#it's always five million fire ants loose in his house.

[spiribia]

im crying about how antscanada had an open air fire ant setup (pictured below - nothing over top of it keeping it enclosed) and now apparently his house is flooded with flying fire ant alates. why did he do that.

[everlark-your-own-adventure]

Mockingjay Manor - Ch 9

Chapter One /// Chapter Two /// Chapter Three /// Chapter Four /// Chapter Five /// Chapter Six /// Chapter Seven /// Chapter Eight

Happy Tuesday, Everlarkers! It’s time for one last visit to Mockingjay Manor. Times are tense for our heroes, injuries and enemies abound. How will they extract themselves from this mess? Hang on tight as @katnissdoesnotfollowback concludes our gripping journey in dramatic style!

“Do you still have your phone?” I ask Finnick. Seneca has now made his way inside the house, dousing the floors in the foyer with gasoline as he goes, and I briefly think that it’d be too much to ask for experiment M to make a reappearance right about now.

“In my pocket, but it’s dead,” Finnick reminds me, shifting Peeta’s weight on his shoulders.

“Peeta keeps a charger in the glove box. Here.” I try to search his pockets, but Peeta mumbles something and flinches back away from me again. Finnick barely keeps them from tumbling to the ground. He’s figured out what I’m doing, though, and distracts Peeta long enough for me to get the keys out of his pocket. “Make for the Jeep, call 9-1-1 as soon as you can. I’ll try to stall Seneca somehow.”

“Be careful, Katniss,” Finnick warns and then slinks through the shadows closer to the Jeep. I creep my way up to the front porch. From behind one of the columns, I watch Effie through the windshield as she lifts a large compact and slicks on a coat of lipstick. While she’s focused on her appearance, I slip inside the house and square my shoulders.

“Hey, asshole!” I yell and Seneca whirls around to face me, spraying gasoline over the beautiful floors. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was looking for you,” he states weakly. “It’s so dangerous to go exploring in a rickety old house this late at night.”

“So you were going to burn it down around my ears?” I ask and Seneca fumbles for a moment or two, waving his hand in a useless gesture.

“Of course not,” he insists and rage fills me. I think of Johanna and Madge, somewhere in this house and oblivious to the danger they’re in. At least this new one. I think of Uncle Haymitch and how he’d been manipulated, used, and possibly blackmailed. His murdered wife Maysilee. Creepy Snow and his experiments topped off with these two greedy leeches trying to burn down my house and not caring who they hurt in the process. And I think of Peeta, his strange behavior and how I might still lose him tonight. But if I think about that too much, I might go insane, so instead I cling to my rage and pull the threads before I come unraveled.

I point towards the bright red gas can in his hands and snarl at him. “So I suppose that’s here to start a campfire. Did you bring marshmallows, too? I’m afraid I’m all out of chocolate bars to make s’mores. Fed them to the creepy, mutant birds in the attic.”

“Well I, uh—” he stammers and then the strangest thing happens. His eyes harden and he stands up straight. The usual fop that I’ve come to despise on some low level disappears and in his place is something sleeker and far more dangerous. “You’re just like him, you know. Your uncle. He was sarcastic and blind when he met his end, too.”

I take a few steps inside and Seneca flinches, so I keep going. “He died of a heart attack,” I remind Seneca, who laughs cruelly at my words.

“Oh no, my dear Katniss. He didn’t at all.”

“You’re a murderer!” I shout. He smiles and then something sharp scrapes painfully across my back. I yell and stagger forward, falling to my knees as I hear the familiar click clack of Effie’s heels and the soft tsk-ing of her tongue. Flames lick over my back as the floor boils in bright orange bubbles. How stupid of me to think she’d just wait inside the car.

“So impolite. Making such vile, unfounded accusations. Seneca is merely taking care of a public menace for me, aren’t you darling?” Effie trills as she examines her nails. The ends glow with something viscous and red. I try to crawl towards the door, but the orange bubbles have turned hot and burn my palms. The floor tilts violently and I retch. “Not to worry, my dear. The first dose is always the worst. From there…it’s only a matter of time.” Seneca hands her a fluttering white cloth and she sighs as she wipes her nails with it, staining the pristine thing red. Her talons, I realize. She’s laced them with the devil’s breath. Vines of the things sprout from the floor and wrap around my ankles, slowing my progress.

