Chapter Sixteen ; Paint Me Dead

For all of his madness, for all of the people he mutilated over the years because of a sick conviction in his head, Doctor Jonathan Meyers took great care in removing the leather straps from Sam's arms, from his legs, from his chest. He even made a hissing wince when – accidentally? – he pulled at the wrist restraint to Samuel Winchester's right arm as it was being undone; flashes of steroided pain drilled into the kid's arm, so great that bottling down a yelp was impossible.

"If you'd like, Samuel," Meyers began as he started work on the other wrist bind, "I could pop that back into place for you."

Sam stopped gritting his teeth long enough to say, "How do I know you're not going to just cut it off?"

Meyers laughed shortly, kneeling down to work on his patient's ankle straps. Placing his hands on one cracking brown leather bind, the doctor raised his head to look at Sam with a gravely serious face. "And how do I know that you aren't going to kick me in the head once I undo this here restraint? You're thinking about it, boy, about striking me unconscious and tying me to that gurney."

"My hands are free," Sam observed wistfully, "I could have just pissed on you and been done with it."

Standing, the doctor retreated back to his chair and settled himself back down into it. "Would you really chance that, Samuel? Would you really risk upsetting me? If you're scared of driving your brother over the edge, you must be close to wetting yourself when you think of how I might – what's the word you kids are using today? – freak?"

Sam scoffed. "I'm not scared of my brother, Meyers. Dean couldn't even put his batting helmet on correctly."

"That's a very comical image, Samuel, but you know just as well as I do what he does when he's angry – when he's that kind of angry." The doctor, almost visibly satisfied with the chance to speak with his captive for a time longer, smiled like a reptile. "You start to get twitchy, I imagine, when Dean squares his shoulders, when he makes that cock jerking motion with his head and neck. You all out run when his eyes glaze over with the sheer barbaric rage you recognized in the church, in the face of that Bruins fan."

"Where the fuck are you getting all of this?"

But, even though all Sam had to do was bend down and untie the final two binds himself, he was starting to get uncomfortable. He was starting to get the kind of uncomfortable that only comes when someone knows something they shouldn't, like when the girl you have a crush on somehow finds out how you feel about her and confronts you about it in front of the entire seventh grade.

"What did he break?" Meyers asked innocently, as if he was asking himself what color sweater vest he should wear to a luncheon.

Sam shook his head, fiddled with the cotton drawstring of his pajama pants. "Dean's dying, I hate him so much I don't give a rat's ass about it, and now I'm afraid of him? God, you come up with the more ridiculous shit."

"What did he break?" the doctor asked again, just as calmly. "That night when you were twelve, what did Dean break? You were in a bright orange cast for what seemed like ten years, weren't you? A bright orange cast that hardly anyone signed."

"No. No, I wasn't," Sam denied curtly.

Like a screwy tug boat, Meyers kept on going. "You were in your room trudging through your homework–"

"I was not."

"–simply minding your own business, listening to the radio, when Dean came charging into the room. He–"

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

Meyers seemed to be enjoying himself. "–was screaming his head off about something, his face had gone red, and you fell off your desk chair because seeing your brother like that scared you so badly. But not only that, you fell off that chair because you knew fully well that you were the reason your older brother was that angry."

"Shut up!"

But, of course, the doctor did no such thing. "You had been a silly child, a silly irrational child, and had taken Dean's most prized possesion, his baseball bat, out to the backyard–"

If anything, the anger boiling Sam's blood drove the final nail into the coffin of the fantasy in this situation. He was no longer in a dream, not by a long shot. "Shut up, you goddamn piss face! Shut up!"

"–and had finally done what your father asked you to do. Samuel, you had been so upset over how much of a perfect son Dean had been, how he always seemed to instigate the fights between you and your father, that you had taken a hatchet to Dean's last remnant of a normal life."

"I did no such thing! I did no such thing, you filthy prick!"

The most bemused expression adhered itself to the doctor's face. "Your father had been bothering you for days about target practice, gently trying to push you in the direction of work so that when the moment came you did come across a werewolf or wendigo or other specter you wouldn't wind up dead. So that's what you had done, you practiced and you practiced on Dean's dearly beloved baseball bat."

