FIC: Inherited Scars (Gen 1/1)
TITLE: Inherited Scars
AUTHOR: buriedchild
RATING: PG/PG13 (Some tame violence and angst-o-rama)
WORDCOUNT: Approx 3,000. Complete. one shot
CHARACTERS: Sam centric. Mentions of Dad, Dean and an OFC.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Supernatural. This is merely a work of fiction. Don't sue me. I have no money or earthly possessions.
AUTHORS NOTES: Preseries. Wee!chesters. Angst. This is not a happy fic. Written for found_fic_spn challenge #41 -- "Self-inflicted". Title taken from song of same name by Sage Francis. There may be more author notes posted. Probably not though. Questions, comments, thoughts or ideas are welcome and appreciated. quellefromage was my beta and I love her lots and lots. For grammar reasons. And for ya know...
Summary: You've got such beautiful gifts , what are you doing ruining the packaging? -- Sage Francis
____________
The mud in his nostrils is the first thing he notices. Musky dirt making his nose twitch and itch, but he doesn’t scratch. He breathes through his mouth instead.
Sam remembers climbing the tree. The falling part’s a bit fuzzy.
How’d he get mud in his nose?
He blinks from unconsciousness to blurred focus. Sees the underbelly of the massive maples and oaks over head; flecked pinpricks of the white above it all screens down through their leaves.
Legs and arms are sprawled away from his torso like a chalk outline of a corpse.
It’s August and he’s in Illinois.
He doesn’t move.
His body shivers when the wind pushes the branches and changes the position of the light that drips down. The chill makes his bones shutter and clack. His back feels wet, set deep in the brownie batter soil. He tries hard again not to inhale through his nose. He could choke on the mud.
A few birds chirp and squeak in the trees. Their call and response trill light in his ears.
“I’m okay!” One says.
“I’m okay, too!” Another one pipes up.
He thinks they’re called starlings, but he’s not positive. They could be robins.
He doesn’t move. Brain stem must be disconnected and now he’s compost.
He learned about compost in school. The dirt and the worms and the organic matter.
He’s organic matter.
He’s fair game.
He doesn’t feel any pain, but knows there’s pain in him somewhere. It was a long fall.
The back of his head feels gooey like lime jell-o. He can smell the sweet green fruit in his hair and the scent makes him want to throw up.
His jell-o head exploded and he can’t remember how he fell. Or how to move his body.
Humpty Dumpty.
The mud is still cold, but there’s a warm tingling in his stomach, gravity pulling the heat down to his spine. It’s the sleepy comfort he feels that pushes him to action.
To work against not becoming compost just yet.
He chirps his own ragged call. High pitched screams and cries. Not words but yells.
Pain thick in his voice but he still can’t feel it in his body.
Where’s the response?
Waits a minute. Counts the seconds.
56…57…58…. 59.
60.
Calls again.
Waits a minute. Counts the seconds.
56…57...58…. 59.
60.
Birds stop chirping. Breeze stops pushing.
He’s getting warmer and for the first time ever, he wants his mommy.
Something is marching through the mud, sending shivers down his spine with each step.
He closes his eyes and slips away before he can recognize the face.
_________
Hospital.
Florescent bulbs buzz and illuminate the tiled wall safari scene he’s propped up in.
Giraffes with thermometers sticking out of their mouths. Sad-eyed turtles wrapped in plaster shells. A monkey dressed in a nurse’s uniform gives a hippo an injection. They’re all surrounded by tile palm trees.
Pediatric ward.
The room is almost empty. Just him and Dean.
Dean is slouched close in an orange plastic chair, eyes closed, head bobbing rhythmically on his chest.
One of his hands is gripping the edge of Sam’s blanket in a fist. The other sits palm up in his lap, cradling an empty paper cup.
He feels the drugs before he feels the pain they’re masking. He smacks his lips lazily. Thick swollen and soft as marshmallows.
His whole body is a marshmallow.
The clock on the wall is blurry and indecipherable and his eyes get tired of looking. There are no windows in the room to judge the time of day. Just tiles. He watches the tubes and monitors. Beeps and drips chirp like the birds from outside.
Call and response. Heart to machine.
Beep…I’m okay. Beep…I’m still okay. Beep.
Flexing his drowsy fingers, his eyes wander down to his belly. Pushes the blankets away to find a long white strip of gauze over his right hip. His left leg feels heavier than the right. Wrapped tight in a plaster cast from foot to the bottom of his knee. It itches.
Bound up in his own skin, marshmallow melting suffocating, he watches the clear bag of liquid drip into the tube running into the back of his hand and decides against waking his sleeping brother just to prove he can.
He looks back at the wall.
That giraffe will always have a fever. That turtle’s never getting out of that cast.
No one leaves the pediatric ward.
His heart aches, thinking about the wall.
He leans his head back and pulls the pink hospital blanket up to his chin, sniffs the soft trace of flowery perfume from a nurse he doesn’t remember.
Lets the drugs take him under.
_________
When Dad gets back from the hunt he looks at Sam and sighs.
“You’d think you’d have better balance. Jesus, Sammy.”
The looking and the sighing make Dad look tired and old. Older.
