Chapter 6
After a day of listening to Dean's revenge fantasies – he had called a halt to that topic after Dean had wondered out loud if there was such a thing as a skunk petting zoo, and whether you could hire a skunk by the hour of if you had to take one for a whole day – Sam was grateful to pull into a motel and collapse on one of the beds. Listening to Dean plotting was absolutely exhausting, but he was afraid that if he fell asleep, he would only dream of tapdancing skunks, possibly juggling rotten eggs…
Dean sat on his bed, channel surfing and eating gingerbread. Again. "I might go find me a bar, Sammy," he announced, "Wanna come with me?"
"Nah, I'm good here," replied Sam, not moving. A shower, and a nap, and a handful of aspirin, that's all he wanted… oh, and a complete absence of skunks.
"I'm gonna clean up, then," said Dean, taking clean clothes and heading for the bathroom. "I'll be back for dinner later, honey." Sam sat up, flipped his brother off, pulled out his laptop, thought better of it, and collapsed back onto the bed.
He was dozing when, five minutes later, a bloodcurdling shriek sounded from the bathroom. He was awake and running for the door, gun in hand, before the scream ended.
"Dean!" Sam burst into the bathroom, looking for the threat.
Dean stood in the tub, at the shower end, clutching the shower curtain around himself.
Max sat at the other end of the tub, tongue lolling, grinning at Dean.
A now-familiar odour assailed Sam's nose.
"It's here! It's here!" yelled Dean, "What's it doing here? Get out!" he flapped a hand angrily at the dog.
Max cocked his head, and gave him full-beam Sammy eyes.
Sam lowered his gun, and sighed. His headache was coming back. "It's okay, I'll try to get him outside, just stay put," he said, throwing a towel to his brother. He backed out of the bathroom, then scrabbled in the paper bag for a piece of gingerbread.
"Max! Come!" he called. The ghostly dog immediately appeared, trotting towards him and sitting, licking his chops, eyes on the cookie.
"Max! I've got a cookie for you! Cookie!" said Sam chirpily, as Max whuffed happily and danced from one front paw to the other, waves of eye-watering smell wafting off him. "Good boy! Now, take it outside! Outside!" Max took the cookie carefully from Sam, and disappeared obediently, thankfully taking the worst of his aroma with him.
Dean emerged from the bathroom, dressed and slightly damp, waving his arms in exasperation. "What the hell happened?" he asked the universe in general, "What the hell just happened? One minute I'm taking a shower, the next, a damned ghost, one that I've salted and burned, is sitting there, staring at me! How the hell did that happen?"
"Whoa, Dean, calm down!" said Sam, "There must be an explanation. There must be something in the bathroom that he's connected to. Something on you? Something on your clothes?"
"It can't be me, I've just washed me," said Dean. "Ohhh, I am so going to kill Bobby for this job, I totally am…"
A closer inspection of Dean's clothes revealed that they were covered in hair. Short, fine, tan-coloured hair. Dog hair. A bit more inspection showed that Sam's belongings were similarly speckled.
A horrible suspicion started to form in Sam's mind. "Just let me look something up," he said, starting up the laptop.
"Yeah, you get on it, Sam," encouraged Dean, "Find us a way to send this stupid mutt on his way. Aren't all dogs supposed to go to Heaven? Isn't a German Shepherd supposed to be intelligent? How does he not know this? WHAT WAS HE DOING WATCHING ME TAKE A SHOWER?"
Sam's search was short: in less than ten seconds, he had multiple hits on forums discussing the owning and care of German Shepherds. He learned three things:
One, German Shepherd owners are a teensy bit mad.
Two, German Shepherds shed. All year round. A lot.
Three, German Shepherd hair is the most insidious, adhesive, persistent substance known to humankind, and possibly the rest of the galaxy.
"Listen to these", said Sam, " 'Shiloh sheds his own body weight in undercoat every Winter, I'm sure. ' 'I have collected enough hair from Mack in the last couple of years to stuff some cushions – they're lovely and soft!' 'I collected Kali's sheddings, and a friend spun it all into yarn – I knitted a scarf.' 'I'm convinced that if I kept brushing Kaiser until he didn't lose any more hair, I'd be left with nothing but a pile of fur, and a little black nose…' oh, no," he groaned, his heart sinking, "Listen to this one: 'Bayla died two years ago, and I still get a bagful of her hair every time I vacuum. In her own way, this dog will never leave me!' You can even buy a coffee mug that says, 'Everything Tastes Better With Dog Hair In It!' " He turned a despairing expression to Dean. "It's the hair. He must've left shed fur all over that house, while he was alive…"
"And we got covered in it, crawling around looking for Honky Duck," finished Dean gloomily, inspecting his things more closely. "It's on everything, look, it's on my jacket, it's on my duffel… it'll be in the car, in my baby…" he looked stricken at the very thought.
As if to confirm the hypothesis, Max reappeared, walking through the wall, to lay down on the floor with a contented humph.
"He hardly smells," noted Dean faintly, "Maybe he's not so excited around us now. He's becoming accustomed to us. Oh, goody."
"Dean," said Sam in a small voice, "We are screwed. We are going to be followed forever by a dead, drooling, flatulent, happy dog whose only need is the occasional gingerbread cookie."
"Oh no, we're not," growled Dean, a sudden determined look crossing his face. "Desperate situations call for desperate measures." He turned to face Max, narrowing his eyes. "All right, Rin Tin Tin, we've tried to be nice. We tried to help you. Time to play rough." He stood in the middle of the room and bellowed to the ceiling,
"Cas! CAS! Get down here, this is an honest-to-Your-Dad EMERGENCY we got on our hands here!"
You really can buy that coffee mug. And the thing with the dog hair, that's real, too.