Samuel sat next to me in the back seat of my car, the man quickly finishing off the last of his stitches while I sat there twirling an unlit cigarette. My blind eye to the window, a position I wasn’t a big fan of as Samuel kept forcing me to look more towards him, it was at least worth it. Samuel already in his scrubs for work that night, a translucent raincoat over them just in case, he already looked exhausted while he worked, he was professional, quick, and at least gentle.
The cut had stopped bleeding fast enough, it was a superficial wound far as even a silver cut went with my runes. Problem was I doubted it would have healed right on its own, and even if it would have I had a son and some party guests to look good for. Last thing he needed to see was his mom stumbling home with her cheek ripped open, not I’d done him any favors last night.
What I’d deserve, he would have been right to be scared of me, I was a fucking monster who’d just mauled a woman. What was I even supposed to do, go in there and host a small get together of friends like I hadn’t just been ripping chunks out of someone earlier? Like I hadn’t had to have my grandma wash the blood from my hair and help me scrub it off my skin?
I would have laughed at it if I wasn’t worried Samuel would hate me for ruining his work. The man gently dabbing his work with a damp cloth before tossing everything into a red baggie he tied off.
Samuel’s lips thin while he checked the backseat a final time, tossing his baggie in a false bottom in his backpack. The man working at removing his raincoat while he told me, “I don’t have any pain pills on me or I’d leave you some. Know you’re still healing from The Lady so I’ll try and run you something early tomorrow”
“Doesn’t hurt half as much as it looks,” I admitted with a shrug, not really sure how to communicate the general pain I’d been in since last night. My unlit cigarette finally going to my lips as I laid back against the seat, “you have work, you should probably head out.”
Samuel opened and closed his mouth a few times, actually looking ready to leave before he turned and reached for me. The wolf growling at the hand in my face before he ripped my cigarette away and told me, “you shouldn’t smoke.”
“You keep telling me,” I said, glaring the man down while he refused to leave. “Look, I’ve had…I just fucking mauled a woman, and I’m not exactly doing the best at the moment. I think me smoking a little is healthier than…”
I couldn’t say it, I couldn’t even really put into words what I couldn’t say, my voice trailing off and the thought of what the fuck did I do on my mind. My mouth shaking, the stiffness of the stitches in my cheek an ever present reminder until I felt a hand rest on my own.
Samuel’s grip firm, easy to escape if I want but an ever present reminder of his presence while I sat there dumbstruck. The taste of salty tears brushing the corner of my lip and a laugh escaping me as I realized I was crying. A few short tears breaking into a full sob, a croaking laughter that caught on a breath that couldn’t form.
My body shook, arms wrapped tight around me, nails digging into my flesh, the urge to scream all encompassing. My body falling forward, head against Samuel’s shoulder and the man not moving a muscle as I tried to hug him. A few gasping sobs escaping me, his hand finally resting on the back of my head, unmoving but there, not even bothering to speak to me while I cried against his shoulder.
My limbs curling in on themselves, almost an orb on the seat as he finally lifted an arm to stop me falling. The urge to throw up rising in my throat, never tipping over but not dying down as my breath refused to slow, the tears refused to stop. Each hiccuping breath and jerk of my body aggravating the burning of my ribs, the useless fucking bone in my right arm.
Eventually my sobs feeling like they were dying less from a feeling of comfort and more my body losing its energy. Burning lungs unable to support me any longer, muscles held tight wanting to give out, tears quickly drying away.
Only when they stopped, my body a gently hiccuping mass covered in snot and tears, Samuel wiped my face off. The clinical air he usually carried when tending me returning only briefly, enough to get most of it up with a final one passed over for me to blow my nose. Samuel using a final red baggie to toss them away for me, before letting the two of us return to a numb silence.
The feeling I was melting away replaced with a creeping guilt.
I’d just killed someone, asked Samuel to come all the way out to the apartment building again to tend to the wound, and I’d made him comfort me. I’d made him hold me while I sobbed when he could have been helping people who deserved it, and couldn’t even fucking clean my own face.
My body shaking once more, the ability to cry feeling like a distant ability as I apologized, “I’m sorry. I… I shouldn’t have made you do that.”
And Samuel answered almost mechanically, his lips thin while he forced out the words, “it’s fine, you needed to get it out.”
