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Fic: Let Nothing You Dismay (1/5), Sue, Terri, Kurt, Rachel, Finn, Will, PG-13
Title: Let Nothing You Dismay (1/5)
Author: Ellydash
Characters: Sue Sylvester, Terri Schuester, Kurt Hummel, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Will Schuester
Rating: PG-13
Warning: References to suicide; violent images.
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 3,612
Note: First of five chapters. I may have gotten a little carried away with this idea.
Summary: Three spirits take Sue Sylvester to visit Christmases past, present and future. A Glee-flavored retelling of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” – Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”
Prologue: Wherein We Hear, for the First Time, of a Recent Tragedy
Terri Schuester’s dead, to begin with.
Sue hasn’t seen the body herself, of course, but she’s been lining the pockets of Lima’s EMTs on a regular basis for years. Their reports on overdoses and sexual acts gone terribly wrong provide her with considerable blackmail material.
She’s received a report from the paramedic on call that night, the first to respond to Will Schuester’s frantic call. She knows exactly where the bullet went in (under the chin; Terri had, apparently, spent a few minutes on Google looking for effective suicide tips), exactly how much blood and brain matter covered the couch she’d done it on (“A whole goddamn lot, ma’am”), even the contents of the note she’d left for Will (the closing line: "Merry Christmas!").
This is important: Terri is gone. Without knowing this, you might doubt the wonder of what’s about to happen. You might still doubt it, and you wouldn’t be the only one. Sue Sylvester, despite her intimate knowledge of the crime scene’s forensics, will, as these pages chronicle, shortly be forced into severe self-doubt catalyzed by the question of Terri’s deadness. This is a crisis of confidence the likes of which Sue has not permitted herself since a deeply troubling night in 1991 with Miami Vice’s Don Johnson and a jar of peanut butter.
This is the first thing you need to remember: Terri Schuester is dead.
Chapter One: Wherein Kurt Hummel Extends an Invitation and Immediately Regrets It; Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson are Good – if Ineffective and Misguided – Samaritans; Sue Sylvester Receives an Unexpected Visitor
One cold afternoon in late December, on the last day of school before the holiday break, Sue Sylvester, who is always the hero of her own stories and never anyone else’s, sits at her desk, scanning sheet music. The Rihanna number she’s considering as background for the Cheerios’ New Year routine has, she decides, distasteful key changes.
She sets the piece of paper on fire with a gold-plated cigarette lighter, and drops the curling edges into the waste bin, satisfied.
Kurt Hummel appears in the doorway.
“Coach,” he says, and then stops. “Is that – what’s that smell?”
“Bad music dying,” she replies. “How can I help you, K? Or, more accurately, in what specific way can I pretend to listen to you talk to me while I’m actually thinking about whether I photograph better from my left or right side? The answer to that, by the way, is all sides, because Sue Sylvester is stunning from every angle.”
Kurt appears unfazed. “I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas before we leave for break. Or happy whatever-you-celebrate. A happy holiday.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Paul Lynde, since I sense it’s born out of a healthy mixture of fear and respect, but, as Jack Kennedy never said, especially to a woman: no thanks. I don’t celebrate anything except the failure of others.”
“You don’t – do anything for Christmas?” Kurt asks, looking as though he’s not sure he really wants to go down this path. “Coach, I’m just as squeamish about commemorating the birth of the baby Jesus as any fashion-forward gay atheist with a skin regimen Joan Crawford would envy, but even I buy gifts and make gingerbread.”
Sue’s upper lip curls in disgust at the idea of empty gingered calories.
“I don’t eat it or anything,” Kurt amends, correctly deducing the reason for Sue’s snarl, “but Dad’s a big gingerbread fan, and it’s kind of a tradition with us. Something we did with my mom.”
“That’s precious.” The word rolls in her mouth like a filthy pearl.
Kurt has enough good sense to stop talking.
“Look,” Sue continues, “this time of year is just an excuse for people to feel better about themselves by dropping a couple of quarters into a Salvation Army tin, or feel worse about themselves because they can’t buy their kids dolls or tractors or whatever the hell kids play with, or not feel anything at all because they’re too busy inhaling spiked eggnog at the office party. It’s a gigantic federally-sanctioned excuse to stick your head in the sand and ignore what’s really important in favor of trivial bullshit like stringing up tiny lights.”
“What’s really important?” He’s genuinely curious.
“Me,” she says, jamming her thumb into her chest for emphasis. “I am. Sue Sylvester.”
Kurt stares at her. She glares back.
He shakes his head a bit, to clear it.
“All right,” he begins, “this is completely and utterly insane, and I’m not sure why I’m doing this except, possibly, that I’m testing the limits of my masochistic tolerance – ”
“I would’ve thought Schuester’s weekly theme challenges were doing that all on their own –”
“ – but I’d like to ask you something.”
Sue watches him, eyes constricted.
