Hunger Games: Disney Edition

Round One

District 1: Aladdin and Jasmine

                Aladdin’s street smarts are definitely a virtue, but the concrete jungle of Baghdad is nothing compared to the humid jungle setting he will face with Jasmine. Combined with her luxurious upbringing, and lacking a key blue ally, Aladdin and Jasmine barely make it off the pedestal and to the jungle alive.

District 2: Eric and Ariel

                If this were an ocean combat, there’d be no chance for most of the competition. Unfortunately, Ariel’s land legs aren’t as trusty as her old fins, and Eric’s lost in the dirt. They both go down before making it to the supply tent.

District 3: Tarzan and Jane

                An expert in the ways of the Jungle and in the fittest condition of a man, Tarzan easily scoops Jane up and into the trees.

District 4: Quazimodo and Esmeralda

                Quazi trips of the pedestal and Esmeralda thinks she’s supposed to be dancing. Dead before they get two feet away.

District 5: Shang and Mulan

                Expert Soldier enhanced with Wit and tempered by pragmatism, Shang and Mulan deftly make it to the weapons cache and steal away into the shadows of the Jungle.

District 6: Hercules and Megara

                Hercules strength and nigh-invulnerability make the launch of this Hunger Games a cakewalk. Megara and Herc make it to the weapons enclave and stock up before taking shelter in the woods to the south.

District 7: Prince Charming and Cinderella

                Lacking a horse, a rifle, and somehow missing a show, these two fare no better than Quazi and Esemralda. Axed before knowing what happened.

District 8: John Smith and Pocahontas

                Smith’s wartime bravado helps him gain a cache of arms before Pocahontas leads them to a very secure cove quite far away from the bulk of the fighting.

District 9: Milo and Kida

                Kida takes the spotlight from Milo on this one, arming up before pushing her clueless ally into the brush.

District 10: Naveen and Tiana

                Despite their adventures through the New Orleans voodoo culture, Naveen and Tiana don’t make it off the plate either.

District 11: Beast and Belle

                The Beast lets out a forbidding roar as the game begins,  and he and Belle manage to be the first team to the arms depot, stocking up and heading out just as quickly as they came.

District 12: The Prince and Snow White

                Scared to death by the Beast’s roar.

Round Two

District 1: Aladdin and Jasmine

                Aladdin’s street smarts do no good in the jungle, as expected. He and Jasmine are caught bickering over the best approach by Meg and Herc, who have somehow acquired a horse.

District 3: Tarzan and Jane

                Neither of these contenders have been seen since leaving the pedestals. Cries heard in the night begin to spread rumors that they have transformed into hellish beasts.

District 5: Shang and Mulan

                Shang and Mulan devise a cunning trap that lures Kida and Milo into their dooms.

District 6: Herc and Meg

                Somehow finding a horse in the middle of an isolated jungle, Hercules and Meg begin carelessly trampling through the battleground, killing Aladdin and Jasmine along the way.

District 8: John Smith and Pocahontas

                Cameras show John Smith and Pocahontas conspiring to wait out the games, allowing the other contenders to kill each other and minimize their own expenditures.

District 9: Milo and Kida

                While attempting to secure water for their rations, Milo and Kida are lured into a stealthy trap placed by Mulan and Shang. Their bodies end up impaled at the bottom of a pit by sharpened branches.

District 11: Beast and Belle

                While Beast begins strategizing about how best to confront their opponents, Belle sees his calm demeanor becoming his old rage. She unsuccessfully tries to soothe him with song and gets shot in the head by well-placed arrows from Mulan’s quiver. Beast attacks in revenge and is thrown off a cliff by a swinging trunk – Shang was in the shadows.

Round Three

District 3: Tarzan and Jane

                Their bloated remains are found by Hercules and Meg on day 4, the victims of tracker-jackers. Video records Jane’s curiosity getting the best of her.

District 6: Hercules and Megara

                Realizing no one has approached the weapons cache in a day, Hercules and Meg take shelter there, waiting for drops from their many fans.

District 8: John Smith and Pocahontas

                John Smith and Pocahontas come out of hiding to see if there are any other contenders remaining. They are promptly killed by Mulan and Sheng, pretending to be bushes next to their camp.

