Supernatural Fanfiction

You are, you always have been the good little soldier. The son who learned the fastest how to load and shoot a shotgun, who learned first how to strip a credit card of its identity and assume it for one’s own. You are the son who understood first what makes a spirit restless, what makes a demon destroy, what makes a ghost haunt. You are the good little soldier who realizes first that the war is fought constantly, whether one takes up arms or sticks one’s head in the sand.

You are the one who stayed.

A soldier at the age of four, you were baptized into this war with fire and the weight of an infant in your arms. You could hear your father’s screams when he couldn’t hear them himself. You feel the licking flames of fire on your arms and see your mother stuck fast to the ceiling through his eyes. And the image stays with you as you learn to load and shoot a shotgun, to strip a credit card, to define a spiritghostdemon. But it does not stay with your infant brother.

He is the one who left.

He too learned to load and shoot a shotgun, to strip a credit card, to define a supernatural being and exorcise it from this world. He did not learn as quickly, but he learned and then he left. He played soccer, went to school, got a full ride to Stanford and you would have hated him had you had the time. Because he left and you stayed and he never understood why. But instead your brain follows only the logical repetition of spirit, salt, fire, burn, in the steady pattern battle formations.  

Spirit. Salt. Fire. Burn. Spirit. Salt. Fire. Burn. Spirit salt fire burn. Spiritsaltfireburn.

When your father leaves you to do this on your own, you though that perhaps it was worth it to be by yourself. But you went to go get him anyway, pulling open the door and getting your ass handed to you by the brother who never tried as hard, never got their first, but may have gotten there better on more than one occasion. And you realize, as soon as he comes with you, that you never could have hated him. That as much as you wanted him to understand, to see and fight, as much as that you wanted him safe.

He was baptized into this war in visions, in telekinesis and the undeniable realization that something is hunting him, hunting those that love the boys who can see and feel what no one else can. As you stand next to him while the corpse of his girlfriend is loaded into an ambulance, as you say goodbye only for him to stand next to you as you fight a god, as you lose him and find him to the twisted insanity of a human mind, you realize something. You became a soldier, the good little soldier, not for your father’s approval, but because it is the only way to keep pulling your brother from the fire.  

All the hosts of hell could come for you at once and they would find themselves dead before they laid one ethereal finger on your brother’s head.

Run, better run. Outrun my gun.

“William, you get back here right this second! Now is not the time to go gallivanting around delivering harebrained vengeance!”

Ginny has just enough brain space left to marvel at the way her mother can turn a phrase, even in the midst of a crisis, before the turmoil around her is once again subdued. She can hear the angry tenor of their voices, see the dark, murderous rage on her older brother’s face, the pained fear on her mother’s. But the sound of their argument has disappeared beneath the water and she continues to stare at the mug of tea cooling in front of her.

“Fine!” Her brother’s voice cracks like a whip, snapping Ginny’s hearing back into place as he storms off down towards his room. The slamming of the door sounds suspiciously familiar, the sound of her anger as it wells up for a moment. He should be here, sitting next to her, not fuming in his room.

She takes advantage of the moment. Her parents are facing away from her, engaged in furious, whispered conversation and so she tries to pick up the little jug of milk her mother had set next to her tea mug. Her handshakes violently, but before the milk can slosh over the side, calling attention to her, Rob has taken the jug in his much smaller hands and poured just the right amount into her tea.

He’s been standing next to her all night, since she stepped into the front room with a split lip and muddy scrapes all down her side. He hasn’t said anything at all, but looking at him now she sees love and uncertainty in his eyes. Being so much younger than his siblings, he has always seemed so much older than his age. She’s grateful that tonight he looks so young.

“Ginny…Virginia, sweetie, why don’t you go into the living room and put on a movie, and we’ll join you in just a second.” Her father’s voice is low and loving, but she can hear the anger lining it, the desire to do what they have forbidden their eldest from. The police have left, but not the relief on her parents faces when Ginny said loudly that no doctor was needed. She’s showered already, and though her clothes were still plenty intact, they are now crumpled in the garbage bin outside.

