The Writer Games | Once In A Lifetime & World Edition

And Then There Were Six: Semi-Finalist Entries

Minnie Amentia: District Four

DID NOT HAND IN.

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Felticka Scwartenzier: District Seven

DID NOT HAND IN.

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Liz Short: District Nine

Am I... am I dreaming?

My eyelids flutter open  in the familiar half-light of the cave, and for a moment through the  haze I feel sensations that simply cannot be right. My back is wet and  cold and being clung to by my sodden shirt, the back of my hair trails  behind my head, weightless as if floating, and somewhere in the back of  my mind I feel that I should move. I roll over.

The tube that rose so  fantastically from these rocks has not been my saviour. It has left me  to die in peace, at least, but it has not been my savoir as I had  naively hoped. Medicine can't do anything about a concave head. In that  tube there was a supply of painkillers to last me a week, enough to  carry me through my final days in a peaceful dream where suffering  ceases to exist. No more than that.

And so I initially  dismiss those strange sensations as some lucid dream making the journey  from unconsciousness into this dismal cave. Only when it persists, my  floating hair now tugging my head upwards as if urging me into action,  do I take note. What were those murmured words? The ones that had  drifted into dreams, travelling through shaking rocks and cascading  waterfalls? Water. That was it. The voice had spoken of water.

This is water.

The cave is filling with water.

I expect my floundering  is comical to those watching who are indisposed as to whether I live or  die, but to me and to everyone who cares about me it is agonising.  Knowing how helpless my actions are, just knowing and being unable to  put them right, is the most infuriating feeling I have ever experienced.  It breaks through the dream-like haze of my mind, snapping the drug  induced calm which, paradoxically, has left me in this state. Limbs fly  in every direction, water splashes high and wide, and I go nowhere. One  moment I'm on my feet, trying to plough through the knee-deep ice-cold  pool, and the next I'm down again, spluttering and blowing out water as I  force my head above the surface.

Something in the  freezing water moves my brain up a gear, and as the level reaches my  waist I finally gain control of my muscles. Now I need somewhere to go.  As the water rises I will be able to tread water with it, the danger  coming only when the ceiling comes into play. That makes my immediate  aim to find somewhere with a high ceiling; it may not turn out to be the  path to safety, but it has as good a chance as any, and will let me  stay alive just that little bit longer. I've always been a  procrastinator.

I lurch into the next  cave along, performing a streamlined hop through the water with  pin-wheeling arms propelling my body as fast as it will go. Which, as it  happens, is not very fast. It doesn't need to be, however, as the next  cave proves to be, well, cavernous, the roof stretching up tens, maybe  hundreds of metres above my bedraggled head. Is this the right place to  be? Only time will tell.

Custer comes into the  cave from the other side, and though he eyes me up from against the wall  he holds his ground, forming a silent agreement to stay clear of each  other while we concentrate on besting the arena. God, it must be bad.

We rise together, inch  by inch, metre by metre, as slowly our fate approaches us. The roof  looms ahead, sparkling, taunting us with beautiful veins of glimmering  gemstones despite the fact that its approach in all likelihood means  death. It will take maybe two minutes to reach the top. With two minutes  left, I see my escape.