A/N: as ever and always, thanks to everyone who reads my stories. (And eternal apologies to everyone I owe a review response to!)

Dead.

They are so dead. Brad and his little friend what's-his-name. They are so so dead. And you know what the upside is? In my line of work, I can kill them when they're alive, then I can hunt them down and kill them again after they're dead. Win-win.

Because they are so dead.

It didn't take me and Sam too long to figure out that the whole "ghost in the dorm room" thing was set up because Bill & Ted wanted an 'excellent adventure' with the Bubblemint Twins. I mean, I can get behind a little supernatural improv to tip the odds when it comes to wide-eyed coeds, so I was willing to let it go.

But then they insulted the car. The car. They called her a gas-guzzling dinosaur and said she should be turned into a solar collector panel. Nobody insults my baby and gets away with it. Nobody. So I told them that if they pulled anything like that ghost stunt again, they'd be the Bubblemint Twins. In Sing Sing. They believed me too.

Ha. Did you know they took 'gullible' out of the dictionary?

Of course then they got some other freshman schmuck to tell me that they'd pulled the Impala's distributor cap. He was another klutzy, pimply kid; tripping over his own feet and practically bouncing off of me. He said he saw them pull the cap off and put it in some prehistoric root cellar or something on the far side of campus. It sounded like something they'd do so I went over there to get it back and had barely set foot in the dark space when the door closed behind me and I heard a lock being snapped shut.

Real funny guys. So funny I forgot to laugh.

Now who's gullible?

I reached for my phone to call Sam – and came up empty. Oh, this just kept getting better and better, didn't it? When that kid 'accidentally' bumped into me, he must've lifted it. Great. Well, Sam'd come looking for me eventually. In the meantime, while I looked for another way out of this mudpit, I could rearrange my 'to do' list - and doing bodily harm to those two idiots was now on the top of the list. And if they touched the car, I was making a copy of the list so I could do them bodily harm twice.

I tried the door. It was old and creaky and still tough as iron. Kicking at the jamb did no good since I was attempting to kick it out, and the floor in this little slice of middle earth was a foot give or take below the door frame so I wasn't exactly getting all the leverage I needed.

Great.

OK, so this way out was a no-go, literally. Maybe there was another way. I flicked on my lighter and started in the direction of the – I don't even know what to call it – hallway? empty space? that maybe that led to another exit or windows or coal chute or something.

The lighter didn't throw much light and I felt my way along the old stone walls, hunkered down to not-always-successfully avoid the low ceiling beams, getting up close and personal with cobwebs and spider webs and probably some spiders too. I kicked something that sound like bones, but too small to be human. I checked anyway, just to be sure. Raccoon maybe. Hopefully.

A crooked turn around a crumbling corner had me tripping over fallen foundation rocks and landing knees first – and almost face first – in a deathtrap of mud, trash, and foul water. Out went my lighter. I searched for it and found it and shook the water out of it, but it wouldn't light. The wick was probably soaked.

Dead. They were dead. That's all I was gonna say. And I was going to keep saying it until it was true. They. Were. Dead.

And just to be really mean, I might just make Sammy think I was totally freaked being down here and let him have first crack at them. He'd be so pissed, he'd scare them back to nursery school.

That thought motivated me and I pulled myself out of the water and kept inching my way forward in the darkness.

Well, I wouldn't make Sam think this had reminded me of hell. For one thing, that wouldn't be nice. For another, it wouldn't be true. This hole was damp and dusty and cramped and quiet. Hell was hot and endless and utter bedlam. Compared to hell, this place – any place - was a garden spot.

And Sam was out there and with a little effort I could get to him, or he could get to me. That alone made this not hell.

A few more turns around a few more rocks, a few more knocks on my head and scrapes on my fingers and bruises on my shins and I saw a wink of daylight up ahead. Finally. Now we were getting somewhere. It was coming through a hairline space between two beams along the foundation, and if there was room for light there was room for wiggle and the chance to knock that wood out of there, find Sammy, and end those two sorry excuses for –

Sam.