She’s grateful for the chance at something to take up her thoughts and senses. She let’s Rob pick the movie, unsurprised to find herself immersed in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the familiar lines washing over her and Rob curled and dozing at her side.

When her parents tuck her into bed later that night, they brush her hair and smooth her covers. Will’s door is still firmly shut and she finds she’s more mad at him then at the boy-who-shall-not-be-named.

“We love you, sweetie,” her parents say they pull the door shut, just like when she was little. And for a  moment she’s five and not fifteen and their worry is that she fell down, not that she had her first sip of alcohol much younger than either of them did. Not that there is a boy roaming free who had the gall to hurt their baby girl.

Ginny doesn’t want to close her eyes, so she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to sleep, doesn’t want to have to wake up tomorrow as the girl who let a boy push her around. The sky is clear and the moon full and streaming in her window, so instead she looks at that and watches the play of the light in the branches. This is why she is not scared out of her wits when suddenly there is a figure who looks suspiciously like Will tapping on her window.

She hesitates before letting him in.

“Where’ve you been?” she asks as he climbs through the window. He doesn’t answer because it’s a stupid question. Instead he just goes to sit on her bed, waiting for a moment until she follows and sits beside him.

And then she’s sobbing, the tears flowing fast and thick down her cheeks as she gasps for breath and the fear and hurt and vicious anger rise in her throat. It feels like hours before she’s calmed down, and she feels like maybe Will’s hands are leaving fingerprint bruises on her arms as he holds her.

“I love you, Gin. No one is ever going to hurt you again, okay?”

And for the first time all night she feels like maybe this might not be the end of the world. And in the morning when her mother comes in to check on her and sees her curled up in her bed with Will like they used to do when they were younger and more scared of the dark, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t say anything, either, when Will sits down for breakfast with red, scraped knuckles and a vicious grin when he thinks no one is looking.

The Desert at Night

The moon hangs low over the horizon, a bright white sphere blazing against the muted, fiery colors of the sky. The blood has seeped from the sky back into the ground, rendering it heavy with guilt and color, the dry dirt matted with grass and branches, ashes and skin. There is fear in the still heat of the air, loss in the thick dust that lays heavily on the metal surfaces of what was once a city and is now a junkyard. It isn’t even a scrap heap; there is no one to salvage the remains, no one to recycle the destruction into something else.

For a little while, they are the only two moving figures on earth. The skeletons of trees do not sway. There is no movement of grass by wind, insect or familiar footstep. They alone break the silence, the softest crumble as the dirt beneath their feet moves is as loud and as shocking as gunfire. When they pick their way across collapsed buildings and metal frames, the screeching of metal against metal is deafening. Her feet are still bare from when she took her shoes off to creep quietly through clean, sterilized hell. They are dark with dust and dirt and blood now.

He has not said a word – not a single word since the strangled sentence he uttered just before he pulled the trigger. At the time it had been indecipherable, choked and violent and grieving. But in the past few hours, she has had time to pick through it, to pull the letters out of her memory one by one. When it finally comes to her she stops, quite abruptly in the middle of what had once been a street.

“I hate you.” Is what he had said, before the crack of gunfire shattered him, before the shouting of guards, of doctors and scientists had forced them to turn and run before the dead had hit the floor. For just a moment, she feels like retching, consumed by disgust, that his last words could be so brutal and cruel. But then he turns to find out why she stopped, turns to face her and she can see the truth etched as permanently on his face as it was evident in his voice.

She remembered, as she shook her head blearily and kept plodding along, the way the words seemed to burn him, leaving scarred and smoking paths in his skin and the air as they made their way along the trajectory that the bullet would later follow. She can see now the scars on his face, the contortions of self-loathing, of anguished missing and inimitable hope conquered by cold loss. And for a moment she is disgusted that she could have ever suspected otherwise. She is nearly doubled over from the force of it and wonders, desperately in fragments, how he can keep putting one step in front of the other.

