Outside, I can hear the group approaching the nest. Fortunately, I’m safe in here, because I’ve never had alcohol. So, I’ll just wait things out. To pass the time, I’ll use this nail polish remover I stole from Cinnabon as punishment for his terrible outfit, and get rid of Pita’s little toe-job.
I pop open the top, and lower an eager nostril toward the lip. It gives my nose that refreshing, dry-erase board singe. As I’m working, I can’t help but belt out my mother’s old nail polish remover song.
“Slather it on, slather it on! Take a shot and slather it on!”
“Hey, Joe! You smell somethin’ funny?” I hear a fly say in the heart of nest, between slurps of beer.
“Yeah.” SLURP. “Smells like booze.”
“Get outta he’ah.”
What? What could the Buzzerguzzlers possibly be smelling? It’s not like I have any alco—ah, crap, I’m stupid. Not only does nail polish remover have alcohol in it, I just took eleven shots of it.
“Nah, Mike, I swea’ah. Let’s go check it out.”
The slurping ends and the buzzing begins. The Buzzerguzzlers are coming for me.
I’m left with a terrible choice: death by fly, or death by teen. Sure, the flies will eat me, repurpose my skull for a fly funhouse of sorts, probably turn my eye into a snowglobe, keep the other eye just to have an eye around, hey, who knows, maybe even use my butt as a trampoline. But I wonder if it’s the teens I should really fear. After all, flies don’t tie a peer up with dirty underwear and circle the fat places of her body with marker. And they don’t put plastic wrap over the toilet seat so that you choke when you try to get a drink of water between classes.
Again, you could make the argument that I’m not going to die right now. But it’s not like there’s a simple test where I can just look ahead and see if there are more chapters of my own book that I’m writing many years after surviving all of this. No, I need to make a decision now.
But as I’m taking several hours to exhaustively list the pros and cons of death-by-teen and death-by-fly, I hear it. A high-pitched shriek. “Help! I’m being held prisoner against my will! Come save me, beautiful ex-girlfriend Bratniss!”
It can’t be. But I peek out and sure enough, there’s Pita, hogtied in the grass. A wedgie reaches up from his butt, loops over his head and covers his eyes. Another wedgie runs around his hips and tucks into his neckline, all bib-like. A third wedgie reaches above him and loops over a tree branch, suspending him several feet in the air. A fourth, frontal wedgie loops over—okay, you get the idea.
Several feet away from Pita, the careers sit in a circle around Scar, who is drinking a can of beer and using a corpse’s stomach like bongos. The other careers laugh uncomfortably.
Pita may be blinded by his underwear, but the second that stalker-nose of his picks up my scent, he’ll start calling for me. I still have a shot at escaping, but I’m sure it will only make Pita think I’m trying to save him again.
Alright, flies, I think, resigned to death. Come get your dinner. I turn back toward the inner reaches of the nest, when suddenly the edge of the hive gives way. I try to scramble back up, toward the safety of the flies’ mouths, but I’m falling, falling downward and—PLOP—I land right in the middle of the careers’ circle and hit Glammorhea, who spills beer all over her face.
“Uh, hey guys.”
It’s like that moment that always happens when the weird kid from school walks into your party. You and your friends were just trying to hang out, but not anymore. He is here now. He asks you where the bathroom is. You point—my bathroom is over there—wait, no—don’t go in there, weird kid. But it’s too late. He’s already in. He’s doing his weird bathroom thing in there. There’s no way he goes to the bathroom like the rest of us. His mark will be there forever. That wart on his hand is touching everything. You have to stop him. You pick up a butcher knife and start walking toward the bath—suddenly Stacey is all, “What do you think you’re doing? He’s just going to the bathroom.” And she’s reminded you of an important thing, you realize, making a note to kill her later, too.
So yeah, we all know how that goes. Isn’t that just the worst, popular teen readers?
A beer-faced Glamorrhea thrusts a finger at me. “You’re going to pay for ruining my makeup, bitc—”
BZZZZZZZZZZZ.
