"The Big Black Dog"

Mystic25

Summary: Sam really wished that dog HAD eaten him because Dean's airplane with the spoon routine was more painful than the prospects of being sewn up without any pain meds.

Rating: T for blood, medical stuff, and references to violence.

AN: Hello everyone! I haven't been neglecting you…not much…okay I have, I just have been working on – um, *coughs* other projects. (flees to hills). So in apology I decided to do a lighter summer fare. Just Sam and Dean and hunting aftermath. Yay!

A/N #2: This is set before Sam undertook the First Trial, so he's still healthy-at least until I got a hold of him.

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"The big black dog, bit a big black bear, made the big black bear bleed."

~Tongue Twister

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The story started on what was one of their weirdest cases yet. And that was a pretty damn high standard to reach.

Residents in a five block radius of downtown Topeka reportedly being mauled by a lone black wolf.

They had first sat down at their "Home Base" (Dean's words, not Sam's) to rule things out.

Hellhounds had been ruled out first. No strange men in Armani suits, or hot chicks in low cut black dresses had rolled into town ten years ago granting wishes for make out sessions. And the dog had been reported as a visible creature. Huge, hairy black. Described by one local stoner teenager as having: "giant mofo teeth man!"

Werewolf lost as much credibility as hellhound because the lunar calendar wasn't due a full moon for 20 more days and nine more hours.(Sam had checked, Dean had called him a giant nerd). Dean had suggested Sirius Black and had been smug about it until Sam asked him how he knew who Sirius Black was. Dean shut up after that.

That left them virtually stumped on leads.

Until Sam suggested something way out of the ordinary , for them at least - a simple rabid dog attack.

They had both looked at each other a bit cock eyed because normal things were abnormal for them. But even with what Dean called "normal banality" there were still no solid leads. No outbreak of rabies reported by any of the local animal shelters in the city, no reports of wolves entering the area from the Wildlife Federation.

But, when Sam had dug through the Topeka police reports, he had produced something of a lead. Something of a very odd lead.

Two weeks ago a college freshman, Tanner Milton had been killed in a car accident.

Apparently Tanner had worked part time at the local ASPCA. And also apparently, when he wasn't walking or feeding stray dogs, he'd been getting some action with one of the shelter behavioral specialists. (Sam had warned Dean against any bestiality or "doggie style jokes." Dean hadn't listened.)

The raw end of the deal for Tanner. Rumor had it that this woman slept with every guy in the ASPCA. And when Tanner had found out, it wasn't pretty. He tried to run her over in retaliation after she got off her from her half day shift on a Wednesday. He would have succeeded in his plan, if he hadn't been hit himself by an elderly motorist in a Honda Rav 4.

None of that part was actually weird.

Where it started to get weird was when Sam saw a mention of someone named "Bruiser" in the police report, followed by a series of non legible scrawls, like someone had been drunk writing it. Dean called it a dead end lead, but Sam had a weird hunch. He went to the ASPCA the next day and had questioned the workers and had finally gotten the name of the paper with an article about Tanner's death. In it, it talked about. "Bruiser" a local favorite Black Mastiff, who had been sheltered by the ASPCA. According to the story, the dog suddenly switched from his mild mannered temperament and started showing signs of what the shelter vet had called "end stage rabies."

Dean had of course asked what the friggin point was, interrupting Sam who had read on:

The dog, "Bruiser" was scheduled to be put down the next day. But when the workers had come to retrieve him from his cage, the dog was gone from a locked kennel cage. The door had been removed completely from its hinges. The reported 'black dog attacks' had started two days later. All of the victims being male workers at that same ASPCA.

Sam's hunch from this article was a completely insane one, even for them. What if the ghost of that kid had possessed the body of the dog, and had broken out of his cage to exact some sort of (fetish, Dean had called it) revenge on the men for sleeping with the same woman Tanner had?

Dean snorted at that, Sam said c'mon. And to further tease his little brother Dean had pointed out that crazy eyed guy's family had cremated him. But then Sam had been approached by a worker at the ASPCA and the last, weirdest – and grossest part finally came out.

It seemed that Bruiser was on a walk with said ASPCA worker the afternoon Tanner bought it. And apparently Tanner wasn't hit by a car, he was hit by a bus and was splattered all over the road. Someone was obviously really, really drunk at the police station when they had written the original report on the incident. The ASPCA worker was the one who had called 911, but not before good old Bruiser had started sniffing around what was left of Tanner's body, mostly a finger bone, which the dog picked up like a chew toy.

