TITLE: "Normal again" (7/8?) part III
(Because of length, cut in three parts.)
AUTHOR: Richard Bachman
EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com
SITE: nope
FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!
DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.
WARNING: Skip this chapter if your fainthearted.
SUMMARY: based on episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in a mental institution.
THANK YOU: For your patience. I love to write, but unfortunately, I also have to do other stuff for a living.
ACT 7: Back from hell and here again.
SCENE 7
There were things in life that weren't quite that easy for me to understand anymore ever since I had found myself a reluctant citizen of Sunny D's residential home for basket cases. My memories had to be one of them. Ranking high at the top of my list of soddin mysteries that is the burden of being mister William August Byron. If I were indeed the vampire called Spike I once had so firmly believed to be, I shouldn't be remembering anything, shouldn't be evoked to certain feelings of melancholy when observing these silly family snapshots. Shouldn't recognize the old folks in the pictures to be my dear mom and dad or remember that warm summer day back in '90, when my parents took us to Lake Michigan to spend the holidays. And that photo with my brother Liam in a yellow ducklings swimming gear, raising two fingers to form rabbits ears above my head shouldn't had brought a smile on my face.
But it did.
"Do you remember that we went swimming, and mom told us to stay in the children's area?" Liam asked, his eyes hopeful. We were sitting around the table in the tiny visiting room, my brother and I. A pile of photographs was spread out on the table.
"Yeah." I said, brushing through a series of photos. " It was daft though. The water in the deepest spot didn't even come up to my chest. You could hardly call it swimming. It was more like waddling." I opted. "And we were dipping in yellow kiddie pee. That place was for babies and toddlers."
"So you convinced me that we should swim out into the lake. Get past the orange safety line and try to get to that rack that was floating right in the middle of the bay."
I nodded, the memories of that day flooding in like a rich, heavy fluid pouring into a glass of water, sinking into the bottom of my awareness, feeling so very real that I had no trouble letting it displace the memories of other, much darker days.
"I thought that it would be a laugh. All the older and cooler kids were there, and I was almost twelve. I figured I could swim thirty feet into the open without cramping out in panic." A grin crept up my face. "Guess I was wrong eh?"
Although he rolled his eyes, his widening smile and the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes reassured me that his annoyance was only badly faked. "Will, you started to panic as soon as you couldn't touch the bottom anymore. I got the scare of my life when I looked back over my shoulder and saw that you were gone with only your pale little arms sticking above the water. "
"I almost drowned." I uttered, and closed my eyes for a sec. Although it had happened more then a decade ago, the panic of that moment, of not being able to breathe and the sensation of sharp cold water penetrating my lungs, the stinging in my nose and the noise of rising bubbles rushing my ears, stuck out in my memory, forming a recollection that was as solid as a rock and as clear as the soddin lake itself. Why did I remember this now? Why couldn't I remember this yesterday or the day before? Did that car accident have something to do with it? Wipe my memories clean, locked them up in a dusty closet in the back of my mind, till my dear brother here was so kind to open them for me with his treasured stack of family snapshots, making me remember how it was to live this normal life of a normal kid who had grown up into a not so normal bloke. Well, not in the mental-department at least. After three months of relentless therapy, I wouldn't dare to even give a second though of me being an evil blood thirsting vampire. That chapter had passed. I had given up on it, although I had troubles adjusting to my new role being the pathetic nut of the loving Byron family.
My head buzzed, as if it had just become heavily loaded. Somewhere in the dark, a small part of me was objecting to the invasion of these light, warm, and very forceful recollections, and clung desperately on the last bits of insanity that was left; mental images of blood and death and sin that was supposed to be worth a century of time in the life of a ruthless vampire, but had proven to be nothing more but my own sweaty delusions at the end. My hands shaking, I covered my eyes and tried not to listen to the merciless throbbing in my temples.
"Will, are you all right?" Liam asked. He sounded awfully concerned and I cursed whoever was supposed to be up there and had decided to make my life a living hell for letting my brother care for me this much. I couldn't hate him when he was kind to me. When he was also Liam as much as he was Angelus. Bloody hell, now I was letting him screw with my mind as well! Soon there would be nothing left of me but a bloody appendix attached to the poofter's cock. Some mindless idiot that opened his mouth and swallowed on command. Such a pathetic, fucked-up mess I was.
"Will? What is it? What's wrong?" I heard him push back his chair, the legs scraping on the tiles and walked over to me, his steps wary. I flinched as if struck by a blow as he placed his large hand on my shoulder.
