Rose Miller: Looking for truth

32 Next to You

Rose wakes up. She is back in bed but doesn't remember going upstairs. Her clothing changed. Now, it's a pair of dark jeans and a pale blue jumper. She is still in her old house. She opens a drawer and finds something sharp. She slashes it over her hand. It heals immediately. 'You should see me now, Alice, a vampire locked in a house.' That was the one thing she hated most about this, watching her family grow older, watching Alice without being able to talk to her. She left quick; she didn't want to look back.

'It's ok.' A voice says.

Rose turns and sees Alice standing by the mirror. She is precisely how Rose remembers her.

'You look strange.' Alice says and smiles.

'Are you real?' Rose asks. She stands up and looks closer at her friend: 'Don't say anything. It doesn't matter.' Rose hugs her friend. And then everything disappears.

Dean enters the building, poking around cautiously with his flashlight. As he goes up the last staircase, he puts the flashlight away and pulls out a wooden stake. He hears something behind him, tucks the stake into his jacket, and enters the theatre. A round red bed with a tacky canopy and a slowly rotating disco ball is on the stage. The two women the trickster materialized earlier are sprawled on it seductively, both in lingerie. As Dean gets to the scene, they crawl towards him. 'We've been waiting for you, Dean.'

'You guys aren't real.' He turns around and walks away.

'Trust me, sugar, it's going to feel real.' One of them says.

He looks for another door and finds someone in the audience.

'They're a peace offering.' The trickster says: 'I know what you and your brother do. I've been around a while. Run into your kind before.'

'Well, then you know that I... can't let you just keep hurting people.'

'Come on! Those people got what was coming to them. Hoisted on their own petards.' The trickster stands up: 'Let me move on to the next town, and I'll give her back.'

'You really do have her? Why?'

'Why not? I just wanted to mess with her head a bit.'

'Let her go.' Dean demands. He takes the stake and points it at him: 'But I can't let you go.'

'Too bad. Like I said, I like you. Sam was right. You shouldn't have come alone.'

'Well, I'll agree with you there.'

The door slams shut. The trickster looks back up the stairs to see Sam just entered with a stake of his own. Bobby stands at the top of the next aisle with a stake. 'Ok, here she is.' He snaps his fingers, and Rose stands next to him. She looks confused. Sam looks at her and throws her the stake. She reacts fast, 'Not good.' the trickster mumbles. And she stakes him.

She sits on the stairs. Dean walks up: 'Are you ok.' He sits down next to her: 'Are you crying.'

'I'm just glad to be back.'

He takes her in his arms: 'What happened?'

'It was so real.' She whispers, crying in his chest: 'The house, almost everything was there, furniture in place, clothes in the closet.'