The Storyteller, Part 2/2
Storyteller Part 1 Here, pouting profusely
~
“You heard me say it before, Sammy. Demons, monsters, nightmare things-they’re evil for a reason. People? Now people are just crazy.
When you went missing, man, it felt like someone sucked my heart out through my nose, I was so freakin’ panicked. But, you know me, I kept it cool. And me and Kathleen found you, and the Benders. And I kicked their asses.
Alright, fine, you kicked their asses, I got myself tied to a chair and got a hot poker to the chest. And I don’t give a crap what you say, Sam, that little girl was freaky as all hell.
In fact, those backwoods banjo-playing inbred Deliverance sons of bitches were one of the scariest things I’ve seen on the job. I mean, they probably didn’t do anything much worse then a spirit or a demon, but what gets to me is, how’s a person get so fucked up? How do you get to be so right and reason don’t matter, or they don’t make sense? How’s a guy lose grip of reality and become something totally different like that?
It’s just…it kinda gets to me. And, I don’t know man…once you’re that far gone, is there anything that could ever bring you back?”
~
No matter how much I told myself that you were in good hands, that things were gonna work out okay, I was waiting for it. Like, my cell phone always next to my bed and a packed duffle bag by the door kind of waiting. I think I actually startled Aunt Mil when she called me late one night.
She asked me if I was okay, and why I wasn’t asleep.
I told her I was fine, and asked her what had happened to you.
She didn’t ask how I knew the call was about you.
But she said that the hospital had contacted her, and that you were missing.
I got my jacket and my keys and, Jesus, Dean, if you could have heard what I was thinking. I was mind was just pumping out nonsense, working overtime. I was in these raggedy sweats, and I was thinking, oh god, I look like hell, and I was afraid if I found you looking this way that maybe you wouldn’t recognize me. I thought maybe I should grab a sweater for you, in case you didn’t have one and only God knew how long you’d been outside. I thought maybe I should get you a sandwich, but I couldn’t think of if you’d prefer salami or roast beef.
I think now maybe it was like emotional karma or something. I was so god damned worried, it was like this big black heavy cloud rising inside me and I thought, this must have been how you felt, those first few weeks after I left. Only you had been locked up on a closed ward with people telling you that you were crazy. I was such an asshole.
I was jogging out to my piece of shit car, and right in the middle of the gibberish thoughts my panicked brain was pouring out, I saw you.
You were sitting in the passenger seat, just staring out the window. I didn’t notice how faint you looked, I was so relieved to see you, I felt like I’d never breathed before.
I got in, and I was ready to be pissed, to give it to you just as bad as you had once given it to me. But, man, one glimpse of your eyes, and I shut my damn mouth and I was on your side. I put a hand on your shoulder, and I could feel you shaking.
“What’s wrong, Dean?”
“Sam,” you said to me, “I think something…something real bad happened.”
You looked worse then I’d ever seen you, and that’s a hell of a statement. Your eyes were rimmed blood red, and they were puffed and dark like you’d been punched, and your face looked like someone scrubbed the life out of you, I mean, you were gray like fog. I was glad I brought the sweater. I put it on you, like a blanket. You wouldn’t take your eyes off my face, and I couldn’t look at you. You looked just covered in pain all over, and it hurt so fucking bad just to look at you.
I asked you what happened.
“It’s Dad, Sam,” you said. “He’s dead.”
Dean.
Only you, only you could have made me cry for a guy who’d been dead for twenty years. The John Winchester I knew wasn’t the drunk who shot himself, but the man from your stories, who was brave and smart and strong and loved us more then life. I spent a whole minute with my heart in my throat before I remembered it wasn’t real. Even then, I could hardly talk.
“No, Dean, I’m sure he’s just hunting.”
I thought maybe I could save Dad for you, but, as usual, you weren’t listening.
“No,” you told me, “He’s been gone for too long. I haven’t talked to either of you in…too long.” It stung me when you said that.
I remember you rubbing a hand over your head, over your eyes, like maybe you were trying to wipe away your thoughts. You stared out the windshield; your green eyes were tracing lines. Outside was rain and ice and misery.
