Night had allready fell a long time ago. The moon had a banana-like shape that night, and to Stan, this appeared to be the weirdest part of all. Brigitte, who had found some clothes she could wear, was allready sitting at the kitchen table. She was still in that moment between being a human, and being the beast. Stan sat down at the table, as he gave her a glass of gin, of which he had also poured a glass of his own.
"Dunno what it tastes like." Stan warned her, "I was told it's the best way to calm down."
He had put himself opposite Brigitte. He looked around the room. In his mind, Ginger was sitting at the head of the table. Ghost, who was still asleep, was sitting on the other end of the table. From her point of view, Stan sat on the left side of the table, and Brigitte was sitting on the right side.
"You know..." Stan began, "... this reminds me of my first horror movie. The one we saw, you, me and Ginger. You'd have one girl tied up over there, you... would have the eldest sitting over here. You'd have the one everybody's afraid of sitting where you're sitting, and… well, we'd have someone else who's involved with this sitting here, where I'm sitting. You remember?"
Brigitte, who knew what he was talking about, yet wondering if he's taking it somewhere: "... Yes."
"Thing is however..." Stan continued, "... the one sitting here is part of the whole thing, knows exactly what this whole circus is all about, and the one sitting over there is not. So maybe I should be the one sitting where Ghost's sitting, and she should be sitting over here, coz she's more aware of what's going on here than I am."
"I'm a werewolf!" Brigitte said, matter of factly.
"Er..." Stan tried to figure out the right thing to say, "... yeah, I figured that one out myself. But how does that tie with everything? There's no full moon, you've been at a mental hospital, and according to your mother you killed Ginger,... there are lots of things..."
"You have some explaining to do yourself!" Brigitte interrupted him.
Stan, knowing what she was on about, became speechless.
"Where've you been the last ten years?" Brigitte continued, "And why did you decide just now 'Oh why won't I visit Brigitte for a while' ? And above all: what did you do down there?"
Stan never recieved such an eruption from her. Ginger, for once, gave him some advice: "You've always been able to explain to me. Explain to her now!"
"One of the guys had seen me hanging out with you girls." Stan started, "Dispite of our morbid pastimes, they assumed we played with Barbie dolls."
"Why is it you're the only guy I understand." Brigitte sighed.
Ininterrupted, Stan continued: "Anyway, for that they all attacked me. I was one boy against an entire school, so what could I do? After I recovered from the hospital, I found out I had moved to Toronto. Away from Bailey Downs, away from my two best friends. Only recently I had found an old newspaper, which mentioned Ginger's death. You can understand it was quite... actually, I don't know the right word for it. I had the idea of returning to Bailey, to see how you're doing. Than one thing came after another, which eventually lead me in the hole of the beast. But I'm not sure what happened then. How did you get in a situation like this?"
At first, it didn't seem like Brigitte wanted to answer, but she did it anyway: "Ever heard of Bailey's beast?"
When Stan shook his head, Brigitte explained: "There was something that terrorised our little town back then. It killed mostly dogs. One night, Ginger and I got out, to pull a prank on Trina... some bitch from our class. Or rather we wanted to do something to her dog. That's when the beast attacked Ginger.
"Lemme guess!" Stan said, "It was a werewolf?"
"Turned out to be, yes." Brigitte replied, "It wouldn't have mattered if I saved her life or not..."
"Woh there!" Stan interrupted, "That's one thing you shouldn't say!"
Brigitte couldn't understand this: "It's the truth!"
"Don't make yourself feel more guilty over something that isn't your fault!" Stan went on.
"Who are you?" Brigitte wondered, "A shrink?"
"When I finish my studies, yes!" Stan said flatly.
Brigitte paused for some time, then she continued: "So anyway, I tried to help her, getting rid of the beast, by knocking it with my camera."
"Hence that picture." Stan said, more to himself than Brigitte.
"You know about that?" Brigitte asked him, to which he nodded, after which she continued, "Anyway, the beast got hit by a truck that same night. It's dead now, but it had allready infected Ginger."
"So when she changed at the next full moon..." Stan thought he had figured it out, "... you killed her in self-defence?"
"No!" Brigitte sounded offended, "I killed her by accident!"
