Current interests! Enstars. Milgram. Marvel/Mcu. Resident Evil. Challengers. Detroit Become Human. Until Dawn. Omori. Kirby. Pokemon. Stranger Things. The Hunger Games. Euphoria. You series. Brawl Stars. Vocaloid. Chiikawa. Project Sekai. Outer Banks. Charisma House. Little Nightmares. Descendants. Xdinary Heroes. Bridgerton. Hypnosis Mic. Dune. The Maze Runner. Hamilton Musical. Alien Stage. Hirono. Peach Riot. Smiski. BBC Sherlock Holmes. Hannibal. Bones and All. The Boys. Gen V. Peacemaker. Supernatural đ„ Ę Ëàč àŁ â
Characters! Nagisa Ran. Ibara Saegusa. Tomoya Mashiro. Tsukasa Suou. Arataki Itto. Jonathan Byers. Steve Harrington. Robin Buckley. Chishiya Shuntaro. Kaoru Seta. Idia Shroud. Shidou Kirisaki. Max Mayfield. John B Routledge. Rafe Cameron. Sarah Cameron. Tashi Duncan. Art Donaldson. Patrick Zweig. Anthony Bridgerton. Love Quinn. Guinevere Beck. Lee (Bones and All). Eugene Allerton. Chris Redfield. Carlos Oliveira. Karl Heisenberg. Ada Wong. Rue Bennett. Sam Winchester. Castiel. Dean Winchester. Hachiware. Rafayel (Love and Deepspace). Peeta Mellark. Katniss Everdeen. Haymitch Abernathy. Steve Rogers. Connor. Hank Anderson. Kafka. Hyuna. Sua. Rika (pokemon). N. Yelena Belova. Thor Odinson. Loki Laufeyson. Bucky Barnes. Peter Quill. Jakurai Jinguji. Aoi Kureha. Minato Ohse. Terra. Jake Sully. Jordan Li. Billy Butcher. Victoria Neuman. Adrian Chase âËâĄïčË
Faves! Drew Starkey. Zendaya. Pedro Pascal. Nicholas Alexander Chavez. Mads Mikkelsen. Mike Faist. Josh O'Connor. Chase Stokes. Sitetampo. Timothee Chalamet. Hugh Dancy. Chris Evans. Benedict Cumberbatch. Penn Badgley. Cate Blanchett. Florence Pugh. Sebastian Stan. Chris Hemsworth. Thomas Doherty. Robert Pattinson. Natalia Dyler. Charlie Heaton. London Thor. Derek Luh. David Corenswet. Nicholas Hoult. Jared Padalecki. Jensen Ackles. âËâč â⎠á°â§âËâč
*green highlights means that it's my absolute favorite at the moment
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Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Commander Reid Wiseman look back at the planet they set off from in pursuit of taking one giant leap forward towards the Moon.
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sam winchester isnât the kind of guy you see and immediately think heâs hot and you wanna have sex with him when i see that man i wanna grab him and suffocate him with the most breathtaking hugs and kiss him all over his face because he is just so baby puppy cutie pie and he deserves all the goodness in this world
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summary: Little town in Ohio, multiple bodies have been found; skin eaten and ribs cracked. Sam and Dean expect another monster. A werewolf, a ghoul, a wendigo. But when they get there, nothing is what they have seen before... In the end, the monster is just another human.
cw: +18. 10.2k words. fem!reader. graphic gore (torn flesh, exposed organs, blood). cannibalism. murder and implied past murders. predatory behavior. body horror. blasphemous / distorted religious symbolism and imagery. guilt. self-harm ideation (starvation, biting self to resist urges). psychological distress. shame and self-loathing. fear and panic. implied sexual activity (non-explicit). threat of gun violence. dark themes of faith, God, damnation. reblog is a creator's best-friend, thank you!
The town didnât have a name that mattered.
It was one of those places folded into the flat spine of rural Ohio, stitched together by cornfields and faith. A single main street with a feed store, a diner that closed at three, and a church that stood taller than anything else, white paint peeling like old sunburned skin. The kind of town where porch lights hum all night and everyone knows when a strangerâs car rolls in.
The sidewalks were cracked like old knuckles, weeds pushing through as if even the earth was trying to escape. Screen doors slapped shut in the evenings while radios murmured gospel through open windows, and the air always carried the faint smell of fertilizer and something metallic beneath itâsomething that clung to the back of the throat if you breathed too deeply. The cemetery rested on a slight hill behind the church, headstones leaning at tired angles, as though even the dead were weary of standing upright in a place that refused to change.
On Sundays, the congregation filled the pews with stiff collars and bowed heads, singing hymns that echoed too loudly in the hollow space.
The preacher spoke of sin like it was weather; inevitable, seasonal, rolling in whether you invited it or not. People here believed in hell with the same certainty they believed in harvests. They believed evil had claws and horns and glowing eyes. They never imagined it might look like a girl buying coffee at the diner, nodding politely, hands folded as if in prayer.
Thatâs why you donât stay long in places like this, and thatâs why it surprises you when you do.
They call it animal attacks at first.
Livestock torn apart in the early hours before dawn. Then a drifter found near the railroad tracks, ribcage opened like a hymnal, meat missing with surgical neatness but no knife wounds to explain it. No paw prints, no tire tracks, just blood soaked deep into the dirt and bones shining pale in the moonlight.
The papers say ritualistic, the sheriff says sick individual and the preacher says the devil walks among us.
Two days later, a waitress from the diner disappears on her way home.
After that, the word no one wants to say begins to creep through town like rot under floorboards: cannibal. It isnât spoken aloud at firstâitâs breathed behind cupped hands in grocery aisles, muttered over rotary phones late at night, written off as hysteria the moment it leaves someoneâs mouth. But the evidence refuses to soften itself into something easier. The bodies, when theyâre found at all, are wrong in a way that no animal could manage; flesh removed with deliberation, organs taken clean, bones left like pale offerings under open sky. Whatever is doing this isnât wild. It isnât mindless⊠It is choosing.
Men begin walking their wives to their cars after late shifts. Porch lights that once flickered lazily now burn until dawn, as if illumination alone could ward off something so intimate. Parents call their children inside before sunset, voices tight and brittle. The town shortens its hours; the diner closes earlier, the feed store installs a lock it hasnât needed in twenty years. Every stranger becomes suspect. Every quiet neighbor suddenly looks different under scrutiny. The fear is not loudâit is constant, low, thrumming beneath conversations like a second heartbeat.
Sunday sermons swell in volume and urgency. The preacher speaks of Sodom, of wolves in sheepâs clothing, of flesh and consequence. He dabs sweat from his brow while the congregation nods, clutching Bibles like shields. They want it to be something supernatural, something with horns and fire and a name that can be cast out in prayer. What terrifies them more than the gore, more than the empty bedrooms and unanswered calls, is the possibility that the thing devouring their own might kneel beside them in the pews. That it might look like them, speak like them, bleed like them.
