She can feel the
emptiness of the house from the sidewalk.
Dawn stops walking
and gazes at the house, mentally chiding herself. She can't feel an
empty house, and anyway, Willow should be home.
She walks up
the driveway and twists her key in the lock.
"Willow?"
The
house sounds eerie in its quietness; the silence almost sounds like
little whispers. And Dawn knows she is truly alone when those
whispers start to hiss sweet nothings into her ears.
There is
a note on the front table. It is light yellow with a daisy border,
covered with Willow's flowing handwriting.
Dear Sweetie,
it starts out. Damn Willow and her pet names.
I'm out
working on (there is a scratched out word here) some stuff. I
won't be home till later, and neither will Tara. Spike will be
coming over as soon as it gets dark. I'm so sorry that no one's
here right now, Sweetie. There's some turkey in the fridge, make
yourself a sandwich. I rented a video last night; it's on top of
the TV. I know you'll be fine. No leaving the house!
-Willow"
Damn
you," snaps Dawn as she rips up the note. "You know I don't
want to be alone!" she screams into the silence.
She
glances at the clock. Two more hours until it gets dark and Spike
will show up and she cannot visit anyone. She is trapped in the
house, alone. This is the first time since her death that she's
been alone for an extended period of time. Willow must think that she
is doing better, otherwise she would have never left her
alone.
Almost drawn against her will, she drops her bag on the
floor and starts to climb the staircase. She walks down the short
corridor and opens the door to Buffy's room. It was still untouched
by their hands; they had not packed anything away.
It was like
a shrine for Buffy, one people visited and paid their respects every
once in a while.
You still miss her, says a little
voice she has been hearing for weeks. You want to see her again,
don't you?
Every time she has a few seconds alone in the
bathroom, at night before she falls asleep, when she is walking to
school, she hears soft whispers; commenting, questioning, observing
and irritating.
They are gentle voices, loving and kind, and
they make her want to do terrible things. She still has half healed
slashes on her arms from the last time she listened to them. She is
probably schizophrenic, but she does not intend to tell Willow this
anytime soon. If she wants to kill herself, and her inner voices are
expressing this desire somehow subconsciously (she got this from a
psychology book from the library) she has every right to do so. Buffy
had died for her, it's all her fault; for being so careless, for
being such an annoying brat sister, for letting bad things happen,
for existing. She feels so empty inside, and why not? All she was
made for was to contain a mystical power and now that power is gone;
she's just a shell.
She drags herself out of Buffy's room
and heads downstairs to the kitchen. She switches on a radio to try
to drown out the silence and the whispers.
Dawn takes the
turkey out of the fridge and plops it down on the counter. She
searches the drawers for a knife to slice the turkey with. She is
about to take a regular kitchen knife until her eyes fall onto a huge
carving knife. She drops the small knife and picks up the carving
knife, entranced by its sleek silvery sharpness. Then she trudges
over to the turkey and begins to slice. It slices easily, sliding
into the flesh like putty. She watches the knife neatly slice the
turkey and her finger.
"I just want to diiiieeeee,"
wails the radio, tuned to some death rock station. The music does not
help very much, she thinks as she stares at her finger. It is just a
flimsy cover for the silence.
The blood drips all over the
turkey, making it very unappetizing. She can feel her heartbeat in
her finger as the blood gushes out of her finger with each
contraction; it is a very deep cut and she probably needs
stitches.
Doesn't that feel good, letting all the tainted
blood drip away? murmurs a voice.
"Go away!" she
screams at the voices. "Go!" Then her voice gives out,
swallowed by the silence. She throws the radio on the floor and it
continues to play, but it is broken up and filled with static
now.
"Die...for...me," croaks the radio.
She
spots a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, but when she
whirls around to confront it, it is gone. Then she turns around and
Buffy is standing there.
"Buffy!" She has found her
voice again and she screams as loud as she can. Buffy is all bloody
and bruised, the way they found her on the floor after she
jumped-
"Dawnie," murmurs Buffy as she fades
away.
"No! No! No!" she shrilly cries.
How
many ways can you find? asks a voice. Do that; she'll come
back then.
Dawn does not know what the voice is talking
about, but her eyes fall on the drain cleaner on the floor and she
knows what it wants.
How many ways can you kill
yourself?
She is crazed and she turns around and knocks
over a chair. She finds lighter fluid on the drier and knocks it
over. The matches are back in the kitchen and she drops them on the
floor. She grabs all the knives in the drawers and throws them at the
wall like darts. She scatters pills all over the living room floor
and rips the cord out of the TV.
Very
good.
That snaps her out of it. Oh my god, what is she
doing? Her finger is still bleeding and blood is smeared all over the
walls. She runs to the phone and picks it up. Willow, she will call
Willow. Willow will make it stop, it will be okay...
"Willow,
Willow, pick up the phone," she sobs.
"Dawnie, why
are you crying?" asks Buffy from behind her.
Dawn drops
the phone and lunges for Buffy. But her sister's body is
insubstantial like a wall of smoke and she crashes into a
counter.
"You're a ghost," whispers Dawn.
"Not
really," says Buffy. "I'm just not entirely here."
She holds out her hand. "Are you coming with me?"
"Where?"
sniffs Dawn.
"Up there, silly! Coming?" says Buffy
cheerfully, like she isn't dead and is suggesting they get pizza
and rent some funny movie to laugh to death over. "Aren't you
coming?"
Aren't you going?
Buffy
disappears as suddenly as she arrived.
"Buffy, come
back!" screams Dawn.
"Hurry up, Dawnie, I can't
wait all day!" comes Buffy's voice from thin air.
She
tries to run. Anywhere, somewhere, nowhere but here. But she trips
over the bag she had dropped on the floor and the TV cord twists
around her ankle.
She drags herself back up and limps into the
kitchen, the cord still wrapped around her foot. She unwinds it and
holds it up.
"If you'd like to make a call, please hang
yourself and try again," says the dead operator's shrill voice
from the hanging telephone.
It is a good idea. She grabs a
chair and stands on it so she can reach the fan. Then she drapes the
cord around it, tears streaming down her cheeks and her hands shaking
spastically as she ties a tight knot the way the voices tell her
to.
"Come on!" says Buffy's voice again. She
finishes forming the noose and drapes it over her neck.
But
she can't jump. The floor looks so far away and she is scared of
heights. She remembers the tower, how high it was off the ground and
how Buffy jumped and fell a long long way down.
Buffy
jumped for you, reminds a voice.
But Buffy jumped for her,
and she should jump for Buffy too.
The soft voices all blur
together in their urgings for her to jump and end it all, to be with
Buffy.
Dawn is just about to take the noose off when Buffy
appears again, right underneath her.
"Jump Dawnie, I'll
catch you, even though you couldn't catch me," she says.
It
will be all right; Buffy will catch her, she dimly thinks.
And
so she jumps.
Buffy disappears the moment she steps off the
chair and in the last brief seconds she hears the voices rejoicing.
Buffy is rejoicing along with them.
"You told her to die.
Good job guys, she's going to be dead soon. " says Buffy.
And
then the cord goes slack.
