Breathing, Living, Grave
by thedtree
Feedback: Yes please! mayathewillowtreehotmail.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. So not mine. ME owns.
Summary: A short ditty. Buffy wakes up in her grave. PG, but depressive. Set during 'Bargaining'.
Hands banging. No one was there, this wasn't the usual knock on the door, where some one would answer. One could say no one was home, but then it was she who had lived here, she who wanted to come out. Breathing was difficult, new to her lungs, rushing like waves, washing over her mouth, throat, anything it could touch. Colliding painfully inside of her. Yet she needed it now, this new sensation, this old rhythm. In, out, in, out and no one could stop her, as she banged her hands strongly against the walls.
In, out, in, out. Gotta remember that. In, out, in, out, and her hands became violent, her actions franatic. Head spinning, hair in her eyes. So much hair, matted with dirt, everywhere. Breathing became more difficult as the air was lined with dirt, spectres that she new she'd never get out of her lungs. Stained, as her banging became frenzied, until the crack came, a simple sound of wood breaking. And then there was more dirt, enveloping her head, going up her nose and into her mouth. Her mouth tasted like ashes, old, forgotten ashes of cigarettes smoked long ago.
Air? It was air, lined with the earth but still beautiful air. Gasping, she remembered the old rhythm. In, out, in, out. Again, and again, and again, and nobody could stop her as she reached out into the night and crawled out of her own grave.
Her hand first, herself later. It was a sadistic imitation of vampirism, only hers held nothing but life at the otherside. She didn't understand that, not then when there was so much dirt in her mouth, not then when her hair had flung in her eyes and it had begun to sting. The tunnel she had created by force wasn't wide enough, and later on at night she was hit with a bitter thought- birth. This was her birth. Welcome to the world, Buffy Summers, is what the banners would say. Welcome back.
But she had no thoughts now, as none were capable to withstand the confusion and terror she felt as she pushed her head out. Glorious air, now at full force, now lined with nothing except for the depravities of human behavior that had lingered after war and everything else people had created. Birth, the thought spat into her head, later on. Why would anyone do this to a child?
Her body now, freed from the earth, shaking with tremors that her mind didn't recognise until the world shook like an earthquake. Her legs, pushing out, kicking out, and her hand reached for grass to hold herself, to pull herself that last bit out of the home they had put her in.
For all her trouble, for all the pain, there was nothing but the world to come back to. At night, when pretending to sleep, she'd go into the grave again. She'd forget how to breathe, and welcome the dirt in her mouth. She's die a bit more, every night, in her bed.
At night, when she had fallen asleep, was when she dug herself out again.
And when she woke up, she was alive.
Fin.