Every time Dean turned the corner, he felt like Cas moved another thousand feet from him. Cas wasn't even running; it was as if he simply appeared all the way down the street, and he would teleport to another area. Dean's determination was unwavering, though. He ran down the streets, flew across corners, and sprinted down alleyways; he wasn't going to stop until Cas was in his arms. At the end of another alley, Cas finally stopped moving around, and looked at Dean with his deep, sapphire eyes.
"Cas," said Dean, bending over with his hands on his knees to try and catch his breath. "Please stop running. Let's just go home, okay? Let's work things out. I just wanna…"
Cas stepped toward him, shaking his head with disappointment. Dean looked up at him, and his eyes reflected the pain this caused. Cas continued to walk, without even saying a word.
"Cas," said Dean, turning around, trying to clutch his hand. "Please don't go."
Cas shied his hand away, continuing out of the alleyway, keeping his silent demeanor about him. He turned the corner, and Dean fell to his knees, hanging his head in despair.
He failed; it was over.
As his hopes of having his beloved back cracked and shattered his heart, so did the town around him. It looked as if the paint on the sides of the buildings around him were peeling and ascending into the sky. As they soared away, the ground below him peeled away, turning into a metal walkway, resembling a fence-like pattern. Through the holes in the fence pattern, he could see that it was the only thing keeping him above a bottomless pit. The pale, grey light around him faded into complete darkness. The only "light" he could see was the orange glow on the side of the buildings that replaced the dull paint.
When Dean finally looked up, his eyes widened and his pupils dilated as he noticed the world change around him. He slowly rose to his feet, examining the area as he moved forward.
"Where the hell…" he said, his thought trailing off as he continued down the walkway.
With each step he took, the metal shook and made rickety sounds that accelerated Dean's heartbeat. He took a deep breath, starting to walk faster as he made his way around this strange new place. It was hard to see anything ahead of him, though, so he kept a steady, cautious pace so he could be on guard.
He had no idea where he was headed.
This world appeared to be a maze of alleyways, and every time Dean turned the corner, he felt there were at least five more paths that he could take. After going down several other pathways, he let out a deep sigh, and hung his head back.
"I just want a way out," said Dean.
When he returned his head to an upright position, he noticed a sign to his left. It was an "Exit" sign, with an arrow pointing to the left. Dean squinted at the sign, moving slowly toward the direction it was indicating. However, as he approached the sign, it became less visible because the darkness around him became intensified. He stopped in his tracks, and started taking a few steps back. It happened just as he predicted; light returned to his vision as he moved away from the sign.
"I need a flashlight or something," he said.
"A flashlight, you say?" said a male, sinister voice.
He turned around quickly when the voice sounded against his ears, but there was no one around. He took some steps forward, looking down the path to his left. No one was there, and he continued his steady maneuver forward.
"Who's there?" Dean asked.
The man snickered. Dean continued looking around for the source.
"I have one of those doo-hickeys that you're talking about," he said. "But you need to come and take it from me. It's…making my eyes feel…"
The snickering became higher pitched. Dean didn't pay much attention to the insanity this man was portraying, and tried to follow the laughing. As he followed the sound, he heard a latch from what sounded like a door closing, and he looked to the direction of this sound. Seeing a door at the end of this path, he jogged to the end, opening the door and entering without trying to confirm if the man even went down that path.
The room he wound up in made Dean want to turn around and leave just as fast as he came in. The only source of light in the room was a dim lantern above a rotting, emaciated corpse, which was lying on a bed with a metal frame. Its hands were folded against its chest, and in those hands was the item Dean was looking for.
He approached the body and noticed something peculiar about it; there were no eyes. The sockets where they should have been were empty, and the skin around the sockets looked scorched.
Trying not to let it terrify him, Dean carefully, as if it would spring to life after touching the flashlight, slid it out of its grasp, letting out a sigh of relief after he had it tightly in his hands.
"Thanks, fugly," he said, starting to walk out of the room.
As he made his way to the door, Dean heard something slide and then thump against the ground, as if something fell off of something else. He turned around to make sure he wasn't becoming as insane as the things he was seeing.
The body was now on the floor; it was face down and its limbs were contorted in uncomfortable-looking positions.
Dean's heart was pounding a mile a minute. He breathed heavily and quickly, trying to convince himself not to go near the corpse. Instead, he backed away slowly, keeping an eye on it. Once his back touched the door, he reached behind him for the doorknob, twisted it, and bolted out of the room before something else could happen.
After closing the door and trying to catch his breath, Dean started walking down the path again toward the exit sign, turning on his flashlight to light the way as the darkness grew stronger. He shined it on the metal walkway below him, making sure he was still walking on solid ground.
"With my luck," he whispered. "The ground will just cave in."
The path was linear from here. There didn't appear to be any turns or alternate alleyways to go down. Dean would shine his light on the walls for anything out of the ordinary, or rather, something that stuck out in this demented world. He was already on edge because of the corpse; he didn't need another one getting the jump on him.
He continued for almost five minutes, and nothing seemed to be different. It was the same, rusty-looking walls with the ominous orange glow on the bottoms. Nothing looked different.
"Maybe this isn't—" he said, turning around.
Once he faced the opposite direction, he was face to face with the same dingy walls that were on either side of him. He backed away, and his eyebrows creased in confusion.
"I uh…" he said with a shaky voice. "Guess I'm not going that way."
He continued on the only path ahead of him. He started to walk faster, since he only expected there to be one way to go. To his surprise, though, he ended up by another alleyway, which he turned down to find a door at the end of the way. Knowing there was nowhere else to go, he opened the door and slipped into the room.