Thatâs when the black car pulls into town.
The engine of the Impala growls low and familiar as it rolls past the church and toward the sheriffâs office. Inside, Dean drums his fingers against the steering wheel, eyes scanning the sleepy storefronts with a predatorâs ease.
They hadnât meant to pick up the case at all. It started as a blip in a police scanner thread, then a local news clipping buried three pages deep online: Rural Authorities Baffled by Livestock Mutilations. Sam had noticed the phrasing first; not attacks, not maulings but mutilations. Heâd dug deeper from a library computer in Indiana while Dean refueled the car, pulling archived coroner summaries and sheriffâs statements that didnât make it into print.Â
No claw marks, no sulfur, no EMF spikes reported by any curious amateur ghost hunters in the area. Just flesh missing in specific patterns and a rising body count that felt purposeful. By the time Sam called Dean over to the screen, his voice had that edge it only gets when something is wrong in a way he canât categorize.
âOhio,â he mutters while driving, eyes on the never ending road. âWhy is it always Ohio?â Beside him, Sam flips another page in the thin stack of printed articles of Johnâs journal on his lap. His brow is furrowed in that deep, thoughtful way that means something isnât fitting right. âItâs not an animal,â Sam says quietly.
âNo kidding.â
âThere are no defensive wounds. No tearing. Itâs⊠deliberate.â He swallows slightly. âIâm talking organs removed, muscle tissue consumed but not randomly.â
Dean glances over for a second, almost scoffing. âYou saying weâve got a gourmet werewolf?â
âIâm saying it doesnât match anything Iâve read.â
Dean smirks. âGreat, love when you say that.â
Theyâd thrown theories at it on the drive east. Wendigoâbut there were no signs of prolonged isolation or cannibalistic frenzy, no half-eaten remains dragged into the woods. Ghoulâbut ghouls preferred the dead, grave dirt under their nails and carrion on their breath. Werewolfâtoo surgical, and wrong moon cycle. Demonâno sulfur, no possession symptoms in town reports.Â
Dean even suggested some backwoods cult, but the lack of ritual markings and the precision of the missing tissue dismantled that fast. Every option ended the same way: a dead end. Which meant either something new had crawled out of the dark or something old had never been given a name.
They donât know you yet but youâve been here your whole life.
This town isnât a stop along the way; itâs the place that raised you, baptized you, watched you grow tall and quiet beneath its steeple shadow. You know every cracked sidewalk and sagging porch, you know which houses keep their lights on past midnight and which fields flood first in spring, you learned to ride a bike on these roads.Â
Learned your Bible verses in that white church with the leaning cross, learned how to bow your head and pretend you were normal while something inside you stirred.
Your childhood bedroom still faces the cornfieldsâthe wallpaper peeled when you were seventeen, curling at the corners like dried skin, and your father never fixed it. He doesnât fix much anymore. The house smells like old coffee, of your momâs perfume, sawdust and the faint copper tang you swear no one else can detect. You still sleep there some nights, staring at the ceiling while the porch light hums outside and trucks groan down the highway in the distance. You tell yourself that staying means you arenât running, that staying means youâre braver than whatever lives inside your ribs.
The hunger has been worse lately.
Not wild, not rabid, oh no. That would almost be easier. No, itâs steadyâreverent. Like a hymn sung too low to interrupt but too constant to ignore. It hums under your skin during Sunday service while the preacher speaks of flesh and sin. It coils tighter when hands join in prayer, when warmth presses shoulder to shoulder in the pew. You feel it most when the congregation says body and blood in unison, when communion wafers dissolve on tongues and the word sacrifice hangs heavy in the air. The irony does not escape you.
Three nights ago, it all became unbearable.
You told yourself you would drive: just drive until the feeling thinned. But you didnât make it past the railroad tracks and he was already thereâa drifter with a backpack and hollow eyes, someone no one in town would claim. The hunger isnât violent at first; itâs intimate, it moves through you like a prayer answered wrong. When it finally took control, it was not frenzy but inevitability. It was flesh parted beneath your hands, warmth spilled over your skin, the smell of iron filled your lungs like incense. You didnât stop until the ache quieted and the world fell silent again.
You never enjoy it. There is no thrill, no ecstasy, only relief so profound it feels holy. Like kneeling at an altar and finally being absolved. The gore doesnât shock you anymoreâthe slick weight of muscle, the fragile crack of bone, the way the human body opens with terrible simplicity. What devastates you is the aftermath: the knowledge that you have taken something God once breathed into.
Afterward, you went to the creek like you did when you were a teenager, when it first started and you didnât understand why your hands wouldnât stop shaking. You knelt in the mud and scrubbed at your skin until it burned, watching pink water swirl downstream, you whispered apologies into the darkâto Him, to your parents sleeping down the road, to the town that taught you about heaven and hell in equal measure. You asked for forgiveness the way other girls asked for love.
You donât see yourself as a monster, because monsters are loud, obvious, they snarl and bare their teeth.
You are quiet, you bow your head in church, you say maâam and sir, you hold doors open, you sit in the third pew from the front and sing hymns with a voice that never trembles.
You are not evil, just wrong.
The Winchester brothers roll into town just after noon, the Impalaâs black frame cutting through the quiet like a bad omen. The church bell is ringing when they pass itâslow, heavy tolls that seem to press down on the air itself. Dean notices the way curtains shift in windows as they drive by, the way conversations on the sidewalk stall. Small towns always react like that: suspicion first and hospitality second.
By the time they park outside the sheriffâs office, Sam has already read every article twice.
Inside, the office smells like burnt coffee and old paper, a mounted deer head stares blankly from one wall. Sheriff Grady is thick-necked, red-faced, and exhausted in a way that suggests he hasnât slept properly in days. Dean flashes a badgeâfederal, polished, convincingâand starts talking livestock patterns and possible animal migration. Sam fills in the blanks, calm and methodical, asking for autopsy photos, timelines, witness statements. The sheriff hesitates before handing over the file.
âYou boys ever seen anything like this?â he asks, voice low.
Dean doesnât miss a beat. âWeâve seen strange.â
The sheriff studies them like heâs weighing how much to believe, then finally mutters, âYouâre just in time, we found another one this morning.â
The crime scene sits just beyond the cemetery fence, tall grass bending in the wind like itâs trying to look away. A coronerâs van idles nearby and flies swarm thick and greedy in the humid air. Sam and Dean step under the yellow tape, gloves snapping tight over their hands.
The smell hits immediately: copper-heavy blood baked under the sun, layered with the sweet-sick rot of exposed viscera. It clings to the back of the throat, almost making them gag. Dean exhales through his nose. âOkay, thatâs new.â
The body lies on its back, head tilted unnaturally toward the church steeple as if in accusation. The ribcage has been opened with disturbing neatness; not hacked, not torn, but parted. The sternum split clean, flesh stripped from the ribs in long, deliberate sections, muscles missing in symmetrical patterns along the thighs and abdomen. The cavity gapes open, empty where organs should rest and the heart is gone⊠so are portions of the liver.
