Author Games: Trial By Fire

Task Five: Responses!

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District 1 - Luxure Amarta

“First of all, don't you even dare think for a mere second I have no chance. That I'll lose. That I'll die. Don't you ever even think that I am the girl that will be buried in a month in the freaking Graveyard of Shitting Shame. I am a warrior. I am a survivor. And that's what I do. Survive. Conquer... Reign.

Kill anyone that comes in the way of what I want. So do not even try to tell me what to do. Because the last person who did that, well… Let's just say they're not around to give you all of the details.”

I stare at Victor’s lump of a body, sprawled across the earth, his blood swamping the damp grass. I had to kill him.

“He told me to leave... to back down. He merely thought I was not but a child! WELL I’M NOT! I WILL DO WHAT I WANT!”

I think back to those years ago... It all seems misty watered now. Killing the boy from seven; crashing my shimmering steel into his frail heart; bursting the crimson organ.

“What choice do I have? And damn, how I hated the District Four girl. What was her name? Coral? It seems my games were flooded with talentless opposition... no wonder I won.”

My head becomes heavy. My eyes dart as a vision of Coral finds herself beneath me and my knife claims her breath.

“There can only be one winner. Every year. That’s what I’ve always learnt. Growing up in a “career district” we hold knives where others would hug a doll. At seven I could kill a grown man. I could very much well have killed my father.

And I wanted to so bad.

He lied to me. He told me, just like he told my brother, that if we trained hard enough and fought well we would live, survive, conquer…and have a big house. We would live like gods. Alas, this was not so. He did not tell me haunting figures would guide my future and torment my dreams. I was scared! And he lied! He lied to me! Cradled me!

“Everything will be okay,” He would say after Mother died. He trained us each day. We were his angels. And it was at age seven that I learnt really what death was. I killed for the first time. 

And boy did I love it.

It was at age seven I decided to kill the people that made me kill them. And yes, I would kill them brutally. I would kill them SO slowly. Take my anger out on other tributes If I so must along the way.

But it was not Coral’s face that I saw as my knife ripped at her chest. It was not Evan, the pathetic thing from three I saw when I snatched his eyes from their sockets.

It was you Snow. It was you.”

The pen splats across the pearl paper; I realise in my frustration I must of pressed down too hard. I stand from the trunk and look around the forest open... Water trails in the unsure horizon. It feels strange that so many have died to cause this peace.

And then a thought crosses my mind... my sick and twisted mind. Victor.

I walk over to the veteran’s body and silently crouch beside him. Slowly, almost savouring the irony, I dip the broken pen into the cold pool of blood and return back to the letter. 

I scribble down the last thoughts that come leeching into my mind. I have to write this down. The words are pouring from my heart to the paper. 

The blood drips from the tip and splatters the paper.