"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Fourteen
"Ice Cream for Predators"
The petals are yellow. Sam checks to see if they've skimmed off the top, or if the order turned out lighter than it was supposed to have, but his triple beam says that it's all there. Good. This is insane on a whole new level, chasing the thinnest of leads to save the thinning thread they're hanging by, but it's all he has. It's barely Winter, and the seeds he has are still useless... especially since it doesn't look like they're going to be around in three months' time.
He reaches for his pack. Only one left. He has a spare, but other than that, fresh out. Shit. He lights up anyway. He does a sloppy job of grouping the branches together. All-in-all, having depleted the local craft store, they seem to have enough to get by.
They also have a fresh set of syringes, acquired with great difficulty, namely with Sam attempting, rather clumsily on account of a permanent pain inside him, to bribe the guy working the night shift at the pharmacy. The matter was resolved when Brigitte produced their old receipts and put on an unexpected amount of charm to grease the wheels.
Given that they're two days from January, the stock should last until late February.
If only any of it worked.
Neither will this, but it's so much more poisonous, and with any luck, they'll put themselves out of their mutual misery.
"Fuck." He mutters.
That's the brick wall. Sam wonders when his life, such as it used to be, became a desperate bid for survival. Chinese take-out boxes and used up syringes and dulled craft store knives, scars running down both arms, the sound of Brigitte's heartbeat constantly in his ears, no matter where in the greenhouse she is... the smell of her, hair and skin and wool and cloth and everything that's consuming him, a persistent reminder.
Something stirs in him. He ignores it. He listens in. He's sure that in his more inebriated moments, he can hear plants breathe. Not now. He listens in for the tell-tale sounds she makes.
Brigitte is not in the greenhouse.
Sam walks out into the biting cold, torch in hand, a white column of light scanning the ankle-high snow for any signs of a body, tracks, anything. Immediately, Sam sees it – a set of footprints, leading away from the driveway and...
"Oh fuck me..."
...right into the woods.
Sam follows the trail, running parallel to it in order not to lose it. His ears are perked, he's listening in for any sound at all that might signal a wolf, a lycanthrope, the Big Foot, whichever monster wants to come out and take a shot. All he can hear is his own breaths and the pounding of his own heart.
Sam stops right before the tree line. The footprints, relentless, continue on. He holds the torch up and scans from the outside, which is when he sees a small mark on one of the trunks – an apparent, shabbily-carved little G. Six jagged lines with a pocket knife, the pocket knife he had on him when Ginger killed him.
"You have got to be shitting me."
Sam breaks into a run. He knows every tree on the way, every stray branch, shrub or rock. You tend to remember where the bodies are buried when you've buried them, after all. The torch light scans, eerie white amidst the black, casting shadows on dead branches as he approaches. A sound begins to emerge, a sound he recognizes, like a song he's heard his entire life. Sniffing, as he is, from the cold. He cups a hand over the torch, cutting off most of the light. He stands perfectly still, listening in.
There it is. A moan.
It's barely audible, not even a whisper, but present and pronounced, the type of moan he's used to acquiring. It's pure sex, uncharacteristically so, and he can't help but feel a warmth shoot through him when he hears it again.
Then the chewing sound begins.
Sinew and flesh ground to paste between teeth. The smacking of the mouth as the tongue swirls to taste more of what's in it, trying to scrape a few more layers off of the meat. The guttural gulp when it goes down.
Sam takes his hand off the torch.
There she is.
She's on her knees, bent over what Sam sees is a run-of-the-mill white-tailed deer – no, fawn. It has no antlers and has the white spots and is currently lying right on top of Ginger's grave, dead. The torch highlights the blood that's freezing on the snow.
"Oh... God..." Sam manages.
The smell of the meat is overwhelming. He has more than half a mind to drop the torch and wrestle her into submission so that he can take the fawn and have himself some of that delicious trachea, but his shock overwhelms the hunger... for now.
"Brigitte..?" he manages to say.
Brigitte turns abruptly. Sam jumps and takes half a step back. Her face is stained with blood. It's everywhere but her eyes. There's a piece of God-knows-what dangling from her mouth and her eyes... motherfuck him, her eyes are almost glowing in the torch light.
"What the fuck..."
Brigitte slurps up the last bit of meat and starts chewing it. Sam is pulled to both sides – his stomach turns at the sight, because it's the most appetizing thing he has ever seen.
"Brigitte..." Sam mutters, his tongue feels like it's borderline vestigial by that point, "What did you do?"
Brigitte blinks. Again.
(think you see werewolves a lot?)
"Sam..?"
