-1PROLOGUE

A roar can evoke so much. Like the roar of that guitar. I loved it. It sent a vibration down my spine every time I heard it. The glide of the string that signaled the opening credits of the greatest television show that was ever produced on network television history: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I'm Rachel. I'm 21 years old. I attend the University of Michigan and I'm the head resident at the Honors Dorm. Which naturally renders it's own Geek Squad as is per usual with any honors dorm in the national organization of university networks. This particular quorum was compiled of 10 of my nearest and dearest, who agreed with me on the complete relevance of "Buffy" within the mainstream of the often times too dull, desensitized, and under dramatized world. We were the cult kids who make the Trekkies look tame. And were damn proud of it.

"I don't know where John could have left them, Kim," I said into the tiny cell phone that sat across the room on my nightstand. Speaker phone was the best part about that annoyingly small and all too easy to lose contraption. I was frantically trying to rid the living room of the illegal beer that had been not so absently left after our last B-Verse meeting. Yes, I was the head resident, I never said I was any good at the job. How they let a klutzy disaster with a vast need to please everyone she came across into a position of responsibility was beyond me. "Did you check Becca's room? From the noises coming from the shaking walls, I'm assuming they're still fucking harder than gay cowboys." Unfortunately for John, it appeared that he had been responsible for taking Kim's Season 3 of "Buffy" back to her room and had neglected to do so. Having an IQ of 154 didn't weigh the scales of common sense, which would soon be knocked out of his head if Kim didn't find what she was looking for within the next nano-second. Being a box set though, were it not returned within the reasonable time limits, no one would judge her if pools of blood were found outside the overly manga decorated door the next morning.

"I spent 50 fucking dollars on that thing and if there is even so much as a scratch on one of those discs---" I barely heard through the speaker as I wiped the last beer spill I could find on the wooden coffee table.

"You'll filet him and serve him to Wicked Willow on a tree stump, yeah, I get the urgency here," I finished for her. I tossed the last paper towel and swiped the light as I picked up the rose colored phone from it's resting spot. I shut the door behind me and locked it as I heard Kim finish,

"Nice visual, thanks for making me feel like a dumb ass."

"It's what you get for buying the shit right after release date from Suncoast," I said as I strolled down the hall to my room, "I'm telling you, Amazon has much better deals."

"Yeah, and then wait two weeks after hoping and praying that the dumb ass I'm buying from doesn't scam me and actually ships the shit," Kim resolved bitterly.

"Relax," I said with a small smile, opening the door to my room, "I'm sure they'll turn up." Stepping in, I flung myself onto my bed, not necessarily a hard task with the tiny size of the resident rooms. Seems like the fucking moguls wouldn't spend the money to make their geniuses comfortable if it meant that the football team had to play with anything less than the latest in equipment. I'm still wondering how they wrote off new Ferraris as "equipment."

"Are you going to the Finite lecture tomorrow?" I heard Kim question through the line.

"Only if Seth's class gets out early enough," I replied, "and what are the chanced of that happening?" Seth was my asshole of an acting teacher. He sure as hell did all he could to make sure I quit the acting program. Being told you'll play every "mother role after 40" but not having a career until then always did wonders for my self-esteem. Needless to say, the guy was rat shit.

"I'm glad I got out of that department while I still had half a brain left."

Wish I could join her sometimes.

"Listen," I interrupted, before the "you're bigger than this shit hole anyway, don't let it get you down" speech took flight for it's thirtieth journey, "I'm hitting the sheets, I'll see ya tomorrow."

"Cool, bye."

"Bye."

That was that. I shut my phone and flung it under my bed. Hopefully the damn thing wouldn't ring again until morning. Exhaling a long sigh that was followed by a grunt, I willed myself over to my closet where I changed from the t-shirt and jeans into my boxers and wife beater. I looked down at my attire as I secretly thought, 'look at yourself, no wonder half the Student Staff thinks you're a dyke.' Then I remembered the hot kiss that was shared by Willow and Tara at the end of season 6 that we watched last week as a smile came to my face. 'Well,' my though concluded, 'in certain cases it wouldn't be so bad.' I shut my eyes and groaned. 21 years old I felt like I was 41. College was taking it's toll on me. In every way possible. But no way to face the music any louder until tomorrow. So to speak.

I stumbled over to the conjoined bathroom I shared with Rowena. Rowena who spent every night over at her boyfriends dorm across campus. Something that really wasn't supposed to happen, but as long as she took our her dirty tampons every month, I was willing to overlook pretty much anything. As I switched on the mirror, I caught a glance at myself in the mirror. My makeup had started running again. Why did no one tell me these things? "Change dyke to uber-dyke," I corrected as I moved towards the sink.

After a rigorous tooth brushing, face washing, self-checking and self-hating of my face and body I headed back to my room. I knew I was attractive. I had a good body, a pretty face, amazing eyes, and I was fucking amazing in bed, but that didn't seem to stop it from wearing on me that something big was bothering me. Trouble was, as trouble always seems to be, I didn't know what it was. As I crawled into bed, I adamantly decided that these thoughts were too big for my head at the moment. Words like 'trapped,' 'anxious,' and 'confused' were a little too wordy for this braniacs vocabulary for the rest of the night. Yet even after I turned off the lights and vowed to not think about them anymore, they morphed into thoughts that were supposed to have vacated the premesis. Maybe these words were why I had wanted to become an actor in the first place. Why I dove into obsessions like Buffy. Maybe I just needed something to happen that would create that...roar. Something to make things tremble and quake and all the things that rhyme with those words that mean "big noise." Maybe I needed an extreme case in my life....or perhaps, I myself needed to be that extreme case. Yeah...me.

I'm not sure what happened next. But something did happen. Something of the extreme case variety. Something extreme happened when I woke up the next morning....in a bed that wasn't mine.