My Eyes closed, I'm on the couch with a book on my chest. The light is on in the kitchen still, and I left the TV. I remember the soap opera I'd been half-watching before I fell asleep. There was a girl who'd been hit by…something. She looked just like me, but her hair was just a wig, and she was bleeding onto the stone floor of…wherever. Her…mother, I think, hadn't moved an inch since the scene began. I remember she cupped the dying girl's right hand in both of hers and bowed her head like she was praying.

"It's alright, Alexandrina. Come on; you're alive, now you've gotta stay that way, alright?" The mother said. "There's so much more you could do in this world, you've got to stay alive."

The dying girl smiled. "I know, I'm trying my best here."

The mother smiles back as she looks down at her daughter; there are unshed tears in her deep brown eyes. "Guess that makes two of us," she whispered.

The daughter smiles with her.

Tears finally fell, streaking down the mother's cheeks one at a time as she cried. "I can't let you die like this, Ally. Please, don't go down this path. I don't want you to go!"

The daughter blinked in surprise, just as I did when I heard those peculiar lines. Granted, I'd started watching the program right in the middle, but still! It seems like there are so much background and context that I'm missing here. This previously confident, witty blonde woman, was now rambling in tears over her dying daughter, words pouring out in grief and relief.

"Hey," The dying girl whispered, catching her mother's attention. "It's alright, Mum. I've lived more in these last two years than I have all others. I'll be okay." She says. And while any audience member could see that she was awake and breathing, I knew she wasn't out of the dark yet.

The older woman, in turn, wipes her eyes, sniffs a little bit and says. "Yes, you'll be okay. You'll be brilliant…I'll have to find a way to make it happen." She sniffs again. "You should probably get some sleep.," she tells her daughter with a trembling smile.

In return, the dying girl barely managed to squeeze out her words with a smile just for her mum. "Will you still be there when I wake up?"

Her mother nodded, keeping that weak smile on her face as best she can. "Of course, sweetie. Now and forever." She kissed her daughter's forehead just as my eyes slid closed.

That was…I don't know how long ago, but now all I can hear from the television is a sort of buzzing noise, a dull grey mist behind my closed eyes. Everything begins to flicker. My eyes open, instinctually sensing something is wrong.

When I exhale, my breath is visible. Getting to my feet, I know what to do. The cupboard, hidden in my closet, I open it. I start pulling out weapons like a magician always pulling scarves out of his hat. The phone rings in the living room. But the call can wait.

For right now, I have more important things to worry about some device, like metal or maybe a radiation detector, which starts beeping and flashing in a frenzy — an EMF reader. I hear the man on the voicemail through the panicked yellow beeps; the orange voice is garbled. But it sounds like Bobby.

Load the gun through the noise, and try to investigate this house I'm in — an apartment. I hear a sound, and I turn. A thin, tall man appears beside me-battered and bruised. I don't recognise him, and yet I am afraid. Why am I afraid?

"You!" I gasp, even though I do not know his name.

I fire my gun at the figure, he must be a ghost, in hopes to scare him off. He disappears, in a puff of smoke. I quietly pull out a bag of salt from the corner of my bedroom and smother the threshold of my room with it. But the ghost returns to me then, on the wrong side of the salt line.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I tell him because I can't remember his name. I do not know this man.

When I turn around and try to run, a blonde woman grabs me by the throat. She is beaten, battered, bruised and grey. Her grip tightens. I cannot breathe, trapping the air in my lungs — no air in, no air out. The man appears behind the woman, jamming his fist into my chest, wrapping his fingers tight around my heart — a scowl from the woman, a satisfied grin was growing on the man.

I scream, begging for someone to help me.

Then it swallows me.

I gasp back to life, panting desperate yellow. Sit up. I put a hand on my neck. Again. No swelling, no tender bruising, but my heart is racing. Again. I am breathing, I am alive, but I am in a panic. Again. My feet flying to the floor, I run immediately for the first closet I can find, my footsteps rapid and loud in my ears.

