Chapter 4 to The Mark
"Intrusion"
Author: Wakingsparrow
Author's Note: Sooooo I lied. It will be the next chapter that has us reeling into action. Any additional faces in this one are not necessarily what I hinted at before. I've come to the conclusion there are going to be quite a few more flash backs than I had anticipated. I've taken a predisposition to the preceding story between Dean and Sam, but am very much dead set on interworking it into what is about to take place. I hate to tack in another battle-less chapter, but it's quite a bit of fun to play up Dean's point of view.
Love it? Let me know! Hate it? Let me know! Don't know how you feel? Letttt meeee know!
I'm at the cross roads of the story right now. Don't make me bury a box with an peppering of precise contents just to pry it out of you.
...
Dean shifted and quaffed at his arid mouth for what little moisture was left, but the act alone made him groan in discomfort. Where was he? His body's aching implied he may have gotten in a fight, but that didn't seem to ring any bells. Usually he reveled in landing a solid punch on some jackass as a memento of his consumption labors, or at least had a tender cheek or a fractured rib if he didn't manage that.
Everything felt densely hot and constricted and he couldn't stretch his legs more than a 60 degree angle before they met something solid. He cracked open his eyes and found nothing but murky scarlet around him. A sound tinned and tacked all above as if he was in a casket and dirt was being shoveled over him.
No, seriously. What the hell?
This was all too familiar.
...
Slick red everywhere lit up with flashes of searing light - heat choking him out - chains pinching blood blisters into his skin and binding his movement. He laid on an odd texture of what seemed to be dense jelly and broken sticks. It was if he was riding waves, too, rolling about in a ship's bilge, when he sickly realized it was all moving. They were parts. Living squirming chunks of anatomy under him. He wanted to clutch his hands over the sides of his head as thousands of screams swelled up and nearly broke his ear drums, but he was bound tight. He erratically inhaled the stink of severed rotting entrails and felt the thick current of tepid blood steadily rise over his neck and snake around his frame.
...
Dean shuttered violently and nearly wretched as he jolted up with a guttural cry, arms thrashing wildly.
The roof of the Impala clipped the top of his forehead with a loud agonizing bang and a thin maroon blanket slipped off his face and pooled in his lap. Jet darkness inundated his vision and as he adjusted to it, he could see the faint outline of the steep quarry walls just beyond, lit up by an ivy swallowed yard light some ways away. Strange translucent markings slid down the vehicle's window casting crawling shadows on the upholstery of the car and distorted his view. Dean's breath was labored, but eased gradually. Buckets of rain, not earth…drips, not worms in flesh.
That makes more sense…
He gripped the cloth at his waist so tightly his fingers began to pin-prick with numbness. Dean hadn't dreamt of hell in at least a month, let alone freaked out about it when he was, though scarcely, awake. God, he'd been such an idiot to believe he was over this nightmare. The shrieks still echoed around his cranium but faded the harder he concentrated through the wilting glass on the dim storm-swept plains. He dipped his head down with a strangled wheeze and registered a few trickles of liquid on his face from his dilated eyes.
So much for counting on a prayer…
As stale air entered his lungs he realized he hadn't been smart enough to at least crack a window the night before. His stomach churned and he wished he would have slept longer, lessening his present illness. It was scarcely a second before he knocked open the Impala's back door and was purging up acidic fluid onto the loose waterlogged stone.
After a minute of misery, he spat and limply rolled over on the ground, taking in the torrent of rain above him. It felt invigorating on his feverish skin and it had been so long since the land had been watered this significantly, he'd practically forgotten what puddles looked like.
The night before was coming to him slowly with each wash of the soggy breeze. The vulgar brew of dinner and the elevated words exchanged, combined with the memory of his argument with Sam before everything blew to shit, made him remember he'd just puked up a bottles worth of barrel resin. Anytime a fight with Bobby occurred, there were only two ways around it: take his warning and make what use of it you could give or take, or avoid the whole ordeal in hopes it would resolve its self. Sadly, the latter had never really worked out all too well.
A violent, fizzling, stripe of lightning flashed down into the endless land and for a moment, everything like the day. It left a vanishing amethyst outline in its wake and a crack of a heavenly cannon so loud, it rattled the tail pipe of the Impala.
