ACT 8 part 3: I should hide from you. Hide my face. You know what I did.
SCENE 5
A thick folder the size of a small novel lay on her desk, the name of the patient neatly written on a white label rimmed by a metal frame. She sat down and opened it. Her fingers went over the first page and unconsciously lingered at the troubled young man's photo that was secured to the file with a small paperclip. Buffy couldn't help but to anguish herself by noticing that he looked much healthier, much saner on that picture then he did now, bound down to his bed, wrapped in a cold cocoon of utter discomfort. She shook her head, trying to set aside these distractive emotions that kept her from thinking clear. What was important right now was to help William to recover. She had to figure out what was causing his strange behaviour, what was frightening him so much that it made him stop functioning properly. Pinching her nose-bridge, she shook her head again, and then started to go through the file:
Patient 17. Byron, William August. M. 26 yrs. Prev. Hosp: None
Initial Diag: Schizophrenia.
Testing: Tests show high (140-150) intelligence, but thinking patterns disturbed by illness. Many questions were answered incorrectly or were misinterpreted due to patient's strong imagination. Personality tests show typically schizophrenic pattern with compulsive and masochistic components. Intention to extreme violent behaviour.
Interview (Initial): The patient appeared calm and logical in his thinking in the beginning of the interview, but as it progressed and the questions became more personal, logic began to fall away and at several times, he became extremely anxious. Patient believes himself to be a century old vampire called Spike. His delusion has become so severe that he has constructed an entire imaginary world on its own to support that belief, a place populated by characters of myth and a group of humans who are his friends, though he speaks of them most dubiously. Throughout the entire interview, patient tried to impress examiners with his wit as a way of obstructive defence, showing no fear and rebelling against every word of criticism that was to question his identity. Finally, near the end of the session, the patient's attitude changed from controlled to visibly angry, and he began to speak loudly, accusing examiners to trick him into telling what they wanted to hear. "I told you the truth, as I promised her that I would. Now are you head-buggers going to help me or not?" It was considered advisable at that moment to terminate the interview.
Family History: Born London, England, August 1976. One sibling, Liam, born 1971. Father, William Jacob, born 1945, English college teacher, migrated with his family to America in 1981 where they lived in a suburb in SunnyDale till 1995, died of stroke in 1995. Mother, Lily Anne Miller, born 1951, died in car accident in 1991. Patient's birth was normal. Family situation was stable and protective. Liam recalled incidents of mild taunting of his younger brother by his schoolmates because he refused to give up the cockney accent that he had picked up from his father. Puberty was normal physically, but patient suffered severe emotional problems at the age of 16 due to lost of his mother. Caused trouble at school, including a severe incident in which he had almost drowned a fellow classmate in a toilet bowl. Patient was suspended and ran away from home at the age of 17. Family lost contact with him till in the winter of 1995 William Jacob suffered a stroke and was hospitalised in the county hospital. Two day later, patient showed up at his parent's house, according to Liam frightened and confused, his appearance neglected as if he had been wandering the streets for the past three years. He asked about his father and Liam took his sibling to the hospital to see him, but they arrived too late. After his father's death, patient moved in with his brother in Los Angeles, till in early 1997, he decided to return to his hometown and move back into the abandoned parental house. He re-attended college and took writing classes, determined to become a writer. Patient visited his brother frequently and his mental and physical health improved till an unfortunate car accident in June 1997 caused him to slip into a three-month long coma from which he awakened in a catatonic state. Patient was submitted to the clinic in 1998 with approval of his brother. Patient stayed in catatonia without any sign of improvement in response to given medications or treatments. Chances at recovery were considered small to non-existing, till in spring 2002 an improvement in his condition was observed, patient started to fight back and finally succeeded in obtaining full consciousness on 15th of May 2002.
She turned the pages, her tired eyes glanced at a collection of graphs, showing various tests scores. William's personality dissected on paper, explained in numbers and compared to the normalized standards of sanity. She laughed, bitterly. How arrogant these people were if they believed that they could just decipher something as complicated as the human mind in a couple of tests and interviews. She had been working with William for a period of three long months and she still couldn't fully understand him, let alone the high and mighty physiatrists at the board who had decided that he was best addressed to as "patient 17" instead of just William. She pinched her nose-bridge again, slightly aware that she was starting to take over the hardly favourable habits of her mentor (thank God I don't wear glasses, she thought) when a knock at her office-door startled her.
"Um, come in. I'm still awake." She answered, only half joking.
The door opened and Mike came into her office, the anxious expression on his face predicting no other but bad news.
"Dr Summers. I think you need to come to see William."
Buffy just got the most terrible feeling sinking into her stomach. "What is going on? Did something happen to him?"
"I don't exactly know what happened." The orderly explained, grimly. "But he has to go see a physician. He's bleeding."
SCENE 6
" How could I've been so blind." Buffy whispered. She clutched her fingers together, anxiety getting the better of her. "This is awful."
Mike, who had been sitting next to the young doctor in the waiting room ever since they brought William to the clinic's emergency ward, gazed up at her.
"I should have seen it through his frenzy. Recognized the symptoms. It was so obvious."
"Don't blame yourself, Dr Summers. I haven't noticed anything either, and I was the one who was supposed to keep an eye on him all day."
"How could this have happened? Who would do such things?" She just couldn't say it out-loud, the one syllable word carrying such a horrible meaning. It baffled her mind that someone would ever want to hurt William like this. As if he hadn't already gone through far more than enough.
Mike kept looking at her in silence, eyes unblinking, analysing the events that he had witnessed on this awful day. Finally he cleared his throat and decided to tell the young doctor what was exactly on his mind. Mike was a good-hearted man, honest to the bone with a down to the earth wit. He had a way of putting things rather straightforwardly, unpolished and hard, but whatever he said came directly out of his heart. "Dr Summers. I don't know if I should say this, but - I got a feeling that Will's brother has something to do with this."
Buffy, who had been staring down at her sweaty hands the whole time, gazed up at the orderly, her expression first puzzled and then, as the words sunk in, horrified.
"You -You mean Liam?" She stuttered. "No. Oh no, that's not possible. Liam loves him. He - He cares about him more than anything else in the world. He would never do this."
"But he was also the last person who was alone with Will for more than half an hour before he suffered that relapse."
"That could have been just a coincidence. It might have nothing to do with this."
"Will was calling him a monster." He said, very seriously. "And he tried to kill him."
Buffy shook her head, the inner voice of reason begging her to reconsider what Mike was telling her, but her heart fleeing in denial for the truth was too sick and too terrible for her to possibly accept.
"Listen Dr Summers. I'm almost sure that he got something to do with this. I saw it in Will's eyes. He was absolutely terrified of him. I'm telling you, it wasn't mad raging hatred that made him pick up that chair and try to smash it down on his head. It was dead threatening fear that drove him to it."
"Will has this delusion in which a vampire called Angelus has bugged him for decades." She muttered, trying to think of some facts that could serve as an excuse so she wouldn't have to suspect the guilt-ridden older brother. "Maybe he was looking at Liam and saw something in him that made him think that Liam was Angelus. Something that scared him and made him to react like that."
"Perhaps." Mike looked away from her, questioning his own judgement for a brief moment. "But even so, don't you think that he has made up Angelus to look like Liam for a reason? Did he ever tell you what this vampire guy had done to him, given you any clues?"
Buffy swallowed, the noose of anxiety tightening around her neck. "Well, he did. In our private sessions, he once told me that Angelus was - abusive, evil. And he described him as his mentor, even his creator." She rubbed her eyes, a haze of tiredness settling in front of them. "Mike, look, we shouldn't just leap into conclusions here. We don't even know if it happened recently or that the wounds were from a couple of days before. It might have been one of the patients on the ward."
"You have been working on our department for what? Five years now? You know this has never happened before."
Buffy fell silent. She knew that the orderly was right. The patients who fell under her care were mostly victims to light cases of Schizophrenia, who came to her scared and in distrust but regained their faith in people after much care and hard work. They were colourful individuals, even more emotional than perhaps the average Wall Street stockbroker, but none of them were this disturbed or evil to could have done this to a fellow patient.
"Dr Summers?"
"Yes." She answered, standing up immediately and feeling guiltily relieved that she could escape from the horrific notion that Mike had planted in her mind. In front of her stood a dark-haired doctor in his early forties with tired eyes and a grey tan, his green uniform and doctor's coat crumpled and stained. A nametag carelessly fastened to his clothes introduced him as doctor Welter, but the physician himself didn't even offer her so much as a hand. He went straight to the point, as if he was an important man always delayed for his next appointment. Brows furrowed, he read aloud from the form on his clipboard.
"Patient number 17, mister William Byron. He's under your care?"
"Yes, he is. How is he?"
"He has been raped." He stated, indifferently. "The assault had caused some damage to the rectum, tore the muscles apart, which explains the bleeding. And the sphincter is damaged, also torn. The first complication cannot be treated and has to heal for itself. The second one can be treated and one of my students is currently attending him as we speak."
She was baffled for a moment, having expected a compassionate doctor, someone who would bring the bad news to her in a careful, comforting way. However, this Dr Welters guy was utterly blunt and offensive, chillingly cold. Telling her about Williams condition as if he was reading up a grocery list, and dealing with the rape issue itself as if, well, as if it wasn't an issue at all.
"If you could fill in the forms at the nurse station, and get back here in let's say, ten minutes?" The doctor continued. "He should be ready by then."
"Doesn't he need to be taken into the hospital ward?" Buffy asked, agitation starting to build up in her voice.
"Hardly. He needs a couple of stitches to get the wounds to start healing. That's all."
"I'm sorry, but I really don't get this. You're sending him away, just like this, after he's been raped? Doesn't he need monitoring or anything?" Her voice was loud and rising. Her frustration no longer concealed. "Don't you think he needs more then just a bit of clumsy needle work?" She spat, sarcastically.
Doctor Welter looked at her with a tinge of contempt on his worn-out face. "Look Dr -" he gazed down at his form again to recollect the foolish girl's name. "Summers. The hospital ward in this clinic has only enough beds for six patients. This, if it has eluded you, is a madhouse. I got people cutting their wrists and bleeding themselves dry in the toilets on a daily basis. I had a woman this afternoon, who had tried to amputate her own leg with a blunt plastic spoon because she believed she saw Satan's face on it. I can't take them all in and the staff and I are still working ourselves into an early grave at ten in the evening to keep up with the damage that you so-called specialists have done. Don't expect us to do your work as well."
His words weighed heavy on her soul, and made it impossible for her to continue to vent her frustration on the physician. "I didn't mean to be offensive." She tried, apolitically.
"But you was." He stated acidly. "Now excuse me, I have another patient to attend to; another casualty of physical abuse that I have to stitch back together ever so clumsily. If you were so kind to remove yours from the emergency room and clear the space for the next patient?"
Buffy wanted to say something, but the doctor turned around and strode off to the double doors and disappeared inside.
"Are you all right?" Mike asked, observing the paleness on her face. "Man, that guy is a complete jerk."
"I'm all right." She muttered softly.
"Don't feel bad about yourself because of what he said. Doctors like him get nothing but the worst cases sent to them. They never get to see what good you and others like Dr Giles have done. I've seen it, and I know how much you mean to people like William."
Buffy answered his kindness with a small, wavering smile. She partly believed that what Mike told her was right, but a bigger part of her was still shaken by the words of the bitter doctor. In a certain way, they had been true. She had panicked after she had seen the blood on the towels, the diluted red pools of water on the shower room floor. Mike had led William there for him to take a warm shower after he was released from the cold pack. However, William had been shivering continuously, unable to move his hands and wash himself, so the orderly had tried to help him with it, soaping him in and scrubbing the suds off his chest and back. It wasn't until the orderly was drying him off with the clean white towels that he noticed that there was blood running between his legs. She came to see William immediately after she had been informed by the orderly, and the very sight of her patient had shocked her then. He had been standing there, shivering in the cold in his bare form, hugging himself tightly. He didn't dare to move, couldn't speak or look her into the eyes. Kept his gaze to the floor, terribly ashamed. The pain he felt wasn't physical, but she knew that it must be as ever as great as real physical pain, and it had reached her. Violated her as he had been violated. Her first impulse was to run away, to escape all that agony that she had seen on his sad face, deny its existence. Deny the guilt. Then, after a moment of silence in which she had fought against her tears, she decided that she should react professional and composed as she was trained to, running down a protocol in her head so she didn't had to think too much of what she was actually feeling. She asked Mike to clean him up and bring him a new set of clothes. She helped him to get dressed, moving him as gently as she could. Their eyes met only once, when Buffy had to repeatedly asked him to raise his arms so she could shrug a shirt over his shoulders. The blue in his eyes had somewhat paled, made less lifelike by a far-away look. She knew then that she had to act quickly. William was starting to fade away into his own secure little world again, but after all that was so cruelly done to him, she couldn't possibly blame him for shying away from reality. She herself, had troubles accepting. In his troubled eyes lay too much responsibility, too many consequences for her to face regardless how she would react.
She told Mike that she wanted to speak to William alone for a moment, and asked the orderly to wait for them outside. As she walked over to the double doors entering the emergency room, she knew that whatever great jerk Dr Stitch-a-lot-Welter was, that the man still had a point. She couldn't just run away from her problems. She had to find the courage to face them, head-on. Be strong for his sake, because he needed her to be there for him more than ever before.
It was time to pick up her heart and start taking care of the things that were her responsibility.
SCENE 7
William knew that he had been bad, he must have been. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, right? That's what he was made of. Just like all the other naughty boys who were brought here. He couldn't see them, obscured as they were from his eyes by endless green rows of curtains, but he knew that they were there because he could hear them, screaming, singing, and crying. William himself didn't participate, he felt already too ashamed to allow him self to indulge into such lucky display of full madness. He was lying on his belly on a cold metal examination table, his trousers and knickers down to his ankles and his shirt tucked up, his bare flesh horribly exposed. A nervous young man with sweaty palms and unsteady hands was in charge, tormenting him with scalpels and needles. He didn't say much either, just concentrated on the infliction of pain like a professional executioner would, the cutting of already injured flesh, the sharp sting of a needle, followed by a red hot track as the thread was pulled through. Torture had become an art in his inexperienced hands. William bit on his lower lip, not allowing himself to scream. It served him right to be tormented in this sterile hell. He shouldn't have let them know. Let them see what had been done to him. Now that they knew how he truly was inside, how small he was and how ugly and dirty, how used, he was so terribly afraid that she wouldn't come to see him anymore. That look she had given him while he stood there in the cold and damp room, his body paralysed by the shock of being exposed, his shameful little secret stripped naked before her eyes in sinful puddles of blood - that look had been one of utter horror and disgust. He had frightened her, he knew for he had recognized the fear. He knew because she had brought him here and abandoned him, leaving the disgusting little thing to the hands of an acid doctor with a withered humanity, let him probe and touch him till he was bleeding again. And then, there were the voices coming from those who just wouldn't allow him to rest, that sang to him the harsh truth that she might no longer care.
William barely dared to look up at them. The two, translucent figures standing at the head of the table, supervising his punishment with much interest and a hardly disguised sense of glee. A gentleman dressed in a Victorian outfit, long tailed coat, proper white shirt and cuffed sleeves, a generous moustache obscuring his upper lip, his dark hair combed back carefully and shining with grease. Next to him stood a woman, also Victorian with her wide, elaborately decorated dress and her tiny, corset captured waist. She was hardly beautiful, but she had the air and the manners of a sophisticated English Lady.
The man had a railroad spike buried through his skull, just above his right eye-socket.
The woman had not yet uttered a coherent word. Her lips had been sewed together with rough stitches, leaving her delicate mouth a raw festering mess.
The man loomed over his shoulders, and William couldn't restrain himself from uttering a small yelp of fright when blood spilled from the horrific wound, down the short, rusty pin and dripped on the back of his hand.
"What's the matter dear William? Never seen blood on your hands before?" The ghostly figure asked, his question not bearing any malice or reproach. It was merely a statement, as if the gentleman was in the mood for a bit of a social chitchat. He tilted his head to the right, and white wriggling maggots fell out of the empty eye. William whimpered and coiled up, horrified.
"Look, can you just keep still for a minute? " The med student asked, irritated. "You've almost broken the fucking thread. You want me to start all over again?"
He tried to relax his muscles, although they were tight as cords. The needle went in his raw wounds again, and he felt how the thread pulled painfully on his flesh.
"Oh my." The phantom gentleman muttered, shaking his head in dismay. "Such appalling language, coming from an academic. Such lack of good manners. Things have certainly changed since our last encounter."
The woman next to him mumbled something, giving her opinion with sealed lips. The man sighed deeply and rolled his eyes.
"Priscilla, my dear. You know that we can't understand you when you're like this."
The woman scowled at her ghostly companion, indignation written all over her pale, skull-like features. She turned toward the small table next to William, where various operation equipments had been spread out on a green fabric. She grabbed a pair of miniature scissors and started cutting through the stitches.
"No!" William yelled, panicking. "Don't! Don't let her!" Then, suddenly remembering, added; " I had a good reason for doing that!"
"I'm afraid I cannot withhold her." The English gentleman stated, almost compassionately. "Well, you know how she is. Her tongue cannot be silenced when there are matters to be said."
"I said hold still!" The med student snapped. "Are you besides crazy also deaf or something? Man. my last shift for today and I have to get this crazy fruitcake.
William groaned and watched sullenly how the last thread was cut. Priscilla put away the instrument and moved her jaw, cautiously. Her peeling lips cracked as she tried to pull them into a proud smile, bits of black thread still sticking out of the red rotting flesh like spikes from a dried cactus.
"There." She muttered. "Much better. Honestly Steven, I was getting quite upset about this whole sit -" her phrase was cut short as she suddenly leaned forward, her throat working frightfully. She tried to shield her unseemly behaviour from sight by placing her hand before her mouth. Then she gagged and threw up a pile of stinking mouse carcasses that landed in front of her expensive looking shoes. She looked at it in full horror, her face paling into a yet unknown colour of translucent white.
"Priscilla dear." Steven Rathbone tried rather cautiously in an attempt to calm down his fiancé. "Now don't get upset now. You knew that this would happen."
Priscilla Schnubly, an full blooded aristocrat and well respected member of the higher social circles of Victorian London, let out a terrifying shriek that caused goose bumps to form on William's skin and tied his stomach into a cold knot of fright. The scorned lady turned to him, her carefully made up eyes no longer indifferent and patronizing, but raging and accusing, hatred aging her skin and hardening the corners of her misshapen mouth.
