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unnameablethings · 2 months ago

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Dead Ringer

Word count: 4k Rating: M for Mature Category: M?/F

Content Notes/Tags: Offscreen/implied domestic violence, non-graphic sex, misogyny, gun violence, horror themes.

Summary: Gemma is the isolated and miserable housewife of a man who hunts monsters. She doesn't know much about her husband's work, but she knows enough about her husband that when he comes home warm and smiling and kind, she knows that whoever or whatever this is - it's not him. -

There were things of John's which Gemma kept well out of. The long road trips he would vanish off on for weeks at a time with no notice, the hush-hush phone calls he would take out in the backyard late at night, pacing along the fence line, gesturing, body contorting in tension. The dreams he would wake up screaming from. The liquor cabinet. The trunk of his car, full of rock salt and guns and iron.

Gemma had become accustomed to the art of incuriosity. John went out to kill the things that went bump in the night, and he was doing it all to keep her and the baby safe. He told her that, sometimes, when he'd made her cry. Said it like a threat, like a bite, like it was supposed to mean she wasn't allowed to cry. It wasn't her job to know what he did out there, only to be patient with him when he came back colder and meaner and drunker every time.

Gemma was washing up at the kitchen sink when she heard the car pull into the driveway. There had been a time in their marriage when she would have run to the door to greet him, to kiss him hello, to run her hands over his arms and his body to check that he was safe, he was whole, he was well. Today, her stomach clenched. I thought he would be gone longer, she thought.

But the baby was sleeping, and the dishes weren't done. She kept her head down and scrubbed stubborn fragments of baked cheese off the bottom of the casserole dish and practiced a welcoming face to greet him with when he came in the door, tried to figure out a way to tell him to keep quiet without him taking it wrong.

The keys rattled in the lock. The door opened. Not with a great burst of force, but something slower and wearier. Gemma turned to him and smiled, a practiced curve that she worked to make reach her eyes. When John came in, he had his bag slung over his shoulder in the same way he always did, but he paused in the doorway and looked at her for a moment in a way he hadn't since they got married. He smiled, warm and tired, and said, "I've really missed you, Gem."

It hurt her in a way she hadn't expected. She hadn't missed him at all - she was a horrible wife - he really did love her - she couldn't believe she'd ever thought I wish I knew how to leave him. (She had seen the guns in the trunk. She had heard the ragged desperation when he said he'd kill anything at all in the world that wanted to take her away from him. Her parents had been killed by the same vampire he'd saved her from, and then he'd taken her a thousand miles away to put her alone in a town where she didn't know anyone.)

"I missed you too, baby," she said, and her voice shook. The tears in her eyes must have been taken as tears of love or sincerity, because he came to her and cupped her cheek and leaned in. She braced for his mouth, rough and possessive on hers. The kiss landed warm and dry and gentle on the center of her forehead.

"God, I'm starving," John said, and turned to look in the fridge. Gemma's stomach clenched again, waiting. She'd made a big batch of baked ziti for her to eat all week, but that wasn't the sort of thing John liked when he came back from a trip. He wanted meat and potatoes, a real solid stick-to-your-bones sort of meal.

"There's nothing made up," Gemma said, quickly. "Just pasta - I'm so sorry, I thought you'd be gone another couple of days. I can make something for you real quick, here, let me just-"

"That's alright, sweetheart," John said, putting out a steadying hand. "I've got it." And he got out the eggs and the tail end of the cheese block and the spices and half an onion and made himself an omelet. Every movement was slow and careful, like he was having to think about where his hands would end up. He must be real tired. He seemed a lot better after he'd devoured the whole mess with a healthy dash of hot sauce, more animated, but the whole time quiet and civil. He smiled at her again when she took the dish to wash, and thanked her.

"I could sleep for a week," he said, and went upstairs and unpacked his own bag and showered and put himself to bed. Gemma stayed downstairs for a while, lingering over the dishes, wiping down the stove. When she opened the fridge, she stared at the line of cold bottles of beer she kept ready for him. None were missing.

