Tricks of the Light
One more for the fic-meme at SPN Gen Love. And there's two more coming... this meme was the death of me *head desk*
This short story came from a promp by pinkphoenix1985 , at the fic-meme in SPN Gen Love. The promp was to write 'an outsider's POV of the apocalypse. Can be a OC or a character from the show. Should mention the Winchesters.'
So, here you have it, one more look at the end. Beta-ed by the awesome Jackfan2.
TRICKS OF THE LIGHT
Momma always said that I was too curious for my own good. She was right about that. But like the spots on a leopard, that wasn’t exactly something that I could change.
Momma also said that I would be burning in Hell on account of what I did for a living. Maybe she was right about that too but, given how things have been of late? Not sure how much worse that can be.
So, I keep on working, even if the sex isn’t paid with money anymore. Money stopped having any sort of meaning or valor when things started going sideways. Or maybe things started to go sideways because of that… it was hard to tell at the time.
It had always been nothing but fancy paper with faces of people on it. It took the burning of crops all over the world and farm animals, dropping dead right and left everywhere, heck! even the fish cooked along with everything else trapped in the boiling seas and rivers, for people to start realizing that paper, no matter how pretty, ain’t food.
There were no more doubts in peoples minds that this truly was the end of times. Not even the mores optimistic could deny it now. Instead, the optimists were now the ones trying to survive, the ones still believing that there would be an after when all the rest went to crap.
The others have just given up.
Momma doesn’t know, she never saw it in me, but I’m an optimist too.
So, I trade sex for food. Hey! Oldest profession in the world, remember? It felt like going back to my origins or something.
Of course, now that people find themselves with useless skills on their hands and no way of feeding themselves (because really, who needs bankers and lawyers and actors and clowns and dancers when there’s no money, no law, no fun, no laughter, no music?), now there’s a hell of a lot more competition in the area. Everyone and their mommas is doing it.
I just happen to be a professional -and pretty damn good at what I do, if you don’t mind my saying it-, rather than these rookies that you see rooming the streets these days, turning tricks for licks.
It happened on a Sunday, I think. The day of the Lord, my momma used to say.
It had been a good day’s work and most of the food that that I would need to feed both myself and the old couple from next door, for the next couple of days, was assured. They thought that I worked at a supermarket; the sweet old dears… as if such places were still open for business.
Anyways, Detroit, four a.m. Dead as a place can be when you know that some unspoken horror is probably taken place in a corner or two of your way home.
I wasn’t taking any more tricks; there was no need to. But the guy dressed in the spiffy white suite, standing in the middle of the street, halogen lights spotlighting him likes some star in the middle of the stage, was just too good looking to pass up.
Because a girl’s gotta to eat, but damn! if the body sometimes doesn’t need more than just food.
“Hey, mister!” I called him out, drawing his attention away from the full moon and back down on earth.
A set of stormy blue-green eyes settled over me and I felt my breath literally freeze inside my lungs. It was like looking at something forbidden, like splashing fresh water over your eyes only to realize too late that it was actually bleach.
I was beginning to think that maybe calling out that guy was not the brightest idea I’d had of late. Still, I found myself walking closer; draw to him like a moth to fire. “Do you-“ I managed to squeeze out, sounding like one of those rookies.
In my defense, usually there isn’t much need for talk. One look at my clothes, with the tight red skirt, the see-through shirt and the bare legs and arms, even though winter had just turned the corner last week... usually they pick up real quick on what I’m selling here. Still, I found myself babbling, going through the needless motions.
The guy just smiled at me, perfectly demarked dimples punctuating his cheeks like question marks. His hand reached out, and only when his warm fingers brushed against my arm, did I realize just how close I’d gotten to him. I was a speck of dust and he was the eye of the hurricane. The feel of his touch was, at the same time, thrilling and terrifying.
I found myself taking a step back.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, voice like a boom of sound, smooth and disturbing in its gentleness. Like white noise, invasive and inescapable.
For a second, I thought that he was actually talking to me, until I realized that his gaze was fixed on some point over my shoulder.
Like being trapped inside a dream, I turned to look back, to see what had trapped his attention in the same captive way that the moonlight had.
There was another guy there, arms loosely hanging beside his body, long legs poised for action. Under the street lamp, his face was nothing but a shadow, head tilted down, halo of light turning his hair almost white.
“Let her go,” the second man said. His voice was the gruff that complemented the other’s smoothness; his darkness seemed to suit the other’s light; the feeling of goodness and safety that opposed the other’s wrongness.
