Noxious

It was dark. The couple was walking through the park, picture perfect setting for a stereotypical slasher movie. The man commented on this and his girlfriend laughed nervously. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and whispered something. She smiled at him. The man's arm tightened around her shoulders briefly and he kissed the shell of her ear.

They exited the park and started walking down a deserted strip mall. Half of the shops had gone out of business. Of those, many had been broken into and boarded up. The effect made the strip more eery than the park.

The girl exhaled and her breath steamed up the air before her. Beside her, her boyfriend shivered. She didn't think it was that cold, so she frowned at him, concerned.

"What's the matter, Tim?" she asked, reaching over and pulling his jacket tighter around him.

He looked at her, unfazed, his lips stretching in a smile. He nuzzled her neck and she giggled. And then his eyes seemed to glaze over. In one swift movement, he turned her around and plunged his hand into her chest.

She didn't even scream. She just looked at him, her mouth hanging open as a thin stream of blood dribbled down her chin. She let out one last gurgling sigh and the life escaped her eyes.

He slowly removed his hand from her chest cavity and looked at it for a second, the girl limp in his arm. He reached out at touched her cheek with just one finger, leaving a small spot of red on the olive skin. His body convulsed violently and he dropped her. Surprised, he knelt down beside her, touching her cheek twice more before convulsing again, and collapsing.

δ

Sam scanned the headlines, trying to ignore the obnoxious music and people surrounding him. No matter how many times Dean dragged him to these bars, he would never get used to it. Nor would he ever understand why he even let Dean take him to these places. He looked up when someone talked to him. It was a redhead with brown eyes. She was wearing what could only be described as a glorified bathing suit. Not his type.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Uh, I'm Sam," he said softly, though he had already turned her down in his head. Still, he smiled up at her and tilted down the screen of his laptop.

"Hollie," she smiled. He had to admit, she was cute.

She commented on how he didn't look like he was from around there. He shook his head and told her he wasn't, and artfully avoided her question of why he was in town; he found it only turned women on when he told them he was investigating a murder. More so when he flashed his badge. The suit was bad enough for some of them. He let her talk at him for a little while longer, always polite, before he found a decent excuse to leave.

Dean was at the pool table, hitting miss after miss against some unattractive skinny guy with a way-too-pretty girl cheering him on. Sam wondered if she was his sister or he payed her. He gathered, as he approached, Dean had already lost quite a bit of money to this guy, and the latest game was ending. Sam put on his disappointed angry face and went to yell at his brother, smiling on the inside.

"Shit, Dean, that was for dad's funeral! What the hell were you thinking?"

"I got this," Dean replied, slurring his words even though Sam could tell he was barely even buzzed. "I'm fine, Sam. I'm fine."

And then he shot and missed and the game was over a moment later when the guy made the easiest shot ever. His sister or whatever kissed him on the cheek and his cheeks glowed red.

"Hold on," Dean said. "Hold on. One more game. Double or nothing."

"I'm sorry," the guy said. "You're too drunk. I wouldn't want to take any more of your money." He started to walk away, but Dean called out to him.

"No, no please man. You gotta listen. I need this money. Look, play my brother. He's sober."

Sam pursed his lips and whisper-yelled something about how terrible of a player he was, but Dean waved an absent hand at him and pleaded with the guy some more. Sam frowned at his brother when the guy agreed to the game, and he let the guy make three unopposed hits before wiping out the whole table without a break, making one shot after another. He stared at Sam with his mouth hanging open as he seamlessly shot one ball after another into the pockets. When he finished, he held out his hand to the man, who shakily put a little over five hundred dollars into Sam's hand. Dean grinned and chuckled, the facade of inebriation gone.

"I've never been hustled before," the man said, realization hitting him soon after.

"There's a first time for everything, my friend," Dean replied, laughing. He patted Sam on the back, saying, "Let's go, Sammy."