The Buzzerguzzlers are on her face in no time. Within seconds, it’s just a hole for her skull to fall out of. Which it does. I can’t believe it. I’ve killed her. I get the feeling that some small, tiny part of me wants to feel bad, but I smartly override it and start spraying beer on the rest of fleeing careers, hoping to get them Buzzerguzzled.
As I spray and spray, flecks of beer begin to coat my arms. Amidst the chaos, Pita squirms inside his maze of wedgies. “Hey, my buddies! What’s going on? I hear flies!” But then his nostrils flare. I stop dead in my tracks. Oh shi—“Bratniss? Is that you, honeybaby?”
I take off after the careers. As I sprint, my legs begin to burn and my vision clouds. I’ve been running for almost eight full seconds. Weirdly, the careers ahead of me seem to be doing fine, almost as if they’ve had access to proper nutrition their entire lives.
Ten yards ahead, I can make out Scar. But I’m losing him, because he seems to be wearing some kind of super short high heels that don’t even really have a heel—whatever you call those. I look down at my arms and legs and notice several Buzzerguzzlers have latched on to me. That doesn’t matter, though. My hunting instinct has kicked in.
With every bit of strength I have left, I throw the beer can at him. I’m squinting, but from what I can tell, it’s going to hit him right in the back of his head. He’s going to get his stupid head eaten right off, LOL.
But then something not very LOL happens. He moves. And the beer looks like it’s going to hit him lower. It…it seems that when you throw something at a moving object you have to take into account that the object is moving. That’s weird. They don’t teach you that in Girl Sports school.
The beer hits his butt, lamely spraying beer on his back pocket. So much for that—oh, no, wait, the flies are on him now. They’re all over his butt, swarming and gnawing, really doing their butt thing.
“You will pay for my butt, Bratniss!” he yells in pain. “No one gets away with having my butt eaten off. No one!”
As he limps into the forest on his half-butt, my vision begins to fade. The Buzzerguzzlers are swarming my arms and legs now. My only hope is to find the thing Buzzerguzzlers hate most: water. But where do I find water? If I can’t find it, then do I just produce it? But how do I produce water? Produce. That’s it. I have to produce water. I hear a stream nearby, look down at the empty water jug in my hand, and realize what I must do: I have to pee on myself on national TV.
But this can’t be any normal pee. I’m going to have to pee all over myself. No part of my body can be left untouched by my own pee. The Buzzerguzzlers will funnel through any spot I miss, and eat my insides out. This is going to be tricky.
I lie on my back and curl up into a pee ball. I must use every ounce of strength I have to overcome my innate revulsion. I must summon all the willpower I—oh, never mind, it’s actually super easy (and fun) to pee on yourself. I can feel the Buzzerguzzlers lifting off, one-by-one.
And then, everything goes black. Because, embarrassingly, the warmth of my pee has me feeling sort of cozy, and I decide to climb up into a tree and take a nap.
When I come to, I’m in a daze. How long have I been out for? Long enough to have slept through the rest of the tournament, I hope. I look up at the huge hologram clock in the sky, as the minute hand ticks from 7:33 to 7:34. So: I've been unconscious for less than one minute. Dang it! Why can't I sleep through even one death tournament?
But now that I'm back, I can tell that I'm in a dire state. My energy levels have hit rock bottom. A dull headache pounds in between my ears. I’m having difficulty concentrating. And, more than anything, I have some sort of…hungry feeling in my stomach. What can
it all mean?
Then, unbidden, an image from the past rushes into my mind. I see myself sitting on a chair in front of a table. In front of me, a piece of food rests on a plate. My hand reaches out and grasps that food, and then brings it up towards my head, after which my lips part and my jaw extends downward, creating an access point to a hollow area in which I place that food. And then, I see myself using the muscles of my jaw to move my teeth in such a way that they soften and tear that food into smaller bits, which I transfer down into my stomach with the help of my tongue and throat.
I’m utterly mystified.
And then I realize: I’m remembering myself eating. Humans need to eat to live. Sweet, merciful God, how did I forget that? I’ve always prided myself on having good common sense, and an inextinguishable will to survive. But this seems like a pretty fundamental mistake to me. What will I do next? Not set the alarm on my watch that reminds me not to light myself on fire?
