TITLE: "Measuring Time In Cigarettes (1/1)"
AUTHOR: Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: After her mother's death, the burden of responsibility
falls on Buffy, and she can't handle it without the greatest
sacrifice of all - her youth.
RATING: R for language
SPOILERS: Post-"The Body"
DISTRIBUTION: To my site,
http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html, and to wherever
else it is wanted, provided that permission is requested prior to
archival
DISCLAIMER: The characters within this story are the property of
Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions and whatever network
it's going to be on this week. The song is the property of Pulp,
from the song "Common People", and that is from their "Different
Class" LP.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story is sort of autobiographical, and yet
it works for Buffy. I needed to write this, and so I did. I hope
that you don't mind my sharing. Also, this story didn't start out
being told in the second-person (something that I have never done
before), but the viewpoint seemed to work for the story. Thanks
to Heather, for reading this and for editing it, as she always
does so well. :)
*****
Measuring Time In Cigarettes
*****
"Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school"
--Pulp
*****
As soon as you step out of the office and get in your car to go
home, you start smoking, and you eventually start measuring time
in cigarettes.
It only takes one to get to and from work. You can usually
squeeze in three or four on your lunch hour if you are lucky, and
if traffic cooperates with you, you can have an extra one. A
bonus smoke, for putting up with all of the idiots on the road. A
workday is a pack of Marlboros, a Saturday or Sunday is a pack
and a half, and a week is a carton. You can't even begin to
fathom a year's worth of time. How many cigarettes could you
possibly smoke in a year?
You haven't exactly kept count for the past six months.
Tiredly, you put your sunglasses on and start up your used Geo
Metro, listening to it whine and grumble into first gear. "That's
my baby," you mutter to the growling engine, thinking that you
can coax it into operation. Good luck. "Come on, duchess. Get
into gear..." The car finally settles into a low purr, and you
sigh, victorious. Your car started today. Your car's so damn
temperamental; it never wants to start.
You can't quite blame it.
Harsh sunlight pours down on you through the filter of the glass
windshield, and you wince, momentarily blinded by the intensified
light that comes just before twilight. Your eyes hurt, but so
does the rest of your body. Your wrists and fingers ache with the
beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome from constant typing, and
your back screams from the shitty office chair they dumped on
you. The chunky black shoes on your feet are impractical but
pretty, and they made your feet burn when you walk on them. But
you have to look professional in your half-priced suit and your
worn-out shoes that are colored in nail polish rather than shoe
polish.
After all, nail polish *is* less expensive than shoe polish,
isn't it? You can always find less expensive alternatives. It's a
talent of yours. Caffeine swirls in your growling stomach, and so
you try to settle it with a cigarette. Substituting nicotine and
tobacco for solid food isn't necessarily bright, but it is
economical.
Buy a pack of cigarettes for $3.80 and ignore the bright neon
lights of fast food joints with their overpriced "Value Meals",
and you win the financial battle. Drink tons of free coffee at
work and chase it with a Vivarin for added alertness after
getting three hours of sleep, and you can go out at midnight to
slay the demons and still get up at 6:30 in the morning to go
earn your $7.25 an hour at the job that you loathe.
Road construction and a traffic accident. You sigh, leaning back
into the poorly upholstered seat of the Metro, squirming on the
plastic trashbag you've draped across your driver's seat. The top
of your car is leaking and it's always raining this time of year,
but you can't afford to put dinner on the table *and* replace the
top of the convertible. Granted, there's no real point in having
a convertible with a top so broken that you can't put it down and
enjoy the weather, but it was economical at the time and you
didn't need the SUV anyway.
Not even when it was your mother's car. Not even when she is dead
now.
You still have to stop by the post office on the way home and
drop off the office mail. Your crappy 8 to 5 job haunts you even
when you're off the clock. Responsibility is such a bitch, and
you can't help it if you're lying in bed at night trying to sleep
and find yourself remembering a file you forgot to replace or a
message you might have taken down wrong. Such little missteps are
enough to get you fired, and if you get fired, then who is going
to feed your sister and pay your rent?
No one but you. You're responsible for it all. You know it, you
hate it, you crave it. You want another cigarette, and who is
going to stop you? You're in charge now. You can get drunk if you
want to, can smoke a bowl of weed or have a line of coke, or you
can chain-smoke while your sister eats leftover Chinese. You have
the freedom of being the boss; you have no freedom because you
are the boss.
It's all a big old Catch-22, and you're pissed because you had to
drop out of college before you could ever even study the book.
Old books that you never bothered to sell back to the bookstore
litter the nonexistent backseat of the car, and it hurts you to
look at them. You've tried to throw them away, tried to burn your
bridges, but the regret and longing makes you keep them. "I'm not
going back," you mutter to yourself. "I've quit. I can't afford
to take classes and go to work. I should sell the books back to
the store and have a good meal."
Sentimentality bothers you, but you can't help but keep the books
and think about what might have been.
The cigarette is done, and you're saddened by it. You only have
two cigarettes left, and you're pissed off because that means
that you have to stop by the gas station on the way home and walk
another sixteen feet in the cursed chunky shoes. You want a new
pair of shoes, a more practical pair, but you don't have the
money right now. After all, Dawn wants to go on a class trip to
San Francisco in May, and you want her to be able to do such
things. So you suffer on your broken shoes, all for a sister
who's not really your sister.
She's more like a daughter now.
You sometimes think that it's all unfair, that you shouldn't have
to be so stressed and tired and old before you're old enough to
have any legal fun. You shouldn't be a mother at twenty. But then
you tell yourself that you're not special; you think of Michelle,
the secretary who has a fifteen-year-old daughter at twenty-nine,
and you know that she has it harder than you do. You try to
swallow your complaints, because your worries aren't as important
as others'.
