| She Only Sleeps on Planes By Wwolfe |
| Disclaimer: Characters and situations related to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER are the property of others. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. But it won't matter if you sue, because Wwolfe isn't some kid that'll fold like a house of cards, he's the legal counsel for the DarkSide, the Devil's Mouthpiece, the real lawyer from Hell. So go ahead. Do your worst. If you dare. Bwa Ha Ha! Archive- Please email request. Feedback- Absolutely. ******************* The building stood alone on the alkaline flats of what had once been an ancient lake bed. Isolated and imposing, its stone walls looming tall, flat, and blank, it was not unlike some of the ancient religious structures that had still been standing in the Mesopotamian region in the early days of her career. Her former career, she thought, correcting herself. Walking from the bus that carried its passengers from the parking lot in the nearby town, she took in the view of the mountains some miles away, standing like a final ring of defense to hem in the residents of this community. The tan of the powdery dirt that shifted and crunched under her feet stretched off into the distance, blending with the gray of tumbleweeds, and ending in the dirty brown crags of the mountains. The flatness and dearth of color, and the steady keen of the desert wind that lifted feathers of dust across the valley floor, all seemed to speak to the leeched out existence of those who lived at the bottom of this earthen bowl. Which made the brilliant blue of the high desert sky all the more startling in contrast, as if nature wished to make the rudest possible comment on the color and vibrancy that would remain forever out of reach of those who lived in this place with its peculiar name. Soledad. She reached the visitors' entrance to the structure and waited her turn. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Remarkable how the sense of smell recalled memories so strongly, no matter how much of a non sequitur they might seem. Now, for example, the smell of salt brought to mind pictures of days spent at the beach in the south of France, the ocean waves crashing on the shore, while the odor of rust returned her to a cold, gloomy afternoon when she'd walked past a huge junkyard, filled to the brim with the skeletons of worn out cars, in some forgotten and forsaken Pennsylvania town. But the sense of touch brought her back to the here and now. Blood became sticky when it was exposed to the air for any length of time. She stared in rapt wonder at the small dab of red on the tip of her index finger, then rubbed that fingertip against her thumb, hoping perhaps that the blood might thus be ignited and burn away. But it only spread and smeared and became more tacky, finally sticking together her finger and thumb. She turned her gaze - stunned, shattered - back to the whorls and swoops of blood that splashed across the wall, as if some feral primitive painter had created a gruesome masterpiece here in the living room of a frat house on the UC Sunnydale campus. She felt as if she were a pre-historic cave dweller, returned to a time before human speech, who felt the need to stand in reverent awe before a bloody cave painting that depicted in raw, inchoate art a monstrosity existing inside her and her kind that could never be gotten at, or gotten rid of. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It had been her little joke. Back in 1976, an unexpected hit by a late, lamented band, then six years gone, had popped up on jukeboxes across America. It was too cheerful for her tastes, but its B-side was a different story. The song's writer may have defended himself by saying that it was completely innocent in intent, but no matter how literally true that might be, she knew that at least one fan had correctly identified just how nasty this piece of music was. She would deposit three or four coins and punch in the number for that song over and over again, letting it play several times running. As the clang and clamor of the music stretched on and on, reveling in its own nihilism, in the luxuriant joy of its casual, expert violence, she could observe the other patrons in the bar or the pizza joint begin to squirm in discomfort, first from the sheer sonic assault, then from the threat they sensed it represented, and finally from the recognition, no matter how unconscious, of what it spoke to inside themselves. When the song ended for the last time, there would be a palpable wash of relief across the room. Each time, she would chuckle to herself, pleased at the success of her experiment. Now, many years and too many lives later, she could feel herself flinch almost imperceptibly when the memory crossed her mind. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "I want them to feel what I feel," the young, disheveled woman said, in a hurt tone. Sitting in the dirt outside the ramshackle, abandoned general store, she scratched at the earth with a stick, as if picking at a scab. "They don't care if I'm gone, they don't care if I'm OK," she continued. "They never cared." She dropped the stick and stared at her hands, palms up. If this woman - no more than a girl, really - never moved again, if she were to sit like this forever, seemingly exhausted in body and spirit, it would not surprise this particular witness, who found herself thinking, "I've seen this type before." The girl could be said to have run away from home, had it not been for the fact that her home - her parents, her teachers, her classmates - had run away from her first. She and a group of similar strays had formed their own congregation here, a half hour's drive from the Southern California suburbs that had abandoned them. They'd found a refuge of sorts on this forgotten movie ranch with its dilapidated sets, less fake for them than the seemingly normal homes they'd fled. The old man who let these lost children live here didn't understand what he'd let in through his front gate, she thought. A contagious disease let loose in a hospital. An infection that would not heal, but would spread and sicken and, finally, kill. Which sounded like great fun to her. She put her hand on the girl's shoulder, seemingly in sympathy, then placed a finger just under the line of her jaw, gently lifting her chin until they made eye contact. "Don't you wish you could do something?" she asked the girl. She saw the drug-addled eyes, the dirty, stringy hair, the loose-fitting sack of a dress that each of the men here had removed many times, as casually and with no more thought than if it had involved shelling and eating a peanut, and she knew this girl was hers, through and through. "I wish," the girl said - softly, longingly, offering a prayer with breath she expected to be strangled before leaving her throat - "I wish they'd remember me and be afraid." "Done." