SPN FIC - The Edge of All There Is
You want to know where stories come from? This one came from a dead snake lying at the edge of the road.
You losing your mind, John? That it? Gone around the bend? Maybe you're not here at all. Maybe you're balled up in a corner somewhere, drooling into your lap. Close your eyes for a minute, then crack 'em open again.
CHARACTERS: John, wee!Dean, wee!Sam, OMC
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2044 words
THE EDGE OF ALL THERE IS
By Carol Davis
The crash got his attention.
…That??? his muddled mind wondered, and offered up possibilities, none of which made sense, given where he was.
Where they were.
Explosion? Car wreck? Friggin' plane dropping out of the sky?
Thunder?
No glow on the horizon, no rising smoke, no sign of fire. Sky clear enough to make a lie out of thinking There's a storm coming. No sign of anything, really. Just road. Dust and low plant life half dead from the heat. It might as well have been the Twilight Zone, for all that was out there. String of power poles carrying electricity across a landscape barren as the surface of Mars.
Maybe he hadn't heard it at all.
That noise.
You losing your mind, John? That it? Gone around the bend? Maybe you're not here at all. Maybe you're balled up in a corner somewhere, drooling into your lap. Close your eyes for a minute, then crack 'em open again.
Any of this gonna be here then?
It wasn't sound that drew his attention to the back seat; anything short of a scream from back there would have been drowned out by the rumble of the engine, the rush of that unending ribbon of asphalt under the tires. It was movement that summoned him, he thought, and he let himself take that as a sign that he hadn't imagined the crash. That Dean could bear witness to the reality of it, that it was yet another thing Dean could acknowledge on his father's behalf, one more in a long string of half-imagined, unbelievable shit.
The boy's face was pinched tight.
John watched him in the rearview, saw him grimace and twitch. "What?" he said.
Dean's lips moved, offered no more than a fragment of something, all of it lost to the sound of the road.
"You need to say it louder," John told him.
I'm not a fucking lipreader.
Dean considered that for a moment, still frowning. Offered a glance to his sleeping brother, round baby's head dropped onto his shoulder at an angle that couldn't possibly be comfortable. All relative, though, John thought. Let yourself slide on past the point where it matters, you can sleep in a hole in the ground. On cement. Sleep upside down, head full of blood like a water balloon, feet cold and prickling.
"Need to pee," Dean said.
You could sleep behind the wheel of a moving car, and wouldn't that just take the goddamn cake.
No rest stops out here. Nothing that amounted to anything out here. They'd passed a collection of junk a while back, an abandoned RV, door hanging open, one hinge broken, offering hospitality to anything with a yen to climb on in there and get out of the sun. Little U-Haul trailer collapsed alongside it, busted all to hell, identifiable only by remnants of orange and white paint, and the letters HA and L.
Remains of a school bus. Burned, by the look of it.
Half-unspooled roll of barbed wire.
Leaving it all there had made sense to somebody. Or maybe not.
"Daddy," Dean said, and there was a high edge to it, a plea for notice. When John looked again in the rearview the boy's jaw was tight. Said clearly, one bump in the road and that would be all she wrote. Jeans, upholstery, the blanket, all of it soaked.
Amazing how much a child's bladder could hold. Amazing, too, how quickly it could all empty out.
They'd seen no other vehicle for what seemed like hours, but John pulled the car well off onto the shoulder anyway. Dean, sitting behind the driver's seat, knew not to open the door himself, knew not to climb out onto the road. (Wyoming? was it Wyoming where that had happened - that near miss, that pickup screaming by?) He waited, grim and silent, for John to exit the car and circle around to the inland side and open the rear passenger door. Waited for John to survey the landscape and declare it free of hazards.
Then, finally, Dean slipped out past his brother, past his father, turned his back to the empty road and hiked his little-boy jeans (elastic waist, no zipper) down to his ankles.
Dusk, soon.
John stood with a hand on the open door, considered the long roll of nothing between them and the horizon. Decided opportunity was best taken advantage of and joined Dean in watering the weeds. The splash of it brought a smile out of the boy. Why anyone ever found something like that humorous, John had never bothered to figure out.
Camaraderie, he supposed.