“Would you –” He’s redder than Brenda Castle’s nose after a bender. “Would you like to join us for dinner on Christmas Day? My dad and me? And Finn and his mom? We’re having tofurkey.”
She hadn’t expected this, not even from Kurt Hummel. Sue’s come to regard Kurt as someone cast out of a familiar mold, with recognizable angles and moves and resistance; and so somewhere deep within her (though she’d rather assist Mary Lou Retton on the uneven bars than admit it) she feels a twinge of pleasure at being acknowledged.
But dinner with Hummel and his family? Making small conversation with Hudson’s mother over cranberry sauce? Feigning interest in her miserable, small little life and her son’s pathetic passer rating? And all in the name, Sue thinks, of what, when you get down to it, really amounts to not much more than charity.
“You’ll have to live without my presence gracing your blue-collar Brady Bunch episode,” she tells him. “I’m taking off for my condo in Ensenada, where I plan to spend the Day That Will Not Be Named with endlessly refreshing margaritas and endlessly refreshing hardbodies.”
Kurt can’t stop himself from shuddering at the mental picture she’s given him.
Sue shrugs. “If you think that’s bad, Prudy, you should be happy I’m not accepting your invitation. Believe it or not, I maintain something of a verbal filter on school property, because, unlike one William Schuester, I believe in appropriate boundaries.”
He doesn’t look as though he believes her, which is quite all right by Sue, who always feels happier when she’s unsettled a student.
“Okay,” he says, and she can hear the not-insubstantial note of relief in his voice. “I just thought I’d ask.”
She doesn’t thank him.
“Ms. Sylvester?”
It’s Rachel Berry. And (Good God, is Will sending her these bottom-feeders on purpose, to drive her up the wall?) she’s brought Finn Hudson with her. Rachel’s gripping Finn’s arm tightly, and the shrill smile on her face is wide enough to wrap around her head several times over. Finn just looks like he wants to throw up.
“Can we speak to you?” Rachel asks, her voice a touch higher than its normal range. “Just for a moment? It’s important.”
Sue considers throwing a trophy at her, one of the small ones. It wouldn’t do much damage – she’d like to avoid another conversation with Figgins so soon after the Ashley Berkowitz glitter machine debacle, so less damage is, for once, a plus – but it’d light a fire under Rachel’s hideous plastic ballerina flats. (Sue's not being unnecessarily cruel here; they really are awful shoes.)
“Nothing,” she says, finally, “is as important as my preserved sense of justice, and right now that sense of justice is being horribly violated by your continued presence in this room. And in this school. Get out. Go serenade a menorah.”
Kurt, who possesses a sense of self-preservation Rachel Berry sorely lacks, chooses this moment to duck out of Sue’s office. Finn watches him go, clearly wishing he could execute a similar exit strategy.
Evidently on a suicide mission, Rachel steps further into Sue’s office, pulling Finn with her.
“Ms. Sylvester,” Rachel continues, “Finn and I are terribly concerned by the severe dearth of adequate vocal training available to the disadvantaged minority populations of Lima. As a Jewish woman with two gay dads and the burden of extreme talent, I fully understand the pain of being a minority, and want to spend this holiday season helping others who do not share my class privilege.”
“Didn’t hear a word you said after ‘Sylvester,’ Berry. I treated myself to a middle-ear implant last week that selectively edits out all speech that doesn’t concern me. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much everything besides my name and the phrase ‘sex explosion.’ Go figure.”
Rachel elbows Finn in the ribs.
“Ow!” Finn protests.
“Say your line,” hisses Rachel.
“Will you – ” He pauses, looks at Rachel for reassurance; she nods at him firmly. “Will you donate money to help poor people get the singing training they deserve?”
Rachel smiles, approvingly, and turns to Sue. Sue’s forehead is crinkled in disbelief.
“Am I hearing you correctly? Poors singing? Holy Mother of Lourdes, Rocco, Mercy and David, what is wrong with you, Berry? If society’s grubs want to massage their vocal cords, they’re better off practicing their excuses for the welfare agency. Schuester dumb enough to give you money for your vanity exercise?”
“He gave us twenty dollars,” says Rachel, proudly. “Coach Beiste gave us fifteen.”
“Shocking. What’d Tracy Flick here make you pocket up, Hudson?”
“Uh – I had a couple bucks left over from a lawnmowing gig.”
Sue stands up. “All right, Donny and Marie,” she snaps. “Before I completely lose my patience and sue your parents for exceptionally incompetent breeding. Out.”
Rachel, remarkably, is not quivering in her flats.
“Why do you have to be so mean all the time, Ms. Sylvester?” she asks, plaintively.
“Berry, as famed 19th century sociopath George Hearst once said, during his first speech as the Prime Minister of South Dakota: haters gonna hate.”
*
She sees Will through the window on the music room door, as she’s passing through the hallway on her way out. He’s got his back to her, seated at the piano. He’s not playing.