Suddenly, Stan believed he missed something. Brigitte noticed as such, judging from the look on his face, so she explained: "The day after she got bitten, she started to change. Not in shape, but in personality. Ever since you left us, we had some hatred towards guys..."
"You really did change our lives, asshole!" Ginger confirmed.
"... But Ginger all of a sudden started to like them." Brigitte continued, as Ginger couldn't really interrupt her, "And how!"
Ginger, from this point on, was dressed a bit sexier than usual. If Stan didn't know any better, he'd say his own imagination was seducing him.
"It is entirely possible that after a close encounter with death, you begin to relise life's to short." Stan figured, "I don't think her lycanthropy had anything to do with it."
Brigitte couldn't believe she was hearing this: "You make it sound like she wanted to be this."
"Didn't she?" Stan asked her.
Brigitte remembered something Ginger had said: "You think I wanna go back? Back to being a nobody?"
"Yes..." she replied, "Yes she did, to tell you the truth."
"Thought so." Stan said.
"But I was so convinced her changes were connected to the virus." Brigitte continued, "So I tried to find a cure."
"Monkshood, by any chance?" Stan asked her.
"I'm not gonna ask how you knew that." Brigitte replied, "Anyway, it doesn't cure you at all, it only slows down the transformation. But I didn't know at first, I was really convinced it's a cure. I even infected myself with the virus, so Ginger would cooperate. But I was too late. She transformed, and was about to kill me. I wanted to give her the seringe of monkshood, but accidentally..."
Stan, suddenly, had the whole thing figured out: "I don't think monkshood's the answer to anything."
Brigitte had become all ears at that moment, as Stan continued: "I'm beginning to believe that monkshood has the same effect as prozac. It eases your depression, since you believe you could've helped her. But drugs are never the answer to anything. You blamed IT for Ginger's changes, but I would blame the environment. You girls were suicidal, you hated everything around you. To Ginger, most likely, the virus was more of an answer rather than a disease. You, in the meantime tried to rid her of it. If I were in her shoes, I'd feel betrayed. Betrayed by the one person close to me! I wouldn't blame her from changing at all!"
"What are you saying?" Brigitte didn't understand him entirely, "The virus only worked because she had let it?"
"I'm pretty sure it really unleashed something which was allready there!" Stan answered.
"Impossible!" Brigitte contradicted, "I didn't want to change, but no matter how much..."
"But... what?!" Stan interrupted her, "Brigitte, you killed your own sister! You left the house! Your mother blamed you for her death in any possible way! They most likely treated you like a nut at the hospital! You were to stay in the basement, in a house run by a psychotic girl! Don't you think that somewhere you had no other option, but to change? While I was looking for you, I expected you would've changed into a monster. Didn't mean it litterally. But as it turned out, with or without the virus, you would still be a monster!
The more Brigitte thought this through, the more she believed Stan was right: killing Ginger, her mother blaming herself, the monkshood which never really worked, the hospital and all it's freaks, particullary this nurse named Tyler and another patient named Beth-Anne, Ghost's lies... also, Brigitte pleed for death, but instead Ghost just locked her up, and used her for all her needs.
"Figured!" Stan said, bringing her back to the here and now, "To you there was nobody left, nobody who may give a damn about you! That was until I went down the basement..."
"... And sort of woke me from a nightmare!" Brigitte finished for him.
" 'The only way the creature can be helped, is when somebody tells him his name.' " Stan quoted, "Makes sence now."
Brigitte didn't know what he was talking about: "What?"
"Never mind!" Stan said.
Ghost, at this point, had started to wake up, but dozed off again. Brigitte however, nearly changed back into the beast.
Stan, who noticed this sudden change with Brigitte, asked: "She did more than just locking you up, right?"
Though reluctantly, Brigitte explained: "That wolf you saw down there, it wanted to mate with me!"
Stan was shocked before he heard the whole story: "She didn't...?"
"I thought I killed it before she locked me, but..." Brigitte continued, although she couldn't finish her sentence.
"You can't be serious!" Stan couldn't believe he was hearing this.
Brigitte continued uninterruptedly: "That bitch had persuated me into killing an innocent man! All the lies she told me! All the people she had forced me into killing..."
"Guess you can't move on, with all that. Am I right?" Stan asked.
Brigitte remained silent, but obviously wanted to say yes.
"I've got an idea!" Stan said.