Robin’s Rambles – “Wishful Thinking” – The Winchester Family Business

“Wishful Thinking”

–Robin’s Rambles by Robin Vogel

Now – An attractive woman taking a shower at a spa is peeped on by a young, pale boy with red hair. When she turns, he becomes invisible! She wraps a towel around herself and walks to the sinks. An invisible hand wipes the condensation from the shower door to better see her. After she wraps a towel around her hair, we see wet footsteps approaching her. Sensing a presence, she turns. “Hello? Anybody there?” She pulls the towel off her head and tosses it toward the rack. However, it ends up on the head of the invisible young man. She stares at the towel, seemingly hovering in mid-air. “Hello, Mrs. Armstrong,” says a voice. She screams.

Bar – Dean rapidly downs shots as he and Sam argue over Uriel. Why would Uriel tell me you remember hell if you don’t? wonders Sam. “Because he’s a dick,” says Dean, as if that explains everything. Their fey waiter stops at the table to offer them more food–a chipotle chimichanga or fryer bombs? Dean says no, then gives the guy a wide-eyed, WEIRDO look. “I have no idea why Uriel told you I remember hell,” says Dean. Watching his brother down the third shot, Sam says, “Right” sarcastically. Sam insists Dean look him in the eye and tell him he doesn’t remember a thing from his time “down under.” Dean does so, easily. Sam just wants to help. “You know everything I do,” insists Dean. Their waiter returns. “Outstanding!” he chortles. “Dudes, you have got to try our Ice Cream Extreme. It’s extreme.” Check, says Sam. The waiter drops it on the table instantly. “All right, awesome!” he says in parting. Munching a pretzel, Dean wants to know, “Where do we go from here?” Sam shows him a report on his computer showing that a ghost might be haunting a women’s health facility in Concrete, Washington–a woman claims the ghost threw her down a flight of stairs. Dean is already grabbing money from his wallet. “Women? Showers?” he says. “We’ve got to save these people!”

Concrete, Washington – Dean drops Sam off at I Lucky Chin’s, where he’s posing as a book writer gathering information for a book called (wait for it) SUPERNATURAL. Sam notices an odd couple in the restaurant–a plain man with a gorgeous woman all over him, making out in their seats. Candace, the woman Sam’s interviewing, claims to be a natural sensitive, so the ghost contacting her isn’t really strange. Candace explains that the ghost not only chased her, it knew her name, Mrs. Armstrong! That’s when she fell down the stairs. Oops! So you weren’t pushed? asks Sam–did the ghost seem violent? “Maybe,” she says, but “it was a ghost, I’m lucky to be alive!” Then it got weird–the ghost helped her up, and kept saying, “Don’t tell my mother!” Sam agrees–that’s weird.

Dean reads a local newspaper–a man in Concrete won 168 mil in the lottery. Dean found no EMF in the showers and Sam thinks CRAZY pushed Mrs. Armstrong down the stairs. Dean really wanted to save some naked women, too! A bunch of kids chasing one lone boy passes by. “Run, Forest run!” urges Dean. They doubt there’s a case–until they overhear a conversation between two men about Bigfoot. The sheriff is placating the man, who looks like a hunter. The latter says, “I know a bear track when I see one! This thing didn’t leave bear tracks; it’s feet were huge! It was THE Bigfoot!” Sam and Dean join them and introduce themselves as FBI investigating–THAT. The hunter assures Sam he can tell him exactly where this happened.

Checking out the hunter’s lead, Sam remarks that every hunter worth his salt knows Bigfoot’s a hoax. Dean wonders if there’s LSD in the town water supply. When they come across gigantic footprints, Dean asks what could have made that. Sam: “A Big foot.” They follow the oversized footprints to a store the back door ripped off the hinges. They find empty, broken booze bottles–Irish Creme. “He a girl drink drunk,” says Dean, grabbing a pint bottle off the shelf and slipping it into his jacket. Sam shows Dean that whatever this is took the entire rack of porn magazines. There’s also a big handful of brown fur stuck in the rack.

