Tacitus Pernice, District 2
"Take me to the palace
Make me think I'm famous."
Car Seat Headrest, Hollywood
I have not had a wink of sleep for the last twenty-four hours.
It's okay, though. This is not the first all-nighter I've pulled. It's not even the second. I have a baby son, a girlfriend with cancer and two jobs, a desperate attempt to care for them both. I know all about sleep deprivation. When the gamemakers had announced, on the first evening, that this year's games would have a special twist to commemorate the victors we'd lost and that any tribute who slept would be killed, I bet the other tributes had quaked in their sandals.
I hadn't. This isn't the Hunger Games. This is just a day in the life for me... and a night...and another day... and another night... and maybe even another day.
I could go on forever, really.
Not wanting to tempt fate, I search my surroundings for a weapon. Even if the exhaustion is hitting the other tributes harder than me, I'm not going to bet my family on a knife fight. I'd much rather incapacitate my opponents with traps. I find a string of colourful electric lanterns decorating the abandoned house I'm taking refuge in. Perfect!
An hour later, I have a basic snare, like the one I'd learned to make in training. Two hours after that, the boy from Five had stumbled, drowsily, into my snare and was dangling from the ceiling. He looks me in the eye, brown eyes wide and full of panic.
"Please," he begs. "Don't kill me. I don't want to die. Please let me live."
I grit my teeth and slash his throat open with my knife. It takes me a few minutes to saw through the skin and find an artery and the boy screams the entire time. My hands become slick with his blood. It feels like trying to cut a tough joint of raw meat.
The cannon fires. At first, I feel so guilty. How could I have brought myself to do something like that?
Then I remember Preston. My son.
I have to get back to him. I'll do whatever it takes.
By the time I make it to the third day, after forty-eight hours with no sleep, I'm really beginning to feel the strain. I managed to pick up two more kills after carving some wooden stakes and digging a pit in the house's gardens.
Luckily there's only one tribute left. All I need is one more kill and I can go home, get some sleep...
I try to think of where my final opponent would be hiding. The arena's a town, which makes me feel a lot more comfortable than I would in a natural arena. Now, shelter isn't an issue for me, despite it being something I'd really worried about before the games.
I know my final opponent is a formidable fighter. In my sleep deprived state, I've forgotten which district he's from but I can remember that he'd scored a ten in training. He's probably feeling pretty confident as well, hiding in plain sight.
Maybe the big tower near the Cornucopia. It's certainly the arena's most impressive landmark. If I were him, I'd climb to the very top of the tower and try to scope out my opponents.
I have a plan. Sneak into the ground floor of the tower, set snares around all the exits and lure him out so he'll be trapped.
It's fairly easy to sneak into the building. There are a lot of bushes in the tower's garden and it's easy to hide behind the foliage and enter the building. My fingers are clumsy as I struggle to tie the snares. At several points, I have to bite my lip to keep myself alert, like I used to do when work or childcare was keeping me awake.
"Can I have some coffee, please?" I find myself asking aloud.
"I don't have any. Sorry, kid."
I look up from my line of snares to see my final opponent. He's massive, bleary-eyed and brandishing a sword. I start backwards...
Then I realise that the snares are between me and him. The moment he charges at me, he'll step into a snare and I'll be able to kill him easily.
"Hey, idiot!" I yell, on instinct. "Come and fight me! Unless you're too much of a coward to take me on!"
As he charges towards my snares, sword drawn, I'm imagining my name in the history books. I'll be District 3's second victor after twenty-three years.
Then a sudden force slams into me. I crash backwards, breaking through a wall as thin as paper. I'm completely helpless. The boy maybe sleep-deprived but he's a Career.
"How?" I choke out, as he looms over me. He must've avoided the snares, somehow.
"You're not the only one with a kid, kid." He growls, raising his sword.
"Why did you volunteer? What if you died? Your kid wouldn't have a father. You'd just abandon your child?" The words come out in a rushed stream as the sword comes down on my torso, slicing me in half.
I want to call him out for being a bad father before I die. I'm so angry that I've been denied my chance to live. Maybe I'm angry at myself for messing up.
If I'd run away instead of provoking him, maybe he'd have focused more on chasing me down than what was beneath his feet. He would have stepped into a snare.
I would have lived.
I'd made a mistake, my mind so scrambled from lack of sleep.
Now I'm paying the price. My family are paying the price.
"The academy picked me," I hear him say as the blood rushes out of me. "When the academy picks you, it's better for your kid if you volunteer. Better to have a corpse for a father than a coward."
In my final moments, as I'm caught between life and death, the waking and the sleeping, I think of Preston. I wish that I could have been there to guide him through life, to be a good father to him, but clearly the odds hadn't been in my favour.
I say a silent prayer that Preston's name will never be picked out of that reaping bowl like mine was. I pray that his children's names will never be picked out of that reaping bowl. I pray that his children's children's names will never be picked out of that reaping bowl...
I could go on forever, really.
Thirty-seven years later...
I watch as my son studies himself in the mirror, like I must've done for my last reaping. Like my father must've done for his last reaping. I think he looks good, in the way that all fathers think their sons look good. I can tell by the way his smile widens that he likes what he sees as well.
