8. Supernatural: The Musical (Part 2)
Before show time, Dean and I had to calm down Marie while Sam went to go get the necessary weaponry we were gonna need for tonight.
There's apprehension in the air, but for the actresses, it's the stress of pulling off their parts. For Maeve, Marie, Sam, Dean, and myself, it's more about killing a goddess.
We're backstage with the actors, all dressed up and ready to go. I'm still kind of upset that I'm nowhere to be found in this play, but I can't take it too personally. Since the books surrounded the Winchester family, I was out of the picture for over a decade. What reason would the play have to include me anyway?
Marie is checking everyone's costumes to make sure they're all perfect.
"Okay!" she says. "Good. Good. Okay. Good." She looks to the actress that's playing Dean. "Alright. Samulet?"
Actress-Dean shows a little necklace trinket.
"The...samulet?" I ask slowly.
"That amulet is a symbol of the Winchesters' brotherly love," Marie points out.
As if almost on cue, Sam comes in, handing Dean and myself a wooden stake each. I take a look at each of the actors. These costumes are scarily accurate.
"Wait a second...Where's Chuck?" asks Sam.
"Oh!" says Marie. "I-I, I love him. I do! But honestly, the whole author introducing himself into the narrative thing, it's just not my favorite. I kind of hate the meta stories."
"Me too," my brothers say in unison.
"All right, listen up, girls," I command. "Now, you're all here, because you love Supernatural."
"Actually, I was hoping we'd do Wicked," says an actress who's supposed to be Mary Winchester. The sight makes me a tad bit uncomfortable. I never really got to know my mother, Dean kind of did.
"Yeah, that'd have been easier," I admit. "I know my brother has expressed some differences of opinion, regarding this particular version of Supernatural." I stare pointedly at Dean. He looks offended, but that look disappears when he knows I'm right. I look back at the cast of the show. "But tonight, it is all about Marie's version. This is Marie's Supernatural."
"So, we want you to get out there," Dean cuts me off, and he ignores my second pointed look at him, "and we want you to stand as close as she wants you to, and we want you to put as much sub and add text, as you possibly can. There is no other road. No other way. No day, but today."
"Did he just quote Rent?" I hear Maeve say under her breath.
"Not enough to get us in trouble," Marie mutters.
"Now, you get out there, and you kick it in the ass!" I say.
"Alright!" says actress-Cas.
"Bring it in!" says Marie.
All of the cast goes in.
"Ghooooost-facerssss!" they all say.
Dean, Sam, and I all look at each other. You're kidding me. I remember the Ghost-facers. Those two idiotic Supernatural wannabe detectives. Well, too bad the girls don't know that that little group has been disbanded for good. It did the world a huge favor. Weed out the amateurs and keep the professionals like the Winchesters in business, no distractions.
"All right, I'll be up in the sound booth with Maeve," says Dean. "You and Sam start looking for that scarecrow down here, okay?"
"You got it." I pull my hair out of my face and into a ponytail.
"You up for this, Jo?" Sam asks me once Dean disappears and the cast and crew are finalizing last minute preparations.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I question him. "I'm not rusty."
"I don't know. Since you've been back..."
I smile ruefully. "Sammy, I'm fine. I would tell you if something was wrong, okay? I'm not gonna be like you and Dean are. I'll tell you what's going on."
"Please don't be wrong about that."
"I won't be."
I can hear Marie start the intro to the show, and Sam and I split up backstage. I'm ignoring the introduction music and the intro number, I'm focused on finding this scarecrow and driving the wooden stake through it.
Where I'm at now, I can see the opening number, what goes on with it. I can also see Sam across the other way. I huff. No sign of the scarecrow. I flinch, nearly driving the stake through Dean as I feel his presence beside me.
"Easy there, tiger," he tells me, lowering my arm. "No sign?"
"No sign." I lick my lips. Come on, I want something to gank. Show yourself.
And the scarecrow does show itself, just behind Sam. Dean notices it too, and he and I begin to gesture wildly to Sam to turn the hell around so he can face the scarecrow. I face palm when Sam misinterprets our signals.
"Turn around!" I mouth to him.
Sam jumps as he finally turns, facing the scarecrow. I move past Dean, running behind the curtains to reach Sam and the scarecrow before something can go wrong. But by the time I reach where Sam once was, he and the scarecrow have disappeared. Vanished.
I stomp my foot on the wood flooring of the stage. Damn it. I feel low bubbling anger rise in my chest. If I was reckless and wanted to risk the show, I would have run through the stage just to get to Sam and the scarecrow in time. Now, thanks to that poor decision, Sam's disappeared, along with the scarecrow.
"What's going on?"
I spin around and find Marie, dressed as it looks to me, Sam, looking at me with terrified eyes.
"Sam's gone," I pant. "It got him." Just then, Dean comes into the picture. Another musical number has started out on stage. "I just missed them, Dean."
"Did you see where they went?"
I shake my head. "If only."
"What do we do now?" Marie pipes.
"Just, stick to the plan, okay?" Dean tells her. "Keep singing, until the scarecrow comes for you."