You kept talking, and you were working so damn hard to keep your voice under control.
“I don’t know, man,” you said. “I don’t feel right. I can’t remember the last time I felt right. I know it-he’s gone. He was coming less and less, and he was getting kinda scary, the way he was after Mom died. And then he vanished altogether, and in my gut I know…”
Your voice cracked and shattered before you could finish. The muscles in your face were twitching, and I could see you wrestling your agony down inside you. I told you to we weren’t going anywhere for a while, and we should get under some covers I had in the backseat. You gave me this look.
“Listen, Dad’s gone,” I said to you. “Can we drop the macho shit and get into the backseat and cry?”
You got back there with me, and you just sat and stared for a while. You looked like you were made of just bone and sadness. I put a hand on the back of your neck, and you finally turned to face me. You wound your fists in my shirt and I pressed your face into my shoulder, I held the back of your head, and you said in this voice that sounded like it was coming out of hell, “I should have saved him, Sammy.”
And you cried. You cried dry, silent sobs that shook you, and I held you tight, like I could keep you safe from grief. I cried too, for Mom and for Dad and for you, Dean. I cried for you.
Eventually you wore yourself down and passed out on my shoulder. My shirt had great big spider web wrinkles where you’d been gripping me. I managed to arrange you without waking you up, and I started to drive us back towards home. You didn’t snore, but I kinda wish you did. The silence made the car feel like it was stuffed with cotton.
~
“I’ll tell you, Sammy, we see some fucked up messes in this job. Molly, though, that…that was just sad.
I know, I know, I was kind of a dick to her. Thing is, I guess I just really wished she was some evil poltergeist style spook so I could feel right about that gig. Even Greely, I couldn’t totally blame. Yah, okay, he was a sick son of a bitch, but let’s say you have this great life, you know, with your awesome wife and your…uh, hunting knifes and life is just dandy and then some chick and her directionally challenged hubby fucking trash you with their car.
I mean, I think I’d be a little sore.
So you haunt the road. You haunt the fuckin’ ghost of the woman that killed you. You can’t let go of your life, and you can’t let go of her. You’re too pissed off that the life you were supposed to have is gone to see what’s real.
Is it weird that I get that? You’re supposed to be Mr. Goodvibes touchy-feely over here, not me.
Hell, you were practically the Ghost Whisperer with Molly. I couldn’t say anything…I just watched, feeling about as useful as broken leg. You told her that she had suffered enough, and there wasn’t anything left for her, and, I don’t know, some other sensitive crap, and poof, she was gone. You did good, Sam.
I didn’t feel good after that job. Tell the truth, I felt a little sick. Just something about Molly’s face when she realized it, that she was really dead and gone. I didn’t tell you this, but a little part of me wanted to just let her go, forget about telling her. But I knew better…and more then that, I knew that you knew better.
See, though, that’s why we make a good team, Sammy. We catch each other, you know? We need each other.
It’s like I kept on trying to tell Dad, the stubborn bastard, we’re stronger as a family.
~
I thought the really bad part was over. That’s why I’m an idiot.
You were not happy to see that I drove you back to the hospital.
“Dude,” you said, when I woke you up. “I just busted out of Hell to find you, and you brought me back?”
That threw me, but I just told you this wasn’t Hell, this was a safe place. I kept telling you, reminding you that now that Dad was gone, it was even more important that you be in a place where things couldn’t get to you. I told you that you had to be safe, and that you were safe at the hospital. I think you were confused, I could see you struggling with it, working it out in your head. I think you couldn’t make the pieces of reality and fantasy fit, and for a while, you just nodded at me, trusting anything I said as I led you back inside the hospital. But when you saw the white-clad orderlies coming towards you, your mind definitely settled on the side of “This is bad.”
“No, Sam, no, it’s not safe here. It never was,” you said. I could hear the hysteria building up inside you. I was shushing you, telling you it was okay, but I knew it was too late.
They had you and were dragging you inside and you were straining against them. I felt so damn tired, and so sick of watching people hold you away from me, like I needed protection from you. I wanted…I wanted to hurt the jerks holding you, grab you and run like hell.
