Dante Efore, D7
None of this was my fault. The others voted me in because they thought I could win. After I put out that huge fire and saved all the orphans, I was pretty legendary in Seven. Probably in all of Panem. One time I saw a bully giving a girl trouble. He was in a body cast for months after got done with him. That was just the kind of person I was. I couldn't stand by and let people get hurt, no matter how hard I tried.
I killed Beth in the Bloodbath. I didn't want to, but she was going after Taylor. I'd already run into the Cornucopia to get some food, and I was the first one there, since I was the fastest. I hardly even thought about it as I picked up a throwing star and chucked it at her. I thought I'd only hit her arm or something, but I was a lot better than I expected. It hit her straight in the head and killed her before she hit the ground. I could tell, since I heard the cannon.
I didn't kill anyone else the first night. It was weird how well I remembered the Bloodbath. One boy's head was cracked open when I ran past it. It was just cracked open. His brains were pink. Pink, goopy brains. He used to be a boy. Now he was a pile of brains.
We all scattered pretty thin throughout the Arena, and it was dark enough that it was hard to see anyone. I made my camp in a pile of rocks. I already had two bags from the Bloodbath. I had water, a lot of food, a whole bunch of random survival stuff, and a big knife. I knew how to use the knife, since my dad used to be a forest survival ranger before he became a normal lumberjack. He had to retire, since too many people knew his face.
There were dogs that first night. They howled like wolves, but they were too big to be real wolves. They were twice as big as normal dogs, and they glowed in the dark. Sometimes at home I exaggerated a little to make stories more interesting, but I couldn't make up those dogs. They ran right past me, so close I could have petted one, but they didn't notice me. They had already killed someone, since I heard the screams and the cannon. They left bloody footprints in the dark. I could see them, since they glowed.
The next few days were really boring. I didn't see anyone, except for the one time Dath ran by and I had to hide in my pile. I could probably have fought him, but I didn't want to risk getting hurt. Mostly I sat around eating and keeping an eye out for intruders. Nobody came, since they were scared of me.
If I won, I was going to give my money to people who needed it. I'd run classes for how to win in case you got Reaped, and I'd build schools and fire stations for Seven. I'd buy us fancy new machines so we didn't have to worry about getting squished anymore. Seven needed someone like me.
Probably I set some sort of record when I won. Nero came right at me with a sword, but I was too quick for him. I kept darting around, punching or kicking every time he hesitated. Eventually I got his sword away from him and stabbed him with it. It hardly took five seconds for him to die.
That wasn't really how it happened. When the Games were done, I was tired of lying. I was finally all out of lies. Me and Jonathan were the last two. The dogs chased us both and we ended up running pretty close to each other. I lived because I curled up into a ball when they reached me. Jonathan looked back as another dog jumped, and it latched right onto his throat. Blood came out of him like a hose. Every time I closed my eyes, it was still spraying.
The truth was, I told all those lies because I knew no one liked me. If I was some great hero, I could pretend it was because they were jealous. They didn't like me, and I knew it. They didn't like me because I was an annoying, lying, bigmouthed brat. Really, this was all my fault.