No ragged edges, no scattered chunks, but just absence: long and heavy.
Flies crawl along exposed bone, dipping into dark hollows where warmth once lived. Blood has pooled beneath the spine and dried in thick, almost black sheets beneath him. âNo sulfur,â Dean notes quietly, scanning with an EMF meter more out of habit than hope. âNo claw marks,â Sam replies, crouching lower. He studies the edges of the wounds, fingertips hovering but not touching. âNo tearing at connective tissue. Itâs clean.â
Dean circles the body, boots flattening grass sticky with blood. âYou ever see a wolf do this?â he mutters. âBecause I havenât.â
Sam doesnât answer immediately but his jaw tightens slightly as he observes the way muscle has been separated from boneânot in frenzy, but with intention. The way joints were dislocated efficiently or the way nothing was wasted in certain areas.
Dean crouches beside him, lowering his voice. âWendigo?â
Sam shakes his head faintly. âWendigos tear, they hoard and they drag remains back to a nest. Thereâs no feeding pattern like that here.â Dean studies the open chest cavity again, grimacing. âWerewolf without the whole moonlight aesthetic?â
âNo bite marks, no saliva traces.â Sam swallows, eyes tracing the precision again. âItâs almost⊠surgical.â
Dean straightens slowly, gaze drifting toward the church looming nearby, white paint glowing harsh against blue sky.
âAlmost like it knew exactly what it wanted,â he mutters back at his brother. Sam stands too, staring out at the cornfields stretching endless and silent beyond the cemetery. He doesnât say what heâs thinking, he doesnât say the cuts donât look animal. He doesnât say the removal patterns resemble something disturbingly deliberate, he doesnât say that whatever did this wasnât frenziedâit was controlled.
Instead, murmurs, âWhatever it is⊠itâs not sloppy.â
Dean studies the body one more time, jaw set hard. âYeah,â he mutters. âMe too.â
The bell above the diner door jingles sometime after the lunch rush has thinned, and you barely look up at first. The place smells like burnt coffee, fryer grease, and lemon disinfectant; familiar, comforting in a way that almost makes you forget the tension coiled beneath your ribs. Youâre tucked into your usual booth by the window, cardigan sleeves pushed over your hands, a plate of untouched pie softening in front of you. You come here more out of habit than hunger, real hunger is something else entirely.
When you finally glance toward the door, you notice them immediately: they donât fit in.
One of them moves like he owns whatever space he steps into. Broad-shouldered, leather jacket despite the heat, boots that look worn in rather than decorative. The other is taller, quieter, his hair falling into his eyes as he scans the room with something sharper than curiosity. They arenât dressed like locals, they arenât passing through on farm business, thereâs a weight to them, like they carry more than duffel bags in the trunk of their car.
You think city, you think temporary, you think they wonât stay long.
They slide into a booth near the counter. The older oneâthe louder oneâflashes the waitress an easy grin and orders pie before heâs even fully seated. The taller one asks for coffee and thanks her in a voice low and careful.
You find yourself watching them without meaning to.
Itâs not attraction exactly, not yet⊠Itâs curiosity; the same kind you feel when a storm rolls in unexpectedly, something different in the air, something alive.
Your hunger stirs faintly at the edges, confused more than awakened. Not because of them specifically, but because newness has a scent all its own. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth and focus on your coffee instead, breathing slow.
At their booth, Dean leans back and stretches his arms along the vinyl seat, surveying the diner like itâs just another stop on a long, endless road. âSmall town charm,â he mutters, glancing at a faded photo of the high school football team from 1998 framed crooked on the wall. âYou can practically taste the cholesterol.â
Sam doesnât smile because heâs already scanning faces subtly; farmers in seed caps, an elderly couple sharing fries, a teenage girl refilling napkin dispensers. He isnât looking for anyone specific yet but just patterns and tells.
âLetâs eat first,â Dean says, lowering his voice once the waitress walks away. âThen we ask about the drifter. See who gets twitchy.â Sam nods, fingers tapping lightly against his mug. âSheriff said he used to hang around here, someone mightâve noticed something.â
Dean shrugs. âOr someoneâs lying.â
Their food arrives, and for a moment they look like exactly what theyâre pretending to be: two road-weary men passing through, arguing lightly over who gets the last fry. Dean makes a show of enjoying the pie and Sam drinks his coffee black and watches the room over the rim of his cup.
His gaze passes over you once; not lingering, not even suspicious, simply cataloging everyone around.
You drop your eyes quickly anyway, heat creeping up your neck for reasons you donât examine too closely. Youâre used to being invisible here, so used to blending into wood-paneled walls and soft country radio playing overhead. But something about them makes the diner feel smaller.
Dean wipes his mouth with a napkin and nods subtly toward the counter. âAfter this, weâll ask if anyoneâs seen strangers around the railroad tracks.â
Sam hums in agreement. âKeep it casual.â
âHey! I always do.â
Neither of them are looking at you now: youâre just another quiet girl in a cardigan, nursing cold coffee and staring out at cornfields through streaked glass.
You finish your drink and slide out of the booth, leaving a few crumpled bills beneath the plate. As you walk toward the door, you pass their table close enough to catch the scent of leather and gun oil beneath cheap motel soap. Dean glances up automatically, offering a brief, easy smileâreflexive charm. You give a small nod in return, smile on your face, the kind of acknowledgment small towns are built on.
The bell jingles again as you step back into the afternoon heat. Inside, Sam watches the door swing shut, then looks back down at his coffee. Outside, you stand for a moment on the sidewalk, sunlight pressing warm against your skin. The hunger is quiet for now, just a distant hum, vibrating under your skin and bones.
That night, you dream of teeth.
Not just your ownârows and rows of them, white and endless, lining the pews of the church like a congregation. They chatter softly in place of prayer, clicking together in rhythm with the tolling bell overhead. The sound is deafening. Youâre standing barefoot in the aisle, dress hem soaked dark and heavy, and when you look down, blood is spreading from beneath your feet in slow, deliberate rivers. It creeps between the wooden boards, thick and warm, carrying the copper scent of communion turned rancid.
The altar is wrong: the cross above it drips steadily, red tracing the carved ribs of Christâs body as if theyâve been split open fresh. His painted chest gapes, ribs pried apart like shutters, muscle exposed in glistening strands. You can see the cavity inside Himâempty, simply hollow. The organ meant to rest there gone. The congregation doesnât scream but they kneel and they bow their heads as if this is expected, as if sacrifice has simply changed shape.
Then the floor shifts beneath you: bones push up through the wood like roots; femurs and vertebrae twisting together into something cathedral-like and obscene. Rot clings to them, sweet and suffocating, clotted pieces of muscle still attached in stringy ribbons. Hands reach up from the blood at your ankles, not to drag you down, but to hold you in place. Their fingers are slick, their palms warm against your skin. The faces attached to them are familiar: the drifter by the tracks, the stranger near the cornfield, shadows of others you never let yourself name. They donât look angry, they look disappointed.