They didn't share much, he and Dean. Not any more. Tossing a ball in the yard. Slapping paint on the fence.
Picking out snacks at the market.
When he turned back to the car, Sam was crouched alongside it. Was inspecting the humped edge of the asphalt, expression split between an idiot's grin and that unfathomable deep water of trying to figure something out.
The thing he was intending to chow down on, for instance.
"JESUS!"
Enough of a yelp, a cry of alarm, to startle Sam into dropping the thing. Dead snake, maybe eight inches long, once as big around as John's index finger but well-flattened by whatever had run it over. Still as identifiable as that U-Haul trailer had been despite a lack of sand-blasted lettering. Still obviously NOT FOOD, its sun-baked guts hanging loose and sweet mother of GOD what about it had asked to be investigated that way, by sucking on it, chewing its head loose, tasting that thin dried ribbon of entrails?
John hurled it off into the distance, though that was no more than a few yards; he hadn't held onto it long enough to calculate the throw. Sam peered up at him, bewildered and not a little annoyed, fifteen months old, too curious by half, easily piqued, though thankfully just as easily cajoled. He should have been latched into the car seat, was required by law to be latched into the car seat, but had taken to screeching when he was tied down. Out here, in the middle of nowhere? No one to see the unbuckled straps.
No one to object.
She would have objected, of course.
Would have lifted a brow. Pressed her lips into a thin, bloodless line.
"Sammy," Dean said firmly. "That's BAD. You don't eat that stuff. It's DIRTY."
It was a good many things.
Was not a good many more.
"Back in the car," John murmured.
~~~~~~~~
The motel was long and low, a single story of glass and steel and concrete block that might once have been painted some particular color, some color other than gray or beige. As it was, it was part of the landscape, looked to be trying to camouflage itself, trying to escape all notice. The sign out front had maybe been set up there after the war. Wood and metal, scarred by the wind and the sand, driving rain and the heat. A little neon wiggle hanging off the bottom said VACANCY.
No shit.
John slumped into the office with Sam in his arms and Dean trailing alongside, unwilling to leave either one of them unwatched, be it strapped into place or not. When John stopped walking two paces from the desk Sam snuffled against his neck and Dean leaned in a little closer. A united front, the three of them. For whatever that was worth.
"Room?" said the kid behind the desk.
John dipped his head. Let that serve as an answer.
"One bed? Two?"
"One's fine."
"You need a crib? We don't really have cribs."
John shook his head. Shifted his grip on Sam a little to free up his right hand so he could sign the register, retrieve his wallet from his pocket. His stomach rolled a little. Growled. Reminded him lunch had been a good long time ago. He took stock of the clerk for a moment, amused in some distant way by the violent red of the kid's hair, at the way it was worn thin like everything else out here in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, revealing patches of freckled scalp, bits of peeling sunburn. It made him look vulnerable. Made him look like he'd be far better off putting down roots in a place with some shade, before the sun cooked him alive.
"Coffee shop -?" John murmured.
There was another building, out at the far end of the splash of bare dirt that served as a parking lot. More glass than this one. Sign said something like JOE-DELL'S.
Dark, mostly.
"Open at six," the kid replied.
Dean didn't grasp, didn't tug at his father's shirt. Made no outward sign of distress, not even the pinched look of before. When John glanced down at him he was staring at the rack of tourist brochures, picked pretty well clean, though there might never have been much in it in the first place. As near as John could figure, finding a place that would offer even a vague interpretation of "fun" would mean a drive of better than two hours.
But John suspected that if he offered the word "Dinner?" Dean's eyes would brighten.
"My kids -" he said to the clerk.
"Sorry." That weatherbeaten red head tipped to one side. Thin shoulders came up in as much of a genuine apology as John had seen in a long time. "They close at ten. No reason to stay open past that, ya know?"
"Okay," John said.
And thought SHIT.
There were snacks in the car. Part of a box of animal crackers. Small containers of juice, probably lukewarm.
Sonofabitching SHIT.
"There anyplace else -"
The kid shook his head. DENNIS, his nametag said, underneath white lettering that spelled out WELCOME!
They close at ten? Was that what he'd said?
"What time is it?"