They pack up the next day. They prop Sam in the backseat. Dad points the car west.
Dean gives Sam a half-used sketch pad and markers. He won’t say where he got them, but Sam’s happy for the distraction while Dad and Dean talk over the maps covering the dashboard.
Sam fills the pages with fire-breathing giraffes and supersonic turtles. He doesn’t bother with drawing monkeys.
Dean makes stupid faces at him in the side mirror until he falls asleep.
_________
He doesn’t like New Mexico. Miles and miles of dead bushes and blinding sun. There are mountains in the distance everywhere you look but you could walk and walk and walk and never get to them. Like a mirage.
No trees in sight.
The heat makes everyone sweaty and mean. Dad bellows without mercy. Dean punches fists and words without reason.
His cast is full of fire ants.
The school is full of cool conditioned air, but everyone’s still as hot and angry inside as out baking in the sun.
He finds a near empty table near the back of the cafeteria on the first day. She’s sitting alone with her lunch and a book. She glances up, looks him over and goes back to her book. It isn’t a welcoming look she gives him, but it isn’t a hostile look either.
He’s too hungry to care. He takes a seat across from her and they eat in silence.
He sits with her at lunch for four days without a word. On Friday she chips away black nail polish from her thumb and tells him her name.
“I’m Tara.”
“I’m Sam. I’m new.”
“I know.”
They spend the first day of speaking getting to know the origin of their names.
She tells him she's named after the book. Her parents loved it so much they gave her the name. She says it was a book before they made the movie. Sam’s never read the book or seen the movie. He tells her this. She doesn't look convinced.
"Never ever?"
“Nope.”
“I can let you borrow my copy, if you want?’
“I don’t have a VCR.”
“Oh. Well.” She pauses to finish her sandwich and begins again.
“Who are you named after?”
“No one. I mean. I don’t think I was named after anyone.”
“You weren’t the first guy named Sam.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Samuel’s from the bible. He was a prophet. It’s a good name. It’s an even better book.”
“Oh?”
He knows bits and pieces of the bible. The good parts.
“My dad calls it the greatest work of fiction ever written.”
“Our dads would probably get along.”
“That’s a shame.” She shakes her head and finishes a carton of milk.
The bell rings and it’s time for math.
_________
“You lose,” Dean spits out in triumph and jumps off from the couch, jostling Sam from his reclined position and knocking the cast with a vibrating thud.
The movement pulls a cry from his lungs and he regrets it immediately because Dean’s on him at once. Thick arm wrapped around Sam’s neck, furiously grating fist against hair. “Aw, baby Sammy’s so sensitive.”
The grunt from the other room stops their tussle and Dean lets go, returns to his place on the couch.
Dean collects the playing cards carefully from the TV tray, glances a few times at the bedroom but there’s just the breathing sound of sleep.
Dad’s got black smears under his eyes like a benched football player. He’s been in his room for fourteen hours. They’ve been trying to be quiet for the last eight.
It’s Sunday and it’s getting warm enough for the sun to give up and go down. It floods summer into the room; makes the dust particles lazy, floating dance visible in the light. The image and the air make Sam sleepy.
Dean stands up and heads out the front door, looking back once, giving silent permission to follow.
The crutches on the floor are difficult to maneuver. He sits up, reaching over the sofa’s arm for the crutches laying just out of comfortable reach. Finally he’s upright and moves toward the door.
There were only vacancies on the second floor. It takes time to take each step carefully. He’s in no hurry.
He smells Dean before he sees him. He’s squatting on a concrete parking block at the edge of the motel by the green dumpster. A cigarette hangs from his mouth like a toothpick. Or a piece of straw.
Sam thump-skips to him. The crutches make his armpits sore.
“Smoking will kill you.”
“Jumping out of trees will kill you.”
“I didn’t jump. I fell.”
Dean looks up at him. The sun is to his back but he squints. “You don’t sound convinced.”
The smoke is blue and stings Sam’s eyes. “I don’t remember.”
At first Sam thought Dean smoked to prove how cool he was. But there’s no one to see the proof but Sam, and cigarettes are hard to come by for a sixteen-year-old.
Not much good to waste one on Sam’s behalf.
“Cheer up Sammy.” He finishes his cigarette and throws the butt on the pavement. Grinds it down rough with his worn sneaker. For a second there’s a flash of understanding in Dean’s eyes Sam feels ashamed and grateful in a single heartbeat and there’s an instant where he doesn’t feel quite so alone. But it’s gone just as quickly.
“I’m starving,” Dean complains as he walks back to the room. This time he slows for Sam to meet his stride.
They’ll probably order pizza for dinner.
________
It’s not so much weird as it is strange. Not so much bizarre as it is odd. Because he never noticed girls before.
But he notices Tara.
She brings peanut butter and banana sandwiches, granola bars and green grapes every day. She never eats the granola bars.
He notices the rough bitten fingernails flecked with black nail polish and the long-sleeved flannel shirts she wears even with the heat.
He notices that other people don’t talk to her. Notices her in the hallway, wiping lipstick graffiti from her locker door.
He notices that she’s not popular, but that’s not hard to miss. Neither is he.
