Midsummer Night, by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: AtS S2 and S4
Author's note: for the Angel Book of Days summer-challenge
Requirements: Lindsey; darkness; summer; no character death, no rape
Author's website:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Lindsey drove into town late in the summer afternoon, when it was so hot and dusty that sweat stung in his eyes continually and dripped down his face, making little meandering rivers on his dust-caked cheeks. Not even the windshield could prevent the dust from whirling in. He'd tried wearing a handkerchief tied over his face, or closing the side windows, but the heat was too relentless for that. No AC was the price you had to pay for driving a vintage car.
He parked his pickup in front of the old-fashioned looking saloon and stepped down, wishing there were still horse-troughs like you saw in Westerns. He'd have dipped his head in. A couple of oldsters sitting on a bench on the wooden sidewalk cackled and tittered at him, saying things to him, possibly rude, that he couldn't understand because they were chewing something. Cud? Nah, that was cows, wasn't it? He hoped it wasn't chewing tobacco, but when one of the men spewed a brown stream into a bowl next to him his guess was confirmed. They looked like pictures form the fifties, in their faded blue overalls with no shirts on, and wearing hats. Even his Daddy hadn't worn a hat anymore. These small towns were all the same, but as long as he didn't settle in one of them he'd be the perpetual stranger.
"City boy…" he heard. It rankled. For one, he was from around here somewhere, and two, he hadn't seen a city in years.
He went into the saloon, looking for the lady of the house, who'd hired him to play at the Midsummer festival. He came back out again to get his bag and his guitar and carried them upstairs to his room. It was plain but clean, the furniture old, but he liked it better than the string of cheap motels he'd mostly been staying as of late. And even they were better than the back of his truck as his sleeping place. He came back down again. Dinner and beer were on the house, as long as he behaved himself and wasn't drunk when he'd have to play.
He sat in the saloon, waiting for his dinner, rinsing away the dust from his throat with the cold cold beer his landlady Charlene served, and watched dust motes dance in the lowering rays of the sun. People came in, farming people who were tired and sore after a hard day on the tractor; there were a lot of acres of corn to tend to here. People with deeply tanned, leathery faces, the women included. Lots of big hair, not so many fat bellies. People still worked hard here, managing their huge farms.
It was still very hot, even if the rapid Midwestern sunset was falling already. The saloon got fuller and fuller, and Charlene and her daughters were hard pressed to distribute the Midsummer special; something huge involving lots of steaming corn and sausages. Lindsey thought it was too hot to eat much and just ordered a sandwich and a salad.
Charlene Junior shifted her weight to the other hip, and her gum to the other cheek. "Everybody has the special on Midsummer evening, " she protested. "It's really good, fresh corn, a nice big serving. And Jim the Butcher makes the sausages himself, none of your nasty factory stuff!"
When he insisted, his demand was met with deep sighs and mutters, but eventually his order was produced. LA had left its traces, and one of the them was that he could no longer eat as he had in his youth. Spoilt by too much sushi and inventive greenery.
When he was done, he picked up his guitar and strolled towards the festival grounds. Gee, he guessed the midsummer theme must be corn, because it was everywhere. Garlands of corn, heaps of dried husks to burn, signs proclaiming the corn queen was gonna be crowned, the corn dance.
And corny music, he added silently. He had no illusion about his musical prowess, but he enjoyed singing and the slow strumming of chords, belting out the country ballads if he must, but preferring the quieter, softer songs. He wasn't on until after the dance; the festival was an all-nighter, and he was supposed to keep the crowds awake until sunup. As long as they supplied him with sufficient coffee, he supposed he could do it.
He walked on into the deepening darkness until he came to the end of town. The corn rustled and shimmered in the faint illumination of the lilac and red western sky and the crickets chirped away busily. He took a few deep breaths, but smelled nothing special. He crushed a couple of tough corn leaves in his hand, trying to inhale whatever scent was trapped in there, but there was disappointing little sap or smell oozing out. The leaves felt dry and listless and were spotted with a rust-like blemish.
