My piece for the @spnangelbang SPN Angels and Demons Bang! Had the wonderful experience of working with @entropic-saudade this time, please go check out Girls Against God because it absolutely rules <3333
The first ever iteration of the SW (Sam Winchester) JP (Jared Padalecki) Reverse Bang has come to an end. Creations are shown in random order and not in sequence of posting.
Fic Summary:
No one is really dead until you see their body. That thin hope is what kept her going when the demons left a crater in her life with Sam. But after three years, even she has to admit that finding Sam alive would be a miracle. So who is that familiar figure at the end of her driveway?
Fic Summary:
No one is really dead until you see their body. That thin hope is what kept her going when the demons left a crater in her life with Sam. But after three years, even she has to admit that finding Sam alive would be a miracle. So who is that familiar figure at the end of her driveway?
@klove0511 was kind enough to claim my art during public claims and wait until you read the amazing fic she wrote inspired by it. 💖
I've always wanted to draw a scene where a soldier character returns home and hugs his wife or girlfriend and swings her joyfully in the air hugging each other. Why no make that Samwena?
Fic Summary:
No one is really dead until you see their body. That thin hope is what kept her going when the demons left a crater in her life with Sam. But after three years, even she has to admit that finding Sam alive would be a miracle. So who is that familiar figure at the end of her driveway?
Never be afraid to recycle an idea you had for a project you already completed. Sometimes ideas really are just that good and deserve to be used more than once.
Okay I have things I should be seeing to but I couldn't help myself. In case you, like me, have not read all of these stories and would like to be amongst the lucky 10,000 today:
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers*
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson**
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard O'Connell
The Nameless City by HP Lovecraft
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
Honorable Mention from the comments/reblogs:
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
*note: this is actually a collection of short stories and clocks in at about 72k words
**Originally published in the New Yorker in 1948; interestingly, the New Yorker still has this story archived on their website BEHIND A PAYWALL. CAN YOU IMAGINE.
Saw a video today about “why aren’t there more veterinary medical dramas?” A bunch of people in the comments were saying things like “off to write an office style vet med tv show” or “oh a scrubs style show!”
So I would like to add some personal experiences that could make for comedy gold on a show like this:
Excited pig monch to butt/knee cap/boots (see this post)
Surgery/necropsy where something full of liquid that is not blood erupts all over the doc/tech/student (like a giant cyst or abscess)
Bird escaping a kennel and techs having to wander around a dark room with nets trying to catch it OR bird escapes kennel, lands on a tech’s foot and attacks shoe while tech has to carefully scoot across room to get a net to catch the amgry birb
Farm call where a group of amgry geese/swans/turkeys are between vet and patient
Yearling colt doesn’t want vaccines so badly that he bolts from the restrainer by managing to tear the ring the lead rope attaches to off his halter
Absurd hamster death
Vet goes home to visit family farm for holidays and ends up providing impromptu wound care to family horse that did something stupid to get through the night
Sassy bunny steals something out of your hands, runs under something, and growls at you while you’re trying to get it
Being trapped in a room with a client for half an hour trying to get a yes or no on CPR/DNR on a patient (could be side plot of a whole episode)
Tech/student not scrubbed into a surgery freezing in the OR and cuddling with a freshly autoclaved surgical pack for warmth
Rat just hanging out on someone’s shoulder for a whole episode while they go about their duties
Add zoo medicine to this and you truly cannot conceptualize the levels of chaos that can happen…. I’ve personally been involved in:
Almost drowning self and patient in mud attempting to net a hog
A sedating dart misfire out of the gun directly up into the air and having everybody stand stock still waiting to see where it would fall back down
Having an animal who is “mostly” sedated but has to move quickly, so being told “we’ll throw it on the back of the golf cart, you sit on her and we’ll drive fast”
Watching a supervisor literally up to the elbow manually cleaning out a rhino rectum for an enema, wearing neon orange crocs and saying that they’re better than closed toed shoes because “you can hose ‘em off after”
Techs not communicating they had started intubating so everyone thought the lion was rousing rather than coughing and everyone trying to panic bolt out of the stall
Being told “Be careful if you go into the hospital, I wasn’t paying attention while making diets, so the rehab crow stole and is now flying around with a knife in his mouth”
If it’s a cat, it is, shockingly, not always ringworm.
Non-carrier cat carriers continued: cardboard box, laundry basket, absurdly large fluffy blanket, and pillow case
Randomly sniffing things in the clinic looking for The Smell and then finally asking a coworker: “Do I smell like anal glands???”
