Midnight Shines
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I started writing this without much thought, not intending to publish it. It's not a masterpiece, but my friends certainly got a few laughs out of it, so I hope you do too.
Midnight Shines (aside from being an awful title) is a satirical, light-hearted Hunger Games fanfic, based several years before the events of the first Hunger Games book. It is told from the perspective of Midnight Abernathy – a character you will absolutely love and relate to.
Kidding. He's an obnoxious, bigoted, wilfully-oblivious dirtbag, struggling to come to terms with his own gayness.
Enjoy yourself as you follow him through the Hunger Games and laugh at his struggles.
Other characters in this story are a mixture of people I know irl, parodies from other fandoms, random OCs and – naturally – the required flawless self-insert.
Without further ado, here's Midnight Shines… (spoiler alert: he does not.)
Chapter 1
"Get. In. The suit! Ugh!"
I'm flung into a wall. My flailing arm bats a vase off a side-table. It smashes.
Before me, Haymitch is sitting in bed, tangled between his duvet and the pile of clothes I was trying to wrangle him into. He glares at me through his dank blonde curtains.
"Go away you bastard." He grunts. He flops back onto the pillows, mumbling to the ceiling, "I'm sleeping in."
"You need to get dressed smartly." I persist, rubbing my bruised elbow.
"So do you." He turns his head to sneer at me.
"Excuse me! I am the height of fashion right now!"
I check myself out in his grimy mirror. My suit is the best money can buy - which, in District Twelve, is still pretty shabby. I wear a fashionable high-collared shirt, the colour of an oversaturated blood-orange. My blazer is a wonderful plum-purple, complementing my sparkly gold tie and pants.
The woman who sold them to me told me the sequins are real gold. I smirk at how I pushed her for such a bargain, as nobody else in District Twelve would be able to afford more than what I paid.
Haymitch grunts like a obese hog, "Get out of my room, Midnight."
"Not until you get dressed."
"I'm not changing in front of you."
"If I leave, do you promise to get up and dressed?"
He sighs, "Yes."
"In that suit?"
Haymitch sits up again, lifting the crumpled jacket by it's prominent shoulder pads. Its grey and lemon-yellow pinstripes make his gunk-coloured eyes look a smidge less repulsive. I picked out the perfect garment for him.
He says, "This rhino skin you tried to stuff me into while I was asleep? No. No I don't think so."
I approach and pick up a tie-dyed shirt from the bed. Before he can prepare, I spring on him again and try to force his arms into the cone-shaped sleeves.
"Get off me."
"I know you won't wear it on your own! I'm helping you."
We grapple with each other. He's older than me, stronger too, but I put up a really good fight. He punches me in the nose and I decide to let him win before he gets blood from his knuckles on my outfit.
"Alright," I say, "You can show up next to me in my fine suit, wearing nothing at all, if that's what you want."
"Are you serious? There's no way I'm showing up to the Reaping with-"
"Not showing up?! You're a mentor! You have to show up!"
He grumbles something about me not listening to him.
"Fine." I say, "But don't complain when peacekeepers drag you there in your underwear."
I throw the shirt I was still grasping. He catches it and drops it on the carpet.
As I exit, he whines, "I was going to try and turn up sober this year. You ruined it. Thanks."
A bottle of white liquor materialises in his hand. Who knows where that was stashed.
Between swigs, he says, "Oh, and er, you've got blood on your oh-so-lovely shirt."
I look down in disbelief.
No… My outfit... This cost my whole three-day's allowance!
I rush to the restroom, Haymitch chortling evilly behind me.
I stuff my dripping nose with tissue and scrub as hard as I can at the stains. No use. In a spark of genius, I pluck a safety pin from a tin nearby and fasten my tie over the splotch of red.
My tie is wonky; a striking angle. It's fashion-forward, something they might wear in the Capitol. I'm ahead of the trends.
Satisfied, I gaze into the mirror again and add some concealer to my face. It fades the bruises Haymitch gave me, but I won't wear any more makeup than that – I'm not a girl.
