Hellhound

Part Two

When Dean woke up the next morning, it took him a little while to realise where he was. Once he did, he had no idea what time it was, or how he had even made it home. He rolled onto his back and stared at the sun creeping across his ceiling while he racked his brain for more information. He felt hung-over but he hadn’t drunk that much. He remembered standing outside the pub and talking to Jet when Garth and the others three guys had showed up. The next thing he remembered was walking to the house party and sitting down with Jet and talking for hours. But after that … he was struggling to piece it together. After lying on his bed and staring at his ceiling for what felt like hours, he decided he would get up and have a shower. He trudged down the stairs to the spare bathroom, reminding himself that he needed to fix the shower upstairs. He didn’t particularly want to look at himself in the mirror yet, so kept his tired eyes closed as he undressed, and got into the steaming shower.

Fifteen minutes later, he stepped out of the shower and started drying himself. When he twisted around to throw his towel into the laundry basket, a sharp pain shot up his right side and nearly floored him. He grabbed onto the sink to stop himself from collapsing on the ground, breathing heavily. He swung the bathroom door closed so he could see himself in the mirror. He slowly turned around so he could see the right side of his back. It took a while for him to register what he was seeing. He moved closer to the mirror to get a better look. Just above his right hip, and stretching almost all the way to his spine were three, long deep gashes. He ran his finger over one of them lightly, and winced as the sharp pain shot up his side again. The cuts were about an inch apart from each other, and there was a lot of dried blood and bruising surrounding each one. He reached into the laundry basket and checked his shirt from last night – it was just about ripped in half and covered in blood. He stood there staring at his shirt, his mind buzzing and his heart thundering in his chest. He dropped his shirt back in the basket and stared at himself. His long, blonde hair was wet sending tiny, warm beads of water all down his chest and back. His chest was rising up and down as he was taking deep breaths, and his eyes … they looked different. He stepped towards the mirror for a closer inspection. They were still their usual, bright green, but he noticed that there was a red tinge around his pupils. Maybe he was just really hung-over.

He spent almost half an hour trying to clear up the dried blood and covering his wound in gauze before heading outside. He was standing on the front porch looking at his bike. It was parked right at the bottom of the front steps. He never parked his bike there, and also wondered how he had even driven it home if he had drunk that much. He sighed and went back inside to find his jacket. He decided to go down and see Matt; maybe he could refresh his memory about what had happened last night. But he couldn’t find his leather jacket anywhere. He went back outside and started up his bike, feeling very lost and confused and started the long ride to Woodlock.

***

About an hour later, Dean pulled up on Matt’s front lawn and shut the engine off on his bike. He winced in pain again as he climbed off his bike. He walked up the front porch steps and knocked three times on the door.

“Hold on, I’m coming!” he heard Matt’s muffled voice call out. Dean turned and sat down on the old park bench on the front porch and waited. As he was sitting there, he could distinctly smell beer and cigarettes. He looked around on the porch, expecting to see beer bottles or cigarette butts, but the porch was clean. Matt came out the front door looking a little worse for wear, and sat down next to Dean. He had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“Bit early, don’t you think?” Dean asked, crinkling his nose at the cigarette smoke.

“Hair of the dog mate, best cure for a hang-over!” Matt smiled, while taking a long drag on his cigarette. When Dean didn’t respond, Matt kept talking.