Chapter Text
The instant they reach the Mile 0 sign in the middle of the bridge, Dean slams a cassette into the tape player. Sam makes a face and slouches deeper in his seat as Dean starts tapping a complicated drumbeat out on the steering wheel. The spoken-word intro kicks in, and Sam knows he’s screwed when Dean starts chanting along. “They say that to really free your body... You gotta free your mind,” Dean drones. Sam wrinkles his nose, and Dean turns the volume up without looking at him. “So come on. Check this out.”
“Come on, man,” Sam protests as the organ starts up, “Bon Jovi? Really?”
“I hate you,” Dean says brightly, “You freaking Philistine. We’re in New Jersey. We’re listening to New Jersey.”
“Dude--”
“Shut up. Jon is speaking,” Dean instructs.
“Oh, so you two are on a first-name basis?”
Dean simply ignores him, bobbing his head to the beat. Sam snorts and shifts to look out the window as they cruise down 80, flanked by thick woods on either side.
“Lay Your Hands On Me” has transitioned into “Bad Medicine” by the time they finally pass the Welcome to New Jersey! sign, but it’s not until “Living in Sin” that Dean decides to have mercy and turn the stereo down to a level compatible with conversation. Of course, that conversation consists more of arguing over the music than anything else. Sam thinks most of the reason he did so well in forensics club at college was because he’d already had so much experience fighting with his family.
“I’m appreciating the culture, Sammy,” Dean argues, with all the boldness of a hotshot defense lawyer from the big city.
“Okay,” Sam concedes, “But that doesn’t have to mean Bon Jovi, dude. We could be listening to Sinatra--”
“My God, are you eighty?”
“--Springsteen--”
“On the way back,” Dean hedges.
"--Saves The Day, Thursday--"
"That whiny ass emo shit, are you kidding?"
"--My Chemical Romance--"
"Just say you sleep with men, Sammy, it's fewer syllables."
“--Misfits--”
“You wanna replace Jon with that little gnome Danzig? I hope you drop dead.”
“Okay, this weird attachment of yours to Jon Bon Jovi is starting to creep me out,” Sam says.
“You don’t understand him like I do,” Dean mourns, patting the stereo. Sam gives up.
———
Driving in New Jersey does not agree with Dean, Sam observes. Dean’s hardly a stranger to bending speed limits, but the Jersey drivers put him to shame.
“These people are fucking insane,” Dean fumes the third time he gets passed on the right by a dumpy minivan going eighty in a fifty-five lane. “Who raised you, asshat!” he yells through the windshield. Sam rubs his eyes.
Dean’s also not used to there being so many cars on the road at once; most of the driving they do is on the long desolate stretches of highway further west. Dean practically starts hyperventilating the first time they get stuck in traffic.
“Dude, I think you’re having a panic attack,” Sam observes, watching Dean’s knuckles go white.
“Shut up,” Dean snaps anxiously. “They’re so close to my baby, Sam. It’s indecent.”
Sam nods pityingly. Dean reaches over to smack at him, and misses. The momentary distraction makes him slow down for a fraction of a second, triggering a chorus of angry honks from behind the car, and Dean stomps on the gas, swearing profusely about how if any of these goddamn motherfucking jagoffs try to pass him he’s going to jump out of the car with a tire iron and beat them to death.
“You could just shoot them,” Sam says, amused. “That would be easier.”
“No,” Dean says darkly. “I want the satisfaction of killing them with my own two hands.”
80 gives way to 206, which gives way to 287, and they’re somewhere around Metuchen when a complicated set of jughandles finally gets the better of Dean, and, just like that, they’re lost.
At least, Sam thinks they’re lost. Dean’s pretty sure if they drive around for just a little bit longer they’ll get back onto the right road, probably. Sam is incredibly skeptical of this plan, and makes his opinion clear, in increasingly louder tones as the minutes of aimless travel tick by. They’re about thirty seconds from tearing each others’ throats out when Dean suddenly says, “PIT STOP!” and wrenches the wheel to the right, veering into the drab grey parking lot of a drab beige strip mall.
“What?” Sam says, taken off guard by the sudden change in velocity. Dean’s already put the car into park.
“Records,” Dean replies, pointing through the windshield at a particular section of the strip mall that, yes, does indeed say RECORDS in giant red letters above the window.
