Ferrari Benz- District Six female

It was almost time for the Peacekeepers to give us more food. I still had most of mine left from the day before. I'd eaten since the Games began but I'd never come close to running out. My body had been going through cycles of exhaustion and pain. Sometimes it screamed at me to just stop, that nothing could be worth this. Sometimes it quietly cried and I felt like I was abusing myself as I kept walking with the background noise of its broken sobs. Sometimes it seemed to resign itself to its fate and stopped trying to tell me I was destroying it. In those moments I could walk with only the knowledge of pain rather than its presence. It was times like those that I could remember I was hungry.

There was a package of crackers and a tube of some sort in my fanny pack. I dug them out and saw that the tube was chicken salad. It was ominous to see chicken salad in a tube. It seemed like it would give me food poisoning or something. But surely the Capitol had done some unnatural preservation method on it to make it shelf stable. I squeezed a line of it onto the cracker, losing some appetite at how much it looked like toothpaste on a toothbrush. I knew I needed energy to keep walking and I told myself I'd feel better after I ate it. Really it would take a while to digest it but the placebo effect is a powerful thing. It didn't taste as bad as I was afraid it would. I nibbled at the first cracker and then popped the second in my mouth all at once. I should eat before the pain came back and I lost my appetite. I was worried my body might reject it and I'd have to walk while throwing up but it stayed down and I did feel a little better.

It wasn't every day someone could say they were the first person in history to think something. I was confident that I, Ferrari Benz, was the first person to ever think I don't want to eat this chicken salad but I'm going to because then I can poop my pants. Katrina was my friend and friendship meant solidarity. If my friend poops her pants I have to poop mine so she's not alone. The only problem was I literally couldn't. We'd been walking for three days and most of us hadn't. The stress of the walk, the degradation of our bodies and the total change in diet had stopped us all up. Katrina was the lucky one because the longer it took the worse the results would be. Honestly I just hoped my plan worked. If I kept eating and nothing came out I'd end up exploding. One time in school a nurse came in to talk about his job and I asked what was the grossest thing he'd seen and he said if you went too long without pooping you ended up vomiting poop. So maybe that would happen. If it did I was going to aim at Titian.

Ember Steiner- District Two female

I'd never been so lonely before. The first time I'd had Shui and the other times I'd at least had allies. Last time I'd even had a bit of a romance. It had been disappointing to not see Havelock with me this time but only for an instant. It would have been an emotional boost, sure, but we'd just have to end up killing each other or watching each other die. But at least I'd have someone to talk to.

I seemed to be the loneliest one. Everyone had paired up right away and the pairs tended to go together, weirdly enough. By the time Gabriel died Eleanor was already empty. Then Fable and Jessie went together. Ferrari and Katrina were still going strong- well, still going, anyway. Eleanor wasn't alone, really, since "alone" meant one and she was more of zero. Elara was alone too and she was my first attempt after the loneliness got to me. I tried to start a conversation and she just coldly stared until I got the hint and awkwardly drifted away. Some people don't get lonely, I guess. Or else they're not lonely enough to talk to a Career.

That was how I ended up with Eleanor. She didn't object to my company at all. I could pretend she was my friend. It wasn't like having a real friend at all but it was someone to talk to. We walked alongside each other for hours, me telling her stories about me and Shui or saying things I wanted to get off my chest, like how I wished I'd never been born so I didn't keep breaking my father's heart.

"I wish he hadn't had children. I think it was selfish of him," I told her. As always she said nothing. I wondered what it was like in her head. Had her higher functions shut down and she was just a brain stem moving a pair of legs? Or she might just have retreated so far into herself none of us could see her. Every once in a while there would be a cull at the Academy. We'd run through some exercises and those who didn't perform well enough were thrown out. One of the events was a run. I used to see blank-faced runners struggling to stay ahead of the pacer, foam flecking their lips, drool running down their chins, their breath whistling. Maybe that was Eleanor under the dead exterior.

"None of us should have children," I said to her, though in truth I was saying it to nobody. "We should let everything die. No more Panem. Let the trees grow over it until no one knows it was ever there."

Elara Angelo- District Twelve female

It was high noon when Eleanor fell. She might have slowed down before that. The rest of us seemed to be catching up. She was close enough to me before it happened that I could see her condition. The only thing that had stuck out to me was her tongue hanging from her mouth. It was coated with dust.

Eleanor took a step and it was like the ground vanished underneath her. She tilted forward and landed on her face, making no effort to break her fall with her arms. I cringed at the wet crunch of her teeth meeting the gravel road. Streams of blood oozed out on the ground beside her chin.

I thought the fall had killed her but a Peacekeeper called her first warning. Her arm twitched once and then her entire body started to convulse. I'd seen people slaughter chickens back in Twelve. Children went hard early in that kind of life. We used to gather around and laugh at how funny the headless chicken looked as it ran around and threw itself side to side like it was groping in panic for its own head. It wasn't as funny when a human did it.

Ferrari was the first one to double back. Katrina looked at her like she might try to help but Ferrari just watched with sympathy and regret. We were far enough into the walk that even Ferrari had to pick her battles. She stayed to watch not out of hope she could help but out of some desire to see it through to the end and not leave Eleanor until the girl was finally gone.

"I didn't do anything," Ember pleaded, walking toward Ferrari and Katrina with a guilty expression. "She just fell." Ferrari and Katrina, focused on Eleanor, gave her no acknowledgment.

The blood that had come from Eleanor's face in neatly delineated streams smeared as Eleanor's jigging body dragged her head through the streams. Her head jerked back and then fell into the gravel again and again, leaving imprints of her face stamped on the ground. She's more lively than she's been in days, I thought sickly. See, she's dancing. Dancing with the ground...

Eleanor danced through a second and third warning. It was a song only she could hear except for the last note, a crashing metal drumroll. At the last note she gave one final jerk of the head and the dance was over.

5th place: Eleanor Cotton- Heat stroke resulting in convulsions

That's what happens if you don't drink during constant exertion. Eleanor is both strong enough and popular enough that she fit perfectly with what I needed. Spoilers again but in my ongoing homage to The Long Walk, Eleanor was Olson. I enjoyed playing with the format to show her decline and once it was complete there wasn't much to do but finally let her go. Eleanor can always be depended on to place highly and I'm sure that won't change next time.