Sue considers calling out something to him, maybe a crack about his poverty or his shoulders (she’s spent the last month trying to convince him that one’s lower than the other) but then remembers Terri and thinks better of it.
If you were to suggest to Sue that holding back is her way of giving a Christmas gift to Will, she would probably punch you in the nose or maybe the stomach, and you would realize the error of your ways and never, ever suggest anything to Sue Sylvester again.
*
It’s snowing, hard.
Sue’s house is irritatingly cold and dark when she arrives home. Imelda’s taken the week off to spend with her family, a request that Sue granted her only because Imelda threatened to have a “little conversation” with Will Schuester, and they’d probably speak Spanish together or something. She’s not sure, but getting blackmailed in Spanish seems somehow worse than getting blackmailed in English. And so Sue returns tonight to a house that hasn’t been pre-warmed (she prefers a sub-tropical indoor climate) or pre-lit (no shadows, because Sue firmly believes that shadows can’t be trusted).
Imelda left a refrigerator full of pre-blended protein shakes, anyway, which is almost as good as having her here to yell at.
On her way to the kitchen, Sue sees something move out of the corner of her eye, in the corner of the living room where she’s got her college trophy cases.
She spins toward it, her hand automatically touching her hip in search of a non-existent weapon.
Nothing. There’s nothing there.
Get a hold of yourself, Sylvester, she thinks, staring at a particularly large trophy with the inscription OHIO STATE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL 1980 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS, and while she’s looking at it the metal basketball at the top of the trophy shifts, and it’s no longer a basketball facsimile, it’s the head of Terri Schuester. Her little mouth is distorted, wide, and it might be a yawn and it might be a scream.
Sue stares at her altered trophy; her skin hums; the fine hair on her arms rises.
As quickly as it appeared, Terri’s little head is gone.
“God, what – ” Sue starts to say, out loud, and then realizes she’s broken her cardinal rule of never talking out loud to yourself, because that’s the marker of weakness. She’s not shaking, she isn’t, it’s just that her blood sugar is low because she skipped out on her afternoon supplemental shake and that always sets her a bit on edge.
Sue hasn’t thought much about Terri Schuester in the weeks since her suicide; as a general rule she tries hard not to think about anything connected to Will Schuester if she can help it. Sue wouldn’t say, exactly, that she liked Terri (‘like’ being an infuriatingly milquetoast verb) but she’d grudgingly respected the woman’s level of crazy, even if the objective of her insanity, keeping Will in her clutches, seemed incredibly misguided.
If she were honest with herself, though – and this being Sue Sylvester, the hypothetical will remain hypothetical – she’s a little disturbed by the circumstances of Terri’s death. How angry she must’ve been at Will, to do herself in on the couch they’d bought together, in their old home, leaving her body there for him to find. Sue understands that kind of anger. She admires it, even; there’s a kind of beauty in the fresh, sharp propulsion of pure rage. She even understands how Will Schuester could’ve been its target, especially for a woman who’d been dumb enough to share a bed with the man for more than a decade.
Sue Sylvester knows what Terri did not: the importance of packaging anger, of slicing it into manageable portions and making clear, informed choices about when and where to deliver. This is the difference between herself and Terri: control.
Sue, however, is not capable of or interested in sustained self-reflection, because she believes navel-gazing is for unimportant narcissists (Sue is a very, very important narcissist). And so she decides to spend her evening with a protein shake and the latest issue of Cheerleader Weekly, with a pen to underline mentions of her name. And she pushes away that slight sense of nausea she feels when she thinks about Terri Schuester and whatever troubling moment of weakness caused her to hallucinate that grotesque image.
*
It’s snowing harder.
Sue dozes in her ergonomic leather reclining chair, images flitting past behind her eyes. Her cheerleaders execute perfect flips and turns, defying laws of physics. Will Schuester polishes her trophies. Jean’s hand is on her arm. Susie, Jean whispers, and Sue says, sharply, don’t you call me that –
The television blinks on.
The sound of it jolts Sue out of her light sleep and onto her feet before she’s sure what’s happened. Recovering quickly, she looks for the remote – she must’ve leaned on it, somehow – and yes, it’s there. Across the room, on the couch, where she couldn’t possibly have touched it.
When she realizes she can hear the TV in her bedroom, too, that’s when she feels the first lick of fear down her spine.
“If someone’s there,” she snarls, her body tensed, “you better prepare yourself for an anatomy lesson, because I’m gonna make you feel every single bone in your body.”
There’s silence. Then she hears footsteps. Heavy, slow, from the back of the house, maybe the laundry room. Coming closer.
Sue grabs the nearest trophy, a hunting commendation with convenient antler prongs, and assumes an offensive position, heels barely touching the floor, knees bent and ready to spring.
When the agent of the footsteps enters the living room, several things happen: first, the TV picture flares and flickers briefly, as if in recognition, and then snaps off. Second, Sue Sylvester stumbles backwards in shock, falling into her chair, and the trophy weapon drops to the floor with a loud thump.