On Monday her hair is streaked red and orange. Thick chunks of it flick and sweep around her face like flames. He finds it terribly difficult to pull his eyes away from her. It makes eating a slow process.
“It’s Kool-Aid. It’s cheap and it washes out pretty easy. I want to move to Seattle and start a grunge band.”
“Like Kurt Cobain?”
“Yeah, but I like Heatmiser better. They’re the coolest.”
“Yeah.” Sam doesn’t know them, but now he feels he might like to.
He notices she says things in a voice that’s soft but full of sincerity and she listens with an intensity that’s overwhelming. He has this feeling that he could tell her everything. Wants to tell her. But he doesn’t. Instead he listens.
Dad often says people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Maybe that’s why people don’t like Tara.
But she’s freak-of-nature beautiful to him.
_________
Dad leaves at six in the morning. He can hear his speech to Dean through the thin walls. Sam mouths the words leaving Dad’s mouth, he’s memorized the goodbye.
Sam’s not scared of monsters anymore. He’s spent the last three years watching his father and now his brother fight the fear out of their existence.
He’s scared of other things.
He has the fear he’s losing his mind. He tells himself maybe he’s just misplaced it. It’s relocated somewhere south for the winter. Hidden behind the pesky left kidney. Maybe folded in between the squishy lines of intestines.
There’s no plan for exploratory surgery on the books.
Nothing makes any sense. All these bits and pieces of his life don’t fit and it makes him feel.
Makes him feel.
Makes him feel without words. Incomplete. Unfinished fiction.
A bruise appears on the inside of his ribcage when he finds himself thinking about the trees in Illinois. Skin unmarked, but the pain still taps a rhythm against the tender muscle in his chest.
_________
He forgets to tell Dean it’s a half day so he has to wait until three when the high school lets out. He didn’t get to have lunch.
He takes a seat on the curb by the front doors, under the school’s concrete awning, the only available shade for miles. There’s a breeze but it’s got the force heat of semi-truck exhaust.
Fifteen minutes later he’s soaked in sweat. He hates New Mexico. He pulls out his book and flips to the dog-eared page.
“You waiting for your ride too?” She takes a seat next to him on the curb. Her hair is purple today and smells faintly of grape.
“Yeah. My brother’s still in school. And my dad is… somewhere.” It comes out blunt.
She gives him a small smile and takes a deep breath of air. Lifts the edge of his book and reads the cover. “Have you read ‘The Chocolate War’? It’s one of my favorites.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty good.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes. Sam reads his book. Tara looks out beyond the parking lot.
He starts speaking without meaning to. The words tumble out of his brain onto his tongue and into the air. Unexpected but easy. “I jumped out of a tree. That’s how I broke my leg. Everyone thinks I fell but I jumped.”
Tara keeps her eyes on the horizon but he can tell she’s listening. “Oh?”
“I don’t really know why.” Sam searches for the words. “I wanted to do something extreme. I wanted something inside to change. I wanted them to change. Nothing makes any sense. I wanted them to see it too.”
They don’t speak for a moment.
“I didn’t want to kill myself or anything. Don’t think that, okay?”
“I don’t.”
There is another beat of silence. She keeps her eyes searching the horizon, to the mountains you can never reach.
“Did it help? Did it change anything?”
“No. But I think I want to try again.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
________
Four days after he tells Tara about the tree in Illinois, he chips his two front teeth tripping up some concrete steps.
Stairs are difficult with a cast.
He misjudges the distance, steps into air, and his limbs flail spastic without permission. He breaks the fall with his mouth like a gummy-faced baby would.
Dean drops the six-pack of orange soda he’s carrying. The cans pop and spray a sticky mist over them. The cast hits the concrete steps, makes a gunshot loud bang but it’s unharmed.
Dean picks Sam up and drag/carries him from the stairwell to the room, muttering about Darwinism and lost pop, and Sam wants to punch a hole in his brother’s gut because everything’s the same except for the pain in his face.
In the mirror, Sam looks like Howdy Doody.
Dad looks like he’s going to pull his hair out, but he doesn’t. Instead, he curses loudly, then quietly, then doesn’t say anything in words at all.
They drive to an emergency dental clinic. No time to clean up; they go covered in sticky syrup and smelling of orange sugar.
In the waiting room, Dean shoves his hand deep in his side denim pocket and produces the two bits of tooth that were left on the stairs. Just in case they can put him back together.
A dental technician pushes a spicy cotton ball that smells like potpourri over the two incisors. The cotton ball is brown and makes Sam’s tongue numb.
The caps are temporary. Whiter and brighter than his real ones. His cheeks blush red and the teeth practically glow with the contrast.
Dean makes jokes. Sam’s face gets redder. Sam’s fake teeth look brighter.
Now Sam looks like Bugs Bunny. With a bruised and swollen chin.
Even Dad laughs and it makes Sam feels like kicking Dad square in the face, just so he could know what it feels like. Instead he cries hot wet tears and chokes down clove flavored saliva.
The next day at school, he tugs the ends of his lips low, blanketing the yokel inelegance in his mouth. He has pudding and milk for lunch. Tara looks at him with methodical serious eyes.
“Did it help this time?”
Sam only shakes his head no.
