Dean Winchester pinches the single, plain, faux-silver coated key, between his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger.

Nashville is...eh.

Yesterday, when the gas station clerk told him Music City is the definition of a 'Little, Big Town' he didn't quite believe it.

How could something be little and big?

Now, as he watches a group of boys, holding onto the loops of a few girls' daisy dukes, as they round the corner of the intersection in the back of an old beat up pickup truck, he gets the gist of what the man was saying the night before.

People come to Nashville to live the country music dream. Dean is pretty sure it's a nightmare come to life.

It's the middle of August. The dead of a Tennessean summer; dead because quite literally everything is dead, or in the process of dying due to the still air and high humidity.

Nashville sits in a bowl. A valley, if technicalities truly matter. A sweaty, hot, liquor and country music entranced fruit bowl.

Kansas is more of a dry heat. A chip in the mountain that is God-awful southern humidity.

Dean can't say much. He's been to Florida in the summer. Granted, most of his stay was inside, holed up in a small motel room with sketchy air conditioning and iffy Chinese takeout he had re-heated in the microwave for the three consecutive days it took to execute the salt-n-burn.

Dean's Flordia experience was, for the majority, all scorching sand, weeping palms, and low dense clouds hanging somewhere between heaven and hell.

By God, is it rough down there.

Its not so good in the neighborhood up in the Volunteer state either though.

Paved roads sizzle and steam from last night's rainfall. Clouds hang low in between the skyscrapers, not-so-sweet-chariot, as sweat inducing humidity, plays a key role in the wide-spread disgruntlement of avid out-of-town bar-hoppers and casual weekend party-goers.

Dean can finally say he understands what the term 'Nash-Vegas' means.

It's not Las Vegas crazy or Miami wild. It's a mix of sickly sweet southern charm, cowboy wannabes, and kids with a country music dream that make up a lump some of oddballs.

Dean, for once, doesn't fit in with a large sum of the crowd.

Think, a can of mixed-nuts. A lot of peanuts--the plain janes and nine to five-rs who partake in buck wild nights on the weekends and wake up to go to college, work, or whatever they do to make the weekdays pass. There's the almonds and cashews--the good ol' boys who mosey through life. They're your goverment personnel who don't have the luxury of casual night life due to their strict work hours. And then there is the occasional water chestnut--or, commonly referred to as the freeloader. They're the ones who belong in either a mental asylum due to their consistant consumption of alcohol on an all around basis or they go about life with a 'daddy's money' attitude. Think, sorority girls.

Oh, don't forget the pecans, they are the mirage of cardboard dwelling women and occasionally, men, of the night.

So, overall, Nashville isn't that bad. Mostly sweet, with a few [ thousand ] nuts.

Dean didn't expect much less.

There are a lot less beach bums and a lot more street bums and something kin to city hillbillys----if there is such a thing. It's a kind of rag-tag and weird that Dean can get accustomed to. Unlike that of New York city and every other metropolis.

Those people belong in Rick James' 'Super Freak' music video.

Dean glances down at the key hanging loosely between his fingers. It's different this time. Instead of a dingy motel on a bad side of town he's staying in a nice up-beat studio suite in the ritz.

He's nervous. Not shaking hands nervous, but butterflies in stomach nervous----and not the good kind.

It's a fresh start, the first leap of true independence from his father. Masked as a few months long monster cleanse of the city.

And the best part of it all? It's free. Paid for by one of dad's long time hunting buddies. Well, kinda. The guy, Kenneth, if he remembers correctly, has a lifetime holding on the apartment for reasons he didn't care to ask dad for.

Dean doesn't fully remember the grinning faces of the Hallmark, cookie-cutter family in the Polaroid his dad had showed him a few days before the announcement of his first official solo trip. He remembers Kenneth. A stern looking man with mid-length brunette hair and reading glasses perched up on the bridge of hid nose.

His wife made the best chicken and dumplings and that's about all he can remembers of her.

And the kids. A whole group of them around his and Sammy's age and even a bit younger. All wearing dust coated overalls and brandishing a series of wood-carved weapons as they greeted the family of three at the door. A flurry of bouncy sandy-blond hair and a chorus of screams as dad announced he was dropping him and Sammy off for the weekend, turned week and a half.

He should remember them. He stayed on their living room couch for little over a week while his dad went on a last minute hunting gig. He should remember them. Kenneth had taken him outback and threw him a ball with his two eldest daughters. Taught him in a weekend what his own father had failed to do since the death of his mother.

He should remember them. But, it's hard remembering a good memory when there's a bad one hooked on the same line when reeled in.

Dean turns right when he reaches the T-section of the apartment complex, right, just as the receptionist chick had told him.

The lady at the front desk of the apartment complex was surprisingly chipper. A young girl no older than himself, with flaming bottle-red hair, and a cute little cut-off top that had displayed a curvy-font and the name of a band he's not to familiar with across the chest.

Dean looks painfully out of place against the retro white washed walls and new-age band merchandise hanging up in the hallways.

He hasn't seen anyone hanging out in the halls yet. That should be a good thing, and it is, when it doesn't make him wonder if it's because the people who allegedly rent out this complex are at work, or if it's because they're hiding from something.

Dean would rather the ladder.

Plus, he's not a 'meet your neighbors' type. So empty hallways is a safe, semi-question free option. Even if it means figuring out this whole new world on his own----just like old times.

He still has to put together a plausible backstory just in case a nosy neighbor gets an idea planted in their heads. Can't forget that pertinent detail.

What would he even say?
"I'm Dean Winchester from Kansas. No, I'm not here to become a country music singer. I'm here for business. No, I'm not in the mafia. And also no on the bar-hopping----huh?----what's a Tootsies?"

Everything in the halls is so bright and ritzy. A throwback, or say, tribute to clean linen and the fresh scent of lemon room spray.

He continues down the hall and to the left as the desk-chick had told him to do. Passing the stairwell sign and heading straight for the elevator.

The arrow pointing up to the ceiling blinks yellow and the doors roll open. He steps inside, turning three-sixty to look out into the hall as the hulking metal doors hum softly and clamp tightly together.

There's a lurch in the floor, a squeal in the motor as the elevator starts to ascend. The red numbers on the digital face in the upper right corner begin go climb higher. Ground. Floor one. Floor two. . .

He grins softly, eyes glancing down at the scuffs on his leather combat boots and chips of dried mud that have fallen off the treads of his shoes and collected around his feet.

At least something other than him is
now out of place.