"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Fifteen
"Healing Wolfsbane"
The liquid starts spreading rapidly, and while Brigitte is used to feeling any injection hurt at the entrance point, this time, it branches out, rushing through the network of veins and touching each one in turn. Her breaths get caught up in her chest and once the cure reaches her heart, she chokes. Her limbs spring and she starts shaking, convulsing where she lies. Sam throws the syringe away and holds her down by the shoulders.
"Brigitte!" he shouts, "Brigitte!"
Her eyes roll to the back of her skull and she lets out a strangled sound.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Brigitte!"
(make it stop please make it stop please make it stop it burns)
White-hot pain drowning out everything else, pouring from a bright point in her arm somewhere, on another continent and in another life, waiting to be released into her. White-hot, like the pokers they tortured witches with in all those movies. The Name of the Rose with Sean Connery, the fear of laughter because how can you laugh at your own death? That's her. She's Jorge of Burgos, blind to the world and condemning it.
(you only have two options then, don't you?)
Let it. Let the burning white-wash herself from herself, let it burn everything down. Search and Destroy. Brigitte Fitzgerald can't live, she never learned how to; even all those years ago, all she wanted was to die, and she was so happy when her sister joined her and made it a project, made it part of the Pact.
(either give in)
Waiting, counting down the days and afraid she'll fuck it up, afraid people will laugh at her, afraid people will reject her even when she's a corpse. It's not an image issue, it's not vanity: she just wants to be the beautiful that she's not, that she never will be. Then, after everything, finding herself wanting to live, wanting to breathe and let them laugh, let them push her away, push her around and aside, because they're all dead anyway, they're all dead but she's not.
(or give up)
He's shouting her name. He's still there, he still hasn't given up on her, still hasn't thrown her away. She's not dying alone, because he's there, trying to get through to her and why? What has she done to deserve it? All she ever did was to fuck his life up, kill him, and all for what? For who? For Ginger? For herself? Forget everything else, forget the sex, forget the stolen kisses, forget his hasty declarations of not thinking of her that way – he's all she has.
She doesn't know if it's enough.
(it only dies if you do)
Brilliant white light, borne from the pain, obscures the room – if it indeed is a room. It feels like one, all boxed in and sealed off. There are shadows overhead that are writhing in an incoherent mass.
She's wearing a black hoodie with the hood raised. Strands of henna-colored hair, mixed with strands of white are pouring out of it... black cargo pants, black combat boots, black blouse...
...the bird skull necklace dangling from her neck.
Pale white skin on cherubic cheeks, mischievous green eyes... full lips, curled in a half-smile.
Brigitte hears her own voice quivering, mousy and pathetic.
"G-G-G-Ginger..?"
"Look what the cat dragged in." Ginger says.
Brigitte can't speak.
"What's the matter, Bee? No hello? No I missed you? I come back from the dead for you and you're just gonna what, stand there and stare at me?"
"You're not real."
"Bullshit." Ginger grins, "I'm as real as you are. Real as the poison that you've got in your veins right now. You're dying, y'know." Brigitte's eyes widen, "That's right. You took pure poison like a fucking idiot, and now you're dying. Dead in the scene, just like me."
Brigitte's tongue is in knots. There are so many things she wants to say, so many things she never got to say, too much to put into words.
She can hear an echo scattering in the distance, desperate and insistent. There's not much time, she knows.
"So, here we are. Just like before. United against life as we know it, Bee, how does it feel?"
"Ginger, I..."
Ginger cocks her head towards Brigitte, waiting.
Brigitte runs up to her and pulls her into a hug. She's crying, she knows, and holding Ginger close enough to feel her heartbeat.
"I was lost without you." Brigitte says, "You left me all alone."
Ginger's hands are in the air. She's not retuning the embrace.
"I love you, Ginger." Brigitte whispers, "And I'm sorry..." she sobs, "I'm so... so sorry..."
As Brigitte openly weeps, she feels her sister return the embrace. Brigitte holds her tighter.
The echo is calling. Growing louder. Slithering into the white room.
"Yeah, well, sorry can't undo a knife to the chest." Ginger says, "But it's a start, don't you think?"
Brigitte keeps crying, her shoulders shaking.