“My sister was studying to be a psychologist. If she was here, she would say your ‘accidents’ are self-inflicted violence.” She smiles at the words. “Self-inflicted. She liked the term better than self-mutilation. She used to say it was kinder.”
The air inside the cafeteria feels heavy and quiet. His eyes move from her ears to her nose and to her mouth as she speaks.
“My mom always calls it a self-destructive habit. My dad calls it self-indulgent and that I was hurting my gifts by ruining the packaging.” A laugh pulls from her, quick and sharp, but in a moment she looks serious again and bites her lip. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make a plan. A plan. And I’m gonna get out. I’m gonna get out. Hurting myself isn’t really working anymore.”
Sam doesn’t seem convinced.
The bell rings and it’s time for math.
_________
Six weeks after the fall, the cast comes off thirty miles south of Mesa, Arizona.
A week ago they left New Mexico in the middle of the night. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Sam thinks it’s just as well.
The nurse uses an electric saw. It cuts through layers of plaster from top to toes and Sam's nervous that she's going to cut too deep, slice right through his leg and hand him over the cast, severed bloody limb and all, shrug and explain, “These things happen”.
The nurse pulls the two pieces apart like she’s cracking a dinosaur egg. Or a bone. The noise rings in Sam’s ears.
Dean puts his hand over his nose. "God, that thing stinks."
The leg looks like a stripped chicken bone. Pale and skinny and decaying in comparison to the tanned healthy right leg swinging from the edge of the gurney.
And it does stink.
A lady doctor comes in and gives him a booklet about exercises and special care for his dead smelly leg.
The doctor gives the cast back, noting it’s the cleanest one she’s seen. No names or pictures scrawled across except for a protective sigil and the word D E A N lightning bolt lettered on the bottom of the heel. Hidden so Dad wouldn’t see.
The doctor asks if he wants to keep the cast. Sam says no. There’s really no point in holding on to the pieces.
The end.
_____________________________________________
Although I used a line from the song as well as the title, the song really comes from the voice of the older brother. The replacement father figure who doesn't know what to do. If you take a look... especially the second and last verses you can see some similarities in SPN issues... well, I do at least. If you get a chance, take a listen to his album PERSONAL JOURNALS.
I didn't tell anyone about what I seen or heard that day
mums the words
still
I'm scared to plant ideas into your head
while your rebellious side is fertile
Hurdles are getting knocked down
I'm running a losing race
Your legs aren't the only ones marked up
- how many dreams have you chased?
If I could have said this to your face
maybe you wouldn't have to write like I do,
Except I use paper instead of my body now;
it's something you might want to try too
From haikus to horror stories, it's something in our blood that we share,
Something in our blood that appears
on the surface of our skin when we bring it there
My facial expression said I didn't care
Hate and aggression must've made an impression on the little kid who stared,
Sitting on stairs when I would bother to bring my skates
My feeble attempt at being a strong, big brother doing father figure 8's
Ripping my cape on the ground that it dragged on
Tripping on fate and hearing the sounds of a sad song
Listen, it's great sharing time now that dad's gone,
But what's with the choice of words?
Or the body parts that you decided to tag them on?
I'm a vagabond, who moved to modern day Babylon and then back again
With minimal contact and you know I can't ask your mom what's happening
You've got such beautiful gifts What are you doing ruining the packaging?
How ironic come to think I probably put this ink on my back for him
I want you to laugh and sing more,
But you dropped anchor in a place
Where dreams go to die and you're keeping your ass indoors
I'm asking for you to stick it out and see things through
You're asking for me to zip my mouth and keep it just between me and you
If I could have been there from the beginning if I could be there right now
If I could promise to be there when you need me, would it raise an eyebrow?
How would your body be different if I still dropped by for visits?
Is it my place to put a smile on your face?
Could I erase your body language telling you it's all been said before?
Or change the words you wrote, exchanging your scars for my metaphors?
I'd add them to my collection while smiling
Next time you want to paint with razor blades and need a canvas use my skin
Hiding your sins well, but I see the hell that your limbs speak
Tongue in cheek Lying awake in bed while other kids sleep
The strength of evil begins to keep your grins weak
No matter the length of the needle
Marking up one's body is so much more than skin deep
Feel the pin prick The grim reap what they sew
and you're trained to say that you're fine
Your threshhold for pain is greater than mine
So I'm waiting in the lines that you give me patiently,
While you get cut in the lines that THEY make YOU wait in
in ways that they can't see
If there's a vacancy as far as room in your life goes,
Say it to me
But don't do it with a knife under your clothes
Because the anguish of hidden skin is letting my ghosts be shown
Plus the language it's written in hits especially close to home
I'm most alone when I'm out of touch
with the people who feel this type of pain
You might just aim for a day that it's raining
to strike a vein to take my name in
Changing your uniform and altering your mind set
Has your pointer finger decided
if it was a fault of his or mine yet? I bet
I know the dialect It's nowhere I haven't been before
With skin that's sore Battle scars that rise from our inner war
Our decorative medals of honor that
our father decided to pass through inheritance
And it is repetitive when the kids head in the direction of evidence
Proving the pain and hurt is relative
Pain and hurt is relative
ETA author's notes
AUTHOR: buriedchild
RATING: PG/PG13 (Some tame violence and angst-o-rama)
WORDCOUNT: Approx 3,000. Complete. one shot
CHARACTERS: Sam centric. Mentions of Dad, Dean and an OFC.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Supernatural. This is merely a work of fiction. Don't sue me. I have no money or earthly possessions.
