FEVERCHAIN 15

Lesbian werewolves, et cetera. FEVERCHAIN is a contemporary horror-romance serial set in the fictional Pinetown, New Jersey.

⚠️ Content warning: Gore, self-harm

Voiceover by Emily S Hurricane and yes, it is flawless.

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I come to feeling like an ice block. My glasses are missing, so it’s all a little blurry and headache-inducing but the Dyers’ backyard is illuminated by porch lights and the black expanse of pines lies ahead. Zip-ties chafe my skin—I’m stuck to the adirondack chair’s arms and legs.

Straining my neck, I try to orient myself. Keep having to force my eyes open, and telling them to stay open. In a navy athleisure get-up, Marie Dyer surveys the woods ahead, shotgun in her hands. She’s walking the perimeter of where the light touches, where there are black metal rings in the somehow-still-green-grass. What the hell are those? I squint. On the porch I see them too, black spiky rings—bear traps.

Open my mouth and it’s bone-dry. Hurts when I swallow; I’m running out of spit to drink. “My dog,” I croak. “Where’s my dog?”

Marie spins around startled, blonde tail flicking her face. I shouldn’t surprise her while she carries that gun. “You’re awake.”

“Where’s Smokey?”

“Don’t be silly.” Marie scans the dark expanse once more before walking towards me, her face fuzzy and blank but eyes trained on my restraints. “We have no reason to hurt him.”

And so many reasons to hurt me. At least now, the only life they’ll hold over my head will be my own. “You’re gonna kill me?”

Marie ducks her chin, rolls each foot in her laced hiking boots. Her ankles click. “What would you do in our shoes?”

“Not this.”

A long sigh, a knowing smile. Every time she adjusts her armed stance, I flinch. “You’ve never had a child, Bianca.”

Here we go.

“Having a child—it should change everything. I want you to know that what we did, what we do… is for her benefit. We’ve made some mistakes, of course.” She glances at me, face backlit by porch lights. “Mistakes are inevitable. Not irremediable.”

“If you kill me, she’ll never forgive you.”

“Oh, honey. You don’t even know her.”

I make fists. Don’t speak, don’t react. She’s holding a big gun.

“Gwen hasn’t been herself for months. She wasn’t always so emotional. So… full of hate.”

I raise my brows. She was just better at hiding it, yet I’m the one that doesn’t know her. Right.

“She was responsible. She used to take care of herself.”

That stings.

“I don’t blame her, I don’t even blame you, Bianca. What’s happened is terrible. Incomprehensible. So we must be terrible and incomprehensible to survive it. Do you understand?” She leans in close to me. Her eyes still freak me out. “Do you understand how hard it is to keep a family together?”

As someone subtly trying to break up my mom’s relationship, not really. Plus, I never knew my dad. I think his name is Mike, and Mom thinks he’s in Miami.

There’s a strange intimacy between Marie and me. One or both of us will be dead soon. Each of us might as well be talking to the void—death yawns when we open our mouths.

“What was it like—the first time?”

“What do you think? It was awful.” I think she’s through talking, but she surprises me. “We were in the car. I thought I was losing my mind. Pierce pulled over and knocked Gwen out with a fire extinguisher. Then I lost my mind for a second time, because I thought he’d killed her.”

That isn’t the sort of thing you can tell your therapist. I wonder how many times they’ve hurt her, and how many ways, and hold back bile.

“You know.” She hesitates. “Before you got involved, I really wondered whether she was a ‘werewolf’ or if the four of us had all gone crazy, all at once. Folie en famille.”

“What?”

“A delusion, shared by a family. I thought that’s what we had. So, in a way, you had to get involved. Because I had to know if it was true.” Her smile is slight. “We all had our reasons for letting you in. We’d just hoped you’d be more manageable.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s a little late for apologies, honey,” she says over the butt of her shotgun. It’s angled at the patio floor, but I can tell she’s comfy with it. “I’m sure you feel the same.”

I nod, diebitchburninhell, press my ankles against their restraints. “So… you think there’s a cure or what?”

Her brows pinch. “We’ve tried things.”

“Like?”

She puts a finger over her lips, eyes ever-roving.

Wind disturbs the pine canopy in pacifying rushes, an inviting abyss. If it weren’t for the moon, I wouldn’t be able to make out the tops of the trees. I keep imagining figures in the dark, shapes emerging into our view. But the imaginings are weightless. Phantoms. Gwen is solid—she sends tremors through the air. She affects me.

“Thought I heard something,” Marie whispers.

I try to quiet the chattering of my teeth. Sleep, no, not sleep—collapse tempts me again—my mind still foggy from the tranquilizer or whatever they put in me. I keep nodding off, but the plastic pinching my wrists reminds me to stay awake. Pay attention.

“Where’s Wade and… your husband?”

She ignores that question. I spy the vein in her forehead.

They’re out looking for Gwen. Maybe lying in wait nearby, I don’t know. I purse my lips, make eye contact with Marie’s shotgun.

