By the time Chance awoke he found himself in a world caught between daylight and darkness. Perfect beauty. His body was sore and throbbed all over but the end was nearing. Once again he made his way to the Cornucopia. As daylight turned dark the skies twinkled and set about a glow. I wonder where Noura went.

She'd taken off to fight against herself too, he knew, and Chance hoped she was alive. Crazy and bitchy as Noura had been, she was also hot and funny. Chance liked that in a girl. Just the mention of her name brought a half-wondrous smile to his lips.

It was then that he heard it--the praise music, the trumpets, and that sad role call. "Another day of deaths," he muttered. Chance cared not for who was dead or alive, he only wanted to make certain it was him among the living. Just before he reached the mouth of the Cornucopia he heard it. Her name.

"Noura Katalin." They even had a cute little picture to go with it. There, Noura's straight brown hair was combed and parted evenly and a headband was covering her forehead. She had a wild, recklessly happy look to her. Like the world was at her fingertips. Noura had hated him and he...well, Chance honestly had no clue what he thought of her. She was funny and hateful all at once. Cute. She was so alive. Liked to comment on irony a lot. She had a boyfriend, though. A life outside the Games. A family who cared for her. Chance had only wanted to know more about it, he'd wanted to know what made her so determined to live. What made him so determined to live.

It was almost animalistic in a weird sense. That primitive desire to stay alive despite every circumstance telling him no. Everyone was betting against or for him--no inbetween, it seemed. Chance liked it that way.

"I can't believe it," he whispered. The air cut past him, reminding him that he had business to account for. There were weapons to grab, things to get done. Life had to go on even if hers wasn't going to. The sky grew dark again and left him in silence.

If not for the dim glow of the Cornucopia Chance would be entirely blind. In sullen silence he found his way around and began shifting through the lame weapons left behind. Things were dull, rusty, or coated with layer upon layer of dried blood. Not a single ax in sight or anything of that nature. Hell, he thought, I'd take a dammed hammer! Come on, Gamemakers, gimme something good!

His stomach rumbled and Chance felt more pain throbbing. It rocked to the flow of his blood, each second ticking off his pulse until he was beginning to grow angry. Starvation, pain, death at every corner. And all for what? So I can go home. So we can have food. So I can bring honor to District Seven.

They were good reasons...but were they his? Chance couldn't shake that god awful feeling that he had no real reason to get home. Everything had been programmed into his head. Ardena Rose had prepared him with artificial words and his District Mentor, the bitch she was, had only told him to fight hard and win.

"Stop thinking," he commanded himself. It didn't work but Chance always had to take the chance that it might. "God, I'm starving. Pissnuts, what I wouldn't do for a hunk of dehydrated beef warmed up in a soft broth..."

When I win I get food everyday. It was a crazy thought. One that brought a crazy smile to his face. My family gets food when I win. God, I get my own house. It'll be perfect. Damn perfect.

Chance's smile faded when he continued looking around the place. Just as he was about to leave he saw it.

A small, metallic box. Around a foot long in every direction and perfectly square. The only part of it that wasn't silver was the smell keyhole, which was bronze and shining proudly. The same color as Margie was. That key was still in his pocket, sharp and prickly against his pants. Chance didn't know why but something told him that if he opened it everything good would come out. It had to be good. The key had to fit, had to work, it had to be perfect.

With fingers moving on their own command he clicked the key into place and turned it to the left. No budge. To the right. No budge. Then, before he could get angry, it slipped in just a bit further. The click rang out like that of a bell, strong and pure and carried away by the wind.

Chance's eyes widened as a stream of light poured out from thin cracks forming in every direction from the keyhole. It opened up in a furious passion, the light engulfing him and only him. Warm, blue, it shone. The most glorious light he'd ever seen. Warmth spread throughout his body in rhythmic patterns that sang a beat never before told and Chance stood frozen in time as it coated every inch of his mind.

Two long stems stretched out from the box as he watched. They grew and shifted, pulsating to the same beat he did. Just as he began to grow sleepy, Chance realized what those stems were. They had small, needle-like things hidden inside of bright green suction cups. And they attached themselves to the sides of his head.