"You!" She shouted. "You did this! You sick, pathetic little whore!"
William uttered a small terrified sound, then tried to coil up again, his heart racing.
"You murdered me!" She shouted. "You filled my mouth with rodents and sewed my lips together, threw me in a hole in the ground and buried me alive! Just because mister William Byron here is afraid to hear someone tell the truth in his snobby little face, exposing you for just what you are, which is nothing but a sad, worthless, gutless little worm!"
"You stupid nutcase!" Yelled the agitated med student. "Look what you've done! You made me lose the fucking thread!"
"I - I am sorry." William stuttered, guilt sweeping up and clearing some of the paralysing fear out of his mind. "I - didn't mean to." He swallowed, tears pushing to the surface. "Please. Forgive me." These were words coming from his heart. It wasn't a pretentious way to deceive his personal demons, and he was slightly surprised by his own honesty.
"Poor William." Steven Rathbone said. "As if these kind of things can be taken care of so easily by uttering those two simple words. It's much more complicated than that."
"Yeah, whatever." The med student muttered, opening a new package of sterilized thread. "Anyway, it's your ass that's bleeding, not mine. It's just that I got more to do than listening to your overripe crazy talk all night."
"Is that why you're here?" Priscilla snapped, her long ghostly neck stretching toward him like an elastic string of pastry. "To be forgiven? Do you think that allowing yourself to suffer all this will make it easier for you, soften the guilt that is eating you up from the inside?" She laughed at him, high-heartedly, shrill and cold like the December wind howling through an abandoned building. "You're a fool William Byron. Punishments are not suffered by the fallen because there is forgiveness to be earned. They are endured by the wicked because that is all what they deserve."
"That's why it's so foolish of you to put all your trust into that girl, um Miss Buffy Summers, wasn't that her name?" Rathbone opted. "She won't pity you, neither will she ever be able to love you. Face it my boy, you don't deserve her love. You're not good enough for her. You're totally beneath her class, physically and morally."
"She had seen you how you truly are." Priscilla taunted. Shifting around William with ghostly grace, her body vanishing into the steel table, cutting through it like a ship sailing through fog. "Stripped from all the pretentious confidence and stubborn strength that protects you from the outside world. The pathetic, weak, disgusting thing that hides itself from the light. And she had been repulsed, utterly horrified."
William shook his head, tears blinding his eyes. "Please, stop this."
"Don't be such a cry baby. I'm almost done." The med student muttered. "Could have been finished already if it wasn't for you thrashing around."
The vengeful phantom smiled broadly, content with the visible agony she had caused. "You know that she doesn't want anything to do with you anymore. She left you here after she had seen how ugly and dark you are inside. Left you all by yourself. Let the sadistic doctor tie you up. Violate you like the stupid little whore that you are. Left you here to be punished and bleed."
"No, no no no." William muttered, sinking his head between his arms, folding his hands over his ears. "Enough. No more. Please, I beg you."
"Begging doesn't help, William." Rathbone said, his voice turning grim. "Neither does praying. It didn't help me at least."
"We pleaded for our lives and you killed us all the same." Priscilla stated, bitterly. "The heartless monster won't let us live, even after we had begged him in tears, scraping our knees bare over the gravel." She leaned closer, her hatred for him burning fiercely in her eyes. "You tormented us." She hissed.
"Tell us you don't deserve what it's done to you today, William." Rathbone came also closer to him, his expression no longer socially friendly, but bleak and hostile. "Tell us and we will leave. Allow you to be left alone and to be able to rest at last."
"I can't. I can't tell you that." William sobbed, his shame burning on his cheeks, hidden in darkness. "I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
"That's exactly what we thought." Priscilla remarked, a malicious tinge sounding through her voice.
"Poor little William. Deserted by everyone."
William peered up at Rathbone who grabbed the blood crusted end of the railroad spike and pulled it out of his eye, rusty iron scraping over pieces of bone. A dark gush dripped down his right cheek making him look like he had been weeping tears of blood, while pale, black headed maggots wriggled in his empty socket, a thousand tiny eyes shifting inside his skull. Rathbone gazed at the murder-weapon in his hand, then turned his head toward the terrified William and smiled, a nightmare vision of death. "Lost and alone" He muttered, callously. "Nothing left to live for but to be castigated for the evil he had done."
SCENE 8
"I can't. I can't tell you that. I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
Buffy heard him before she saw him, his strange emotional ramblings coming from behind the drawn curtains. She shifted them aside and stepped inside the tiny, secluded space. William was lying face down on the operation table, gazing up to an empty spot in the air with wide-open eyes while panting in frantic horror.
"William?" She tried. Walking over to him cautiously.
"I won't try too hard if I were you." A nervous looking young man told her, throwing away his blood tainted gloves and cleaning up the place. "I mean the lights are on, sure, but there's nobody home in there."
"Could you leave us for a minute?" She asked.
"Sure, whatever. It's time for a break anyway. Could use a good nicotine rush after having to put up with this crazy nut here."
He strode off, plucking lose bits of tread from his sleeves. "Just don't let him break anything in here. Oh, and if that old slave-driver Dr Welter asks about me, tell him that I have already moved on to the next patient, will-ya?"
"Sure." Buffy said, faking a smile to appear polite. "No problem."
She waited till the rude med student had vanished behind the curtains, and turned to William, who was still staring straight out into the empty space in front of him, his head tilted slightly to one side as if he was listening carefully.
"William?" She crouched down beside him. "Will, what are you doing?"
He turned his head and looked at her, startled. His cheeks damp of fresh tears. Then returned his gaze to the spot in the air, furrowing his brows worriedly.
"Will, what's going on?" She asked softly, careful not to frighten him.
"I -" He paused, licking his dry lips, looking at her again, but averting his eyes shamefully when he noticed that she was studying him. "I was talking to them. Asking them to forgive me."
"Asking who? And why? I mean, you didn't do anything wro-"
"I did. I did horrible things. I - I murdered people. Taking revenge. A monster, a murderer. I have blood on my hands." He lifted both his hands from the surface and held them up to show it to her. "See? Blood. Blood everywhere."
"I don't see any blood, William." She assured him, trying to remain calm. "There isn't any blood. You haven't hurt anybody."
He bowed his head, pressing his hands to his ears as his invisible demons started shouting at him again. "I hurt people. They are yelling at me. Dead inside. Dead and dark and ugly. You've seen me. You've seen what I am and you ran away from it."
"I didn't run away." She said, her heart feeling heavy. "I helped you to get dressed and brought you here with Mike to see the doctor, remember?"
"You wanted to. I saw it in your eyes. You were afraid of me. Disgusted."
"That isn't true! It wasn't like that. I was -" She paused, taking in a deep breath to calm her rampant emotions. "I was shocked. I didn't know what to think. I guess - I was weak."
She gazed into his eyes, and was relieved to find them looking at her instead of staring at the phantoms in his head.
"I'm sorry, Will. I should have been there for you."
She reached out and gently, she grab hold of his hand, holding it up in front of him. "There's no blood, Will. Your hands are clean. Whatever these gutless bullies tell you that you've done, it isn't real. You're not a monster. You're William August Byron. You're a good man."
She felt relieved as she saw how his face lightened up a bit when she spoke these words to him.
"I don't want your pity." He said, his voice not angry, but sad. "Don't deserve any. Liam got all hurt because of me."
"Liam, did he - did he hurt you? Frighten you? Is that why you attacked him?"
William whimpered and hid his face from her, making her regret her impatient questioning immediately.
"Will? Don't be afraid, tell me what happened."
"It wasn't his fault." He muttered softly. "I deserved it."
"That's - That's not true!" She was only slightly aware that her voice was louder than she wanted it to be, so filled with sudden anger was she. "Nobody deserves that. Especially not you. What happened wasn't your fault, Will! Please don't feel guilty or ashamed about yourself."
William blinked his eyes in confusion. "So you're not angry with me? You didn't bring me here because - because you wanted me to be punished?"
"I brought you here because I wanted to help you." She said, hardly in control of the trembling in her voice. "I want to see you get better again."
He closed his eyes, concentrating on his own thoughts while trying to shut out the endless string of insults that he got hurled to his head by the two unforgiving phantoms. Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked at her ever so shyly.
"Do you - Do you love me?"
Buffy was startled, the sincerity sounding in his voice made her believe that it wasn't his illness that had driven him to ask this peculiar question, but she wasn't sure it was his full sanity either.
"Why are you asking me this?"
"Please tell me you do." He said desperately, almost pleading. "If you do I can tell them that they are both bloody lairs and tell them to sod off. Get them out of my head. But if you don't - Then I think I have to believe them." He was very serious about it. "Please. Tell me you care about me." He averted his eyes, barely able to look at her.
"I don't know." She hesitated when she saw him shrink away from her answer, fluttering his eyelids nervously, his eyes dashing from her face to the floor and back again. Maybe I should lie, she thought, tell him that I did love him. I must care about him enough to pull that off. He's too confused right now to notice the difference anyway. But as she pondered about the lie, she realized that it wasn't that far off from the truth at all.
She did have feelings for him.
"I -do - love you." She furrowed her brows, confused about her own confession, but feeling relieved at the same time to have these words off her heart at last. "I didn't realize it before." She watched how his eyes widened, staring at her, making her feel somewhat embarrassed. "Stupid, isn't. It took you getting all ramblingly insane to make me see it."
He looked at her now, right into the eyes, a great gratitude showing on his face. "Better late than never." He said, giving her a slight nod. "Thank you, Buffy."
"Yeah, well." She muttered, his honesty sending butterflies into her stomach. He just gave her the sweetest look, mesmerized as he was by her presence. "No need to if telling you this can help you with getting those crazy voices out of your head. Are they going away now by the way?"
"Who?"
Buffy gave him a slightly suspicious look.
"Oh, um." William reluctantly tore his gaze off her and glanced around, looking for the vindictive spirits that had tormented him just minutes before, but they were nowhere to be seen. "I think they're gone." He said, a bit confused.
"So you don't have to yell at them to them get out?"
"Guess not. They just disappeared, but they were not much than thin air to begin with."
"God, I really hope that you're not faking this to get me to say this to you! Because if you are -"
"No! I wasn't faking them!" He protested loudly. Sounding hurt. "They were here! They were telling me things. Tormenting me. Made me afraid to lose you. But you chased them away." He calmed down again, his mind half lost, half lucid. "You always chase the bad things away. Help me, even when I don't deserve your help. You're the only one who keeps me sane."
Buffy smiled, touched by his words. His eyes showed a sadness and loneliness that reflected his soul. His words and gestures all cried out a silent craving for love, so intense that it was aching. It filled her heart with a deep affection for him. And for a moment, she forgot who she was and who he was and all about the narrow-minded, cold world around her. She leaned forward, her eyes half-closed, her lips moist and anticipating, her hands gently folding over his flushed cheeks.
She found herself kissing him.
There was a part of her, the sane part she supposed, that was all ~ Oh, my God, what the hell am I doing! ~ while wishing that she would stop before someone came in and saw her taking advantage of her feeble minded patient. (Because that was exactly what it was when one considered the codes of conduct for a practicing psychiatrist; shameless abuse. Manipulation of a man who wasn't quite sane enough to distinguish empty spots of air from real persons of flesh and bone, let alone get himself sorted out to come to the rash conclusion that he was deeply in love with her.) However, the emotional, perhaps more primal part of her, pleaded not to stop for the sensation of his mouth on hers was overwhelming. His kisses were tender, painfully shy at first, but became fiery and passionate as he realized that she wanted him. Truly wanted him. He closed his eyes and let her lips caress his, making it buzz and tingle, filling up on electricity coming from her soft flesh. It was everything he dreamed of; it was warm and affectionate and blindingly bright, a glimpse of heaven that he would never set foot on. It was complete.
It was love. Her love. Unconditionally in return.
Her touch ebbed away. Slowly, but still so very painful was that departure. He leaned toward her, trying to linger to those lips for precious seconds longer, but eventually, he had to let her go.
He opened his eyes again and smiled, dumb-folded, almost unable to believe to be so very fortunate.
"Strawberries." He whispered, looking into her eyes, lost in them like Odysseus on his ocean, never able to find shores.
Buffy brushed a lost lock of his hair back to his ear and gave him a puzzled look.
"Your lips." He explained, smiling timidly. "They taste like summer strawberries."
ACT 8 Part 3B: I shouldn't be talking to myself. I can't stand that bloody git.
SCENE 9
Wonderful, beautiful, and incredible. That's what she was. The soddin cherry on my soddin pie, all sweetness and sugary goodness. Did I mention she was wonderful? Did I? Well, she was. Didn't want to spin three times around forgetting about that! She, with her goldy-locks and pouting lips. Her eyes, God, I could swim and drown in those eyes.
I loved her so much that it bloody hurts.
And she loved me.
She - she kissed me.
Buffy kissed me!
Not that she had never kissed me before. The fake Buffy that was. Back in Crazy Never Never land where she was a sadistic little Slayer and I the ever love-sick whipping boy, her pet vampire so to speak. But even then, before I finally realized after waking up that I had been trippin on foggy brain-farts, I knew very well that it wasn't real. Lust, craving to do wrong, the dark luscious appeal of seduction, followed by mind-boggling, sweaty flesh on flesh shagging. That's what it was. Not love. It had never been love. Until now.
I gazed up at her, all cheer happiness and moronic gratitude, strapped in my wheelchair, wheeled around because my legs refused to walk. Stupid, silly little legs, all rubbery, like they were made of molten strings of soddin tin instead of bone and flesh and skin. But I didn't mind. How could I? She was right beside me, supervising my ol' mate Mike while he was wheeling me through the corridors (You may think it was buggery-daft, but you have to be in control of these things. Really, wheelchair-pushing is not for the average inexperienced wanker. You need to have a licence to be allowed to get behind that chair, trust me).
"Where are we going?" I asked, and watching her face reminded me of that kiss she had given me just then. She smiled at me, her endless kindness warm and pleasant on my skin and I wished that she could bath me in that loving, caring, radiant smile forever and ever.
"We're bringing you back to your room. Don't worry. Everything is going to all right. I'll take care of you, promised."
Back to my - But there were - Oh no no no no! That was definitely not all right. Not good. Not good at all.
"Don't bring me there!" I yelled, a tad to loud, a bit too freaked. "Buffy, I don't wanne go back there. That room, it's swarming with the nasty head buggers. Don't want to be crazy again. Don't wanne let them get into my head." I pleaded with her, eyes begging. Begging helped. With her it always did. "Please, don't."
She looked at me, a gracious God, ever forgiving. Ever loving. Even if I had been worse than the devil himself. She did pity me. I'm bloody well insane but not a complete idiot here. But I knew that she loved me not because she though of me as a poor lost wee little lamb to be guided back into the flock of brain-dead, drooling sheep, she loved me because - Why did she actually love me? I couldn't think up any good reason for her to hand her heart over to this nasty piece of work. I didn't deserve her. She was light, compassion, everything that was bloody worth spending your days on this rotating heap of dirt for. I, on the other hand, was - (a tyrant, a killer, a liar, ruthless, pitiless, EVIL) was not worth her love.
I started to hyperventilate. Somewhere from down the very depressing hallway returned the first whispers of doubt, cold and bitter. It swept me away, carried my soddin carcass like a corpse drifting on foaming waves, and I froze.
"William, what's wrong?"
The whispers grew stronger, more violent in their descriptions of malice, but still it was no more but a faint, ghostly murmur of a long dead crowd. I shook my head and pressed my hands on ears, frightened whimpers escaping my throat while my personal demons droned monotonously in my head.
~ Murderer ~ Murderer ~ Dead inside ~ Evil disgusting thing ~ Soulless ~ She won't ~ She doesn't ~ She will never ~ She is ~ weakness ~ Your weakness ~ hunted ~ hunter ~ killer ~kill her ~ Kill her ~ That last request came to me in Dru's luring voice, sing-songing it into my brains. I closed my eyes, horrified.
"Buffy." I said, weakly. My words got stuck. I was so very afraid that she could hear them too, so terrified that she might get to know what was spooking through my head and just leave.
"Don't listen to them." She grabbed hold of my hand. "I'm here. I'm not leaving you."
Really, how did this girl know when to say the exact right thing? Is she a natural or what? I nodded, sensing the hostility in the chaotic voices swell like a soddin baboon's bum after spanking. Ignoring it, as best as I could. Any idea how hard that is, to ignore a thousand voices all yelling at you at the same time, trying to talk you into doing crazy things, piling up a guilt complex inside of you that exceeds the limits of the soddin sky? It was impossible, almost. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have even tried. Got better things to do than attempt to empty the endless oceans with a leaky bucket. Got people to meet, places to be. The sulphuric pits of molten lava in hell to visit. But she was here, right by my side, and everything suddenly became so much less stressful. Made me wanne stay away from those voices instead of granting their common wish and go find a couple of sharp razorblades or stick my head in a thick pillow.
"Don't bring me back to that room." I sobbed, bloody sissy that I was. "Please don't. They're all waiting for me there."
She was silent for a moment. Indecisiveness and anxiety pulling on her like heavy weights. You could almost see her balancing her options in her bare hands.
"Mike, perhaps we should bring him to the seclusion-room. I don't like the idea of restraining him."
Mike nodded and made a turn left, away from the ghostly company that was expecting me in my own bedroom. I sighed of relief as their whispers died down till it was no more than an annoying buzz that I could ignore when I kept thinking my own train of thoughts. Had to keep myself busy though. The trick was not to be quiet enough to hear them.
"Hey, I've never been here before." I opted, when they helped me out of the roller and into the tiny room. "Padded walls, padded floor, padded door." I murmured. Then, getting curious, lifted my eyes to the ceiling. No padding of course. They didn't think that I could jump that high. "Oh, I get it!" I said, a bit proud. A bit cocky. I didn't get to be cocky a lot these days. "This is for crazy people, right?"
"Um, yes - I mean, no. It's just a quiet little place where you can calm down." Her cheeks flushed, pretty pink blushes. She was embarrassed, feeling guilty to have to lock me in here. I could tell.
"Silly me. Silly crazy William. It's - a resting kind of place, of course. Not a nut palace." I murmured, shaking my head. I didn't want to upset her. Wasn't her fault that I was as mad as a revolving door. I sat down on the wobbly floor with my back against the wobbly wall. Pulled my knees up, wrapped my hands around my legs and gazed up, giving her a huge - Hey, look at me, mom! - grin. "I think I stay here for a while. To get - calm."
