SUPERNATURAL: Counting Monsters
Title: Counting Monsters
Characters/Pairing: Jo
Word Count: 353
Rating: PG
Summary: The nights Jo can't sleep are more common than the ones she can, these days.
Notes: Written for justprompts, originally posted at Jo's journal (orphanblues).
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, and I'm not making any profit from this.
The nights Jo can't sleep, these days, are more common than the ones where she can. She can't remember the last time that happened. Gordon used to tell her stories of his hunts when she was younger, to try to scare her. She'd imagine the monsters he talked about in shadows, until finally she gave up on sleep and ended up turning on the light and flipping through the scraps and notes she collected, the things hunters left behind. Eventually those stories stopped scaring her, and she can't remember when that was.
She's not scared of the dark now either. She has no reason to be, when she's seen what's out there first hand, she's faced it, salted and burned it. But she lies in bed awake, staring into the dark, listening to the wind or the creak of the building settling or the muted roar of traffic outside whatever motel she's found herself in this month. It's just the noise keeping her up, she tells herself. When she closes her eyes, she doesn't see the faces of the dead, hungry and malevolent, or just scared and angry. She doesn't see the jagged teeth of something not-quite human, lunging for her face in the half second before she pulled the trigger. She doesn't imagine the screams of the dying in a place that used to be home.
Jo ends up sitting cross-legged on her bed with the light on, just like when she was younger. The difference is, this time it's not scavenged notes of Roadhouse patrons she's flipping through, it's her own accounts in her own handwriting, rough sketches of symbols and battered newspaper clippings. Her daddy had a journal like this, that her mother never let her see. She's sure it's gone now, destroyed with the rest of her past, but she wonders if his would hold any more comfort than hers does.
Invariably, she ends up falling asleep curled on her side with the journal open beside her, on top of the covers and crooked on the bed, as the morning sunlight shines dimly through the cheap motel room curtains.
Characters/Pairing: Jo
Word Count: 353
Rating: PG
Summary: The nights Jo can't sleep are more common than the ones she can, these days.
Notes: Written for justprompts, originally posted at Jo's journal (orphanblues).
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, and I'm not making any profit from this.
The nights Jo can't sleep, these days, are more common than the ones where she can. She can't remember the last time that happened. Gordon used to tell her stories of his hunts when she was younger, to try to scare her. She'd imagine the monsters he talked about in shadows, until finally she gave up on sleep and ended up turning on the light and flipping through the scraps and notes she collected, the things hunters left behind. Eventually those stories stopped scaring her, and she can't remember when that was.
She's not scared of the dark now either. She has no reason to be, when she's seen what's out there first hand, she's faced it, salted and burned it. But she lies in bed awake, staring into the dark, listening to the wind or the creak of the building settling or the muted roar of traffic outside whatever motel she's found herself in this month. It's just the noise keeping her up, she tells herself. When she closes her eyes, she doesn't see the faces of the dead, hungry and malevolent, or just scared and angry. She doesn't see the jagged teeth of something not-quite human, lunging for her face in the half second before she pulled the trigger. She doesn't imagine the screams of the dying in a place that used to be home.
Jo ends up sitting cross-legged on her bed with the light on, just like when she was younger. The difference is, this time it's not scavenged notes of Roadhouse patrons she's flipping through, it's her own accounts in her own handwriting, rough sketches of symbols and battered newspaper clippings. Her daddy had a journal like this, that her mother never let her see. She's sure it's gone now, destroyed with the rest of her past, but she wonders if his would hold any more comfort than hers does.
Invariably, she ends up falling asleep curled on her side with the journal open beside her, on top of the covers and crooked on the bed, as the morning sunlight shines dimly through the cheap motel room curtains.