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goodboydummy · 14 years ago

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Gimme Three Steps!

A Supernatural Drabble Fic

For Flailspace

Inspired by this Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tS_pzCEvjY

Enjoy

"SAM!" Dean yelled, crashing against a solid metal wall after turning a sharp corner harder than he'd meant to. It was hard to control his movements when he wasn't thinking about his feet or the direction they were going in or how they were moving at all. It was hard to control anything when all he was thinking about was getting to Sam as fast as possible.

"SAMMY!" His voice echoed off the steel walls of the unfinished apartments that the "monsters of the week," namely vampires, had chosen as their hideout.

"Shit!" he cursed, glancing down at his leg while trying to run on it at the same time. Maybe his suddenly terrible motor skills weren't only from his panic over finding Sam, but because there was a huge gash right at his knee, dripping blood onto his favorite pair of jeans.

'That's it,' he thought angrily, turning another corner in the desperate hope he was going in the right direction. 'These bastards took Sam, and now they made me ruin my favorite pair of pants. They're goin' down.'

Just as he came to a fork in the hallway and didn't know which way to go, he heard Sam scream, and it came from down the hallway to the left. Ignoring his knee, Dean began to sprint towards his brother, holding tightly to his gun in his right hand and his brother's gun, that he'd found abandoned in the front of the building, in his left.

How long had he left Sam with these monsters? What had Sam gone through so far? What if they turned him?

Dean ran faster until, at the end of the hallway he saw an open door and knew that that was where he'd find Sam and, if luck was on his side, the unlucky sonofabitch that Dean was about to kill.

There was a metallic BANG as the door swung back and hit the wall. A scrawny, yellow-haired and obviously young vampire turned around to face the man in the door with a expression that went from obvious delight to pure terror in the space of less than one second.

"W- who're you?" he stuttered, panicking as he stood in front of Sam, who was strapped to a chair. "They s-said no one could find me here! They promised! I swear I didn't do nothin'! It was dem!"

"Save it." Dean spat, walking towards the vampire who was now so nervous he was shaking. He raised his gun, pointed it straight into the vampires face, and pulled back the safety. The blond vampire looked as if he were about to faint. Without glancing away from him, Dean questioned Sam,

"Are you alright, Sammy?"

Though he was panting hard, and he groaned when he spoke, Sam replied in the affirmative.

"Yeah." Just from the tone of his voice Dean could tell he was relieved. "I'm okay."

"Good. Now I can get with killing this piece of-"

"Wait!" The vampire said, and Dean's scowl deepened. This vampire was pretty pathetic looking, but Dean knew he still had to kill it.

"Please!' Please, it wasn't mah fault! I didn't even kill 'im!" The monster pleaded. "Please Mister! I was confused! Just, gimme a head start! Three steps! Three steps towards the door!"

Dean hesitated for a moment and let his eyes wander in Sam's direction. He snarled and pulled the trigger the moment he saw blood smearing his brother's brow but it was too late; the vampire was already screaming his way down several flights of stairs.

Dean quickly untied his brother and they went after one of the monsters they'd come to the town to fight and kill. They caught up with him after very little effort and cornered him in an alley. He was panicking, glancing left to right, trying to find some way out. When he realized that none existed he turned once again to Dean, pleading with his hands clasped together,

"Mister! Please, let me just have three-"

"Shut it," Dean replied, shifting the machete held in his right hand while pointing his gun at the vampire with his other. "Anything that touches a hair on Sam's head doesn't get to keep theirs attacked to their neck."

The vampire whimpered. Deans shrugged.

"Sorry. It's the rules."

He fired, and before the vampire even had time to realize that the bullet didn't kill him, his head was chopped clean off and went rolling across to the other side of the alley.

He turned to Sam and smirked. The younger Winchester brother gave him a half-amused smile in reply.

"Always have to be the overprotective older brother, don't you?" he asked as he went over to the body of the vampire and began to clean up.

"Better than being the overprotective boyfriend, right?"

