Writer's Games Entries

Task 3: "Arachne's Web"

You'd think that I would be fast asleep. Before the Games started, I spent so much time being tense and nervous, and during the first stages of the Games, I spent most of my time running and fighting to stay alive. I should be exhausted. I feel exhausted. There is just no way that I can afford to close my eyes. My eyelids threaten give into the sleepiness every fifth second, but I always end up shaking my head to snap out of it. I know far too well that in the Games, if you shut your eyes for just a moment too long, it might be my last.

As hot it was during the beginning of the Games, the darkness covering the Arena has brought with it the cold. The cold temperatures are getting to me. No matter how much I want to, I have to resist the urge to light a fire. A fire will create smoke. That smoke will pinpoint my location to any nearby tribute. That would almost be as if I was begging to the closest tribute to just come and kill me. As much as I don't know much about what or whom I have left back in District Seven, I still wish to live. I want to go back to my family and prove to them, or should I say my father, that I am still the boy he raised. Despite of our different career-choices, I am still a Nairn.

What would help me immensely in doing that, would be staying alive. If I were to die, I know that my father will use it a reminder to my brothers of what might happen if they don't go the same path as him. He will hang me out as the Nairn who couldn't follow through with traditions, and how that very choice itself could have cost my life. Those are just things I'm imagining of course. I would be too dead to know.

As I try to adjust my position against the wall, I start hearing noises. I turn my head around, trying to focus to determine if it actually is something, or if it's all in my head. It's not nothing. As much as I dread to do it, I get up on my feet and look down one of the long paths that I walked through earlier. There is nothing there, but I can feel it in my bones something is about to happen. I hear movement, hissing...and it's all coming closer and closer. Before I know it, it feels like I can sense something breathe against my skin.

The moment I turn around, I stumble backwards in shock as a giant spider-mutt giggles at the sight of me. It looks to be around my size, six or eight legs...that is an unfair advantage. It looks ready to devour my poor soul and body. I manage to collect a handful of sand and throw it at its eyes as a diversion. Meanwhile I get up on my feet and start running, but those giggling noises and the hissing is still just a few meters behind. It almost seems as though the noise grows louder the harder I try to run away. It's almost as if it knows that I won't ever get away.

As I keep running, I hear whizzing noises behind me. A quick glance to my right reveals that the spider-mutt is firing strings of web at me. It has missed a couple of times and I pray that it continues for no matter how long I have to run, although I probably won't be able to keep up for a lot longer. I just know that if it catches me, I am going die as a meal for a Capitol spider-mutt. As much as I don't want that to be the end of me, I don't really have much of a say in here. Things are going to happen, and I'll just have to deal with it.

The inevitable then happens. The spider-mutts manages to fire a string of web at my foot and slowly pulls me backwards. I try as hard as I can to hold to anything, but the only thing to hold on to are the tiny particles of the sand, which is basically nothing. The closer I get, I sense the web spread up my legs. It's got both of my legs, making it impossible for me to try and break loose. When the mutt has me within its grasps, it hangs me up midair, and continues to pack me in. I would cut myself loose if it hadn't been for the fact that I dropped my knife only moments earlier.

I try to wiggle, hoping that it will loosen the web, but it doesn't. The more the spider-mutt manages to cover me webs, the drowsier I suddenly start to feel. That's not the scary part really. The scariest part is that if I close my eyes now, which I know I just might, I might not ever open them again.