Authors' Note – Without further adieu, part one of episode two. Make our dreams come true, and why not review?
Episode Two – Part One
'The Female of the Species'
x-x-x
Charleston, South Carolina
May 4th 2011
Finally, the evening that Catherine Porter had been anticipating for the last thirteen months, two weeks, four days, six hours and approximately twenty-nine minutes, had arrived. In the bathroom of the honeymoon suite in one of the swankiest hotels that the entire state had to offer, Catherine gazed down at the silver band that nestled on the ring finger of her left hand, and smiled. Finally, Catherine Porter had ensnared her fiancée in the trap of matrimonial bliss, and she had become Mrs. Robert Jackson Wyatt. The name rolled so nicely off her tongue, and had done ever since she had met Rob four years ago.
Catherine let out a sigh of utter contentment that caused her entire body to shudder, and returned her attention to the mirror. She combed her fingers through to the ends of her auburn waves and pouted, deciding that she could perhaps use a third coat of coral lipstick as well as a fourth spritz of perfume.
Adjusting the strap of her negligee, Catherine reached for the tube of gloss from the counter and carefully ran the applicator over her lips. Replacing the tube beside the sink, she dabbed at a smudge above her top lip and cast a final gaze over her reflection. She reached for her powder brush and swept it across her cleavage, smiling to herself at the perfectly alluring image before her.
With another liberal squirt of perfume, Catherine flung open the bathroom door, and hoped that her groom would take note of the effort she had made that evening.
"Well, Mr. Wyatt, what do you think of your bride?" she drawled, arching an eyebrow seductively as she turned out the bathroom light and leant against the door frame with one arm stretched above her head. It was a pose she had seen women adopt in movies many times, and Catherine had done her fair share of studying in recent weeks. She had watched and then re-watched all kinds of movies from soft pornography to 'When Harry Met Sally' in order to ensure that she was well prepared for their wedding night. Of course they had already done 'it' more times than either could recall in the years they had been involved, but Catherine was adamant that their first time as a married couple aught to be extra special.
Catherine was somewhat nervous but above all excited, and she was certain that nothing short of a major global catastrophe could ruin the night. The entire wedding ceremony and reception had passed by her in a blur as Catherine's attentions remained focused upon what promised to be the first night of the rest of her life.
When the approving response Catherine had been anticipating failed to appear, she heaved a sigh and padded across the room, perching on the edge of the bed. As her hand rested on the cotton sheets her eyes were suddenly drawn to the warm, viscous fluid that bathed her skin. Tentatively, Catherine raised her hand to eye level and swallowed, hard.
A scream shattered the silence as Mrs. Catherine Wyatt's gaze fell upon the lifeless and decapitated body of her now late husband.
x-x-x
The utterly terrified shriek that emerged from Jo's mouth was so uncharacteristic in itself, that both Sam and Dean burst through the bathroom door in unison with guns drawn and eyes wide.
"Jo, what the..." Dean demanded, finding his girlfriend standing stark nude in the centre of the motel bathroom, her features frozen in a mask of fear that he had not witnessed even during their more gruesome hunts.
"Oh... God..." Sam spluttered, whirling around and propelling himself back through the bathroom door as he took in the sight of Jo's naked body with abject horror. On the other hand, Jo appeared not to have noted the appearance of the younger Winchester brother, instead too preoccupied with gesturing wildly to the far wall whilst babbling something unintelligible.
Dean frowned, noticing no obvious threats, and followed the direction of Jo's hand as she jabbed at the air.
"Spider!" Jo squeaked, directing Dean's gaze to the corner of the room. Dean squinted and slowly the small, brown arachnid that had recoiled against the wall came into focus. Dean was almost certain that if he could stare the poor creature directly in the face, it would be sporting an expression of horror identical to Jo's.
"That?" he stared at Jo as if she had clearly lost her mind before he demanded, "that little thing?"
"Dean, I hate spiders," Jo stuttered, injecting the word 'hate' with venom. Pulling a towel around her body, Jo watched as Dean rolled his eyes and took a step toward the creature, which as though on cue began to scuttle in a zigzag pattern towards them.