"I can't believe that this is my last reaping," he whispers.
"Are you nervous?" I ask.
"No. I've never taken tesserae - I have you and Mom to thank for that," he says. "Besides, if I do get reaped, someone'll probably volunteer for me. Maybe some heartbroken ex-boyfriend on a quest to win me back."
I laugh, despite myself. My son's always been full of surprises. I'd never expected to get my girlfriend pregnant at eighteen. I'd never expected my son to come out as bisexual on his twelfth birthday. I'd never expected him to be so calm going into every one of his reapings.
Maybe it was because I'd never told him what had really happened to his grandfather.
I'd changed my first name when I was eighteen, sick of being known as the kid whose dad had come second in the Hunger Games. They'd teased me about it endlessly in the dull community home where I'd grown up. My wife and I had agreed that we'd tell our son the truth after his last reaping, when he didn't need to worry about the Hunger Games anymore.
It was difficult. My son has always been so curious, especially about the Hunger Games. When he was five, a rerun of the Thirty-Fifth Hunger Games was shown on TV, since the victor's daughter was getting married that year. My son had asked me, practically bouncing off the walls with excitement, if we were related at all to the boy from our district who'd come second, the boy with our surname.
"He's so cool!" He'd said. "They way he built all the traps was so epic!"
I'd shaken my head. "I don't think we're related to him. I think we just have the same surname."
"What do you think happened to his son?"
"I don't know." I'd said, knowing exactly what had happened.
I'd lived what had happened.
"It must be so sad not to have a dad," My son had said, quietly. "Promise me you'll always be there, even when I'm really, really old."
"I promise, son," I'd given him a really comforting hug - the kind that you could only get from a parent. "I'll always be there for you."
I still intend to keep that promise.
"I suppose if I do get reaped and there's no volunteer, I'll have to win the games, won't I?" My son continued, turning away from the mirror. "But I could probably win the whole thing. It's the Hunger Games. How hard could it be?"
"Be careful, son," I say, trying to hide my worry. "You're beginning to sound like a Career."
"Who wouldn't want to sound like a Career? Careers are hot, especially Finnick Odair."
"I thought you preferred Manel Lobos." I offer.
"I suppose I could take more pride in being an outlier," my son muses. "The Careers might have the most hot victors but we've got the hottest singular victor. Well, we don't have him, District 10 does. We've got Ramona Hirose-Snow, I suppose, but she's extremely married so it's a little weird to think of her in that way. Maybe I should volunteer. Win the games. Give District 3 the gorgeous champion it needs."
"Fawkes Ingram Chau," I say, firmly. "You will do nothing of the sort!"
"Okay, dad," Fawkes says, adjusting his glasses. "No need to yell. I was just joking. I'm happy with life how it is. I don't need to win the Hunger Games to be happy. You taught me that."
"Thanks," I say, wondering if I really did shout at my son. I was just so scared of the thought of losing him to the Hunger Games. For the last eighteen years - almost nineteen - he's been the biggest source of joy in my life and I have a loving wife and a close group of friends and a comfortable job. Fawkes just has so much love to give the world. He has the most brilliant smile I've ever seen. Whenever I have a bad day, when I get stuck in traffic or have to deal with a really grumpy customer, I always come home and Fawkes just brightens up my day.
I'm terrified that my son might get taken away from me before I get to watch him grow up more.
"I think I should go. I've got to say hi to my friends before the main event," Fawkes leans in to give me a hug. "I love you, dad."
"I love you too, son." I say.
Then he walks towards the front door and all I can do is hope that his name isn't drawn like my father's was.
I feel like Tacitus got a bit overshadowed by his final opponent. I had to leave him out of the story a lot to preserve the mystery of who the narrator for the first two segments really was. How long did it take you to figure out that the narrator wasn't Tacitus? Tacitus may have only got a brief scene but hopefully it's clear he's a ruthless Career... with a baby. He's living proof of how toxic Career districts can get, to the point that academy students are forced into the games, potentially leaving their children fatherless.
As for this games' little twist, I was hoping to do a games where tributes couldn't sleep. I'd seen an episode of game show where people who hadn't slept for twenty-four hours were told to do simple tasks and, while it wasn't exactly The Crystal Maze, I felt it was a cool thing to base a Hunger Games on. In terms of commemorating lost victors, it's worth noting that Lachesis died ten years before this games and Lucy Gray disappeared twenty-five years ago, so the twist is probably in honour of one or both of them.
Then there's the whole three generations of Chaus storyline, which probably a lot more rewarding if you've read The Bride and The Widow. If you have, you can appreciate all the painful, painful dramatic irony and parallels between Fawkes and his grandfather in this chapter. If you haven't... this is your introduction to Fawkes Chau. I'll let that sink in. Enjoy the foreshadowing (or Fawkes-shadowing). I will be making that joke a lot.
Speaking of The Bride and The Widow, the next victor actually appears briefly in one of the mentoring chapters. Next chapter should give a bit more backstory to one of the Hunger Games' deadliest poisoners.