“No kidding,” Sam says.
“Let’s go check it out. We need a break. Stretch our legs. Decompress. Et cetera.”
You know what? Sam can’t really disagree with that. So they unfold themselves out of the car and head towards the modest little record shop. The instant they’re through the door, Dean makes a beeline for the classic rock section in the back right corner. Sam hangs back, taking it all in.
The walls are covered with framed pictures; curious, Sam leans closer and realizes that each photo is of a concert or a signing held at the store, meticulously dated. There’s a stage at the back of the building that Sam hadn’t noticed before. It’s empty now, but Sam can just imagine a collection of sensitive long-haired guys up there, cradling microphones and guitars.
Sam begins a methodical lap of the store, carefully examining each photograph on the wall to see how many names he can recognize. It’s a pretty eclectic collection of artists, ranging from Rob Zombie to Bad Religion to the Donnas to Fountains of Wayne to Less Than Jake to the New York Dolls to Senses Fail– and around again. As Sam works his way along the perimeter, Dean periodically comes over to show him weird CDs, like a cat bringing dead birds to Sam’s doorstep.
“Dude. Check this out.” Dean proudly presents a CD labeled "BONGWATER: The Power of Pussy." Sam squints, unimpressed.
“This place rules,” Dean goes on, unbothered by Sam’s lack of enthusiasm for novelty psychedelic rock. Sam’s actually pretty inclined to agree with his statement, though; it feels like this place has got everything. “Man, if I had a record player,” Dean says wistfully. “I’d clean these guys out.” Sam doesn’t have a chance to reply before Dean bounds off to some other far-flung corner of the store.
Sam looks up at the wall. High above his head hangs a red and black record, scribbled over with signatures in silver Sharpie. He wishes Dean had a record player, that Dean could have a record player, that they didn’t have to keep their possessions constrained to whatever bare necessities will fit in the backseat of the Impala. Sam would buy Dean every record in this store to say, Thanks for looking out for me, and maybe it would help make up for all the things Dean’s had to go without for so long. Help make up for all the crap he went through because of this family.
Then Dean shouts from across the store that they've got some Celine Dion CDs Sam should check out, and Sam's guilt evaporates.
To close his leisurely circuit of the shop, Sam ends up at the magazine section. Dean, at this point, has made it up to the register and is leaning easily on the counter, chatting with the heavily tattooed guy behind it about some metal band or another. Good, Sam thinks vindictively. Let Dean inflict his trivia on someone besides Sam for once.
One magazine in particular catches his eye. Among the collection of band guys pouting and glowering from the music magazine covers, a horned stone face leers out, below wonky orange letters reading “Weird N.J.”, and a tiny yellow subheading explaining: “Your Travel Guide to N.J.’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets.” Sam picks it up and starts flipping through; it’s essentially just a statriotic collection of wacky roadside attractions and improbable paranormal experiences. Sam rolls his eyes a little. Sure, Debbie from Weehawken. That was definitely an alien craft you saw over I-95.
"Whatcha got," Dean says, from over Sam's shoulder. Sam startles, but it’s too late. Dean has swiped the magazine from his hands and is leafing through it, laughing his ass off at the bizarre headstones, mystifying graffiti, and dubious UFO sightings. A roadside billboard reading “Jesus didn’t come to Rub it In, He came to Rub it Out” nearly sends Dean into hysterics. Sam averts his eyes, pretending he doesn’t know this person who’s absolutely losing it over a dumb novelty magazine in the middle of a place of business.
“You know what, my friend?” Dean calls to the guy at the register, practically wiping a tear from his eye, “I think I will get something after all.” Four dollars later, he tosses the magazine to Sam as they’re walking back to the car. “Some reading material for you, Sammy. Keep your big throbbing brain fed for the rest of the ride.”
"We're still lost," Sam says as they come up alongside the Impala, deciding that changing the subject is the better part of valor.
Dean clicks his tongue at him. "Incorrect. Got directions from Nose Ring back there. We just have to get back to 9 and we're basically golden."
“Oh,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows. “I thought he was just flirting.”
Dean scowls. “Ha, ha. For that, we’re listening to Slippery When Wet next. Get in the damn car.”