He threw away the balled-up leaves. Every time he arrived in a new town, he went looking for the summer smell of his youth, a smell he couldn't describe, but that was composed of boy sweat, corn dust, ice cream, beer, and something moist that he sometimes supposed must be the unspoilt countryside of yore. Usually he got to thinking about this after a few beers too many, and when he was sober he assumed again it had never existed. Or maybe his nose had atrophied, living in LA for so long. And God knew what he'd stuffed up that nose when the money was rolling in. He shouldn't forget what he'd done to himself.
He turned back to the festival grounds, found himself a place near the platform and a beer, and proceeded to watch the evening's festivities. The whole place was floodlit so brightly it almost hurt his eyes after the balmy twilight in the cornfields. Somebody gave out programs, and he felt he was in for a long evening indeed. Produce contests first. Singing by the local talent. The Corn Queen. He perked up a little at that, but had to admit that even his taste in women had changed on the west coast. He thought she was too plump and her hair too big, and whoever had done her make-up should be hanged. The Oklahoma twang in which she simperingly thanked the local butcher for sponsoring her and the town for her election reminded him for a moment of Cissy Ziegler and the bubblegum taste of her kisses, but it passed quickly.
He thought about women like Darla and Lilah, and what's her name, Cordelia. There was nobody here that looked even remotely like that. He mused on that. Were they a special breed that could only flourish in big cities? Or was it simply that girls like that hot-footed it to the West coast or to New York first chance they got? Like he'd done, really, just on his brains instead of his beauty. Although the Cindys in high school had liked his face well enough. He fingered his nose. A jealous jock had made a permanent bump in it long, long ago. When he was still as innocent as he'd ever been. Well, maybe not so much innocent as unaware of what morals were, what good and evil meant. There was just what you could get away with and what you couldn't.
He waved at the waitress for another beer. It was really the only way to stay cool. Maybe he should have gone to Montana instead; it was rumored that the summer nights there were cold. The dancing began. A local band played with gusto and not much else. The whole town was swinging and boogying their stiff hips until they creaked, and he had to refuse several ladies who were eager to try him out. The square dance they performed was a little disturbing; it was odd and off-putting to see the young people thrusting their hips at each other in a stylize mating dance in this setting, when much more explicit goings on in an LA club wouldn't have merited a glance.
A few hours into the dance and his head was reeling with an overload of noise and sweaty, stamping, twirling bodies. And the beer. They kept supplying him; a surprising row of different waitresses bringing him bottle after bottle, smiling at him with their country teeth, bending over to show their deep cleavages, trying to catch his eye and asking him to dance.
"Hi," another one of them was saying. "I'm Marlene, happy to serve you with our gifts. How d'ya like it here so far? Fun, huh? Wouldya like to dance with me?"
He could hardly keep refusing now, could he? That would look churlish. He was getting paid to be here all evening, and he was part of the entertainment. Stood to reason the women were interested, he was from out of town, a musician.
Lindsey got up and twirled a few rounds with Marlene, or was it Kaylee? Then Brandi and CherriAnne and a surprising Beth. He was sweating like they all were, and he couldn't get over how all the townspeople seemed to be dancing, even the oldsters, pregnant women, little kids.
The beer and the dancing finally started catching up with him; the twirling skirts of the women were turning into whirling colored stars, mixing in with the floodlights and the real stars, which he couldn't really be seeing because of the bright lighting, could he? He was lying on the warm dirt somewhere behind the platform, staring up at the sky and feeling like van Gogh, seeing these dancing dervishes in the sky and behind his closed eyelids and not being able to escape them.
Someone was helping him up. Marlene? He couldn't remember their names. They all looked alike. She cradled his head against her voluminous sweaty bosom and he was surprised at the hot lust he felt rising. Not his usual type, this Marlene. He liked them fine boned and blonde. He pushed the face that rose up in his mind violently away and took Marlene's invitation. It was kind of easy and comfortable that there was no kissing or pretty words necessary. They were just rutting in the good honest farm dirt here in Oklahoma, no questions asked, and tomorrow he'd be out of town.
"Oh yeah," Marlene was saying, "Put it inside me, you're the man tonight, take me and fill me with your seed, oh yeah, do it to me, harder."
