In Kennescook, Maine, housewife Phoebe, who carries within her suppressed anger over society's treatment of women, shops at a supermarket. The sanitary napkins she picks up remind her of the book she read about the women of the Pennamaquot nation, who had to spend their menstrual periods with their grandmothers, stark naked, in a dark, windowless building called the Red Lodge, as their culture considered menstrual blood unclean. She thinks of their anger and their longing for the moon they were forbidden to see.
Back in the Houma wetlands, the Swamp Thing spends some alone time with Abby. Although she's now more open to his following Constantine in return for self-knowledge, he tells her he's had enough of being manipulated, and that after meeting him in Kennescook he intends to stay in Louisiana with her.
That evening, Phoebe serves dinner for her misogynistic husband Roy, his like-minded friend, and the friend's silent, unhappy wife. The men's conversation reveals that Roy's and Phoebe's house used to be the Red Lodge. After dinner, washing the silverware, she looks at the full moon and realizes she craves a different kind of silver. That night, and all the next day, she feels something primal raging and churning within her. As the Swamp Thing arrives in Kennescook the next evening, he too senses this primal power, and tracks its source.
When Phoebe fails to make his dinner, Roy goes to confront her, and finds her standing outside the house, queasy and in pain. Grabbing and shaking her, he demands that she "spit out" whatever problem she has with him. And she does. A werewolf pokes out of her mouth, sheds her human skin, and pursues him in and out of the house. The terrified Roy tries to apologize, then calls for help, and encounters the Swamp Thing. He passes out at the sight.
Phoebe and the Swamp Thing have a telepathic exchange in which she warns him to back off (see page quote). He attempts to stay her hand anyway, and she tosses him back into the house. Realizing that he's in her place of power, not his, he can only stand by helplessly as she draws back her hand to slay her revived, pleading husband...
...But she can't do it. She realizes the real nature of her "woman's curse": that despite his mistreatment of her, she still loves her man. Howling in agony, she wrecks their property and heads for the nearest main street, trashing the bridal shop and adult bookstore. The Swamp Thing catches up with her and begs her to tell him what she wants. Phoebe says telepathically that she wants release from the "stifling place" she feels trapped in. Sadly, he tells her he can't give her that. She heads for the supermarket and, feeling the presence of the Red Lodge everywhere around her, knocks over the displays. Then, before the Swamp Thing can stop her, Phoebe impales herself on a display of kitchen knives, feeling it's the best she can do as far as silver goes.
Reverting to her naked human form as she bleeds, she asks the Swamp Thing to take her outside to die. He obliges her, as shoppers flee in terror. As he lays her tenderly on the ground, she thanks him and asks if Roy is okay. When he assures her so, the satisfied Phoebe comments on the moon's beauty, and dies.
Later that night, Constantine meets the Swamp Thing and hands him a slip of paper with his next destination on it. He snatches it from Constantine without looking at it, and says he's going home to Louisiana. Constantine just smiles and says that's fine with him, then leaves. Confused, the Swamp Thing looks at the paper and finds his next destination is Louisiana.
Tropes
- All Periods Are PMS: Discussed. Roy, first jokingly and later angrily, buys into the myth that all women get unmanageably irritable just before their period.
- Arc Words: This poetic refrain about the Pennamaquot women:Their anger, in darkness turning, unreleased, unspoken, its mouth a red wound, its eyes hungry, hungry for the moon.
- Artistic License – History: Several feminist readers have pointed out that Moore's portrayal of the (fictional) Pennamaquot nation's Red Lodge gives an overly negative impression of the menstrual hut institution in Native American and other cultures. While acknowledging that the menstrual huts did serve the patriarchal function of tracking women's monthly cycles for optimal fertility, they argue that the huts also enabled women both pre- and post-menopausal to socialize, and share stories and folk traditions, independent of men's interference.
- Big "NO!": Phoebe (who otherwise doesn't speak while in werewolf form) lets one of these out when she finds she can't kill Roy.
- Driven to Suicide: Phoebe feels that death is the only way to escape her lot as a woman in a male-dominated society.
