Carnage Under the Moonlight
The 93rd Hunger Games

Prologue

Brae Harrison, District 11 Citizen
1 week before Reapings.

It's 4pm on a Friday at the local Orchard. Spud and I love Fridays as we're the fastest workers around. Once you get your quota of oranges picked you get the night off. I decide to take a rest on the rung of my ladder, with only a few more to go.

Spud is climbing the nearest branch to try to catch up so we can go home. "Spud!" I yell. "Stay on the ladder". Joker that he is, he starts doing the chicken dance on a branch 35 feet off the ground. I roll my eyes, he stops and goes to pick an orange a few feet over his head.

Just as the wind picks up, the orange he was reaching is a few inches out of his reach. One second he's on his tip toes, the next second he's grasping at any branch he can reach. "NOOO!" is all I can manage to scream as I watch the apple of my eye fall to his death.

Next thing I know, I'm reclining in my rocker, my nightgown drenched in my own sweat. Even 45 years later, I still have that dream weekly. I lost the love of my life at the ripe young age of 38. Call me crazy but I'd never recover from that event. Call me psychotic but the only thing that helps me forget it for a spell is watching The Hunger Games.

District 11 is hopeless, I'm always pessimistic they will ever field a decent tribute. The last victor was a complete fluke and I let her know it any time I see her around. She's getting a bit too big for her britches.

I have nearly no hope for this year's crop of munchkins but I can't help but snoop on the prospects. One girl that reminds me of myself, a rather tall and scrawny young whippersnapper. She has that same look as her nanna which tells me she must be a Clementine. I figure she works more hours than Spud and I did back in the day so she must be tough. I worry about her being a loner though, since that doesn't seem to work in the games.

The only other cubs I can see surviving the bloodbath are these two that play catch in the abandoned lot by my place. The one who's friend calls him Bash has a strong arm. He broke my window last year with a poorly aimed football. I had a good yellin' at him, but somehow he talked me out of making him pay. He's got strength and likability I suppose but those careers always have both of those in spades.

Suppose I won't get my hopes up. The games are still a stretch away and this old lady can't take any bit more heart break.

Felicity Spool, District Eight Citizen

I don't like the rain.

Mother always says that the rain is good, that it's what allows us to keep growing the small pots of flowers that we keep up in the apartment. But I don't like it - it makes it hard to walk to the factories and the older ladies that I work with say that the moisture in the air clogs up the machine. There's always more accidents in the spring.

But I know that the real reason is that the Hunger Games are coming closer every week. Closer and closer it comes, with every passing minute. Sometimes I lie in bed at night, thinking of all of the seconds that are passing by until I might get reaped.

Mother doesn't know that I'm terrified of going to the Games. But I am, just like every other girl in my class. Before we head off to the factories our families are employed at, we trade stories about what we've heard the arena might be this year. Some say it'll be a horse ranch, others say a massive volcano, and some hope that it's just like District Eight - so if one of us goes, we'll feel safer there.

Mother says that I'd never get chosen for the Hunger Games, and I'm still only twelve. I'm not supposed to be the one to go to the Games, I only have four slips this year. But I still have to be careful.

Mother doesn't know, but I practice throwing our kitchen knives at the back of the apartment building's walls before she gets home. I draw targets in chalk and take turns with the knives, throwing from different distances and angles. I tried to throw one after doing a somersault once, but I cut my hand and had to get bandages so it wouldn't bleed too badly. Sometimes I get scared that Mother will catch me, but she's never home early. I only use the worst knives, anyway - she won't notice any scrapes or new bends in them. She won't notice a thing, as long as I'm careful.

I hope.

Mother says that when the Reapings are over, she'll take me out and we'll go get some fresh bread to eat from the bakery. I like the bakery. It's a pretty place, full of flowers that have vibrant, luscious colours that our dingy flowers at home don't. Maybe it's because they have less soot on them, or maybe it's because the scent of bread in the air invigorates the plants to grow. I don't know, but whenever I ask Mother she says I'm being silly again. According to Mother, I'm silly quite a lot.

I don't like the rain, not at all. I hate puddles, I hate being wet, and I hate what it brings us, year after year. But it's washing away the dirty snow that still lies in the streets. As it cleans our roofs and roads, it brings in the winds of change. It's bringing something new this year, something different.

Mother doesn't know, but I wake up with nightmares every night about drowning.

Atalanta Ryder, District Six Escort

Atalanta knows fair game.

It's the year of the 93rd hunger games, but the reaping still hasn't come, and she is here, oh she is here, torn with impatience. She wants the reaping to start soon, so she can work her way up to being the most famous escort that has ever existed.

Who is she kidding? Every escort must want that. Only weirdos like Gladys Hiro and so on can't appreciate the true motive of being a escort to those ugly, ugly tributes.

