Chapter Two
The house in Iowa is everything I
expected it to be, right down to the white picket fence surrounding the tidy
front yard, and the wooden clapperboards, painted a faded pale yellow. Not
quite picture postcard pretty, it needs some work doing on it – shutters
mending and roof tiles replacing, that sort of thing – but this only makes
Riley even happier. He comes home from working on his dad’s farm every evening
and gets his toolkit out. Then he whiles away the hours painting and sawing and
hammering, doing just what a good husband should do.
Life isn’t so bad at first, not
like I thought it was going to be. I’d imagined the sudden shock – a whole new
way of a living, a new identity for myself, new places, new people – would have
been difficult to cope with. But in a way it isn’t at all. When I arrive there
is so much stuff to do. There is the unpacking and the settling in and meeting
all the neighbours. Instead of being strange and foreign, it is actually quite
fun. No vampires, no demons, just Buffy getting to play house.
But as the weeks pass the novelty
begins to wear off. I realise that it’s not just playing I’m doing. I can’t
pack up my toys and go home when I’m done. This is my home now, this is where I
live – forever – and these places and people are my world. Gradually, Iowa and
its hometown, backwater atmosphere starts to surround and choke me. It’s
insidious – it creeps into your mind and your heart and tries to steal all the
memories you keep there. It tries to blanket you with its bland, humdrum ways,
extinguishing all the fire in your heart.
And the people upset me too. They
are the worst kind – all sugar and sweetness to your face then bad mouthing you
behind your back. Gossip runs rife through the town – you cannot even have a
visitor around to the house without the news being passed on to six different
people before ten minutes have even passed. Whenever I speak to any of them, I
feel like I’m being judged by their small-minded values, like there’s some sort
of test I have to pass before I can be admitted to the fold. I try to be polite
and nice and accepted, but only for Riley’s sake and for the baby’s. Just
because I don’t fit into this kind of life, doesn’t mean they should be
ostracised by this society. So, whenever I meet a neighbour in the street or
someone comes around to welcome me, I always smile and offer them coffee, even
though the Slayer in me just want to tell them to get their heads out of their
asses. Here they all are worrying about what colour Mr Martins from number thirty
painted his shutters and whether Mrs Travis is having an affair with her
gardener when there are people out there dying.
I know what exists in the night.
I know about vampires and evil and death. These are the things I was born to
fight. I should be out there, living my destiny, saving people’s lives, not
here desperately trying to learn how to make apple pie that doesn’t end up in a
mush at the bottom off the dish.
Yesterday I cried. I threw the
pie dish across the room, smashing it against the wall, then collapsed in a
heap, sobbing my eyes out. I never would have done that before, that’s not the
kind of person I am, or was. I wouldn’t have let something as stupid as a visit
from Riley’s mother get to me like that. The old Buffy probably would have
slapped her, yelled at her or something. Anything except just stand there and
take her abuse.
She seems to think she can drop
by any time she likes, doesn’t even bother knocking, just lets herself in
through the back door. When I tried to confront her about it, she just replied
that it was her husband’s money that paid for the place, so didn’t she have a
right to come and go whenever she wanted? There wasn’t really anything I could
say to that, because she was right. This isn’t even my house. There’s nothing
of mine in it – no traces of Buffy whatsoever. Everything in it belongs to her.
And I’m just some intruder tolerated for the sake of her misguided son.
“You’re a very lucky young lady,”
she said to me. “Not many men would have been as easily tricked as Riley into
marrying you.”
I wanted to tell her that not
many men would have got their girlfriend pregnant as quickly as Riley, but
instead I just kept quiet. I vented my fury on the pastry in front of me;
attacking it with the rolling pin and wondering why it was crumbling into
little pieces, rather than making a nice flat circle like the picture in the
recipe book.
“I told him not to,” Mrs Finn
continued on blithely. “I told him it would be the worst mistake of his life,
but he wouldn’t listen. He had to do the right thing. We raised that boy to be
far too noble for his own good,” she preened.
