A/N: American kids aren't using Brit slang. Toby is British. I thought it was obvious. Everybody else got it…
Spike read over the poem several times. It had taken all day and into the evening to finish it. It seemed it didn't take him that long when he was human.
He could certainly tell the difference between this Velocity girl's writing style and his own. She wrote more philosophically and he wrote more morbidly. He was a little rusty but, hey, what do you want after 100 years or so?
After he was satisfied with all his work, Spike got up from his sitting position on the stone coffin and went to get some blood from his fridge; leaving the poem on the makeshift desk.
" I think I did a bloody good job on that. Gonna get me a flower onion thing to celebrate. Cheers to me."
He grabbed his coat on the way out and made his way to the Bronze.
**********************
Velocity lay flat out on her bed. She had run straight home and was steady screaming the entire time. Her throat hurt and her legs were tired. As soon as she reached her home, she burst in the front door, ran up the stairs, shut the door to her room and pushed her dresser up against it.
She was now lying on her bed; staring at the ceiling. That man was scary. She didn't even know if he was a man. He looked like a monster. And the way he was coming at her and the way he looked, she just turned tail and ran out of there.
She didn't even know she could run that fast. But she high-tailed it out of there. Just thinking about that face and that man made her shiver all over again.
Velocity turned over and looked to her cat. He was asleep in the corner; curled up in a ball. She sighed; at least someone would be resting peacefully tonight. She'd be having nightmares and probably have them all the way through 2nd period.
" Then there's homework…Oh crap!! I left my backpack in that crypt!! And I need those books and my notebook! Crap, crappity, crappy, crap it! I'm so stuck!"
She was beginning to panic. She left her backpack in a crypt, she had so much homework to do, her poems were in there, and school property was in there. If she didn't get that back, she'd be in so much trouble.
" Oy, Hwoarang, I gotta get back to that crypt."
*************************
So there Velocity was. She was walking cautiously through the cemetery; trying to find the crypt she had walked into by mistake. She needed her books and especially her notebook badly.
Sneaking out of the house had been easy enough. Her mother and father were fighting. Again. For what had to be the third time since that morning. They wouldn't notice if an H-Bomb dropped on the town. Her father would be too busy beating up her mother to notice the explosion.
Velocity shook her head vigorously to get rid of the images that threatened to appear and spotted the crypt she had been looking for." There it is. Just get in, get out, and go home."
She calmed herself down and prepared to enter. She hoped that thing was gone now. Maybe it was at another crypt or it only appeared in the day. Didn't matter, she wouldn't stay around long enough for it to yell at her again.
She opened the door quickly and walked in. After entering, she paused and waited for the yelling to start. But it when it didn't she opened her eyes and looked around.
The place was empty.
So Velocity decided to get started and get out of there fast. First she had to find her backpack.
" If I were a backpack in a crypt, where would I be? At home cause I would have found me already. Where is it? Alright!!"
She spied her neon yellow backpack on a bed in the back. The bed was made up with red silk sheets and looked like it had been slept in recently.
Come to think of it, this whole place looked lived in. There was a TV and an easy chair near the door, a refrigerator in the corner, liquor bottles strewn about, a pack of cigarettes here and some butts over there. Someone definitely lived here.
" But why?"
Why would someone want to live in a crypt? Why not a house or an apartment? Well, it wasn't her place to judge. Someone lived there so she'd just try not to disturb anything.
" I think everything's all here…Hey! My notebook's gone! I gotta find it!"
Velocity began frantically searching through all the things around the crypt. She climbed into the bed and searched through it, she looked in the easy chair and under it, she looked near the fridge and near the TV, but she couldn't find it anywhere.
Sighing in defeat, she leaned against the stone coffin and panted from her laborious efforts. " I'm never gonna find that thing. I've been looking for…"
She trailed off as she looked behind her, atop the stone coffin. Her notebook was lying right there. Open to the page where her poem was. And there was more writing on it. It wasn't even in the same color as she wrote in.
Curiosity getting the best of her, Velocity picked her notebook up and read over the poem in its completed form. She had to admit, it was good; albeit gruesome and morbid, it was still good. Poetry was poetry.
She hopped up on the stone coffin and read over it again. She liked it. She didn't know who wrote it, but she liked it. " Wow, this is good. The style is melancholic, yet it expresses a certain pain and arrogance along with the sadistic harmony of sadness in the way of life."
Just as she was about to put it away and get out of there, the door flew open. In the doorway stood the same 'thing' she saw earlier that day.
" I knew I smelled a 'uman in me crypt."
Velocity couldn't even begin to scream, nor could she think to run this time. She was just frozen in place by the thing's evil yellow eyes. " I…I…I…"
" I'll 'ell ya wha' ya betta do. You betta run as far away from 'ere as ya can or I wager you'll never see the light'o day again."
Velocity nodded and gathered her things and made a break for the door, but the thing grabbed her arm as she passed." Where do you think you're goin' with that?"
She clutched her notebook." It's mine. I'm Velocity Voorhees."
He raised a dark brow." Are you related to Jas-"
" No. I'm not. Can I go now?" She asked meekly.
*******************
Spike smirked. This human was afraid of him. Man, how long had it been since someone was afraid, truly afraid of him. Felt bloody great! Almost made him want to try and bite her, but that would lead to head trauma, so he wouldn't go there.
" Just a sec. Did you really write that poetry?"
" Uh huh. I did. Please don't kill me."
He nodded and let her go." Sod off."
She didn't need to be told twice. He almost laughed as she stumbled up the stairs. She started out the door like a frightened rabbit. But she paused halfway out the door. " Um…excuse me?"
He made an irritated noise." What?!"
" Did you finish my poem for me? I mean, not that I don't like it. It's really good, albeit dark, but it's good. I mean I can feel the pride and the misery in your words. You write in sadistic harmony."
Spike scrutinized her to see if she was lying. He didn't hear her heartbeat accelerate anymore than it had been. And she didn't seem like she was mendacious. Someone truly enjoyed his poetry and understood what he expressed through words. He honestly thought it'd be too complicated for anyone to get, but she got it.
After the short silence, he answered." Yea, I wrote it. You really like it?"
" Oh sure! It's great. I mean, our flows are different, but I don't think I'll change it. Unless you want me to. Oh, wait, you wanted me to leave. I'm going, sorry about all this!"
With that she got went out the door and disappeared among the headstones. Spike was sure he heard her running her way home. But he didn't care. He plopped down in his easy chair and relaxed his face into a smirk.
Someone was finally giving him credit for his poetry. And someone finally took him for the evil creature he was.
" About bloody time."
