Olivine Martinez, District One female (18)

What I was fighting wasn't human. With her last breath Marley had pushed Venus through the window. I bent over my friend as she bled out and when we stood Venus was gone. All that was left was a trail of blood from Marley's knife in her side. No one could survive that.

Lottie rushed at Venus like a freight train. The two of them went tumbling down the stairs. I heard limbs and skulls cracking against the concrete steps as their forms blurred. When the rest of us reached the staircase and looked down there was only one body. No one could survive that.

Ava and I ran. For the last two weeks the nights had been sporadically interrupted as Venus claimed more victims. In the daytime the deaths were from skirmishes or duels or sometimes all-out battles. The ones that came in the night were so often something that looked human but wasn't. We were the only three left, or at least I thought we were. It was hard to keep count with so many. Even with only three of us left and even with the two of us still allied, when Ava saw Venus we both ran.

So much of this wasn't possible. It wasn't possible how Venus appeared in front of us when she'd followed us at no more than a walking pace. It was impossibly fluid how Venus manifested in front of us. I'd barely seen her before her knife was arcing through the air and Ava was spitting up blood. I tripped over her as she fell and that was all that saved me from Venus' knife slicing through the air where my throat had been.

She can't be killed. They must have wanted there to be no Victor this year. To prove Careers aren't stronger than them, maybe? She couldn't be killed. The best I could hope for was to buy myself a few more seconds of life. It was just animal self-preservation that kept me from giving up right there as I lay on the ground partially on top of Ava.

I drew back my arm and stabbed my knife downwards into her foot. It went through the flesh and sliced my hand when it hit the wood floor and stuck deep into it. Venus tried to rear back and fell backwards by the knife holding her in place, her leg audibly snapping as she awkwardly landed. I threw myself onto her knife arm as she tried to bring it sideways into my head. I couldn't believe her strength as I used all my weight to pin her arm down. It was like trying to wrestle an alligator.

Venus showed no reaction when I cocked back my arm and elbowed her in the face. All it got me was a knife in the arm when she wrenched herself free and I barely caught her before her knife went in my eye. I could feel her leg bone pricking my stomach and despite it her face was dead flat. There was nothing there. It wasn't that she was a Career and was controlling herself. There was nothing there to control. I was fighting a person not no longer thinking but something that had never thought at all. I was more afraid than I thought I ever could be. There were things in the world that should not be and there were things in the world that had caused them to exist.

My hand dripped blood on my face as I tried to force Venus' knife away from me. That same blood lubricated the blade and it went flying when we both lost our grip. Venus' hands went for my throat. I slipped between them and wrapped myself around her head, cutting off her vision. I twisted myself around so I was partially underneath her and began to twist. She thrashed only briefly before flesh and bone started to give and then a familiar broken-bone noise snapped in the air. Venus went limp and her cold stillness seemed so much more appropriate for something so inhuman.

I stood over Venus' still form and looked down at her. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it at all. Her eyes were empty and unmoving but I did not believe it. I bent and picked up the knife from the floor. I crouched by Venus' side, lifted the hair from her throat, and sawed. Skin broke to reveal flesh and eventually flesh broke to reveal viscera. When the hovercraft came Venus' body was on one side of the room and her head was on the other. Nothing could survive that.

Horror movies: only virgins can be final girls
Olivine: hold my beer