Bread and Circuses 1/2
Bread and Circuses - 1/2
Rating: P/G, Gen
Word Count: 5,732/12,593
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Consider this my virtual Easter egg for my flist. That said, this is so not the angst-ridden Easter fic which is still a work in progress. Damn it. It is pure, unapologetically surreal, crack!fic This is what happens when you go to hospital and they give you anaesthetic ::nods:: It was the drugs, honest, it was! They were also foolish enough not to take my laptop away. Heh. I just have one problem, this was supposed to be total froth and nonsense ::frowns at fic:: so I don’t know where all the dark angsty bits came from, truly I don’t. Banner enhanced by the superb secret-seer (digital flour-painting, now there’s a talent!)
Title note: The title is the translation of a Latin quote by Juvenalis, blatantly misused here just for the hell of it. And yes, this does confirm the sad rumour that I am an unrepentant geek.
Characters: Dean, Sammy, Bobby Singer, John.
Setting: Pre-series. Lawrence County, SD. Easter 1996.
Summary: Television can be dangerous to your health.
Part 1 | Part 2
Part 1
‘Knock, knock.’
?
‘Knock, knock.’
What the?
‘Knock, knock.’
Oh, for Heaven’s sake. ‘Shut up, already!’
‘Come on, Dean.’
Huh?
‘Knock, KNOCK!’
‘I don’t care who’s there. Just go away!’
‘Dean!’
‘Dean who?’
~~~
‘Stop calling me that!’
‘Very funny, Dean. Just because you don’t like my jokes there’s no need to pretend you don’t know me.’
‘Um, because I don’t?’
The kidder was standing there with his hands on the hips of too short jeans. Any minute now he was probably going to stamp his feet. Hah! Got that in one.
He wasn’t sure what the heck was going on. He’d woken up, goodness knows where, to find himself sprawled face down on a leather couch so badly marked with scratches and unmentionable stains that Goodwill would have rejected it on sight. His wake-up call had taken the form of somebody’s hyperactive ragamuffin child who thought it was endlessly amusing to pretend to call him by someone else’s name. Yes, really comical. Funny, hah hah.
‘Enough, already. But while you’re standing there can you at least shut off that television? Please? It’s giving me a headache.’
The kid huffed once before stomping resignedly over to snap off the old black and white set perched at a dangerous angle on top of a huge pile of what looked like Bibles. Seriously, who collected Bibles? ‘China and silverware, maybe, but Bibles?’
‘What?’
‘Huh?’ He thumped himself over the ears; thank goodness that awful, loud, static was gone.
‘What about our homework?’
Oh, he hadn’t realised he’d ended up asking the last question aloud. Homework? He shelved that query because it made no sense, and the whole Bible thing was bothering him more. ‘Bibles?’ He got up and moved over to squat down for a closer look, fingering the spines in amazement. ‘Is that Latin, and Greek?’ Ew. His fingers were all brown and rusty. Yuck. He did his best to wipe them off on his rumpled t-shirt. He didn’t have much luck. And now his clothes were dirty. Dirtier. He’d slept in his clothes, and it didn’t look like they’d been clean in a while, and he doubted they’d ever seen the business side of an iron. That was just wrong.
‘Bibles and exorcism texts in three different languages,’ the kid said looking a little confused. ‘You bitch about the lessons all the time but that’s no reason to act like you’ve never seen them before.’
‘Mind your language,’ he replied automatically. Lessons? He felt carefully all over his head. No, it didn’t feel sore on the outside. He still had what felt like a miniature bolt of lightning behind his left eye, and no idea where the heck he was, but apart from that he felt completely normal. Fit as a fiddle. Fit enough to … He threw himself down on the dusty floorboards and laid down one hundred push-ups before flipping over to match that in abdominal crunches. Yes. Fit, even with that pesky migraine. Though why he was wasting time doing silly exercises like some jock, he didn’t know. He lay panting on the floor and wondered if he could persuade the kid to bring him a cold compress and a nice glass of lemon water.
‘Dean?’
Whoa. That was quick. The kid was suddenly right there in his face, bending over looking like he’d just figured something out.
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Drunk? Me? Why would I be …?’ Although that would explain the whole waking up somewhere else. Maybe someone had gotten him drunk on some sherry after a dinner party. That could explain everything.
‘Dean?’
‘I’ve already asked you nicely to stop calling me that.’
‘Dean, stop kidding around, okay? Enough with the April Fools’ joke. You got me. It’s not funny any more.’
The kid’s voice was getting completely emotional. Kid. Hmmm. I can’t keep calling him that, it isn’t polite. ‘Uh, sorry, kid … I mean … so, what’s your name anyway, young man?’
The kid just gave him one stunned look before disappearing through an archway into another room, screaming, ‘Uncle Bobby!’
~~~
He’d never seen anyone look less like an uncle in his life. He gave the impression of being a very dangerous ex-bikie, or maybe a trucker. Though if he had to hazard a guess, not that he’d ever met one, or associated with the sort of people who would, he assumed that truckers had families too, it was just … he wasn’t quite sure what. The cap? The beard? Or those eyes that looked like they knew how to kill you without thinking. Weird. Now, where had that thought come from? Definitely not the sort of uncle that took you to ball games, or cheered you on in the school spelling bee. Just. Not.
He scrunched himself a little tighter within the slick nylon ropes binding him to the chair. The kid - Sammy, the kid’s uncle kept calling him Sammy - was standing rigidly right where he’d been ordered to after he’d dragged the man back into the room. The man had taken one look at him, and next thing he knew he was tied to a chair. The kid was over against the far wall, and Sammy’s good old Uncle Bobby was trying to force him to drink out of an antique silver flask. Georgian? And he was trying to twist out of the way, and keep his mouth shut, and it wasn’t working, and all the time he could hear that kid calling out for this Dean like he was pleading for something, and then he couldn’t stop it, and he was gasping, and choking on water.
Then the man was standing back looking puzzled, and saying calming things to the kid like he hadn’t just tried to torture someone in front of him. And the kid was crying, and not moving, and looking at him like he’d lost something precious, and it just made his head hurt all the more.
‘I’m not a burglar,’ he managed to say when he’d finally stopped coughing up all the water he’d managed to suck into his lungs during the wasted struggle. ‘I’m not, and I didn’t try to hurt the kid, honest. I just woke up here, and I don’t know how! If you just let me go, I’ll never come back. I promise.’
For some strange reason that seemed to upset the kid even further.
As if his day wasn’t bad enough, this Bobby person proceeded to erect a ladder in the middle of the room and climbed up and spray-painted graffiti on the ceiling like he was the Hell’s Angels’ personal decorator.
The kid had started muttering what sounded like prayers, in Latin of all things, through his tears, while his uncle literally kicked the ladder across the room as if he couldn’t waste the time to put it away neatly. Despite that frantic look in his eyes the man still took the time to drag him in the chair across the room and carefully align him dead centre beneath all those strange symbols.
Oh please, God, don’t let them belong to some sort of cult! He needed to get out of here and tell the authorities about these crazy people.
Then the man was joining in with the kid, praying. Although he sounded too angry for it to really be a prayer. And his head just wanted to explode, and after a while, all the chanting and the pain just made him go blank.