"Get it, kill it, get it!" Jo yelped, one word tumbling into the next in her panic. Dean shot Jo an amused glance and gestured to the weapon he still held in his hand.
"You want me to shoot it?" he checked, chuckling as Jo glared at him with murder on her mind.
"I don't care how," Jo seethed, visibly trembling now as the spider scuttled across the wall and down towards the linoleum, "just get rid of it. Now!"
His eyes dancing with the endless possibilities for mischief that were playing through his mind, Dean set down his gun and advanced upon the spider, which had just begun to weave it's way across the floor and towards Jo. Raising one boot high, Dean brought his foot down heavily atop the spider, wincing as he both felt and heard the tiny body crunch beneath the sole of his boot.
"Happy now?" Dean demanded, grimacing as he lifted his foot in order to examine the mess of guts that now adorned it. Jo shook her head, scattering droplets of water from her freshly washed hair.
"Not funny Dean," scolded Jo, her lips turned downwards into a frown that only caused Dean's amusement to peak further. "I don't make fun of you for being scared of flying."
"Hey, planes crash all the time," Dean retorted, his tone immediately defensive and his eyes adopting an almost comically haunted appearance, "when was the last time the common house spider was held accountable for the death of one hundred and forty tourists?"
Jo sighed and began to pat her hair dry with a clean towel, ignoring the smirk that still lay plastered across Dean's face. There was no way she was ever going to live this down; a fact that she recognised now. But the terror she had felt at having first encountered the creature had been far too immense to be reigned in by rational thought.
Jo had hated spiders since childhood, having awoken one night to find a rather large brown recluse sharing her bed covers. Her parents had come running, similarly armed, at the sound of her wails and thus Jo's hatred of arachnids had been born. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons and anything else the powers of darkness had to throw at them, Jo Harvelle could handle; spiders were simply another matter.
"Okay, so I... might... have overreacted," she allowed, avoiding Dean's gaze as he laughed out loud and gestured to the gun on the bathroom counter.
"Overreacted? Jo, you scared me half to death," Dean replied with a wry smile, feeling his heart rate gradually steadying. Hearing her screams had filled him instantly with dread and the images his mind had conjured up in the seconds before he reached her now seemed ridiculous.
"Sorry," Jo mumbled, a pout beginning to form on her lips. Dean felt his resolve melting, the way it always did when Jo turned that same expression upon him; in an instant she managed to look so irresistibly innocent and alluring that Dean was helpless to retain his own free will against her. With a sigh, he pulled Jo into his arms and an embrace that left the front of his black t-shirt soaking wet.
"Next time, maybe just yell 'spider' first," Dean suggested, resisting the urge to laugh and instead placing a kiss against the crown of Jo's head. She nodded, withdrawing from his arms and gesturing through to the adjoining room.
"I think I scarred Sam for life," she said, wincing sheepishly at the chuckle that Dean was powerless to hold back.
"Sweetheart, I don't think the dreams he'll be having from here on out will be nightmares," Dean replied, arching an eyebrow and then frowning at the disturbing thought. He trusted both his brother and his girlfriend implicitly, and new beyond all doubt that their relationship did not extend beyond the bounds of friendship; however, the very idea of his brother having that kind of dream about Jo was thoroughly disconcerting.
"Anything else I can do?" Dean inquired, toying with the end of the towel Jo had tucked around herself, "scrub your back, or maybe help you out with that moisturiser?"
Jo shook her head, swatting at his hand and dissolving into giggles as he seized her around the middle.
"Dean, stop... stop," she protested half-heartedly, attempting to still his advances for no other reason than Sam's presence in the adjoining room. She figured that the younger Winchester had suffered enough already.
"Sam's next door," Dean reasoned, trying his best persuasive smile as he walked his fingertips along her shoulder. He leaned closer and watched the resolve slip from Jo's features, his own heartbeat beginning to thrum harder in anticipation.
