Author's Game Entries

*Task 4: Don't Scream

 Sammy sniffs and runs a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes. He had stopped crying a while ago, though he hadn't moved from his position crouched against the wall, not yet. When he finally does though, he starts to stand up slowly only to wince at the cracking sound that followed his movement, his joints protesting. Rubbing his knees, he stands up fully to look around, his eyes sweeping from one end of the hallway to the other.

There wasn't much to see. While he had been running from the siren, he'd darted into just any hallway he could, running as far as he could before he had broken down sobbing. It was a miracle that no one had found him and killed him in that time, thought that could probably be attributed to the fact that all the closest tributes to him had been preoccupied by the mutant.

Letting out a surly sigh, the young boy turns and starts down the hallway, in the opposite direction he had entered it from in hopes it would lead him away from the stage. But after just a couple minutes of walking he found this was not the case as the hallway stopped abruptly at two doorways. The one that lead right had no label on it while the one directly in front of Sam read "Backstage" in blocky, easy to read letters.

He gives the unmarked door a curious glance and approaches it hesitantly, turning the knob and cracking it open. He winces at the loud sound it makes as it creaks and stops the door half way open, peeking into the room beyond only to squeak loudly and slam the door shut again as he saw what was on the other side. Laying on the ground had been the body of a female tribute, the District 6 emblem on her uniform splattered with blood. She had been decapitated, her head laying inches from her body next to what had looked like the murder weapon, a cymbal.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Sammy had a hand clamped over his mouth and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to purge the image of the dead girl from his mind. Her glazed over eyes and still moist stump of a neck refused to leave his memory though and he almost loses what was left of his last meal onto the floor.

After his moment of queasiness passes he quickly stumbles past the door without hesitation, pulling open the heavy black door that lead backstage. To his surprise it didn't creak like he thought it would, and he manages to slip through silently into this next hallway, one that was much darker than the one before it. Sammy realizes then as he uneasily looks around that he was on the opposite side of the stage than he had previously been, now in the left wings instead of the right.

There were less props on this side surprisingly and instead were more costumes, and the short boy was able to weave his way through the maze of clothes racks fairly easily, even in the dim violet lighting coming from the black light above. Once through, he finds himself standing in front of three more doors on the left side of the long continuous hallway.

Confused, Sammy looks back between the way he had come and the unmarked doors now in his path. There was no notable difference between the doors, and he finds himself tentatively reaching for the doorknob of the closest, turning it and pushing the door open slowly. When he saw no gore, and nothing jumped out at him right away, he steps in and looks around tentatively, allowing the door to close softly behind him.

He found himself in what appeared to be a recording studio, but it was so incredibly old, the technology was so ancient that Sammy marveled at how any of the machines had even worked at all back in their time. A layer of dust coated everything and the boy runs his fingers along the chair set up by what seemed the sound board, and when he pulls them away he sees the clean streaks his fingers had left in the dust. Everything seemed to be from the early 2000's, which only increased Sammy's wonder and awe that the room was even there, as he thought everything from before Panem had been destroyed long ago.

Picking up a set of headphones left on the soundboard, he places the bulky object over his ears and smiles, imagining what it must have been like when this studio had been in use, all the music that had been made here. He was about to pull them off again when he is suddenly stopped by a small sound he hadn't heard before, a sound that was coming from the headphones. Bringing a hand up, he presses a hand against one muff and listens closely, jumping when he suddenly realizes what the sound was.