What if they'd done something to Sam, too? What if they'd tricked him and locked him someplace just as cramped? This place was a tight squeeze on me; Sam would be jammed in here.

I scraped a stone out of the mud at my feet and used it to batter the wood. They messed with me, they messed with my car, they messed with my brother? That meant they got to be dead three kinds of way, and I knew how to be creative.

But – even using all my strength and a damn heavy rock, that wood was not budging. Was this place so old the wood was petrified? Okay, so maybe the fact that the beams were six inches thick had something to do with it too. I was getting seriously pissed.

Well, if I couldn't go out, I'd try up.

I dropped the rock and reached over my head to whatever was passing for a ceiling. Wood. Great. More wood and webs and annoying resistance. I couldn't find a decent finger hold, and in this place that was practically a miracle. So I tracked along, feeling every which place for some give, some opening, some weakness.

I found nothing.

How could something so old and decrepit be so sound and well put together?

Of course, if Sam was here, he'd only have to stand up straight to lift this place clear off its foundations.

Finally, I finally found a notch between two boards and worked a finger into it. If my lighter still worked, I could scout around for a piece of metal or wood or appropriately shaped stone to use as leverage to pry the boards loose. Well, I wasn't out of options yet. I stacked some stones across the ground – floor –whatever – so that I'd know where to stop and look for the crack in the ceiling again, and kept up my trek to the far end of this tunnel.

Maybe ten minutes later of slow, careful treading, and I carefully tripped over a thin length of metal. I was never so happy to nearly fall into a stone wall as I was at that moment. I grabbed it and made my way back to my cairn of stones.

They better not have touched Sam, I groused to nobody while I jammed the metal into the wooden joint and tried to force a break in it. He better not be trapped in some creepy crawly mud pit. Mess with me, fine, you pay for it. Mess with my little brother and you die. He's got enough crap on his shoulders, he doesn't need any more –

Crap.

The wood gave, and dirt and soil and just plain gross showered down on me. I dodged away from it, keeping my grip on my improvised pry bar and choking on the dust. Okay, note to self, don't mess with the ceiling in here anymore. Bad idea. Very Bad Idea.

I spit the dirt and the dust and the gross out of my mouth and felt my heart pound from more than the shock of it. It reminded me too much of digging myself out of my grave, and while in the big picture that had been a good thing, in the actual moment it was kind of unpleasant.

A lesser man might have even found it scary…

Okay, so – up wasn't a good idea, but I still had plenty of ahead to explore. My lighter still didn't light, but I kept a grip on my metal bar and pushed farther into the darkness. Turned out the rest of the burrow was full of rocks and webs and garbage, but no way out. After another half hour or so searching, I hit a dead end, an immovable mountain of soil, filling the space between two very solid rock walls.

Great.

Back I went toward the 'front' door, reciting to myself everything I was going to do to those morons for trapping me in here. The metal bar might be some use for leverage on the door, and it for sure would come in handy for beating some sense into Dumb and Dumber.

I made a slower trek back, checking and double checking walls and beams for any give or crack or dry rot. I was muddy and coughing and pissed, and when I finally got back to the motel, a nice long hot shower would wash away all this muck and any evidence of murder.

I'd just passed my pile of stones when I heard the loud and satisfying sound of wood splintering all to hell, and light and air filtered down to me.

Sam. Just as I was thinking it could only be Sam who blew open that door, I heard him call.

"DEAN! WHERE ARE YOU?"

He sounded seriously pissed, which meant he was okay. I took a breath to call back to him, but I only seemed to suck the dirt and dust farther into my lungs and all I could manage was a squeaky cough. He'd see me soon enough anyway. I dropped the metal bar and headed for the light.

"FIND HIM."

He wasn't alone. He wasn't alone. If he had one or both of those idiots with him I was going to pile drive them into this mud floor and come back for them when I had grandchildren.