Round Four: District 5 vs. District 6

                Sheng and Mulan approach the weapons cache, having spotted Hercules mourning Meg’s death. Mulan remembers something about Greek myth, and shoots her last arrow at Herc’s heel. It bounces off because Hercules is not Achilles. Calmly, Herc chucks the ENTIRE WEAPONS DOME at Shang and Mulan, who run back into the Jungle. The dome cuts a swath through the trees and the Asian couple’s remains are found a day later: smashed against the perimeter wall twenty miles away.

Victor: Hercules and Megara.

The reason you don’t see Phillip and Aurora? Because after killing a fucking dragon they became last year’s Champions.

Getting into the Write State of Mind

I've been experimenting on some casual writing in an attempt to get the ball rolling on a novel that's been in seclusion for a few months. If you have any constructively critical comments, feel free to leave them. It may contain questionable, possibly objectionable content if you have a love for the history it violently re-writes.

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The young man fell to his knees and I could hear his muffled sobs escape through the fingers covering his face. Were his hands any lower, I would have imagined seeing a usually hopeful visage flexed into aged lines of despair.  He sniffled. The kind of sniffle you hear when someone is trying to revive his resolve and put on a mask of clarity and defiance.

                “You’ve seen clearly what I have brought to show you. What this will all be and what they will all become. Because of you, John. Everything your life amounted to, all the wonderful things you have tried to bring and all the people you have touched – they will reject you and you will be a broken shell of a man.” I said these, the last words he would ever hear, with a clearly defined sense of wrongness. I didn’t want to be here, lying to this man. It was because he was supposed to die-no, had already died in this concrete jungle of a city, just a few blocks away, that the vision he I showed him became a reality. Clearly, his resolve faltered under the pressure of the last few minutes. It was only ten minutes ago that John was walking briskly through these late evening New York streets with determination and confidence. On the way to meet his lovely wife he stumbled while stepping off a curb and the arm of the body I wore caught his flailing hand. Of course, that was intended. Through that contact he caught a flash of this world’s future and what it looked like. He saw the war and scandal that corrupted not just this land’s government, but that reached across the vast ocean and corrupted that of his home country and every other other so-called civilized nation. He saw the everyday squabbles of the people deteriorate into pettiness. Every hope he had ever had for the future of a world in which he strived for peace was lost in that instant. His body continued to the ground, curled into the infantile security only a womb could provide.

                “I knew it,” he said, accepting the fate that this shattering future glimpse forced upon him. Then he took the .38 special from my host’s extended hand and ended his suffering. By the time the echoes of the screaming had faded and were replaced by the sirens, I wasn’t even in the same state…

…Correction, I was still in the Big Apple. Just not on the evening of Dec. 8, 1980. It was now a brisk spring morning nearly a century later. But on 203^rd floor of the towering iron spire that reached into the sky it was a crisp thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. I approached the woman sitting in the center of the room with my true form apparent. It was the only way to surrender myself to her complete control.

                “It is done,” I conveyed in my usual manner. I placed the words gently into her auditory cortex, so as not to overwhelm the human female’s fragile neural-cognitive system. She smiled, a wry, evil smile. A glint of light reflected off her dark eyes from the single covered bulb in the vaulted ceiling. I put the book on the table in the middle of the room, a nearly new copy of Catcher in the Rye, as proof.

                “I have another target,” she said, ignoring entirely the evidence of my deed.

                “That wasn’t our arrangement,” I told her as calmly as I could, betraying the roiling aggression beneath the surface.

                “Our arrangement has altered. Pray I don’t alter it further.” She steepled her fingers in front of her face before leaning back in her chair and then standing up. “You have the ability to give me a world that loves only me.” The gleam in her eyes shimmered and the lines on her face creased as she entertained her fantasy-come-to-life. “I have the one and only thing in this reality that you need, and I hold its existence by a thread.” I cringed. She was right, of course. Until I had fulfilled all of the desires of her madness, her complete saturation of drunken power, I would not be allowed to return to my realm whole. “You will go here,” the images in her mind swirled to a theater and a bearded man wearing a tall hat, “and bring me the play bill for ‘Our American Cousin’ as proof when you are done.”

                If I’d had teeth to bare and a brow to furrow, I would have done so. But I relented, just as John had moments before. Just like John, I knew what the future held for me if I did anything but relent to this woman, this paragon of corruption. After all, the other half of my soul was helpless in her grasp.

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So, that's page one of a work tentatively titled 'Lennon.'

Comments? Critiques? Hold the mayo...