#✦ beth◞ lives v. ╱ the dawn yawns; i don’t know fear.

[cataschism]

Beth verses below the cut.

THE CLASSIC. ✦ BETH LIVES.

On the tin. Prank never happens, Beth (&. Hannah) never falls, never dies on impact, never gets eaten. Beth goes to college, gets internships and residencies, and becomes a psychiatrist. She prefers research over clinical work during most of her schooling, but ends up really enjoying psychiatry as an adult. She even acts in Josh’s movies, if he needs a psychiatrist who can act.

THE CREATURE. ✦ BETH IS THE WENDIGO.

Beth is the one who survives and eats Hannah, though even post-transformation she is timid and remains the same size as the rest of the monsters. Her destruction style, unlike Hannah’s intentional and symbolic killings (inspired by some stuff Hal has said) is what I call “panic killings,” where she doesn’t mean to, doesn’t want to, but ends up shredding people in the process of trying to undo her harm.

Sub verses, but no tags:

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH DIES.

In an attempt to cradle Josh upon recognizing his smell / warmth, she pierces his arms at the shoulder / armpit, and stakes him through the chest. Attempting to get him removed from her claws, she rips him apart, crying all the while.

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH GETS TAKEN.

Beth takes her best friend to the mines, less so grabbing him than just herding him further into the mines. To do what, exactly - force him into her position (cannibalism), or “protect” him from their friends / the pranksters, her mind is foggy &. unclear. She sees her best friend through the haze of the Wendigo, and can do nothing except get him back to where they used to hang out, their secret place - a dark &. wet spot, deep below past where anyone could find them.

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH SURVIVES.

The confusion of the mines being so cold, &. the water being so cold, disrupts Beth’s wendigo heat-reading eyes. Josh seems almost invisible. She thrashes, scaring him deeper into the mines. But lost in her confusion, fear and despair, she does not attack him. She leaves for easier prey, above - ground.

THE STRANGER. ✦ HANNAH TURNS BUT BETH DOESN’T DIE.

Separate from the Creature Verse, Beth does not follow Hannah into the woods, to the Stranger, or the mines. Hannah runs and Beth pointedly does not follow nor wake Josh: she stares into the night and something screams at her: DON’T GO! &. she is unable to move. Her sister “dies,” &. she feels her guilt &. Hannah’s “spirit” (or is it just her own guilt, doubling - up, weighing her down?) mesh, like a physical weight upon her.

Beth does not survive the incident mentally - sound, but she does survive. Beth considers genuinely hurting their friends, unable to explain why she feels so weighed - upon. It’s a twin thing. You’d feel it too, if part of your soul died.

She eventually becomes like the Stranger, and without knowing why, knows there’s something out there keeping her sister alive - dead - neither. Is it to kill Hannah, to make her rest? Or to kill the things that did “it” to her - this unexplainable thing?

THE LAST ONE STANDING. ✦ BETH - JOSH SWAP.

Instead of Beth and Hannah dying, Josh is awake and follows Hannah into the night, taking Beth’s stead and dying in her place. Beth is the one who lives. She asks her friends involved in the prank, though her brother &. twin sister are dead, to come back to the lodge for a remembrance day &. to tell them how well her psychiatry studying is going. Maybe she can help them heal. 

But Beth is still her brother’s sister, &. has something fear - inducing in mind.