This wasn't John.

Obviously.

Something had stolen his face and his voice and was living in her house where the baby was and sleeping in her bed and she was going to have to go upstairs and lie down next to it.

It didn't even know how to be John so it probably didn't even know she had noticed anything was wrong.

It ate an omelet, she thought, staring at the drying dishes. It's not going to eat the baby. If she just played along, she could probably keep herself and the baby safe until the real John got back, or - or until she could figure out what else to do.

She went upstairs and got ready for bed, quietly, trying not to wake up the sleeping impostor. Then, slowly, she got into bed beside it, and lay awake in silence, listening to it breathe. It didn't even snore like John had, just breathed, long and slow and even. Its body was relaxed next to hers, loose and warm.

At some point she must have fallen asleep, because she woke up to John missing from beside her, and the sound of the baby crying. The room was dark, disorienting. Her heart jumped hard in her chest, adrenaline jolting her out of bed before she remembered that it wasn't even John. She went for the baby's room without a plan or a thought, just the terror-fueled desire to stop it from doing whatever it was planning to do.

The door to the nursery was open. The impostor stood inside it over the crib, holding the baby. It spoke low and quiet in John's voice. "Shhh, Danny-boy, I know you're hungry," it said. "Hush now, don't wake your mama, she didn't sleep well. Let's go see if we can rustle up a bottle, alright, baby?"

"John, give me Danny," Gemma said. Her voice shook. Danny twisted in the impostor's arms when he heard her, crying, his arms outstretched.

The impostor handed him over. His smile was apologetic. "I thought I'd let you sleep in a bit. Poor little guy won't settle for anything but his mama."

The statement made her cold, for a moment, but there was no rage behind it, no bitterness. It wasn't John. "He loves his daddy, he just knows who can give him his breakfast," Gemma said, taking Danny into her arms. Danny's crying redoubled as soon as he was safe in her arms, his little wet face turned to press into her shirt and ooze on her, mouth gumming at her ravenously. She turned away from the impostor before she pulled her shirt up to let Danny latch onto her breast. This wasn't her husband, and it was not for him to see. "You can go back to bed."

"You sure?" the impostor asked. "There any bottles made up for if he needs em, later?"

Gemma shook her head. "Really, it's alright, you had a long drive," she said, keeping her head down.

"Alright," the impostor said, after a moment, and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck that made all the skin on her back crawl.

As soon as the door shut behind the impostor, she took an enormous, shaky breath. She did not cry. She knew a lot of ways not to cry, now. She stared dry-eyed at the floor as Danny nursed. He was safe. She would keep him safe. "It's okay, baby," she whispered to Danny, over and over. "I've got you. You're going to be okay."

Somehow she got through the day, and the next day, and the next. She kissed back when the impostor kissed her good morning, and was horribly grateful he never pushed it beyond that. The kiss was bad enough. It felt like cheating on John at the same time as it was John. He'd be furious when he got back.

If he ever did come back. The longer the days went on, the less it felt like there was anyone coming to save her.

And with every day that went by, the impostor kept being… not particularly dangerous. It spoke calmly and kindly to her and to Danny, always. It went out and mowed the lawn. It took out the trash. It played with Danny. It did the laundry. It went to the grocery store for her, and when it came back from that it had stopped somewhere along the way and gotten her sunflowers.

When it handed her the sunflowers, she touched the petals with bewilderment. "These are my favorite," she said, and couldn't help but let her voice rise in a question at the end. John had gotten her roses before, when he had really fucked up and didn't know how to apologize. Roses and roses and roses, but never sunflowers.

"I know," said the impostor. "You wear that apron with the sunflower on the pocket all the time." Then, his voice changing, half concerned, half laughing, "Oh, honey, are you crying? Come here," and somehow she found herself collapsed into the impostor's arms, sobbing inconsolably. He didn't even smell like John. The impostor smelled like leather and laundry detergent and a little like sweat, but nothing at all like rust and stress and whiskey.