"Remember that game we used to play when we were little?" Ginger said, her hands gently caressing Brigitte's back, "The one where we'd make ourselves hold our breath until we passed out? And you'd always get scared and call mom and I'd get in trouble?"
Brigitte draws back, just enough to see Ginger's face, to etch her face into her memory.
"That game really sucked." Ginger says.
Brigitte can't help it. She bursts out laughing.
Together, they laugh, holding onto each other in the heart of the room, away from everything, entombed in the safety one of one another.
The echo is screaming now, splitting everything apart with its razor-sharp resonance. Someone is screaming.
"I miss you." Brigitte says.
"You're supposed to. I'm dead."
Brigitte holds out her hand.
"Out by sixteen or dead in this scene." she says.
Ginger takes the hand offered. Their fingers interlock.
"Together forever." Ginger says, "Now breathe. You're about to lose the game."
The echo is calling...
"...motherfuck me, come on! Come on!"
The first breath cuts just like the first wound – sharp, deep, inconsolable. Her lungs stretch to their limit and then contract, exhaling, and Brigitte feels her breath tear something out of her throat just to scatter it into the air. She starts coughing as her lungs begin to work overtime, to make up for when they were still. The external pressure on her chest disappears, but she can still feel it, internally. She doubles over, one arm sweeping the air to give herself some room to breathe, and she tries to see, to feel, to have a sense of where she is.
"Shit... oh shit, that was close... that was in the red."
The familiar, rugged surface of the worn-out faux-Persian rug. A cliché accessory for an otherwise functional room. The familiar view of the doorway, leading to the corridor that she once walked down, expecting to find nothing but the end of it all. The worn-out frame, sporting a few bent splinters. The smell of soil, wood, glass, cigarettes and marijuana.
Familiar place. Sam's place.
Home.
Just as soon as it fades in, her consciousness fades out and all goes black.
In the darkness, somebody calls somebody's name. Somebody lives. Somebody can't believe that this was caused by the impossible only to circle back to that, in the end.
(not by what you think, they don't exist)
When Brigitte comes to, she's lying in Sam's bed. She's down to her underwear and under the covers. As blood flow asserts itself, a nasty gash on her arm makes itself known by starting throb dully. Her throat dry as the desert and still trying to get the morning blur out of her eyes, Brigitte lifts up her arm to inspect the source of the feeling. There's a thin strip of gauze there, stained, but it appears fresh.
Brigitte rubs her eyes. She sniffs to clear her nose.
Her eyes fly open and awakening, the fast-forwarded version, descends.
She expects to differentiate the different smells present in the room. Detergent used to wash the sheets, rye whiskey, cigarettes, leftover ashes, weed, soil, wood, glass, surgical steel, fibers in the rug, wax of the candle, 40 proof alcohol, her own sweat, his shampoo, iodine... but there's nothing. They are all there, but faint, like the ambient hum of rooms – indistinct until approached, focused on.
She props herself up on her elbows.
Could it have..?
(you can't fix this)
Brigitte knows that shooting up monkshood does that. The first surge of the antitode dulls the sharpened senses to the level of a baseline human, pushing the world back as it pushes back the Curse. The withdrawal to the next dose is the grace period, in which the symptoms slowly re-emerge.
Waking up being the exception. Brigitte knows that opening her eyes then is like being reintroduced to the repressed instincts that animals have but humans have lost for the most part.
But now, she just feels like she stayed up all night watching horror flicks with Ginger and now has to get through school with barely an hour of rest.
(what happened..?)
The name leaves her lips by the virtue of the same instinct, expresse differently.
"Sam..?"
Brigitte gets up. Her bare feet find the texture of the rug pleasant and she manages to stand. She glances at Sam's desk, and sees that, amidst all the junk, there is a single solitary syringe filled with a yellow liquid. The healing wolfsbane. Brigitte takes it.
"Sam?" she calls out again.
No answer.
Her heart starts beating faster as she cautiously approaches the door and peers at the hallway. Nothing but the plants. She steps out of the bedroom.
"Sam, are you here?"
Just the ordinary cracks and pops of the greenhouse. Brigitte takes a step further. Something sharp enters her sole, startling her and eliciting a small yelp. She steps back and looks down.
