I've been working on this story for the past two months, and man, I'm happy it's finally finished. This was written for a movie challenge, but can be read with no knowledge of the movie. It will be posted in instalments over the next week.

Title: The Real Labyrinth

Movie Adapted: Labyrinth

Genre: Gen

Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam, characters from Labyrinth

Warnings: Some swearing

Notes/Credits: There are three major people I'd like to thank. Firstly, starrylizard for reading the entire story in snippets as I wrote it, suggesting ideas, dialogue and being the best enabler a girl could ask for, reading the entire thing through twice and betaing in what would have to be world record time. Secondly, pixieonacid for also betaing in world record time and providing amusing ideas and lots of support throughout the writing. Thirdly, heylittleriver for betaing the first section and pointing out some bits that needed to be clarified. An awesome promo vid for this can be downloaded from a link off my Livejournal page (linked from my profile).

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit. Some lines are taken directly from the movie and I do not own those.

Summary: When Sam is taken by The Goblin King, Dean must enter the Labyrinth to save him. With six hours to find him, nothing is as it seems.

"Man, it's pissing down out there."

Dean shook his head, trying to get the water running out of his hair and into his eyes to change its path. Finding that it made no difference, he put the bag with his dinner down on the table by the door and dumped the other bag in Sam's lap. His vision blurred as a particularly large drop of water made its way into his eye and he hurried into the bathroom and grabbed one of the towels.

"Gah, I'm never going to be dry again."

A grunt from the other room was his answer.

He rubbed his hair vigorously and removed his soggy sweatshirt, dropping it on the floor, before stopping to listen. There was a baby crying rather hysterically and it didn't sound like it was coming from another motel room.

"What're you watching, Sam?" he asked curiously as he exited the bathroom, moving into a position where he could see the TV. When he saw Muppets – goblins, to be exact – and a very young Jennifer Connolly, he realised exactly what it was. "Never mind."

He went to his duffel bag, pulled out a t-shirt and checked its smell. Passable.

"Goblin king, goblin king, wherever you may be, take this child of mine far away from me."

"You know," he said as he pulled his soaked t-shirt off, "I used to wish that the goblins would come and take you away."

Sam turned around to look at him, a smile on his face. "You wished the goblins would come and take me away. You. Mister-I'm-the-best-big-brother-in-the-world."

Dean shrugged as he wiped his chest with the soaked towel. "Yeah, when you were being a snot-nosed whiny brat, which was like, all the time."

Sam laughed.

"Of course, then I'd come and rescue you, being the kick-ass big brother I am."

"Of course," Sam agreed as Dean pulled on the cleaner t-shirt.

"It never worked." Dean made himself sound disappointed. "You were always still there, being a snot-nosed whiny little brother."

"How devastating for you."

Dean grabbed his own dinner, flopped down on the bed beside Sam, poked him in the side with a smirk, and parroted the TV, "I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now."

There was an enormous crash of thunder and the power went out.

Dean laughed loudly at the timing. "Well, that's never happened before."

A flash of lightning lit the room and Dean's stomach dropped. Sam wasn't sitting beside him.

"Sam," he bellowed, not caring if he sounded like a frightened little girl, "that's not funny." When there was no response, he quickly got off the bed, navigating his way to the bag with weapons in it by memory. "Sam!"

There was a creepy little laugh and he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. He hurriedly searched through the bag, trying to remember what might work on goblins, but it wasn't anything they'd ever had to deal with before. There was another laugh and the sound of pattering feet.

He finally settled on a knife and the shotgun, tucked the knife into his boot, and stood up, looking around the dark room. Something scuttled across the floor, giggling maniacally. "Jesus," he whispered, "this isn't meant to be real."

There was a tap at the window and it burst open, bringing with it a flurry of rain and hail. He put his left arm in front of his eyes, keeping the shotgun aimed at the window with the other. A shadow appeared, resolving into a man who looked scarily like David Bowie, bad 80s hair and all.

"Jareth, the Goblin King, I presume?" Dean said, his mind reeling. This couldn't be real, it couldn't be. Maybe he somehow got knocked out and this was some sort of concussion hallucination. Of course, since when had they ever had that sort of luck? His hand tightened on the gun. "Give my brother back, you son of a bitch," he ground out.

