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Movie night with the boys was always fun. For this one, Dean had insisted on doing classic horror movies. “Come on, you know the lore is so inaccurate in those,” Sam complained. “Don’t we get enough vampires and werewolves and stuff?”
“One, who cares about the lore, it’s about the movies,” Dean said, holding up a finger in Sam’s face. “Two, nobody likes the crappy documentary shit you keep trying to make us watch.”
“That’s not true,” Castiel interrupted. “I quite enjoy most of them.”
“Yeah, well, not even you liked that stupid thing about sheep he made us watch last time,” Dean grumbled. “And three: It is Halloween. This is what you do.” He grinned, confident that this was an argument winner.
“I have a movie we need to watch if we’re doing monster movies,” Gabriel said. “It’s called Black Sheep and you will love it and maybe it’ll get the taste of the sheep documentary out of our mouths.”
“Will you guys ever shut up about the sheep documentary?” Sam said. “Fine. Monster movies it is.”
Black Sheep was as ridiculous as Gabriel promised – carnivorous zombie sheep. Dean got to choose next, and he went with Dracula. Then Castiel chose The Creature from the Black Lagoon. When Gill-Man first showed up on screen, Gabriel burst out laughing. “That’s where I got this guy from!”
“Huh?”
“A few years back, when I was playing Loki and giving people their just deserts, there was this dude who took great joy in messing with water. Dumping trash, pissing in it, that sort of thing. I set Gill-Man on him. It was hilarious watching him get drowned in water he’d just finished polluting.”
“You killed him because he peed in rivers?” Dean said, face contorting in disgust. “Dude, that’s a huge overreaction, don’t you think?”
Gabriel gave an exaggerated eyeroll. “Technically, Gill-Man killed him. I just put Gill-Man in the position to do it. I’d have intervened if I thought he deserved it, but he was a great big bag of dicks. There were so many other things I could have done and he’d have brought it on himself.”
“I know you’re a trickster, and some of your tricks are hilarious, but do you really need to kill them?” Castiel said.
“I try not to anymore, but when I’m turning lab animals loose on unethical researchers, it’s hard to keep that from happening.” Gabriel gestured to the screen. “The monster could have chosen not to kill him. Monsters don’t always go for the kill. This one was just so pissed off by what the dude did to his lake that he wasn’t inclined to show mercy.”
“Dude, still. They’re jerks, but…” Sam shook his head. “There’s a reason we tried to kill you.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I try to go for non-fatal now. You’ve shown me the light. Giving them traumatic experiences that no one will believe is way more fun anyway!” Gabriel winked. “Relax, boys. You don’t have to kill me for killing anyone else. If something does get out of hand, I just bring them right back, these days. Unless they really deserve it.”
Sam crossed his arms. “For example?”
“For example, last month I came across a guy who really liked sex. That part, I could sympathize with, who doesn’t?”
Castiel glared at Gabriel. “Sam, for one.”
“Yeah, true, but you know what I mean,” Gabriel said, reaching out to muss Sam’s hair. “Lots of people like sex. It’s fun and it feels good and it’s a good way to bond with someone. But this guy, he didn’t care much about whether his partners wanted it too. Drunk, high, passed out, screaming for help… if he could stick his dick in it, he would. So I set him up for an alien abduction anal probe. He couldn’t deal with how he’d been violated, so he shot himself as soon as he got back. Decided not to bring that one back.”
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. “Yeah, okay, that dude was a monster, and he killed himself anyway, you didn’t,” Dean said. “Man, the alien abduction… that never gets old, does it?”
“Not yet. I am so grateful to the people who came up with the modern myth. So much more fun than boogeymen, and definitely more fun than using whatever real culture’s taking the blame for missing kids in that time and place.”
Sam leaned forward. “You know, it never occurred to me to ask, but… are there aliens? Is there life out there?”
Gabriel scoffed. “Course there’s life out there, it’s a really really big universe. There’s just not life hovering a few million miles above us stealing our cows and messing with corn and probing our anuses.”
“Are we done bickering about the Trickster being a Trickster so that we can watch the movie?” Castiel interjected. “Sam, I know you’re curious, but it would be a bad idea to take you to another planet or abduct an alien to bring here. That’s how these myths get started.”
“Yeah, fair enough," Sam said. "Just knowing they’re out there, that’s cool enough for me. Maybe someday we can escape this planet and get out there and meet them.”