Phantom Load Master Fic Post
Title: Phantom Load
Author: lovesrain44
Artist: xterm
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Dad, OFC's
Fic Rating: NC-17
Art Rating: G
Word Count: 54,000
Warnings: Weechesters & present day, dark, angst, underage non-con (not wincest).
Summary: Dean and Sam return to Boulder, CO, where they investigate a haunted school. The job seems simple enough to Sam, who has good, although vague, memories of living in Boulder back in 1992, when John Winchester rented a single-wide trailer, and the boys were able to walk home from school together. Dean, however, has altogether different memories, far less pleasant and far more damaging. It's during the investigation that Sam discovers the secret that Dean doesn't realize he's been hiding.
A/N: Sorry, Dean, I was compelled by forces beyond my ken to be really, really cruel to you.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9
Thanks to Amothea, here is a link to the whole story in a single file! Click here. (And then click on the link inside the box that displays.)
Here's a link to Xterm's marvelous art!
xterm and to shea. They held my hand and listened to me whimper as I wrote, they beta'd and encouraged. And also to
big_pink, from whom I learned the art of the outline.
A phantom load is a concept that I head about one day, and couldn't get out of my head. According to Wikipedia, it refers to the electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode. (You can read more about it at their site.) I mean, who counts the wattage used by a lighted clock face on a microwave oven or stove? I thought it also might refer to an emotional drain occuring to a person that they were unaware of, a constant and irratating problem, or memory, or secret. Long obsessed about Dean's bleeding eyes secret in "Bloody Mary," I wanted to write a story where that secret came to light.