Warnings: explicit language, non-explicit references to rape and incest
Disclaimer: Angel is the intellectual property of Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, Mutant Enemy, The WB, and a bunch of other people who aren't me. I make no profit, monetary or otherwise, from this exercise in creativity.
May 1989
"I swear, I could kill him!" Lilah exclaimed, throwing open the gate to her backyard. She angrily slammed her calculus book onto her picnic table and sank into a chair with a huff. "I just... ugh!" She snatched a pen from her book bag and threw it at a tree for good measure.
"He's unbelievable!" Lilah's classmate Annie slid more gracefully into the seat across the table, her brown eyes flashing with anger. "He's a slimy, spineless little cretin. Don't you wish you could just squash him like a bug?" Annie asked, emphasizing her question by slamming her fist into her palm.
"God, I'd love to put my fist through his face," Lilah fumed. "I mean, when we had sex he could barely find my vagina, and he could supposedly tell whether or not I was a virgin? Fucking prick." Her rant over, Lilah sighed and dropped her head into her hands. "I hate him."
Annie nodded in commiseration. "He's pathetic. You're so much better than him, Li."
Forming tears began to prick the corner of Lilah's eyes. She kept her face down and hidden in her hands, too ashamed to let Annie see her cry. "Am I, though?" she asked. Her voice wobbled slightly, and Lilah mentally cursed herself for falling apart in front of someone else. "He told me that he loved me, that he wanted me."
"He lied to you," Annie said matter-of-factly. "He's a man; that's what they do."
Lilah laughed darkly. "I've known that for a long time now, Annie," she said, and she suddenly felt like she might throw up. "I knew, and I still believed him."
Annie scooted her chair around the table so that she was sitting in front of her classmate. "He told you beautiful lies, Lilah, things that he knew that you wanted to hear. That doesn't make you pathetic; it makes him a low-life weasel asshole who can't get a girl without trickery and deceit."
With one last sniffle, Lilah lifted her head and wiped her eyes. "Thanks," she whispered, squeezing Annie's hand. "God, I just..." Lilah looked around her minuscule backyard and at her family's tiny house; chips of paint were flaking off the siding and onto the un-mowed lawn. Not for the first time, she felt trapped, claustrophobic. "I can't wait to get out of this hellhole. In three months, I'm leaving this shit town. I'm going to Columbia, and I'm never coming back to Virginia, or the South, ever again."
Annie smiled. "I don't blame you. I've only been in this town for a week, and I already hate everyone here, aside from you."
"I'm getting out of here," Lilah reiterated angrily. "No more fucking Kevin Jordan, no more Amy Bianchi and her army of skanks, no more Mr. Pearson grading down my arguments in government class just because I'm a girl and I don't worship Ronald Reagan, no more of my dad — three more months, and I'm gone."
A strange look passed over Annie's face. "You don't like your dad? I didn't know that."
Panic seized Lilah. It was one thing if Annie saw her crying over some jackass boy, but this? She quashed her fear deep into the pit of her stomach and arranged her face in her best poker face. "He just... we don't get along, that's all."
"That's a shame," Annie replied, her slightly narrowed eyes belying her conversational tone. "He seemed really nice when you introduced me to him. Very affectionate."
Lilah felt a wave of nausea rip through her stomach. Suppressing the urge to gag, she responded in a clipped tone, "Yeah, well, we just don't see things eye-to-eye very often."
Annie nodded. "Yeah, my dad can be the same way sometimes, too. It sucks." She fiddled with her necklace, a thoughtful expression on her face. "You know what really sucks, though?" she asked, her tone serious. "Kevin. I wish we could teach him a lesson, don't you?"
Lilah sighed inwardly, relieved that their conversation had veered away to safer territory. "Tell me about it. Kevin, and all of his geek friends, and that whole popular circle that they worship — I'd like to make them all suffer."
A sudden grin spread across Annie's lips, and the teenager leaned forward conspiratorially. "Maybe we can. We could come up with some sort of plan for revenge, or something. What do you want to do?"
