Writer's Games Entries

Task 2: "The Globe"

Petrified and hyperventilating. Those two words magnificently describe the way I feel right now. Thinking back to when the Games started, I probably should have run towards the stage and prayed that I would get my hands on some supplies that would keep me alive. Now, I'll have to settle for dreaming of them. When the countdown reached zero, I could hardly move. I completely froze at how fast people's nature just changed. Little Marshall was pushed on the ground and his face pushed towards the mud, suffocating him. Freja was fighting Montes, but had to surrender (die, more to the point) before I managed to move a muscle.

Before the Games started it didn't take more than a second for me to realize that this Arena was not made for me. I would be very much out of my element. Nothing in my immediate visibility spoke to my advantage because we were at a theatre. The theatre looked ancient though, like it wouldn't be particularly familiar to us from the newer generations. Most of us appeared in what seemed like a pit. There was an open roof above our heads and several stories of seats around us, where also a mixture of tributes seemed to appear.

From the moment I got my head together, my tactic was to run. At best, perhaps I had planned to sneak my way to the stage and grab something worthwhile, but I just started running. Spectators were probably disappointed in my choice of tactics, but my tactic was to survive (it still is mind you). The bloodbath was no place for me. I would go down right away, because I don't have the darkness in me to take another human life. I haven't known anything close to that kind of darkness. I'm an outdoor type of person who's enjoyed the calm and peaceful nature, not this.

I was trying to find my way out of the theatre. The size of the building was just so small and crowded that there had to be a way out. This couldn't be all of it. Except whatever door I was trying to get out through was locked. Either that or I was just too stupid to know how to open it. Now, I'm completely lost. I'm sitting by that very door, with my back to it and sensing the anxiety come from deep within. I know this is probably not the time to break down emotionally, but at this point there is no stopping that from happening.

Ka skal eg gjøre? Kordan skal eg overleve dette? Eg kjenner jo ikkje igjen noenting! The anxiety is hitting me with full force. I have no idea what to do or how to survive what has already become a nightmare. Every little thought entering my head is all about how I can't manage this, how I don't want to be a part of this. I just want to go back to my home, to the mountains, the rain, even worst of storms instead of this hell. Everything that I know is so far away and I need all of that more than anything just calm myself down.

Everything around me is completely opposite to what I know. Yeah, for sure, Mother Nature and the climate can be chaotic and unpredictable, but there is no bloodlust and brutality in it. It's just nature's way. It's natural, it's the way it's supposed to be, as opposed to teenagers being sent into an Arena to kill each other. The life I lived back home did in no way prepare me for the brutality and abrupt change of human behavior. It happened too abruptly for me to be able to adjust to it.

Having survived the first stage of the Games, the cannons of the fallen are sounding all over the Arena. I guess most of the killings have stopped...for now. The heat of the bloodbath is over. The weaker participants of it have been confirmed dead, now there is only a bunch of strong, or lucky, tributes left. The only reasonable thing to do now is lick their wounds, check out their supplies and go hunt down the others...like me. I hope they just think of me as such a weak tribute that they won't prioritize killing me before late in the Games...or perhaps they could just fall off the third story of this theatre for the grand finale, which would be just fine with me sadly.

I get up on my two feet, deciding that if I keep sitting here, drowning myself in anxiety and fear, I'm basically inviting another tribute to just come and kill me. At least I want to go down swinging if nothing else. With the door behind me not opening I have to find another way out, which means heading back towards the pit where I started. As my steps pick up the pace slightly, the thought of the blood and stench of death is invading my mind. I know I'll just have to go through it because that's what my instinct tells me.

I remember running pretty much a straight line from the pit back towards the door that I got stuck on, which is how I know my way back. It's a bit too quiet for me though. I don't trust the silence, least of all in this place with people wanting to kill me (only to be possibly be killed themselves five seconds later). I try to pay attention to every tiny little noise because that might be someone close by who is ready to put up a fight. There's the sound of dropping water, old wood creaking above my head.

I'm so busy looking upwards that I don't see her before I stumble on her. Her being the girl that Freja was fighting right in the beginning. I can sense vomit wanting to make its appearance on live television, but I manage to swallow and hold it down. There is something so haunting about seeing a girl who was alive a short time ago, lie so still and be so cold. As I keep moving forward, warily of course, I find more bodies along the way. The closer I get to the pit, the closer they are together, like breadcrumbs.

Just when I reach the center, I stand in a pool of blood and dead tributes. I remember most of their faces from only a few days ago as they were talking to the cameras, smiling, chatty and eating everything they could get their hands on. Now they're dead. Talking about contrasts. The even bigger one is that the moment I step in the middle of this pool of blood, a rain-shower comes over the open space of the theatre pit and comes down on me. That's exactly what I needed.