Buffy hesitated. "You're sure? If you want to go somewhere else, there are vacant bedrooms at the other side of the ward and -"
"I'm fine, really." Shaking and nodding my head, not sure if I did the right thing in the right order. "It's a good place. No voices. And it's all comfy and soft and oh, look! No gory bloodstains! That's always a winner on my bed -and - breakfast guide."
She rewarded me with a little smile. Still, she looked sad, was concerned about me. I think I didn't try hard enough not to upset her.
"Look, don't worry about me." I said, in my sanest voice that I could master. "I'll be all right. You said so yourself. Go and do whatever you have to do to make a living in here and - and shut the door. Let me deal with myself. I think I can handle the bloody git."
She gazed at me, the tenseness in her shoulders dropped a bit after the thinned out comfort that I had to offer. "If you need anything." She said, gently. "If you don't want to be in here anymore. just open the small window on the doorpanel and call us."
I nodded and smiled at her. That type of smile you gave to your loved-ones on Sunday-lunches to let them know that your life was all roses and peaches, while in the meantime, you really got dumped by your girlfriend, fired from your job and evicted from your apartment. Quite desperation, hidden beneath a toothy, faked grin.
She leaned toward me and gave me peck on my damp forehead, her lips surprisingly warm against my flushed skin.
"Try to lie down and sleep a little. I'll be back to see you tomorrow morning." She cupped my face with a comforting hand. I leaned into it, brushing my cheek over the gentleness of her touch.
I didn't want her to leave me. In here, all by myself with nothing to listen to but my own bug-shagging gibberish. It was dark outside and all the corridors of this comfy madhouse were not stretched long enough to separate my torment-demons from my short-circuited brains for very long. She was my bloody sun that chased away the nasty dark dwelling creatures in broad daylight. And now that she was leaving, I was stuck at twilight with the growing sense of dread that I didn't exactly know how to make a light to be able to go through the night without getting hunted down and killed.
"Buffy." I tried. To explain it to her. To beg her.
"Yes?"
"Nothing." I swallowed a lump, huge and heavy to digest, chewing on my lower lip. Not enough balls to ask her. How sad.
"See you tomorrow. Good night."
"Uhuh." I managed to babble, then she left and the door was closed behind her and I could hear the clicking of several locks. The lights didn't go out, but somehow, the place seemed darker after she was gone.
It was not my intention to act crazy or anything. I wanted to be sane, whole again. No creepy mind crawlers to drive me crackers, no more vindictive dead aristocrats leaving piles of maggots under my bed. But the point was that it was kinda difficult not to act crazed when you were in fact absolutely nutters. Your body wanted to, your mind hungered for it, and the surroundings in which yours truly here was located right now was all inspiring, of course. It was really the most decent thing to do, to fill this quiet little room with all the madness that was slamming and screaming inside. I let it all out, the fear, the anxiety, the self- loathing, a Catholic sized GUILT. All in brilliant colours, sickening green, depressing blue, dangerously bright red, all with their own set of creative agony that compelled me to literally bounce off the soddin walls (No, I didn't bounce high enough to knock my head on the ceiling, if you wanne to know). I couldn't see or hear or notice anything till the raging storm had settled down, and I found myself weeping, huddled against the smelly padding and trembling like a wet dog. Rocking back and forth, my mouth uttering nonsense.
That was when I saw him standing there at the other side of the cramped room, silently watching me. Soddin pity all written over his haughty face.
I took a ragged breath, wiped tears out of my eyes with tugged up sleeves. Composing myself as best as I could.
"What do you want?" I asked, agitated. No patience was in me to deal with the likes of him right now.
He lifted his silver framed glasses with the tip of his finger, ever so slightly. A nervous tick the bloody nonce had, together with his pencil ticking on empty sheets of paper and endless nail biting. A disgusting habit if you asked me.
"I came to see you." He said. Just like that. As if it was all the information I needed to know what was exactly going through the wuss' pudding brains to pay me a visit on this hardly favourable time.
"Yeah? You're here and you're done with seeing me. So sod off. Leave me alone."
"What happened?" He asked, brows all furrowed in concern.
"It's none of your business. Piss off!"
"What do you mean it's none of my business?" He said, surprisingly louder now. "I was you, Spike! Don't you think I deserve to know what's happening to us while you're floundering around, wasting decade after decade, using my mortal vessel as a cheap rental to go cruising through the swamps of absolute immorality? Doesn't the rightful owner get a say in any of this delusional adventure of yours?"
"Hey, I thought you were supposed to be a poofy Victorian wanker. What's with all the modern poetic talk?"
"I was." He opted. "But try spending a whole century in limbo with a whole bunch of shady types flowing through the gates while your stuck at the bar with your millionth serving of Brandy and I can assure you that you'll be able to pick up the changes in modern language pretty fast."
He walked toward me. Well, not walking in the precise definition of the word. He moved his feet but he was sinking into the padding constantly, waddling through with possibly his neat shiny brown leather shoes dangling somewhere close to the ceiling of the floor below us.
"Really." I said, being sarcastic. " I didn't know you drink. Didn't I make you up to be all vomity allergic to alcohol?"
"Yes well, you learn to drink quickly and a lot with the likes of you keeping me out of heaven. Any idea what kind of hell limbo is? It's like sitting in an overcrowded cocktail-bar, watching everybody who came in later than you getting a table at Our Lord's first. I mean, I do have good manners of course, but even a soul has only a limited amount of patience."
"You're bug-shagging crazy." I said. "You're not real you idiot! Didn't you hear me? I said I made you all up! Some weird alter-ego thing probably. Hell knows what that was any good for. You're not my long lost soul spending eternity in God's waiting room. You wish."
"What? " The stupid git was one of those annoying as hell characters who did understand you loud and clear the first time around, but had to seal every line you utter with a moronic question. "Spike! You're not serious are you? I mean, you don't really believe that all this is real, do you?"
"Look Gibbering One, I'm ill. I'm bloody insane. So stop bugging me. We can have this conversation another time, over a cup of imaginative earl Grey and sandwiches perhaps. Right now, I'm trying my very best to calm down in here, because that's what this room is made for, right? To calm down and NOT to listen to the bloody headbugs who are trying to make me crazy. You being here, is not exactly helping."
"Spike, I'm not one of your personal demons. Listen to me. You're ill all right, but not in the way you think you are. We have to get ourselves out of here."
"Oh, really. Brilliant plan. Didn't think of it myself. Of course I have to get out of here! But only when I'm sane, dimwit!"
I watched him roll his blue lookers to the padding-free ceiling and suck in his cheeks. Irritated of course, I know I would be if I were him.
"I'm only sent here to help. Stop being so obnoxiously offensive."
"Stop calling me Spike. It's William."
"No you're not. Not really. I am William. I'm not sure who you are." He tilted his head and stared at me, this poofy version of me in tweed jacket and flannel trousers. An air of bookish nerdism floating around his head like a soddin nimbus. "Actually, I'm not even sure why I need to be here in the first place. Undoubtedly, it wasn't your fault that you were injured by that horrible demon thing, what it's called? That dreadful Glarkul-what-me nik?"
"It's glarghk guhl kashma'nik. And you're partly right. You're definitely not me. You're a hell of a lot stupider."
The wuss strolled around the tiny room, ignoring my snarky response, obsessively rambling about himself. The egocentric git.
"Right, they send me here in order to fix things. Set the record straight. Offer me a chance to get off my barstool and into the highly desired place. But, bloody hell! What in heaven's name am I supposed to do with you? You're - a demon! I've never heard of any demons redeeming themselves successfully, let alone one of them slip past the gate's security and make it into heaven."
"I'm not a demon." I tried to explain to the very obnoxious illusion, not being very patient with him. "I'm a bloke. A crazy bloke, but still human, definitely not demon."
"You are a demon. Trust me. After I died, and the cosmic powers kicked me out of my dead and limp body before I could even finish my strings of embarrassing ohings, you came crashing in with the eagerness of an Hungarian immigrant. Don't you remember the first moments after being turned? How strange it felt to be a part of matter? To have a real body at your disposal? Before that, you were nothing but a wobbling field of chaotic energy drifting through the ether, clinging on to that insane vampire girl, nagging on and on in her poor head to help you find a vessel."
"I don't remember being surprised, except for suddenly being dead and buried, that is." I stated bitterly. Then, realizing that I was reasoning into the wrong direction again, added rather lamely. "Not that any of that was real of course."
"You thought it was you who died because you had my body, Spike. There are things that tend to seep into the mortal flesh, experiences, emotions, hiding in the cracks and creases, not removed when the soul is evacuated. I lived in that package of yours for 26 years, my friend. Even your rusty old Lincoln is getting shaped after your dare I say flamboyant personality after ten-odd years, don't you think that I would at least leave an impression of me in there? Something to affect a powerful but absolutely naïve demon barely taking its first steps into the material world?"
"You want me to believe all this?" I asked, trying to sound bold, but meanwhile, there was this feeling of unrest in my bones that started to work its way up into my spine, riding the express highway to my mind. "Bloody hell! I've heard enough gobbledigook in the last couple of hours to bake a soddin fruitcake out of it, but this is absolutely richer than dairy fat!"
"It's true. I'm not lying to you. You're not the real William August Byron who died in 1880. You're a demon, shaped by my memories and feelings, driven by your own instincts to do the absolutely wickedly wrong things, and thereby condemning my immortal soul to hell -"
"Hang on there a minute!" I thought I had discovered the flaw in his fantastic tale, something to shut the wanker up so he would stop making me nervous. "If you're right that you're by no means me, why will you be responsible for anything I do or won't do?"
"Because it was my fault. You see, I let Drusilla bite me. She tempted me into it, true, and I was having a particularly bad night, with Cecily breaking my heart and those rich snobs laughing at my work. He should have picked any other day to test my determination in doing the right thing perhaps. However, the point was, I still could have walked away. Stopped her. She would have probably drained me dry after refusing her, but I wouldn't be responsible for creating a dangerous vampire to taunt mankind for the upcoming 120 years. In a certain way, all the innocents you've murdered, all the evil you have done, was partly my doing too." He sank his head, his eyes averted to the murky yellow stains on the padding, and for a brief moment, I felt sorry for him. I knew what it was like, to have your mind eaten away by guilt.
"So after my death, He decided that I should wait outside of the golden gates till He had made up His mind of what to do with me. I was a lucky chap not to be cast down into the fiery pits of hell immediately. I mean, every word picking judge would have found me guilty and discarded me with the rest of the sinners to spend the rest of eternity in damnation. It was, to a certain extend, a very cowardly approach to attempt suicide from my side, allowing her to kill my old self in return for something better. Such a fool I was."
I listened quietly. My heart quivering, my palms sweating. I didn't really like this scary little bedtime story he was telling. Even if it was of course, as fake and unlikely as a tasty brand of American beer, the whole theory behind his imaginative babbling brought a chill into my body.
"But I'm here because of you. You are one nasty piece of work, you know that?"
I nodded, and for the first time since the poofter had appeared in the room, I became a bit frightened of him.
"They told me they were watching you. Just as I did if I was drunk enough to dare to take peek down, that was. There isn't a spot on our skin that hasn't been once drenched in other people's blood."
I sank my head in shame. Somewhere from behind the secured door, I heard one of my demons laugh at me.
"They say that you've changed."
I lifted my head, gazing up at this mirror image of myself. Unable to understand how it could be that I wasn't the man that I believed to be, William August Byron, the insecure young man dreaming of becoming a writer, driven to madness by his own delusions, a complete nutter, perhaps, but real. A person.
This noncy git who was halfway down to scaring the crap out of me was terribly convincing in pushing me to believe that I was nothing but a dark ugly force cast into a deceased man's body. His body, of all bloody people.
"It's all because of her, isn't it? That girl. The Slayer?"
Buffy, again everything leaded back to Buffy. As if my whole soddin existence was built on hers. That I merely came to be, to play a part in her struggles fighting against the dark evil forces. How did this wanker exactly know, how to make me feel so insignificant and utterly useless?
"She's a good thing that we're having in our life. Don't turn your back on her. She's the only one who keeps you away from damming us straight to hell."
"I won't abandon her. I love her." I uttered, before I could put a cork in it.
He smiled. "I know you do. You've done something extraordinary because of that love. Something that's possibly my only salvation. Yours too."
I blinked my eyes, heavily confused.
"You see, you were not supposed to end up in here. There had been a bit of a mix up in the fate department."
"What?!" I asked, dumb-folded.
He sighed, embarrassed to have to tell me this. "Well, you were not supposed to be getting poisoned by that Glarkal kulllurlu - oh balls."
"Glarghk guhl kashma'nik." Slightly surprised by his swearing. You don't get to hear your Victorian double utter a word like that everyday.
"Right, that thing. Thank you. It should not have been you who was sent into this asylum-verse of Sunny Dale. It should have been Buffy."
"What?!!" I uttered, that daft moronic word again, but I was too baffled to think of something smarter to say.
"Honestly, I don't have any bloody idea what you were doing there in the first place. It was by all means, hardly helpful what you did. It only complicated everything, sent destiny reeling off track. The chaps up there are working overtime trying to fix this little paradox you've created. Hence, my part in the whole rescue mission."
"I don't get this."
"It's simple. I have to convince you to get back into the right dimension. I didn't have the slightest idea how to do that, so I decided to just tell you the whole story. Hoping that you might still have enough common sense in the pudding of your brains to realize that you don't belong here."
"I do belong here." I muttered, desperately clinging on to those words. "I - I'm crazy and all that about me being a - a demon, a vampire. It's all bullocks! Made up, like you are! All fancy little lies to keep me from staying awake. Staying sane. I won't believe a word you blather you hallucinated wanker!"
"Spike, listen. You really can't stay here. I know it's quite comfortable for you, particularly now that Dr Summers has finally told you the one thing that you like to hear so much, but the point is that you're needed back in the other reality. The original intention of getting Buffy here was to let her know that she was needed by her friends, that she couldn't just keep her head stuck in a pail of mud to avoid the blows. If everything went according to schedule, like it had infinite times before, she would have figured what was to be taught by the end of her second day in the institution. You, on the other hand, are a very slow student."
"Look, I'm not going back, no matter what you say. Why do you care if I return to good ol' SunnyHell or not? Are they gonna let you in as soon as I transport my consciousness back into your corpse or what?"
"It's hardly that easy." He grinned, bitterly. "It has to cost a lot more than that. In the end, I've to pay dearly for all of our sins. And so do you."
"And you're surprised that I'm not eager to jump in?" I stated. "Besides, they're punishing me already. All those made up victims of my shadowy past? They're here. Tormenting me. Driving me to the bloody edge of self- mutilating desperation."
"And it will become worse. Trust me, I know. But it's part of the path you've chosen."
"What soddin path? I didn't explicitly ask to become a masochistic nut! I just - I just want to be sane again - normal - to be with her."
"But you'll never be able to be with her if you stay here. Don't you see this, Spike? This is the devil's easy way out. His free-out-of-jail card offered to you on a silver serving-tray, rimmed by slippery deceit with a forked tongue. You think you've earned it, after all that you've suffered. You think you should get the girl and live happily ever after as the reward of everything fate had made you to swallow. But you have to ask yourself, truly, what have you done so far to deserve to be forgiven by Him? What in your actions has made you equal enough to deserve her?"
"I - " I tried to think clearly, search deep within my memories, both the false and real ones, to justify myself, justify my luck to have her. But I couldn't find anything or I had to lie.
"I - don't. Oh God. I don't." My words became garbled as my over- productive tear-ducts started working again. He watched me sob in silence, compassionately, but unresponsively, like God himself watching the disasters that taunt humankind taking place from up his throne shaped cloud. Deeply moved, perhaps blinking away a tear or two, but generally not even lifting a bloody finger to help out.
"He's not indifferent you know. He's only doing what a good parent should, let His children stand on their own feet and find their own strength. You can't blame Him for the weakness of man to abuse whatever freedom of will that is given to them to turn it into something ugly."
"What are you? A bloody mind-reader?"
"I'm just a soul who had spend too much time talking to other miserable souls, only I had time to think about everything what was said while the others rushed into heaven after a couple of decades or plunged right into the burning inferno below."
"I don't exactly remember you having a very strong and balanced character either." I snorted, shielding my sorrow and insecurity with sarcasm and wit. "What happened to the bloody awful whimpering poet?"
He didn't bite. "People grow, Spike. Even dead ones. Demons on the other hand, are not very known for their ability to change for the better. That's what makes you such a strange case for them to crack. You're different. It's hardly imaginable for a demon to be able to grasp something as elusive to them as the concept of conscience. But here you are, feeling guilt and remorse without the guidance of a soul. That is quite an achievement."
"You're wrong." I tried, one more time, to plead for my insanity instead of having to swallow all that terrifying truth that he was forcing down my throat. "You're absolutely wrong! I'm not a demon. You're contradicting yourself. A demon cannot feel any remorse. Go ask fluffy Peaches in LA. He will tell you. You can't be all remorseful and flogging yourself with a cat o' nine tails for what you've done without a soul. That's you, mate."
I really thought I had him then with my clever observation, but he just shook his head and smiled sadly at me. The bloody git. "You've confused me with your conscience. Sometimes, to make things easier to understand, people try to explain the soul as the ability of a being to distinguish right from wrong. But you know that it's not entirely true, right? Serial- killers, rapists, dictators, terrorists, Bill Gates, they all have souls but are at least a bit deprived in the conscience department. Your conscience is just a tool to help you to make the right decisions. If you're pigheaded enough, you'll be able to ignore it, choose not to use it and do whatever comes to your liking instead, which is exactly what you did the first hundred-odd years of your existence. A soul on the other hand, is an essence. A force with a mind on its own. Most souls are good and pure, but not strong enough to withstand temptations, and people end up heavily screwed or screwing others. In my case, I was the one who got screwed, and the result of my weakness ended up hurting others."
"But - then, w-what is left for me to be?" I stuttered. A sickening feeling doing a somersault in my stomach. Didn't much appreciate to be cast down all the way of the celestial ladder, to be defined as once again, a soulless evil thing. "I mean, you can't just hop in here and tell me I'm a soddin soulless monster! I have to be something to be able to feel all this! Otherwise, what is the bloody point?" my voice quivered, fear and anger mixed into a powerful emotional cocktail. "Why should they make me fall in love, torment me with it till I can hardly breath without thinking about her! Why would they let me know what's it like to feel guilt? It's an utter waste of time if it wasn't for that they wanted to redeem me, force me to see the wrongs in my doings, right?"