Frowning, Lilah began to think. She'd gone to school with these people for nearly thirteen years now, and she'd never been able to say or do anything to wound them. "I don't know. I just wish that I could—"
It was strange; Lilah was certain that she somehow sensed the hand moving through the air toward her a moment before it came to rest on her shoulder. She let out a strangled noise of surprise.
"Easy there, Lily. I didn't mean to startle you."
Lilah jumped out of her chair immediately and pressed her back into the picnic table. She glowered at her father, rage seething beneath her skin. How dare he come here and just grab her, with no warning, as if she were his property?
"Good afternoon, Annie," her father said pleasantly, smiling at the other brunette. "How are you doing?"
Lilah noticed that the smile had disappeared from Annie's face, only to be replaced with a darker, unreadable expression. "I'm fine, thanks, Mr. Morgan," Annie responded.
Mr. Morgan turned back to his daughter. "Sorry again about that, Lily," he said, his voice still full of laughter.
Lilah clenched her fist; he was always doing this, turning something into nothing and treating everything as if it were a game. "It's not funny," she hissed.
Her father just laughed louder. "Oh, sweetie, yes it was. You should have seen how high you jumped!"
Fury began to boil in Lilah's belly. It was all too much — Kevin's betrayal, Amy's taunts, and now her father and his stupid face and laughter and his entire existence. Normally, Lilah would have been too afraid to talk back to him, but hatred and anger were surging through her veins like a drug, and Annie's presence was making her feel bold. "Would you just shut up? This isn't funny!" she shouted, stepping forward. "When are you finally going to get that?"
Lilah's father raised his hands in an apparent gesture of peace, but his eyes had grown cold and hard. "It was just a little prank," he placated. "I wish you could just learn to take a joke, honey."
He was doing it again, grinding Lilah and her feelings down into insignificance with a friendly grin on his face. God, how she wanted him to suffer, to bleed, to scream. "And I wish you were dead!"
His lips began to curve into a smile, but halfway through the motion they froze; his eyes grew large as a quick succession of unidentifiable emotions flashed across them, and then they just... went dark. Something in them disappeared, and then slowly, over what felt like a lifetime to Lilah, her father crumbled to the ground.
Lilah became completely paralyzed; neither her mind nor her muscles seemed able to function. All she could do was stare at her father, his limbs a heap in the too-tall grass.
"Dad?" she finally whispered once she remembered how to use her voice. She made no effort to touch him. "Daddy?"
He made no movement; his eyes were still open, empty and glassy, and then it hit Lilah. Panic sprang up within her. She didn't know what to do, or how to do it, and oh God, her daddy was dead, and she hated him, but she didn't want this!
"Annie?" she cried, panic seeping into her voice. She turned toward the other girl. "Annie, what do I—"
Lilah froze in horror. Annie's youthful, friendly face had transformed into something so grotesquely pale and veiny that at first Lilah didn't recognize her classmate. She backed away in a hurry, accidentally stumbling over her father's outstretched arm.
"Who are you?" Lilah gasped. "What did you do to my father?"
Annie smiled widely, revealing a row of brown, rotting teeth. "Now, now, I can't take all of the credit, dear." Lilah flinched at the sound of her voice; it was low and gravelly, unlike any human voice she'd ever heard. "I just made your deepest desires come true."
Lilah grabbed her head, pulling at her hair. "I didn't ask you to do this!" she cried. "What have you done?"
"You wished it," Annie laughed. "I just made it reality."
Her own words suddenly floated back to Lilah, ringing in her head: And I wish you were dead. She looked down at her father's body and clutched her stomach. "Oh God," she murmured. Flicking her gaze back to Annie, Lilah rushed forward in desperation. "I didn't... this isn't what I... please, take it back! You've got to undo it! Please."
Something in Annie's hideous visage twitched, and then her face was normal again. She looked at Lilah with what appeared to be sadness and pity in her eyes, but when she spoke, her voice was hard and jaded. "Listen, kid," she began, "normally, I just grant wishes for the carnage; I don't really care how the girl feels about it. But with you..." She paused. "I've done you a favor, okay?"
Lilah's mouth dropped in disbelief. "You murdered my father!" she shrieked, nearly hysterical. "I've got two brothers, and my mom... oh God, this is going to destroy her!"
"Maybe," Annie mused. "He was destroying you, though."
