The Art of Re-Fixing Sour Lemonade Part Two

[poetartist]

SHADOWLANDS:
They run and run and don’t stop until they do. Adam can’t say how far they’ve gone, but he doesn’t feel dead on his feet or exhausted.

He feels just fine.

He knows that’s a problem.

They reach a cave hidden deep in the canyon that goes on forever. It’s just a crack in the wall, but the woman drags him inside and they come out in a cavern so large Adam is nothing more than an ant passing through the stalagmites.

Light disappears the farther they go until they’re drowning in darkness. The woman keeps hold of Adam’s hand, helping him when he stumbles, guiding him through the maze they can’t see. Or maybe she can see it. Maybe her weird rabbit eyes have something to do with that.

Then she comes to a stop and he hears the flick of a lighter. A spark catches something and she has a torch in her hand.

“Well, didn’t expect them to get on our tails that fast, but it was good exercise, right?”

“What the hell?” Adam says. He has no other words to convey his thoughts on the entire situation.

“Angels, actually,” the woman says. “Try to keep up, okay? I’ll tell you what I can before I send you off, so you might listen up. We don’t have time to do the traditional soul searching, touchy-feely, find yourself journey. Sucks for you, but I have a feeling you’ll pull through because you don’t have your head up your ass like certain other family members.”

The woman tilts the torch and it ignites a row of fires that travels around the cavern. If Adam felt dwarfed before it pales to how he feels when the light illuminates only a small portion of the cave around them. The fire disappears from sight down a long curve. The light doesn’t even reach the ceiling.

“I’m dead, right? I remember dying.”

“See, keeping up already. That’s good. Yes, you are dead. Sort of. I snatched you just before you fully died, so there’s still the tiniest bit of spark left in your body, even though you’re not in it.”

“So I can go back?”

“There is no back, only forward.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

The woman grins a feral grin, something old and wild and pure. Adam shivers and shrinks from it and backs into a stalagmite.

“My name is Rabbit,” she says. Her gaze slides past him and toward the curve of the fire. “You’re here because you’re part of something much bigger than yourself. If I hadn’t gotten you someone else would have.”

“Who would want me?” Adam asks.

“See for yourself,” Rabbit says. “Follow the fire until you meet the old one. Be respectful.”

Rabbit was backing away from Adam, back into the shadows.

"Remember, nothing is set."

Then the black swallows her up and he’s alone. Adam calls out, steps back to reach for her, but the darkness crowds toward him like a seething mass. Adam skitters back to the light, trembling in the warm glow as it keeps the dark back.

Adam looks all around, but there’s nothing else save rock and fire and black. Adam follows the lighted path.

The path curves without end, like it’s taking him in circles, except he never comes back to where he started. A spiral then, Adam thinks, as the stalagmites close together and form a wall on either side of the path. Adam knows some mythology. He hopes to God or whoever will listen that it’s not a minotaur waiting for him at the center. Adam doesn’t have any magic string. He doesn’t even have his wallet.

How either of those would help him right now is not clear, but he feels a little more naked knowing he doesn’t even have useless crap in his pockets to McGuyver into a spark of hope or sanity.

Adam’s footsteps echo around him, each crunch of sand and dirt, every breath he exhales. There’s a dripping somewhere in the cavern.
A couple more minutes and he notices cave drawings on the walls around him.

A coyote comes first, followed by pictures of a rock circle, a tree, and squiggle lines that crisscross and loop around each other. On the next section the coyote goes up against two men with spears. The next shows a coyote with a man and a black ash-like smudge that Adam would swear resembled a car, but there’s no way.

Adam can’t begin to puzzle out what any of that means.

The next curve brings Adam to a pool of water that stretches across his path. The water is clear and still, like a sheet of perfect glass, and reflects the flicker of the firelight against dark and he’d almost swear it became a yin yang.

Adam approaches the edge. He can’t see the bottom to tell how deep it is, and there’s no way around it. The stalagmites are now so tall the tops disappear.