“Good for you,” I muttered under
my breath.
“Excuse me?” She responded. “Did
you say something? Because you have no right to be answering back to me. You’re
nothing but a common little hussy.”
I spun around on her. “Don’t ever
call me that,” I said in a shaky voice.
“Why not?” She asked. “It’s true.
I did some checking into your background. You were thrown out of your first
high school for setting the place on fire, no less. Then you were a suspect in
a murder investigation, following which you disappeared for three months
running wild in LA. That’s hardly the type of woman who’s good enough for my
son. So, I’d go minding your p’s and q’s around me, my girl, unless you want to
be thrown out on your ear. Riley may not be able to see past your pretty blonde
hair and your low cut dresses, but I can. And young men always listen to their
mothers, just you mark my words.”
I lifted the heavy rolling pin in
the air, suddenly wanting nothing more than to smash it into her skull and see
her fall lifeless to the ground. Then horrified by my own imagination, I
dropped the makeshift weapon to the ground where it landed with a clatter. “Get
out,” I ordered. “GET OUT!”
She smirked at me, before
strolling slowly out of the door, pausing as she did so to examine my cookery
attempts. “You used too much flour – that’ll never stick together.”
I hurled the pastry dish after
her, gaining only a tiny bit of satisfaction as it shattered into about a
million pieces, sending globs of pie filling flying about the kitchen. Then I
collapsed to the floor, sobbing out my broken heart, utterly convinced that
this is all my life will ever be again. Failed cookery attempts, interfering
mother-in-laws and a sense of total inadequacy.
There is this little voice always
in my head, always telling me how much I messed up. I threw away my whole life,
my entire future, just because I thought some boy would like me better if I
slept with him. Well, maybe that’s a little unfair, because I wanted it too. I
wasn’t pressured or tricked into sex with Riley. It was just something I
thought I should be doing, so I did it. I was a grown-up girl trying to have an
adult relationship – only maybe I wasn’t ready for that considering the fact
that it all went horribly wrong.
I still don’t know what happened.
Maybe I was ill one day and it stopped my birth control from working. Perhaps I
forgot to take one of the pills. I could even possibly be one of those
mysterious 3% they talk about on the packet, when they give you false
reassurances that ‘this product is 97% effective’. But whatever happened,
happened. As my grandmother was so fond of saying: you made your own bed,
Buffy, and now you have to lie in it.
~~~
Hospital
walls fade in and out of my vision and the shouting of the doctors and nurses
seems very far away all of a sudden. Odd phrases catch my attention.
“She’s haemorrhaging…”
“Mr Finn, perhaps you should wait
outside.”
“Get that blood into her STAT!”
“But, but my wife… She’s going to
be okay, right? We just got married last month.”
“Where the Hell is that
anaesthetist?
“Page the OR – get them to prep
for an emergency C-section.”
“We just got
married last month. The baby’s not even due for another two weeks. I don’t
understand what’s happening…”
I am vaguely aware that I’m
probably dying, but I don’t even care. As long as the pain has gone now, the
pain that woke me up to blood soaked sheets at three a.m. this morning. The
pain that ripped through my belly so fiercely, I felt like it were actually
splitting open right there and then, as if the baby were trying to crawl out of
it’s own accord.
Now, though, everything is fuzzy.
My vision, my hearing, my awareness. And I sort of like it like that. It
reminds me of the time I discovered beer and everything was hazy and nice. More
than that it reminds me of the time Angel bit me. It’s probably the blood loss
making me giddy as it did then, but it makes me think that maybe that’s what I
was looking for in alcohol – a way to become light-headed and euphoric, a means
to blur the edges between myself and my memories of him.
A cool, clammy hand grips mine
tightly and a large face looms in my vision.
“We’re just going to put you
to sleep now, Buffy. When you wake up you’ll have a beautiful baby. Don’t
worry, everything’s going to be okay.”