Jo looped her arms around Dean's neck and he claimed her lips in an urgent kiss. Dean's quiet moan of pleasure became a groan of annoyance as a pointed cough resonated from the bedroom and succeeded in tearing the embrace apart.
"Uh... guys," Sam called out, becoming nervous at the silence that had suddenly descended, "there's something I think you should come take a look at."
Jo shot Dean a grin before waggling her fingers at him in a dismissive gesture. As Jo began to towel her hair dry, Dean rejoined Sam in the bedroom where he was pouring over a copy of what he assumed to be the local newspaper.
"What'cha got Sammy?" Dean demanded, seating himself backwards on a chair that was set around the table at which Sam sat with all manner of papers and books spread out before him. "I thought we were done here?"
The latter was more of a statement than a query, and Dean quirked a brow as Sam tapped the article on the front page of the newspaper in a meaningful fashion. Dean peered down at the newspaper, frowning at the headline that dominated the centre of the page.
"So some dude got offed on his wedding night, huh? Call that the epitome of unlucky," Dean said, wincing as he proceeded to skim the piece and was rewarded with a particularly grizzly and detail riddled murder story. "Wow, these small town journalists really dig the murder scoops."
"Tell me about it," replied Sam with a wry smile. "But this looks like it could maybe be up our street."
"What gives?" asked Jo, suddenly entering the bedroom from the en-suite, now fully clothed and running her fingers through to the ends of her damp hair. The motel at which they were currently staying was run down to say the least, and much to the trio's chagrin did not even contain a television in the guest rooms; instead it offered a kind of communal lounge area where entertainment was provided in the form of a scuffed pool table, a games machine, and an archaic looking computer that sported a permanent 'out of order' sign. Given this fact Jo figured that it was futile to hope that a hair dryer would be squirreled away somewhere in the lobby, and had instead become resolved to the fact that her hair would remain wild for the duration of their stay. With their current job resolved, Jo rather hoped that their exit would be a speedy one.
The hunters had arrived in the area to track a demon residing in the corpse of an oral hygienist, who had left a trail of bodies from Virginia to South Carolina. Whilst the motive of the demon had remained a mystery, they had succeeded in cornering it and exercising the host, who had passed away of natural causes even before his possession. The job had been a long and arduous one, and Jo was glad to see it over, having developed a dislike for the city that bordered on loathing. However, it now appeared that Sam had discovered some new potential hunt in the area that may anchor them to Charleston for the foreseeable future.
"Some guy got his head ripped off on his wedding night," said Dean, tearing into the wrapper of a candy bar that he had discovered in the pocket of his jeans. He licked his lips in anticipation before hungrily biting a chunk from the candy.
Jo peered over his shoulder at the article whilst snatching the candy bar from him before breaking off a chunk and popping it into her mouth with a satisfied smile.
Dean let out a theatrical sigh as Jo dropped the snack back into his hand, but he watched with interest as she sucked the remains of the melted chocolate from her fingertip. Immediately, Sam's cheeks and the tips of his ears turned beet red as he recalled the awkward moment that had occurred between he and Jo only minutes ago.
"Ripped off?" Jo queried, widening her eyes in order to raise a response from Dean who appeared momentarily lost in thought.
"Huh?" Dean shook his head, quickly regaining his senses and doing his best to ignore the exasperated groan he received from Sam.
"Yeah, the uh... the bride found him on their wedding night, head totally severed," Sam supplied, moving the article along the table toward Jo. Their fingertips brushed as Jo received the paper and the crimson hue of Sam's cheeks darkened by several shades.
"Clean cut?" Jo queried, her eyes skimming the image of the couple. She found it somewhat distasteful that the newspaper had decided to run the story accompanied by a wedding photograph taken mere hours before the groom had met his untimely end.
Sam winced yet a thoroughly ghoulish smile settled on his lips as he relayed the more macabre details of the crime, "No, actually the ME said it looked like it'd been bitten off."
"Nice," Jo said with a grimace, plopping down on the chair beside Dean who had been re- reading the article.
