Ginger Snaps

Storytime

One month before the events of Ginger Snaps...

In the suburbs of Canada, all was deceptively quiet that night. The usual chorus of dogs in the night could not be heard. Nor could their owners yelling at them from their back doors or bedroom windows to shut the hell up. The Beast of Bailey Downs had put pay to that. No one who actually valued their pets left them outside anymore. The didn't even let them out alone to do their business. And for good reason. Whatever that thing was, it was known to tear animals apart. Especially dogs. There was even talk of the town governors bringing in a local law stating that anyone letting their dogs out unsupervised without good reason was liable to face arrest on a charge of animal endangerment.

But it wasn't such noise that awoke Ginger Fitzgerald that night. Nor was it the abstract silence of the night- so much the inverse of what she and Brigitte were used to. Instead, it was the one other thing guaranteed to disturb her sleep since she'd been a little girl: the suffering of her younger sister. She looked over immediately to see Brigitte tossing and turning, gently muttering to thin air. Her voice was incomprehensible, save for the occasional four letter word. Ginger knew what those sounded like well enough to identify them, even when uttered as a sleep-driven mumble. But her voice was high and vulnerable in pitch and tone. She was scared. And no one scared her little sister. Not that bitch Trina Sinclair, not the police who might one day question them for hours on end about what happened to said bitch Trina the moment she said the wrong thing- a personal fantasy that Ginger was not afraid or ashamed to admit she had gotten herself off to more than once- and certainly not monsters lurking in the shadows.

When Brigitte was suffering, Ginger found herself capable of anything. But the one thing she couldn't do was see into Brigitte's mind. And what a mind she had. One so smart she was already a grade ahead in school. One so advanced that she knew virtually everything about the human anatomy and how it worked by the time she was twelve and had already been planning what aspect of it she wanted to write her college thesis on. She'd tried it once already. But just like most twelve-year-olds she just hadn't had the patience. And that attention span was only set to get worse now that she'd just had her fifteenth birthday. Oh, well... That would come with time.

If Ginger had been able to see into Brigitte's mind, she would have known what was going on in there. The hellish images tearing through Brigitte's brain at a lightning pace. Showing her things she didn't want to see. Things that broke down her mental defences and forced open the floodgates, letting even more in. She was thrown face-first onto a dead dog while playing hockey as Trina Sinclair stood over her. She saw Ginger being attacked; dragged off by a large creature that moved faster than anything human possibly could. She tried to catch up, but her own human speed was no match as Ginger's terrified and agonised screams rang through the night. She saw Ginger- having survived her harrowing ordeal- begin to change as a person. Not just mentally but physically. Jason McCardy throwing her into the janitor's closet and pinning her against the wall. That one was especially terrifying because it was so short. It switched as soon as her back hit the wall. What his motives were or what the outcome might be, she had no way to know.

And as she saw Ginger's changes progress, she felt them drifting further and further apart. She was lost and alone with no way to get help from Ginger and no idea how to do what she needed to on her own. But she had to figure it out because it was the only way she could hope to save Ginger from herself. And try as she might, she failed. Everything she did ended up failing. Until in the end, she found herself standing on her bed, confronted by the very monster that had dragged away and savaged Ginger to hell and back as it bore down on her. The knife from her bedside drawer was in her hands. And finding her last shred of courage, she brought it swinging up into the creature's underbelly. Except in the instant the blade made contact, there was no creature. There was Ginger. And it was too late to stop as the knife punctured her silky, fair skin, the feeling of the blade slicing into her internal organs travelling down the length of the handle as the elder sibling collided with Brigitte and pinned her. With gasping breaths, both of them rolled onto their side as Ginger stared with a dumbstruck look of betrayal into Brigitte's eyes. And unable to do anything to save her, Brigitte had no option but to hold her close and treasure the last moments she saw her sister draw breath at all.

She saw Ginger die.

Unaware of all of this, Ginger swung her feet out of bed and made her way over just as Brigitte rolled to face her. As she did, Ginger could see the tears cascading down the brunette girl's cheeks. That was it. This couldn't go on! Reaching out, she decided not to bother with subtlety as she grabbed Brigitte by the shoulders and started shaking her awake. She didn't care if it startled her. Whatever was going on in her head, she needed to get out of it and she needed to get out now!

"B? B! Come on! Wake up!" Brigitte's eyes snapped open. As soon as they did, Ginger stopped shaking her. She was shaking plenty well on her own and it was clear that whatever the nightmare had been, it had put her through absolute hell. She was so far beyond the border of scared shitless that the line in the sand wasn't even a dot to her.

"Ginge..." Brigitte threw her arms around her, holding her in an embrace that seemed impossibly tight for someone so weedy.

