The Post Devil's Trap Choose Your Own Adventure

The first thing Sam became aware of was the sound of Steven Tyler’s voice crooning to him amidst the static of the radio. He didn’t remember turning the radio on and Aerosmith wasn’t the usual car music. Dean took sadistic pleasure in forcing the very best of mullet rock down his throat at all times; rarely, if ever, playing something Sam actually liked. He couldn’t remember anything – like why the hell was someone taking a drill to his skull? And why was it so damn quiet? – and his lack of clarity became even more obvious as he blinked his eyes open

At first, Sam hoped that this was another one of his nightmares, that at any second, Dean would wake him up. But the pain radiating out of his skull and the destruction of the Impala was beyond his imagination. The steering column dug into his stomach and the floor of the driver’s seat was much shorter than it used to be. The hood of the car was smashed to hell and smoke poured out of it – god, Dean was going to kill him – and when Sam managed to turn his head to the side, the scene was even worse. His father was slumped in the passenger seat, blood trickling in a thick line down his cheek. He was twisted in the wreckage of the passenger-side door and covered in glass from the windows.

Sam stretched out an arm – the one not aching with unimaginable pain – toward his father, but couldn’t reach him. Sam grunted, the smell of fuel and smoke filling his lungs until he almost choked on it. He gagged and used the back of his hand to wipe the bile and blood off his lips. Sam’s heart thudded in his chest and every nerve on his body felt like it was buzzing. He was dazed, and he could feel the Impala shaking under him and the sound of the truck’s horn blasting into the night sky.

“Dad?” Sam shouted out.

“Dad? Dean?” his voice cracked as he raised his voice.

“Come on guys! Dad, answer me!”

The horn stopped abruptly and the only sound Sam could make out was his own ragged breathing. He said, almost nothing more than a whisper, “Dad please!”

Sam shut his eyes – he’d get them through this – and tried to formulate a plan. He pushed on the steering wheel column to get room to move around and noticed his own blood smeared all over the dashboard.

Sam tried to clear his head and stay focused on the situation at hand. He gripped down on the seat to stop his hands from shaking, cursing at himself, and forced his gaze away from the dashboard. He couldn’t worry about his own injuries at the moment. He was okay. He was alive. He needed to make sure that was the case for everyone else. His eyes darted around the rest of the area. They had been slammed into pretty damn hard and it was a miracle the Impala hadn’t been ripped to shreds. Though from the creaking sounds and the steam billowing out of the hood, Sam wasn’t sure that the car wasn’t about to explode.

Sam strained to see where the point of impact was when suddenly, the entire evening’s events rolled over him like a wave – the demon’s possession of his father, Dean being bled dry by the bastard, and the out of nowhere truck that plowed into them. Sam knew that it was the demon. The crash was no accident. The truck had sought them out and rammed into them at full-force.

Sam cursed himself for being so stupid. If the demon could possess his father, the most stubborn man in the entire world, there was nothing to keep it from picking some random person on the street and using them to get at his family. Meg had said that obtaining the colt was an act of war and now he and his family were trapped in a scene out of a fucking war movie.

And it was his fault. Maybe his father had been right, maybe he should’ve killed the demon when they had the chance. At the very least, he shouldn’t have let his guard down. He was too angry with his father, too worried about Dean’s blood loss, to stay focused.

God, Dean…he was in dire need of a hospital before getting run over by a semi. Sam strained to see Dean through the rearview mirror and panic spiraled through him when he saw Dean’s hunched shoulders. He couldn’t see anything else, but that combined with the fact that Dean would’ve said something by now…Sam pushed on the steering wheel until he managed to break free.

Finally free, he tried to get a better look at his brother.

“Dean,” he called again, shifting around in his seat. As he twisted, though, something in his neck popped and a sharp pain lanced all the way down his back.

“Shit!”

He brought a hand up to roughly massage the tense muscles in his neck. He must have pulled something on impact.

“Dammit,” he muttered, changing tacts. He focused his energy on trying to open his door, the sound of metal grinding against metal assaulted his ears as he did so. His injured arm was killing him and the door wouldn’t budge. His heart raced again as he realized that he and his family were trapped in a car that, for all he knew, was seconds away from exploding. He took a moment to catalogue his injuries – stiffness in his neck, definite head trauma and the pain in his arm probably indicated a break somewhere – and concluded that he wasn’t that bad off, considering. He could do this. He could get all three of them out of the car. He had to.

Sam slowly reached his arm under his seat and pulled out the gun that was kept there. Once he knew he could at least protect them from anymore demon visits, Sam shifted, careful to keep his neck still, until his legs faced the driver’s side door. He grit his teeth and kicked hard, thinking of Dean and his father and making sure they were okay. On the third kick, the door fell off its hinges and Sam was able to slide out of the car. He propped himself up against the side of the Impala, but with his first step, he fell to the ground.

If things looked grim from inside the car, the view from outside was so much worse. Sam could hear his heart crashing against his chest as his eyes wandered over the damage: shards of glass and pulverized metal littered the ground. The smoke from the hood of the car was getting thicker, but even worse was the weird sound coming from the truck.

The truck was empty and it didn’t look as though the driver had been thrown from the car. It just looked like he had walked off into the night, which considering it was probably the demon at work, made sense.

Sam glanced over the truck again, making sure it wasn’t on fire or about to collapse further in on the car, but he couldn’t keep his gaze away from the backseat for long. There was Dean, in the middle of it all, his head against the window, blood and hair splayed across what was left of the glass plate.

Sam bit down on his lip and tried to survey the damage to his brother from where he was. Sam knew one thing for sure – Dean was bad off. He needed Sam to come through for him for once. Sam tried to will his legs to move, to work with him, but it was as though he was frozen in his place on the ground, unable to do anything. His family was counting on him to take charge, to prove that he could take care of them for once, and he was letting them down.

His father or Dean would have known what to do in this situation. Sam wished that he could trade places with them, because his father always had a plan and Dean always saved the day.

Dean had mentioned earlier that he used to want to be a firefighter and Sam could see him in a job like that. Dean was an immature ass most of the time; but in a crisis, there was no one better to be around. Dean was always cool and collected when it really mattered. He might bitch and moan, but he never backed down and always found a way to fix things, barking out orders until everything was okay again.

Dean would never have let the damn truck hit them in the first place.

Sam punched his fists into the ground, feeling almost as impotent as he had when he couldn’t stop the demon from hurting Dean. He fought back the voice in his head that told him there was nothing he could do - that he was too late - as he crawled to the backseat.

All that faded away, terror overtaking him, when got a closer look at Dean.

Choice 1: What does Sam see?

a. Dean is unconscious and doesn't appear to be breathing
b. Dean's eyes are open and focused on Sam.