The 74th annual

Just a very little fanfic short thing on the Hunger Games I wrote at Newshoots, hope you enjoy!! It was from a game, I had to write a story about a taxidermist/winner of a reality show and a side character who always called radio stations, they were in the worst storm in fifty years, and they had hunger on their side. So what better to do than the Hunger Games??

The 74^th Annual

By Jessica Yang

Thunder filed through the black sky. I stared out, surprisingly frightened. I’ve seen many horrid events, more than my fair share, and yet I was cowering to this. Somehow, the weather reminded me of the arena, the thunder as Gamemakers, the lighting as electricity for the cameras. Worst of all: the hunger. Two days with no food, two days. At least in the games, there were animals to hunt.

As an apprentice to a taxidermist, I was part of a small community of animal experts here in District 11. We used to say, “If the agriculture flourished to become a butterfly, then we were the cocoon, holding it all together. Flowers needed pollination, wheat needed manure, and of course, rich people needed objects of pure death to decorate their bare walls. Us taxidermists, we hunt animals, stuff them, and both sell them on display as well as study their remains. And as I looked around the room, I wished desperately that the animals were not all stuffed.

Lala cried softly in the corner, rocking her body back and forth as if she was a rocking horse. Two days with no calls to her friends at the radio station, she was really driving herself (And with all her whimpering, me) out of sanity.

We were working late when the evils of the storm hit, and if the goddamn door was not utterly stuck, I would go out and get some food. Animals come out in the weirdest weather sometimes.

The only thing we could count on to work was the television. The Capitol couldn’t let any of us miss the games just because of a little rain, now could they? I recalled my own games, when I had to simply outlive all my opponents rather than kill some like this year’s tributes had to.

The girl who was on fire would’ve been extinguish long ago in the storm, and I watched her sing softly to my old friend, Rue, as she exhaled a final breath. Now, the girl who was on fire would’ve had to fight on her own. Katniss Everdeen was neither trying to win glory, or fame, but simply, like all the rest of us had done, for her life. That was a very cruel joke to make a TV reality show out of. And as she gingerly padded the flowers into Rue’s soft dark hair, I realized that I’ve known my answer to Lito for a while now. Katniss Everdeen was fighting the government, and when this storm was over, I will join them, and we, we will fight with her.