"Hey..." Ginger said gently, reaching up to delicately hold the back of her sister's head as she pulled her in affectionately. "If I'm gonna be here a while, can I come in? It's fucking freezing out here!" Brigitte's mouth quirked in a sickly grimace that was the closest she could manage to a laugh at the moment. She lifted the sheets, letting Ginger climb under. As soon as Ginger was in, the two girls pressed as close to each other as possible. Ginger hadn't been lying. The two steps to Brigitte's bed and the time it took to wake her up had been enough to freeze her. Brigitte holding her close was now actually serving a dual purpose: Brigitte could hold her close and gain comfort from it while Ginger could bask in the body heat her sister was putting out. And Brigitte was currently like an oven by comparison to her.

She didn't know how long they sat there together. She didn't care either. Brigitte just buried her face against Ginger and held on. Ginger returned the embrace as she felt her sister's shoulders shake with sobs. It must have taken at least an hour before she finally settled down enough to talk. And by the time that happened, Ginger could sense Brigitte's defences coming back up. That was fine. If it was what she needed after being so scared, Ginger wasn't about to deny her that.

"So..." she ventured as she drew back from the embrace slightly. "Want to talk about it?" It took a while for the brunette to find her words. But when she did, Ginger's disappointment was immeasurable.

"I had a nightmare." Brigitte said bluntly.

"Yeah, no shit." Ginger sighed, rolling her eyes. "Do you want to talk about what happened during this nightmare? Who knows? There might be something we can use in there for the school slideshow." At that, she felt Brigitte flinch. Ah, so that was it. A death had been involved.

"It was horrible." Brigitte said, her defences slamming properly into place. "Everything was cute. There were bunnies."

"Bunnies?" Ginger said in mock anger as she pulled back to look Brigitte over properly. "Did they do that thing where they twitched their noses at you?" Brigitte nodded. "What about wagging their fluffy tails?" Another nod. "How dare they?" Ginger demanded, flicking her flame red hair over her shoulder. "I'll cook them all alive for this outrage!"

"Good luck." Brigitte snorted. "They run around in the oven too much, remember?"

"Yeah, and that's why you knock them out and bake them in a pie." Ginger told her. "Just staple their ears down to the pie crust and it stops them from moving if they wake up and keeps the tips of the ears from burning on the top of the oven." At that, Brigitte did manage to let out a splutter of laughter. That was better! Ginger knew she'd got her foot in the door now and couldn't waste this. She had to pull the emotional opening wider and get in do dispel the darkness. Or at the very least, release a different kind of darkness in there. One that it was better for Brigitte to focus on. "Come here." Ginger said, looping her arms around her sister once more to pull her close again. "I've got something to chase away those bunnies."

"Oh?" Brigitte said in amusement as she pressed herself in and rested her head on Ginger's shoulder. "What have you got? Snares? Napalm?"

"I've got a story." Ginger told her. "A story that will put the fear of god in them."

"Well let's hear it." Brigitte said, looping her arms around Ginger as Ginger's own arm slid up around Brigitte's shoulders.

"Okay..." Ginger grinned, settling in properly. "Lions Gate Films presents- A 49 Films/Combustion production in association with-"

"Cut the crap!" Brigitte burst out laughing as she clumsily swiped at Ginger, accidentally smacking her across the left tit and causing her to break into laughter too.

"Okay, okay-" Ginger held up the hand that wasn't holding onto Brigitte in mock surrender. "For real here..." She took a breath and began properly. "In its push westward, the Northern Legion Trading Company established an outpost in the wilderness. Each spring, thirty-six men from the fort travelled to Hudson's bay in York boats laden with animal pelts. The boatmen would return in the fall with provisions to survive the harsh winter. In 1815, they never came back."

"Chilling." Brigitte grinned. But something told Ginger that the shiver that went through her wasn't staged.

"You like it?" Ginger asked.

"Love it so far." Brigitte nodded. "Hey, is this going to be one of those curse stories?"

"Curse stories?" Ginger asked, confused. "I'm not familiar. But if you can give me a jumping point I'm sure I can spread my wings before I crash and burn." At that, Brigitte just smiled, gazing up into Ginger's eyes. A glint of her old fire was returning.

"The Indians say the curse began in the time of the Ancients. And was passed down through the blood of generations." Now it was Ginger's turn to shiver in anticipation. It was probably how tired they both were, but in that moment Brigitte's tone of voice carried the weight of a professional narrator. "There are legends of the Wendigo. The coming of the red and the black. Legends of the day of reckoning. When Death would consume the land. And good would face evil. The day the curse would be broken forever. Or grow stronger. And live on to plague generations to come. But ours was a story of survival. Of two sisters bound by blood. A bond that would not be broken. That was our promise. Above all. Above men. Above god. Above fate. It was in our blood. Together forever."