Enraged, Sam forget he was still attached to the gurney and made to hop off the rusted thing and bash in the doctor's skull. He nearly fell on his face.

"You put it back in your brother's room – an eye for an eye, that's what your message was – and when he came home that night he saw it sitting there on the shelf above his bed, hacked down into a most disturbing sight. Samuel, you broke that poor man, and in your fit of prepubescent anger that was what you had wanted. In your preteen head, you were only getting even. You couldn't do anything to your father, the one who really stomped out any hope of normalcy, so you went to the next best thing."

"I'LL BREAK YOUR GODDAMN NECK! Shut your mouth!"

Meyers made a sound halfway between a giggle and a full fledged snort. "Is that what Dean had told you? Is that what he yelled at you when he grabbed you by the arm, when he got so caught up in his rage that he broke that arm?"

Sam made a choking sound in his throat.

"You had told your father, the doctors that you had fallen from a tree, is that right? You were put into a cast and that was it. Since then Dean's forgiven you, realized that you were only twelve when you did what you did, and you've forgiven him. He hadn't been thinking clearly, not with the image of his destroyed bat still floating around inside his head, and when he had every intention of taking you to see what you had done… things got a little out of hand. But you've also, since that day, felt like a monster, haven't you?"

If he had still been in a dream, daggers would have shot from Sam's eyes and dived into the doctor's heart – if there was even a heart in there.

"And judging by the way you were yelling at me, boy, I'd say that there's no reason for you to be frightened of your brother. Dean might be terrified of you, but the other way around is like a lynx being afraid of a blade of grass."

In that dream which was no more, steam would have also shot out of Sam's nose as he bull snorted.

"Samuel, you really do have some serious issues here," Meyers diagnosed happily. "I'm amazed you haven't yet hung yourself."

An exasperated whinny passed by his teeth, like Sam was no more human than a horse was from a sloth.

"My problem? My problem?" Meyers chortled, having read his patient's thoughts. "I suppose I can tell you that, can't I? Don't worry, boy, my offer to walk out of that door is still good, but since you'd like to know what my problem is you might want to wait a spell."

The pressure against his brain subsiding, Sam shut his eyes and waited for the lightheadedness to pass. When it did, he bent down as best he could to attempt to free his ankles. "Don't you worry. I might be highly pissed off at you, but I won't bash your brains in with my foot. I'd rather not get your gunk on me."

Meyers no longer seemed amused by the slightest thing. He rose from his chair and hustled over to Sam with earnest, undid the leather straps around the boy's ankles, and straightened his back. He looked at his patient momentarily, dead eyes now with a tinge of puss yellow-green staining the former white areas around the irises, and waved his left hand impatiently off to the side of the room. If the doctor wasn't bipolar, he certainly did a good job in acting like he was.

"Emily, please bring a chair, for this might take a while."

As the German nurse materialized in a dark corner of the basement, walked into the middle of the room with a chair in her arms (managing it far better than her husband had with his), Sam watched her with a blank mind.

Though he would say no such thing, through mouth or mind, Sam was happy for the detour. The longer he had to think up a play, the better off he was. Lord knew poor Dean couldn't do anything – his watery sobs still coming into the room fifty floors below Hades, but finally starting to show their distance – except thankfully remain by his brother's side. When and if Sam ever woke up, he'd need to say a lot of things to Dean as soon as he possibly could.

The chair Meyers's wife had brought them, another rackety buffet for mold and termites, she set in a spot of floor right behind Sam. Because they were no longer in a dream, Emily had to push the gurney back to do it, the wheels screaming out in a rhythmic protest straight from a horror movie.

"Danke," Sam said to her as she began walking back to the crypt-like corners of the room, her long ago white and blood free dress swishing loudly.

Emily didn't turn around, but told her husband's prisoner to "sitzen Sie" rather harshly before being eaten by shadow.