He almost flipped at the surprisingly talkative Marlene's mention of seed, but managed to get the job done. After they were done, she lay panting up at him appreciatively and cooed admiring words. He shook his head, trying to clear away the beery mists from his brain, which insisted on finding something sinister in her choice of words. She put her hands between her legs and cleaned off his glistening seed on the earth. Faintly revolted, he mumbled a 'thank you' and stumbled back into the festivities. His place near the platform was still unoccupied, which was damn polite of them. Someone, not Marlene, shoved a plateful of the Midsummer Special in front of him, 'take the gifts of our land', and in spite of the heat and a bellyful of beer he found himself hungrily shoveling it all in.
After several cups of stuff that bore so little resemblance to what Starbucks served that he wouldn't call it coffee, except that there was caffeine in it, he was called in to sing. They lit the bonfire, dimmed the lights a bit, and let him play. His voice was obedient tonight, and his first few notes hushed the crowds easily. It still gave him an incredible feeling of triumph, forcing that alien hand to do his bidding, clumsy and stiff as it had been at first, but almost like second nature, now.
His playing ascended to a level that he only seldom attained. He thought this might be called 'flow', a term found in a LA Times article on a lazy weekend. His voice and the notes from his guitar blended into something better than he usually managed, and it was effortless. The stars halted their wheeling to listen in on it and the rustling in the corn stilled. The townspeople swayed in a colorful mass of bodies and hummed along in amazing tunefulness.
When he took his bow, he had tears in his eyes and he felt humble and grateful to be there, to be able to contribute in such a way to the magic of the evening. Three female figures stepped forward to crown his head with flowers. He bent his head to receive the garland, laboriously kneeling with his heavy body at the feet of the three beauties, his hooves scraping red gauges in the dun-colored mud. The first woman, a slender teenager, placed cornflowers as blue as her eyes on his left horn. The second woman, his weathered iron-gray landlady, straight and proud, set dark violet bittersweet on his right horn. The third one, a tall woman with a beautifully curved figure reached out with blood red poppies in her hands to adorn his forelock.
"Never thought we'd meet again like this," she murmured in her sassy LA voice.
He looked up, and although his eyes were clouded, he had no trouble recognizing his erstwhile colleague from Wolfram & Hart.
"Lilah!" he wanted to say, but only uttered a muffled lowing sound.
"You're beautiful, Lindsey, white as snow. I never imagined you'd be the kind of boy who'd consent to be the sacrifice."
Sacrifice? He turned his great head to the side and saw the townspeople with his myopic eyes, milling around, all armed with big sharp knives and lance-like things. How? What?
"You ate their food and drank their wine, and had sex with the woman they offered you, would be my guess?" Lilah tsked. "You're such a gullible fool. You should have studied the magic part of the firm a little more, boy. Now you're down home and it ain't down home no more, huh? What a shock that must be."
If he hadn't been feeling so sluggish he'd' have taken her on his horns and gouged her open until her entrails spilled out and he could trample them.
Lilah laughed and scratched him familiarly under his chin, her hand disappearing in the great flaps of wattle he had hanging there. His eyes fell on the red necklace she had on. It almost looked like someone had lopped her head off and sewn it back on. Lilah followed his gaze and her hand went self-consciously to her neck.
"I guess you'd be wondering what I'm doing here? Well, you know, there are advantages to being dead. Watching former colleagues get killed is one of them." She smiled an unpleasant smile. She was so beautiful in her Greek gown with her crown of poppies and wheat that Lindsey felt ready to weep.
Lilah handed some kind of curved blade to the waiting Corn Queen and he felt the girl slice his throat with amazing ease. It didn't hurt at all. He felt a great gush of something warm go out of him and saw the earth being splattered with his blood in a pretty circular pattern, and he realized that was because he was swaying his head from side to side, bellowing out his death chant. Softly his head folded on his hooves, and the last thing he saw were the pretty bare feet of the Corn Queen, her lilac toenails speckled with red, receding from him in a great rolling of thunder and a rushing sound.