———
“Can we please act like adults,” Dean snaps as they come off the Driscoll Bridge and roll straight into a deadlock. Sam’s gotten very good at ignoring Dean’s road rage over the years, so he simply looks out the window. For the past couple hours, it’s been nothing but large, uniform areas of grass periodically exchanged for large, uniform areas of trees, but it’s way less demoralizing to look at a boring landscape than at the legion of rear bumpers ahead. Dean mutters darkly to himself, and Sam looks for birds. Eventually, they’re moving again, and Dean’s cursing no longer drowns out “Livin’ On A Prayer.” Sam’s not sure it’s an improvement, but he’s too hypnotized by the side of the road sweeping past to mind that much. “Livin' On A Prayer” isn’t that bad anyway.
He watches the swollen body of a white-tailed deer advance on the shoulder.
One time when Sam was younger, maybe eleven, Dean hit a doe. It wasn’t his fault, really; it was dark, and the road was quiet, and she had come sprinting out of the woods at the exact wrong moment. Dean had slammed on the brakes, but it wasn’t enough, and the doe’s body crumpled, smacking against the front bumper and folding limply to the ground.
Dean had leapt out of the car, swearing, and Sam, heart pounding, had followed. The deer was already dead. Dean turned around from where he’d been crouched to look, face white in the headlights, and said, “Get back in the car, Sam. Don’t look.” But it was too late. Sam had seen the brown glassy eyes and the pink tongue hanging out of her mouth and the glistening guts spilled across the asphalt, and it made his heart lurch into his stomach. “Get in the car, Sammy,” Dean said, gentler, “Let me handle this.” That time, Sam had obeyed, curling up in the backseat while Dean grabbed the doe by the legs and started dragging her out of the road. Despite his best efforts, Sam felt his eyes begin to sting.
There’d been no reason for the deer to die. She had just made a mistake, because she was a deer and didn’t know any better. Sam stared out the window and tried to breathe deep.
Eventually, Dean finished up and let himself back into the car. Sam watched from the corner of his eye as Dean frowned for a second, seemingly confused that Sam wasn’t in the passenger seat, before he realized Sam was hunched up in the back, hugging his knees to his chest and sniffing quietly.
“Dude, don’t cry,” Dean said, concern in his voice. “It’s just a deer.” Sam looked at him through blurry eyes and said nothing. Dean was quiet for a few seconds. Then he got out of the driver's seat, walked around to the other side of the car, opened the backseat door, and slid in next to Sam. He didn’t say anything. Neither did Sam, but he did relax ever so slightly, side pressing against Dean’s. Sam doesn’t really know how long they sat there, car parked smack in the middle of the desolate road, but in his memory it feels like hours. Eventually Dean got out and started the car up again. They drove over the bloodstain in the middle of the road and kept going.
They’d been driving to meet their dad somewhere, exact details fuzzy in Sam’s memory, and when they got there, John was furious about the dents in the grille. Not furious in what Sam had come to internally label his “hot” way, where he was loud and violent and explosive, but furious in his “cold” way, where he seemed calm and collected, and if you didn’t know him like Sam and Dean knew him, you wouldn’t even know he was mad at all. When John was cold, he had a way where he could, with a word or a look, make them feel like they were mud stuck to the sole of his boot. Sometimes, when he was in a cold mood, he would smile at them, and then they knew it was really bad.
“You’re goddamn lucky it didn’t hit the windshield,” he’d remarked to Dean, who had just stood there and taken it. Dean always stood there and took it, which had made Sam hate him in a way. He couldn’t stand watching Dean lock his jaw and let their dad dress him down without ever saying more back than ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ When Sam fought with their dad, he yelled at him. Even when the man was on his deathbed, Sam still yelled at him.
Dean had ended up repairing all the dents by himself. By the time he was done, you couldn’t tell the car had ever killed a doe.
Off the side of the Garden State Parkway, the deer’s body recedes in the rearview mirror. Sam can’t see the head, so he doesn’t know if it’s a stag or a doe. It doesn’t really matter.
———
These are the particulars of the case as Sam knows it. A week ago, Hope Vaughn went camping in Bass River State Forest. Park rangers later found her campsite totally trashed-- tent shredded, saplings uprooted, and Vaughn and her two dogs viciously disemboweled by the firepit.