"It's -" Dennis folded his body, took a look at something underneath the overhang of the desk. "Eleven eighteen."
How long…
How the fucking long have…
"You okay, mister?" Dennis asked.
Close to dusk, when they'd stopped at the side of the road. And that had been… when? An hour ago?
"Where you headed?"
Dennis, talking. From somewhere else. The far side of a divide.
"Dakota," John muttered. "Headed to Dakota. Sioux Falls."
"You're a hell of a long way from Sioux Falls."
That's why I stopped. That's…
Row of chairs, backs to the glass front of the office. Shineless chrome, cracked and wrinkled black vinyl trying to be leather. He was half aware of being slumped in one of them, of Dean and Sam on the floor at his feet, sitting on a blanket that had come out of nowhere. Southwestern pattern, brown and rust and white. Of Dean feeding Sam out of a small blue-and-white bowl. Not roadkill snake, thank God; it looked like oatmeal. One spoonful for Sam, one for Dean. There was a lot of oatmeal there, enough for both of them.
"Here," a voice said.
Dennis.
Something there, being pressed into his hands. A paper plate. Sandwich, cut in half. Ham and cheese.
"You should eat that," Dennis said.
Wouldn't take long to break into the coffee shop. Place like that, way out here, wasn't likely to have an alarm. If it did, it'd take forever to get a response. Pick the lock, grab enough chow for the three of them.
Leave the money on the counter.
Or not.
She'd vote for "yes."
"Mister?" Dennis said.
John heard other voices say You need to eat. You can't do this to yourself, John. You need to think about the boys. They need their daddy.
Heard voices say Winchester, take point and You know they eat dog? They eat friggin' DOGS. The hell is that shit?
Heard a crash, far away, maybe not real at all.
"There somebody you want me to call?"
Dennis. Thinned-out red hair laid across a freckled scalp. Earnest brown eyes. Looked eighteen or nineteen from a distance; up close, closer to sixty. The eyes of an old man. Eyes of sorrow. Exhaustion.
"Are we still in Texas?" John asked him.
"Yeah," Dennis said. "You're in Texas. You want me to -"
"There's nobody," John said. "Nobody to call. Not any more."
* * * * *
You losing your mind, John? That it? Gone around the bend? Maybe you're not here at all. Maybe you're balled up in a corner somewhere, drooling into your lap. Close your eyes for a minute, then crack 'em open again.
CHARACTERS: John, wee!Dean, wee!Sam, OMC
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2044 words
THE EDGE OF ALL THERE IS
By Carol Davis
The crash got his attention.
…That??? his muddled mind wondered, and offered up possibilities, none of which made sense, given where he was.
Where they were.
Explosion? Car wreck? Friggin' plane dropping out of the sky?
Thunder?
No glow on the horizon, no rising smoke, no sign of fire. Sky clear enough to make a lie out of thinking There's a storm coming. No sign of anything, really. Just road. Dust and low plant life half dead from the heat. It might as well have been the Twilight Zone, for all that was out there. String of power poles carrying electricity across a landscape barren as the surface of Mars.
Maybe he hadn't heard it at all.
That noise.
You losing your mind, John? That it? Gone around the bend? Maybe you're not here at all. Maybe you're balled up in a corner somewhere, drooling into your lap. Close your eyes for a minute, then crack 'em open again.
Any of this gonna be here then?
It wasn't sound that drew his attention to the back seat; anything short of a scream from back there would have been drowned out by the rumble of the engine, the rush of that unending ribbon of asphalt under the tires. It was movement that summoned him, he thought, and he let himself take that as a sign that he hadn't imagined the crash. That Dean could bear witness to the reality of it, that it was yet another thing Dean could acknowledge on his father's behalf, one more in a long string of half-imagined, unbelievable shit.
The boy's face was pinched tight.
John watched him in the rearview, saw him grimace and twitch. "What?" he said.
Dean's lips moved, offered no more than a fragment of something, all of it lost to the sound of the road.
"You need to say it louder," John told him.
I'm not a fucking lipreader.
Dean considered that for a moment, still frowning. Offered a glance to his sleeping brother, round baby's head dropped onto his shoulder at an angle that couldn't possibly be comfortable. All relative, though, John thought. Let yourself slide on past the point where it matters, you can sleep in a hole in the ground. On cement. Sleep upside down, head full of blood like a water balloon, feet cold and prickling.
