"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Nine
"Blind to Supernovas"
It's boring, repetitive work that involves a lot of waiting, time Brigitte spends clamming up and Sam wastes by smoking a joint. He offers it to her as well, but she refuses – she doesn't want any drugs. That's fine, more for him. In his mind, he's thinking about the Winchester rifle tucked away in a place he alone knows, that he's going to have to have her have it handy in order to have any semblance of security.
They prepare several syringes' worth of monkshood. One is all they need to kick it off, and the rest is for keeps.
Sam gets tired of the process quickly once his weed runs out. His body, he's noticed, is metabolizing it with record speed. He glances at the puncture marks. The light, pinkish scar tissue flesh is there, but the wounds have closed and stopped hurting.
"So what's your idea?" Brigitte asks shyly.
(mine were never good, just barely passable, just like me)
"Easy. I give you the rifle, I inject him, we see how he does. If it doesn't kill him, and if he's back to normal, we give him three syringes, tell him to take it when his symptoms flare up, but to keep an eye on the intervals."
"That seems like a lot to ask." Brigitte says, "Especially from him."
"He wants to live, he's gonna have to get smart. It's either this or your idea, and excuse me for not wanting to write him off as another casualty just yet."
Brigitte averts her gaze. She's been expecting that.
(living things make me sick)
"And that's without getting into our problem, which is that we're gonna have to shoot up too."
(an overdose sounds like the order of the day, death is always on the menu and I used to be so hungry)
Brigitte considers it. There's an elephant in the room.
"And if we get worse?"
"I told you, I have some seeds."
"If fresh monkshood's the answer."
"What do you propose, that we hang ourselves right now?"
(alone in the dark, the snow will cover my footsteps)
Brigitte shakes her head. That's a piece of Ginger she's not ready to face, or to let go of just yet.
"One problem." She says, "I don't think I have the best aim. You should have the rifle. I'll inject him."
"I don't wanna tempt him into growing a pair."
Brigitte feels herself blush and wonders if he can tell. The slightest twitch in his eyes betrays his seemingly calm mask. She looks away.
Brigitte turns the key and the padlock holding the shed door clacks open, prompting Jason to go unusually silent. Brigitte pockets the key and slides the padlock off. She grips the syringe and pops the cap with her index finger. She has a pair of garden shears in her other hand, held right above the handles. Better safe than lycanthrope chow.
Behind her, Sam is waiting, machete in hand, having abandoned the rifle due to neither one of them being crack shots in a pinch. Brigitte glances at him, one hand on the shed door, and sees that he looks awkward and out of place with his weapon. It's the will to kill, she notices, the intent. He doesn't have it. She's seen Ginger's face, the way she looked after she tore the janitor's heart to pieces. She knows what a killer instinct looks like.
Sam looks more like a scared kid putting up a brave front.
(just go for the show)
Jason McCardy is tied up good. Somewhat rusty but sturdy-looking chains tie his ankles to the post, rise up from behind it to snake around his torso, and then tie his hands a little bit above his head. There are several belts, borrowed from power tools (Brigitte spies a chainsaw in the cornerand her mouth waters at the thought of it revving, the delightful sound interrupted by the sound of her mentally slapping herself) that serve as a makeshift muzzle that leaves barely enough room for his nostrils to suck in air.
His eyes are burning embers, flaying Brigitte's skin with a mere look.
"This is for your own good." Brigitte says, "This is the cure."
Jason growls a muffled, unintelligible protest. Business as usual.
Sam approaches from behind her and stands there, making sure Jason sees the machete. Jason does, and begins to laugh. Brigitte lets him have his fun, because as the doomed victim laughs, the other victims remember the first time his life was ever a topic of interest.
(you gave it to Jason)
"Sorry, McCardy."
Brigitte makes a move. Jason makes one right back.
The chains snap and Jason delivers a kick to Brigitte's stomach. The wind is knocked out of her, and she sees black spots dancing merry little jigs in front of her eyes as Jason tears off his makeshift muzzle. Jason's boot collides with Brigitte's side and snaps a rib, eliciting a scream out of her.
Sam doesn't think, Sam swings. Jason instinctively lifts up an arm and the machete cuts him down to the bone, inviting blood to gush out of the wound. Brigitte feels it splash on her face, and a few stray droplets leap into her mouth, flaring up every taste bud they touch. Jason screams in pain and anger as Brigitte tries to ignore the pain erupting from her bruised kidney. Sam pulls back the machete. Jason immediately closes a hand on his wound.
"I don't wanna do this, man!" Sam shouts, "C'mon, hey - we're trying to help you here!"
"You smug son of a-"
Sam never learns what he's a smug son of.
Jason is cut short by Brigitte jabbing the garden shears right into his leg. She shifts, agony coursing through her, and wedges her arm in between the handles, thanking for once that she's such a skeleton, and uses it as leverage. The shears open, ripping right through his flesh. A torrent of blood comes gushing out, and that's when Jason loses his balance and falls backwards. His head hits the concrete pole with a loud crack, the crack that, for Brigitte, recalls the memory of the first real corpse in the kitchen.
Jason's body slides down, his cracked skull leaving a trail of blood as it scrapes the post, all the way down.
Silence.