Church bells keep ringing, louder, louder and louder. Until the sound becomes a heartbeatâyour heartbeatâpounding so hard you can taste it. The hunger pulses with it, a living thing inside your chest, pressing outward as if it wants to split you open the same way. You feel your own ribs part in the dream, feel fingers hook beneath bone and pull. Not to kill you but to look inside, to see whatâs wrong.
You wake before dawn with the hunger clawing at your ribs.
Your sheets are damp with sweat; the room smells faintly metallic, though you know thatâs in your head. Your jaw aches from clenching and for a split second, you swear you can still feel warmth coating your hands, something sticky beneath your nails.
Itâs too soon.
You press your palm to your mouth and breathe through it, inhaling slowly, exhaling slower, like the preacher taught during long sermons when panic tried to creep in. The sky outside your window is still ink-dark, the world holding its breath before morning.
Not again, not yet.
Please.
You lie awake staring at the ceiling while the porch light hums outside your bedroom window and the house settles around you in tired creaks. Your parentâs door is closed down the hall. The clock on your nightstand blinks 3:17 a.m. in dull red numbers. The hunger has been building, low and patient, like something sharpening its teeth in the dark.
You try to pray.
You press your hands together, tug on the silver cross at your neck, bow your head, whisper words youâve known since childhoodâdeliver us from evil, forgive us our trespassesâbut the phrases feel thin tonight. Paper shields against something ancient and gnawing. The hunger doesnât rage, it doesnât scream, but God, it beckons.
By 3:43, you are sitting up.
By 3:51, you are pulling on your boots.
You donât turn on any lights as you move through the house, you donât look at the family photos lining the hallway, you donât let yourself hesitate at the door. The screen creaks softly when you push it open, and the night air wraps around you thick and damp, heavy with the smell of soil and corn and distant fertilizer.
The fields are endless in the dark, silvered by moonlight and whispering prayers. You walk toward them like youâve done this a hundred times before. Because you have.
The gravel crunches beneath your boots, crickets pause and resume their chorus. Somewhere far off, a dog barks once and then falls silent. Your pulse is steady, but your mouth floods with that familiar metallic tang; your gums ache, your fingers flex at your sides as if remembering something they were made to do.
You donât know how long you walk before you hear him.
A laughâsloppy, off-balance. Followed by the crunch of someone stumbling through the outer edge of the cornfield. You pause, body going still as prey. He emerges from between the stalks, swaying. Mid-thirties maybe, a shirt half untucked and a bottle dangling loose from his fingers. He smells like cheap beer and sweat and something sour beneath it.
He doesnât see you at first. When he does, he squints. âJesus,â he slurs. âYou scared the hell outta me.â You say nothing but recognize him as one of the regulars of the diner. The hunger tightens, sharp now and the warmth of him hits you like a wave. Alive⊠So alive. âYou lost?â he asks, taking a step closer. âYou shouldnât be out here alone, itâs late.â
The irony almost makes you laugh.
He steps closer again, close enough that you can see the pulse in his throat, close enough that you can hear his heart under the slur of his breathing. You feel something inside you give way.
You move before you consciously decide to. One second thereâs space between you; the next your hands are in his shirt, fingers fisted tight. He yelps in surprise, bottle dropping and shattering at your feet. For half a heartbeat, thereâs confusion on his face. Then your teeth sink in. Hot. Thatâs what you always forget.
How hot blood is when it spills fresh: it floods your mouth in a rush, copper-rich and thick, coating your tongue, sliding down your throat before you can even swallow properly. He screamsâa wet, choking soundâand tries to push you away, but youâre stronger now. Stronger than you look, stronger than you ever want to be.
You pull him down into the grass.
The corn stalks sway above you like witnesses turning their backs.
Your hands work without hesitation, without doubt. You know where to press, where to tear: skin parts beneath your fingers with a resistance that gives way in sudden, awful bursts, muscle stretches and snaps in fibrous strands and warmth pours over your wrists, slick and alive. His movements grow weaker quicklyâshock, blood loss, the body surrendering to something it cannot understand.
You donât look at his face. You focus on the hunger because it guides you. It makes you forget about anything else.
Ribs crack beneath your grip with a muffled, splintering sound, the cavity opens under your hands, steam rising faintly in the cool night air, the smell is overwhelming; iron and salt and something almost sweet beneath it. You reach inside and feel the frantic flutter of a heart still trying. For a moment, just one, your hands hesitate.
When itâs over, the field is quiet again. Crickets resume their song and the moon watches without judgment.
You kneel back on your heels, chest heaving, blood soaking into your jeans, sticky and cooling against your skin. Your mouth is stained red, your hands tremble as the hunger recedes, as the roaring in your ears fades to a low hum. But as always, thereâs tears running down your cheeks, mixing with the wet blood.
Relief settles over you like a heavy blanket.
You sit there longer than you should, staring at what remains. Pale bone catching moonlight, torn muscle exposed to open air, skin shredded apart. The earth is drinking what itâs been given. Your stomach twistsânot with nausea, but with something far worse. Guilt. It crashes in once the silence returns, once the hunger is sated and you are left alone with yourself again.
âIâm sorry,â you whisper into the dark. âIâm so sorry. Iâm so, so, sorry.â You donât know who youâre apologizing to. The man in pieces at your knees? The God hanging in the church down the road? Your parents asleep in his bed, unaware that their daughter has slipped out into the night again?
You wipe your hands on the grass, but the blood doesnât really leave.
By the time you walk back toward the house, dawn is just beginning to bruise the horizon. The porch light is still humming and you step inside quietly, boots left by the door, and move down the hallway like a ghost returning to her grave. In your bedroom, you sit on the edge of the bed and stare at your hands until the shaking stops.
The hunger is quiet now, but just for a little while.
Morning in town arrives pale and merciless.
By seven, the rumor had already outrun the sun: a farmer found him, half-hidden in the corn like something the earth tried to swallow and couldnât finish. The sheriff calls it in with a voice stretched thin, and word travels fastâfaster than it should in a place this small. Another body, worse than the others.
Deanâs phone vibrates while heâs still nursing motel coffee that tastes like burnt pennies. He answers on the second ring, jaw tightening as he listens.
âYeah,â he mutters. âWeâre on our way.â
Sam is already grabbing his jacket.
The field looks different in daylight. Cruel, blood-soaked, poison from the divine.
Yellow tape cuts across the green like a wound that wonât close, police cruisers idle along the dirt road and a small cluster of townspeople gathers at a distance despite orders to stay backâdrawn by horror the same way people are drawn to open flame.
The smell carries farther this time. Itâs all thick, metallic and sweet in a way that makes the stomach revolt. Dean ducks under the tape first, flashing the same federal badge as before. Sam follows, eyes already scanning the ground, the stalks bent and broken where struggle turned into collapse.
The body lies on its side this time, twisted into the grass.
