The fading sun is beating down on the '67 Chevy Impala, warming the interior uncomfortable for its occupants. Highway to Hell is blaring in the speakers for the umpteenth time today on this love of a Sunday in mid-July. Of course, the irony of the soundtrack pissed off all of the Christians driving by on the way home from 6 o'clock mass. The first few honks were amusing to Sam and Dean, because each time it happen, they just made eye contact and grinned about being a proper disruption to the peace. Now, however, the irritated and offended responses were just plain…idiotic, maybe. Yeah, that was it. It was nothing but a barren wasteland all dressed up in casinos and sunburned tourists trying to "get lucky" in more ways than one, yet they worry about two godless guys in a car on Easter? And what is more, what are they even doing in Vegas anyway?
Oh Vegas. It was always a mystery as to why his brother and father always picked the places with the ridiculously extreme temperatures and either smog-ridden mountain ranges or vast and empty plains. Was it too hard just to go to some place with a nice forest, 65 degree temperature, and pretty azure sky with a mere one or two wispy clouds running around? Of course it's too hard, Sam bitterly thinks to himself. My family doesn't like normal weather, or normal hunts involving nymphs or something. No, my family likes chasing after a bunch of evil vapor trails into the teeth of inclement weather. I mean really, Dean's such a masochist. Always rambling on and on about needing a break and how this job is bullshit, and yet here he is, following our absent father's orders like he always does-
A clear and irritated "Sam Winchester likes picturing guys naked" cuts into Sam's thoughts, causing him to look over with his trademarked bitch face.
"What are you, Dean, twelve?" Sam retorts hotly, just mildly annoyed that his brother once again ruined his train of contemplation. Honestly, his brother did act like a grade-schooler with all of his pranks and little elementary remarks.
"If I'm twelve that makes you eight, bitch," responds Dean with his "I am still four years older than you so nyeh" authoritative voice. "Now do you want to shut the hell up so I can continue what I was trying to say, or do you want me to make you sound like even more of an idiot?" Sam exhales in defeat and motions with an annoyed hand to continue.
"Okay. Well, I was flipping through Dad's journal while you were living it up on that cozy little sofa last night, and..." Sam shudders as he remembers the lumpy couch he was forced to deal with while Dean got the comfy bed and the lamp and the mini-fridge. Dean, oblivious to Sam's vacant stare out of the windshield, continues with his little important rant.
"...And I found an entry that is of some particular help and interest to us."
"I'm all ears," Sam mumbles, absentmindedly massaging his sore neck and cursing crappy motels in the middle of nowhere. Or, really, just motels in general.
"Well, as I'm flipping along and minding my own business, I came about a particularly...interesting section."
"Interesting as in...?"
"Interesting as in," Dean inhales, shoulders raising as he thinks of a proper way to put this. "Interesting as in he has a detailed section on kids."
"…Of the many vibes I had from that man, pedophilic was never one of them," Sam responds incredulously with his mouth slackened.
"That's because he isn't, you dick. It's a special children's section!"
"Oh my God," Sam yelps, cringing playfully into a ball by his door. "No wonder I have nightmares!" Dean pulls to a stop at the red light before turning his head and staring at a hysterically laughing Sam with agitation. It took about two more stoplights and three high-intensity death glares before Sam finally reigned in his amusement, giving Dean the signal to continue.
"These kids have psychic abilities that Dad has marked have mega psychic ability. A lot of them go as far as to be exceptional in the area of seeing ghosts, like the ones that not everyone, including us, can see."
"Like reapers?"
"…Doesn't say. But he has all of these kids tagged, and only one is highlighted, starred, and all the way at the top of the list." Dean slowly increases the push on the gas pedal, glancing at the clock and the rearview mirror. "Her name is Magnolia Fride; she's fourteen, and our reason for being in this wasted hellhole of a city."
"And we have to find all of these psychic kids because they can see a few extra spooks that we can't?"
"Yep. Dad doesn't say why, but there it is, in Dad's handwriting." Dean pulls a hand off of the steering wheel and motions to the journal on the dash. "You're welcome to look through it, Mr. Psycho Pervert." A small silence passes over the car as the tape switches to the next track and the role of giving death glares is reversed. The purr of the Impala's roaring engine lulls along with the beat of the song, causing Dean to drum his index fingers on the steering wheel. After a moment of sitting in stagnation, Sam reaches for the dash to grab the journal.
"You're a psycho pervert," he mimics in a childish voice to himself.