Third, Terri Schuester says, “Well, hi there, Sue.”
And it is, despite what every law of science tells us is possible, Terri. She’s wearing what Sue knows, thanks to the very thorough paramedic’s report, was Terri’s last outfit, and she looks perfectly normal – or as normal as a dead woman might be expected to look. The only out-of-place accessory is a light blue bandanna, bound tightly around her head and chin.
“Did I freak you out?” Terri asks, sweetly. “I was thinking about keeping all that going, maybe over a couple of nights, but I’m trying this nice thing now. It’s harder than it looks.”
Sue is momentarily, and maybe for the first time in recorded history, unable to speak.
“For crying out loud.” Terri’s hands are on her hips. “Lady, you’d think with the gigantic favor I’m about to do you, you’d be a little more welcoming. I certainly don’t get off on people being terrified of me.”
“You,” Sue begins, slowly, “are – not – there.”
Terri smiles at her.
“Oh, I’m not?” she says. “You don’t believe I’m here?”
“No.” Sue’s not sure why she’s having a conversation with what she’s absolutely, positively sure is her own psyche. “I must be more run down than I thought – ”
She clamps her mouth shut on what, if unstifled, would be a shriek. Terri’s untying the bandanna around her head and chin, and her jaw unhinges from the rest of her face; it’s an unholy mass of shot-mangled pulp and bone, and it drops so much farther than it should, it drops slowly, and it rests on her sternum.
Somehow, out of that flesh tangle, Terri says Sue’s name.
Sue shakes her head: no, no, no.
“I made a mistake,” Terri tells her. “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I drove away the one person who cared about me through all of it. And when I died, I died alone and miserable and I ruined my hair. Now I can’t take any of that back. That’s why I’m here, Sue. I’m here because I’d like to keep you from making my mistakes. You’re just as miserable as I was. I can’t change the choices I made, but you –” The reanimated Terri, apparently, enjoys drama as much as the living Terri. “You can reevaluate your life before it’s too late. Get some perspective. Pet a dog, say nice things to people. You know, basic shit.”
“What – ”
“Now, you’re a smart woman, and so you’re probably wondering why I’ve developed this sudden interest in you when we’ve had all of, what, three conversations before this? Four? Well, Sue, I’ll be honest. I’ve had a lot of time to indulge in voyeurism over the past three weeks. I see a lot of myself in you. We’re both bitches who don’t know when to quit.” She pauses. “Also, I’m sort of bored.”
“I,” Sue begins, still not quite believing she’s having a conversation with a woman who’s been buried for three weeks, “am nothing like you. I’d never do something so fantastically idiotic as off myself because that vest-addicted Jaime Escalante wannabe you married developed a sexual obsession with a member of the primate family.”
“Probably not,” Terri admits. “But, as Dr. Phil would say, you’re committing emotional suicide.”
Sue wonders, briefly, if this is some kind of bizarre undead Intervention spinoff, and says so out loud. Terri laughs at this: a short, clipped bark. It’s not quite right, her laugh, like she’s forgotten just a little how to make the sound.
“No trip to a California rehab for you, Coach,” she says. “We’ll do things a little differently, and it’s going to be weird, and it’s going to freak you out. And that’s a good thing, because, honey, it’s about time someone got you out of your comfort zone. You’re going to be haunted.”
The only possible response to this is a look of incredulity so intense that a furrowed line deep enough to carry water wrinkles to life between Sue’s eyes.
“Not just by me,” Terri clarifies, somewhat unnecessarily. “By three others – spirits, ghosts, guides, whatever the hell you want to call them – they’ll pick you up, right here, on Christmas Eve. That has a nice allegorical ring to it, doesn't it? One a.m.” She carefully tucks what’s left of her obscene jaw back into the nest of the handkerchief, tying it again around her head.
Sue protests, audibly, but she’s lacking her usual fire, and maybe it’s because she recognizes something familiar in Terri’s comparison, but she also can’t stop thinking about that godawful ruin of a jaw. It’s like something out of a horror film or a Heidi Montag surgery recording.
Terri looks at her, into her. Sue can’t help it; she flinches.
“Merry Christmas!” Terri says, brightly.
They’re the same words she left for Will, in her suicide note.
*
When Sue’s in bed, she drags the covers up to her chin (but not over her head. Over her head would mean admitting to the kind of fear she’s promised herself never, ever to allow).
She thinks about the doors she knows were locked and the woman she knows is dead, and she tries to say “Bullshit!” out loud, but only the first syllable makes it; the rest sticks to her dry tongue.
The world drops away, and she sleeps.
Chapter Two
Author: Ellydash
Characters: Sue Sylvester, Terri Schuester, Kurt Hummel, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Will Schuester
Rating: PG-13
Warning: References to suicide; violent images.
