Laken Dervissey, District Four male (18)
Whoever I was stalking, they were close by. I couldn't find many traces- which led me to believe it was one of the trained Tributes- but I could still sense it. From all the subtle things they taught us in the academy, like the silence of birds or the sixth-sense feeling of being watched, I knew I was getting close. While I'd never cared for the killing part, hunting someone gave me a unique thrill. It was even better knowing my target was trained, meaning it was a real fight and I had a chance of dying myself. It took an intense focus that blotted out any worries or problems. It was one of the main reasons I'd volunteered. Unlike most Careers, I hadn't been trying to get a better life. I'd just been trying to run away from my old one.
"Why you following me, you weirdo?"
The voice came from ahead of me, and I tensed into a fighting position. An arm snaked out from behind a tree and waved at me. Beth's face came out after it.
"I really don't want to fight right now, but if you don't leave me alone we won't have much choice," they said.
It was stupid to relax, really. It was just that of all the Tributes, I knew Beth best. While we hadn't allied, we'd seen each other for years in the academy. We'd assumed we would ally, though I didn't have hard feelings that it didn't work out. If Beth had come after me during the anti-Career purge I would have been pissed, but everyone had been focusing on Charm. So while I wasn't very relaxed, there was something nice about seeing a familiar face. Seeing her brought back some silly, innocent memories, like the day someone brought their dog to class and she couldn't stop sneezing, or the time she got her tooth knocked out in a match but kept going.
"I was hoping you were Charm," I said. It couldn't hurt to find some common ground. The Games tore people apart, but everyone could agree we hated Charm.
"God, don't do me any favors," Beth said. I wasn't good at these things, but I thought I detected some sadness in her demeanor. Her allies weren't dead, so I wasn't sure what was going on.
"Your friends around?" I asked. It seemed if they were, Beth was extending the District courtesy of giving me a chance to run.
Beth came out from behind the tree. "No," they said, their face going troubled. "I split off."
"Guess it had to come sometime," I said.
"Not like this," Beth said. "Tell you the truth- one of us killed Jack. We don't know who it was. I split off before either they struck again, or people thought it was me."
"So it wasn't?" I asked. It was almost funny how strange it felt to talk to someone else. It felt like I was trying to remember a language I'd learned a long time ago but hadn't used in years.
"I wouldn't have started with Jack," Beth said. They looked up pensively. "I wouldn't have wanted to kill any of them. Maybe Zeb, I guess, if I hadto pick someone. But just because I knew everyone else better. It wasn't that I didn't like him."
Of course I couldn't trust anyone in the Games. But this seemed like, of nothing else than by default, one of the less unbelievable things. If Beth killed someone and wanted to lie about it, she just would have said Charm killed Jack, or not mentioned him at all, since I hadn't even known he'd joined their alliance.
"Kind of spooky out alone, isn't it?" I asked. I was a big boy and I wasn't afraid of the dark, but I certainly wasn't enjoying the phantom screams and bestial noises that came with every sunset.
"Guess we got off to a weird start," Beth said. "But... District runs deep, right? It would be good to have someone you've worked with before. Maybe just until we get Charm?"
"Good enough reason for me," I said. Just like that, Four was back together.
Romeo Auto, District Six male (18)
I was not happy. I hadn't been happy for a long time, of course, but now I was especially not happy. It was unbearably hot and muggy. How had I not noticed that before? Or was my patience just wearing thin? No one could have patience when saddled with the soul-sucking harpy that was Dahlia. I knew it was stupid to throw away an ally and go it alone, but I just wasn't sure I could take it much longer. When Dahlia was talking, she was annoying. When she wasn't talking, somehow she was still annoying. How anyone could be that horrible without even looking at me... honestly I had to have a little respect for just how viscerally obnoxious she was.
"You okay? Dahlia said, very annoyingly, when she saw me wince and hastily pick up my bad foot after stepping on a pebble.
"No! I am not okay! Do I look okay? And why is it so damned hot?" I clenched my fists, wishing for some small animal to squish.
"I think you're infected," Dahlia said.
"No shit, Sherlock!" I hadn't looked at my foot all day because I was just plain scared to. I'd rubbed on the little tube of antibiotics we'd taken from the cornucopia, but it wasn't doing the job. My foot was swollen and discolored, the toes red and the skin around the puncture bone-white. It didn't help that my skin was already in tatters from constantly being wet. Now I had red lines going up my leg like I was some screwed-up tiger.
"We need to get some sponsors or that's going to kill you," Dahlia commented. "Maybe if we kill someone we'll get some support."
"Perfect. Let me just pull a Tribute out of my ass and we'll kill them," I said. Of course we'll get more support if we kill someone. You think I'm stupid?
"You're really being a dick, you know that?" Dahlia said.
"Pardon my ill temper, but my foot is killing me and we're stuck in a mud pit, so I'm not really at my best," I said.
"Let me take a look. Maybe I can at least clean it out a little," Dahlia said. Seemed unusually nice for her, but girls do love playing nurse. Valencia was always so excited when I got in a fight and she could patch me up.
I sat down gingerly and eased off my sock and shoe, wincing at how crusty my sock was as it slid off my skin, taking little white sheets of it along. They reminded me of being in second grade and putting glue on my hand so I could peel it off.
"Ew. Gross," Dahlia said as she examined the wound.
"No kidding," I said.
"Hold on, let me try something." Dahlia crouched down and examined the wound closely. She gently poked at the skin right at the edge of the wound.
"YOWCH!"
