Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.
Even as I survey the contents of the cornucopia, everything is numb. I feel like I’m plugging my ears, and the only sound filtering through is the clock. I stand with the other tributes surrounding the giant metal cornucopia.
10… 9… 8…
Blood pounds through my veins, twisting and running through the complicated swirls of my body. The adrenaline pours through me, it is a waterfall. It pounds on my brain as the clock ticks down even further.
3… 2… 1…
Everybody starts running towards the cornucopia. I’m standing a few feet off of my pedestal and I’m not quite sure how I got here. The other tributes are a blur of blacks and whites and browns, each of them with their own personal smear of color. I see five items easily accessible to me. A foot long length of rope, Ellie Goulding, a small Arabian lamp labeled “food”, a German Shepherd, and an invisibility cloak. Something tells me I have five seconds and five seconds alone to take something and run.
Then I see a girl run at me. The sounds are disorienting and fear spikes through my body. I dread having to hurt people and I realize how sick this whole thing is. But I also know I need to get it together if I’m going to survive. The girl is a few feet away from me and suddenly I snap. Everything goes into focus and I seize the item closest to me. The rope. The girl has long blonde hair and I have a hard time remembering who she even is. I’m more focused on the fact that she has a knife and is running at me, her face frozen in a snarl while she lets out a battle cry.
I bend at the waist and ram my head into her stomach. It’s the first thing I can think of to do, and her soft stomach doesn’t hurt my head all that much. She scrapes a shallow cut in my lower back and it stings, but I’ll live. Blondie tumbles over my back and I fall on top of her, Pinning her in place with my knees and knocking the knife out of her hand.
I shove her over and onto her back looping the rope around her neck as she wiggles and struggles beneath me. I can feel the blank expression on my face while I pin her head down with my knee and yank the rope tighter around her neck. I hear her choke and gag while she claws at the rope around her neck. I know this is taking too long, I don’t want somebody to attack me before I finish. I need this to go faster. I bang her head into the grass several times until she stops moving. As I push her head further into the grass, I brace my foot against her head and pull on the rope with all my might. I don’t stop pulling until I hear the snap of her neck.
My first kill seemed to take forever, but it really only happened within a minute and a half. Regardless, I’ve spent too much time on it. As the cannon sounds several times, I take off into the woods. Stumbling through the trees, I realize what I’ve done. I’ve taken a life that wasn’t mine to take. I lean against a tree, gasping for breath. And my hands start to move.
My fingers weave and twist the rope automatically, like a switch has been thrown to keep me sane. As I concentrate on my fingers, I walk slowly throughout the woods trying to find a good place to rest. I look up momentarily and watch another tribute with the dog. The tribute has a firm grip on its leash and without looking my way, hurries in the other direction. It’s then that I’m glad I chose the rope.
Worse case scenario, I use the rope to kill. If the dog attacks me, he’ll just get a brand new chew toy. I know this small length of rope is not all it seems and that’s an advantage. Who would ever suspect it would be useful to use as any sort of weapon or survival tool? Nobody. While I twist the rope some more, I know it has given me a small but significant advantage.
I have a weapon that doesn’t look like a weapon, a source of protection that is easy to hide and a mechanism to help me from losing my mind in this game of lies, betrayal and murder. If even this tiny little item can give me hope, then I might actually have a shot. After all, they just want a good show. So as I amble on through the woods, I tie random knots that I make up in my head and a thought runs through my mind.
"May the odds be ever in your favor, tributes, if something this small can tip the scale… you’re going to need it."
My busy fingers have been making various knots I’ve never seen or heard of. I look down when the rope won’t move anymore. In my hands, I see I’ve made a perfect mini noose.
Maybe the odds aren’t in my favor after all.
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137,492 Literary Works • 672,039 Reviews
OMG it is like another view of the hunger games! I LOVE IT! Please continue will ya? Pretty pleaseeee. <3
Hey Grav, Black here for a quick bit of feedback on your entry.
Okay, so far, so good. As usual I won't be pouring nit picks and grammar corrections in on your head; but it should be mentioned that you have your fair share of them! You might ask another reviewer to look through this real quick and point out what they can (it's really not my specialty).