Brigitte looks at her hands. Her fingers are covered in blood, and some of it is freezing on her skin. Plasma popsicle. Her tongue itches to lick it, see what ice cream for predators is like. You scream, I scream, the fawn screamed for the lycanthrope's ice cream truck, and Brigitte feels the taste of raw meat in her mouth – so delicious that it's disgusting and it's so disgusting that it's beyond delicious, and the mere presence of the aftertaste makes her nauseous and desperate and scared and exhilarated and horny at the same time.
She doubles over and retches. Pieces of half-chewed meat come up with a torrent of bile.
(nothing helps except tearing live things to pieces)
In her mind, she's back in the basement where they all died, lapping Sam's blood right off the floor. That same revulsion, that same insane thrill of the revulsion is there and patting her on the back as she sticks her fingers down her throat to make herself throw it all up, to vomit everything that's eating her alive from the inside.
Sam shuts down completely and defaults to what he's seen and what he knows. He gets next to her and holds her hair up as she throws up, and holds onto her when the sobs start.
Once the moment passes, Brigitte feels tired beyond the telling of it. Sam sits down into the snow and leans back on the fawn's carcass. Brigitte scoots closer to him. Warmth is too much to ask, but she'll settle in that wall of shame moment, for the sake of not being alone.
Sam lights up a cigarette. He smokes quietly.
Brigitte holds out her hand, blood-soaked fingers open.
"Give me." she says.
Sam hands the cigarette over. She takes a drag. She watches the smoke disperse and dissipate when she exhales. She puts her head on Sam's shoulder.
"Alright, I'll say it." Sam says with a sigh, "We're fucked. We're not gonna make it."
"No." Brigitte murmurs, "We're not."
"Well, I guess we've tried everything... well. There's the yellow monkshood. Not that it's gonna do shit."
Brigitte freezes.
"What..?"
"I ordered some of the dried variety a while back. The roots are supposed to have healing properties, if you buy it. It's hell of a lot more poisonous than the one we've been shooting. It's a long shot, but after this... well, let's just say I'm not banking on it."
A flash in Brigitte's mind.
"Healing wolfsbane." She says.
"Yeah. Aconitum anthora."
(I'm not dying in this town with you)
Brigitte throws the cigarette away and dips her hands into the snow. Her fingers are numb and frostbite is assured, but she doesn't care. She brings her hands together and blows on them, and starts rubbing the snow in. It doesn't do a marvelous job, but it cleans some of the gore. She then gets up. Sam looks at her quizzically.
"Come on." She says.
(I'm not dying)
Brigitte washes her face and hands as Sam cooks up the wolfsbane. She looks at herself in the mirror. She tries to look into her own eyes, to see if there's anything behind them that's worth this, worth anything.
(you know what, I do see a monster)
What has she left to lose? Life?
What a joke.
(I'd rather die than be what you are)
"I think it's about as done as it's gonna be!" Sam calls.
Brigitte braces herself.
(can't be worse than being roadkill)
Sam stares at the syringe as Brigitte takes off her sweater. The liquid is not quite yellow, and it has a sickly, greenish tint that he doesn't like. If it glowed, he'd safely conclude that it's radioactive.
Brigitte takes off her necklace. The skull dangling off of it is miraculously unstained, and the cord its tied to is good enough for a makeshift tourniquet.
"I don't know about this, Brigitte." Sam says, "What if... ah fuck it, what if kills you right here?"
Brigitte carefully ties the necklace around her bicep. She squeezes it nice and tight.
"And why not together? Why just you? You first?"
(worst case scenario, you put her out of her misery)
Brigitte taps on her arm.
"I'm not gonna lose you." Brigitte says, "If anyone's gonna die, it's gonna be me."
"Who the fuck decided that? Seriously, we're talking about pure poison here! I'm not gonna just let you finally kill yourself, 'cause I didn't come this far just for this shit!"
Brigitte lies down on the bed. Sam stands there, unsure. She gestures for him to come along and feels for the vein. There it is, bulging, easily found.
Sam sits down on the bed.
"Oh, you're out of your mind..."
"Hey."
(you cannot try this alone)
"You said I can't try this alone." Brigitte says.
"Yeah." Sam remembers. His last day on Earth.
"I'm not alone." Brigitte says. She smiles, one of those rare occasions that Sam's seen her actually smile. "I've got you." She says.
Sam takes off his belt. It's leather, and though worn, it is perfect to bite down on.
The needle sinks in slowly. Sam is nervous. His thumb is on the plunger, but the liquid he'll push with it seems more and more dangerous, less and less right every passing nanosecond. He feels that he finally understands what she was feeling when she came to him with the monkshood: torn between trying to save her and wondering if he'll kill her in the process, he realizes what an asshole he is, because the words seemed so easy to offer when they left his lips back then.
(understand that you might kill her trying to save her)
"Ready?" he asks.
Brigitte nods.
Sam injects.