They were working you back towards the door, back to your ward full of hopeless cases, and you yelled out to me and said, “Sam, don’t you know we’re better together? Don’t you know that?”
For a week, while you were locked away from the world, that echoed in my mind. It just rang around in my head like a song in a cell until I finally decided that you were completely right.
It was about that time that I got a headache. It didn’t go away for a year.
There was paperwork and lawyers and doctors all the damn time, and Aunt Mil and Uncle Billy were heartbroken. They’d lost me. They spent their lives trying to make things as normal for me as possible, and in the end, I chose the alternative. I don’t blame them for being upset--I can’t even explain it, it was just how the story had to end.
In your long twenty-seven years, all the belongings you managed to collect were a bunch of occult books I’d sent you or the nurses brought in, and an old raggedy leather notebook. Now, that thing was interesting. It was brimming with stuff about ghosts, demons, monsters-but it wasn’t your handwriting. I have to give it to you, Dean, how you kept that thing with you for almost twenty years is a total mystery to me. But, then again, I’ve just had to accept that there’s a lot about you I’ll never understand.
I got a little nervous when you hopped in my car and said, “Take me to something evil, so I can kick its ass.”
You were like a kid on a field trip or something, and a part of me wanted to hit the road and scour the country side looking for things that don’t exist. But, instead, I told you that I wasn’t ready, that I needed time after Dad’s death, and could we just take a little break from hunting.
You were understanding and said that was fine, I could take all the time I needed, and you asked if you should call Dr. Phil.
You jerk.
You approved of my tiny ass apartment, and, though you tried not to show it, but you were ecstatic about the room I set up for you. I thought you were gonna cry when you looked at the framed Metallica poster. There was a ceramic lamp. There was a mirror. You had your own razor, and I wasn’t gonna watch you while you used it.
I watched you put a hand to the mirror hanging above your dresser. You stared at yourself for a while, and I couldn’t tell at all what you were thinking, but you were thinking it pretty hard. You still looked pretty rough, your face just shades of dark purple and pale gray. You’d probably only ever seen your reflection in those weird polished metal mirrors that keep you from hurting someone and seeing yourself.
I took days off of work, and that first week you were home with me, man, that was the happiest time of my life. We watched crappy movies and threw popcorn at each other. We tried to make dinner, and ordered pizza instead. I watched you try to like beer.
You ate food that wasn’t mass produced. Man, the way you looked when you ate, it made me feel down right pervy to share a meal with you. You loved it. Too bad your stomach didn’t. You were sick a lot that first week, and I felt really bad about that.
I learned a lot about you, stuff that had nothing to do with hunting.
You loved the Breakfast Club, because you thought Molly Ringwold was “a smokin’ hottie.”
If you could find some way to combine pie and bacon, your life would be complete.
You really enjoyed bad jokes, and the louder you could make me groan with a god-awful pun the happier you were.
I didn’t want to go back to work, I really didn’t, but you ate like a wild animal and I had to keep us supported. When I told you, you were kind of confused.
“Just tell me what we need,” you said. “I’ll get it.”
Having just gotten you home, I wasn’t too keen for you to be arrested, so I may have tricked you a little.
“Come on, Dean,” I said. “You know you have to lie low, after what happened in St. Louis.”
“Fucking shape-shifter,” you said.
I was a nervous wreck all through my first day of work. I called you about every fifteen minutes until you said, “Dude, I’m not freaking five. Quit calling before you get fired.”
And when I got home, nothing was burned down, my neighbors weren’t mauled, and you were in one piece. Besides all the damn salt, it actually worked out alright.
You did start hunting again, though, in your dreams. You’d wake up every morning and tell me this amazing story about what we did the night before. I was almost always late for work.
On the weekend, we’d do “research” or chill and watch movies or sometimes you’d insist that we do some training, but you’d just yell at me the whole damn time.
“Sammy, this is ridiculous. You’re not focusing. You just took out a freaking Wendingo last week, so what the hell is the problem now?”
For years it was like that-I worked, and you made us these incredible adventures. It was a comfortable rhythm. I was happy. It felt like it had always been that way, and like it would always be just like that.