AUTHORS NOTES: Preseries. Wee!chesters. Angst. This is not a happy fic. Written for found_fic_spn challenge #41 -- "Self-inflicted". Title taken from song of same name by Sage Francis. There may be more author notes posted. Probably not though. Questions, comments, thoughts or ideas are welcome and appreciated. quellefromage was my beta and I love her lots and lots. For grammar reasons. And for ya know...
Summary: You've got such beautiful gifts , what are you doing ruining the packaging? -- Sage Francis
____________
The mud in his nostrils is the first thing he notices. Musky dirt making his nose twitch and itch, but he doesn’t scratch. He breathes through his mouth instead.
Sam remembers climbing the tree. The falling part’s a bit fuzzy.
How’d he get mud in his nose?
He blinks from unconsciousness to blurred focus. Sees the underbelly of the massive maples and oaks over head; flecked pinpricks of the white above it all screens down through their leaves.
Legs and arms are sprawled away from his torso like a chalk outline of a corpse.
It’s August and he’s in Illinois.
He doesn’t move.
His body shivers when the wind pushes the branches and changes the position of the light that drips down. The chill makes his bones shutter and clack. His back feels wet, set deep in the brownie batter soil. He tries hard again not to inhale through his nose. He could choke on the mud.
A few birds chirp and squeak in the trees. Their call and response trill light in his ears.
“I’m okay!” One says.
“I’m okay, too!” Another one pipes up.
He thinks they’re called starlings, but he’s not positive. They could be robins.
He doesn’t move. Brain stem must be disconnected and now he’s compost.
He learned about compost in school. The dirt and the worms and the organic matter.
He’s organic matter.
He’s fair game.
He doesn’t feel any pain, but knows there’s pain in him somewhere. It was a long fall.
The back of his head feels gooey like lime jell-o. He can smell the sweet green fruit in his hair and the scent makes him want to throw up.
His jell-o head exploded and he can’t remember how he fell. Or how to move his body.
Humpty Dumpty.
The mud is still cold, but there’s a warm tingling in his stomach, gravity pulling the heat down to his spine. It’s the sleepy comfort he feels that pushes him to action.
To work against not becoming compost just yet.
He chirps his own ragged call. High pitched screams and cries. Not words but yells.
Pain thick in his voice but he still can’t feel it in his body.
Where’s the response?
Waits a minute. Counts the seconds.
56…57…58…. 59.
60.
Calls again.
Waits a minute. Counts the seconds.
56…57...58…. 59.
60.
Birds stop chirping. Breeze stops pushing.
He’s getting warmer and for the first time ever, he wants his mommy.
Something is marching through the mud, sending shivers down his spine with each step.
He closes his eyes and slips away before he can recognize the face.
_________
Hospital.
Florescent bulbs buzz and illuminate the tiled wall safari scene he’s propped up in.
Giraffes with thermometers sticking out of their mouths. Sad-eyed turtles wrapped in plaster shells. A monkey dressed in a nurse’s uniform gives a hippo an injection. They’re all surrounded by tile palm trees.
Pediatric ward.
The room is almost empty. Just him and Dean.
Dean is slouched close in an orange plastic chair, eyes closed, head bobbing rhythmically on his chest.
One of his hands is gripping the edge of Sam’s blanket in a fist. The other sits palm up in his lap, cradling an empty paper cup.
He feels the drugs before he feels the pain they’re masking. He smacks his lips lazily. Thick swollen and soft as marshmallows.
His whole body is a marshmallow.
The clock on the wall is blurry and indecipherable and his eyes get tired of looking. There are no windows in the room to judge the time of day. Just tiles. He watches the tubes and monitors. Beeps and drips chirp like the birds from outside.
Call and response. Heart to machine.
Beep…I’m okay. Beep…I’m still okay. Beep.
Flexing his drowsy fingers, his eyes wander down to his belly. Pushes the blankets away to find a long white strip of gauze over his right hip. His left leg feels heavier than the right. Wrapped tight in a plaster cast from foot to the bottom of his knee. It itches.
Bound up in his own skin, marshmallow melting suffocating, he watches the clear bag of liquid drip into the tube running into the back of his hand and decides against waking his sleeping brother just to prove he can.
He looks back at the wall.
That giraffe will always have a fever. That turtle’s never getting out of that cast.
No one leaves the pediatric ward.
His heart aches, thinking about the wall.
He leans his head back and pulls the pink hospital blanket up to his chin, sniffs the soft trace of flowery perfume from a nurse he doesn’t remember.
Lets the drugs take him under.
_________
When Dad gets back from the hunt he looks at Sam and sighs.
“You’d think you’d have better balance. Jesus, Sammy.”
The looking and the sighing make Dad look tired and old. Older.
They pack up the next day. They prop Sam in the backseat. Dad points the car west.
