One Shot. More (Dean) angst added to A Very Supernatural Christmas. (Torture Scene)
Edward and Madge Carrigan's Kitchen
"Dean? You okay?" Sam frantically pulls at his bonded wrists. For the past half hour he's twisted and yanked at the rope bindings to no avail. His wrists are now rubbed raw, missing several layers of skin and bleeding.
His older brother is tied to a chair in a similar fashion. At least he believes so. His back is facing Dean. He knows he's there because he can hear his heavy breathing.
After spending countless nights sleeping in the same motel room, he can identify Dean is in a deep sleep. When yelling Dean's name didn't do the trick, he knows from experience Dean is either hung over, crashing from days without sleep, or injured. From the way Mr. Carrigan slammed Dean into the basement wall, he's going with injured.
"Come on, man, wake up! Dean!" Sam sighs in exasperation. He knows those sick bastards will be back any minute.
As if on cue, the overly joyed couple enters the kitchen behind him. "Oh, and here we thought you two lazybones were going to sleep right through the good stuff," Madge singsongs. She eyes up Dean who still has his head lowered, eyes closed. "One lazy bone. This little fella doesn't seem to want to wake up, dear."
She not so gently kicks his shin in hopes of a response. When she doesn't receive one, she frowns, "Oh Fiddlesticks! I really wanted both of them awake."
Edward steps around Dean, pipe extending from his mouth. He slaps Dean roughly across the cheek, eliciting a slight grown in response.
"Leave him alone!" Sam angrily shouts, tugging at the ropes once again. His neck is turned, craning in a futile attempt to see his sibling. Dean's head tips back as he awakes, Sam now realizing just how close he is when his head rests on his upper back. "Dean? You alright?"
"Mmmmmmm," is Dean's response as his bruised eyes slowly begin to open. His vision is slightly blurred. He lifts his head up weakly and shakes it back and forth in an attempt to clear his focus and instantly regrets it when a pain explodes in his head. Another low moan escapes his throat as his head falls back onto Sam. "Uhhhhh my head... what happened?"
"Oh goodie gumdrops!" Madge squeals with delight. "It's so nice of you to join us. Why I was starting to worry you wouldn't wake up in time," she coos, grinning down at him with a big cheesy smile.
Dean blinks a couple times, his vision clearing enough for him to make out her features. "Who are you?" He squints his eyes in confusion, "Why does it feel like I was hit by a monster truck?" He lifts his head off Sam and very slowly this time, looks down at one of his arms. "Why am I tied down?"
Edward leans into Dean's line of sight. "I think that knock on your head tuckered you out young lad," he says thoughtfully. "Busted your nose a good one, too." His face morphs into a decayed, much older version of his current self then flashes instantly back. "That's what happens when you go sticking your nose where it don't belong."
So that would explain why his face hurts so bad. Dean just now feels the moisture of blood below both his nostrils. He licks his upper lip, tasting the coppery fluid, then trails his tongue to his lower lip and chin. He can feel the texture of dried caked blood on his chin and neck. It makes his skin feel tight on his neck when he swallows.
The knot the size of a baseball makes itself known just beyond his hairline. "I'm guessing you are the bad guys?" Dean finally says, with less sarcasm than usual.
"You're hunters, is what you are." Edward responds, heading over to the kitchen table.
"And you're Pagan Gods," Sam adds, hostility in his voice.
Dean feels dizzy and sick to his stomach. He knows he has a concussion and a nasty one at that. He doesn't remember how he got here at the moment. The why he's here is apparent. He closes his eyes to ward off the kitchen's bright lighting. "My head is pounding. Can we call it even and go our separate ways?"
Edward picks up a long bladed curved knife and laughs, holding it up in the air. "What, so you can bring back more hunters and kill us? Ha ha ha...I don't think so!"
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you went snacking on humans," Sam says, looking over at the knife in Edward's hand he swallows hard, his eyes widening in fear.