Ginger was left staring open-mouthed at her sister. She'd never dreamed that Brigitte might be such a great storyteller. This was a side of her she'd never seen. Her mind went into overdrive, processing all she'd been given and how she could make it work. So there was a curse, there would probably have to be Indians and she wanted the two of them to be the main characters. She could do it. It was a bit patchwork since she'd just had to instantly re-write most of her script and had her thinking time cut by two thirds, but it would do. She hoped.

"Do you want to tell this?" she asked hopefully.

"Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" Brigitte countered. Letting out a sigh, Ginger nodded.

"Fine." She took a breath and tried to continue where Brigitte had left off.

One hour, twelve minutes and forty seconds later...

"And then Grandma Indian said- 'I warned you. It's too late. The curse is in the blood. Kill the boy- before he bit you.' The two sisters shared a glance and-"

"Whoa, okay..." Brigitte said, sitting up slightly. "No way in hell! At no point did she say the words 'before he bit you'. That never left her mouth! She is clearly bullshitting!"

"Will you shut up and let me tell this?" Ginger said, sliding her hands up Brigitte's side to her armpits and beginning to tickle mercilessly. Brigitte let out a high yelp that turned into frantic laughter as she aimlessly tried to swat Ginger away.

"No! Bitch! Get off!" Both girls were laughing as Brigitte tried to get away while Ginger went after her. Unfortunately for Brigitte, there were very few places to go when it was two people in one single bed. Fortunately for her, salvation came bursting through the door in a matter of seconds.

"I hear screaming. Is someone finally on the red yet?" The irritating sing-song voice heralded the arrival of their mother as Pamela Fitzgerald poked her face around the door.

"Shut up and get out!" Ginger yelled as both of them grabbed a pillow and flung it at her. She ducked back quickly, the door slamming shut as the pillows impacted it.

"Oh, great!" Brigitte muttered. "Those were my pillows."

"Don't worry. I've got you covered." Ginger said. Before Brigitte could process what was happening, Ginger flipped her up with minimal effort and unceremoniously dumped her on top of her, the smaller brunette girl's head resting on her chest. Brigitte closed her eyes, seeming to find comfort in Ginger's heartbeat. Her arms coming up to encircle her sister's skinny frame, Ginger held her close while committing that to memory in case whatever hellish nightmare had plagued her ever dared to make a return. With that, she continued the story.

Another eighteen minutes and sixteen seconds later...

Ginger finally finished the story. The touching scene at the end with the two girls laid out on the ground just outside the fort with Brigitte's head in Ginger's lap had moved the real Brigitte to tears. Especially when in the story, she took her hand to infect her with the werewolf curse too in order to heal her wounds and banish the cold. She'd buried her face in Ginger's night shirt and hadn't looked up for a few minutes after.

"Ginger?" she said eventually. It actually caught Ginger slightly off guard. She'd almost believed her sister was asleep, but her breathing had been just slightly too fast.

"I'm here." She began gently running her fingers through Brigitte's hair in a reassuring gesture.

"Never leave me, okay?" In that moment, Ginger realised what must have happened in that nightmare. Well there was no need to worry. She wasn't going anywhere soon.

"I'm here, B. I'll always be here." She meant it. As long as Brigitte was around, she promised to stand beside her. Well, until sixteen, anyway. Then their pact came into effect. But whether they stuck to that or conveniently forgot about it, she'd support Brigitte right to the very end. "I love you. You know that. I'm not going anywhere."

"I love you too." Brigitte said, looking up with a tearful smile. "I guess this was the day of reckoning, huh?"

"I guess so." Ginger said, laying her head down. It felt weird without pillows, but she was damned if she was walking across that freezing floor to get them when she and Brigitte were perfectly comfortable now. She would manage.

"The day of reckoning." Brigitte said, closing her eyes contentedly as they both drifted off to sleep. "The day the curse grew stronger in the red and the black. Sisters united in blood. Together forever."

Author's Note: This is a oneshot I've wanted to write for a while. It's a cute, funny moment between Ginger and Brigitte, but is also what I imagine when I watch Ginger Snaps Back. The story of it made no sense in the continuity of the three films or within its own plot; so I imagine it's a story that Ginger and Brigitte were telling.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed it. This is my first ever Ginger Snaps fanfiction. Whether I write more will depend entirely on how it does. Please feel free to leave a review and let me know what you thought. I would certainly like to hear people's opinions on this since Ginger Snaps is a set of movies I fell in love with when I saw them almost a decade ago. To this day I have yet to find a werewolf movie done better. And believe me, I've been looking. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know of them too. If I haven't seen them yet, I'll look them up.