The Cloudy Games
Chapter 7: Last Day of Training and the Dreams
Flint and Sam listened attentively to Earl. He was, once again, in front of the mob of tributes, talking about the following day's goings.
"Now, all you men and women, you will have only 8 hours to train and prepare for tomorrow's evaluation. Each of you will be rated on a scale of 5 to 10, depending on your strength, stamina, and accuracy. For the strength test, you will have weights to throw. You will work your way up to the highest weight you can possibly haul with one arm across the room. For the stamina test, you will dodge holograms of people and weapons being thrown at you. In addition, for the accuracy test, you will have three shots with the weapon of your choice. Just aim at the target three times. I suggest all of you work on that. Do y'all understand everything? Alright. Good luck, everyone." Earl announced. After he finished, everybody scattered off to his or her stations to train.
Sam turned to Flint. "I'm gonna head over to the archery area. You gonna practice throwing weights or are you gonna keep throwing spears?"
Flint shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I'll work on the weights since all I've been doing is using spears. I might as well anyway." Sam patted his shoulder with an encouraging smile and walked off to get her bow.
XxX
"Why, if it isn't Little Miss Overprotective! Aw… Still trying to help that pathetic little loser over there?" A girl dressed in gunmetal blue teased Sam, who was retrieving her quiver full of arrows from the rack. She fiddled with the fletching on one arrow and followed Sam over to the shooting line.
"Bug off, Sabrina. Don't you have somewhere to be, like making out with that dick, Dawson?" Sam remarked back, not making eye contact with the girl in blue. She'd seen Sabrina kissing Dawson, Flint's enemy, between the main buildings, so that was Sam's new excuse for Sabrina to skedaddle. Sam attached the nock of one arrow to the string of her black bow and drew it back.
"Well, at least I HAVE a life, unlike you. I actually have one to save." Sabrina scoffed, twisting the point on another arrow.
Sam turned her form toward Sabrina and aimed the tip right at her nose. "Don't make me shoot this arrow early. I'll blow you sky high if I have to."
Sabrina put up her hands a little bit and smirked slyly. "Yeah, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Hold in your bitchy personality for another two days and when the horn goes off, go nuts, but I doubt you'll get anything good out of it." She used her finger to redirect the arrow tip away from her nose.
Sam huffed and aimed at the target quickly, releasing the arrow with a swift slip of her yellow-toned fingertips. The arrow landed dead center of the head. "Oh, I assure you I WILL."
XxX
"How many pounds did you manage to throw today?" Sam asked Flint through the wall, slipping into a sleeveless top.
"Not much. Only…I don't know…20 or 25. I'm not that strong… You kind of know why now." Flint sighed and pulled on his long-sleeve gray shirt. "I saw you with that girl, Sabrina, again. What did she want?"
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Uh… She was just being a nuisance again. I actually had to threaten her once with my weapon because she got on my nerves so bad."
"Oh. Well honestly, if Dawson had been that annoying, he'd have already been dead." Flint scoffed back, climbing into bed. A beep was heard through the wall. "Are you enjoying those backgrounds every night?"
"Yeah. They help me fall asleep. It just feels so nice in these times to see a place where you don't have to fear being taken away to a dome where you have to kill everyone and everything in sight." Sam sighed, also climbing into bed. "Good night, Flint. Sleep well."
"Night, Sam. You, too." Flint smiled at Sam's comforting voice. It was his bread and butter then. He pulled up the thick red covers past his shoulders so it grazed his chin.
Within minutes, the two had fallen asleep and already began their dreams. Everything seemed silent and fine if you listened to the stillness of the apartment floor, but in their minds, it was a pandemonium of fear.
XxX
(Flint's Dream)
Everything is dark and silent, and you can't see anything. Flint feels like his eyes are shut, but they're wide open. "Dad? Agatha? Sam? Anyone there?" Flint calls. No answer is heard.
The lights rise and the town of Swallow Falls surrounds Flint completely. He furrows his brow into a worried frown. "I thought I was at the complex." Flint whispers to himself. Suddenly, an explosion pounces from the ground and envelops the ground around Flint. Flint lets out a shriek. "DAD! AGATHA! SAM! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
Out of the bellowing smoke appears a tall bulky man, a woman of medium height, and a short girl. They all walk slowly toward Flint with determined looks on their faces. "Dad! Agatha! Sam! My Lord, I thought you guys weren't going to come for me!" Flint shouted with a hint of relief in his eyes.
"We are." The three approaching friend and family members state blankly. Flint's eyes wander down to their hands. They hold a weapon each. His father, an axe. Agatha, a knife. Sam, a bow, and quiver full of arrows.
Flint can feel his heart rate speeding up. "Oh…" he vents. A chill makes Flint shiver. More bombs rain from the sky in the distance.
Sam arms her bow with a freshly sharpened arrow. She draws her arm back and squints an evil expression toward Flint. Agatha grips her knife harder and raises it up. It already has blood on it, as if she'd already killed someone. Flint's dad crosses his weapon arm across his body, clutching his axe so hard his knuckles turn white.
"Agatha? Why is your knife bloody?" Flint asks, shakily. "Why are you even carrying a knife?"
"Oh, it's not MY knife…" Agatha scoffs, closing in toward Flint. She stretches her spine and neck out to reach Flint's ear. "It's YOURS." She whispers.
"I'm sorry, but I don't own any knives." Flint backs up from Agatha. Her sly smile makes him uncomfortable.