I nodded, not sure what else to do, not sure what else even to pretend while we sat there like I hadn’t just broke down at nothing. Samuel refusing to even look at me, probably thinking about how horrible I was to do that, how I couldn’t do anything myself. Even his breathing seeming to stop, slow and shallow breaths that came in and out without barely seeming to exist at all, the man almost a statue in his place.
“You didn’t tell me I had an uncle.”
The words fell from my lips before I realized, Samuel not even flinching a muscle at the statement. My words almost sitting unobserved on the air, and for a moment I wondered if I’d truly said them out loud before the man sighed.
He rubbed his eyes a moment, head rolling back against his seat while he admitted, “I mean, living yes I knew you had the one.”
“Any other family I should know about?”
Another long pause, the man smacking his lips, “not I’m dreadfully aware of. Your other uncle was human and fucked off some decades ago, your mom said her sister died when they were young. I’m sure you probably have a grandfather still, he was a werewolf, though Arthur never mentioned him.”
I nodded, my mouth suddenly feeling dry at the thought. Something almost feeling wrong about it even as I asked him, “why didn’t you tell me?”
This silence shorter, a small laugh following, “just… I never worked myself up into being able to tell you.”
What was I even supposed to say to that? Pry deeper, demand he explained himself, try and make it into a fight? All of it sounded wrong, and I felt my hands shaking all the same even as I did manage to ask, “is there anything you can tell me?”
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Samuel shook his head before the words were even finished, his hand resting on the door handle beside him without even seeming to think about it. His own lips breaking into a twisted smile as he finally moved his hand back to his side and almost wistfully admitted, “your mother, she… she loved music.”
“Music?”
How was it all attempts to ask about my mom ended in dead ends except for the one time I wasn’t trying to ask about her? I couldn’t even figure out why he connected the two thoughts, though I couldn’t bring myself to ask that much as he started to talk again. For all the things I’d heard about her, I still knew nothing.
“I mean, she was older so it was a thing, I’m old to I know, but music was one her favorite things,” the man explained, the words sounding almost unsure even as he forced himself to continue, “we would sit in the back of her car sometimes just listening to the radio, one of us hold the other in our arms and just tune the radio or put something on. I don’t think I listened half the time, but… got you some of her favorites, some of mine. Before she left for the Purists she’d stay up until well past midnight quilting and listening to late night talk shows, switch her room’s radio over to a rock station to fall asleep, and wake up wondering why she was tired. Her favorite song was Springsteen’s Born to Run, and she listened to her cassette of the album so much she had to buy a new one. She loved to always say she hated musicals, but Footloose was her favorite movie once she saw it. She liked cheese horror, has a crush on Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing. She hated horse racing, but the first Saturday of every May she’d make a mint julep and listen in on the Kentucky Derby, get bored halfway through them introducing the horses, and then put on some a cassette instead.”
He was not crying as I had, but tears stained his cheeks and his smile looked almost half-hearted. I almost stopped him talking, told him he didn’t need to go one, and instead I sat there listening to him describe a woman I’d never met.
“You both have the same crooked smirk when you think you figured something out, and you wiggle like you have a tail when you’re excited like she did. She started cutting her hair short because The Lady hated it shorter than her shoulders, and then she took six more inches off because she couldn’t stop chewing the ends when they fell near her lips. She…” he stopped a long moment, mouth hung open, his eyes staring somewhere else, “she woke up screaming some nights, and woke up shaking and crying others. Sometimes she’d laugh at everything you said even if she didn’t think it was funny, and sometimes she’d start crying without knowing why herself. When she decided she wanted to do something, she’d do it even if I tried to stop her…” a small laugh, the smile returning a brief moment, “one time we killed this family, not the funny part, and the TV started playing… I think it was some TV show adaption of Emma? One those Jane Austen stories, but the point is she just… laid there on the bed, hugging a pillow to her chest, refused to move a muscle or do more than nod or shake her head until the whole show was finished. She’d watch someone break down crying for something that she did to them, or even someone else did, and just… laugh at them for letting it happen or not understand the problem.”
I nodded, not sure what to say, my mouth feeling dry as I tried to come up with any words to actually say. His description slowly settling together into a single clear image I put to a face I could almost imagine. Every small detail, interest, quirk he’d described that made me almost wonder what it would have been like to know her.
Would she have quilted on a lazy Saturday while I sat at her side playing with toys? Would she have sung along to Springsteen while doing chores around the house or teased me for liking a couple musicals? Would we have watched Jane Austen and Hammer horror together and she’d demand I watched Footloose? Would people who saw us together laugh about the little ways we acted the same?
