The Fifth Annual Writer Games: The Fall

The Fall of Pompeii: Entries

District 1 Male – Chet Jackson

Eitan kicks him up. Sole to his sleepy shoulder so he shoots forward as much as his bounds will let him. Rope, now wrapped around a halfway limbless tree as well as Chet Jackson, himself, plays at his neck and bites into his muscles quickly tensed. Chet bites into himself as well. These boots are rubber is all, but there is a steel all about Eitan. And everything he does. And, as Chet says, spitting silent swears into grindstone teeth, it translates.

The kindling branches that go up further than any of the pack can reach with a hand axe rustle and release a rain of leftover leaves, half-eaten by weevils or other things that are sorta like weevils. They fall where they will and Chet lives or dies by it. He could probably blow one away if it were to nestle atop the point of his nose.

In some spots, branches further up than the ones that shed upon him have been stripped. Bakari was the tallest they had. Now, he's half as tall as the others, and anyone really, except for toddlers and short people. And his one leg's folded up behind his head and the other one's somewhere else entirely. So the branches aren't cut so high because of that.

He can't turn his head to react to his assailant, he's learned from the last five of Eitan's rounds, and he is done caring about trying. The crumpling of snow under a steel toe moves away and towards him in a circle. The dark of the night seeps into his eyes right before Eitan makes it all the way around and kicks them full of stars again.

Chet's rubber band head is stretched to the sky when he hears footsteps again finally. The other once had become his silence but these are different and the inconsistencies wail out for attention. It's not like Chet has anything better to do than to give them it. He swallows a shot of sulfur, throat bobbing with strain. These feet walk back in harsh and sharp lines, and towards it. Billowing, throbbing, it. It's actually just sat there, Chet has to think - not like he can check. But nobody has said anything about the cornucopia becoming a great big maggot so it probably hasn't done. His gut shouts about it, though. It yells from the top of it's - whatever the lungs of the gut are. Probably the lungs still, Chet thinks, looking down at his belly. The bottom of the lungs are definitely a part of the gut, but the top of the lungs more than likely not. Maybe it's the appendix.

The cornucopia is a land of possibility. A blade to cut his throat. The very same blade could cut his binds. Tributes are sprawled about the area, far enough away from the shelter so that it won't be too cold, as if that makes sense. Some tributes are smeared about, doesn't matter where. Venus is back there somewhere, rolled out like a red carpet. Venus. Her bitter blood waltzes across his tree-bark tongue and fills up his empty mind like a bathtub. Let it, and let her go, he gids himself. And he's able to, more or less. Especially with Eitan on not exactly the night watch right now. It's so quiet in the night that in the cornucopia, far away, Chet can hear footsteps. They sound like a heart beating free from its surrounding flesh, pummeling up and out and harder. Then the sounds arrest.

Eitan trudges back with a trident in tow, it should do, and do better than what was left of the rest. It's not either of the two from Four's property, though it could have been if they kept a trident as property. It's the weapon itself they don't fancy enough, rather than Eitan, that makes it not the case. He allows himself to grin at this. He could almost submit to happiness after the past day's events. Losing Bakari... untangles many things. And each enemy slain is an obstacle brushed aside. He doesn't bother walking around most of them anymore, stepping straight in blood-soaked snow if it ever paves the path to his purpose. Even the ground gives way to him. When he reaches his destination, he stands in a wide stance, one foot either side of the tree Chet is bound to. Eitan grins at the struggles and side-eyes that surrender themselves before him. He holds, only to let the curiosity climax, and then he hefts his arm.