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 3,612
Note: First of five chapters. I may have gotten a little carried away with this idea.
Summary: Three spirits take Sue Sylvester to visit Christmases past, present and future. A Glee-flavored retelling of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” – Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”
Prologue: Wherein We Hear, for the First Time, of a Recent Tragedy
Terri Schuester’s dead, to begin with.
Sue hasn’t seen the body herself, of course, but she’s been lining the pockets of Lima’s EMTs on a regular basis for years. Their reports on overdoses and sexual acts gone terribly wrong provide her with considerable blackmail material.
She’s received a report from the paramedic on call that night, the first to respond to Will Schuester’s frantic call. She knows exactly where the bullet went in (under the chin; Terri had, apparently, spent a few minutes on Google looking for effective suicide tips), exactly how much blood and brain matter covered the couch she’d done it on (“A whole goddamn lot, ma’am”), even the contents of the note she’d left for Will (the closing line: "Merry Christmas!").
This is important: Terri is gone. Without knowing this, you might doubt the wonder of what’s about to happen. You might still doubt it, and you wouldn’t be the only one. Sue Sylvester, despite her intimate knowledge of the crime scene’s forensics, will, as these pages chronicle, shortly be forced into severe self-doubt catalyzed by the question of Terri’s deadness. This is a crisis of confidence the likes of which Sue has not permitted herself since a deeply troubling night in 1991 with Miami Vice’s Don Johnson and a jar of peanut butter.
This is the first thing you need to remember: Terri Schuester is dead.
Chapter One: Wherein Kurt Hummel Extends an Invitation and Immediately Regrets It; Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson are Good – if Ineffective and Misguided – Samaritans; Sue Sylvester Receives an Unexpected Visitor
One cold afternoon in late December, on the last day of school before the holiday break, Sue Sylvester, who is always the hero of her own stories and never anyone else’s, sits at her desk, scanning sheet music. The Rihanna number she’s considering as background for the Cheerios’ New Year routine has, she decides, distasteful key changes.
She sets the piece of paper on fire with a gold-plated cigarette lighter, and drops the curling edges into the waste bin, satisfied.
Kurt Hummel appears in the doorway.
“Coach,” he says, and then stops. “Is that – what’s that smell?”
“Bad music dying,” she replies. “How can I help you, K? Or, more accurately, in what specific way can I pretend to listen to you talk to me while I’m actually thinking about whether I photograph better from my left or right side? The answer to that, by the way, is all sides, because Sue Sylvester is stunning from every angle.”
Kurt appears unfazed. “I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas before we leave for break. Or happy whatever-you-celebrate. A happy holiday.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Paul Lynde, since I sense it’s born out of a healthy mixture of fear and respect, but, as Jack Kennedy never said, especially to a woman: no thanks. I don’t celebrate anything except the failure of others.”
“You don’t – do anything for Christmas?” Kurt asks, looking as though he’s not sure he really wants to go down this path. “Coach, I’m just as squeamish about commemorating the birth of the baby Jesus as any fashion-forward gay atheist with a skin regimen Joan Crawford would envy, but even I buy gifts and make gingerbread.”
Sue’s upper lip curls in disgust at the idea of empty gingered calories.
“I don’t eat it or anything,” Kurt amends, correctly deducing the reason for Sue’s snarl, “but Dad’s a big gingerbread fan, and it’s kind of a tradition with us. Something we did with my mom.”
“That’s precious.” The word rolls in her mouth like a filthy pearl.
Kurt has enough good sense to stop talking.
“Look,” Sue continues, “this time of year is just an excuse for people to feel better about themselves by dropping a couple of quarters into a Salvation Army tin, or feel worse about themselves because they can’t buy their kids dolls or tractors or whatever the hell kids play with, or not feel anything at all because they’re too busy inhaling spiked eggnog at the office party. It’s a gigantic federally-sanctioned excuse to stick your head in the sand and ignore what’s really important in favor of trivial bullshit like stringing up tiny lights.”
“What’s really important?” He’s genuinely curious.
“Me,” she says, jamming her thumb into her chest for emphasis. “I am. Sue Sylvester.”
Kurt stares at her. She glares back.
He shakes his head a bit, to clear it.
“All right,” he begins, “this is completely and utterly insane, and I’m not sure why I’m doing this except, possibly, that I’m testing the limits of my masochistic tolerance – ”
“I would’ve thought Schuester’s weekly theme challenges were doing that all on their own –”
“ – but I’d like to ask you something.”
Sue watches him, eyes constricted.
“Would you –” He’s redder than Brenda Castle’s nose after a bender. “Would you like to join us for dinner on Christmas Day? My dad and me? And Finn and his mom? We’re having tofurkey.”
She hadn’t expected this, not even from Kurt Hummel. Sue’s come to regard Kurt as someone cast out of a familiar mold, with recognizable angles and moves and resistance; and so somewhere deep within her (though she’d rather assist Mary Lou Retton on the uneven bars than admit it) she feels a twinge of pleasure at being acknowledged.
