The Carnelian Islands

Prologue

All of the 24 of the contestants are graded and given numbers. 1 means, you are the best, 24, that you are the worst. The numbers also implicate, how many minutes of lead start you get. Let’s say you got the number 21. You are the third weakes link, but you get 21 minutes of advantage. The clock starts ticking, and only you get to leave your position, when it shows 21 minutes.

You run, maybe grabbing some supplies, but the trick is, if the clock strikes 20, the next person comes running and they may, or may not, bash your brains in.

Of course the strongest are left with near to no things, but that doesn’t matter. They always track youngsters down, slit their throats and collect the reward.

This is not anything new for people here. Every year it happens, the event get televised and people bet loads of money on their favourites.

You may think, it sounds a lot like of Panem’s Hunger Games.

It does actually.

Let me make it clear to you: These are NO Hunger Games.

1) You get a lead, if you are weaker than the others.

2) It’s almost a rule, that you get some supplies. One year, a girl grabbed two backpacks, filled with food and hid up a tree until other’s starved. Pretty neat, huh?

3) You get the basic tracking devices. Only a small phone like object, a chip installed in your leg, but it’s not like someone hasn’t cut it out.

4) To get more supplies, food, weapons, medicine, matches, you have to get your phone, or someone else’s, contact the people organising this event, state your number and order things.

5) You actually get ’credit’ for killing people. 1500, if it was a ’nice’ death, open wounded, with lots of fresh meat or blood, 500, if it was just a silent kill.

6) There is no Arena, players are ditched on a stranded island, pretty big, but nobody know’s the layout for their year, as the old islands get used, you know, once every two decades.

7) When you hear the sound of ticking, someone is about to die. There is no way to make the ticking end, before someone is killed.

There you have it. No Hunger Games. More like Island Games.

Who am I to know all of this?

I am this years 'entertainment', one of the unlucky 24, to fight for survival.

I am 5’ 10, weigh 110 pounds and I look like crap. Messy tangle of red hair and sunburn tanned skin. Green dull eyes. Muscles are nothing on me, I’m not strong, I’m not fast. I’m just a normal girl.

My name? I haven’t used it for so long, I’m not going to start now.

When I am announced as one of the ’lucky’ twenty four teens, who get to redeem their share of the money we got, fifty thousand dollars, to spend on our terrible lives, I scream.

I knew, what I signed up for, as I wrote my signature down on the paper, but I hoped that my luck will keep me afloat this time. I needed that money, not caring for consequenses.

My luck failed me, I got shipped to some underground fight club and here I am. Learning how to fight for my life.

„Again.“ The bulky chocolate skinned man tells me and I whine. „I can’t! I’m tired!“ The man, whose name I don’t know and don’t want to know, growls at me and throws me another weight, which I catch and moan at how painful my muscles are.

„Again.“ He says and I throw the metal disc as fas as I can, it landing next to a girl with blonde hair and hazel eyes. I’m calling her Blondie, as names don’t really matter here. This is my first-and last- time to show people, I can do this shit.

Blondie yells at me to watch it and throws a similar metal object, the head of the axe, towards me and I avoid it.

„Good.“ The man tells me and I raise my eyebrow. „Can I go now?“

„No. They have to grade you. You know what that means, don’t you?“ He guides me to a room and I nodd. „Yea, yea.“

I go in the room, do the excercises I’m told, I light a fire, I kill a squirrel(poor lovely creature) with a knife, I lift heavy stones and I run on a treadmill. For a special bonus, I demonstrate how flexible I am, cracking my bones and managing to put my feet behind my neck.

That was it, just plain sweating with monitors controlling my pulse and breathing. No comments on how bad I was doing, no nothing.

I don’t worry about how well I do, I mean, I won’t be on the top ten for sure, just look at me. I’m tall, skinny and look horrible. The other girls actually got their looks upgraded with that money, I didn’t.  I gave it to my friend, who disappeared shortly after.

I hope I live long enough to tell her, she is a bitch, a backstabbing bitch.