Title: When the Weasels Go Popping
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Standard babble, don't own nothin'.
Summary: I'm venting my temper at the amateur saxophone player outside the window where I work through fic. By having Sam and Dean beat him down.
Timeline: Does it really matter? No.
Note: Badfic in the extreme.
It was an unusual haunting to say the least.
At first it looked fairly typical of these sorts of things. The brothers Winchester had seen the sudden burst of violence in a small town and had gone to check it out. It was an odd and sudden spate of killings, mostly involving people beaten to death with woodwinds. When they got to the town and managed to sneak into the police station to interview one of the people arrested, they found out there was a little more to it.
"It was annoying," admitted the sixty-year-old grandmother who had been arrested for repeatedly stabbing her next door neighbour with a broken clarinet. "He sat there and played 'Pop Goes the Weasel' over and over for a half an hour, then switched to the worst rendition of 'When the Saints Go Marching In' for the next." Her lips compressed a little. "It was like someone was driving a pickaxe through my skull after that hour. I just . . ." she shrugged helplessly.
"Lost it?" Dean prompted. He jerked a little as Sam kicked him, but showed no other outward sign of his little brother's displeasure at his bluntness. It worked though.
"Exactly." She turned to them, looking a little blank. "It was like someone else was running things, y'know?" she told them. "I was annoyed, and then all of a sudden, I was going over there and making him . . . stop." She swallowed hard.
They left and split up to interview the rest of the witnesses, survivors, attackers and anyone else who might have some information. Dean caught up with Sam at the library. "Well, everyone who was attacking has the same story. Someone nearby was practising 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and 'When the Saints Go Marching In' and then something made them get up and try to kill the musician."
Sam replied, "Well, the two who survived the attacks say that they can't even recall playing the instruments. In fact, one of them says he didn't even own a bassoon. He doesn't know where it came from."
"What've you got?" Dean asked, jerking his head at the computer.
"I was looking into recent deaths, and I found a music teacher who died recently." He turned in his chair. "Apparently, there was a teenager living across the street from him who liked to bug the guy by playing the saxophone really badly. Alan Bergstrom died from being hit by a car while he was trying to cross the street to yell at Richard Leung." Sam shrugged and added, "That's the only thing I have so far, but it doesn't explain why the players are getting possessed as well as the --"
"Critics?" Dean suggested helpfully. He didn't even flinch when Sam glared at him. "So we're going to talk to Bergstrom's friends?"
Sam gathered himself as he stood. "Looks like."
When they got to Bergstrom's house, however, chaos had all ready ensued. A woman was being held back by two men while she screamed obscenities and struggled to get to the confused teenager across the road. If it weren't for the fact that both men were used to chaos like that, they might have missed the older man, smirking off to the side.
The Winchesters exchanged looks and promptly headed in the smug man's direction. "What's goin' on?" Sam asked casually.
An odd smile crossed his face. "My son's been at it with that instrument of his," he said. "Seems the sound bugs those smug sonsabitches across the street."
"You don't seem too concerned about that," Dean noted.
Before the man could say anything, a woman poked her head out of the house, paled as she saw Dean and Sam talking to the man, and said, "Gerald, honey, why don't you come in." She looked terrified as she spoke and Gerald turned to her for a moment before saying, "I'd better go in. That's my wife, Marlene."
The couple exchanged some quiet, but heated, words on the porch before vanishing inside the house. The crowd had dispersed by that time, and Sam and Dean managed to snag the teen before he vanished back into the house. "Richard Leung?" Sam asked.
"Yeah?" the kid didn't look all that happy. "Are you two reporters too? I already told everybody I don't remember a damn thing about playing that stupid sax."
"Your Dad seemed pretty sure you'd been playing," Dean said.
The kid's eyes widened. "You spoke to . . . You're lying. My Dad's dead. Everyone knows that."
"So Gerald isn't your Dad?" Sam asked all sympathetic and dewy eyed.