"I love them," she sobbed, and the impostor kissed the top of her head and murmured "I love you," into her hair. She didn't ask him where he had gotten the money. She'd never asked John about the money, either. It came from somewhere, and that was all that mattered.

The sunflowers went in a vase on the table, and she cooked impostor-John dinner that night from the groceries he'd bought. He liked protein - meat and eggs and cheese - the same way John had. Impostor-John also liked spicy food, though, and more salt than John had liked, and bitter-flavored things like brussels sprouts and asparagus which John wouldn't have even touched. Danny got a mushed-up brussels sprout to try at the table, and impostor-John laughed with real humor as Danny screwed up his little face at it and announced his immense displeasure and then hurled it onto the ground.

"You'll grow into it, kiddo," impostor-John reassured him, and bent down and wiped up the mess with a paper towel before Gemma could even get up.

By the time the sunflowers wilted, Gemma knew John was never coming back. The day she realized it, she took a long shower and used the sound of the water to cover up her crying. When the hot water ran out, she felt hollowed-out and worn through, but clean. Like her lungs had been full of tar for years and she'd only just remembered what it was like to breathe air. It wasn't John, and nothing would ever be the same, but she would survive this, the same way she'd survived everything else. And she and Danny would be alright. Maybe even safe.

When she came out, her husband was sitting on the bed with the lamp on. He wasn't even pretending to read a book, just waiting up for her. His expression was tired and gentle. Concerned, like maybe he'd heard her cry. The look shifted to surprise as Gemma let her towel drop and crawled into his lap.

"Oh, hello, gorgeous," he said, his hands coming to rest on her hips. There was the barest hesitation, an uncertainty. "You're sure?"

"The baby's asleep, we have time," she said, deliberately misunderstanding, and straddled him. The sharp intake of his breath relieved her of any worry that he didn't want her. This was for the best, then. This was good, this was right, this was how she could keep herself and the baby safe, and keep her husband close at hand and loving her.

It turned out that her husband was better at that than John had been too. Attentive and gentle. He touched the stretch marks on her belly and thighs and breasts with a tangible sense of awe, took clear joy in coaxing her to come. He closed his teeth harmlessly around the curve of her neck and shoulder as he made love to her, and she thought she could feel the points of them a little sharper than they should be.

She started calling the impostor Johnny after that, and her husband never asked why, just kissed her and answered with a ready "Yes, ma'am," whenever she started a sentence with "Johnny, will you please."

When he moved too quickly and she flinched, or when she apologized to him too much, or when he said something a little too like John might, he was careful with her. Apologetic, gentle. She always told him it was alright. They never talked about it. He wasn't John, and John was never coming home, and as long as they never talked about it then everything would be alright, and they could live in this sunlit honeymoon forever.

Nothing good had ever lasted for Gemma, and everything broke eventually. She wished she felt surprised when this broke too. A big rusty pickup truck came roaring up to the house one night. Gemma stared at it through the window, and thought nothing. Only perfect blankness, a deer in too-bright headlights, the engine sound deafening. Loud enough that Johnny came running from the other room.

"Fuck," he said, when he saw the truck through the window. She'd rarely heard him swear, since he came to them. He did even that differently than John did. Crisp, even-toned. Almost matter-of-fact, though she could hear strain under it.

"It's Bill," Gemma said, distantly, in case Johnny didn't know. "Your friend you used to go on all those hunts with. You remember."

Johnny looked at her, and she looked back, and all of the things they didn't talk about stood between them, every prickly edge of them pressing, ready to draw blood. He said, heavily, "I remember."

Outside, the truck parked. The engine shut off, and the headlights. Gemma could see the silhouette of Bill coming up the driveway.

Gemma wiped sweating hands on her skirt and said, "I think you'd better go check on Danny. I'll get the door."

"I think you'd better go check on Danny," Johnny said, gently and firmly. "And don't come back out until I tell you."

Bill knocked. Gemma went numbly to answer it.

Johnny said, very quietly, "Baby, you don't want to see this."