Shiver. I need water, but there’s no use in asking for it.

Marie strides away, form fading into the night. I can feel the world spin. I can feel time move, too slowly.

Come on. Come on.

After I don’t know how long, Marie’s footsteps are behind me. It’s still the dead of night.

“You want to know about a cure?”

I do.

“We tried wolfsbane. Silver. Bloodletting.”

“Bl-bloodletting?”

“For blood transfusions. We have a contact at the hospital who doesn’t ask questions.” Marie appears beside me, on my left. The shadows on her face twist sinister and I don’t know if it’s real. She’s slowing my heart, tightening a fist around it and juicing it like a fruit. “We fed her a fetus.”

I jolt against my restraints. My head is heavy on my shoulder—neck kinked, spasms.

Marie and her shotgun are on my right. “Did you hear that?”

I shake my head. But I feel something, inside and outside of myself. A node of heat building, drawing closer.

“I thought I heard a scream.” One of her hands falls to the walkie talkie strapped to her waist; she clutches it. “You didn’t hear it?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Don’t lie.” But she’s not asking the walkie talkie—she doesn’t want to know.

“I was dreaming…”

Marie shudders. Now her hand clutches at her neck. Her cross necklace catches the light.

I’m not cold anymore, and I wonder if it’s from the drug. Sweat trickles down my spine as tears trickle from Marie’s otherwise stoney face—whatever hold she had over my heart is gone. There’s no more pain in my chest. Just pressure.

I moan. It comes from the bottom of myself.

Marie clamps her hand over my mouth, her nails digging into my jaw.

I wail, I want it to rise over the pines but it stops against her cold flesh.

“Stop that,” she snaps.

Besides her breathing, it’s so quiet. My skin prickles hot pin needles. My voice vibrates against Marie’s hand again.

I’m feverish?

“You’re calling her.” Marie releases my face and wipes her palm on her hip. She stares at me with lip-curled awe as I do my best pitchy scratchy howl at the moon.

Then we both hear it, a soft, thudding gallop. Marie stares at the woods.

And the woods stare back with reflective eyes at a height no predator should be. The pressure built up in me starts to subside into pleasure. I can’t help it. My toes curl at the idea that Gwen comes when I call, and it’s a fulfillment I’ve never felt, a validation so alien and divine that I feel my sense of self expand like a pool of water.

A tall dog, still too thin, is dark and wet with red, skulking fast like wild animals do—blink and you’ll miss her.

Marie must catch her because she’s desperate enough to sizzle and spit into her walkie talkie: “Pierce, Pierce? Wade? Hello? Anybody? I’ve got it. I’ve got it. Pierce? Wade?”

No answer from the boys. The walkie talkie hits the patio—the plastic back ricochets and the batteries roll out. Mrs. Dyer, a fresh widow, whimpers.

Gwenwolf weaves in and out of where the light touches, as if the illumination is uncomfortable but she is drawn here. She pants as she wades in and out of the artificial glow—whines at a pitch and volume I feel in my teeth.

I glance at Marie and realize Gwen is not wavering from the light but from her mom’s shotgun. Her mother, eyes icy shiny, aims steady. Manicured finger on the trigger.

“NO!” I shriek. “Don’t.”

Marie doesn’t look at me. Pumps it—chick-chick. Flips the shotgun, barrel under her chin, BOOM.

And I’m covered in Marie Dyer. When I scream, I taste her. Spit and I can’t even wipe my face. Iron and gunpowder burn my nostrils.

The shot’s echo seems to linger. A piece of something hard slides down my temple and I don’t want to know what it is. Whatever trance I was in is over.

Gwen is missing. Spooked. I weep with shut lips.

When she slinks back, I’m wide awake to see her. She’s unsettled, tensing and sharp ears flattening when she refocuses on the illuminated circle.

The circle. Circle.

“Gwen, stop! There’s bear traps!”

She lifts her head, slightly.

“Bear! Traps!” I rasp and wheeze. Try to charades it with sound. “Shhh CKK! Shh CKKAH! Ow!” I don’t know what the fuck a bear trap sounds like. Probably not like a cartoon trap door, but that’s all I got.

My limited vision can sorta spot where they disturb the grass, loosely staggered in a ring. If she steps over one, she might hit another. She’s almost upon them now.

“ERRT!” I make a sound like a negative buzzer on a game show. It always stops Smokey in his tracks. “WAERRT!”

She finally looks at me, just for a moment. Bends to sniff the open, iron jaws.

“Watch your nose!” I squawk. “Jesus.”

One paw at a time, she steps over that trap and the two behind it. Her control is surprising, gaze focused and scary in its humanity over cautious black curled claws. After she avoids the layer of snares, she surveys the ground with her snout and looks at me. Waits. For direction.

“Y-you understand me?”

She just stares.

My throat tightens. “I don’t think there’s anything else—any more traps, I mean.” Marie’s blood and brain fluid have chilled my bones. And now I see that there’s nothing between me and Gwenwolf. She sees it too, and beelines to me.