It was what you can do with them. Sadly, since the rebellion, she had been desperate. Even with Rike winning the games, no one will promote her to a Career District.

Oh Rike, that little boy who didn't know how to kill someone, but still did it. It was all because of her. She remembers seeing the poor little kid in his room, almost two years ago. In the train most of District Six tributes are either high or crying, but he wasn't. He was just numb and stoic. She remembers him asking her advice.

"How do you think I can win?"

"How do I do to kill someone to without the other person feeling pain?"

"How can a thirteen-year-old win?"

"How do I not die?"

She remembers seeing him and feeling pity for him. He was a few months younger than Tisa Lychee, the youngest victor at the time. He was for sure dead. But for some reason, he got an ally in training. The boy from Twelve. Sadly, that boy died in the bloodbath, but still, Rike found a way to shine through his interviews and got a decent score (Five. It was a Five). It was all thanks to her advice. Even though Rike was the youngest by far, since the next youngest tribute was fifteen, he still found a way to do what he needed to do.

Though, once it got a point where she knew he was going to die. It was only him and the careers, after they had dismembered the girl from twelve. She was sure he was going to die and her opportunity for a better future would be out. Why did the escorts rely on their tributes so much?

But then, an idea came to mind. She remembered Rike telling her he was training with poisons a lot during training.

She gave her brother a call.

"Do you want to cheat…and send him, the thirteen year old we all know who is gonna die…some poisonous frogs? Do you want him to die by his own hands rather than the careers?" was his incredulous reply.

"It isn't like that. You are a gamemaker and you have the power to do anything with it and-"

"No, you know I can't cheat. That boy is going to die tomorrow or the day after that, but he is going to die." And Jorge hung up.

She was crying for once. Why she was so emotional, she didn't know, but she still was. She wanted to tell herself it was all because of the opportunity for a better future, but it wasn't true.

Or at least it wasn't the whole truth.

She was still crying when she saw something she didn't expect. Rike had gotten those frogs, but naturally, in the arena. Like if they had been part of it all along.

Rike then proceeded to put them bellow the sleeping bags of the careers. Atalanta held her breath. BOOM, the six cannons sounded. They were all dead. Districts One, Two, and Four annihilated in one move.

Later her brother told her the head gamemaker like the idea, to spice things a bit. And even though later she met the president and they told her that she had to stay in Six for "reasons", and even though she went back to her greedy, manipulative, stoic self, she still remembered it. The night where she first cried.

She couldn´t possibly believe it was for a simple trbute. No, it was for her opportunity to go higher in the district range, that´s for sure. She tells herself that, even though when she sees Rike, she is always about to cry. She tells herself that, even if she is the only person he vents to. She tells herself that, but he is the only person she truly smiles with.

Maybe she's not as stone-cold as she thinks.

But she has to be.

Prometheus Lancaster, Stylist

It's amazing how much one person can screw things up for everyone else around them. We never used to have to watch our backs. Stylists were there to make the pre-Games festivities interesting, keep things bright and colorful and fresh. Once our part was done, we could sit back and watch the Games in peace, enjoying the fruits of our labor if our tribute did well with the Capitol sponsors, and if not … well, there was always next year.

Cinna ruined all of that for us. Oh, he never thought about it that way, I'm sure. He thought he was making a difference. He thought he was going to change things. And in a rather twisted way, he was right. The Mockingjay rebellion did change things.

It made them worse.

It would have been one thing if it just made things worse for the districts. They're the ones who rebelled, after all. So when District Thirteen got bombed into oblivion – really, this time – I wasn't exactly shedding any tears. It took District Twelve a while to get back on what was left of its feet, and there are still bombed-out sections of several other districts. But at least in the Capitol, we can tell ourselves that they just got what was coming to them.

Our new president, however, apparently isn't content with just frightening the hell out of the districts. Sure, everyone used to tiptoe around President Snow, but at least he usually left people like me alone. We were frivolous, silly, inconsequential. But Cinna just had to go and show everyone how dangerous it was to dismiss us.

Now instead of just having fun, we have to be careful. We have to be interesting while still being certain not to make a statement, not to go too far, not to suggest that our tribute is too important, too … noticeable. We have to say something while being careful not to scream it, engage the audience without making them think too hard, dazzle them while being careful not to captivate them.

It's a balance – a balance that few of us are capable of striking. There was always a lot of turnover as older stylists were replaced with younger, more attractive faces with fresher ideas. Now it's even worse. Anyone whose designs even hint at a whiff of a trace of something that might be perceived as rebellious is gone the next year – either voluntarily or otherwise. The president simply won't tolerate anything that might be considered a challenge to her authority.

I've thought about leaving, of course. Most of us have. It's frustrating. It's often frightening. It used to be fun. It used to make me happy. Now…

I should leave.

But I don't know what else I would do.