Both he and Dean were startled when the kid pulled back and glared. "Gerald was my Dad," he told them defiantly. "That . . . thing in there isn't my Dad. Whatever the hell Mom brought home, isn't my Dad." He glared at the faded bushes in front of the house. "Bet that's why the lawn is dying too."
Things kinda went nuts then, because Gerald came flying out of the house, 250 pounds of zombie fury. "Shut up! That smug jerk across the street killed me! Him and his wife ran me down because they don't like my playing!" He launched himself at Richard, but Dean diverted him, managing to send him flying headfirst into the tree in the front yard. Then he planted himself solidly between Richard and the zombie that was once the kid's father.
"So what've you been doin' to junior here?" Dean asked.
The zombie grunted, but in the longstanding tradition of Bad Guys, told them everything. "I just cast this little spell. Makes people play my favourite tunes when that Bergstrom bitch is around."
There was a sudden pause, and Dean couldn't help it as he asked, "'Pop Goes the Weasel' is your favourite song?"
With an incoherent scream of rage, Leung threw himself at Dean, trying to pummel the hunter. Sam threw himself at the zombie's back and added, "It's not like 'When the Saints Go Marching In' is so much better." That won another incoherent scream of fury and the zombie began splitting his attention between the brothers, trying to kill them both.
"Oh Gerald!" Marlene cried, almost in tears. "If I'd known bringing you back would change you so much I never would've done it."
Sam made a sort of strangled noise at that, a sound echoed by his disbelieving brother. Sometime in all this Richard had vanished into the house and returned with a baseball bat, which he managed to use to get in a few hits before Gerald had flung him across the yard. Sam picked up the bat from where it had fallen and slammed it into the zombie with all the force he could muster. It slammed him away, making Sam lose his grip on the bat, then brought the makeshift club around to hit Dean. The elder Winchester tried to dodge, but still took a serious hit and hit the ground, stunned.
Sam had managed to get to his feet, trying to distract the man. "Over here!"
The zombie started to sing. Badly, out of tune, slowly and with a lot of fervour. "Round and round the mulberry bush," he began, stalking toward Sam. "The monkey chased the weasel."
Sam dove and rolled to avoid another swing of the bat. "The monkey thought it was all in fun . . ."
At that moment, there was a rush of air and the temperature dropped. And suddenly the zombie who was once Gerald Leung was hovering in the air, held up by an invisible force. "Pop! Goes the Weasel!" snarled a disembodied voice in fury as invisible hands ripped the zombie apart.
They guys were sitting in the motel room, Dean lying on the bed with an ice pack on the bump on his head. "Let me get this straight. Gerald has this feud goin' with the Bergstroms about his loud music."
"Yup."
"Which is 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and 'When the Saints Go Marching In'."
"Yeah."
"When they get into an argument about it at the mall one day Bergstrom accidentally pushes Gerald over the balcony edge, killing him."
"Uh-huh."
"Gerald's wife brings him back from the dead as a zombie, who's hellbent on revenge."
"Right."
"Gerald decided the perfect revenge was making Bergstrom's widow listen to 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and 'When the Saints Go Marching In' over and over."
"Yep."
"He casts the spell to make random people play Pop Goes the Weasel and When the Saints Go Marching In on the first instrument they can get their hands on, which makes Bergstrom wake up and kill them to shut them up."
"Exactly."
"And you're sure Bergstrom won't come back the next time some five-year-old sings either of those?"
Sam raised his hands in a little, a chagrined look on his face. "I'm as sure as I can be, I guess," he told his brother. "I mean, he got his revenge, didn't he?"
Dean still looked disgruntled. "I suppose, but man, get me my Mp3 player. I wanna get that crap outta my head."
His younger brother nodded as he started picking through Dean's duffle. "I get where you're coming from," he said. Then started humming 'Pop Goes the Weasel'.
"Sam!"
The End
Okay, I feel better now.