HAVING A BALL

Chapter 25

"Okay, Jerry," snapped Sam irascibly, "Take it from the top, slowly, clearly and don't try and stretch your IQ past words of one syllable – tell us exactly what you did, step-by-step, starting from the point in your mega-sulk when this girl suddenly appeared and acted like your new best friend."

Immediately again whining that he 'never thought it would work', Jerry nevertheless seemed to realise that the ice wasn't so much thin as already rapidly melting out from under him before the blow-torches of the hunters' anger.

Apparently recognising the small calibre intellect she was working with, the Faerie had given him 'Evil Rituals For Dummies 101'. She'd helped him gather the rocks to make into the 'camp fire' circle – at which point Joe witheringly informed Jerry that should have set alarms bells ringing in his head, as a Faerie broke a sweat about as happily as Al Capone had done his tax returns.

Unfortunately that analogy had gone right over the kid's head with his blank-faced response of 'Who?' prompting Joe to mutter that it was no wonder the world was going to hell – literally – if people were too stupid to learn enough about history to avoid repeating it – did they think the Good Lord had inspired King Solomon to warn, 'there is nothing new under the sun' for His own amusement or because He was trying to make it clear that the smart people were the ones who learned from the past mistakes of others and avoided making the same idiot moves themselves?

Little Miss Helpful had also provided the animals for him to sacrifice – a couple of rabbits, a fox and a kitten, all 'unconscious' –

"…and a honkin' big steak knife she said was some kinda ceremonial dagger," Jerry shrugged, "So I did the animals, and…the ritual and said the incantation –"

"What did you do in what order?" Sam reined him in. "A lot of occult rites are like certain food recipes, what you end up with depends on what order you add the ingredients to the bowl and how you mix them in – and what you leave out." He recapped Jerry's explanation so far, "You made the circle, you cut one animal's throat and used the blood to make the symbols on the stones, then you placed the wood for the fire, then you added the herbs, then you got the knife, then you slit the throats of the other animals, and -?"

"Uh…er…"

Dean gave a low groan. "We're back to the BSI, I can tell…"

"BSI?" Joe frowned.

"Brain-Stabbing Imagery," Dean clarified before scrunching up his face in disgust at Jerry, "You did it, you little pervert, didn't you? You got your weenie wiener out of your pants and jacked off before you lit the fire!"

"No!" But Jerry's face was almost eggplant-purple with mortification and since his ability to lie was about as convincing as his ghost costume –

"I wish we had time for me to take a break and gouge out my mind's eye," Sam muttered, "but I suspect time is what we don't have, so, what was the incantation, genius?"

Jerry stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, oblivious that the sudden movement had never put him so close to a violent death as all three hunters tensed reflexively. He pulled out a folded brown thing that crinkled loudly and opened it up to reveal it to be a sheet of actual parchment, clearly extremely old, about eight inches across and twelve inches long, with lines of 'symbols' or runes, clearly grouped into what had to be words, written – or even printed – neatly across it, about the same size as an '18pt' font; presumably the language of the Faerie.

Clearing his throat, Jerry began, "Oh-she-tam, bay-list-hack, foe-mar-apt –"

"Wait a minute!" Sam exclaimed, reaching out and plucking the parchment from Jerry's fingers. Scanning down it, he jabbed the barrel of his sawn-off shotgun at a random word about a third down the page halfway along one line and held it out to Jerry. "What does that word say?"

"Uh…" Jerry's lips quivered slightly as he scanned down the page.

"I don't believe it!" Sam stared at the idiot in utter contempt as he yanked the parchment back off him. "Some girl you've never laid eyes on before gives you explicit instructions on how to do something very dangerous and probably fatal to your family and you blithely just do it because the off-chance of maybe getting to get your clammy mitts on her tits and your dick inside her means more to you than your parents' lives, than your brother?!"

"That's not how it was!" Jerry protested, but his face was still guiltily flushed.

"For all you know this is a recipe for Polish pierogi!" sneered Sam. "This mysterious girl hung around for maybe ten minutes before she disappeared as suddenly as she came yet you swallowed everything she said hook, line and sinker – you gulped it down whole without chewing!"

Joe sighed deeply and shook his head slowly at Jerry's flustered, distraught face. "Son, you make me despair of what of my own sex is like today in general. You're so full of crap in seeing girls as nothing other than sex objects for your own selfish, greedy gratification it just never occurs to you that women have minds of their own and are perfectly intelligent and more than capable of arranging things to get what they want their way - and more than bright enough to lie like rugs to gullible idiots like you that they can lead around by your dick!"

Heartily wishing he'd given in to his earlier impulse and simply strangled the jerk in the hotel, Sam held out the paper to Joe. "Look, you're our resident expert on all things Faerie. How are your translation skills?"

"Patchy," but Joe took the parchment and squinted at it, though fortunately the unknown Mr & Mrs Hanson, presumably transformed in the hotel like everyone else, hadn't skimped on the parking lot lighting.

Amazingly, Jerry still had some self-pitying tears left inside him, "I didn't mean it! Waiting until the spell wore off was all I could think to do… I just want it all to go back to how it was…"

"That's the thing, Jerry," Dean told him, "in real life there is no second take and no 'we'll fix it in the dub'. Nothing can ever be how it was – " hearing the weary bitterness in his own voice, he shut up; his eyes met Sam's and they both glanced away from each other, too many raw and sore feelings exposed.

"Uh-oh."

Now Sam and Dean did look at each other, in weary resignation and with 'ah, yet another totally unsurprising free side order of extra doom to go' expressions.

"I can't read it all, but I don't need to, 'cause boy, you've been well and truly screwed with your pants on," Joe told Jerry, before showing Dean and Sam a 'word' on the parchment, "That translates literally as 'life-fire-orb', or the sun to you and me. Those words before it I'm sure means 'to rise up' – "

"So it's talking about sunrise? Dawn?" surmised Dean.

"I'd say so. The big bad is that word, just there, that's the kicker," Joe warned, his face grim and very unhappy. "It literally means 'to carve into a rock', and the nearest translation would be something like…'to be sealed', or 'resolute', or 'to become irrevocable."

Neither Sam or Dean were slow on the uptake. "Crap."

"What? What?" Jerry looked from one brother to the other in panic as their grim went up to DefCon2.

"'What? What?'" parroted Dean sarcastically back at him, "I'll tell you what – your little Faerie friend played you like a violin. She lied like a rug. The transformations will not wear off in a couple of hours, Jerry-boy. Unless the spell is broken before the sun comes up, the transformation becomes permanent."

Continued in Chapter 26…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers