Beads of innocence

Have you ever noticed that along with his watch, and black sex-me bands, Dean wears that black beaded bracelet? This is the story of where it came from, and why he never takes it off.

STEPHANIE'S POV

I was 17 the night my life changed. The night I realised that the things I dream about are real. It all started when my friends decided it would "fun" (would you like me to roll my eyes for you?) to go explore the old mine shafts, a couple of miles out of town. It had closed almost 15 years before then, and since it had, our town had gone from a big mining town, to side-of-the-road-toilet-stop-ville.

Anyway, I thought it was a stupid idea, but Tory, Gary and Ben had somehow talked me into it. I won't lie, the whole idea scared me. It wasn't that I was afraid of the dark, in fact, I can't sleep with the light on. It's just that it freaks me out when I don't know the things around me, and I can't see them well enough to be sure of what is or isn't there. It just makes me feel so alone, so venerable. And that night, I learned that I was right to be afraid.

Tory, my best mate, Gary, her boyfriend, and Ben, his friend, had dragged me out on a night that was supposed to be an "Annie and Tory" night. That is, a night that is just me, my best mate, girl talk, and some movies with good eye-candy. But, yet again, plans had been changed to include Gary, and worse yet his sleazy mate Ben, and so I was damned pissed off.

So there we were, exploring the old maze of the mine, at around 11 on a Friday night. Gary and Tory had recently disappeared together (and I totally did NOT want to know what they were doing) so it was just Ben and me. Ben with his, more then half empty, bottle of tequila. Me with my caffeine-saturated soda in a plastic bag hanging of my arm, and my family-sized paper-bag of hot chips in my hand. My mates hadn't let me stay at Kady's (the diner) so I had, in a way, brought it with me.

Anyway, it was around then that I started to get really freaked. It wasn't just because of where we were, or because I was blind to everything outside the small radius of our flash-light beams, mine dancing crazily as I tried to eat and shine at the same time. It probably had a whole lot to do with the way Ben was smiling at me, the fact that we were alone, he was drunk, and that he had tried to get me into bed before. I'd say it was also because it was then that his hand decided it would be fun to start feeling my ass. I shoved him hard.

'Don't Ben, pl-' but he didn't let me finish. Pushing me hard up against the wall, and using his body to pin me there, his hand started to explore the inner-side of my panties, and his tongue forced it's way into my mouth. I bit down hard. Jerk.

'Ahhhhh!' Ben yelped, as I kneed him where it hurt most, and pushed away from him, and the wall, and picked up my torch, that I'd dropped.

'Thunkin-' he started to try to swear at me, but stopped suddenly, eyes going wide.

'Shove it, ass-hole,' I told him, but he just stared.

'St-St- ' He stuttered, unconciously dropping his precious bottle of tequila. But the bottle never touched the ground. It shattered mid-air, the shards flying at him. Ben yelped, and stumbled the otherway, back where we had come. I heard some funky croaky noise behind me, and I hesitantly turned around. There was a man there, but I didn't give my self time to focus on him properly. I screamed, and ran, easily over taking Ben. Suddenly the man appeared in my front of me, moaning something that sounded like my name. I screamed again, and threw my paper-bag of salt-soaked chips in his face, and he evaporated the moment it touched him. I ran.

DEAN"S POV

I fiddled with the black beads on my wrist, as I let my mind slip away from the motel room I shared with my brother, Sammy. Slip back, to when my life had really started to change. 15yearold Sammy had talked Dad into letting him go to some nerd-ist camp, witch Dad had only let him go on, because his parents-in-law had called and said that they had already paid for it. It also wouldn't hurt for Sammy-boy to learn how to mess around with passwords and other nerdy computer stuff. Me, I didn't do the whole camp thing, but that doesn't mean I didn't do anything new that summer. Dad had found an easy hunt through a friend, that wasn't all that far from the nerd-ist colony. But it wasn't for dad to do… dad wanted to keep an eye on Sammy, so he had given the hunt to me. I was like OMG, dude, and though I was going to be supervised, it would be from a distance, the same as Sam.

