They both stood staring in front of the coffee bar.
On one or two occasions, the brothers had found a hunt, not by research, or even searching at all, but sheer dumb luck. This seemed to be one of those times. But of all the places and all the creatures they might have anticipated to encounter purely out of chance, the idea of happening upon two beings such as these inside a remote roadside convenience store had honestly never occurred to either one of them.
"Sammy... What the hell are those things?" Dean whispered to his brother.
Sam opened his mouth as if to answer, but shut it again as true puzzlement and confusion fought their way across his features.
"I...I think they're...chickens, Dean." He answered finally. There was no surety in his voice whatsoever.
One of the short, dumpy creatures was occupied in tearing salty snacks from the shelves, filling his feathered arms—arms, Sam was almost sure, not wings. The other stood on the tip-toes of his little orange feet, drowning a plate of nachos in hot cheese. The brothers shared a look, uncertainty filling both of their expressions. They both turned to look at the clerk who himself had been staring at the odd spectacle. When they caught his eye, he managed only a helpless shrug. He didn't seem overly concerned, merely glad that he wasn't the only one who saw them.
The brothers looked back at one another, their awkward confusion nearly matched with each other. In his typical impatience, it was Dean who spoke first.
"Well, fine, Sam. But what the hell do we do with 'em?"
"Maybe we should wait and see if they pay." A defeated tone seemed to have crept into his voice.
Dean didn't seem very sure about Sam's solution, but in his circumstances he wasn't going to argue. In any case, he wasn't given much time for debate. To the clerk's uncomfortable relief (and Dean's mild disappointment), the odd avian creatures brought their burdens to the counter. Shaking his head disgustedly, Dean turned to the isles hoping to find something sufficiently sweet or greasy to distract himself from the whole embarrassing mess...and something caffeinated. He still found himself glancing back at the counter occasionally, but this encounter seemed destined to end without further fuss.
"Huh." Sam said finally, as the freakish fowl exited the store. They nodded briefly at the brothers in what could be supposed a friendly manner as they waddled past. "I guess they were harmless enough."
Dean answered Sam with a dismissive wave of the hand, wanting to drop the subject. And then they both heart the noise. Nails on a chalk board—even an acheri demon's hideous claws—could have produced a sound to run a harsher chill up Sam's spine. He saw Dean's posture stiffen.
They'd seen the jalopy out in the parking lot before entering the store: A relic so encrusted with rust and primer that it had seemed ready to dissolve away into dust at a touch. Dean had even scrawled the message "WaSH ME!" into the grime on the back pane. It otherwise wasn't the type of machine he'd catch himself dead looking at other wise. He certainly would not have expected it to survive the scraping, rough collision its back end made with the Impala. The encounter left the car's glossy black paint with a scarred by a pale, mud-streaked scratch.
Sam could almost have sworn he heard Dean's sanity shatter.
"Harmless or not, they're friggin' dead!"
A/N--This scenario was funnier to me before I actually wrote it out... I might have to start taking requests... I've realized I'm getting a little repetitive. I'll try to avoid the Impala punchline from now on...I promise.