As I rounded the last corner, I saw Sam first. He was okay like I thought, but I could tell that he was seething. When Sam gets that angry, it just seems to make him even bigger and scarier. You know, like he needs the extra intimidation factor. But he was okay and the idiot kid he'd obviously driven or dragged or hounded into this cellar looked terrified and I almost felt sorry for him.

Until I remembered…

"Did you touch my car?"

"YOU TOUCHED THE CAR?" Sam echoed me. That's right – love me, love my baby.

Once the kid – I forget his name – spit out 'no!' I stopped really listening. I registered a lot of 'sir's' and 'didn't touch' and 'wouldn't touch' and a lot of fear. And then he said locking me in here was supposed to be funny.

Funny?

I was breathing in spiders and coughing out gravel, covered in dirt down to my elbows and mud up to my knees and they thought it was funny? Beside me, I could feel Sam's fury amp up another notch.

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" I asked the kid. He blinked and looked from me to Sam and back and I registered – Sam must've said the exact same thing to him. Never, never mess with the Winchesters.

Again I got the 'sir's' and 'no sir, no laughing' and yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

"Give me back my damn phone."

I almost wished he didn't have it so I'd have another reason to flatten him. But he had it. I grabbed it back from him and ran down the list of things I could do to him but there were so many, I couldn't choose. I decided to be generous.

"Do you know what you're going to do now?"

"Die? Sir?"

Well, he wasn't as dumb as he looked.

"You're going to run, and you're going to hide…" And you're going to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for us…

SmartBoy started to book for the doorway and I was happy to see him go. Sam, however, was not.

"STOP."

"Sam?" I was a little worried. Sam was pissed and this kid was a pipsqueak.

"He didn't apologize."

Ouch. Sam was really really pissed. Really pissed and channeling Dad I think. Apologize? The kid had the same idea because I saw 'no hell, no way' cross his face. And then he looked at Sam again.

"I'msorry-it'llneverhappenagain-canIgonow-Ihavetostudy-formySurveyofLitmidterm."

And then he ran, probably feeling Sam's burning glare all the way back to Mommy. When he was out of sight, Sam turned back to me, gripping his hand around my shoulder.

"You're okay?" His voice shook a little, like he was scared. He was hunched, this place wasn't all that high to start with, not Sam Winchester high, but I got the idea he was leaning in anyway to have a good look at my face.

"I'm fine."

"Really? You're sure? This place didn't – it isn't -?"

I hadn't even had to suggest it, he was worried all on his own what this place might be reminding me of.

"It didn't. Really, Sammy. I'm fine. C'mon, let's get out of here."

And as hunched, crunched, and crammed in here as he was, he stepped back and let me out the door first into the air and sunshine. As I stepped over the sill, I got a good look at the door and door frame, splintered in true Winchester style.

"A little impatient, were we?" I asked him.

"They pissed me off." He answered after a moment's consideration. Aw, Sammy, you love me.

We'd only walked a couple of yards away from my Saturday excursion when, like an offering from propitiating deity, Brad strolled into our line of sight. He stopped, we stopped. We looked at him. He looked at us.

Then he ran like hell back where he came from.

Sam tensed, ready to go after him, but I put my hand up to stop him. That put no joy in Sam.

"Dean – I can catch him."

"And do what? End his suffering? Trust me Sammy, the only thing scarier than somebody knowing that you are coming after them, is somebody wondering when you're coming after them. He's not going to stop running until Thanksgiving. C'mon, I need a shower, and we know where he lives anyway…"

I started walking again, and Sam walked with me, though he threw some glares in the direction little Brad had run off, even when we'd gotten back to the car. A quick look under the hood showed me that my baby was okay. If it hadn't been, I would've given Sam my blessing to go take of our little pest problem.

"Funny this." He gave a parting shot to Brad's invisible jet trail, as we got into the car.

"You know what Sam? Remind me never to piss you off."

"Dean - I remind you every day…"

I couldn't resist. I had to say it.

"Funny."

The End