Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing well! It's Paradigm of Writing back again with another prologue for Tales of Flesh and Fortune; this is Prologue #2: Memories of Haunted Flesh, with our pov being the one and only wonderful Johanna Mason... I cannot seriously tell you how excited I am for this and the remaining prologues to come (Snow, Annie + Finnick, Plutarch and all these characters I've been wanting to write but just have never attempted).

Subs are coming in at a nice pace, but I would say to make sure you check my FFN profile to see an updated list of spots (or in my channel on SYOT Verses if you are a member there just so there's not too much overlap). And shoutout to Dante Alighieri1038 for his shoutout of my story, his own These Cloying Delights is just wonderful! Anyhow, enjoy the chapter!

"I should be over it by now, but I am not. I am still haunted. Still hunted." ~ Anonymous

Victor of the 71st Hunger Games: Johanna Mason

The soft lull of the waves outside would be calming to Johanna Mason if there was not the accompanying screech of a seagull mere moments after it. She'd turn to scream at it, but she knows already that her voice won't reach that far – too many nights clawing at bedsheets, fighting off the dead that rise from the floorboard – and it'd startle poor Annie sitting next to her on the couch.

She swallows her rage into the iced tea sitting across from her, while Finnick shakes his wet hair off in the doorway. He has just come in from a swim, water dripping off of his Herculean form and soaking up the carpet beneath his feet, soggy enough to make squelching sounds as he crosses the living room to plant a kiss on Annie's lips.

Johanna gags.

"What?" Finnick raises a brow, cockily flashing her a grin. "Love too much for you to handle, Jo?"

"You look like seaweed," Johanna scowls into her tea, teeth clenching and biting softly at the plastic to take a sip. She relaxes her face and does a half-baked smile when Finnick just keeps his brow cocked at her in an amused stare.

Gentle, gentle, she has to work on being gentle. At least, that is what her therapist tells her on their telephone calls. Johanna has refused to set foot back in the Capitol unless it is time for her to mentor, though at Coriolanus Snow's insistence, she must have help…

"It is not healthy, my dear, for that much rage to be bottled up inside of you," the president had told her, the stench of roses overwhelming the atmosphere of the office to the point Johanna's eyes had watered. "It needs outlets."

"I can think of a few outlets for it," Johanna sniped back, and the president's eyes flashed venom green, and that night at midnight another loved one of hers was whisked away in the night.

Johanna stopped telling Finnick and Annie about them after the first, when her boyfriend of three and a half weeks was found dead at the base of a sycamore tree in Seven's woods with an axe buried in his chest, the word Murderer written across the iron-handle in ink.

That was the routine… snip at the president, and someone from Johanna's life vanished. She did not believe – though there were certainly times, most certainly – that he'd lay a head on Finnick or Annie, victor darlings to the Capitol, but she would not put it past him. Her mother vanished last week, her father three weeks before that when she had sent Seneca Crane a newspaper on fire with cow shit tied to the front page.

It seemed the officials in the Capitol had not bought her routine, the song and dance that she was not helpless, but a pit viper whose fangs could remain sheathed until they were required for self-defense.

The blood of the slit Career's thorax slid across her palms, the sounds he made akin to that of a cawing raven while his eyes stared at Johanna in fright, the last vestiges of life slipping away from him. Her face, inches from his, mouth open wide in a ferocious yell, a caged tiger unleashing its fury.

His district partner never got a chance to cry out when her head was severed from her brain stem, for Johanna's throw had been on the money. In the rainy finale of the 71st Games, all Johanna could hear was the pitter-pat of precipitation on muddy land, brown hair, brown eyes, blood-soaked flesh all meshing into one pit of melancholy beneath her boot heel.

Biding her time, waiting for the right moment… it seemed lighting did not strike twice in one area.

"You're going to make the carpet smell," Annie giggles, pushing Finnick off of her, for the audacious sunshine soldier felt the need to join his girlfriend on the couch, the plush leather creaking under his lithe frame.

"What? The smell of fish and mildew doesn't make your heart just beat with anticipation?" Finnick grins at her.

