Safe
Long is the way that out of Hell leads up to light.
Brigitte pressed down by pounding, pulsing silence.
(violent, visceral nightmare, shrieking virus, burning, always faint burning)
Did she ever hate as viciously as Ginger? Had it somehow become their shared habit over time, or was her own hatred cultivated somewhere beyond the dark small space between?
(angelic noise, relentless grinding of machines, Fitzgeralds caught somewhere inside, snagged in the gears, ripped, mutilated)
They'd spent hours shut inside with photography, tricks of light and shadow, morbid theatrics. Rain will drip into the teacups, dilute the bleach, dilute the poison, slide gently down her sister's pretty impersonating face like tears she didn't have, didn't ever have for anyone except herself.
I can't be like this I can't be like this I can't be like this I can't be like this I can't be –
"Wake up, sleepyhead. It's time."
-----
"Are you …" That same voice from before, concerned, fearful, and hopeful. Brigitte's eyes fluttered open. She didn't want to move and discover the paralysis she was sure she'd suffered. "You … overdosed." The memory hit her in a wave of cold insanity, and she felt sick to her core. And worse, she'd been found. She had no idea how she'd deal with that, as she'd grown so used to her newfound independence it had seemed like she'd lived that way all her life. She'd discovered quite quickly that she didn't need anybody's assistance to simply exist, contrary to everything she'd ever been taught.
The blinds were drawn, frail light seeping through. The room was small and bland, but well-kept. Brigitte supposed it was the very early hours of morning.
She fished her semi-conscious mind for a response or excuse, but it offered her nothing. Someone or something had painfully sandpapered the inside, leaving only smooth, blank skull.
"You have to tell me what you're taking." The wounds on his face leapt out at her. How could she not have noticed them before? Was injury that commonplace now?
"What happened to your face?" she asked, lowly, both to avoid his question and to satisfy her curiosity.
He paused, taken aback by the inquiry. Turning slightly away, he grazed the surface of the laceration with tense fingers.
"You don't remember …"
The smooth skull shrieked with half-lost memory, Ginger's fingernails on a chalkboard.
"I was going to get help for you … and something attacked me just as I was getting into the car. I think I ran over it when we were driving away." A flurry of panic arose. "It might have been a coyote, but it seemed too …" He closed his eyes, didn't finish his thought. "I was going to take you to the hospital …"
Brigitte again, couldn't find words. Ginger could create and unfurl lies seemingly without effort, and here she was, struggling. At least she had the oft-cited right to remain silent, as she always had. The one right she could retain, even when life was shattered and her body convulsed with the Curse, or monkshood, or both.
"I don't need to go there," she stated, feigning calmness.
"I saw the syringe. I watched you pass out." He leaned in, eyes pleading despite his attempt at an authoritarian tone. "You need help, Brigitte Fitzgerald."
She started for a moment at the mention of her name, but then recalled the books and the library card. Two could play at this game.
"What I need, Jeremy, is not something that you or any hospital can give me."
"What do you need, then?"
Confusion tore through the white space. She replied with subdued shock. "Right now … I don't know."
-----
Hours slid by, increasing the boredom in increments that had become almost unbearable. She was too fatigued for any movement, save turning to face the wall rather than the chocked full bookshelves and meticulous cleanliness. Ginger came and went, alternately snarling at her for her foolishness and comforting her for her fear.
Jeremy had left for his "day job," which was apparently more pressing than the addict in his room. Ginger pointed this out as soon as the door closed behind him.
"Give him a break, Ginge; he doesn't know what he's in for," Brigitte said weakly, resurfacing from under a thin layer of sleep. The redhead wrinkled her nose, flicking her bored gaze up from her sister to the bookshelves.
"I think he knows exactly what he's in for." She smirked in distaste. "Or hopes he's in for."
"The world isn't nearly as full of rapists as you'd like to think," snapped Brigitte.
"Did you already forget how he stared at you in the library? What he said to you?" Brigitte furrowed her brow in irritation and turned on her other side. A rustle of sheets, Ginger's icy whisper in her ear. "They're all the same, Brigitte, and it's never worth it."