Like the man in white, an air of danger hung in the lamp-lit glow above him, but unlike him, there was no pretext, no subterfuge, just open hostility, tinged by... regret.
I realized that he was talking about me and I took a step away from both men, away from the street, into the sidewalk. You heard about lots of things in those days, strange things about people with black eyes that turn crazy; about beasts that should not exist, roaming freely through the streets...
And the way these two were behaving, the way their eyes were fixed on each other, the way the very wind seemed to move around them, afraid to touch their skin… it was weird enough for me. Weird enough to pique my curiosity.
Too curious for my own good, momma always said. And if she’d been wrong, I would have never seen what I saw next.
The guy standing under the lamp moved forward, purpose in his steps. He passed inches from me, his eyes moving for one split second to meet mine.
I felt myself drowning in a forest of green, a place of luxurious trees forever bathed in the sun. It felt like a real place, a safe place, a warm place, and yet I knew that my feet were still standing in the wet and filthy streets of Detroit. And then he looked away and it was over.
“Get out of here,” he whispered over his shoulder, never looking, never making sure I was gone.
I stayed.
The happiness on the face of the guy dressed in white was such that I half expected them to kiss and hug as soon as they were within
each other’s reach.
The glint of a knife shined in the dark instead, lightning quick motion coming from the back of shadow guy’s jeans towards the chest of the man dressed in white.
I gasped, hand reaching for my mouth. I couldn’t make a sound. I was sure I would be dead if I did.
The guy in white did not go down as I expected him to, as anyone with a frigging knife stuck in his chest would. When the other pulled the knife away, there wasn’t even any blood on it.
“You should know better than that, Dean” I heard the man in white say.
Shadow guy, Dean as the other one had called him, said nothing and, when they moved to stand exactly in the middle of the street, one leg over each side of the white dash in the middle, I understood why. Dean's face was red, green eyes bulging out like some cartoon character, as the man in white's hand closed over Dean's throat and squeezed harder and harder.
I didn’t know either of those guys and yet, my heart was clenched tight inside my chest as I watched the man in white slowly squeeze the life out of Dean.
I couldn’t do anything. The police and military were scattered too thin all over the country, trying to plug whatever gaping holes society had managed to stretch of late; they no longer had time for this sort of petty events, like some random dude killing another in the middle of the street. Crime wasn’t crime anymore because there was no one left to judge it.
All I could do was stand and watch and maybe hope that the guy in white would forget about me and not kill me next.
I missed if the man in white had asked anything, but I swear that, even though he looked more dead than alive, Dean whispered a faint ‘I’m sorry Sammy’ quickly followed by a single ‘yes’. It was faint, raspy, like sand scratching through paper, and it could’ve been any other word, but I would swear that it was yes.
It seemed kind of weird at the time, you know, like he was giving the other guy his consent to kill him.
The other guy didn’t look all that pleased with that though, his pretty face contorting in to a grotesque parody of what he was before. He dropped Dean, watching dispassionately as he landed in a heap of boneless flesh on the filthy ground.
The other guy, Dean, who by all rights, should've been dead or, at the very least, gasping for breath on the ground, was… he was
glowing. He was -honest to God, no Twilight vampires crap- glowing.
It was like a lamp had been lit inside of him, chasing away the shadow and growing brighter and brighter until the street at four a.m. turned in to the sunniest of days.
The light, loud and abrasive, washed out the world, forcing me to squint, angle my face away. Stubbornly, I kept my eyes open, even though it was too bright for me to see anything more than the outlines of the two men, even though it made my eyes water and made me think that I would never see anything else ever again.
But I did saw that. And if I went blind after? I would still not regret it.
Dean, who was no longer on the ground, was standing tall and defiant in front of the man in white. His face was still the same, laugh lines circling sad eyes, slender body built of strength, and yet, something important, something that classified him as human, had changed.
His eyes looked older... no longer green, but the same stormy mix of colors, like the man in white. And there were shadows beside him, shielding his form like a pair of... wings.
“Hey, little brother,” I heard Dean say, longing and love in his voice.
And then he plunged his knife on the other’s chest a second time.
I heard a scream, I possibly screamed along with it, and suddenly it was dark and night again, and I was still in Detroit and the only one on the street. And the world was still turning.
I don’t know who those men were; I don’t know where they went or what their business had been.
All I know was that, the very next day, whispers of crops flourishing again started pouring in from the different corners of the world; I know that people started to pick up their pieces and decided to start over, even the pessimists; I know that that feeling of warmth and security that I’d seen in that guy's eyes had, somehow, spread over the world.