Adam debates. Sighs. Fuck it. He has to go through, apparently.

The water is freezing. Adam sticks close to the wall and feels his way along. Each step brings the water higher and higher. Then he takes a step and the bottom isn’t there.

Adam goes under with a strangled cry. Water rushes into his mouth and nose. Adam can swim, he’s known how since he was seven, but this water is so heavy around him. It grabs hold and takes him down. Adam thrashes, eyes on the tantalizing surface where light glimmers. His lungs burn. His legs are lead.

Adam goes down until the surface completely disappears and a horrifying thought enters his mind.

He’s dead.

He can still feel pain.

If he doesn’t get to the surface the drowning will never stop.

The world around him shifts again. He is still in the water, but not the pond in the cave. He’s in a murky brown river and his hands are tangled in the seaweed of a kelpie’s mane. He tries to pull away, but the mane grips him tighter.

A flash. A flare.

Hands grab him and pull him up. Adam coughs. John slaps his back and-

The vision fades and Adam is back in the cave. He fights. He twists and kicks, lashes out with his hands, fingers seeking purchase for anything as leverage.

Something drifts by his hand. Adam grasps at it. It’s a strap. Backpack strap. He clings to it and tugs. It’s higher than he is. He uses it to pull himself up.

Adam breaks the surface and coughs through his desperate gasps. The other side of the path is nearby and he kicks to shore, dragging himself onto the sand as he heaves the water he swallowed.

Adam presses his forehead to the ground, doesn’t care the sand will cling and fall into his eyes. He breathes through fire, heart pounding against his ribs.

When he can, he looks down at his hand. He’s still clutching the strap to a beat up backpack. Adam rolls onto his side, then sits up. He opens it.
Inside is a tacky snow globe from Hell, Michigan and a collection of waterlogged postcards and letters bound with rubber bands. He can’t make out the words, but thinks one is signed Sam.

The water in the pool begins to bubble and seep up the bank. Adam drops the letter and scrambles backwards. The bank around the backpack and letters crumbles, taking both back to the dark depths.

Adam watches it for a moment, but when both items disappear the water calms again.

Adam gets to his feet, casts a wary look at the water, and continues on.



NOW:
Ding. Ding. Ding.

Adam groans.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Adam reaches for the alarm clock, except his arms are too heavy and holy fuck he hurts.

Adam blinks his eyes open. Something sticky and warm trickles down his face. Adam is on his side against his door. The cab is on its side. Nathan is dead. He’s dangling in his seat, the belt holding him in place, face slack. The dream catcher is swaying from side to side, so gentle, from the rear view mirror.

It’s hard to breathe. For a moment Adam feels like he’s back in that pool with the water closing in over his head.

He grits his teeth and scratches at the seatbelt until he unbuckles it. Adam drops and pain whites out his vision. When it clears up he crawls.

The windshield is busted out. Glass glitters everywhere, the shards like broken teeth. Adam tumbles out and over the hood to the ground. The shards crunch and prick at him through his clothes.

Adam’s arms shake as he crawls away from the wreck and he collapses ten feet away. His insides feel jumbled, jellified. The stars tilt and fall away. Cuts and bruises slowly knit themselves but he feels like shit inside and out.

Thunder rumbles overhead and gets louder. Adam jolts when the thunder sound gives way to a rumbling engine.

An engine rumble he knows.

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.

His body screams in agony but he pushes himself. Hand over hand, toehold by toehold. Wounds reopen on his belly and back. Blood clings thick at the back of his throat. A stand of trees is just a little farther away. He has a vague idea or stolen memory that he can hide in trees. He can crawl into them and stay out of sight.

Car doors open. Close.

Come on. Come on.

Voices, low. Twist of metal, screech. Crunch of glass underfoot.

The trees are closer now. Adam is breathing too hard, they’re gonna hear.

Hand over hand. Lift, grip, pull.