But dinner with Hummel and his family? Making small conversation with Hudson’s mother over cranberry sauce? Feigning interest in her miserable, small little life and her son’s pathetic passer rating? And all in the name, Sue thinks, of what, when you get down to it, really amounts to not much more than charity.
“You’ll have to live without my presence gracing your blue-collar Brady Bunch episode,” she tells him. “I’m taking off for my condo in Ensenada, where I plan to spend the Day That Will Not Be Named with endlessly refreshing margaritas and endlessly refreshing hardbodies.”
Kurt can’t stop himself from shuddering at the mental picture she’s given him.
Sue shrugs. “If you think that’s bad, Prudy, you should be happy I’m not accepting your invitation. Believe it or not, I maintain something of a verbal filter on school property, because, unlike one William Schuester, I believe in appropriate boundaries.”
He doesn’t look as though he believes her, which is quite all right by Sue, who always feels happier when she’s unsettled a student.
“Okay,” he says, and she can hear the not-insubstantial note of relief in his voice. “I just thought I’d ask.”
She doesn’t thank him.
“Ms. Sylvester?”
It’s Rachel Berry. And (Good God, is Will sending her these bottom-feeders on purpose, to drive her up the wall?) she’s brought Finn Hudson with her. Rachel’s gripping Finn’s arm tightly, and the shrill smile on her face is wide enough to wrap around her head several times over. Finn just looks like he wants to throw up.
“Can we speak to you?” Rachel asks, her voice a touch higher than its normal range. “Just for a moment? It’s important.”
Sue considers throwing a trophy at her, one of the small ones. It wouldn’t do much damage – she’d like to avoid another conversation with Figgins so soon after the Ashley Berkowitz glitter machine debacle, so less damage is, for once, a plus – but it’d light a fire under Rachel’s hideous plastic ballerina flats. (Sue's not being unnecessarily cruel here; they really are awful shoes.)
“Nothing,” she says, finally, “is as important as my preserved sense of justice, and right now that sense of justice is being horribly violated by your continued presence in this room. And in this school. Get out. Go serenade a menorah.”
Kurt, who possesses a sense of self-preservation Rachel Berry sorely lacks, chooses this moment to duck out of Sue’s office. Finn watches him go, clearly wishing he could execute a similar exit strategy.
Evidently on a suicide mission, Rachel steps further into Sue’s office, pulling Finn with her.
“Ms. Sylvester,” Rachel continues, “Finn and I are terribly concerned by the severe dearth of adequate vocal training available to the disadvantaged minority populations of Lima. As a Jewish woman with two gay dads and the burden of extreme talent, I fully understand the pain of being a minority, and want to spend this holiday season helping others who do not share my class privilege.”
“Didn’t hear a word you said after ‘Sylvester,’ Berry. I treated myself to a middle-ear implant last week that selectively edits out all speech that doesn’t concern me. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much everything besides my name and the phrase ‘sex explosion.’ Go figure.”
Rachel elbows Finn in the ribs.
“Ow!” Finn protests.
“Say your line,” hisses Rachel.
“Will you – ” He pauses, looks at Rachel for reassurance; she nods at him firmly. “Will you donate money to help poor people get the singing training they deserve?”
Rachel smiles, approvingly, and turns to Sue. Sue’s forehead is crinkled in disbelief.
“Am I hearing you correctly? Poors singing? Holy Mother of Lourdes, Rocco, Mercy and David, what is wrong with you, Berry? If society’s grubs want to massage their vocal cords, they’re better off practicing their excuses for the welfare agency. Schuester dumb enough to give you money for your vanity exercise?”
“He gave us twenty dollars,” says Rachel, proudly. “Coach Beiste gave us fifteen.”
“Shocking. What’d Tracy Flick here make you pocket up, Hudson?”
“Uh – I had a couple bucks left over from a lawnmowing gig.”
Sue stands up. “All right, Donny and Marie,” she snaps. “Before I completely lose my patience and sue your parents for exceptionally incompetent breeding. Out.”
Rachel, remarkably, is not quivering in her flats.
“Why do you have to be so mean all the time, Ms. Sylvester?” she asks, plaintively.
“Berry, as famed 19th century sociopath George Hearst once said, during his first speech as the Prime Minister of South Dakota: haters gonna hate.”
*
She sees Will through the window on the music room door, as she’s passing through the hallway on her way out. He’s got his back to her, seated at the piano. He’s not playing.
Sue considers calling out something to him, maybe a crack about his poverty or his shoulders (she’s spent the last month trying to convince him that one’s lower than the other) but then remembers Terri and thinks better of it.
If you were to suggest to Sue that holding back is her way of giving a Christmas gift to Will, she would probably punch you in the nose or maybe the stomach, and you would realize the error of your ways and never, ever suggest anything to Sue Sylvester again.