Doing as he was told, Samuel Winchester sat down across from the maddest of all hatters. With a doctor staring at him like he was a piece of prime Angus steak, a nurse who could turn herself into a shadow, and an older brother who – though Sam loved him for it all the same – just wouldn't calm down and seemed to be getting farther and farther away from him every second…. Sam was becoming distressed.

But he mustn't show it. If he started to show his panic now (real, unabridged panic not hidden behind anger) Sam was fucked – quite violently. Just act like Dean would and he'll be fine. Just act like a great southern blues musician (real or posing as one just for a song), sitting up there on stage, and put all anxiety and fear into playing that guitar. Oh, but how how how how.

"Meyers," Sam began to break the silence, "I don't know if you know this, but I can't read your thoughts."

"No?"

Sam shook his head. "Nope. I get preminissions, but I'm not telepathic. Sucks balls, really," he leaned back into the chair, "but beggars can't be choosers."

The doctor bent his head to the side, just a millimeter but it was noticeable. "No, I don't suppose they can."

Instantaneously, as if Meyers's tick had sent up a thousand red flags, Sam was brought back to Illinois, to the tall building with a million seeing eye windows, to the younger and saner Dr. Ellicott. God. Were all doctors this frustratingly musing? They wanted their answers, they wanted to pick away at the scab to see what laid underneath it, but did they have to be this… this….

"Dreamily abstracted? Yes, most repeat everything you might say with an airy quality of amazed wonder about their voice, but it's a tactic."

"I gathered that, thank you."

If Meyers couldn't come up with another way of announcing his humored pleasure, Sam was sure to sew the man's decreped mouth shut – with his shoelaces if he had to.

"Don't be so frugal, Samuel," Meyers coddled. "Here we use only the finest needle and thread. In fact, let me show you. Emily!"

Before Sam even had a chance to react to the look in the doctor's eyes, before his own could grow wider than saucers and before he could turn around to see where the nurse would be coming from this time, Emily was on him.

&&&

Sammy didn't scream, didn't so much as let out a muted gasp, so Dean did it for him.

Yelling incoherently, Dean watched as Sam's head was pulled back on the pillow, his neck at an unnatural angle. A clump of the younger man's hair, by his forehead, was standing up stock straight as if an invisible hand was trying to see how well Sam's conditioner worked. While that imperceptible hand kept the youngest Winchester brother's head in the preferred position, another was sewing the boy's mouth shut. At least that's what Dean thought was happening, for there wasn't a speck of thread or a needle to be seen – but the roll of holes popping up above Sam's upper lip, below his lower made it hard to conclude anything else.

Trickles of blood began pooling by Sam's nose or sliding down his chin, and from somewhere within the furthest reaches of Dean's soul he heard his brother's muffled cries of pain. Not out of reaction to hearing those distant, anguished screams – but because he was able to feel the thread and needle going through his own mouth, just like he could feel the dislocated right shoulder and pulsing finger with the ripped back nail – Dean brought both of his hands to his horrified face.

Too much sand was in the bottom half of the glass timer now, far too much.

&&&

Any last hope lurking within Sam of still being locked in a dream was extinguished like a candle: moistened fingertips pinching out the flame. Tears were streaming down his face from eyes that only occasionally were open in a wide, disturbing expression of pain and fear.

Sam, kicking his legs and waving his arms in a useless plea for an end to the pain, felt as though his jaw was going to shatter. His screams had nowhere to go, not with his lips being quickly and efficiently closed off forever, and so they built up in his mouth. They formed a rag, those screams, and it seemed to grow larger and thicker in his mouth the more he tried to cry out for someone, anyone to "mmmm, mmmmm!" the excruciating distress he was in. His brain was trying to tell him to cease with the screaming, to just shut his cake hole before he choked to death or his jaw ripped from its hinges (whichever came first), but his voice box would have none of that.

Still screaming out uncontrollably as Emily finished her chore, her face void of anything close to emotion, Sam tried hard not to admit to himself that he was doomed. This was only a minor set-back, he wanted to believe, a very small one that would take up a bit of time – but he'd still be able to get his sorry behind out of the basement and back into room number twelve of the Driftwood Motel.