Having a cat who appears to be fully sedated get up and start dashing around the clinic in a mad bid for freedom.
Making two cats vomit because one of them definitely ate something dumb and their sibling was a co-conspirator who *might* have eaten something dumb (he did not). Incidentally, making a cat vomit involves small doses of anesthetic drugs, waiting a bit, and then spinning them until they get dizzy.
Untold numbers of “I’m sorry, they ate *what*?” Weirder when it’s a cat, tbh, but they eat dumb shit too. I saw a sewing needle once on x-ray. It was already in the colon, and the cat was fine. I still don’t know how. Other things I’ve seen ingested by cats: entire mouse toy, gauze square (because it had a drop of wet food on it), socks, lots of hair ties, pistachio shells (stomach full of them), and dental floss that ran the length of the cat—internally
CALLING ALL SPN ARTISTS!!
Looking for a chill, fun bang where all ships are welcome? Then look no further than the SPN Pro-Ship Bang, where the claims gallery is now open for viewing!
We have gen fics, we have Destiel, Wincest in many forms, and even fics with the best of both worlds featuring Wincestiel. We have Dean/Ketch, Jimmy Novak/Sam, Samifer, and even fics where Dean crosses universes and runs into Jared Padalecki! We have canonverse, complete AUs, and everything in between!
Don't miss out on your chance to join! Signups close on November 7th, with claims beginning on November 8th. Artists of all styles, mediums, and experience levels welcomed! Curious but don't want to commit to first round claims? Join as a pinch hitter! We'd love to have you.
Imagine dean dies on a hunt(Stanford era) and John doesn't tell Sam. Okay years later (and I mean sam is in his thirtys) goes to find his brother just to learn his brother died in his early twentys alone and thinking Sam hated him
WHYYYY would i picture this?!?!?!
okay i'm picturing it 🙂↕️
sam's not surprised that dean didn't answer his wedding invitation, but he is disappointed.
he sent it to one of their PO boxes, one he knew that dean and dad would usually check if they were on their way north. but the invitation (handwritten, not the printed ones that jess's parents paid for) ended back in sam's mailbox two weeks later with "returned to sender" stamped on the front.
sam had called the post office, and was told that the rent on the box had lapsed. sam sent three more invitations to other boxes, and hadn't heard back from any of them. he had waited though, even on the day of, with luis straightening his tie and making fun of him. he had kept one eye on the door, one eye at the shadowy back of the church, for him.
for either of them, really, but sam wanted his brother there more than anything. at the reception, sam got drunker than he should've, and his wedding night was spent with jess laughing and rolling her eyes at sam stumbling around their hotel room. she knew.
time fuzzes. it spills, like water out of a tipped-over glass. days become years.
it's not until jess shows him a stick with two, strong lines that the wall inside sam starts to crack. he can't become a father without reckoning with his past. without knowing if his past is able to be reckoned with.
without telling his brother. without looking his own father in the eyes.
he didn't react as he thinks he should've--didn't react much at all, really--and jess has been upset and short with him for a week.
finding bobby is easier than he thought it'd be. singer auto repair, right in the yellow pages. sioux falls, south dakota, right where sam left him. sam packs a bag for a few days, and leaves jess alone in their apartment. it's nice--not as nice as it could be, because sam's working on a public defender's salary, but jess makes up for it with her engineer's paycheck. she's still tense and uncomfortable around sam as he leaves, so their goodbye is brief. sam tries not to think about it.
he's gotten very good at that, over the years.
it's like no time passed at all as sam drives his rental car up bobby's gravel drive. the paint is still peeling as he raps his knuckles against the door. the dust still clings to the porch like a second skin. sam's pretty sure that the numbers on the door are still crooked in that exact same way when he was younger, too.
he's hit with a potent, delirious wave of nostalgia as he stands there, even more oppressive as bobby swings the door open. sam didn't have much to remind him of home.
of home--he's hit with so much longing that it feels like nausea, as he stands in the doorway. bobby smells like smoke and motor oil and whisky. he doesn't smell like john but it's close, and sam wants to close his eyes and lean into the house which he knows will smell like bacon and old books and let it completely swallow him whole.
nothing in california smelled like his childhood except crappy old bars that jess got onto him for going to late at night. whenever sam missed anything in his life before the age of 18, he'd take the oldest book he could find in the stanford public library ("the 1951 old farmer's almanac," it turned out), order a double shot of bottom shelf whisky, and sit for hours on a too-sticky stool and read about weather patterns until comfort and exhaustion made him half-fall asleep into the pages.
bobby glares at sam mistrustfully, and the hot south dakota sun outside bake sam's back, the porch doing little to shade him.