"Pissnuts-" Chance didn't get to say more. He was falling downwards, going deeper and deeper, his entire body plummeting as the air began to rush forwards to slap him in the face and body. It cut through his clothes and soon began to shred through his entire being. Everything about Chance was falling and erasing and becoming a part of the aqua-colored light that engulfed the world and fed off of his confusion and unease. Light became dark and dark became something pretty, something wanted, something beautiful. That box was leading him down to the most wonderful things ever invented. He took a deep whiff and could smell roasted beef and fried onions slathered with the homemade sauce his mother always made. Margie's homemade beans and cornbread. God, could she make some cornbread. Every year when the District got together for a feast they'd bring food and she'd make two big pans of it, mother would make the fried onions, Chance would carry everything and help chop wood for the big fire-pit.

Even Natalie was there last year. She made the green bean casserole and it wasn't half bad for a girl with pink hair who always ran around talking her big mouth and spreading happiness. If they hadn't been pit against one another to the death he would've been great friends with her, had they actually spoken with another. Both loved to talk to people and he knew in a lot of ways her opinionated self was a lot like his. But she didn't make it...and I have. How she died was a mystery. Chance didn't get to see her death, only the light in the sky with her name on it. They had gone different directions. Maybe things would be different if she hadn't.

Chance didn't realize how much he missed his District until he really thought about it. All the things they had, the silent rituals of life, the patterns he would create each day and never cease to follow. I have to get home for that, he thought. I want to see the next feast and help people survive the winter and we've got to make things good again.

Slap!

The ground connected with his face with a bang and Chance groaned. Though he'd grown used to the pain it always seemed worse whenever something new happened, like opening up a new wound or getting a paper cut in the same place where the last one was. Whatever the reason was, Chance hated every single second of it. His eyes opened to see a packed floor of dirt that was smooth and almost like marble to the touch. Had his fingers not dug into it he wouldn't have even realized it was dirt. "What the...?" Chance rubbed at his head and sat up, trying his hardest to survey where he was at before jumping to conclusions. I do that too much. I need to think. Think. Think!

It was a perfectly round room, the place he was in. Everything was made of dirt and the smooth, shiny glean didn't fade at any point. Despite him seeing no discernible light source he could see perfectly fine, almost as though the walls themselves glowed. Unnatural light and shiny dirt, two things he'd never thought could be real. Then again, it was made by the Capital, and nothing made by the Capital was ever real. Everything was fake and if he thought hard enough he could almost convince himself that this too was fake.

"How do I get out?" he wondered aloud. All the thinking inside his head was giving him a headache that throbbed behind his eyes. "There's two ways to go. Left, or right?"

Chance chuckled, feeling as though he was growing crazy. Talking to himself? That was new, even for Chance. "What's the chances that right isn't right? Left isn't right so I might as well go the only direction that is."

With that as a guide he set forth walking, pounding on the dirt every so often to remind himself it was real. The walls didn't turn, didn't shift, they remained sternly in place. Schoolteachers with their strict ways, teaching him what to and not to do. Chance shuddered at the thought, having hated all of his teachers. He'd been happy the day they told him there was no further need to continue with education. It'd never been his strong point anyways.

The faster he moved the wider the walls seemed to become and they wider they got the faster he moved until he was basically jogging down the pathways of dirt. Eyes distracted by the consistency of the brown, he didn't notice the huge glob of greenish-white saliva until his foot stepped down into it, pulling back up in long, greasy strands that slowed down his pace. Chance coughed deeply, having to force himself not to puke at the sight of his shoes coated in the thick mucus. With a shudder he began to move faster, forcing himself not to think about it, not to question where it came from. Questions only got him in more trouble.

"God, I'm getting out of here," he whispers. Something tickles inside of his throat and his next words came out a squeak. The world grew silent, more than it was before. The world was a hush, on mute, closed off in a cylinder with no sounds. A vacuum. No ends and no beginnings, only a constant state of movement and the occasional glob of mucus. Every ounce that he passed was absolutely disgusting and he didn't know what made it but he didn't want to find out. It almost looked like some sort of throwup, but what creature lived underground in tunnels? Not ants, for it wasn't like the complexities of ant mines he'd spot out in the woods. No, it was something different. Something...slimy.

