Cruel Summer (AHS: 1984)

Chapter 9: Mercy

Ralph insisted for he and Lavinia to be discharged from the hospital by noon. When the nurse and physician who took care of them objected to this, especially for Lavinia's leg wound, Ralph insisted that because he himself was an MD, it was an informed decision. Really, he just did not want to be caught transforming in the middle of a hospital. Due to the fact his car was on the side of the road near the gas station where Roy was killed by his Lycan form, they did not have an easy way to get back to Los Angeles. They were four hours away, and by public transportation, it would be a much longer trek home. They decided to suck it up and endure the trip that lasted nine hours by trains and buses to Los Angeles. They were given clothing to wear by the hospital and were on their way. Ralph, recalling his youth, snuck he and his daughter on board two trains and three buses unnoticed. Their stops were in Indio, Palm Springs, Riverside, and Anaheim before finally reaching Los Angeles around 8:00PM. Luckily, the last bus stop from the final train was down the street from their house, and when they got off, they hustled down the street to the three-bedroom bungalow with pale yellow siding and white, carved wooden accents. They got in and collapsed on the furniture, yet Ralph knew this period of rest would be temporary.

Lavinia laid on the couch for a full hour before moving toward the kitchen to get a glass of milk as well as to the bathroom to take a shower. It was hard to shower with a bandaged leg, but she managed. She even applied a new bandage and dressing successfully without the aid of her father. She put on clean, comfortable clothing that she could easily go to bed in – a pair of dark gray joggers and a loose-fitting navy-blue sweatshirt. She went back to the living room and turned on the TV, finding that the sitcom Family Ties was on. She fell asleep ten minutes into the episode, but the nap turned into two hours of much-needed deep sleep. She woke up again, wiping her eyes and walking down the hallway to her bedroom only to find the master bedroom door open, seeing her father standing there with the top drawer of his dresser open.

Lavinia looked at her father from where she was standing in the master bedroom doorway, rummaging through his drawer until he found a small leather drawstring pouch. It looked aged, wrinkled with the touch of its previous owners as he opened it gingerly as to not rip it. Lavinia's eyes widened at the sound of metal falling into Ralph's open palms, and his icy blue eyes looked over at her, knowing full well she was there in the hallway.

"Come here." It was an order, and she walked slowly toward him, curious to see what the metal pieces were.

"Dad?" she asked tiredly. "What are those?"

"What I'm holding here are about a century old," Ralph explained. "Do you know why I didn't die all those times you shot me when at the camp?"

She shook her head rapidly, her heart racing with anxiety: "uh... n-no, dad."

"One of the perks of being a Lycan is that you cannot die by regular bullets. In fact, you heal up in mere seconds upon impact, like you were never shot," Ralph explained. "When my grandfather came with the family from Russia on the eve of the Revolution, he went to a bishop acting as though he himself were afraid of werewolves. The bishop gave him these silver bullets, blessed in a ceremony, for the sole purpose of killing one successfully." He paused. "One thing I do know about these bullets, is they are laced with wolfsbane, a poison that makes a human sick before it kills...but to us Lycans? Instant death. We don't get the luxury of being sick an hour or two before death."

"Dad, what are you trying to prove here?" she asked. "Why are you showing me these?"

Ralph took a deep sigh and walked over toward the window on the other side of the room, looking up at the moon and growling in a deep whisper, a homage to his true, animalistic ways: "I want you to put me out of my misery."