To The Beat Of The Devil's Drums [Supernatural]

Nightmare

Everything is dark. No matter where Dean looks all he sees is blackness, stretching out above, below, beyond him. If he brings his hand within an inch of his face still he can make out nothing, and wonders if he even has limbs at all. There's no discernible texture or substance to the floor: it seems to only be made of black.

"Dean!"

In the distance – if distance even has meaning – a voice cries his name. He hears the fear, the desperation, and his heart begins to pound harder in a chest he isn't sure he has.

"Sammy?" He has a voice, then. Dean tries to move forward in the direction of his brother's cries, but then he hears it again. The voice seems to come from somewhere else, at once all around him and not in the direction he was going.

"Dean!" It sounds more urgent, panicked.

He tries to turn, feeling like he's wading through mud as he fights to make it to Sam. His brother's hurt, bleeding out. Dean has to find him...

Then the screaming starts.

It makes Dean cry out in horror, hearing the agony in the echoes bouncing off of non-existent walls. "Sam! Sam, where are you?!" He can't tell. Can't see a thing.

He turns, head spinning (and the world too, for all he knows) as he desperately searches. His legs – yes, he has them – stumble forward, moving fast yet going nowhere.

He needs to find his brother. This is all down to him: find Sammy, get them both out of here, but his heart's pounding too fast and Sam's bleeding too quickly and–

The face appears from nowhere. Dean stumbles, tries to run through the dark, and suddenly it's there.

Some of it he sees: the matted dark hair that falls wild around its face; waxy olive skin painted with streaks of red; thin lips pulled back from sharpened teeth just inches from his face...

But all that he soon forgets. What lingers is the penetrating stare: gleeful violence in its dead, white eyes.

Something cold plunges deep inside his chest, and Dean opens his mouth to scream.