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Chapter 2- This Whole Wicked World

Hell remains for merciless moments, relentless days and inexorable ages the widely torn, depthless void that's become Dean's whole world. Moribound in some vortex outside time, fraught in neverending gloom. Nothing but the resonance of lost souls and the echoes of his own screams ever answers back to him. The deep and endless pain swathing his body not only persists, but imperceptibly intensifies with each stretching moment. There's a terrifying hole in the universe, and this is where he's bound. He knows that time can be of no consequence in such a ceaseless place; but time is all there is here now- tenacious time, enduring time. Time that will not be thwarted, will not withdraw.

Dean's instincts call for retaliation, but his mind tells him there's no reprisal to be had against the plight he faces. Nothing he can do will fight the nameless and imperceptible overseer of his suffering. He seeks a peace, his mother's sleep, but oblivion or any other kind unconsciousness eludes him. He's suspended in this tortuous place- in Hell, and all that Hell encompasses.

Somewhere deep in the hazy recesses of his mind, a stark denial of his doom rages onward despite the screeching vacuous force that holds the air he breathes- a force faceless, blank and evil. Yet the denial still remains, for Dean had once been a human: a random and indeed hopeless, flesh and blood denizen of the world. He'd been born and had an infancy, and a childhood and a life. He'd had a family that had at least cared enough to raise him to a man. He'd had a brother, too – someone put into his care early on. His mind struggles to keep hold of these, the articles of memory he knows are being ripped from him. He dies a thousand more deaths for just mere glimpses of his past…

Daddy's hands are black with dirt and grime as he rolls out from under our big black car parked out on the driveway. He winks at me as he picks himself up off the flat wooden skateboard that he rides on whenever he's underneath the car.

"I think that's about all she needs right now, Dean, to make her purr like a kitten when we take her out this evening," he says.

"She's not a kitten, Daddy!"

His laughter is gruff as he wipes his hands on a rag and then lightly ruffles my hair. "I know, son – but in top form this baby will always sound like she's purring…"

"Dear God, John!" my mother calls from the front porch swing, where she's rocking baby Sammy, "You already have him referring to that car as a girl?!"

Daddy laughs at her; then I run to her. "She IS a girl, mamma," I tell her. "And Daddy said she's the prettiest girl ever, except for you!"

My mom smiles the same special smile that she always saves for me, "You're quite the little mechanic then, aren't you, my little man-" I nod and step up beside her, reach for her hair, which is the softest, most wonderful thing in the world to ever touch, and I wrap my fingers in through it. I lean my head towards her chin as she kisses the top of my head, then I reach my other hand out to touch the peachy soft edge of Sammy's pink cheek. Sammy in turn looks back at me.

A cloud all of a sudden rides over the sun, darkening the air. I glance up and see a storm coming fast. Out the corner of my eye I see Daddy moving toward us. When I look back at my baby brother, he gives me a slow, strange smile as his eyes change.

The hand I have tangled up in my mother's hair is abruptly seared through with pain, and I scream and fall back in horror at the sight before me: Her hair is in flames, and she is on fire- her whole face aghast in soundless screaming fraught with a torment that nothing here on earth or no one in the universe can save her from-

"No! No No No No! Never Happened- Never Happened!" Dean cries breathless into the phosphorous air, "Never Happened At All! No! Never..." He repeats like a spasmodic chant, over and over until his gasps and bawling shrieks of denial can no longer support nor bear his voice.

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Bobby peaks out from the corner of the back porch and sees nobody, demon or otherwise. He hopes this is a good sign. He'd checked his watch at five 'til midnight, and since then had been covertly making his way from inside a house across the street to the house where Lillith and the boys were. The intensity of the watch the veritable swarm of demons had been making outside the barrier of sprinkled holy water seems to have lessened significantly since the clock struck twelve. This should be construed as a good sign as well, but somehow Bobby gets the feeling it bodes nothing but ill tidings.

He enters the house through the back door, quietly pacing his way through the quaintly laid out abode. Beyond a door just off the kitchen, he hears rustling and some whispering, whimpering voices. He opens it to find it leading to the basement. At the foot of the stairs he spots a man and woman, as well as the little girl Dean had earlier identified as possessed by Lillith. They look at him warily, six eyes popped open wide in his direction. He holds his hands up in supplication.

"It's okay," he tells them, "just be quiet and stay down here until I come back an' tell ya it's okay to come up." The woman nods at his reassuring smile, and he proceeds to head out, shutting the door behind him. Near the front entrance of the house he spots the body of an old woman, an obvious victim of the demon. Around the corner he finds an old man slumped at the head of the dining room table- another victim, he thinks sadly. He quietly makes his way further into the heart of the home.

He scopes his way through the first floor passages, and soon hears the sound of quiet sobbing coming out from the open French doors at the end of a hallway. He rushes to it, and suddenly his sense of foreboding dawns true as he gazes at the scene before him…

At the foot of a table, in the midst of several haphazard puddles of blood, are the only two people in this whole wicked world Bobby's ever come to love as his own children. For a few moments he cannot even move- can barely breathe in air so thick with grief. He forces a deep sigh through his non-compliant lungs, though, knowing his trembling hand must somehow find a way to Sam's shoulder, knowing he must figure out a way through the coming hours despite his breaking heart.

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