"He saved me."
"That thing wasn't going to kill you. You know that."
"At least I'm safe … a little."
"Safe? You think you're SAFE? He could send you to some hospital any time he wants to, and THEN you'll be really, really safe." Brigitte buried her head beneath a pillow to escape Ginger's accusations and outrage. It turned from voice to static, roaring in her ears, in her head, until she thought she'd go insane(-er). Finally it ebbed away; Ginger had retreated to lurk in the darker recesses of her sister's subconscious. Brigitte stayed perfectly still, waiting for it to lash back out again, and after a few moments in which she could have sworn her heartbeat ceased, she bolted upright. And noticed that there were absolutely no injuries or aches to speak of. With muted horror, she realized that all results of the attack, presuming that there had been any, had already healed. She couldn't have been here for more than three hours.
Cautiously edging herself upwards to a sitting position, she slid her feet over the edge of the bed, hitting the floor much sooner than she'd expected. Jeremy's bed was just two mattresses stacked in a corner, she thought, blearily amused, and walked over to the shelves, feeling imaginary shards of glass cut into the soles of her feet.
She expected Ginger to comment on it, but no one was there; no apparition, psychological residue, or whisper. Brigitte looked over to the door, irrationally half-expecting to see Jeremy entering the room. When no disturbance had occurred after two minutes of waiting, she pulled out the first comic book she saw.
And abruptly closed it. How could Jeremy have so little shame? She almost felt herself getting angry, but subconsciously opted for embarrassment instead. That was easier to deal with. If Ginger was right in saying that all men were the same, then she couldn't exactly condemn risqué comic books as being a particular downfall of Jeremy and Jeremy alone. It was trivial, after all. It didn't matter. She gave the rest of the spines a sweeping glance, stepped through the hot coals to the door, and tentatively opened it just far enough to glimpse whatever lay outside. In that thin strip of vision, nothing particularly jarring. She slipped on through.
An apartment, like she'd thought. It seemed somehow un-lived in; like Jeremy had moved here years ago and never bothered to unpack. The furniture was stale and lifeless, created with concern for function rather than aesthetics. Not that different from home, really, with the exception of her shared bedroom, the only place in Bailey Downs from which the aura of life -- or rather, death -- ever seemed to emanate. She had loved that room, and it made her nostalgic and faintly ill to think of it now. She shoved the black-and-white television, the hanging bangles, the wall of Polaroids, all to the back of her mind, and stepped cautiously down the short hallway, which ended in a room that was half kitchen and half living space. And spotless, too. She scowled a little at that. It'd be so much easier to hate Jeremy if he was a slob. There was stuff in here; more than the bedroom. The tiny television which looked like it had been scavenged from a dumpster and scrubbed clean was surrounded by four different game consoles, the wires of which were, unsurprisingly, untangled and neatly coiled. The kitchen was cramped and non-descript, and she opened the small fridge tentatively, wondering briefly if she'd be able to hide the vials somehow without Jeremy noticing. But nobody was that clueless.
The phone rang. She'd deal with the fridge issue later.
"Hello? Jeremy?" A small, pertinent female voice carried across the line. "The people at the library weren't returning my calls, so I looked you up in the yellow pages to ask you if you'd gotten the third issue of 'Immortal Wolf Woman' in yet."
Brigitte's heart stopped. Was this somebody's idea of a joke?
… Did they know?
Almost instinctively (she and Ginger had dealt with frequent prank calls), she responded.
"Don't ever call this number again," she growled, slipping the receiver, still emitting endless chatter, back onto the cradle. Immediately, she regretted vocalizing her anger. Her voice may not be overtly feminine, but it would be impossible to confuse with the male librarian's.
Smart move, B. Brigitte turned to see Ginger leaning back against the fridge, arms crossed, black sweatshirt casting a dim shadow over her petulant stare. Brigitte swallowed her excuse, and turned to go sit on the beige couch. Ginger looked aside, chewing on imaginary gum, then turned her accusatory gaze back to Brigitte and strode over.