Back at the motel, Dean asked Sam to reexplain the whole case. Sam glared at his brother, having explained it several times already, but recited the information anyways.

"Four months ago a girl was on a walk with her boyfriend. He shoved his hand through her chest, killing her, and then fell into a coma. He woke up three weeks ago and we've got an appointment to talk to him tomorrow, though he says he doesn't remember a thing. He says 'It was like I was possessed.'" Sam looked at Dean pointedly before continuing. "Same thing again three more times, all in three months, all on the same day of the month, except this time the boyfriends didn't fall into a coma. They're still awake and being tried for manslaughter. We'll be able to talk to them tomorrow, too."

"We always get the fucking weird ones."

"It gets better." Dean groaned. "They, uhm, they paint smiley faces on the girls cheeks."

"Okay. With-with what?" he waved a hand around.

"With the girls' blood." Sam made a face of disgust at his brother.

Dean ran a hand over his mouth and licked his lips. Then, in a flash, his mood changed. He jumped up and said "Shower dibs," racing to the bathroom.

"You're an actual five year old," Sam shouted, annoyed. He powered down his laptop and got into bed to wait for the shower. "Five years old."

δ

Timothy Mentana maintained that he didn't know what happened. His defense was claiming temporary insanity, and he was claiming he was possessed by a demon. Sam assumed the defense was going to claim he's just delusional if he kept going on like this.

"Listen," he said. "I told this to like twelve special agents already. I don't know nothing. One minute I was walking with Cindy through this park and then I'm shoving my hand through her fucking lungs. It wasn't me though. I swear it, I swear. I would-- I loved her. I was going to ask her to marry me." Tears dribbled from his eyes, and Sam handed him a tissue. "Somethin' was controlling me man."

The boys listened to the rest of his argument, which didn't really differ from the first part, and then left to go talk to the other three. Each had a similar story: they were just out and about in the evening, and then they shoved their hands through their girlfriends' chests.

"It's probably just a ghost," Dean said when they left the last guy. He was holding it together the least, probably because it had happened such a short time ago.

Sam nodded and voiced his agreement. They went back to the motel and Googled recent violent deaths, focusing mainly on that day of the month. There was one that fit the timeline.

Ashly Merin died five months earlier, a month before the killings started, on the same day of the month. She was a straight-A cheerleader at the local high school. One of the popular kids, very pretty, going places. Unfortunately, she was somewhat unstable. She had jumped off a bridge into a rocky river when she found her boyfriend of two years cheating on her. Sam decided that she fit the profile of their ghost pretty much perfectly, and reported his findings to his brother.

Dean grinned at Sam crookedly. "Let's go dig us up some cheerleader."

δ

Sam was the first to hit the wood of the coffin. He looked up to Dean, and the rest of the dig was rushed. They eagerly pushed dirt out of the way, sweat coating their limbs and cooling in the night air. Sam jumped out of the hole and Dean stood to the side, pulling up the lid of the coffin. The body had not fully decomposed yet, and Dean jerked back away from the smell.

He jumped out of the hole and took the lighter fluid from Sam. Sam poured the salt over the remains and Dean finished it off. They sat on the hood of the Impala, watching the flames burn down.

"What if we were wrong?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "Well, tomorrow's the day, right? The day the boyfriends go nuts? I guess we'll see then."

"Yeah, I guess so." Sam paused. "You hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what--"

"What the hell is this?" a voice said from across the grave. A young man came out of the shadows. He had flowers and a flashlight in his hand. "What are you doing to my girlfriend?!"

Dean cursed under his breath and they jumped into action, picking up their shovels and getting in the Impala. The boy was still yelling at them, running around the grave, screaming now. Dean shouted back, asking who the fuck visits their dead girlfriend in the middle of the goddamn night. Apparently this guy.

δ

Sam cursed under his breath. They were across state lines two days later when he read the headline. He called his brother over, his eyebrows low over his slim hazel eyes.