"Need to pee," Dean said.
You could sleep behind the wheel of a moving car, and wouldn't that just take the goddamn cake.
No rest stops out here. Nothing that amounted to anything out here. They'd passed a collection of junk a while back, an abandoned RV, door hanging open, one hinge broken, offering hospitality to anything with a yen to climb on in there and get out of the sun. Little U-Haul trailer collapsed alongside it, busted all to hell, identifiable only by remnants of orange and white paint, and the letters HA and L.
Remains of a school bus. Burned, by the look of it.
Half-unspooled roll of barbed wire.
Leaving it all there had made sense to somebody. Or maybe not.
"Daddy," Dean said, and there was a high edge to it, a plea for notice. When John looked again in the rearview the boy's jaw was tight. Said clearly, one bump in the road and that would be all she wrote. Jeans, upholstery, the blanket, all of it soaked.
Amazing how much a child's bladder could hold. Amazing, too, how quickly it could all empty out.
They'd seen no other vehicle for what seemed like hours, but John pulled the car well off onto the shoulder anyway. Dean, sitting behind the driver's seat, knew not to open the door himself, knew not to climb out onto the road. (Wyoming? was it Wyoming where that had happened - that near miss, that pickup screaming by?) He waited, grim and silent, for John to exit the car and circle around to the inland side and open the rear passenger door. Waited for John to survey the landscape and declare it free of hazards.
Then, finally, Dean slipped out past his brother, past his father, turned his back to the empty road and hiked his little-boy jeans (elastic waist, no zipper) down to his ankles.
Dusk, soon.
John stood with a hand on the open door, considered the long roll of nothing between them and the horizon. Decided opportunity was best taken advantage of and joined Dean in watering the weeds. The splash of it brought a smile out of the boy. Why anyone ever found something like that humorous, John had never bothered to figure out.
Camaraderie, he supposed.
They didn't share much, he and Dean. Not any more. Tossing a ball in the yard. Slapping paint on the fence.
Picking out snacks at the market.
When he turned back to the car, Sam was crouched alongside it. Was inspecting the humped edge of the asphalt, expression split between an idiot's grin and that unfathomable deep water of trying to figure something out.
The thing he was intending to chow down on, for instance.
"JESUS!"
Enough of a yelp, a cry of alarm, to startle Sam into dropping the thing. Dead snake, maybe eight inches long, once as big around as John's index finger but well-flattened by whatever had run it over. Still as identifiable as that U-Haul trailer had been despite a lack of sand-blasted lettering. Still obviously NOT FOOD, its sun-baked guts hanging loose and sweet mother of GOD what about it had asked to be investigated that way, by sucking on it, chewing its head loose, tasting that thin dried ribbon of entrails?
John hurled it off into the distance, though that was no more than a few yards; he hadn't held onto it long enough to calculate the throw. Sam peered up at him, bewildered and not a little annoyed, fifteen months old, too curious by half, easily piqued, though thankfully just as easily cajoled. He should have been latched into the car seat, was required by law to be latched into the car seat, but had taken to screeching when he was tied down. Out here, in the middle of nowhere? No one to see the unbuckled straps.
No one to object.
She would have objected, of course.
Would have lifted a brow. Pressed her lips into a thin, bloodless line.
"Sammy," Dean said firmly. "That's BAD. You don't eat that stuff. It's DIRTY."
It was a good many things.
Was not a good many more.
"Back in the car," John murmured.
~~~~~~~~
The motel was long and low, a single story of glass and steel and concrete block that might once have been painted some particular color, some color other than gray or beige. As it was, it was part of the landscape, looked to be trying to camouflage itself, trying to escape all notice. The sign out front had maybe been set up there after the war. Wood and metal, scarred by the wind and the sand, driving rain and the heat. A little neon wiggle hanging off the bottom said VACANCY.
No shit.
John slumped into the office with Sam in his arms and Dean trailing alongside, unwilling to leave either one of them unwatched, be it strapped into place or not. When John stopped walking two paces from the desk Sam snuffled against his neck and Dean leaned in a little closer. A united front, the three of them. For whatever that was worth.