Wake up… baby… everything’s
going to be okay…
No. I want to shake my
head. How can she possibly even think that? Nothing’s going to be okay ever
again.
~~~
My eyes flutter open and the
first thing I see is Angel standing at the foot of the bed, his expression as
inscrutable as always. My heart floods with relief and I smile up at him.
“I knew you’d come.”
“I never really left,” he
replies.
Lowering my hand beneath the
sheets I feel my stomach. It is as smooth and flat as always, the muscles taut
as I remember them. But most significant of all there is no pain. The vast open
wound that I was expecting isn’t there either. “What happened to me?” I ask.
Angel’s eyes narrow slightly.
“You married Riley – that’s what happened.”
I shake my head. “No, I mean,
after that. What happened to the baby? I was having a baby.”
“No, you weren’t.” Angel walks
around the side of the bed as he answers.
“Yes, yes, I was.” I insist. “I
remember…”
He looks at me strangely. “But
how can you be having a baby that you never wanted? That you never loved?”
I think about this question for a
while. He’s right. I could never have a baby if I wasn’t prepared to love it.
That’s not who I am. And I don’t feel like a mother. I don’t feel different at
all really. But, but I was absolutely sure I was pregnant. I remember the
ambulance and the doctors and the nurse with the clammy fingers.
“If I’m not having a baby, then
what am I doing in the hospital?” I ask, glancing around at my surroundings. I
am in a small, grey room, with no windows and not even a door that I can see.
The walls and the ceiling and the floor are all totally blank. I shudder at the
sight – this seems more like a prison cell than a hospital room.
“You’re not in the hospital,”
Angel informs me. “You’re at home.”
“No,” I shake my head
desperately. “I don’t live here. I don’t!”
Angel starts to walk away and I
frantically call after him. “Don’t go, Angel. Please, don’t leave me here
alone.”
He turns back around and comes to
sit by the side of the bed. Gently he strokes my forehead, pressing a soft kiss
to my damp brow. “I wasn’t going anywhere,” he reassures me. “You know I’d
never leave you, right?”
I nod, calming down somewhat. “Of
course not. I love you.”
He smiles softly. “I love you
too.” He lowers his lips to mine, leaning in for a long kiss. Closing my eyes,
I kiss him back, savouring the feeling of his fingers first threading through
my hair, then wandering lower. Over my shoulders, across my breasts, swirling
patterns on my belly…
Suddenly, my whole body is
consumed with pain emanating from my abdomen. I scream into Angel’s mouth, my
body tensing rigidly. Angel pulls away from me as I arch backwards on the bed,
my every nerve ending seeming to throb in agony. I force my eyes open, looking
up into his face, imploring him to help me somehow.
He just smirks. “Serves you
right,” he says cruelly. “You were never good enough.”
His words cut deeper than even
the searing pain in my stomach and this time my screams aren’t muffled by a
lover’s kiss but tear loudly through the still air of the room. A nurse and a
doctor appear by my side, materialising out of nowhere.
“It looks serious, Doctor.” The
nurse says, reaching over to check my pulse.
“She’s going to need emergency
surgery,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders into a blood stained lab coat.
“Scalpel please.”
The nurse hands him a giant
silver blade, which he lowers down towards my body, hovering it just above my
chest.
“What are you doing?” I gasp out.
“It’s my stomach that’s hurting!”
The doctor shakes his head. “No,
I think you’ll find it’s your heart that’s the problem.” He slashes the knife
downwards, opening a gaping wound along my sternum. With a sickening crack, he
pulls my ribs apart and reaches inside and pulls out my heart.
The doctor turns around to Angel
and carefully passes him the still beating heart. “I think this belongs to you,
sir.” My eyes widen as Angel cradles it close to him. Then he clenches his
fist, blood dripping out from between the fingers.
I pass out.