Or what remains of it does.
The throat is ruinedâtorn open, not ragged but decisively breached. Dried blood cakes the collar of his clothes in dark, stiff layers. His abdomen has been opened wider than the previous victim, ribs forced apart at unnatural angles, cartilage snapped clean. Portions of muscle are missing from the thighs and shoulders, removed in long, deliberate strips. The cavity of his chest gapes toward the sky, organs absent in select, intentional places.
Flies swarm thick over exposed bone again. Dean swears under his breath. âJesus.â
Sam crouches slowly, taking it in piece by piece; the soil beneath the body is blackened with blood that soaked deep overnight, there are no animal tracks circling the perimeter, no dragging marks leading away. Just impressions from a struggle that ended quickly. âHe was alive when it started,â Sam murmurs, mostly to himself.
Dean glances at him. âYeah?â
âDefensive abrasions on his forearms, bruises, like he tried to push it off.â Sam swallows slightly, eyes tracing the precision again. Dean straightens, scanning the edge of the field. Behind them, the murmur of townspeople grows louder.
Thatâs when Sam sees you. You didnât mean to come, you told yourself you wouldnât but guilt has a gravity of its own.
You stand at the edge of the crowd, cardigan pulled tight around you despite the rising heat. Your face is paleâmore than usualâand your eyes are fixed on the yellow tape as if you can see through it. Gone is the smile, the bright eyes and the politeness everyone knows of you.
You canât stop picturing it: the way his breath hitched, the sound of ribs giving way, the warmth on your hands. Your stomach twists violently, not with hunger this time but with shame. The relief from last night is gone, replaced by a hollow ache that spreads through your chest like frost.
You donât notice Sam watching you, not at first.
He remembers you from the diner: the quiet girl with the cardigan and the tired eyes, the one who left without finishing her coffee. You donât look like someone who belongs at a crime scene. But youâre here. He nudges Dean lightly. âIâll be back.â
Dean arches a brow but doesnât argue.
Sam slips back under the tape and makes his way through the onlookers, flashing his badge when necessary. You feel him before you see him, thereâs a shift in the air, a presence stepping into your orbit. âMaâam,â he says gently. You turn to face him. Up close, he looks taller than you remembered, broader and his expression isnât accusatoryâ itâs careful. Concerned, almost.
âAgent Elsher,â he starts, offering the fake last name smoothly. âI saw you yesterday at the diner, right? Can I ask what youâre doing out here?â Your throat feels dry, your muscles aching inside your body.
âI live here,â you manage to voice back at him. âEveryone does.â
He nods once. âYou know the victim?â You shake your head quickly. Too quickly. âIâve seen him around.â Your eyes flick past him, toward the field, you can smell it even from here; the blood drying in the heat, the faint sweetness of opened flesh, the rot just beginning to whisper at the edges.
Your pulse stutters and the hunger stirs once more. It shouldnâtâyou fed.
But it does, not because of the body, but because of him.
Sam watches the way your pupils shift, the way your breathing changes almost imperceptibly. Something in his gut tightens, not in suspicion yet, but in awareness. âYou okay?â he asks quietly and you nod at him. Lie. Being this close to him feels wrong⊠It feels different. Your hunger has always been drawn to vulnerabilityâdrifters, loners, men already slipping. Sam is none of those things; he is steady and strong.Â
Your body reacts anyway as heat creeps up your spine, your gums ache faintly. You clench your jaw, forcing your teeth together. You donât want to look at his throat but God, you do. âDid you hear anything last night?â he continued, voice calm. âAny shouting? Cars?â
You swallow, the memory flashes vivid and brutalâthe scream cut short, the crack of bone under your hands. âNo, I didnât hear anything,â you whisper. Sam studies you for a moment longer than is comfortable.
Behind him, Dean calls out something to the sheriff, frustration lacing his tone. Your gaze flickers to the field again. The manâs ribcage is visible even from this distanceâpale arcs through broken grass. A smear of darkened blood marks the earth like a signature.
Your stomach churns. âIâm sorry,â you murmur suddenly.
Sam blinks at those words. âFor what?â You realize what youâve said and shake your head quickly. âFor⊠whatâs happening. Itâsââ Your voice falters. âItâs awful.â He watches you carefully. Up close, he notices the faint tremor in your hands, the exhaustion carved into your features and the way you look not frightened but burdened.
âYou donât have to stay,â he says softly. âYou shouldnât.â
Your eyes meet his and for one dangerous second, the world narrows. The hunger hums louderânot violent, not overwhelming, but curious, intrigued. It presses toward him like a compass needle seeking north. You take a step back instinctively, scared of yourself.
âI should go,â you whisper. Sam nods slowly. âIf you remember anything, anything at all, come by the sheriffâs office.â You nod again.
You turn away before the pull becomes unbearable.
Sam watches you retreat through the thinning crowd, cardigan swaying around your waist, shoulders drawn tight as if youâre holding yourself together by force alone. Dean approaches him moments later. âFriend of yours?â Dean asks lightly, joking in his tone. Sam shakes his head, still watching the spot where you disappeared. âNo.â But something about the way you stood thereâtoo close, too stillâlingers in his mind.
Back in the field, the body lies open to the sky, bones gleaming under harsh morning sun. And somewhere in your house, you press your back against your bedroom door and slide down to the floor, shaking.
The hunger isnât gone at all.
Two days pass in a blur of church bells and sirens.
The town tries to fold the horror into itself the way it always does; with casseroles and whispered prayers and the steady hum of gossip behind drawn curtains. The body found by the cornfield is spoken about in lowered voices now. No one says what the coroner actually saw: the precision of torn muscle, the absence of certain organs, the way the ribs had been split like a butcherâs offering.
You know what he saw, you know because your teeth still damn ache.
You donât sleep much or when you do, itâs shallow and fevered. You see bone under moonlight, you feel warm blood running over your wrists again. You wake with the phantom taste of iron coating your tongue and the echo of tearing flesh in your ears, nightmares and dreams mixing together.
And beneath the guilt, the crushing, nauseating guilt, there is still the hunger you know so well. It is quieter now, sated for the moment, but it hums like something coiled.
Waiting.
Sam canât stop thinking about you.
He doesnât say it like that, doesnât even let it sound personal but Dean notices the way his brother circles back to the same detail in conversation. âThe coroner said the tissue removal was⊠deliberate,â Sam mutters from the passenger seat of the Impala, case file open on his lap. âNot random scavenging.â
Dean drums his fingers against the steering wheel. âYou think weâre dealing with a ghoul?â
âMaybe.â Sam hesitates. âOr something pretending to be one.â
âAnd the girl from the diner?â Dean asks lightly, but thereâs a thread of curiosity under it. Sam stares out the window at the passing fields. âI donât know, she was at the scene the next morning. She lookedââ He searches for the word. âNot shocked. Just⊠wrecked.â
âPeople get wrecked seeing a body split open like that,â Dean says. âDoesnât make them monsters.â
âI know.â
But Sam doesnât sound convinced.