"Please Will." His voice was calm, masking his anxiety underneath. "Tell me what's wrong. I want to help."
I swallowed hard. Tears stinging my eyes as I looked up and gazed at his grim expression. "You saved me that day. You saved me from drowning."
"I did." Liam said. A small smile crept up his face, lighting up the bleakness in his eyes. Hope tends to do such silly things to him.
"I don't want to remember it." I uttered. Distress clouded my judgement, loosening my vigilance around my brother that had been up and running ever since the first time Angelus came out to play. But I couldn't help it. My heart felt so heavy that I thought that it would bloody well sink to my toes if I didn't throw this out of my system. Tell my brother to stop torturing me with this before he drove me into complete madness and I ended up strapped in a straightjacket for the rest of my miserable life.
You could say that I was pretty much like a soddin elephant hopping on a minefield.
"I don't want to know how good you've been to me!" I hissed, anger rising like bitter bile, desperation choking my throat. I grabbed a couple of photos from the table, my hand clawing on them like a vulture holding on a dead furry animal. Liam's eyes widened in horror as I started ripping them into pieces. "I don't wanne remember how mom used to bake cookies with us at Christmas or how dad used to turn our home into a ghost-palace to scare to crap out of our friends at Halloween. I don't wanne know how much they loved me before each of them died." My vision became blurry as my fight against my tears left me defeated. "I don't wanne remember my family. They're gone now. All gone. There is no one left but me."
"What are you talking about, Will? I'm not gone. I'm still here for you! Please don't do this to yourself." Liam stuttered, no longer trying to sound calm. He stared at me with eyes wide in shock as if I had gone mad, or madder.
"Oh, you are gone too." I said. I licked my lips, tasting salty tears. "Only you don't realize it yet. Please, stop torturing me like this. Just -just leave me alone. Don't try to make me care about you. Let me remember all these things that you ever did for me. We can't be brothers anymore. Not without you driving me to the point of snappin."
"But-But why? I don't understand. What-What have I done, Will? Tell me what have I done!"
I rolled my eyes, aggravated. The dull throbbing in my head had become a mad pounding, but it almost seemed merciful compared to the agony and frustration I felt, the crimes my brother had committed becoming more painful every minute past as memories of our shared childhood filled my heart with love and respect for him. It hurt like hell.
"Why-" I managed to say, although my voice was barely more but a whisper. "Why can't you just stop caring about me? Why won't you just let me hate you?"
"Because I can't." He crouched down beside me. His hand on my shoulder trembled. "I can't let you hate me. I can't let you slip away. We're family, Will. The same blood runs through our veins. Nothing in this world is more important to me then you are."
His words hit me hard in my sub-consciousness and sent shivers down my spine. I had heard them before, in another time and perhaps in another world, and I knew what worth they were coming from him. I wanted to jump up out of my chair and call him a bloody liar. Wanted to break something, trash the room and scream my lungs out. But I was hurt and undone, and all I could do was start sobbing like a child.
I slipped off the seat, my body weak and cold. I wanted to hide away somewhere dark, curl myself into a tight little ball, put this ugliness all far behind me. Instead, I crawled under the table, pulled my legs up against my belly and pushed my knuckles into my mouth, biting on them till I had the coppery taste of blood on my tongue and my sobs were muffled into soft whines.
Liam looked at me, his restless eyes showing endless pity and the corners of his mouth were strained, and trembling. "Please tell me what's wrong, Will." He uttered, his own emotions barely under control. "I beg you. Please tell me what's going on. I can't bear seeing you like this."
I gazed up at him, this man who was supposed to be my brother, my family, my blood. My mind was numbed and my resolve was broken, tired of fighting a brawl that was already lost. I didn't want to lie to him any longer to keep myself safe. Could no longer deny myself from facing the truth either. Angelus had done something to me that could never be undone. He had taken a part of me, a part of my being that I needed to be able to trust and care about others, and had turned it into something ugly. My emotions were so fucked up now that I couldn't distinguish seething hatred from true love and even if I did finally acknowledge it, this supposedly pure and upright virtue was constantly tainted by a haze of blinding jealousy and became eventually poisoned by my own selfishness.
Angelus was a soddin monster with a capital M, and he taught me well.
I loved my brother, I really did. He was a kind and selfless guy who wouldn't hurt a fly and wished nothing but to see me happy. I got a head- full of memories to proof that. But I had to tell him about Angelus. Perhaps he already knew. Like I told you, I was having nightmares confronting him about his nasty evil twin. Perhaps he didn't know or he just pretended he didn't so he could live with it. It wouldn't matter. I just wanted to get it over with and had this burden off me before Angelus came back to finish his job on me.
