Never open the door in the dark
The sound of someone knocking on the door startled Dean from his light sleep. Listening to the TV when you couldn't actually see the images that went with each sound was quite boring and it wasn't like he could do much else but lie in bed or sit on the chair by the table.
The motel room had a kitchen, but after the 'cabinet incident', John had declared that whole area off limits for Dean. Not that he could find it again, not without the noises of dishes and pots to guide him back.
The only way he could manage to find the bathroom with relative ease was because of the faulty faucet that kept a steady pingpingping! Any other time, that would've annoyed the crap out of him to the point of taking the whole thing apart, but now that Dean found himself... handicapped, it came in quite handy.
Sam had been fussing all over him since it had happened. Nobody's fault but his own, Dean knew that, but there was no helping the guilty sighs on his brother part and the deep breaths dad kept taking whenever Dean bumped into one more thing left out of place in the room.
It wasn't permanent, they had assured them that. Two weeks, the doc had said. Two weeks with his eyes covered from all types of light while his burned corneas healed.
The knock came back with a vengeance and Dean remembered what had roused him up in the first place. The stupid door.
"Wait a frigging minute, will ya?"
Now... the door was to the left of his bed, Dean remembered that too. He just needed to find the edges of the extra bed, go around it and then it was just a matter of making those five steps across the void.
Dean hated the void.
He'd never been one to be afraid of the dark. Being afraid of the dark was for people who didn't know how to fight the things that lived there. Dean knew. His dad had taught him how.
But now...
When he had awakened in the hospital, his face in utter agony and his world plunged into darkness, Dean had to confess that he had lost it. A little bit.
Enough to punch the first person that had touched him.
Which had turned out to be his father.
The fact that John had hugged him tight instead of ripping Dean a new one for punching him was enough to tell Dean how serious it was.
Well, that and the blindness.
The doctor had come to explain later. Apparently, it was a bad thing to be too close to a flare when it explodes in your hands. Besides the slightly singed fingers, the eyes were kind of partial to not having extra-bright lights and heat that close to them. Wusses.
He would recover, but for all intent and purpose, Dean was blind for two weeks. At the time, it had seemed to Dean like a small price to pay for his clumsiness... until he had bumped into his first obstacle.
The knocking became more insistent, urgent.
"Hold your horses, I said I'm coming!" Dean blared at the insistent knocking.
The manager, it could only be the manager. The man was a dick that had extorted his father for extra money for a room on the ground level, even though the whole place was barely occupied. One look at Dean's face, standing by the door, with the bandage wrapped around his eyes and the band aids on his hands and the man had seen an opportunity to earn a few extra bucks on the needs of others. Dean hadn't seen it, but he could easily hear the sleaziness in the man's voice when he had explained to John why he was paying for a special 'handicap fee'.
Dean hoped his dad punched the man in the face before they checked out. Or Dean could it himself, as soon as he opened the door.
Sam and his father were out. All Hallows Eve was all fun and candy for kids and suburbia moms, but for hunters, it was the busiest night of the year. Even with a man down, John had been forced out to hunt a skinwalker that had been prowling the area.
Dean had begged to come along, promised to stay in the car, to behave himself and help as far as he could; but his pleas had fallen on deaf ears.
John had remained firm, adamant about not taking Dean with him.
The message was clear to Dean; in his current condition, Dean was useless to him, and worse still, he was a liability. His father hadn't flat out said it in so many words, but Dean could still hear it in John's voice. So, he had taken Sam instead, whom despite being only twelve and still inexperienced as far as hunting, could at least see where to point his gun and shoot.
Dean flung the door open in frustration, wanting nothing more than to send the annoying man away and go back to his bed... if he could find it again.
"What?"
It was chilly outside, the end of October bringing with it the first rain of the winter. The dogs were barking at a distance. A car drove by on the wet road.
"I know you didn't just knocked to look at my face, so... what do you want?" Dean insisted. The feeling of anger at his lack of usefulness was slowly crawling behind the iciness that was spreading from his stomach out. "If you want more money, you'll ha—"
Dean stopped himself. Something was wrong. Despite the fact that he was still a few months short of seventeen, Dean had been hunting for long enough to trust the odd feelings around him. And right then, his gut was telling him that something was very, very wrong.
Not caring if there really was someone at the door, or of it was just some creep staring at a blind kid, Dean shoved the door closed and quickly knelt down.
His father had made sure that there were salt bags near the windows and doors and had guided Dean on a tour through all of them. Dean was grateful for that as his right hand collided with one and he quickly spread its contents against the door.
Dean breathed in relief. Maybe he was just being paranoid; maybe it was the darkness he was trapped in that was making him act like a scared kid. Either way, it was better to be safe than sorry, his dad always said.
The puff of air against his neck told Dean that being safe was no longer an option.
TBC