~
“Alright, I’ll be the first to admit it was kinda weak. Spoon-in-the-mouth isn’t really one of your classic pranks, but dude, the expression on your face when you woke up and had that spaz attack, that right there was totally worth it. And it’s not like your lame ass “I turned up the radio real loud, hee hee” was any better.
I still think the itching powder was freaking hilarious. ‘I think I’m allergic to the soap’-ha, that was just cute. I almost felt sorry for your twitchy squirmy little white ass, I was so good.
The superglue? That was just uncalled for. I couldn’t clean the pipes for, like, a week and a half after that, my hand was so messed up. I give you points, but it was still wrong as hell. You don’t take a man’s beating hand like that.
But no doubt, the best part was us getting over on Ed and Harry. Granted, dead fish in the backseat wasn’t as subtle as tricking them into thinking you’re some big deal producer, but still, I think it gets the point across. Man, we were chuckling for days after that one. Good times, hunh?
But, hey, we always have good times together, don’t we, Sammy?”
~
I always left my door open at night, just in case. My whole life I’d been a light sleeper, so that night when a shadow fell over my face I woke up instantly.
You were standing in the doorway, blocking the light. You practically whispered my name. You were just a black smear, and then you were sliding to the ground.
“Dean!” I called. I bolted out of bed and called 9-1-1, babbling out the address. My heart was going so hard, man, I thought we’d both need an ambulance. I threw myself next to you on the ground, and grabbed your shoulders so I could get a good look at you.
Over those years with me, you’d put on more weight, and you’d gotten to look good…better then good, even.
But that night, I looked at you, and all the extra years of stress were on your face. You were old. I saw every line, every wrinkle, and you looked scared. Your hand was tight over your heart. I don’t know how I managed to keep breathing.
“Sam, something’s wrong,” you told me.
The doctors had told me your heart was weak. I’d been good with giving you your meds, Dean, I was perfect, I swear. But you’d spent ten years in perpetual panic, that sort of thing leaves a mark on a body, you know? I tried, Dean. I really did.
I told you to calm down. Tell me what was wrong exactly.
“My chest hurts,” you said. You laughed a little. “Hell of a way for a hunter to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told you. It felt like a lie. “I’m gonna save you,” I said.
You laughed again, and you put your hand on my face. It was ice cold, and that jumpstarted my tears.
“That’s my line, Sammy,” you said. Your face got tight, and I swear I could feel your hurting. “Sam, you know there’s nothing you can do for me.” Then you said, “There never was.”
You looked me in my eyes. You seemed so big all of a sudden, like there was nothing else in the whole universe but you and me.
I gripped you tighter. “What do you mean?” I asked. I could hear the ambulance coming. “This isn’t happening, Dean. You can’t go. I need you. Please, please…” my voice was disappearing on me. I don’t think you were looking at me anymore. You said something, so quiet that I might have missed it if I weren’t leaning into you so hard.
“Remember that time, Sammy? In Lawrence? I saved you…”
Your hand dropped. And I screamed your name until it was burned in my throat.
~
I sat for hours, everyday. I scribbled in notebooks the way you used to. But, no one called me crazy. In fact, my stories sold big, but I was a fraud. They were all your stories, Dean. All of them. I just had to write them, to show them for what they were. When you told your stories, you were just a raving lunatic. When I told them, I was a creative genius. I wanted everyone to know you as more then a guy who grew up in a psych ward and died of a heart attack at thirty-one.
When I published the last of the Sam and Dean stories, I stopped writing. I don’t really have anything else to say. There’s nothing left.
So, I brought lilies this time. Yah, yah, shut up. I know you couldn’t care less about flowers on your grave, but it makes me feel a little good, so stuff it. Next time I’ll bring a cheesesteak, and lay that on your headstone, how about that?
Dean.
I miss you so fucking much. I know, I’m being a girl. I thought there would be a day when I could come here and talk to you without crying like this. The funny thing is, Dean, I keep waiting for you to come haunt my ass.
Every day I take out the trunk, packed full of your notebooks and drawings, and I spread them out on your bed. I read them, Dean. I read until it’s time to sleep.
