Rose Miller: Looking for truth

38 What a Wonderful World

What is and should never be...

A TV airs an old black-and-white movie of a monster carrying an unconscious woman.

Dean wakes up bare-chested and wearing a necklace that is not the amulet. He sees an apparently nude woman beside him. Only he doesn't know who she is.

Dean, dressed, is walking through the dark apartment. He takes his phone and dials his brothers' number.

'Dean?'

'Sam?'

'What's going on?'

'I don't know. I don't know where I am.' Dean scans the nicely decorated apartment. Nothing looks familiar.

'What? What happened?'

'Well, the uh, the Djinn. It attacked me.' That's what happened, but what did it do?

'The gin? You're... drinking gin?'

'No, asshat. The Djinn. The ... scary creature. Remember? It put its hand on me, and then I woke up ... next to some hot chick...'

'Who?' He laughs: 'Carmen?'

'Who?' He asks his brother.

'Dean, you're drunk. You're drunk-dialling me.'

Sam hangs up. Dean looks at his phone, puts it back in his pocket, is frustrated, and looks around. He sees an envelope and picks it up. He sees that it is addressed to:

CARMEN PORTER

53 BARKER AVE

LAWRENCE, KS 66044

'Lawrence?' He mutters. The following two envelopes are addressed to Dean, the same address as Carmen's. 'What the hell?'

'Honey? What are you doing up?' Carmen asks. She walks down the stairs in a dark blue dressing gown.

'Hey. Carmen. Carmen, uh, I just uh...'

'Aw, you can't sleep, huh?'

'Yeah, heh heh.' He looks at her, really looks at her this time.

She stops before him: 'Well, why don't you come back to bed and let's see if I can do anything to help.'

'Sure. Yeah. In a minute. You - you, you go ahead.'

She looks at him, smiling: 'OK. Don't stay up too long.'

'No.'

She kisses him warmly.

He goes to a bookshelf and sees a photo of Carmen and another of her and himself embracing. He turns and sees something else shocking – another picture – and drops it. The glass shatters as it breaks, and Dean turns on his heel and leaves the room.

Dean wakes up on the couch to the sound of birds singing outside. He opens his eyes, sitting up, confused. He dials his phone.

Hey, it's me. I can't come to the pho- Dean hangs up and stands up in his childhood home. His mother is alive, and so is his father. The pictures he saw confirm that he had a normal childhood, an everyday life.

Dean talks with a professor: 'Well, I don't think I've seen you in my class before.'

'You kidding me? I love your lectures. You... You make learning fun.' Dean replies.

They laugh: 'What can I do for you?'

'What can you tell me about Djinns?'

The professor takes a few books from the shelf: 'Well, a lot of Muslims believed the Djinn are very real. And they're mentioned in the Koran—'

'Yeah, yeah. I know. Get to the wish part.'

'What about it?'

Dean thinks he needs to find out: 'Do you think they could really do it?'

'Um... Uh, no. No, I don't think they can 'really do it. You understand these are mythic creatures?'

'Yeah, I know. But uh... I mean in the stories. You know, say you had a wish, but you never even said it out loud. Like that, uh... that a loved one never died. Or that, uh, something awful never happened.'

'Supposedly, yes. I mean, they have godlike power. They can alter reality however they want. Past. Present. Future. Although it mostly doesn't turn out exactly like you would expect. At least that is what they say.'

Outside at the side of the road, Dean opens the trunk to the Impala. Inside are only old magazines and paper cups, no guns or other weapons. He laughs: 'Well, who'd thought, baby. We're civilians.'

He closes the trunk and looks over at the building. He doesn't understand what happened but hasn't decided what to do.