But then you think of Pat, the other secretary, who has the
husband of thirty-seven years and the perfect children with
successful jobs, and who takes vacations to Spain at the drop of
a hat. You think of her railing about the sins of the world and
the aimlessness of the current generation, and you want to drive
a stake through her. She doesn't understand you. She has no idea
what you have been through.
Then again, sometimes, neither do you.
Off goes the mail, and out comes the next cigarette. If you're
going to go to the gas station, then you have time for another
one. The gas station is exactly one cigarette away from the post
office, so you're in the clear. Deeply, you inhale on the
tobacco, and think of the beginning ulcer in your stomach.
Smoking is bad for ulcers; you read it on the Internet last
night. God, you love the Internet. It's so much cheaper to go to
the medical websites and self-diagnose rather than spend the
money to go to the doctor, especially when you can't afford
insurance.
Slayers shouldn't have ulcers, you tell yourself. They're not
very helpful when trying to fight vampires. It's not exactly a
good thing when you have to pause in the middle of a fight to the
death so that you can throw up blood. But you know that you're
getting one; that it's the product of too much poorly-brewed
coffee and too many cigarettes.
You should quit. You should take the money that Giles offered and
go back to school, let him take over the funding of your
education, and use the college fund for Dawn. But you can't let
him do that. It's not his fault that your mother died and the art
gallery crumbled. Not his fault that your mother didn't think of
life insurance or financial provisions.
It's not Giles's fault that your worthless father is running
around Europe like that damned bitch Pat does, spending money
left and right while his children starve.
Your fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and you feel road
rage coming on. You *love* road rage. "Get the fuck out of my
lane, you asshole!" you yell over the din of traffic, your window
open and your stereo pumping nasty British pop over the roar of
your crappy engine. "Stupid *bitch*." You hate all of the drivers
on the road, and you make damn sure that the other drivers all
hate you in return.
Gas prices piss you off. It was definitely more cost-effective to
sell the SUV; it ate gasoline. Gasoline is too expensive.
Sometimes, you snidely think about selling the Metro and buying a
golf cart, but your power bill is too high to afford recharging a
little electric piece of crap. Alas, there are no easy answers
for you. Grumbling and grousing, you get out of your car and
refuel the car halfway, so that you can stop and get a pack of
cigarettes with the rest of your mileage check.
Inside, you look at the clerks working the counter of the gas
station, at their dull, bored faces, and you can commiserate with
them. They hate their jobs just as much as you hate yours. You're
polite to these people; you smile for them and they know your
name. Hell, you're in here everyday, buying yourself a cheap cup
of coffee or a pack of cigarettes, and the occasional box of
tampons or bag of chips if you're lucky.
There's a stranger next to you, and he's staring at you. He's
young, probably about your age, wearing Abercrombie & Fitch and a
cute little smile. You used to be able to shop there. You used to
be able to shop wherever you wanted to shop. You could go to The
Limited or Bebe and buy a thousand cute little tops and dozens of
real leather pants, all with chunky black shoes that were
fabulous then and are irritating now. You instantly hate this boy
for being able to do what you can do no longer - have fun.
"We smoke the same brand of cigarettes," the boy says to you. You
don't give a shit. It's the only thing that the two of you have
in common. He doesn't have to go to a nine-to-five job and
sometimes forego his lunch hour to get in that extra seven bucks.
He doesn't have to worry about whether or not his sister will eat
tonight and ignore the pressing concern of his own stomach.
Selfish, spoiled little shit.
"Great," you say coldly, taking your pack of cigarettes from the
clerk and paying her your last ten bucks. It's cold pizza for you
tonight, and more endless coffee. Instant coffee. You fucking
*hate* instant coffee. You give a big lie of a smile to the cute
boy who would not want you if he knew you. "Have a *fabulous*
day."
You don't mean a word of it.
The gas station was out of your way home, so you get to finish
off the pack of cigarettes as you drive back to the apartment.
You had to sell your mother's house, and it kills you everyday.
Your mother loved that house. She decorated it herself with her
silly little ethnic knick-knacks, and you rolled your eyes
everytime she brought home a tacky little statue of a woman with
enormous breasts. "Can't we get more fertility statues?" you
whined to her. "They would balance out all of the fat little porn
stars you've got lying around here."
Your mother just laughed; that's what kind of person she was. She
loved you even though you were a total smartass. You're still a
total smartass, but no one loves you now.
You exhale a cloud of bitter smoke and think about the boy at the
gas station again. You shouldn't have been so harsh to him. He
was kind of cute. But it never would have worked out. You measure
time in cigarettes, and you know that you don't have the
cigarettes necessary to have a boyfriend. You have to go home,
cook dinner, clean the apartment and balance the checkbook, and
then go out to your other job. The job that doesn't pay.
Besides, you know that no frat brother wants a girlfriend who has
to be a mom to a teenager who's really only nine months old.
Kids totter by on bicycles, laughing and screeching as you drive
carefully through the parking lot of the apartment complex. You
envy them. How easy it would be to be eight-years-old again,
before you were the Slayer, before your mother died, before you
lost your passion. No rent to pay, no ATM charges to worry about,
no bill collectors to lie to. Nothing but Barbie dolls and tea
parties, and big dreams that are now dead.
You think that your future is buried in a plot in the Sunnydale
Memorial Cemetery, folded into the hands of Joyce Summers, and
you think that you want it back.
Dammit, the door lock is stuck again. You *hate* it when the
deadbolt gets jammed. Now you have to call the super and make him
come out to fix it, and naturally he won't do it after 5:00, so
you have to come home on your lunch break so that he can tell you
that it's *your* fault. You want to kick the door in, want to
force the lock to work with a blowtorch, but instead, you just
sigh and walk inside.
All of the lights are out, and so that means that Dawn is out
somewhere. You look for a note on the table, but there isn't one.
