A/N: FYI, before you read this just two things.
1) This takes place sometime during season three because god dammit Kripke I miss the good old days when the world wasn't ending every time we turned around and
2) This is my first SPN fanfic so I'd love feedback on my OC and how well I portray Dean and Sam.
Chapter 1: The Inevitable
Musical Accompaniment: I Stand Alone- Godsmack
Beckville, Texas
This was, to say the least expected. Randy, that was the name he had given her, was apparently some up and coming actor on his way to California- just needed a little cash to get there. Of course, being a high school graduate with two sense full parents Ashley Thomas did not fall into his trap and fork over the three hundred bucks he wanted from her. He didn't react like she thought he would have. Instead he invited her to stay for the weekend. Which turned into the week. Then a month. Then two months. And then finally he snapped. Demand number one, rent. Demand number two, extra cash for booze.
When Ashley refused he picked up all her clothes, threw them into a trash bag and put them and her outside. In the rain. At four in the morning. He threw the bag at her, tilted his head with a smirk, told her to have a nice life, with the addition of a rather misogynistic curse, and slammed the door. Ashley stood in silence for a moment, seething quietly before dropping her stuff and banging on his door. He turned up some crap music he was listening to and dead bolted the door.
"Fine!" She yelled after the first five minutes of futile effort. "Fuck you and your plasma screen TV! Join the 21st century like the rest of us you prick!" The loud boom of her really-should-be-thrown-away-according-to-all-of-her-friends-and-family boots echoed throughout the corner of the complex. She flipped the door the bird and grabbed her backpack off the ground, stomping down the steel stairs. Ashley could practically feel her blood boiling when the music in his apartment turned up to drown anything else she might scream at him out.
Stuffing her hand in her pocket she fished around for some change for the bus ride home, as the only way she used to go out was with his car and she didn't own a car. A groan left her throat when she found that not only did she not have any change, but she had left all of her cash in his house. Going back for the money would be the sensible thing to do. But it also could entail more verbal fighting and probably an escalation to physical fighting.
So, with all the dignity she could muster at roughly five a.m. in the middle of a parking lot for the most ghetto of apartments, she walked home. The shred of self respect that hung onto tightly to her ego dispelled the thought of pulling out her phone and calling her parents. Not with what they had said to her last time they talked. She was in no mood for an 'I told you so' type of conversation, not that early in the morning. It would take about an hour to walk home and by then most of her anger would have flooded out and there would be no urge to punch someone who tried to tell her that they knew he was bad news.
"Son of a bitch it's cold." She muttered, crossing her arms and running her hands from her shoulders to her elbows. "Dammit."
Twenty feet. Maybe more. That's about the distance from the stop sign at the end of the street to Ashley's childhood home. Even so, her mom saw her from the window and smiled that old womanly smile that could make anyone go from completely badass to a blubbering baby. The flowing river of regret and that little voice in the back of your head screaming 'THAT'S RIGHT, YOU'RE AN IDIOT!' pushed Ashley over the edge enough to slink into her home and lie on the couch with red eyes and crossed arms. "I didn't cry. I just…"
"You don't have to explain yourself. Just as long as you understand the circumstances if you plan on staying here. One, you get a job; I don't need you moping around this house like some sort of depressed ghost. Two, you pay us rent. You're eighteen, not ten; you're not supposed to be living with your parents. And three…" Her father trailed off, then looked to the ceiling. "What was three Christy?"
"I don't know? You never told me what one and two were, how am I supposed to know what three is?" His wife hollered from the kitchen, the bitter sizzling of bacon in a pan almost loud enough to drown out her frail voice. Ashley's father just waved that off with a shake of his head, and like there had been no conversation at all going on, went back to playing his game of solitaire.
The youngest of the three stared at the old man, furrowing her brows and standing to go to the back room. Letting the others know that she was just going to settle in for now, go look for a job later that week. "Breakfast'll be done in fifteen minutes, don't miss it." Ashley nodded and opened the door to her old bedroom, closing it quietly behind her.
Her parent's home had originally been an actual trailer. Like one that you hook on to the back of a truck and that you actually have to 'empty the shitter' yourself. But when that burned down due to a fire her older brother caused when he was seven (trying to make brownies and obviously doing poorly) they bought a house that comes in on an even bigger trailer and placed it right on the foundation. It still was just one long rectangle, but at least the shitter was hooked up to the sewer system.