So that's how I ended up in Kady's, a small town diner, that Thursday afternoon. It was one of those diners, that sat next to a highway as it cut through a town, that advertised the whole stop-revive-survive-feed-the-kids-and-survive thing. There had only been two witnesses to the SOB I was hunting, and one of them hung out here.

I looked around as I walked into the blue, 70's style diner. There was only a family with young kids, and a grandparently couple, none of which fit the profile, near the front. As I wandered past empty tables, I noticed a girl, around my age, comfortable in one of the booths near the back of the restaurant. In her well-loved jeans and Nirvana shirt, laid back, eating a family-sized plate of hot chips, overloaded with salt and sauce, she looked, to me, to be one of the hottest girls I had ever seen.

STEPHANIE"S POV

I felt close to tears, that Thursday afternoon in the diner. After the incident in the mines, the Friday before, I'd had a fight with Tory, and she, nor anyone else my age in this hole, had talked to me since. School had ended on the Wednesday so at least, even if I was loner, I wouldn't have to see her.

So anyway, I was sitting, alone, in the diner when he had walked over to me. I'd been half-lying-down, listening to my walk-man, and eating my usual, when he sat down, opposite me in the booth. He said something I couldn't hear over my music, so I pulled my earphones out, as I sat up, and raised my eyebrow.

'Hey?' He grinned at me, he was actually kinda cute… well more then kinda.

'Hey, can I have a chip?'

'How do you know I haven't poisoned them?'

'Because your eating them yourself. Annyyway, I'm Dean,' He told me, and though I told myself I was hoping he'd leave, I was secretly glad for the human interaction.

'Stephanie,' I half-smiled,

'But poeps tend to call me Annie, or watever. Are you passing through our little town?'

'Actually I'm staying at the motel for a couple of weeks, with my dad. My little brothers at that nerdist camp not so many miles away, so we thought we'd stay here.' I grinned.

'Nerdist…? nerd-boy plus nerd-girl equals nerd-love,' I told him, and he laughed. We talked, as shared the chips till we ran out, and he bought the second round. We kept talking, and it was pretty kool, till I heard a familiar, and completely unwanted chorus of voices walk through the door. Tory, Gary and the middle-of-no-where plastic royalty crew. Oh crap. I pulled him down, so that they wouldn't see us. And out of a complete lack of anything else to keep him there, I kissed him.

DEAN'S POV

We shared her hot chips, as we talked, and I shouted the next round when we ran out. It was just about school, and music and stuff, not really personal or supernatural. But I was getting to it, in fact I was trying to figure out how to bring it up, when a group of kids our age rocked up to the diner. I could hear them laughing, and mucking around but I was paying more attention to the worried look that was eched on Stephanie's face. She suddenly pulled me down, pulling me into a kiss. Man, she was a hot kisser, despite my shock of the suddenness of it. When Stephanie surfaced for air, I realised the group had gone.

'Sorry,' She said, with her eyes, not just her mouth.

'I didn't want them to see me- us- uh, yeah,' she tried to explain.

'You don't have to make up excuses to kiss me,' I tried to lighten her mood.

'So why didn't you want them to see us- you-?' I asked, and she suddenly looked like she was gonna cry. I jumped up and sat next to her, putting my arm around her.

'What's wrong? Who's ass do you need me to kick?'

'That group of plastic sub-humans happened to include my ex-best-friend. We had a fight last Friday. It's stupid.'

'No, it's not,' I told her.

'My dad, my brother, and me travel around a lot, so I'm also getting dumped in different schools. So I know what it's like to lose friends, or to be the loner at school…it does make braking up easy tho…What happened?'

'Last Friday it was supposed to be just me and Tory, my best mate, but it wasn't. She dragged my ass to the old mines, just out of town, to hang with her boyfriend and his mate. Stuff happened. We yelled. Now she's plastic, and she wont talk to me,' Just then my cell rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket. Looking back, I wonder how that brick ever fit in my pocket… Anyway, Dad called.

'Kenny's pizza plaza, how may I help you?' I asked.

'I'd like a Dean, extra cheese, and a bottle of soda, at the motel in five minutes,' Dad replied. Crap. It turned to Stephanie.

'Look I gotta go back to the motel, what's your number?' she recited it as I pressed it into my cell.

'Meet me here tomorrow?'