With a Whimper

He who lives his life without a father and successfully learns to fight and hold his own, he who fights off the metaphorical ghosts and monsters in the house while the real ones stand in the shadows and wait, he who learns how to tie his own shoes once he learns that Velcro is for babies, he who goes through a pudgy stage during his childhood but cuts down on the Twinkies and the other Hostess snacks when a girl points and laughs at him, he who breaks his leg during the third grade when trying to climb a tree to impress that same girl despite her mocking and teasing behind the teacher’s back in class, he who watches his friends with envy whenever their mothers come to pick them up from school, he who has to walk home alone with a heavy backpack and a heavier heart because his mother is always working to pay the bills, he who learns how to cook his own dinner when he’s only nine years old, he who attracts the attention of all the ladies working the cash register at the supermarket whenever he walks in by himself because he was so young and on his own, he who gets his first kiss from a girl on the playground because they were playing truth or dare and she was one of the weird kids in his grade but he was dared to kiss her anyway because his friends sucked, he who was bedridden for a week with the stomach virus when he was in the fourth grade and spent entire nights and days throwing up into the toilet...

...he who joins the Boy Scouts to learn some semblance of friendship from others his age, he who gains more than friendships but valuable knowledge as well, he who becomes an Eagle Scout and holds his head high and proud and comes home to his mother with the badge to prove it, he who is exposed to his first interest in medicine and first aid because of this experience he’s had...

...he who meets his biological father for the first time when he turns twelve and his surname is the name of his favorite kind of gun, he who stands in the shadow of his father, he who looks up to him, he who idolizes him even though he’s only ever been a ghost in the back of his mind, reminding him that he never had what seemed to be the norm, he who feels no shame when other people question whether or not he even really met his father because the meeting only lasted a few hours and then the man was gone back to wherever it was he came from...

...he who hides porn magazines under his mattress when he turns thirteen and finally learns what a girl’s body really looks like, he who has to figure out on his own what masturbating is and how to do it and what techniques work best, he who has to decide for himself what sport he wants to play in middle school, he who has to figure out from his friends how to properly ask a girl out on a date, he who fails at getting said date...

...he who can’t concentrate in math class because he likes it much better when he’s writing short stories under his desk, he who gets into his first fight because one of the other kids in his class started making jokes about how he doesn’t have a father and how his mother was a whore who just slept with any guy she could get her hands on, he who was suspended for beating the other boy so hardly that he was almost left unconscious but still had to be sent to the hospital, he who scares away the other children at first before they realize it was a fluke happening and so they start to gather a crowd again, he who starts to look at the other boys when they’re all changing together in the locker room, he who denies that he does this when his best friend questions him about it relentlessly, he who feels guilt at the fact that he once had a crush on said best friend, he who never missed a day of school in his life until he turned fourteen and was beaten up after school once because he looked like such a twink, he who started faking sick so he wouldn’t have to go to school until his mother caught onto the ruse and had a meeting with the vice principal, he who forever became known as the mommy’s boy because he couldn’t stand up for himself, he who took a year off when he turned fifteen and was home-schooled by a tutor his mother hired with the little money they had...

...he who continuously meets his father every year for his birthday, he who drinks his first beer with the man when he’s fifteen and learns that it actually doesn’t taste all too bad despite what rumors he’d heard from his mother, who probably only wanted to nudge him away from the drink in the first place, he who drinks a little too much and ends up becoming best friends with the toilet the next day after his father has left already and his mother is working at the hospital and all he has with him are his porn magazines and the bathroom rug underneath him...

...he who starts to drink regularly, secretively, obsessively whenever his mother isn’t home to ease the pain of starting school again at sixteen, he who finds temporary comfort in a razor for a few weeks before dropping the habit after he hears on the news about a girl who committed suicide that way in a town a few miles north of them, he who is still haunted by the memories his classmates left behind even though nobody bothers him anymore because he’s lost a lot of weight and gotten out of his pudgy phase and he doesn’t look like such a twink anymore even though he still does sometimes sneak a peek in the boys’ locker room, he who is always scared of being rediscovered, or discovered for the first time, whichever one is worse...

...he who starts to think about college applications early because he wants to get as far away from his hometown as possible, he who applies to the best pre-med program he can find because not only is it far away but it’s a damn good school too, he who is yelled at by his mother for applying because it’s too far and too expensive and the only way he’d be allowed to go is if he got a full scholarship, he who doesn’t receive the full scholarship and is stuck sticking in the same state close to home because his mother prefers it that way and it’s safer and she’d miss him if he was too far, he who obliges because all he’s ever wanted to do was make his mother happy and go to a good college so he could get a good enough job where he could help his mother leave this poor existence behind and he could take care of her the way she deserves...