The Goblin King crossed his arms, smirking way more than a man wearing that much make up had a right to. "What's said is said."

"Where the hell is he?"

"You know very well where he is."

"Give him back." Dean moved menacingly forward, keeping the gun trained on Jareth, who also strode forward, his hands on his hips.

"Dean, go back to your life, play at being a hero; forget about your brother." One of the Goblin King's eyebrows rose disdainfully.

Dean shook his head. He felt like he was trying to think through cotton, like he wanted to do exactly what Jareth said. "I can't," he hissed.

Jareth put his hand up. "I brought you a gift." A clear ball appeared in his hand, the meagre light from outside the window shining on it. Dean's eyes were drawn to it of their own volition.

"What is it?" he asked, hesitantly, wanting to reach out and grab the ball.

"It's a crystal." The crystal started moving in a complicated pattern, switching from one hand to the other. Dean's eyes followed the hypnotising movements as his brain marvelled at the skill necessary to move like that. "Nothing more. But if you turn it this way, and look into it, it'll show you your dreams." Dean thought of his mom and their house in Lawrence. "But this is not a gift for an ordinary man who takes care of his little brother. Do you want it?" The crystal stopped and Dean could finally look at the Goblin King again. "Then forget your brother."

"I can't." The answer should have been the most obvious thing in the world, but it hurt to say. "Give me my brother back."

"Dean," Jareth's voice whipped out and the crystal turned into a snake. "Don't defy me." The snake was flung at him, and he raised his arms reflexively, catching the hissing being. It turned into a scarf and he dropped it to the floor, a goblin laughing as it ran out from under it.

"You're no match for me, Dean," Jareth said condescendingly.

"I wouldn't want to bet on that," he retorted, his senses clearer now that the crystal was gone. "Let me guess, my brother is at your castle, right outside that window?"

Jareth acknowledged his response with a nod of his head and a smirk and they were suddenly outside in a red-lit landscape, a maze in front of them.

"Do you still want to look for him?"

"What the hell do you think?" Dean turned to face Jareth, not wanting to let him out of his sight.

"Turn back, Dean, turn back before it's too late."

Dean rolled his eyes at Jareth's tone and the wind blowing the 80s hair around. It always seemed so melodramatic in the movie, and the real deal wasn't any better.

"Yeah, right."

"What a pity. Time is short." Jareth pointed to a clock that had suddenly appeared on a tree next to them, loudly ticking. Dean glanced at the old clock, and then looked back at Jareth, who was now uncomfortably within Dean's personal space, especially considering the weird mojo he seemed to be projecting. "You have six hours in which to solve the Labyrinth before your baby brother becomes one of us for ever." He backed away, towards the tree and shook his head, gradually disappearing. "What a pity."

"Hey!" Dean shouted. "It's supposed to be 13 hours!"

There was no response, no magically reappearing creepy David Bowie look-alike. Dean looked at his watch, noting that it had stopped working. He couldn't even time the six hours. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket: it wasn't working, either. Dean resisted the urge to punch the tree, figuring that hurting his hand wasn't going to help matters any.

He rubbed his head. "This is insane. They're just frigging Muppets; they're not meant to be real. Next thing you'll be telling me that there's a pig in love with a frog running around out here somewhere. Ghosts I can believe, but this…"

Theoretically, this would be easy, but considering the fact that Jareth had already changed the amount of time he had, it probably wouldn't be as easy as it seemed. This world seemed to operate by his rules, and that meant that they could probably change at any time. Plus, it had been years since Dean had last seen Labyrinth, so he couldn't remember a lot of what happened. It would be hard to try and avoid things he couldn't remember.

"I'm coming, Sammy," Dean murmured, thinking he should say something and if he couldn't be profound, he might as well be obvious. He trotted down the hill, sliding slightly in the sand.

He jogged in a straight line as the sun rose, bathing the burnt-looking trees and spindly grass scattered around with more blood red light. The land sloped subtly, and the footing was treacherous; more than once he'd skidded to a stop, only barely missing falling flat on his face. The sand under his feet moved once again, and he grabbed hold of the grass nearby, trying to slow himself down.