The volunteer was a bit ("totally," Dean offered over the phone to Sam after meeting with the skinny teen.) disgusted at the dog's "deed" , and hadn't told police. He found Bruiser chewing on the bone the next day in his cage and tried to get it away from the dog. But, Bruiser got all insane and in the kids words to Dean: "tried to eat him, but not the good kind of eat, you know, from vaginas."

So when what was left of Tanner had been scrapped off and pressure washed off into a pile to be cremated, Bruiser was happily chewing on a snippet of Tanner's remains.

Sam's crazy idea actually started to make sense. Which scared Dean more than anything.

The dog could have been possessed by Tanner. Human spirits being that possesed animal bodies were rare, but not un heard of. Especially in Native American cultures. If Tanner's ghost had, what Dean called "enough balls" he could have pulled something like this off. And just like that, boom, crazy ghost possessed dog killer lead. Stranger things had happened with them, so they just finally went with it.

They tracked the locations where a black dog had last been sighted. And sure enough, a black mastiff had been reported by neighbors to be around the apartment complex of one Jenna Elkins- the same Jenna Elkins who had gotten her fair share of action against the ASPCA kennels.

So they staked out Jenna's apartment. Dean said she had great legs in her yoga pants, but he shut up when an enormous black dog loped out behind some trashcans as just as Jenna had capered up the stairs from a night out.

Jenna at first had turned, not screamed and had simply called: "here boy!" when she saw Bruiser, like a bit of an idiot.

But then Bruiser's teeth barred, his hackles raised, and he growled that deep growl Dean had heard from one too many junk yard dogs. And then Jenna finally screamed.

If Dean didn't believe that the dog was possessed by a ghost, the solid black ectoplasm that dropped from the dogs mouth instead of drool clinched it.

Dean had rushed Jenna, and Sam had rushed the dog moments before Bruiser attacked. At least moments before he attacked Jenna. Sam, naturally, had the bad luck of Sam Winchester and the Mastiff turned on him, going immediately for his throat. Sam dodged the dog's bared teeth, but not before the front canines bit into his neck.

There was a moment, a long painful gasping one, when Sam couldn't breathe, and his blood poured slick and warm down his throat, and Dean screamed out his name. Then he was stabbing his hunter's knife up into the dog's chest.

The dog howled and released him. It was then that Sam noticed the odd addition of a finger bone dangling from the collar around his neck.

Sam didn't have time to question how the hell a dog managed to get someone to turn a finger bone into a collar charm so he could exact his spirit revenge. He just rolled, yanking hard on the leather collar. It snapped off the dog's neck, and Dean torched it with his lighter. Sparking and billowing smoke shot out of the dog's mouth and evaporated, and the Mastiff fell over in a dead drop on the pavement.

Then it was over. The Mastiff was bleeding and whimpering. And Sam was just bleeding. Dean approached the cowering dog, gun drawn.

But Sam jumped to his feet faster than would be expected for someone who had just been lunged at in the neck by a crazy ghost possessed dog, and told Dean to leave the dog alone. That it was over, and something about puppy rights because Dean stopped paying attention and started getting pissed. Because Sam was bleeding like escaped prey and he was trying to save a damn dog.

Dean cursed a lot of good things at his brother, but ultimately Jenna had interceded. She was shaken up, and scrapped up, but agreed to take the dog back to her home and find a way to help it. Dean told Sam it was his big pleading eyes and blood loss that made her do it, and also called him a dumb ass.

Dean helped his brother to the car, there had been a brief arguments about a 'hospital' that Sam had refused, and still refused over the 3 hours Dean drove them back to the Men of Letters bunker, telling him that if he bled out all over the upholstery he was going to be pissed off and make him clean it off. This hadn't been said as a real threat, because there had been too much worry behind it for it to amount to anything.

The drive from Topeka to Lebanon took three hours. A ride made exceedingly longer because Dean decided to keep stopping about every three minutes on the drive in order to check the field bandages around Sam's neck. On one of these times he tightened it so much that Sam choked and coughed out the word: 'air' like a raspy ghost escaped from a haunted house.

They finally arrived safely in their 'home,' Dean hauled Sam into the library, the room with the most amount of light, shoved his brother into a chair; and Sam spread out their first aid kid on the table top.

And it was where both brothers found themselves when Sam wanted to choke Dean under.