~~~
When he came to he was back on the couch, with a lumpy pillow under his head, and a blanket around him and the two of them were just crouched in front of him, staring. And the man still looked mad, just not at him any longer.
There was too much sunlight slicing into the room, and he could hear himself breathing, and every sound in the room was yelling at him, and he couldn’t think, and he just wanted to die, his head still hurt so much.
‘Please? Just let me go, I won’t tell. Please?’ he whispered, not meaning to beg, just wanting to be away, to be gone; to be quiet.
‘Ssh, Dean. It’s okay,’ the kid said, reaching out to stroke his hair, like he was the kid.
It shouldn’t have felt so good, and he shouldn’t have turned his head into it like he recognised and welcomed the touch. Slower. He just needed it to be slower, gentler. Quiet. Still.
And the kid, Sammy, that’s right, his name was Sammy, seemed to know what he needed because he just kept his hand there barely moving, calming.
‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ He thought he’d asked it before, but he wasn’t sure of anything much over the pain that was only now beginning to ease off. How long have I been lying here?
‘Because it’s your name, Dean,’ the man was saying gruffly. If anything he was looking slightly guilty, as if he was regretting what he’d done to him.
So why did he do it?
‘You’re my brother,’ the kid broke in loudly before lowering his voice as he felt him flinch beneath his hand. ‘Dean. Your name is Dean.’
He tried to sit up, but they both pressed him back down; gently, but they obviously weren’t going to let him go anywhere in a hurry. ‘What do you mean, you’re my brother?’ It didn’t make sense. He’d woken up to this kid’s stupid joke. And the kid and his uncle had performed some sort of weird voodoo ritual over him. And then he must have fainted, and they’d stopped and were trying to be nice for some reason. As if it didn’t matter what had happened, as if he’d understand why they did it. And none of it made any damned sense. And his head still hurt, and besides, his name wasn’t Dean, it was … it was …
No, this wasn’t right. You couldn’t just forget who you were could you? ‘Rats.’ No, that wasn’t strong enough for what he was feeling. He didn’t know who he was, and suddenly these strangers were claiming he was family, and …
‘Oh sugar, honey, ice and tea!’
~~~
Apparently you could just forget everything. They proved it, or rather Sammy did. Sammy, his name is Sammy. The kid dug out a plastic lunchbox stuffed with things he obviously cherished, rummaging through a clutter of what looked like school IDs; one of those old tin tokens from a Monopoly set - the car; a harmonica; a map of Kansas; a very sharp looking knife; and what couldn’t really be a handful of bullets before pulling out a rubber-banded batch of photos. Photos of them, he knew it was true even before he made the man bring him a mirror. It was him; it was them, the two of them together joking around in front of the camera looking the same as they did now. Taken last month, outside Vegas, the kid said about the topmost photo. Him with a crude buzz of fair hair, and freckles. You’d think a person would remember having those. He looked anywhere between sixteen and thirty with that cocky smirk. Sammy. His name is Sammy … was all eyes and hair and draped over him like an octopus in every picture. And there were other, older photos; strangely never the same background in any of them. It was always just the two of them, never anyone else. Except for the last few photos of them at different ages, them with some guy, always the same guy. Their Dad, the kid said.
Sammy. His name is Sammy. He’s my brother. Sammy. Sammy. He had to remember that. He couldn’t let himself forget that too. I have a little brother, and his name is Sammy. Don’t forget. I have a brother, and I have a father.
‘Dad?’ It sounded strange. ‘I … we have a Dad?’
‘John,’ Bobby said. He’d been standing back just watching ever since Sammy came dashing back with his treasure chest to curl up next to him on the couch and do his show and tell.
‘John.’ It was a good name. A name. ‘John?’
‘Winchester.’
Oh. His name was Winchester. Dean Winchester. He repeated it to himself a few times. He guessed he’d have to get used to it. ‘Winchester, just like …’
‘The rifle,’ Sammy interrupted with a grin.
‘… the cathedral.’
Now what had he said? The two of them had just closed up. ‘Or the rifle,’ he said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Of course, just like the rifle.’
~~~
‘So this J… our Dad, where is he? Is he …?’
‘No!’ Sammy said quickly. ‘He’s fine, he’s just off … uh … hunting. He’ll be back soon. Uncle Bobby called him. He’ll be back tomorrow. He was just about to … finish, and he said he was going to leave right away. If he drives straight through, he’ll be here before breakfast. He was leaving.’ It was said with some surprise. As if he wasn’t used to their father doing that. Dropping everything if they needed him.
Their father. Dean just … Dean. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t call himself by that name, their name for him. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t fit. He wasn’t anybody. Not yet. Not till he remembered. Until then he was … nobody. Whatever they wanted to call him, in his head he was going to be Nobody.
Nobody was about to ask about their mother, where she was, if they had any other relatives, any sisters, anybody besides this Uncle Bobby. He didn’t know what made him stop. It was like there was this hole inside him, and it was deeper than the not knowing, the not remembering who he was, not recognising his family. In the middle of the emptiness there was this one thing he knew not to ask. Nobody didn’t think that was a good sign at all. Mom?
‘So, Mr uh Winchester, we’ve been staying with you while he … our father’s been away?’
Now their uncle was flinching. ‘I mean Uncle … Bobby, that’s right isn’t it? … Sammy …’ My brother’s name is Sammy. My name is Dean. My father’s name is John. John Winchester. I have to say it’s like the rifle. My brother’s name is Sammy. My name is Dean. My brother’s name is Sammy … ‘Sammy called you Uncle Bobby.’
‘Robert Singer. Like the sewing machine.’ For a minute there was a definite glint of a grin behind those eyes. ‘We’re not related, but I’ve known you both since you were shorter than any of my dogs so you might as well call me Uncle like Sammy does, or just Bobby. You’re old enough for that now.’
Nobody tried not to focus on Sammy whose eyes were wide in awe. He just nodded. ‘Bobby. Do we stay with you a lot?’ There was something more than just courtesy in that title Sammy used. Something he had to think about.
Bobby took off his cap to hitch up his pony-tailed hair in discomfort. ‘Yeah, you could say that. John drops by now and then, and if he’s … busy, you two bunk in the spare room upstairs. Aint as if it’s any problem, just throw some food at you the same time as I feed everything else around the yard.’ He was looking grumpy, but even Nobody wasn’t stupid enough to buy it. Bobby might be even tougher than he looked but the way Sammy acted like a faithful puppy around him told him everything he needed to know for now. He should trust him.
Except for just one small thing.
‘Why did you tie me up, and make me drink that stuff that tasted like water, and why did the two of you …’ Nobody gestured vaguely. ‘Do that ceremony over me?’
~~~
Bobby spun a fantastic tale full of monsters and demons, and things that did more than go bump in the night and the kid kept butting in adding even more flourishes until Nobody didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. They’d thought he was possessed?
Although to be fair, the … - have to call him Sammy - Sammy’s first thought had been that he was joking, then that he was drunk, and only then that he was possessed; in that exact order. Nobody worried about what that said about him as a person, and this surreal family he’d woken up a part of.