So, I climb down from the tree and begin making some traps and snares. Of course, they’re really easy to build and instantly work. As soon as I’ve turned my back, I hear the sound of a large animal being caught. And, from what I can hear, it sounds tasty.
“Shit,” the animal yells. “SHIT.” I lick my lips. A fire would be too great a risk now. No choice but to eat it alive, I guess. “Gotta get out of this trap,” the animal says. It must have nicely developed vocal cords to be making these types of animal calls. Huge, delicious vocal cords, engorged with even more delicious being-eaten-alive-adrenaline. I grab hold of the net as the animal struggles inside.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, bringing it up towards me. “I’m going to make this as easy as possible—eyes first.” I shove its head inside my mouth. Then, in that vibratey-ear-hearing way, I process it saying: “No, Bratniss! Don’t eat me! I’m not an animal! I’m Roo!” I pull her wriggling body out, and to my surprise, she’s right: she is Roo—that darling little sacrifice from Slum 11.
“What were you doing out here?” I ask. She blushes.
“I saw a pretty butterfly fly into the forest. It was so pretty to look at that I had to follow it! I’m sorry if I disturbed you here!” I’m taken aback. It might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. And I heard it here, where misery and pain lurk behind every tree, underneath every rock.
“Oh, sweet Roo,” I murmur, tousling her hair and straightening her outfit. As I do, a folded piece of paper falls out of her pocket. I pick it up and open it, ready for another dose of cuteness. What could it be? An invitation to her next tea party? A letter to one of her guinea pigs back home?
But it’s a series of diagrams and maps…all of which seem to relate to me: “Route to Bratniss’s tree;” “Areas on Bratniss’s tree to release super-termites, to make her tree fall down in a way that her head is crushed;” “Spot to put C4 explosive putty in Bratniss’s tree, to blow her sky-high once and for all.”
“Uh, Roo? What are these?" I ask, reading yet another description that has “Bratniss” and “to Kingdom Come” side by side.
“I don’t know!” she says, full of childlike wonder. “What are they? I saw them on the ground and I took them because I thought I could make some pretty paper dolls to sing and play with! What does that writing on them say, Bratniss? I’m too little and tiny to know how to read!”
“Are you certain you don’t know what these say? I’m pretty sure this is your handwriting, because I can see that you’re making another one right now,” I say, pointing at a new diagram that she's furiously sketching. It’s a drawing of my face labeled, ‘Talks a lot…could easily throw a sword into her mouth.’
She blushes bright red. “They're all…silly jokes?”
I'm stunned. In the midst of all this horror, little Roo has found the strength to laugh. And in doing so, she has given me the strength to do the same.
“Got your nose!” I say. She giggles uncontrollably.
“Do that again!” she begs. "Do that again, but much slower, and expose your wrists so I can put this razor-blade bracelet on you!”
“Maybe later, sweetie-pie. Right now, we have to talk about some grownup-things,” I say, ducking my head away from the joke-noose she's trying to lasso onto it, “Roo, will you be my ally?”
She's silent for a moment.
“You really want me for an ally? Even after I made those silly joke diagrams?”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, unless they’re the living word-monsters the Capitol has created,” I say, repeating an old Slum 12 adage. “Besides, I was a few seconds away from eating you. So maybe we can just…call it even?” I ask, extending my hand.
At that exact moment, the tree I was sleeping in explodes in a massive fireball. Roo grins nervously. “So...you were saying?”
“Um, what was I saying? Oh, yeah! Let’s be allies.”
We both know that it can’t last forever. So, we come up with a thorough agreement. I pick up a piece of charred wood from the explosion and begin to write on the back of one of Roo’s diagrams. When I’m finished, I present it to Roo:
“Bratniss and Roo are allies now. Signed, Bratniss and Roo.”
“This seems really good!” she says. “I have a few suggestions, but maybe they aren’t very important…”
“I’d love to hear them, Roo. I bet they’ll be cute as a button, just like you!” I say, scooping her up and giving her raspberries on her tummy.