~~~
When I wake up it is to a dull
ache suffusing my whole being and a head that feels like it’s been stuffed with
cotton wool. An IV steadily drips blood into my left arm, the deep crimson
running down thin tubes like somebody has ripped the very veins out of my limbs
and hung them up in the air for everybody to see. My eyes wonder across the
room, squinting in the bright light, until they rest upon Riley’s face. He is
smiling broadly and suddenly a wave of nausea hits me. This isn’t right, is it?
This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.
Riley squeezes my hand tightly,
his large fingers curled around mine, and calls the nurse over. “She’s waking
up!”
Immediately, I close my eyes
again, wishing I had stayed asleep. Anything to not be here.
“Mrs Finn,” the nurse calls
cheerfully. “How are you feeling?”
For a minute I am confused, then
I realise she’s talking to me. I’m Mrs Finn, wife of Riley Finn, mother of…oh
my God, the baby! What happened to the baby?
“What happened?” I ask, having to
make incredible effort to form the words. “Baby…”
“It’s all right,” the nurse
replies. “The caesarean went fine. You’re now the mother of a perfectly healthy
baby son. He was nine pounds six ounces too – a big boy, like his daddy.”
The idea makes me feel even
sicker. Exactly like his daddy, Riley’s sandy hair, his small town mentality,
his dopey grin. I see it all transposed on to the creature that came out of my
womb and it just feels totally wrong somehow, like my own child is a
stranger to me. But then I guess he is because I’ve never even met him yet. For
some reason I find this thought hysterically funny and start to laugh, only it
comes out more of a choking sound and the nurse’s eyes widen in concern.
“Mrs Finn? Are you okay?”
I breathe deeply, quieting
myself, blinking back the tears forming in my eyes. “I’m fine. I just need a
little more rest that’s all.”
The nurse takes the hint and
gently shepherds Riley out of the room, suggesting that he visit the neonatal
unit now. He deposits one last wet kiss on my forehead, before leaving me
alone. I don’t sleep, however, I just turn my face to the wall and close my
eyes, wishing for my life to have turned out differently.
~~~
Later on
that day, they bring the baby to see me. I hold it in my arms like I would a
doll – except I never played with dolls much when I was younger, I was more
interested in toy soldiers or cars that lit up and made noises. I remember that
when all the other girls played house, I used to put a sheet over my shoulders
and pretend to be a superhero. I would always zoom in, Buffy to the rescue,
stomping over make believe tea parties and demolishing Barbie and Ken’s Malibu
beach retreat. Those things didn’t interest me, I lived in a world of action
and high excitement.
My teachers used to call me disruptive, they recommended I see a
child psychiatrist, take drugs to combat my hyperactivity, but Mom dismissed
all this. She insisted I was just different, a special child. You know sort of
preparation for the ‘one girl in all the world’ gig. Now I wish that I had been
more like the others, then maybe I would be able to fit into this new life a
little better, rather than constantly craving my old one.
I’m a mother. This little creature in my arms belongs to me. I
say the words to myself, but I don’t believe them. I’m somebody’s mother.
No, it isn’t true, it can’t be. They made a mistake at the crèche – this isn’t
my son. He doesn’t look like me, or feel a part of me. He may as well be just a
doll of rubber and fabric, because that’s what he is in my eyes. He’s not a
little person to love, but a thing sent to make my life Hell.
It shouldn’t be like this, should it? Aren’t I supposed to feel
that overwhelming rush of mother love? Where’s that bond with the baby I’ve
read about in all the maternity books? What happened to the protective instinct
I’m supposed to feel, or the gooey softness that should come inside when he
gazes up at me with wide, unfocused eyes?
“Have you decided on a name yet?” The midwife asks cheerfully.
I just look up at her blankly – it wasn’t something I’d ever
considered. Choosing a name makes it real, I guess. It means I can no longer
deny the fact that this baby exists and is half my responsibility. I turn to
Riley. “You choose – I’m all out of ideas at the moment.”