She's so irresponsible. She has absolutely *no* concept of
dependability or accountability. You understand these things
*very* clearly. After all, Dawn was never screamed at for
misplacing a file or mixing up a "very important" telephone
number. You've been through that shame, that humiliation, that
taut fear of being fired.
Sighing instead of screaming, you place your purse on the table
and watch as the strap comes undone. Again. It always comes
undone. Everything always breaks around you, whether it's the
crappy deadbolt, the prickly plumbing, or the pilot light on the
oven. And you have to pay for everything to get fixed.
You'd pay a million dollars to fix yourself, but there's not a
single person left on this earth who could do it.
There aren't any messages on the machine, and you're relieved and
hurt all at once. Isolation a double-edged sword. You don't want
to be around your college-attending friends because you're so
jealous of their easy lives, but you miss them and feel rejected
that they have stopped calling. You want it both ways. You want
them to love you and beg for you to see them, but you don't want
to actually have to follow through. Eventually, such indecision
cost you all of your friends. They don't know who you are
anymore, and really, neither do you.
You go to the stereo and put in an old CD, something that you
bought when you were still mommy's little angel. It makes you
nostalgic, makes you want to smile and makes you want to cry. But
you do neither. You just light another cigarette and step out of
your fucking *evil* black shoes. Carefully, you hang up your Liz
Claiborne knock-off jacket. You can't afford dry cleaning, and so
you can't afford wrinkles. You change into a pair of ratty
sweatpants and an old tee shirt, and numbly smoke your cigarette.
It tastes like your mother's ashes.
Abruptly, you turn off the CD player. It's making those damned
butterflies jerk around in your stomach. The anxiety, the
nervousness of being trapped; all of it is starting to strangle
you. Your hungry stomach becomes nauseous, and you don't want to
throw up anymore blood. If you throw up blood, then you can't
deny that you have an ulcer any longer, and that means doctors
and doctors mean money. So you grimace and cup your hand over
your stomach, thinking that that will do the trick, and it only
makes it worse.
You turn on the television set, and you remember the good old
days of cable television. Now you have to deal with static
crawling over the screen and four boring channels. One of them is
the Christian channel. You sometimes watch it for laughs, because
there's nothing better to do. It's not like you believe or
anything. Why should you put faith in God? You can't try to
depend on something so unreliable and intangible. You have to
work for yourself, have to do everything on your own, and you
don't have the luxury of asking for guidance or help. But you're
really not in the mood for a good laugh at God's expense today.
God's having his own good laugh at you.
Maybe God should be laughing. Maybe the whole world should have a
big old chuckle because you've fallen so far. You used to be
Buffy Summers, Prom Queen, Head Cheerleader, Campus Queen. Now
you're a receptionist at a law firm, working an eight-hour shift
to keep food on your table, and you're utterly alone. No more
cute little strappy tops and hip-hugging jeans for you. It's all
cheap suits and chunky black shoes from here on out, girlfriend.
You wish that you were old enough for a beer, but then again, you
wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.
Thudding noises come from the ceiling, and you look up at the
ceiling with gritted teeth. Of all the people on the planet that
you hate, you think that you hate your upstairs neighbors the
most. It doesn't matter that you have to manage on three hours'
worth sleep every night. They're all little college boys who
don't pay their own rent, who have wild keggers every night and
who play thumping hip-hop music into the wee hours of the
morning. You throw your fucking chunky shoes at the ceiling, but
they just turn the volume up even louder.
Dazedly, you look around your roach motel of an apartment. You
see the crappy television set that only gets three out of four
major networks, the couch and its stained cushions, the old
computer that you bought on sale for Dawn, and the urn with your
mother's ashes on the mantle.
You have to get out of the apartment.
A note for Dawn is scribbled hastily on the back of an overdue
telephone bill, and you pick up your car keys and slip into ratty
tennis shoes. It's sundown anyway, and there are frozen dinners
in the freezer. She can use a microwave; you have your cigarettes
for dinner. And there's a can of pepper spray and a baseball bat
just in case of an emergency...
In case the world comes crashing down again...
In case Glory finds your new flat and takes away your last family
member...
Oh, you *really* have to get out of the apartment.
Funny, how the Metro hates to be pampered, but loves to be
pushed. It is the perfect vehicle for road rage, and you take
full advantage of that fact. You rev it through its gears,
growling back at the stubborn engine as you burn unnecessary gas.
You want to fly down the streets, want to run over pick-up trucks
and police cars and cute little Volkswagens with happy kids
inside.
Every time you shift the car, you shift out another anxiety. The
damned fax machine that won't take more than one piece of paper
at a time. The phones that never stop ringing wth the damned
clients who don't have problems as important or as dire as yours.
The bank acount with $59.48 in it, and the four days that you
have until you get paid again. The fucking ulcer. The fucking
goddess. The fucking sister.
The fucking urn.
It all makes you so *tired*. Should twenty-year-old girls with
supernatural strength get so tired? You don't know. All that you
know is that it's wearying to deal with everyday life, to have to
bury your anxieties and be strong for everyone else. You have to
smile and be sweet at work in order to stay on the lawyers' good
side. You have to be kind and patient to the clients who scream
and curse about the phone calls that were never returned, even
though it's not *your* job to return them. You have to struggle
to keep yourself from taking out your work-related stress on your
little sister, because she's so fragile now from your mother's
death.
Dusk falls, and this is your hour to be angry. This is your time
to pull the crappy, unreliable Metro off to the side of the road
and throw out the cigarette that you smoked on your way to the
cemetery. You can now unleash your desk rage and your road rage
on demons and vampires, can kill the fucking fax machine with a
stake, can turn your chunky black shoes and your bitter sister
into dust. You step out of the car and into the night, ready to
vent.