Gemma ignored him and unlocked the door and opened it.

"Bill?" she asked, and the confusion was real. It was alright he could tell she was scared of him. She'd always been scared of him. "John didn't say you were coming!"

"Is he here?" Bill demanded, incredulously, and then his eyes rose and he saw Johnny standing behind her. "Boy, why the hell haven't you been answering my calls?" he demanded, and shouldered his way past Gemma as Gemma melted out of the way. "I thought you were dead."

"After the shit you fucking pulled on me?" Johnny said, and it was John's voice, thick with rage and ugly violence. Gemma's blood froze in her veins, her heart hammering. "You just ditched me with that fucking thing. You wouldn't have thought I was dead if you'd fuckin' stuck around to help me finish the job. The drive home was hell after."

"Oh, so you decided to be a petty little bitch about it?" Bill snarled right back, and came crowding right up into Johnny's space.

Bill reeked like John always had, cigarettes and booze and rust. It was too familiar, too close. Bill and John had duked it out in the living room before, loud and ugly and terrifying. Come to blows, staggered off both bleeding and swearing up a blue streak, and then she would catch them later, talking like the closest of old friends, shoulders pressed together, not looking at each other.

"I decided to spend a few months getting my fuckin' head on straight," Johnny said, and shoved Bill back, hard. "I've got a wife and a fucking baby now, I can't be running off with you all the time to take potshots at ghosts. I'm done. I'm not fucking doing this anymore."

Gemma watched that hurt Bill. Saw the way it cut him open, like maybe he would have preferred if John was dead. "Bullshit," Bill spat. "Bullshit! You fucking love hunting. You've been married years, and what, it's suddenly a fucking problem for you? You can get cunt fucking anywhere. You'd rather stay home and play house with fucking Gemma than come out and save lives?"

Johnny punched him in the mouth. It sent Bill staggering back, blood on his lips, and Gemma shrieked, startled. "Don't you ever," he said, and his voice was low and furious. "Don't you fucking dare talk about my wife like that. I'll put a bullet through your fucking head. Keep her name out of your filthy fucking mouth, you worthless son of a bitch. We're done, you hear me? I don't ever want to see you around here again."

Bill touched his mouth, looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he reached inside his coat and Gemma saw the flash of metal as he pulled out a knife. She gasped, and Johnny said, dangerously, "The hell you planning to do with that, Bill?"

"It's silver, John," Bill said. "You're not acting like yourself. And I'll forgive you for it - I'll fucking leave you and your wife alone," His voice came out wrong, strained and cracking. "But do me a favor and prove to me you really are him."

Gemma's stomach dropped. Johnny stood very still, looking at Bill and at the knife. The air was thick and airless.

"I would have noticed if he wasn't my husband," Gemma said, voice wavering. "You're being ridiculous, Bill."

"Yeah, well, you don't know him like I know him," Bill said. His voice had some awful, heavy triumph in it. "That's an awful lot of hesitation, John."

Johnny sighed, a long, low, rattling breath. "Give me the fucking knife," he said, and held his hand out for it. Time seemed to slow. Gemma didn't know what happened to the sort of thing that Johnny was when he touched silver, but Bill would know, and then he would kill Johnny right here in the living room, and there would never be sunflowers in that vase on the table again.

Gemma turned and hurried out of the room. Behind her, she heard voices rise again, heard the gasp of pain, heard a great crash. Gemma ignored it the best she could as she keyed in the code to the gun safe and got out the shotgun. John had taught her how to shoot, back before they were married, so she could keep herself and Danny safe while he was gone. She checked to make sure the gun was loaded. It was.

There was a sheet of glass between her and the world. Somewhere underneath it all there was sick terror, but her hands were steady on the gun grip.

It was the way she'd felt when her parents died, when John had pressed an iron cross into her hands and told her not to let it go no matter what he or anyone else told her. He'd had to pry it from her hands at the end of the night while she screamed. Tried to fight him. Lost. Cried about it, even when he told her he'd killed them all.

