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This is a horror story.
Just not the one you’re expecting.
A woman in white and a demon with sulphur-yellow eyes and the devil himself—they are nothing.
The first time you encounter true horror is a day like any other day, and you are having an argument with your brother, and the horror sneaks in when you realise you have had this fight, you have had so many ‘any other days’ just like this one. You do not want to argue, you realise in a moment of startling clarity. But still the words flow out of you even as your brain turns to tv static, floating out into being against your will.
You forget this moment of starling clarity until an angel slaps his bloody palm against a wall, saving both of you from a deceptively beautiful room. A prophet tells him he is not in this story. It hits you that the prophet is right, the angel is not supposed to be here. He was supposed to be...supposed to be...what was he supposed to be? You don’t know, but you know he was meant to be gone somehow, somewhere, before you reached this point. He tells the prophet ‘we’re making it up as we go’ and he is the only real thing in this room that flickers in, out, a wall missing, lights and silhouettes filling its place until you blink and everything is set back to normal. You have to go find your brother.
Sometimes, you think you black out for days, weeks, even months at a time. Sometimes you wake up from these moments and find you’ve done so much despite the unshakable feeling you didn’t do any of the things you remember, and sometimes no time has passed at all.
Your hand wraps around your machete. Your vision flickers—rings and bracelets decorate your hands, appearing and disappearing. Why did you stop wearing jewellery anyway? Have you ever had tattoos? Ever wanted them? Sometimes you catch vibrant ink on your skin out the corner of your eye.
Sam throws himself into hell, saving the world. Then, you’re driving, and driving, and your grief clears enough for a moment to wonder why. Lisa is beautiful, and wonderful, and normal, and she is the mother of a kid who may or may not be yours. She is everything you should want, but it was one bendy weekend and one changeling case and you barely know each other and why would she let you into her home and her life anyway? Cas appears in the passenger seat. You talk. He leaves. You keep driving and for some reason Lisa does let you in. When she does, it feels like a curtain somewhere is being drawn, but it doesn’t last—Sam is back and the curtain drawn against that missing wall opens right back up.
People are watching. You see them out of the corner of your eye, and even if they vanish as soon as you turn to look at them, you know they are there, watching. You don’t want them to see you—you grin and make jokes and flirt with women and pose with a gun in your hand or a knife over your shoulder.
A performance for an audience, is that who you are? Is that who you have to be? Have you always known they were there, is that why you walk the way you walk and talk the way you talk?
You can’t tell anyone about them. you try, but the words stick in your throat, choking you and coming out as a comment about the case, or playful banter with Sam, anything except what you are trying to say.
Cas continues to be steady, solid in a world of flickers and glitches. You are drawn to him, and drawn, and drawn, but you can’t do anything about it. You see how he looks at you, you look back, intent so clear, but you can’t act on it. Instead you shut it down, walk away, one time you even kick him out and even though you know why your body riots against it; it feels forced on you by a contrived set of circumstances.
You have never been to the grand canyon until you have, yet somehow you now have without ever actually going.
You want to kiss Cas. You’re standing in your kitchen, in purgatory, in a motel room. You’re sitting in Baby, in a diner, in a bar. You want to kiss him. A figure flickers in the corner, and you get the sense they want you to kiss him too—this voyeur, whoever they are, it would mean a lot to them if you kissed your best friend. You don’t. You can’t. None of you are happy about this.
You’re good with kids. You always have been—you raised Sam from an age when you still should have been being raised yourself, and considering everything, you did a pretty great job. Your brother grew up to be incredible. Suddenly, you are telling a newly-born kid you would kill him, you are holding a gun to a young girl's face, you are holding a gun to the face of that newly-born kid you’ve grown to consider family.
You were good with kids. Once.
You’re god's favourite show. Is he the voyeur you catch out of the corner of your eye? Is he forcing you to do the things you don’t want to do and say things you don’t want to say? And not do the things you want to do and say the things you want to say? Moulding you, changing you, destroying you?
You need god gone. You need to be free.
Cas has never been clearer than in that basement, telling you he loves you, that he loves because of you. You know god would have prevented this if he could have—but Castiel has never been caught in the same trap as you. He has been breaking the rules from the start, not just heaven’s or even god’s, but the rules of this existence. The only problem is you are still trapped, and when you try to say the words you’ve been longing to say for years, what comes out instead is ‘don’t do this’.
Jesus, why aren’t you grieving? Why aren’t you trying to get him back? You sat on that floor and cried as the world vanished around you, then time went black again and suddenly you’re on a road with Sam and Jack and even though the grief is squeezing your insides into viscera, you can’t let it out, only a crack here and there letting it show. You have grieved him openly and destructively before, why can’t you do it now? Why have the rules changed and why can you never keep up?
God is gone. It doesn’t matter after all. You can still feel them watching you.
You die. You can’t let yourself grieve and you can’t escape the life you no longer want and you weren’t trying to die but it happens and you let it. In your last moments, you desperately think maybe this is it, maybe this is how you get out, maybe now you won’t be chained and witnessed.
In heaven, you go for a drive. You don’t know why, because what you should be doing, the only logical thing to do, is look for Cas.
You drive. You are still being watched. No one is happy.
This is a horror story, and there is no way out.