"I told you before. I don't know exactly who you are. You are a demon, but you entered my body as a blank sheet of paper, no word about the character was written on it perhaps expect for the total lack of control over so much emotions, the trait mark of evil and insanity. However, what you have become, partly because of who I once was, partly because you had time to experience life itself, is a mystery to me. To be honest, I don't believe that you're entirely soulless, Spike. And I do realize that demon's don't carry around souls in the very way humans do. But, there is something in there. Something very much like yours truly here that perhaps can be defined as one. Otherwise, you're right. I wouldn't understand why they would bother with us both if there wasn't a small chance of you and me finding forgiveness."
I sucked in a ragged breath of air. My emotions rampant. My mind clogged with contradicting facts and knowledge. I felt heavy, worn-out like an old shoe. I wanted to crawl in a corner and sleep.
"Forgiveness." I whispered. "That's not something that's easily earned. Better not expect it, than to be horribly disappointed after trying very hard to get it."
"It's the only way to silence the voices, to allow ourselves peace."
"I thought you weren't me. That you didn't want to be me. You shouldn't be talking in plural like we're best mates or something. Because we're not."
He gave me small, all knowing grin. "In the end, there will be no difference anymore between you and me. It's what He wants. And ignoring the popular saying of Him moving in mysterious ways, most of his biddings, are actually very carefully planned."
ACT 8 Part 4: Sleeper
SCENE 10
The night had progressed halfway down to the next morning when Buffy finally reached the doorstep of her house, her mind exhausted from an emotional day, her body cold from a chilly wind that swept through the streets, making a flock of clattering leaves rise from the ground. She unlocked the door with an unintended loud noise, and although she tried to push it open most carefully, the squeaking of the rusty hinges and the groaning of old wood, made her worry that perhaps she might wake up Dawn. But the small hallway remained peacefully quiet and no sound came from upstairs. Her little teenage sister must already be fast asleep.
Buffy hung up her coat and strolled into the kitchen, took a smelly carton of skimmed milk out of the fridge, took a sniff, then decided that it wasn't worth the risk and discarded the miniature cheese fabric in the already overflowing garbage bin, and picked a bottle of Coke instead. Although it had already been opened and the fizz was all gone, it still tasted chemically challenging enough to be free of any microbial invasion that seemed to be tyrannizing her groceries. She also picked up a stale slice of pepperoni pizza, leftovers from Dawn's nutritious dinner, considered shortly of heating it up in the microwave, took a bite, then decided that it would do and, after spinning two layers of kitchen paper from the roll, headed for the living room.
She sat down at her mom's antique writing-desk, consuming the horrid piece of fast food, flushing it down with sips of fizzless Coke. She took William's file out of her bag, staining the cover with greasy finger marks. It was odd, but she wasn't that tired anymore. Back at the clinic, just after she had put William away in the seclusion room, she hadn't realized how worn out she was, emotions stirring up tons of adrenaline to keep her going. The first thing she did was to go back to her office and start doing research, reading books that dealt with the psyche of rape victims. In order to be able to help him, she must first understand (or attempt to understand) what kind of hell William was going through. However, as the evening progressed and she kept making up excuses for not having to abandon her work (or was it not having to abandon him?), the weariness started to get to her, tugging on her eyelids and filling her mind with garbled pudding while it should be filled with knowledge. Still, she stood her stand till three o'clock, after which she decided to take one last look at William to make sure that he was still all right.
Through the small, pigeonhole-sized window, she saw him, fast asleep, his body curled up into a tight knot, his chest rising and falling in a peaceful rhythm. No bad dreams. No imaginary voices. It was only then that she had really made up her mind that it was time to call it a day and get her own portion of good ol' shut-eyes before she collapsed in front of Will's padded cell and started snoring rather un-ladylike.
However, after finishing the pizza, the fizzy drink and, after another short trip to the kitchen, half a bucket of ice -cream, she felt invigorated and anxious enough to start worrying again (it must have been all that sugar, she thought; mental note to myself: do not consume large quantities of Hagendaz's Chocolate cheesecake goodness just before getting a night's rest, or you won't get any.). Not the type of worrying that she considered as helpful to her and Will, because it drove her into professionalism and whipped her brains into action to find solutions. It was more the useless kind of worrying, the sort that distracted her from being the collected, rational Dr Summers, and turned her into a volatile emotional dupe. It boiled up with a nosy string of trouble-bubbles, while she was staring into the shady pool of light that her tiffany desk-lamp provided.
Did she do the right thing to tell William what he wanted to hear? That he thought he wanted to hear? Did she love him? Did he love her, or was it just his illness that made him believe that he did? In that case I shouldn't be worried, the rational Dr Summers part of her considered. I mean, lying to a patient isn't much of a crime as compared to falling in love with one. If he didn't mean it, then my words back there in the emergency room didn't have any meaning either, right? I can't be falling in love with someone, who isn't in love with me.
Although it was late, she still had enough common sense left to know that the last part of her reasoning was absolutely nonsense. Of course she could. And she had perhaps.
Buffy Ann Summers! Please, pull your self together! This isn't the time to take a membership on Will's craziness! She shook her head, a physical motion that kicked in an impulse inside her head to do the same mentally, so that her girlish thoughts of insecurity was spilled from her mind. Really, having too many problems to deal with right now to start worrying about the sincerity of Will's feelings for her. She must focus herself on the problems, focus on -
"Liam." She muttered, scraping the spoon over the bottom of the empty bucket for the last bits of sticky chocolate. God, how was she going to deal with Liam now she knew the horrible truth? She was still having when she went to see William, but after she had seen his reaction to her questions, she could hardly fool herself any longer. His fear, his recent torment by insanity, perhaps even, while she was considering, his entire mental illness, had something to do with Liam.
Should she report the crime as it was, get the older brother arrested?
"That would the right thing to do." She said to herself. "But it wouldn't be the smartest." If Liam got arrested, he would be trailed and charged for physical abuse and rape, subsequently jailed for four to five years and lose his custody over his younger sibling. Liam would end up without any hopeful prospects for the future and William would lose his only brother.
And that was what, exactly? A great loss? Did you already forget what he had done to Will? He raped him! He took away his pride, took possession of what was not his to have and drove him to madness out of horrible shame. And now, Dr Summers, you're feeling sorry for that monster? What are you, the all-forgiving Mary? Didn't you see in which state the incident had left him, how it had destroyed him?
"I'm not going to keep this quiet because I'm pitying Liam." She said, softly, slightly aware that she was having a rather peculiar conversation with herself. Boy, perhaps it was really time to go the bed. "I'm doing this for Will." He didn't want to bring Liam into trouble. It might have been the ill-thinking pattern of a rape victim that had been talking to her earlier this evening, but she did know that he cared about his brother. That he needed Liam to keep him grounded in this reality as much as he needed her right now to set things right for him. "I can't just - tear his only family away from him. That wouldn't be right." She thought of the photographs Liam had showed her only this morning, the wide grins on both boys' sun tanned faces ("Summer-camp." Liam had explained to her, smiling at her not without the sad glee of sweet melancholy. "God, were we a handful! Will and I had to do most of the potato peeling for the entire camp because we managed to get ourselves into trouble almost every day. Ever had bits of cooked fur- ball drifting in your breakfast? Will's idea."), and the inevitable Holliday shots ("Christmas '83. See that tree over there? Mom used to make loads of cookies to get the whole thing decorated. Took her boys three days to make a full afternoon of baking efforts completely fruitless. They definitely didn't make it to Christmas."). She couldn't decide if the pictures were lying, or that she just wasn't ready to accept the truth that such an ugly and heinous deed was not the product of a cold, stone - hearted monster, but the wrongdoing of a man, whose normal appearance was so just and lovable that nobody could have suspected anything. It was even harder for her to understand what had driven him to it. Had Liam been violent, compulsive or easily enraged, it would have at least provided her a sketch of character that fitted the felony. However, he seemed to be none of that, and the profile of William's family didn't point out any signs of physical abuse suffered by the hands of their parents as a possible motif for his actions. It had to be something else. Although the files didn't bear as much information on Liam Byron as it did on William, there was still enough about the older brother documented in there to give her the impression that Liam was considered a decent man by his family and friends. A sensible man with a rational mind, as he was described by her colleague who had taken the interview. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, but perhaps only the great remorse and the overprotective behaviour he expressed when dealing with his younger sibling's illness.
Buffy chewed on the cool surface of the spoon in her mouth that quickly warmed on her tongue. There was that nagging feeling again that told her that something wasn't right, that the answers to her questions were more complicated than that she wanted them to be. When she was still a student, she once had taken classes on criminal psychology, and from what she had learned about the subject was that these type of offenders could be divided into two groups, One group was driven to the act by desperation, an outburst of uncontrolled emotions, blinding them for their actions. Most them did feel remorseful after the felony had taken place.
The second group was also driven by strong emotions, although not the type that any normal person could ever understand. It was a burning rage that was more abstract and wasn't specifically pointed to anyone, but more to everyone, that fitted the criminal's criteria of potential victim. The criminal's actions were compelled by his strong belief that the world had deeply wronged him (the rude cashier, the you-are-not-good-enough-for-my- daughter mother-in-law, the bitch boss), and that he should take his rights in his own hands to make it better. The people he hurt were not seen as human beings. They were not subjects but objects. To be degraded. To be dismantled. To be owned. There was absolutely, no remorse after the act.
The first group consisted of wife-beaters, frustrated boyfriends, and shameful fathers who couldn't quite keep their hands off their own children.
The second group consisted of dangerous serial killers.
Liam could be fitted into the first category, considering the remorse he showed towards his brother (It made her sick to her stomach to think that during all that time she had felt sorry for Liam blaming himself for his brother's illness) and his passive character. Liam had been devastated after the horrible incident in the visiting room. She had seen his complexion, pale as a ghost, his features turned crude, and noticed the slight movements of his trembling hands towards Will, who was lying on the floor unconscious at that time. He wanted to help him.
Liam went back to his hotel after she had put much effort into explaining to him that there was nothing he could do to help out, that it would be better for him not to see Will if his fit had something to do with his presence. There had been pain in that man's face. Even with the red swollen cut running down one side of his cheek reminding him that his younger brother could have in fact, killed him if it wasn't for the staff's intervention, he couldn't escape his conscience.
She wanted to give the man a second chance. For Will. But perhaps also, as she reconsidered her feelings towards the older brother, a little bit for Liam himself too.
But why was there still this tiny little voice inside her head, that warned her for what she was about to do, told her that it might not be such a good plan to keep this dark secret hushed? Why did it say that she should reassess everything most cautiously?
Buffy couldn't figure out what was bothering her. She thought that her reasoning was rational, considered enough to be transformed into action. She would call Liam the first thing in the morning, inform him about Will's situation to reassure him, but not mention a word about the rape. Then, she would make an appointment, telling him that she had something serious with him to discuss concerning Will. When he showed up in her office in private, she could approach him tactfully. Ask him the burdened questions. Talk him into getting help and offering help to him herself. She would promise to keep it a secret between them, and in the perfect scenario of her mind, Liam would accept her offer, go in therapy, and leave Will alone.
As with many ideas concocted in the early hours of the morning, it seemed like a good workable strategy. A win - win situation in which she could save both brothers without having to sacrifice anything in return. Simply brilliant.
Still, there was that whiny little voice again, accompanied by that nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right.
SCENE 11
Sorrento is a small village on the west coast of Italy, north to the ruins of Pompeii, south to the dark, rat-infested alleys of Naples, just balancing on the seams of Lady Vesuvius luscious green skirts. Decades ago, it wasn't much more than a collection of tattered little hovels, on the verge of collapse any minute. The docks in the small harbour were rotting away from underneath and smelled like dead fish. You got a pebble beach there, consisting of sharp volcanic rocks in all colours and shapes, able to scrape open your bare feet till the cuts started bleeding ferociously, although you would have barely minded the mild stinging in your soles. At twilight, you could see the boats wobble and nod their ways back to the port, sun scarred men bringing in their meagre catches to fill their hungry brats' mouths with. The sky would be endlessly high, becoming darker by the minute, while at the other side of the sea, the retreating sun sank into a rippling puddle of her own colourful blood. The stars and the moon would come out, while the last bit of sunlight bounced off the waves, kissing it goodbye with a farewell orange glow. Somewhere above, seagulls would shriek.
I used to love sunsets, observing them in the sanctuary of shadows, the cheery end of a useless day. There was this feeling of finiteness, as if the daft Bugger up there had finally figured it out that there was no sodden point in letting the sun come up everyday, if everything had to end up in darkness anyway. Eternal darkness, now that would be a real treat for the likes of her and me. No more hiding from the sun, no more limits to our strength. Mayhem, death and bloodshed 24 hours a day, just like cable telly.
With a slight rumbling noise coming from my empty stomach, I looked at her, cradled in my arms, her soft long hair tickling my shoulders. She stirred, and her lips parted in a small sigh. Her eyes opened, fluttering gently.
"Spike?" She said.
"Yes, luv."
"I'm hungry."
We got out of our shelter and ventured into the tiny village. There was only one bar in the entire town, but it kept its doors open till the very last costumer was gone. Some funny South European hospitality thing, wished that the pubs back home would adopt the same policy, but anyway, local wine went down the locals' gullets as if it was tap-water in there, and the boozers were easy pickings. We went to a table in a quiet corner, sat down and watched silently. When the patron came and advised us to choose one of his excellent wines, we picked him instead. He smelled of soggy armpits and sweaty Parmesan cheese, but according to her, he tasted like sweet grapes. There were more victims that night. A drunken fisherman with a crumbled photo of his family but no money in his pockets. A rose cheeked harlot with eyes still too innocent to be any older than fourteen, but with a body too broken and used to be that of a child.
At the end of the evening, we strolled back to the beach, my arm wrapped around her shoulders while she herself clutched on to a blood-red scarf from the dead girl that we had left behind in the narrow maze of cobbled streets. Suddenly, she yanked herself away from me, and draped the cloth around her slender neck, letting it sliver down her low cut dress like blood.
"Guess who I am." She said, a thin smile on her lips.
"Well, geez, I don't know. Little Red Riding Hood?" Half mocking her, offering just a bit of benevolent teasing.
"Ha! You wish!" her smile broadened, but there was no real glee in it. "You're not the Big Bad Wolf, you know."
I walked up to her. Her features were lovingly familiar in the sparse pools of streetlights. Somewhere behind the crumbly walls of decomposing houses, came the distant roaring of the sea.
"Then tell me, luv." I whispered close to her, close enough to smell the copper in her breath. "Tell me, who are you supposed to be?"
"It's not a hard riddle to crack, really. I'm a vampire with a dead whore's scarf around my neck."
She just said that. Without emotion. Without compassion. She was like me now. Dead inside.
We reached our lair, an abandoned house near the beach that had once belonged to a happy elderly couple whose bodies we had discarded in the cellar beneath the tidy kitchen. As long as they didn't start to smell, we were not planning to move out.
Just as we were about to set foot on the small wooden veranda, she twirled around. The scarf was now secured to her hair in a flame-red bow. She kicked her shoes off her feet and staggered back, her red lips pouting into a luring grin.
"Come on Spike. Let's take a walk on the beach. The moon is beautiful tonight."
I watched her slip one strap of her dress over her shoulder, baring pale skin underneath. Her blue eyes appeared black amidst the dark midnight blue of early morning, while her soft curling hair seemed to be made out of silver moonbeams.
"Buffy." I managed to say, my voice trembling. Although the very sight of her, the unreserved beauty of her darkness, had overwhelmed me, there was this strange feeling of sadness that I couldn't quite place. I had her love. She had become one of my kind and would spend the rest of eternity with me. I should be happy, but I wasn't.
"I would love to take a dive in the sea right now. Let the fish tickle my legs." She purred, her voice seductively low. "Don't you want to see me naked?"
"Love to, pet. But there isn't enough time to go skin dipping in the sea. The sun will be up in an hour."
"Ah, come on. Don't be such a whiny but! A whole hour should be more than long enough." Her hand slipped underneath the second strap and as she pulled it down, the entire dress fell from her body like a lose skin and sank into a heap of untidy folds before her feet. Her hand gently cupped her mango-sized breasts, tendrils of silver curled loosely around her pale sweet little face while moonlight stroked her soft curving body.
Understandably, I had some trouble controlling myself.
"Buffy, listen." I explained, trying not to think with the growing bulge that was currently straining my trousers. "If you want to take a dive in the sea, we can go tomorrow night. Skip the elaborate three-course dinner to spare the evening and only go for a quick bite in town. But for now, we really don't have the time to - "
"Come and get me." She whispered, her voice carried away by a salty sea- breeze, and she turned around, ran across the pebbles till she reached the dark sands of the shore and dived into the hulls.
"Bloody hell." I muttered, after which I quickly shrugged my shirt over my shoulders and subsequently hopped on one foot to get rid of my docs. "Buffy!" I yelled, slightly panicking. But she was already too far away to be able to hear me. Beads of moonlight caught on her skin and her slippery body just seemed to dissolve in the waves.
"Is this what you want? How you though it would be?"
"This isn't what it might have been." I said, a sharp tinge of resentment in my voice. "This had already happened. Once before. With Dru." I turned and met William Byron's accusing stare. "I know what you're trying to do, but this isn't working. Buffy is not anything like Dru."
"No, she isn't." He said. "She's much stronger than her. That's why you shouldn't -"
"Shouldn't what?" I snapped. Within a blink of an eye, my dusty "soul-mate" was gone. So was the night's sky, the sea, the beach, whole of sodden Italy. For a moment I feared that she was gone too, but then I caught sight of her, huddled in a corner of the bathroom in her own house back in Sunnydale, the mascara lines under her eyes broken and smudged as hot tears rolled down her cheeks.
"You lied to me." She said, her voice breaking. "You said it wouldn't hurt, that I wouldn't feel anything, but I did."
I stepped closer to her, warily, my head light on the thick scent of blood that choked the stagnant air. My fangs were bared, my human features twisted into that of a demon. Somewhere on my right, my eyes caught a glimpse of a pale hand, clutching lifelessly onto the brim of white porcelain. Inside the tub, a body drifted in murky brown water, hair swaying like patches of red seaweed.
Red's eyes were not closed, as I had rather wished them to be, but stared up to the ceiling. Not haunting or judging or revengeful or anything. Just - dead.