Sam bit his lip and blushed, leaving Dean to smirk confidently at him. Sam replied quietly, without glancing up at his brother,

"You're that too, Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean replied, pulling Sam up to tenderly kiss the scratch on his forehead that was already caked with dried blood. Sam groaned with fake annoyance but allowed his brother another slight peck on his lips.

Sometimes having an overprotective brother wasn't so bad...

I'll get around to doing the Supernatural/Shakespeare one eventually, Sarah. Eventually.

#XD #flailspace #fanficiton #drabble #olivia #supernatural #wincest #songfic

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mymnemosyne-blog-blog · 13 years ago

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The Lancaster Women | Megan's final short story for her class

The phone rings—piercingly, a discordant note of alarm—just as Penelope gets up to take a batch of vanilla scones out of the oven for afternoon tea. It’s 2:23 p.m. according to the wall clock, deep in the lull of a lazy Wednesday afternoon, entirely the wrong time for a conversation when one’s son works and nobody else calls anymore. She shades her eyes against the brilliant light that slides slyly into the kitchen through gauzy curtains, and has to ask the voice on the other end to repeat that, the scones are ready to take out of the oven and she was distracted, what was that? Are they sure?

Ronnie is dead, the voice tells her. A terrible car accident on the freeway early that morning, a semi-truck driver asleep at the wheel. Quite unfortunate, but sudden, and thankfully painless.

“Thankfully,” Penelope tests, the word cloyingly thick on her tongue. She reaches up to pat a few strands of grey-brown hair into place before turning to the oven. “Could you hold on for just one moment? I really must take the scones out.”

They’re just a shade browner than she’d like, but not ruined. She divests herself of the oven mitts and returns to the phone.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but just to clarify, how—how exactly can you be certain it’s my son?”

Ronald Edward Lancaster, aged 34, born December the 17th, 1947. Five feet, ten inches tall. Lawyer. Blue eyes. Brown hair. Pale. No pulse. These are all the facts that matter now, not his chiseled jaw or the proud lift of his shoulders, both his father’s. Diplomas and grainy photographs—these are the only things left. Penelope examines that fact, turns it over and finds it’s just as matter-of-fact as the news itself.

“Thank you for the phone call.” Would she like them to call someone for her? “No, there’s no one. I assume you’ve notified his wife. His widow, I mean. Lucy.” Of course, ma’am, that has been taken care of. “Well then, goodbye.”

After the phone call, Penelope sits for a very long time at the table set for one, the rich, buttery smell drifting through the room. Her discarded library book, an insipid thing, sits untouched at her place setting. The summer light filters onto her face and stings her into black-starred vision. A surge of something rushes up inside of her, seething throughout her body until she shudders with it, just once. When the sun finally gives way to a stray wisp of cloud, she gets up and bustles to wrap the scones in a cheery yellow cloth, fingers neat and precise.

* * *

The next day is a blur of concerned murmurs, mostly disembodied static through the phone. Family members—none of hers by blood, all her late husband’s—huff through stilted silences, asking after the house and how she’s been in the six years since Robert passed. They remember Ronnie from the photograph sent around of his law school graduation, a solemn expression and clear eyes under black robes. Neighbors call, too, and a few brave souls even stop by with a plate of food and condolences, hoping for a story to pass on to their curious friends. Penelope obliges in minute doses, parceling out bits of what she has learned.

“It was a truck driver, you see,” she explains graciously, and Mrs. McCann from next door nods gravely and tuts, even as her eyes glint like a magpie’s.

As Mrs. McCann totters down the drive with her cane, Penelope turns to regard the kitchen table, stacked precariously with an absurd number of casserole dishes and plates of sandwiches, with a thin frown. The practice of giving food to family of the dead discomfits her. She is hardly so ill-collected as to need others to provide for her.

The phone rings, again. She takes a fortifying breath and answers it.

“Good afternoon.”

“Hello, Pen—Mrs. Lancaster. This is Lucy calling.” Newly-widowed, she sounds so young. Her voice is thin and pinched.

