Chapter 3

Flashback 1996

The pale moon waxed against evening's blackened sky. The steady hum of the black truck's tires connecting with the worn country road beckoning slumber. The man at the wheel shifted in the driver's seat, grimacing as he felt the bruises he'd sustained from his last battle beginning to form. He cast a glance in the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of his eldest son stretched out across the backseat, a flashlight in one hand and pen in the other, his face etched with concentration. John Winchester could never recall a time he'd seen Dean in such a state over his homework. This has to be one hell of an assignment.

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Dean rested his head against the cool truck door, thumping his pen on the blank page before him. This was the last night he had left to get this assignment done, and he still had no clue how he was going to finish by tomorrow morning. He would be the first to admit he'd done his fair share of burning the midnight oil due to a serious case of procrastination, but he'd spent every night of the last three weeks repeating this process of staring at a blank page and still nothing came.

He didn't understand why he was having so many problems with this assignment; it had appeared easy enough at the beginning. And the fact that most of his classmates had already finished theirs' by last week proved it to be so. He'd thought about pulling one from the paper and just changing it up a bit. But his teacher had reminded them on Monday that he had been collecting the weekly obituaries from the local papers and would not hesitate to cross reference, if he felt the need. So there went that grand idea.

Dean couldn't make sense of it. He was the one in class that faced the issues of mortality on a day to day basis following his father's lead on hunt after hunt, with the final goal of killing the thing that took his mom. Yet another reason why he should be able to do this assignment with ease, he'd witnessed death in the worst possible way and the sound of crackling flames and smell of thick, black smoke still haunted him daily.

He tightened his grip on the pen and pressed down into the paper, the blue ink staining the page in the same way it had on all his other rough drafts, as he wrote the words in his neatest print.

Dean M. Winchester

January 24th, 1979—

He hesitated, pulling the pen back from the page, clicking the point in and out. Dean sighed heavily at thought of having to pick one date out of the 365 days of the year. Take it slow…If I could just pick a month.

He gritted his teeth in frustration, as this idea seemed to yield an even bigger challenge. If he died in the Spring, more than likely it would rain, and while that could be construed as rather poignant, Dean wasn't sure he'd show up to anyone's funeral, much less his own, if he knew he was going to get drenched. Summer was too hot, Winter was too cold and Fall, well, Fall reminded him of school, and school was the reason he was stressed at the moment. So, Fall was definitely out.

And then there was the issue of the year, a number that would seal his fate. The question then rose of how long did he want to live, to linger on this earth. The seventeen-year-old quickly rephrased the question in his mind. It wasn't a question of how long he wanted to live, it was one of how long he could live, realistically speaking, if he continued his life as a hunter.

He remembered his father had told him once after a terrifying ordeal with a shapeshifter, that if he didn't start being more careful, he'd never live to see thirty. Okay, so before I'm thirty. I can handle that.

With a semi-decision made about his life span, but still not one made toward the rest of the date, Dean opted to skip that entirely and come back to it later, choosing rather to work on the body of his obit.

Son of John and Mary Winchester, deceased.

Brother of Samuel Winchester.

Dean retracted the pen again groaning in annoyance as he realized he now had to state exactly how he was going to die. He figured his teacher would frown upon him putting "killed by poltergeist" but he couldn't simply claim a hunting accident either. The man had been adamant about wanting specifics, not some half-ass broad incident. Dean couldn't for the life of him figure out why he was being such a prick about the whole thing. What he did know, was that he wasn't going down like some pansy. If he was to die, he was going to do it with style, preferably playing the hero.

Dean drew in a breath sharply, his eyes widening in excitement as he brought the pen back to the paper and started writing. I got it. Ah, man. I got it. I am so getting an A, well maybe not an A, but at least a B.

Present Day 2006

"Sam, get up!" Dean urged loudly, smacking the back of his brother's head lightly. Sam bolted upright instantly, his body rigid, hands out bracing himself for attack. Dean laughed at his brother's display of a true hunter's reflex, but stifled it when he noticed a tinge of burning anger clearly apparent in Sam's squinted eyes.

"You suck." Sam growled, searching the nightstand for his glasses. Putting them on, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and began making his way over to the bathroom.