Good morning star shine, the earth says hello.
Ugh, he wanted to throw up again. The alcohol was evidently not out of his system.
...
Dean pointedly ordered the greasiest burger possible with a side of infinite glasses of water and leaned back against the worn corner booth. Sioux Fall's twenty four hour/seven days a week Annie's Tavern was at its usual bustling capacity of three, even at five in the morning. Alcohol was cut off at two AM, but the upstairs rooms were rented out at a meager price to the intoxicated, which kept the law enforcement from interfering. Antlered buck heads were hung intermittently on the dark wood of the walls along with a spew of random antique photographs and tchotchkes. Thick and tasseled floral drapes were perpetually pulled back from the windows with rope ties, gathering a layer of dust so thick, it was hard to decipher the original color of the cloth. The structure was on the far border of the town off a cul-de-sac, which made it even less accessible to the passer-throughs and all the more desirable to the hunter.
He refused his body a shiver as he recalled his moment of panic earlier. It had been a few years since Dean had dragged himself up from his own grave, but it stuck with him like a thirsty tick. Still made him bolt up in bed gasping for air like it was just moments before, pawing at the nonexistent dirt that filled his mouth and choking on the taste his own perspiration. He should have been more understanding about Sam's insomnia in those hotels they shared. Hell was far more fresh and unbearable for him. Though his stint had been shorter, it had been a hundred times worse. His brother had needed someone to talk to whether he wanted to or not, but Dean had been too afraid to even go there. He thought he had been doing him some favor by giving him his space, but in retrospect, he wasn't so certain he didn't simply come off looking like a dick.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped it open. No missed calls. Not surprising. He fingered over the speed dial that would reach Sam's most recent number, assuming it was still working, but he shut it and placed on the laminated table. It was more than hell that separated them now. Not after that last time they were together, the events that had unfolded.
"Yuh look like shit, kid."
A gravely voice deadpanned above him making him jump slightly.
In his threadbare state, Dean hadn't even resister that the thin, aged, aproned woman had approach his booth. She set down a mug and filled it full of an opaque tan liquid, but it didn't steam as he expected coffee to. He looked up at her skeptically.
With a dutiful smirk involving a few missing teeth, her two fingers that clamped a cigarette tapped a bottle of something tucked in her front pocket where straws would usually go. The top of the container dripped with red wax, and he knew the trademark liquor. "My iced specialty to beat the heat, hang over, or heartbreak."
All thee above, in that case. His eyes shot up to the woman's collar and read her name tag. Well if it wasn't old Annie her self. You wily fiend, before noon (or eight am) and everything.
"A man yer handsome age shouldn' look as much like road kill as yah do." She winked a mascara leadened eye, crow's feet turning upward like her willowy smile.
Before he could say anything she started to leave, patting his shoulder. Not but two steps away, though, she turned back around. "You best put right whatsever hassling you, son. You don't have all the time in the world. Goes quicker than yer think."
You have no idea, lady…
She left him be after that and he felt mildly creeped out, but the words rang true.
Gingery he sipped the spicy creamy drink she'd poured and after a few minutes, it surprisingly made him feel a better. By the time his burger came he didn't feel too ill to eat and it seemed to help soak up the lingering cheap whiskey that burned his chest.
Dean typically prided himself in being stoic, but with the combination of Bobby's intense fuming and a total stranger's brief assessment, it was clear his current state of mind was less than veiled. The silent phone of the table mocked him, so he tucked it back in his pocket. He'd had enough extrospective advice in the last 24 hours to last him a year.
The cobalt hue from the sky murmur out a gentle warning that the mantle of night was fraying hastily. Whatever concoction of drink he'd been served left him feeling wired and at ease as he folded his payment under the mug and drove his way back to the yard. It was no use avoiding it, he had no where else to go.
As he rolled down the potholed lane to the fenced entrance, he noticed the recently fresh set of tire marks in the mud.
That's weird, Bobby isn't much for visitors.
The Impala rumbled up next to a grimy green pickup and he felt his full stomach twist. Whoever it was, they could be a multitude of things, a demon looking for vengeance, an old hunter friend, a customer who actually believed this was a junk yard...
Or it could also be Sam.