"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Eight
"House of Wolves"
"Alright, I'll get the rifle," Sam says before his body is halfway through the front door, "You get us something sharp. There's a lot of that around here. Just make sure I didn't forget to sharpen it."
Brigitte has to admit that the thought of killing Jason McCardy as a first step to recovery sounds a bit too comforable for comfort.
Sam locks the door as Brigitte moves down the hall and into the bathroom. She turns on the faucet, and Sam isn't two steps from the door when the door is knocked on. First with the knuckles.
Then with a whole fist.
Brigitte sticks her head out of the bathroom, and sees that Sam is frozen in place. The knocking continues, each pound on the door harder and more forceful.
Sam retreats towards the door. Stands a step away.
"Who is it?" he asks. Brigitte's fingers grip the threshold tightly.
Another knock and the door flings open. Sam jumps a step back to avoid it, and as the door crashes to the wall, he sees who it is.
"Hello, Sam."
"Oh... shit..."
His mouth is parted slightly, revealing gleaming, razor-sharp canine teeth. His skin is breaking into uneven blotches – it looks like dried up soil, with fault lines emerging from central points. He looks like he hasn't seen the light of day, or a shower, in weeks.
"I hear Brigitte's here. Hear she's staying with you. Figured I'd stop by and say hello."
"Jason... what the fuck happened to you..?"
"That's what she's gonna tell me."
Brigitte quickly gets out of the bathroom and moves to where Jason can see her. The quicker his impotent temper is diffused, the better.
"We're not sure." she says, "We tried the same thing I used on you. Didn't work so well, either."
"You both look fine!" Jason snarls, "I had to work overtime on making excuses, just to keep my parents from dragging me to the hospital!"
(know what I did for fun last night?)
"Have you killed yet?" Brigitte asks
Sam glares at her.
"No." Jason says, "Not this time."
Silence. Jason looks at Sam.
"So..." he says with a feral smirk, "You two, huh?"
"What?" Sam says, with more force than Brigitte likes.
"She gave it to you?"
"No." Sam says, "Ginger. She bit me."
"Where is Ginger, anyways? Haven't seen her around in a while." Jason snarls, "I've got a score to settle with her."
"She's dead." Brigitte says.
(she's out by sixteen by virtue of being dead in the scene)
"...what?" Jason asks.
"I killed her." Brigitte adds.
Jason moves, and it's too fast for Sam to catch. His fingers lock around Brigitte's throat and shuts off her air supply completely. She grips his wrist, one hand reaching to his face, but he slaps it away.
"Then you are gonna pay for what she did, bitch!" Jason snarls.
"Jason, stop." Sam says, "Stop before I put you down."
"Suck my dick, Sam!"
Brigitte sees the move out of the corner of her eye. Sam throws a punch and for a moment, she notes that it's good, but not that good. Nevertheless, she hears it crack, and then it's on.
With a throaty growl, Jason shrugs Brigitte off and leaps at Sam. Sam only has time to lift his arm up before they collide. Jason drives Sam into the wall and starts putting weight on him, forcing him to take quick steps to the side to adjust. Sam grips Jason's t-shirt for leverage, but its not enough. Jason tightens his grip and attempted to lift him.
Brigitte is coughing, trying to catch her breath while, within spitting distance, the house of wolves eats itself alive.
Sam elbows Jason's head with as much force as he can muster. Jason growls, both in pain and frustration, but doesn't let go. He keeps pushing, and Sam misses a step.
"She fucked me over real good, and now I'm gonna fuck you both, and it's all gonna feel that... much... better!"
Jason shifts, forcing Sam to follow suit, but he can't get a grip on him. The asshole is squirming, constantly attempting to push him down the hall, closer to the bathroom. Jason shifts again, tilts his head to the side, and as Sam winds up his arm to elbow his head once more that Jason's teeth sink in.