~
“You heard me say it before, Sammy. Demons, monsters, nightmare things-they’re evil for a reason. People? Now people are just crazy.
When you went missing, man, it felt like someone sucked my heart out through my nose, I was so freakin’ panicked. But, you know me, I kept it cool. And me and Kathleen found you, and the Benders. And I kicked their asses.
Alright, fine, you kicked their asses, I got myself tied to a chair and got a hot poker to the chest. And I don’t give a crap what you say, Sam, that little girl was freaky as all hell.
In fact, those backwoods banjo-playing inbred Deliverance sons of bitches were one of the scariest things I’ve seen on the job. I mean, they probably didn’t do anything much worse then a spirit or a demon, but what gets to me is, how’s a person get so fucked up? How do you get to be so right and reason don’t matter, or they don’t make sense? How’s a guy lose grip of reality and become something totally different like that?
It’s just…it kinda gets to me. And, I don’t know man…once you’re that far gone, is there anything that could ever bring you back?”
~
No matter how much I told myself that you were in good hands, that things were gonna work out okay, I was waiting for it. Like, my cell phone always next to my bed and a packed duffle bag by the door kind of waiting. I think I actually startled Aunt Mil when she called me late one night.
She asked me if I was okay, and why I wasn’t asleep.
I told her I was fine, and asked her what had happened to you.
She didn’t ask how I knew the call was about you.
But she said that the hospital had contacted her, and that you were missing.
I got my jacket and my keys and, Jesus, Dean, if you could have heard what I was thinking. I was mind was just pumping out nonsense, working overtime. I was in these raggedy sweats, and I was thinking, oh god, I look like hell, and I was afraid if I found you looking this way that maybe you wouldn’t recognize me. I thought maybe I should grab a sweater for you, in case you didn’t have one and only God knew how long you’d been outside. I thought maybe I should get you a sandwich, but I couldn’t think of if you’d prefer salami or roast beef.
I think now maybe it was like emotional karma or something. I was so god damned worried, it was like this big black heavy cloud rising inside me and I thought, this must have been how you felt, those first few weeks after I left. Only you had been locked up on a closed ward with people telling you that you were crazy. I was such an asshole.
I was jogging out to my piece of shit car, and right in the middle of the gibberish thoughts my panicked brain was pouring out, I saw you.
You were sitting in the passenger seat, just staring out the window. I didn’t notice how faint you looked, I was so relieved to see you, I felt like I’d never breathed before.
I got in, and I was ready to be pissed, to give it to you just as bad as you had once given it to me. But, man, one glimpse of your eyes, and I shut my damn mouth and I was on your side. I put a hand on your shoulder, and I could feel you shaking.
“What’s wrong, Dean?”
“Sam,” you said to me, “I think something…something real bad happened.”
You looked worse then I’d ever seen you, and that’s a hell of a statement. Your eyes were rimmed blood red, and they were puffed and dark like you’d been punched, and your face looked like someone scrubbed the life out of you, I mean, you were gray like fog. I was glad I brought the sweater. I put it on you, like a blanket. You wouldn’t take your eyes off my face, and I couldn’t look at you. You looked just covered in pain all over, and it hurt so fucking bad just to look at you.
I asked you what happened.
“It’s Dad, Sam,” you said. “He’s dead.”
Dean.
Only you, only you could have made me cry for a guy who’d been dead for twenty years. The John Winchester I knew wasn’t the drunk who shot himself, but the man from your stories, who was brave and smart and strong and loved us more then life. I spent a whole minute with my heart in my throat before I remembered it wasn’t real. Even then, I could hardly talk.
“No, Dean, I’m sure he’s just hunting.”
I thought maybe I could save Dad for you, but, as usual, you weren’t listening.
“No,” you told me, “He’s been gone for too long. I haven’t talked to either of you in…too long.” It stung me when you said that.
I remember you rubbing a hand over your head, over your eyes, like maybe you were trying to wipe away your thoughts. You stared out the windshield; your green eyes were tracing lines. Outside was rain and ice and misery.
You kept talking, and you were working so damn hard to keep your voice under control.
