The View From District Nine

     I had never resented the factory district as much as I did on reaping day, I could feel the gentle breezes and smell the crops from the feilds calling to me. How I had toiled away under that merciless sun not even a day before, and yet it was still preferable to what I faceed that day. Reaping day. In the agricultural sense, reaping is when you harvest the grain. When you slice the sheafs, ultimately killing the plant. That is how we at District 9 see the yearly reaping.
We see it as death.
     But it is as necessary as ridding the fields of their beautiful wheat grasses. It is necessary to keep the Capitol at bay.
     The option of putting our names in more times in order to get more rations was an option for us, but hardly anyone did it. Enough food fell through the cracks to feed everyone. I stood in the reaping crowd of teens and kept my head down, hoping for it to end soon so we could all be on our way again. The announcer lady stepped up to the podium and began speaking, but I wasn't paying attention. I never had.
Teh only reason I knew when the woman began choosing names was because everyone grew very still. There wasn't much talking in the first place,, but when her hand plucked out a white strip of paper, I could hear the heartbeat of the seventeen year old next to me.
     I cannot say the first emotion I felt when I heard my name was fear. Fear was a second thought, but first, I felt saddness. For I knew this was either going to end my life or mentally scar me to the point at which I wished it was the end.