Chapter 18:

Petrina Bevell, District One, Age 15

Victor of the 93rd Hunger Games

Petrina could count on more than one hand the amount of times she has wished she couldn't hear what's going on around her in this arena. She didn't want to hear the screams of kids younger than her when she drove her axe into their heads, ending their lives. She didn't want to hear the awful sounds coming from the mutts that have chased her and others around the graveyard, awful horrible creatures that she could only wonder what sick, twisted person could come up with that.

She didn't want those sounds haunting her nightmares.

The blood and horror on their faces was enough to haunt her. The screams just…made it ten times worse. If she somehow makes it out of this arena alive…well, she'll deal with the nightmares from a nice, secure home in One.

Petrina so desperately wanted to sleep and could feel her eyelids growing heavy as she strained to stay awake. She can't give in to sleep. Not when she has no allies and night is falling. That's when the mutts come out. She hopes she'll be safe up in the tree, too high up for the mutts to reach her but…she really doesn't know.

That's the worst part of the arena: never truly knowing what to expect. One wrong move could mean death and she might not even see it coming. She might as well be one of the three blind mice when night rolls around.

She snorts in laughter at her own internal joking around and quickly covers her mouth, worried that she was too loud and someone – or something – will have heard her. She peers around the ground below her, desperately straining to see any movement in the quickly darkening sky. But nothing happens for a few minutes and she finally relaxes, wrapping her arms around herself to fight off the chill of the night as a fog rolls in. Well, they sure do know how to up the creep factor in this place. She shudders at either the creepiness of it all or the cold, hard to say.

Her eyelids start growing heavy once more and no matter how much she fights it, she knows sleep is going to win over soon enough…

Thud!

Petrina groans in pain as she slowly pushes herself up from the ground, her brain slow to process what is happening. She rubs her eyes as she looks around, trying to figure out how she wound up on the ground…and realizes she must have dozed off and fell out. "So smooth," Petrina mutters to herself as she picks up her bag and puts it back on her shoulder. She glances around as she stands up, getting ready to climb back up into her tree.

Movement catches her eye and she pauses, one foot already on a low hanging branch. She squints as she stares through the fog, and she has never been one for faith, but in that moment, she is certainly praying it's a tribute and not a mutt.

Her prayer was half right: it is a tribute. Just a tribute getting chased by a mutt.

The scream of the tribute reaches her then, followed closely by the gurgled cry from the mutt and Petrina starts scrambling back up into the tree. The tribute has seen her and makes their way over to her, clearly trying to use her hiding place or have the mutt attack her instead. "Help me!" the boy yells up at her as he reaches the tree, reaching his hands up to her.

Petrina stops climbing to look down at him for a moment, before seeing the mutt about 10 yards away from them. A…horrible decaying thing and soon the smell reaches her, nearly making her vomit all over the boy below her. She reaches down and takes his hand, helping him start climbing up into the tree as the mutt gets closer, not thinking about helping him get away from the mutt. But she just catches the flash of the knife before he reaches up and slices her arm. She cries out in pain, barely holding onto the tree and she starts kicking at the boy below her, screaming in anger at him. "Bastard! I tried to help you! Get the fuck outta my tree!"

"No!" The boy yells back at her as the mutt reaches the tree and its arm grabs onto his foot. "Please, no, don't let it kill me!"

Petrina nearly forgives him for attacking her, especially when the mutt bites into his ankle and he shrieks in agony as it rips flesh away. But her wrist throbs in pain as blood drips down from the wound he caused and she makes up her mind. "Go to hell, asshole," Petrina tells him as she stomps down on his fingers on the branch, making him scream and release it immediately.

The boy falls to the ground and the mutt is on him in an instant and no amount of slashing with his knife can get it to stop. It tears into his throat, cutting off his screams with a gurgle of blood. Petrina can only watch in horror at what she did to this boy, the fate she let him have…

Boom.

The mutt stops attacking at the sound of the cannon and backs away from the boy, staring up into the tree at Petrina as she covers her mouth, barely holding back the contents of her stomach from all the blood in the air. It slowly starts to wander away from her and Petrina very soon vomits, turning away to not vomit on the boy she just inadvertently killed. "Oh God, what did I just do?" she whispers as she wipes her mouth with a shaking hand.

She just…got a boy killed. His face still stares up at her, twisted in shock and horror over what happened to him. She has to get away from him. She jumps down from the tree, landing on shaky legs, and takes off running in the opposite direction the mutt went. As she runs, tears of horror stream down her cheeks.

How could she have so easily killed someone? And…the worst part is…she knows she could do it again. She'll have to do it again…

Well, there's Petrina Bevell, Victor of the 93rd Hunger Games. I got nothing else to really say here. Updates will keep coming with this through the 100th Games and get us to the end of November, and then we'll see from there.

Next up: someone who made a terrible decision (they're new).