And I know that, for some reason that completely escapes, I had witnessed something important.
The end
This short story came from a promp by pinkphoenix1985 , at the fic-meme in SPN Gen Love. The promp was to write 'an outsider's POV of the apocalypse. Can be a OC or a character from the show. Should mention the Winchesters.'
So, here you have it, one more look at the end. Beta-ed by the awesome Jackfan2.
TRICKS OF THE LIGHT
Momma always said that I was too curious for my own good. She was right about that. But like the spots on a leopard, that wasn’t exactly something that I could change.
Momma also said that I would be burning in Hell on account of what I did for a living. Maybe she was right about that too but, given how things have been of late? Not sure how much worse that can be.
So, I keep on working, even if the sex isn’t paid with money anymore. Money stopped having any sort of meaning or valor when things started going sideways. Or maybe things started to go sideways because of that… it was hard to tell at the time.
It had always been nothing but fancy paper with faces of people on it. It took the burning of crops all over the world and farm animals, dropping dead right and left everywhere, heck! even the fish cooked along with everything else trapped in the boiling seas and rivers, for people to start realizing that paper, no matter how pretty, ain’t food.
There were no more doubts in peoples minds that this truly was the end of times. Not even the mores optimistic could deny it now. Instead, the optimists were now the ones trying to survive, the ones still believing that there would be an after when all the rest went to crap.
The others have just given up.
Momma doesn’t know, she never saw it in me, but I’m an optimist too.
So, I trade sex for food. Hey! Oldest profession in the world, remember? It felt like going back to my origins or something.
Of course, now that people find themselves with useless skills on their hands and no way of feeding themselves (because really, who needs bankers and lawyers and actors and clowns and dancers when there’s no money, no law, no fun, no laughter, no music?), now there’s a hell of a lot more competition in the area. Everyone and their mommas is doing it.
I just happen to be a professional -and pretty damn good at what I do, if you don’t mind my saying it-, rather than these rookies that you see rooming the streets these days, turning tricks for licks.
It happened on a Sunday, I think. The day of the Lord, my momma used to say.
It had been a good day’s work and most of the food that that I would need to feed both myself and the old couple from next door, for the next couple of days, was assured. They thought that I worked at a supermarket; the sweet old dears… as if such places were still open for business.
Anyways, Detroit, four a.m. Dead as a place can be when you know that some unspoken horror is probably taken place in a corner or two of your way home.
I wasn’t taking any more tricks; there was no need to. But the guy dressed in the spiffy white suite, standing in the middle of the street, halogen lights spotlighting him likes some star in the middle of the stage, was just too good looking to pass up.
Because a girl’s gotta to eat, but damn! if the body sometimes doesn’t need more than just food.
“Hey, mister!” I called him out, drawing his attention away from the full moon and back down on earth.
A set of stormy blue-green eyes settled over me and I felt my breath literally freeze inside my lungs. It was like looking at something forbidden, like splashing fresh water over your eyes only to realize too late that it was actually bleach.
I was beginning to think that maybe calling out that guy was not the brightest idea I’d had of late. Still, I found myself walking closer; draw to him like a moth to fire. “Do you-“ I managed to squeeze out, sounding like one of those rookies.
In my defense, usually there isn’t much need for talk. One look at my clothes, with the tight red skirt, the see-through shirt and the bare legs and arms, even though winter had just turned the corner last week... usually they pick up real quick on what I’m selling here. Still, I found myself babbling, going through the needless motions.
The guy just smiled at me, perfectly demarked dimples punctuating his cheeks like question marks. His hand reached out, and only when his warm fingers brushed against my arm, did I realize just how close I’d gotten to him. I was a speck of dust and he was the eye of the hurricane. The feel of his touch was, at the same time, thrilling and terrifying.
I found myself taking a step back.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, voice like a boom of sound, smooth and disturbing in its gentleness. Like white noise, invasive and inescapable.
For a second, I thought that he was actually talking to me, until I realized that his gaze was fixed on some point over my shoulder.
Like being trapped inside a dream, I turned to look back, to see what had trapped his attention in the same captive way that the moonlight had.
There was another guy there, arms loosely hanging beside his body, long legs poised for action. Under the street lamp, his face was nothing but a shadow, head tilted down, halo of light turning his hair almost white.
“Let her go,” the second man said. His voice was the gruff that complemented the other’s smoothness; his darkness seemed to suit the other’s light; the feeling of goodness and safety that opposed the other’s wrongness.
Like the man in white, an air of danger hung in the lamp-lit glow above him, but unlike him, there was no pretext, no subterfuge, just open hostility, tinged by... regret.