“I don’t know, man,” you said. “I don’t feel right. I can’t remember the last time I felt right. I know it-he’s gone. He was coming less and less, and he was getting kinda scary, the way he was after Mom died. And then he vanished altogether, and in my gut I know…”
Your voice cracked and shattered before you could finish. The muscles in your face were twitching, and I could see you wrestling your agony down inside you. I told you to we weren’t going anywhere for a while, and we should get under some covers I had in the backseat. You gave me this look.
“Listen, Dad’s gone,” I said to you. “Can we drop the macho shit and get into the backseat and cry?”
You got back there with me, and you just sat and stared for a while. You looked like you were made of just bone and sadness. I put a hand on the back of your neck, and you finally turned to face me. You wound your fists in my shirt and I pressed your face into my shoulder, I held the back of your head, and you said in this voice that sounded like it was coming out of hell, “I should have saved him, Sammy.”
And you cried. You cried dry, silent sobs that shook you, and I held you tight, like I could keep you safe from grief. I cried too, for Mom and for Dad and for you, Dean. I cried for you.
Eventually you wore yourself down and passed out on my shoulder. My shirt had great big spider web wrinkles where you’d been gripping me. I managed to arrange you without waking you up, and I started to drive us back towards home. You didn’t snore, but I kinda wish you did. The silence made the car feel like it was stuffed with cotton.
~
“I’ll tell you, Sammy, we see some fucked up messes in this job. Molly, though, that…that was just sad.
I know, I know, I was kind of a dick to her. Thing is, I guess I just really wished she was some evil poltergeist style spook so I could feel right about that gig. Even Greely, I couldn’t totally blame. Yah, okay, he was a sick son of a bitch, but let’s say you have this great life, you know, with your awesome wife and your…uh, hunting knifes and life is just dandy and then some chick and her directionally challenged hubby fucking trash you with their car.
I mean, I think I’d be a little sore.
So you haunt the road. You haunt the fuckin’ ghost of the woman that killed you. You can’t let go of your life, and you can’t let go of her. You’re too pissed off that the life you were supposed to have is gone to see what’s real.
Is it weird that I get that? You’re supposed to be Mr. Goodvibes touchy-feely over here, not me.
Hell, you were practically the Ghost Whisperer with Molly. I couldn’t say anything…I just watched, feeling about as useful as broken leg. You told her that she had suffered enough, and there wasn’t anything left for her, and, I don’t know, some other sensitive crap, and poof, she was gone. You did good, Sam.
I didn’t feel good after that job. Tell the truth, I felt a little sick. Just something about Molly’s face when she realized it, that she was really dead and gone. I didn’t tell you this, but a little part of me wanted to just let her go, forget about telling her. But I knew better…and more then that, I knew that you knew better.
See, though, that’s why we make a good team, Sammy. We catch each other, you know? We need each other.
It’s like I kept on trying to tell Dad, the stubborn bastard, we’re stronger as a family.
~
I thought the really bad part was over. That’s why I’m an idiot.
You were not happy to see that I drove you back to the hospital.
“Dude,” you said, when I woke you up. “I just busted out of Hell to find you, and you brought me back?”
That threw me, but I just told you this wasn’t Hell, this was a safe place. I kept telling you, reminding you that now that Dad was gone, it was even more important that you be in a place where things couldn’t get to you. I told you that you had to be safe, and that you were safe at the hospital. I think you were confused, I could see you struggling with it, working it out in your head. I think you couldn’t make the pieces of reality and fantasy fit, and for a while, you just nodded at me, trusting anything I said as I led you back inside the hospital. But when you saw the white-clad orderlies coming towards you, your mind definitely settled on the side of “This is bad.”
“No, Sam, no, it’s not safe here. It never was,” you said. I could hear the hysteria building up inside you. I was shushing you, telling you it was okay, but I knew it was too late.
They had you and were dragging you inside and you were straining against them. I felt so damn tired, and so sick of watching people hold you away from me, like I needed protection from you. I wanted…I wanted to hurt the jerks holding you, grab you and run like hell.