"Why does it hurt so much?" She asked, gazing up with tears burning behind those stale blue eyes. "I'm a demon now. Just like you. I shouldn't feel anything when - when -"
I crouched down beside her, wiped tears from her cheeks and placed my forehead on hers. "Shshsh" I kept saying. "Shshsh, it's all right, luv. The pain won't stay. Shshshsh."
" How many are there left?" I asked gently, careful not to startle her.
She blinked away some tears. "I - I think I've killed everyone. Everyone except for - for Dawn. I don't want to kill her. Please don't make me."
I stroked a damp lock away from her eyes, my features shifting back into human again. The corners of my mouth curled into a sad smile.
"I'm sorry, luv. But you have to. It's the only way to make the hurting stop. Let her live, and she will only remind you of the pain. It will drive you mad. You have to finish it."
"Spike, please! I - "
"Kill her, Buffy. Kill her, or I'll turn her."
She chewed on her lower lip, watching me with a fiery hatred burning in her eyes. Gone was the sadness, the fear, and the nagging voice of conscience. All that remained was her rage and bitterness.
"You are a monster, Spike!" She spat. "You tricked me! You've never really loved me, or you wouldn't have done this to me! You knew how it would feel like and still you made me do this! I hate you! I fucking hate you!"
"You need me, luv. You can hate me all you want but the truth is, that you can't go on without me. There no-one left for you but me. You're mine now, Buffy."
"Stop this!" I yelled, screaming inside the tiny bathroom, not to myself or to Buffy, but to that wanker William who had spinelessly kept himself out of this soddin motion picture from hell. "This isn't real!" I raged. "This has never happened!"
"But you wanted this. Deep in your heart you wished she would be yours, joining you in the dark." His voice came out of nowhere, and his enlightened cowardly arse was equally nowhere to be seen. The room was dim now. Nobody was left in here except for me.
"Yes!" I admitted. "I love her. I want her. But not like this! Never like this! I would never hurt her or Nibblet or -"
"You would do as you were taught, Spike. Tell me in all honesty; if her friends and family were all that stood between her and you, wouldn't you like to remove them? Isolate her, make her miserable and lonely, just so you will be able to get to her?"
"I - It wasn't anything like that! I am not - I'm not Angelus!" I spat the words out before I had time to regret them, and still my daft tongue kept rolling. "My peachy Grand Sire, he told me that it was something every fledgling had to do. Remove the traces of my past, cleanse the messy board of my childish attempts to life and more of that buggery nonsense. With all that unresolved rage burning inside of me, it seemed like a good plan at the time." I sucked in a torn breath. Shut my eyes to hide the tears. I'll be bloody damned to let the wussy librarian see me cry again. "He told me, that I wouldn't feel anything. That it wouldn't hurt because the demon was so much stronger than the pain. I went to my uncle's house after I had starved myself for two nights, just to make sure. Bloody massacred them, ended up much in the same spot Buffy was. In the bathroom, huddled away underneath my aunt Dorothy's wash-table with my aunt Dorothy herself floating in the tub. I was so confused, so ashamed because I did feel something. I had felt something break inside. It wasn't supposed to be like that." I fell silent. Bloody tears running out of stubborn eyes. William appeared right out of thin air, just in time to witness my second round of pitiable snivelling. Balls.
"I'm sorry." He said.
I frowned at him, slightly baffled by his response, having expected an tedious lecture about my dubious feelings for Buffy, but receiving his pity instead.
"Don't be." I said, and I meant it. "If there's someone here who should be apologizing it should be me. It was your family that I've murdered, not mine."
Our surroundings changed, it shifted and wobbled like sheets hung out to dry in the wind. The sound of rolling waves came back to us, together with the salty scent of the beach and the feeling of cool pebbles underneath my bare feet.
"You really shouldn't have shown me all this." I muttered. Keeping me eyes from him and down at the pebbles. "It had only made me more afraid to go back, knowing what I could do. I wouldn't be able to look at her without that thought passing my mind."
"Spike, I showed you this because I want you to see that it wouldn't have worked. That it was wrong to love her the way you did. You wanted to drag her into your world, into the darkness, make her into something what she is not because your love-sick brains wished to spot that side in her. To recognize a resemblance to yourself in order to hush that sickening feeling in your stomach, that something as explicitly declared evil as you, could love some-one as pure and good as she is."
"It was so easy to see it." I said softly, bowing my head. "That glitch in her eyes just before she brings out the stake, her moments of contempt and anger. She seems to be able to kill so easily, but she's nothing like me, is she? And she never will be."
"You have to come home, Spike." There was that easy tune of contentment in his words. As if the brawl was all over and done with. All the kittens won and stuffed in his pockets.
"I want to stay here."
He looked really surprised. "You know that nothing here is real. You'll be fooling yourself."
"Then allow me to be once again, a complete clueless dupe. Look, I told you that you shouldn't have shown me all this."
William lifted his spectacles. His nervous twitch kicking in.
"Spike, you don't know what's coming your way if you stay here. I can bloody well tell you that it's not going to be a cosy picnic. It's going to be hell for you."
"Perhaps, but tell me, is there chance in the end? For me to be with her?"
"She isn't the real Buffy."
"Is there a chance?!" I insisted, trying my very best to forget what he had just said to me.
William rolled his eyes and sighed out of sheer desperation. "Yes." He admitted, reluctantly. "Yes there is."
I decided to play it safe before I put my final say in this. I might be a nutter but I still knew how to cover my arse.
"So, I won't stay in the funny-farm forever?"
"What is this? Are you trying to use me as crystal ball to predict your future in this crazy head-trip of yours? I'm sorry for asking you this, considering the circumstances and all, but are you bloody insane?"
"Just answer the question." I said, crossing my arms over my bare chest.
William rolled his eyes again (I wondered if I got that annoying habit from him, that strange spasm in his overused eyeball muscles that got to develop a will on its own). "Oh bloody hell! No you won't. There, happy?"
"Almost." I said, showing the pillock a content smile. "Only one more thing I'd like to ask."
"Spike! Look you're missing the point here! You were supposed to see the wrongs in your previous doings, sink through your knees and have a good howl, ask for forgiveness and pop on my mystical cloud back to good ol' Sunnydale. The real one that is. So if you were so kind and start with the begging for forgiveness part, we're running out of time -"
"Tell me one more thing."
"No! Listen Spike, I won't answer any more of your moronic questions! You're supposed to do the right thing here, and -"
"Will I be able to make her happy?"
He stopped his tedious monologue, and fell into silence for a moment.
"Is that what you most care about, her happiness?"
"Yes." I answered, truthfully. "There is nothing more important in the world to me but to know that she has finally found it, some peace of mind, a moment of bliss. Even if it means that I should stay away from her for the rest of her life."
"So if I told you that you would make her completely miserable if you stayed here as mister William Byron -"
"I would go with you, this instance. Not a second thought wasted."
He averted his eyes from mine for a moment, looking out over the dark folds of the sea. It was still obscured in anticipating darkness, but not much longer as the horizon at the east started to glow. A tired little smile crept up his face.
"But I can't lie to you, can I? And you knew that. You knew that William, the bloody honest soul, had to tell you the truth."
"I only care about her. I didn't try to trick you or anything."
"Very well then." He said, tilting his head to one side and sighing deeply. "She would have been loved, and cared for. She would have found happiness, being with you."
A sigh of relief escaped my throat, and I nodded. "That's all I wanted to know."
"You're making a huge mistake here, Spike. This reality was not supposed to be. They won't allow you to stay here."
"Really?" I snorted. "Thought this was one of those my-choice-only gig. Why so that you've wasted a whole night of making soddin shadow-puppets on persuading me to go back then?"
"I was being polite! Look, there isn't really an option here. I know that God had given just about everyone on this lump of clay free will to chose his own fate, but it's rather contradicting you see. Since there is this little thing called "destiny", which inconveniently also happened to be created by God almighty himself. A bit dubious but hey. God, right? So, in practice, you only have the freedom in choosing whatever is already destined for you to choose. That's how it works. There isn't another way. If you decide to go against the stream, they'll make it so hard on you that in the end, you'll begging on your bare knees to get out of here!"
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm just begging you to listen for once! What I told you, was what could happen if the divine entities decided to look the other way and let you get away with this which, as I had stated previously, is as likely as you not begin such a strong-headed idiot for a change! It's serious business to mess with God's plans."
"And how's He going to stop me then? Bloody kill me?"
He didn't say a word, just turned his head and stared into the direction of the sea where the first sliver of sun appeared, making a simmering furnace out of a distant cloud.
Panic shot through me that was almost as bright and hot as bloody daylight. "Bleedin hell! Buffy!"
I turned on my heels, sharp edges of stone cutting into my soles. I ran, my legs moving faster with every step. I reached the shoreline and dived into the freezing water, my mind a swirling chaos and already forgetting that this was just a dream inside a dream. Even lesser real than the asylum reality. But it felt awfully real to me.
She had swum out far from the coast, and was on her back, drifting peacefully on the waves. Her head held back and resting on the surface, nodding on its motion. Her hair waving in the dark water like tails of silvery fish.
I swam with raw speed, my arms crawling, legs kicking. I tried to keep my mind clear, but all I could think of was how she had stood there last night, with the scarlet scarf woven around neck and had told me that she was nothing but a ruthless monster, bearing her victim's blood.
"Buffy!" I yelled, hoping, praying that she would hear me. "Get out of there! The sun's coming up!"
She should have heard me. I was already close enough to her to see that she had shut her eyes as if sleeping, but she didn't react, didn't move to swim away. Only folded her hands over her chest. The waves were carrying her, almost lifting her from the surface, and she appeared to be as light and frail as a feather.
"Buffy! Please!"
In reality, the real reality as I now finally had figured out, it had been Dru, who I had tried save from spreading her ashes over the midst of the Mediterranean sea. She went out swimming on one starry night in 1947, and lost track of time, while I had lost track of her after a little messy accident in the village. I only found her back at dawn, when the sun had already started its tracks over the water in which she was bathing. Naked as the day she was born, her slim body drifting on the waves while she was counting the stars that weren't even there anymore by that time. In the real reality, it had ended well for Dru and me. I got her out on time with the wrath of the sun burning on my heels.
However, this time, everything was different.
The beams of sunlight appeared and cut through the shaded sky like butcher- knives. It bounced off the rolling waves, the bright orange disk at the horizon spreading its arms to swallow her in its deadly embrace.
The light reached her faster than I ever could, and I had to watch her burn.
ACT 8 part 5: Solace
SCENE 12
The corridor was filled with loud, hectic voices, and Buffy found herself rushing, her feet automatically bringing her back to the seclusion room where she had left him last night. She found Mike standing there in front of the doorway. His massive body barricading any possible escape routes. From inside the padded cell she could hear William scream.
"Buffy! Where is Buffy?" He sounded scared, lost.
"Dr Summers is not in yet. She'll come to see you as soon as she's here."
"She promised to be here! She's not here. She promised - she promised me. She's not here. Not here."
"Will, calm down!"
Her feet felt heavy, like there were pebbles in her shoes, as she walked into the tiny room. William was no more but a small curled up form, arms wrapped over his head, his face hidden between pulled up knees. The colourless hospital garb he wore seemed far too big for him.
"I'm here, William." She said in a gentle voice.
The confused young man looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. As he caught sight of her, his restless blues caught a spark of light, and his cracked lips mouthed her name in a soft sigh.
She knelt down before him, her hand gently caressing the damp curls of ruffled hair.
"I thought you were gone."
"No silly." She smiled, distressed by his neediness. "I had to go home to recharge the batteries. But I'm back now. As promised."
"I thought - I watched you die. I killed you."
For a short moment she didn't know how to react, his odd and sudden assertion frightening her, though she could never imagine him capable of doing her any harm. Nevertheless, she shot a short glance over her shoulder to Mike, to see if the sturdy orderly was still around.
"It's all right." He nodded, trying to calm her. " I think it was only a dream. Or a vision. Hard to tell. He wasn't very clear."
William gazed at the other side of the room. There was someone there who was demanding his attention.
"Yeah, that's you. How come you're still around then? Told you I'm gonna stay. Don't you have any bad poetry to write, you nonce?"
"Will." She tried, her voice rasping like dry paper. "Who are you talking to?"
"To him." And he nodded his head in his invisible companion's direction. "Will Byron, the righteous soul? You should meet him, a real spineless git he is! Talks of guilt and sin and seeking penitence, embrace the bleedin light of his allmighty God and more of that rubbish." He mocked, hot anger gripping his voice. "You're full of it! If that God of yours is so Goodie Good, why did he let her die then? He's a bloody murderer, that's what he is! Stupid old goat, two-faced Janus, pretentious pimp who wants to whore me to his great big plans! I HATE Him! I bloody HATE Him!!!" His fist lashed out and struck himself on the cheek, and Buffy heard the crunch of knuckles bruising bone.
"Mike! Get in here!"
William kept hitting himself. His cheeks turned crimson while he kept muttering his string of words fed on his anger and self-loathing.
"I HATE Him! He killed you Buffy! I killed you! I hate him. And you - You can stick your soddin redemption up your soddin arse!! It's all over, you hear me?!! No more funny head-trips, no more crazy Spike! I'm through with being a bloody string-puppet! Never needed Him. Never needed anyone!"
He barely fought them back when harsh hands pushed him face down on the padding, his nose and mouth digging deep into the dust coloured cloth till he could hardly breathe. It didn't matter. They could do whatever they liked to him and he would endure it without so much as a whine. It wouldn't last, he knew. This world of barred windows and cramped up white walled spaces wasn't going to be his home for the rest of his life. His eyes kept staring up at her as he was down there on the floor, observing anxiousness drawing deep lines in her pretty face. It made his heart squirm. She didn't know it yet, of course. Didn't know that everything he had to suffer was well worth suffering for because of her. She didn't know, that he was now as sensible as a piece of toast and a cuppa thee in the morning and that had made his choice.
He was going to stay here, with her, at all costs. Even if it meant he had to go through hell itself.
"He told me that I was going to make you happy." He mumbled, giving her a boyish, shy smile. He uttered a soft whimper when the thin needle entered his arm and spread the familiar numbness over his body, but apart from that, he kept smiling at her, hardly blinking his eyes, afraid to fall asleep too quickly.
"You shouldn't listen to those voices." She managed to say, the words choking her. "They're making you crazy."
"Oh no! I'm sane now, Buffy." His tongue felt heavy. As did his head. So incredibly heavy, that he had to lie down and rest. "I figured it out. Really, I did. I'm a demon. A soulless monster. But I love you and I'll be good. I'll make you so happy Buffy! For You, I want to forget who I was. I want to be Will Byron."
Buffy put his head against her chest, cradling him as though he was a small child. She could feel the drumming of his heart against her own, though his was slowing down by the drugs and hers was still as fast-paced as that of a frightened rabbit. She couldn't think of anything to say to him, her heart saddened by the condition he was in. Months of pain striking efforts to built up his sanity, to help him to recover from his illness, only to see him relapse into a state of delusion that was even worse than anything she had seen on him before. She wished she could make him stop referring to himself as a soulless, evil thing, but her wits left her completely blank.
"Shshshsh." She finally hushed, pushing her lips against his ears. "Shshshshsh. Don't say a word. It will be all right, Will. It will be all right. I promise.
I'll never let anybody hurt you again."
SCENE 13
London nights were chilly in November, with pools of mud and dung turning into icy surfaces and the maze of back-street alleys around the Seven Dials becoming covered by a layer of brittle frost. The whores were out in spite of the freezing cold, showing pale skin underneath their colourful high-cut dresses, their tits spilling over the fabric like milk over a rim. Thieves were out too, so were the bully-men, throatcutters, gamblers, cullies and boozers*. There was plenty of violence; a drunken gentleman got robbed from his purse and got a knife thrust in his great fat belly, while somewhere away from the scarce pools of gasoline streetlights, a bully-man cut off a disobedient girl's nose as a punishment. With such a hideous deformity ruining the merchandise, she would starve on the streets the coming winter.
There were other things, dark things that called these shady alleys their home and had made it into their hunting ground. But even they were the lowest of the low, scavenging rats compared to the sophistication of the greater evil (Evil with a capital E, I supposed) living their endless existence in the better parts of town.
It was scum feeding on scum in here. In the West End, the civilized codes of the Victorian era had never reached the poor and life was much the same as it was a hundred years ago.
It was still every man for him-self.
I clutched on to my last bottle of gin like it was a dying thing. Scuttling through the filthy alleys in a hasty pace, hardly able to feel my feet. I'd figured that they had turned into clumps of ice by now. My clothes were too tattered, with holes showing skin and letting in the bloody cold. I had nicked a blanket from a dead beggar frozen stiff in an alley at the back of St. Paul, but still, without regular feeding, my body felt like ice with only the occasional gulp of gin warming my stomach. The booze helped. My mind was pleasantly dazed with less pleasant memories fading like the letters on yellowing newspaper. Who said I gave a bloody shag about them? Who said I needed anyone to survive? I was my own man now, I was. With the liberty to starve and freeze off my skinny dead arse out on the open streets as I wished.
Who said I gave a lousy penny about myself anyway?
Dawn was bound in one-hour time. I needed to find a shelter for the day.
I turned in and out of alleys, my feet dragging me in wide circles through a maze of stinking poverty. Cramped rooms with ridiculously large families, already up before dawn to make ready for a long day of slaving for the reward of a lousy shilling in the evening. Brats with rags covering their shivering bodies compared to which my ripe outfit seemed luxurious. Adults who were no more but skins on bones, the men red-eyed and covered in masks of sooth, the women worn like old shoes of giving child -birth and hard labour with sunken cheeks the colour of ashes. One look at them, and I had lost my soddin appetite. Not that I had any these days, unless you counted my recent stormy love affaire with Lady Gin, that was. That cheap devilish whore was difficult to let go.
No vacant dwellings or empty rooms where I didn't need an invitation to get in. Another half an hour was easily wasted. I was tempted, my stomach growling, to make one of those wretched families invite me in, but I hadn't had the taste of human blood in my mouth for weeks and I was afraid that it would still make me sick to my stomach.
Finally, I found a cellar that seemed abandoned. The narrow window was covered by a panel of rotting wood, easily disposed. I crawled inside, letting myself drop on the dirt floor like a sack of coal. Sleep came immediately, and was, for the first time since days, blissfully dreamless.