After an hour they let him get up. Bobby was still eying him warily, if protectively, and muttering about needing to get him to a doctor if this, whatever the hell it was didn’t wear off Goddamn fast.
Nobody thought about reprimanding Bobby for swearing in front of the kid but he didn’t think he’d pay any attention. The man could swear like a trucker or an army vet and Nobody heard more curses in the next few minutes than he’d ever heard in his life. Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true as he couldn’t actually remember his life, but Nobody felt sure he’d lived a fairly sheltered life, because, my Lord, some of those words were simply shocking.
Bobby and Sammy were throwing ideas back and forth as he wandered around the room, just touching things. The whole place was so weird. There was no way these people - his family - were completely normal. In the background he could hear Bobby discounting alcohol as a cause apparently because he hadn’t done more than sneak one beer the previous night. Nobody was glad he wasn’t a complete lush, though the thought of beer as a nighttime aperitif made him screw up his nose in distaste. Head and other injuries had already been ruled out after Bobby had given him an embarrassingly intensive check-up before letting him off the couch. Sammy was now putting forward a case for him having been cursed by a witch, and Nobody didn’t know why he found that idea less frightening than the fact that the kid, who looked about thirteen at most, sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
By the time Nobody came back to them gingerly carrying two odd looking objects that he’d found leaning up against one of the bookcases, Bobby was leaning more towards him having had some sort of breakdown. Talking about accumulated stress, and traumatic events, like he was a shell-shocked soldier rather than the innocent teenager he’d seen in that hand mirror.
‘What are these?’ he asked out of genuine interest, and also so they would just stop talking about him like he wasn’t even in the same room with them.
‘Assegai,’ Bobby said as he quickly eased the slender hardwood spears out of his hands, and swivelled them iron tip upwards before he passed them to Sammy.
Nobody was a bit miffed to see that although the spears dwarfed the kid in height, he was handling them like he knew how to use them in a fight.
‘Zulu weapon,’ Bobby said blandly.
Oh. Nobody was glad he hadn’t told him that he thought they would make good stakes for rose bushes. Just as he was about to desperately suggest he find the kitchen and make them all a nice pot of tea he spotted something that he’d completely missed on his first circuit.
‘Oooh, television,’ he said brightly, drifting across the room again.
~~~
In the end he’d been forced to let his brother - Sammy, his name is Sammy. My name is … Dean - literally drag him away from the set. Sammy’s explanation that the television didn’t work wasn’t enough to stop him casting one longing glance back at it as he was led out of the room.
Sammy pulled him through the entire house, pointing things out eagerly as if by identifying them he could make Nobody remember them. And he didn’t. None of their clothes and other personal items strewn messily around the room Sammy said they’d been sharing for a week. None of the strange towers of books everywhere, none of the signs and what Sammy called wards, none of the weapons that were hung up all over the building, tucked under beds, and even between the bathtub and the wall.
It was like being trapped inside a funhouse with the mirrors distorting reality back at you. There was nowhere he looked that there wasn’t something out of the ordinary or just so totally wrong that alarm bells rang in his head. As if his head wasn’t already sore enough. Nobody sighed a little mournfully and hoped tea would eventually be forthcoming.
It wasn’t till they got back downstairs and Sammy pushed him ahead of him into the kitchen that Nobody was finally able to relax in the only normal room in this shabby madhouse. He made himself pull up a chair and sit down at the table. He was pretty sure it was the same one he’d been tied up in earlier. The fact that Bobby had returned it to its rightful place actually made him feel slightly better. He was obviously the kind of pragmatic man who would have left it where it was if he thought he was going to need it again later. Sammy didn’t seem to be paying the chair any special attention and was bustling around throwing what looked like an entire cup of ground coffee into a saucepan of water before setting it to boil on the top of the double range.
‘Tea?’ Nobody asked faintly as he tried not to think of how strong that coffee would end up being.
‘Tea?’ Sammy didn’t look like he understood the word.
‘Any sort is fine, but Earl Grey would be nice if you had it.’
Sammy blinked. ‘Earl Grey tea?’
Nobody nodded thankfully. Now he was listening. ‘No milk or sugar, I’m watching my weight.’
‘Uh,’ Sammy said not very clearly. ‘Well, you usually have coffee, but I’m sure I can find something in here.’ He was running frantically from one slatted cupboard to another as if speed would help him in the search.
‘Oh,’ Nobody said faintly. Coffee didn’t feel right, but if that was what Sammy said he drank. ‘No, coffee would be great. Just what I need. Caffeine to clear the mind.’
Sammy smiled back at him in relief. The smile made Nobody anxious for some reason. ‘Maybe some biscuits or some cake?’ There was nothing strange about anyone asking that surely? Judging by the way the kid rolled his eyes at him before dumping a heavy tin onto the table, that was a totally normal question.
Nobody wanted nothing more than to be completely normal.
Looking down at a leaden lump of a bought fruitcake nestled next to a packet of Twinkies, Nobody almost took that thought back. ‘Do you have any cake forks?’
~~~
Sammy, his name is Sammy. Nobody had to keep telling himself that. It seemed to be the one thing he needed to keep hearing. Sammy kept staring at him while he struggled to eat the dry cake. Bobby was doing the same thing; pacing up and down shouting into a phone in the next room, and glancing worriedly through the doorway every time he did an about-turn at the south wall. Bobby was really mad. There was a great deal of yelling, and a lot of what might have been military jargon, none of which made any sense to Nobody, so he did his best to block the noise out. Life wasn’t like this in the magazines or on television he thought.
‘So, amnesia?’ It sounded more like a dessert than the black hole that was his life.
Sammy looked at his uncle who merely shrugged before continuing to bellow what sounded like a weird list of ingredients at the by now deafened person at the other end of the line. ‘Looks like. Uncle Bobby’s checking it out. He wants to have all the facts before Dad gets here.’
Nobody wasn’t sure what kind of facts they were talking about except for the fact that … ‘I can’t damn well remember anything!’ he shouted. ‘Oh my,’ he whispered with one hand on his mouth in shock. I didn’t mean to swear, I guess I’m a little upset.’
Sammy looked more stunned by his apology than his language.
‘I like food,’ Nobody suggested uncertainly, as he tried to steer the conversation back to an more appropriate social topic.
‘Yeah, you do,’ Sammy agreed wholeheartedly.
Nobody smiled back, and cut himself a much smaller slice of cake while he did his best to ignore the state of the kitchen.
~~~
It only took him two hours to clean the kitchen working around Sammy’s protests. Surprisingly it wasn’t all that bad once he’d removed the surface dust, although the leadlight windows over the sink obviously hadn’t been cleaned with a toothbrush in years. Sorting and alphabetising the contents of the cupboards took a lot longer. The man had the most eclectic collection of supplies Nobody had ever seen. Tins of tomatoes, rat poison, vermicelli, what must have once been potatoes judging by the tortured purple nodules twined around the desiccated lumps in the bottom of a sack, salt, dog food, baked beans, curry powder, gun oil, more salt, condensed milk, old jars full of assorted screws. And that was just the first cupboard he opened. There was no flour, spices or anything to indicate Bobby had ever baked except for some ginger, cinnamon and molasses shoved to the back of a shelf. Nobody tried not to get disheartened, but, really, the mess! Eventually he found that reading the labels on each jar and tin aloud as he wiped them clean before putting them back in a much more logical order helped keep him calm and focussed.