Bear attack is one of the theories in the papers, but bears are rare in the area, and Sam’s never heard of a bear ripping someone’s guts out and tossing them around a campsite without actually taking any bites. And anyway, not once in Sam’s hunting career has it actually just been a bear. At this point Sam's not sure he believes real bears even attack humans at all.
Inexplicably violent death coupled with animal mutilation-- in Sam’s eyes that points straight to the unnatural. Regardless, he can’t deny that they need more info to be sure. So that’s how they’ve ended up trekking deep into the Pine Barrens, armed with fake press badges in case anyone is still at the site. Sam feels like an idiot for not remembering to put on bug spray. What if he gets ticks? Does bug spray work on ticks? Or just things that fly? Do ticks fly?
“I was expecting something more like a Christmas tree farm,” Dean remarks, when they’re about half an hour deep into the Pine Barrens.
Sam rolls his eyes, even though he kind of was as well.
Truthfully, to Sam’s eyes, the Pine Barrens look pretty much like any forest. There are tall trees. There are shorter trees. There are bushes. Behold, a forest. Admittedly, the ground is weird. It’s carpeted with a loose layer of dried pine needles and pinecones, concealing dry white sand beneath. It’s kinda hard to walk on; Sam feels like he’s about to stumble any second. The fact that he doesn’t own hiking boots isn’t helping.
Something strikes Sam square between the shoulder blades. He stiffens and whips around to see Dean already picking up a second pinecone. This one hits Sam in the shoulder.
“Dude,” Sam huffs. Dean pulls a ‘who, me?’ face.
“I’m gonna choose to be the bigger man here,” Sam says.
“Not much of a choice for you, Paul Bunyan,” Dean cracks.
Sam resolves not to make himself a liar so soon, and keeps moving.
They wind between skinny pines with scaly bark, their trunks scabbed over like alligator leather. Occasionally they come upon a grove of cedars, tall and solid with long, even grooves extending up their trunks. Interspersed throughout are what Sam internally thinks of as “normal trees”-- he guesses oaks or birches, but he’s not sure.
Sam peers into the dark, tea-brown water of a little stream as it briefly runs alongside their path. He’d read about this, when he was looking up the area in preparation for the trip. The water isn’t muddy, it’s actually been stained by pine needles. Pine barrens water is so acidic that nothing really lives in it, so when the pine needles start falling in, there aren’t any microorganisms to break them down completely, and everything just turns brown. He tries to explain this to Dean, who just says, “God, you’re a nerd,” and keeps walking.
They don’t come across much wildlife. Sam spots a robin. Dean hears a woodpecker. There are, however, plenty of bugs. Sam's reflexes are good enough to nail a shifter straight between the eyes with one hand, but apparently not good enough to smack mosquitoes before they bite him. He's itchy. He wants to be back in civilization.
The site is probably totally cleaned out by now, definitely already examined by CSI: Atlantic County. That’s not why they’re here. Sam’s already gotten his hands on the police report; he knows the obvious gory details that have now been tidied up: the slash marks on Vaughn’s tent, the exact number of meters separating Vaughn’s liver from the rest of her body, the complete lack of pawprints (and of footprints, in case Vaughn’s attacker was a completely human psycho killer. It happens). Sam and Dean are here to look for the stuff the cops didn't know mattered.
When they finally reach the clearing, all of Vaughn's things are gone, just as Sam had been expecting, but the trees surrounding the campsite remain. They’re utterly mangled, branches broken and deep marks scored into the trunks.
Sam drifts over to one, lifting one hand from the strap of his backpack to fit his fingers over the parallel gashes. “Claw marks,” he calls over to Dean, who’s got his janky EMF meter out and is waving it at the bushes. Gotta be claw marks. Sam can’t imagine anything else that could make gouges like this.
“No EMF,” Dean shouts. Sam didn’t really think there would be any, but keeps his mouth shut. He cranes his neck up and sees that the damage to the trees extends upwards, way, way higher than any person should be able to reach from the ground. He points this out to Dean. “Either it was able to climb these trees, or it could fly,” Sam remarks, frowning in thought.
Dean twists his mouth. “Yeah, or it’s just freakishly tall. Like someone I know.” He slaps Sam on the shoulder and wanders off towards the fire pit.