They exit Lang’s Liquor Store through the front door and sit down on a bench in unison, their bodies in exactly the same pose. “I got nothin’,” says Dean. Sam figures it’s a joke, a big-ass person in a gorilla suit. Or he’s a Bigfoot, Alco-holo-porno addict–kinda like a deep woods Duchovney. Dean smiles at his own wit. A little girl rides past them on her bike. A magazine drops from her basket. Dean picks it up–Busty Asian Beauties! They agree she’s a little young for this mag. She leaves a crate of booze and more porn magazines on the steps of the liquor store; on top is a note that says SORRY. She walks away with her bike; Sam and Dean follow her home in the Impala. “Is this what Harry and the Hendersons do?” wonders Dean as they walk to the front door. The same little girl (so cute!) answers the door. Sam asks if her parents are home, but they’re not. “Have you seen a really, really. . .” Dean raises his hand up to show something really tall. “Is he in trouble?” asks the girl, worried. No, they assure her they just wanted to make sure he was OK. “He’s my teddy bear,” the girl says, “I think he’s sick.” “Amazing,” says Dean, “because we are teddy bear doctors.” They pull out badges and hold them up. “Really?” she asks hopefully. “Can you please take a look at him?” Sure, they say, and follow her upstairs to her bedroom. “He’s pretty grumpy,” she whispers. Knocking, she says, “Teddy, there are some nice doctors here to see you.” She opens the door. An eight foot tall teddy bear sits in a rocking chair, a bottle of booze clutched in his hand. “Close the friggin’ door!” yells Teddy, and the girl does. “See what I mean?” she asks, and the brothers can only stare at each other in astonishment.

“All I ever wanted was a teddy that was big, real and talked,” the child explains. “Now he’s sad all the time, ouch in the head sad, says weird stuff, and smells like the bus!” “Little girl,” begins Dean. “AUDREY!” she corrects him. How did your teddy become real? asks Dean. I wished for it, she says, at the wishing well. Dean opens her bedroom door. Teddy is watching upsetting news stories. “Look at this!” whines Teddy. “Can you believe this crap?” “Not really,” says Dean, staring at the huge button eyes and bow tied around the bear’s neck. “It is a terrible world!” says Teddy. “WHY AM I HERE?” “For tea parties!” says Audrey, exasperated, “TEA PARTIES?” cries the bear, sobbing. “Is that all there is?” Dean, disbelieving, closes the bedroom door. Sam asks Audrey to give them a second, and they walk away to discuss it. “Are we gonna kill this damn bear?” asks Sam. “How?” asks Dean, “Shoot it, burn it?” “Both?” asks Sam. Dean doesn’t want some flaming, pissed off giant teddy bear after them if the bullet and fire don’t work. Sam suspects the bear isn’t really the core problem. “Audrey,” he asks, “where are your parents?” “My mom wished they were in Bali,” she says, “so I think they’re in Bali.” Your bear is sick, says Sam, he’s got. . .” “Lollipop disease,” fills in Dean, “not uncommon for a bear his size, but it’s really contagious.” “Is there someone you can stay with while we treat him?” asks Sam. Audrey agrees to stay with Mrs. Herlie for a few days, per the brothers’ instructions. “Where is this wishing well?” asks Dean.

Chinese restaurant – We view from the bottom of the wishing well the little boy who ran from the group of kids past Sam and Dean. He tosses a coin into the fountain and presumably makes a wish. Dean tests it out by throwing in a coin, but refuses to tell Sam his wish. A man walks in calling for who ordered a footlong sandwich with jalapeno. “That’d be me,” says Dean after exchanging a look with Sam. Sitting at a table, eating his sandwich, Dean opines that the wishing well works–“That was pretty specific, dude!” Dean shows him the front page of the paper showing the huge lottery win. “I’m guessing this,” says Dean. “I’m guessin’ that,” says Sam, gesturing toward the plain guy-pretty gal combination having fun together at a nearby booth. “That definitely goes on the list,” agrees Dean. They wonder what, if anything, they should do about this; denying people what they wish for seems, as Dean says, a “douchey” thing to do. Sam reminds him that these things usually come with deadly price tags. Dean is loving his sandwich, that’s all he knows, but agrees to “put a hole in the wishing well” until they can figure out more about it. The owner of the restaurant bustles to their table, “We don’t allow people to eat outside food here.” Dean insists he won’t eat the “inside” food here, and fumbles in his pocket to find the right badge. “Health Department,” he says. “You, my friend, have a rat infestation. You’ll have to shut this place down under Emergency Hazard Code 56C. “RATS?” cries the owner. “Typical fountain, plaster Buddha,” says Dean after checking it out. “Yes,” says the owner, “we keep a clean place here!” Sam tells the man he has to leave during their preliminary investigation. Dean flips a coin to Sam. “Aren’t you tempted?” he asks. “No, it wouldn’t be real, wouldn’t trust it,” says Sam, handing the coin back. “The bear seems pretty real. If you could wish yourself back before it all started,” says Dean, “big Yuppie lawyer with a nice car, white picket fence?” That isn’t what I’d wish for, says Sam. Dean is surprised. I’m not that guy anymore, says Sam. “What would Sammy wish for?” asks Dean. (aww!) “Lilith’s head on a plate–bloody,” replies Sam seriously. “OK,” says Dean. He notices an odd coin at the bottom of the fountain, but he can’t pull it free. “Is it welded on there?” wonders Dean. The proprietor gets nervous when the boys re-enter the restaurant with a hammer and crowbar. Watching Dean slipping the crowbar under an edge of the coin, the man protests, “You’re going to break my fountain!” Sam threatens to slap him with a 44-16 and the man walks away. When Dean tries to hit the crowbar with the mallet to free the coin, the top of the mallet flies off. The boys agree–that coin is magical! “I think it’s hoodoo protecting the well,” says Dean, “I don’t think we can destroy this.” Sam takes paper and pencil, makes an impression of the coin and tells Dean to check it out. “Where you goin’?” asks Dean. “Something just occurred to me,” says Sam. Dean, confused, watches Sam hurry out. The angry owner stares daggers at them.