You see the vampire who used to love you standing in the shadows
instead. He doesn't love you anymore, the bottle-job with the
feline cheekbones. Why should he love you? You're nothing more
than a girl in a cheap suit. Your hands are callused and your
wrists hurt from taking dictation all damn day. Your posture is
shot to hell from crouching over a computer. You've lost too much
weight, and you stink of cigarettes.
So he just walks away, and you're slightly saddened by your
stalker's rejection. It hurts to know that not even he loves you
anymore.
But there's the hunt. You still have the hunt. You still have
about ten cigarettes to smoke before you have to go home and stop
the hunt, face your little sister who hates you for not being
your mother, and go back to work. So you can lose yourself in
violence, can beat the shit out of whatever you want to, and then
go home knowing that you did it all for the greater good.
No one comes, and so you smoke a cigarette while leaning against
a crypt. You're starting to hate your hair. It's a pest, a
bother, too pretty and delicate, but you can't afford a haircut
right now. Briefly, you contemplate sawing it off yourself, but
then you'd just look stupid and unprofessional. They like your
hair at work. You can't risk cutting it off and losing even the
slightest bit of security.
Your reasoning sucks, and you know it.
It's summertime now, humid and balmy, and you start to sweat. You
think of the beach, where kids your age are drinking and fucking
and having fun, and you're angry because you can't do these
things. You can't stay up late with your friends, because you
have to save the world and then wake up at the buttcrack of dawn
so that you can go to work. You can't make love through the
night, because no one wants a girl with this much responsibility
and this little passion. You can't afford to have a beer or a
joint or a childhood.
It's sad when you can't even afford a little freedom.
The night is passing on, and you start to worry about Dawn. It
happens all the time now. Sometimes, you think that she hates you
for not doing a good enough job, and then you resent her in
return for being a burden. But she's not a burden, and deep
inside, you know that. She's your sister, and you do love her.
You've talked about these things before with Michelle, the
secretary with the daughter Dawn's age, and she understands. You
like Michelle because she has a life like yours. Both of you are
hard and miss being soft.
Is Dawn hungry? Is she cold? Does she have enough looseleaf paper
and is she out of art supplies? How can you get her food and
warmth and education and creativity? How can you get yourself to
a doctor and still manage to give her these things? You know what
no other teenager knows - what it feels like to sacrifice all of
your dreams for the dreams of someone else. You love Dawn like
she is your daughter, and that is what she has become to you. You
have to protect her. You have to smile at her.
You want to go home and be a mother.
It's frustrating to want to be a thousand different people, and
you resent that you can't be everything at once. You long to be
the Slayer so that you can feel the passion of the fight and the
good of the battle. You yearn for the recklessness of normalcy
and youth. You ache to hold your non-sister and never-daughter in
your arms and tell her that you love her. Hell, you even want to
be the good receptionist, because deep inside, you kind of like
your job. And you always want to be these things at the wrong
time.
This is how you are surprised by the vampire that sneaks up
behind the crypt and grabs your arms. Furiously, you kick him
backwards, feeling the strain in your bones and the sour churning
in your stomach. Fucking ulcer. You pretend that the vampire is
your bleeding ulcer and you pummel him with your fists, smashing
your knuckles into his disgusting face. You don't want to stake
him yet, because you're still pissed and you want to unleash the
rage.
It's not a bright move to play with the vampire, and you are
ultimately punished for it when he gets in a good kick to your
aching stomach. The ulcer screams inside of you, and you swallow
vomit. You scream, and it tears your aching throat apart, but
damn, does it feel *good*. The stake draws back, and it
disappears into the vampire's chest, and you are bathed in dust.
It's the best feeling on earth, and it's the worst feeling on
earth.
You have to go home; you've done your job for the night. Dawn is
waiting, and she's probably not happy that she came home to an
empty apartment. She wants her sister. You want your daughter. So
you sigh and swipe at the dust clinging to your TJ Max sweatpants
and thin tee shirt, and then climb back in your reluctant Metro.
"Come on, bitch," you mutter tiredly, listening to the car
sputter into gear. "Let's go home."
The drive back to the apartment is another two cigarettes, and
you are halfway through the first one when you pass by the
college campus. There they are, on a lonesome hill; the friends
that you once had. You pause in a parking space briefly, lowering
your head slightly. Just enough so that you can see them, but not
enough so that they can see you. You want them, you don't want
them, you don't know what you want. You long for their company,
but you don't want their sympathy. You don't want to listen to
their triumphs and their successes and feel ashamed of your life.
Pain more poisonous than any ulcer stabs you in the gut when you
see Xander and Willow laughing together, and it makes you want to
puke blood as you watch Tara and Willow kiss. You want a lover.
You know you're not good enough for one. You're a voyeur in a
piece of shit car and a pair of dirty clearance-aisle sweatpants.
Even if they saw you, they probably wouldn't recognize you.
You catch a glimpse of yourself in the rearview mirror, and you
hate that you don't even recognize yourself anymore.
The drive back to your apartment is quiet now. You don't want to
play any loud, blaring music with raunchy lyrics. You don't want
the world to feel as pissed as you feel. You just feel as sad as
the world is, and as lonely as the earth can be. You are utterly
alone, in your one-bedroom flat with a never-ending stream of
spiders and roaches and mess of unused textbooks in the backseat
of your shitty Geo.
The cigarette is finished, and you start the other one
immediately. One more cigarette and you'll be home, trapped
between four walls, and with about eight more cigarettes until
bedtime. And then, a cigarette before work, and the cycle repeats
itself.
So you just shift your car into third, and you keep measuring
time in cigarettes.
It's all that you can do.