"hey, bobby," sam says, and is a little embarrassed by--of all things--how he's dressed. he has his jeans on, but his shoes are new and scuff-free, and his collared shirt (minus the wrinkles from the plane-trip) is overly formal. he pulled out his oldest jacket from the back of his closet, but it fits oddly, now, like sam's body has forgotten how to wear it.
"do i know you?" bobby growls, and sam blinks.
"it's--yeah, bobby. it's me. sam winchester."
"winchester?" bobby repeats, incredulous. "i haven't heard that name in--" realization slowly dawns on his face, and bobby's eyes widen. "sam?"
"yeah." sam warms, smiling, but between one breath and the next, cold water is thrown on his face, and sam sputters. he blinks, wiping it out of his eyes. "oh. wow."
bobby's holding a flask, and wow, shit. sam snorts, wiping his face with the sleeves of his jacket. he had forgotten about that.
"can't be too careful these days." bobby says, and he cranes his neck so he can see around sam's shoulders. then, he splits into a grin, and thunks sam on the shoulder a few times, steering him inside. "get your ass in here."
sam stumbles into bobby's front hall, and bobby herds him into his dusty living room. sam's throat immediately closes as he passes through bobby's kitchen, at the bullets held in the glass jar next to the flour, at the duct-taped fridge lines and the peeling tiles. he spent countless hours in these rooms as he grew up, and his entire body aches to be somewhere so familiar, so deep inside of him that it feels like shedding skin.
the couch is just as uncomfortable as sam remembers, and as he slumps down onto the fading, torn fabric, the edge of a spring digs into his ass.
bobby--for lack of a better word--flutters around sam for a second, passing him an already-opened beer and awkwardly clearing heaps of paper from the coffee table. eventually, red-cheeked and swearing softly, bobby hauls a chair across from the couch and plops heavily into it.
he looks up at sam, the corners of his eyes going soft.
"wow. sammy winchester." his voice is awed, slow, drawling, and it melts into sam like the sun on a soft sunday morning. "what're you doin' here, boy?"
bobby looks older, sam realizes with a pang. he, himself, is older, but it's so strange that bobby is so much shorter than him now. his once strong, large hands and booming voice seem infinitely frailer now. time has come for them all, it seems.
then, it hits him. sammy. sam hasn't been called that in...
sam's winded with the grief of it. he hasn't heard someone call him that--really call him that--in years. a decade.
"it's sam." sam corrects, voice thick. he clears it, and tries to gather his thoughts around himself again. why did he come here again? oh right: "i--my wife's pregnant."
"your--" the beer in bobby's hand dips, and he spills beer over the thread-bare rug at his feet. he scrambles, tipping it back up again, and when he looks up at sam, there's tension in every line of his body. "holy goddamn shit, kid." he swears, and puts his beer firmly on the coffee table between them. he takes his hat off and runs a hand through his thinning hair, exhaling sharply. "congratulations! that's--" he smiles, but for some reason, it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "that's certainly something, huh?"
sam's been congratulated by everyone they've told, but for some reason, in bobby's dusty, ragged living room, it feels real. for the first time since jess passed him the stick, it hits him: i'm going to be a dad.
"yeah--thanks." sam says, shakily. he aims for excited, or pleased, but nausea makes his stomach roil instead. "i was hoping you'd heard from dean. or my dad. i know you didn't end up on good terms, but neither of them have been pickin' up my calls for a few years now. at least maybe you've heard about 'em through the grapevine. do you--what?"
sam trails off, because bobby's face completely changes as sam speaks. first, a complete blankness, and then encroaching rage.
"he didn't--" bobby starts, voice tense and loud, then he cuts himself off. he rubs a hand over his face.
"who?" sam asks. bobby doesn't even look up. "bobby, who?"
"i'm going to kill that sonovabitch." he growls, and kicks out at the coffee table, rattling the beer bottles on it.
"john?"
"he...son, i haven't heard about john winchester in five years."
sam's stomach since. not heard from him, heard about him. hunters tend to be loners, but it's an insulated space. there's not much that happens around them that they don't hear about. if dad were still taking cases, other hunters would've heard about it, right?
dad fell off the map five years ago.