John wasn't here anymore. She cocked the shotgun and went back into the living room.

The coffee table was lying on its side. Blood was splattered across the ground. Bill was sitting upright, straddling Johnny's body. He had the knife in both hands, and Johnny's hands were locked around his wrists, preventing him from stabbing down. His arms were shaking. Bill's shirt was soaked in blood, torn where a knife must have gone through.

Beneath Bill, Gemma's husband didn't look much like John at all anymore. Didn't look much like a person at all. He was bleeding too, his hands around Bill's wrists blistered and burning. Her gorge rose. She couldn't stop staring at him, at Bill, at the blood.

Bill's eyes darted sideways, the whites of them showing, a panicked animal. "Fuck, girl, what are you waiting for, shoot it," he said.

Gemma raised the shotgun and fired.

The noise felt like the house coming down. Armageddon. It made her ears ring, made the startled outburst of the baby's crying from upstairs sound muffled in comparison. The force of it, unexpected, knocked her off balance, sent her stumbling back to collapse. She couldn't even scream as she saw what the blast had done at point blank range. It just came out as panicked, stuttering wheezing. She dropped the gun and pressed both her palms over her eyes and shook with adrenaline.

There was movement, then. The dragging, heavy sound of someone hauling himself to his feet, staggering over to her. Strong arms came around her to hold her, and her mouth opened and she wailed like Danny was wailing. "We're alright, baby girl, we're alright," Johnny said, tired and heavy. She could feel blood soaking through her shirt where he was holding her.

"I killed him," Gemma sobbed.

"You did," Johnny said, after a moment.

"You killed him," Gemma said, and meant someone else entirely.

The pause that time was longer, heavier. "I did," Johnny said.

"Why?" She meant why'd you kill him, though she could guess. She meant why be my husband, and couldn't guess at all.

Maybe being the thing that Johnny was meant he understood people better than John had. Johnny held her tighter and kissed the top of her head and said, "Didn't like how he treated his wife." It was enough.

Gemma laughed, horrible and wet and shocking herself. Maybe someday she'd ask out loud. Maybe someday he'd tell her. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be alright," Johnny said. "I don't go down easy. You go upstairs and shower and see to the baby, I'll clean up down here. Alright?"

"Alright," Gemma said, and meant it. In a moment she would go upstairs and clean herself up and soothe the frightened baby, and in a while maybe Johnny would come upstairs and shower himself and bandage up his wounds and then crawl into bed next to her. All of the nastiness down here would be gone, because Johnny would have cleaned it up for her. They'd maybe end up having to replace the carpet, but then they would just be living here happily in the house that John had bought for her.

"We should move," she said.

If it caught Johnny off guard, he didn't say so. "We'll move, then," he said. "I love you."

"I know," Gemma said, and turned and kissed him. "I love you too," she said, and went upstairs. (Resurrecting my ANCIENT fucking pinglist. from SIX YEARS AGO. I GUESS. I don't know if any of you even still exist but hey if you're alive and liked me SIX YEARS AGO. maybe you will like this. @trishaloach @toastyhat @acefruitloop @skye07 @m1sosazai @yoyoendlessstring @blue-tomatoes @catsfeminismandatla @lady-redshield-writes @alhena09 @emanonnosrep @je11yfish-queen @gingerly-writing @dramaticvoiceover @writingmyselfintoanearlygrave @authorisada @reciclingbin-blog @lushprocrastinatrix @timeenoughforamasterpiece @tedrakitty @haphazardlyparked @kiwisoap

@silver56 @pacifiedperoxide @kooncat @severe-fangirl-syndrome @startledserpent @dhawandyke @50-shaeds-of-fae @stritt @dorianelle @linariuswrites, @somber-fae)

#Original fiction #short fiction #romance #??#my writing #original #feels ABSURD to ping for this after so long but also #you know #I feel like there's been a glow up #also if you are thinking hmmm this whole thing smacks of Supernatural #well #we exist in conversation with a text

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