Final chapter of House of Fun! I hope you've enjoyed it. Since it's midnight right now and I have no idea what I'm doing up at this hour (especially with finals in one friggin' week!), except that you guys have probably waited far too long for this chapter of delicious Emmetty goodness, I"m skipping the bad poetic disclaimer we've all come to know and... tolerate.
It may not be as funny as the rest of the story, considering the windy-down-y nature of an epilogue—but then, I don't want to jinx myself, do I?
"Right, she's gone," said Emmett. "What can we do now?" He paused for a moment. "...You know, I'm kind of in the mood for a bonfire."
"Sounds good to me," said Alice.
"Me too," said Bella.
"Well... why not, I guess," said Edward, a little sadly. The events of the day had distracted him for a while, but now that it was all over, he was still a little sad about his hat missing. It was just lucky it was a sunny day—if it had been raining, even drizzling, he wouldn't even have considered going outside. His hair was too important to treat lightly.
Edward, of course, hadn't considered that had it been raining, nobody would have even tried to light a bonfireexcept perhaps Emmett.
"What about your fireworks?" said Jasper. "Weren't you doing something with those?"
"Yeah, some other time," said Emmett. "But right now, it's bonfire time!"
Soon there was a large, well-arranged pile of wood in the back garden. Emmett stood over Alice and Jasper, supervising their arrangement of the kindling.
"No, small ones first, a bit of newspaper, and—No! Don't put a large piece over the top of all those ones! You need to give it room to breathe..."
"Calm down, Emmett," said Bella, who was alternately helping Edward lay out makeshift wooden seats for the bonfire, and comforting him about his hat. Daily tasks had become so much easier for her ever since the size of her stomach had returned back to normal.
Emmett ignored her. "...and leave that piece of wood for last." he said, appearing to have finished his spiel.
"Yes, oh master," muttered Alice. She would have said more, only Carlisle came stomping out of the house.
"What is this pile of rubbish?" he demanded.
"Just a bonfire, Carlisle," said Bella, smiling disarmingly at him. It worked.
"What?" said Carlisle. "Oh. Well, clean up after yourselves, I suppose. And no mess."
"Yes, Carlisle," chirped Bella, Alice and somebody else.
There was a short pause as the group reflected on guys' voices reaching heights no guy's voice should go to.
"Emmett, was that you?" said Edward finally.
"A guy can join in if he wants to," said Emmett.
Carlisle decided to go inside the house before a vampiric aneurysm took hold of him and did unspeakable things to his long-empty blood vessels.
Emmett said: "All right, that's the kindling sorted out. Now, light it!"
Jasper struck a match and threw it onto the middle of the bonfire, which was about a metre wide in all directions (Emmett was very thorough). The newspaper and thin kindling caught alight.
Everybody watched the bonfire burn for a few minutes in silence, Emmett heaving on a piece of wood every so often. As the wood was burning up, not out, it took a little while to spread to the outside of the kindling. The fire seemed to have a relaxing, soothing effect on all of them—just what they all needed, reflected Alice, after such an... odd day. She idly fingered the green slime in her pocket, where it still lay after she had confiscated it from Jasper.
A few minutes later, Bella sniffed the air. "What's that smell? And that sizzling noise?"
"Probably just the wood catching alight properly," said Jasper lazily, staring into the fire.
"Oh."
Something caught Edward's eye. "Um, guys..."
"It's so relaxing, isn't it," said Alice.
"Mmm," said Emmett, whose current lack of hyperactivity could certainly testify to the calming effect of watching a fire.
"Guys..."
"It's really pretty," Bella said. "But I can still smell that—"
"Guys!"
"What?" A very annoyed group swivelled their heads to look at Edward.
"What's wrong, Edward?" said Alice, annoyed.
Edward pointed to where sparks were travelling along streaks of gunpowder that all lead from a pile in front of the house, and appeared to lead to the shed. The same shed that Emmett had been making fireworks in. The effect was rather as if somebody had laid several strings of fairy lights in the grass and then turned them all on at once. "That."
Immediately, there was chaos.
"Somebody put it out!"
"I'm a vampire, I'll burn!"
"Bella, would you...?"
"Hey, just because I'm a human, doesn't make me invulnerable to gunpowder."
"Well, somebody do something!"
"Yeah, or Carlisle'll murder us!"
"Too late!" said Alice, pointing at the flame, which was quickly moving along the paths of spilt gunpowder. They had spread wildly across the grass previously, but were now coming closer together again, moving further and further to Emmett's firework-factory shed...