Brigitte looks around for something heavy, something reasonably heavy that she can lift. She sees Sam's work bench and spots one of the flower pots – the one housing the broken remains of the black orchid. She rushes to it and picks it up as-is, figuring that the soil could add at least another pound.
Sam screams as he feels the canines pierce his skin and draw blood, and Jason's jaw clamps over a mouthful of flesh. With both hands, Jason moves Sam a step back, and Sam slips, an opportunity that Jason takes to drive him to the ground.
Sam elbows Jason's head, once, twice, three times, four times, each time feeling his upper and lower jaw inching closer, almost crippling him with pain.
Brigitte inches closer. She raises the pot over her head.
The sound of something ceramic shattering over Jason's head, which almost instantly makes his jaws release, is what brings Sam down a notch. Sam welcomes the slight reduction in the intensity of the pain.
Jason falls and lies there like the dead.
Sam gets his torso, Brigitte gets his legs. He leads, she follows. Together, they haul Jason all the way= to the other side of the greenhouse, outside and over a very short distance to a rather sturdy-looking shed. Sam digs into his pocket for the keys and opens the doors. Brigitte sees that it's where he keeps his bigger tools, the shovels and the pickaxes. She also sees why he chose the shed: there's a metal column in the middle of it, from which various gardening tools hang.
"This thing goes below the ground. It's solid concrete down there. Don't know why it's there, either, it just always was."
They set Jason down. He stirs.
"It'll hold." Sam says, "We need to chain him."
Brigitte looks at Jason. His physical deformities are obvious but few. Longer nails to scratch things with. Sharper canines. Bags of pus all over his face, like acne out of control. Hairy palms. Brigitte can't help but flash the ghost of the ghost of a smile at that.
"We can't hold him." She says.
Sam is nervously scratching at the bite marks. Brigitte glances at it.
(it's already healing)
"Well then what?" Sam asks, "What do we do with him?"
Brigitte looks at Jason again. Sam shivers. Her face is blank, completely devoid of any sign of life whatsoever.
"We kill him." She says, deadpan.
Sam's eyes widen.
"I'm sorry – what!?"
"We kill him." Brigitte repeats, "We bury the body. Everyone thinks he's missing. They'll think he skipped town. Nobody will know. It doesn't matter one way or the other – he's got the Curse. He's as dead as we are."
Sam stops picking at the healing wounds. He stops, period. There's nothing in him that continues, and if he's breathing, he doesn't know.
(you like it)
Sam grabs Brigitte by the arm, and before she can react, he walks out of the toolshed and pulls her along. He pushes her as he lets go, and she stumbles, but doesn't fall.
"Get the fuck out of here." Sam says, "Go back to the greenhouse, sit the fuck down and wait for me. I have to deal with this asshole first."
Sam gets back into the tool shed and closes the doors behind him. Brigitte hears the lock clack as it engages. For a few moments that seem like hours, she just glares at the toolshed.
(and then he's done... and you're like, oh)
It takes Sam ten minutes to emerge. He locks the doors behind him and pockets the key. Brigitte just stands and stares.
Sam lingers for the fraction of a second, and then brushes past her. Brigitte considers breaking the door in, maybe there's a pair of garden shears she can use... one sharp jab into the heart should do it, she can open the shears once they're in him... she can see the blood gushing from the wound, all that lovely red going to waste to feed the worms and-
(nothing helps except for tearing live things to pieces)
Sam is almost to the van that got him into this mess in the first place when Brigitte catches up with him.
"Where are you going?" she asks.
"I need to find more monkshood." Sam replies, his voice cold, "Maybe it needs to be fresh to fully work, but we're a ways away from spring, so I figure, if you can find some, so can I."
"Craft store." She blurts out, "Pam found them in a craft store."
"Thanks for the tip."
Sam opens the door and gets in. He turns the ignition.
(say something you fucking idiot)
The motor roars to life and before Brigitte can open her mouth, he pulls out of the driveway and down the road.