"Shit!" he yelled, quickly letting go and coming to a stop a few feet further along, ass casting a groove in the sand. Dean cradled his hand, willing the excruciating pain to stop, before opening it up to see just how close he'd come to cutting his fingers off with the razorblade grass. There was no mark. His brow furrowed as he studied his hand that had suddenly stopped hurting. "This place is insane."

He sat for a few seconds more before he got up off the ground and, dusting off his butt, started his headlong plunge forward again.

It felt like it had taken at least half an hour to get to the wall of the Labyrinth. In the movie, this was where Sarah met a troll who liked torturing fairies, but there was no troll peeing into the pond that was in front of him. He really didn't have the time to waste waiting for a creature that very likely wouldn't turn up.

The door to the Labyrinth, however, was only just off to his side. He ran up to it and, feeling stupid, waited for it to open.

"Of course," he said with disgust when it didn't move. He banged his hand on it hard. "Hey, open up!" Dean gave it another bang for good measure, before backing up and bracing himself. The wood didn't so much as vibrate when he kicked it with all his power. Instead, he ended up sitting on his ass, his leg aching.

He stood up again gingerly and cocked the hammers on the shotgun. He didn't really want to waste his firepower, but it appeared he had no choice, what with having to get into the Labyrinth to stop his six foot four brother from becoming the tallest goblin in history. He fired, expecting a sizeable dent to appear in the door, but instead, two bright pink pom-poms with eyes hit the door with a squeak and fell grumbling to the ground.

Dean looked at the shotgun with disgust. "Guess it's plan B, then." He looked up and up at the looming wall and then walked closer, studying it. It was creviced and pock marked, with branches and lichen growing out of it. There'd be enough hand holds that he'd be able to climb, assuming it didn't suddenly become slick as ice or something.

"Don't give it ideas," he murmured to himself. Everything was already so much more complicated than it was in the movie, he couldn't really expect anything to be the same.

He stuck the shotgun into the belt at his back, swatted at a fairy that had ventured too close – he didn't want to be bitten – and started climbing. After a couple of minutes, he looked down, relieved that the ground was further away. He reached for a handhold next to a plant with eyes that turned to look at him and pulled himself up, scrambling for a hold when the wall crumbled slightly under his grip. "What are you looking at?" he grumbled at the plant, glancing up to find the end almost in sight. A few feet more and he'd be over.

A minute later he was sitting on top of the wall, looking out over the Labyrinth. The wall went on seemingly for miles without meeting another wall. As much as it might be easier to stick to the ridges, so to speak, it wouldn't be possible. Dean swung his legs around, twisted so that he was facing the wall and dropped to the ground below. The Labyrinth's floor had to be raised compared to the outside, because it wasn't a very large drop. Just as they had appeared to do from above, the walls seemed to go on forever in parallel. "Right or left?" he asked the eyes hanging off the wall in front of him. The stalks they were on drifted towards the left, humming as they did so, seemingly pointing him in that direction. Deciding he'd have to be insane to trust them, he said, "Right it is, then."

Dean set off at a fast walk, carefully avoiding the debris and detritus that was strewn along the corridor. There were no openings to the rest of the Labyrinth, no turns, nothing, just miles of endless, monotonous parallel lines. It was enough to put you off geometry for the rest of your life, if you hadn't already been put off the subject by the geometry teacher from hell. Literally.

"Where's a friendly worm when you need one?" he muttered.

"Here I am!"

He stopped and looked around at the high-pitched voice, finally spotting a green worm with bright red hair, wearing a bonnet and sitting on the edge of one of the bricks.

Dean rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "My life is weird."

"You're telling me," the worm said. "I'm the one that has had to sit on this same brick every day for three hundred years, waiting for travellers to come along. Well, except for that one time with that Sarah girl, that was the mister." The worm shook its head from side to side. "I miss all the fun."

"I suppose there's no point in asking you how to get through the Labyrinth, is there?" Dean crouched down beside the worm.

"Nah, I'm just a worm."