"Hey," I tell Marie softly. She's shaking. "We're gonna get this thing. You let us take care of what we need to do, and you go out there and knock the audience's pants off."
"I thought the saying was 'knock their socks off'?" Dean mutters.
"You want to be technical about a freaking saying right now?" I groan. I look at Marie, trying to be tender. "You got this." I give Marie an encouraging nudge onto the stage. While her music cues her to sing, Dean and I watch from offstage.
There's a little warble in Marie's voice, still from the pressure of everything. But she slowly loses the fear.
"Dean," I say, nudging him beside me. We see the scarecrow appear again, eyeing up Marie. But it's on the other side of the stage. I adjust the grip on my wooden stake.
Dean doesn't stop me as I charge across the stage and go for the scarecrow, he joins me in the fight.
I hear the confused murmurs in the crowd, but the act is still going on as planned. It's not interrupted, although I'm sure the actors are petrified and confused out of their minds. Dean is thrown off, his stake rolling across the stage. I bare my teeth at the scarecrow, almost like I'm an animal, and I dare expose my demon eyes to him. Not that it scares it any, I just keep it distracted while Dean tries to pick himself up off the floor.
There isn't a problem until the scarecrow gets a hold of me, sending me flying away from the stage and into Dean. There's a collective noise of grunts and groans from the two of us as we're a tangled mess of bodies. We try to untangle ourselves as fast as possible as we see the scarecrow moving in on Marie.
Marie sees the stake Dean dropped earlier and grabs it.
"No chick flick moments!" she says.
And Marie stabs the scarecrow. It explodes into a purple goo, splashing the front part of the audience. The audience is silent, until one guy adorned in a poncho, rises and claps. The rest of the audience follows his lead, and I can see the surprised smile on Marie's face.
"Take a bow, Sammy," I hear Dean mutter.
Since Dean and I are on stage as well, we, along with Marie and actress-Dean take a bow. The curtain shields us from the audience. I breathe easier. Intermission. Time to sort out this mess.
"You did good out there, kid," I tell Marie. "Nobody seemed to notice it wasn't part of the plan."
"Whole point of improv."
I laugh. "Yes, I guess so."
"Are you okay, though?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine. Probably little bumps and bruises." I shrug. "Nothing I can't handle." At the sound of approaching footsteps, I smile as I see Sam coming back to us, finishing his conversation with Maeve. Dean pulls Marie aside to talk to her.
"This should go under 'unforgettable cases', don't you think?" I ask him.
"Unforgettable is one word. Probably not the one I'd use."
"Strange?"
"That's an understatement."
I chuckle.
"You know?" I hear Dean say. "This has been educational. Seeing the story from your perspective. You keep writing, Shakespeare."
"Even if it doesn't make how you see it?" asks Marie.
"I have my version, and you have yours."
My eyes trail upwards as the lights flicker.
"One minute, folks," says Maeve. "One minute."
"And, Dean?" says Marie. "You never should've thrown this away." She gives him the samulet. Dean takes it, but tries to hand it back over.
"It never really worked," he says. "And, I don't need a symbol to remind me how I feel about my brother, so..."
"Just take it. Jerk."
"Bitch."
I burst into laughter. That's something I remember from my brothers. Dean always called Sam and I "bitch," Sam always used "jerk," and my specialty was "asshat." Some things never change.
"Well, I guess we can go back to staring at motel room walls," says Dean once he comes back to join Sam and I offstage.
"You know what, Dean?" Sam says. "You were right. Staying cooped up isn't helping us. We need—"
"We need to get back on the road, Dean. Doing what we do best." But that's not Sam who says it. It's Marie, who's on stage, who, along with actress-Dean, are in their own version of Baby.
"What is that?" I whisper, squeezing between my brothers.
"It's just...I don't know anymore," says actress-Dean.
"It's the, uh...the B.M. scene," says Dean.
"Saving people, hunting things. You know? The family business," says Marie.
I wrinkle my nose. "The...bowel movement scene?"
"No! Just...Shh!" Dean hisses.
"You're right, Sammy," says actress-Dean. "Out on the road. Just the two of us."
"The two of us against the world," says Marie.
"What she said," Sam whispers.
"Make that the three of us," I correct him softly, pinching both my brothers' shoulders.
The song that's covered next sends chills through me. I know the song, but I've never heard it sung so...beautifully, in a haunted manner of speaking. "Carry On Wayward Son" starts out with actress-Mary singing, then actress-John. And then more of the cast begins to sing the haunting melody.
But, there's one person I fail to recognize in the crowd.
"Who's that?" I ask, nodding towards one of the cast members. They don't look like Sam or Dean, or even Cas.
"Oh, that's Adam," says Maeve. "John Winchester's other kid. He's still trapped in the cage, in Hell. With Lucifer."
I look at Sam and Dean expectantly, demanding an explanation.
"Later, Jo," Dean whispers.
Normally, this song wouldn't speak volumes to me. But somehow, the cast's rendition does. I look at my brothers. The emotions are clear on their faces. I squeeze their shoulders a bit hard in comfort.
**The cover for this song gives me chills.**