Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Six: The Plagues/QF - Females

District One - Jace Argentaria

DID NOT HAND IN.

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District Four - Selene Albright

Few things, I knew, were  constant in the arena. Simply watching the Games for all my life had  taught me that lesson. The weather changed on a Gamemaker's whim, Mutts  were brought into the arena, dead bodies taken out. Still, I never would  have expected the changes that these Games brought.

A ribbit came from a  nearby bush, as though to punctuate my latest thought. Frogs. As though  the Gamemakers hadn't brought in enough to torture us, they added frogs.  Every few seconds, one of them ribbited, loudly enough that it was  impossible to focus on anything no matter how hard I tried. No matter  how quickly I tried to set a trap, a croak or a ribbit or one of them  jumping in front of me distracted me, forcing me to start all over.  Then, if I actually managed to set one, they'd trigger it immediately,  hopping right on top of the trap. Time was a precious commodity, and the  stupid frogs were making me waste it.

Trying to calm myself  down, I closed my eyes as another frog ribbited. Half of me wished that I  knew whether or not the frogs were edible, since the abundance of them  meant an easy food source. My stomach was past the point of growling,  and I was about as hungry as I'd ever been back home. The other half of  me though, the half that my stomach was actually in, turned at the  thought of eating a frog, poisonous or not. Slimy, and dirty, they were  worse than any fish I'd caught back home.

The ribbiting of another  frog, only distinguishable from the others because of its location,  tore me from my thoughts. I might not want to eat the frogs, but all of  me wanted to kill them. Only a small piece of me said otherwise, warning  me that another tribute might see the massacre of frogs and learn my  location. The idea of wandering through the arena and finding a pile of  dead frogs, and a girl victoriously holding a bloody knife was almost  comical to me. At home, I might have smiled from the thought. It  certainly sufficed to say that I wasn't at home though.

Another frog ribbited  and my hand, almost like it had a mind of its own, threw my knife to the  side, to the general area of the creature. I heard the familiar sound  of my knife hitting flesh, and the strange, surprised sound of the frog  as it died. That would teach it to not ribbit anymore.

Something, a small voice  in the back of my head, was almost as surprised as the frog had been.  I'd killed something just because it had annoyed me.

Killing in District Four  was just a part of life. Granted, we didn't kill humans for sport, we  really didn't kill for sport at all. But as a District that depended on  killing animals for sustenance, taking a life was nothing out of the  ordinary. The first time I saw someone kill a fish, my dad slitting its  throat so it'd stop writhing so much, I was shocked. I wasn't sure why,  I'd eaten fish several times before, and knew that they had to die  somehow. Maybe it was seeing the fish itself die, and the absolute  calmness with which my father killed it. I asked him why he killed it.  Tears weren't in my eyes like they were in Calypso's, but there was a  fragility in my voice that could only be associated with childhood,  naivety.

As clearly as I could  hear the frogs croaking, I could hear my father's response. "We kill  because we have to, Selene, and we only kill when we have to."

I tried to stick to the  mantra for all of my life, I really did. And even though it was just a  frog that I'd killed in my frustration, the thought that I'd broken my  father's most cardinal rule made me want to cry. He might understand me  killing Calypso, I had to do it to survive. But killing anything just  out of frustration, even something as small and insignificant as a frog,  was unacceptable. Unless I had a reason.