I woke up with a heavy weight pressing on my chest, the green bottle of gin rolled away from my hand, which was frozen so solid that it hurt as hell only trying to wriggle my bloody fingers. I blinked my eyes sheepishly, just when a dollop of spit came down on my cheek. The sack of anvils on my chest was a muddy leather boot to which a tall man was attached. His yellow eyes jumped out of the dim shadows. Another fellow demon, oh that's just great, such a lucky chap I was!
"Oi! Get up ye stray-dog! Or do I have to teach ye how?"
I staggered up, wiping the disgusting muck off my face with a dirty sleeve and probably smearing dirt all over myself. My mind raced, it was a good thing that I was already dead or my heart would have leapt straight out of my rib-barrel. There were vamps all around me, clothed in brownish poormen's rags like mine but without the crust of mud and gaping holes in the cheap cloth to make them look like desperate beggars. Most of them hunched down in the dark corners of the cellar, watching me with far too much interest than that it could ever be considered healthy for a half year old fledgling like myself, and I shuddered.
"I - I am terribly sorry. I didn't know this place was already taken." I muttered, eying at the wanker from underneath my lashes, my head bowed. So far, I had only met one or three of my kind apart from my Sire's twisted little family, and I wasn't sure how to behave towards them. The Poof claimed that he had taught me about everything I needed to know to keep myself out of trouble. Yeah, right, the Great Angelus Education was a bit lacking when it came to the codes of conducts towards other demons if you asked me.
He grinned at me, white fangs glittering between rows of brown rotting teeth. One of the lurkers gave me a long hard stare, clutching a fag between his dirty fingers while blowing rings of smoke through his nostrils.
"I know that skinny thing." The fag-blower barked. "He's one of Angelus' clan. Aren't you, boy?"
I kept my gob shut, not knowing what to expect if I told them that he was right. One of the three I had ever met. Just my bloody luck.
"Did you got tossed out? Angered the crazy old goat or one of his misses? It's that why you're strolling the streets and smell like you've been eating horse dung?"
"Talking to ye lad! Don't play dumb with us!"
A punch in my stomach, hard enough to knock the air out of my dead lungs, was more than sufficient to persuade me that I better spill the beans if I wanted to keep most of my flesh further agony-free.
"Yeah, and what's to it if I was?" I asked, stupid anger making me act all bold and fearless, while I was actually crapping myself.
The disgusting toothy grin on leather-boots' face widened. "Fierce one. Cocky too. Must have learned a thing or two from the Grand Pillock himself." He turned to the others, his face half hidden by shadows, and snapped his fingers. Four of them appeared, coming toward me. I staggered back, tripping over something in the darkness. It was the body of a girl, drained from every drop of blood, her skin felt like ice and her brittle dress cracked underneath my weight. I struggled back up and tried to fight them off.
"Get away from me you cocksucking git! You ugly tossers!
A punch on my jaw that made the room burn in fiery colours. The crunch of splitting bones followed by the rich taste of blood on my tongue. Not exactly the kind of blood I longed to taste, but I swallowed it down hungrily nonetheless, such a disgusting, hopeless thing I was.
Another blow that creaked my ribs, and I became silent without even so much as a whimper. They dragged me to the demon with the serious dental problems and tossed me in front of his boots. I kept my head to the ground, spitting out a wasted tooth.
He knelt down beside me. His breath smelled like the poorpits in the London graveyards during high summer, and I had trouble keeping myself from puking my guts out. I wished the wanker could keep all the "evil" self-involved jabbering to himself. We both knew what was coming. I was going to get hurt and he was gonna have a jolly good time making it hurt. So, what was new then?
"Nice." He breathed, tearing my tattered shirt, running callused fingers over my dirt-covered neck. I hadn't had a bath in weeks. I was filthy with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, skinny as a dried corpse. Surely he wouldn't be interested? I can't imagine anybody nutters enough to want to enter a body like mine. A heap of dead flesh, covered by bits of broken skin.
He lowered his head, greasy strings of hair brushed over my bare back, and I was slightly aware that it tickled like Dru's gentle fingertip touches. Whatever you do, don't start sobbing like a bloody nonce, I thought. And keep your gob shut, even if you have to bite off your tongue to do so. Just think of Dru. Shut out the rest. That way, you would be able to take it.
Corpse-breath surprised me. Or maybe he didn't, really. He wasn't interested in shagging my dead cadaver after all. Didn't thought of this to be possible because I was sure that I had nothing else worth to take. But I had. And I didn't realize it until the very moment he sunk his pearly whites into my neck and ripped a hole in there the size of a shilling. You see, Dru's blood came from Angelus who became of Darla who was the throat- ripping favourite of the Master. The long linage of the insane Aurelius clan, its pure and wholesome blood as precious and as much priced as bloody oranges in December.
They drained me, hungry wolves licking blood from the smaller wounds on my legs, my thighs, my arms, my chest. One really sick pervert bit me in the tip of my limp cock, and suckled on it till it rose, making it ache and throb at the same time. A girl with wild manes of flaming red hair stuck her tongue in my mouth and scraped her black nails over my genitals till they wept blood. I took all of this in silence, too weakened now to even cry. My body was a cold statue, only moved when it was dragged, handed over from one hungry mouth to the next like a piece of mouldy bread amongst the starved.
It baffled my mind afterwards, but they let me live and even let me stay in their shelter till twilight. After that, they threw me on the streets and warned me never to come back if I didn't want to have my legs cut off and be kept by them as a barrel of easy blood. It sounded fair enough to me. The fag-blower needed one last laugh and took my tattered shoes away. There was a large hole in the right one that let the cold and the damp in, but I really did miss them once I stepped outside barefooted on the frozen cobbles.
Swaying like a drunk from blood-loss, I moved away from their scornful laughter and out of the reach of their sharp stones. My feet carried me reluctantly while I left a track of blood behind that excited stray dogs, and I got chased by a pack of hungry mutts till a couple of humans took pity and bashed them away from me with shovels.
"Are you all right, lad?" One of the two men asked, his face black of sooth. A coalman, busy shoving the dark lumps down a pipe into a rich wanker's cellar. His large black hand shook my shoulder as if he wanted to make sure that I was still alive. I stared at the tiny silver cross dangling around his thick neck, the only thing on him that wasn't covered in dirt.
"No." I sobbed, softly. Not quite myself. "Not all right. Never gonna be all right. Never again."
The large man shook his head. "You need help. Go to the St. Giles cathedral. Find a shelter for the night. You're skin on bones and bleeding. I'll take you there myself if you can wait."
I didn't want to go to any church. Never entered one since I was turned. I was pretty sure churches were a big no-no for the likes of me. Vampire, right? Dedicating his wretched un-life to the wrong side. For as much as I knew, I could be set on fire like I was taking a stroll in the sun as soon as I entered The House of God. However, that notion didn't startle me as much as it should, and I was too much in need to refuse the man's kindness. The coalman helped me in the back of his cart and covered my shivering form with a emptied bag, since I had lost my blanket somewhere out there on the muddy streets. Rough cloth with black stains scraped over my wounds, but still I was grateful.
As the cart started to move, I sat very still between the sacks of coal, pretending to be one myself with my bony knees drawn up and pressing against my sunken belly. Just a lump of dirt, cold and unfeeling. Nothing could harm me now.
They brought me to the gates of the cathedral, where a friendly priest helped me inside, his hands burning hot on my frosted skin. A rosary hung from his wrinkled neck. The sight of the small wooden crucifix dangling from the strand made me wonder how much it would hurt if I pressed it on my flesh. Would it make me smoke like a ham on glowing cinder? Or would I just burn, like ordinary criminals did at the stakes?
I swallowed and held my breath as we crossed the threshold and entered the St. Giles, expecting to be punished for my sins with the wrath of God shattering my bones and scorching my flesh, but nothing happened. No thunder, no storm, no rage of the righteous raining burning ashes down on me from the skies. Just rows of neatly ordered pews and marble pillars. Just the familiar stagnant air, faintly smelling of mould. Just miserable little ol' me, still very un-alive and shaking on my legs, prone to lose consciousness any minute.
"Were you lost, my son?" The priest asked, gently. Observing my shock and misery in general.
I wanted to tell him to go sod off, that there wasn't a reason to pretend to be good and virtuous anymore because obviously, God was sodden blind. He had let me in! Me, this lowest of creatures, this filthy evil thing that had murdered so many and probably was going to kill more if I wasn't getting dusted on time! I wanted to say that there was no justice in this world, no reward to kindness and bare my fangs to rip out his throat, just to show him that I was right. Stab the mercy out of his bloody eyes. Tear his kind heart from his potbellied body and toss it on the ground right before his feet. THAT, was what his sodden righteousness was worth to me.
But instead, I broke down in tears and nodded warily, my body shaking. He took me in his arms and let me cry on his shoulders, and I wept till dark stains the size of cauliflowers ruined his robe, carefull not to touch the crucifix resting on his chest.
"God knows forgiveness like no other." He said. "All you have to do is open your heart to accept it, my child."
I had no soddin clue what came over me then, but all I could do was cry that it was bloody well too late for me now to regret anything. That it was done.
I was sure to rot in hell.
SCENE 14
She didn't know what to think of this, but it wasn't catatonia, yet. His eyes were still opened, but that didn't mean anything. He had that far away gaze on him that didn't predict much good. When she talked to him, asked him a question, he would just smile to her and repeat the words she had used to comfort him this morning.
"Shshsh." He would whisper. "I'm all right. Everything's going to be all right. London is far away. Long ago. I'm not really there, am I?"
"No Will. You're here in the clinic. You're taken good care of."
"Shshsh" Putting a finger on his lips. "No need to disturb anyone. Sleeping dogs and such. It's all right, Buffy. Let me deal with them. It will be over soon."
"Okay Will." She said, her voice breaking. "I'll wait for you to come back."
"Please come back."
SCENE 15
The angry mob passing down Russel Street had a devastating energy. It was like a roaring beast of destruction, smashing windows, breaking doors, looting shops. Thousands of angry voices shouted as one, the unison of their words bringing goose-bumps to my skin. With white knuckled fists and the same anger rising in my voice, I walked with the crazy horde. Men and women slapping me on my back comradely, slinging arms over shoulders. I was sure that most of them were as drunk as a vicar on Sunday. It didn't matter to me what message they tried to deliver, what cause it was that they fought. I walked in any riot, whether it consisted of angry factory workers calling for a six pence raise, or the desperate poor demonstrating against the price of bread.
"Two pence more for daily bread, means thousands more, starved to death!"
They had very cunning cat-phrases, you have to give them that, the bloody simpletons.
I was a stranger now to most of the human emotions, as I should be. Kindness was something that couldn't be found anywhere in my dictionary, as was the word gratitude. After my wounds were healed, I left St. Giles without so much as leaving a note to thank the priest, who had so painstakingly nursed me back to good health (I had a good suspicion that he knew what I was, as he kept the curtains of my bedroom closed without me having to ask and brought me broths so thick with pig's blood that it would make any normal bloke have the pukers.) but I was stacked with a sack full of church silver, that I had pawned immediately for booze and blood. Just a lesson for him to be learned, so he would never think of taking someone with the likes of me in again. I mean, yeah, I took the Old Man's silver, but do you think the next vamp-in-need would be satisfied with taking only that then?
The point was that I walked with the crowds because their anger was something that I could identify with. The itching force buzzing close underneath the skin. The desire to wreck havoc, to smash and mutilate. The general feeling that WE were wronged and someone else had to pay. It made feel alive again. It made me feel that I was part of something, however bloody stupid.
Besides, I had nothing better to do but to get myself pissed and sheltered before sunrise anyway.
The coppers were not idiots. They knew better than to mess with a crowd of thousands, but the real trouble started when the whole soddin war-fleet had to squeeze its way through the narrow passage of Princes Street, and our group got isolated. Now, forty men and women with starved postures and weakened strength and one pretty pissed vampire, that was a company the coppers could take.
I fought like a maniac, cracking one officer's skull with a heavy brick and whacking several others on their limps with a lead pipe that I had brought with me to the demonstration in case there was a mighty good brawl coming up. Not caring who I was hitting really, and I whacked a fellow rioter full in the face by accident, breaking his nose.
"What are you doing you crazy bastard? You're supposed to hit them, not us!"
"Oh, is that right?"
I smashed the pipe on his kneecaps, and he went down, screaming and cursing.
I still had time to have a good laugh about it, before what seemed the whole remaining team of bloody rioters came flying around my neck. Useless to say that even with the advantage of my vampire strength, I was no match for them all and was destined to be smashed into vamp-powder, but the coppers were fast, and clubbed down most of them, or made them too busy with running away to keep themselves occupied with me. Just as I started to lose the feeling in my limps, the rain of angry fists and feet ceased and I got pulled up by two officers. My brains hopped like soddin Moris dancers in my skull as I raised my head to look at them.
"Can you walk?" One of the coppers asked.
"Yeah, I think sslo. If I musst." I slurred, my lips cut and swollen like burst cherries.
"Good." And his club exploded on the back of my head, sending a bright pain into my skull that shattered like crows from a field. I fell with my face down in the mud, barely aware that they were tying my hands together with a rough rope.
"Drag him up the cart!" Barked the officer. As I brushed by, I eyed him briefly, and saw him nursing the wound on his forehead with a reddened handkerchief. No wonder he was so crossed.
The cart was a filthy wooden cage on wheels packed with arrested rioters. Most of them were terrified, wore their fear like a thick cloud of stench, forgetting all about their pigheaded anger and bitter resentment that had made me give them at least a thimble full of respect before, but now they earned nothing but my deepest loathing. The coppers tossed me right into the pile of human misery, and I landed between a frail woman with white- rimmed eyes and wild windswept hair and a heavy, sweaty pillock, wetting himself like the oversized baby of a French trollop.
"We're dead!" He whined, sending much dreaded pain waves into my skull. The bloody lump at the back of my head throbbed like a second heart, an alive one that was. "They're gonna lock us up in the Tower! We sure to get the noose for this!"
"That, or all of you wankerlsss die of gaol fever in there." I muttered, blinking blood out my eyes. The giant toddler just glared at me, and didn't dare as much as move a finger. Just as I thought, not enough balls to be a man. How pathetic.
I crawled to the back, pressed my face against the cool bars, and watched how outside the sky of London glowed like cinder, rampant fires filling the air with the smell of burning ashes. I didn't care much if the Tower was the place that I was going too. From the stories I had heard about it, the place was dark, and dank, and bloody awful. Pretty much like my average hideout, really. I had run out of my last penny for days now, had to catch strays and rats to keep myself fed. Did try to rob humans once by frightening the living daylight out of them, but I ended up getting chased by an angry crowd with burning crosses and garlands of garlic. People did get awfully smart these days.
The worst thing was, that even after two long months, I still couldn't take a drop of human blood in me without gagging like a sissy sipping on his first drag of Whiskey.
Face it Will, you're screwed. I thought bitterly. You can't go back, and you can't on like this either. What use will it do to struggle on? To tempt fate? Better surrender here and now and wave with the white hankie before God or Lucifer or whoever was up and down there decide to drop the big heavy curtains on you. And if they want to hang me for ruining one of the coppers' stunning features - well, I will be let off easy considered all the harm I've done, now won't I?
A couple of strange British words here that need a bit an explanation;
Cullies: guys who seek out the ladies and pay them after fornication. In Dutch we call them "hoerenlopers". Can't find a proper English translation for this word in my dictionary though. Funny innit?
Bully-man: That I -could - find in my dictionary, it simply means pimp.
ACT 8 part 5B: Solace (part 2)
SCENE 16
"You should keep him here. It would be better considered the instable state he's in."
Giles watched thoughtfully how his pupil helped their patient off the spot where he had been sitting for the last five hours; wide eyed, not moving, hardly blinking, with only his soft, incoherent mumblings assuring them that he wasn't completely gone already. With Mike's help, she moved William into a wheelchair.
"I want to bring him back to his own room." Buffy said, her eyes restless. "He might snap out of it if he can see something familiar to attract his attention. This room is too bare. There's not even a window in here."
"I don't think the accommodation has anything to do with his relapse." Giles opted, trying to sound gentle. "Neither will it help to move him around the entire institute. He's not a withered plant who needs a good spot in the sun to get better!" He lifted his glasses and swallowed uneasily, when he saw how she furrowed her brows in dismay. "Perhaps the last comparison was rather inconsiderate of me, but surely you do see my point in -"
"I'm getting him out of this room, Giles." She turned the wheelchair around, letting William face the door. "With or without your permission."
"Buffy." Giles' hands reached out and grabbed hold of the arms, leaning on the chair with his whole tall weight. "You shouldn't do this. It's not wise. William has attacked someone only yesterday. He had threatened to kill his own brother! It would be better to keep him in isolation."
"It wasn't his fault! Something happened to him. Something awful to make him act -" She wanted to tell him, but then calmed down and managed to swallow her words. This wasn't the right time. She still needed to speak to Liam first. Perhaps, after the dreaded confrontation with the older sibling was over, she could inform Giles, bring it to him tactfully. She sighed and gazed up to her mentor. "He shouldn't be punished. He should get help. You of all people have to understand. You were the one who taught me this."
There was a slight furrow in the doctor's brows when she so shamelessly pleaded on his decency and good heart. It was true, he knew. All she did, the way she acted, was the result of his teachings, that a patient should always be treated with compassion and kindness, however disturbed their actions were, since only their illness could be held truly responsible for their wrongs. Buffy had been a good student. "All right." He sighed, and pinched his nose-bridge for felt a mild headache coming up. "But keep his room locked until we're sure he's no danger to the other patients. I don't want that Walsh woman's predictions to turn out right, for God's sake."
SCENE 17
Bloody hell, how did I get myself into this bleedin mess? And when did I start caring again? Wasn't I all over that whole keeping myself alive obsession months ago?
The Tower lived up to his infamous reputations. To only describe it as dank and dark and bloody awful was just a horrible understatement. The gaols were large and depleted of any windows, which meant no daylight, only the dim glow provided by oil-lamps. I didn't really mind that of course, but there was also no fresh air, which did bother me since the cell I was in smelled like the stables, with the stench of sweat and human waste so thick that you cut it with a knife. The place was cramped with frightened prisoners, huddled together like bruised fruit. The floors were bare, there wasn't even straw there to provide at least a bit of comfort or warmth. Some of us were chained up. Hands cuffed and tied by manacles, a collar of rusty metal leaving a red inflamed mark running across the neck. Only the real troublemakers were dealt with in such a manner, and I myself earned this special treat after I tried to shove my dinner-plate right into one of the gaolers' skull. He didn't die of his injuries, rather unfortunately, and I ended up getting beaten into a bag of purple bruises and splintered bones by him and his happy mates. They left me afterwards, dangling in half upright position with my rags dripping blood.