You donât want to go back to the diner, it feels like stepping into a confession booth.
But routine is safety, routine is invisibility. So you pull on your soft cardigan, smooth your long dress, and walk through town like you always do. The bell above the diner door chimes as you step inside. The smell hits you first; itâs grease, coffee, sugar. And underneath it allâsalt, sweat, warmth.
You see them immediately.
Theyâre seated in the same booth as before. The older oneâDean, you overheard the waitress call himâleans back with easy confidence, jacket slung over the vinyl seat. The taller one sits straighter, hands folded loosely around a mug like heâs trying to ground himself. Sam. The hunger reacts before you do, it lifts its head inside your chest like a scenting animal.
Not because they are weak but because they are strong. Because something in them feels different, denser, almost bright. It makes your mouth flood, it makes your pulse stutter. You nearly turn around and run out, trying to escape the feeling inside your chest.
But Dean sees you first, he flashes you that same easy smile. âHey. Corner booth, right?â
You swallow, smile back at him and try to be as polite as you normally is. âYeah, thatâs me.â Your voice sounds normal, well, you think. Samâs eyes are on you again, but not accusatory. Dean gestures to the empty seat at their table. âWe were just talking about how small towns always have the best pie. Youâre local, right? Any recommendations?â
Itâs harmless, casual conversation between two people. You sit before you can stop yourself. The vinyl seat sticks faintly to your thighs. You fold your hands in your lap to hide how they tremble. âCherry,â you say. âThey make it from scratch. Might be the best pie Iâve ever tasted in my life.â
âSee?â Dean grins at Sam. âTold you.â But Sam doesnât smile, he studies your face, and it makes something inside you twist. âWe didnât catch your name,â he says gently.
You give it, syllables rolling onto your tongue. He repeats it like heâs testing the shape of it. âYouâve lived here long?â Dean then asks you, hands crossing on the old diner table.
âYes, all my life.â Is all you can reply to the question, because thereâs nothing else to say. âYou knew the man who died?â Sam questions you. The words land like a stone dropped into a well. You picture him againâsprawled in the dirt, breath sour with alcohol, pulse fluttering weakly in his throat before your teeth found it. You remember the sound his ribs made when you pulled them apart. The way his blood soaked into the soil.
You keep your face soft. âIâve seen him around,â you say. âHe drank a lot.â
Dean nods. âSheriff says animal attack. You buy that?â Your hunger shifts under your ribs at the sound of his voice, uneasy. You shrug. âThere are coyotes sometimes.â Samâs gaze sharpens just slightly. âCoyotes donât usually remove organs that cleanly.â
Your heart slams once, hard enough you think they must hear it. âI wouldnât know,â you reply. âIâve never seen something like that before.â
Itâs the truth, youâve never seen yourself from the outside. Never met anyone like you before. Never saw the stain of blood, the color of mud on skin, the hunger in someone else's eyes. Dean leans back, studying you now too. Heâs attentive, hazel eyes on your pretty face. âYou were at the scene the other morning.â
You freeze. âIââ You lick your lips; they taste like salt and fear. âEveryone was.â
âYeah,â Dean says easily. âYou just looked like it hit you hard.â
Because it did. Because you tore into a human body under the moon like a starving animal and now the memory wonât leave your hands. âI donât like blood,â you say quietly. The lie sits between you and Sam watches your throat when you swallow.
And then it happens; the hunger flares again. Itâs so sudden, making you gasp under your breath. The feeling is violent like a thunderstorm, calling at your name and tearing at your stomach. It looks at Sam firstâat the strong line of his neck, the steady pulse beneath the skin. It imagines breaking that skin, it imagines warmth flooding your mouth.
Then it turns to Deanâsmaller, louder, confidence like spice on his skin. You imagine sinking your teeth into his shoulder, hearing him gasp in surprise before pain overtakes it. You flinch at the ideas and images.
âHey,â Sam says softly. âYou okay?â You realize youâve gone pale, probably. âI justââ You push back from the table too quickly. âI need air.â
Dean stands halfway, instinctively. âYou want us toââ
âNo.â You steady yourself. âIâm fine.â But youâre not. Because for the first time, the hunger doesnât feel satisfied by memory. It feels curious, it feels interested to those two men. It feels like it wants to know what hunters taste like; though you donât know that word, donât know what they are, only that something about them is dangerous and bright and unbearably tempting.
Sam doesnât reach for you, but he looks like he wants to. And that look, that concern in his eyes, itâs worse than suspicion. As you step out into the afternoon light, heart hammering, you donât know what frightens you more:
That Sam suspects you or that your hunger is starting to crave them both.
But the guilt has teeth.
It does not sit quietly in you like remorse should; no, it gnaws, it scrapes its way up your spine and settles behind your eyes so that even when you blink, you see red. You try to drown it in routineâwashing dishes twice, folding laundry with trembling precision, standing in the shower until the water runs cold and your skin turns pink and raw but the smell never fully leaves you. Itâs like iron, soil and something sweetly rotten beneath it.
You kneel at the foot of your bed and press your forehead to your clasped hands that night. âPlease,â you whisper to a God you have never felt but have always feared. âPlease donât let me do it again.â
The room is dark except for the sliver of moonlight spilling across the floorboards like pale milk. The house creaks around you, settling. Outside, the town hums in its sleep with porch lights buzzing faintly, a dog barking once and then going quiet, wind moving through the cornfields in a slow, sighing hush. You try to pray properly and you try to imagine forgiveness descending like white light through stained glass. An angel caressing your forehead, promising a room for you to Heaven.
Instead, you imagine Sam.
You see him as clearly as if heâs standing at the edge of your bed, all tall with shoulders slightly hunched as though bracing against a cold no one else feels. You remember the way he said your name at the diner, gentle, careful, like he was afraid of breaking something fragile. You imagine that same mouth parting in shock, you imagine blood there. The thought makes your stomach twist so violently you gag.
âNo,â you murmur to yourself, shaking your head. âNo, noââ
Then Dean intrudes into your mind, that leather jacket creaking as he leans back in the booth, grin crooked and easy. There is something solid about him, something loud and alive. You imagine your hands fisting in that jacket, dragging him closer, you imagine the resistance in his muscles when you press him down.
The hunger responds to the thoughts like a struck match, it flares bright and hot, licking at the inside of your ribs. You double over on the floor, palms digging into the wood. Your pulse hammers in your ears like church bells ringing the hour. You tell yourself to stay, you try to crawl back into bed. But the hunger has already made its decision.
It rises through you like a tide, pulling your limbs with it. Your body moves before your mind consents. You donât remember unlocking the door. You only remember the night air hitting your faceâcool, damp, carrying the scent of soil and growing things and distant human breath.
You walk barefoot into the dark.
