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“Magda’s not my name,” eyes sweeping back to the cross, a bare soul flickering underneath the watery sheen glazing her dully agonized eyes, “I’m the devil.” Lashes stretching wide across her back, spilling dirty and crimson repentance down the hollow sides of her spine. Edges of past wounds puckering up red and angry—furious at her. Furious at her hands flinching and moving against herself, against her will. The inflamed, scarred edges gnarled over the blood-stained flesh. Raw pink stretching over her flesh and lining the flagellations—pale and rough, texturing her back.
Like him. Pockmarking her back as twisted wounds did his face.
That burning, rotting energy—searing flesh right off the bones, tearing at the seams—flaring against the frame, ripping it to shreds. Slamming against the walls, ripping through the passageways of life like a lightning storm. Vicious and angry, exploding into every fiber, every atom. Shredding everything with savage glee. Cackling with the mad desire to create darkness-chaos-agony.
And noise. Shrieking and screaming, bellowing, shouting giggling laughing thundering singing—
Constant. Never ceasing and catapulting through the air, through his head, like an eruption.
There’s no noise here. The mild whistle of breeze flickering the candles—the gentle hum of a distant generator. His loudness isn’t here.
“You’re not the devil.” Sam’s voice keeps quiet, akin to the relative peace of the cellar. The scars on her back glisten in the warm light, blood running down in streaked rivulets. The sight of blood is familiar, simultaneously comforting and disturbing. Too relatable.
The girl’s eyes flinch back, as if just remembering there is someone with her. Her face set in a calm expression—not alarmed or curious. Either pain or indifference glazes her mind and face. Maybe even both. After pain and terror nothing feels real enough or important enough to matter. Blurring into a sheet of dark grey. Pallid and dead as it swallows you whole, that numbing pounding reverberating in the head and skin. Until feeling calm is just the same as feeling terrified.
But above all disbelieving. With a posture not even suspiciously guarded, simply disbelieving. She thinks it is true. Trusts her mother’s words to the very marrow of them—enough to whip herself. Enough to gash long, bloody marks down her back and feel satisfied with the torture.
“You aren’t.” The conviction comes stronger now, building up in his chest, growing with every breath of blood-tainted air. “I know you aren’t Magda. ”
She has turned to face him now, twisting at the waist, pulling the lashes taut from shoulder to hip. “You don’t understand.” For a second her face flinches, an unconscious reaction to the pain that fades away without a second thought.
He knows what it is like to be the devil. To feel the corruption.
“No,” Sam sits up straighter, clearing the confusion out of his throat, “you’re not.” Now the spark of contempt snapping behind a curtain of lank hair. Swaying back and forth like a dark pendulum. Shrouding half her face in shadow, exposing one to the wavering candlelight and then swaying back and obscuring the opposite side. Fly-aways glowing with the golden backlight.
“I know what—” the words trail off dumbly, and Sam—with his name rotting on his tongue and lurking in his mind—rolls the muscle around his mouth to make sure it remains attached to the bottom of his mouth, thin flaps of raw sinew hooking from lower jaw to tip of his tongue. His jaw hasn’t disappeared then. Fingers—that run from hand to arm to shoulder to head to chest or wherever the center of him lies, the center that can feel what part of him is real—brush roughly against his cheek. Following the uneven stubble—
It reminds him of the fields they pass by. Him and Dean. With hacked-up stalks of corn cut down to the quick; sharp and strong, stiff against the wind and resistant to everything. Except fire; strong against everything except for the scorching and corrupting dissolving of fire—some call it purifying, cleansing, but it simply destroys everything. The good and evil; the black, white, and grey. Clean slate—empty and aching with loss, free of burden and crying in agony. Tears rolling down for nothing memorable, nothing real. An empty, robbing quiet that swallows everything like a tangible creature.
—the rough rasping of the beginning of some facial hair grating beneath his fingers, tracing along the jawline. Still there not swinging like a pendulum suspended on uneven lumps of gristle. “I know what the devil is like.” The words taste dry on his mouth, musty with blood and stale breath.
“No you don’t.”
Actually—“I do.” The laugh rasps from his throat, originating from some wry part of him. A shrewd part of his sanity; scarred over and filled with bitter loathing.
Her eyes gaze into his now, confusing flickering over her face, curiosity dancing with the shadows and warping candlelight. Dress pooling around her shoulders, stained yellow and brown from dried blood and sour pus—Magda wraps her bony arms around her knees, hugging them close and watching with questions planted deeply in her eyes.
“Well,” his posture shifts, responding to her own, latching on to each other. “First of all you’re a psychic—not the Devil.”