Dean laughed sourly. "I figured." He stood up and walked to the wall opposite and put his hand out, relieved to find that he was right. It wasn't a real wall; there was an entrance to the rest of the Labyrinth. "'Bout time something went right. Which direction takes me to the centre of the Labyrinth?"

"Neither."

Dean turned around, facing the worm. "Guess it doesn't matter which way I go, then."

"Left," the worm said decidedly. "You'll do better to go left."

"Thanks." Dean was so not telling Sam that he'd thanked a worm. He had no idea which direction was better, so he could trust that what the worm was saying was true, or he could go the other way. Or he could go by the tried and true method. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe; catch a hot chick by the toe. If she squeals, don't let her go; eeny, meeny, miny, moe." He ended up pointing to the left, and therefore went to the right.

"People," he heard the worm yell disgustedly after him. "Never listen."

The path zigged and zagged psychotically for several minutes, until he found himself out in something that seemed more like what a labyrinth should be. Seemingly to make up for the straight corridor he'd initially found himself in, the walls almost constantly turned now, twisting on themselves and giving him multiple directions to go. He picked at random, knowing that there wasn't much use in trying to mark his path. The Labyrinth's residents would just screw it all up.

"Dean!"

Sam's disembodied and very pissed off voice echoed off the walls. Dean looked around, hoping that it might give him a direction to go in. Shrugging, he ignored most of the hands pointing in different directions out of the pillar beside him and went diagonally forward toward the castle he could see in the distance.

Sam was going to kill Dean. Of all the moronic things to do, this was pretty high on the list. Of course, there was no way that he could really have known that it would actually work this time, but that was beside the point. Thanks to Dean, he was sitting chained to a wall in a castle filled with goblins, and in, oh, just under four and a half hours he'd be a vastly oversized ugly evil thing.

Sam was bored. There hadn't even been any singing or dancing to relieve his boredom, just goblins fighting and gorging themselves and Jareth preening in a mirror.

He rested his chin on his manacled hands and sighed. Jareth turned at the sound, before lifting his legs off the side of the very over-the-top throne he was sitting in and jumping to the platform. Sam sat up a little straighter as Jareth stalked to him in those ridiculously girly boots. He stopped in front of Sam and Sam looked up, trying to avoid staring at the crotch right in front of his face.

"In four hours and twenty three minutes you'll be mine." There was a smug edge to Jareth's voice that worried Sam more than a little.

"And why exactly did you want me, again? I don't think I'd make a very good goblin."

Loud raucous laughter filled the room as the goblins stopped what they were doing and looked at him. Jareth laughed louder than all of them and crouched until he was on the same level as Sam, giving Sam a fantastic look at the lovely ruffled shirt that was a fashion travesty and the pimp-style gold medallion. Quiet descended on the room when the Goblin King gestured violently.

"I don't want you for you." There was a sardonic twist to the man's lips as he leant in closer and whispered in Sam's ear, "I want you for your heritage, Sam. Imagine what I can do with all those pretty powers of yours. Imagine how I can expand my kingdom."

"Not going to happen," Sam ground out.

Jareth looked at him with bemusement. "What, you believe that your brother is going to save you? Do you really think that a mere human can get through the Labyrinth in time?"

"Yes," Sam spat out. "Dean will kick your ass."

"Such confidence." A long delicate finger was drawn along Sam's jaw and he tried not to flinch away. "Well." Jareth clapped his hands together and stood up. "I guess I'll just have to throw a few more things in your brother's path, then, shall I? Can't have it being too easy for him, we wouldn't want him to be so bored that he turns back."

Sam laughed. "You really don't know Dean, if you think he'll turn back. Trust me, he won't." Not even if I told him to.

"We'll just have to see, won't we?"

The timing of all this so sucked. He hadn't had a chance to have dinner, and now his stomach was seriously complaining. There was nothing worse than being hungry. Well, almost nothing worse. It had an unfortunate tendency to make him really grumpy, as Sam termed it, particularly if he wanted pie. Dean really wanted pie. And the burger he'd had to abandon back in the real world. It'd be getting cold, which was just sacrilege. Of course, he wouldn't be so stupid as to actually eat anything in this world, that would be asking for disaster. The residents would just have to put up with his stomach sounding like a volcano waiting to explode.