"It makes me want to puke," Johanna chomps on an ice cube. An arm breaking, hands scrabbling at her to try and throw her off, but it is the finale of the Games, and she's had enough sitting by fooling the cameras, her throat burns from all the bullshit tears she's had to surface onto her face.

"You don't have to be so serious all the time, you know," Annie chides lightly, patting her friend on the arm. Johanna bristles at the contact, but she does not move away from her. The victoress from Four has always been gentle, especially after what she went through two years ago… losing her- Johanna blocks the memory out of her mind, focusing on the Careers she killed and their copper streams coating her skin. "It's just us."

Just us.

The Capitol had said those words. Caesar Flickerman had said those words to Johanna way back when for what felt like eons ago on his couch of velvet and cashmere – Cashmere would have been offended that such a piece of terrible furniture had been constructed in her likeness, lemonade-yellow and encrusted with sapphires.

"It's just us here, dear," Caesar spoke aloud though it was not just them The entire viewing audience, the entire nation, and Johanna knew that of all of them there was one pair of eyes staring her down… President Snow waiting to see if the fire-starter from Seven would creak and crack.

"Doesn't seem like it is just us here," Johanna responded to the comment, to the giggling and gasping of the moronic Capitol crowd. All of them could hang.

Another topic she had to discuss with her therapist, who loved to drag out conversations by the second, slow as molasses dripping off a spoon as the greybeard and white wigged man talked about keeping feelings bottled in.

Johanna may had commented on her last session she would much rather have shoved a bottle of feelings up the man's ass to see if it would be the reason he finally left her alone.

It didn't work.

Finnick wanders into the kitchen, his body still dripping from his mid-afternoon swim, and a seagull call continues to mark his every step. Johanna can feel a headache building just behind her eyes, like an oncoming thunderstorm, and the iced tea is about to be hurled through the window.

"How can you stand listening to seagulls all damn day?" Johanna asks, fingers squeezing the glass so hard it could shatter in her grip. "Doesn't that noise bother you? I can't take it for more than two minutes."

"Doesn't bother me," Finnick shrugs, reaching into the fridge for another glass of iced tea. Annie had so kindly made them between her two morning naps, siestas as she called them because sleep helped keep the voices at bay.

"I prefer them to the silence," Annie says softly, smiling, but there is pain building up like plaque between her teeth, grimy, but instead of calcite gray and black, it is Panemian streaks of red and gold, bloodied victories won in the Games. "It's why Finnick bought this place, so we'd never have silence."

She is right there, but Annie Cresta has never been wrong in a majority of her statements. Johanna could see why Finnick picked the place, for in the absence of the seagull screeching, the dull roar of the waves hitting the beaches fills the void. A lulling calm to someone born in the sea, spat out by the storm and tide… it has saved both people occupying the house across from her, after all.

"I think I'd go crazy if I heard cicadas all night long," Johanna pinches her brow. "Though, Blight's snoring sometimes is just as loud."

"Ah, Blight," Finnick exhales, having just finished chugging his own iced tea glass and going for a refill. His skin is near as pale as the marble countertops adorning the sides of the kitchen space, and Johanna swears her eyes are playing tricks on her, for it seems Finnick's arm is swallowed up whole by the pallid wave of light emerging from the fridge. "How's he doing anyways?"

"Besides bringing a new man back to the home every night, pretty well," Johanna says, picking at her straw again and taking it out of the glass. She watches the droplets of tea drip off of the plastic and back into the container, ripples, puddles, blood in the water…

Her mentor had been more than accommodating to Johanna's plans when she was reaped seven thousand years ago – to her, it had felt like a lifetime, though to those families whose souls she stole from them, it may seem like a hairbreadth of a second away – with his friendly smile and always well-kempt beard. His eyes had the glow of a warm campfire in a cool autumn night, and whenever they'd hug, she could feel his heartbeat against her chest, a timpani drum of comfort.

Snow would not take him. Snow could not take him…

That is not to say Johanna was not – is not - jealous as she watches her mentor have fun, some eye candy sitting on his arm as he led them back inside to their shared Victors Village home. Johanna refused to live alone, afraid that Peacekeepers would steal her away in the night for whichever curse word laced tirade she had recently spewed would circle back around to haunt her.

