Monachopsis

Chapter XXI: Did I Truly Prefer The Ugly Truth?

I grew up in a simple two story ranch house on the outskirts of town. It was surrounded by four acres of land, and guarded by a swinging gate that was held shut by a thick chain.

When Dean drove up to the house, the chain was left broken and limp, the gate half-open. The fence behind dented from the force of the gate being driven into.

The house was far enough from town that nobody local would have noticed anything amiss. My mother and I rarely entered town for anything other than annual breakfast. Groceries were picked up once every couple of weeks.

The townspeople would be getting suspicious soon.

The driveway was made of gravel. One time, when I was around seven or eight, I fell playing with a toy airplane and skinned my knee. It stung like crazy, and when it bled, I felt like crying. It was the first time that I hadn't.

Dean didn't groan about the dust or the rocks damaging his car. I think even he could feel the heaviness of the air. Sam was silent too, No one said a word. No snide comments regarding my house's cartoonish red window shutters or the dozens of decorative wind chimes singing on the front porch.

No.

Everyone was too busy staring at the front door. Slightly ajar and untouched.

The car came to a stop in front of the house. My mother's dark blue car was still parked in the spot I'd left it. Unmoved. Ordinarily, I would have rathered Sam and Dean wait in the car while I entered the house. A large part of me wished for it now. But another part of me--a part saturated in fear and a heavy, heavy sense of dread--desperately wanted them near. The feeling wasn't so much longing for them personally, but rather a primitive need for companionship. A safety in numbers.

I approached the front door in slow motion. The gravel crunched under my feet, the normal sound echoing and impossibly loud. As I approached the front steps, a pair of toddler's handprints sunk in the cement snagged my attention. Beneath the tiny hands was my name, and the date. I had done those when I was six months old.

I pulled my pistol from my waistband. Crossing the porch, instinctively avoiding that one squeaky floorboard, and forced myself through the front door.

The hinges squealed. Immediately, sets of frenzied muddy footprints stained the wood floor. It rained that night, I remembered. The mud was dried and crusted, indicating that they had been there for a while.

I was experiencing that moment of clarity one feels when in the middle of a crisis. When the dread and anxiety is so strong that it pushes your primitive brain into overdrive. I noticed the stench before I entered the house, and when I gingerly nudged the door open, it slammed to a stop halfway. When I looked down, a prone human leg blocked my path.

Strangely, I felt no emotion upon discovering a leg. I was acutely aware of Sam and Dean's anticipation behind me, but I didn't share their feelings. I was oddly numb, as if my head was stuffed with cotton balls, and everything was moving in slow motion. I stepped coldly over the body, making out the face of a young man and a gory chest wound as I passed. The dark brown color of dried blood mixed with the black coagulation of the hole swirled in my mind like a morbid cocktail.

Sam and Dean were following close on my heels, twin pairs of heavy footsteps shadowing me. I had a vague sense of Sam calling my name. I couldn't tell if it was a warning or a summoning, but my mind was too detached to really register.

I was too busy following the trail of bodies leading to the living room. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see stray corpses littering the staircase and scattered across the kitchen and dining room. The doorway to the living room was guarded by rotting corpses, dried blood splatter painting the walls.

I could feel my heartbeat thrumming. Blood roared in my ears. My grip was slick and slippery on my gun. So slippery that when I finally entered the living room, the pistol slid from my grip. The dull thud of it's impact with the floor finally brought everything back into focus.

Bodies littered the living room floor and furniture. Brown stains of dried blood hid the original red couch. In contrast, black coagulated wounds festered on the corpses. Every body was dressed in black leather. There was a mix of both men and women. I couldn't see many of their faces, and I didn't care to. I was too focused on who was sitting in the middle of the room.

It was my mother.

She was lounging in one of the loveseats by the fireplace. Her head was leaned back, blonde hair askew and tangled in a rat's nest. Her blue eyes were open and blank, staring up at the ceiling. Her clothes were ruined with giant black coagulated holes.

That was all I could process before a large hand clamped onto my shoulder and pulled me away.

I didn't fight it. In fact, I reacted purely on instinct. I spun around, throwing my arms around the first solid thing I could find. I buried my face into Sam's shoulder, struggling to breathe, shaking. Sam wrapped his arms around me, pinning me against him and preventing me from turning back around.

"It's okay," he murmured, trying to calm me down. "It's okay; you're okay. Everything's gonna be fine."

I didn't believe him. I couldn't. How could he possibly know that everything was gonna be okay? How could anything be okay again?

Tears blurred my vision. I still had enough sense to blink them away. Shock gave way to another wave of numbness. I slowly--gingerly--extracted myself from Sam's sheltering embrace. My body refused to turn back to my mother; refused to put my mind through any more pain. So instead, I shuffled away from the living room.

I passed Dean in a daze. He didn't try to stop me. He just let me shamble away through the front door. I didn't make it far.

I collapsed on the porch steps. My hand--stretched out of instinct to catch me--landed on the deep impressions of my toddler hands.

I could hear Sam and Dean's distorted voices murmuring inside the house. There was shuffling, running footsteps, a distant splashing sound before a faint wafting odor of gasoline.

I was aware of Sam putting his hands on my shoulders and lifting me to my feet. His arm wrapped around my shoulders and escorted me back to the car. When I glanced over my shoulder at the house, I could see Dean's silhouette moving from room to room.

"Come on," Sam coaxed. His words didn't penetrate the protective bubble my mind had put up, but the familiar tenor of his voice was comforting. Like a dim gold light in a pitch black cave, shining behind a pane of frosted glass. "It's okay, Gray. I've got you."

After he'd placed me in the backseat and shut the door, he messed around in the trunk. I didn't turn around the see what he was doing, but when he was done, he bounded back into the house empty-handed.

I didn't look back at the house. Not when I could see the orange flames erupting in every window. Not when the flames began shattering the windows. Not when Sam and Dean slid back into the car, and we were driving away.

It was a long time before any of us said anything. I couldn't find my voice. Everything just seemed so surreal. It couldn't be true. My mother couldn't be dead. Mom was forever. She was invincible and fearless and incredibly smart. She was too large for life. What kind of creature could have taken her down? Nothing I'd ever faced before. And nothing--I think--that any of us have faced before.

But finally, when the yellow street lights of Fallon, Texas were far behind us, Dean glanced at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes were--once again--unreadable and cloudy with thoughts I couldn't read.

"Gray," he said. My name sounded strange in his voice. "Are you gonna be okay?"

I didn't answer him. I couldn't. My voice was gone. I simply stared at him blankly, my face feeling frozen and cold even from the inside.

The only warmth came in the form of a single tear streaking down my cheek.