I arched my back and fell backward as Dahlia dragged the twig directly across the wound, opening the scab and letting pus and grime slide out. At the same moment, she snatched up my bag and jumped backwards, out of my reach. While I was still reeling in pain, she shot to her feet and sprinted away.
"What the %(&$?!" I screamed after her.
"Bye!" she yelled.
For a moment, I could barely even think. I sat motionless as the explosion of throbbing pain in my foot died down. A bit of sticky liquid stuck to the sole of my foot and my stomach turned at both the gross feeling and the thought of what exactly was going on inside that cut to produce so much glop. I curled my leg painfully to be able to see the wound and dry-heaved at the smear of oozy, off-white discharge. I halfheartedly tried to scoop it out, knowing my hand was so dirty it wouldn't make much difference.
Dahlia was long gone. No use chasing after her. It seemed she'd run the numbers and decided I wasn't worth staying with anymore. Really I shouldn't be too mad. I'd have done the same thing.
Anjou Corriente, District Ten male (18)
There was a little caterpillar climbing on the rough bark of the tree I stood beside. It was cream-colored with a single brown stripe near its neck. As I looked at it, I was having thoughts I'd never thought before. Namely, I was wondering what cream-colored raw caterpillars tasted like.
You can eat grubs, right? That's probably where the term 'grub' came from- like food grub, I thought. I plucked the caterpillar off the tree and it wiggled indignantly, trying to get free. Should I kill it first? I wouldn't want to get eaten alive. But then, biting it was just about the fastest way I could kill it. If I bite this, I better eat it, I told myself. I shouldn't kill something and then not even use it.
Before I could think again, I bit the caterpillar. I'd braced myself for something unbearably gross, so when it mostly just tasted like dirty water, it was easy to hurriedly chew and swallow. I stood there licking juice off my teeth for a moment, thinking over how it had gone. It wasn't the grossest thing in the world. It wasn't even the grossest thing I'd ever eaten- that went to the time my old ex-girlfriend Poppy insisted that rotten bean paste was a "delicacy". I may have been a bad boyfriend, but I did manage to pretend I liked it.
Something crashed into me from behind. An unbelievable pressure closed on the back of my head as I fell face-first into the ground. It felt like something was grinding against my skull, like sandpaper. A furry paw came down to the side of my head and I recognized the bright orange stripes against black. I twisted my head around, gouging out two strips of flesh, to look directly into the face of a tiger. It was terrifyingly beautiful, with its golden eyes and the black of its mouth against its very, very long teeth. I could see its whiskers backlit with sunlight as it opened its mouth. Hot air and droplets of spit fell on my face when it screamed.
I reached up to shove the tiger's face head away. It easily shoved past me, only pausing to snap at my hand until bones crunched like paper. I wiggled sideways underneath it and its legs shuffled around me, boxing me in and weighing me down. Its neck bent and its jaws closed on my shoulder. I had the sudden feeling that I was made out of glass, the way my body seemed to shatter and cave in underneath the pressure. My arm went numb and fell limply to the dirt.
Elias' knife was still in my pocket. I scrambled for it as the tiger battered me with both its claws and its weight. I couldn't see past its looming face on top of me. It was like being in an orange tornado- I wasn't even entirely sure which way was up. The tiger's teeth were ripping me apart when I shoved the knife up and into it. The blade hit under the tiger's head and it reared back, screaming again. It ran sideways off me, stepping on me on the way and painfully crushing my stomach. It ran off into the trees with a strangely primal galloping gait.
I sat up, in disbelief that it had actually left. Then I noticed the blood absolutely flooding over my shoulders and chest like a waterfall. I put a hand up to my throat and noticed the cold numbness I felt was covering up catastrophic damage so bad I didn't know where to hurt first. My hand actually slipped in the blood- it slid down my chest and came away solid red.
I'm going to die,I knew. I couldn't believe how fast it had happened. The tiger had melted out of the night, congealed into shape to tear me apart, and melted back away. I was bleeding so fast I wouldn't have time to start feeling pain before I faded out. I couldn't make my thoughts come together. They seemed to float in my head, drifting near each other but never touching.
An airy hiss came from the trees beyond me. I looked over and though I saw nothing, I knew something was there. The tiger was there, waiting for what it new would come soon. There was no need for it to come out when in so little time I'd be no threat at all. It would come back out and it would feed. The strange thing was, I didn't resent it. I was going to die, I knew, but somehow that wasn't the worst thing I could imagine. I'd been taking stock of my life and honestly, it hadn't been much of a life worth living. I'd been starting to accept that and starting to think I should make changes, but what could I do with the time I had left? It was too late to make real changes, not unless I won the Games, which would come on the backs of so many other people, most of whom had lived better lives than I had. If I really had to be honest, if I was watching the Games, I wouldn't be my pick to win. I wouldn't even be in the top five.
Some good would come from my death, even if it hadn't from my life. The tiger would get to eat, which I didn't begrudge it for. Someone else would survive the Games and go on to have a full life. I hoped it was someone who deserved it. And I hoped something came after this. I wasn't the best person, but at the end I'd been trying, at least. That had to count for something.
11th place: Anjou Corriente- mauled by tiger
Tigers are a big deal in Vietnam, so of course they had to show up. Anjou had to die soon, so that worked out. He's had a rough time of it, mostly from me misinterpreting his form into him being into kids when he's not. He IS a terrible person, but he's not into kids. Upon seeing my mistake, I was luckily able to mostly salvage him, resulting in the very much not GOOD but still not EVIL person he turned out to be. Sometimes you see your mistakes too late to fix them, and all you can do is the best you can with what you have. Thanks Silver for another dark Tribute in this very dark Games, but one whose ability to make some real progress set him apart from those who are even worse.