...he who asks the girl of his dreams to his senior prom and she says yes and he’s only a little disappointed that she said yes because now he actually has to go through the motions of getting ready for prom, he who spends more time than necessary picking out a tuxedo to match her green dress, he who drives up to her house in his rusty shit truck sweating buckets because this is prom and what kind of night would it be if he wasn’t nervous, he who picks the corsage to match her eyes, he who arrives to the prom fashionably late and asks her to dance and together they sway on the dance floor to the rhythm of the music, he who is an expert at switching tempo between songs – fast, slow, rock, hip hop, old school, pop – and can thankfully keep up with his pretty date’s energy, he who brings said date to an empty stairwell where the two of them kiss for the first time, first gently, then hard, then they’re everywhere at once and there’s hands and grabbing and missing clothes and a condom appears somehow and everything is raw and unpracticed but neither of them really minds because this is the first time neither of them has been alone...

...he who spends his first few months the summer before college trying to keep in touch with the girl but she prefers to get around rather than stay tied down to one person, he who drinks himself into a stupor because he thought they were right and that they’d work out but apparently he wasn’t all right and he wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, because he usually never is, because he wasn’t enough to take care of his mother and he wasn’t enough for his father to want to stick around for very long so why should he be enough for this girl when she could have so much better, like the drinking that’ll kill her new boyfriend within the week or the drugs that’ll kill her the following month...

...he who spends most of the summer dicking around on the Internet looking at porn or reading from sports magazines or hanging out at the local mall because he has nothing better to do, he whose mother finds out about his drinking and yells herself hoarse and nearly hits him but thinks better of it and instead cries herself to sleep that night which is so much worse than being hit and he’d rather take the smacking right now anyway, he who gets rid of all the alcohol he has hidden in his room because if there’s one thing he doesn’t want, it’s to disappoint his mother, because he’s already disappointed in himself and he can’t bear to lose her support too...

...he who meets his college roommate at the local diner a week before the semester begins and finds out that the guy dabbles in the art of drugs, he who has to fight with the student housing office to switch to a different roommate because they don’t want to be hassled but he doesn’t want to be near this kind of guy so they’d damn well better switch his roommate or so help him God...

...he who meets his second new roommate on move-in day and together they hit it off right away and he thinks the guy is mildly attractive but he doesn’t show it for fear of having college end up just like public school in his hometown so he just keeps quiet, he who joins the college track team but then quits because his pre-med courses are keeping him busy enough as it is, he who can’t keep a steady girlfriend until he meets ‘the one’ in his biology class and asks her to coffee, he who doesn’t normally drink coffee but chokes it down anyway for her sake because all she drinks is that free trade shit so he might as well at least make an attempt to enjoy it but he doesn’t, he who feels like this college thing isn’t all its cracked up to be as his dad misses his nineteenth birthday and doesn’t even send a card to make up for it, doesn’t even attempt to make an excuse, doesn’t even try to apologize for it...

...he whose mother goes missing one weekend and he drives home in that piece of shit truck of his, he who goes around interviewing neighbors and colleagues and coworkers and friends and book club members and PTA members but nobody has seen or heard from her in quite some time, he who goes to his house and investigates for himself because he knows there has to be some sort of clue lying around somewhere, he who knows and loves his mother because she wouldn’t just pack up and leave him without saying anything, he who suddenly feels more alone now than ever before because this is his mother and she’s the one steady light in his life...

...he who finds a nasty surprise waiting for him in his room when he sees the thing that looks like his mother but isn’t his mother as it rushes him and bites at his face, he who thinks this is some kind of game and this is some kind of crazy kiss but then her teeth are ripping chunks out of his neck and he’s bleeding everywhere, getting red on the carpet and flailing to get away as he tries to crawl along on the ground, he who gets cornered on the staircase by a second creature, this one who looks suspiciously like a local cop but can’t be, because there he is, tearing bits of skin off his arms to grind his teeth into the muscle there, he who suddenly wonders, in his last moments of consciousness, whether or not he tastes good...