*****
(end)
*****
Sad? Perhaps. But it's what I needed to write. I hope that you
enjoyed it. If you have any comments, please e-mail me at
auralissa@aol.com. :)
*****
AUTHOR: Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: After her mother's death, the burden of responsibility
falls on Buffy, and she can't handle it without the greatest
sacrifice of all - her youth.
RATING: R for language
SPOILERS: Post-"The Body"
DISTRIBUTION: To my site,
http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html, and to wherever
else it is wanted, provided that permission is requested prior to
archival
DISCLAIMER: The characters within this story are the property of
Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions and whatever network
it's going to be on this week. The song is the property of Pulp,
from the song "Common People", and that is from their "Different
Class" LP.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story is sort of autobiographical, and yet
it works for Buffy. I needed to write this, and so I did. I hope
that you don't mind my sharing. Also, this story didn't start out
being told in the second-person (something that I have never done
before), but the viewpoint seemed to work for the story. Thanks
to Heather, for reading this and for editing it, as she always
does so well. :)
*****
Measuring Time In Cigarettes
*****
"Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school"
--Pulp
*****
As soon as you step out of the office and get in your car to go
home, you start smoking, and you eventually start measuring time
in cigarettes.
It only takes one to get to and from work. You can usually
squeeze in three or four on your lunch hour if you are lucky, and
if traffic cooperates with you, you can have an extra one. A
bonus smoke, for putting up with all of the idiots on the road. A
workday is a pack of Marlboros, a Saturday or Sunday is a pack
and a half, and a week is a carton. You can't even begin to
fathom a year's worth of time. How many cigarettes could you
possibly smoke in a year?
You haven't exactly kept count for the past six months.
Tiredly, you put your sunglasses on and start up your used Geo
Metro, listening to it whine and grumble into first gear. "That's
my baby," you mutter to the growling engine, thinking that you
can coax it into operation. Good luck. "Come on, duchess. Get
into gear..." The car finally settles into a low purr, and you
sigh, victorious. Your car started today. Your car's so damn
temperamental; it never wants to start.
You can't quite blame it.
Harsh sunlight pours down on you through the filter of the glass
windshield, and you wince, momentarily blinded by the intensified
light that comes just before twilight. Your eyes hurt, but so
does the rest of your body. Your wrists and fingers ache with the
beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome from constant typing, and
your back screams from the shitty office chair they dumped on
you. The chunky black shoes on your feet are impractical but
pretty, and they made your feet burn when you walk on them. But
you have to look professional in your half-priced suit and your
worn-out shoes that are colored in nail polish rather than shoe
polish.
After all, nail polish *is* less expensive than shoe polish,
isn't it? You can always find less expensive alternatives. It's a
talent of yours. Caffeine swirls in your growling stomach, and so
you try to settle it with a cigarette. Substituting nicotine and
tobacco for solid food isn't necessarily bright, but it is
economical.
Buy a pack of cigarettes for $3.80 and ignore the bright neon
lights of fast food joints with their overpriced "Value Meals",
and you win the financial battle. Drink tons of free coffee at
work and chase it with a Vivarin for added alertness after
getting three hours of sleep, and you can go out at midnight to
slay the demons and still get up at 6:30 in the morning to go
earn your $7.25 an hour at the job that you loathe.
Road construction and a traffic accident. You sigh, leaning back
into the poorly upholstered seat of the Metro, squirming on the
plastic trashbag you've draped across your driver's seat. The top
of your car is leaking and it's always raining this time of year,
but you can't afford to put dinner on the table *and* replace the
top of the convertible. Granted, there's no real point in having
a convertible with a top so broken that you can't put it down and
enjoy the weather, but it was economical at the time and you
didn't need the SUV anyway.
Not even when it was your mother's car. Not even when she is dead
now.
You still have to stop by the post office on the way home and
drop off the office mail. Your crappy 8 to 5 job haunts you even
when you're off the clock. Responsibility is such a bitch, and
you can't help it if you're lying in bed at night trying to sleep
and find yourself remembering a file you forgot to replace or a
message you might have taken down wrong. Such little missteps are
enough to get you fired, and if you get fired, then who is going
to feed your sister and pay your rent?
No one but you. You're responsible for it all. You know it, you
hate it, you crave it. You want another cigarette, and who is
going to stop you? You're in charge now. You can get drunk if you
want to, can smoke a bowl of weed or have a line of coke, or you
can chain-smoke while your sister eats leftover Chinese. You have
the freedom of being the boss; you have no freedom because you
are the boss.
It's all a big old Catch-22, and you're pissed because you had to
drop out of college before you could ever even study the book.
Old books that you never bothered to sell back to the bookstore
litter the nonexistent backseat of the car, and it hurts you to
look at them. You've tried to throw them away, tried to burn your
bridges, but the regret and longing makes you keep them. "I'm not
going back," you mutter to yourself. "I've quit. I can't afford
to take classes and go to work. I should sell the books back to
the store and have a good meal."
Sentimentality bothers you, but you can't help but keep the books
and think about what might have been.
The cigarette is done, and you're saddened by it. You only have
two cigarettes left, and you're pissed off because that means
that you have to stop by the gas station on the way home and walk
another sixteen feet in the cursed chunky shoes. You want a new
pair of shoes, a more practical pair, but you don't have the
money right now. After all, Dawn wants to go on a class trip to
San Francisco in May, and you want her to be able to do such
things. So you suffer on your broken shoes, all for a sister
who's not really your sister.
She's more like a daughter now.
You sometimes think that it's all unfair, that you shouldn't have
to be so stressed and tired and old before you're old enough to
have any legal fun. You shouldn't be a mother at twenty. But then
you tell yourself that you're not special; you think of Michelle,
the secretary who has a fifteen-year-old daughter at twenty-nine,
and you know that she has it harder than you do. You try to
swallow your complaints, because your worries aren't as important
as others'.