Lilah grew very still, her heart racing in her chest. "What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn't know, couldn't know — no one could know!
Annie shook her head. "His smiles and jokes were all a mask, weren't they? He hurt you." Her voice grew soft, though the hard edge remained. "He hurt you like no father should ever hurt his daughter, right?"
"Shut up!" Lilah roared, pressing her hands to her ears. It would be bad enough to have anyone find out the secret she'd fearfully guarded for so many years now, but Annie? For the first time since elementary school, Lilah had thought that she'd met someone who could be her friend, but now... it felt like her head was going to split in two. "Shut up, you don't know anything!"
"No," Annie sighed, clearly annoyed with Lilah's denial. "No, I've only been at this for a thousand years. I know nothing." She sighed again, and then her features softened. "Look, I understand that you're traumatized, so for your sake I went easy on him. He died quickly, and with relatively little pain. There's no blood, no mess; they'll think he died of a heart attack."
"But I just said it without thinking!" Lilah sobbed. "I never asked you to do this!"
Annie looked at her piteously, and Lilah felt sick again. "No, you didn't. But you wanted me to."
"No!" Lilah cried. "I wanted to kill him myself!"
Lilah wasn't sure where the words had come from. She'd just felt them burning in her throat, like magma, and then they'd spewed forth like some sort of primal, uncontrollable force. Once her words had sunk in, their meaning registered, Lilah clapped her hands over her mouth. She looked down at her father's body slowly with wide, horrified eyes.
"Well, well, well," Annie chuckled. The grin that she wore on her lips almost seemed too evil to grace a human face. "That is an interesting twist. If I'd known that, I never would have stepped on your toes." Annie opened her hand; Lilah knew that it had been empty earlier, but now there lay a small, golden trinket, along with a scrap of yellowed parchment. "This talisman will summon my boss, D'Hoffryn. We're a... a family, of sorts. We grant vengeance to the scorned. Once you've had a chance to calm down and think clearly, use the instructions here to summon him. Tell him that Anyanka sent you, and he'll take you right under his wing."
Lilah's head spun; her mind was all a terrible jumble, and nothing was making sense. Annie — Anyanka, whatever she was — offered her the talisman and its instructions, but Lilah shoved her hand, knocking its contents into the grass. "Get away from me," she hissed.
Without warning, Annie's face changed and twisted again into something horrible and furious. She grabbed Lilah by the throat and pulled her closer so that their faces were inches apart. "Don't you dare try to pretend that you're better than me, little girl," Anyanka spit out. "As it turns out, you and I aren't all that different after all." She released her fingers, and Lilah gasped for breath as she massaged her bruised neck. "Be seeing you," she smirked, throwing Lilah one last look of contempt. A light breeze wafted the blades of grass, and suddenly Anyanka was gone, as if neither she nor Annie had ever existed.
The talisman remained, though, right at Lilah's feet. She picked it up and examined its weight and shape in her hand, wanting to focus on something, anything other than her father's corpse.
Slowly, so slowly, she turned around. The body was still lying in the grass, growing colder by the moment; his eyes were still open, yet saw nothing. She gripped the talisman in her hand and felt it cut the skin and draw blood.
What would happen to her family now? Factory work didn't earn her family all that much, but her father's wages had been easily twice of those that her mother's job as a secretary brought home. God, Mama loved Daddy so much — how would she ever survive this? And her brothers — they might be adults, technically, but most months they could barely make ends meet. What would they do now?
Still, Lilah could not make herself feel sorry that he was dead. She realized that she would never again have to worry about his sneaking, roaming hands, and she felt relieved. But beneath the relief, and the fear, Lilah felt... disappointment. Dissatisfaction. The dreams of revenge to which she'd clung every night for nearly six years were gone, destroyed. Lilah would never be able to come back ten years from now, dressed in splendor and adorned with pretty things, and show her father how, in the end, she'd triumphed over him and his ugly lies. She'd never be able to make him pay, make him bleed and choke on his own sobs, as he'd once done to her.
A shiver ran down Lilah's spine. The wind whispered through her hair, making ripples on her father's shirt. Blood dripping from her hand, she stood, stared, and did not move for hours.