A small, glittering sea. Glass, but not clear. Tinted. She puts one hand on the threshold of the room and inspects her sole. A small shard. She pulls it out. It's thicker than the windows, thinner than the vials and the ashtrays...
The TV is lying right outside the entrance of the living room, now just a hollow box with the screen smashed in. From the looks of things, she guesses it was thrown from inside the living room.
(oh God, I hope not)
Brigitte goes back to the room and pulls on her socks and shoes. She picks up a woodcarving knife she finds on his desk. Better safe than guilty and sorry.
She doesn't intend to use it, but then again, she never intended to do a lot of things.
Brigitte heads out and into the living room.
(be careful – that would've been the last thing I ever said to him, but he never was. He stuck by me. That's not careful at all)
He's sitting in a corner with his legs spread, and in between them are four syringes, all spent.
Brigitte freezes in place when she first sees him. It's not the state of him, that is just an afterthought to her... but he does look like a mess. His hair is a bit longer. His ears are sharp and longer than that of an average human. His chin is a bit more prominent, she sees, and his fingernails are small daggers sticking out of their beds. He seems to have put on a bit of bulk, if that is indeed possible – his body is filling up his clothes quite nicely.
His right arm is held higher, as it is cuffed to a pipe sticking out of the wall... with three different handcuffs. She sees that there are a few scars on his wrist already, and that he's scraped off a few layers of paint and rust from the pipe.
She feels the syringe in her hand as if it weighs a ton.
(it's a super antioxidant, radical detox)
Maybe it's time, but her legs refuse to move, refuse to go near that thing.
(not a thing, it's a he, it's a boy, and if he has cooties, I have the cure)
Brigitte inches closer. Sam doesn't stir. She hides her hand holding the knife behind her, on the off chance he wakes up and comes to the conclusion that she's there to kill him. Three steps left and that's when his eyes open. He looks straight at her. She freezes, trying not to scream – the eyes she's seen in many different states now reflect nothing but an intensely focused killer instinct. Jaws of death held in sockets.
"Well hell-o, hello hello..."
His tone is acidic, but his jawline flexes, and Brigitte sees his expression soften somewhat.
He's hungry.
"Yeah, it's me." He tugs at the handcuffs, "Don't ask where I got them from." he says, "Somebody had to do something. You were not in any position to... so to speak."
"I..."
(and what do we say to the people we've wronged, Brigitte?)
"I have the cure."
Sam laughs. It's a sickening, guttural sound, closer to baying than laughter.
"That shit's not a cure, you know. It just slows the transformation. It doesn't stop it, B." she flinches at his emphasis, "Nothing stops it."
"It cured me." she says, "It works, Sam. Look."
Brigitte surreptitiously slips the knife into her panties, feeling the cold blade against her skin, and demonstrates the cut on her arm. She takes off the bandages. The cut is starting to close, but it's still not healed.
Sam blinks. He instinctively sniffs the air, trying to catch the scent of blood.
"Three days, no monkshood. Nice. I was hoping it would bleed." He licks his lips, "It should've healed."
"It didn't. See? It works. The stuff works."
"Don't you come near me with that thing. It killed you."
"I'm still here."
"...just for a minute. Longest fucking minute of my fucking life."
"...will you let me help you?"
(let me be the hero for once, let me save you)
Sam appears to consider it. By the way his eyes are darting all over her body (her neck, her eyes, her breasts, her legs, her thighs, her boots), he's considering either eating her or fucking her, or both, and all a far cry from simply letting her give him the cure.
It passes. He goes all stiff, and restraint takes a foothold.
"Ah, fuck it. I'll try anything."
Brigitte braces herself. She retrieves the knife, and gets to the spot between his legs. She goes down on one knee. She can smell the hunger in his breath. Her stomach churns, but she still holds.
"You can always fall further." Sam says, looking away, exposing his neck to her. She can see the artery, engorged, pulsating with every beat of his heart. Brigitte wounds the blow. She can't afford to go slow – he can turn his head and take a bite out of her at any moment.
"Okay." She says, "Now hold still. This is gonna..."
"Pinch a little? I know that."
Brigitte's thumb settles on the plunger.
"No." she says, "No, Sam. It's going to hurt like a bitch."
Brigitte stabs the needle into his neck and empties its contents into his body before he can even begin to respond.