A/N: Inspired by a contribution to the Twitter hashtag #HorribleWaysToStartAStory by deejf
They were in the desert outside Barstow when the sock monkeys attacked.
It wasn't one sock monkey, oh, no. It was a horde of sock monkeys, swarming silently across the landscape, floppy salt and pepper limbs kicking up dust, beady button eyes glinting blankly in the sunlight, fixed sewn smiles somehow more unnerving than if they had been, say, grimacing with bloodthirst.
"Dude. Sock puppets?!" Dean hissed in disbelief to Sam as they crouched behind a boulder, watching the overgrown toys bearing down on them.
"Monkeys, Dean. Sock monkeys," Sam corrected him, squinting into the blazing sunlight. He was trying to count how many were coming. It looked like hundreds. "Sock puppets are on the Internet," he added absently.
Dean unlimbered his machete.
"What the fuck do we do with them?! What the fuck do they think they're gonna do to us?!"
Sam pulled out his own machete, stood up. The monkeys were near. He shrugged, braced himself. "Dunno. Hack their heads off? If enough of them swarm us, I guess they can smother us."
And then the throng of stuffed monstrosities hit them like a soft, silent tidal wave. Some got caught on the low creosote bushes, knit covering tangling on twigs, and blew in the wind like plump grayish banners. The bulk of them, though, made it to the boys and began grasping at their legs, climbing awkwardly up them, trying to trip them. Dean and Sam slashed and hacked, tufts of polyester filling floated away over the battlefield, and disconnected happy sock monkey heads flew through the air, rolled across the ground. The heat and the sweat meant that they were soon covered with blobs of stuffing plastered to every inch of bare skin. Mostly, however, the machetes merely whacked the monkeys like baseballs, lofting them into the air, sending them tumbling head over heels to land at a distance, untangle themselves, and then march inexorably back to the attack.
"Goddammit, Sam! This isn't working!" Dean impatiently blew stuffing away from his lips. "We need a goddamned flamethrower, something like that!"
At his words, several of the nearest sock monkeys froze, then their heads swiveled to face him.
"Uh, dude, I don't think they like the sound of that," Sam called back to him, hitting and kicking.
"Tell me about it!" Dean yelled. The bulk of the monkeys had abruptly abandoned their attack on Sam and were now concentrating on Dean. He was batting them away as fast as he could, but more and more surrounded him. They were huddling around his legs; when he kicked some off, more simply moved in to take their place. And they were beginning to climb on top of each other. Enough were clinging to his machete arm that he was beginning to tire. "Sam...Sammy! Do something, dammit!"
Sam thought quickly. He could wade into the swarm engulfing Dean, pull them off. But it was pointless - they'd just come back. They needed, as Dean said, a flamethrower. And they actually had one, back at the car. He made a quick calculation, glaring furiously at the absurd threat, then turned and dashed away, kicking monkeys, like footballs, out of his path as he went.
Luckily, the car wasn't too far away. He stopped, panting, and unlocked the trunk, heaved it open, and grabbed two of their improvised flamethrowers. Then he made his way back.
All he could see of Dean was his head, decked with white fluff. Everything else was a heaving, squirming pile of stuffed gray limbs with bright flashes of red bandanas and beady black button eyes. Dean's own eyes rolled at him with a crazed mix of terror and helpless laughter.
Sam placed one of the propane tanks down, opened the nozzle on the other, and lit it, a long, thin blue flame. Then he reversed the process. He grabbed them, one in each hand, and barreled toward Dean, screaming a wordless battle cry as he ran.
Monkey bodies began burning as he aimed the flamethrowers. More and more of them. They tried to bat the flames out, but the dryness of the stuffing, and the aridity of the desert air, made it useless. Sock monkeys began peeling off the pile, some dancing away flaming, others simply running. Sam cursed and kicked and aimed the flamethrowers, using his elbows to knock more of them off his brother while burning others.
And then, without warning, the sock monkeys disappeared. Sam and Dean were left surrounded by charred bodies, severed grinning heads, an assortment of unattached sock monkey legs and arms, and huge amounts of fluffy white stuffing floating across the desert floor and catching on the creosote, but the monkeys themselves were gone.
Dean pulled stuffing off the edge of his machete, then dropped it, leaned over with his hands on his knees, and just panted for a while. Sam dropped down to sit wearily on the ground, his long legs stretched out before him.
"I'm gonna be pulling stuffing out of my hair for hours," Sam grumped. Dean slumped down beside him, knees up and arms resting on his knees.
"That's what you get for having long hair," he said. Then he drew a deep breath, blew it out, and added, "Let's not get any more 8-year-old witches mad at us again..."