In this sort of situation, he really appreciated what his dad had done for them. He was able to keep a rough mental map of what directions he'd tried; rough because of the fact that the walls kept on moving. What was a dead end a minute ago often turned out not to be five seconds later.

Of course, this situation was unique. He'd hit a dead end, turned around, and there was a wall blocking his way.

"Oh, for…"

He turned in a circle, and when he'd done the full 360 he was no longer facing a dead end. Instead, there were two beings – or possibly four – with shields in front of their chests. They were standing in front of two recesses in the wall that were probably doors, from what Dean could see. The left being was dressed in red with a red symbol on its shield, and the right being was in blue, with a blue symbol. There was a head both below and above the shields, hence why Dean wasn't sure whether they were four beings or two.

"The only way out of here is to try one of these doors," the bottom red head – Ass 1, Dean decided – offered helpfully.

The bottom blue head – Ass 2 – poked out below the shield. "One of them leads to the castle at the centre of the Labyrinth, and the other leads to…" The blue head above added a dramatic 'bom bom bom bom'. "…certain death," it finished as the others made 'oooooh' noises.

"So, the rules?" Dean asked wearily.

There were some 'ahs' and 'ums' from all four heads. "We can't tell you," Ass 1 finally said.

"But they can," Ass 2 added, looking up.

The top heads cautiously popped up.

"You can only ask one of us which is the right door," the top red head – Dumb – said.

The top blue head – Dumber – nodded. "Ah ha. It's in the rules. And I should warn you, one of us always tells the truth and one of us always lies. That's a rule, too." Dumber gestured to Dumb. "He always lies."

"I do not," Dumb said indignantly, ducking down partially behind the shield. "I tell the truth!"

"Oh, what a lie." Dumber looked away from Dumb, off to the side, as Ass 2 laughed madly with its hand over its mouth.

"He's the liar," Dumb said, as the laughter from Ass 1 and 2 continued.

"Shut up!" Dean yelled, causing all four heads to duck back behind the shields and the shields to quiver. He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face as Dumb and Dumber peeked back over the top of their shields, pointy hats and ears poking out comically.

Dumb looked at him with fear as Dean planted himself in front of it. "Yes or no," he said calmly. "Would he-" Dean pointed at Dumber and Dumber hid partially under the shield in reaction, "-tell me that this door-" he indicated the door behind Dumb, "-leads to the castle?"

"Uhhh." Dumb looked down behind the shield. "What do you think?" There was whispering. "Really, I don't know," Ass 1 replied quietly. Dumb popped back up. "Yes," he said uncertainly.

"Then, the other door leads to the castle and this door leads to certain death."

There was a general 'ohh' of awe from the four beings.

"Of course," Dean continued, "that only works if you're not lying about the rules…and seeing as the two of you-" he gestured at both Dumb and Dumber, "-are the ones who supposedly tell the truth or lie, and you're the ones who told me the rules, well, why should I believe either of you?"

"Uhh," Dumber said as it looked at Dumb. "Nobody's ever asked that before."

"Nobody's ever thought of that before," Dumb replied, sounding surprised. "He does have a point."

Dean slowly worked through the logic in his head. It required more thinking than if only one of them was lying. "If you're both lying, then he-" Dean pointed to Dumber, "-would really say no, but as he's lying as well, this door-" he pointed to the door behind Dumb, "-really does lead to the castle."

Dumb and Dumber looked at each other. "I'm completely lost," Dumber said. Dumb nodded in agreement as the Ass twins laughed again.

"And I don't believe a word you're saying." He looked pointedly at Dumb and it crab-walked to the side, giving him access to the ornate door. It swung open with a squeak when he pushed it, and he looked down carefully as he walked through, watching out for a trap door or a hole. He sighed in relief when there wasn't anything to drop him down into the pit of grabby-grabby hands or something worse. The door behind him slammed shut.

Wherever he was now, it was dark, dark enough that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. He stood quietly for a minute or so, letting his eyes adjust, hoping that there would be some sort of low-level lighting that he could use. Unfortunately, there didn't appear to be any light at all, and his flashlight and lighter were back in the real world.