"Oh, we used to take over a hundred tributes a year," Madge explains, "now what do we take? Two? Three?" She unfolds a napkin and places it in Dean's lap. He sluggishly looks at her, pupils uneven, before lowering his head and closing his eyes again.
She paces over to Sam and does the same, causing him to flinch when she reaches from behind him. "What the hell is this for?" He asks, looking at the cloth napkin then up to her, not really wanting to know.
"Hardy boys here make five," Edward chimes in.
"Now that's not so bad, is it?" Madge asks as she walks over to her husband's side.
"Well I guess that makes you two the Cunninghams," Dean says in a low hoarse voice.
"You, mister, better show us some respect," Edwards says to Dean.
"Or what? You'll eat us?" Sam shouts sarcastically. He tries to draw the attention to himself. Dean's already hurt and doesn't need this. Whatever "this" is. He doesn't have a clue what Mr. And Mrs. God do to their victims before the big meal.
Dean has been hurt so many times since his deal with the crossroads demon. Sam has had to watch his back with Dean's reckless behavior. But this time, this time Dean didn't run into the situation guns blazing. Dean wanted to have a Christmas with him. His last Christmas and Sam denied him that out of his personal feelings.
Sam silently vows to give Dean his Christmas. First, he would have to get him alone. Dean was the one with the knife. The key to their freedom. In Dean's condition, he couldn't afford to be hurt anymore. More injury would surely cause him to pass out again. If there was a way out of these ropes he would have got out by now. They were tight and professionally tied.
"Not so fast," Edward grins. "There's rituals to be followed."
Rituals? Oh fuck we are in trouble, big big big trouble, Sam thinks.
"Oh we're sticklers for rituals," Madge says enthusiastically, grabbing a couple wreaths from under the table. She quickly places the meadowsweet wreaths around each Winchester's neck. "Oh don't they just look darling?"
"Good enough to eat," Edward sucks his teeth in a creepy manner. "Alighty roo, step number two," he picks up a bowl and heads over to Sam. Sam eyes up the blade and the bowl, "What do you think you are doing!"
He holds the bowl under Sam's arm and grins wickedly before easing the blade down.
Sam tenses for the pain to come. His breath hitches.
Dean hears Sam's breathing stop. He can practically feel how tense Sam is. He lifts his head up. "Sammy?"
The knife slices through Sam's arm easily, causing him to tip his head back and cry out it pain.
"Leave him alone you son of a bitch!" Dean spits with fueled anger. He ignores his pains and begins frantically tugging on his binds.
"You hear how they talk to us?" Edward says. "Listen here, back in the day we were worshiped by millions!"
"Times have changed you sick bastard," Dean shouts with fury.
"Dean stop," Sam gasps.
"Tell me about it," Edward quips. "All of the sudden this Jesus character is the hot new thing in town. All of the sudden our altars are being burned down and we're being hunted down like common monsters!"
"He's right," Madge adds taking the bowl and knife from her spouse. "For two millennia we got jobs. We got mortgages. We uh... what was that word, dear?"
Edward responds, "We assimilated".
"We assimilated. Why, we play bridge on Tuesdays and Fridays. We're just like everybody else," Madge waves the knife in her hand around like a cookie cutter or spatula.
"You're not blendin' in as smooth as you think, lady," Dean growls.
"Now this may pinch a bit," she ignores him, bringing the blade down on his exposed arm. She drags the blade much deeper than Edward did to Sam, all the way across the length of his arm. He hisses in agony and screams out with clinched teeth. Blood begins to instantly pool from the wound. Some filling the intended target, the bowl. Some spirting out across Dean's lap, absorbing into the cloth napkin.
"You bitch!"
"Oh my goodness. Somebody owes a nickel to the swear jar," she says. She holds the blade up, taunting him. "Oh, you know what I say when I feel like swearing? Fudge."
Dean looks at her with zoning vision. "I'll try and remember that!"
"You boys have no idea how lucky you are. There was a time when kids would come from miles around... just to be sitting where you are," Edward says, now holding a pair of strong multi purpose pliers.
