Carry on my Wayward Daughter: A Supernatural FanFic

Chapter Four: Black Eyed Surprise

… 2014…

                “What are you doing out so late, Cass?” My best friend Paula says as she slides onto the stool next to me at her parents’ café. Well, more like her mother’s café; her father handles the car dealership they also own. I wandered over here just after my mother sent me out of the house. It’s always been my go-to place whenever I’m upset. I just order pie and wallow in my feelings as I eat. It’s surprisingly soothing.

                “A fight with my mom” I mumble through a mouthful of pie.

                “What? Why?” Paula’s voice is full of shock, probably fake. “I thought you always got along great.” Lie. My mom and I had fights regularly; she always said I reminded her too much of my father. I think the reason we really fought was because she had me when she was very young. She still hadn’t grown out of her angst teen ways and not even having to raise a child could do that. I was two years old when she turned twenty-one and began frequenting bars. She’d always drop me off with my Uncle Jimmy or my grandparents and come back totally wasted. One time she came back an entire three months later after leaving me with Jimmy, missing my 5th birthday, to announce that she had gotten pregnant, married, and divorced after a miscarriage. Jimmy was reluctant to give me back to her, but she threatened to call the cops and he handed me over. That was the last time I saw Uncle Jimmy. Finally she began to clean up her act the next year, when she was 25. She had been getting better and better at all this “being a parent” stuff – she was still better at it than my Dad – but she never really mastered it, however she went to college and got herself a decent job.  She was still bitter and yelled about my Dad and other things. She must have cracked again tonight with the drugs.

                “Yeah we normally do get along,” I say going with Paula’s charade, “but I guess the tension of her losing her job finally broke her.”

                “Well, I’m heading home. If you need some place to sleep the couch is always yours.” She says and hugs me. Just before she pulls away she whispers “Carry on, Cass.” I remember sneaking the mix tape over to her house for sleepover and playing the songs for her. Like me she fell in love with the first song: Carry on my Wayward Son by Kansas. Whenever one of us gets upset or sad, we always say “Carry on” Like when Paula’s first and so far only boyfriend of 2 years broke up with her or when I got into a fist fight with another girl who had called me a bitch and my mother a whore.

                I finish my pie and look around the empty café. Everything has an eerie calm over it. It’s almost too passive to be peaceful. Chills race up my spine and goose-bumps pop up on my arms. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. I grab my coat of the stool next to me and slowly begin to walk towards the door. Everything about this screams horror movie. I bite my lip as I open the door slowly. Thankfully all the street lights that lead toward Paula’s are on.

                I drape my coat over my shoulders and begin to walk down the road. The wind whips at my hair and seems to rub my skin raw. Why is it so cold? I slip my arms into my coat, so I’m wearing it. I am buttoning up the front when I pass under the first streetlight. It flickers. My heart lurches with fear as I stop and stare up at the light flickering. Just two seconds ago it was shining strong, and now?

                I shake my head. I’m being delusional; overreacting. Lights can only run for so long before they flicker and go out. I continue walking and buttoning up my coat. I’m halfway between the first and second streetlight when I hear breaking glass from behind me. I spin around on my toes, almost losing my balance, just in time to see a shower of sparks explode from the past streetlight. I freeze, arrested by panic. I hear the same thing from the second streetlight and slowly turn in horror to see every single streetlight along the road go out in a burst. It’s suddenly so dark I can hardly even see my shoes.

                A hand clamps down on my shoulder and I jump at the touch. I scream, burning out my lungs, as I struggle to make out a face in the pitch black. Finally, when recognition hits me I stop screaming and gasp.

                “Paula?” I smile and start laughing, “Oh, Paula you really scared the hell out of me.”

                She smiles back and blinks her eyes, but when they open again they are black; the pupils, the irises, and the whites all a deep soulless black. Her smile devolves into something a little more devilish.

                “Paula isn’t home right now,” Paula’s body says, “leave a message.” Not-Paula punches me, getting a good hook on my right jawline. The sheer force of it sends me slamming to the ground, blood trickling out of my mouth. It then kicks me in the stomach and the blood vomits out of my mouth. I struggle for breath in between the swift, painful kicks of this black-eyed bitch. The more the beating continues the more I feel weak. You always tell yourself that you could beat up anyone and everyone, but when the time actually comes – you’re nothing. All my tiny, meaningless fist-fights have done nothing to prepare me for this moment. I curl into myself on the pavement and heave more blood onto myself. The assaults now are attacking my back, ripping off my jacket and tearing holes into my shirt as it claws at me.

                “Please,” I am barely able to mumble this small cry for help. Not-Paula however notices this plea and begins to talk in between its attacks.

                “Please what?” Kick. “Please stop?” Punch. “Pathetic.” Not-Paula picks me up of the ground with such strength that when it holds me by my jacket my feet don’t touch the ground. “You’re supposed to be a Winchester.” It practically spits in my face. I cringe at the mention of my last name; the only thing I have from my Dad. “Now I know why Daddy-dearest didn’t want you,” It teases, lifting me higher. “It’s because you are weak!” It throws me to ground again on “weak.”

                Just then a man randomly appears in front of Not-Paula and places his hand upon its forehead. By now my eyes had pretty much adjusted to the dark already, so the blinding light that came along with Not-Paula’s screams was well – blinding. When Not-Paula collapsed to the ground a couple of streetlights that were still sort of functioning turned back on to reveal that its black eyes had been completely scorched out of its head. That’s when it hits me; those were also Paula’s eyes. I rush over to her body and try to feel a pulse in her neck; nothing. This time the pain doesn’t hit me. No tears come, because it almost doesn’t feel real. The way she went with the black eyes. Paula, the only person to ever understand me more than myself, couldn’t possibly be dead. Not before me. I relive her death with the man and the blinding light…

                “You” I say turning around to face Paula’s murderer; the man who could make killer light comes from his palms.

                He doesn’t look me in the face at first, but just seeing him in the broken light of the streetlamps is enough recognition I would ever need. I would know him anywhere. The only adult to ever give two shits about me.

                “Uncle Jimmy?” I gawk and finally his blue eyes come up to meet my green ones.

                “Hello Cassidy.”