"I don't have anywhere to keep the monkshood," said the brunette, shivering a little in panic. "If I stay here, I'll have to keep them in the fridge, and he'll see them."
"Then, why stay? You were doing just fine before, with that thing always right behind you." Her voice dripped sarcasm, and it made Brigitte slightly nauseous. There was no arguing with the fact that she was safer here, even with the constant threat of convalescence. She speculated that as long as she didn't overdose again, Jeremy wouldn't have the nerve or ambition to turn her in.
"I won't leave until ..." Her throat suddenly constricted at the notion of finally relinquishing her last grip on herself. "If I'm going to continue to stave it off, I'm going to need the monkshood."
The best place to hide something is in plain sight. Didn't the lives we used to have teach you that much?
Brigitte nodded slowly, hooked powerlessly in place by Ginger's cornflower blue stare.
The building is right next to another one, with six inches of space between. For some reason, they still put windows on the side that faces that other building, and there's a narrow ledge a foot or so below it. It's still winter; the air will keep them cold enough out there.
"That window?" she asked, pointing to one of two that provided the dual room with meager light. All that she could see through it was another brick wall. She stood and approached it, the needles beneath her feet growing steadily fewer in number, and heaved the window frame with its peeling, chipped paint upwards. Cold air rushed in and Brigitte smiled to herself, sticking her upper body through and bending downwards to view the ledge. It was there, but couldn't have been more than two inches across. The narrow, filthy alleyway thirty feet below, strewn with broken glass from windows and beer bottles, hardly provided a safe place for the vials to land. She withdrew, and looked around the room, then strode to the kitchen, rifling through the drawers until she came across grey duct tape and a pair of old scissors.
Hasn't this turned into quite the DIY.
Five cold and uncomfortable minutes later, with the windowsill jutting into her abdomen all the while, the vials were sitting on the ledge beneath the window, taped securely against the wall. Save for one, which she decided to keep on her person or within reach at all times. The room temperature might dull its effect, but lukewarm monkshood was better than no monkshood, should it come to that. And she hoped it wouldn't.
The digital screen on the stove read 4:06 PM. She had no way of knowing when her captor of sorts might return, so she flopped onto the couch, which smelled faintly of some cleaning chemical despite its manifold rips and tears, fished under it for the remote, and switched on the TV. Flipping through channel after inane channel, she finally settled on some science documentary. The fascination science always imbued was fleeting this time, and she began to drift off again. She couldn't remember being this tired in her life, and did not enjoy it at all. Did it have something to do with the attack? She doubted it. She'd been in those kinds of situations plenty of times before, and they never exactly made her want to curl up and sleep afterwards. Regardless of her mind's constant revolt to the idea of sleep, five more minutes of droning had her practically dead to the world.
-----
Jeremy wove through the grocery store, impressing even himself with his calmness. Or maybe what was just his facade of calmness, which he maintained while his world fell into a very quiet calamity. He'd always been frighteningly good at hiding tumultuous emotions and situations. He was harboring a teenage drug addict in his home. He drew a deep breath, and pushed his cart into the check-out line. A cute teenage drug addict, maybe, but that didn't justify much in the eyes of the law.
"They found a trail of blood down by the motel, but no body. It looked as though something had been run over ..."
"Eugh! That's disturbing. Do you think it was someone's dog?"
"They're not sure. Seemed like too much blood for a dog."
The ongoing dialogue between two people in line behind him, whose faces he couldn't even bring himself to look back at, caused Jeremy to realize that to have one's blood freeze wasn't just a saying. He fumbled with his wallet and quickly paid for the two grocery bags of food in cash (he couldn't be bothered to register for a credit card or deal with the payments and debts), scooped them up in his rather skinny arms, and hurried off to his car. He had been surprised to find out that considerably little damage had been done to it. The fender had been bent slightly inwards from the impact with ... well, with whatever that thing had been, but the car was so ugly already that it hardly made a difference. All in all, it didn't give the impression that it had ever been in an accident -- all the damages were of an eventual and underfinanced nature.