This was a bad idea; two of those corpses, similar to the one he saw in the other room, were hanging off the ceiling in this brightly lit room.
There was door directly on the opposite side of this room. Trying not to disturb the bodies, Dean walked slowly around them, being careful as to not brush them in the slightest. He kept his eyes on them, now walking backwards as he inched closer and closer to the other door. Feeling he was safe, he turned around and turned the knob on the door.
It was stuck; he heard the same thump on the ground behind him, only louder.
Horrified at what he might see, he turned slowly to see where the thump came from. One of the bodies was slumped on the ground, now. The other was gently swaying side to side.
Dean struggled with the doorknob some more, pulling and pushing on the door in his attempt to escape. He rammed his whole body's weight against the door, but nothing was breaking this door down. He stopped to take some breaths before he started shoving his foot against it with relentless force.
There was another thump from behind him.
He turned around and saw the other body face-down on the ground. Dean froze. His shock prevented him from thinking at all. His fear consumed him, and the only thing running through his mind was, I'm not gonna make it.
He was able to shake his fear enough to think of a plan. Without trying to disturb the moving dead even more, he tiptoed to the door he came from, and once he was close enough, he twisted the knob and tried to open the door. It was locked.
The bodies started moving again.
They used their legs to stand themselves up, with their torsos still slumped over. They turned toward Dean, and as they walked toward him, their upper bodies slowly rose to a full-standing position.
Dean let his instincts take over, as he used the back end of the flashlight to strike one of their faces. It bent backwards, but then sprung right back to its regular position, giving no indication of being wounded. Dean struck it again, not knowing what else to do. It bent back again, and the one he wasn't attacking gripped his arm tight. To Dean's disadvantage, it was the arm that was holding his only weapon.
The other corpse approached Dean, raising its hand to attack Dean. However, Dean defended himself my striking the corpse's face with his fist, giving him enough time to throw his head back and smack the other corpse's head with the back of Dean's. This was enough to free him from its grasp, giving him an opening to sprint to the door that would lead him further in the journey through this nightmare.
With his momentum building, he bolted to the door and used his shoulder against it, falling when the force bounced back and sent him to the floor. Even though this caused a lot of pain, he forced himself to get up quickly. He gripped his throbbing shoulder and turned around, watching as the corpses stepped closer to him. He backed up against the door, knowing he couldn't slip by either of them.
He didn't know what to do anymore.
The faintest idea shone through his confusion. He wasn't sure if it would work, but he knew that it was worth a shot. He shone the flashlight into their eyes, and they immediately froze. Their bodies shattered into tiny particles of dust, and rested in a pile where they once stood.
Dean sunk against the door, leaning back against it as he took a rest. He hung his head with fatigue, resting his right arm on his knee. His breath was heavy, and a single tear dripped off of his cheek.
"I can't give up," he said, hoarsely. "I know I can't, but I wish I could."
He shook his head vigorously. He then gave his face a few pants with each hand, and jumped back up on his feet. Wiping his tears away, he turned to the door and looked at it with a hardened stare.
"Man up, Dean," he said. "Feeling sorry for yourself won't do shit in this world."
He shoved his foot against the door with a great deal of force, and it swung open. His expression brightened after he succeeded. He moved through the door, and ended up in a dimly lit room full of the corpses he just saw. All of them were attached to the walls with their arms folded against their chests. From what Dean could see, there were about ten lined along the walls.
The door slammed behind him. The sight ahead of him, though, scared him more than the loud noise behind him.
"Son of a bitch," he said, falling to his knees.
He was too tired to fight all of them. He was too tired to throw his whole body against another locked door. He was too tired to keep searching through this darkened world to look for something that simply couldn't be found. He was too tired to pick himself up and give it another go, and let his determination fuel him up yet again.
Even though his journey had just started, he was simply tired.
The bodies, one by one, broke off of the wall and fell to the ground. Dean watched as each one of them fell down, and with each thump on the ground, the pit in his stomach sunk deeper and deeper.
They started moving toward him, and he lowered his head, accepting what was going to happen.
"Dean," said a woman's voice. "Dean you have to get up."
His head snapped back up. His eyes squinted as he tried to think of whose voice it was. Who could have been talking to him in this hellhole?
"Dean, please," she said again. "You have to get up. Please."
The voice was enough to pump him back up, letting curiosity be the energy running through his veins. Once he stood up, the room became brighter, and the emerging light blew that nightmare to dust, making all the creatures dissipate into the air. As the light filled the world, it quelled Dean's fear, and filled him up with the determination he had when he came to Silent Hill.
He was in a building of some sort. The walls were grey. There was a door in front of him, and two windows on either side of him were the only sources of light in the room. It was the foggy, grey light that Silent Hill provided on the streets, but it was still more than what the nightmare world offered him.
"Dean!" he heard, which was more like a shriek.
It was the same voice he heard in the dark world, and he realized who it was when he was in the real world.
"Jess," he said, charging to the door.
He rammed against the door and burst into the room, where Jessica was sitting in a wooden chair with her hands tied behind the back.
"What happened?" he asked, as he went behind the chair and started untying the knots.
"Well I was looking for you," she began. "And I ran into some guy and…well, I can give the details later, but he's coming back, some we need to get out of here."
Dean finished untying the knot, and right as Jess stood up out of her chair, the door Dean came through swung open, and a tall man with black hair, and a white suit with a black rose in his breast pocket stood in front of them. He gripped his pistol with a white-gloved hand, and he grinned, staring them down with his iceberg colored eyes.
"Sit back down, my love," he said.