"Oh, yes, you do, Flint." Agatha circles around Flint slowly, looking up into his blue eyes. You can almost see the confusion in his deep blue irises. "It's your knife. You killed someone with it. It's not mine…because I'm just a little girl. So helpless and weak." Flint followed Agatha's path without turning or shifting.
"I didn't kill anyone with that thing and you know it. And even if I did, who did I kill?" Flint asks, finally loosening his joints to move. There is no use in moving, though, because he just locks right back up.
Agatha holds the knife up to Flint's nose. "MOM." Flint's eyes freeze on the knife in front of his face. The sounds of knives sharpening and his mother's final blood-curdling shriek fill his ears with fear and emotional pain.
The word "Mom" echoes repeatedly in Flint's mind. The feeling gives Flint the urge to snatch the knife right out of his sister's hand and stab himself until he dies. "Oh my God, Agatha. THAT WASN'T ME! HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW MOM DIED?!" Flint shouts in Agatha's face, pushing away the bloody knife.
"It's because I know things! Dad told me! I know, now, how Mom died and it's because I don't need to be protected from a secret you've been keeping since I was 6 months old! Isn't that right, you lying sun of a-…" Agatha is interrupted by more bombs in the distance. The bombs explode in sets of 10 repeatedly, moving closer and closer by the millisecond.
Flint begins panicking. "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?" Flint screams over the deafening bangs of the bombs.
"KILL HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!" Agatha screams so loud, it's audible even over the extremely close explosions. Sam aims precisely at Flint's chest with an arrow hooked to the string of her compound bow. Tim holds out his weapon's deadly tip with a determined expression. Agatha arms herself firmly with her knife, freshly sharpened. All three charge at Flint as he runs relentlessly away from them.
"HELP!" Flint screams. Suddenly, a sharp feeling stabs Flint in the back. He awakens.
XxX
(Sam's Dream)
Sam sits in the dark basement of her home with her mother and two other brothers, silently watching the 6th Cloudy Games unfold on the television screen before them. Sam's oldest brother had been involved that year, and was currently on his killing spree. Blood flies everywhere on the screen as Sam's brother, Simon, continued stabbing his victims.
Sam bites her nails in sync with the clicking of her mother's knitting needles, quietly weaving together blue and red yarn. "Come on, Simon…" she whispers. "Just a little further. I know you can do this."
Simon had faced many repetitive stabs almost everywhere on his body, making him completely covered in his own and others' blood. He still survives somehow, but he is totally vulnerable to instant death.
The cameras pick up a man approaching closer and closer to Simon from behind. Sam whispers to the television over and over, "Simon, turn around. Turn around. Please, turn around!"
However, Simon fails to look behind him. The man grabs him by the shoulders and clutches his neck as hard as he can. Sam's eyes widen quickly and threaten to shed tears. "SIMON!" She quickly shouts, startling her mother and brothers out of their gazes.
The man digs his fingers into Simon's blood-soaked throat and forces a long knife straight through his stomach several times. Simon drops to the ground with huge, bloodstained gashes on his neck and deep open wounds in his torso. His eyes remain open as his lifeless body lay there in the dirt.
Sam can't believe her eyes. Tears fall freely from her eyes and her heart beats a million miles a minute. "SIMON! SIMON, NO! NO!" She sobs, falling to her knees and clutching her aching stomach. "SIMON, COME BACK! PLEASE! PLEASE, SIMON!" Sam yells at the screen, refusing to stop crying.
The dark scenery of the house's basement begins to grow darker and darker as Sam watches the male winner of the 6th annual Cloudy Games raise his arms in victory. She turns her head to face behind her, but sees no other half of her house's basement. Just a dark pit of nothingness. Sam sees in her mind a series of herself murdering herself by overdosing, stabbing, cutting, hanging, and throwing herself off of 20 story buildings. She just doesn't want to live any longer. Not without Simon, her life coach and her only reason to live at all. Never again shall she ever stop trying to kill herself, she vowed. No matter how much her body protested to live. Just death, death, and more death is her only desire.
XxX
Flint and Sam quickly sat up in their beds, crying hard, and breathing heavily. Flint was shaking uncontrollably. Sam sobbed just as she had been in her dream.
Flint didn't dare make a single sound, just half-sobbing, and half-dying from fright. His eyes felt glued open for eternity.
Sam burst into Flint's room crying and ran over to Flint, ramming into him in a deep embrace. Tears fell onto Flint's shirt, sticking it to his chest, just like before he left his home for the Games. "Help. Help me, please." Sam sobbed into his shoulder. "I don't want to die like my brother, Simon, did. I hate being afraid! Please help me, Flint." She pulled Flint out of his bed and squeezed him tightly, like he was the last thing she could hold onto.
Flint's eyes stayed open wide in overwhelming fear. "I-I-I…" he stammered. "I-I d-don't know… what to do…" Sam continued to cry and clutch Flint close to her, hoping she'd never have to let go. Flint managed to wrap his long arms around her, without even processing the situation at hand.
Sam looked up into Flint's ocean eyes, shining in the moonlight from the holes in the wall. "You don't know how much pain and suffering I've gone through, and I don't think you want to know. Just please help me." Sam whispered quietly between more sobs, "Don't let go. Please don't let go."
Flint snapped out of his trance and realized Sam was crying and holding him. He ran his fingers through her strawberry blond hair, trying to comfort her. Flint laid his head on Sam's and used his other hand to rub her back. "Sit down." He whispered.
The two sat down back on the bed and hugged one another, tears still falling from their eyes. Flint moved his head to Sam's ear and said three little words that made all the difference in times of sorrow and crisis. "I love you…"