Trigger warning: Excessive profanity, recreational drug use, etc. (Basically just skip Calla's POV if you don't want to read this sort of stuff xD)

I tear my heart open

I sew myself shut

My weakness is

That I care too much

My scars remind us

That the past is real

I tear my heart open

Just to feel

Takami Wired, 22

Resident of District 3

Victor of the 16th Annual Hunger Games

I make my daily pilgrimage without a thought. The dreary clouds cling to the corners of the slate gray, blurry sky. My lungs have long become accustomed to the smoke and smog that pour from the rows of technology factories that dominate the skyline of Three like the pure mountain vistas in Two or the orange rock spires in Five. Newcomers, like our Escort, Luizy, also hack and cough, eyes watering and tongues drying up in their mouths. Pollutants run rampant through the District whenever it rains and subsequently floods. Starvation is common, and hunger is an ever present feeling for most. Eighty percent of our population work in the unsafe, rickety factories, producing advanced technology. 2% of the others work in schooling and other usual jobs, and 1% work in the high-up designer jobs that pay actually good money. The rest are unemployed, probably homeless, or children. Our people are skinny and pale and weak and break like twigs underneath the boots of Careers and tributes from stronger Districts like 5, 7, and 11. No wonder it took Three sixteen years to get a Victor.

The basket tucked under my left arm steams with the heat and scent of freshly baked goods. I wake up at six in the morning to bake them. It's my hobby, and I have to craft pastries for Snow and Council members almost monthly to show that I am obedient or something along those lines. A mile walk from the Victor's Village, where only I live, to the city center. Everyone else is spread out in thin patches on the fringes of the District, where they mine metal and other things for the technology and machines. Tributes almost never get Reaped from those outer villages. Only I and a girl from the 4th Hunger Games, Ticha Modim, have ever lived in those small towns and entered the Games. Ticha died in the Bloodbath of her Games, and I won. Conflicting statistics, no? Everyone else lives in the giant, sprawling city that makes up the center of Three. That makes my job easier.

Every day I have 6 families to visit, excepting Mondays and Tuesdays. On Mondays, I visit my older sister Suzuki in the designing parlors in the center of the city along with delivering food to five other families. On Tuesdays, I visit a family that had two tributes in the Games. Today is a Tuesday. I pull out my list. Ticha Modim is at the top of the list. I have already mailed seven small sugary cakes to her family; one for her mother, one for her father, one for her grandmother, and one each for her three sisters and brother. Ticha's family is poor, so I make sure to pack as my calories as possible into those little cakes. Some families, like the family of my second stop, do not really need the nourishment of these steaming treats.

I check off the name Kieran Lan: 18th Hunger Games on my list as I approach the large two floor house nestled on the quasi-suburban outskirts of the giant city simply called Three by everyone and anyone. It's official name is surely something intelligent and wise and proud, but everyone just calls this area Three.

I knock on the bright red door, and it squeals open. A woman in her forties, Mrs. Lan, opens the door with a light smile.

"A couple of minutes early, Takami," she says with a wry grin. I chuckle as I open up my wooden picnic basket. Mrs. Lan is dressed in a pretty, expensive, lacy red dress with a pearl necklace. Mr. Lan is one of the head supervisors of a factory, so they have good money in their household. I draw out two small brownies with caramel drizzled across the top. Mrs. Lan smiles gratefully, takes them from me, and then I bid her farewell. Poor woman. Her husband is always away, and her son, one of my charges as a Mentor, was slaughtered by the girl from 1 on the first night of the 18th Hunger Games when he was 16 years old.

My next stop is at a small, cramped apartment about a half mile deeper into the city. I check off Gates Mirame: 20th Hunger Games as Mr. Lester Mirame hauls open the door. The man is thin and tall, lanky, really. The chatter of eight children ages 4 to 17 meet my ears, and it all ceases when they spot who is at the door.