Okay; besides the grammar I only have 2 comments. First: You're going to fast. I feel like you're rushing through this story! Ever read a piece by a really new, new, new writer? They sound so rushed, like they can't wait to skip over the boring -but critical- descriptions and fillers to get to action and such. You might want to rewrite and expand a bit. Give the reader a feeling of place using a bit of description, and make things feel more spread out and less rushed by a bit of filling somewhere.
Second thing: You're concentrating, just like every other tribute so far, exclusively on your story line. You are not writing about SOMEONE, you are writing about a decision. The best stories, the most enthralling ones, are the ones about PEOPLE! Readers are people and people relate to people. Some people may relate to decisions, goals, objects, and whatnot, but it's going to be an awefully small number by comparison to PVP. Write this piece like you are writing a STORY! Put in the story line as a critical piece, but don't concentrate on it so so so so so so so sooooooooooo hard!
In doing this you are trying to compact all the possible feelings that would be felt through an entire THG FF book into a single half-chapter. Fear. Anger. Hope. Disgust at the whole thing. Worry. If this person is a career, which, by their effectiveness, I must assume, then they should have a bit less worry and feeling. More confidence! Define your character! Write them out if you must! Making a character sketch might bring you a long way seeing as this piece has only ONE person it's focusing on!
Remember this and REWRITE!
~Black~
*Btw, I do know this is late, but i hope it helps!
Timmy, your teammate, is here for a quick review!!
The description flowed evenly into the plot, and the dialogue... Everything just flowed very well. And your characters voice! Oh, man. It was as if there was a voice for your character, but it was woven into the story as to not have it noticed, but you still had a vivid picture of your character's personality in the end. Wonderful.
I figured that someone else would do it better than I would... Cuz I was pretty stumped. What can you do with a foot long chunk of rope? Obviously, quite a bit. 
This was very well done in my opinion. My humblest of opinions!
I was wondering how you were going to use the rope, and now I know! I was planning on using it myself... but ya know.
Normally, I would pick out a lot of nitpicks... but in this case, I will only do one.
No quotes here... Just a bit of talking.
Watch out for redundant sentence openings. In first person, its very difficult to avoid sentences beginning with "I". Very difficult, indeed. I fall into that trap all the time. But when doing first person, try to visualize what is going on and use that to help you. Use your thought to help keep the writing smooth. For instance, you wouldn't think "I do this and I do that." Dialogue and thought--everything--would flow smoothly, because that is how our brain works!
Well. random nitpick, but hope it helps somewhat.
~Darth Timmyjake
Wow. Fabulous ending!
Congratulations on your entry!
Okay, so there were only a few nitpicks, and I'll quickly point those out.
You just forgot the h in though.
Pinning doesn't need to be capitalized.
That's all, they were just minor thingamajigies.
Okay, so, I myself have not got the total idea of this YWS Hunger Games stuff, so I'll have to ignore that part and just focus on the content.
I really like this, and the character's emotions are great, like the beating of her heart and all that, I thought it was really wonderful.
I especially like the end. It was like I was harnessed on a rope, and I was being pulled up, when all of a sudden it dropped because I read to ending, and everything turned still. It gave that crisp cliffhanger.
I got a little confused with the item part then you listed Ellie Goulding. Could that perhaps been part of the blood bath or something? If not, I just got super duper confused with that, and I think you should change it.
Overall, great! Although, getting to know the scenery of this hunger games would be amazing, because in the books I always remember them immediately saying what the arena was like.
Okay, hope this helps, if at all!
WillowPaw1~
Oh, the five items I had to choose from, from the cornucopia were a dog who sniffs poison, a foot long rope, an invisibility cloak that only works at night, one wish from the food genie (must be food related) and a pep talk from my fav celeb. Ellie Goulding is my fav celebrity so yeah.
Ah, okay, makes much more sense now. Thanks for explaining.
Hi, Tulip here to give you a review. O am not participating in this but heuy why not give you a review on your piece.
I know the first thing someone hates to see are nitpicks but as I am on a tablet, I am doing nitpicks first.
Just missing the "I" here.
Forgot the "h" in through.
So now onto the meat of the review.
Besides the two mistakes that I found, and aren't very hard to find and fix, I saw nothing else wrong with this piece. The pacing is good, the kill scene, a bit long but hey, death CAN be a good thing.
The noose. Is she intending on hanging anyone who messes with her? To prove the point that rope is a weapon? Or to show she can kill? Either way, you have made your mc have a strong voice and actions are very clear.
This is well written. Can't wait for the next part.
~Tulip