"Hey, I just thought you'd like to know that there was another death last night." Dean stated smugly, sitting down on the edge of the nearest bed.

"What?" Sam asked, stepping back out into the room, his mouth full of toothpaste and toothbrush in hand.

"Dude, go spit or something."

"Huh? Oh…" Sam muttered as he retreated back into the bathroom, only to reenter the main room moments later, searching for a clean shirt. "It's only been 2 days since the last one. None of the others have been this close."

"Yeah. Whatever this thing is, it must be latching on to the people themselves and not based on a cycle." Dean offered as he tossed Sam the morning's paper, a picture of the deceased pasted on the front page.

"So, it all has to tie back to Kingston then." Sam stated, scanning the article.

"I guess. We need to go talk to the family though. See what we can find out." Dean grabbed his keys from the table and was halfway out the door when he realized Sam wasn't moving, just staring at the article. "You want me to leave your ass, Specs?"

The drive across town was uneventful, and the Morgan home was easy to find, since everyone in the entire town seemed either incredibly curious or utterly sympathic. Dean parked the Impala a block away from the house, earning him a look from Sam, but he wasn't gonna take the chance of one of the townies hurting his baby in all the commotion.

Along the walk, Dean and Sam discussed strategy. Sam was to take the mourning family seeing how he had that whole "I feel your pain" routine down to a science. Dean was going to work the newspaper guys and the cops if they were still around.

As the rounded the corner, they went there separate ways. Dean noticed a man, pad and pen in hand, talking to a blonde-haired women. Their conversation ended right about the time he approached and he quickened his pace in efforts to get the supposed reporter's attention as the man headed towards his vehicle.

"Hey! Can I talk to you for a sec?" Dean asked, managing to step in front of the man, edging himself between the man and his car.

"Look, kid. I got work to do, ok?" The man snapped as he brushed past Dean.

"I know. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. I'm, Dean, and I'm, uh, a student at the community college and I'm writing a paper about Professor Kingston and the legend. So if you could help me that would be great." Dean gave his best smile as he sidestepped his way back in front of the man.

"Fine, but make it quick. I'm Jenkins, by the way. What do you want to know?" the man's tone was indifferent, but Dean noticed the intrigued look in his eyes.

"Well, for starters, um…was Mr. Morgan a former student of Jake Kingston?"

"Yeah. In fact, we took Kingston's class together in high school. The man was an institution in this town." The admission came slowly

"So, what was that like?" Dean questioned, figuring it better not to push the man too hard for information at this point in time.

"Having Kingston for a teacher, you mean?" Dean nodded.

"Oh, well, it was interesting."

"Interesting how?" Dean pressed, his hunter's instincts kicking into high gear. This man knew something and he sure as hell was gonna find out what it was.

"If you are writing about Professor Kingston, then surely you know about his infamous assignment?" Jenkins asked, suspicion in his voice.

"See that's where I hit a dead end." Dean remarked sheepishly, trying his best to seem believable. "No one seems to want to talk about that."

"I can see why." Jenkins sighed. "Kingston had this "tradition" if you want to call it that. You see, every year he made his students write their own obit. It was supposed to teach us the importance of life or something like that. Ended up just scaring the crap out of most of us."

"Oh." Dean muttered, swallowing a huge lump that seemed to be forming in his throat as buried memories from his past forced their way back to the surface.

"You know the weird thing is, when they found Tom's body, he had his old obit in his hand. Can you believe that? The man kept that thing after all these years." Jenkins shook his head in disbelief, gazed down at his watch, and excused himself from the conversation mentioning he had someplace he needed to be.

Dean stood frozen, his mind going in a thousand different directions as he watched Jenkins drive off. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt a hand fall on his shoulder and sighed in relief when he realized it was Sam.

"You alright, man?" Startled by Dean's reaction, Sam quickly released his hold on Dean's shoulder and issued a scrutinizing glance, noticing his brother now appeared quite pale.

"I think we may have a problem, Sammy."

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Okay, lemme know what you think. Did you like it, did you not like it? Please lemme know if there is any major typos, errors, unanswered plot questions (not ones pertaining to the ending, people!) haha. cause it's pretty late here and my brain is officially fried. So leave a review and I will try to have the next chapter up by Sunday seeing as i'm leaving town on Monday. Thanx again for reading.