10Carebears, Shirts and Hangars, Oh My!
They said they didn't actually exist in real life.
I believed them. Sorta.
000
The first time I was pressed into a Care-Bear rant everyone gave me strange 'is-she-okay, seriously?' looks, and shifted positions continuously, trying not to laugh. It wasn't my fault – Sharika kept prodding and prodding and prodding –
I had always been scared of Care-Bears.
Sure, everyone thinks they're so cute, and sweet, and daft in the head, a little. I mean, they have names like you wouldn't even believe; Fun Shine Bear, and Cheer Bear, and Love-A-Lot Bear – I mean, what the hell? They go around, all day, everyday, teleporting in on their clouds into little children's rooms and talking with them and giggling away, at all hours of the night, without the parents ever knowing; the freaks. They're doing it to get in our good books; once we all trust them – it'll be over for us. They'll be raping our kids, drugging and brainwashing us, and shooting us up with radioactive rainbows from atop of Care-a-Lot, their impeachable castle.
Who knows what they do up there – create plans to take over the world, and change it into a sickly, technicolour Care-Bear paradigm? Maybe they're watching us…yeah, always watching us – watching us sleep, eat, doing our private things. That's probably what keeps them so cheerful; that sick, stalker-like pleasure. That, and the knowledge that one day they can rule over us all, can drop the masks, and eat homo-sapiens for every meal, not just for that occasional treat on the sly.
And no one will realise, because they'll all love the Care-Bears, and think, what? No. The Care-Bears care about us, they'd never do that, silly. And then they'd shoot the person who dared suggest it, in the head – three or four times, counting optimistically on their fingers, because that's how the Care-Bears taught them.
But no; they aren't sweet. They aren't innocent, or kindly, or generous. They are psychopaths in deceptively small and cuddly and bright coloured packaging.
And I knew it.
"Lauren, you're being ridiculous. Just forget about it, move on. The Care-Bears aren't dangerous –" I see they already got to you, Dean… "That snuggle bitch though, ooh, I'd love to get my hands on that furry little neck."
Fuck him. I knew the truth – what bear species was truly the dangerous type.
And they didn't advertise clothes washing-liquids, either.
The topic wasn't brought up again. But soon, oh, soon they would realise I was totally right.
000
One by one my shirts started disappearing.
I didn't think much of it at first; just thought I was misplacing them, or someone else had shoved it into their duffel by accident – worst case scenario they'd been left behind at the Laundromat. By the time I had three shirts left, one shoe-strap and clingy, one a boob tube, and one that couldn't even be classified as a shirt – it was more of a net with sleeves – I had gone through pissed off and was on the other side.
"Where are my shirts?" I hissed at Dean, that night, pressed him into the bed with my body, glared into his eyes. I'd looked everywhere – all the secret spots. In the Impala under the weaponry, in the bottom of his duffel, in the middle of his dirty laundry, even in Sam and Sharika's bags, because I knew he was devious enough, and had little enough of a conscience to do that – use their duffels to hide the evidence of his activities.
But no – they were nowhere.
On one hand, it was kind of flattering, of course. On the other, I was considering banging his skull endlessly against the headboard until he confessed. I knew it had to be Dean. No one else had a reason, a cause – any kind of kink that'd lead them to do it. Not even as a stupid prank. Dean, though –
"What are you talking about?"
"My shirts, you asshole. The ones that have all conveniently disappeared?"
"What the hell would I do with your shirts?"
"You expect me to try and understand the tangled webs of your freaky mind?"
000
Long story short – he didn't have my shirts.
000
We'd been doing a simple little job down in South Carolina when it had all started – some boring-as-fuck poltergeist. We first got wind of something weird happening in the town next door about a week after I was down to my last three shirts – the article on it in the newspaper immediately caught my attention. It was something about a sudden onset of the missing-t-shirts epidemic and dark, indistinct little shapes running through the streets in the middle of the night. I, of course, stated that we were going, and no matter how much Dean joked about horny little green men, or what-the-fuck-ever, I didn't cave. They agreed eventually, Sammy hypothesising imps, maybe goblins if we were really lucky and the surrounding woodland had the right kind of shrubs. Whatever.
Like good little hunters we went to check it out.
First night in town we pulled into a motel just off the main street, cut the engine, threw our bags and ourselves into the room, laid the salt lines, and laid ourselves down to sleep. It was uneventful, but for the others' missing shirts in the morning. Since I'd slept with all three of my remaining ones on my body as soon as I'd realised they were all I had left – unless I wanted to wear baggy flannel – I suffered no losses, and instead sat smug and contemptuous, waiting on the sagging motel bed, arms crossed.
"Where the –" Dean continued to swear, looking for his favourite flannel shirt, and I smirked at him, Sharika and Sam scouring the whole room around me, anxious. "I liked that shirt, damnit," the elder Winchester boy muttered finally, then turned to me, mouth pulled down grudgingly, hazel green eyes rolling. "Alright, so. You were right." Dean was down to two layers, a T and his jacket, rather than his usual three, today. Can't say I felt guilty about it – I had warned them.