Lindsey opened his eyes into blinding, burning white light. He rolled to his side to escape the glare and stared at the roll of rope he always kept in the back of his truck. He sat up, which was a mistake. A few deeply unpleasant and humiliating moments later, he stood up on wobbly legs and took stock of his immensely confused, queasy and yet famished state.
He stumbled back to the truck and rooted around in the cab until he'd found the bottle of water he knew he had. It was warm, but tasted like heaven. He used some of it to cool his aching head and climbed out again to check his surroundings. He turned around in a circle and all he could see was the road going west in front of him and east at his back, and on all sides corn as far as he could see. He could still look over the top of the stalks, but there was nothing on the horizon on either side, no trees, no houses, no telephone poles, nothing. Just intensely green corn and bright blue cloudless sky, arching like a bowl over the flat expanse of the earth.
From the angle of the sun he guessed it was still morning, although it was already very hot. The corn seemed taller, as well as greener and lusher than yesterday, every leaf gleaming perfection, no dust or small blemishes, except that on every plant a leaf was broken and brown in the exact same spot. Lindsey touched the invisible, but to his fingertips very evident line where his new hand joined his wrist.
What had happened at the festival? He could vaguely remember playing the guitar in front of enthusiastic crowds, and seeing Lilah Morgan, and something about a bull. He touched his forehead gingerly, but of course there were no horns. Somehow, he had the feeling he was lucky to be alive. And where the hell was he? Where was Elefsis, Oklahoma? He was guessing that way, where the backend of the truck pointed.
Lindsey checked the back of the truck, but his guitar was in there. He hesitated, thought about going back for his fee, but thought the better of it. It seemed wiser to just drive away in the direction the truck was pointed at. He'd end up in civilization somewhere.
The truck started sweetly, and he steered it up the white road that stretched ahead like a ribbon until it disappeared into infinity. He settled in for a long, dull drive, and thought seriously of spending a prayer or two on the need for a filling station within fifty miles, for caffeine, water and gas.
After a while, he began to get the feeling he wasn't alone in the car. He furtively checked out the seat beside him, and the back of the truck in his rearview mirror, but of course there was no one there. He kept getting feelings on and off, the impression that something was lurking at the edge of his vision, only to disappear when he looked straight at it. It was silly to have a notion like that in bright sunlight. If he'd been surrounded by other cars, off-ramps or any other sign of human habitation, he would have shaken the feelings off, but the sense of being surrounded by the alien corn got stronger and stronger. Something was different, and he wasn't sure if it was he or the world.
In spite of these misgivings, the sun and the dullness of the straight road were starting to make him sleepy, just when he saw something in the rearview mirror again. He wasn't sure what he was seeing at first, but then he realized it was a grin, a big wide grin hanging in the air, with no one it belonged to. It tickled his brains, something he'd read about in a book once, long ago, but he didn't know what. The grin moved, contracted, and a small downwards movement of the lips suddenly told him whose grin it was.
His hands clenched tighter on the steering wheel, but his voice was pretty even. "So Lilah, keeping me company?"
She materialized further, cool as cucumber in her pale grey business suit with its short skirt. "Still got your brains, I see," she remarked.
He didn't answer to that, just kept checking her out. It was unmistakably Lilah, down to every little detail. He must be dead, or in another dimension.
"What are you looking at me with these big cow's eyes for, or should l say bull's eyes?" she said, playing coquettishly with her hair.
"Gee, Lilah, better not slay me with your wit while I'm driving," he grunted.
She sniffed. "Well?"
Lindsey decided not to answer her yet. He checked out her neck, which was covered with a prissy little shawl that didn't match the mood of her suit.
"So, if I remember correctly, you told me you were dead?" he asked, eyes on the road.
Lilah sighed. "Yeah. Cordelia Chase killed me, and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce beheaded me."
He remembered these people vaguely; associated of Angel's. "Um, wow?"
A sharp elbow poked him in the side. "Don't wow me. You don't know what you're wowing about. When I became head of the firm, I had to sign a permanent contract. So here I am, after death did us part."