Out of the silence he could hear it, sudden and fast. Crunch, crunch, crunch. A plop of wet hitting the ground. The munching of some gravelly type substance--dirt, he knew, it was eating dirt. No! Chance refused to believe it. It couldn't be true. His feet began to run and soon he could see it, a turn in the ever-one-directioned path.

An exit.

Only, it didn't lead to the outside. No, it led him further into the dirt. Further into madness. Chance's bones shook and shivered and he could see the barest bit of a pink tail slithering around the corner. A brown body with no eyes peeking out of the ground and then full on facing him. It was huge, bigger than the tallest trees he'd ever seen. It scraped the ceiling but looked as though it could rise a full seven feet higher than the already eleven-foot it was at. It had a mouth and large rows of razor sharp teeth that threatened to spill the blood of whatever it ate with glee. It's skin was covered in several rows of bristles that looked like briar thorns. The worm's huge head was more red than the rest of it, but it's body contained some of that reddish brown hew.

There is no time to scream. Chance runs, turning around and getting as far away from the thing as he can. It follows him easily, sliding down the path and eating away at more dirt as it does so. Every disgusting swallow was followed by that god-awful plop noise, terrifying him to no end. Chance knew he was going to die. It was going to tear him limb from limb until everything died in an awful, bloody mess.

Nothing was safe from the beast. Screams filled the air, none from him. Chance looked back and saw them. His family, running. His mother was the farthest away from him. Her face, terrified. Kelsey was right beside her, her curls flowing behind her as more screams cut away from her throat. A lump formed in his own as he turned back around, unable to stop and help them run faster. There was no time to pick Kelsey or his mother up. No time to help as the older lady tripped and fell. No time to stop the beast from ripping her apart.

It gave them more time but for what? What good would come? Chance's heart betrayed him and he looked back again just in time to watch his mother be viciously torn apart. Pathetic screams and the dark red bleeding to the ground and running down it's brownish body in streams. Gagging, he turned away from it again and began to run faster.

Kelsey was the next to fall. No! Fucking hell, no! Chance wanted to stop. He wanted to save her. He wanted to do so much to stop everything but there was no way, he couldn't do it. The worm would kill him, it would rip him apart, and he didn't want to die. Tears fell, useless and fat as they were. I hate myself.

His father too fell, stuck inside of a pile of mush. He screamed out for Chance, "Help me! Pissnuts, Chance! Help-"

Crunch. It slurped the old man down without hesitation and Chance couldn't take it. His shoulders shook with rage and sadness and the overwhelming fear that filtered throughout every inch of his body. His soul was on fire and he needed to stop it, to kill the thing, but there was no way. It would kill him.

Then there was just the two of them. Margie, still running beside him. Her little hand reaching for his and her big, beautiful eyes filled with terror and tears. All of his family was gone. "I won't let it get you," he said. "I won't."

She shook her head and screamed. The worm was right behind him, moving faster than he could possibly comprehend. Everything was on fire, burning him up and killing him from the inside out. Nothing would ever be right again.

Her voice wasn't strained like it should have been. She was silent and still, as though she hadn't been running for her life. Margie stopped and he didn't. "It's not my fear, Chance," she told him. The air froze at her words. Everything froze at her words. "It's yours."

Chance stopped running. There was no screams from Margie, nothing at all. She stood before the creature, whose mouth was held up in the air, leaning down with razors to bite down and suck the blood out of her flesh before consuming the rest of her tender body. A shiver ran through him and he tensed up, knowing that it would be the death of him. Just touching it would be the death of him. As it grew closer to her Chance knew there was only one way to save her. Only one thing would keep Margie from dying a second time.

He ran forward and touched the beast, slamming his hands down into his mouth. A scream ripped through him. It's not my fear, Chance, he could hear her saying. It's yours.

*

Not very happy with this...but I got it done before it was due! Just barely, but it's done.