Riley leans over the baby, tickling its tummy and causing it to
kick its legs and gurgle. “How about Caleb?” He suggests. “Caleb Johnston Finn
– after my mother’s maiden name. Do you like that, Caleb?” He speaks in a
singsong voice to his son. “Do you like it?”
“That’s sounds fine,” I say distractedly. “We’ll use that.”
“Would you like to try and breastfeed him now, Mrs Finn?” The
midwife enquires now that the naming issue has been sorted out. “We usually
find the earlier you start, the easier it is to get into a routine.”
My eyes widen in horrified shock. Breastfeed? Nobody told me
I was going to have to do that. The idea repulses me. To have that thing
clamped on to my nipple, sucking at me with red, hungry jaws. I can’t face it,
I just can’t.
“I-I don’t think I want to do that,” I stutter, starting to feel
sick.
“Of course you do, Buffy,” Riley interrupts smoothly. “A
mother’s milk is the best thing a baby could possibly have. You want to give
our little boy a head start in life, don’t you?”
“We fully recommend breast feeding here at the hospital,” the
midwife backs up Riley’s insistence. “A mother’s milk contains all the vitamins
and minerals the little guy here could ever need and you can pass on your
immunity to certain diseases on to him as well.”
I stare at them both, suddenly trapped in a nightmare situation.
I don’t want to do this. I really don’t and yet neither of them seem to
understand. It feels like the walls are closing in on me. They can’t make me do
this, can they? I’m still my own person. I’m still Buffy – they can’t make me
to anything!
“Come on,” Riley reaches a hand out to me. “Just give it a try –
for me.”
I slap his arm away, twisting to virtually scream at him. “No!
Leave me alone. I can’t do it. I can’t do it!”
At my outburst the baby in my arms begins to cry. Long, thin
wails echo through my mind, bouncing off the walls of my skull, only increasing
my feelings of panic. My heart is racing and I feel my muscles tense in
readiness for a fight. “Stop him crying,” I demand crazily, the frightened look
in my eyes reminiscent of a wounded animal. “Make it shut up!”
The midwife hurriedly takes the baby out of my arms, rocking him
soothingly until his cries cease. Riley glances over at me worriedly. “Buffy?”
“It’s okay, Mr Finn,” the midwife tries to reassure him. “She’s
just a bit tired – still not recovered fully from the surgery. Your wife just
needs a little more rest that’s all.”
He looks unconvinced, but gets up to leave, anyway. He leans
over to give me a kiss on the cheek, but I shrink away, forcing him to remove
his lips. Pulling away, with a slightly hurt expression on his face he exits
the room. The midwife hesitates a little, a suspicious look in her eye. She
knows, I realise. She knows that something’s not right inside me.
And yet I don’t seem to even care.
~~~
A few days
later they discharge me from hospital. Riley stays at home with me at first,
patiently showing me how to hold and change and bottle-feed the baby. I go
through the motions, blankly, automatically doing as he says, my mind always
elsewhere – anywhere but here. My life is like a dream, or perhaps a nightmare
– it all passes in an unrealistic haze I can’t wait to wake up from. Then Riley
goes back to work and I do wake up. But not to anything better.
It’s all horribly real, me here
alone with only the baby for company. It demands my attention almost 24 hours a
day. Feed me. Change me. Bathe me. It cries and it screams almost constantly,
so much that I took it to see the town doctor. I thought that there must be
something wrong, the baby was so fractious all the time. But during our trip
out he was fine. He lay calmly and patiently while the doctor and nurses
examined him, all the while giving me strange glances as if they were wondering
why I brought him in at all. Finally the doctor asked me if I were feeling okay
and I just stormed out.
Nobody gets it. Nobody
understands how difficult this is.
The baby cried all the way home.
It bawled until its eyes were red and throat sore and wouldn’t be comforted by
anything I did. The only thing that finally quieted him was Riley’s return.
Whereupon I just ran upstairs and collapsed on the bed, staring up at the
ceiling until the tears blurring my vision faded away.