Would she have woken me up as a kid with her screaming and made me wonder how I’d wake up each night? Would she still be a monster like everyone said she was? Would everyone I know hate her? Would she just laugh at me for leaving the Purists, for letting Alpha and The Lady hurt me? Would she…
“You… I know you said my mom is a monster,” I admitted, not wanting to even look at the man while I said it, “but would she… we got better, right? We left the Purists, we became better people, do you think…”
I let the words trail off, Samuel looking at me with a mix of emotions I couldn’t even begin to properly understand. His lips thin, stare stoic until he finally took up his backpack and left the car without a word.
The door closed behind him, the man not rushing away, not an angry jerking movement, but not slow about it as he walked across the apartment building’s parking lot to his own car. Almost robotic while he put his stuff away and drove off, leaving me sat there until I saw a mess of blonde locks form out of the corner of my eye.
Barbie wasting no time to ask me, “you alright there, Mary?”
I shrugged, already fetching another cigarette with my lighter half out when Barbie reached out. Her fingers plucking the item from my lips, dropping it on the floor even as I snapped, “can people just let me smoke?!”
And Barbie flinched, a pang of guilt shooting through me even as the ghost slid forward, ice cold arms wrapping around my neck. Her face nuzzling into my neck as she tried to comfort me, “I’m just worried about your health, love.”
Of course she fucking was, why wouldn’t a dead person worry about a werewolf?
My head leaned on her own, my arms wrapping around her as best I could with tears threatening to form in my eye. The wolf wanting to turn here, curl against her and let the world fade away as I embraced the simple life of a pet. At least that holding some hope for comfort, that maybe Barbie wasn’t one to beat her pets and break their fucking arms and ribs.
That at least Martin would be safer if I was gone.
The thought no sooner entering my mind than Barbie’s grip tightened on me, the ghost’s voice a trembling whimper as she whispered, “I’ll stay with you, Mary, I won’t leave you again.”
I nodded, my mouth feeling a little dry even as I told her, “I want to kill something, and…”
“You hate you enjoy killing?”
I nodded, the idea of actually admitting the words out loud almost too much. I needed that control, I needed that brief bit of excitement for the wolf getting blood on its tongue and knowing it had won. I needed that moment where everything made sense, and it was the wolf and its prey before the guilt set in that I was acting like a Purist.
I needed to kill the bastard doing all of this and-
“You can kill me.”
Barbie let me push her away even as I realized how weird the gesture felt against a ghost. Her smile unbreaking as I looked down at her in what definitely felt like horror, confusion, disgust at the idea. My incoming spiral… I didn’t want to say stopped, though it was true my mind had been taken somewhere completely different.
All the same Barbie not reacting as I told her, “I don’t want to lose you again, I’m not going to-”
“Ghost, remember?” Barbie interrupted, taking a my good wrist gently in her hands and moving the hand to her throat. Her body leaning into the touch, my hand starting to shake as she nearly begged, “I want to help you, Mary. Think about it like this, you just… do what you want, I go with it, no guilt, right?”
I wanted to throw up at the idea of it, I wanted to throw up at the fact even a small part of my brain was considering it. Barbie’s flesh, tender under my grip, a pulse I was sure she was faking beating against my palm in the split second before I jerked it away to a new wave of pain through my body.
“Please, I… I don’t want that.”
Barbie nodded, almost looking sad about it until she finally asked, “would a softer touch help?”
My confusion short lived before the ghost swung over, the woman ice cold in my lap, her hands on my shoulders. Her warm eyes staring down at me while I felt a small warmth flush to my cheeks.
A small part of my brain returning just long enough to say, “I know, um… no one really lives here, but you know we’re still in a parking lot right? The Lady put security here and I’m having some guests coming over in an hour and-”
“Mary,” Barbie interrupted, the one word enough to make me stop. The ghost reaching a hand out to brush it against the glass window next to us, even the relative dimmed heat of Virginia December enough to fog the window with her touch, “that help?”
“A good chunk of my body is not working or injured right now.”
“I’ll be gentle.”
“I just got done sobbing and having a really intense conversation.”
“Between the two of us one is groping a ghost’s ass.”
I closed my eye, kicking myself for the revelation yeah, she still has that effect on me before looking back up at the ghost. Her smile almost teasing while I told her, “You know what happened last time.”