"We need to get a look at that body," said Dean, chewing and swallowing the remaining piece of his candy bar before deliberating once again over his plan. He then gestured emphatically to Sam, "You need to get a look at that body."
"Me?" Sam protested, watching as Dean stood from the table and hastily pulled his t-shirt over his head as he prepared to change into more suitable clothing.
"Yup," Dean nodded, not missing a beat as he added, "and whilst you're doing that, Jo and I are gonna go talk to the blushing bride."
Jo shrugged, standing up and instantly rummaging through her gym bag as she located a clean shirt and pair of black tailored trousers. Any plan that involved her not having to poke around a corpse was more than okay with her, although judging from the petulant and unimpressed expression upon Sam's face, he was not quite as pleased with his allotted role.
"Hey, you want the stiff or the sobbing widow?" Dean challenged. Sam appeared to mull this over and finally nodded in agreement. The corpse would undoubtedly be a less troublesome encounter than a recently bereaved bride.
"I guess we're staying then," Jo muttered, her discontent at the prospect colouring her tone. Jo's lips twisted into a frown, which Dean met with a chuckle, finding his girlfriend's dislike of the quaint city to be a source of constant amusement. Jo was undoubtedly set in her ways and those ways were routed firmly in the twenty-first century. Whilst picturesque, Charleston held little appeal to Jo who favoured a more raucous environment, perhaps as a consequence of her having been born and raised in a bustling bar.
"Sucks huh?" Dean pressed, his amusement evident as he watched Jo twisting her hair up into a bun. Jo poked her tongue out at him and glared.
"Let's just get this job done and get back to the roadhouse," Jo said, directing a pointed glance at Dean as she added, "the sooner we get out of this hell-hole, the better."
"Look at it this way, sweetheart," Dean smirked as he looped a ready knotted tie around his neck and tugged it toward his collar, "could be worse, you could be going to poke at the headless guy."
Sam folded his arms across his chest, one eyebrow shooting up in response to Dean's goading quip. Standing up, Sam took a decisive step toward the door, intending to make his way to his own room to change.
"Guess I'll see you guys later," Sam said almost dubiously, and he grimaced slightly at the prospect of the afternoon that lay before him. Dead bodies were one thing but a headless corpse was a whole other kettle of proverbial fish.
"But Dean?" Sam paused in the now open doorway and pointed with intent at his brother, "next time, you get the dead guy and I get Kleenex duty!"
x-x-x
After thirty minutes in the company of Mrs. Catherine Wyatt, Dean was beginning to regret his own eagerness to avoid the morgue. Almost as soon as the woman had answered her front door, both Dean and Jo had realised that Sam would be in for an infinitely easier ride that day in the company of the stiff.
Catherine was a young woman in her mid-twenties who carried herself with the affected air of one who had not long been used to money or, indeed, polite company. Her black shirt revealed far too much heaving cleavage and she wore more make-up than was truly respectable for a supposedly grieving widow. Jo had swallowed her instant disdain for the woman and instead offered her a smile that Catherine had returned with her eyes trained unwaveringly upon Dean.
She had introduced herself by offering a manicured hand that she had thrust under Dean's nose as though she expected him to kiss it. Having realised that this was indeed what the woman was hinting at, Dean had shot her a thin smile and patted the back of her hand in the most patronising manner he could muster.
"Well," Jo huffed, dropping down into the passenger seat of the Impala, "she was a delight."
Dean nodded in agreement, closing the door and leaning wearily on the steering wheel, "Yep. Talk about the merry widow. Ya know... half an hour with her and I'm starting to think the guy chewed his own head off."
Jo grinned and pulled her hair free, running her fingers through it as she leant her elbow on the door and glanced across at him, "You think she did it?"
"Nah," Dean shook his head as he jammed the keys in the ignition, the engine roaring instantly to life, "those pearly whites she kept flashing me didn't look anywhere near pointy enough."
Jo glanced up as she finished fastening her seatbelt and she affixed Dean with a decidedly withering glare, "Yeah, I thought you'd catch that."