Southridge Legacy was quiet, like it usually was at this time. There was no wind, no rustle from any nonexistent passing insects. A far off streetlight buzzes dimly, flickering on and off in response to the fact that the bulb hasn't been changed in over two years. If anything, this eerie quiet was taken from most people as a standoffish rejection meant to say "You're not like us so get the hell out." Honestly, I'll be the first person to admit that this place is not the one that will send you a welcoming committee with chocolate fudge brownies decorated with colored sprinkles when you first move in. However, it's not the snobby place it's made out to be, either; Southridge is a highly misunderstood place that just doesn't have the time or emotional capacity to deal with anything other than their own screwed up little problems.
For instance, right down the street is Mrs. Richards. She was a nice, Bible-abiding woman when she moved here, handing out cookies to the distraught kids and casting reassuring glances to their shifty parents. Karen Richards only lasted a month before she claimed that her daughter died of demonic possession, a belief that then turned Karen Richards into a heroin addict to cope with her intense spiritual pain. As if this wasn't enough, her husband, Benjamin, was going to leave her and then put in for divorce later. Well, that was the plan, anyway. The day of his expected departure, he was found hanged on the stairwell. No speculation was put on the junkie wife of Benjamin Richards, but that could have been because she managed to overdose just as he was leaving. There wasn't a funeral for either parties, or any mourners really. I actually doubt anyone but myself and my mother knew that they died.
Then, we have Bill and Loretta Smithson, a lovely Irish couple that didn't have a drink/abuse problem until Bill made wild accusations that Loretta was threatening to bash his brains in with their nonexistent son's baseball bat. Poor girl was hospitalized after a beating she received from her drunken husband, who told the authorities in a slurred statement that it was merely "self-defense." Then she started taking to the bottle of Jack, and now my mother and I frequently hear bottles of Budweiser smashing against the cabinets accompanied with a chorus of bloodied screams. When it first started, my mother and I froze while eating our soggy macaroni and cheese, our water-stained forks hovering in mid-air. I refused to look up and acknowledge what I was hearing, and from what I could tell thanks to my peripheral vision was that she was doing the same. Maybe if we didn't look up, it would just go away in a minute, and our ears would resume picking up Estelle Getty insulting Betty White on a Golden Girls rerun. It didn't go away though, and that's when my mother moved toward the phone to make a call she was saving for an occasion like this. She probably would have gone through with it too, if only she didn't get the biggest electric shock of her life just as she touched the phone. While she sucked her fingers and retrieved the ice, we heard the Smithsons pick up loudness in their actions. I guess it was at that point we decided just to not interfere any more.
As for my family…my mom stays pretty normal. Or, as normal as a grieving may-be widow is. We moved in as a loving family, of course. We didn't come to Las Vegas for a "fresh start," as those people floundering for some sort of salvation would call it. Dad had to work here, and Southridge just seemed like the perfect place in terms of school and placement for my dad's work. You know how it is, it has to be accommodating to both the kid and to the father who was the main provider. Not that we didn't enjoy my father's company, or we disliked or resented him in any way. Stephen Fride was one of the nicest, most gentlemanly people I ever knew, and I'm proud to say that he was once my father. Well, for all my mother and I know, he still is my father. But we don't know, and that's the whole point of staying in one place, and my mother getting a job and making sure that she stays in the house less often than Stephen did.
As long as she leaves for work every day and works several double shifts at the diner, it's usually not too hard for the household to keep functioning properly, even without that second set of hands. The only time we encountered a small bump in the road was that one time that she stayed home sick, and ever since then I've never let her near any of our knives. I, on the other hand, seem to have developed some sort of immunity to it. Of course, I still leave for at least nine hours. Most of the time, I go to the library to get ahead on school, and when I want to kill a tree I go to the park for a little while. It usually works until I run out of schoolwork, then I try to scrounge up money for a movie or ice cream or something. Mom always feels bad about leaving me alone for a long time and for not birthing me a sibling, but I always just smile and say it's alright, because it is. If there is one decent thing this place has taught me, it's to never rely on anyone, and never to get used, long for, or to even enjoy another person's companionship.
In one moment, I am waiting at the stop sign of Kelso Blvd and Jones at eight o'clock PM, where a classy black car pulls in front of me, and the passenger door opens to invite me in.
In another moment, I am back on the main street of Southridge Legacy. It's 6:45 PM, and I stare expectantly at the abandoned road just beyond. No one ever goes on that road, not even just wandering tourists. It's not just because we have a more glamorous neighborhood with no known celebrities, or that we're not near the Strip. No one ever comes to Southridge Legacy, unless they want to buy, and not many people want to do even that.