The cupboard full of glass jars of strange powders, dried leaves and berries labelled in Latin was the only one he left untouched. As he stacked a distressingly unhealthy quantity of salt into a neat pyramid in one corner of the walk-in pantry, Nobody wondered how long he’d have to know Bobby before it would be considered polite to have a talk about the hidden dangers of high cholesterol.
The mainstays of Bobby’s diet were no secret. A refrigerator full of beer and steak; and oddly, enough bread, peanut butter, milk and juice to keep a horde of teenagers going for a month. Oh. Nobody guessed that explained the five family packs of Lucky Charms in the cupboard to the left - Sammy food.
In the end he had two separate piles left over. One he closed his eyes to as he bagged the out-of-date, or just plain unknown or bulging tins before thrusting the garbage bag desperately at Sammy saying ‘Rubbish, now!’ The other pile of non-kitchen items he managed to fit into an old Jack Daniels carton. There was no way he was having that stuff in his kitchen a moment longer. He’d just got the back door open with his foot - darn there was another pile of spilt salt he’d missed with the broom - when he froze on the threshold looking out into Bobby’s yard. Yard was definitely the operative word. There wasn’t anything that looked remotely like a garden anywhere in the vicinity. What there was in inglorious abundance were trucks and cars, and heaps of scrap metal - parts? - everywhere. It looked like a tip.
‘It’s great isn’t it?’ the kid said, appearing from behind one of the wrecks. He was skipping between car shells as if it was his own private amusement park.
Nobody couldn’t see any Ferris Wheels, and didn’t have the words to reply. He tried, but there was nothing suitable to say. Nice salvage? I love what you’ve done with the place? Sometimes if you couldn’t find anything good to say, it was best to say nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.
He bent over to carefully put his carton of feral objects down outside the door. It wouldn’t do to knock the gun off the top and have it go off by accident. ‘Garage, maybe?’ he muttered helplessly to Sammy not sure if that would make any sense because the entire property looked like what he assumed the inside of garages must look like. Not that he’d ever go anywhere that dirty of course.
As he shut the door firmly on the horrors outside, Nobody made himself a solemn promise never to go out there again. The world was indeed a very scary place.
~~~
‘What’s he doing now?’ Bobby hissed not very quietly.
‘Sitting.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know’
Nobody looked up from where was seated contentedly in front of the television. It was on, but the kid was right. It didn’t work. He’d spun the dial, and all he’d got was static on every channel. It wasn’t that bad, it was actually comforting staring into all that perpetual motion and listening to the white noise. Still, maybe they had a point. He got up and fiddled with the horizontal and vertical hold switches on the back of the set. No luck with that. Hmm, he pulled the notepad and pen out of the middle of the book immediately underneath. That had to help. Nice and balanced, but still no picture. He spent a long time adjusting the rabbit’s ear antennas until he had them just where he wanted them. Well, that made a difference, now there were giant black ribbons flickering in and out of existence on the screen. Nobody ignored the whispering behind him and decided that maybe in this one case violence was the answer. He reached over to another pile, picked up one of the heaviest volumes and slammed it down hard on one precise spot, right there.
‘What the fuck, do you think you’re doing?’ Bobby yelped as he grabbed the antique book out of his hands.
‘That,’ Nobody said with a grin, watching the television flicker back to full life. ‘Anyone want to watch Days?’
~~~
Nobody did his best to go to sleep. After all it had been a long, traumatic day, and he was exhausted. Anyone would be what with the whole exorcism and amnesia thing. As he turned himself once more on the squeaky bed like a rotisserie chicken he just wished he could sleep and wake up with this whole nightmare over and done with.
‘Do you want another drink of water?’ a voice whispered in the dark.
Drat he’d woken the kid again. Sammy, his name is Sammy. ‘No.’ If he had any more fluids he’d burst. And having the kid checking he was okay every time he breathed was getting a bit claustrophobic. It didn’t feel right.
‘Back in a minute,’ Nobody said as he felt his way out of bed and back down to the bathroom again. At least this time the kid didn’t try and come with him. Talk about no personal boundaries.
When he almost tripped over him on the way back to the room, he realised maybe he’d been too polite the first time. ‘I’ve got amnesia, I’m not a complete idiot. I can find my way to the toilet and back,’ he snapped into the beam of the torch.
The kid was tougher than he looked, and merely shone the torch back down the corridor. Nobody still felt like he’d tried to beat up a kitten.
~~~
The fourth time he got up he was downstairs and ghosting mindlessly across the main room before a hand on his arm stopped him. The kid again. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.
‘Come on, Dean. Back to bed. It’s too late, Uncle Bobby will have a fit.’
‘Uncle Bobby just might,’ came a voice from the other side of the room.
A standard light next to the couch came on dazzling Nobody for a few minutes until his eyes adjusted to the brightness enough to see Bobby sitting there with a very large gun on his lap.
Look after Sammy. He pushed the kid behind him without thinking about it, and wished there was a rolling pin in the house to use if he had to.
‘Dean, Dean, it’s okay,’ Sammy managed to dodge back between Nobody and Bobby again. ‘Ssh, he’s not going to hurt you, or me,’ he finished softly as he watched Nobody stand there bristling at the older man.
‘Just on guard, kid,’ Bobby said soothingly as he cautiously put the weapon down on the floor. ‘Never know what’s out there in the dark.’
~~~
The three of them made quite a procession going back upstairs. Bobby leaving the gun behind made Nobody feel a little calmer. Sammy’s hand on his arm helped even more.
‘You two settle back in and no high jinks, I’ll be back in a minute,’ Bobby said with a glare.
Nobody sat cross-legged on the bed and watched Sammy make the most unbelievable shadow puppet monsters on the wall until Bobby came back.
‘Cocoa,’ Bobby said gruffly as he plonked two Star Wars mugs down on the chest of drawers between them. ‘Drink up before it gets cold, don’t want to have hauled it all the way up here for nothing you know.’
As Bobby closed the door firmly on his way out, Nobody found himself peering hopefully into his Han Solo mug.
‘Uncle Bobby doesn’t do marshmallows,’ Sammy said with a grin. ‘Says they’re for sissies. But his cocoa is awesome.'
Nobody was forced to agree with that statement.
~~~
Even though the drink had made him sleepy, Nobody strangely found himself struggling to keep awake after Sammy had switched his torch off. He didn’t know why he still felt so on edge.
After about ten minutes of restless shifting and yawning he heard a loud sigh from the other bed. A rustle and a thud was followed by an impatient shove on his shoulders, and the soft slap of a pillow in his face.
‘For God’s sake, move over, you big lug,’ Sammy said. ‘And if you kick me I’ll shoot you when you’re better.’
Nobody didn’t know why the threat made him relax, but he fell asleep grinning to the sound of the kid’s snores into the pillow he’d left draped over the top of Nobody’s head.