Dean gives Sam a half-used sketch pad and markers. He won’t say where he got them, but Sam’s happy for the distraction while Dad and Dean talk over the maps covering the dashboard.
Sam fills the pages with fire-breathing giraffes and supersonic turtles. He doesn’t bother with drawing monkeys.
Dean makes stupid faces at him in the side mirror until he falls asleep.
_________
He doesn’t like New Mexico. Miles and miles of dead bushes and blinding sun. There are mountains in the distance everywhere you look but you could walk and walk and walk and never get to them. Like a mirage.
No trees in sight.
The heat makes everyone sweaty and mean. Dad bellows without mercy. Dean punches fists and words without reason.
His cast is full of fire ants.
The school is full of cool conditioned air, but everyone’s still as hot and angry inside as out baking in the sun.
He finds a near empty table near the back of the cafeteria on the first day. She’s sitting alone with her lunch and a book. She glances up, looks him over and goes back to her book. It isn’t a welcoming look she gives him, but it isn’t a hostile look either.
He’s too hungry to care. He takes a seat across from her and they eat in silence.
He sits with her at lunch for four days without a word. On Friday she chips away black nail polish from her thumb and tells him her name.
“I’m Tara.”
“I’m Sam. I’m new.”
“I know.”
They spend the first day of speaking getting to know the origin of their names.
She tells him she's named after the book. Her parents loved it so much they gave her the name. She says it was a book before they made the movie. Sam’s never read the book or seen the movie. He tells her this. She doesn't look convinced.
"Never ever?"
“Nope.”
“I can let you borrow my copy, if you want?’
“I don’t have a VCR.”
“Oh. Well.” She pauses to finish her sandwich and begins again.
“Who are you named after?”
“No one. I mean. I don’t think I was named after anyone.”
“You weren’t the first guy named Sam.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Samuel’s from the bible. He was a prophet. It’s a good name. It’s an even better book.”
“Oh?”
He knows bits and pieces of the bible. The good parts.
“My dad calls it the greatest work of fiction ever written.”
“Our dads would probably get along.”
“That’s a shame.” She shakes her head and finishes a carton of milk.
The bell rings and it’s time for math.
_________
“You lose,” Dean spits out in triumph and jumps off from the couch, jostling Sam from his reclined position and knocking the cast with a vibrating thud.
The movement pulls a cry from his lungs and he regrets it immediately because Dean’s on him at once. Thick arm wrapped around Sam’s neck, furiously grating fist against hair. “Aw, baby Sammy’s so sensitive.”
The grunt from the other room stops their tussle and Dean lets go, returns to his place on the couch.
Dean collects the playing cards carefully from the TV tray, glances a few times at the bedroom but there’s just the breathing sound of sleep.
Dad’s got black smears under his eyes like a benched football player. He’s been in his room for fourteen hours. They’ve been trying to be quiet for the last eight.
It’s Sunday and it’s getting warm enough for the sun to give up and go down. It floods summer into the room; makes the dust particles lazy, floating dance visible in the light. The image and the air make Sam sleepy.
Dean stands up and heads out the front door, looking back once, giving silent permission to follow.
The crutches on the floor are difficult to maneuver. He sits up, reaching over the sofa’s arm for the crutches laying just out of comfortable reach. Finally he’s upright and moves toward the door.
There were only vacancies on the second floor. It takes time to take each step carefully. He’s in no hurry.
He smells Dean before he sees him. He’s squatting on a concrete parking block at the edge of the motel by the green dumpster. A cigarette hangs from his mouth like a toothpick. Or a piece of straw.
Sam thump-skips to him. The crutches make his armpits sore.
“Smoking will kill you.”
“Jumping out of trees will kill you.”
“I didn’t jump. I fell.”
Dean looks up at him. The sun is to his back but he squints. “You don’t sound convinced.”
The smoke is blue and stings Sam’s eyes. “I don’t remember.”
At first Sam thought Dean smoked to prove how cool he was. But there’s no one to see the proof but Sam, and cigarettes are hard to come by for a sixteen-year-old.
Not much good to waste one on Sam’s behalf.
“Cheer up Sammy.” He finishes his cigarette and throws the butt on the pavement. Grinds it down rough with his worn sneaker. For a second there’s a flash of understanding in Dean’s eyes Sam feels ashamed and grateful in a single heartbeat and there’s an instant where he doesn’t feel quite so alone. But it’s gone just as quickly.
“I’m starving,” Dean complains as he walks back to the room. This time he slows for Sam to meet his stride.
They’ll probably order pizza for dinner.
________
It’s not so much weird as it is strange. Not so much bizarre as it is odd. Because he never noticed girls before.
But he notices Tara.
She brings peanut butter and banana sandwiches, granola bars and green grapes every day. She never eats the granola bars.
He notices the rough bitten fingernails flecked with black nail polish and the long-sleeved flannel shirts she wears even with the heat.
He notices that other people don’t talk to her. Notices her in the hallway, wiping lipstick graffiti from her locker door.
He notices that she’s not popular, but that’s not hard to miss. Neither is he.