- Dying as Yourself: Phoebe not only reverts to human form after committing suicide, but reveals her underlying love and concern for Roy.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Phoebe's suicide method.
- Meaningful Name:
- The issue title refers to the slang phrase some women have used to describe their menstrual cycle.
- Phoebe, in Classical Mythology, is both the Titan goddess of the moon and an alternate name for Artemis (Roman "Diana"), the Olympian moon goddess.
- Menstrual Menace: The story draws parallels between menstruation and the traditional lunar-cycle-based activity of werewolves.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Instead of the usual human-to-werewolf transformation, in which the person's skin, flesh and other organs morph into those of a wolf, Phoebe's metamorphosis involves a wolf emerging intact from within her and shedding her human skin like a snake.
- Period Shaming: This comes up repeatedly, as part of its overarching theme about sexism and patriarchy.
- Phoebe recently discovered that her house is built where the "Red Lodge" of the Pennamaquot people stood long ago; due to menstruation being considered unclean by their culture, women who were on their periods had to stay in the cramped darkness of the lodge, not being allowed to even look outside, being fed on the ends of sticks "like lepers" and the gourds they drank from being smashed and buried. Phoebe empathises with the women, as she feels permanently trapped and oppressed by society's sexism.note
- When Phoebe buys pads from the supermarket, she notes that the cashier - an older woman - puts the box into a separate paper bag as if they might contaminate her groceries.
- Phoebe's sexist husband Roy cracks jokes with his equally-unpleasant friend about the Pennamaquot women getting locked up for being "cranky around that time o' the month" and that he doesn't blame the men, right in front of their wives. Phoebe is visibly hurt and angered, though Roy doesn't notice. Roy later finds Phoebe outside, clearly in distress, and starts whining about her not making dinner yet; when Phoebe tells him to leave her alone, he snaps that she's just using PMS as an excuse. And then Phoebe turns into a werewolf.
- Place of Power: Phoebe's home, the former Red Lodge, which became a spiritual repository of women's anger and now precipitates, under the full moon, her transformation into a powerful werewolf. Although the Swamp Thing has been discovering new powers for some time now, he recognizes that here, he's out of his depth.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Subverted. Although Phoebe intends to murder Roy for his abuse, she can't bring herself to do so. Instead, she trashes a bridal shop, adult bookstore and supermarket, all of which she sees as modern manifestations of the Red Lodge.
- Rule of Symbolism: The "Good news for housewives" knife display. Penciller Stephen Bissette, and many readers, have pointed out that in reality no halfway-competent store manager would condone knives being displayed with the blades pointing outward, for obvious safety reasons. Nevertheless, their arrangement here allows for the symbolic, tragic juxtaposition of silver as moonlight with silver as instrument of death.
- Shout-Out: Bissette's then-wife Nancy (now Marlene) O'Connor drew the werewolf face-in-the-sky that appears on page 7, drawing inspiration from the 1981 film The Howling.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In an implied contrast to Roy and his friend, the issue has Abby tell the Swamp Thing why she loves him:You don't ask me to feed you, or tidy the swamp, or iron shirts, and I get fresh flowers all year round. You're just the sort of person I imagined marrying, when I was little...except, y'know, not green...and without all the patches of fungus.
- Straw Misogynist: Roy and his unnamed male friend are defined entirely by their disdain for women. The friend denies his wife Joannie any more cookies because she hasn't gotten back her figure after delivering their child. Roy jokes that confinement in the Red Lodge was an appropriate consequence for women being "cranky at that time of month" and tells Phoebe her eyebrows need plucking. When she doesn't make dinner the next day, rather than fix it himself he manhandles her while accusing her of taking up a "diet fad" she saw on TV "while I was workin'," and of using P.M.S. as "an excuse for everything." Neither of them receive any characterization beyond this, apart from Roy apologizing for his attitude, after Phoebe's transformation, and pleading for his life.
- Telepathy: The Swamp Thing and the transformed Phoebe communicate with each other by thought.
