pandemonium. rose plague happenings.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

starring: kora, fox, lili & tea.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

Oh fuckin' fuckin' fuck.

Look, I'm just an intern with a mic and a vox-pop recorder. I was only supposed to interview the winners from these events, a fluffy piece for the national affairs segment that airs between 3 and 4am. And now they're telling us we can't leave and us Capitol folk have to wear masks and this is kaka man, I gotta call my Dad!

But they won't let us use the phones so I'm starting to freak out a little, and then they said we're switching track and have to interview the doctors and the citizens instead. I knew this nepotism shit was gonna bite me in the ass and here I am, being escorted from makeshift rooms in a warehouse with clear plastic walls and people in white.

Man I shoulda just gone to university for a year and studied something interesting like... I don't know, History of Fashion In Panem 001. I wouldn't be stranded out here in Six with some sort of virus going around, silently losing my shit whilst I work twelve hour days shoving a microphone in tired people's faces and risking my own health for pennies. I'd just have my head stuck in a textbook in my cushy dorm room!

Wait - that's right, I don't even get PAID for this damn internship.... fuck!!!

Get me outta here!!

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

Funny how much you can get away with when nobody knows who you are. Funny how much more you can get away with when nobody gives a fuck. They really bought me as a medic from the Capitol. My scrawny ass! Not on this salary, certainly not in this economy, but I guess these poor suckers are desperate for the help.

And I'm desperate to get paid, so it's a win-win!

Cop got me in with some fake ID bullshit. Don't ask me how it works because I don't fucking know. Super secret spy shit. But according to the card with the barcode they scanned my name's Torkington The Third or something ridiculous and I'm a pharmacist.

I mean, I do a lot of drugs - so, sure. The lights lit up green and here I am!

Mr. Cop just said I had to go to Six and 'blend in' which meant he made me dye my hair brown, which fuckin sucked, but the hairdresser did say it'll wash out in a week. So avoid the showers and avoid rain, tick! I'm here spying, sending my silly little messages up some silly little secure line straight to Cop's desk.

Whoever's his secretary this week has a bit of an attitude. I said 'Hey, it's really bad here, there's like some disease going around and Keepers in hazmat suits and people are dropping dead like tributes on Day Five' and they just said 'Ok, stay where you are.' Like, hello??? Can you not READ? I'm dyslexic but I'm pretty sure I spelled the word dead and hazmat and disea- okay, maybe I spelled disease wrong (too many vowels). But the jist was there, right? I'm too young to die!

And these fuckers have the nerve to say idk, hold your breath I guess? If I die in District Six I'm going to haunt Mr. Cop's secretary's bitch-ass from the grave. Rose isn't even my colour. Ugh!

Hey, I wonder if ghosts can transmit germs?

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

I went to bed exhausted and I woke up--

No, I didn't go to bed. I-

Collapsed? Against a wall, I think. I couldn't see straight? Muscle memory, I was inside. On my way back to--

They said Mister Torkington are you okay? And I said my name isn't Torkington and--

Almost blew my cover but my skin--

I woke up and my skin was on fire.

Said I was talking gibberish, woke up alone. Said my name wasn't my name and that's true, but it's not, so they put me in a room by myself and--

They don't know I'm terrified of being alone because they don't know I'm me,
Fox. I'm--

I need to talk to Mr. Cop--

Delirium. I said no, no, I'm-- I'm supposed to be a pharmacist, I said my name is Fox and I need to speak to Fenwick and they strapped me down, I threw something,

my hands were on fire, red, purple-
rose.

Oh no.

I'm sick but I'm not-
I'm not that sick,

am I?

Pick up the phone, Cop. Pick up the-

don't leave me here to die,
alone.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

This is the last time I try and take a vacation. It's certainly the last time Dad is going to accompany me on trips as my parent-or-legal-guardian. Guess I'm going to have to wait until I'm at least nineteen before I get to see out of District Three again. That being said, I might not get out of Six until I'm nineteen. What's four years eh?

"D'ya think if we have to stay here for years and years they'll put me in Six's reaping or-?"

Dad groans, he's had enough of me. Of this place. I would to - try being trapped in a three-roomed apartment with your teenage daughter for weeks on end. I caught him reading a magazine in the toilet yesterday. He wasn't doing his business or anything, he was just sat there on the porcelain lid reading because it was a change of scene from the 4x4 living space we have.

"I reckon we could become citizens if we stayed long enough. D'ya think Mom would move down here with us-"

He's not the only one losing his mind. I get it, these were only supposed to be temporary accommodations. But man is my back sore from sleeping on these cheap fold-out beds! I'm fiffeen and I'm going to have back problems before I hit 21! So to distract myself from the never-ending dullness that is being quarantined with no friends and a TV with one (1) channel that only plays EXY reruns (ew, sports), I had to take matters into my own hands.

"I found some hazmat suits outside! I'm thinking I could make a cute jumpsuit if I can find some-"

Another groan, something about throw those away and could be contaminated but Daaaaaaad, I'm boooooooored. He said Hi Bored, I'm Dad, so it was my turn to shut myself in the bathroom for some alone time. What's a girl supposed to do for entertainment when all she brought was a sewing kit? I can't re-embroider the two pairs of socks I brought in my backpack for the eighth time!

And then I hear a very manly yelp and something along the lines of why is my white shirt now pink and oops! Guess I forgot to rinse out the beetroot-juice-stained towel I used to dye my hair pink before I threw it in the laundry. You live and you learn right?

"But pink is totally your colour, Dad! Rose is so in right now!"

The longest groan I've ever heard - and the bathroom door closes.

Dad is definitely regretting reproducing.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

Lilibeth, foolish girl. They come in the morning and take you away. It's a whole scene, of course it is. A pantomime. A show. You're screaming and howling, begging for your brother to save you.

"Teddy! Teddy, don't let them- Teddy! TEDDY!"

Princess, trapped in her castle. The real threat was in the air - you should never have ventured out. Those people who you try not to look down at, really, you do. Teddy is teaching you compassion - slowly but surely - but old habits die hard. You were raised by horrible people, then raised by your brother who was raised by no-one at all.

You had tried to name a family of stars Ursa Major and they laughed, silly little fool.

It already exists.

Your cheeks had flushed pink, hot and raging. You had fled their comical jibes in tears under the cover of night. What's a princess in a world full of scientists? Little girl lost in her Victor's Village, trying and failing to make little Georgie Cham just like you. You stormed up the stairs and flung yourself on your bed sobbing, claiming that you were never leaving the house again. Mortified, you were.

Perhaps it wasn't too late to ask for one of those Capitol gigs again. They'd politely declined the first time - but at least the Capitolites let you down gently. They were kinder up there - people who killed children were kinder than the snobby, greyish bookworms of this awful District. You were Lili, meant for more than this place. Meant for more than who you were supposed to be - and you knew it.

A light at the crack of dawn, you flinch.

"Georgie? Is that you?"

It's just routine, safe-keeping. They find rose petals on your pillow, tangled in your hair. Yesterday's mascara smudges around your eyes and they won't stop staring at it, "Stop," you beg. It hurts - it, flinch, too early. The light burns.

They take you away kicking and screaming, no knight in shining armor coming to rescue you.

"I didn't do anything! I SWEAR!"

And that's just it, Lilibeth Ursa.

You haven't done anything at all. You are just like the rest of them. Just as prone to sickness. Just as pathetic. Just as normal. You are ordinary, extraordinarily so. You are just like them, and that is why they take you. In defeat your shoulders sag, your head lags, your voice grows hoarse and quiet.

The truth of how not special you are might just kill you - if the plague does not.