“And since you don’t have much time, let me explain a few things to you. Haymitch Abernathy was a drunken fool. A coward, too afraid to take risks. He was on his way to becoming one of the greatest engineers of our time but instead, he wanted a family with that whiny milksop of a wife. Well I knew I couldn’t just let him go and waste his millions on a pack of snotty children just like you. Poor Maysilee, unable to conceive though they did try so very hard,” Effie sings the words in a grating tune of false sympathy. I’ve almost reached the door as she keeps talking. Maybe if I can get there, through the ant hills sprouting up from the floor and spewing forth giant red ants, maybe I can flag down Finnick in the Jeep. My pulse pounds in my ears and for a moment, I think my heart actually slows. The distant rumbles of thunder alert me to the return of the storm.

“Well I couldn’t let them adopt a child. So Seneca and I took measures to make sure they didn’t. Your dear friend was correct about that,” she sneers and I freeze. How could she know about Madge–

Effie whistles and a flock of birds swoops gracefully down from the rafters. “Experimented on her with the Devil’s Breath.” One of them says in Madge’s voice. “Let experiment M loose.” Johanna’s voice joins in, “You need an exorcist.”

“Weapons in the house,” another says in my voice this time. Another sings about the hanging tree in Finnick’s and I cover my ears as all of our voices merge together and the birds form a swarm, screaming out in pain and fear.

“Katniss! Run!” Peeta’s voice yells above me. Peeta. I have to get to Peeta. It’s all I can think as the wings beat all around me, their beaks pecking at me and their words driving me insane. There’s a puff of sulfur and a light just above me. I reach towards it as Seneca stares down at me from the doorway, his face garish in the light from the match, his eyes black tar pits. I can just see the Jeep at a distance, two figures wrestling in the night. One of them scrambles for the door and the other wrenches him away as Effie hums and saunters back towards her Jaguar, it’s eyes glowing red. I can’t move. Instead, I watch, helpless as Peeta falls on Finnick and his fingers close around his throat—

“Okay, that’s it!” I shout and snatch the flashlight from Johanna’s hands. She freezes with her arm extended, hand curled into a strangling motion and her face twisted in rage. “You are not making Peeta murder Finnick.”

“What? No!” Finnick protests and shoves another handful of popcorn in his mouth. “If waf ‘us effing ‘ood.”

“Oh it was only now getting good?” Johanna asks and pops her hip to glare at her good friend.

Peeta lifts his marshmallow from the fire and frowns at the flaming thing before blowing it out. “Dang it, Jo. You made me burn another one.”

“Let her finish, Katniss,” Annie protests, her green eyes wide and luminescent in the firelight. “I want to know how it ends.”

“No!” I yell and everyone stares at me. I cross my arms and wriggle deeper into the blanket. “Couldn’t you have at least told your scary story from your own point of view?”

“That’s no fun,” Jo says with a wicked grin. “I don’t scare as easily as you do.”

“BLAGH!”

Hands clamp down on my shoulders. I scream. Smack them off and jump straight into Peeta’s lap as the other’s around the campfire lose it. Even Peeta’s biting his lip and trying not to laugh at me. I whack his chest as Madge wraps her arms around us both.

“I’m sorry, Katniss. I couldn’t resist,” Madge says between laughs. I plant my hand on her face and shove her away.

“None of you are my friends anymore,” I say petulantly.

“So do we all die or what?” Peeta asks and Jo shrugs before pointing around the circle. She starts with Finnick.

“Killed by your friend because you’re the jokester.” Next comes Madge. “Burned alive in the house, still haunts the grounds to this day with eerie song.” Madge claps her hands in glee. Then Johanna points to Peeta. “Locked in an asylum for the rest of your days.” To me, “Killed by the villain in your heroic efforts to save everyone else. Oh and that’s also because you had s-e-x,” she whispers the letters as she crosses her arms and grins. I sputter and protest that this was her story, not mine. She ignores me and moves on to herself. “Got away but don’t worry, I bite it in the sequel. Torn to shreds by the inexplicable reappearance of Experiment M.” She wriggles her fingers and twists her features into a grotesque mask. Then she drops her voice into a quiet but deep, creepy warble. “And Annie? Annie visits the burned-out shell of a house to look for her beloved and only finds the charred remains of a brass keyring, the echoes of birdsong, and half of Maysilee’s burned up portrait. Annie, of course, is the star of that sequel.”