*
It’s snowing, hard.
Sue’s house is irritatingly cold and dark when she arrives home. Imelda’s taken the week off to spend with her family, a request that Sue granted her only because Imelda threatened to have a “little conversation” with Will Schuester, and they’d probably speak Spanish together or something. She’s not sure, but getting blackmailed in Spanish seems somehow worse than getting blackmailed in English. And so Sue returns tonight to a house that hasn’t been pre-warmed (she prefers a sub-tropical indoor climate) or pre-lit (no shadows, because Sue firmly believes that shadows can’t be trusted).
Imelda left a refrigerator full of pre-blended protein shakes, anyway, which is almost as good as having her here to yell at.
On her way to the kitchen, Sue sees something move out of the corner of her eye, in the corner of the living room where she’s got her college trophy cases.
She spins toward it, her hand automatically touching her hip in search of a non-existent weapon.
Nothing. There’s nothing there.
Get a hold of yourself, Sylvester, she thinks, staring at a particularly large trophy with the inscription OHIO STATE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL 1980 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS, and while she’s looking at it the metal basketball at the top of the trophy shifts, and it’s no longer a basketball facsimile, it’s the head of Terri Schuester. Her little mouth is distorted, wide, and it might be a yawn and it might be a scream.
Sue stares at her altered trophy; her skin hums; the fine hair on her arms rises.
As quickly as it appeared, Terri’s little head is gone.
“God, what – ” Sue starts to say, out loud, and then realizes she’s broken her cardinal rule of never talking out loud to yourself, because that’s the marker of weakness. She’s not shaking, she isn’t, it’s just that her blood sugar is low because she skipped out on her afternoon supplemental shake and that always sets her a bit on edge.
Sue hasn’t thought much about Terri Schuester in the weeks since her suicide; as a general rule she tries hard not to think about anything connected to Will Schuester if she can help it. Sue wouldn’t say, exactly, that she liked Terri (‘like’ being an infuriatingly milquetoast verb) but she’d grudgingly respected the woman’s level of crazy, even if the objective of her insanity, keeping Will in her clutches, seemed incredibly misguided.
If she were honest with herself, though – and this being Sue Sylvester, the hypothetical will remain hypothetical – she’s a little disturbed by the circumstances of Terri’s death. How angry she must’ve been at Will, to do herself in on the couch they’d bought together, in their old home, leaving her body there for him to find. Sue understands that kind of anger. She admires it, even; there’s a kind of beauty in the fresh, sharp propulsion of pure rage. She even understands how Will Schuester could’ve been its target, especially for a woman who’d been dumb enough to share a bed with the man for more than a decade.
Sue Sylvester knows what Terri did not: the importance of packaging anger, of slicing it into manageable portions and making clear, informed choices about when and where to deliver. This is the difference between herself and Terri: control.
Sue, however, is not capable of or interested in sustained self-reflection, because she believes navel-gazing is for unimportant narcissists (Sue is a very, very important narcissist). And so she decides to spend her evening with a protein shake and the latest issue of Cheerleader Weekly, with a pen to underline mentions of her name. And she pushes away that slight sense of nausea she feels when she thinks about Terri Schuester and whatever troubling moment of weakness caused her to hallucinate that grotesque image.
*
It’s snowing harder.
Sue dozes in her ergonomic leather reclining chair, images flitting past behind her eyes. Her cheerleaders execute perfect flips and turns, defying laws of physics. Will Schuester polishes her trophies. Jean’s hand is on her arm. Susie, Jean whispers, and Sue says, sharply, don’t you call me that –
The television blinks on.
The sound of it jolts Sue out of her light sleep and onto her feet before she’s sure what’s happened. Recovering quickly, she looks for the remote – she must’ve leaned on it, somehow – and yes, it’s there. Across the room, on the couch, where she couldn’t possibly have touched it.
When she realizes she can hear the TV in her bedroom, too, that’s when she feels the first lick of fear down her spine.
“If someone’s there,” she snarls, her body tensed, “you better prepare yourself for an anatomy lesson, because I’m gonna make you feel every single bone in your body.”
There’s silence. Then she hears footsteps. Heavy, slow, from the back of the house, maybe the laundry room. Coming closer.
Sue grabs the nearest trophy, a hunting commendation with convenient antler prongs, and assumes an offensive position, heels barely touching the floor, knees bent and ready to spring.
When the agent of the footsteps enters the living room, several things happen: first, the TV picture flares and flickers briefly, as if in recognition, and then snaps off. Second, Sue Sylvester stumbles backwards in shock, falling into her chair, and the trophy weapon drops to the floor with a loud thump.
Third, Terri Schuester says, “Well, hi there, Sue.”
And it is, despite what every law of science tells us is possible, Terri. She’s wearing what Sue knows, thanks to the very thorough paramedic’s report, was Terri’s last outfit, and she looks perfectly normal – or as normal as a dead woman might be expected to look. The only out-of-place accessory is a light blue bandanna, bound tightly around her head and chin.
