Owen had been gone for a while now. Jenny was not sure how much time had passed, but it had to be some. With no way to actually tell time – her phone abandoned at home on the coffee table and her watch gone unused for weeks – she had been left to try and figure out through her biological clock, which might as well be non existent. Outside the world ravaged on. She heard sirens and screams, tires squealing around corners, and more screams. Jenny sat on the ground, back leaning against the wall, the bag squeezed between her chest and knees as she huffed the Axe and wept.

She understood now that there was a connection to her clearmindedness and the deodorant. How or why, she did not know. It was a question for later. If there was a later where she returned home and could get her phone and ask one of the people who should know. An hour ago, perhaps, she had tried to scour the locker room for other bottles of deodorant. In abandoned lockers, in the bin in the corner, in gym bags. She’d collected them all and looked at them, their shitty designs and horrible scent names. She’d then gone on to spray them one by one, inhaling their thick scent. Floral and musky and fresh and plenty more smells entered her nose, overwhelming her senses but not in the same way the Black Vanilla did.

Jenny had lost control when inhaling the smell from can number three, tongue slithering out and swinging around the locker room, banging against lockers and the bench, then attempting to get the door to budge. She had smelled the blood right outside the room, but was incapable of getting the door to open for her, to break her free. 

Black Vanilla had straightened her out and Jenny had returned to the ground, clutching the bag and that was where she had remained for hours. 

Her mind was folding in on itself, replaying the gore that had happened at the end of her tongue. She remembered it quite clearly — the way she’d killed a man so swiftly, the fight she’d been in with Owen. The way he had looked at her when she’d come back to herself and how he had not moved to kill her, but had in stead stuck her in this room.

She did not understand why. He had killed that vampire in front of her, had threatened to kill her pre-emptively before she’d even turned. She had killed three fit men in front of him and had attempted to kill him too, and yet he was now showing her mercy (even if it came in the shape of being locked up in a smelly room). If she were to go by any kind of fictional standards, she certainly was the kind of vampire that should be killed. Not that she wanted to be. She felt no desire for a punishment fitting her crimes, to explode in blood like her sire had. But there was a part of her that wondered why her punishment was only this. If the hammer would come to fall. If she should be wanting a stake to the heart now. 

She could do it. Die and explode into a pool of blood and become a cautionary tale. She saw it. An icarian story about blind desire, about becoming a monster. Because as she sat there and rethought the things she had done when she’d been outside of the locker room, she knew the divide between her and her frenzied self was thin. Those memories were her. The desire for the blood was hers.

She cycled through these thoughts, touching upon the thought of Baz. Of the previous surge, when she had been human and had watched them cycle through faces while surrounded by three fae. In awe of their forms, even if one of them had been a little weird and grey. She thought about where they were now. If they were safe. If they were okay. If Monica or Teagan was with them now. She thought of Rosemary and her lack of magic. Of Metzli, who might be on a rampage similar to her own. Her mind bit down on the people she’d gathered in her odd little community, struggling with the concern for others when her own pain was already so large but finding distraction in it too.

Jenny moved after a few hours. She peeled herself off the floor and walked to the showers, where she let the water clatter until it turned the right temperature (scalding hot) and she was able to stand under the water. The Black Vanilla was not feasible here, the scent minimized by the water, so she tossed the bag to the dry area and let her mind slip. It was easier, perhaps, to be a creature of rage. To slam her tongue against tiles, to break a showerhead off and make water spray around the room. Her clothes were soaked, blood circling the drain, and she was licking up every last drop that slid down her body. She ended up on all fours, tongue sweeping up blood mixed with water, desperate for something to satiate her.

The shower took at least two more hours. She bounced out eventually, slamming herself and her tongue against the door again. No dice once more, but not for lack of trying. Jenny was roaring, screaming, growling against the largest foe she had known so far. The most unrelenting one. An non bleeding one. She scratched and kicked and slammer her tongue, but the door was not breaking. 

Eventually she found her way to the hissing scent again, and Jenny decided to not let go of the bag again. The shower had cleaned her, somewhat, and she busied herself with drying off. Her clothes draped over benches, her body dried off with a clean towel she stole from a bag (at least, she hoped it was clean) and then she sat on the ground with the towel between her naked behind and the tiles. She went back to folding her mind, rocking herself on the ground while huffing the Axe, going from whimpering to wailing to laughter. She tried to sleep but only found herself screaming at the memories or starting to talk to herself in circles. Hands pulled at hair, scratched at the bricks of the wall, plucked at the skin of her neck. Jenny thought this might perhaps be where she would slip into the madness that went hand in hand with vampirism in so many stories. What better moment to go mad than now? 

A few hours later again, she moved around the locker room in the nude, holding her can of deodorant close and rifling through the bags and coats left behind. She started imagining a poem about being nothing but a piece of clothing left in a locker room, wished she was just a coat filled with stupid belongings, its only function to keep its owner warm. She imagined being locked away for most of the year, only to make an appearance when it was warm again. She wrote it in her mind, with no paper or pencil or phone to aid her. She huffed the coats, then stopped as the human scent almost threw her off. She found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and started to chain smoke, sitting on a bench and trying to focus her sense of smell on the Black Vanilla rather than the burnt tobacco.

She got dressed hours later. Her clothes felt crunchy but mostly dry. She was starting to wonder if someone was coming for her and who it would be. Owen, again? Another slayer, who would finish the job? A policeman? A gym goer who just wanted his coat back? A hopeful part wondered if it would be someone she could eat. A fearful part of her wondered the exact same thing.

The lighter clicked in her hand aimlessly for an hour. She watched the flame dance and die and dance and die over and over again until it was out of fuel, then tossed it across the room. She started to talk not to herself, but to the can of Black Vanilla, wondering how it was helping her and if this was helping, or if it would be better to let herself go again. She asked it about the passage of time. If it wanted to be a coat, too. If it was going to die out soon. She squeezed it into her mouth, choking on the chemicals but feeling almost human due to the reaction. She returned to the floor again and remained there until —

“Jenny?” 

A voice rang out. Jenny pulled her legs closer. She squeezed Black Vanilla and inhaled her fumes. Was she truly going mad now? 

“Jenny?” 

That voice was familiar. It was Jade. Here to finish her off, or here to release her? 

“Jenny?”

She swallowed thickly. Lifted her head and shouted back. Whatever Jade was here for, she would face it. Anything but this room.