by Declan Quinn. Inspired by the Hunger Games. Response to a writing prompt: “write from the point of view of someone about to be killed”

It was rather unfortunate, really. I thought it was a joke at first. I was surprised to see it at all; this really didn’t seem like the time for jokes, especially one as cruel as this. It was only when I had gone through the bag three times that I realized my fate was set. And from that moment forward, my entire existence rested in the only thing I was given: a butter knife.

But I digress. My frustration at receiving something so trivial while others around me received crossbows and pistols was quickly lost as I remembered that it was a death game we were playing. I figured that stealth would be my best option, and I began my journey as a shadow. I managed to stay hidden for days, and while the occasional machine gun fire would interrupt my thoughts, I was always one step ahead. Every day around 6pm the names of the dead would be released, and every day my name wouldn’t be one of them. “Brendan Lien” would be a name that I’d never hear, and that feeling – the feeling of being alive – was unlike anything else. It cancelled out the hunger, the thirst, and the fear. The only time my ecstasy ever came crashing down on me was when I would hear the name of someone I knew. Maybe I’d hear a friend one night. Maybe I’d hear the name of an elementary school crush. Maybe I’d even feel a little sad. But inevitably, the next name would come, and I’d return right back my heightened state of existence. That state that balanced dangerously on the edge of life and death, and loved every second of it. Maybe, under different circumstances, I would have felt differently. I might have been depressed about my situation. I might have been angry with those who organized it. But at that time, I was just happy to have been alive.

This system worked beautifully. A little too beautifully, actually, because it took me a second to understand the severity of the situation when I walked into a clearing and found a machine gun pointed right at me. I probably knew the name of the kid hiding behind the weapon. At one point, I might have even called him an acquaintance. Yet in this situation, my brain only registered the kid as “THREAT.” I immediately whipped out my knife. To anyone watching, it would have looked really silly. But there was no one watching. This was between him and I. No one else.

If I’m being honest, there was nothing between us, because there was never anything to begin with. Rock beats scissors. Machine gun beats knife. No questions. Realizing its significance, I dropped the butter knife. I wish I had done something cool in that moment, like throwing the knife or darting off into the bushes. But I didn’t. Instead, I thought. I thought about how my stealth game had been for nothing. Hell, my life had been nothing. My entire legacy could and would be reduced to “Brendan Lien – bullet sheath.” That was what would be left of my name. And in that moment, the entire weight of the game came down on me. I could almost make out the living and the dead speaking to me, whispering their tales of sorrow – the tales of their deaths and kills. The tales of kids my age that would suffer the same fate as I. We were destined to be nameless faces in the epic of history. The background characters, as some might say. The unimportant ones, others might add. And I was truly sorry, but it was too late. The machine gun stared at me with cold, steel eyes. The trigger twitched, and those eyes shed tears for me. Hard, metal tears.

The sun dipped beneath the first of the hills, and somewhere far in the distance a bell tower rang out. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. A voice, cracked by the PA system, rang out across the desolate land. “Dead today. Brendan Lien.”