Disclaimer: Supernatural and all its characters belong to The CW and Eric Kripke.

Suggested Songs:

"You're Lost Little Girl" by The Doors

"He's Gone" by The Grateful Dead

Prologue

Whatever it was, it needed to feed, or so Melissa had gathered from the evidence. She stood solemnly in her grimy motel room, now not noticing the strong smell of stale cigarettes that had been so potent when she had checked in the day before. She stared at the collage of newspaper clippings and sticky notes hidden behind the coats in her small closet. By now, collages like these took her less than two hours to create. It seemed to her that she had a Wendigo on her hands, although she wasn't quite sure just yet. But all the missing hikers had vanished along the Lost Creek Trail, with no sign of them left except some blood and a few ravaged campsites.

The cycle of disappearances had been going on for years, and it seemed that this time the monster, Wendigo or not, was only just getting starting. The body count was much too low so far. If it was a Wendigo, it would need at least three more people to sustain itself for a another 20 or 30 years. Melissa sighed, then quickly shut the closet doors, turning back to flop on the worn motel mattress. She knew she would have to stake out the trail tonight in order to find out exactly what the monster was, and if it was a Wendigo hopefully just kill it and be able to move onto another job.

She liked it when they were simple, like a quick salt and burn, then skipping to the next godawful motel to at least try and save some more lives. This time she hadn't needed to use any of her fake IDs or her professional gear to make herself a believable FBI agent, or whatever other organization she needed to impersonate, but she still felt exhausted. She turned over and stared up at the yellowing popcorn ceiling. It was still only early evening, and Melissa thought it wise to at least try to get some sleep before going on a night hunt. Those were sometimes her favorite; it was easier for the monsters to lose sight of her in the darkness.

A small smile came played on her lips as she closed her eyes. She hadn't gotten to use her flare gun in a long while, and it if was a Wendigo, she was certainly going to need it.

. . .

An old smell filled her nose, a comfortable smell. The smell of a bonfire. She slowly became aware of her hazy surroundings. The old red truck was parked behind her on a dusty road, and before her was a vast field. The pine trees in the distance seemed a thousand miles away. The sun was beating down and she had a flannel tied around her waist. The bonfire she was standing near did no help in cooling her off. There was no wind, and the air hung with heavy humidity. She looked down when she felt something smooth and hard clutched in her palm. She hadn't noticed at first, but now it felt like her nails were digging bloody divots into her flesh with the tightness of her fist.

She opened her hand with an almost drunken timidity, her mind cloudy. Inside her fist she found a locket. She gasped and suddenly she knew where she was. She looked around in sudden in alarm. Is somebody watching me? Have I been captured by a djinn? She let feelings of paranoia invade her momentarily, before those thoughts seemed to fall right out of her head and she turned her attention back to her open palm.

I really am losing it, a different, more conscious part of her thought distantly. She couldn't quite sort out where those thoughts were coming from. She felt as though she was between sleep and awake.

The urge to open the locket consumed her, but she kept it closed. The bonfire was of modest size, but its crackling seemed loud, echoing painfully in her foggy head. She made the dim decision to go through the motions of the memory from so many years ago, and then see what was to come next. It seemed too blurry for what a djinn would muster, and too sad. This memory was very accurate. Nothing in her life seemed to have changed for the better. Her wildest dreams hadn't been fulfilled. But she kept her options open, just in order to keep her defenses up if something out of the ordinary came about. This time though, it wasn't with the same sadness and pain that she played out the scene, now all she could feel was the cloudiness in her brain. It was almost numbing.

She tossed the small gold circle into the fire, its thin chain following through the summer air. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her shorts and watched as the fire swallowed the soft metal of the necklace, the picture inside being destroyed in the process. Everything was as she remembered. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose from her braid, and they clung to her flushed, slightly sweaty cheeks in the stagnant air. And as she turned away, the dry grass crunched underneath her brown boots rhythmically, just as they had before.

Only when she was walking to the truck did the memory veer from reality. Suddenly, a little girl appeared before her. There was no white smoke or fog or a sudden pop noise; she was just there out of nowhere. She had long, curly black hair and an olive complexion, and she stood in a tattered white nightgown. There was a river of blood flowing down her front, beginning in the middle of her chest. It was a deep, sickening red.

She didn't look like a normal ghost. There was no ashy quality to her skin. Her eyes were wide and bright with terror, not lifeless. That almost made it worse. It was hard to tell whether she was alive or dead, despite the fact that it would be impossible for any little girl to live after having lost that much blood. Melissa just stared at those lively, dark brown eyes, frozen, wishing to be far away. The little girl slowly raised a stubby finger to point at Melissa and furrowed her brows in anger.

"You killed me, Lissa," the little girl whispered with a mixture of rage and sadness. "You didn't wake up in time."

. . .

Melissa woke up slowly. She propped herself up on her elbows and surveyed the dimly lit motel room. She sighed and let her head fall back onto the pillow with a soft thud. She covered her eyes with one hand and let out a shaky breath as she tried to blink away her hot tears. She didn't feel sad or scared, mostly just pissed. No matter how many times she had that dream it always felt impossibly new, and she just wanted some way to make herself remember. Or, better yet, a way to make that dream stop happening altogether.