Regardless, Mom always begs me to never leave this main road of Clayrock, and I tell her I won't. I think she know that I disobey too, but if something does happen…I guess she'd rather think that I'm safe and sound in our crazy, heroin-addicted subdivision, and what she doesn't know won't cause her any distress as she buses tables. So at eight o'clock PM, I will go to the street section of Kelso Blvd and Jones, waiting for a sleek black car. She won't be home until four AM anyway.
~BREAK.~
I take a leisurely pace back to the house, waving on queue to all of the neighbors that peek at me with astounded expression through their black curtains. A few wave back, others snap their blinds closed with weakly angry expression. People here either loved me for being strong or hated me for not being weak. Normally it bothered me, and even saddened me a bit, but I decided at 6:45 PM that this was no longer "normally." It was 7:20 PM, and I still needed to formulate a plan as I stepped through the blue door of my faded peach-colored house.
See, these little visions that I have...well, I have confidence that you've guessed that they come true 100% of the time. I suppose that you could also infer that these visions pertain strictly to my neighbors and their ineluctable demises, not to my one-in-a-lifetime chance to get out of Southridge in a car of unknown origin. Perhaps, if I had the sweet time, I would have taken a moment to analyze just what I was doing, and the meaning of it all. However, when little yet crucial facts start jumping up at you like an ill-timed pop-up video, you do what you must with the time you're given.
I walk in and stomp my feet on the little mat by the front door, calmly inspect my surrounds, and then hurriedly bound up the creaky wooden stairs. The dull thunking sounds of rubber soles on wood mingle with the tick-tick-tick-tock-tock-tocks of the orange sunflower kitchen clock. Flicks of light switches and their humming bulbs keep pace with how fast the plans are forming in correspondence with the facts in my head, hurrying me along my merry way. In a split minute decision, I change into black skinny jeans, a black tank, a black jacket, and silver aviators as I attempt the feat of pulling on my combat boots without losing my cool. My heart starts to race as I slip my cell phone and iPod into my back pocket while simultaneously packing my black gym bag with various essentials. A violent urge to get the hell out of Dodge overcame me, and as I flung seemingly random items into the bag, my body was suddenly thrown into this race against time- as if to tell me that if I didn't escape soon, I'd be trapped.
One vision I was thrown into some sort of pulse-racing action-adventure.
As the last of my incidentals were hurled in, I glanced at the alarm clock on my bureau- 7:39. Just as the chargers make it into my side pocket, I grab my Sharpie and scribble down a note on a scrap piece of paper, then storm out of the door with the bag on my shoulder. The doors began to bang in fury, as the lights flickered in more pronounced patterns. Footsteps appeared warningly behind me as I bounded out of the threshold and into an even bigger nightmare.
Do you know that eerie calm before the storm you always read about in 1800s swashbuckling adventures, or in movies about the perfect hurricane hitting the tiny boat in the middle of the sea? How the inclement weather seems to start in slow motion, before gaining real time, before hitting the speed of fast-forward?
Everything was still. None of the lamps were buzzing, the street was quiet. Husbands weren't beating their wives with scared and confused tears running down their faces, and their kids weren't shrieking to the top of the lungs in terror from under their little beds. Silence wasn't that bad ninety-four minutes ago, and that terrified me, while the sudden presence of a breeze nearly gave me a heart attack. This place was under an omnipresent shade of darkness, insusceptible to any form of earthly weather, but now there was a breeze picking up intensity. Meager rain drops that surfed along the current became a self-reliant torrential rain that was clawing down front the obsidian sky in vicious sheets. Overwhelming senses of fright and nerves bore down on me in a wave as I tore down the street in a panic. Every house I passed seemed to glare at me and lean in closer, trying to trap me, to catch me with the prickly fingers of their gardens. Lactic acid in my legs kept building and my breath became shorter and shorter, and somewhere in my chest I became aware that I would collapse before this was all over.
The downpour sloshed my bangs in front of my eyes, hindering my vision as I tried to check my watch: 7:55. Five more minutes to go, and I had at least three more blocks until the main road. I tried to push myself harder, but I still managed to slow with each passing step in spite of myself. As I slowed, movement became harder, and I was suffocating and lightheaded. Weights increasing latched on to my limbs, increasing in pounds by each passing second. With my joints aching beyond the ability to keep fighting, I fell to my knees in exhaustion, and suddenly the scenery changed- and I was not smack in the middle of the dry-as-a-bone cross street of Kelso Blvd and Jones.