Head of the firm? For a moment he felt white-hot jealousy lance through him, and with a conscious effort clamped it down. He needed to be focused and cool, here. "Um, Lilah, we never…"
"Manner of speech. The backwoods have definitely eroded your sense of humor, Lindsey."
"Sorry." He assumed the dead knew how to recognize sarcasm.
"So, what gives me the honor of your visit?"
"Visit? You wish!"
"What?"
"Never mind. Lindsey, I don't know if you ever thought about it, but death is pretty boring and lonely. The people you knew are revolted by you, and even vampires and former vampires feel too good for your company."
There was an honesty and wistfulness in her voice that sparked his interest for about two seconds. Bitch probably deserved it.
"Oh, gee, Lilah, I'm so sorry about that."
"Well, you will be," she said cheerfully and killed a fly that had managed to stray in. "Aren't you gonna say thank you, at least?"
Lindsey's brow furrowed. "What for? For killing me? This is hell, I suppose?"
Lilah threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, Lindsey, you just crack me up. No, this is only plain old Oklahoma, rural America at its best. When I saw you at the ceremony I was really surprised, you were the last person I expected to meet. I just thought you'd be the perfect person to keep me company, and I substituted someone else for you in the ceremony. You know, like God and Isaac." She shot him a wide smile. "Nifty, huh, the things you can do when you're dead?"
"You saved me? You? I thought you hated me!"
Lilah lifted an eyebrow and stretched out her long legs as far as they could go in the cabin. "You're not wrong."
"Why would you save me then? You sure I'm alive?"
"Oh yeah."
A little blot at the horizon grew slowly in to a small town, existing of a gas station cum diner and a couple of dirt side roads branching off into the corn. Lindsey pulled up to get gas and food, and to his surprise his wallet was filled with his festival fee. He fingered it distrustfully. Best spend it quickly before it turned into dead leaves or something. When he was paying for his purchases, he looked back at the truck, but it was empty. Huh.
He rode off, and sure enough, after a few miles Lilah was back, wearing a sleek anthracite ensemble, even less suited for the summer and the countryside than the last one.
"I guess this is your revenge?" he tried after a long silence.
Lilah didn't seem put out by silence at all. She was sitting even more sprawled than before, her arms behind her head. She'd actually had to undo the button on her fitted jacket. Still with the little silk scarf, though.
"Aw, Lindsey, that is so self-centered of you. You think I've been plotting all this time? Please." She flipped her hair behind her shoulders with a head movement and winced. "I just saw and opportunity and I took it. This act binds you to me until I discharge the debt."
Lindsey's shoulders sagged and he straightened with an effort. "Okay. What is it that you want?"
Lilah smiled and played with the ends of her scarf, holding them out of the window to make them flutter. "Very Bonnie, don't you think?"
Lindsey sighed. "So you want us to rob liquor stores or should I fuck you?"
She pouted. "Such limited options. And you're forgetting Clyde couldn't get it up. At least in Warren Beatty's version."
Lindsey resisted the urge to beat his head upon his steering wheel. Or hers. Only she was already dead. He was sure there was no point.
"Then what?"
"Gonna keep you alive and with me for a long time. I need company, and you're it. How about that? You're my savior from boredom."
The noose of her words slid softly around his neck and pulled playfully tight. He was sure there would be more playing and tightening to come. It wouldn't ever loosen, he guessed.
"Why, Lilah? Isn't living life through me gonna be boring?"
"Not if you do what I want you to! And you know, not as if the Senior Partners keep me hopping. They think boredom is the ultimate punishment. And so do I," she said sadly.
Lindsey stared straight ahead at the pale road reaching out to the horizon. That would be his future, driving for ever on the same road and never getting anywhere. Hell, for sure. He ran his hands through his hair and glanced at his nemesis, who seemed to be staring appreciatively at the green walls they were rushing past.
Lilah really was looking way too smug. What was her game? He'd been the better lawyer, dammit. Smarter, more devious, better able to withstand pressure. She couldn't have forgotten that? If there was a way out he'd find it. No such thing as a permanent contract, there was always a loophole. He set his jaw, and with a last glance at his smiling companion set out to remember everything he'd ever known about contract law and dealings with Senior Partners.
END