"What?" Dean barked.

Sam gestured at the news report on the computer screen despairingly, and said, "Another one. Last night. Same M.O."

Dean cursed under his breath and ran a hand over his face. "Okay so we missed something. What did we miss?" he asked.

Sam shrugged and thought about it. "Well the whole smiley face thing never made any sense to me. Maybe it's got something to do with that."

"Okay... So what does it mean?"

Sam shrugged and slammed his laptop. "I guess we're going back."

δ

The sheriff thanked them when they came back and said he was just about to call the field office. The brothers swapped looks of masked relief.

Sam dove back into his research, studying deaths and missing persons. When he found something, he would call families claiming to be a reporter or something of the sorts. The boys couldn't find anything at all, not for two days. Sam spent most of his time between the motel and the library, his phone partially glued to his ear, while Dean spent time at the sheriff's office reading files and gossiping. And then suddenly--

"I got it," Sam said.

"I think I might have something, too. You sure?" Dean asked.

"Yes. Everything fits. Come back to the motel and we'll swap notes."

"Alright I'm on my way."

Sam didn't wait for his brother to get in the door before he was explaining his theories. Charlie Joseph was a twenty-eight-year-old man with Down Syndrome. He was killed in a car accident around the same time Ashly Martin committed suicide, except ten years before. After talking to his family and friends and anyone in general who knew him, and reading all sorts of reports and files and even a blog post on the topic, he had been able to piece together a solid story.

"Get this, Charlie was in love with his little brother's girlfriend Layla Watts, according to anyone who saw the two of them together. Apparently they were like best friends. Except Alvie, Charlie's brother, kinda hated them together. He would try and keep Layla from going near him and when she did, he would hit her. Apparently he was pretty abusive. One day he hit her so hard it killed her. He blamed it on his brother and people believed him. Charlie was on his way to court to hear his sentencing, driving through this town, and someone drove straight into the side of their car. Charlie was the only one who died." Sam smiled grimly. "Guess what they pulled off of his body after the wreck."

"Oh, god, what?" Dean asked slowly.

Sam turned his laptop around and showed Dean the picture. "A notepad with smiley faces drawn all over it."

"Is that--"

"His own blood."

Dean's eyebrows furrowed and he looked away from the evidence picture. "Okay so how does this connect back to our murders."

"Well, I think he possesses the guys and kills the girls like he was blamed for. And then, maybe he's got a partial death echo on him, and he draws a smiley face. The last thing he was doing when he died."

"Yeah, but why now? And why here?"

"Alvie died three days before the anniversary of Charlie's death. Drank himself to death after being released from a mental hospital for reportedly 'Seeing his brother's ghost'." Dean muttered something condescending, along the lines of 'well-rounded guy', under his breath. "And Charlie was buried here, in town. He didn't live here, and when he died, his parents didn't want him associated with their town or their family. So they left him here. "

Dean made a face. "I guess now all we gotta do is get rid of the bones."

δ

They set out for the cemetery at dusk, shovels in hand for the second time in a week. They had the pit dug in a couple of hours, Dean making sure it was perfectly rectangular. Sam never really understood why Dean insisted on that, but he never fought it, either. Once again, Dean pulled up the top of the casket and hopped out. This time, Sam kept watch while Dean lit the body. They let it burn for a while before throwing the lid of the casket down and refilling the hole.

Cases like these always brought on a silence when they ended, when it wasn't the ghost's fault. Charlie had never been asked to take the fall for his brother's violence, nor to die doing it. He had been turned into a vengeful spirit out of the spite of someone else. He didn't know any better.

They watched the flames die down from the hood of the Impala, and left soon after. In an effort to lighten the mood, Dean suggested sneaking into a Foreigner reunion concert two days drive from there. Sam, still a little down from the whole thing, agreed.

So they ditched town and took some time off, partied to Foreigner and met some groupies, and then were at it again like they always had been, and always would.