Yeah. Sure. Right. And gerbils could fly planes.

After Emily had walked away, her chunky white-turned-grey hospital heels clacking sinisterly against the concrete floor, her husband grinned widely. He watched, relatively unmoving, as Sam stopped his screaming and sat limply in his chair, head dipped forward to his chest. The kid was crying, silently without shaky breaths or shuddering shoulders, but crying nonetheless.

"Now, Samuel, maybe you'll finally put those kind of remarks behind you. I was getting rather annoyed," Meyers added.

Sam raised his head, blood sliding down his chin and onto his dark blue nightshirt or slipping into his mouth – how he hated the taste of copper. With eyes covered by fog thicker than that hanging above the London of yesteryear and a head that bobbled drunkenly on its perch, Sam looked as though he wouldn't be able to answer even the most brainless of questions, wouldn't be able to even recall his own first name.

Meyers rubbed one of his hands against the other, clasped them together like the doctor thought them cold. "Boy, I hope you aren't going to go falling onto the floor. Such a handsome face, we wouldn't want it any more ruined by a broken nose or gashed forehead."

Though Sam was rocking slightly in his chair, he didn't appear to be close to tumbling out onto the filthy floor. If anything, the knowledge of what might be festering on that floor gave himself enough strength to keep his butt parked on the chair seat.

"Good," the doctor voiced simply.

Sam might have given him a look that said, "Oh, yes, terrific."

King Zany chose to ignore his captive's facial expression, whistled. "My, my, isn't your head snowy? Certainly not as good with pain as your brother. A few painkillers to quell his chest pains and he's good to go. Why do you think he is the one to always get the coffee?" Meyers added, knowing that Sam might have been confused by that statement. "He won't reach into his endless bag of pills in front of you, he thinks you're too fragile to see something like that."

Another look, this time: "Get off your goddamn tuffet, why don't you?"

"Well," Meyers got into a comfortable position in his chair, "you wanted to know what my problem was and, now that you've quieted down, I'll tell you."

Even in his hazy state of mind, Sam found it in him to roll his eyes.

"I'm not like your brother, boy. I won't sit here and tell you about my dismally boring life, make up a few exciting lies to spice the story up, but I will tell you what you've been searching for."

Sam: "Gee, I wouldn't have dreamed of having it any other way. And my brother doesn't embellish his life that much, asshole."

Meyers looked up to the ceiling, smiling like he could see a happy memory dancing around up there.

The Winchester captive looked up as well, found nothing, and lowered his head. He had a mind to rest his chin against his chest again, but when the doctor began his story he was too weirded out to do any such thing.

"I was born in Vermont, Ira to be precise, to a steel worker and a housewife – that's what women did in the olden days. I had one sibling, a brother ten years my senior, who died of an enlarged heart when I was eight. He used to always walk me home from school, but one day he never came. Jeremiah, that was his name, he wanted to be a medical doctor and I came into that same profession not because I was pushed by my parents but, maybe because I loved my brother a little too much. I had thought that following in his footsteps would prove my love to him, you see, and that he would know that though he was dead and gone I would love no other man. I thought, what greater sign of an undying, albeit unnatural, love than that?"

Sam threw up in his mouth, but because his lips were sewn shut he had to swallow his vomit back down to his stomach again. As if having (because of the doctor's perverted relationship with his sibling) the image of Sam and his own brother… he also had to puke and be forced to swallow it.

"I know, I know, but I was of such a young age when it began happening. I didn't know rape from a steam engine. I twisted the situation around in my head to such a point where, well, one day after Jeremiah had been dead several years I let it slip. Since my brother's death my parents had been touchy about the medical field, who could really blame them, and wished for me to pursue a different career. I told them I would not and why I would not. It must have been the way I said it, for they threw me into the nearest asylum 'for my own good' and didn't look back."

Without thinking about it, letting the doctor assume he was actually listening to the explanation of his actions, Sam began devising a plan of escape. Surely the only way to get out of this place alive was to kill Meyers, to release his grip from Sam's conscious, but just how was still the jackpot question.