"what about dean?" sam asks, guiltily. dean was the one he had really come for, after all. if it comes down to it, dean'll know where dad is.
bobby doesn't speak for a long moment. he simply stares at sam, eyes wide.
"i..." bobby starts, then stops again abruptly. he looks away, and speaks at the floor. "i haven't heard about him in fourteen years."
sam's stomach drops.
"fourteen--" sam gasps, entire body washing ice-cold and numb. "that's...a year after i left for stanford?" sam struggles to do the math. he tries to imagine what dean could've possibly done in that time, how he could've avoided every other hunter in the nation. "what do you mean heard about him."
it's not a question. sam needs clarification, needs it like he needs to breathe. dad is elusive, dad is isolationist, but dean? dean is alive and bombastic and loud.
bobby must mean something else. he has to. dean can't have disappeared.
bobby's eyes are still downcast, and his jaw is clenched hard underneath his scruff.
"bobby, what do you mean?" sam repeats, more urgently.
haltingly, bobby says, "your daddy got a lead on the thing that killed your mom. it was...a demon."
"a demon?" sam's mind reels. they rarely hunted demons when he was a child; they were rare and wildly difficult to find and kill. sam doesn't even think humans can kill them--you can only banish them to hell. dad wouldn't let them near them when one cropped up.
sam thinks of his mother, alone and terrified and dying, at the hands of a demon.
"yeah. your brother and father went after it. they got a lead on a gun, real early on after you left. a gun that could kill anything." bobby mutters, and he still won't look sam in the eye. he sounds like he's reading off of a piece of paper. "they...they got 'im."
"they--what?" sam repeats, aghast. "it's dead?"
bobby nods.
sam sits back against the couch, thoughts whirling. the demon is dead. the thing that killed mom, the thing that put them on the road in the first place, dead. dad's life mission has been accomplished. dean's life mission has been accomplished. the reason dad kicked him out, finished.
there is no more fight, no more vendetta.
"i can't believe dean didn't call me. or dad! our whole fucking lives have been chasing that bastard." sam rubs a hand over his face, trying to get his thoughts in order.
it's over. it's been over. for years.
familiar, reflexive anger, rises in sam. they made their position clear, apparently: sam is not a member of their family anymore. he didn't earn a call about this.
when sam finally looks back over at bobby, his shoulders are tense and his jaw works, grinding slowly. when his eyes flick up to meet sam's, they're guilty.
dread, swelling and ugly and clawing, swirls in sam's gut, makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand.
"what aren't you telling me?"
bobby sighs, shifts in his chair. "the demon was a powerful sonovabitch. one of the most powerful evil things that's ever walked topside."
he hesitates, looking at sam again--nervous, like he's expecting sam to blow up at him. sam nods, not understanding what bobby's trying to get at here.
"i wasn't there, so i didn't see it. but they found the gun long before they found the demon itself. john left dean with the gun when they split up, and they were taking out cases all over the country." bobby's eyes film. "the demon...it found dean first."
the world
spins to a
stop.
"what?" sam's entire face is numb, the word falling from an unfeeling tongue.
no.
no, that's not possible.
bobby can't really be saying that--
"it found out about the gun, knew only the gun could kill it, and it ambushed dean on a hunt."
sam's shaking his head, and the world spins, a dizzying blur of colours as sam's stomach riots. "bobby, no--"
it's not possible. dean isn't--
"he...he didn't make it."
~~~
Archived: Breckinridge Herald, 2 September 2002; medium: website, last accessed 8 August 2008.
Man Found Dead in Morton Woods, Authorities Puzzled
On Sunday morning, a local jogger found the body of an unknown man in the Morton Nature Preserve. The body was found a mile off of the hiking path, and the preserve has been closed until further notice. The man was found with a duffle bag of two guns, a sawed-off shotgun, a shovel, a canister of salt, gasoline, and matches. Jericho County Police Department has released a statement claiming that the man had been in the department that week claiming to be a state police officer. Given the contents of the bag found next to the body, the spokesperson for the department state that the man was a potential arsonist. IDs in his wallet give inconclusive answers to his true identity, as most of them have proven fraudulent.
The cause of death is undetermined, but eyewitnesses state the crime scene was "the most gruesome thing [they've] ever seen" and "the stuff of nightmares."
There are no suspects at this time. The investigation is ongoing.