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ She stood with the curtain pulled back slightly, just enough to allow her to see down to the street below. Soft coronas of light hovered around the street lamps, reflecting off the blacktop of the street, wet from recent rain. Occasionally, she would hear the tires of an approaching car whirring on the damp road, then watch the headlights float past, followed by the red of the tail lights, passing through her frame of view. She never knew what she expected to discover on these nights when she found herself here at three a.m., staring out her window, but it seemed to be happening more and more often as the weeks and months passed following her recent voluntary resignation from her long-time occupation. Tonight she was too restless to stay in her apartment. Or rather, she was too restless to stay in her own skin, but she was only able to leave her apartment. Closing the front door behind her, she set out down her residential street. Some time later - she had no idea how long, being too deep inside her own thoughts and consequently too disconnected from her surroundings to take any notice of the world passing around her - she found herself walking down a particularly dreary side street in the industrial section of town. Given the denizens of this locale, and being no longer possessed of her former powers, she recognized that she had placed herself at the mercy of those who had no mercy. Six nights later, having repeated this process on each of the following nights, she gave up. Sometimes good luck was the last thing a person wanted. Her escape would apparently not be so easy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is my most brilliant moment, she thought. The yellow tape formed an unbroken ring around the location, but she had simply teleported into the living room a few minutes after one a.m., some twenty hours after the celebrated event. The accomplishments of the previous night were already slipping into legend, and she understood why. There was so much blood on the living room carpet, one would have thought its original color was an awful blackish-brown, with the occasional light patch being the stained area, rather than the reverse being true. The rope from which the one pregnant victim had hung prior to her execution - the pregnancy had been an unexpected, inspired grace note - still dangled from the beam that ran along the ceiling. Looking through the window out to the front lawn, she could see the tape outlining where the corpse of the other woman had lain. The girl who'd made the wish had been thoughtful enough to convey this victim's final words, spoken to her assailant after collapsing on the grass from knife wounds suffered in the living room prior to her doomed flight across the lawn: "Why are you stabbing me? I'm already dead." If I ever write my autobiography, she thought with a smirk, that will be the title. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once again - still - she was staring through glass. Staring - puzzled, gutted by her own conscience - trying to understand. Once again she reached out her hand, as if touching that which dumbfounded her might somehow allow her to crack its mystery. Her fingers touched the glass separating her from the girl - a woman now, of course, more than three decades later, gray-haired, face deeply lined by care, eyes dark with the knowledge of what she'd done. "Why are you here?" this woman asked quietly, dressed in the last clothes she'd ever wear, her drab prison grays, a number stitched above her left breast pocket. "I..." She stepped back from the required words. "I want to understand..." Again, a final connection was avoided, a last leap was dodged. "How do you live with what you did?" she asked at last. And then added the necessary correction: "With what we did." "It's the last thought I have before I fall asleep and the first one I have when I wake up," the prisoner replied. "How long?" came the question. "How long do I have to live with it?" It took a moment for the question to register with her accomplice on the other side of the glass, but the response came, finally, with a small, bleak, utterly blasted smile. "Til I get to the bottom and I see you again." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ People talked about redemption as if it were a process no more arduous than returning empty soda bottles for the deposit money. She didn't know if redemption was possible, and she certainly knew it would not be up to her to decide if she ever could or would be redeemed. She decided, though, that respect might be within her agency. She could acknowledge what she had done of her own free will, as well as the ghastly seriousness of the consequences of her choices, and she could accept responsibility for those consequences. By so doing, she might offer respect to those she had harmed, in the only decent and true way she could do so. As water drips, drop by drop, from the overhanging rocks of a cave, depositing minerals both from where it falls and on the place where it lands, building up grain by grain a stalactite and stalagmite which, over seemingly endless time, may finally meet to form a pillar that can help support the weight of the cave's roof, perhaps she could likewise form a structure which might provide sufficient support for her existence. She would have to try. 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