On Monday her hair is streaked red and orange. Thick chunks of it flick and sweep around her face like flames. He finds it terribly difficult to pull his eyes away from her. It makes eating a slow process.
“It’s Kool-Aid. It’s cheap and it washes out pretty easy. I want to move to Seattle and start a grunge band.”
“Like Kurt Cobain?”
“Yeah, but I like Heatmiser better. They’re the coolest.”
“Yeah.” Sam doesn’t know them, but now he feels he might like to.
He notices she says things in a voice that’s soft but full of sincerity and she listens with an intensity that’s overwhelming. He has this feeling that he could tell her everything. Wants to tell her. But he doesn’t. Instead he listens.
Dad often says people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Maybe that’s why people don’t like Tara.
But she’s freak-of-nature beautiful to him.
_________
Dad leaves at six in the morning. He can hear his speech to Dean through the thin walls. Sam mouths the words leaving Dad’s mouth, he’s memorized the goodbye.
Sam’s not scared of monsters anymore. He’s spent the last three years watching his father and now his brother fight the fear out of their existence.
He’s scared of other things.
He has the fear he’s losing his mind. He tells himself maybe he’s just misplaced it. It’s relocated somewhere south for the winter. Hidden behind the pesky left kidney. Maybe folded in between the squishy lines of intestines.
There’s no plan for exploratory surgery on the books.
Nothing makes any sense. All these bits and pieces of his life don’t fit and it makes him feel.
Makes him feel.
Makes him feel without words. Incomplete. Unfinished fiction.
A bruise appears on the inside of his ribcage when he finds himself thinking about the trees in Illinois. Skin unmarked, but the pain still taps a rhythm against the tender muscle in his chest.
_________
He forgets to tell Dean it’s a half day so he has to wait until three when the high school lets out. He didn’t get to have lunch.
He takes a seat on the curb by the front doors, under the school’s concrete awning, the only available shade for miles. There’s a breeze but it’s got the force heat of semi-truck exhaust.
Fifteen minutes later he’s soaked in sweat. He hates New Mexico. He pulls out his book and flips to the dog-eared page.
“You waiting for your ride too?” She takes a seat next to him on the curb. Her hair is purple today and smells faintly of grape.
“Yeah. My brother’s still in school. And my dad is… somewhere.” It comes out blunt.
She gives him a small smile and takes a deep breath of air. Lifts the edge of his book and reads the cover. “Have you read ‘The Chocolate War’? It’s one of my favorites.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty good.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes. Sam reads his book. Tara looks out beyond the parking lot.
He starts speaking without meaning to. The words tumble out of his brain onto his tongue and into the air. Unexpected but easy. “I jumped out of a tree. That’s how I broke my leg. Everyone thinks I fell but I jumped.”
Tara keeps her eyes on the horizon but he can tell she’s listening. “Oh?”
“I don’t really know why.” Sam searches for the words. “I wanted to do something extreme. I wanted something inside to change. I wanted them to change. Nothing makes any sense. I wanted them to see it too.”
They don’t speak for a moment.
“I didn’t want to kill myself or anything. Don’t think that, okay?”
“I don’t.”
There is another beat of silence. She keeps her eyes searching the horizon, to the mountains you can never reach.
“Did it help? Did it change anything?”
“No. But I think I want to try again.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
________
Four days after he tells Tara about the tree in Illinois, he chips his two front teeth tripping up some concrete steps.
Stairs are difficult with a cast.
He misjudges the distance, steps into air, and his limbs flail spastic without permission. He breaks the fall with his mouth like a gummy-faced baby would.
Dean drops the six-pack of orange soda he’s carrying. The cans pop and spray a sticky mist over them. The cast hits the concrete steps, makes a gunshot loud bang but it’s unharmed.
Dean picks Sam up and drag/carries him from the stairwell to the room, muttering about Darwinism and lost pop, and Sam wants to punch a hole in his brother’s gut because everything’s the same except for the pain in his face.
In the mirror, Sam looks like Howdy Doody.
Dad looks like he’s going to pull his hair out, but he doesn’t. Instead, he curses loudly, then quietly, then doesn’t say anything in words at all.
They drive to an emergency dental clinic. No time to clean up; they go covered in sticky syrup and smelling of orange sugar.
In the waiting room, Dean shoves his hand deep in his side denim pocket and produces the two bits of tooth that were left on the stairs. Just in case they can put him back together.
A dental technician pushes a spicy cotton ball that smells like potpourri over the two incisors. The cotton ball is brown and makes Sam’s tongue numb.
The caps are temporary. Whiter and brighter than his real ones. His cheeks blush red and the teeth practically glow with the contrast.
Dean makes jokes. Sam’s face gets redder. Sam’s fake teeth look brighter.
Now Sam looks like Bugs Bunny. With a bruised and swollen chin.
Even Dad laughs and it makes Sam feels like kicking Dad square in the face, just so he could know what it feels like. Instead he cries hot wet tears and chokes down clove flavored saliva.
The next day at school, he tugs the ends of his lips low, blanketing the yokel inelegance in his mouth. He has pudding and milk for lunch. Tara looks at him with methodical serious eyes.
“Did it help this time?”
Sam only shakes his head no.