The Impala has been idling half a mile down the road for over an hour. Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel, jaw tight. âYou saw her face, Sammy. That wasnât normal. She knows something about this.â Samâs gaze is fixed on your house in the distance, lights out, curtains still. He doesnât reply for a moment, letting the silence eat everything around. âI know.â
âYou think sheâs our monster?â Dean asks, turning his head toward his brother, trying to see his expression. Thereâs something serious about the taller one, right now. Something that looks like concern. âI donât know what she is,â Sam admits quietly. âBut somethingâs wrong.â
Dean exhales sharply. âSo we watch.â Sam simply nods at that.
So they watch, for minutes, for hours, until they see the front door open and they see you step out. Sam straightens immediately. âThatâs her.â You move like someone sleepwalkingâslow, deliberate, head slightly bowed. You donât look left or right, you donât see the car parked down the road with its lights off.
âWhereâs she going?â Dean mutters, eyes squinting as he tries to follow the movements of your body. Samâs voice is low. âInto the fields.â
Dean doesnât hesitate, pushing the door of the driver seat of Baby. âLetâs go.â
The corn swallows you whole, stalks brush your shoulders and whisper secrets against your ears. The moon hangs low and swollen above you, pale and watchful. Your breath comes in shallow pulls, every sense sharpens until the world feels unbearably loud; the rustle of fabric, the crunch of dirt underfoot, the distant murmur of voices. Voices. You stop in your steps.
There, ahead and deeper in the field, a soft laugh. A girlâs voice, breathless and bright and then, a boy answering her in a low murmur. You close your eyes, you could turn back, you should go home. But the hunger presses forward, relentless, begging to be fed like an animal. So you step toward the sound.
Through a break in the stalks and near the clearing, you see them: a couple tangled together on a blanket, limbs bare in the moonlight. The boy is leaning over her, kissing her neck, she giggles and pushes at his shoulders playfully. They are so alive it hurts through the bones of your ribs. Your mouth floods, your nails dig crescents into your palms. âDonât,â you whisper to yourself, but you are already moving.
The first scream is cut short; you hit him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, the girl tumbles sideways, shrieking, scrambling backward through the dirt. âWhat the hellâ?!â the boy gasps, trying to shove you off. Your hands are in his hair and your teeth find his throat too fast for him to do anything about it. Itâs over before he can even think about it.Â
Skin splits with a sickening ease, hot blood surges into your mouth, thick and metallic, and the sound he makesâthat choked, bubbling cryâvibrates against your jaw. You press him down harder, knees digging into his ribs as he thrashes. The girl is screaming now, scrambling to her feet. âGet off him! Get offâ!â You tear, you rip apart, you shred.
Your fingers hook beneath his shirt, dragging fabric and skin aside. You feel the delicate give of muscle under your nails, the slick slide of it when you pull. There is a crack; sharp and obscene as one of his ribs gives way beneath the pressure of your grip. He is still alive when you bite deeper because you feel the flutter of his pulse weaken against your tongue.
The girl runs away, her scream rips through the cornfield, high and hysterical.
âDeanââ Samâs voice is tight through the darkness of the night. âDid you hear that?â They are already moving, pushing through the stalks toward the sound. Another scream, itâs closer now, more panicked. Dean draws his gun as they break into a clearing.
The flickering headlights from the road spill faintly through the gaps in the corn, illuminating you in flashes of white. Sam stops dead when he sees you, his brain not understanding the vision he has, for a second. It canât be true, it canât be that. âJesus Christ.â He mutters quietly; you are kneeling over what used to be a boy, his chest is open.
Bones gleams wetly in the moonlight, jagged and wrong. Blood soaks into the earth beneath him, dark and spreading. Your hands are buried inside him, slick to the wrists, with your mouth red, chin dripping, eyes wide and glass-bright in the light. Your white nightdress is soaked with crimson blood, the smell of iron and copper sticking to the fabric. For a moment, you donât even see them, you are too busy breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling, as if youâve just surfaced from deep water.
Deanâs voice cuts through the night, sharp and electrifying. âHey!â You flinch immediately, your head snaps toward the sound like a deer caught in headlights, pupils blown out, . Sam steps forward despite himself. âItâs her,â he breathes, horror and something heartbreakingly like recognition mixing in his tone. You stare at them, blood drips from your fingers back into the ruin of the boyâs chest. Your expression shiftsâconfusion, then shame, then something feral and starving that makes Deanâs grip tighten on his gun.
âDrop him,â Dean orders, voice rough. You look down at what youâre holding; at the torn flesh in your hands, at the open cavity where a heart used to beat. Your lips part, trembling, voice quiet. âI tried,â you whisper, though you donât know if youâre speaking to them or to God. âI tried not to.â
Samâs gaze locks with yours and for one terrible, suspended second, the hunger inside you turns toward him again. It recognizes him, it wants, it longs for the heart beating inside his chest. Dean sees the change in your eyes, the slightest of shifts. âSam,â he warns softly.
You rise slowly from the body, blood sliding down your arms like dark sleeves and crimson ribbons. The girlâs screams are fading in the distance, forgotten for a moment. The cornfield is suddenly too small to contain what you are and Sam, standing there in the moonlight, realizes with a sickening certaintyâthey didnât find the monster but the monster found them.Â
For a long moment after the screaming stops, the world feels carved out of silence.
You are standing in the middle of it; in the trampled clearing, in the metallic fog of fresh blood, in the wreckage of a boy whose name you never learned. Your breath comes in ragged pulls. The night air is thick and damp, clinging to your skin where it isnât already lacquered in red, it dries in stiffening streaks along your forearms, dark and almost black under the moon.
Deanâs gun is still pointed at you but it looks small compared to what youâve done.
Sam steps closer despite it, boots sinking slightly into the churned dirt. His gaze moves over the scene with dawning horrorâthe torn sternum, the exposed cavity, the slick gleam of organs interrupted and handled and bitten. He swallows hard, Adamâs apple bobbing, but he doesnât look away from you for long. âWhat are you?â he asks again, but this time itâs clear bewilderment.
You donât know how to answer without sounding insane.
Your teeth chatter once: not from cold, but from the comedown. The hunger that had roared through you minutes ago is quieter now, coiled and sated, licking its chops in the dark recesses of your ribs. It is pleased. It hums low and satisfied, like a choir after the final hymn. âI donât have an official name for it,â you say, voice hoarse. âIâve tried to find one, though.â
Deanâs eyes flick to the body and back to you. âYou eat people,â he says flatly.
âYes. I am an eater.â There is no point in softening it, no point of denying it anymore. The word lands heavy between you; it feels like kneeling in a confessional and admitting the worst thing youâve ever doneâexcept there is no absolution waiting behind a screen, only the cold mouth of a gun.
