…so the labels arrive and I start looking up information and I get all graphic artisty and find the info required and spend ages formatting it to be printed out on teeny little sticky labels in what must be the most expensive arts and crafts session that the public purse has ever funded and I get the minions together again and we remediate the remediation then the WHS drone comes back and says audit time and I say bring it bitch then she turns to the shelf packed full of folders marked 'Safety Data Sheets' and she says are those your SDSs and I say no that is the list of people I want to murder slowly guess where you are in the list and she just gives me this look and I say le sigh yes that's copies of all the SDSs we can't upload to WOFTAM because they are NOT COMPLIANT but don't worry all the NON-COMPLIANT ones have stickers identifying them as NON-COMPLIANT and I have a gigantic file of emails contacting companies asking for COMPLIANT ones and she says do you have copies of all your SDSs then and I say no just the NON-COMPLIANT ones the COMPLIANT ones are all stored in WOFTAM as per THE PROCESS and she says you need paper copies of them and I say I thought the whole idea of WOFTAM was that we had to store the SDSs as files in that do you have any idea how much time I've spent uploading files of SDSs in the REQUIRED COMPLIANT FORMAT and she says everybody must have access to all SDS files at all times and I say well all they have to do is log on to WOFTAM and ta-dah just keep trying them on until you find one that fits you and she says no you have to have paper copies and I say there isn't enough shelf space in here and she says well get more shelves and I say I've been trying to get more shelves for useful stuff for eighteen months but there's no money and she says how are people supposed to know that WOFTAM is available on the network and I said BECAUSE you TRAPPED US ALL in a FOUR HOUR BRIEFING to tell as at length that we HAVE TO USE WOFTAM NOW THAT'S WHY and she says what if somebody comes in and doesn't know and I say I'm the frigging OIC of this lab and nobody comes in here without clearance from me and she says well you have to have everything on a backup CD-ROM then and I say fine, fine, I've wasted enough time on this WOFTAM already, and she says and you have to put a notice with all the CDs saying that the CD has electronic copies of the SDS files and I say fine, fine and she says and you have to put a sheet of instructions in each SDS file explaining how to use the CD and I say fine, fi-what? and she says you have to have instructions for using the CD and I say go away, for your own safety go away, so I make the CDs and I label them and I put the notice in the SDS folders and I know for a fact that she never bothered to check them because the instructions read: Put CD in PC and read files if you don't know how to do that you are too stupid to be working here GTFO OF MY LABORATORY YOU IDIOT hand your degree back at the gate and don't let it bang you on the arse on the way out…
Bitter. I do not has it. Srsly…
Chapter Twenty-One
A powerful spell, Sam mused, looking through the last case file again, it was a very powerful spell – moving anything alive took a lot of occult mojo, moving anything from one reality to another took a lot, moving something living from one to another, that meant somewhere, somebody was packing serious occult heat, and they knew how to use it. It wasn't the sort of thing that just happened for no reason.
Sure, spells could have backdrafts, there could be collateral damage, fallout – he'd seen that. Hell, he'd experienced it; having to use a very old charm to banish a minor but destructive sprite associated with a museum artefact from ancient Greece had left him with a hankering for gyros and an unfortunate (if somewhat amusing, to Dean at least) compulsion to get up and dance the Kalamatianos every time he heard music with the appropriate time signature, which might not have been a problem except they'd stopped at a Greek restaurant that was hosting an engagement celebration to get him some lamb. On the bright side, Dean pointed out later, Sam had ended up dancing the night away with more women than he'd probably associated with in his entire life, even if they did range from teenagers to one particularly agile Yaya who declared him to be Adonis reincarnate. But it was usually minor, as the intent of the spell, the main charge, was directed at the objective. For them to cross realities, somebody had to do it intentionally.
But why?
There were plenty of people, entities and other individuals of dubious virtue who would have been glad to see the Winchesters gone from their own reality. But if it was somebody with malicious intent, it would have been much, much easier just to kill them. Permanently. It was analogous to the sledgehammer-on-a-walnut argument: why would you mess around translocating them to a different reality, when it would be a lot easier to, oh, for example, just translocate a huge rock from the side of the road to midair so it went through the windscreen, or translocate a dose of poison into a coffee unobserved, or even levitate a piece of pie a few feet from the edge of a cliff and watch Dean hurl himself into thin air to get at it…
That was the thing. As 'malevolent intent' went, it was a complete fizzer. This reality was 'wrong', in so many ways, but… it wasn't disastrous. In fact, an uninvolved observer might look at the reality they'd come from, and think that being a Hunter with a nine to five job was a pretty good option. And in many ways, it probably was.
Even if for them, for him, and his Dean, it wasn't.
He heard the harrumph from knee level, and looked down. Jimi was gazing up at him with adoring eyes, so he bent down to scratch the dog's ears.
"You're not our Jimi," he said sadly, watching the animal squirm happily nonetheless, "You're a happy little guy, and if I was here, I think I'd get to like you a lot. But… you're not our Jimi."
The beagle gave him the most understanding smile he'd ever seen on a dog's face as he ran a hand through his hair, and turned back to the file. "So, we got something that happened, just after our job shutting down Leslie the congenitally incompetent witch. In our reality, we had to stop her, because she was tryin' to help people, but kept screwing it up. And we ended up in your reality, where your Dean and Sam had just done a job shutting down Leslie the incompetent in this reality, because she'd been tryin' to help people too…"
He opened another tab on the file; it was a document authored by Fergus, with some observations about Leslie, accompanying a photo of the would-be white witch herself, smiling benevolently like a slightly demented Earth Mother. Sam scanned down the document; apparently, Fergus was also the in-house profiler.