But when she looks at him, his back is straight, his footsteps sure. She sees the path of his vengeance. She sees the blood on his hands and the righteous fire in the unforgiving lines of his shoulders. She pulls herself together, forces herself to forget a time when she could have walked away uncaring and clear-minded. She hastens her step and takes his hand and feels him flinch. She knows that her touch hurts him but she does not let go.

They stop. There are shadows moving toward them in the distance. Let them come.

This is what it really felt like. This is what it looks like when your life starts to fall apart.

It is a bright sunny day. Spring is fading into summer and the air has that crackling heated feel. The day is going to be too hot, the air thicker than one would expect in May. School is still in session but if you can manage to get off the island before it starts, there isn’t a lot they can do about your absence. The sun is barely over the horizon when they meet up on the pier. The boys are shoving each other, their laughter matching the rhythm of the waves and the sparkles of sunshine on the water. They don’t notice that she is too pale until she collapses.

…

It is one of the bad days. Sometimes she can get out of bed, walk around a little, sit outside and let her brother or her boyfriend bring her an ice cream cone. On those days her smiles are brighter, the tension eases along the lines of her mouth and the set of her shoulders. Today, everything hurts. Her bed is uncomfortable, her sheets too scratchy. There is nothing on T.V. Her brain is fuzzy and disconnected and for a few minutes it feels like she is missing a leg. The prickly feeling has begun in her abdomen and she knows she won’t be able to keep anything down today. She shouts at her brother, and her smile for her boyfriend is bitter and tight. But they let her writhe and rail, and when her boyfriend’s hand settles on her stomach she feels a little bit less like she might explode.

…

There is always a baseball bat within arm’s reach these days. He hasn’t seen his parents in approximately 96 hours. Not that he’s been counting. It’s been weeks since he’s seen his sister and at this point he’s not sure that he’s ever going to see her again, and what kills him a little is the look on his best friend’s face when he thinks no one is looking. They both miss her. But only one of them thinks she’s getting out of this alive.

…

“Luke…?”

“Don’t.”

“Luke.”

“I said don’t.” And Luke, who just unloaded an entire round of bullets into Dex’s sister, into his own girlfriend, turns around and walks out the door. There is something gritty and hard and primal about the stiffness in his movements – as though he has nothing left but violence anymore. And Dex knows that isn’t true, knows that in a few days Luke will have shoved this moment into the darkest corner in the places he never goes. But Dex sort of wishes he wouldn’t. Wishes that instead, he would explode so that Dex doesn’t have to.

…

By the time Luke has stopped waking up screaming in the middle of the night, Dex has developed a death wish. He’s not really sure where it came from, not really sure why he (who has not lost the love of his life) has become the hopeless bitter one. He waits for Luke to yell at him, to tell him he’s being a selfish bastard trying to take the one thing from his best friend who started out with nothing and already lost most of it. But Luke doesn’t and Dex thinks that maybe thwarting Dex’s wishes is the only thing that’s keeping Luke from dying too.

This is the fairy tale version – the one you’ll tell your children if you make it out alive

Once there was a boy who lived on an island off the coast of New York. It was a small island, housing mainly a large scientific research facility funded by the United Nations and a military base. This boy grew up there with his parents and his younger sister. He went to the small island school for which he was too smart, and he rode bikes around the island with his best friend and his sister. They were kings and queen of their little island – the children everyone knew, loved and chased. And as they grew up, and he noticed that his best friend and his sister were looking at each other more closely, holding hands more often, well, that couldn’t really be helped, could it?

In spite of this, all was not right with this boy’s world. Because there were days, sometimes weeks or even months at a time when his sister could not come outside and play. When his best friend stayed in her room, laying quietly and tensely on the bed next to her as they watched a movie instead of coming out. There were times when he would sit next to his sister, holding her hand as she received one treatment or another, trying to take as much of her pain into himself as he could.

And despite all of the specialists and scientists and research that could be done right next door, nothing seemed to make her better. His parents, once bright, happy and cheerful, now had faces lined with worry, with exhaustion. A once full house became quiet later and later into the night as the parents searched more and more desperately for a cure, winning a grant from the United Nations Research and Development Defense Corps to use their unlimited resources in their search.

