Could’ve Gone Mad
I have to keep a hold of myself. Is that really you or is it someone else? I swear it looks just like him.
Meg breathed in the cool, damp air of the vault she was now standing in. Her demon eyes could see in any darkness, which was a good thing because this room was as dark as a cave. This place, she recalled, was where there were some important artifacts stored. There were bones here procured from evil men and women throughout history, vials of blood from heretics, several locks of blood-matted hair from the head of Abel, and many other various ingredients for any dark magic you might want to perform.
Azazel had brought her here sometime in the early 1960′s, telling her that until then it had been risky to try to gain access to this vault, but that the guardians had been neutralized and were now extinct. Meg surveyed the room, noting that in addition to the large locked compartments there were boxes full of books. She picked up a few reading their titles. “Sam would have a field day with these,” she muttered flipping through the dusty pages of a book on demonic hierarchy. She ran a finger over the chapter titled Princes of Hell before slamming the book shut and tossing it back on top of the pile.
She huffed and yanked open the door of the vault, and it groaned on it’s rusted hinges. Meg stepped out into a passageway looking right to left to see if there was anything else there worth checking out. When Azazel had brought her here before he had just translocated them directly into the vault, so she wanted to get an idea of how this place was set up. To her right it appeared that there had been some kind of explosion, and the passage ended in crumbled earth. She took a step to the left and felt a sort of tingle on the bottom of her foot. Her gaze shot downward and she noticed that patterned into the tile of the floor was a devil’s trap, broken and cracked, but still clearly visible. “Thank hell for that. Must have cracked when this tunnel fell,” she said aloud to try to sooth her own nerves. Getting stuck in a devil’s trap in a hole in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t do any good for anybody. She walked on down the open end of the passageway, running her hand along the wall, nearly jumping when her hand hit open air. “Another passage?” she said, perplexed as she turned and followed it a few feet to yet another collapsed ending. “This is like a house or something...What the hell happened down here?” Meg went back the way she came, turning again to the left and then around a curve to a set of galvanized stairs. “They go up,” she quipped to herself, climbing them slowly until she reached a large steel door. She banged against it a few times and it finally gave way to the fresh night air.
Meg turned around and studied the dark doorway she’d just exited. “Weird place,” she whispered to herself. Her eyes moved up to view the large, abandoned power plant that loomed over her, before she trudged off to try to find some sort of civilization to get herself some whiskey. She had no idea that just on the other side of that power plant, down the hill, Donatello, Prophet of the Lord, was exiting the part of the Men of Letters bunker that had not collapsed, on his way to fried chicken and destiny. ---------------------------------------------------- Meg walked along the sidewalk in front of the different storefronts on Main Street in Lebanon, Kansas sipping a flask of bourbon she’d stolen from a demon she’d run into. More of Asmodeus’ detail, she assumed. There wasn’t a single liquor store within twenty minutes of the vault she’d explored, so it had been a welcome discovery in the demon’s jacket pocket, along with $60 in cash. Suddenly she heard voices coming from nearby, so she screwed the cap back on the flask and jammed it in the back pocket of her jeans. Something about these people seemed strange to her. Slowly she moved forward until she could see who was talking. She could see a man, small in stature, and heavy set. He wore glasses and was holding a bucket of chicken. He was talking to a man, but all she could see was that he wore a tan colored coat and he had dark hair. She felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck, and she stared at the man. As she watched the man with glasses opened the bucket of chicken taking out a piece. The way the man in the tan coat moved, his height, his build were so similar to Castiel, but there was something off. Something about him didn’t seem right. She moved slowly until she could just see the side of his face, but making sure that she stayed hidden from view behind a tree and some shrubs.
Meg heard as the man with the glasses increased his volume, saying, “I couldn’t live with myself if they never make it out of that terrible place.” “Yes, yes, that would be very tragic. Forget this,” Castiel said, not at all sounding like himself, as he touched the head of the other man, just as he was about to take a bite of his chicken. “That’s not Castiel,” Meg hissed. Just then Castiel’s form shifted into that of a man in a white suit. His hair was graying and he spoke quietly as he leered forward at the smaller man. “Asmodeus,” she said, eyes widened. Fight or flight kicked in and she transported herself somewhere safe, somewhere she knew. By instinct she traveled, finding herself standing in front of Northern Indiana State Hospital, where she’d watched over Castiel when he had taken on Sam’s memories of Hell. She blew out a big puff of air, taking the flask out of her back pocket and turning it up, gulping down the burning bourbon. “This is a mess. This is a big mess. Why is it always a big mess?” she said, shaking her head in consternation. “Clarence, you’d better be alive when I do find you again, or so help me I’ll kill you,” she swore.