I realized that he was talking about me and I took a step away from both men, away from the street, into the sidewalk. You heard about lots of things in those days, strange things about people with black eyes that turn crazy; about beasts that should not exist, roaming freely through the streets...
And the way these two were behaving, the way their eyes were fixed on each other, the way the very wind seemed to move around them, afraid to touch their skin… it was weird enough for me. Weird enough to pique my curiosity.
Too curious for my own good, momma always said. And if she’d been wrong, I would have never seen what I saw next.
The guy standing under the lamp moved forward, purpose in his steps. He passed inches from me, his eyes moving for one split second to meet mine.
I felt myself drowning in a forest of green, a place of luxurious trees forever bathed in the sun. It felt like a real place, a safe place, a warm place, and yet I knew that my feet were still standing in the wet and filthy streets of Detroit. And then he looked away and it was over.
“Get out of here,” he whispered over his shoulder, never looking, never making sure I was gone.
I stayed.
The happiness on the face of the guy dressed in white was such that I half expected them to kiss and hug as soon as they were within
each other’s reach.
The glint of a knife shined in the dark instead, lightning quick motion coming from the back of shadow guy’s jeans towards the chest of the man dressed in white.
I gasped, hand reaching for my mouth. I couldn’t make a sound. I was sure I would be dead if I did.
The guy in white did not go down as I expected him to, as anyone with a frigging knife stuck in his chest would. When the other pulled the knife away, there wasn’t even any blood on it.
“You should know better than that, Dean” I heard the man in white say.
Shadow guy, Dean as the other one had called him, said nothing and, when they moved to stand exactly in the middle of the street, one leg over each side of the white dash in the middle, I understood why. Dean's face was red, green eyes bulging out like some cartoon character, as the man in white's hand closed over Dean's throat and squeezed harder and harder.
I didn’t know either of those guys and yet, my heart was clenched tight inside my chest as I watched the man in white slowly squeeze the life out of Dean.
I couldn’t do anything. The police and military were scattered too thin all over the country, trying to plug whatever gaping holes society had managed to stretch of late; they no longer had time for this sort of petty events, like some random dude killing another in the middle of the street. Crime wasn’t crime anymore because there was no one left to judge it.
All I could do was stand and watch and maybe hope that the guy in white would forget about me and not kill me next.
I missed if the man in white had asked anything, but I swear that, even though he looked more dead than alive, Dean whispered a faint ‘I’m sorry Sammy’ quickly followed by a single ‘yes’. It was faint, raspy, like sand scratching through paper, and it could’ve been any other word, but I would swear that it was yes.
It seemed kind of weird at the time, you know, like he was giving the other guy his consent to kill him.
The other guy didn’t look all that pleased with that though, his pretty face contorting in to a grotesque parody of what he was before. He dropped Dean, watching dispassionately as he landed in a heap of boneless flesh on the filthy ground.
The other guy, Dean, who by all rights, should've been dead or, at the very least, gasping for breath on the ground, was… he was
glowing. He was -honest to God, no Twilight vampires crap- glowing.
It was like a lamp had been lit inside of him, chasing away the shadow and growing brighter and brighter until the street at four a.m. turned in to the sunniest of days.
The light, loud and abrasive, washed out the world, forcing me to squint, angle my face away. Stubbornly, I kept my eyes open, even though it was too bright for me to see anything more than the outlines of the two men, even though it made my eyes water and made me think that I would never see anything else ever again.
But I did saw that. And if I went blind after? I would still not regret it.
Dean, who was no longer on the ground, was standing tall and defiant in front of the man in white. His face was still the same, laugh lines circling sad eyes, slender body built of strength, and yet, something important, something that classified him as human, had changed.
His eyes looked older... no longer green, but the same stormy mix of colors, like the man in white. And there were shadows beside him, shielding his form like a pair of... wings.
“Hey, little brother,” I heard Dean say, longing and love in his voice.
And then he plunged his knife on the other’s chest a second time.
I heard a scream, I possibly screamed along with it, and suddenly it was dark and night again, and I was still in Detroit and the only one on the street. And the world was still turning.
I don’t know who those men were; I don’t know where they went or what their business had been.
All I know was that, the very next day, whispers of crops flourishing again started pouring in from the different corners of the world; I know that people started to pick up their pieces and decided to start over, even the pessimists; I know that that feeling of warmth and security that I’d seen in that guy's eyes had, somehow, spread over the world.
And I know that, for some reason that completely escapes, I had witnessed something important.
The end