"I know," I said.
"What the fuck kind of monster is a klepto?"
000
The forest didn't have the right kind of shrub, so, no goblins. And then we were all stumped when we realised – hey! There were no typical signs of imp activity either. Whatever was going on here required much more research.
What exactly we were looking for though? Yeah. No one was really sure. That was the problem. You can't actually type in the search engine 'kleptomaniac supernatural' like Dean suggested. And 'shirts stolen supernatural' didn't turf up anything helpful either. I seriously had to re-evaluate my faith in Google after that.
The first clue came in when Sam found a half-dead sunflower in his duffel, yet another of his shirts having gone missing the previous night. He held it up, staring at the three of us – of course, we as a collective had no clue.
I had an inkling, right in the back of my brain, niggling – but no real evidence. It's like my mom used to say – my Lauren, she finds all the clues without one.
But I always hated that bitch, so what she says doesn't count.
000
We were at the local haunting ground – or, in other words, the pub – bumming around, moping and wearing shirts that were starting to get just a little on the funky side, from being worn too often in the last week. Sure, we'd been to the Laundromat, but there's only so many times we can go without looking like hobos, and without seeming suspicious, or something. And it's not like we could exactly steal shirts from other patrons. Too much attention in our line of work is never a good thing – hunters should remain anonymous, nondescript, so as not to be identified to authorities later on.
'Course, Dean wasn't thinking like that, as per usual, slutting himself around at the bar, hustling pool with a gigantic grin, and seemingly hustling his own ass as well. I just rolled my eyes, and read more and more hysterical reports on myspace blogs, about favourite tops gone missing in the night, and increasingly strange gifts being left behind. Namely candy, flowers, and suspicious powder that poofed into inexistence as soon as it was touched. No one knew what was going down; no one knew what to think. What the hell was going on? Why were people breaking into their houses to steal their clothes, for chrissakes, when they had expensive technology lying around? Wouldn't a burglar find a TV far more alluring than a boob-tube?
I myself wasn't sure what to believe either, really. I mean, how truthful is myspace? How reliable? How much of it is BS? So many questions, so few shirts left. Dean was down to his last four – having copied my example of wearing them all to sleep – Sam had five, and Sharika had four as well.
Watching Dean sink two balls simultaneously, I sighed, then turned back to the laptop before me. Took a long pull of my beer, then went back to reading more:
'like zomg, my totally most FAVEourite topp – you know the, likle, green one with sparkles and is strapless, and like totally shows off my boibs w/o looking slutty, but still makes me look, like, totally HAWT? – okay, so, I woke up tis morning and I wanted to wear it 4 my date with Brad – omg, he IS hot, isn't he?! MY BOYFRIEND, LOVE YOU FOR LIFE BRAD MY HEART!1! 33333 – but where I keep it – there was a rose instead. I am going to KILL my lil bro.
My brain may be dead and melted out of my ears by the time I'm finished – but lives, right? RIGHT?! PEOPLES' LIVES ARE MORE IMPORTANT!
I think, however, if I end up quietly killing bradzangel on the side, before this hunt is over, no one could blame me.
000
When it happened, I think I was the most shocked.
That's irony for you.
000
"We love you!" the tiny maws, sprinkled with long, jutting teeth said, claws outstretched towards us as we shot, over and over, iron bullets gauging skin and not stopping the furry bodies' inevitable forward tread one itty bit.
"I told you!" I yelled, and pulled Dean by his shirt collar, behind a bin with me. "I told you they were real, but did you believe me? No, of course not."
"How do we kill these sons of bitches?" Dean panted, reloading. I peeked out from behind the edge, ducking as a blast of sunlight laced with bright flowers came my way, hearing the fizzle of the hairs at my nape. An explosion of plaster, mortar and brick shards followed, sprinkling down on me and Dean as I sprung back.
"How the fuck should I know?!"
"You're the fanatic!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am –"
"We looooove you!"
"Move!" Dean yelled, and we ran for cover behind another bin, rolling as they shot bunnies and candy in steaming streamers over our heads. The crackbang of bullets heard behind us marked Sharika and Sam's presence; the scrapeslide of concrete under my knuckles made me wince.
"Shit!" I said, as my gun spun away from my hand, to hide under a dumpster nearby.
"Count?" Dean asked, and passed me the spare from his waistband.
"Seven on the left, two on the right."
"Any ideas?"
"We could run them through with the excess of coat hangars we have lying by our feet."
"Ha. Ha. No, really."
000
"Who was right?" I asked, standing over the run-through Care-bear corpse at my feet.
"You were," the three of them said in dull unison, pulling their reshaped coat hangars free of Care-bear heads and hearts alike.
"Yeah, that's right." Hey, I had a right to be smug.
"So, the Snuggle Bitch?"
"Maybe next time, Dean."
Complete crack!fic. I know it! I am aware! This has been sitting in my documents for time immemorial. Just finished it. It's not the best, but I like parts of it besides. I don't own Supernatural. If I did there would be genderswap and mindswap and more sex.