Sam returns to the women’s locker room where another pretty lady is being spied on by the invisible boy. Sam grabs his shoulder and turns him around; the kid is naked! Sam shows his badge to the startled woman. “Don’t worry,” he says, I’m with the Health Department. She runs off. “So you can turn it on and off?” he asks the kid. “You actually walked up to a wishing well, dropped a dime and wished to be invisible?–to spy on women in the shower?” The babbling, stammering boy says no, but his apparent erection suggests otherwise. “Put on some pants,” orders Sam, poking him in the chest, “and STAY VISIBLE!” “OK,” mumbles the boy, upset at having been caught.

Dean spots the little boy who made a wish chasing after the three boys who had previously been chasing him. “You’d better run!” warns the lone boy. The other kids race from him in terror. Noticing Dean staring, the boy stops. “You gotta problem, Mister?” he asks. “What? No,” says Dean. The boy keeps on running. Ugly sounds are coming from Dean’s stomach, which is why, when Sam returns to their room, he hears violent retching from the bathroom. “The wishes turn very bad, Sam,” reports Dean between bouts of vomiting. He flushes the toilet and exits the bathroom, wiping his mouth with on a towel. “The coin’s Babylonian,” says Dean, sweaty and pale. “It’s cursed. I found some fragments of a legend. . .” He seems about to return for another bout with the commode, then decides, “I’m good.” The serpent is Tiamat, the sign of primordial chaos,” continues Dean. “I guess her priests were workin’ some serious butt magic. Whoever throws a coin in first turns on the well, then it starts granting wishes to all comers.” “But the wishes get twisted,” says Sam,” you ask for a talking teddy. . .” “You get a bi-polar nut job,” finishes Dean. “And you get E-coli,” says Sam. “This thing has turned more than one town upside-down over the centuries,” explains Dean, “it’s even wiped a few off the map–one person gets their wish, it’s trouble, but EVERYONE gets their wish. . .” He takes a swig from his can of beer. “Chaos,” finishes Sam. “Any way to stop it?” “One way,” says Dean, “we’ve gotta find the first wisher. They’re the only one who can pull the first coin back out and reverse the wishes. Once word gets out about the well, things are just going to get crazier and crazier.” We see a blackboard in Audrey’s room. Written on it is “LIFE IS MEANINGLESS. Signed, T. Bear” Teddy, sobbing, has somehow gotten hold of a gun, which he’s plugged into his mouth. He pulls the trigger. Stuffing flies into the air behind him like brain splatter would have had he been a living creature. Teddy, a huge hole in his head, stuffing sticking out like brain matter, realizes he’s still alive. Shaking his fist, he yowls, “WHYYY?”

Hotel – Dean, asleep on his back, dreams of blood and screams in hell when Sam calls his name and awakens him. “Sleep well?” asks Sam. Reaching down for his half-empty pint of booze, Dean says, “Damn rested and ready.” He takes a swig from the bottle. “Do you think I can’t see it?” asks Sam gently. “The nightmares, the drinking–I’m with you 24/7, I know what’s going on.” Dean refuses to discuss it. “Uriel wasn’t lying, but you are,” says Sam. “You remember hell, don’t you? I’m your brother, I just wish you’d talk to me.” “Be careful what you wish for,” says Dean. Seeing his brother’s determined face, he adds, “Can we stow the couples’ therapy? We’re on a job, I wanna work, what have you got? Please?” Reluctantly, Sam outlines, “We got teddy bear, lottery guy, naked pervert guy, they all musta wished sometime in the last two weeks, but who wished first and how we’re supposed to know who else wished for what when?” “It helps when they announce it in the paper,” says Dean, showing him an article and photo describing the surprise engagement of Hope Casey to Wesley Mondale” “Ah, true love!” says Dean sarcastically. “Best lead we’d got,” says Sam.