The rushing in his ears blots out all other noise. He can’t hear anything but his harsh breathing, his heart, the water closing in over his head.

Hands land on his shoulders, his back. Adam panics and twists. His hand goes for the amulet and he thinks of Kansas, except he panics so all he imagines is corn and the Wizard of Oz.

He hears a surprised yelp and the world rips around him. The extra weight goes with him and then there is sunshine blinding his eyes. Adam rolls over and comes face to face with Sam Winchester’s look of bitch-faced surprise.

“Oh crap,” Adam says.



SHADOWLANDS:
The paintings on the walls change. The coyote gives way to a hunchbacked figure and rows of plants. He’s pretty sure one picture is of a thunderbird all done in red, and then a gigantic tree at the end.

Adam’s clothing squelches with each step. Sand cakes his feet and itches between his toes. He rounds another corner and stops dead.

In the middle of the path is a large creature unlike anything Adam has ever seen. It’s gray and hairless, four legged, and has a large hump straining its battle scarred skin. The animal is bound to the sand with thick vines that seemed to have grown over it. The animal blinks at him, red rimmed eyes looking pained and angry.

“Okay, this is really fucking unfair. I did not sign up for any of this,” Adam says. He wipes his already wet hands on his jeans and studies the obstacle before him. The creature is blocking the path. To get past it Adam will have to approach and climb over it.

Suicidal, that plan is, Adam thinks in Yoda’s voice.

And yet that is the only plan he can come up with.

Adam approaches the creature slowly. If it gets out of those vines maybe Adam can lead it back to the pool, try to lead it in and drown it. Which means he’ll have to go into the water as well, and the weird heroic backpack of letters and postcards might not be as benevolent a second time.
It doesn’t move, though, just watches him and takes in long rattling breaths.

Adam is a couple inches from it. He reaches out and puts a hand on the creature’s shoulder.

The images come in flashes.

Adam is nine years old when John Winchester takes him to a baseball game. They eat hot dogs, get sunburned, and Adam rides in the front seat of the Impala.

Adam is nineteen and the ghouls drag him to the crypt and eat him alive. They eat his mother, too.

Adam is twenty and angels bring him back to life. He meets his brothers for the first time. They’re dicks. Zachariah comes to Adam in a dream, gives him a better option. Adam changes his mind when Sam and Dean come for him and Zachariah turns. Then the room shakes and Sam and Dean get out the door, but not Adam.

Adam hears Michael’s voice.

Adam is almost twenty-one and Michael grabs onto Sam. Sam pulls. They overbalance and their feet leave the ground. Adam and Michael are falling, falling.

The cage isn’t steel bars. It’s not an enclosed box or a cave. It has no boundaries or fences or walls. It is simply absence; no color, sound, taste, or smell. Nothing to touch or to steady him. It is a blank spot in the universe adjacent to hell where nothing surrounds him, covers him, absorbs him.

Adam is twenty-one and the nothing presses him thin, scrubs at him until pieces start blending in with the fabric of the void, one erasing stitch at a time.

There is no life, no death, no time, no end.

At least hell would be tangible, real. The cage is not, and in all the nightmares Adam ever had, none of them came close to the slow, inevitable erosion of his body, his soul, his perception of existence.

To become nothing, to truly cease…

Hell would have been kinder.

Michael leaves Adam in a rush of feathers and a scream of rage. Adam cannot move or think, he can hardly breathe.

Adam stares out into the cage. Michael and Lucifer fight with each other, their rage and betrayal echoing and fading into the voice. He hears Sam screaming and it stretches on into years that become meaningless as Adam forgets the concept of the word. Then Sam isn’t screaming anymore and there is a palpable difference. The nothing must have taken Sam.