He slid the bags into the backseat, slid himself into the front, fastened his seatbelt like he always did, and put the unadorned key into the ignition, but he hesitated before turning it. There was no way they'd know that it was him who hit that thing. No one had witnessed the incident. Brigitte was another matter entirely. Her presence itself didn't need to be kept under wraps, per se -- it was her addiction that he needed to keep anybody else from ever learning of, at least until he had come to a conclusion regarding how to best deal with it. In the meantime, he'd pay off Brigitte's overdue fees himself, and destroy all record that she'd ever been to the library, the management of which hadn't even known that he'd left to give her the books. It wouldn't be too hard; Jeremy by no means considered himself much of a computer nerd, but the library's outdated organizational system didn't exactly make clicking and dropping a file that difficult of a feat. Beyond the completion of these relatively simple matters, he started to feel conflicted towards the situation.
He owed it to Brigitte, to himself, and to God to help her; he knew that instinctively. She might not want his aid, but he was bound by kindness and righteousness to give it to her. But he also knew that the rehabilitation centers, at least around here, did very little to help the people who were sent there. They were practically prisons, under the pretense that the kids would just get better by being locked away. It almost reminded him of the Victorian insane asylums that he'd read about during a rather fleeting fascination with the history of mental health, through which morbidly voyeuristic people willing to pay an entrance fee would be led through to see the "Ophelias," as the young insane women were occasionally called.
He dispelled everything -- he'd deal with it later, later, always later, as the tortured engine sputtered to life for the millionth time. His apartment was across town. Usually he'd walk such a relatively short distance, but the current burden presented a bit of a problem. Even his more miserly inclinations had to be undercut by rationality at some point, and he preferred that to be a point before he passed out from exhaustion. He looked fine, not particular attractive by his own standards, perhaps, but he couldn't complain. However, that did not mean he was physically fit in any sense of the word, because he, quite simply, was not.
Naturally, he indulged in rich food such as the pasta he'd just bought, but it caused no extra pudge. He'd been blessed with a fast metabolism, but the powers that be had dispensed onto him no stamina whatsoever. In any case, he liked pasta. So what? He hoped Brigitte did, too. He hadn't meant to imply that beggars could be choosers, of course. Jeremy smiled bitterly to himself at the hackneyed phrase which rang so hollowly in response to everything he'd experienced in the last 24 hours. Beggars like Brigitte could never choose.
-----
"Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up," Jeremy said as he set the paper bags down on the ugly linoleum countertop. Brigitte stirred and sat up almost immediately, eyeing him with ill-concealed paranoia as he began to put everything he'd bought, package by package, into the small fridge. She felt suddenly relieved that she had taken Ginger's advice and hidden the purple liquid elsewhere. "I hope you like spagh – whoa," Jeremy said involuntarily as he suddenly noticed the girl who had appeared silently next to him. Brigitte stared at him, bored, then examined the packages he'd set on the counter rather than in the fridge. Jeremy smiled weakly, and yet again attempted to engage her in some sort of conversation. "It's not too labor-intensive, if you'd like to help." She nodded with a very serious expression, and the effect was so bizarre and cute that Jeremy had to cough to keep from laughing. "There's a pot in that drawer over there. Fill it up with water from the tap and boil it." Brigitte's eyes followed his gesture, and then returned back to him.
"That's not a drawer. It's a cabinet," she said, again, intensely serious. Jeremy would have been slightly hurt or embarrassed by her observation, had she not pointed it out in such a life-and-death tone. He didn't bother to conceal his laugh with a cough this time.
"This is why I tend to buy the just-add-water kind of food. I don't know the first thing about cooking," confessed Jeremy off-handedly as he cranked the can-opener against a tin of tomato sauce. The faucet started running behind him, and he heard the tapping of what he assumed were Brigitte's fingernails against the countertop as she waited for the pot to fill.
"You know more than most …" Brigitte seemed to gag on her next word, "men."
"Um, thank you, I guess." He set the severed sharp lid carefully aside. He couldn't keep track of how many times he'd cut his hands on those. "My mom passed away when I was sixteen, so I kind of had to learn."
