District Three: Mind over Machine

Reagan Lockster, District Three

I lie there with my eyes closed, even though I'm already awake, not wanting to leave the shelter and warm of my bed. Something is burning, giving off an acrid odor. A man is swearing somewhere near me, and I can hear metallic clangs and screeches far off in the distance. I guess my father must be trying to cook breakfast again. I'll probably have to stop him before he burns down this miserable shack that we call a home.

Something wet is dripping on my hand. That would be my dog, Wally, trying to wake me up before my father blows us sky-high. When I don't respond, the dripping becomes faster, more persistent. "Not now," I groan as I roll over and turn away from Wally. Getting up means facing another day, another six periods of torture at school, another seven-hour shift at the factory where I make televisions and computers and toasters and whatnot. I figure that I still have at least fifteen minutes before he blows him, me, Wally, and half the district to kingdom come.

An explosion, and then a single cannon shot. Damn, it sounds like my father's a lot perkier than usual today. Time to get up.

I open my eyes. Instead of our scorched, cracked, and water-stained ceiling, the first thing that meets my eyes is the hazy, smog-filled sky. The air is cold and stagnant, reeking of spilled blood. What the hell just happened?

I'm lying on a pile of corpses, all of them still warm—or maybe it's just my body heat. Debris, cracked slabs of stone and concrete, tower around me. One body has been flung over me, blood dripping from a chest wound to where my hand was, only moments earlier. Sickened, I heave the corpse off of me, and stumble away from the grisly scene. They're all children.

This can mean only one thing. The Hunger Games. The annual televised event in which all of Panem gets to watched as their children get murdered, one by one. How else can I explain the bodies, the blood, the cannon shot? But I have no memory of the reaping, the parade, and the bloodbath. How did I end up there, under a stack of children's corpses? It makes my head hurt just to think about it.

So what are my chances of surviving? As of right now, I have exactly zero bags, zero food, zero water, and zero matches. Lovely. On the bright side, I've found a pipe bomb tucked in my jacket, three fire grenades strapped to my belt, and a knife cleverly concealed in my boot. At least I'll be well armed while I'm dying of thirst, hunger, exposure, or whatever I'll be facing in this hell on earth.

Two more cannon shots ring out. Well, someone seems to be in a hurry today. The sky lights up as they show the emaciated face of a scrawny, dark-haired boy, and then, thirty seconds later, that of a girl about my age. Oddly, there are no numbers for me to identify them by. I try to shrug my concerns off. Since when has the Capitol cared about my convenience? Still, it troubles me, especially since I have no idea about how many of us tributes are still alive.

I don't have much time to bask in the self-pity of my multiple problems before another cannon is fired. Another face, this time belonging to a girl that can't be more than twelve, shines high in the sky. How are the tributes dying so quickly? Is the Career pack smarter than usual this year? Have the Gamemakers thrown some new mutt into the arena, mutts that I've been lucky enough to avoid so far? This entire scenario is puzzling. And I don't like puzzles.

Before long, I have my answer. In fact, I hear it before I see it. Two voices, one belonging to a boy and one of a girl, drift through the smoky air as they get louder and louder. They must be heading straight for me. I realize that I don't care. Let them come, those murderers. I remember the twelve year old's haunting face in the sky. They've bitten off more than they can chew this time.

"—and did you see the look on her face?" crows the boy. "Her eyes were as big as saucers—at least they were until I gouged them out!" I hear something hitting a pillar of concrete with a sickening splat. Could he really have done something so disgusting?

"And how she sounded when I ran her through," laughs the girl. "Remember how she screamed?" She makes a high pitched, strangled-sounding squeak. They both chuckle with glee.

I feel myself go hot with rage. The very least they could do would be to kill with some dignity, some mercy, without any of their torture or their sickening experiments. The only thing they're doing is giving the Capitol a better show. I unhook a flame grenade from my belt.

Then the two of them turn the corner and find themselves face-to-face with me.

"Well, how nice of you to walk straight—what the hell?" swears the boy as my grenade bounces off his head and lands at his feet. He pokes at it with his club—

—and is instantly consumed by an inferno. The fireball reaches out, catching the girl, and both of them scream as the flames eat away at their bodies. Two cannons boom. A minute later, all that is left of the Career pack are two heaps of ash. I'd love to see the hovercraft try to pick that up.

I unhook another flame grenade from my belt and head off to look for some more tributes.

Cormier Hemlock, District Three

My life sucks. You think you have it bad? Wait until you see my life. I kid you not, your life is nothing compared to mine.

So I was born a couple of months prematurely, completely blind and with a list of weird birth defects that could stretch for miles. Some of them, like my susceptibility to even the most minor diseases, can be particularly annoying. I've never really been let out of the house; there's always the chance that I could be run over by a car OR contract some new disease that would force my parents to work extra to pay for the healer—even now, my siblings are going hungry to pay for my medical bills. Being a burden sucks. I wonder what my mother would say if she saw me in the Hunger Games, the most dangerous environment of all.

Oh, that's right; I've been thrown into a fight to the death televised nationwide, to top things off. Wonderful. I guess it's kind of my fault, though, since I volunteered to take my brother's place when those goons came to our house in the middle of the night to cart him off to certain death. At least he has a hopefully long, healthy, and un-blind life ahead of them, while I'm just a burden to my family. I guess I'm better off dead. At least I won't be blind anymore.

So, now that I'm actually in the Hunger Games, I guess I have two choices:

1.) Try to somehow feel my way to the Cornucopia as soon as the gong rings, hoping that I won't trip over something and kill myself in a humiliatingly painful way or, heaven forbid, that I get killed by some idiot looking for a blind, easy, target because blind, easy targets are all too common in these Games

2.) Give up and lie down by my metal plate, where I'll probably get trampled by the crowd of bloodthirsty tributes, or, in a best case scenario, be mistaken for dead and survive these Games to continue my torment

Either way, I'm dead. At least the second choice takes less effort.

True to my word, I lie down the second the gong sounds and hope that getting trampled to death is a lot less painful then it sounds. Cannons go off almost immediately as the screams of dying children fill the air. Weapons clang and screech as tributes hack away at each other. The smell of something burning stings my nostrils. Well, this is wonderful.

And then the world blows up.

A huge explosion rips though the area, spraying debris and rubble all over the place. Several chunks of something—they sound like concrete—crash into the ground near me, narrowly missing my head. And then, silence. Am I dead? No, I can feel the sting of multiple cuts and bruises on my arms and legs. And I'm still blind. Which means that I'm fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) still among the living.

Things go quickly after that. After a while, the cannons start booming again. Explosions rip through the arena, taking out multiple tributes at a time. Just what I needed. A pyromaniac on the loose.

"People of District Three," a voice suddenly booms. "Your tributes—Reagan Lockster and Cormier Hemlock!"

Did you notice a difference? Yeah, I tried to change up my writing style this chapter. Because writing two dozen tributes in the same style gets boring kind of quickly.

Anyways, sorry about being a bad updater lately :(. Summer break is turning out to be a lot crazier than I expected (not bad, just busy), but I'll still be able to update regularly. I hope.