She swallowed thickly and tried her best to shake off the feelings of nauseating grief the dream had induced. She looked over at the alarm clock on the rickety nightstand: 11:34.

"Fuck," she whispered. She had meant to be out on the trail beginning her stakeout by 10. She clumsily gathered her things and made her way out the door, tripping in the process as she rushed to the old Chevy. She slumped in the front seat, ready to put the keys into the ignition.

Before getting to work trying to get the car rolling, which would no doubt be a challenge considering its age, she unzipped the bag next to her. She searched carefully for her trusty flare gun and felt a small sense of relief as her hand curled around the worn handle and trigger.

"I couldn't forget you, old friend," she said to the gun with an odd fondness as she put it on the seat next to her. The habit of talking to her weapons and car had probably formed through her many years of hunting in solitude. But she shook her head to herself anyway. Sometimes she felt like she was losing her mind. For some reason, the gun gave her a peculiar sense of home. It made her feel better and more secure. She quickly lost any bad taste the dream may have left in her mouth.

Her light eyes were calm as she glanced in the rearview mirror, unconsciously checking just to make sure there was no one watching her. It was something she had learned to do after being unhappily surprised too many times. She felt satisfied when she was only met with the empty parking lot, glowing in the dull yellow light of the street lamp. But still, there was nothing could ever totally silence that creeping sense of being watched that Melissa had harbored practically since the moment she became a hunter. Part of her thought that was one of the most tiring parts of the life. Not the running or the killing or anything physical, but the constant need to watch, to be vigilant.

She straightened her tattered leather jacket and revved the ancient engine. The car coughed only once before starting smoothly, and Melissa smiled as she opened the glovebox. She picked a tape randomly, in the mood for a surprise. The thoughts of her dream were gone completely and replaced by pre-hunt adrenaline. Boy, had she grown to love that feeling. She popped in the tape and smiled even wider as she left the motel's parking lot and the music started to play.

Jerry Garcia's voice crooned slowly through the truck's speakers and Melissa felt an odd mixture of nerves and serenity as she drove down the winding road on the way to the trail. She loved that car. On the outside it looked close to death, the battered metal body covered in faded red paint and rust. But on inside, to her, it was home. It was her most prized possession. It was a classic 1970 model Chevy truck, complete with a crew cab. Being able to fit four often helped on hunts with lots of victims. The car was messy, sure, but so was she.

The windows were down and she breathed in the muggy air; it was a hot night for late autumn, especially in Colorado. She sang along softly as she drove without realizing it, and she tried to clear almost all her pesky thoughts from her mind. She had to stay sharp on a hunt; she had to stay strong. She told herself this mantra almost any time she had to face a monster, although she sometimes didn't get any time to prepare before having to fight them. Melissa knew how dangerous it was to be distracted on a hunt. If she wasn't always paying attention, if her mind wasn't always fully alert and awake, she was afraid she might get killed before even realizing it.

Author's Note: Hi lovelies! (Get ready, this is gonna be long.) This is just a little prologue for my new Supernatural fanfiction. I'm very excited and I hope you are too! As you can tell, this is just a tiny microbe of what the character of Melissa is going to be but I don't want to give everything about her away at once. I feel like Supernatural does that with most of the characters except Sam and Dean, like how we know Bobby for a while before we figure out why he got into hunting.

Also, this is really short and doesn't involve the Winchesters yet so I'm gonna call it a prologue, but rest assured, the first chapter should be up in the next few days! Also, I should just mention a couple of things:

This starts at the beginning of season one with the episode Wendigo, and it will not follow all the episodes, but will cover a lot of them. Also, there are going to be a lot of original scenes in there too, just to spice it up.

Music has always been such an important part of Supernatural, and the soundtrack was part of what really attracted me to the series in the first place. And I didn't feel like this story would be complete without me adding a soundtrack. At the beginning of each chapter, there will be a couple suggested songs that will correspond to the feel of the chapter in some way. It will be old music, and I know that kind of music is not for everyone so if that's not your thing just disregard it. But, if you are interested, I'll put the title of the song and the artist. Just type those into YouTube and I'll make sure there's at least one video of it on there before I post. Also, it will probably take more time to read than one of the songs to play, so I'll put them in the order I think they would work best being played along with the chapter. I don't know, I just thought it would really add to the mood or something. Let me know what you think of that. :)

Lastly, this story is not finished, unlike my last story. I know what's going to happen for the most part and I have a lot of ideas, but I haven't written all of it. But, the writing has been going pretty well so far so I will try very hard to keep uploading regularly. Expect a chapter at least once a week, if not more. I'll be sure to let you know if something changes.

Oh no, that was A LOT. Don't worry, the author's notes will be much shorter in the future. Anyway, thank you so much for reading and I hope you're excited for the rest of the story!

PLEASE review to let me know what you think!

Peace and love.