"Mr. Wired's here!" Lester calls, and all of the kids scamper over. They are all skinny and taller, like their father. Their mother died in a factory accident months after giving birth to little Galaxy, and their brother, Gates, died two years ago at age 18. He lasted until the Top 8, but died 5th after an electrical trap he was fashioning backfired and electrocuted him while he was building it. Gates was the closest I ever got to having a fellow Victor yet. I pull out a giant container with a small strawberry cupcake for each of the kids, a slice of carrot cake for Mr. Mirame, and two loaves of sourdough bread to hold them over for a couple of days. Mr. Mirame just grins thankfully at me as the kids start eating their snacks. The oldest now, a girl called Sam, gives me a look of gratitude that makes me so happy I get up at the crack of dawn to bake these foods.

My third stop in the city is near the tightly packed little apartment the Mirame's call home. I knock on the painted gray door, and it doesn't open for about twenty seconds. I'm just about to leave, getting the two cinnamon buns out to place on the doorstep, when the doors creaks open.

A ghost of a woman stands there, her hair frizzed and uncombed, bags under her eyes. 12 years ago she lost everything she ever had. My eyes glance down at the two names I have checked off: Catherine & Cameron Spark.

"Hello, Takami," Mrs. Spark says in a quiet, worn out voice. She opens the door wider, and I step into the apartment. Everyone in Three knows that tragic story of the Spark Twins. Two young 12 year old children, twins, were Reaped. Their names were Catherine and Cameron Spark. It was a cruel twist of fate, one of the most sadistic things to happen in Hunger Games history, and that is saying something. Catherine managed to stay upbeat and score a 7 in training, the same as me. Cameron scored a 5, still good for a child his age, especially out of Three. Cameron died just before the Top 12 after drinking poisoned water, and Catherine place 7th after she slaughtered an ex-ally in the bloodiest kill ever made by a tribute 14 years or younger. She had a meltdown and attracted the attentions of the two remaining Careers, the boy from One and the girl from Two. The boy from One did her in.

Mrs. Spark and Mr. Spark still have not recovered from their loss. Their apartment is trashed, dirty, dusty, uncleanly. They're thin from not eating just because they're too tired to get up and buy food. Mr. Spark, the more depressed of the two, stopped working soon after the end of the 10th Hunger Games. Mrs. Spark is the breadwinner, working part time at a nearby grocery store to make enough money to feed, clothe, and house the two of them. A dozen years later, and whenever anyone sees them out and about, they pay their respects. The graves of Catherine and Cameron Spark, in the Tribute Park in the central square of the city, are the most visited of the 41 graves. They're some of the most memorable tributes ever out of Three.

Mr. Spark is sleeping on the couch, and we let him be. Mrs. Spark produces a mug of tea, and pours me a cup. I nurse it as she nibbles away at her cinnamon bun thoughtful. We sit there quietly, sometimes chatting, most of the time just sitting and thinking. After a half hour, my cup's drained. I hug Mrs. Spark, wave to Mr. Spark, who is waking up, and depart from the apartment.

My final person to visit lives in an old, empty, rusted Dumpster in a darkened back alley. It always takes me an hour to get the right alley, and I've almost gotten mugged for waking up the wrong female Dumpster dweller. As I approach the Dumpster, I squint through the shadows, my hands shaking as I check off the name Elodie Sprocket: 16th Hunger Games.

I look into the Dumpster, rapping lightly on the side of the metal container. Emma Sprocket, small and skeletally thin, pops up slowly. Her face is contorted in pain, and I pull her out of the Dumpster. The 22 year old girl weighs less than 90 pounds. One of the only times she eats is when I visit her. Sometimes I think I should visit her twice a week, but I never do. It hurts to be reminded of your District partner once a week, not to mention twice or thrice. Selfish, I know.

The picnic basket falls to the ground, the large piece of chocolate cake inside splattering onto the dirty ground as I stare at this girl in my arms. Her side is inflamed, a huge cut running up and down its length. She hisses when I touch it.

"Gangs suck in Three. They never go in for the kill," Emma chokes out. I hush her and carry her all the way back to my house in the Victor's Village.

Once we get there, I pull out the first aid and scramble to action, asking her questions (what weapon did this to you? how many days ago? who did this!?). I clean the wound as she swears, cussing out every word in the book. Then I bandage it up, and sit her on the counter of my kitchen table and look into her dark brown, near black, eyes. She stares back passively, her eyes thundering with some hidden emotion.