Dean put his hands out to his sides and immediately hit walls on both sides. The walls were smooth and cool to the touch, like glass or plastic. Putting his hands above his head revealed the same surface only a foot or so above him.

"Great," Dean breathed, feeling the way that the air almost seemed to vibrate with his words. He walked carefully forward, hands touching the walls beside him and put each foot down slowly to make sure that there wasn't some cavernous opening below him. Even though he tried to keep his footfalls light, they seemed to echo thunderously in the darkness, probably alerting anything in a five-mile radius to his location.

Something brushed against the fingers on his right hand and he breathed hard in shock. He really didn't want to think about what that could be. Creepy things in the dark were better not thought about, especially when you had no chance of seeing them to defend yourself.

His left hand suddenly hit air and he walked forward a few more steps, confirming that the tunnel turned. After three more turns – right, left, then right again – he was convinced that this couldn't be part of the Labyrinth. Instead, it was a tunnel designed to send him insane from claustrophobia and sensory deprivation. He'd be fine with a light, but it felt like he'd been stuck in the dark forever and was never going to get out. There was a tiny – okay, maybe not so tiny – part of him that was gibbering in fear, screaming that the walls were going to get narrower and narrower until he couldn't fit through and couldn't go back. He was resolutely stomping on the thoughts and fears, breathing slowly, and running Metallica lyrics through his head. He wasn't going to turn into a little girl just because of a pitch-black tunnel.

Of course, all that deep breathing and calming exercises – and no, he wasn't admitting to ever having read a book on that new-age yoga crap, or having seen a segment on Oprah (though he totally had) – went out the window the minute that he ran into something solid and slightly gooey in the middle of the tunnel. If Sam were there, he'd say that Dean had squealed like a girl and then laugh at him for a week. As he wasn't there, Dean could tell himself that a spike of adrenaline made him draw in a breath really noisily.

Once The Unforgiven had restored him to sanity, Dean crouched down and put out a cautious hand to the body blocking his path. He had no doubt it was a body; there was a faint odour of blood and death surrounding it, and it was big, about the size of a very large sheep. It probably hadn't been dead for more than a few days, and considering the large sections of it that he could feel were missing, there was some sort of large predator haunting these tunnels. Which was just perfect. Sam was going to be turned into a goblin and he was going to be glow-worm food. Where was the justice in that?

Dean wiped the goo and blood off onto his jeans, reminded himself to wash his hands before he ate, and stepped over the carcass of the animal. If there was some large predator in the tunnels, it had probably adapted to the complete lack of light and the only real chance he had of avoiding it was getting the hell out of dodge before it found him. Irrationality aside, there had to be a way out of here, unless he'd been wrong and this was the 'certain death' option. But, he wasn't going to think about that. That sort of attitude would get him killed.

"Crap."

His hands had both hit air. Walking forward a few more steps revealed that it was a T-intersection, which was slightly better than a crossroads, on a number of levels. This way he had a one in two chance of getting out of here, assuming that the tunnels didn't fork again, and there was only one exit - which was a lot of assumptions, and he knew what they said about assumptions.

He turned his head to look in both directions. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell. No fresh air to tell him to go that way or smell of decaying flesh that screamed "Don't go this way!" Left seemed as good as right in this instance. Forgoing some sort of choosing rhyme, he turned left and continued on his merry way.

An eternity of darkness later, an explosion went off in front of him. Dean instinctively put his arm across his face, trying to block out the bright white light that had effectively blinded him and protect himself from any debris. The rumbling from the explosion didn't stop, and the light didn't die down, and he was suddenly on the floor, pinned beneath something furry that was rumbling and blinding him. There was pain in his arm – teeth, his mind suddenly connected – and he could hardly breathe with the weight on him. He rolled to the side, swearing at the pain as he dislodged the creature, and pulled the shotgun out of his belt. His vision had returned enough that he could make out shapes around the spots dancing in his watery eyes, so he slammed the shotgun down hard several times on what he thought was the head. The light dimmed slightly and the noise went down in volume, so Dean kept on hitting.