“My sister was studying to be a psychologist. If she was here, she would say your ‘accidents’ are self-inflicted violence.” She smiles at the words. “Self-inflicted. She liked the term better than self-mutilation. She used to say it was kinder.”
The air inside the cafeteria feels heavy and quiet. His eyes move from her ears to her nose and to her mouth as she speaks.
“My mom always calls it a self-destructive habit. My dad calls it self-indulgent and that I was hurting my gifts by ruining the packaging.” A laugh pulls from her, quick and sharp, but in a moment she looks serious again and bites her lip. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make a plan. A plan. And I’m gonna get out. I’m gonna get out. Hurting myself isn’t really working anymore.”
Sam doesn’t seem convinced.
The bell rings and it’s time for math.
_________
Six weeks after the fall, the cast comes off thirty miles south of Mesa, Arizona.
A week ago they left New Mexico in the middle of the night. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Sam thinks it’s just as well.
The nurse uses an electric saw. It cuts through layers of plaster from top to toes and Sam's nervous that she's going to cut too deep, slice right through his leg and hand him over the cast, severed bloody limb and all, shrug and explain, “These things happen”.
The nurse pulls the two pieces apart like she’s cracking a dinosaur egg. Or a bone. The noise rings in Sam’s ears.
Dean puts his hand over his nose. "God, that thing stinks."
The leg looks like a stripped chicken bone. Pale and skinny and decaying in comparison to the tanned healthy right leg swinging from the edge of the gurney.
And it does stink.
A lady doctor comes in and gives him a booklet about exercises and special care for his dead smelly leg.
The doctor gives the cast back, noting it’s the cleanest one she’s seen. No names or pictures scrawled across except for a protective sigil and the word D E A N lightning bolt lettered on the bottom of the heel. Hidden so Dad wouldn’t see.
The doctor asks if he wants to keep the cast. Sam says no. There’s really no point in holding on to the pieces.
The end.
_____________________________________________
Although I used a line from the song as well as the title, the song really comes from the voice of the older brother. The replacement father figure who doesn't know what to do. If you take a look... especially the second and last verses you can see some similarities in SPN issues... well, I do at least. If you get a chance, take a listen to his album PERSONAL JOURNALS.
I didn't tell anyone about what I seen or heard that day
mums the words
still
I'm scared to plant ideas into your head
while your rebellious side is fertile
Hurdles are getting knocked down
I'm running a losing race
Your legs aren't the only ones marked up
- how many dreams have you chased?
If I could have said this to your face
maybe you wouldn't have to write like I do,
Except I use paper instead of my body now;
it's something you might want to try too
From haikus to horror stories, it's something in our blood that we share,
Something in our blood that appears
on the surface of our skin when we bring it there
My facial expression said I didn't care
Hate and aggression must've made an impression on the little kid who stared,
Sitting on stairs when I would bother to bring my skates
My feeble attempt at being a strong, big brother doing father figure 8's
Ripping my cape on the ground that it dragged on
Tripping on fate and hearing the sounds of a sad song
Listen, it's great sharing time now that dad's gone,
But what's with the choice of words?
Or the body parts that you decided to tag them on?
I'm a vagabond, who moved to modern day Babylon and then back again
With minimal contact and you know I can't ask your mom what's happening
You've got such beautiful gifts What are you doing ruining the packaging?
How ironic come to think I probably put this ink on my back for him
I want you to laugh and sing more,
But you dropped anchor in a place
Where dreams go to die and you're keeping your ass indoors
I'm asking for you to stick it out and see things through
You're asking for me to zip my mouth and keep it just between me and you
If I could have been there from the beginning if I could be there right now
If I could promise to be there when you need me, would it raise an eyebrow?
How would your body be different if I still dropped by for visits?
Is it my place to put a smile on your face?
Could I erase your body language telling you it's all been said before?
Or change the words you wrote, exchanging your scars for my metaphors?
I'd add them to my collection while smiling
Next time you want to paint with razor blades and need a canvas use my skin
Hiding your sins well, but I see the hell that your limbs speak
Tongue in cheek Lying awake in bed while other kids sleep
The strength of evil begins to keep your grins weak
No matter the length of the needle
Marking up one's body is so much more than skin deep
Feel the pin prick The grim reap what they sew
and you're trained to say that you're fine
Your threshhold for pain is greater than mine
So I'm waiting in the lines that you give me patiently,
While you get cut in the lines that THEY make YOU wait in
in ways that they can't see
If there's a vacancy as far as room in your life goes,
Say it to me
But don't do it with a knife under your clothes
Because the anguish of hidden skin is letting my ghosts be shown
Plus the language it's written in hits especially close to home
I'm most alone when I'm out of touch
with the people who feel this type of pain
You might just aim for a day that it's raining
to strike a vein to take my name in
Changing your uniform and altering your mind set
Has your pointer finger decided
if it was a fault of his or mine yet? I bet
I know the dialect It's nowhere I haven't been before
With skin that's sore Battle scars that rise from our inner war
Our decorative medals of honor that
our father decided to pass through inheritance
And it is repetitive when the kids head in the direction of evidence
Proving the pain and hurt is relative
Pain and hurt is relative
ETA author's notes