So all the rooms, including the bedrooms, were all on the same level as each other. There was no basement and no second level with dangerous stairs that a blonde bimbo might run up in a cheesy thriller flick. Which, in its own way, was disappointing to Ashley Thomas. She wasn't necessarily obsessed with these type of horror films, but they definitely interested her. In fact they had inspired her dream job. Special effects artist.
Not some corny make-up artist who has to make a zombie that didn't look like it came from the 93' video game. She was planning on becoming the real deal. The one who makes an animatronics dinosaur roar and move like its alive, the one who uses dry ice and chemicals to barrel smog over the graveyard where the next thriller video will be filled, able to keep the white smoke there for over an hour without it dissipating. Yes, she had big plans. Not that they'd ever be anything more than plans, laid out on the blueprints she had scrawled out in her mind, but at least there was something she could shoot for.
Which all leads into the reason why her room looked more like a serial killer's lair rather than a teenage girl's room. Or at least, why is used to look like that. When she opened the door she was only slightly surprised to see that her parents had taken down every poster, every fake corny cobweb, and put every little robot that would have been, someday or another, a monster that could move and attack her poor Barbie dolls by itself. Okay, so Ashley was a little wacked up in the head, but what movie junkie teen isn't?
She set her bag of poorly packed clothes on the now purple and gray bed, her old red and black bed sheets must've being switched out by her parents, and headed back out to the living room. She sniffed the air. "Mom the bacon is burning."
"Oh, sorry, I'm getting the door can you watch it?" Ashley nodded and headed for the stove, turning the flame down and flipping the crispy slabs of meat over onto the other side. She heard the door open and looked over her shoulder to see her mom leaning slightly to her side as she tilted her head at a young man just outside her screen door. Ashley paused.
"I'm, a, sorry to pester ya' ma'am," He had a southern accent that sounded hundreds of years old, but this was quickly forgotten as he reached up to his shoulder with a solemn shy look on his face. "Bu' I, uh, is hurt and needin' of some help." He swayed to the side, caught himself by shifting his feet, and forced his eyes open the rest of the way.
Ashley's mother quickly opened the door. "Come in boy, come in. Sit down at the table right there." The man hobbled carefully to one of the wooden chairs and plopped down.
"I was ridin' the train, and some 'un jus' push me out." He removed his jacket as the father of the home carefully made his way to the injured man. "Glad it was light out, could s'my way 'ere at leas'." The wound on his shoulder was something like a deep cut, drawn from his shoulder to halfway from his elbow. Ashley cringed. "Gotta' leak?" The man looked above him where a dark tan spot had covered a good two foot square part of the ceiling. Water damage.
"God dammit, thought I fixed that patch up years ago…" He shook his head and walked to the back room. "Didn't even know it was raining outside."
Ashley's mother touched the man's shoulder lightly, careful not to hurt him. "Ash, honey, go get me the first aid kit. And take the skillet off the stove." Ashley nodded and turned the flame all the way off, lifting the pan off the heated iron and setting it to a cooler burner.
She passed her dad in the hallway, raising her eyebrows in such a way that suggested this was probably the stupidest thing her mother had ever done. A slight smirk and nod of the head from her father said that he agreed.
Ashley pushed her way into the cluttered office, swinging the closet door open to rummage through all the random stuff. She pushed past the puzzles, the old candy that should be thrown away and finally through the old t-shirt boxes her mom then used as gift boxes. "Mom! Is it the one with the blue plus or the red plus?!" No answer. She groaned and grabbed both of them. "Mom!" She called, walking out of the office and back into the hallway.
The man, the traveler who had been hurt, was standing next to the kitchen table. He had his hands out in front of him, crimson flowing off his palms like water. He looked up to her, his face full of sorrow. She dropped the blue plus box. "Mom…dad… What did you do?!" Her nostrils flared.
"I dunno. They jus'…died." He fell to his knees, rested his head in his hands, and began to sob. "What have I done?!" He stopped. Turned his head and glared at her. "YOU. Yur' the reason I'm this way!" His face contorted to give him the look of black holes for eyes, sharp teeth in a strange slanted mouth of a black hole, and his body turned flesh rotting gray.
"Son of a bitch."