"What do you think you are doing with those?" Sam hisses. When Edward makes a grab for his hand, Sam by reflex clenches his fingers into a ball. "No... no... don't!"
Edward works on Sam's hand, "Give me a finger or I'll snap them all off," he warns.
"You fucking touch me again I'll fucking kill you!" Dean curses Madge who is now working his shoe off. His legs are tied to the chair by his ankles but that doesn't stop him from attempting to kick out at her. His adrenaline flow is slowly waning, however.
She eases his sock off and tosses it to the side, grinning up at him before grabbing his great toe and spreading it apart from the others. "Now hold still, we want the little piggy that stayed home to stay home, don't we?" Before he can respond she brings the sharp point of the ritual blade down into the center of the toe piercing bone, slicing through to the floor yet not scraping the plastic covered tile, rocking the blade further down side to side with precision, severing his toe off.
"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhaaaaa!" Dean looks down at her, watches her plop it in the bowl and rise.
He's going to lose it. Pass out to oblivion. Or toss his cookies.
Maybe he should pass out. He could see it earlier in Sam's eyes. Sam didn't want to have Christmas with him. He tried, he really did but he failed Sam on so many ways and levels. If Sam didn't want to spend Christmas with him, his last Christmas, practically his dying wish, maybe he should give in now.
No, he can't, he holds the bile back. Holds the darkness back. He has to, for Sam's life. Sam has to live. This isn't about him. It's all about Sam.
But it hurts so fucking bad.
Sam gives in and holds out his index finger. There's nothing he can do for Dean. There are two of them. Mrs. Sadistic Bitch is working his brother over and there is nothing he can do about it. He can't help but watch as Edward grasps his fingernail with the pliers, slowly ripping it from its home.
"Arrrgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," his head thrashes back, eyes watering, spots clouding vision. The pain is unbearable.
"Oh ho ho ho, we got a winner!" Edward holds the pliers up, intact nail in its claw, his smile a mile wide like a kid that just won the best prize in the toy crane machine.
The Carrigan's unite once again, mixing up their treasures into a much larger bowl. "What else, dear?" Madge asks as she stirs their concoction.
"Oh let me see. Blood, a fingernail, a toe..."
Dean's head jerks up. They ripped Sammy's fingernail out?
Sam forgets his pain. A toe?
"Dean?"
"Sam"
They say in unison, worry for each other evident.
"I believe that is it," Edward winks at his Madge.
Dean and Sam relax at that. No more torture. How will they kill them before eating them they both wonder? Hopefully instant death. Back to back, what a way to go. Together. It has to be together.
"Sam I..."
"Me too..."
"Oh, hog wash," Madge laughs out loud. "We both know what's next. We've been doing this for how long, dear?"
Edward grabs the pair of tongue-and-grove pliers from the table, laughing with his darling wife. "Oh, sweet Peter on a popsicle stick! You know I didn't forget. We need a tongue!"
Sam's head cranes again, watching Edward pace out of his view. "NO! PLEASE NO! I'LL DO ANYTHING! DON'T!" Desperate, he screams out, "Fucking no! Take mine! Don't do this! I beg you! You cock sucking pagan worthless piece of shit! Take mine you son of a bitch!"
"Ho ho ho," Edward imitates Santa. "Now open wide."
Dean turns his concussed head to the side. "Merry Christmas, Bro. I love you."
Edward grabs Dean's jaw forcefully. It doesn't take much to pry his mouth open.
Sam hears the steel grinding together, the flesh ripping apart, the squirts of fluids, the grunts and growls, the gargles as blood fills Dean's throat, gagging him.
"DEAN!" Sam goes wild, rocking his chair back and forth. He ends up on his side, one arm free, rope and chair arm attached. "DEAN!"
One year wasn't enough. Ten lifetimes wouldn't be enough.
When he felt a foot pinning his head to the floor, he knew time was up. "I love you too, Bro..."
The End.