Her face flinches at the term, twisting in a sort of disgust. The strange stereotyped mysticism around the word—veiled women with bangles around their wrists, telling futures through battered cards and swirling balls of lighted mist. Psychic—a cheap, plastic word all fake and full of flaws. Flimsy, paper-thin, something she can claw right through and face the mirror on the other side.
“Powers, right?” He scrambles for some semblance of recovery, trying to grasp the tremulous thread of her attention in his hands. “I have them too—well they’re kind of quiet, dormant I guess right now but,” a soft sigh whistles past his lips, “ but, I get it.” his hands fumble in the air, trying to grasp the concept, trying to show Magda the Plan that had been laid out for them. Somehow she escaped—and the plan burned while she remained ignorant. Burned to cold ash that led Sam away to another fight while the others went free. “Powers like dreams that could tell the future, or—or killing demons—”
“Demons?”
Her own head follows his nod, moving up then down slowly. “I’m a hunter.”
“Are you here to kill me?” Placid, the fear of death long gone.
“No.” The answer comes firm and unusually quick. “Hunters—” how to explain this now? How she is an abomination to them, how he is an abomination to his own people. Demon blood roiling through their veins, not the Devil but close. “Magda what’s in you isn’t the Devil. I have it too, it’s—”
“Then—then maybe the Devil is in both of us.”
Hellfire scorching his limbs, a hand writhing in his stomach where it shouldn’t be. And he just wants to itch at it. The pain and the agony is secondary but it itches, and it’s uncomfortable and Sam wants it to stop.
Gotcha Bucko—
“Stop,” the word is whispered, solitary. And yet Magda hears it, cocking her head with a curt curiosity. “He—the Devil isn’t in you.” Nails digging into Sam’s palm, bitten to the quick, too short to draw any blood. Fist clenching hard enough for the muscles to cramp and spasm under the force. “It’s demon blood.”
“You—you kill demons…” confusion tangled up in her words, battering her throat and shaking her voice.
“We aren’t demons either. Look, it’s a long story, but in the end you can still be a good person, Magda.”
Oh but, uh, you’re not a good person, Sammy boy—you’re a terrible person. That’s why you are in here—with me . His hand flinches open before clamping back together, the twitch of muscles protesting again. Focus on the light, the wind, the girl cross-legged in front of him with twin blood trickling down her back.
“I’ve done—” the words die across Sam’s tongue, bathing his mouth with the taste of disease and decay, “I’ve done some bad things,” he fights for purchase against his blood-slicked throat. It always tastes like blood now. “But that’s not because of this—this blood that’s in me. It’s because of my choices. My brother—Dean—and I, we fight monsters. We save people—” Ellen, Jo, Bobby, Ash, Kevin, Adam “—we save as many people as we can. Sometimes we can’t save them all.” his voice falls feather soft, the breeze stops and the candles calm, standing straight on their wicks—then it kicks back up and extinguishes six, smoke curling up towards the ceiling. Sam watches it for a while, watching the grey curl towards heaven.
“But we do a lot of good. And we fight demons, and other monsters—and we make sure they can’t hurt anyone else.”
“And…the Devil?”
Yeah, what about me bucko?
Sam nods, eyes flickering upwards, trying to search for remaining traces of smoke. “Sometimes we go up against the really bad guys.” The light words feel fake on his tongue—a poor attempt at shrugging off the voice whispering in his ear, clawing at his brain and constricting his throat.
“We’ve fought—we’ve fought the Devil.” Voice numb, a dryness plaguing his mouth, dropping the words quietly into the dim room.
“You killed the Devil?” Eyes wide and hopeful. A shimmering desperation that clouds her entire face. Magda leans forwards, dried trails of blood on her back cracking, sending spiderwebs of broken lines shattering through her back—breaking free from her cage of gore.
That’s really funny—don’t you think that’s funny? You can’t ever kill me Bucko, you can never ever ever ev-er kill me. I’ll always be here with ya’.
“No.” Her face falls immediately, shuffling back. “But, he’s locked away, and he will never be able to touch you.” The tears fall now, rolling down her face, washing away the stains from previous cries of agony—dripping down her throat and collecting in the dips of her collarbone. Magda kneels over, back arched towards the sky as more blood breaks off and flakes away. Her quiet sobs continue, relieved.
Bu-u-u-ut I can touch you—that’s an exciting thought, isn’t it? Right?
Shut up.
Sam places a hand on her shoulder, palm dyed with blood—blood that’s brothered to the one running through her veins and spilling across her back. The children with the demon blood. Not stained, not tainted. Their predetermined destiny shattered, their paths unfurling in a million directions.
And it’s peacefully quiet.