The problem with getting chained up and being chastised was that they expected you to die of neglect afterwards. They didn't feed you. Didn't bring you a drop of water to drink, and most of the wretched prisoners who were in the same peril as I was had to lick the brown drops of damp off the mouldy walls to get some quench their thirst with. Off course they did die eventually, all of them did, of starvation or illness or by hanging themselves on their chains in desperate misery. All of them died, except for me. As a presumably immortal vampire, I only became weak (or weaker) till I could hardly lift an eyebrow without passing out. The thirst for blood had finally become something overwhelming, a huge hunger that clutched into my intestines like a vindictive claw-thing. Gone was my detest for human-blood, all that I could think of was a good gulp of that crimson goodness, running smoothly down my throat to put the rampant grumble in my stomach at ease. I tell you, I was bloody well cured! If only it could have happened to me earlier, before I got myself into this mess and became too pathetic to do something about my renewed blood-thirst.
After a while, as with most of the starving humans, the hunger became less and less with the passing of weeks. I no longer tried to get a sip out of the free roaming prisons who were constantly prancing in front of me like a tasty, maddening herd of docile life-stock, always a feet or an inch too far away and with my cursed body too slow to pull them nearer if they did make the mistake to come within my reach. I was constant drooling loon. By the time I was in there for a month, the hunger died a silent death and I just sat there on the dirt covered floor, my numb arms dangling somewhere above my shoulders, not even able to prevent the needy tossers from snatching the last threads of clothing right off my pitiable form. I lost my shirt to a crazy old hag with a one-toothed grin who tore it to pieces and wrapped it around her feet. My shoes were the next things to go and one day (or night, there was no certain way to tell in here) I woke up from a feverish slumber only to find greedy hands pulling on my soddin trousers. After that was gone too, most of the prisoners lost interest in me and just left me alone, even if I did occasionally burst into a mad kind of laughter or drowned myself in hysterical tears. You learned to ignore naked crazy folk in here. Surrounded by them, you see. Couldn't afford to be too distracted all the time.
It had never occurred to me before that death could be such an agonizing, horribly slow process.
It must have been somewhere in March or early April, for the cold had finally become bearable and I started to forget that my body was bare and freezing. I had seen her before. Things happened in the dark after the lights went out. She moved through the field of sleeping bodies, showing a type of grace and speed in her movements that I recognized. Bending over the ones who were dying already of illness, or were outcasts, not much cared for if they were gone the next morning. Or she kept herself to the ones who were chained. One night, when it was still very cold and the stones of the walls stuck like clumps of ice into my back, she had walked over to me, her dirty brown dress shifting and touching my bony knees as she knelt down and studied me, as I was some-kind of waxed body in a museum. She had a fair face with large, coal-black eyes, long brown locks kept in an untidy hair-knot. Both her mouth and tongue were tainted deep harlot red, with a thin line of crimson spilling down her chin. I didn't move or talk to her, and she went away after a while as I had hoped she would. Didn't came anywhere near me again till that moment in early in spring.
It had rained so hard that the water seeped into the creaks of the ceiling and ran down in murky streams along the walls. I hadn't felt water on my skin for months and the mud and dirt had crusted on to me like a heavy shield. I caught myself laughing hoarsely like a lunatic and sticking out my tongue to catch the drops. It wouldn't do me any good. I was not dying of this kind of thirst here, but for a moment it was so thrilled that there was a shower inside this wretched place! If only I could see the stars and a slice of moon as well.
If only. Yeah, when pigs soar through the sky really.
"I though that you were just too weak to move, but you have really lost your wits, haven't you luv?"
I blinked drops of water out of my eyes, letting them glide off my cheeks like tears. There she stood in front of me, her brown dress slightly filthier than I remembered. Perhaps there were a couple more of brown stains there. Her pale hands held a mouldy blanket above her head to shield herself from the dripping roof.
"That isn't blood, luv. It's only water. Very filthy water. Even the mutts in the ditch won't give it a try."
I tried to back away from her, hide from her by turning myself to face the walls. Why was she talking to me? Didn't she know she was supposed to ignore me, pretend that I wasn't even there?
"Hey, don't shy away like that, dear heart. Just trying to help."
I wished she would stop giving me cuddly nicknames.
"Don't help." I uttered, my voice hoarse of disuse. It was strange to hear myself speak again. I mean, really speak. In a proper language instead of that gibbering pixies -tongue that I had mumbled for months. "Don't need any."
"I see." She nodded in what I hoped to be an understanding way. Surely she would go away now? But instead, she eyed me up and down. "So this is what? Some act of penance?"
I gave her a puzzled look. "Penance?" I repeated daftly.
"Like the batty martyrs and Saints. Though unlike you, getting pardon for their short list of dull sins must be a doddle. So, are you lost then? Did you see God? Or only one of those vague hovering angel figures?"
"D-doddle?"
"Let me guess. You saw some shapeless heap of light and feathers and turned into this sad wreck of shivering demon in an instance. Am I right or just a bit hasty here with drawing conclusions?"
"Feathers?"
She sighed, rolling up her eyes to observe the dirty blanket. "Look dearie, I'm not trying to have a nice monologue with myself here. Perhaps you did forget how a normal conversation goes. Let me remind you; you were supposed to talk and not just repeat after me like some sort of very selective echo."
"I - I do know how to talk."
"Splendid! So I didn't stumble upon a caveman version of a blood-feeder after all."
"Noting like that."
"What's not so, pet?"
"Wasn't paying penance. I just - I got sick."
"Sick of what? Immortality? Dignity perhaps? Or was it your liberty you got tired of?"
"I - I got sick, of -of feeding." I stuttered, licking my crusted lips. They tasted like dust. "And don't mock me."
I expected her to turn away from me and laugh at my frailty, but she did none of that.
"Explain. I'm confused here. You did say you were not trying to redeem yourself."
"No I'm not. I just couldn't stand the smell of human blood for a while- I mean, I couldn't kill - It hurt when I did. "
"Uhuh" She nodded. "Sounds like guilt to me. That's how it starts, right before the real idiots grab their little whips and burning crosses and begin maiming themselves in name of their Almighty God. "
"I didn't do this to myself! I was thrown in here! Got nothing to do with God or feathers or anything-else." I furrowed my brows, serious as I was.
"Well there must be something wrong with you. You're a vampire! Feeding off humans is your sole purpose of existence! There must a be good reason for you to make it so hard on yourself." She took a deep unnecessary breath to calm down a bit. Old habits of the living died with difficulty. "So tell me, what happened then?"
I swallowed. The drops of water rolling into my mouth tasted like rusty iron. "A clean slate. I wanted to have clean slate."
"Picture me confused again, dearie." She said, a bit agitated. Why was she wasting her time with me? There was no use in any of this.
"I needed to forget who I was." I tried to explain. "Angelus told me so. It was something every fledgling had to do. So I - I became - a murderer."
She didn't say a thing for a while. Just stared at me and raised a curious brow. Then, as if the ice was suddenly broken and a crack of insanity had hit her, she burst into a loud scornful laughter that sent me huddling against the wall in fright.
"You -" She managed to say, her words choking in hilarity. "You ended up like this? All because you were feeling guilty for killing your human family?! For the sake of all the bonfires in hell! You really are a special case, William. Batty as a loon, but so very amusing! A real challenge one might say."
"Go away." I whispered, frightened and angered by her sudden change from the deepest of sympathy into full mockery.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" She said, wiping tears away from her eyes, a huge grin on her harlot lips. "I'm so very sorry. Inconsiderate of me of course. But still, it's so funny! Think about it! A vampire without a soul but with the burden of a conscience? What will the Old Goat come up with next? A charitable stasher? A virtuous whore? A vampire with a soul? Now that would be interesting."
"Please. Go away."
"I won't. I told you I was here to help, sweetcheeks. And that's what I'm gonna do."
I wanted to tell her that laughing at me wasn't exactly helpful, but before I could utter a word, she grabbed a prisoner who was sleeping nearby by the throat and broke his neck with a clean snap. As the body sank limp as a puppet on the wide skirt of her dress, she gazed up at me from underneath lazy lashes and showed a wicked grin. She laid out the dead man before my filthy feet, draping his hands over his chest as if he was resting in his coffin instead of on the bare floor of a prison. Her hands made an inviting gesture as to say that dinner was served, but I just stayed still and glared at the body, my stomach filled with cold pebbles and my mind blank.
"You must eat, dear boy. You're skin on bones."
I shook my head at her. "I'm not hungry anymore."
She grabbed the dead prisoner and bended him so that his neck became exposed. Then she pushed his throat between my lips, and I could feel the warmth of his flesh burning hot against my teeth and the smell of his blood came to me like an intoxication.
"You're still hungry. Trust me on that, luv. Take a sip and see. A lion doesn't need the devil to teach him what to eat."
SCENE 18
"What's wrong with him?" Glen asked. He was standing in the doorway of Will's bedroom, his floppy features perhaps bearing more wrinkles than usual. "Is he all right?"
"He's fine. He will be. He suffered a breakdown yesterday." Buffy muttered, tucking William in with a warm blanket. She was worried. His hands were terribly cold and she wasn't sure if he was running a fever or not.
"Oh, that's terrible. Poor Will! Um, did he eat any of that?" Glen pointed to a bowl still filled to rim with oatmeal porridge standing on the small table at the side of the bed. There was a towel stained with brown mush lying next to it.
"He didn't finish everything. But he did eat a bit." She lied, remembering how he had pressed his lips together when she tried to put a spoon of porridge into his mouth. And anything she did succeed to force down into him, had been retched out immediately.
- Blood - he had whispered, drifting on thhe edge of lucidity. - I need it. Please. I need to feed again. -
"We have to give him some rest now." She said, turning to her other patient. "Don't worry. Will is going to get better soon."
"I hope so." Glen muttered. "Poor guy. And he was so looking forward to catch that Passions marathon with us tomorrow night. It was all he talked about the last couple of weeks." He shook his head, than added thoughtfully. "Do you think he might be able to come and sit with us in the recreation room to watch the show? I mean I know he's a little catatonic right now but he could use something to cheer him up right now."
"He's NOT catatonic!" She said far too loudly before she herself realized. She cleared her throat, apolitically. "I mean, he's - he's very confused right now and totally out of this world, but nothing serious, really." Nothing that I can't fix, she thought, or hoped.
"All right then! Will's not catatonic, I got it!" Glen said, laughing nervously. "And I suppose watching Passions with his pales is out of the question here too. I can imagine that. It was rather silly of me to ask." He gave the good doctor an apologizing grin.
Buffy looked at him for a moment, hesitating.
"You know what, I think he should! He should get out of his room and get a chance hang out with you guys." She said, questioning her sanity for making this decision, but her own inner ramblings succeeded in persuading her. Any action coming from her, however thoughtless, seemed better than just to watch him sink further and further into obliteration while she stood nearby so very helplessly. "Just, let me see how he is doing tomorrow, and if he's recovering well, we can always wheel him outside and pop him in the front row."
"It would be good for him." She stated, more so to comfort herself than it was to assure Will's worried friend.
SCENE 19
She told me her name was Lucy. I though that was incredibly funny till she whacked me in the face and broke my nose, but she assured me that everyone she didn't kill after telling them her real name called her Luce. She had hot hands for a vampire, and every time she touched me it felt as if I was licked by flames. Luce fed me fresh bodies, and I sank my fangs into her generous handouts with a sort of resentful gratitude. I wasn't sure I wanted to be saved by her after all.
One night she came and threw a prisoner at me. Although her body was limp, the girl was still breathing, and conscious, and her mouth opened and closed as if she was a fish thrown at shore, but she couldn't utter a sound.
"Mute." Luce nodded to the frail thing that I clutched onto with my dirty fingers, leaving red prints in her bony arms. "She won't scream. Take your time, William."
After that girl, all of the humans she brought to me were still alive. Their spines were perhaps broken, their tongues torn out, but they breathed and moaned out of fear when I killed each of them, and their death filled my cold unfeeling body with warmth and a sense of completeness.
I could have lived like that till the day of reckoning came and all the cherubs in heaven started burning and ice-skates were handed out in hell, but Luce wasn't the type of demon to let me do this kind of thing. Although she was a great admirer of the seven sins (Rules! She mocked frequently. Always those silly, utterly futile rules! You do realise that God is a pathological control freak, don't you?) she did make an exception for sloth, which was even in her restricted set of morals, considered a true crime.
"Ain't it about time for us leave?" She mused out-loud on one non- particular day. "The summer is gonna turn out hot this year and I'm not keen on the smells and sights of sweltering human flesh. I've a rather delicate nose, you see."
I was just feeding of a hairy old woman whose white manes were making bloody fur-balls in my throat. I stopped and coughed, eyeing at Luce with a bit of a mad grin on my blood-smeared lips.
"How do you mean us? I can't just leave."
"Course not. " She said in that witty sarcastic tune of hers that I had learned to hate and love. "All this filth and total lack of comfort, the piles of shit in the corners, the constant buzzing of flies and mosquitoes, who would leave all that for just a bit of fresh air or a glimpse of the night's sky?"
"You could leave, I reckon." I felt something heavy sink in my stomach as I told her that. I didn't really want to be left alone in here. "If you play it smart and catch the guards when they're bringing in someone new. You're strong enough to take a couple of them out at the same time. But I can't go with you. I'm all chained up."
She burst into that horrible laughter and set her hands on her broad hips. I hated it when she mocked me like this.
"Stop laughing!"
"Really, dear boy! Sometimes you can be so utterly pathetic!"
"I'm NOT pathetic!"
"Right! Then you're just incredibly thick then! Don't you see, you dupe? Those frail iron contraptions can't hold in you here! Not ever since you accepted my little gift at that first night, really."
"What are you jabbering about? I was too weak."
"And weak you still are, it appears. But it's not your body that's feeble. Nor it is the lack of physical strength that keeps you chained."
"Nonsense!" I muttered. "All soddin nonsense."
She bended down to me, her charcoal eyes shimmering in the darkness.
"Come dearie, be brave for a chance! Get up and walk with me. I'm tired of this hellhole. The stench of human misery starts to soak into my pores."
She offered me a hand. There was a moment of hesitation, I took it. As she pulled me up, I noticed that she was strong like a wicked bull and I felt the harsh tug of my chains on my wrists and neck. For a moment I pictured my hands and my head being torn from my body, with clean fractures where the rusty iron had cleft into the dead flesh. The collar I wore tightened around my throat like a noose. I had to bloody well do something if I didn't want to end up in pieces.
I tugged on the chains on my wrists, and they snapped without offering much resistance. With my freed hand I broke the manacles, which had me tied to the walls like a beaten dog for so long, and it tumbled down before my feet with a loud rattling.
And suddenly, I was free again.
Luce smiled at me. "Told you so, luv. Don't look so dumb surprised."
After that, we made a real mess in our hated quarters. I bet the walls of even such a wretched place like the Tower had never seen so much bloodshed. But as soon as the last bits of iron were torn from my body, leaving purple scars on my pale flesh, and from the moment Luce told me that we should leave the place in some style that suited our demon nature, I lost control over myself. Everything became a blur, a muddled succession of screams and horrified faces, of empty eyes and drained bodies and seas of blood. In the end, the only thing that really stuck with me from the whole soddin massacre, was that I found back my shoes on the feet of a smelly inmate, whose guts were hanging out of his fat belly. I took them off the corpse and put them back on. I found proper trousers on another dead bloke, and took his shirt as well. The fabric had turned yellowish brown of filth and dirt, but there were only tiny specks of blood on it, so it would do.
When the gaoler came in to bring the prisoners supper, he found a mount of corpses, most of them heavily mutilated, that was already covered by flocks of black flies.
"Dear Lord in heaven!" He sounded like a real wimp who had just wetted himself, and the bucket of slob that was meant to feed the prisoners fell on the floor and spilled over all the nice puddles of sticky blood. "Dear Lord in heaven!" He shouted again, followed by frantic footsteps as the man ran away from the horrific scene, possibly in such a hurry that the bloody git had completely forgotten to lock the soddin door behind him. At least I hadn't heard the rattling of keys.
"Should we make a run for it?" I asked, keeping my voice down. I was lying still on top of two not too disgusting corpses. Wasn't very eager to sully my new gear. Luce lay a few feet away from me, her body resting between the cadaver of a headless inmate and a knot of broken limps that didn't seem to belong to anybody specifically. She moved her lips as she talked, but except for that she looked like a corpse herself, which was of course, the whole bloody point.
"Stay down. It's easier this way." She whispered, and closed her eyes so that she didn't have to stare up all the time and get her eyeballs dried out.
The gaoler came back with five more men. All of them couldn't keep their gobs shut about their soddin God in heaven. One of them said it was the work of the devil. I smiled secretly because I knew Luce would be pleased.
They didn't go through the entire mess to make sure that everybody was really dead. Only poked a couple of bodies near the door with broomsticks. Since none of them moved, they draw the conclusion that there wasn't much left to do but to get rid of the whole stinking mount of decaying meat and give the place a good scrubbing afterwards before herding in the next load of prisoners. The men started carrying out the bodies. It took them agonizingly long before they got to Luce and me. I had soddin flies crawling all over my face, making me itch. They took Luce first, holding her under her arms and by her feet and carrying her out the miserable place. The moment I saw her disappear out of my sight, I had to repress the compelling urge to get up and run right after her. Finally, They dragged me up and tossed me on a handcart. The geniuses had figured it would work faster that way, and they piled another three or four corpses right on top of me. I didn't give so much as a sound, though the weight was crushing.
They wheeled the whole heap outside. From beneath the clutch of cold body- parts, I caught sight of the large courtyard, where countless crows hopped over the cobbles and cawed in resentment towards the superstitious morons who had cut their wings.* We stopped in front of a shabby looking cart pulled by two large black horses, pale limps and half naked corpses stacked up on it like badly sorted stocks of fish. Two men grabbed me by my arms and feet and swung me on the cart. I let go of a small moan when I stung my ribs in someone's protruding elbow, but they were too busy to take notice.
It took another bloody eternity before the cart was considered full enough and we finally started to move.
* It is believed that whenever the crows of the Tower of London depart from the place, the English monarchy would fall. That's why the keepers trim the wings of the birds to keep them on the ground.
ACT 8 Part 6: Solace (part 3)
SCENE 20
"Didn't Dr Giles tell us to lock him up?" Mike asked, furrowing a worried brow.