I squeal and she halts, close enough that I can smell her acidic musk. Between pine needles and leaf bits, there are dark globs and strings stuck in her fur. A particularly offensive gelatinous hunk hangs from her neck—some piece of Mayor Dyer or Wade, probably. Hopefully.

Bile rises to my mouth. Gwen comes closer, dog breath and death. I can’t speak. Her nose, hot and slick, nudges my wrist where it’s zip-tied to the arm of the chair. She licks it, tracing the hard plastic shackle. I feel the slightest twinge of teeth on my skin and scream again, but it’s more air than sound. She backs off.

“Use your hands! Your—paw-hands!” I flex my fingers, tab them on the adirondack arm. I think she has opposable thumbs, but I haven’t seen her use them.

She turns and puts her nose in my face. “No,” I say, but she licks my cheek and scalp, cleaning or tasting or both. As she angles her mouth over the top of my head the gelatinous chunk, cold and wet, kisses my chin, almost my lip.

I swerve my head, willing to break my own neck: “GET THE FUCK OFF!”

She adjusts, sticky fur tickling me in the worst way, and keeps licking. I scoot, straining against my zip-ties to hit my head into her nose, soccer-style.

She recoils. Muzzle quivers. Moon fangs flash, long and thick. Oh fuck. Oh god.

“Gwen?”

More teeth.

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming. Goodbye, weird world. Her head flies back, her body tenses rock hard.

She sneezes. On me, in a wet whoosh. I hack out a deranged laugh.

Gwen shakes, getting more shit on me. I’ve been kind of extremely overwhelmed, but it dawns on me that holy shit, the police are gonna be here soon and find me zip-tied and covered in blood beside Marie Dyer’s headless corpse. I couldn’t have done it tied up, right? But it might elevate their investigation from ‘animal attack’ to something more intense. Something where they search the Dyers’ house and find evidence of Gwen’s condition. And interrogate me. What the hell would I say? Yeah, the mayor and Wade died in an animal attack, then Mrs. Dyer found out and shot herself. Easy enough. True enough.

I was zip-tied to the chair and encircled with bear traps because…

“I gotta get out of here.” Gwen’s probing her mother’s corpse. “We gotta get out of here.” I peep above the dead woman’s neck. All that’s attached to it is a thin flap of skin, barely cradling the back of her emptied skull-shell. A strip of blonde hair’s attached to it, trailing into where the blood has gathered between the patio’s bricks.

I vomit on myself. “Fuck.” Lean back in the adirondack and try to slip my feet free, but the ties are too tight.

“Gwen. Get me out of this chair.” She could break it, maybe without breaking me.

Her breathing deepens, and I hear her lapping. Don’t want to look.

“You have to be kidding.”

She’s nibbling at the corpse’s catastrophic wound.

I turn away. “Please don’t.”

It gets so much worse. She punctures, grips, and tears—opening her mother’s body. It steams into my face like opening an oven full of rank pork belly.

That’s it. I grit my teeth and stretch against the zip-ties, shake until the chair wobbles. I lean left, lean right. Left, right. Totter on one leg, then the other. I lean too far left and Gwen’s snarl warbles at me as something is popped and pulverized in her mouth.

“Hey!” I bark. Teeter totter again. “Don’t fucking growl at me.” I groan and press all my weight against the back of the chair. Tip it. My backside slams the patio. The zip-ties rip my skin and blood rushes heavy into my head, puke-soaked hair slapping my face.

Fantastic.

Feel like the top of my head’s gonna burst like Marie’s. The bodily odors around me are strong, each flavor like a dirty dish shard to the brain. My vision blurs to black wool, and I’m too tired to be afraid.

When I awake, the sky is gray. Gwen, so coated in blood she looks like a zombie, is crouching beside me, warm hands gripping and smearing something syrupy on my arm.

“Bianca? Bianca?” Her stained mouth trembles. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” I flipped this fucking chair myself.

Gwen sobs. She still has dog breath. “What happened?”

I look behind her and see bones poking through a mangled, pink hulk. “I think it’s pretty obvious, baby.” I lick my lips and instantly regret it. Thinking is like cross-country skiing on peanut butter. “Scissors… Get some scissors, get me out of this chair. We clean ourselves, get Smokey, and go home.” My bed with the lavender comforter and the radiator on, please.

“They’re gone, right?”

Her family, she must mean. I regard her gore-drenched, naked frame. “I’d say so, yeah.”

She sobs again. This time, with happiness.

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YES Didrik (Grimelight) WROTE, SANG, PRODUCED A FEVERCHAIN SONG. As a lover of electronic/ambient music, I find this incredibly sick. Now is the perfect time to share it as we reach this climax of the story, (one of many, we’re dealing with lesbians after all, har har har). FUCKING ENJOY AND ASK FOR IT TO BE PLAYED AT THE CLUB AHHHHHHHH ⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️