Sam perfunctorily flips Dean off behind his back before switching tactics, now looking down instead of up. The pine needles aren’t so thick around the campsite, but the sand is so churned up by the dozens of people who've tramped across the clearing that Sam thinks getting any useful tracks around here is a lost cause. He steps out further into the underbrush instead, and promptly trips over a branch, dropping his water bottle. He swears and bends down. Just as his fingers brush against the plastic, something catches his eye. Two teardrop-shaped impressions, cutting deep into a patch of bare sand at the base of a tree. Deer, Sam’s brain catalogues automatically. Then he pauses. Deer tracks usually max out at about three inches long. These ones have gotta be closer to five inches. That’s weird.
“Hey, look at these prints,” Sam calls, waving Dean over.
“Dude, those are deer tracks,” Dean says, squinting.
“No, they’re way too big,” Sam insists.
“Moose tracks, then.”
“There are no moose in New Jersey, Dean,” Sam snaps.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were the world’s top moose expert. Whatever. Anyway. I’m thinking werewolf. Heart’s missing, lunar cycle lines up-- seems pretty wolfy to me.”
“I don’t know,” Sam says doubtfully. “The heart was gone, but so were a bunch of other organs. They might just have been eaten by raccoons or whatever afterwards. And I didn’t think werewolves usually do animal mutilation, either.”
Dean twists his mouth in annoyance-- not at him, Sam knows, just at the case itself for deciding to be difficult. “Fair. Maybe it was doing trial runs on Fido and Rover?”
“Or maybe the dead dogs don't mean anything at all,” Sam sighs.
“Ah, chin up, boy genius,” Dean says, slapping Sam on the back. “You’ll figure this thing out in no time.”
Sam hopes he's right.
———
“You sure you don’t want some of my fries?” Dean says, eyeing Sam’s salad like he expects it to lunge at him.
“I’m sure,” Sam replies.
Dean waggles a fry underneath his nose. “One hundred percent sure?” he wheedles.
“Dude, cut it out,” Sam says, swatting the fry away. “Those things are covered in salt; it's disgusting."
Dean shakes his head sadly. “You’re gonna waste away. People are gonna think I can’t take care of my baby brother.” Sam rolls his eyes, so Dean gives a theatrical sigh and sits back to dig into his sandwich.
“You know, I think this Jersey Devil Roll is just pulled pork with buffalo sauce,” Dean says, but with his mouth full it sounds more like a dog trying to eat a pillow.
“Mhm,” Sam replies. He’s occupied reading a Things To Do In The Pine Barrens brochure that he found at the bottom of his backpack, probably something Dean shoved in there when they’d checked into the motel earlier that day.
“God,” Dean groans, stretching, “I’m beat. When the hell do we get to work a case on the beach? I am freaking sick of the woods.”
“I got so many bug bites,” Sam laments.
“Dude, Atlantic City is, like, right there. We should go, once this case is wrapped up. Check out the boardwalk. Maybe we’ll get to see Snooki. I’ve always wanted to meet Snooki.”
“Jersey Shore is set in Seaside Heights, not Atlantic City,” Sam says absently, piercing a tomato on his plastic fork with one hand and holding Things To Do In The Pine Barrens open with the other. “If you wanna swim, we can check out the, uh…” Sam flips through the brochure. “Blue Hole in Hammonton.”
“Blue Hole,” Dean says, tipping back on the legs of his chair. “And I thought blue balls were bad.”
“Gross,” Sam says.
———
They’re too wiped to do much else that day, but the next morning they kick into higher gear. Sam has Dean drive him all the way out to the Galloway Township library so he can look through the archives for similar violent deaths in the area. Dean, predictably, squirms his way out of spending more than thirty minutes inside the library, taking off to try and talk to the victim’s sister, who apparently was the one to call the police after she first went missing.
Sam's a little leery of letting Dean handle the bereaved relatives on his own, but if it's between Dean possibly upsetting some grieving woman and Sam having to babysit his ADHD ass in a library, well. Even Jesus took some days off, probably.
Sam watches Dean excuse himself, adjusts the strap of his shoulder bag, and mentally cracks his knuckles. The microfiche is calling him.
He’ll have to ask the librarian for help setting up, but that’s no problem. Dean can charm kids, lonely housewives, barflies, gun nuts, old ladies, et cetera-- but when it comes to librarians, Sam reigns supreme. Librarians love Sam.
“Hi,” Sam starts as he comes up to the main desk, ducking his head a little and trying for a friendly, somewhat shy, I-love-learning, I-will-not-cause-problems, I-respect-library-science kind of grin.