But then you think of Pat, the other secretary, who has the
husband of thirty-seven years and the perfect children with
successful jobs, and who takes vacations to Spain at the drop of
a hat. You think of her railing about the sins of the world and
the aimlessness of the current generation, and you want to drive
a stake through her. She doesn't understand you. She has no idea
what you have been through.
Then again, sometimes, neither do you.
Off goes the mail, and out comes the next cigarette. If you're
going to go to the gas station, then you have time for another
one. The gas station is exactly one cigarette away from the post
office, so you're in the clear. Deeply, you inhale on the
tobacco, and think of the beginning ulcer in your stomach.
Smoking is bad for ulcers; you read it on the Internet last
night. God, you love the Internet. It's so much cheaper to go to
the medical websites and self-diagnose rather than spend the
money to go to the doctor, especially when you can't afford
insurance.
Slayers shouldn't have ulcers, you tell yourself. They're not
very helpful when trying to fight vampires. It's not exactly a
good thing when you have to pause in the middle of a fight to the
death so that you can throw up blood. But you know that you're
getting one; that it's the product of too much poorly-brewed
coffee and too many cigarettes.
You should quit. You should take the money that Giles offered and
go back to school, let him take over the funding of your
education, and use the college fund for Dawn. But you can't let
him do that. It's not his fault that your mother died and the art
gallery crumbled. Not his fault that your mother didn't think of
life insurance or financial provisions.
It's not Giles's fault that your worthless father is running
around Europe like that damned bitch Pat does, spending money
left and right while his children starve.
Your fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and you feel road
rage coming on. You *love* road rage. "Get the fuck out of my
lane, you asshole!" you yell over the din of traffic, your window
open and your stereo pumping nasty British pop over the roar of
your crappy engine. "Stupid *bitch*." You hate all of the drivers
on the road, and you make damn sure that the other drivers all
hate you in return.
Gas prices piss you off. It was definitely more cost-effective to
sell the SUV; it ate gasoline. Gasoline is too expensive.
Sometimes, you snidely think about selling the Metro and buying a
golf cart, but your power bill is too high to afford recharging a
little electric piece of crap. Alas, there are no easy answers
for you. Grumbling and grousing, you get out of your car and
refuel the car halfway, so that you can stop and get a pack of
cigarettes with the rest of your mileage check.
Inside, you look at the clerks working the counter of the gas
station, at their dull, bored faces, and you can commiserate with
them. They hate their jobs just as much as you hate yours. You're
polite to these people; you smile for them and they know your
name. Hell, you're in here everyday, buying yourself a cheap cup
of coffee or a pack of cigarettes, and the occasional box of
tampons or bag of chips if you're lucky.
There's a stranger next to you, and he's staring at you. He's
young, probably about your age, wearing Abercrombie & Fitch and a
cute little smile. You used to be able to shop there. You used to
be able to shop wherever you wanted to shop. You could go to The
Limited or Bebe and buy a thousand cute little tops and dozens of
real leather pants, all with chunky black shoes that were
fabulous then and are irritating now. You instantly hate this boy
for being able to do what you can do no longer - have fun.
"We smoke the same brand of cigarettes," the boy says to you. You
don't give a shit. It's the only thing that the two of you have
in common. He doesn't have to go to a nine-to-five job and
sometimes forego his lunch hour to get in that extra seven bucks.
He doesn't have to worry about whether or not his sister will eat
tonight and ignore the pressing concern of his own stomach.
Selfish, spoiled little shit.
"Great," you say coldly, taking your pack of cigarettes from the
clerk and paying her your last ten bucks. It's cold pizza for you
tonight, and more endless coffee. Instant coffee. You fucking
*hate* instant coffee. You give a big lie of a smile to the cute
boy who would not want you if he knew you. "Have a *fabulous*
day."
You don't mean a word of it.
The gas station was out of your way home, so you get to finish
off the pack of cigarettes as you drive back to the apartment.
You had to sell your mother's house, and it kills you everyday.
Your mother loved that house. She decorated it herself with her
silly little ethnic knick-knacks, and you rolled your eyes
everytime she brought home a tacky little statue of a woman with
enormous breasts. "Can't we get more fertility statues?" you
whined to her. "They would balance out all of the fat little porn
stars you've got lying around here."
Your mother just laughed; that's what kind of person she was. She
loved you even though you were a total smartass. You're still a
total smartass, but no one loves you now.
You exhale a cloud of bitter smoke and think about the boy at the
gas station again. You shouldn't have been so harsh to him. He
was kind of cute. But it never would have worked out. You measure
time in cigarettes, and you know that you don't have the
cigarettes necessary to have a boyfriend. You have to go home,
cook dinner, clean the apartment and balance the checkbook, and
then go out to your other job. The job that doesn't pay.
Besides, you know that no frat brother wants a girlfriend who has
to be a mom to a teenager who's really only nine months old.
Kids totter by on bicycles, laughing and screeching as you drive
carefully through the parking lot of the apartment complex. You
envy them. How easy it would be to be eight-years-old again,
before you were the Slayer, before your mother died, before you
lost your passion. No rent to pay, no ATM charges to worry about,
no bill collectors to lie to. Nothing but Barbie dolls and tea
parties, and big dreams that are now dead.
You think that your future is buried in a plot in the Sunnydale
Memorial Cemetery, folded into the hands of Joyce Summers, and
you think that you want it back.
Dammit, the door lock is stuck again. You *hate* it when the
deadbolt gets jammed. Now you have to call the super and make him
come out to fix it, and naturally he won't do it after 5:00, so
you have to come home on your lunch break so that he can tell you
that it's *your* fault. You want to kick the door in, want to
force the lock to work with a blowtorch, but instead, you just
sigh and walk inside.
All of the lights are out, and so that means that Dawn is out
somewhere. You look for a note on the table, but there isn't one.