âI donât hunt during the day,â you continue, because if you stop speaking you might collapse. âI donât stalk children, I donât break into houses, I wait until the hunger is so loud I canât hear my own thoughts. And then I go somewhere empty, somewhere I think no one will notice.â
Deanâs jaw tightens, his eyes darkening. âSomeone always notices.â
You nod, tears cutting pale tracks through the blood on your cheeks. âI know.â
The wind moves faintly through the corn again, making the stalks whisper around you. It sounds almost like prayer, like a congregation murmuring in the dark. âI tried to starve it out once,â you say quietly. âLocked myself in my room for five days, I thought if I prayed hard enough, if I didnât move, if I made myself small enough, God would see me and fix it.â
Samâs expression changes at that, something in it cracks, like he can understand a point of your story. âWhat happened?â he asks. You give a broken laugh. âI nearly tore my own arm open.â The confession hangs in the air.
âItâs not a taste,â you try to explain, pressing a shaking hand to your chest. âItâs pressure. It builds here, like something pushing out from the inside and it makes my bones feel hollow, my teeth ache, my skin feels too tight. And when I see someoneâwhen I smell themâitâs like the bell rings.â
âBell,â Dean repeats.
âLike church bells calling the faithful,â you whisper. âOnly Iâm not walking toward salvation, Iâm walking directly toward slaughter.â Dean lowers the gun an inch without realizing heâs done it.
Sam looks at the dead boy again, at the violence of it; the split ribs like broken cathedral arches, the blood soaking into the roots of the corn. He has seen monsters before, all sorts. Ghouls, vampires, wendigos, spirits or things that delight in carnage. You do not look delighted, no, you look ruined. âYou were at the diner,â Sam says slowly. âYou felt it then.â
Your breath stutters. âYes.â
âWith us.â You canât meet his eyes.
âIt was louder,â you admit. âStronger⊠I donât know why, but it scared me.â
Dean lets out a humorless huff. âThatâs comforting.â
âI didnât want to hurt you,â you say quickly, desperate. âThatâs why I left. Thatâs why I went into the fields instead of staying in town.â Instead. The word is a knife. Dean drags a hand down his face. âSo what, weâre supposed to give you points for picking random over personal?â
âNo,â you whisper. âIâm not asking for points. Iâm asking you to understand that I hate this.â
The night presses closer around you, heavy and intimate, blood continues to drip from your fingertips in slow, rhythmic taps. Sam studies you the way he studies lore: searching for pattern, for origin, for some line in some book that might explain you. âYou were born like this?â he asks.
âYes.â
âNo bite, no ritual, no deal?â
âNo.â You voice back at him, at them. Dean finally lowers the gun fully, though he keeps it in his hand. âGreat,â he mutters. âA homegrown nightmare.â You flinch at the word nightmare, because thatâs what it feels like; like youâve been trapped in one since childhood, since the first time you stared too long at the pulse in someoneâs throat and felt your mouth fill with saliva.
âThen maybe you should kill me,â you say, and your voice is steadier now than you expect. âBefore it happens again.â The hunger reacts instantly, thrashing against the cage of your ribs, furious at the suggestion. Your knees weaken under the force of it and you sway. Sam moves forward without thinking but Deanâs hand shoots out to block him. âCareful.â
âIâm not going to attack him,â you say faintly. âIf I was going to, I would have.â Dean doesnât answer, he looks at the body, at you and finally, at Sam. Theyâve made these decisions before in graveyards and barns and abandoned warehouses. Usually itâs clear. Usually the monster lunges, or laughs, or bares its teeth.
You just stand there, shaking, covered in evidence.
âSheâs not possessed,â Sam says quietly. âSheâs not turned, sheâs not feeding for fun.â
âSheâs still feeding,â Dean replies.
âAnd if we shoot her,â Sam continues, âwe still donât know what she is⊠or if there are more like her.â Deanâs mouth presses into a thin line.
You suddenly feel very small.
The town lies just beyond the fields: houses dark, porch lights humming, unaware that something ancient and wrong has been kneeling in its crops for years. The thought of staying makes your stomach churn.
âI canât stay here,â you whisper. âThe girl ran away⊠Theyâll find this, theyâll start asking questions, and put me in jail. Iâm not able to hide anymore.â Dean glances toward the road, toward the faint glint of the Impala through the stalks.
âYouâre right about one thing,â he says. âYou canât stay.â You look up at him, startled. Samâs eyes flick to his brotherâs. âDean.â
âWe donât know what she is, no idea if sheâs truly human,â Dean repeats. âWhich means we donât know how to kill her or if we canâand Iâm not big on shooting first and Googling later.â Despite everything, a hysterical sound escapes you. Dean meets your gaze fully for the first time since the gun went up; thereâs no softness there, but there isnât cruelty either.
âYouâre coming with us,â he says. The words donât make sense at first. âWhat?â
âYou want to not kill people?â he continues. âThen you donât get to sit in this town and wait for the next bell to ring. We figure out what you are, we figure out if thereâs a cure or a leash.â Sam exhales slowly, tension easing just a fraction. âWe can research, cross-reference. There has to be something.â
âAnd if there isnât?â you ask, still not realizing that Dean isnât going to kill you on the spot. Deanâs jaw tightens. âThen weâll deal with that when we get there.â
Itâs a stay of execution.
Your legs finally give out, you sink to your knees in the blood-soaked dirt, not in surrender but in exhaustion. The hunger is quiet now, full and drowsy but the guilt is louder, howling in the hollow space it left behind. It always is after you finish eating. Itâs like a loud ringing in your ears.
Sam steps closer again, slower this time, giving you room to flinch away. âYou need to clean up,â he says gently. You look down at yourselfâat the red coating your skin, at the evidence of what you are.
You nod without replying.
They donât let you wash in the boyâs bloodied clearing, they guide you back toward the road, keeping distance but not abandoning you. Dean walks slightly behind, watchful and Sam stays to your side, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from him. It makes the hunger stir faintly but you shove it down.
At the edge of the field, Dean shrugs off his leather jacket and tosses it toward you. âPut that on.â Itâs absurdly tender, the gesture. You slip your arms into it despite the blood, leather sticking to your skin.
The Impala waits like something patient and black beneath the moon. You hesitate before climbing in and behind you, the town sleeps onâunaware that one of its quiet daughters is leaving in the dead of night, stained red, riding shotgun with two hunters who havenât decided whether sheâs a case study or a future grave. Your parents are sleeping in the house, with the porch light flickering, moths attracted to it like flies to rot.
Sam gets into the back seat with you instead of the front as Dean starts the engine. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the road out of town.
As the fields fall away behind you and the small Ohio houses shrink into nothing, you press your forehead to the cool glass and close your eyes. You donât know if this is salvation, you donât know if itâs a longer road to the gallows. But for the first time in your life, you are not alone with the bell ringing inside your ribs.
And somewhere between the fading cornfields and the open highway, the hunger goes quiet.
notes: once again... i went a bit insane with this fic #lmfao. but i just wanted to make dean, sam and eater!reader meet. also, this is not canon to eater!reader story with dean and sam, but just something i had in mind! meaning: this probably won't have happened with you request this reader for sam or dean (unless you want to)... if that makes sense? + i feel like this end is too rushed but uh 10.2k words⊠so yeah, sorry!