“That tickles!” she squeals. “Now, how does this sound?” I read her revisions out loud:
“‘We, the undersigned, proclaim that from this moment forth, we are allied to one another.’ Roo, that’s very good! I bet you’re gonna be a big, important lawyer when you grow up!”
She giggles. “Thanks. You didn’t finish, though.”
I read on:
“Due to the peculiar nature of the child-killing contest in which we are engaged—particularly its prohibition of a number of winners greater than one—we will each allow the other one instance of pretending to fall asleep, waiting till said party hears us snoring, creeping up on us, and then lifting a jagged rock above our heads, murmuring, ‘Forgive me,’ but right then the sound of an owl alighting from a branch wakes us, and we roll out of the way right in time.”
“Huh.” I say. “Yeah, I guess this is still okay, Roo. It’s sensible, for sure.”
“You’re still not done.”
“‘The undersigned shall not be said to have reneged upon the agreement if her ally dies in a natural disaster, including, but not limited to: poison blow dart-shooting statue incidents; spiked walls slowly closing in on each other; or any of a particular set of wind patterns whose peculiar nature have been known to cause a plastic bag to engulf a human head and ziptie itself around the neck area, even if the survivor is suspected of having engineered the disaster for the express purpose of killing her ally, since the movements of the Earth are extraordinarily difficult to gauge.
‘This alliance will only be severed if either party dies, if both parties agree to sever it, or if one of the parties realizes that her ally probably isn’t on board with dying so that she herself can live.’”
I take a step back. “Hoo boy…I may have to think about this a little, Roo.”
“If you don’t sign the agreement, we can’t play together,” she coos. Some of the wording makes me nervous, but how can I not sign? After all, Roo sort of reminds me of my little sister, who means so much to me that she appears in maybe three entire paragraphs throughout the trilogy.
After that's taken care of, I tell Roo that our first act as allies should be finding some food.
“Have some of these berries,” she says, holding out a handful of pitch-black deformed orbs that are oozing out a bubbling, neon green fluid that’s sending waves of noxious gas into the air. “They’re good!”
“Aren’t those facemelt berries? I thought they were poisonous.”
“Oh, you can totally eat around the poison! Like this.” She turns so that I’m looking a
t her right side, and brings the berries up to her mouth with her left hand, swallowing them with big, theatrical bites. It doesn’t seem like the most efficient way to eat. Nearly every time she does it, I see the berry fall out of her hand onto the ground, where it sizzles and flames.
“Mmm,” she says, rubbing her belly.
“Thanks, baby Roo-ling. But to tell you the truth, I'm in the mood for something a little more substantial.”
And I’m in luck, because we’ve stumbled across a mockstrich egg. I gasp. An egg: a symbol of hope restored and life renewed! Could it be some sort of sign that I’m destined to lead a nationwide uprising against the Capitol? Yes, I should have known that the mockstrich would be of the utmost importance to me, from the day I got my precious mockstrich pendant. I can’t help but smile as I look down at the rainbow Silly Bandz I pawned it for. Damn, my arm looks cool.
By the time we’ve eaten our fill, dusk is beginning to fall. We put our heads together to try to decide what we're going to do about our competition. I consider our options. The careers must be furious about the Buzzerguzzlers. I don't think there's much to do except stay far, far away, and I tell Roo so. She frowns.
“That's not bad. But what if we were to...draw them towards us?”
“They'd kill us.”
“Then I guess the only thing to do is to go to them.”
“That would kill us, too.”
“Right, right,” she says. “So it's settled: you'll run straight into their camp, yelling and screaming, with no weapons and wearing mine-magnet shoes.”
“I don’t know, Roo. It’s getting pretty late.”
“Well, if we’re done for the day, what do you say we have a sleepover?”
“Sleepover?” I ask, surprised. I've never had one before. “Those weren't allowed back in Slum 12. At least, that's what the popular girls in my grade told me.”
“Then let’s have one tonight! They’re super fun! You stay up talking, pig out on snacks, and then you tie this rope around your neck and see who can jump down hardest from the tree! Come on! We can practice now, if you want!”
The Hunger But Mainly Death Games: A Parody Page 10