My ivory-handled comb sits neatly on a shelf. I stroke it through my unwashed hair.
Unlike Haymitch's dank mop of hair, the natural grease in mine makes it hold its shape better and keeps it shiny. Most of my hair is black, except for the shock of white that sweeps down the left side of my face. I flip it out of my diamond-blue eyes, flashing a crooked grin that would make any girl fall in love with me.
"You've got this, Midnight." I tell myself. Then I add, "You handsome, handsome man."
It's to be expected that I give myself a peptalk before the Reaping. Every child from age twelve to eighteen is entered – more times depending on how old you are, and how much your family wants sacks of corn or whatever. My name will be in seven times, even though that's totally unfair.
I'm the child of a victor; why should I have to risk a chance in the Hunger Games?
Let me just make it clear that Haymitch isn't actually my dad. Ew. No. He only got the honour of adopting baby me when my parents died, having named him as my godfather.
Why the awesome people who created me were friends with that sarcy waterlogged-potato, I have no idea.
Maybe they thought Haymitch's Hunger Games winnings would support me. Pah. He spends so much on white liquor that I only get about three times a peace-keeper's salary. That's, like, nothing.
As for being a good role model, well. He's insistent on me cleaning up after myself, going to school, ignoring the bullies rather than picking fights with them... If he loved me like a son, he would beat up the bullies for me.
Or maybe he knows he wouldn't win. Well, I'm better than him. They win some, I nearly win the odd one… That's what life here's like; everyone scraping to get by.
So yeah, I've had it rough.
I turn in the mirror to admire myself. Now I'm ready to go, I can squeeze in a game of Roblox on my PS5.
Minutes later, my fist is buried in a hole in my wall. The electricity to my PS5 isn't running!
I put my chin in my arms on the windowsill, depressed. What's a guy to do? Not only is it the day of the Reaping, but I can't even get electricity. Normally I get power twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day – I got unlucky that my hour today is now.
Just then, I see Haymitch walking out of the house.
I hurtle down the stairs, straightening my jacket and flattening my hair as I go.
I collide with the door and jiggle the handle. He locked it! I flick the catch and jog twenty feet to where Haymitch groans at the sky.
Beside us, the electric fence buzzes. Apparently it's only on for one random hour each day. How lucky that we're all penned in on Reaping day.
Panting, I say, "Silly! You forgot about me!"
"Are we going with forgot? I'd substitute it for tried to avoid. Or how about, hoped you might have bled out from the nosebleed I gave you."
I realise suddenly why he might want to walk without me.
"Ah! It's ok! I won't start crying this year."
"Really? You know, you were a real baby last year."
"Was that last year...?" I brush him aside, "Anyway, why are you dressed like a dirty coal miner?"
"Oh boy." Haymitch mutters. He takes a long swig from his liquor bottle.
Turning to me, he puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Midnight. This is a suit. It's black, because that's the colour you wear to show respect to the kids who are gonna die today."
"They don't die today, they go into the arena and then…" I feel my bottom lip tremble. I bite it and swallow down my fear. Just a momentary lapse of control.
Haymitch's tone is dark.
"Trust me, the two picked won't be living after this."
I puff out my chest, a paragon of resilience and strength.
"If I get picked, I won't die. I'll win."
He scoffs and turns away, walking in the direction of the square.
I keep pace.
He glances at me, rolls his eyes and downs the rest of his bottle.
"Are you looking forward to being a mentor again?" I inquire.
Haymitch extracts a new bottle from his inside pocket and spits the cork onto the ground.
"Yeah, I could do with another kid to look after besides you. Though, at least their demands would be valid."
"My demands are valid! I'm your son!"
"Ordering me to frame someone for murder because they made fun of your dumb name isn't valid."
"You're a nerd, you could do it."
"I could, or you could just grow up and get some real problems."
"My problems are real! Like last week when I ran out of – I mean, a girl at school asked me to get her some concealer and I asked you nicely to go and get some because I was busy doing a super important essay on… er… coal?"