Buffy had just shut the door to Will's bedroom most carefully, making sure not to make a sound to startle him, but she didn't grab the bunch of keys dangling from her belt to lock the room.
"Yes, he did say that." She pulled a nervous face. "But he isn't here, right? And I really don't think Will is going anywhere like that."
"So why don't you just do what Dr Giles says? We didn't even restrain him to his bed. He could just walk right out of here if he decided to get semi lucid all of a sudden."
"If he does get out bed on his own, I will be so happy with it that I will let him." Buffy sighed, giving the orderly an anxious gaze. "Look, it's stupid and irrational. I know. But none of the other patients on this ward are used to getting locked up and Will knows all of them from his therapy group. I don't want to make an exception here that singles him out in front of the others. Glen came to see him just a minute ago and was really worried. I don't want them to think that Will has snapped out and has to be locked away because he's dangerous or anything."
"You're right Dr Summers. It's rather irrational." He paused, and Buffy had half expected him to add that he also quite agreed on this being a stupid way of thinking part. But Mike was wiser than that. "But on the other hand, so are Dr Giles orders. Keeping Will isolated from other people is only going to make it easier for him to slip away. It won't do him any good."
"So, you're going to leave the door open and keep an eye on him for me?" She asked, a bit wary.
"I'll do what I can, Dr Summers. But as soon as Dr Giles hears about this, I'm afraid I have to follow his orders." He turned his eyes to his paper slippers. "Perhaps we should tell him about what really happened to Will. I know I promised you that I should keep it a secret till you spoke with that his brother, but he's your senior after all."
"True." She said softly. "He's my senior, but he isn't always right. Giles can't find out about this yet. He will flip and call the police. I know he will. Please, you can't tell him." She looked him straight into the eyes till Mike gave a slight nod in agreement.
"What if he finds out by himself?" Mike asked.
"He won't. I will make sure Will's problems are all gone by the time Giles starts worrying about him again."
SCENE 21
Luce had transformed from a plain brown winged moth into a radiant dragonfly. The first thing she did after we jumped off the death cart was getting herself a change of finer clothing. She picked out a lady who was out taking a stroll with her male companion on the Strand along the river Thames, and was careful to judge her size correctly. I had half expected her to make a real mess and ruin the gown, but as she stride out of the dark alley where she had disappeared with the two of them, she was dressed in the stunning slammerkin the alive woman had worn just minutes ago; white satin with silver embroidery, so snowy was the cloth that her skin appeared blushing. There wasn't a single drop spilled on it.
"I just adore the pattern." She purred, rushing over to a small fountain at the square, she sat down by the edge and washed the dirt off her face. "Snakes and apples. Very Eden. Very seductive." She ranked through her hair with wet fingers, getting the worst knits out of the way. "Don't you need a better set of clothing, luv? I think her spouse has the same size as you. That tweed jacket he's wearing would quite suit you I think. It brings out the blue in your eyes."
I shook my head, wiping my dirt-covered hands over my muddy trousers. "No thanks. I think I just keep this. It suits me better."
Luce gazed at me, her raven eyes gliding over my outfit. "Right my dear, rags worthy to a beast of the field. If that's what you are."
"I don't need anything better. I'm a demon. I know what my purpose is."
I froze when a laugher as brittle and cold as ice shattered from her throat. "My dear boy! My dear - dear boy! Even now, you're in doubt, aren't you?"
She rose slowly, her pose that of a rigid statue.
"You are still in pain."
She dabbed her face and neck with her sleeves, leaving dark patches on the satin. Luce was lovely. Her black hair curled in wet strings around an angelic face that was cream with rose-peddle blushes. She licked her lips, plump and red and wicked.
"Why are you still trying to punish yourself?" Her words spilled hot into my ears, her mouth brushing my cheek. "Let it go William. Let it all go. Didn't you learn anything from me yet?"
SCENE 22
Buffy woke up that Saturday morning with a tiredness and vigilance pressing on her shoulders. She went through Will's files again and again over breakfast, hardly aware of her teenage sister's worried stare as she hid herself behind the papers and spilled her coffee over the rim of her cup. Her mind was constantly occupied. While driving back to the institute, she almost ran over a couple of schoolchildren as they were crossing the streets in a reckless pursuit of each other. After she arrived and rushed her way down to her office, she thought of the things she was going to say to him, carefully choosing her words.
- Liam, I must speak to you. There's sometthing I know that you must know that I know but nobody else knows so far -
She shook her head, stupid clumsy line.
- Liam, I know what you've done to Will. II want you to stop. You are -
You're the one who is supposed to be locked up in here! Not Will. Will didn't deserve any of this! Hadn't he suffered enough already? What on earth made you do this to him?
Buffy shook her head to her inner voice of reason, aware of her rising disgust for the man. Bile souring her throat, turning her heart into stone. With effort, she sucked in a deep breath of air.
Anger wasn't what she needed right now.
-You are ill. Liam, you are ill and you neeed help. -
Please stop it.
Stop destroying him.
I love him.
She practiced till the lines sounded flat to her and no longer caused her emotions to stir. When she left her station around eleven, she still had four hours to prepare herself for her afternoon meeting with Liam Byron.
SCENE 23
The pub was full of costumers filling the place up with the smell of beer and sweat. Dices rattled, the loud clatter of conversations and dirty Cockney songs. Back in a corner, sitting at a battered wooden table, Luce was waiting for me to tell her everything. Her hot hands were holding mine. She folded my fingers, baring the palm of my right hand. It appeared clean, but if you looked close enough you could see the rusty lines of crimson that ran along the grooves.
"How many luv?" Her voice was husk, thick with anticipation.
"Five." I answered. I watched over my shoulders, making sure nobody else saw the blood on my hands. Blood that I was so eager to let her see as a good diligent schoolboy showing his teacher his first scribbling on the slate. - Look miss! Look what I did! Didn't I make a terrific mess? -
"Did they suffer?"
I leaned back into my chair. My other hand draped over the back and with one boot resting on the table, I grinned cockishly. "Did they suffer? Bloody well tortured the wits out of them!"
Her lavish lips curled, and there was this joy stirring, an itchy glee that struck me every time I did something that pleased her enough to reward me with that smile. I decided to tell her more.
"First, I dragged them to the stables. They didn't put much of a fight, considered what I had done to them already. Then, I used the ropes that I had found in the storage to tie them up. I made a noose for each of them, secured it around their necks."
There came a tinge of light inside her black eyes, and she leaned closer to hear my words.
"I tossed the ropes over a large beam running across the ceiling, then made them stand on top of a pile of crates, all in a neat row." I shut my eyes for a sec, and saw their faces. A butler, a young manservant, a maid, the mistress of the house and her two children; a tall girl and a sickly looking boy who cried piteously when I struck his mother across the face.
"How did it end?"
I opened my eyes again, looking into hers. There was a swirling in my stomach, a lightness in my head.
"They had four horses, as was to be expected from an honourable family like the Roberts. One stallion and three mares. I secured the two men, the girl and the maid to each of the animals. Then I opened the door of the stables and gave the horses a slap at their rumps. They swung like dead crows from a bare tree."
Her lips curled again, and split to show teeth, rewarding me with a small impious smile.
"What did you do with the mother and her son?"
I took a swig of ale and licked my lips.
"I strung up the boy myself, and made her watch. I had wanted to save her for my last kill, but she was already dead by the time the brat's fat little face turned un unnamed shade of blue."
"What happened?" She asked, not with disapproval for my little cock-up, but with an amused ring in her voice.
"She jumped off the barrels and broke her neck." I shrugged, taking another swig of ale. "Took her own life, so she wouldn't have to watch her own flesh and blood getting strangled."
"A true mother." She mocked, hate burning fierce in her eyes.
"Yeah, although she should have known that she was going straight to hell for this. It's still suicide. But I guess she wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the box."
"William." She was still holding my right hand, her fingers tracing the blood streaks. She cut with her nails along the bended lines, deepening each of them, creating new ones as her cuts diverged from the main trails.
"Only five?"
I cocked an eyebrow at her, trying to mimic bloody innocent confusion.
"You said you killed five. But I count six. The servants, the two children and the mistress. There were six of them."
I lowered my eyes and watched how she drew blood on my hand. I wondered if she was trying something with her seemingly harmless cut-games. I was no more a superstitious bloke as the next vampire, but wasn't it said that your fate was written in the lines of your hand? If I showed one of those fortune-telling swindlers down at Regent Circus mine, would they still recognize my existence in it? Or would they only see the knot of lines that Luce's jolly handy-work had left behind?
"What did you do to the boy?"
I showed her what I did. I didn't have the guts to tell her straight into her face. We left the pub, and I led her back to the Roberts family's dwelling, a stately mansion with huge windows and marble pillars. At the back were the stables. The broad wooden doors were still ajar and creaked in their rusty hinges.
Two of the four horses were still there, and kept the maid and butler swinging from the ceiling. Their bodies were already stiff and blue, drawing thin shadows on the beaten earth floor. The stallion and the black mare were gone, and so were the bodies that had been attached to their riggings. Behind the barrels, hidden first from our sight, came the sniffling of the boy. The noose still hung around his little neck like a rough necklace, a purple bruise showed where the rope had touched his skin. His mother's body dangled in front of him. Eyes closed. Her blue-lipped mouth opened as if caught in uttering his son's name.
Luce didn't say a word, just turned her heels and walked away.
"Luce! Luce, I'm sorry!"
She pushed open the doors and strode out into the courtyard, her back held rigid and her hands clenching on to her baggy skirt, lifting them to quicken her steps.
"Oi! I said I was sorry!"
I caught her arm and tried to hold on to her, but she twirled around and grabbed my wrist and twisted, her fingers tightening around it till it hurt like hell, and I thought that she would just snap it like a dried twig.
"You let him live." She hissed, her voice dripping poison.
Well, at least she was still willing to talk to me.
"I didn't want to disappoint you." I said, truthfully.
"You didn't disappoint me." Her eyes turned cold. "It had never been about me. Why are you so foolish, William? After all this time, after everything I've shown you, you're still conducting iniquity for the wrong reasons! What in the name of every wretched soul that's burning in the cosy fires of hell is wrong with you?"
I sucked in an unneeded breath and tightened my jaws, the painful pressure on my wrist reminding me that bones were fragile things, easily broken. Still, I didn't ask her to let me go. I was taught better than that.
"Did you think I needed you to kill him, for me that is?" She smiled oddly at me, a twisting of lips that spelled superiority. "The boy cannot escape me. His life is mine to take. Perhaps not today, but after what you've done, it won't be long before he's swinging from the gallows. I'll make of sure of that."
It struck me that she meant what she said. The young lad would be collared and dead before he turned sixteen, dragging a string of others with him into ruin as he grew up to become a thief or a murderer, his innocence poisoned by memories of what I had done.
So even when I make a mistake and try to do good, I end up creating more misery than when I would just do the things that I am supposed to, I thought bitterly.
"I wasn't interested in him. Humans with souls like his are sold twenty in a dozen."
Fear crept into my dead bones. There had been this feeling, this nagging suspicion ever since she rescued me from the gaols. But I had never enough courage before to think it through more properly, to draw my conclusions on her.
"What I wanted, was you."
She let go of my wrist. I wrenched away from her, my mind raced and recollected all her oddities, how she felt so incredibly hot to the touch for a vampire, how she knew my name that first night I ever met her. Her resentment to God and how she spoke of Him like a punished child bad- mouthing her parent.
Luce, Lucifer.
Satan.
"You're a special boy, William. A rare gem that I like to purchase for my own private collection to bring the green of envy into the Old Man's eyes."
She looked at me as I gazed at her, confusion written all over my face. But no fear. Never show fear to the likes of her. It would be like signing your own death warrant.
"It's like a challenge, you see. Time's a plenty. So what's to do with eternity otherwise? I don't like to be idle."
"Perhaps you should pick up sewing or housekeeping." The insult rolled out of my mouth before I could put a cork in it, and I bit on my tongue to punish the daft thing.
She didn't set me on fire with a snap of her fingers, or made the ground split open and swallow me all up into the blazing inferno of hell below. Nor did I shrink and did my limps become all slimy and bend as she turned me into a warty toad. She just stood there, only slightly lifting a dark brow at me, her arms crossed over her bodice.
"Witty tongues won't save you. You've already pawned your soul and lost the receipt. Why are you still doing this, luv? There isn't another path for you left other than the one I've decided for you. You're one of mine. Stop staring over the bloody borders, thinking that God's meadows look so much greener. Even if it's so, you won't set foot on it. Ever."
"For the last time, I'm not trying to redeem myself." I spat, the fear was thick, but the gut feeling that she wasn't fair to me was even thicker. "I'm over my guilt. I can kill without feeling anything, like any other demon. I'm NOT your special case who needs more attention or further persuasion to stick to his evil self."
"Bah! Even now you're blind for your own weakness!" She snorted, sticking her nose in the air like she smelled something vile rising from beneath. "Can't you see why you spared that wretched boy? Why you probably felt that pang of pain cut through your dead ugly heart when you saw the mother jump without her feet ever touching the ground?"
"No! I bloody well can't!" I shouted, anger rising in me like boiling acid. "So why don't you tell me what's wrong with me then?"
"You lack control! There's this evil inside of you, a great gift of power, but instead of being grateful you're continuously disgusted by it! All because you let your emotions take over so easily! You hate and fear and envy with the same intensity as did when you were still alive! As if you still had a soul to lose!"
I didn't know what to say and just stared at her.
"You are even able to love someone. True love, the very - it hurts so bad but I'm still prepared to sacrifice my demon hide - variety!" She spat on the earth before my feet. "It's just bloody sickening!"
"I won't do it again." I muttered, my head bowed in shame, asking her for forgiveness. What else could I do? "I won't lose control again. I'll do what I'm supposed to from now on. No more pity to cloud my judgements. I promise."
"You shouldn't do this for me, William! Hell! Do you still not get this? You should take over control for the benefit of your own self! Think of what they have done, what you have allowed them to do to you! You've tried to please Angelus and you end up abandoned in the gutter, discarded like dirt. You tried to take care of Drusilla, and she repaid your devotion and love with treachery and heartache. You attempted to do good -"
She lifted her hand and traced her hand over my cheek, her tantrum subsiding out of her tense body. Her touch was searing, blinding.
"You tried to love her, craving to be finally loved in return. And yet again, you end up alone, broken. As always."
"I - I d-didn't try."
She gazed at me now, almost lovingly.
"Believe me, if anything I tried so hard not to!" I muttered, my throat tightening around my words. "I knew that it was wrong. Perverse even, to the point of getting the bloody pukers! But -Buffy -" her name slipped past my lips and I was stunned that I could remember her. Knew who she was. It wasn't right. She didn't fit here.
"She is your weakness." She whispered.
"I love her." I pleaded, disgrace compelling me not to look her into the eyes. "Please, I don't want to hurt her. I rather dust myself or take a stroll in the sun."
"Who said you had to?"
I kept avoiding her gaze. Dark thoughts rattling inside my head like rats in a too tiny cage.
"I want you to take control over your existence, my luv. Not destroy it by taking away your childish dreams. One has to have dreams, to want to exist, to keep on fighting. Without that, life is just empty and we are as good as dead."
Relief and the tiniest speck of hope, and I finally found enough courage to look into my tutor's face again. She seemed so compassionate, so kind. All the poison of her rage and disgust with me had seeped out and had left her a tending mother, a forgiving father, and I was their long lost son.
"What do I have to do?" My voice was broken ice, cold and brittle. "Tell me. What do I have to do to make it all better?"
"Go back to her. Go back to your family." She wrapped her arms around me, devouring my flesh in scorching heat, like I was already burning in the eternal fires of hell. But to me, this was still better than the cold and loneliness that I had felt for so long. At least by her, I was accepted.
"Take your fate in your own hands, my luv."
Something smooth lay in my right hand, burning to the touch. I opened my hand and looked, a rusty piece of iron, blackened by heat.
Her smile was as seductive as ever.
"Angelus must be already waiting for you."
SCENE 24
The dark Sedan swept over the small secluded parking-lot, hurling a trail of yellow and orange into the air and coming to a halt with a loud shrieking of tires. He killed the engine and parked the car under the barren trees, his feet crushing dead leaves as he stepped out.
He took in a breath of cold air, inhaling deeply. Wet earth with a touch of decay, so very pretty depressing. The grey sky above hung low, heavy with rain. No wonder there were more suicides around this time of year. A man would put the barrel of a fully loaded gun in his mouth for less.
He started to move into the direction of the institution. His palms were sweating. His heart a quivering lump of flesh. When he reached the fenced gates, and looked up at the monstrous building with its red-brick façade and its barred black holes for windows, his breath became trapped in his lungs.
"Liam, I want to talk to you about William."
He had asked her what it was that troubled her. Meanwhile his suspicion was rising, nibbling at him like a maggot.
"It's something I can't talk about over the phone." She sounded different from usual, less compassionate, harsher, and the little maggot of worry inside turned into a giant flesh eating monster.
"Come to see me in my office, tomorrow at three in the afternoon. We can discuss things in private."
"I thought I still had a date with you for tomorrow night." He had said, trying to steer the conversation to an another topic. Something that didn't make his heart jump or made him as nervous as a rattling snake.
She didn't go in on that, only reminded him to come to their appointment. Her voice was as frosty as ice.
He couldn't sleep after that telephone call.
Now he stood before the gates of the institute, the so-called hospital where his very own brother had spent the last five years of his life in wretchedness and misery. He passed through the gateway, giving a slight nod to the guy sitting in the security station, who was idly flipping through a magazine. A buzz followed, and the gates swept close behind him, the loud clanging of metal on metal stabbed ice cold fear into his heart.
What if they wouldn't let him out again?
Would he be forced to spent the rest of his life in this nightmare place, deprived from his liberty, kept in claustrophobic white rooms, chained like a beast, just as he had condemned Will to such horrors?
Would it be punishment, or would it be mere justice?
His hand slipped into the pocket of his coat, and with his thumb he brushed over the smooth coolness of the hidden Colt firearm. The chromed lined barrel felt surprisingly hot to the touch, as if the weapon had just been fired.
- I'm not going to use it. - The thought oof taking it out of his pocket and pressing the end of the barrel against his temple passed his mind and he shivered, though the temptation was as strong as his own despair. - It's there, just in case. - If she's not prepared to listen to me. - if she refuse to understand any of it like Will did so very foolishly. - It will be there. To put an end to all of this.
TBC...