"Room?" said the kid behind the desk.
John dipped his head. Let that serve as an answer.
"One bed? Two?"
"One's fine."
"You need a crib? We don't really have cribs."
John shook his head. Shifted his grip on Sam a little to free up his right hand so he could sign the register, retrieve his wallet from his pocket. His stomach rolled a little. Growled. Reminded him lunch had been a good long time ago. He took stock of the clerk for a moment, amused in some distant way by the violent red of the kid's hair, at the way it was worn thin like everything else out here in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, revealing patches of freckled scalp, bits of peeling sunburn. It made him look vulnerable. Made him look like he'd be far better off putting down roots in a place with some shade, before the sun cooked him alive.
"Coffee shop -?" John murmured.
There was another building, out at the far end of the splash of bare dirt that served as a parking lot. More glass than this one. Sign said something like JOE-DELL'S.
Dark, mostly.
"Open at six," the kid replied.
Dean didn't grasp, didn't tug at his father's shirt. Made no outward sign of distress, not even the pinched look of before. When John glanced down at him he was staring at the rack of tourist brochures, picked pretty well clean, though there might never have been much in it in the first place. As near as John could figure, finding a place that would offer even a vague interpretation of "fun" would mean a drive of better than two hours.
But John suspected that if he offered the word "Dinner?" Dean's eyes would brighten.
"My kids -" he said to the clerk.
"Sorry." That weatherbeaten red head tipped to one side. Thin shoulders came up in as much of a genuine apology as John had seen in a long time. "They close at ten. No reason to stay open past that, ya know?"
"Okay," John said.
And thought SHIT.
There were snacks in the car. Part of a box of animal crackers. Small containers of juice, probably lukewarm.
Sonofabitching SHIT.
"There anyplace else -"
The kid shook his head. DENNIS, his nametag said, underneath white lettering that spelled out WELCOME!
They close at ten? Was that what he'd said?
"What time is it?"
"It's -" Dennis folded his body, took a look at something underneath the overhang of the desk. "Eleven eighteen."
How long…
How the fucking long have…
"You okay, mister?" Dennis asked.
Close to dusk, when they'd stopped at the side of the road. And that had been… when? An hour ago?
"Where you headed?"
Dennis, talking. From somewhere else. The far side of a divide.
"Dakota," John muttered. "Headed to Dakota. Sioux Falls."
"You're a hell of a long way from Sioux Falls."
That's why I stopped. That's…
Row of chairs, backs to the glass front of the office. Shineless chrome, cracked and wrinkled black vinyl trying to be leather. He was half aware of being slumped in one of them, of Dean and Sam on the floor at his feet, sitting on a blanket that had come out of nowhere. Southwestern pattern, brown and rust and white. Of Dean feeding Sam out of a small blue-and-white bowl. Not roadkill snake, thank God; it looked like oatmeal. One spoonful for Sam, one for Dean. There was a lot of oatmeal there, enough for both of them.
"Here," a voice said.
Dennis.
Something there, being pressed into his hands. A paper plate. Sandwich, cut in half. Ham and cheese.
"You should eat that," Dennis said.
Wouldn't take long to break into the coffee shop. Place like that, way out here, wasn't likely to have an alarm. If it did, it'd take forever to get a response. Pick the lock, grab enough chow for the three of them.
Leave the money on the counter.
Or not.
She'd vote for "yes."
"Mister?" Dennis said.
John heard other voices say You need to eat. You can't do this to yourself, John. You need to think about the boys. They need their daddy.
Heard voices say Winchester, take point and You know they eat dog? They eat friggin' DOGS. The hell is that shit?
Heard a crash, far away, maybe not real at all.
"There somebody you want me to call?"
Dennis. Thinned-out red hair laid across a freckled scalp. Earnest brown eyes. Looked eighteen or nineteen from a distance; up close, closer to sixty. The eyes of an old man. Eyes of sorrow. Exhaustion.
"Are we still in Texas?" John asked him.
"Yeah," Dennis said. "You're in Texas. You want me to -"
"There's nobody," John said. "Nobody to call. Not any more."
* * * * *