"Oh. I'm sorry." She sounded incredibly genuine, and that scared him a little.
"It's not your fault." He was quiet as he dumped the thick sauce into a pan on the stove. "It's been four years since then. You'd have thought I'd have learned how to make fois gras or something by now!" he joked, hoping that the slight levity in his voice would make her feel more comfortable. He didn't think it did.
"I don't mind," she returned quietly. And it really didn't look like she did. She appeared although she was capable of going a week without any sort of sustenance at all. More like she had, actually. She didn't appear particularly indulgent in any way, especially in the most straight-forward sense of gluttony. This train of thought suddenly struck him as ironic when he thought of the syringe in the carpet.
"There, it's boiling. You can put the noodles in, now," he said as he stirred the tomato sauce. "You can turn down the flame, too." She silently acquiesced. A short while later, the two sat across from each other, awkwardly avoiding each other's eyes.
Brigitte picked at her food disinterestedly at first, constantly glimpsing up from the plate to Jeremy. Eventually, she appeared to have given into some internal argument and began eating quickly, if still with some restraint. This pleased Jeremy, but he attempted to keep his satisfaction to himself as he tried to make conversation for what felt like the hundredth time.
"I've never seen you around before a few weeks ago, when you started visiting the library and staying until obscenely late hours." She glared off to her left, probably remembering their first real interaction, during which Jeremy half-jokingly accused her of returning to the library every night with the motive of seeing him there. "You're not from around here, are you?"
Brigitte paused, spaghetti-laden fork held in mid-air. "No …" she said slowly, as if she were chewing on her words as well. "I'm from a suburban shithole." She continued to eat contemplatively. "Probably a hundred miles away by now," she added, almost like an afterthought. The sheer contempt with which she spoke of her hometown shocked Jeremy. While he hadn't exactly enjoyed his youth either, he could still reminisce about it without sounding like he wanted to vomit.
"Which town? Maybe I know where it is." He hoped he hadn't sounded too eager. Brigitte didn't look like she would entertain the notion of being dragged back there, not by a lone librarian, or even the National Guard. She hesitated for a while, presumably decided whether or not to inform him, before responding.
"Bailey Downs."
"Oh." He hadn't expected to be familiar with the place of Brigitte's origins, but it disappointed him anyway when he wasn't. "I haven't heard of it."
"Then, you're fortunate." Again, the unadulterated hatred disarmed him, and he struggled for a grip on the conversation before it subsided into silence again. Anything was better than that. That silence made him feel like her enemy.
"So, have you learned anything useful about … bloodletting?"
He immediately cursed himself. He wasn't supposed to bring up anything which might make her uncomfortable, and something told him that her acquisition of knowledge in that field wasn't a random, self-detached study. She shot him a short, piercing stare, and stood, picking up her plate and silverware to carry to the sink. The sound of running water, again.
"Wait, you don't have to do that!"
Why are you treating her like a guest? This girl almost got you killed. She's also on drugs, as you seemed to have conveniently forgotten. A fact which you still haven't had the nerve to do anything about.
She dried the plate and set it back in one of what he now knew were termed cabinets, then stood there awkwardly.
It's now or never.
"Brigitte?" he asked tentatively.
"Jeremy," she responded. "Why am I here?" Something about the way she said it made Jeremy believe that there was no way he could provide a response that satisfied her. Something so hopeless, determined, exasperated. He stood up, and tried desperately to cease his shaking before he slowly approached her.
"You have to tell me." Again, he tried to instill a sense of authority in his voice alongside compassion, although he was entitled to only the latter.
She gave him that fearsome look again, like she was attempting to see into his mind and detect any malice there, and diffuse it by pure will alone. Jeremy was intimidated – by a girl five years his junior – but didn't step back, didn't recoil at all.