“Why yes, hello. Thank you for calling. I suppose we need to discuss funeral arrangements and such. Let me grab a pen.”

There’s silence on the other end while she rummages around in a drawer, phone tucked under her ear, then Lucy gathers the courage to timidly ask, “I don’t suppose—I couldn’t come see you in person?”

“In person? Is there something the matter?”

“Well, you see…Ron left a letter containing instructions. For the funeral. It’s all very much in order.”

“Is that so? What sort of instructions?”

“He—he wants us to bake a cake.”

Penelope blinks.

“Pardon?”

“It’s right here, hang on.” Paper rustles faintly. “Here it is. ‘I wish for my wife, Lucy, and my mother to bake a cake to be served at the reception, in cherished memory of all the sweetness they have brought to my life.’”

Penelope purses her lips. “I’m sure you’re aware this is all most irregular.”

“I am. I had no idea—Ron never mentioned he’d made any arrangements, let alone something like this.” Lucy sounds faintly embarrassed; it’s a small consolation.

She sighs. “Well, I suppose there’s no help for it. You’d better come over straight away. Don’t bother bringing your recipes, I have plenty. We can discuss the cake today and bake on Friday, assuming the funeral is on Saturday.” She rattles off her address, previously used only for a few Thanksgiving dinners and her birthday in July. Ronnie always bought the gift, but Lucy wrapped it and addressed the tag from both of them with a librarian’s neat scrawl. She smiled too widely under large brown eyes, but when he threw back his head to laugh, just for a moment the sun burnished his hair gold.

* * *

The knock comes as Penelope drags a considering finger over the well-worn spines of her many recipe books. She selects four particular favorites before answering the door with a polite smile.

Lucy is pale skin stretched over thin bones. There’s something bird-like about her, in her swan neck, the crop of fine, copper hair dusting her shoulders and the innocently earnest way she cocks her head to the side when thinking. She doesn’t look well; her dark gray dress turns her skin wan and accents the red rims of her eyes. Nevertheless, she squares her shoulders and nods cordially to Penelope on her way in.

“I had thought we might each glance through a book and mark any promising recipes,” Penelope says by way of hello.

“That would be useful. Thank you for inviting me over, Mrs. Lancaster.”

Lucy looks out-of-place, perched stiffly on a chair at the table so often set for one. Penelope sits across from her. It’s the first time they’ve ever been alone together, and Lucy’s presence creeps across her skin, a jangling note of wrong on the edge of her peripheral vision.

Ten minutes pass before Lucy shuts her book and glances up.

“I found a recipe for Swiss buttercream,” she says.

“It could be two-tiered, one chocolate and one white,” Penelope responds, already thinking ahead to frosting colors.

“Do you have much experience with baking cakes?”

“I used to bake for the Honeysuckle Bakery in town, but…then Ronnie came along.” Penelope winces at the hint of wistfulness in her tone. “I was rather good.” It’s not a boastful statement, but rather an admission of fact.

“He told me about the cakes you made him for his birthdays, you know.” Lucy idly worries at a corner of her book’s cover. “Tiers, layers, frosting, fondant, all of that. He was always rather cross that I couldn’t manage to evenly frost two layers.”

“It’s not that difficult,” Penelope demurs automatically. “I’m sure you could learn.”

Lucy’s eyes flick up to meet hers. “You are?”

“Fairly so,” she responds brusquely, lowering her gaze to the book.

When they’ve decided on a two-tier cake frosted in deep blue Swiss buttercream, Lucy follows Penelope to the living room to replace the volumes. She lets out a small cry at the sight of a leather-bound photo album and snatches it from the bookshelf, flipping it open.

There they are, the photos from their wedding, eight years ago. Ronnie dutifully smiles, close-mouthed and stiff, in each photograph. Lucy is comically short next to him. Her lashes are long and spidery, her mouth painted a garish red. She looks like a young girl caught mucking around in her mother’s makeup. At nineteen, she nearly is.