They were working you back towards the door, back to your ward full of hopeless cases, and you yelled out to me and said, “Sam, don’t you know we’re better together? Don’t you know that?”
For a week, while you were locked away from the world, that echoed in my mind. It just rang around in my head like a song in a cell until I finally decided that you were completely right.
It was about that time that I got a headache. It didn’t go away for a year.
There was paperwork and lawyers and doctors all the damn time, and Aunt Mil and Uncle Billy were heartbroken. They’d lost me. They spent their lives trying to make things as normal for me as possible, and in the end, I chose the alternative. I don’t blame them for being upset--I can’t even explain it, it was just how the story had to end.
In your long twenty-seven years, all the belongings you managed to collect were a bunch of occult books I’d sent you or the nurses brought in, and an old raggedy leather notebook. Now, that thing was interesting. It was brimming with stuff about ghosts, demons, monsters-but it wasn’t your handwriting. I have to give it to you, Dean, how you kept that thing with you for almost twenty years is a total mystery to me. But, then again, I’ve just had to accept that there’s a lot about you I’ll never understand.
I got a little nervous when you hopped in my car and said, “Take me to something evil, so I can kick its ass.”
You were like a kid on a field trip or something, and a part of me wanted to hit the road and scour the country side looking for things that don’t exist. But, instead, I told you that I wasn’t ready, that I needed time after Dad’s death, and could we just take a little break from hunting.
You were understanding and said that was fine, I could take all the time I needed, and you asked if you should call Dr. Phil.
You jerk.
You approved of my tiny ass apartment, and, though you tried not to show it, but you were ecstatic about the room I set up for you. I thought you were gonna cry when you looked at the framed Metallica poster. There was a ceramic lamp. There was a mirror. You had your own razor, and I wasn’t gonna watch you while you used it.
I watched you put a hand to the mirror hanging above your dresser. You stared at yourself for a while, and I couldn’t tell at all what you were thinking, but you were thinking it pretty hard. You still looked pretty rough, your face just shades of dark purple and pale gray. You’d probably only ever seen your reflection in those weird polished metal mirrors that keep you from hurting someone and seeing yourself.
I took days off of work, and that first week you were home with me, man, that was the happiest time of my life. We watched crappy movies and threw popcorn at each other. We tried to make dinner, and ordered pizza instead. I watched you try to like beer.
You ate food that wasn’t mass produced. Man, the way you looked when you ate, it made me feel down right pervy to share a meal with you. You loved it. Too bad your stomach didn’t. You were sick a lot that first week, and I felt really bad about that.
I learned a lot about you, stuff that had nothing to do with hunting.
You loved the Breakfast Club, because you thought Molly Ringwold was “a smokin’ hottie.”
If you could find some way to combine pie and bacon, your life would be complete.
You really enjoyed bad jokes, and the louder you could make me groan with a god-awful pun the happier you were.
I didn’t want to go back to work, I really didn’t, but you ate like a wild animal and I had to keep us supported. When I told you, you were kind of confused.
“Just tell me what we need,” you said. “I’ll get it.”
Having just gotten you home, I wasn’t too keen for you to be arrested, so I may have tricked you a little.
“Come on, Dean,” I said. “You know you have to lie low, after what happened in St. Louis.”
“Fucking shape-shifter,” you said.
I was a nervous wreck all through my first day of work. I called you about every fifteen minutes until you said, “Dude, I’m not freaking five. Quit calling before you get fired.”
And when I got home, nothing was burned down, my neighbors weren’t mauled, and you were in one piece. Besides all the damn salt, it actually worked out alright.
You did start hunting again, though, in your dreams. You’d wake up every morning and tell me this amazing story about what we did the night before. I was almost always late for work.
On the weekend, we’d do “research” or chill and watch movies or sometimes you’d insist that we do some training, but you’d just yell at me the whole damn time.
“Sammy, this is ridiculous. You’re not focusing. You just took out a freaking Wendingo last week, so what the hell is the problem now?”
For years it was like that-I worked, and you made us these incredible adventures. It was a comfortable rhythm. I was happy. It felt like it had always been that way, and like it would always be just like that.