And then one day, a miracle happened. The parents, with that unique and catalytic combination of desperation and brilliance, had found a cure – a cure that could erase all traces of the disease. A cure that could wind its way through the boy’s sister until not only was she healthy, but stronger and faster and smarter than before. A cure that seemed to work for all diseases, changing a person’s DNA so that it was no longer susceptible to outside forces. In return for two years in the Defense Corps, anyone could receive an injection.

For a few, blessed and wonderful weeks the world rejoiced as the most devastating illnesses, the most fearful and grief-ridden faces relaxed to see their loved ones coming back better and brighter than before.

The boy’s best friend and his sister were together more than ever. Their smiles were wider, their expressions more relaxed. He was constantly touching her – his hand on her waist, his fingers on her hips his lips in her hair. Perhaps, if they had been able to stop staring, to stop drinking in the other, the island would not have gotten the advance warning that it did. The boy’s sister became more aggressive, meaner and colder. On day one it was noticeable. On day two, frightening. By day three, the sister had been committed for analysis and treatment. By day five, the recall of the miracle cure had begun.

By day six, they realized that it was too late.

How many times do you want to die?

In the room where Caesar died, there is blood pooling on the floor. It is oppressive and wet and the Senators make bright red footprints on the ground as they try and fail to step warily around it. They paint their hands red but the blood on their shoes is where their guilt truly lies. They wear their righteous indignation as a mask for their fear as they step quietly into the sunlight. Their footsteps make sticking sounds which echo as they leave the hall one by one. If a man has died and there is no one left to view the body, does he exist any longer?

This is the price of democracy – the blood and death and betrayal in this room. It fills the air with oppressive and weary heat. This is the price for every man’s voice. We pay it in blood, in the feel of murder in our hearts and the sting of iron and steel against flesh. We are the clawing masses, scrambling up the tunics of the men who rise above us. We claw and scratch, not until we have reached their height, but until they have reached our depths, sinking beneath ideals into the murky underworld of our demanding and vicious realism.

Caesar is dead and Rome will fall. The men he called friends will parade his death through the town, mocking our grief with their righteous indignation, not knowing that this democracy demands of us to be the lesser men. We cannot live in the world we create out of death. The walls are built high with corpses, the buildings constructed with bone and the rivers made red and flowing with blood and tears and sweat. It is easy to follow the will of the people when the only ones there are those that can stand the stench of dead bodies in the bright and pulsing sunlight.

Utopias are ghost towns built by men with guns and ideals and arrogance. They are carefully warded with dark, navy magic that binds them together with their triumph and their guilt. It guards them against those that palm their guns with disgust, with fear that sits heavily in their hearts. They offer their own deaths up, to time and space and fate as it carves its way through human history. They who fear themselves more than they fear the bright light of Caesar will become more than either he or his murderers can comprehend. Their stories are the old woman who comes with a cloth and a bucket and methodically strips the stone floor of its memory. The red pools are gone. Death has been chased away by true honor and not just by its voice.

So let slip the dogs of war, that they may tear the throats of tyrants and thieves and cowards alike.

A Bond of Brothers

“So all of those times I thought I was saving Camelot and winning honor for the realm…I was really getting myself knocked out so that you could do it?” Arthur couldn’t seem to keep the bitter disappointment out of his voice. He flung his sword to the corner of the room and let the pieces of his armor clatter to the floor as he pulled them off.

“Oh for the love of -” Merlin cut himself off before starting again. This self-esteem counseling session wasn’t exactly how he expected this to go. “This isn’t about you. Or rather, isn’t about me doing your job.”

“We should just crown you royal prince and heir to the throne,” Arthur muttered.

“God, Arthur. You really don’t get anything, do you? I’m not brave or terribly smart. I’m not diplomatic. I don’t know what you know. But I love you. And so I occasionally save your ass. But Camelot doesn’t need me. They need you. So stop worrying about actually using your servant every once and a while and get to being a prince.”

