Silent Lucidity

LXXV

[The Werther Project]

St. Louis, Missouri - 1973

A paperboy rode past a white house on his bike and tossed the newspaper.

INT. HOUSE

A teenage girl, Suzie, was laying on the couch watching TV when her teenage brother, Brad, walked in and shut off the TV.

"Hey!" Suzie protested.

"Get lost," Brad said.

"My show just started. You have a record player in your room."

"Dad's speakers are better."

"Tough luck." She turned the TV back on. Her mom entered with a basket of laundry.

"I need the laundry started," her mother said. "The workmen have finally left for the day and I have my hands full with dinner." She turned off the TV. "And please, none of your Betty Friedan stuff."

"It's not fair." Her brother put the album on the record player. "Look, I always get stuck with the hard chores just 'cause I'm a girl."

"Yeah? Well, tough luck." Suzie carried the laundry past her dad's home office where he was on the phone.

"The house is great, Ted," the father stated. "It's a bit of fixer, but it's a real beaut. It was caught in some ownership muddle for years but finally hit the market, and I leapt."

I Saw the Light by Todd Rundgren began playing. The dad closed his office door. Suzie passed her mom in the kitchen and went down the basement stairs to the washer and dryer. She walked over to a toolbox and took a sledgehammer.

"Don't spend all day down there," the mother warned.

Suzie began hammering until she'd made a large hole in a wall that revealed a large box that looked like a safe. She stepped through the hole and went to the box. When she tried to open it, she was knocked back by a force. As Suzie was lying unconscious on the floor, green smoke came from the box and floated upstairs. Suzie woke up and went upstairs. The food was burning in a frying pan on the stove in the empty kitchen.

"Mom?" Suzie called, walking to her father's office and entered. "Dad, where's Mom?" She saw her father laying dead on the floor. There was a gun laying near him and a large puddle of blood coming from a gunshot wound in his head. She ran into the living room. "Mom? Brad?" She saw her brother had hung himself in the hallway. "Aah!" She ran back into the kitchen and saw her mother. "Mom? Mom!"

"Everything's gonna be okay," her mother said as she her to her mom and knelt while hugging her. "Everything's..." her mother grabbed a knife. "Gonna be just fine." The mother sliced her own throat.

INT. BAR/RESTAURANT

Sam and Rowena were sitting at a table.

"There's only one thing you could possibly do for me that I can't, at least presently, do for myself," Rowena said. "Kill my son. He's expecting it from me. Already has his stinking minions on high alert. And if you're wondering how a mother can get to the point of wanting her own son-"

"No, I'm really not," Sam interrupted. "I'll kill Crowley. First things first - can you read the book?"

"Of course I can. I'm likely the only witch alive who can understand such old, dark magic. Just not in its present form."

"Drink's on me." He closed the lockbox with the book inside."

"Hey, you're not going anywhere, pal. I'm your mortal enemy. I've tried to kill you, your brother and your sister-in-law - your brother as recently as last month. You wouldn't have come to me if I wasn't your last resort. You're desperate. You can stop pretending you're not." Sam's phone buzzed and he took it from his pocket. "So rude." He read a text from Dean; 'Hitting a nest in Tulsa. Join if you want. Kendy's at the bunker with Nadia.' "Now, I can't read the book in its present form, but there is someone who could. Nadya. Grand Coven witch."