Blight was handsome, he was friendly, he was well-spoken, he was home, and men saw that and desired it. Johanna was looked at like a tangle of barbed wire, a beast to be tamed, hair covered with the beehives in District 7's canopy line versus that of their honey. He had suitors every night, lumberjacks afraid to come out to their families or express themselves freely finding the ability to do so in Blight's bedsheets.

Johanna's evening company were dust bunnies and the shadows that still screamed at her for daring to look at them, when insomnia would refuse to let her sleep.

"You'll find someone one day," Blight assured her, eyes twinkling like summer fireflies, as he roasted a marshmallow over the campfire between them. "It'll just take time."

"Sure thing, old man," Johanna quipped back, though her tone carried far less malice than usual, eyes bearing into the flame. She often wondered what it would feel like to step in and let the blaze take her. There had been a fire in her arena, during the bloodbath, and there had been little killing taking place for everyone had been running away from the flames. "Sure thing."

"I'm not that old."

"You're practically a corpse. Your heart will stop at any minute."

Blight had poked her with the stick, singed marshmallow and all. Johanna nearly tackled him over the flames.

"You'll stay till the weekend, right?" Annie asks her, jolting Johanna out of the memory so hard that the victor from Seven nearly knocks her drink over. The other woman's face, pale, blue-eyed and calm – though no one, not even Finnick, Johanna bet, knew the true turbulence hidden in those eyes – waiting for a response. "There's no need to go back to District Seven until next week, right?"

"We've got a big enough place," Finnick says, coming back to join the ladies, he draping his arm across Annie's back, as he leans down and kisses the top of her head. "I can get the sheets for the guest bed if you'd like."

A week from now meant the reapings. It meant her first year mentoring, sending two unlucky souls from District Seven to potentially die. Lighting truly did not strike twice in the Hunger Games… Career districts weren't lucky either to have multiple victors in back-to-back years.

"I…" Johanna stutters over her words, as their kindness is real – it has always been real – but it does not seem to be that way, a pretty picture marred by the crashing of waves and the humming of singing steel slicing through the air, haunting her. "I…"

A seagull caw interrupts her, interrupts her denial that Johanna knows she'll make, and then the victor from Seven is leaping off of the couch, ambling for the window.

"That bird is dead!" Johanna shrieks, and she doesn't realize she's kept the glass of iced tea in her hands this entire time, a tide of murky brown sloshing with her movements, splattering Annie in the face, and Finnick at the elbows…

Johanna recalls little next except colliding with a window that had looked open, pain blossoming at the bottom of her skull, and collapsing back onto the carpet. She moans, in a daze, setting the drink down finally beside her.

"It's just a bird, Jo," Finnick admonishes lightly, voice humored enough.

"Yes…" Johanna groans, staying in the spot on the floor. "I… yes…" she sits up. "I'll stay…"

Johanna Mason lays there on the floor, like she has had practice over many months now, perfecting the art of not moving, perfecting the act of letting others do all the work for her, as Finnick and Annie help her sit up.

"Good, no point in arguing then," Annie wipes away the iced tea dripping down her face.

"Promise me one thing though, Finnie," Johanna breaks out a laugh, by the mere absurdity of it all, despite the resounding headache now burrowing further into her skull. "Or I'm leaving."

"Anything, Jo," Finnick's eyes light up, smiling, full of mirth.

"Kill that fucking seagull."

And there we are ladies and gentlemen! Chapter #2: Memories of Haunted Flesh. I love, love, love getting in Johanna's mind and there are a lot of canon-characters I want to make my prologues from (literally bogged down by so many people here), but I've got my few in mind I really can't wait for. Anyhow, please continue to submit, it'll be greatly appreciated! Reviews always appreciated as well, it has been a good while since I've immersed myself in the writing game. I am quite excited for the next prologue, cause I will be writing Plutarch Heavensbee! Remember that the rules + form is on my profile as well in my channel back on SYOT Verses. A Declaration of Death update is in the works soon as well! Can't wait! See you next time! Have a great day! Bye!

~ Paradigm