The room was silent for awhile, the tension of recently released magic and frustration humming quietly in the background. Merlin hung around being annoyed for awhile, but just as he was getting fed up and ready to leave, Arthur finally spoke.”

“You are brave. And smart.” Arthur took a deep breath. Merlin kept his eyes on the window off to the side. “And whether or not Camelot needs you, I do. And not just to save my ass.”

“You really do need me quite a bit for that though,” Merlin said, grinning.

Arthur scowled and grinned good natured. “I firmly believe you have dramatically exaggerated the frequency at which that occurs.”

“Have not! Ask anyone!” Though to be fair, there was no one who knew the answer but Gwen, a sore subject; Morgana, a treacherous and bitter pill; and Gaius – whose death was still to close to the surface for Merlin’s comfort.

“How’s about we go find some monsters, then, and you can prove it,” Arthur tossed a sword to Merlin who caught it more deftly than Arthur had imagined he could.

As they raced off, Arthur said so quietly he thought Merlin wouldn’t possibly hear – “I love you too.”

Merlin smiled.

With my freeze ray I will…

Footsteps sounded on the pavement. She could hear, in the pressing darkness, the sound of bare feet lightly scratching the asphalt. The air was heavy with the impending storm, settling around her with aching wetness and potential energy. The sound of the footsteps changed to the mere indentation in the quiet, produced by walking on wet grass. Then came the rustle of leaves, the groaning of a branch pulled down by the weight of a person, the sound of hands and feet gripping bark. The trembling of muscles and the absence of breath as hands were placed on the shingles of the roof, as feet left the branches. The sound of legs hitting the gutter lightly. Only then did she turn to face him, watching with wide unblinking eyes as he settled himself next to her, perched on the awkward flatness of the roof.

“You’re late,” she said finally, turning back to face the oncoming thunderheads.

“I’m not,” he answered, taking the join that was dangling from her fingers, bringing the red glow to life as he inhaled. Smoke weaved its way up through the air, defying gravity and the duty of the storm to blow it sideways.

“The storm is about to start.” He spoke again after a minute or two. “We should go inside.” They had been staring at the smoke instead of at each other, watching the spirals dissipate until there was nothing left. He blinked, and then turned to face her yard. Then he tossed what was left of the little white roll of paper. It caught on the sudden rising breeze which lifted it clear over the fence, settling it gently on her neighbor’s porch.

“We still have a few minutes.” She was not ready to open her window, to enter again into the enclosed space, to once again feel the oppressive presence of her mother knowing exactly where she was, the knowledge that at any moment she could be found.

He didn’t answer, but remained sitting next to her, knowing better than to press the issue, knowing better than to reach his hand over to take hers, knowing better than to wrap his arm around her shoulder or rest his knee against hers. He always knew better. The wind began to rise and the darkness changed as the clouds sped up their movement, rolling forward with the grace and blunt precision of an invading army.  Only when the first raindrops began to fall did she begin to move slowly towards her window.

“Finally,” he said with a smile. There was a crack of lightning – in the flash of light he appeared frozen, smirking at her with impatience and love and a little bit of fear. And then the sky split open, cracking as though someone were hitting it with a hammer.  He began to shatter against the roof as she sat frozen, watching the shards turn into dust and get swept into the jagged cracks in the sky.

The opening notes of the 1812 Overture sounded into the storm. The cracks widened, swallowing up the darkness until a scene began to emerge – a room, painted a light blue grey, a window framed by black curtains, a wall full of bookshelves and crates stacked all the way to the ceiling. Katie was sitting straight up in her bed, her expression still frozen in horror, her arm outstretched. After a moment of blank incomprehension, she relaxed, settling back on her pillows, breathing heavily.

The scene from her dream had taken place a little over a year ago, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. The sky hadn’t cracked and he hadn’t shattered upon her rooftop. The reality of it was almost worse – he had climbed into her room and fallen asleep curled around her as he had so many other nights. And in the morning he had been gone. And she hadn’t seen him since.

Spoilers: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

I have a friend from Northern Ireland. I once asked her, in the course of a conversation about the violence of the region, what her religion was. “I’m an atheist,” she said. “But politically, I’m Catholic.”