"What you saw …" She stopped, and sudden distrust flared up in her eyes, but she shook her head as if to dismiss it and continued. "I've been doing that for three months now." Again, she paused, battling with herself. Something won out inside her and she violently pushed up the left sleeve of her brown sweater, and the sight disturbed him. Ten or so short scars from the crook of the elbow to the middle of her forearm. After the initial shock wore off, he noticed that she'd stayed clear of the vein connecting the forearm and wrist. So, not suicidal. He sighed in relief, having previously concerned himself with the idea that suicidal tendencies came along with the addiction territory. "They keep healing faster, so I have to take more of it." She looked down at the scarred skin, back up at Jeremy, who stared at them, transfixed, then shoved the sleeve back down again. "I dosed twice yesterday. I thought I needed it."
Jeremy always wished he knew how to act during these types of dire revelations. The scars had submerged him in mindless panic, and he struggled to reign in it, deal with this.
"Do you think you … can stop?"
What the FUCK kind of a question is that?
She didn't answer, either out of a desire not to dignify such an idiotic question with a response, or because she herself didn't know. She dispelled both these theories by finally speaking.
"What it's like when I do it …" She paused, apparently figuring out how she could best convey her situation, or how much of it she was willing to disclose to him. "I don't … like it. At all." This struck Jeremy as a surprise. Weren't recreational drugs bought and sold and administered in painful solitude primarily for just that, entertainment? "But …" She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to draw into her center and disappear there. "If I stopped … it would be a million times worse." She let loose a ragged breath along with her words. Was this fear of withdrawal? He knew that was common among hard drug users, but Jeremy didn't know how to interpret it.
… Could she be psychotic?
It seemed like more than that. He knew schizophrenics were prone to imagining themselves in elaborate situations, but when Brigitte said that going without it would be worse, he wanted to believe her. She didn't seem crazy; she just seemed trapped.
"Brigitte. What will happen?" He tried to pose the question as gently as possible, knowing he would not get a gentle response. He wanted to hold her, save her from whatever this was, but he didn't dare. Not like this, not when she was so wounded and worried that he risked her lashing out at him.
She struggled with herself again, and attempted to begin explaining it several times and stopping. She sunk slowly to the floor in dread. "What will happen, Jeremy … is hair everywhere but my eyeballs, elongation of my spine till my skin splits, teats, and a growing tolerance, maybe even affection for, the smell and taste of feces ... not just my own … and then, excruciating death." Something tortured and evil writhed inside her, and Jeremy thought it was the most frightening thing he'd ever glimpsed in anyone's eyes. His first instinct was to recoil, but he forced himself not to. If he wanted to earn her trust, he'd have to show her his. Although, the strange threat did make that difficult. He didn't know quite what to make of it. She must have noticed this, because she turned around, holding her head.
She was a run-away, presumably because of her addiction. Perhaps her parents had kicked her out because of it? His stomach sank at the thought. She didn't seem like the delinquent type. Then again, when he'd been watching her shyly in the library, she hadn't seemed like the addict type, either. He breathed deeply, adjusted his glasses, feigning calmness while he was rocked violently between panic and disbelief.
"Okay." Two all-purpose syllables to steady a situation, at least hypothetically. Thoughts raced along with his blood. Why was she cutting herself? Why did the acceleration of the time it took to heal them matter? And what did any of that have to do with whatever she'd been shooting? Or what had almost come through the window of his car? There had to be more to this, but even in her current state – no, especially in her current state – the chance that she would disclose anything more was very slim indeed. He decided to try another tactic. "Is there anything I can do." It came out fatalistically, although he'd attempted to sound stable and altruistic. Funny how he could never express anything correctly to her.
"I don't think so." Irrationally, the fact that the bitterness in her tone was directed at herself rather than at him didn't relieve him at all. He would have let her denounce and condemn him, despite the darker part of him which screamed out in protest against being accused of crimes he'd never committed. He may have been a perfect stranger, who by immaculate chance came to be involved in this circumstance which stretched beyond his range of vision. He would readily rebel against all the sense in the world and take the blame himself for all of Brigitte's failings. There was no way to convey this in words, but he hoped that his sad smile could carry some of his message across. He reached out his hand, which she hesitantly took, and he helped her stand up again.