The Hunger Lames

District 1 - male tribute - Darcy

I always knew there was something off about my female counterpart, Aurora.

I knew it when she volunteered for the games. Not to be sexist or anything, but girls are less likely to volunteer in district one than guys, we haven't had a female volunteer for three years. I swear it's not sexist, it's just stats.

Aurora was always sort of different. It couldn't be put into words because there was no way to document it. It was never the way she acted, or anything she said, there was always this undercurrent of something not right.

So I decided I might as well kill her first. I wasn't emotionally attached to her so it's not as dramatic as it sounds. I'm just taking out someone who I think is going to be mentally unstable, and therefore, harder to predict later on in the games. Sure, we went to school together, but that's what it's like in district one. You can be best buddies with someone but then still look at them thinking "One day I might have to kill you."

Rule number one: don't get attached to possible murder victims.

I watched the games one year where my brother and his girlfriend went into the arena together. They were the last two tributes left and it got messy. You could see the regret in my brother's girlfriend's eyes as she slit his neck.

I watched Aurora's stance while Claudius counted down.

Her body was convulsing with laughter and her eyes looked wicked and crazed. What the hell? Then, it got even weirder. Instead of running away, or going head first into the bloodbath like what she told me was going to do, she scooped up some poor girls mattered remains after she leaped off the platform too early.

Aurora skipped, yes, skipped, off into the edge of the woods.

Looks like I was right about her being mentally unstable.

I waited a couple seconds before following her, being careful to make my footsteps light and unnoticeable.

What I saw when I reached her was horrifying.

She looked like an animal, tearing apart the girl's disemboweled head, hunching over as if someone was going to come and take it away from her. I watched in a terrified amazement as she didn't even stop when chowing down on the eyeballs.

She needed to be taken out.

I realized that, like an idiot, in the excitement of following Aurora, I hadn't picked up any weapons.

I looked around for something to hit her with when I saw a fantastic, sturdy looking stick.

Grinning, I tried to yank on it.

My grin fell when I realized that what I had grabbed was not in fact, a stick, but a brown, ginormous, probably mutated, snake.

Alright, all I had to do was fight it off, right? I grabbed the snake with my other hand and tried to strangle it. I did not account for the fact that this snake was about twenty feet long until it's tail started wrapping itself around my legs.

It started to cocoon my body, around my midriff now. Soon, it engulfed me and I couldn't breathe. I panicked and did the only thing I could think of, I bit down. Hard. I realized my mistake as venomous liquid poured into my mouth and my tongue went numb.

The good news was the snake's gripped lessened, the bad news was I just drank a mouthful of poison.