“Oh no,” Annie says in the long pause after Johanna’s words and shakes her head, although she’s smiling.

“This is the thanks I get for letting you stay in my lavish mansion and mooch off my riches,” I mock. I try to stay mad at Johanna, but I can’t. The others seem just fine, talking about their favorite parts of her winding and twisted tale. Eventually, the full moon hangs high above us and the distant sounds of the night animals prowling in the woods beyond the fences reach our ears. Annie shivers and Finnick wraps a blanket around her, telling us that they’re turning in for the night. Madge and Johanna are next, laughing about the reality of our first meeting.

“No mutant birds, but I’m still not sure what kind of fungus that was growing in that attic aviary,” Madge jokes as she refers to the room she was hired to consult on the restoration of, only for us to learn that she was also Haymitch’s niece through her Aunt Maysilee. 

When it’s just Peeta and me, he roasts a few more marshmallows for us while I stand on the edge of the verandah and gaze up at the restored façade of Mockingjay Manor. It took some serious work and we almost missed our six month deadline, but in the end, we managed to meet Haymitch’s challenge.

I shift my eyes to look over at the house falling into disrepair next door. Next door is thankfully a bit of distance, though. It took the chill of fall to finally kill the smell of the genetically altered roses from his gardens and it will take some time to get over Coriolanus Snow’s attempts to blackmail me with Uncle Haymitch’s past as we worked to restore the manor. His nearly successful tries at blocking each step of the project. For now, it’s Snow’s estate that remains embroiled in legal debates, the old man having finally croaked during tea time, his death shrouded in mystery along with the scars ranging in age from a few weeks to years old found all over his body, resembling claw markings but unmatched to any kind of animal known to science. Maybe that’s why Johanna’s story freaked me out so much. Because at some point, it became difficult to find the line between the real and the made up as she spun the tale.

Mockingjay cosmetics, the hushed-up scandals of corporate misdeeds and ethics violations. The weird dreams that plagued Peeta for weeks after clearing the gardens and the bushes filled with razor sharp thorns left his arms cut and his blood exposed to toxins from fungi and plants alike. Even the hint of murder in Maysilee’s death. The child scheduled for adoption to two eager parents who built her a beautiful nursery, left somewhere in the system when the adoption agency pulled out and refused to give just Haymitch custody after Maysilee died. Haymitch wanted me to make it right, to find her and make sure she had a home, a family. I have a name – Lavinia Tulane. But I still haven’t gotten much farther than that.

“We’ll keep looking,” Peeta assures me as he steps up behind me and wraps his arms around me, his loud footfalls ensuring that he, at least, can’t scare me tonight. Something about Johanna’s story keeps nagging at me, though, and as I look up at Peeta’s concerned face, I know what it is that upset me so much. Just the idea of losing Peeta. But he’s here in front of me, so very alive and safe as he speaks softly. “In the meantime, do you want that last s’more? Or would you rather just go to bed?” That’s a question I definitely know the answer to. So I grab his hand and tug him inside and up the stairs, to where adventures of a more enjoyable nature await.

And that, friends, concludes Mockingjay Manor! We hope you enjoyed the ride! The story, in its entirety, will be posted on AO3 in time for Hallowe’en.

We’d like to express our deepest gratitude to our incredible group of authors, @burkygirl, @jennagill, @albinokittens300, @peetamymuse, @norbertsmom, @appleblossomgirl0305, @mega-aulover, @xerxia31, @katnissdoesnotfollowback and @peetabreadgirl. Your talent and creativity astounds us, you took this story to places we never could have imagined. Thank you!!

Itching for more Everlark-your-own-adventure? Stay tuned, because we’ll be launching a brand new story soon!