Author's Games Entries

Task Three: Chance

His eyes were heavy when he woke up. The sun was hidden behind clouds yet he could still see the deep, wonderful blue of the open sky. Unfiltered by trees. In fact, no trees are anywhere around. It only takes a second for him to realize that and in that second he jerked awake.

"Where-" His words were cut off by a beautiful girl rolling onto him and wrapping her hands around his neck. Her hips and legs clamped against his and tightened like a bolt screwed into the finest of metals.

The girl--Noura, from District Ten. One district away from him, yet he hadn't even tried to talk with her. Shit. Should've made better allies. She had strength that he wouldn't have expected from a girl with as tiny wrists and bones as she.

Her dark brown hair was intensely wild and fell into his mouth, tickling his cheeks. Tanned skin transformed into rouge cheeks and her dark eyes spoke of death and only death. Chance gasped and tried to hit her. His left arm responded, but his right only caught on hers and she cried out in pain as her wrist was bent backwards.

A silver chain was tightened around both their wrists, trapping the two together. She furrowed her brow, sleep still crusted in her eyes. Noura wasn't happy, that was easy to see. "What the hell did you do?" she asked.

"Nothing!"

"Why are we chained up?"

"I don't know," he told her. She slapped him hard. Fuck! "I really don't know!"

She laughed--or, rather, barked--and shook her head. The girl who hadn't seemed even the slightest bit bad before was now near cynical.

"Of course," she said, "they just want me to lose it! Goddammit, I'm sick of this. Haven't you already died twice now?"

Chance didn't know what to say. On one hand, he had an insane girl with her hands still wrapped around his neck. On the other, he had a hot girl straddling him and talking nonsense. Just my damn luck. Where's Margie? His ax was nowhere to be seen, which only made everything worse somehow.

"Every freaking time," she muttered.

He sighed. "Look, Noura, can't we just...talk?" Buy time. Let's get her to get the hell off me. Maybe then I can kill her. Yeah, yeah. "My name is Chance. We haven't met yet, but I'm-"

"District Nine, I know."

She made it hard to hold a conversation. Heart pounding, Chance tried to keep himself calm. He had to be calm.

"What's it like in Ten? Is it hot there?"

She just glared at him. The tightening of a single pinky finger left him near shouting a he tried again, "It gets hot in Nine. Some days I can't even walk outside with a shirt on. It's hot here too, but we need our shirts. Well, you do." His face flushed but he didn't stop talking. "I mean, not that you don't have a nice chest. You do. I mean, fuck, um..."

Water began to flow. It turned the desolate wasteland into mud as Chance's feeble attempts at conversation slowly turned into a heated argument between the two. Their questions went back and fourth with no real answers. Just, "What did you do?!" "Why did you do this?" "I'm going to kill you!" Over and over.

Chance finally had enough and shoved her, cursing as she fell down and drug him with her. His knees scraped against the ground and bloodied as the two tumbled down into a valley. Pain coursed through him and he rubbed at his body with his free hand.