~~~
Part 2
Rating: P/G, Gen
Word Count: 5,732/12,593
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Consider this my virtual Easter egg for my flist. That said, this is so not the angst-ridden Easter fic which is still a work in progress. Damn it. It is pure, unapologetically surreal, crack!fic This is what happens when you go to hospital and they give you anaesthetic ::nods:: It was the drugs, honest, it was! They were also foolish enough not to take my laptop away. Heh. I just have one problem, this was supposed to be total froth and nonsense ::frowns at fic:: so I don’t know where all the dark angsty bits came from, truly I don’t. Banner enhanced by the superb secret-seer (digital flour-painting, now there’s a talent!)
Title note: The title is the translation of a Latin quote by Juvenalis, blatantly misused here just for the hell of it. And yes, this does confirm the sad rumour that I am an unrepentant geek.
Characters: Dean, Sammy, Bobby Singer, John.
Setting: Pre-series. Lawrence County, SD. Easter 1996.
Summary: Television can be dangerous to your health.
Part 1 | Part 2
Part 1
‘Knock, knock.’
?
‘Knock, knock.’
What the?
‘Knock, knock.’
Oh, for Heaven’s sake. ‘Shut up, already!’
‘Come on, Dean.’
Huh?
‘Knock, KNOCK!’
‘I don’t care who’s there. Just go away!’
‘Dean!’
‘Dean who?’
~~~
‘Stop calling me that!’
‘Very funny, Dean. Just because you don’t like my jokes there’s no need to pretend you don’t know me.’
‘Um, because I don’t?’
The kidder was standing there with his hands on the hips of too short jeans. Any minute now he was probably going to stamp his feet. Hah! Got that in one.
He wasn’t sure what the heck was going on. He’d woken up, goodness knows where, to find himself sprawled face down on a leather couch so badly marked with scratches and unmentionable stains that Goodwill would have rejected it on sight. His wake-up call had taken the form of somebody’s hyperactive ragamuffin child who thought it was endlessly amusing to pretend to call him by someone else’s name. Yes, really comical. Funny, hah hah.
‘Enough, already. But while you’re standing there can you at least shut off that television? Please? It’s giving me a headache.’
The kid huffed once before stomping resignedly over to snap off the old black and white set perched at a dangerous angle on top of a huge pile of what looked like Bibles. Seriously, who collected Bibles? ‘China and silverware, maybe, but Bibles?’
‘What?’
‘Huh?’ He thumped himself over the ears; thank goodness that awful, loud, static was gone.
‘What about our homework?’
Oh, he hadn’t realised he’d ended up asking the last question aloud. Homework? He shelved that query because it made no sense, and the whole Bible thing was bothering him more. ‘Bibles?’ He got up and moved over to squat down for a closer look, fingering the spines in amazement. ‘Is that Latin, and Greek?’ Ew. His fingers were all brown and rusty. Yuck. He did his best to wipe them off on his rumpled t-shirt. He didn’t have much luck. And now his clothes were dirty. Dirtier. He’d slept in his clothes, and it didn’t look like they’d been clean in a while, and he doubted they’d ever seen the business side of an iron. That was just wrong.
‘Bibles and exorcism texts in three different languages,’ the kid said looking a little confused. ‘You bitch about the lessons all the time but that’s no reason to act like you’ve never seen them before.’
‘Mind your language,’ he replied automatically. Lessons? He felt carefully all over his head. No, it didn’t feel sore on the outside. He still had what felt like a miniature bolt of lightning behind his left eye, and no idea where the heck he was, but apart from that he felt completely normal. Fit as a fiddle. Fit enough to … He threw himself down on the dusty floorboards and laid down one hundred push-ups before flipping over to match that in abdominal crunches. Yes. Fit, even with that pesky migraine. Though why he was wasting time doing silly exercises like some jock, he didn’t know. He lay panting on the floor and wondered if he could persuade the kid to bring him a cold compress and a nice glass of lemon water.
‘Dean?’
Whoa. That was quick. The kid was suddenly right there in his face, bending over looking like he’d just figured something out.
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Drunk? Me? Why would I be …?’ Although that would explain the whole waking up somewhere else. Maybe someone had gotten him drunk on some sherry after a dinner party. That could explain everything.
‘Dean?’
‘I’ve already asked you nicely to stop calling me that.’
‘Dean, stop kidding around, okay? Enough with the April Fools’ joke. You got me. It’s not funny any more.’
The kid’s voice was getting completely emotional. Kid. Hmmm. I can’t keep calling him that, it isn’t polite. ‘Uh, sorry, kid … I mean … so, what’s your name anyway, young man?’
The kid just gave him one stunned look before disappearing through an archway into another room, screaming, ‘Uncle Bobby!’
~~~
He’d never seen anyone look less like an uncle in his life. He gave the impression of being a very dangerous ex-bikie, or maybe a trucker. Though if he had to hazard a guess, not that he’d ever met one, or associated with the sort of people who would, he assumed that truckers had families too, it was just … he wasn’t quite sure what. The cap? The beard? Or those eyes that looked like they knew how to kill you without thinking. Weird. Now, where had that thought come from? Definitely not the sort of uncle that took you to ball games, or cheered you on in the school spelling bee. Just. Not.
He scrunched himself a little tighter within the slick nylon ropes binding him to the chair. The kid - Sammy, the kid’s uncle kept calling him Sammy - was standing rigidly right where he’d been ordered to after he’d dragged the man back into the room. The man had taken one look at him, and next thing he knew he was tied to a chair. The kid was over against the far wall, and Sammy’s good old Uncle Bobby was trying to force him to drink out of an antique silver flask. Georgian? And he was trying to twist out of the way, and keep his mouth shut, and it wasn’t working, and all the time he could hear that kid calling out for this Dean like he was pleading for something, and then he couldn’t stop it, and he was gasping, and choking on water.
Then the man was standing back looking puzzled, and saying calming things to the kid like he hadn’t just tried to torture someone in front of him. And the kid was crying, and not moving, and looking at him like he’d lost something precious, and it just made his head hurt all the more.
‘I’m not a burglar,’ he managed to say when he’d finally stopped coughing up all the water he’d managed to suck into his lungs during the wasted struggle. ‘I’m not, and I didn’t try to hurt the kid, honest. I just woke up here, and I don’t know how! If you just let me go, I’ll never come back. I promise.’
For some strange reason that seemed to upset the kid even further.
As if his day wasn’t bad enough, this Bobby person proceeded to erect a ladder in the middle of the room and climbed up and spray-painted graffiti on the ceiling like he was the Hell’s Angels’ personal decorator.
The kid had started muttering what sounded like prayers, in Latin of all things, through his tears, while his uncle literally kicked the ladder across the room as if he couldn’t waste the time to put it away neatly. Despite that frantic look in his eyes the man still took the time to drag him in the chair across the room and carefully align him dead centre beneath all those strange symbols.
Oh please, God, don’t let them belong to some sort of cult! He needed to get out of here and tell the authorities about these crazy people.
Then the man was joining in with the kid, praying. Although he sounded too angry for it to really be a prayer. And his head just wanted to explode, and after a while, all the chanting and the pain just made him go blank.
