A/N: Thanks to coolcattime, Fillius Flickerman, District4-divergent-nephilim, mangesboy01, Oxenstierna D. Yuki-Rin and Jemmie for reviewing :)
This chapter was sent in by Kiliflower. I hope that you all enjoy it :)
"Well I come around every now and again
When the lights are low and the flickering
There's a bit of paper torn to pieces on the floor
It's a lonely place and no one comes here anymore"
- Jeremy Messersmith, 2009.
The 119th Annual Hunger Games
Elodie Morris (17), District 6 Female
Jeremy Messersmith – Miracles (2009)
As I travel up from the hellish catacombs that trapped me below ground in the transparent tube that holds me now, all I know is the suffocating fear that courses through my very being. There is no chance for me – I only scored a four in training, I have no alliance to cling to and in my interview I was utterly forgettable. It doesn't take a genius to understand what that means. No sponsors. No supplies. No hope.
I try to think how my district partner, Devlin, must be feeling right now. He has nothing to worry about – he isn't bad looking, pulled a nine with the Gamemakers and his cheeky hooligan angle won over the audience. I wish I'd had a similar approach, playing up a caricature of what I truly am. I think it's because part of me didn't want to transform for the Capitol, refused to change for the sake of the Games. I'm proud of that, but after the interviews, the look on our mentor Steelton's face said it all: you're as good as dead.
The tube keeping me contained opens at last and while I get a rush of fresh air into my lungs, I'm baffled and, judging by the surprised cries that surround me, so are a lot of the other tributes.
We've been thrown into an arena we cannot see.
This is bad. It's one thing to have us fight each other face to face, but in the darkness we panic and get clumsy, might even kill someone we're not meant to. The dark brings out our greatest fear of the unknown – another tribute could be right behind you, stalking you, or about to kill you and you wouldn't even know. Looking up, I see that there's no sky here and the sun is blocked out. I feel like an insect trapped under a bowl.
As the gong rings out, I decide to just make a run for it. My feet hit the rough, gritty, rocky ground hard and I stumble at first, almost falling completely. I regain my composure and move further into the arena. I'm completely blind and have lost any fraction of confidence that I previously had as to my status in these Games. I'll be dead before the day is out.
Then, with no warning at all, I hear the terrible sounds of weapons being utilized. The screams emerge from the empty void of darkness without warning, piercing my skull. I drop to the ground as if to escape them, crawling away. I hear voices calling out to each other, perhaps lost allies, begging them to come back and find them, help them – but they aren't returning. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't make an alliance.
Yet as I crawl, I brush against the cold steel surface of the Cornucopia and my shaking hands scramble pathetically around the crates that surround it. Hardly believing my luck, I dig my hands in and root around, looking for something useful. And it is by some small miracle that I discover an object that feels familiar and all I'm thinking is that there is no way I am the first to find the true gold of the loot.
The night-vision glasses I've found may just be my ticket out of here and it is with a satisfied smirk that I pick up a scythe from the Cornucopia, loving how I can see its blade glint so brightly. Without hesitation, I rush at the nearest tributes, hacking away at them all.
It's chaos. Nobody sees me before I strike, not even the Careers – and by then it's too late. I wreak havoc with my weapon, every bit of fury and snippet of emotion combining into this unstoppable wave of aggression. As I kick down one tribute – I think it's the boy from District 1 – it's impossible not to feel a small bit of sympathy for him as he begs piteously for mercy from a foe he cannot see.
"Here's my mercy – I'll make it painless."
And I do. Only when the cannons start to go off do I realize that this is the Gamemakers' way of telling me to stop, that some Tributes have escaped.
The bloodbath is over. But the Games are not.
Due to the twist being that the Games were held in total darkness (though they were aired in night vision to the viewers of Panem), these Games did not last long. By the time Elodie had found the night glasses in the Cornucopia, a few tributes had already killed each other in a panic.
Elodie did not waste her window of opportunity. She was the only tribute in the bloodbath with the ability to see clearly in the darkness and any of the stragglers or wounded met their doom by her scythe. By the end of the first day, sixteen tributes were dead, ten of them due to Elodie.
On the second day, to even out the playing field for the final six, the Gamemakers let some light into the arena (which was revealed to be in the shape of a cube and constructed so that it led the Tributes through confusing corridors and multiple dead ends). However, her kill streak at the Cornucopia had massively affected Elodie's attitude and she gladly hunted down her opponents, killing the boys from District 5 and District 8. It was her District partner Devlin who finished off the pair from District 11 (who had fled the Cornucopia from the get go).
This led to a highly dramatic finale where the two Tributes from District 6 were drawn in to battle, but the young girl's swiftness and newfound confidence gave her the edge and despite being deemed the least likely to win at the start of the Games, Elodie Morris was crowned victor with an unanticipated thirteen kills, the highest tally for any victor since the Mockingjay rebellion, and the joint second highest total of all time.
A/N: If you enjoyed this chapter, please review! Can we get to 250 with this one? ;)