Today is another day like all the
rest. The baby cries and wails and screams, its protests getting louder and
louder whenever I go near it. I try making a bottle, changing its diaper,
rocking it in my arms, but nothing seems to make any difference. It gets more
upset and I get more desperate. I wish he were never born. I wish I’d listened
to Willow and had that abortion. I wish I’d never married Riley and moved to
the middle of fucking nowhere in the first place.
“Shut up!” I yell at the baby.
“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”
The howling gets louder and I
pace despairingly back and forth. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed
to cope? This child is making my existence Hell. It would be so much easier if
he weren’t here, if he were dead and gone and the house was peaceful again.
The thoughts shock me, but I can’t stop them coming. It would be
so easy, so very easy just to make things better right now. I could take a
cushion off the sofa and hold it over his mouth and nose. Two minutes later and
it would all be over, I could have my life back again.
But they check for that, don’t they? People would know if I
suffocated him and I’d just go from one prison to another. Something else. I
need something else. My eyes scan the room, settling on the sideboard where
our household’s sole bottle of liquor is kept. Neither of us being heavy
drinkers, the vodka is purely for medicinal reasons – used for cuts, scrapes
and days when I need a little extra just to get me through – and there is
almost two thirds of it left.
Enough of that in his milk and he’ll just go to sleep, right?
He’ll just fade away and it won’t be cruel at all. With shaking hands, I make
up some baby formula then reach into the cupboard for the vodka. Just half the
bottle – that’s all I’ll need. Just half of it and all my problems will go away
forever. I unscrew the top and the heady scent of alcohol wafts into my
nostrils. The baby is still crying. I can do this – everything’s going to be
fine from now on.
“Don’t worry, Caleb,” I whisper. “Everything’s going to be okay.
Mommy’s going to make it better.”
Mommy. My mommy with the soft skin and the arms that held me when I
was upset. The one who used to be the centre of my universe, who made all my
problems go away, who kissed my cuts and bruises healed. I’m supposed to be
that person for this little boy. I’m supposed to love him and cherish him and
protect him. God, what kind of mother am I?
I crush the glass bottle between my hands with Slayer strength,
the broken shards cutting deep into my palms and drawing red rivers of blood.
The alcohol found its way into the gashes making them sting sharply, but I like
the pain. I deserve the pain. Falling to my knees I begin to weep,
staring fixedly to the red streams running unchecked down my arms and dripping
off my elbows, my cries blending in with those of my child.
~~~
Riley found me when he came home
from work. He kept asking over and over what had happened but all I could
answer was that I was sorry. I only wanted to make him stop crying. I’m sorry…
The doctors stitched up my hands
and made me stay overnight in hospital. I heard them whispering amongst
themselves. Have you seen the crazy lady who tried to kill her baby? $2.50
entrance fee to see the freak.
A social worker came to see me.
“Are you okay, Buffy?” She asked.
“I didn’t hurt him,” I replied.
“I never touched him. I never touched him.”
She spoke nonsense in a voice
that was meant to be soothing then she talked to Riley and the doctors straight
over my head. I’m not stupid, I wanted to say. I can still understand
what you’re saying. I know what post-natal depression means.
They gave me some pills, said
they would make me feel better. The counsellor told me I shouldn’t worry.
Thoughts of harming myself or my child are perfectly normal in the case of
depressed mothers. But I’m not to be left alone with Caleb. I can’t look after
my own child unsupervised. They gave me some pills, told me they’d make me feel
better. I said, what if I don’t want to feel better? What can you give me for
that?
Riley’s mom volunteered to look
after Caleb while I’m feeling ‘unwell’, but the idea only horrified me even
more. I don’t want her near me. I don’t want her anywhere near my child!
People were beginning to talk she
told me in a visit to the hospital. Town gossip was all about my apparent
insanity. “It’s just laziness, if you ask me,” Mrs Finn complained. “Whoever
heard of a woman not being able to look after her own baby? Young folks today
can’t cope with anything. They have a weak mind and an idle temperament and
doctors call it an illness. Would you even believe it.”