~~~
When he came to he was back on the couch, with a lumpy pillow under his head, and a blanket around him and the two of them were just crouched in front of him, staring. And the man still looked mad, just not at him any longer.
There was too much sunlight slicing into the room, and he could hear himself breathing, and every sound in the room was yelling at him, and he couldn’t think, and he just wanted to die, his head still hurt so much.
‘Please? Just let me go, I won’t tell. Please?’ he whispered, not meaning to beg, just wanting to be away, to be gone; to be quiet.
‘Ssh, Dean. It’s okay,’ the kid said, reaching out to stroke his hair, like he was the kid.
It shouldn’t have felt so good, and he shouldn’t have turned his head into it like he recognised and welcomed the touch. Slower. He just needed it to be slower, gentler. Quiet. Still.
And the kid, Sammy, that’s right, his name was Sammy, seemed to know what he needed because he just kept his hand there barely moving, calming.
‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ He thought he’d asked it before, but he wasn’t sure of anything much over the pain that was only now beginning to ease off. How long have I been lying here?
‘Because it’s your name, Dean,’ the man was saying gruffly. If anything he was looking slightly guilty, as if he was regretting what he’d done to him.
So why did he do it?
‘You’re my brother,’ the kid broke in loudly before lowering his voice as he felt him flinch beneath his hand. ‘Dean. Your name is Dean.’
He tried to sit up, but they both pressed him back down; gently, but they obviously weren’t going to let him go anywhere in a hurry. ‘What do you mean, you’re my brother?’ It didn’t make sense. He’d woken up to this kid’s stupid joke. And the kid and his uncle had performed some sort of weird voodoo ritual over him. And then he must have fainted, and they’d stopped and were trying to be nice for some reason. As if it didn’t matter what had happened, as if he’d understand why they did it. And none of it made any damned sense. And his head still hurt, and besides, his name wasn’t Dean, it was … it was …
No, this wasn’t right. You couldn’t just forget who you were could you? ‘Rats.’ No, that wasn’t strong enough for what he was feeling. He didn’t know who he was, and suddenly these strangers were claiming he was family, and …
‘Oh sugar, honey, ice and tea!’
~~~
Apparently you could just forget everything. They proved it, or rather Sammy did. Sammy, his name is Sammy. The kid dug out a plastic lunchbox stuffed with things he obviously cherished, rummaging through a clutter of what looked like school IDs; one of those old tin tokens from a Monopoly set - the car; a harmonica; a map of Kansas; a very sharp looking knife; and what couldn’t really be a handful of bullets before pulling out a rubber-banded batch of photos. Photos of them, he knew it was true even before he made the man bring him a mirror. It was him; it was them, the two of them together joking around in front of the camera looking the same as they did now. Taken last month, outside Vegas, the kid said about the topmost photo. Him with a crude buzz of fair hair, and freckles. You’d think a person would remember having those. He looked anywhere between sixteen and thirty with that cocky smirk. Sammy. His name is Sammy … was all eyes and hair and draped over him like an octopus in every picture. And there were other, older photos; strangely never the same background in any of them. It was always just the two of them, never anyone else. Except for the last few photos of them at different ages, them with some guy, always the same guy. Their Dad, the kid said.
Sammy. His name is Sammy. He’s my brother. Sammy. Sammy. He had to remember that. He couldn’t let himself forget that too. I have a little brother, and his name is Sammy. Don’t forget. I have a brother, and I have a father.
‘Dad?’ It sounded strange. ‘I … we have a Dad?’
‘John,’ Bobby said. He’d been standing back just watching ever since Sammy came dashing back with his treasure chest to curl up next to him on the couch and do his show and tell.
‘John.’ It was a good name. A name. ‘John?’
‘Winchester.’
Oh. His name was Winchester. Dean Winchester. He repeated it to himself a few times. He guessed he’d have to get used to it. ‘Winchester, just like …’
‘The rifle,’ Sammy interrupted with a grin.
‘… the cathedral.’
Now what had he said? The two of them had just closed up. ‘Or the rifle,’ he said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Of course, just like the rifle.’
~~~
‘So this J… our Dad, where is he? Is he …?’
‘No!’ Sammy said quickly. ‘He’s fine, he’s just off … uh … hunting. He’ll be back soon. Uncle Bobby called him. He’ll be back tomorrow. He was just about to … finish, and he said he was going to leave right away. If he drives straight through, he’ll be here before breakfast. He was leaving.’ It was said with some surprise. As if he wasn’t used to their father doing that. Dropping everything if they needed him.
Their father. Dean just … Dean. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t call himself by that name, their name for him. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t fit. He wasn’t anybody. Not yet. Not till he remembered. Until then he was … nobody. Whatever they wanted to call him, in his head he was going to be Nobody.
Nobody was about to ask about their mother, where she was, if they had any other relatives, any sisters, anybody besides this Uncle Bobby. He didn’t know what made him stop. It was like there was this hole inside him, and it was deeper than the not knowing, the not remembering who he was, not recognising his family. In the middle of the emptiness there was this one thing he knew not to ask. Nobody didn’t think that was a good sign at all. Mom?
‘So, Mr uh Winchester, we’ve been staying with you while he … our father’s been away?’
Now their uncle was flinching. ‘I mean Uncle … Bobby, that’s right isn’t it? … Sammy …’ My brother’s name is Sammy. My name is Dean. My father’s name is John. John Winchester. I have to say it’s like the rifle. My brother’s name is Sammy. My name is Dean. My brother’s name is Sammy … ‘Sammy called you Uncle Bobby.’
‘Robert Singer. Like the sewing machine.’ For a minute there was a definite glint of a grin behind those eyes. ‘We’re not related, but I’ve known you both since you were shorter than any of my dogs so you might as well call me Uncle like Sammy does, or just Bobby. You’re old enough for that now.’
Nobody tried not to focus on Sammy whose eyes were wide in awe. He just nodded. ‘Bobby. Do we stay with you a lot?’ There was something more than just courtesy in that title Sammy used. Something he had to think about.
Bobby took off his cap to hitch up his pony-tailed hair in discomfort. ‘Yeah, you could say that. John drops by now and then, and if he’s … busy, you two bunk in the spare room upstairs. Aint as if it’s any problem, just throw some food at you the same time as I feed everything else around the yard.’ He was looking grumpy, but even Nobody wasn’t stupid enough to buy it. Bobby might be even tougher than he looked but the way Sammy acted like a faithful puppy around him told him everything he needed to know for now. He should trust him.
Except for just one small thing.
‘Why did you tie me up, and make me drink that stuff that tasted like water, and why did the two of you …’ Nobody gestured vaguely. ‘Do that ceremony over me?’
~~~
Bobby spun a fantastic tale full of monsters and demons, and things that did more than go bump in the night and the kid kept butting in adding even more flourishes until Nobody didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. They’d thought he was possessed?
Although to be fair, the … - have to call him Sammy - Sammy’s first thought had been that he was joking, then that he was drunk, and only then that he was possessed; in that exact order. Nobody worried about what that said about him as a person, and this surreal family he’d woken up a part of.