“My goodness,” Lucy breathes. “We look so dreadfully silly.” She laughs and laughs until she has to wipe her eyes and gasp for breath.

Penelope’s lip twists up at that, and the expression lingers until well after Lucy has gone on her way.

* * *

Grocery shopping for the first time after the accident is a surreal experience. Typically, Penelope wanders the aisles, comparing prices-per-ounce with the shrewdness of a woman hunting a bargain. With so many eyes following her progress around the small supermarket, she finds herself striding stiffly down the aisles, looking straight ahead.

She’s accosted in the baking aisle by Gwen Wolfe, an unnaturally blonde woman in her forties whose young son sometimes mows her lawn over the summer.

“Penelope, dear, I was so sorry to hear about Ronald.” Gwen lays her hand on Penelope’s arm and squeezes gently. “If you need anything, anything at all, please give me a call.” Looking down into this near-stranger’s face, the ratty brown roots peeking from beneath flashy yellow hair, Penelope is repelled for reasons she can’t name, and she nods with a smile that she’s sure is more of a grimace.

“May I ask what you’re picking up?” Gwen looks around the aisle as if seeking out vodka, or ice cream, or another of the ‘drown your sorrows’ brood.

“I’m actually baking a cake.”

“A cake?” Gwen’s voice trills loudly over the faint, tinny classical music.

“For the funeral reception. It was something Ronnie wanted me and Lucy to do together, in the event of his death.”

“I see,” Gwen manages haltingly. “How…unusual.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Penelope murmurs as she expertly maneuvers her cart out of the aisle, grabbing a sack of cake flour as she goes.

Approaching the cashier, she is struck with weariness at all of it—the exposure, the judgment. Being approached by people she hardly knows with saccharine messages of sympathy, she’s expected to graciously thank them. Worst of all, in just two days Ronnie has become a thing, a sort of martyred, small-town hero with no room for faults. It’s the way things are, she thinks, for some inexplicable reason. They’re all hollow gestures, the apologies for some nebulous situation and the plates of food cluttering her refrigerator. And yet.

* * *

“I want to make the cake more elaborate,” Penelope says abruptly, tapping two fingers against her chin.

“More elaborate?” Lucy gives her a doubtful look. “We already have two tiers planned, and a complicated frosting. What else do you want to do?”

“More,” she says. “I don’t know. Just…more.” Something is swelling inside of her, fueled by chocolate and flour and a sort of possibility.

Lucy slowly nods her head, worrying her lower lip as she looks back at their list of tasks—bake layers, cut layers, whip frosting, fill and frost cake.

“It’ll be fine,” Penelope offers impulsively, and when Lucy looks back at her again, she almost smiles.

They end up baking one each of chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet. Penelope talks Lucy through melting the chocolate, running a heatproof spatula across the edges and bottom of a double boiler as the dull pieces melt into a swirl of rich, velvety brown. While Lucy turns the handle of a sifter, forehead furrowed over her bowl of snowy flour, Penelope beats eggs and oil together with a practiced hand. They work in silence, broken only by the soothing susurration of their whisks.

“Is this okay, Penelope?” Lucy asks hesitantly, holding out the bowl for inspection. Penelope leans over and makes an approving noise.

Before they can fall again into silence, Lucy sets down the sifter and asks, “What was it like, when Ron was growing up?”

“It was—” Penelope falls silent, sticks her tongue between her teeth and whisks a few more times before turning to look at her daughter-in-law. “What would you like to know?

“The truth.”

She almost laughs at the seriousness of it, but the earnest look on Lucy’s face makes her reconsider while she adds a cup of milk to her bowl.

“It was just before the war, and Robert was leaving. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes, because back then it was just what people did. We were young, like you and Ronnie. He came back—different, like a lot of men were, but we were still so young that when everyone else had babies, we did too.”

It’s been a long while since she thought about that time, the time before the war, and during, and after. The memories come loose slowly, like half-cooled caramel, and she whisks idly for another moment before continuing.