[UPDATE (9/12/2002): A SECOND BODY HAS BEEN FOUND A MILE AWAY FROM THE FIRST. SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR UPDATES.]
Local elementary school teacher, Christopher Lyle, found dead after going missing five years ago. Ms. Angela Lyle, his widow, is holding his wake in St. Bernard's Church on Sunday at 3 p.m. He is survived by his two children, Jeanne and Michael.
His body was found three miles into Morton Nature Preserve in Brickenridge, Illinois. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest, and he was found near the unidentified body of another man. Authorities suspect a criminal dealing gone wrong, as the unidentified man was found with unregistered guns and arsonist materials. The whereabouts of Mr. Lyle during his five-year absence is unknown. The family will be retracting the $50,000 reward for his safe return.
~~~
dean died alone.
dean died alone, in the woods, at night. he died bleeding out, and scared, and desperate.
he died thinking sam hated him.
he died with his guts in his hands, with his insides spilling out of him like a slaughtered animal.
he'd been bleeding out while sam was studying for his history exam, or out at a bar, or sleeping in his shitty sophomore dorm. had he even thought about reaching for his phone, or had he assumed sam wouldn't pick up? had he tried calling dad?
dad fell off the map, and the last time bobby heard of him, he'd been drinking himself stupid in a hunter bar. he hadn't been seen or heard from in five years. sam assumes he drank himself to death. the mission had been accomplished, but it cost him everything. both sons, and the last fragile line of his sanity. dad is gone. dean is gone.
they'd been gone this whole time.
sam tries desperately to think of the last thing he'd said to his brother, but he can't. that's something that he should remember, right? that's something that's important--it's the last time his brother heard his voice, and sam can't remember? what was the last thing dean said to him? when was the last time he'd heard his big brother's voice?
sam feels wretched, faithless, for not knowing. for letting dean go. if sam had stayed, if sam had reached out at all, dean might be alive.
his big brother. that's no longer big. no longer older than him.
sam's big brother will be younger than him, forever. dean never got to see twenty four.
sam became older than his brother and didn't even notice. his twenty-fourth birthday had been quiet and small because sam had always hated his birthday. and dean had been dead.
sam never got to apologize for their last fight. he'll never hear dean laugh again. he'll never hear dean sing under his breath again. he'll never hear dean tap on the steering wheel to some metallica tape. he'll never get to hug him again, or look into his eyes, or feel the warmth of his skin against his.
one night sam had gone to sleep, and woken up alone in the world, and he hadn't even realized.
sam had thought he'd grown up. he thought he'd outgrown the need for his brother. but now that dean is gone--gone, gone, gone--sam is torn open like a wound.
he hadn't outgrown dean, he'd buried him. he buried him in his bones and in his mind and in his chest and had refused to think about him. if sam didn't allow himself to think about it, if he buried his childhood underneath denial, then he wouldn't have to feel like this.
but sam feels every ounce of dean now. every single millisecond of missing dean in the grocery store and in class and on a hike and in the shower and in his bed at night consume him.
sam has no recollection of leaving bobby's. he has no recollection, for a long time.
the next thing he remembers, he's laying on a motel bed, and his phone is lit up with calls from jess. calls from his boss. calls from his friends.
it's been nine days. sam is nine days older than he was before. farther and farther from dean, with every second.
sam drives to a public library. he goes to a pet store. he goes to a graveyard.
the dirt underneath sam's nails is cold and gummy. it had rained recently, so sam is scooping mostly clay from the earth, and his fingers become so coated and slick that his pawing becomes ineffectual. sam hurriedly wipes his palms on his pants, the thick gunk melting into the grain of his jeans.
sam places the box in the center of the hole. he covers it up, the heels of his shoes slick and sticking to the thick clay.
for a breathless moment, sam is standing in the road alone, alone, alone, alone.
"well, well, well. if it isn't our wasted potential." sam whirls around, and finds a woman standing there. she wears a simple black dress, cut low and revealing a flash of bright red bra.
the night is cold, but she shows no sign of feeling it, her shoulders bare and exposed. sam's heaving for breath, and it billows between them, smoke-thick and damp.
"what can i do for you, sam winchester?" she asks, eyebrow raised, and mouth curled like she already knows the answer. she already knows his name, can probably see him down to his yawning, black-hole center. sam doesn't hesitate.
"i've come to make a deal."
~~~
i hope this made up for your wait, anon! i hope your week is lovely~!
kaledo-art
yousharknotpass
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