"Bella, get down!" howled Edward, throwing himself across his beloved's body to protect her from the—
At that moment, something went BOOM!
Pieces of shed went everywhere. Old firework cases rained down on top of the Cullens' heads. Dust was all over the place. Fireworks screamed toward the sky and in all sorts of directions. Debris hit the house.
Rosalie, having returned once again, this time on an errand particularly dear to Edward's heart, was extremely unprepared for the scene she came upon.
As brown dust swirled in the air, she held up a rather distinctive floppy object and said rather lamely, "Edward, I think I found your hat."
Edward's head popped up from the eddies of dust in the air, startling Rosalie just a little. "What! Where?" he said.
"It was at the bottom of my suitcase, for some reason," said Rosalie.
"Oh, thank you, Rose. Thank you, thank you!" The grin on Edward's face almost split his face in two. "It's my hat! My hat, Bella!" Edward placed it on top of his head with the utmost care, picked up his girlfriend, and began to cavort wildly around the garden. Bella frowned, confused, but played along.
The joyous reclamation was interrupted by one very angry vampire.
"What was that?"
"Carlisle!" said Edward, stopping the dance immediately and nearly dropping Bella. "Isn't it fantastic, Carlisle? Rosalie's found my hat!"
Carlisle stared at the damage that had been done to the garden. Dust all over the place. Pieces of wood and steel and firework cases nested in trees and bushes and burn marks on the grass. And the broken, ruined stumps of what had been a shed. "Fantastic? Fantastic? Edward Cullen, this is the worst thing that's ever happened in my life! My poor backyard. What am I going to do?"
Far from being angry, Carlisle seemed to be on the verge of the vampire equivalent of tears, until Esme hurried out of the house, and carefully led her poor, broken husband back inside.
"So, Emmett," said Alice. "You seem to be good at wrecking buildings, don't you. Irina's house and now this. Please don't tell me you did exactly the same thing to Irina's house. Or no wonder she's so mad at you..."
Emmett rose up from the dust, ignoring Alice's statement and doing his best to carry on. "But it was totally worth it! Right, guys?"
It seemed to most people there that the only reason Jasper got up from the ground was to stare blankly at Emmett, informing him that this had not, in fact, been worth it.
"Right, guys?" Emmett said again.
Rosalie sniffed the air. From the smell, which was very similar to the disaster area of Irina's house, it seemed as though Alice might have been right about gunpowder featuring in both scenarios. About to bawl her husband out for being so stupid, twice over, she caught the desperate look on his face and took pity on him.
"Oh, I suppose it was kind of funny," she said slowly.
"Aside from getting squashed by a few hundred pounds of vampire." Bella narrowed her eyes at Edward, who was too busy caressing his rediscovered hat to notice.
"And that shed did need redecorating, anyway," said Alice. "Now that it's all gone, we can just build a new one. Esme will like designing it, and I'll decorate it and we'll put all new stuff in it and—hey!" Abruptly, her mood turned from one of joy, to one of abject dismay. "My joke book! I left it in the shed!"
All eyes turned towards the smoking remains of the shed. A smattering of light pages still descended from the air, where they had been tossed high by the explosion. Alice's joke book had definitely not survived, to the relief of the many who had had to endure her jokes that morning.
"What am I going to do?" she wailed.
"Forget it," said Jasper firmly.
Alice fished out the green slime from her pocket and threw it at him.
THE END.
Well, it might be the end of the story but it's not the end of the series. Like I said last time, we still have Cullenmania 3: Sold Out before that happens. So don't take this story off alert just yet: I'll post the link to Sold Out when it goes up. If the story wants to co-operate (so far it isn't, and it's really annoying me), my updates should be a bit more regular then. Because after November, NO MORE SCHOOL! YAY!
Wish me luck on my finals! Considering my marks on my pre-final exams, I'm going to need it...
Also, don't forget to check out the other stories on my profile. Twilight humour or not, you may find something you like! And just to pimp myself a little bit more, I've entered the latest Writers Anonymous Forum challenge, so by October 31 there'll be a Twilight psychological horror oneshot (that doubles as the tentative introduction to a new fic) on my profile...if you like that kind of thing.
And finally, an end-of-story celebration review would be just luv-er-ly, chaps :) Thanks to everybody who's read and/or reviewed so far, and in advance to the readers to come!
stephanie :)
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(I think I've just exceeded the recommended dose of exclamation marks. Twice...)