She's so irresponsible. She has absolutely *no* concept of
dependability or accountability. You understand these things
*very* clearly. After all, Dawn was never screamed at for
misplacing a file or mixing up a "very important" telephone
number. You've been through that shame, that humiliation, that
taut fear of being fired.
Sighing instead of screaming, you place your purse on the table
and watch as the strap comes undone. Again. It always comes
undone. Everything always breaks around you, whether it's the
crappy deadbolt, the prickly plumbing, or the pilot light on the
oven. And you have to pay for everything to get fixed.
You'd pay a million dollars to fix yourself, but there's not a
single person left on this earth who could do it.
There aren't any messages on the machine, and you're relieved and
hurt all at once. Isolation a double-edged sword. You don't want
to be around your college-attending friends because you're so
jealous of their easy lives, but you miss them and feel rejected
that they have stopped calling. You want it both ways. You want
them to love you and beg for you to see them, but you don't want
to actually have to follow through. Eventually, such indecision
cost you all of your friends. They don't know who you are
anymore, and really, neither do you.
You go to the stereo and put in an old CD, something that you
bought when you were still mommy's little angel. It makes you
nostalgic, makes you want to smile and makes you want to cry. But
you do neither. You just light another cigarette and step out of
your fucking *evil* black shoes. Carefully, you hang up your Liz
Claiborne knock-off jacket. You can't afford dry cleaning, and so
you can't afford wrinkles. You change into a pair of ratty
sweatpants and an old tee shirt, and numbly smoke your cigarette.
It tastes like your mother's ashes.
Abruptly, you turn off the CD player. It's making those damned
butterflies jerk around in your stomach. The anxiety, the
nervousness of being trapped; all of it is starting to strangle
you. Your hungry stomach becomes nauseous, and you don't want to
throw up anymore blood. If you throw up blood, then you can't
deny that you have an ulcer any longer, and that means doctors
and doctors mean money. So you grimace and cup your hand over
your stomach, thinking that that will do the trick, and it only
makes it worse.
You turn on the television set, and you remember the good old
days of cable television. Now you have to deal with static
crawling over the screen and four boring channels. One of them is
the Christian channel. You sometimes watch it for laughs, because
there's nothing better to do. It's not like you believe or
anything. Why should you put faith in God? You can't try to
depend on something so unreliable and intangible. You have to
work for yourself, have to do everything on your own, and you
don't have the luxury of asking for guidance or help. But you're
really not in the mood for a good laugh at God's expense today.
God's having his own good laugh at you.
Maybe God should be laughing. Maybe the whole world should have a
big old chuckle because you've fallen so far. You used to be
Buffy Summers, Prom Queen, Head Cheerleader, Campus Queen. Now
you're a receptionist at a law firm, working an eight-hour shift
to keep food on your table, and you're utterly alone. No more
cute little strappy tops and hip-hugging jeans for you. It's all
cheap suits and chunky black shoes from here on out, girlfriend.
You wish that you were old enough for a beer, but then again, you
wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.
Thudding noises come from the ceiling, and you look up at the
ceiling with gritted teeth. Of all the people on the planet that
you hate, you think that you hate your upstairs neighbors the
most. It doesn't matter that you have to manage on three hours'
worth sleep every night. They're all little college boys who
don't pay their own rent, who have wild keggers every night and
who play thumping hip-hop music into the wee hours of the
morning. You throw your fucking chunky shoes at the ceiling, but
they just turn the volume up even louder.
Dazedly, you look around your roach motel of an apartment. You
see the crappy television set that only gets three out of four
major networks, the couch and its stained cushions, the old
computer that you bought on sale for Dawn, and the urn with your
mother's ashes on the mantle.
You have to get out of the apartment.
A note for Dawn is scribbled hastily on the back of an overdue
telephone bill, and you pick up your car keys and slip into ratty
tennis shoes. It's sundown anyway, and there are frozen dinners
in the freezer. She can use a microwave; you have your cigarettes
for dinner. And there's a can of pepper spray and a baseball bat
just in case of an emergency...
In case the world comes crashing down again...
In case Glory finds your new flat and takes away your last family
member...
Oh, you *really* have to get out of the apartment.
Funny, how the Metro hates to be pampered, but loves to be
pushed. It is the perfect vehicle for road rage, and you take
full advantage of that fact. You rev it through its gears,
growling back at the stubborn engine as you burn unnecessary gas.
You want to fly down the streets, want to run over pick-up trucks
and police cars and cute little Volkswagens with happy kids
inside.
Every time you shift the car, you shift out another anxiety. The
damned fax machine that won't take more than one piece of paper
at a time. The phones that never stop ringing wth the damned
clients who don't have problems as important or as dire as yours.
The bank acount with $59.48 in it, and the four days that you
have until you get paid again. The fucking ulcer. The fucking
goddess. The fucking sister.
The fucking urn.
It all makes you so *tired*. Should twenty-year-old girls with
supernatural strength get so tired? You don't know. All that you
know is that it's wearying to deal with everyday life, to have to
bury your anxieties and be strong for everyone else. You have to
smile and be sweet at work in order to stay on the lawyers' good
side. You have to be kind and patient to the clients who scream
and curse about the phone calls that were never returned, even
though it's not *your* job to return them. You have to struggle
to keep yourself from taking out your work-related stress on your
little sister, because she's so fragile now from your mother's
death.
Dusk falls, and this is your hour to be angry. This is your time
to pull the crappy, unreliable Metro off to the side of the road
and throw out the cigarette that you smoked on your way to the
cemetery. You can now unleash your desk rage and your road rage
on demons and vampires, can kill the fucking fax machine with a
stake, can turn your chunky black shoes and your bitter sister
into dust. You step out of the car and into the night, ready to
vent.