"And that same day you had a volcanic zit and were insisting to your Capitol Discord friends that makeup was girly."
"Details." I wave my hand. "Or what about earlier when all I wanted before entering the genocide lottery was a game on my PS5 and the electric – hey! Where are you going?"
Haymitch is walking towards the gaping door of a soot-crusted warehouse; the Hob.
I tag along behind him, biting my nails.
"Why are we at the Hob?"
"I've run out of liquor." He mutters, casting aside his already-empty bottle.
As we approach, the bustle from inside the Hob sounds stifling. The air in there must be more coal-dust than oxygen, people weaving in and out of the darkness like lice in a block of butter. A pretty accurate comparison, since they're all peasants.
There could be ruffians from my school in there, among the other witches and axe-murderers.
I hang back.
"Aren't you coming?" Haymitch calls.
I huff. "Err… Nah; it's boring. I've been here like a hundred times."
"Guess I'll have to meet you at the square then." Haymitch sneers lopsidedly and trudges inside.
I wait outside, kicking a pebble at a passing family out of boredom.
They're clearly on their way to the Reaping, too burdened with dread to notice.
The only other person around is a twelve-year-old girl called Pinty. I know her name and age from the wanted-posters that were up a few years ago.
Everyone thought she was responsible for the murder of her two parents. Then one day - while she was still on the run – another girl from school showed up with a full confession. Absolutely out of the blue. She even had fresh scars showing the struggle she'd had to kill them.
So Pinty came back to school, now an orphan, and changed her surname to Massacre-Lyncher. .Of course, she was too young to understand what those words meant.
It's very cute.
I slope towards her. She's currently sitting by a bucket full of pink, bloody lumps. I realise what they are when I see the pile of rats in front of her, with their fur still on.
In her hands is a half-skinned rodent and a bloody knife.
"Hi Pinty! How's things?"
She looks up at me through her straight brown hair that trails down either side of her face. Her one visible eye is narrowed at me. An eyepatch covers her other eye and she has a presumably-fake nose-ring.
It strikes me as sad that she's playing pirates on her own. She must not have any friends her age.
"How's tings?" she repeats. "You mad? It's Reaping Day innit."
Her voice has been shredded by the coal fumes in the Seam, so it sounds like she smokes a pack a day. The Seam, where all the poor people flock to live near the mines; their only purpose in life.
It's no place for a sweet girl like Pinty to grow up.
She dumps the skinned rat into the bucket and picks another one off the pile.
"That's a horrible job that Greasy Sae has paid you to do today." I say, trying to comfort her despite my own disgust.
"She don't pay me. This just keeps me busy before the ceremony. Man's about skinnin' animals. Sometimes I get to eat a few raw before she puts 'em in her stews."
I see. Skinning rats I almost nothing in comparison to the horror of the Reaping.
"You must be terrified today." I say sympathetically.
"What you on about cuz? Today's all death, suffering and entertainment innit. Man's not scared."
"Yeah, me neither." I say, joining in with her obvioussarcasm. She snorts and waves her knife at me.
"That's cap. D'you think I'm dim? Man only knows who you are 'cause last year you was the only kid in the whole square balling your eyes out like some absolute wuss."
My face burns up and I tactfully hide my embarrassment by checking my gold-plated watch.
"Oh look… I think we'd better get going, it'll start soon. Would you like to walk with me? I can try to cheer you up on the way."
"A'ight. But you gotta help man with these rats first, yeah?"
She holds out a rat by it's slimy fleshy head, offering it's fuzzy lower half for me to finish the job.
My mouth fills with vomit. I swallow it.
"Err… Actually I've just remembered I'm supposed to be meeting a friend… Good luck Pinty! Bye!"
I dash away, trying to purge the vein-webbed carcasses from my mind.
Pinty calls after me, "You kiddin' fam? You got no friends."
I'm flattered that she thinks she can relate to me. But we're so different – I, refined and well-rounded, Pinty a sorry soul, with no choice of toys besides dead rats.