I said absolutely nothing in
reply, just turned my face away and studied the peeling paint on the walls of
the local hospital. When Riley came into the room, his face drawn and worried,
I looked up at him with desperate, pleading eyes.
“I want to go home.”
“That’s fine, Buffy,” he replied.
“I spoke to the doctors and they said you can leave. I’ve arranged for Mom to
stay at the house with you during the day.”
“No,” I shook my head. “I want to
go home – back to Sunnydale.”
So, we went.
~~~
Mom looks
surprised to see us, but not too shocked, like perhaps she always knew this
turn of events was inevitable. We give her some flimsy excuse about wanting
Caleb to meet his grandmother, which she sees straight through, but plays along
with for everybody’s sake. I don’t know how long exactly we’re going to be
here, but if it were up to me I’d never go back.
On our first night Mom is busy
cooing over the baby with Riley standing by – the proud, overprotective father
– so I slip upstairs to my old room, feeling surplus to requirements. I gaze
around my old room and all its reminders of another life, another person. Dust
has gathered over all my old things already and I think it terribly sad how the
girl who owned this room died.
Suddenly restless, I decide to
climb out through the window, sliding over the roof tiles like it was only
yesterday I did this, not over 12 months ago. Silently, I drop to the ground,
my heart pumping and adrenaline flowing through my veins. For the first time in
a long time, I feel the black cloud that hangs over my head shift a little. I
escaped! I’m free!
Snapping off a tree branch in
order to fashion a makeshift stake, I head towards the cemetery. Out on the
hunt where I was born to be. The night air is sweet and fresh and I realise
with a pang how much I have missed it and how much I will miss it again when I
must go back to Iowa.
A vampire attacks from behind and
I lash out at him with flying fists and feet. My actions are uncoordinated and
stiff from lack of practice, and the fight lasts longer than usual because of
it. Eventually, I tackle the creature to the ground. Straddling him and
plunging down with my stake, watching fascinated, as he explodes into dust.
That’s what I do. I kill things.
That’s what I’ve always done. I killed my first lover, didn’t I? I plunged a
sword through his belly without even thinking twice, so was it that
inconceivable I’d think about murdering my own son. It wasn’t the illness, the
depression, it was me. I met the first Slayer – she was a killer without
conscience. Is that what I am, what I’ve become?
The exhilaration of the fight
suddenly gone, my heart seems to sink right down to my feet and I begin to feel
sick. Aimlessly now, I wonder through the tombstones, mentally cataloguing the
locations of my former battles. Over there I sliced the head off a scaly green
demon, then I went dancing at the Bronze and never thought of the creature
again. Maybe it wasn’t pregnancy or marriage that sealed my fate. Maybe it was
becoming the Slayer in the first place. It gradually drained me of who I was
and left only a shell of Buffy, a shell that can’t even remember how to love
somebody.
A noise from behind me alerts me
to the presence of another vampire. This time I don’t fight back. I just want
everything to be over – I can’t cope with the ruins of what used to be my life
anymore. So, I let him grab roughly hold of my shoulders and push me up against
the wall of a nearby crypt. His fangs hover over my neck then sink in deeply,
the pain nothing at all really. Only a pinprick. Not a bad way to go. It
reminds me of Angel and when he bit me, his large body covering mine, his arms
holding me tightly as he took my essence into himself. I wish I’d died then in
his embrace, saving the life of the person I loved.
I close my eyes and lean back
against the cold stone surface, beginning to feel more and more light-headed as
the blood gushes out of my system into the mouth of this vampire. Not long now.
Only a couple more minutes and I’ll be gone. I’ll have peace finally.
The pressure on my neck is
suddenly gone, the vampire’s fangs removed. My eyes shoot open, just in time to
see my attacker turn to dust. As his remains clear from the air I catch a
glimpse of the person who rescued me, who saved my life when I hadn’t wanted
them to.
“Angel.”