There wasn't really much there that he didn't think he knew already: a desire to help, an inability to recognise her own ineptitude, and a recommendation that she be put on the watch list, because in his opinion, she was likely to try 'helping' people again.
Frowning, Sam looked back at the picture of Leslie. She was dressed as she had been in their own reality, a sort of hippie-chick-meets-Nanny-Ogg with far too much eye make-up, which just went to show how incompetent she was, because a truly powerful witch went out of her way not to look like a witch, just to blend in and look completely ordinary, and would not be seen dead wearing the leftovers of an Avon clearance bin and a dress that she probably thought looked nature-loving and welcoming but actually looked like she'd just wrapped herself in a maiden aunt's curtains and chunky 'occult' jewellery that even a high school principal who was dressing up as Madame Sirena Catalina Ovencleena the gypsy fortune teller for the school fair would reject, because it looked too tacky…
His eye fell on the pendant she was wearing, and he drew in a sharp breath.
It would not be fair to say that, in the Winchester family business, Dean was the brawn and Sam was the brains. However, it would be fair to say that Sam had made it more his business to acquaint himself with the rituals, rites and artefacts that were part of the job they did, whereas Dean preferred to acquaint himself with ever more efficient ways to kill fuglies.
Sam didn't think he'd ever know as much as Bobby did about That Sort Of Thing.
But he did know an occult artefact when he saw one, and as he studied the pendant, he knew he was staring one in the face. Or in the setting, at any rate.
A terrible suspicion that had nothing to do with being one of Azazel's special children, and everything to do with being familiar with human nature (especially the nature of those who had no idea just how incompetent they were) formed in his mind.
There was a set of car keys with a fuel card in his desk drawer; apparently, FOOCERverse Sam had a work car. He told Bobby he needed to tie up a loose end on his last job, then headed for the FOOCER garage, Jimi trotting at his heels.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Leslie had been having another fight with her kohl pencil when she opened the door to him and smiled.
"Mr Winchester!" she trilled, just a little too happily, "What can I do for you?"
"Leslie, we have to talk," he sighed, "About your pendant."
"M-my pendant?" she asked brightly, her hand closing defensively around the jewellery. "What, um, what about it?"
He gave her a stern look. "Look, I don't have time for this," he griped, "That pendant. I'm gonna take a guess that it was something else that your inherited from your grandmother."
Leslie looked stricken, like a rabbit – or possibly a panda – in the headlights.
He pushed his way past her, into the house. "Leslie, I need to know what you did," he said, "Something's… happened to my brother and me."
She let out a little squeak.
He sat down, trying not to loom. "Look, I'm not angry, okay, I just… something's gone wrong, and I just need to know what you did, so we can try to fix it, undo it."
With a sound like a deflating balloon, Leslie dropped to the sofa beside him, and burst into tears. Trying not to roll his eyes, he took a box of tissues from a side table and passed them to her. She took a couple, and honked extravagantly into them.
"I just wanted to help," she blubbered, "After, you know, after my spells went wrong, and you were so nice about it, and, and, Fergus was so understanding, and, and, and, you mentioned that your brother really needed to take some time off, and, and, I thought, you deserved a vacation, a change of scenery, a trip away somewhe-e-e-e-e-e-re…" she dissolved into mascara-smeared sobs again.
"Well, you got that bit right," Sam muttered, "But seriously, Leslie, it's… look, it's complicated, but whatever you did, we have to undo it. Did you use the pendant?" With another despondent honk, she nodded. "Okay, so that's a good start, so, what did you do?"
She looked sheepish, or, in fact, since her make-up was running, Alice Cooperish. "I don't , uh, well, I used the coffee mugs you'd used, you know, the little bit left in the bottom of the cup, and I sprinkled it on the picture, and…"
"Picture?" Sam cut in, "What picture?"
"The one of Disneyland, in the paper," she warbled, sniffling, "I thought, who doesn't love Disneyland? A-a-and then I used the pendant, and, and…"
Sam nodded encouragingly.
"I don't know!" Leslie wailed, "I just kind of, you know, mashed it all together, and, and, there was a lot of green smoke then, and I couldn't see what was happening…"
Sam groaned. "Oh, great," he sighed, "Look, Leslie, do you have any idea how to undo this?"
"No," she said ruefully, "But I suppose we could ask Grandma."
Sam's head snapped up. Ask… Leslie, you told us your grandmother was dead!"
"Oh, she is," Leslie agreed, heading for a cupboard and taking out a box that proved to contain a Ouija board. "But she doesn't let that slow her down. Come on," she checked her watch, "We might be interrupting her bridge game, but if it's important, we'd better get right on it."
Send reviews, because Reviews Are The Winchester Of Your Choice Dancing the Kalamatianos With You In The Greek Restaurant Of Life!
What?
You don't know it? Whyever not? It's a wonderful dance, and you feel so smug when you get the hang of it. (That's the one thing about Australia that our current Prime Minister seems to have lost sight of, in his determination to keep out anybody who doesn't have lots and lots of money: if you come from another culture, so long as you bring a cuisine, some good swearwords and maybe a dance or two, you're in with just about everybody except the politicians and a bunch of bigots you don't want to dance with anyway.) Come on, it's easy, it's twelve steps, just like AA, only with better music, just follow Monty-Fred the dancing plot bunny. Aaaaand one-two-three this way, and four-five-six this way, and seven-eight-nine this way and hop, and ten-eleven-twelve back that way, repeat until the next course is served. Opa!