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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Ty and Ryan's Fictional Hunger Games (Part IV: THE CAGE!)








Kate Austen and Willy Wonka Enter…The CAGE
On the morning of the second day of the Games, Willy Wonka wakes from a night of uneasy slumber.  The sun has just risen and Wonka raises himself to a sitting position, looking around for the impromptu alliance he had joined yesterday at the Cornucopia. 

After bolting from his pedestal for a backpack filled with cash and candy near the Cornucopia yesterday morning, Wonka had found himself in a fight with Nic Cage.  As they were wrestling for the mutually desired backpack, however, Nic suddenly eased his grip, looked Wonka directly in the eye and said in a hauntingly calm voice, “only a fool chases a dream, but a dream never chases a fool.”  He then released the backpack and walked away unexplainedly.  Before he could process these odd actions, Wonka was cut on the arm by a Dwight Schrute-tossed ninja star.  Falling to a knee and grimacing in pain, Wonka quickly felt someone pulling him up by his uninjured arm.  He was on his feet again before he noticed it was Kate Austen, the attractive brunette he’d befriended before the Games began.  “Come on, I can clean that wound for you, and you can help me find and cook food, let’s team up,” Kate said.  He agreed, thinking to himself that a partner wouldn’t be a bad thing to have.  She may not be as helpful as a team of Ooompa Loompas, fair enough, but she could keep watch while his creative genius manifested itself in the woods.  Yes, he thought, there he would create a world of his own pure imagination, a world of booby traps and sadistic whimsy that would lure in the greedy and selfish of the tributes.  There was one child in particular he’d like to teach a lesson, a foul-mouthed little blonde boy who kept demanding cheese pizza at all the Tribute’s events before the start of the Games.  Besides, it got lonely living in a large chocolate factory, and Wonka couldn't pretend that Kate's flowing, dark brown hair and bright smile weren't a pleasant change of scenery from the orange skin and green hair he’d become accustomed to.  Wonka and Kate began to move away from the circle of pedestals and chaos when Nic Cage appeared suddenly in front of them, saying in a solemn voice,  “I’d like to join you’re alliance, you both have noble hearts.  It would be an honor to battle along side you.”  “Did you change clothes!?” Wonka couldn’t help but spit out, flabbergasted by the mysterious man, “and how did your hair change, it was short earlier?”  But Nic Cage simply responded slowly, peering knowingly into Wonka’s very soul, “a tiger may change his stripes, but the wolf…the wolf howls at the moon.” Neither Wonka nor Kate managed a response and before they could even look at each other Cage turned on his heal, “follow me.  We’ll head to the woods.”  And they followed.





Now, in the sunlight of the early morning, Wonka rubs his eyes.  He sees Kate Austen sleeping soundly a few feet from him.  Gently, he shakes her shoulder until her eyes open.  “Good morning.  Where’s Nic?” Kate asks groggily.  “How should I know?”  Wonka says, a bit more aggressively than he means to, he can’t quite explain the twinge of irritation he feels at Kate’s question.  “C’mon, let’s find some breakfast,” he suggests, careful to carry a softer tone.  They walk a short circle around their campsite, collecting plants, bugs and berries.  Kate’s island experience has made her very efficient at gathering food from the wild.  When they return to the campsite, she makes a fire and Wonka begins to employ his considerable culinary gifts.  Soon they have a delicious feast of exotic treats.  Wonka feels a warmth spread out from his chest when Kate, trying one of his snozzberry-flavored concoctions, closes her eyes and lets a soft, “mmmm” escape.  While eating they begin to discuss the previous day.  Once in the woods yesterday, their time had mostly been spent putting space between themselves and the Cornucopia (particularly Achilles…) and looking for a place to sleep. When night had fallen they were all shocked to see Achilles’ face appear in the sky (the Gamemakers project in the sky the faces of the fallen that day), all except Cage.  He was, quite simply, inexplicable; they both agreed.  For the most part he spoke only in parables and enigmatic axioms, save for the full, two-and-a half hour biography of John Quincy Adams that he regaled them with later in the night.  Wonka wasn’t sure what to make of the man.  He both resented him for out eccentric-ing Willy Wonka himself and feared the man for his unnerving calm and encyclopedic knowledge of American history. 

“When Nic looks at you,” Kate says between bites of her breakfast, “do you feel like he’s…like he’s…I don’t know, peering into your soul.  Like he sees everything there is inside you, deep down…even things you might not know yet?” She finishes, gazing out into the woods.  “He certainly has an intense gaze,” Wonka replies carefully, looking at Kate out of the corner of his eye and secretly thinking to himself that that was exactly how he felt.  It bothers him, he realizes after a brief moment of reflection, that Nic has this effect.  He, Willy Wonka, was supposed to be the enigmatic figure who knows what everyone’s thinking, he’s the brilliant genius who always knows the cards in everyone’s hands.  Also, he has to admit, it gnaws at him a bit that there was a hint of excitement in Kate’s voice when she asked him the question. 