The librarian returns his smile, and they’re off to the races.
———
Dean picks him up near closing, armed with a chicken salad and a Diet Pepsi, both of which Sam gratefully inhales. Between bites, he shares his findings from the library. While most of his research was only helpful for ruling things out, one pattern did catch his eye; there seems to be a weirdly high incidence of missing pets and livestock mutilation in the area stretching back decades.
“Could be nothing,” Sam concedes, but he's feeling a little more hopeful about Vaughn's dead dogs.
“We’ll keep it in mind,” Dean says, stealing a sip of Sam’s Diet Pepsi and then making a face. “My turn.”
Dean matches him with intel of his own; apparently he did not freak out the bereaved sister, thank you very much.
“In fact,” Dean says, “She told me to call her Barb instead of Ms. Vaughn. We’re practically BFFs.”
“The case, Dean.”
“Not even Barbara. I got promoted straight to Barb.”
“Dean.”
Though Hope was an experienced camper, Barbara (sorry, Barb was apparently not as woodsy as her sister, and tended to get anxious about Hope, even over weekend trips. Hope had brought a satellite phone with her whenever she went camping, so she could call Barb every evening to check in and keep her from worrying so much. Barb didn’t have any recordings of those calls, but by posing as a friend of Hope’s from work, Dean had managed to charm his way into getting Barb to tell him everything she could remember about them.
The first call was completely normal. Hope had seen an eastern wood pewee that day. The dogs had rolled in some deer poop.
The second call was mostly normal. Hope had seen two egrets. She also complained of having been kept up the previous night by awful noises, which she’d written off as “foxes or something," given how excited it had made the dogs. Sam’s thinking there’s a decent chance it was “or something.”
There was no third call.
They toss some ideas back and forth, and Sam starts looking into black dogs or chupacabras as possible culprits, but neither seem to be quite right. They talk about the case the whole way back to the motel, and then some more. But, to be honest? At this point, they have no fucking clue what’s going on. Around midnight, Sam finally calls it and clambers into bed.
———
Your shift is itchy, and your hair is sticking to your face.
Your mother walks on, always three steps ahead, and you have to hurry to keep up.
You reach a hand up to adjust your coif, trying in vain to shove the wayward strands of hair up under the damp fabric. When you finally give up, you realize that your family has kept on walking while you slowed down. You bunch your skirts in your fists, lifting them so you can run to catch up.
You can see the church now, as you all come around the bend. It’s a narrow building, stark white against the grey-green of the forest.
You don’t like it much.
The spire makes you nervous. You’re terrified that one day it will snap off and plunge to the ground to impale you through the heart.
You walk through the doors. You take your seat with your family. You don't look at any of the people, though you know they're looking at you.
The man in black, with white around his neck, silently stalks up to take his place at the front of the room.
He places his hands on the big book.
He clears his rusty throat and starts to speak.
Everyone stands up.
It’s difficult for you to focus on the words themselves; they’re overwhelmed by their delivery, bowled over by the voice, the voice, the voice of the man in black. He switches effortlessly from a drone like the rasp of a saw, to explosive shouts that crash from wall to wall and box you about the ears. The tumult reminds you of a thunderstorm, alternating between the drizzle and the torrent.
The man in black's brow glistens with a sheen of sweat. Spittle froths at the corners of his mouth, which you find disgusting and terrifying in equal measures. You shut your eyes so you don’t have to look at him, at his long black body and his long yellow teeth and his long white hands, making fists and clawing at the air. Yet closing your eyes just makes his voice ring louder, and now you are beginning to hear the words-- bits and pieces bobbing to the surface, jabbing into you like pins.
Damnation.
Hellfire.
Sin.
The words slam against your shuttered eyes, and a feeling builds and builds in your chest, at the hollow of your throat. You feel ill. You feel feverish. You feel wrong. You feel as though you need to get out of this room.
You should not be here.
Your hand begins to tremble, so you make a fist and press it hard against the side of your thigh. The voice is louder than ever, thundering between your ears and washing away any sense of calm, of content, of safety.
You are not wanted here. You do not belong here. You are unclean. You are dirty dirty dirty dirty and you are hated.
You think you can see it now, the shape into which the words are beating you.
You faint.