Rudolph Shmits, Unknown District (16)
Sometimes I felt like I was the luckiest boy in the world. Sure, I got Reaped, but I was the only boy in the District who was totally prepared for it. I'd always loved trapping things, ever since we got rats in our storeroom and I rigged up a snare with some old cardboard and a bottle of glue. I didn't like thinking about them stuck in there until I happened to check, so the next one included spikes. It was better to get things done quickly.
Sure the Arena sucked, but it worked out for me. The rocks served as counterweights and precariously balanced triggers, and the thin trees were anchors for my ropes. I caught my first Tribute on the second day. It was the boy from Four. He wandered a little too far from the pack and learned his lesson too late.
Traps don't only catch Tributes. The only food I had from the Cornucopia was a single bread roll. Bad luck for some people, maybe, but just what I needed. In such a barren arena, what wildlife there was came running at the slightest crumb, and they ran right into my snares. I had a steady supply of lizards and scrawny rats. I'd spent a fair amount of time at the survival station. When I told the attendant I was willing to do anything to survive, he saw I meant it. There wasn't any water in the Arena, as far as I knew, but I didn't need it. Blood is mostly water, after all. It also contains iron, vitamins, and minerals, since the life of an animal is in its blood. It made me sick and it tasted disgusting, but I was alive longer than any of the others.
The people always want a good show. They cheer when the final two battle it out with blood and limbs flying, like last year. I couldn't improve on that, and I didn't try. Sometimes the Games don't end with a bang. Sometimes they end with a whisper, as the final boy walks up to the final girl where she dangles upside-down in a tangle of ropes. Lucky me, Victor of the Twenty-Ninth Hunger Games.
And that was just the start. After that came riches and fame, and anything I wanted in all of Panem. As it turned out, the one thing I ended up wanting was the only thing I couldn't just take. But it was all right. Pray wanted me as much as I wanted her. And that's why I'm the luckiest boy in Panem.
Rudolph's is shorter than some. I didn't actually invent him. Pray's submitter sent him in as her boyfriend, which might have made it harder for me to know his personality.