At the doors of one, I stop, again, panting enough to puke. I take a breath and hold it in as I check inside again, sifting through the clothes and things inside; to my relief, there were no weapons stashed in the wall behind the closet, I was not in the apartment with the battered, murderous ghosts.

To my surprise, there were no weapons stashed in the wall behind the closet, I mean, this was Bobby's house for crying out loud! Where would he not have demon-killing weapons stashed? I let out my breath, my heart calming and my stomach settling at last-for the third inVoices. The first thing I register is a voice. Downstair, multiple voices, I make my way to the end of the hall, to the head of the stairs. I stop. And I listen.

"Don't you think that if angels were real, that some hunter somewhere would have seen one…at some point…ever?" A rugged red voice asked-Dean.

"Yeah. You just did, Dean." The sassier yellow voice replied-Sam.

"I'm trying to come up with a theory here. Okay? Work with me here." Dean.

"Dean, we have a theory," Sam said as if he were already stating the obvious.

"Yeah, one with a little less fairy dust on it, please," Dean said slowly.

I chuckled a little bit at that remark, then got to my feet and headed into around the corner to the kitchen where Dean and Sam's voices, and selves, were assembled.

"Okay, look. I'm not saying we know for sure. I'm just saying that I think we—." Sam trailed off as I came into the room.

Dean took this opportunity to make his point angrily. "Okay, okay. That's the point. We don't know for sure, so I'm not gonna believe that this thing is a freaking 'Angel of the Lord' because it says so!"

"I'm pretty sure Castiel is a he, Dean. Not it." I said from behind.

Dean jumped and spun around to look at me, surprised.

I laughed at the look on his face. "Good morning to you too, sunshine." I teased, coming into the room entirely. Then, looking over, I noticed the pile of books opened on Bobby's desk. "Whatcha got, Uncle?" I asked.

Everyone perks to attention and walks over to the front of Bobby's desk.

"Well, I got stacks of lore—Biblical, pre-Biblical. Some of it's in damn cuneiform. It all says an angel can snatch a soul from the pit." Bobby replied in his usual way.

"What else?" Dean asked.

"What else what?" I asked him.

"What else could do it?" He rephrased.

"What? Airlift your ass out of the hot box? As far as I can tell, nothing." Bobby replied.

"Dean, this is good news." Sam insists.

"How?"

"Because for one, this isn't just another round of demon crap," Sam said.

"Sam's right." I agreed. "Maybe this time you were saved by one of the good guys," I suggested.

"Okay. Say it's true. Say there are angels. Then what? There's a God?"

"At this point," Bobby pointed out. "Vegas' money's on yeah."

"That's what's most likely," I added cognitively. "I mean, what are Heaven and angels without God? If I remember anything from Sunday School, it's that the angels served God, one-hundred-per cent. Practically helpless without him." I remembered.

Dean still seemed sceptical.

"Dean, I know you're not all choirboy about this stuff, but this is becoming less and less about faith and more and more about proof," Sam said.

"Proof?"

"Yeah."

"Proof that there's a God out there that gives a crap about me? I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it." Dean snorts.

I look at him carefully. "Why not?"

"Because, why me?" The boys insisted earnestly. "—If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?"

The sudden shred of vulnerability in his voice put me off a beat. "Because it's like Castiel said—" I tried to put in, but Dean cut me off.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, 'God has plans for me' and blah blah blah," Dean muttered. "I mean sure, I've saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and the ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy."

"Because it's like Castiel said." I insisted more firmly so that Dean would at least look over and listen to me. "God has plans for you. And if he picked you, then you must be the only one who can do what needs doing, whatever that may be. You must be special somehow."

"Well, no offence to the big guy, but that creeps me out. I mean, I don't like getting singled out at a birthday party, much less by, by God."

"Okay, well, too bad, Dean," Sam said, rather sharply. "Because I think he wants you to strap on your party hat."

