the 1000th annual hunger games

Mother, look at me, I'm flying

Chapter 51: Mother, look at me, I'm flying.

My eyes flew open as fast as a hovercraft could fly by. Which, if you didn't know, is extremely fast. I hover above the simple arena, full of jungle. Palm trees and ferns dominate the land beneath. Great. I'm dead. Now what. I notice, nearby is my pack, and to left, in the distance is the boy. What is his name? Oh jeez, am I supposed to remember? Well, at least he's dead. I never liked him anyway. His smirk radiates the sky around me. He performs a swimming motion against me, pulling himself towards me as if he were climbing  a rope, and I was at the top. I quickly turn myself around pull myself away from the killer.  I'm already dead, I don't need to be killed again. searching around the arena, which appears to be large circle that appears to glitch several times.  Dark dots appear in the distance, only to be faded by the blue glitching electronical light. Closer up to me, human shaped blobs squirm about, appearing to stab one another. Several booms of the canon are heard. To my count, 14. Which now, horrifyingly, seems a mere number to me.

 I hear a faint buzzing sund, like the small generator we used to use back in Fifteen to keep our school'd electricity on. Often, the electricity would flicker out, leaving everyone in the darkness, if the sun didn't want to shine that day. The fence was rarely on, and the only days for sure it'd be on is on reaping day or a nation-wide holiday, when extra peacekeepers from the capitol were filed in, train after train to stop the several riots of party-goers in the square. The riots were often drunken, like many people in Fifteen always were. They'd brew their beer and drink all night, expecting their problems to be gone in the morning, or to be dead. Either would be acceptable to our district, being the smallest and one of the poorest.  Cobwebs clung to every corner back there, and dried blood was often found in the streets, mostly in the morning, after two agressive drunkies were in a fight. Now, of course, they'd be arrested if they were found alive, as there is a strict curfew of 10 at night, no later. Not a minute. If they were found dead, they'd be the arrestee's dinner for that night. It's sad what the Capitol has resorted to so it can promote itself. And if their food and corpses, it's nothing at all. Cannibalism isn't right, never was, and the fact that they would serve human corspes as dinner scares me, and is probably why I'm not in jail.  I'd want to be arrested if it meant not dealing with drunks, druggies and having to keep several people alive.

In the distance, the opposite way where I was looking before is filled with tiny -almost microscopic, mechanical bugs, that, knowing the Capitol, is a death trap for me to step in.   I hurridly turn around and 'swim' the other way. The boy has a content smirk on his face, ready to kill me, most likely. Basically, either way I go, I'm dead.  Unless I already am, which I'm starting to doubt, because when you're dead, you probably don't feel an undying fear, similar to the one you experience in the Games.  The buzzing sound radiates around me.

Once, in the woods, a far distance away from  fifteen, where larger animals dwell, perhaps prefering the quietness of deep in the woods, I was hanging around looking for prey for dinner. It was the day before reaping day, the one time before the uncontrollable amount of peacekeepers swarmed in from The Capitol and District Two to 'control' our 'crazy shanigans' for the next two weeks. The two weeks after Reaping Day was a common time for uprisings and riots to occur, because crazy parents, lead to crazy happenings, or so they say, but the Capitol lies and lies to an extreme.  I had to hunt for a lot of game and gatherings, maybe even some fish at the stream, a few miles west. I'd even trade some at the black market for salt to preserve the game and we'd eat the fish as soon as possible.  So far, I'd gathered quite a bit of berries, various greens even some carrots, onion and potatoes. I'd also had the luck of shooting down a buck. I was simply carving down the antlers into pretty little statues for  the peacekeepers and rich to buy for the upcoming weeks, when I heard it. The iconic howl of  a wild dog. I quickly shoved the statues in the bag and practically ran up the tree I was leaning up against. it was tall, about 125 feet high, and when I was about 60 feet off the ground, my muscles ached and I coouldn't take it. I sat on a nearby branch  and relaxed. I looked down to see the wild dog clawing it's way up the tree.  It took all of my bravery, I swear, but after a suspenseful ten seconds, I swung from that tree to another. I rid up the tree, as I noticed, the wild dog had hopped trees in swifter, smoother movement than I. I went willy nilly, and crazily hopped from tree to tree, that thing constantly on my tail.  I had gotten dangerously close to the district, when the loud train screamed by, scaring the him away. I was relieved, but rushed back to the district, as the peacekeeper train arrived early.

The point  of that is to say that I was as scared of these Capitol mutants as much as I was of that most likely dieased wild dog come to kill me, to rip my instestines out and watch me die.  The buzzing sound clogged my ears, and took over my eyes. I couldn't breath, as if they were strangling me, like an angry drunkie to another. And with no concept of time or emotion, I feel for what seemed like forever.