the first of so many [flynn garner] 88th

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

FLYNN GARNER
88th Hunger Games

I wake up every morning not knowing if I will see their faces in black and white or full of life. Am I meant to be sleeping? Am I meant to be spending most of my day shouting a television screen Robin PLEASE find an alliance? What am I really meant to be doing? I can try and be Teddy’s shadow, he has all the experience. All those years behind him but then I will just become another Teddy and I don’t want to be another Teddy. We already share curly hair. The Capitol are good at comparing very different people. Just like they have done with poor Robin to me.

I am a mentor now, an advisor to people who are older than me, but I guess it won’t be long before they are younger. Younger, naïve, and full of a life they deserve to live. This is how it is going to be for…for I guess the rest of my life? A soft punishment compared to what Lorraine, Lenox, Castor and Nanette are facing. A very soft punishment.

I have spent so much time trying to communicate some kind of advice to Robin in the arena, to at least try and find some people to befriend. Yeah, that really has not worked out the way I would have liked. FREAKING MAUVE! Mauve!! Mauve the one with a rat in a bag. The absolute mad bitch Mauve. I really wish I could shake some sense into Robin, except I can’t do anything now. Other than maybe try and persuade some sponsors to send him something useful. Though unfortunately sponsors cannot send allies, just the usual questionable threads, needles, and endless rolls of bandages. I really hope Robin remembers his first aid training.

It is the fourth day; the television on the sixth floor is split screened between the two fights that Willa and Robin are in. There are few bodies stood around the couch watching. There are always a few hours of the day where I force myself to not take my eyes of the screen. It is odd how the games work, action never lasts long in a day. One encounter. One explosion. And then it is time to lick wounds and pick up the pieces.

Willa is really taking a beating today in an alliance versus alliance fight. Robin and MAUVE!! are picking on one unfortunate soul, one who strikes at Robin first. My fingers are quick to hide the inevitable, but Ripred likes me today, I peek through a gap in my hand and MAUVE!! triggers a canon, the poor District Four is down. Two against one, there were really no favourable odds there.

I can breathe again for another day. But Willa, back to the Willa.

The poor girl plucked from a world of peace. In a coma, with no struggles or need to worry about anything. To now face this carnage. To now feel pain and bleed out in front of thousands of people who are watching. It is not fair. It is really not fair. Awoken into the living world just to be torn apart, to be hacked at. She looks so determined “I’m. Not. Quitting.”. It is not enough though. Nothing is ever enough in the Hunger Games. My first mentee…gone. Severed into pieces and gone… ”It is not fair. None of this is really fair. Why did they wake her up for this? Why?” My words shake, my arms shake, every part of me is shaking as I push myself up from the couch. There are too many people watching to breakdown right now. She is not even Robin. I need to get out of here.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

FLYNN GARNER
88th Hunger Games

The final eight, I got to the final eight too! It’s not plain sailing from here but still, I got there and now has Robin. He has got far! He will get further, he must. He has outlived MAUVE!! like I did Lore and Nanette and Revan. History can repeat itself, can’t it? District Eleven got its stint in the early Seventies, I guess the late Eighties can be Six’s time? It has to be. Robin has resisted all of the odds, just like I did. He is going to do it like me.

Nobody has explained to me yet why the gamemakers put tributes together one versus one when there are just single figures left in the arena. I guess its just for the drama.

On the seventh day since wishing Robin Keeni good luck when he stepped onto the elevator, I watch, like I always do on the big cushiony couch on the sixth floor, with company on either side. Darkness fills the screen; the tributes are fighting under starlight tonight. How lucky of them, my throat still tickles from visibly thick smog that I had to shoot through.

”Why the masks?” I ask, not that anyone in the room knows what is going on in those gamemaker’s heads. Whatever they have stuck to Robin’s face makes it hard to keep my eyes on the screen. The cringe, the reminiscing of horror stories told by the club in the dead of night and Robin’s new face is not alone in the horror either. His opponent’s is just as terrifying. ”Is that the Aspen from Seven?” History is really is repeating itself.

Maybe I can watch through my fingers, out of fright from the masks and the anxiety of Robin missing his first throw of the knife. ”Come on Robin, we never taught you to do it like that!”

All my scars are waking up with every poke of Aspen Peake’s spear against Robin’s skin. The gap between my fingers that my eyes hide behind grows smaller and smaller. ”Stop talking Robin, just focus!” Yeah, I am probably not the best person to give that kind of advice. ’Motormouth’ someone in an interview called me.

”Focus Robin!” I slap both hands against the coffee table in front of me, pulling myself closer to the television, as another knife sails straight passed Aspen. I can’t hide behind my hands now; he needs my help. ”You are in the way Flynn, we can’t see!”

”I don’t care!” How dare they all sit in silence while this goes on. Teddy too, how numb can he really be? ”He is dying, what is he doing?”

My body clings to balance as my knees are now leaning on the edge of the coffee table in front of the television. Miss after miss. He is really giving up. It is really over. I could have done so much better. We could have practiced throwing knives. I could have given him therapy like Quest does for the confidence. I could have done so much more.

My body loses the fight for balance, I collapsed from the table, headfirst onto the carpet in front of all those that have stood in silence as a boy who was once sat in this very room dies live on television. There is still silence even after the canon sounds.

”I can’t keep doing this Teddy, he didn’t even try…” I could go on in a rant but my voice breaks and I just want to stay curled up in a ball on the floor. Hiding the tears. Hiding the embarrassment. Hiding every part of me that actual cares. Robin and Willa are the first and they will never be last.