The Last Hunger Games

Chapter 28 - The Mutts

A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this one written, it's a very long one, and some days I just wasn't in the mood for writing, you feel me?) 

I walk as casually as I can back to Violet and Jack, who are stood their with their mouths hanging open like fish. Jack looks especially puzzled, and as I get back the other tributes start whispering among themselves.

"Why - why did you do that? You didn't have to, I could've handled that just fine," Jack says, trying to act arrogant, as usual. 

"Well no-one else was going to, were they? And I think it's time we start picking off the greatest competition, because I don't know about you but I don't want to stay in this place any longer than I have to. It's too full of...death. And, well, Titan was your mate. You haven't killed me since I found you and Violet, I had to pay it back somehow," I say. Once I started that last sentence, I wasn't sure how to finish, so I came up with a pretty lame excuse. I don't know how or why, but for once Jack takes me seriously. 

"Wait - you killed them...for me?" he says genuinely, and this could escalate in something more very quickly and there's no way I'll let that happen, so I say,"Well, no, I killed them for that flamingo in a feather boa over there, didn't I?" He picks up my sarcasm a few seconds late and Violet sniggers. I'm not sure if she really knows what a flamingo is, as they went extinct a long time ago, but she laughs anyway.

"Haha, very funny. But seriously, did you -" he stops and turns around. "Did you guys hear that?" We shake our heads and Violet's eyes open wider than I've ever seen anyone's open before, and her mouth forms an 'O.' 

And then she lets out a blood curdling, glass shattering scream. Within an instant, everyone else has spotted it too, and Jack clamps a hand over his younger sister's mouth, cutting her scream short. 

"Looks like you were right about one thing, huh," Jack says quietly in a shaky voice. "That's a mutt alright." All I can do is nod in reply, because I know that if I open my mouth I will start screaming and I shan't be able to stop. 

The monster approaching the dead body of the tribute I've just killed is unlike anything I've ever seen before. No mutt in any past Hunger Games could compare to this thing. They are weak in comparison. I blink my eyes shut tightly, hoping it was all just a vivid hallucination, and when I open them a second later, I can hardly believe it when I see that the mutt has gone. It has genuinely disappeared. But how? Surely I'm not the only one that saw this?

I slowly turn my head to look around the Feast table, and I'm almost relieved to see that everyone else looks about as shocked as me. 

"Did that - did that - mutt - disappear -?" I stammer out, my mouth struggling to find the ability to form words. 

"Did that actually just happen?" Jack says, and for the first time he doesn't have any idea at all of what's going on. Ha; serves him right for being so arrogant and proud all the time. (You think he's annoying here, try putting up with him for years at the Capitol Academy. Pure torture, I'm telling you. 

"Wait..but if the mutt disappeared, surely they haven't sent it back? I mean, it hasn't killed anyone yet," says a surprisingly loud voice coming from the tribute under the table. "Sorry, just..thinking aloud," he says in a much timider voice. 

"It's still here!" Violet exclaims, and as people realise and understand what this means, a series of gasps can be heard and me, Jack, and Violet take around five steps backward. But I wish we hadn't, because when Jack trips over something and we look down to see what it was, we are met with - for the second time today - the mangled mess that was once known as Servius Sangria. This time though, it's not just his head, it's his whole body. His arms look as though they have been ripped off by a savage beast on a hunt for blood. The rest of his body lays on the ground in two clear halves, his intestines strewn about the floor. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I take in the fact that we are not alone in this arena with just one mutt, but multiple monsters.