"I spent eight years in that place, was subjected to every nightmarish procedure imaginable to cure my sickness. When I was mended, lacking a few extremities and parts of the brain, I had realized my true calling. I went back to school, began studying at the Wade House in New York state, met my wife. Granted, I could never love her, but she hadn't seemed to mind. As you might conclude, Samuel, I was relatively sane until I began my experimentation on random citizens. Emily and I had felt strongly that a plague had been unleashed on the world, a vile disease that needed to be eradicated, and so we went out and tried to help those people."

Through his bleeding, stinging, swelling lips Sam scoffed.

Meyers tipped his face, a confused expression dusting his features. "I feel no shame in what my wife and I did, boy, just like you do not feel badly for killing your creatures of the night. We were helping those poor people, trying to aid them into wellness, but unfortunately those who didn't die were permanently damaged. When the police tried to solve their puzzle, townspeople saying that it was I doing all of those 'brutal slayings', I had been at the height of my career. Emily and I moved here, to Arrowsic Island, so that my life wouldn't have been destroyed."

Sam lifted his head in order to shoot a glance, "Yours might not have been destroyed, but what about all of those people you plucked off the street?" and then hung it down again.

"By then it had been much like an impulse, boy, a desire and a need to go on helping people. For understanding's sake, it was like you and your preminissions – I could not ignore my impulses any more than you can now turn your back on those dreams of yours. But, sadly, the residents of Arrowsic Island did not share my views.

"For a while I had been able to control my hands by locking myself into this basement, having Emily bring my meals down and so on and so forth. But I couldn't eat, boy, and I couldn't sleep. I had wasted away to sixty pounds before I simply couldn't take it anymore. I would travel to other small towns some distance away from here, but it hadn't been the same. So I had brought my sights back to this island to murder here again, slay and maim and ruin."

Meyers rose to his feet for the umpeenth time, waved a wroth fist at Sam. "But I did no such thing! I was helping those people, like I myself had been helped, but they never did appreciate it. If what they say I did to those Infected rings true, then I stand before you a mutilated man. But that I am not, Samuel. I am cured man. If nothing else, I am cured!"

The doctor's arm falling slacken to his side, he sighed and sat back down. "The police came on a beautiful March night, took my wife and I away and threw us into one disgraceful prison cell. She slit my throat with a razor blade, then she took it to her own."

Again, Sam lifted his head. His face glowed with a single word, coward, but not because Meyers had committed an act of murder-suicide. Coward, the doctor was, because his wife had to kill him for him.

This time, Jonathan Meyers chose to not write off his captive's expression.

"There's a belief that few people have, boy, that when a person dies their soul is used to save someone else; their soul, for a reason unknown, is dying when it's not set to until much further in the future. In today's language, you might say the recently deceased's soul is stuffed into a freezer until ready to use."

Sam's face clearly said, "I couldn't care less."

"Samuel, when you were a baby you came very close to dying. You had known it then. Only a few bushels old and you had already started to receive your dreams, at the time one in which the flames eating your mother's corpse would burn down your room with you in it. Dean had known it as well, had felt it – which now I realize might have something to do with why he sprinted back into the equation. But you weren't suppose to die then, oh no, the demon your father's chasing had come along and shaken things up."

Meyers grinned.

"The police buried my wife and I here, you know. In the middle of the night, at the base of a tree by our home, they buried us. As decoys they took two homeless people from the city and put them in the graveyard behind the church, in unmarked graves. Those are the bodies the islanders buried, you were half right about that. You've wondered why, boy, you feel that this island is your home? Because I considered it mine. Samuel, my soul was the one the Gods used to save yours."

Shock, along with a little bit of pain from his sewn lips and dislocated shoulder, that was the emotion now registered on Sam's face.

"You have my soul, boy, and I'd like it back. If you can't get out of that door within the next four minutes, I'm afraid your dear old brother is going to be succumbing to his illness very much alone."

Almost faster than Sam's pain sluggish mind could comprehend, Mad Doctor Meyers whipped out not his pliers but a freakishly large syringe. He jabbed it in the meaty flesh immediately above Sam's left knee, cackling something fierce.