"I'm like catnip to the ladies, what can I say?" Dean shrugged unapologetically, winking at Jo as he watched her arch an eyebrow in response. She bristled a little and Dean could not help but wonder if she was perhaps jealous.
"You think you're so hot, don't you Winchester?" demanded Jo in a tone that Dean could not readily categorise; it hovered expertly somewhere between playful and dangerous, and Dean found himself unnerved by it. However, he maintained his bravado with a practiced ease.
"Oh I know it, sweetheart," he drawled, winking at Jo before beginning to pull away from the curb. From the lounge window of her newly inherited home, Catherine Wyatt watched the couple of FBI agents leave with the faintest of smiles playing across her lips.
"So what now?" asked Jo, twirling the dials of the Impala's radio as she searched for a station that was not offensive in its offerings. Dean shrugged, his gaze shooting to the radio as Jo settled on a channel that he knew to favour noxious eighties power ballads. Shrugging, Dean said nothing, internally marveling at the fact that had Sam done the same, he would immediately be lecturing and teasing his brother on his poor music tastes. Somehow, things with Jo were just different; equally as easy, but somehow ten times as difficult at the same time. Dean thought that he would never truly figure out the whole relationship thing, and certainly not the concept of loving someone who was not bound to him by blood. However, he had to admit that it was kind of nice.
"I guess we go back to the motel and see if Sam found the groom a little more forthcoming," he stated, watching Jo adjust the volume of the radio before he reached out and seized her hand within his own. He threaded his fingers through hers before pressing a kiss to the back of her hand and then shooting her a meaningful smile. Jo leant her head back against the warm leather and mirrored his expression. Their interlaced hands fell to rest on her thigh.
"Is it wrong that I kind of thought she wasn't..." Jo began, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully as uncertainty gripped her. Whilst Jo could have no idea how Mrs. Wyatt was feeling, just imagining losing the man she loved was enough to send her stomach plummeting in fear. It was not that Jo had necessarily expected some great emotional or dramatic outpouring, but she had figured a recently bereaved young woman might be more inclined to tears than breathy smiles and flirtatious glances.
"What, she wasn't bawling enough?" Dean inquired, chuckling to himself as Jo blushed.
"I guess she could still be in shock," Jo mused, "I mean, the guy she loves did wind up dead on their wedding night."
Jo winced as she decided that perhaps she had unfairly judged their witness.
Dean let out a low chuckle as he assured her, "I guess she could be. One thing's for sure, she's not our perp."
Jo nodded her agreement and returned her attention to the radio, still turning over the behaviour of Catherine Wyatt in her mind.
x-x-x
"So what did you find Sammy?" Dean hollered as he threw open the door of Sam's motel room and strode in, uninvited and unannounced. Sam looked up with a start from the table, where he stood over a battered looking microscope that had been in his possession since he had swiped it from a high-school somewhere in Memphis when he was fifteen. Sam had wanted a microscope for months, much to Dean's disgust, but given the fact that every spare scrap of cash was spent on ensuring that his boys simply had food in their bellies, John Winchester had failed to ever supply one. Dean knew that the microscope had been the first and last thing that Sam had ever stolen, but he also knew that to this day Sam felt horrible about the small misdemeanour.
"How do you know I found anything?" Sam shot back, folding his arms across his chest and shooting Dean a questioning glance.
"Saw you through the window looking over that thing," Dean answered, pointing in the direction of the microscope with a curled lip. "Figured you had to be looking at something of interest."
Sam peered through the eyepiece of the microscope one more time and leant back in his chair, arms folded across his chest.
"Honestly, I'm not really sure what I'm looking at. Pulled it off the groom's body... it was..." he swallowed against a wave of distinct nausea the memory evoked, "stuck in the... wound... area."
Dean arched an eyebrow and bent over the microscope, realising he'd probably have no clue what he was looking at, but wanting to satisfy his curiosity none the less.
"It looks like a hair... a long dog hair, maybe?" Dean frowned, baffled by Sam's slightly uneasy expression.