You see the vampire who used to love you standing in the shadows
instead. He doesn't love you anymore, the bottle-job with the
feline cheekbones. Why should he love you? You're nothing more
than a girl in a cheap suit. Your hands are callused and your
wrists hurt from taking dictation all damn day. Your posture is
shot to hell from crouching over a computer. You've lost too much
weight, and you stink of cigarettes.
So he just walks away, and you're slightly saddened by your
stalker's rejection. It hurts to know that not even he loves you
anymore.
But there's the hunt. You still have the hunt. You still have
about ten cigarettes to smoke before you have to go home and stop
the hunt, face your little sister who hates you for not being
your mother, and go back to work. So you can lose yourself in
violence, can beat the shit out of whatever you want to, and then
go home knowing that you did it all for the greater good.
No one comes, and so you smoke a cigarette while leaning against
a crypt. You're starting to hate your hair. It's a pest, a
bother, too pretty and delicate, but you can't afford a haircut
right now. Briefly, you contemplate sawing it off yourself, but
then you'd just look stupid and unprofessional. They like your
hair at work. You can't risk cutting it off and losing even the
slightest bit of security.
Your reasoning sucks, and you know it.
It's summertime now, humid and balmy, and you start to sweat. You
think of the beach, where kids your age are drinking and fucking
and having fun, and you're angry because you can't do these
things. You can't stay up late with your friends, because you
have to save the world and then wake up at the buttcrack of dawn
so that you can go to work. You can't make love through the
night, because no one wants a girl with this much responsibility
and this little passion. You can't afford to have a beer or a
joint or a childhood.
It's sad when you can't even afford a little freedom.
The night is passing on, and you start to worry about Dawn. It
happens all the time now. Sometimes, you think that she hates you
for not doing a good enough job, and then you resent her in
return for being a burden. But she's not a burden, and deep
inside, you know that. She's your sister, and you do love her.
You've talked about these things before with Michelle, the
secretary with the daughter Dawn's age, and she understands. You
like Michelle because she has a life like yours. Both of you are
hard and miss being soft.
Is Dawn hungry? Is she cold? Does she have enough looseleaf paper
and is she out of art supplies? How can you get her food and
warmth and education and creativity? How can you get yourself to
a doctor and still manage to give her these things? You know what
no other teenager knows - what it feels like to sacrifice all of
your dreams for the dreams of someone else. You love Dawn like
she is your daughter, and that is what she has become to you. You
have to protect her. You have to smile at her.
You want to go home and be a mother.
It's frustrating to want to be a thousand different people, and
you resent that you can't be everything at once. You long to be
the Slayer so that you can feel the passion of the fight and the
good of the battle. You yearn for the recklessness of normalcy
and youth. You ache to hold your non-sister and never-daughter in
your arms and tell her that you love her. Hell, you even want to
be the good receptionist, because deep inside, you kind of like
your job. And you always want to be these things at the wrong
time.
This is how you are surprised by the vampire that sneaks up
behind the crypt and grabs your arms. Furiously, you kick him
backwards, feeling the strain in your bones and the sour churning
in your stomach. Fucking ulcer. You pretend that the vampire is
your bleeding ulcer and you pummel him with your fists, smashing
your knuckles into his disgusting face. You don't want to stake
him yet, because you're still pissed and you want to unleash the
rage.
It's not a bright move to play with the vampire, and you are
ultimately punished for it when he gets in a good kick to your
aching stomach. The ulcer screams inside of you, and you swallow
vomit. You scream, and it tears your aching throat apart, but
damn, does it feel *good*. The stake draws back, and it
disappears into the vampire's chest, and you are bathed in dust.
It's the best feeling on earth, and it's the worst feeling on
earth.
You have to go home; you've done your job for the night. Dawn is
waiting, and she's probably not happy that she came home to an
empty apartment. She wants her sister. You want your daughter. So
you sigh and swipe at the dust clinging to your TJ Max sweatpants
and thin tee shirt, and then climb back in your reluctant Metro.
"Come on, bitch," you mutter tiredly, listening to the car
sputter into gear. "Let's go home."
The drive back to the apartment is another two cigarettes, and
you are halfway through the first one when you pass by the
college campus. There they are, on a lonesome hill; the friends
that you once had. You pause in a parking space briefly, lowering
your head slightly. Just enough so that you can see them, but not
enough so that they can see you. You want them, you don't want
them, you don't know what you want. You long for their company,
but you don't want their sympathy. You don't want to listen to
their triumphs and their successes and feel ashamed of your life.
Pain more poisonous than any ulcer stabs you in the gut when you
see Xander and Willow laughing together, and it makes you want to
puke blood as you watch Tara and Willow kiss. You want a lover.
You know you're not good enough for one. You're a voyeur in a
piece of shit car and a pair of dirty clearance-aisle sweatpants.
Even if they saw you, they probably wouldn't recognize you.
You catch a glimpse of yourself in the rearview mirror, and you
hate that you don't even recognize yourself anymore.
The drive back to your apartment is quiet now. You don't want to
play any loud, blaring music with raunchy lyrics. You don't want
the world to feel as pissed as you feel. You just feel as sad as
the world is, and as lonely as the earth can be. You are utterly
alone, in your one-bedroom flat with a never-ending stream of
spiders and roaches and mess of unused textbooks in the backseat
of your shitty Geo.
The cigarette is finished, and you start the other one
immediately. One more cigarette and you'll be home, trapped
between four walls, and with about eight more cigarettes until
bedtime. And then, a cigarette before work, and the cycle repeats
itself.
So you just shift your car into third, and you keep measuring
time in cigarettes.
It's all that you can do.
*****
(end)
*****
Sad? Perhaps. But it's what I needed to write. I hope that you
enjoyed it. If you have any comments, please e-mail me at
auralissa@aol.com. :)
*****