had to create an arena. And a perfect one, of course.
He sighed heavily, resisting the growing urge to tear some pages out and burn them. Plus, who in the name of sanity still used paper books, really. Well, the District Citizens, sure. But the President?
Naturally, there were a few things that had caught his attention in all of these stories. Quotes, characters and especially monsters. Emerald reached out to grab a black notebook, where he had written those few things down. He had hoped that doing things the old way would help him and his inspiration. Sadly for him, no inspiration came.
At all.
He yawned as he read out loud some quotes, testing the sound of the words. If they sounded nice, they were useless; if not, they were still useless because there was nothing he could do with them.
"Down the rabbit hole…" Emerald whispered. It came from a story named 'Alice in Wonderland.'
"We're not in…" He started saying, but a yawn cut him off. "In Kansas anymore…" That one came from something called 'The Wizard of Oz'.
"One day, my prince will come?!" He shouted, angry at himself for even writing that sentence down.
He got to his feet swiftly, kicking his chair back. The piece of furniture hit the ground with a loud thud. His hands were shaking uncontrollably. Emerald had never felt so scared in his life.
He was going to fail.
Unless, of course, a miracle happened.
Surprisingly enough, a miracle happened. Well, actually, his brain kicked in. Same thing.
He took his notebook into his small hands, once more reading a quote. "One day, my prince will come."
He could actually work with that. The tributes, they were still kids. And kids were silly enough to fall in love. He could use that to his advantage to break them, to make them suffer, to make a huge scene out of it. The Capitolites would most certainly love it.
He carefully put back his chair where it belonged before sitting in it. Hope had eventually found its way back into the Gamemaker's eyes.
Emerald smirked evilly as millions of ideas submerged his tired mind.
It was going to be perfect.
So, so perfect.
Author's note: Hello you guys! First, thank you to the ones who already submitted a tribute (or multiple ones).
There are still a lot of empty spots, readers! Don't hesitate! Throw a tribute (or more) my way, I'll gladly accept them!