Then, sometime later, the cage opens. Michael reclaims Adam and they fly out, straight into a blast of air pungent with the smells of the world. Adam reels from the abrasive elements on his skin. Lucifer leaves and Michael standing in the center of an ashen circle. Adam can’t catch all of Michael’s thoughts, but he feels raw hurt thrumming like exposed nerves. It’s different than what Michael felt while facing down Lucifer in Stull cemetery. He’s not angry with Lucifer anymore. He’s angry with God.

Michael pushes Adam to the back of his head. It’s not as bad as the cage, but it’s disorienting. Adam is wrapped in cotton, surfacing only long enough to garner a snapshot.

Deserted cities.

Infected humans.

Demons walking free.

Scared survivors huddling in squalor.

Michael keeps him down until one day he pulls Adam up and they are standing back in the circle at Stull cemetery.

Adam is twenty-five, give or take, when Michael reunites the Horseman’s rings and does something to keep the door to the cage open. Adam watches in slow rolling horror as the nothing inside the cage seeps out into the world and eats it up, drawing everything into the yawning pit in a gust of wind that never stops howling.

The void takes Adam as Michael rushes out of his body. Adam tumbles in after chunks of ground and trees and buildings. He keeps falling until he hits bottom once more. Everything hurts as the nothingness seeps into Adam once more, invisible teeth biting into his heart.

Something dull gold glimmers next to Adam’s head. It’s a horned metal head hanging from a leather cord. He reaches out, grasps it. The horns cut into his hand. Adam clutches it close, closes his eyes.

Adam is twenty-five-ish and he’s just been used to end the world.

The next snapshots are quick and out of focus. Adam gets up. He walks through the nothing tearing the world apart. He can’t speak, but he thinks.

I ended the world.

I ended the world.

The nothing eats at him, but he’s angry now.

I ended the world.

I ended the world.

He begins to forget, but every time he does Adam closes his fist around the necklace until he draws blood. It helps for a while.

I ended the world.

I ended the world.

Later there is a rip, a tiny tear in the fabric of the cage. It flutters slightly, a sighing breath. Adam finds it among the wreckage of a twisted black car.
Adam is ageless and walks on all fours anymore instead of two. He can smell fresh air and dry dirt through the tear. He doesn’t remember what it means, but he wants it. Adam goes through the tear and comes out in a desert where mountains resemble giants and the sky is a churning mass of midnight stars and rosy dawn.

The tangibility of the world scares him, angers him. He howls out long and loud. It’s not right, but he craves it. Wants to rip it apart with his teeth and hands that are more like paws now. He wants to feel bones breaking, feel blood gushing.

He finds other things that look like him. They growl, teeth bared, hackles high. Adam snarls right back and charges, dropping the necklace in the sand. When the red haze lifts Adam is standing in a plain of blood-soaked carnage. The other creatures on the outskirts yip in fear and slink away from him. Adam heaves giant, rattling breaths. He licks his face, tastes blood, and it triggers hunger in his brain.

Adam eats the field of dead until he is gorged.

Adam forgets the necklace, forgets his name is Adam. He wanders the desert, sniffing out new enemies to eviscerate. He grows stronger, bigger, meaner.

One day he is walking and comes upon a man-creature. It looks at him, surprise and apprehension on his face. The man-creature turns and light reflects off of something around his neck.

He sees the necklace. Something clicks in his brain.

Dean. Sam. Cage.

I just ended the world.

He charges, but plants erupt from the ground and tangle his legs. He hits the sand and they cover his body and up over his snout. He struggles against them, he has to kill the man-creature, kill the Dean.

The Dean crouches in front of him, face confused, elated, full of awe.

“You couldn’t let go. You kept holding on so tight you turned into this.”

Adam comes back to himself. He stumbles away from the creature- from himself- and sinks to the sand. Adam buries his face in his hands and just shakes as the sheer amount of memories slot in next to his.

When he looks up his creature-self is gone. Laying in the sand in its place is Dean’s necklace.

Adam wants to throw up. He feels like he should, but he’s dead, he has no food in his stomach.