"Why do you care so much, Takami?"

"I could never save her."

"No fucking dip, Takami! She was a frail 14 year old girl! You couldn't save her! No one could save her! Get the hell over it!"

"It doesn't work that way, Emma."

"I'm going."

"Stay a while, won't you? The Dumpster won't miss you for a night."

"Homeless people like sleeping in Dumpsters."

"Then you can stay a bit longer until you find a new Dumpster."

"Goodbye, Takami."

"Just stay, alright?"

"Okay."

That was five months ago. Now Emma weighs 110 pounds, is healthy, and bakes with me. She delivers the food with me, and sometimes I find myself wondering about her and I. Love is no good in a place like Panem.

I think you hide

When all the world's tired and asleep

You cry a little, so do I, so do I

I think you hide

And you don't have to tell me why

You cry a little, so do I, so do I

Anneliese Petrova, 28

Resident of District 5

Victor of the 12th Annual Hunger Games

The knitting needles clack together rhythmically as my eyes glance back and forth between my handiwork and the elaborate example I've painstakingly sketched out on a large piece of paper. Balls of yarn, in a myriad of colors and textures, fill up a large wooden basket at my feet, overflowing onto the cool hardwood floors of my Victor's Village house's living room. Clack, clack, clack. Thump, thump, thump. As long as the needles move, my heart keeps moving, too.

My latest piece is a couple of months overdue. The three fourths that are finished pour out of my lap, pooling in a soft rainbow puddle of yarn. Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. Minute by minute, my yarn mural grows and grows. This is how I whittle away my time. Clack, clack, clack. Thump, thump, thump.

My eyes dart to the third last person I have to create with the yarn. He's a monster of a boy, the behemoth from 7 last year that tore through the arena like wildfire and took down the girls from 4 and 12 and the boy from 6 before he was subdued in the Final 3 by the pair from 2, Lucia and Bastian. His skin is muddy brown, and he is bald, his white grin frightening and attractive at the same time. Over the course of the hour, this boy, named Adom, takes shape as my needles clack and my heart thumps and yarn pools on the floor at my feet.

I guess I'd better explain my project. I knit a yarn mural of sorts of every Hunger Games ever. It started as therapy to work out the memories of my last Games. My Capitol therapist suggested drawing a picture of the things I didn't want to remember, and then burn them and let them go. Arbitrary, yes, destructive, yes, helpful, maybe, but I followed his advice. I was three months out of the arena, and the memories of the blistering sand and the stampeding camel mutts were still fresh in my mind, so I followed him blindly. I had always liked knitting, so I spent three months knitting every event to happen in my Games as I knew it. The giant piece of artwork sold for nearly a million on auction in the Capitol after my Mentor discovered it. I started the trend of Victor hobbies, which are now starting to seem almost mandatory for the newest Victors like Lucia. Nowadays, when I knit a Games, I go slower and knit the arena, then the tributes and what they looked like at the time of their cannons, and then the Victor. Yes, Adom was grinning like that. He was a strange specimen.

I knit in the bleeding red hole in Adom's chest, courtesy of Bastian's spear going in the front and Lucia's sword going in the back. Then there are the two beauties, the two that everyone knew would sail to the end. Bastian and Lucia come to life underneath my needles as the sun begins to set.

I work through the night and early into the morning, and my eyes are drooping as I finish off Lucia. In the next couple of days, I will have to refine the artwork, add details, things like that, but for now, I will take a break. I stagger off to my room, where I collapse in a tired heap on my bed.

I wonder who I will be stitching this year I think to myself as sleep quickly takes me and pulls me under.

Are you high enough without the Mary Jane like me?

Do you tear yourself apart to entertain like me?

Do the people whisper 'bout you on the train like me?

Saying that you shouldn't waste your pretty face like me?

Calla Espenson, 31

Resident of District 6

Victor of the 9th Annual Hunger Games

"Pass the joint, won't you?" I croak with a lilt to my voice. My childhood friend Robbie passes me the weed, and I take a long draw. I let it go with a long, hard push, letting it explode from my lips. I always love watching the smoke dance and intermingle with the polluted, smoggy air before it fades or floats away. It's always so ethereal, so distracting, something I need on days like today.