Dean was silent for a moment, then just shook his head. "Fine." He said. "What do we know about angels?" Dean turned to ask Bobby.

Bobby picks up a pile of fat and heavy looking books from the centre of his desk and puts them on end, in front of Dean. "Start reading." He says, as-a-matter-of-factly.

Dean stares at the pile of books like a cow just crapped on his shoes. Then he looks to Sam and points at him. "You're gonna be getting me some pie." He says, grabbing a book from the top of the pile.

"Oh, can I come?" I ask.

Sam and Dean turn to look at me. "Why?" Sam asks.

"Because. I need to go grab new clothes up in town." I told him. "No way am I wearing the same stuff six days in a row."

Both boys looked me up and down as if realising for the first time that I was still wearing the same trainers, black pants, white cami and pink hoodie that I had been wearing the day I met Dean.

"Okay." Sam shrugged. "Let's head out."

Sam retook the Impala today. And by the time we were turning into the nearest gas station, a bold mix of thick blue and white lines with yellow block print, he was already on the phone with Dean.

"Yes, Dean, I'll get the chips," Sam told his brother as if he were talking to his mom. "Dude, when have I ever forgotten the pie?" he asks. I chuckle at the exchange. "Exactly," Sam said, then hung up.

He gets out of the car. I shift over into the driver's seat. The keys are still in the ignition, and Sam starts heading for the station.

"Hey, Sam!" I called, as he was heading in the door to the gas station store.

"Yeah?" he asks, turning to look at me.

"You can handle the food order, right?" I asked, with a teasing smile.

Sam laughed. "Yes mom!" he called over his shoulder, heading into building to get himself some pie.

I laughed back, even though he may not have heard me, then restarted the car. After that, it was smooth sailing through town. Cruising in an antique vehicle exiting off Highway 42 was like—well, first of all, I have to say Dean's car drives like a dream. Sure, the engines created before sound mufflers invented, but the sound didn't affect smoothness at all, and I have to say I was rather impressed. But more than that, driving a 1967 Chevy Impala through the centre of town was like…passing through a tunnel, a portal, maybe—some boundary like the wall between East and West Berlin in the '80s. I could see the shift in the air, as if the sky suddenly filled with smoke or dust and no one cared, driving past the skeevy motels and abandoned street-side pharmacies. Looking anywhere besides the road ahead would show nothing but low-income workers, clueless travellers and homeless penny pushers at every crossing.

Out Colonial Drive, the road dominated by pick-up trucks-looking around their hulking steel frames was a constant struggle; I had to find that rusted old sign that said Green Oaks Drive. It came up so suddenly I nearly missed it, but once the few hundred feet of asphalt gave way to a washed-out dirt road, I knew I was in the right ballpark, which was a shame because they'd already built a small community further down. Houses which were also left the same time as their shared driveway, now home to junkies and squatters and other struggling folks.

The road was a dead end, the dust-painted houses and pine-wood skeletons cast shadows over me, telling me to turn back—I refused. Staring out at the empty dirt road, the reflective heat distorting the image of what I knew was there-a half-built strip mall wavering in the bright distance. There had once been a sign or each of its four storefronts, but as I approached, I could see the busted and sun-bleached neon would never shine again. This single-story building had never passed its prime, it was hardly even born, but it found a way to die all the same. Strips of cracked paint peeled away from the flat roof and solid walls, revealing bare cinder-block and unabashed iron cords. The windows were either stained with dust, broken, or poorly boarded up by half-assed authorities trying to keep out the 'unsavoury people' that would rest their heads here at night.

As soon as the car stopped, I immediately registered a smell that could only tell me one thing—no one had lived here in a long time. Anyone who had lived here previously was not alive anymore. Walking around the back of the building, I find four locked steel doors, each corresponding with the four individual storefronts I saw on the other side. These aren't the ones hanging rusted and chipped with chains that only pretended to be secure. These were shiny and relatively new—there are no words to describe how glad I was that I had taken the Winchester's Impala to get here. That hunting arsenal they kept in the trunk was bound to have metal cutters buried somewhere.