“Did I freak you out?” Terri asks, sweetly. “I was thinking about keeping all that going, maybe over a couple of nights, but I’m trying this nice thing now. It’s harder than it looks.”
Sue is momentarily, and maybe for the first time in recorded history, unable to speak.
“For crying out loud.” Terri’s hands are on her hips. “Lady, you’d think with the gigantic favor I’m about to do you, you’d be a little more welcoming. I certainly don’t get off on people being terrified of me.”
“You,” Sue begins, slowly, “are – not – there.”
Terri smiles at her.
“Oh, I’m not?” she says. “You don’t believe I’m here?”
“No.” Sue’s not sure why she’s having a conversation with what she’s absolutely, positively sure is her own psyche. “I must be more run down than I thought – ”
She clamps her mouth shut on what, if unstifled, would be a shriek. Terri’s untying the bandanna around her head and chin, and her jaw unhinges from the rest of her face; it’s an unholy mass of shot-mangled pulp and bone, and it drops so much farther than it should, it drops slowly, and it rests on her sternum.
Somehow, out of that flesh tangle, Terri says Sue’s name.
Sue shakes her head: no, no, no.
“I made a mistake,” Terri tells her. “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I drove away the one person who cared about me through all of it. And when I died, I died alone and miserable and I ruined my hair. Now I can’t take any of that back. That’s why I’m here, Sue. I’m here because I’d like to keep you from making my mistakes. You’re just as miserable as I was. I can’t change the choices I made, but you –” The reanimated Terri, apparently, enjoys drama as much as the living Terri. “You can reevaluate your life before it’s too late. Get some perspective. Pet a dog, say nice things to people. You know, basic shit.”
“What – ”
“Now, you’re a smart woman, and so you’re probably wondering why I’ve developed this sudden interest in you when we’ve had all of, what, three conversations before this? Four? Well, Sue, I’ll be honest. I’ve had a lot of time to indulge in voyeurism over the past three weeks. I see a lot of myself in you. We’re both bitches who don’t know when to quit.” She pauses. “Also, I’m sort of bored.”
“I,” Sue begins, still not quite believing she’s having a conversation with a woman who’s been buried for three weeks, “am nothing like you. I’d never do something so fantastically idiotic as off myself because that vest-addicted Jaime Escalante wannabe you married developed a sexual obsession with a member of the primate family.”
“Probably not,” Terri admits. “But, as Dr. Phil would say, you’re committing emotional suicide.”
Sue wonders, briefly, if this is some kind of bizarre undead Intervention spinoff, and says so out loud. Terri laughs at this: a short, clipped bark. It’s not quite right, her laugh, like she’s forgotten just a little how to make the sound.
“No trip to a California rehab for you, Coach,” she says. “We’ll do things a little differently, and it’s going to be weird, and it’s going to freak you out. And that’s a good thing, because, honey, it’s about time someone got you out of your comfort zone. You’re going to be haunted.”
The only possible response to this is a look of incredulity so intense that a furrowed line deep enough to carry water wrinkles to life between Sue’s eyes.
“Not just by me,” Terri clarifies, somewhat unnecessarily. “By three others – spirits, ghosts, guides, whatever the hell you want to call them – they’ll pick you up, right here, on Christmas Eve. That has a nice allegorical ring to it, doesn't it? One a.m.” She carefully tucks what’s left of her obscene jaw back into the nest of the handkerchief, tying it again around her head.
Sue protests, audibly, but she’s lacking her usual fire, and maybe it’s because she recognizes something familiar in Terri’s comparison, but she also can’t stop thinking about that godawful ruin of a jaw. It’s like something out of a horror film or a Heidi Montag surgery recording.
Terri looks at her, into her. Sue can’t help it; she flinches.
“Merry Christmas!” Terri says, brightly.
They’re the same words she left for Will, in her suicide note.
*
When Sue’s in bed, she drags the covers up to her chin (but not over her head. Over her head would mean admitting to the kind of fear she’s promised herself never, ever to allow).
She thinks about the doors she knows were locked and the woman she knows is dead, and she tries to say “Bullshit!” out loud, but only the first syllable makes it; the rest sticks to her dry tongue.
The world drops away, and she sleeps.
Chapter Two
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You have Sue down to a tee. Your characterization is perfect.
I don’t celebrate anything except the failure of others. - I love this line so freaking much. Such a Sue thing to say:)
Anyways, thanks for the giggles. Looking forward to more ♥
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um. i am really enjoying this so far! ♥
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...um, basically I love this a lot.
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Thank you so much! ♥
credit rachat de credit
(Anonymous) 2011-07-08 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)Mon francais n'est pas tres bon, je suis de l'Allemagne.
Mon blog:
Regroupement de credit (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regroupement_de_credit) et Rachat De Credit (http://www.rachatdecredit.net) credit
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