When he feels up to moving, he goes to the necklace and picks it up with gentle fingers.

No memories come rushing at him, but he feels a sickening dread overtake him.

He pockets the necklace and starts walking with purpose.

He’s going to find whatever is at the end of this damn maze and make noise until he gets some answers.



NOW:
“Stay the hell away from me.”

Adam backs away from Sam, who keeps advancing. It’s weird that Adam forgets how tall his half brother is. He’s lived with him, fought him, for so many years, but each time they meet it hits him all over again.

“What are you?”

Sam’s nostrils flare like he’s scenting the air. A hysterical laugh bubbles up inside Adam. He keeps backing away.

“Stay away. Just go back to Dean and do what you two do best and leave me alone.”

Sam isn’t going for his weapons yet. That is definitely odd, but Adam will take whatever small favors he can at this point.

“Tell me what you are. I’m not going to ask again.”

“I’m not anything,” Adam yells.

The sun is shining down, so Adam knows they’ve hopped time. When and where is the real question. He only hopes its not too far off the mark and that getting back on track won’t take more out of him than he can give.

Sam makes an impatient noise and gestures with his hand. Adam freezes and can’t move again.

Sam blots out the sun as he comes to stand directly in front of Adam. Then Sam leans in and sniffs, touches a finger to Adam’s forehead.

“Adam,” Sam says. His face is blank, there’s no telling what Sam is thinking. How does he know?

“Go away.”

Adam wills the thread to work against Sam, to compel him back to Dean. A pressure builds up in Adam’s chest like a thumb pressing down on his heart. Sam narrows his eyes. Adam pushes harder and harder.

There’s a distinct pop somewhere in Adam’s head. Something warm trickles over his lips and chin.

“Stop it,” Sam says. He puts his huge paw on the back of Adam’s neck and bends down to look Adam in the face. “Stop whatever you’re doing.”

“Go back to Dean, God damn it, you gotta go. You’re ruining everything again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just let me fix this!”

“All right, that’s enough of this.” Dean is there. Adam doesn’t know how he followed, but Dean is looking downright pissed and he grabs hold of Adam’s arm. “Sam, take us back.”

They are moving before Adam can open his mouth through a rip, the rip that Adam made, and there wasn’t supposed to be a rip like that. Then they are in front of the Impala and it’s night. The world twists again and then they are at Singer Salvage.

Adam pulls back, but he’s not strong enough to get away from both his brothers. And Adam’s own body doesn’t want to obey him. This isn’t right.  Sam and Dean should not be able to do these things, to use power with ease and move through time rips and nothing is making any sense, because all of this is not following the intended programming.

They take him inside. Bobby gives him a stink eye as he passes. His brothers fold Adam onto the couch and Sam…does something. He makes several gestures with his hands and the energy in the air changes.

Adam looks up at him.

“You’re not human anymore?”

“No, neither are you, by the looks of it,” Dean says, face thunderous. “So why you start off this little sharing and caring session by telling us what exactly you’re trying to do. Because you’re in a hell of a mess, kid.”

Adam laughs. Not funny-ha-ha, but full on hysterical take-me-to-the-loony-bin-hiccuping-sobs. Hell of a mess, that’s one way to describe it.

Dean draws away from him, sends an incredulous look over to Bobby.

“Okay, so we’re cuckoo for coco puffs, that’s just awesome.”

Adam laughs even harder because that is just Dean, every Dean he’s ever grown to love or admire or hate or want to strangle in his sleep.

The many Dean’s he’s known flash through his mind, the ones that bandaged his scraped knees and punched him hard enough to knock out teeth. The ones that rescued Sam from the cage and left Adam to fade away. The ones that put a gun in his hand only to take it from his cold fingers later.

None of this is right, but things still haven’t changed at all.  The Winchesters are always the same make and model, following different roads to the same God awful conclusion, Thelma and Louise-ing their way through the Apocalypse and on into the void.

Adam has failed.



PART THREE>