Chapter Text
“IM COOK!” Cook lunged towards Foster and they landed on the ground hard. Cook grabbed Foster’s wrist - the one holding the deadly baseball bat - and pinned it to the hardwood floor. They squirmed, neither one giving advantage to the other. Cook’s teeth were bared and his face was red.
Foster suddenly grunted and pulled his arm free with a sharp tug. Cook lost his balance and howled in pain as his wrist landed awkwardly on the ground. Foster was on his feet now, panting, attempting to look calm but with a manic glint in his pale blue eyes. He readied his blasted bat and drove it into Cook’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Cook wheezed, but before he could catch his breath the bat was coming down again, walloping him about the midriff. Cook heard the crack of a rib breaking and yelled in pain.
Foster was breathing hard, slamming the bat up and down with practiced efficiency. He began to laugh, a hoarse, insane laugh that echoed through the dark deserted basement.
Cook twitched on the floor, and Foster held the bloody bat over him, arms trembling with adrenaline and the effort of keeping the bat suspended. He had stopped laughing.
“She’s mine,” he said. “I’m very sorry, but she’s mine.”
Foster lifted the bat over his head for one last deadly blow.
Cook, though, had managed to position his head next to Foster’s foot, and with the strength of a desperate man, he bit down as hard as he could onto Foster’s bony ankle.
Foster doubled over, howling, and as he nursed his wretched foot, bleeding now, Cook pulled the bat out of his hands.
Cook let out a guttural yell and cracked Foster about the head. He threw the bat aside - ever recklessly stupid - and began beating him with his own bloody fists. Everything hurt - Cook’s wrist smarted and his ribs screamed whenever he moved, but he was red with rage and invincible to his body’s complaints. He smashed Foster’s nose into his face and rained punches down on his neck and jaw. Cook’s knee found Foster’s groin and drove into it mercilessly. He pulled Foster’s cropped hair like they were girls having a fight in the school hallways. He grabbed Foster’s ear with his sharp teeth and pulled down, hard. A piece of ear tore off into Cook’s mouth and he spit it onto the now-bloodstained floor.
“you thought you could kill me, mate? Like you fucking killed Freds?” He screamed in Foster’s face. “IM FUCKING COOK!”
Foster had stopped moving by this time, and Cook staggered to his feet. His breath came in ragged gasps.
A few minutes passed like this. Foster’s chest wasn’t moving. Cook licked his lips and eyed him apprehensively. He crouched and slowly, like an animal to its downed prey, approached Foster again. He gritted his teeth and pressed his fingers into the side of Foster’s neck.
Nothing. Foster was dead.
Cook stumbled backwards and ran through the open door of the washroom. He vomited into the toilet until he was dry heaving and shaking.
Cook flushed and leaned his head over the toilet bowl, breathing hard. He knew he should feel victory, or fear, or pity, but he felt nothing. He felt like shit.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, but pale morning light had begun to shine through the basement window when he finally pushed himself to his feet.
Cook rummaged inside the washroom’s cabinets: if he didn’t want to rot in a jail cell for the rest of his life, he’d have to dispose of Foster’s body.
Cook snapped on latex gloves and picked up a rather stale-looking sponge sitting in the back of the cabinet. He carried it and a large bottle of bleach over to Foster’s body, where he set them down and stared at the whole lot disgustedly.
‘No use in making it easier for the cops,’ he muttered, kneeling and unscrewing the bleach cap.
*****
Cleaning all of the bloodstains took several hours, and by the time Cook was done scrubbing, he was panting with effort. He kept shifting to keep the weight off his ribs and wrist, but they hurt terribly all the same.
He staggered to the bathroom again and found, in another, smaller cabinet: a body bag. Cook’s stomach churned sickly; the half-empty bleach, the body bag so conveniently located in the basement - Foster had bought all of these things to do Freddie in and dispose of the evidence.
And it looked like the second bag had been meant for Cook.
The irony should have given him satisfaction, but all Cook could think about was Foster cleaning up Freddie’s bloodstains, Foster putting Freddie’s body in one of those horrid bags, his black hair matted with blood, brown limbs askew, oh god, naked — Cook doubled over and retched.
Shaking now, Cook yanked the body bag out of the cabinet. He was angry again, so it was easier to approach Foster’s body, easier to slide him and the baseball bat into the bag and zip it up and do one last scrub of the floor, easier to haul him up through the basement window and into the garden.
Cook made to go the same way, but hesitated. He climbed back down and picked up Freddie’s bloodstained shirt. He looked at it a moment and then shoved it into his back pocket, turned, and climbed out of Foster’s window without looking back.