Heart of Darkness: the Forty-Fourth Hunger Games

Chapter 20

I was going to write some non-alliers when I remembered I did have an alliance. Ally and Yara are seeking Nassor if interested.

Kirsta Thales- D6

So much for being a better person. The only way to have any chance of surviving this is to be the worst person I could be.

It was fitting I chose daggers. It was the most personal, painful, and difficult weapon to kill someone with. That wasn't why I chose them- I only chose them because they were the easiest to hold and carry. It still haunted me when I thought about what I knew of daggers. I heard on the news once about a man who stabbed his girlfriend to death after she broke up with him. He stabbed her twenty-eight times, and they said it took her hours to bleed to death. An arrow killed someone like lightning. Daggers ripped the life from someone an inch at a time.

The girls from Eleven and Nine had been talking together for a while. I hope they weren't allying. They were both strong, and they'd be stronger together. They were both stiff competition on their own, and I didn't know if I could kill either. Some of the others were looking for allies as well, but none of them came to me. I was glad about that. I didn't want anyone.

"Always aim for the soft vital spots," the attendant told me, pointing the knife at my stomach. I wondered if that was where the man stabbed the girlfriend, and how soft the flesh felt when he pushed the knife in. I hoped that he hadn't done that at all and had stabbed the hard spots. Maybe then if I stabbed the soft areas, the other guy would die faster.

"The heart is protected by ribs and will be fiercely defended, but it's the best place to hit," the attendant said.

Good, because mine must be very small, I thought. There were two ways I could go with that information. I could recognize the error of my ways and penitently work to better myself. Or I could embrace it and kill the others before they killed me. It was selfishness versus abnegation. I didn't dwell on it or wallow in guilt. I wanted to live. I hardened my heart.

The dummy in front of me was open and silent. The only thing stopping me from killing it was myself, and I didn't stop. I pulled back the knife the way the attendant told me, with the blade pointed straight out and my arm bent behind it to piston out with maximum power. I shot my arm out like a snake and stuck the knife into the circle that marked the dummy's heart. I felt the rough fabric give way and my knife pushed into the stuffing.

It might not be dead yet, I thought. I yanked the knife out in something like a panic and stuck it into the stomach in a half-dozen flurried strikes. I kept stabbing even after I knew it would be dead, just in case. I didn't want it to linger like that woman. I didn't want to be like that.

Ally Tesla- D5

There was something good about being in the Games building. I got to meet people from all over the country. Naturally, Yara and me got together pretty quick, since we were both young and her District partner was really scary. It wasn't even like we introduced ourselves and made friends. We just found each other in the crowd and paired up naturally. Girls of our age did that by habit.

"I love the food here. We usually eat mush in Twelve," Yara said.

"We eat lots of different things in Five, since we're transporting so much stuff and there's usually some surplus. I got to eat Twelve mush once. It was yucky," I said.

"You got that right," Yara said. "Do you ride cars everywhere? We have to walk."

"We don't have a car. Sometimes I ride the bus if there's a special school thing," I said.

"What's a bus?" Yara asked.

"You've never seen a bus? It's a big giant truck that fifty kids can fit in. Usually they're yellow," I said.

"We hardly even have roads in Twelve," Yara said. We were by the first aid station, practicing putting bandages on each other.

"Do you have lots of sisters? Most families in Twelve are small because there's not much food," Yara said.

"I have one sister. She sleeps a lot. She's been really sad lately," I said.

"Do you think she's sick?" Yara asked.

"I don't know what she's so sad about. She used to be happy. It's like she forgot what she was happy about and only remembers the sad things," I said.

"Maybe there's something wrong with her brain," Yara said.

"The doctor said there's something wrong with my brain, since sometimes I don't understand grownups very well. He said I have a developmental disability, but the only other kid I saw who had the same thing couldn't talk and wore a diaper, so I think he might have been wrong," I said.

"You don't wear a diaper?" Yara asked.

"No!" I said. I pulled up my underwear without thinking and showed Yara it was pink and not a diaper.

"Maybe you were a weird baby and that's when he said you were sick. I knew a kid who didn't talk until he was four, but then he was fine," Yara said.

"Yeah, I saw a baby once with a huge head. They were worried he was stupid, but he just had a huge head," I said. I liked being with Yara. Sometimes people were confusing when they said one thing and meant another, especially grownups. Yara wasn't like that. She was a normal kid, like me.

Yara Warsaw- D12

Being with one ally made the Games half as scary. I hoped we could find another ally, hopefully someone older. There were two of us, but we were still pretty little. So far the youngest person to win the Games was fifteen. I was only three months away from being fourteen, but that was still a lot younger.

Being in the Games building was like an entirely new world. In Twelve, there was my house, the mines, the market, and school. There really wasn't much else, and it was hard to learn new things. Here, there was literally everything. I could go to the computer in my room and ask what the most popular dress style in One was and it would tell me right away. We didn't even have computer in Twelve. I thought it was magic at first. I felt like I lived in the future when I was in the Capitol. It was like a science fiction story. I'd never imagined it was so amazing here. Capitolites must know everything.

Ally came with me when I went back to the snare station, in case Shinju came back to scare me again. She was a bully, and bullies didn't like being outnumbered. Ally tried to help be my victim for my snares, but I ended up getting tangled along with her. I left the next snares empty and those ones turned out better.

That night, we camped out together in Ally's room. We made a blanket tent and huddled underneath it, watching fashion shows on the wall television and eating tons of food from the wall cubby. It was the coolest thing ever just to have as much food as we wanted, and being in the crazy fancy room was even better, but it was still foreboding.

"Let's make plans for what happens if one of us wins," I said.

"Yeah, I guess we should," Ally said.

"If you win, can you send my parents food every once in a while? And buy a porch swing for my mom? She always said she knew she'd be rich if she had a porch swing," I said.

"I'll send a really pretty one with that pretty red wood like the table downstairs," Ally said. "And if you win, can you send my parents enough money that they don't have to work anymore and we can send Abby to the doctor and he can fix her so she's not sad? I have to be happy all the time for her, even when I'm really not," Ally said.

"Okay," I said. I'd thought Ally really was happy. She was a good faker. We both were, since we were pretending not to be scared.