It did, and I found a mini-flashlight, too.

Even so, the metal frame of the third door was thick with the crust or something warped with age. So, it took a bit more elbow grease to push it inward just a crack. I ended up having to kick it the rest of the way in, which was rather exhilarating. The open door gave me sufficient light to examine my surroundings, though the air was warm both inside and out, replacing stale with fresh was a welcome relief. This place will office remember, judging by the labyrinth of metal shelves swallowing the back of the building I'd say this was the storage room for all the products sold. The papers on the floor are all either blank, lined, or some faded colour.

An empty room was nothing new to me, and neither was silence, but the sound of my every breath, every shuffling footstep, echoed in my ears—a sensation I haven't felt in a long, long time. Finding the empty side wall on the west side of the room, the light from the door glimmered against the glue stains on the concrete floor. Walking forward, I found the only evidence that anyone ever left behind in this room since the 70's—a stack of cardboard boxes hiding a jagged, semi-circular, thigh-high hole in the wall. The acronym A.M. was still spray-painted there in an army-green colour that almost blended into the shadows of the room, the dust coating every surface of this place. After so long, it felt as if I hardly recognised the 'handwriting' behind the spray paint.

Ducking down, the flashlight I slipped from my pocket reveals yet another cardboard box, but this one sealed correctly, and more significant, with the same initials scribbled there in Sharpie—A.M. I remember living here after…life happened, and whatnot. I made a few trips in between months, but I always came back to this place. I found it after I'd first left everything behind. I tried going back home, finishing school or whatever, but nothing stuck. That is until I decided that my life needed to be tossed upside down yet again. I still remember the day—

Under my kitchen sink where I kept the garbage and recycling, I pulled out a two-foot by a two-foot cardboard box and headed to my bedroom. Taking my clothes from my closet, I folded them as neatly and as quickly as possible, stashing them all in the box. I also packed a few of the more precious things I owned. A picture of me, Mum and Da, then another of me, Mum, and my little brother Jamie…along with the camera my uncle (not Bobby, one my blood-related ones) got me for my birthday when I was fourteen.

Once everything was packed and sealed with duct tape, I changed into my last remaining set of clothes in the closet and took the box out to sit by the doorway. Before I left, I thought of something; also, from the recycling under my sink, I pulled out a paper bag and a large roll of cash. I put the money on the counter, then checked the cupboard. After putting the money and my remaining laundry in the paper bag, I stacked that on top of my cardboard box and headed out the door. Carrying all my stuff down the steps, out the building, I loaded it all into the old Subaru. He was in the driver's seat, waiting for me.

"You ready to go, babe?" He asked with his signature smile, his face pale and his pupils the size of flying saucers.

"As I'll ever be," I admitted with a nervous smile, noticing the way his fingers twitched on the wheel, his grip whiter than snow. "Are you sure you don't want me to drive?" I asked, vaguely with a concerned furrow across my brow.

He shakes his head and laughs, his uncontrollable shock of black hair falling in his sea green eyes. "Nah, don't worry 'bout it, babe. I've got it all handled here, tell me where you wanna go, and the road is ours." He threw a reckless smile at me and jerked to the gas pedal. I yelped, and eight hours later we'd found a suitable motel room far, far away from Columbia, Missouri.

All that time, gone in an instant, and yet I kept coming back to this place. Barely a speck of dust on any map, and however it was right here, in this abandoned strip mall, that I hit my lowest point and came back up again. This was my Crucible, now the vault that protected everything I've ever held dear in my life. Any little piece I could salvage and categorise, I've hidden in here. This box, the one I pulled from beneath my mother's kitchen sink, has been filled with cash, emptied of clothes and then refilled of both many times before, but some things remain the same. I hope it is the only box I will need to recover, this place has been my haven for so many years I don't want to leave it bare and empty again, not so soon. There are far too many secrets in here to reveal in just one trip.