~
“Alright, I’ll be the first to admit it was kinda weak. Spoon-in-the-mouth isn’t really one of your classic pranks, but dude, the expression on your face when you woke up and had that spaz attack, that right there was totally worth it. And it’s not like your lame ass “I turned up the radio real loud, hee hee” was any better.
I still think the itching powder was freaking hilarious. ‘I think I’m allergic to the soap’-ha, that was just cute. I almost felt sorry for your twitchy squirmy little white ass, I was so good.
The superglue? That was just uncalled for. I couldn’t clean the pipes for, like, a week and a half after that, my hand was so messed up. I give you points, but it was still wrong as hell. You don’t take a man’s beating hand like that.
But no doubt, the best part was us getting over on Ed and Harry. Granted, dead fish in the backseat wasn’t as subtle as tricking them into thinking you’re some big deal producer, but still, I think it gets the point across. Man, we were chuckling for days after that one. Good times, hunh?
But, hey, we always have good times together, don’t we, Sammy?”
~
I always left my door open at night, just in case. My whole life I’d been a light sleeper, so that night when a shadow fell over my face I woke up instantly.
You were standing in the doorway, blocking the light. You practically whispered my name. You were just a black smear, and then you were sliding to the ground.
“Dean!” I called. I bolted out of bed and called 9-1-1, babbling out the address. My heart was going so hard, man, I thought we’d both need an ambulance. I threw myself next to you on the ground, and grabbed your shoulders so I could get a good look at you.
Over those years with me, you’d put on more weight, and you’d gotten to look good…better then good, even.
But that night, I looked at you, and all the extra years of stress were on your face. You were old. I saw every line, every wrinkle, and you looked scared. Your hand was tight over your heart. I don’t know how I managed to keep breathing.
“Sam, something’s wrong,” you told me.
The doctors had told me your heart was weak. I’d been good with giving you your meds, Dean, I was perfect, I swear. But you’d spent ten years in perpetual panic, that sort of thing leaves a mark on a body, you know? I tried, Dean. I really did.
I told you to calm down. Tell me what was wrong exactly.
“My chest hurts,” you said. You laughed a little. “Hell of a way for a hunter to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told you. It felt like a lie. “I’m gonna save you,” I said.
You laughed again, and you put your hand on my face. It was ice cold, and that jumpstarted my tears.
“That’s my line, Sammy,” you said. Your face got tight, and I swear I could feel your hurting. “Sam, you know there’s nothing you can do for me.” Then you said, “There never was.”
You looked me in my eyes. You seemed so big all of a sudden, like there was nothing else in the whole universe but you and me.
I gripped you tighter. “What do you mean?” I asked. I could hear the ambulance coming. “This isn’t happening, Dean. You can’t go. I need you. Please, please…” my voice was disappearing on me. I don’t think you were looking at me anymore. You said something, so quiet that I might have missed it if I weren’t leaning into you so hard.
“Remember that time, Sammy? In Lawrence? I saved you…”
Your hand dropped. And I screamed your name until it was burned in my throat.
~
I sat for hours, everyday. I scribbled in notebooks the way you used to. But, no one called me crazy. In fact, my stories sold big, but I was a fraud. They were all your stories, Dean. All of them. I just had to write them, to show them for what they were. When you told your stories, you were just a raving lunatic. When I told them, I was a creative genius. I wanted everyone to know you as more then a guy who grew up in a psych ward and died of a heart attack at thirty-one.
When I published the last of the Sam and Dean stories, I stopped writing. I don’t really have anything else to say. There’s nothing left.
So, I brought lilies this time. Yah, yah, shut up. I know you couldn’t care less about flowers on your grave, but it makes me feel a little good, so stuff it. Next time I’ll bring a cheesesteak, and lay that on your headstone, how about that?
Dean.
I miss you so fucking much. I know, I’m being a girl. I thought there would be a day when I could come here and talk to you without crying like this. The funny thing is, Dean, I keep waiting for you to come haunt my ass.
Every day I take out the trunk, packed full of your notebooks and drawings, and I spread them out on your bed. I read them, Dean. I read until it’s time to sleep.