Then, a word.
"Shit..."
Through clenched teeth, Brigitte becomes aware of her lungs working overtime to make her hyperventilate through what just happened.
The smell of blood in her nostrils is overwhelming. Eau de Vitae, and it's positively intoxicating. Just from the smell, she can feel a heat beginning to pulse between her legs.
Sam's voice cuts it down to size and brings back the pain of her rib.
"Oh, shit..."
(he's dead isn't he)
Brigitte moves, remembering one of many Ginger lessons in which she told her about the quirks of human anatomy. Like pulse, detectable right below the wrist and on the jugular, on right side of the neck.
Her broken rib makes her scream out at the slightest movement. She bites down on her coat and reaches out to check. Her fingers, like that of a professional ER doctor, find the spot immediately. Practice makes perfect.
There is no pulse. Jason McCardy is dead, she confirms, and Sam concurs:
"Fuck!"
For the briefest moments, half-blind from the pain, Brigitte expects to see supernovas, but all she sees is a starless, cold landscape, pitch black.
Sam, by reflex, lights up a cigarette. He gets down on one knee, just an excuse, to keep his right leg elevated so she doesn't see just how fucking hard he is and he knows that if he wasn't terrified out of his mind, he might dwell on how fucked that is; but as it stands, he's scared shitless. His mind feels like a crackhead hornet's nest on a sugar high, with every thought buzzing and bouncing off the honeycomb walls.
He notices that he still has the machete in his hand and wet blood is dripping off the blade and he has half a mind to lick that right up.
"We killed him." He says, snapping to, as if he's only now discovering the obvious, "Shit, we fucking killed him..."
Brigitte tries to stand, or at least recover to a crawling position. Her hair scrapes the ground and soaks in the spreading pool of Jason's blood.
Sam is still going.
"Fucking sh-"
"Shut up, I'm trying to think!" Brigitte hisses through clenched teeth.
Sam shuts up. Brigitte tries to think. They both end up staring at the body.
(if we weren't here, would we eat him?)
"Hold off on the monkshood." Brigitte hisses. The pain has lessened, but not to a point where it could be called manageable. Moving is a war, "I need to heal. We go with plan A."
Sam glares at her. Brigitte notices that the curvature of his ears look sharpened somewhat.
"You inject." She says, "I'll stay. Come back when you're done. We have to bury the body."
Sam's mouth opens, and Brigitte imagines that it's to protest. When she manages to speak, her voice is almost pleading.
"Just go, Sam."
Sam drops the machete and stumbles on out of the toolshed. Brigitte finds a position she's quasi-comfortable in, and lies there, staring at the trail of blood Jason's skull has left on the post. For some reason, it seems like the most interesting thing in existence – it's just that mundane at this point.
(maybe even your final moment's a cliché around here)
Sam wakes up with a start and the bump on his head makes its presence known. Confused, he looks around. The vaguely familiar surroundings of his own bedroom seem out of sync. He looks at himself, just to get some perspective, and sees that the syringe is still stuck in his arm. He pulls it out and tosses it somewhere that he knows he will find out about when it jabs him one random night.
He looks at his hands and sees blood. In a flash, his senses return, dragging his memory along for the ride. He gets to his feet a bit too fast and gets dizzy, shakes a bit. He grabs a spare monkshood dose from his desk, pockets it and rushes back out.
He finds Brigitte right where he remembers she was. He crouches to inspect her. Her eyes are open, just glass-like. Expresionless. She's breathing. He can see streaks of tears on her face, having left clean trails across all the blood that she... no. Forget about it.
"Brigitte..?"
She flinches. Tells him all he needs to know.
"Come on." He says and grabs her arm. He lifts her up like she's a rag doll, a traumatized rag doll with lots of issues to sift through, but she's lighter than she looks with all the layers she has on. Sam manages to get her to her feet. Careful not to touch her side, he sits her up.
"I have the monkshood." He says.
Her stare is blank. He nevertheless takes the syringe out and demonstrates it. When she doesn't react, he pulls the cap off with his teeth, puts the syringe in his mouth and proceeds to roll up her sleeves, plural. He's aware that she's watching him now, her dead eyes dead set on the sight of her would-be savior in another life. He doesn't remember a time when he felt more like a drug dealer than now.
There's the coat, the sweater, the long-sleeve t-shirt, and when they're gone, all he's left is a pale arm with skin thin enough to let him see the veins – the rolled up sleeves provide enough pressure for it to be visible, though not to bulge.
The needle sinks in easily. She doesn't flinch to that either.
"I hope you healed enough."
He looks up. She bends down, and before he can react, kisses him, her free hand coming up from behind him to hold the back of his neck, holding him in place. He lets her, and as they kiss, he presses the plunger down.
Sam carries Brigitte back into the greenhouse. She weighs a bit more when she's asleep. He sets her on his bed. He doesn't drape the quilt over her, as there are quite a few layers on her already. She curls up in a ball, turning to her side and drawing her knees to her chest. He makes a mental note to tweak the dose a bit – if this is going to be a regular thing, can't have them passing out every time they have to dose.
Her lips part and she whispers:
"Ginge..."
Sam stands there, tired, weak and beside himself and knows that maybe he wasn't meant to hear that.