After an hour they let him get up. Bobby was still eying him warily, if protectively, and muttering about needing to get him to a doctor if this, whatever the hell it was didn’t wear off Goddamn fast.
Nobody thought about reprimanding Bobby for swearing in front of the kid but he didn’t think he’d pay any attention. The man could swear like a trucker or an army vet and Nobody heard more curses in the next few minutes than he’d ever heard in his life. Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true as he couldn’t actually remember his life, but Nobody felt sure he’d lived a fairly sheltered life, because, my Lord, some of those words were simply shocking.
Bobby and Sammy were throwing ideas back and forth as he wandered around the room, just touching things. The whole place was so weird. There was no way these people - his family - were completely normal. In the background he could hear Bobby discounting alcohol as a cause apparently because he hadn’t done more than sneak one beer the previous night. Nobody was glad he wasn’t a complete lush, though the thought of beer as a nighttime aperitif made him screw up his nose in distaste. Head and other injuries had already been ruled out after Bobby had given him an embarrassingly intensive check-up before letting him off the couch. Sammy was now putting forward a case for him having been cursed by a witch, and Nobody didn’t know why he found that idea less frightening than the fact that the kid, who looked about thirteen at most, sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
By the time Nobody came back to them gingerly carrying two odd looking objects that he’d found leaning up against one of the bookcases, Bobby was leaning more towards him having had some sort of breakdown. Talking about accumulated stress, and traumatic events, like he was a shell-shocked soldier rather than the innocent teenager he’d seen in that hand mirror.
‘What are these?’ he asked out of genuine interest, and also so they would just stop talking about him like he wasn’t even in the same room with them.
‘Assegai,’ Bobby said as he quickly eased the slender hardwood spears out of his hands, and swivelled them iron tip upwards before he passed them to Sammy.
Nobody was a bit miffed to see that although the spears dwarfed the kid in height, he was handling them like he knew how to use them in a fight.
‘Zulu weapon,’ Bobby said blandly.
Oh. Nobody was glad he hadn’t told him that he thought they would make good stakes for rose bushes. Just as he was about to desperately suggest he find the kitchen and make them all a nice pot of tea he spotted something that he’d completely missed on his first circuit.
‘Oooh, television,’ he said brightly, drifting across the room again.
~~~
In the end he’d been forced to let his brother - Sammy, his name is Sammy. My name is … Dean - literally drag him away from the set. Sammy’s explanation that the television didn’t work wasn’t enough to stop him casting one longing glance back at it as he was led out of the room.
Sammy pulled him through the entire house, pointing things out eagerly as if by identifying them he could make Nobody remember them. And he didn’t. None of their clothes and other personal items strewn messily around the room Sammy said they’d been sharing for a week. None of the strange towers of books everywhere, none of the signs and what Sammy called wards, none of the weapons that were hung up all over the building, tucked under beds, and even between the bathtub and the wall.
It was like being trapped inside a funhouse with the mirrors distorting reality back at you. There was nowhere he looked that there wasn’t something out of the ordinary or just so totally wrong that alarm bells rang in his head. As if his head wasn’t already sore enough. Nobody sighed a little mournfully and hoped tea would eventually be forthcoming.
It wasn’t till they got back downstairs and Sammy pushed him ahead of him into the kitchen that Nobody was finally able to relax in the only normal room in this shabby madhouse. He made himself pull up a chair and sit down at the table. He was pretty sure it was the same one he’d been tied up in earlier. The fact that Bobby had returned it to its rightful place actually made him feel slightly better. He was obviously the kind of pragmatic man who would have left it where it was if he thought he was going to need it again later. Sammy didn’t seem to be paying the chair any special attention and was bustling around throwing what looked like an entire cup of ground coffee into a saucepan of water before setting it to boil on the top of the double range.
‘Tea?’ Nobody asked faintly as he tried not to think of how strong that coffee would end up being.
‘Tea?’ Sammy didn’t look like he understood the word.
‘Any sort is fine, but Earl Grey would be nice if you had it.’
Sammy blinked. ‘Earl Grey tea?’
Nobody nodded thankfully. Now he was listening. ‘No milk or sugar, I’m watching my weight.’
‘Uh,’ Sammy said not very clearly. ‘Well, you usually have coffee, but I’m sure I can find something in here.’ He was running frantically from one slatted cupboard to another as if speed would help him in the search.
‘Oh,’ Nobody said faintly. Coffee didn’t feel right, but if that was what Sammy said he drank. ‘No, coffee would be great. Just what I need. Caffeine to clear the mind.’
Sammy smiled back at him in relief. The smile made Nobody anxious for some reason. ‘Maybe some biscuits or some cake?’ There was nothing strange about anyone asking that surely? Judging by the way the kid rolled his eyes at him before dumping a heavy tin onto the table, that was a totally normal question.
Nobody wanted nothing more than to be completely normal.
Looking down at a leaden lump of a bought fruitcake nestled next to a packet of Twinkies, Nobody almost took that thought back. ‘Do you have any cake forks?’
~~~
Sammy, his name is Sammy. Nobody had to keep telling himself that. It seemed to be the one thing he needed to keep hearing. Sammy kept staring at him while he struggled to eat the dry cake. Bobby was doing the same thing; pacing up and down shouting into a phone in the next room, and glancing worriedly through the doorway every time he did an about-turn at the south wall. Bobby was really mad. There was a great deal of yelling, and a lot of what might have been military jargon, none of which made any sense to Nobody, so he did his best to block the noise out. Life wasn’t like this in the magazines or on television he thought.
‘So, amnesia?’ It sounded more like a dessert than the black hole that was his life.
Sammy looked at his uncle who merely shrugged before continuing to bellow what sounded like a weird list of ingredients at the by now deafened person at the other end of the line. ‘Looks like. Uncle Bobby’s checking it out. He wants to have all the facts before Dad gets here.’
Nobody wasn’t sure what kind of facts they were talking about except for the fact that … ‘I can’t damn well remember anything!’ he shouted. ‘Oh my,’ he whispered with one hand on his mouth in shock. I didn’t mean to swear, I guess I’m a little upset.’
Sammy looked more stunned by his apology than his language.
‘I like food,’ Nobody suggested uncertainly, as he tried to steer the conversation back to an more appropriate social topic.
‘Yeah, you do,’ Sammy agreed wholeheartedly.
Nobody smiled back, and cut himself a much smaller slice of cake while he did his best to ignore the state of the kitchen.
~~~
It only took him two hours to clean the kitchen working around Sammy’s protests. Surprisingly it wasn’t all that bad once he’d removed the surface dust, although the leadlight windows over the sink obviously hadn’t been cleaned with a toothbrush in years. Sorting and alphabetising the contents of the cupboards took a lot longer. The man had the most eclectic collection of supplies Nobody had ever seen. Tins of tomatoes, rat poison, vermicelli, what must have once been potatoes judging by the tortured purple nodules twined around the desiccated lumps in the bottom of a sack, salt, dog food, baked beans, curry powder, gun oil, more salt, condensed milk, old jars full of assorted screws. And that was just the first cupboard he opened. There was no flour, spices or anything to indicate Bobby had ever baked except for some ginger, cinnamon and molasses shoved to the back of a shelf. Nobody tried not to get disheartened, but, really, the mess! Eventually he found that reading the labels on each jar and tin aloud as he wiped them clean before putting them back in a much more logical order helped keep him calm and focussed.
