You'd think that I've grown a third eye, the way the front desk receptionist at the motel looks at me. I acknowledge her shock with a polite nod and stumble past her to the elevator. I'm too burned out to be bothered to give her an explanation.

I don't even know her name.

That strikes me as vaguely rude, seeing as I've been here for over a week; but then again, I'm too burned out to care.

She has a right to stare, anyway. I caught sight of myself in the mirror this morning, and there's not much more flesh on me than a skeleton, and the abnormally pale skin on my face isn't helping with the imagery.

I look like I'm celebrating Halloween in the middle of June.

While I was walking from meeting Cameron back to the hotel, which is only about a mile or two, I fell.

Like an old man.

Tripped on air, or my feet decided they were done moving, I don't know. So in addition to the zombie look I have going, my knees and hands are scraped to hell.

I pity this desk attendant. I would be shocked, too, if a tall, slouched skeleton came limping out of the summer heat; greasy hair and bloody, ripped up dress pants a suit coat drenched in a fevered sweat.

It's downright disgusting.

Bless her for not calling the police.

"Have a nice evening, sir." the nameless girl says slowly as I limp into the elevator.

The frayed, green carpet reeks of strong chemical cleaner from the recently departed housekeeping staff. While unpleasant, it beats the alternative.

This place is building up pros for itself.

Elevator, polite-ish staff, clean-ish carpet. I'm going to write them a nice review on TripAdvisor.

Came to seek answers about dead friend whose death I may or may not be responsible for, got abandoned by my brother and my best friend(who's an angel).

Staff politely ignored my distracting health condition, and the bathroom perfectly suited my needs for the numerous times I was sick in it during the course of my stay. I was able to perform top secret activities with the assistance of your lovely deadbolt on the door to the room, and I painted creepy magic stuff on your walls to keep out angels and demons, which are both real, by the way. I'll pay for the damage with the money I hustled in pool, and the cash from my credit card frauds.

Thanks.

My key grates painfully in the lock for a few minutes, my mind arguing with itself about how keys and locks actually work, while my eyes try to decide whether or not I can see straight today.

Once I finally make it past the door, I bolt it behind me and kneel down beside the bed.

Pull the suitcase out from under it. That's what I should be doing. Instead, my face gets up close and personal with the hazel bedspread, heat rising from my stomach. I dry heave a few times, the violent wracks of my shoulders forcing my head up and down against the mattress.

pull the padlocked suitcase from under the bed. Despite refusing housekeeping service and keeping the door locked, I'm still paranoid. The sigils around the room have kept my old friends and enemies out so far, but I'm not sure those will last. I flip open the suitcase and start spreading its content around the room.

I'm making so many holes in the wallpaper of this room, all these push pins. Pieces of evidence, and drawings that would appear as no more than scribbles to the uneducated eye. And a picture of Kevin. One that portrays him when he was still alive, and his eyes were whole and in his head.

I reach out to pick it up and hiss as my burnt hand bumps into the bedside table.

My palms are mysteriously burnt; so badly that they are blackened. I keep them bandaged, but that doesn't do much good.

The burns are the only things I can see, the only things that I feel from that night. I don't know how it happened, how they got there, and my stomach churns when I consider the possible connection between my burnt hands and Kevin's burnt eyes.

Between my injured knees, my intense muscle loss, and my burnt hands, getting undressed is really difficult, so I skip that part and start a cold stream of water in the shower, and step under fully clothed. The wet bandages cling painfully to my raw hands, so I unwrap them and let the bandages fall to the bottom of the tub, then let my body follow them down, ignoring the nasty color the water turns. I lay down, full length in the bottom of the tub, barely avoiding slipping and hitting my head, and let the water cool me down.

I won't go to sleep in here. I won't drown.

I don't know if I can get up, now that I'm down here.

The thing that finally gets me up and out is the pain. Pain at a level 9 and the lure of painkillers are a powerful incentive to get up.

I slosh out of the bathroom, making puddles in my wake as I head into the bedroom again and find my pills, swallowing three of them bone-dry. I'm not sure what they are; Dean has offered them to me several times over the years, only describing them as "effective". It took the trials and whatever happened to me before Kevin's death to finally get me bad enough to accept them.

I learned one of the side effects really quickly, or maybe it's just my scrambled eggs brain….I'm gonna go with saying it's the medication.

I dream.

I'm just thankful that dreams are the only images that can haunt me. At least I don't have any memories of what actually happened. Although...that's more frightening. The not knowing.