I don't often get high off my ass. Well, that's a lie. I get higher than the clouds every other day, but still. I'm usually a real hardass, so enjoy me while you have me in that stage between hardass and so-high-I-can't-touch-the-ground-and-wow-can-someone-walk-me-home-before-I-kill-myself-stupidly-or-set-something-on-fire. So yeah. This doesn't last long. Enjoy!

I took another puff than handed the joint to the third person in our little circle, my maid, Carrey. She's a nice girl, only 16. How sweet. She's also an alcoholic, but who am I to judge? If you don't have your first drink by age 12 in Six, you're goddamn weird as hell. I had my first drink, a bottle of crummy, watery beer, when I was nine. Normal. Yeah, that's about how fucked up Six is. We give our kids alcohol by age 12, and they're all addicts by the time they're past Reaping age.

Carrey takes a quick draw then passes it hurriedly to Robbie before standing, grabbing her coat and purse, and shuffling towards the door.

"Bye guys, gotta go see my mom in the ward." Carrey's mom overdosed a couple of days ago. I'm not making this crap up to lead to some "Wow, I should stop doing drugs. They're so bad!" emotional moment. Drugs are drugs. There is a reason why hundreds of people choose to take them and die each year instead of dealing with their problems. Because drugs fuckin' rock.

Now it's just me and Robbie, and soon we find ourselves slung over one another on one of the couches in the living room, taking turns between taking a sip of vodka from the bottle and taking a puff from the joint. Soon I just put out the joint on the arm of the couch and then start guzzling vodka. I'm getting close to the so-high-I-can't-touch-the-ground-and-wow-can-someone-walk-me-home-before-I-kill-myself-stupidly-or-set-something-on-fire stage in my highness, my drunkenness, so Robbie needs to get the hell off of me before I do something I regret.

"You look so hot today," I slur. I guess it's too late for that.

"You always look hot," he mumbles back, giggling. He's as high as a kite. He rolls off of me and just sits there, commenting on the colorful pinwheels spinning on the ceiling. Oh, thank God. I thought we were about to have sex there for a moment, or at the very least have a hardcore makeout sessions. Robbie is hot and I've liked him since we were little, but my emotions don't work very well. Neither do my words. The only things that work are my sarcasm and my rockin' bod. That's all Robbie needs, but I don't want to ruin what I have with him, especially not by having a dirty one night stand while we're both drunk and high, where we won't even remember half of it and just end up waking up next to each other, hung over and pissed as hell.

I finally make the executive decision to refill the vodka bottle with water. Robbie's so high that he doesn't notice that he's glugging tap water instead of pricey vodka. I'm sobering up already. I've really built a tolerance to alcohol and weed over the past thirteen years. Ah, damn, my life's a train wreck, isn't it?

I cook myself up a mixture of juice and vegetables and salt that always sobers me up super quick. Then I set Robbie down for bed, and head up to my room. The sun's already set, surprisingly. Carrey left at around noon. Maybe we drank for longer than I thought...

All I know is that I need to get my shit together. I hate it, but my life is a total shitheap. I survived the effing HUNGER GAMES for God's sake, and I probably won't survive the next year if I don't stop drinking so goddamn much.

Ah, well, now I'm starting to think of my Games, of killing Garry Manchas, of slaughtering the little girl from 10, of killing the lanky boy from 7, of killing the singing girl from 5. Yeah, I'm done. I'm gonna go grab a beer. Maybe I'll stay sober tomorrow.

A/N: We have all the slots filled! I'm going to keep submissions open a bit longer, but I want to start tribute POVs as soon as I get the last three Mentors out, and that should be by the weekend, so I probably will have chosen all of my tributes by Saturday/Sunday and told you who they are. So, if you still want to submit, you'll want to get your tributes in ASAP.

Did you like Takami, Anneliese, and Calla? Sorry for Calla, but she is a Victor from Six. She's actually probably the healthiest Victor from Six since she's not one of the Morphlings xD How was the writing?

Thanks for reading! :)

Until Next Time,

Tracee