Hunger Games (DNF)

Part 1, Chapter 8: the gamemakers

George POV.

I sat awkwardly tapping my foot as I waited for my audience with the gamemakers, my brain running at a million miles per hour. All of the tributes were waiting along with me, besides 1 and 2 of course, all of them went before District 3, and Darryl was in with the gamemakers now.

I couldn’t think of what he was doing, probably something survival based since he didn’t seem too interested in weapons, although he could be demonstrating his knife throwing skills.

All of the other tributes were nervous too, most of which sat silently or mumbled something to their District partner. We had to sit in 4 rows of 3, with me, Darryl, Clay and that other boy from District 4 right beside me. As luck would have it Clay was sitting right next to me, he kept switching between talking to his district partner and trying to talk to me, key word being trying.

Whenever he attempted to start up a conversation I just ignored him. I felt bad, but when we got into the arena he may kill me or I may kill him, and that would be even worse if we were friends. Suddenly a voice crackled over the loudspeaker, telling me to go get assessed by the gamemakers.

As I stood up Clay whispered a quiet ‘good luck’ and I left the room. After a walk through the brightly illuminated corridor which felt like it took several hours I walked into the training centre.

It felt extremely different when it was empty, nobody was in there besides some peacekeepers standing to attention around the walls of the room. The only people besides them and myself were the gamemakers sitting where they usually were and watching me make my way over to the centre of the room.

With a few quick steps I made my way indirectly in front of them and looked up at them as they looked back down at me. Sam, the head gamemaker raised an eyebrow, asking me to introduce myself.

I tried to hide the fact that I was scared as I stood up as straight as I could and stared straight back at them. “I’m-uh George Davidson, District 3.”
“Very good.” Sam gave me a nod indicating to show them whatever I was going to do.

I let out a nervous breath and turned to look at all the weapons to see if there was anything that I could use to show my skill. On tables all around the centre of the room were different tools which I knew would be in the cornucopia at the start of the games, wires, matchsticks, different tools and weapons, lots and lots of weapons.

After glancing over all of them I decided that the wire would be best, I could make something that could help me in the games. The gamemakers watched me as I grabbed some string and the bundle of Wire. I unwound about a foot of the wire before chopping it away with the knife. With the wire clenched tightly in my hand, I ran over to the forest station with the trees that Darryl and I had climbed on the first day.

Even the peacekeepers were raising eyebrows and wondering what I was doing as I looked for a sturdy enough branch and snapped it away from the trunk, I repeated this action until I had half a dozen sticks.

My brain was running a million miles a minute, as I used the knives to drill holes through the sticks. I thread the string through two holes I made in the longest of the sticks and made it into a bow which had some quality, then using the knife again I quickly sharpened the other sticks into arrows.

Being honest they looked quite unimpressive but nonetheless I continued, returning to the centre of the training room right in front of where the gamemakers were watching. With a deep breath I spun to the targets and shot an arrow at it. The arrow was kind of weak compared to the ones that were provided by the Capitol but making a makeshift arrow in the games would be better than trying to run into the cornucopia and getting killed when I tried to grab the bow. My arrow hit the side of the target's head.