“In my travels,” comes a voice from behind them, startling both Kate and Wonka, “I have countless times feasted upon the fruits of the field and the nectars of the flower.  The meal you’ve prepared here is a meal of honor, prepared with courage.  I commend you for that.”  Seemingly out of nowhere, Nic Cage now stands behind Wonka and Kate, not looking at either of them but staring up at the sky, searchingly.  “Thanks,” Wonka finally gets out, “hey, did you find a stockpile of clothes or something, you’ve changed outfits again…and I swear your hair is different.”  Cage lowers his gaze from the sky and walks over to the dwindling fire.  He picks out a charred stick and begins to rub ash on his fingers.  “In the land of the naked, William” he speaks slowly, each word heavy with gravitas, “it is the clothed…” as he speaks he walks over to Kate and draws a strange hieroglyphic-looking symbol on her cheek with the ash, “who are firemakers…”  He finishes and walks over to Wonka, drawing another symbol on his cheek as well, “but the fire…it comes from within.”  He finishes drawing and stands up.  “We should move from here.”

Wonka is simply dumbfounded, he is the riddle-maker; what is Cage doing?  Besides, Cage has taken things to a new level of inscrutability, Wonka thinks to himself, this is ridiculous!  His consternation with Cage begins to mingle explosively with his frustration with Kate, as she looks utterly spell-bound.  She and he had gotten along so well, Wonka thought.  They had a history from before the Games began!  They had been friends during the training, chatted often during the Tributes’ dinners.  If only he could show her that he, too, was mysterious and riddlingly prophetic.  These thoughts race through Wonka’s mind as the trio begins to move through the woods.  Suddenly, a voice comes calling through the woods, a high-pitched voice, a child’s voice…a voice Wonka immediately recognizes. “Hey you guys!  I’m over here!  I’m really scared and I’m aaaallllll alone.” 





“No, Willy!  Don’t chase him!!” But Wonka’s adrenaline has taken over and his blood is pumping too fast in his ears to hear Kate’s shout.  He’s already darted deep into the woods after the little troublemaker.   The combination of Cage-related befuddlement and desire to shift the tides of Kate’s affection finally manifest themselves as Wonka tears through the forest after the toe-headed fiend.  Just like that spoiled rich girl and that fat German, I’ll teach this little monster a lesson, once I find…But he has no time to finish his thought.  There he is, the boy, up in a thin but tall tree ahead of him.  Wonka runs up and begins to climb the tree, huffing and puffing a sing-song as he slowly climbs, eyes focused intently on the tree he clings to and his careful hand-placement, “oompa…loompa” he pants heavily between each word, “loompa dee doo…” His top-hat has fallen off and a vain is throbbing ferociously on Wonka’s forehead as he struggles to clamber up the tall tree; he’s lost now in his “JackTorrance-ian” lunacy.  “Willy…Wonka…is…coming….for…you,” he grunts out the last word with a maniacal grin.  Wonka looks down, he’s fifty feet up.  He looks up the tree for the boy, who should be a mere ten feet or so from him but he doesn’t see the child.  “Hey!  I’m over here,” the boy says playfully with a friendly wave.  He’s eye-level with Wonka, on the nearest tree.  “What?!  How did you…?!” just then Wonka notices a very thin rope has been tied to the tree he’s holding on to, secured about twenty feet above him, the other end held by the boy in the next tree over.  With a panic Wonka realizes how thin the trunk has become as he’s climbed higher and higher.  He notices now how unstable the tree is, swaying with his weight.  “See ya!” says the boy as he gives the rope a mighty pull.  A loud crack near the base of the tree sends birds nearby scattering as Willy’s weight and the boy’s tug of the rope become too much for the thin tree.  

Finally on the ground, a young Kevin McCallister goes to one knee and gives several Tiger Woods fist pumps with a victorious but quiet, “Yessssssss!”before scurrying off.

ELIMINATED FROM THE COMPETITION: WILLY WONKA       

1)      Achilles - 1/3
2)      Dalton - 10/1
3)      Katniss - 20/1
4)      Super Mario - 30/
5)      Dwight Schrute - 35/1
6)      Nic Cage - 40/1
7)      Willy Wonka – 60/1
8)      Kate – 60/1
9)      Kevin McCallister – 75/1
10)  Horatio – 75/1
11)  Rudy Ruettiger - 80/1
12)  Helen of Troy - 90/1
13)  The Hamburglar – 90/1
14)  Yossarian – 90/1
15)  Harry Potter – 100/1
16)  Lenny – 120/1
17)  Steve Urkel – 200/1
18)  Charlie Kelly – 250/1
19)  Marcia Brady – 300/1
20)  Willy Loman – 400/1
21)  Hester Prynne – 600/1
22)  Miss Piggy – 800/1
23)  Adrian Balboa – 1,000/1
24)  Boo Radley - ? 

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