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There's something heady about standing within her own crime scene, like she's not a girl but a phantom. Like her body were not a body but a crumbling house.
Her throat is ripped out, Ginger's mouth smothered with blood, as if when she bit down Brigitte was a life force not to drink but to choke on. It takes a moment for the pain to bloom, after the rush of the flash hits, a sharp silver hurt just above her collarbone.
"Fuck, Ginge, you really bit me?" It swims through the dizzy high of adrenaline and fumes from the garage they painted white to better show the breadth of their destructive habits.
Ginger laughs and throws her face into Brigitte's shoulder. "Authenticity, kid. You taste like corn syrup." She kicks her lips with exaggerated ferocity and smiles wolfishly.
"Sweeter than sugar, honey." Brigitte draws her finger down her own throat and samples the red spilt there, something entrancing about the warmth of it, something freshly killed. "Next time I wanna be the killer," she says, flashing her teeth.
"You're my favourite murderer," Ginger smiles back.
That's the picture they use after. As if it were proof, some macabre foreshadowing to the thing that bloomed after. Brigitte feels a tug somewhere within her, something struck between nausea and hunger, an indignant growl between belly and chest. The disquieting urge to rip something apart rattles within, for the thrill as well as indignation.
She buries her face more deeply into her sister's hoodie and inhales the lingering smell of girl sweat and their father's deodorant, the sting of it always suited Ginger more than the saccharin florals of their mother's. It covers the bite mark well enough, her simple spot-the-difference mark of monstrosity. She wonders if that's what makes her want to run, more than the bodies and the grief and fires she built out of misplaced elegie, the opposite of a memento mori.
If Brigitte's teeth sink further into her cheek she will draw blood again, and she is tired of the taste of herself. It is too shared, their history of playing murder and blood-pact rites, polluting the essence of anything but run-on names, GingerBrigitte, BrigitteGinger. It doesn't fill the emptiness that has opened up within her.
If she runs, she won't stop until the wolf consumes her. If she stands still she will wilt like that, a poison oak tree, infecting the bloodstream of anyone close enough to touch. She counts to three, chewing on the knotted drawstring of the hood.
One, her fingernails bite into her palms.
Two, the bite mark stings and swelters.
Three, the traffic slows to a quiet and above the sound she hears that lonesome howl, Ginger calling her home. It seeps through her skin like a feral happy birthday. Her teeth a flash in the night air, her own blood filling her mouth once again, sweet as copper, Brigitte submits to the hunt within. She runs, and runs, and runs.