Those of us with ambiguous heritage, or with a belief in nothing but the irrelevance of religion, or perhaps even with belief, but without faith, it is impossible to understand religious conflict. It is impossible for us to comprehend the idea that there are lives and bloodshed and stability and peace that are worth risking on the hearsay words of a prophet born two thousand (or four thousand or ten thousand, or fourteen hundred) years ago. It is impossible for us to comprehend political identification with a religion that comes without faith or belief.

It is impossible for me to understand Meyer Landsman.

I can get pretty close. He is a man who is torn apart by a belief in his own failure, and little else. He is a man who feels that the world has abandoned him, and that he deserved it. He is a man who believes in justice, but perhaps has little concern for the law. He does not believe in God, but he is Jewish. He sees absurdity in trying to force the world to bring about the Messiah, but he is a Jew and he wants a homeland. He is identified with the culture that also produced the mass government and religious conspiracies that lead to the explosion at the Dome of the Rock.

Perhaps this novel transcends its genre fiction and its noir griminess with the questions of faith and fear and silence that it poses. I think it more likely that it is only through the course of uncovering mass government conspiracies can this novel begin to ask any of its questions. What is a Messiah? How will we know? Can he be forced to save the world when he cannot save himself? Is faith a worthy reason for murder? Is mercy killing? What will come of the guilt we feel at the way thousands of years of anti-Semitism exploded in gas chambers and the death of six million human beings? What is a homeland? These are only the surface level questions, the rest come with the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think about the plot of the novel from the Christian end. Only when the Jews reside in Israel will Jesus come again. We know that salvation is not so easily bought.

Of course, this novel is about many things. It is about murder and chess. It is about relocation, and identity, and it is about survival. It is a mystery story with a parlor scene, and it is about redemption. It is about being Jewish and speaking Yiddish. But throughout the novel, the question of belief, the question of faith persists, without any sort of answer.

Spoilers: Tinkers by Paul Harding

Literata Borealis: 1. We turn the pages. The sheaves of paper are like snowflakes, unique and individual and floating past our fingertips, hovering just beyond our line of sight, shifting slowly to the ground in our peripheral vision, the black lines (they form words that link together with invisible lines of comprehension, taut and tight and ready to snap in the moment we start to believe in their existence, as soon as we start to see the crackling electricity that snaps across them) are the holes in our vision, the unique patterns that turn crystallized water into intricate reflections of light and conscious thought and silence. 2. Howard and George meet in death. We see their travels and the forces that cause their separation. We see the ordered, cyclical progression of George’s time and the natural ebb and flow of Howard’s and at one precise moment they intersect. The ebb flows and the clocks tick and as George dies he remembers his father in the exact last moment of Howard’s life that we see. We become the connecting piece in the order that we understand the story and we feel the tension of their times and the single moment of synchronicity in which there is no time. 3. We are terribly, terribly cold. We are surrounded by death, by black and white, by blood and incomprehension. We are driven crazy by constant counting down, by ticking and the lightning strikes and the rattling, raw and broken fear grips us from the inside. We can hear Marjorie’s grief and the shuffling of Erma’s feet as she comes to her husband’s death bed. Nature is red in tooth and claw. It is cold and unforgiving and whatever affinity for it Howard feels, nature ignores him and his seizures and more often than not leaves him to die in the grass or the snow or the dirt. The water flows beneath our chins and for Howard it is a dream but for us it is cold, it aches and it reminds us of the stillness and quiet death of winter. Without the rocks that weight us down we would just float away. 4. Time passes, with little regard to the way it is experienced. It marches forward with unrelenting perseverance the seconds leaving behind abandoned lovers, children with bitten fingers, failing bodies and missing friends. The years leave us behind but string together memories like gems, white light breaking on their shells and splitting into infinite parts. They break us apart and our atoms become stars become planets become single snowflakes that settle in amorphous, vague piles graying and dark as they progress through adolescence until they begin to melt, the years slipping away tumbling over each other in a race to the bottom that no one can win and still the seconds march steadily on.