oh, boy, do I fail so hard
A gen-oriented, horror-themed Comment Meme
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Yeah, so I got sucked up into another comment fic challenge over at sharp_teeth and here is the result. Also, one for Being Human
Dammit.
eta: here, have a slightly better, cleaned up version (spn)
for the ones beneath your skin
It's a humming under his skin, a constant thready pulse that beats along with his heart, and he's known it before. On a case, once, before Stanford. A houseful of ghosts, talking and chanting in the walls, sweeping through the mirrors.
Voices, dozens of them, thick with static and dry, dead air.
So he knows it, but now it's under his skin.
He's tried to catch it, sometimes. He's sat in dingy motel bathrooms with Dean outside the door, and he's scratched gouges in his arms - desperate and dying to see if he could find it. Just blood and broken skin, the layers of white-pink flesh underneath. It's messy and normal and he almost cried, almost slammed himself into the fuckin dirty wall in front of him, because it's there.
He knows it is, he just has to find it. So he's cut himself, in bathrooms and behind buildings, anywhere he thinks Dean won't look. He's held his arm over sinks, let blood ooze down twenty or thirty different drains. Nothing, nothing and when holy water sunk in, deep in his veins, there was nothing. When he glanced into dirt smudged mirrors, it was just him, even though he knows it's there, maybe behind his eyes, maybe in all those nerves.
Because he feels it, and he knows Dean sees it. He can tell, in the glances and small touches, in the way his brother says his name. It's like the counterpoint to the thrum inside him, shivering like broken glass along everything he touches.
"Dean," he says when his brother stares at him like he's broken. Him, maybe Sam or maybe Dean, maybe both. But he says, "Dean," like it means something, and then he says, "I'm fine, jerk," and waits for the smile, there right there, and it's blinding for a moment, pieces of a puzzle he doesn't know how to put together, that he wants to flinch away from.
I'm fine, I'm fine once I find it.
He doesn't really sleep anymore, because it's there in his bones, whittling through them like a piece of wood or maybe wet sand. He feels it deeper and deeper, hollowing out his chest. So, no, no sleep, but he smiles through it, and through the haze of coffee and the quick glances out of the corners of his eyes. He holds his gun steady and his knives close and he knows his latin maybe better, because maybe he whispers it at his reflection every night before he goes to lay down.
Ghosts, Sammy, Dean whispers at him. The hisses flit down his spine, silibant and heavy. Ghosts. And they're trapped, trapped so deep down.
He knows, he knows, because he's seen plenty of them. One by one and then in groups, real and dim, he's seen them pass right through people and he's seen them tear people apart. And they're hiding, creeping by where he can't see them. It. Just one or more than one. Hiding past skin and blood and bone, maybe deeper than the soft vulnerable parts of him.
Sammy, Dean says. We know.
"How do we get rid of ghosts?" He's alone behind a locked door, dim bathroom like a second home, the walls pressing in, close. He says, "Salt and burn, salt and burn," and maybe it reminds him of Dean trying to get him to remember the steps when he was a kid. "And how do we keep them away? Rock salt and iron." Because he has to see where they are, and he has the blade and he has the salt, and if he can push both of them deep enough maybe it'll keep the ghosts away long enough for Sam to burn the bones.
But it's the blood, the slippery trails of flesh, that make it so hard to find what he needs. It's everywhere, slicking his hands and his clothes, and he wants to push it away. Tries, but it comes back, covering them, and even his bones won't give them up. They're under his skin. He knows because he's seen them when he's not looking, they're under his skin and they shiver and quiver through him when he tries to breathe.
"Sam," and it's not his Dean's voice. Too deep and clear, and he hunches his shoulders against it. "Sam, open up."
"Find them," he says, and he tries pressing salt into his skin. It burns and burns and the shivering moves, and he tries to follow but his skin holds him back. "I'll find them before you." I know you, I know you. "I'll find them."
Just a little deeper, maybe. Then he can hunt them down and force them away. Ghosts, goddamn ghosts flickering through his veins, and all he has to do is wait.
"Fuck you, Sam, open up!" There's banging and clanking, and maybe the walls are haunted, now, maybe they're multiplying in Sam and leeching out where ever he goes. The door blasts open, smacks Sam in the leg, and suddenly Dean's there, or maybe not Dean, because Sam's never seen that look before. "Shit," Dean says, hitting the floor, and Sam wants to say watch it, it's there, all messy, but maybe Dean knows. "Holy fucking shit, Sam, what the hell?"
Dean's hands are rough, and Sam feels the tingle and shiver move with the pressure. There, there, and if he can just reach -
"...No, Sam! Stop it, fuckin stop it!"
"There, Dean," and he's wrestled to the ground, heavy weight. "There, Dean. Get them, they're right there - "
"No, Sam," and Dean's looking at him funny, distant and quiet. "No, Sam, I'm sorry."
He sees the fist coming, a heavy shadow on the edges of his sight, but he can't move with Dean straddling him, can't dodge it, not in time, not before everything goes black.
and, the other one, all nice and revised:
took him three and three
It's simple.
All it would take is a cut, one small cut, and then he could play. Just like he shuts his eyes and dreams it, hears the screams and smells the tears and tastes. Blood. Right here, right below the navel, just a bit until George woke, looked at him, begged him to stop.
And he would, maybe, stop. Maybe after Mitchell's fingers twirled inside him for a bit, stirred his insides. Maybe after he found where George hides, maybe then he'd stop. Or maybe Mitchell would add him to the list, to the one that reads Sarah, Micah, Liam, Gwen, to the one that's torn and speckled with red.
With blood.
He could, he knows he could. George is sleeping, now, so quiet and fragile. He's nowhere near close to a change. He doesn't have the stength and the senses, he couldn't last. He'd never last.
Mitchell could taste him then, if he wanted. Lick a wide stripe inside George's soft, warm flesh. Maybe a bite, a small bite, while George shrieks and twists above him.
He wants to, he wants to. It's all right there, building in his head, pleading for one scream, one tiny little tear. Just a little fear.
Something. Because the buried bones are old, so old, and the pain is faded so it doesn't count. We need something new, a voice whispers. Just this once, we need some time to play.
It'd be so sweet. Mitchell knows that, and his hands almost drift down to the warm body he's so, so close to. He feels the shift and pull as George sleeps, breathes little hitches into the air.
"No," he whispers back, fingers curling into claws, into fists, folding away into the skin of his palms. The bite of pain is a joke, a shiver of laughter through his body. More, more.
He eases toward the door, quiet and reluctant and steady. Cracks it open and slips out.
"What were you doing?" Annie's voice, high pitched and suspicious How would you sound, down and bloody and crying, he thinks. Beautiful. "Mitchell. What were you doing in there?"
He can see her in the corner of his eye, where she's flickering in and out with uncertainty, with fear. He doesn't answer her question, he doesn't move, and he hears her gasp, low and breathless.
He smiles.