...he who wakes up on the floor of his old high school gymnasium, dressed in that same tuxedo, he who stands up and confusedly looks around before realizing that this is his senior prom again and there’s the girl who broke his heart but she looks the same as she did back then, he who takes her hand without thinking twice and relives the memories, he who has no idea where he is or what’s going on but he’s going to enjoy every second of it while he can, he who doesn’t realize it but this is the fifth time he’s waking up to this heaven, the fifth time he’s ‘losing his virginity,’ the fifth time he’s dancing with this girl to this song...

...he whose routine is broken one day by two people in business suits who tell him that they’re angels and they have a job for him to do, he who is told that he has to save the world by becoming a vessel, whatever the hell that is, he who is told that if he chooses to leave Heaven he will become a soldier in a war that will change the face and fate of the planet, but if the angels win it will be for the better, he who wants his own compensation, he who is told that if he helps the angels and becomes a vessel that he’ll get to see his mother again...

...he who does everything for the only woman who has ever been a steady light in his life, he who is raised from the dirt and filth and soot, he who meets his brothers for the first time, he who is betrayed, trapped, lied to, deceived on all ends by everyone around him, he who learns that sometimes people pick and choose who their family is depending on what comes easiest to them because even though family is everything, he should’ve known there’d be a little footnote that reads ‘but only the family that actually matters,’ because he knows he sure as hell doesn’t matter and that’s why they’ve left him behind in that room to be killed again...

...he who is not dead, but merely stagnant, hovering in between life and death and whatever else there is in between because there’s nothing to him anymore but at the same time he can feel warmth, he who doesn’t realize it yet but this is the archangel, the host for his body, he who will be using him as a vessel, he who needs to fight his brother to win the war that many have died trying to prevent and begin...

...he who sits backseat to his own mind and body and can only watch the events unfolding before him like some sort of sick film at the movie theater, he who wants desperately for anybody to hear him screaming in his own head but knows that the archangel will never let him get a word in edgewise, he who kicks and bites and scratches tooth and nail at the walls trapping him in there, he who is infuriated by the archangel’s cruel laughter at the fact that he will never escape or be able to make a sound, he who watches helplessly as the archangel and his brother – also possessed – circle each other in that graveyard as they prepare for the ultimate battle, the war to end all wars, he who can do nothing to ward off the holy oil Molotov that gets thrown his way, he who burns fierce and pure and white as he and the archangel disappear from the plane of existence for what seems like days but was really only minutes, he who screams bloody murder in his own mind as he and the archangel and his brother fall down, down into that black pit...

...he who has to endure decades of battle, war, carnage, as the two archangels rage on inside the pit they’ve fallen into, he who is abandoned and left to rot and falls every downward, he who must learn to defend himself or die trying, but it doesn’t really matter, does it, because he knows he’s going to die anyway because this is Hell and he knows it and there’s no telling what will happen to him down here especially now that he’s on his own...

...he who is alone on the ground, alone wherever he is and he knows it but at the same time he’s in denial because he was once with the archangel, the one who he thought cared about him at least a little bit, at least a smidge, the one who tried to heal his broken limbs and skin and regrow him and remold him into a newer better image every time he was destroyed the first few decades before he was abandoned, he who feels more alone now than ever because he’d grown so used to the archangel’s presence and now he has nothing, not even himself, not the archangel, not even the archangel’s brother or his own brother, who’d been rescued earlier because Lord knows the world only ever cares about him and not about the other one because the other one is a bastard and a fatherless son of a bitch and nobody really ever notices him anyway, he who is forgotten about long after he’s dead, he whose gravesite is nameless because he lived a nameless forgetful life...

...he who learns the true meaning of fear...

...he who starts to give up hope because as far as he knows this is the end of the line for him and there’s no telling what kind of miserable existence he deserves otherwise, he who is more than shocked when his archangel lays siege to the bottom of the pit and frees him from his chains and flies with him tucked between his grace and his essence, shielding him from the rest of the pit, he who helps the archangel buffet the attacks from the angry warring brother as he tries to drag them both back down, he who is relieved when he and the archangel break through the surface and find themselves in a hotel before he passes out from exhaustion...

...he who learns how to trust again, because he’s forgotten what the word means and how to deal with this new sensation of what it means to have a friend or a confidante or whatever the hell else he’s supposed to call the archangel who rescued him because at this point words have no real meanings and he doesn’t know what to even do in this situation...

...he who feels warmth for the first time in decades, in over a century, but doesn’t know where his warmth is coming from, he who wonders if it’s from the grace in his body, he who wonders if it’s the archangel who rescued him, he who wonders what could possibly be happening to him to make him feel these things for the creature that had abandoned him in the first place, he who wonders if really abandonment was the right word to even use in this situation because sometimes he doubted himself and doubted his judgment because for all he knew he was biased because of what happened to him and to them and to the rest of the world while they were down below...

