Flashfic: Real
Real
(There’s a room.) (There’s a hole.) (There’s a cage.)
Once it happened. It’s a memory now but it happened, once, and it was real. It was real and it happened and the memory isn’t the thing, what happened was as real as now. There is no then and now there are only things that happen and he knows it was real. Is real. Real as now. Every moment, breath, every shivering skin cell and vaporizing air molecule. Real. True. Real then is real now. Absolutely now.
Dean says, “No, Sam, stay with me, c’mon.” And Sam tries. God, he tries. The room is real. Happening now. Dean is. But there’s a gap and Sam has to go.
He bangs into the nightstand and things scatter onto the floor. Breaking lightbulb and clockface and he was falling. Is. Sudden drop and it would have been okay but he left his stomach somewhere on top where the world is green, and the gap yawns under him. The gulf, huge and getting huger and there isn’t any air, just teeth behind his eyes and screaming.
Pitch and yaw.
Something wrenches him sideways and fingers press and burn all over his neck and arms and face-skin. He spits and tries to bite but bones pressing under his eyes hold him back and he whines. (This isn’t happening this isn’t now it isn’t then it isn’t falling.)
“…can’t do this Sam not now…”
Tiny whisper. Too far away to be heard.
It opens in his head again, teeth and darkness, big and black spreading wider, cracking the bone from the inside. Pushing the planes apart, making new soft spots like babies have in their heads.
He doesn’t hit the ground and doesn’t hit the ground and doesn’t hit the ground. There’s no ground to hit because this is now and falling is now and there was after and before but now is always now. Real. Always real. He thrashes and fingers clamp into nerves below his clavicle, in his armpit, and he squeals and thuds against the floor and he’s got a face full of carpet and that’s now, too.
Too much now. Too much real.
He hits the ground and every cell tears. Hands wrench his arms behind his back and falling and tearing and burning and everything comes pouring out. Sack of meat spilling blood and viscera and whole entire organs. His face is gone.
Someone else has it now.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Dean says, and of course Dean’s here now. Organs all over the floor and his stomach somewhere high overhead and he’s falling and Dean’s sitting on his back, knee pressed into his spine. Sam squirms and pants into the floor. Guts all over the place. Offal.
These things are real.
Teeth are dropping out of his head, out of his face, falling and spinning away into the dark. He sobs and rocks his face into the carpet.
He says, “Help.” Begs. Dean eases off his back and Sam’s arms slip to the side and he gasps out another noise, more formless than the last, not a laugh or the wet spatter of blood. It tears. It’s dry.
Dean lies down on the floor, all the way, flat, and fingers weave through Sam’s hair until they can clutch at his skull, dig in hard, pull. Sam’s head rolls with the motion, awkward but painless, and he’s staring sideways up at the ceiling.
“Help,” he says again, to the ceiling and to the wind whistling by. Dean’s grip tightens.
He doesn’t say, ‘It isn’t real.’
Dean knows.
And he stays.
-end