Hunger Games Diary Entry
March 29th, 2090 4am
The reaping
I can’t sleep. I’ve got to be up in an hour anyway to start work downstairs in the bakery mixing and kneading the dough for the bread before baking it. I could have tried to lie in bed for another hour but my head is swimming with thoughts and I think the only way to make sense of them is to just write them down.
Yesterday was an exceptionally terrible day. Reaping days are always terrible; it is the one day of the year that makes you live the other 364 in absolute dread. Every year it’s like a time bomb ticking away, another two children from our district senselessly sent off to battle to their deaths. It’s so unfair. What chance do they stand? I tell myself every year that this year I won’t go and every year I break that promise. Like always, I closed up the bakery and walked down to the town square. It was packed with rows of children in their age groups, lined up like piglets in a slaughter house. I saw my wife off to the side and went to stand with her. She was shooting a look of disgust at the hardhearted, opportunistic men running around placing bets. Then, it began.
“Primrose Everdeen” was the name that boomed out over the microphone.
My jaw dropped. It couldn’t be. Not Melanie’s youngest daughter. She’s only twelve and is as beautiful as her mother once was. I had to grip firmly onto my wife’s hand just to stop myself from yelling out at the injustice of it all. What good would it do with all the ‘peacekeepers’ swarming around?
Someone beats me to it. I hear a ‘NO! PRIM!” as her older sister Katniss burst from her place in the line and as the peacekeepers rushed to seize her she hollered “I VOLUNTEER, I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!”
As my wife muttered under her breath, “at least district 12 might have a winner this year” my eyes searched the crowd for Melanie and I wondered how she could cope with another loss. After losing her husband she completely closed off. It nearly killed her and now
The reaping
I can’t sleep. I’ve got to be up in an hour anyway to start work downstairs in the bakery mixing and kneading the dough for the bread before baking it. I could have tried to lie in bed for another hour but my head is swimming with thoughts and I think the only way to make sense of them is to just write them down.
Yesterday was an exceptionally terrible day. Reaping days are always terrible; it is the one day of the year that makes you live the other 364 in absolute dread. Every year it’s like a time bomb ticking away, another two children from our district senselessly sent off to battle to their deaths. It’s so unfair. What chance do they stand? I tell myself every year that this year I won’t go and every year I break that promise. Like always, I closed up the bakery and walked down to the town square. It was packed with rows of children in their age groups, lined up like piglets in a slaughter house. I saw my wife off to the side and went to stand with her. She was shooting a look of disgust at the hardhearted, opportunistic men running around placing bets. Then, it began.
“Primrose Everdeen” was the name that boomed out over the microphone.
My jaw dropped. It couldn’t be. Not Melanie’s youngest daughter. She’s only twelve and is as beautiful as her mother once was. I had to grip firmly onto my wife’s hand just to stop myself from yelling out at the injustice of it all. What good would it do with all the ‘peacekeepers’ swarming around?
Someone beats me to it. I hear a ‘NO! PRIM!” as her older sister Katniss burst from her place in the line and as the peacekeepers rushed to seize her she hollered “I VOLUNTEER, I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!”
As my wife muttered under her breath, “at least district 12 might have a winner this year” my eyes searched the crowd for Melanie and I wondered how she could cope with another loss. After losing her husband she completely closed off. It nearly killed her and now