(you fucking sissy little girl)
Brigitte stares on after him, even after the yellow van disappears from her view. Standing in the driveway, shivering, Brigitte can't believe what just happened. She doesn't even have the words to frame it properly. Did they just... have a fight? Like, fight-fight? A quarrel? Do you quarrel, sir?
The entire concept is too ridiculous to take seriously. A fight over what, exactly? A mercy kill? A euthanasia needed as much as a double suicide is right about now?
Search and destroy. That's all there is.
(I can't believe I lost it to Sam)
Brigitte feels her insides get twisted up. She crosses her arms and shuffles on back to the house.
An hour passes. Brigitte fidgets, shifts, sits down, stands back up, paces, stops.
She doesn't know what to do with herself.
Brigitte considers dwelling. The interim has given her time to catch her breath, get ahead of the constant apocalypse in real time. But now, she realizes that she's never actually thought about anything beyond that. She's thought first of the Pact, then of running away with Ginger, then of saving Ginger, then of saving herself and Sam (and so far I'm really kicking ass) and then, suddenly, five minutes ago, all that's left has become Jason McCardy tied in the shed and Sam giving her the cold shoulder.
First she wanted to die. Now she wants to... live? Maybe? Is it because she's seen death up close, she wonders; because she's seen the horrible truth of it?
(not ours, ours'll rock)
Brigitte goes to the living room and sits down.
Maybe the almighty, all-knowing educator will know what to do.
She turns on the TV.
Two hours pass, and Sam isn't back. Jason is growling up a storm, the faint hum of which Brigitte hears, even through the droning of the TV. She tries to concentrate, but all she's found worth looking at is a Z-grade vampires versus werewolves flick. The make-up work is decent, but the plot sucks, and there's a human-vampire-werewolf love triangle for whatever reason that takes up more space than it should.
Three hours. No Sam. The movie ends and they all kill each other. Don't you just love the very poor imitation of the sounds of nature?
(where are you?)
Four hours, twenty-seven minutes and it's down to the Eldritch horror show of afternoon edutainment when Brigitte hears the van pull up into the driveway. The tell-tale sound of the door being slammed, and the rustling of nylon bags.
Sam kicks the door open and slips in. He shuts it with his heel and moves onto his room. Brigite hears him set down the bags and then rummage through them. His chair is pulled up. He sits down.
The moment his Zippo lighter's clank is heard, Brigitte decides, fuck it, and gets up.
Sam lights the candle to begin prep. It's not the most efficient way of doing it, maybe, and he could be persuaded to kill for a Bunsen, but this is what he has, and it has done nicely so far. No different than heroin addicts cooking shit up in spoons, and how fitting. As of now, they're no different than a bunch of junkies shooting up flowers. Like smackhead hippies.
Behind him, on his bed, are five bags filled with dried monkshood, more than half the stock of the craft store. The sixth bag has syringes, cotton balls and a few X-acto knives, just in case he needs to cut the petals with a bit of precision.
"Hey."
Sam doesn't look up. He knows she's there. He's seen her when he first got in.
"Hey." He says, regardless.
"You found more monkshood."
"Yeah."
"You need... help with that?"
"I'm fine, thanks."
He can't help but steal a glance. He sees her standing there, arms crossed, hiding behind her hair, but not well enough, because even if her face betrays nothing, her eyes tell a different story. Sam wonders what that story might be, but can't get the deadpan tone of her voice when she suggested killing Jason and burying his body out of his head.
"I'm sorry." Brigitte says. Sam looks at her, and sees that she's looking away, at the ground.
She looks vulnerable beyond the telling of it, and he remembers that he has forgotten that she is, in so many ways.
He takes a branch and presents it to her. She smiles. He sees the world slow down to give him a slow-motion demonstration of the saddest sight he has seen – Brigitte Fitzgerald smiles with her lips, and her eyes stay dead and desperate.