“Back then, we all thought things would be different. I’d worked in the bakery before the war, and during with whatever we could get. I was sure to become a manager soon. But after, things changed. I couldn’t go back, not after Ronnie.

“Don’t mistake me, Ronnie was a good baby, a good boy. He never fussed, and when he got older he was smart, smart like few people were out here. He was a good Christian, a decent athlete, all of those things. He was a good boy.”

Her words hang in the air as she stirs the wet and dry ingredients together and scrapes them into the cake pan.

Lucy licks her lips and cocks her head consideringly before confessing, “You know, he really was awfully boring.” Another smile tugs at Penelope’s mouth, and this time she lets it spread.

* * *

Penelope insists that Lucy make the frosting on her own, and Lucy’s eyes widen for a brief moment before she juts her chin forward determinedly.

“Now, the thing about Swiss buttercream,” Penelope says, “is that after you add the butter to the egg whites, the whole thing falls down, and you think you’ve utterly killed the frosting. But if you have to whip it and whip it, whip it like your life depends on it, it’ll form.” She darts a sideways glance at Lucy’s tiny, pale hand and dainty wrist.

“I can do it,” Lucy says firmly, tucking a few stray hairs behind a shell-like ear.

She whisks the egg whites and sugar over simmering water, whisks them in a bowl, lips pressed tightly together as she starts whisking with her other hand.

“What was your life like, before?” Penelope asks. Lucy hardly looks up.

“I have three sisters. My mother always said she was glad I wasn’t plain-looking, so they could send me off to secretary school and hope I’d meet a man. Ronnie came along before then. They were really pleased they didn’t have to pay for secretary school.”

Lucy laughs shortly and continues beating. Penelope watches that skinny, pale arm where it churns egg whites into a fluffy mass.

“Time to add the butter.”

Lucy whips, whips, whips for an interminable five minutes, forehead creasing, jaw clenching, eyes narrowed, the frosting tossed and beaten and scraped, before it finally becomes a glossy satin. Blinking, she lets her arm fall to her side and a wild grin appears on her face.

“Congratulations,” Penelope says. “Your first batch of Swiss buttercream, and it looks just fine.”

Frosting the layers is a matter of concentration, orbiting one another around the small table, but finally the cake is finished, and they stand back to look at it.

“What do you think they’ll do?” Lucy asks finally. Penelope can’t stifle a small snicker.

“I really don’t know, to be honest. Though it is our reception, and so they can’t really complain, now, can they?”

* * *

Those in attendance at Ronald Edward Lancaster’s funeral reception agreed that it was by far one of the strangest they had ever attended, so memorable as to be brought up at this party or that in the future by some guest who remembered “the Lancaster women, and that damned cake.”

Relatives, co-workers, and friends shuffled from the internment site, a muddy hole in the ground marked by the curious tombstone, “Ronald Edward Lancaster, 1947-1982. Lawyer, son, and husband. Death was thankfully painless.” Upon entering the reception hall, they observed Ronald’s mother, Penelope Lancaster, and his widow, Lucy Lancaster, waiting to receive guests in front of what appeared to be a three-tiered wedding cake.

Stacked and layered with lustrous white buttercream, it was topped with a single white orchid. Cordial to a fault, the Lancasters served each guest a piece of the cake with a smile, and when all the guests had been served, they conferred near it with heads bent together and lowered voices. Had anyone been listening, they might have caught the stray phrases, “too much flour,” or “more vanilla,” but many were absorbed in the phenomenon of the cake itself, murmuring in scandalized tones to one another.

Oddest of all, when the guests began to depart, the Lancaster women offered no traditional parting words, but instead, soberly hands clasped in front of them, “Thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed the cake.”

#flailspace #you said such kind things about the original two paragraphs that spawned this #audrilyn #descendingintoconfusion #you were so sweet last night :)#you EDITED this because you're a star #starkiddaltonite #silverscribe #you wanted to see this #everyone else should be tagged for reasons

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