Something slammed into his leg and he was knocked to the floor again, his head hitting it hard and his teeth clicking together painfully. The creature loomed above him, pinning him in its spotlight. His head swimming, he swung out with the shotgun, hoping to hit it in the legs like it had done to him. There was a sound like an earthquake and the light went out. Dean struggled onto his side and to his knees, sitting still until his head stopped wanting to completely fall off. He then walked forward on his knees the few feet to where the creature's head probably would be and laid into it again with the shotgun. It could just be unconscious, or playing dead, and he couldn't risk it still being alive and coming after him, particularly when his head felt like he'd left it back on the floor.

He tried to slow his harsh breathing down and then held his breath for ten seconds, relieved when he didn't hear any breathing or rumbling from the creature. Still trying to catch his breath, he crawled away from it to rest against a wall and absentmindedly wiped the shotgun on his leg. These jeans wouldn't be surviving this adventure. A careful exploration of his arm revealed that he was bleeding, not incredibly heavily, but enough to be a worry considering the last time he ate and how much longer this might all go on. He suddenly remembered the knife he had grabbed before he'd left the motel room and checked his ankle. It was still there but he would have to wait until he had some light to cut some strips off his t-shirt and wrap his arm. He couldn't believe that he'd become so turned around by everything that he'd completely forgotten he had it. Their dad would have kicked his ass.

After a couple of minutes he staggered tiredly to his feet, using the wall to prop himself up when dizziness encroached. He couldn't afford to waste anymore time just lying around. He turned to his left and discovered a slight problem: he wasn't sure whether that was the direction he had been going before running into the glow-worm from hell. It probably was, but he couldn't be certain.

"This day is really starting to suck," he grumbled as he lurched off down the corridor again.

Three turns later the day was really sucking. There was a wall to his left, a wall to his right, and one in front of him. He'd hit a dead end.

"Damnit," he swore as he hit the wall in front of him. There was a mechanical groan and he stepped back. "That's more like it."

The wall rose from the ground, bringing with it blinding light. There was a clunk when it reached the ceiling and stopped moving and he stepped forward through the entrance, his hand shielding his watering eyes. There was fresh air, warmth and something other than a smooth surface beneath his feet. Once his eyes adjusted, he'd be in heaven. He took another step forward and the world fell out from underneath him.

"Holy crap!"

He thrust his hands out, trying to slow the rate he was falling as the light receded above him. There were things grabbing at him, feeling him everywhere, bringing him to a stop.

"Great, the pit of grabby-grabby hands. Because I so need to be felt up today." There were hands everywhere, scaly green and blue, holding him solidly in place, hurting his sore arm. "Hey, would you mind?" he said indignantly to the green hand on his butt.

He was abruptly let go and fell a few further feet. "Okay, okay!" he shouted. "Put your hands wherever the hell you want."

The hands grabbed him again, thankfully in less touchy-feely places.

"Well, are you going to help me, or just grope me?"

Five hands formed into a face: two curving to form the eyes, a fist as the nose and the other two creating the mouth. "We are helping," a disembodied deep voice said as the 'mouth' flapped in time with the speech. That face dissolved, and another formed next to it. Two hands formed each eye socket, two palms outlined the nose and another two formed a thin mouth.

"We're helping hands," it said with a deeper voice than the first face, before becoming hands again.

"Really helpful," Dean mocked.

Four hands formed a face right in front of him. "Up or down?"

"Ah," Dean stalled, trying to figure out which way would be better.

Faces rapidly formed one after another along the tunnel.

"We haven't got all day!"

"Well, it's a big decision for him."

"Which way do you want to go, hmm?"

"Yes, which way?"

Dean looked above him to what little light he could see. "Up," he said firmly.

"He chose up!" Two hands associated with the four that had spoken pointed up in time with the words.

The hands let go and he started to fall down. "I said up!" he yelled. "Up!"

"We're helping hands," a face mocked.

"Just not helping you," another said, laughing.

He kept his hands out, trying to grab on to something to stop himself from falling, but his grip slipped every single time. Then there were no more hands and he was landing on cold dusty ground, a manhole closing overhead.

"Shit."

TBC…