Writer's Games Entries

Task 6: "My Battle Cry" (SF)

The ones on the right...they have this grey shade covering them. I see Jem among the faces and I have to swallow even harder. I had him killed, twice...the second time it was me directly because he was about to kill me. Some of my other allies are there too, allies that I got separated from and never saw again until I heard their cannons.

They all look the way they did when they died. Some are covered in blood, others have their necks deformed and their heads in an unnatural position. Jem, he has my arrow through his chest, and the boy from the stage-set...his head is covered with rivers of blood all over his head because of the arrow I shot into his chin and that reappeared on the top of his skull.

Just the memory of it was enough to stir me up the first time, seeing it now just makes it all worse...my hands are shaking badly as I fail to hold on to the arrow. It drops to the ground. On my left, the other six are throwing insults at me. Normally I wouldn't be able to take it, but...looking into the eyes of the dead is somehow just far worse than any words any of those tributes could throw at me.

I have survived...for this long, into the top seven of these Games. I have survived with the use of my bow and arrow, props and my allies to an extent. Let me not forget my forever loyal ally in the shadows. I look at the ones in grey, and wonder loudly to myself:

"What are you...why are you here? You're all...dead..." I gulp several times as I say that. The ones that are still alive are starting to get aggressive. They're swinging their 'toys' as I just look down on the arrow I just dropped. It dawns upon me: they're all coming after me. They are all getting ready to kill me. They're too many. I can't take them all at once. I can't!

Here's the ironic part though, I already have. For my entire live, I have been fighting against everything and everyone. I've been fighting against the attention at the Academy, I have been fighting to avoid people looking or talking at me, I have been fighting against becoming a career tribute who is maniacally in love with killing...in most of them I have failed. I may not love killing, but like the rest of my predecessors, I kill, because that's what I'm good at.

Now I have become something I do not want to be. I can't stop this. No matter how much I want to stop the killer that I have become, it's already done. I already am a killer...a vicious one at that if you look at some of the tributes I have killed. It's just...there's no way out of this. There's no way out of the identity that I'm slowly taking on.

As this rising feeling of hopelessness rises inside my chest, so does the tributes around me. For some reason, they are growing into big giants and the walls rise to the point where I don't see the top of it anymore. It just mirrors the increasing pulse inside my chest, my throat turning dry like a desert as I keep my normal human size. My entire body goes into this mode of panic.

The point of collapse is near. I am a complete mess. Everything and everybody is just going against me while I'm just...me. I drop to my knees and my bow...well, I've dropped that one some time ago without even noticing. My first instinct is covering my ears. The voices...they are returning from the back of my head, in the shape of the clone that I encountered earlier in the Games:

"You're not good enough, Shadow. How are you going to win when no sponsor would be stupid enough to sponsor you? How are you going to get by without any allies? And let us not forget, how are you going to win while hiding in the shadows? You're a coward. You are and you always have been. Bow and arrow? That's not a Career's weapon, it's a coward's weapon!

What? Did you think I was only in the back of your head? Who do you think is actually telling you this? As far as my knowledge go, I'm just a reflection of you..."