SACRIFICE ³ - DEAN WINCHESTER

Forty-Three

Sam, Jenny and Dean sit at the table. Jenny kept staring at Dean as he happily ate his burger. She turned down to her food, which was untouched.

"You gonna eat that?" Dean asked, pointing to her BLT. Jenny shook her head, passing it to Dean, who smiled through a mouthful of burger..

"So, I got a theory." Sam spoke up from behind his laptop. Dean looked at Sam mid-bite. "Yeah, I talked to Mr. Giggle's doctor. Turns out his incisions were sewn up with silk."

"That's weird." Dean commented as Jenny nodded quickly with a frown.

"Yeah. And also very deadly." Sam nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, nowadays it is, but silk used to be the suture of choice back in the early 19th century. It was really problematic. Patients would get massive infections. The death rate was insane."

"Good times." Dean smiled, going for Jenny's BLT, setting his burger down.

"Right, so doctors, they had to do whatever they could to keep infections from spreading. One way was maggots." Dean paused before biting into the sandwich to glare at his brother.

"Dude, I'm eating."

"It actually kind of worked because maggots, they eat bad tissue, and they leave good tissue. And get this. When they found our guy, his body cavity was stuffed full of maggots."

"Dude, I'm eating!" Dean repeated, putting the sandwich down. "Alright, let me get this straight. So, people are getting ganked, right?" Sam paused for a moment and nodded. "A little "antiques roadshow" surgery, some organ theft. But why is this all sounding familiar?"

"Because you heard it before. When you were a kid... from Dad. Doc Benton...real-life doctor, lived in New Hampshire, brilliant and obsessed with alchemy, especially how to live forever. So, in 1816, Doc abandons his practice and..."

"Right, yeah, nobody hears from him for like 20 years, and all of sudden, people start showing up dead." Jenny frowned at Sam and Dean, confused on what they were talking about.

"Dead or – or missing an organ or the hand or some other kind of part." Sam continued explaining.

"Cause whatever he was doing was actually working. He just kept on ticking. Parts would wear out, he'd replace them. But I thought Dad hunted him down and took his heart out." Dean frowned. Jenny still had one, only more confused.

"Yeah, I guess the Doc must have plugged in a new one."

"So...... This doctor discovered the secret to immortality?" Jenny asked. Sam and Dean didn't answer for a moment before nodding. "Wow."

"All right, where's he doing the deed?" Dean questioned next and Sam went through his laptop again.

"According to this, Benton's picky about where he sets up his lab. He likes dense forest with access to a river or stream or some kind of freshwater." Dean took another big bite of his burger.

"Why?" He asked, Sam smirking slightly.

"Because that's where he likes to dump the bile and intestines and fecal matter." Dean looked disgusted for a moment and gagged slightly. "Lost your appetite yet?" Dean considered it for a moment. He looked at the burger, then to Sam, then back down at the burger. Dean picked it up and took another large bite.