The cupboard full of glass jars of strange powders, dried leaves and berries labelled in Latin was the only one he left untouched. As he stacked a distressingly unhealthy quantity of salt into a neat pyramid in one corner of the walk-in pantry, Nobody wondered how long he’d have to know Bobby before it would be considered polite to have a talk about the hidden dangers of high cholesterol.
The mainstays of Bobby’s diet were no secret. A refrigerator full of beer and steak; and oddly, enough bread, peanut butter, milk and juice to keep a horde of teenagers going for a month. Oh. Nobody guessed that explained the five family packs of Lucky Charms in the cupboard to the left - Sammy food.
In the end he had two separate piles left over. One he closed his eyes to as he bagged the out-of-date, or just plain unknown or bulging tins before thrusting the garbage bag desperately at Sammy saying ‘Rubbish, now!’ The other pile of non-kitchen items he managed to fit into an old Jack Daniels carton. There was no way he was having that stuff in his kitchen a moment longer. He’d just got the back door open with his foot - darn there was another pile of spilt salt he’d missed with the broom - when he froze on the threshold looking out into Bobby’s yard. Yard was definitely the operative word. There wasn’t anything that looked remotely like a garden anywhere in the vicinity. What there was in inglorious abundance were trucks and cars, and heaps of scrap metal - parts? - everywhere. It looked like a tip.
‘It’s great isn’t it?’ the kid said, appearing from behind one of the wrecks. He was skipping between car shells as if it was his own private amusement park.
Nobody couldn’t see any Ferris Wheels, and didn’t have the words to reply. He tried, but there was nothing suitable to say. Nice salvage? I love what you’ve done with the place? Sometimes if you couldn’t find anything good to say, it was best to say nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.
He bent over to carefully put his carton of feral objects down outside the door. It wouldn’t do to knock the gun off the top and have it go off by accident. ‘Garage, maybe?’ he muttered helplessly to Sammy not sure if that would make any sense because the entire property looked like what he assumed the inside of garages must look like. Not that he’d ever go anywhere that dirty of course.
As he shut the door firmly on the horrors outside, Nobody made himself a solemn promise never to go out there again. The world was indeed a very scary place.
~~~
‘What’s he doing now?’ Bobby hissed not very quietly.
‘Sitting.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know’
Nobody looked up from where was seated contentedly in front of the television. It was on, but the kid was right. It didn’t work. He’d spun the dial, and all he’d got was static on every channel. It wasn’t that bad, it was actually comforting staring into all that perpetual motion and listening to the white noise. Still, maybe they had a point. He got up and fiddled with the horizontal and vertical hold switches on the back of the set. No luck with that. Hmm, he pulled the notepad and pen out of the middle of the book immediately underneath. That had to help. Nice and balanced, but still no picture. He spent a long time adjusting the rabbit’s ear antennas until he had them just where he wanted them. Well, that made a difference, now there were giant black ribbons flickering in and out of existence on the screen. Nobody ignored the whispering behind him and decided that maybe in this one case violence was the answer. He reached over to another pile, picked up one of the heaviest volumes and slammed it down hard on one precise spot, right there.
‘What the fuck, do you think you’re doing?’ Bobby yelped as he grabbed the antique book out of his hands.
‘That,’ Nobody said with a grin, watching the television flicker back to full life. ‘Anyone want to watch Days?’
~~~
Nobody did his best to go to sleep. After all it had been a long, traumatic day, and he was exhausted. Anyone would be what with the whole exorcism and amnesia thing. As he turned himself once more on the squeaky bed like a rotisserie chicken he just wished he could sleep and wake up with this whole nightmare over and done with.
‘Do you want another drink of water?’ a voice whispered in the dark.
Drat he’d woken the kid again. Sammy, his name is Sammy. ‘No.’ If he had any more fluids he’d burst. And having the kid checking he was okay every time he breathed was getting a bit claustrophobic. It didn’t feel right.
‘Back in a minute,’ Nobody said as he felt his way out of bed and back down to the bathroom again. At least this time the kid didn’t try and come with him. Talk about no personal boundaries.
When he almost tripped over him on the way back to the room, he realised maybe he’d been too polite the first time. ‘I’ve got amnesia, I’m not a complete idiot. I can find my way to the toilet and back,’ he snapped into the beam of the torch.
The kid was tougher than he looked, and merely shone the torch back down the corridor. Nobody still felt like he’d tried to beat up a kitten.
~~~
The fourth time he got up he was downstairs and ghosting mindlessly across the main room before a hand on his arm stopped him. The kid again. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.
‘Come on, Dean. Back to bed. It’s too late, Uncle Bobby will have a fit.’
‘Uncle Bobby just might,’ came a voice from the other side of the room.
A standard light next to the couch came on dazzling Nobody for a few minutes until his eyes adjusted to the brightness enough to see Bobby sitting there with a very large gun on his lap.
Look after Sammy. He pushed the kid behind him without thinking about it, and wished there was a rolling pin in the house to use if he had to.
‘Dean, Dean, it’s okay,’ Sammy managed to dodge back between Nobody and Bobby again. ‘Ssh, he’s not going to hurt you, or me,’ he finished softly as he watched Nobody stand there bristling at the older man.
‘Just on guard, kid,’ Bobby said soothingly as he cautiously put the weapon down on the floor. ‘Never know what’s out there in the dark.’
~~~
The three of them made quite a procession going back upstairs. Bobby leaving the gun behind made Nobody feel a little calmer. Sammy’s hand on his arm helped even more.
‘You two settle back in and no high jinks, I’ll be back in a minute,’ Bobby said with a glare.
Nobody sat cross-legged on the bed and watched Sammy make the most unbelievable shadow puppet monsters on the wall until Bobby came back.
‘Cocoa,’ Bobby said gruffly as he plonked two Star Wars mugs down on the chest of drawers between them. ‘Drink up before it gets cold, don’t want to have hauled it all the way up here for nothing you know.’
As Bobby closed the door firmly on his way out, Nobody found himself peering hopefully into his Han Solo mug.
‘Uncle Bobby doesn’t do marshmallows,’ Sammy said with a grin. ‘Says they’re for sissies. But his cocoa is awesome.'
Nobody was forced to agree with that statement.
~~~
Even though the drink had made him sleepy, Nobody strangely found himself struggling to keep awake after Sammy had switched his torch off. He didn’t know why he still felt so on edge.
After about ten minutes of restless shifting and yawning he heard a loud sigh from the other bed. A rustle and a thud was followed by an impatient shove on his shoulders, and the soft slap of a pillow in his face.
‘For God’s sake, move over, you big lug,’ Sammy said. ‘And if you kick me I’ll shoot you when you’re better.’
Nobody didn’t know why the threat made him relax, but he fell asleep grinning to the sound of the kid’s snores into the pillow he’d left draped over the top of Nobody’s head.
~~~
Part 2