"Actually, I think it's from an insect," Sam replied, picking up the science textbook from the table beside him and tapping his finger against the images printed on the page.
Dean paused and cast a suitably confused glance at his sibling, "But this thing is like four inches long."
Sam remained silent but nodded, his gaze instantly flitting toward the door as Jo knocked then strolled in clutching three chilled soda bottles in her hands. She deposited one to each of the brothers before taking a long swig from her own.
"You find something?" she asked interestedly, wondering what had prompted the use of the microscope. She knew Sam liked to 'go all CSI' as she jokingly called it and hoped it meant there had been some sort of break in the case.
Sam indicated towards the microscope, prompting Jo to eye both Winchesters with suspicion before she bent over the device and peered down the lens.
"Keep your hands off my ass, Dean," she warned, realising her current position would be all too inviting to her boyfriends wandering hands.
"It's a hair," she announced after several seconds, clearly unimpressed with the find.
"It's uh... it's an insect hair," Sam stated, watching as all colour drained rapidly from her face.
Jo planted her hand on her hip and shook her head vigorously, "No way, that thing's like... four maybe five inches long..."
"It's a really... big bug," Dean frowned, staring down in a mixture of trepidation and contemplation at the hair that lay across the glass slide.
"That's not even possible, right?" Jo stammered, clearly in a state of alarm. "Tell me that's not possible Sam?"
Sam swallowed hard, weighing up the plausibility of an insect large enough to yield such a hair. The creature would have to be at least five feet tall, if not more, and the prospect was one that caused even Sam to balk. As a child, Sam had never been a typical boy, in the sense that anything with more than four legs had served to instill in him a deep sense of dread. Dean was irritatingly nonplussed by anything of the nature, and had many a time planted something squirming and grotesque in Sam's bed just for kicks.
"No, I mean..." Sam attempted, trailing off as words failed him. Jo swallowed a mouthful of her soda before laying the bottle on the table before her.
"Oh come on you two," Dean scoffed, gently brushing Jo aside so as to gaze through the microscope once again. "It's probably nothing. I mean, who ever heard of a giant bug biting a guy's head off?"
"Well actually," Sam began, his features twisted into a characteristically thoughtful expression, "there are many insects that are known to sever the head from their prey. The praying mantis, several forms of spider..."
"Spider? A spider" Jo balked, her brown eyes widening in abject horror as she began to absently scrape her fingernails up and down the bottle nervously.
"Jo, calm down," Dean placated, glaring irritably at Sam for instilling such fear in his usually unflappable girlfriend, "it's not a giant spider, okay? It's not."
"You don't know that, Dean," Jo said ruefully, "last month it was giant Easter bunnies and now..." Jo swallowed hard, unable to finish her sentence.
Dean wrapped an arm around her waist in a comforting gesture and drew her into his side, "And on the off chance I'm wrong and this does turn out to be some giant, murderous arachnid, you can totally sit this one out. I won't even tease you... much."
Jo appeared to think this over momentarily and then shook her head, "No. If you go after this thing- whatever it is- I'm going with you."
Dean smiled, touched by Jo's concern; given her irrational but intense fear of spiders, Dean saw it as a testament of her feelings for him that she was willing to hunt a potentially enormous insect.
Dean kissed the crown of her head and Jo nestled closer, although Dean assumed it was an unconscious gesture on her part as she continued to stare intently at the microscope slide. Dean felt her shudder against him, and could not resist walking his fingertips along her upper arm, imitating the scuttling movements of a spider. Jo wrenched herself from Dean's grip before slapping his chest.
"Not funny, Dean," she scolded, gesturing rudely at Dean who appeared somewhat shocked. Sam rolled his eyes at their playful sparring, and directed his attention back to the microscope. He almost felt a thrill of excitement course through him at the prospect of facing such a fascinating challenge; giant insects were certainly a new one, and he was mostly over his childhood unease with them now.
"Well, if you're right Sammy boy, I got one thing to say," said Dean, shooting Jo a wicked grin, "we're gonna need a bigger shoe."