...he who remembers what it feels like to burn, to be torn apart, yet has to wear a mask every day because he knows that if he shows the slightest sign of fear or trepidation that the others will lock him away in that panic room or even tie him down like he heard they’d done to his other brother once, he who knows that putting on a mask is his greatest strength and also his biggest downfall, he who knows the dangers of hiding his feelings but he can’t help himself because what else would he do to help himself, he who can’t help others, but tries his best anyway...

...he who remembers...

...he who still knows what a kiss on the forehead feels like, he who knows what it means to give a hug or be given a hug, he who knows what it feels like to love unconditionally and to be loved in the same fashion, albeit only by his mother but in all honesty that was the only kind of love he needed at the time because it was the only love necessary to survive, he who knows true loss because that kind of love was taken away from him all too soon and all too violently and all too bloody, much like the rest of the things in his life, including his own...

...he who feels pain, fear, sadness, anger, betrayal, love, despite all those years underneath when he should’ve been desensitized and broken and flawed and maimed beyond repair because of what happened to him and his soul and his very essence and everything that happened to him should’ve left him a hollow empty shell like his other brother but it didn’t because for whatever reason the grace had chosen him and him alone and it had bonded with him and chosen him as a kindred spirit and instead of only healing him now it was attaching itself to him and weaving its way through his body and evolving him and morphing him...

...he who tries his hardest not to let his anger and his thirst for vengeance get the better of him, he who knows that he should be learning forgiveness especially after what he had experienced, he who spent too many years being angry at too many different people and too many different things, he who is tired of being angry, tired of thirsting for revenge, tired of even being tired in the first place, he who tries his hardest to make amends in his own mind but when he translates those feelings into actions he doesn’t exactly do the best job...

...he who still tries anyway, no matter how many times he fails or how many people he upsets or how many people yell at him, no matter how often he thinks he isn’t good enough to help because why should he be when he couldn’t even help himself during his lifetime, couldn’t even stop himself from drinking or hurting himself or spiraling downwards in his own head whenever things looked a little rough...

...he who might be falling for the archangel, falling even when he’d already been raised...

...he who sits in his own head sometimes and relives memories from his past life because those memories offer him the only comfort right now, the only thing keeping him stable and sane and balanced because without them he would cease to be anything, he who is afraid he’ll stop being human if he lets go of these memories...

...he who isn’t human anyway because of the grace within his body, he who has already wasted so much time and effort trying to hold onto his humanity only to have it ripped away from him in so little time and with so little effort, he who has worked for everything and gained nothing for his efforts except about eight hundred more muscles, new dangers, and a new load of confusion and feelings...

...he who loves breathing, loves loving, loves feeling the things inside his chest and his body and his heart but doesn’t know if what he’s feeling is real or if it’s all a part of his grace and the rest of the essence running through his body, he who doesn’t know himself anymore because he’s not even sure who or what ‘he’ is, he who has nothing left to himself but his own name and even that seems to be a lie in and of itself because of his father and his brothers and everything that was supposed to be dynamic about a family was reversed in his life...

...he who cannot hold a candle to his family because he knows he’s not worth the same as them, he who knows he’s always second or third to their first priorities, he who has never been a priority in anyone’s life before and he’s resigned himself to this faux-existence with a kind of sad recognition and even though there’s a voice inside telling him that he’s worth so much more than he gives himself credit for, he can’t help but feel that this half-assed life is all he’ll ever be familiar with, he who dies more times than he cares to remember because he’s good at death and dying and perhaps that should be his profession instead of saving lives, because Lord knows he’s pretty close with death...

...he who knows that normalcy is just a thin veil covering the truth behind everything in the world, he who fears to stand between the veil and see both sides because both of them could destroy him in a heartbeat, he who has no place in either and so he inhabits his own little space, he who hopes he’s finally safe but there’s something deep inside him telling him otherwise...

...he who does, feels, knows, understands, relives, experiences all of these things, is a hero, and while Adam Milligan doesn’t think himself one, in time he will come to understand there’s more to his life than death and dying, than fire and brimstone, than being second to Sam and Dean Winchester all the time because he’s really only gained two things so far out of being their brother. One was learning that sometimes you can’t even count on your own family, and the other was a new catch phrase.

Son of a bitch.