Swallowing hard, I gathered the last bit of courage that I had left and told him what was on my mind.
"You - You hurt me. You let him hurt me."
Liam's face paled, his mouth dropped open as if I had just shoved an icicle through his heart.
"I never - What do you mean? I don't understand. I would never, never hurt you - "
"Not you. Him. Angelus. It was Angelus. Every time you came for a visit. He appeared and - and - "
"Angelus? Who is Angelus? " There was a spark of terrified recognition in his eyes. "Him. You don't mean - No, Will. No! That's not possible!"
"It was him. You lost control over yourself a couple of months ago and when you did, you became him. He tortured me, Liam! I couldn't fight him off. Believe me, I tried but he was stronger then me. I couldn't stop him."
"No! No! No! That couldn't have happened. I haven't had a blackout in years. You must have dreamed it! You must have been delusional! There's something seriously wrong with you, Will." He stood up again, looking down at me, a sane man who had observed his brother's madness in its full ludicrous glory and was absolutely horrified and disgusted by it.
"Why are you doing this to me, Will? I only want you to become better again, for things to go back to normal between us. But you keep making up all these terrible things about me."
"I'm not lying!" I yelled through my tears. "You have to believe me, Liam! He was really here, and - and he raped me! He bloody raped me!"
Liam shook his head in dismay. "Lies William. All lies. You're very sick, my little brother. I had hoped that these three long months under Dr Summers' care would have helped you to recover from your madness. But it only gets worse." He sagged over, leaning with his knuckles on the table, his expression grim. "Perhaps I should have listened to Dr Walsh after all. She told me that your condition was far too severe to expect any improvement when I continued to allow Dr Summers to put you in social therapy."
A wave of panic hit me when he dropped the name. Walsh, I knew her. Skinny dried up old hag with a heavy scent of antiseptics lingering around her permanently. I only met her once as she brushed by in the corridors while I was on my way to group therapy, and she had eyed at me with a sort of unsettling predatory covetousness. And Buffy had mentioned her once or twice, used her as a boogieman to scare me off when I misbehaved myself, although everything coming from her pretty little mouth was as much threatening to me as a basket filled with fluffy kittens.
The thought of being subjected to Dr Walsh on the other hand, did easily scare the crap out of me.
"What do you mean?" I muttered, lips trembling.
Liam loomed over me, tall and massive, as self-assured and unyielding as the real Angelus would have been, addressing this ungrateful, lunatic childe. His hands slipped into the pockets of his dark coat where they formed bulges under the leather, as he bald his fists. His nostrils flared with every breath he took and a paralysing cold sunk into my stomach when the last sane part of my mind reminded me of how painful it was to have his knuckles bruising my skin and creaking my bones. How much brute strength could surface in this man when he was in rage and how weak and defenceless I myself was at this very moment.
I didn't dare to look into his eyes. Afraid to see that his soul had fled the place and the monster had already taken over control.
"Christ Will. I don't know how to say this, but -" He sighed, his voice dangerously calm. "It's time for you to face the facts here. You just can't keep blaming me for everything what had happened to you. I am not the one who's mad, William! I'm a sane, healthy man. You're the one who's suffering from delusions, from the ridiculous idea that you're a century old vampire called "Spike". " He spat the name out as if he was tasting something vile. "You made up this entire world where people are constantly bugging you, misunderstanding you, and casting you out like a fucking pariah. And still, you can't help yourself from fleeing back into this hell you've created and turn your back on the people who truly loves and cares about you. Why Will? Why do you want to torment yourself like that?"
I couldn't speak, my tongue useless, my mind gone. All I could do was weep with hollow eyes and shake my head feverishly. Staring at him from down on the floor like a sinner begging to his God almighty for forgiveness. His hands slipped out of his pockets and smoothened his hair. A pained grin appeared on his face.
"And then you invent this vampire character called Angelus. A ruthless, evil man that you hate and loathe and spends every breath cursing him till you almost choke in it. He looks like me, sounds like me. Tell me Will, do you really hate me so much that you have to make him up to hurt me? Because if you did, congratulation on a job well done." His voice sounded sarcastic, angry, hurt. It added guilt to my growing collection of maddening emotions that were ripping me apart. I continued to shake my head, terrified that he wouldn't listen, that he didn't understand that I was only trying to warn him. I wasn't mad at him. I didn't hate him. He was the only family I got left.
And Angelus was taking him away from me, wiping him out before my very eyes. There was nothing I could do about it.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I blurted out with a voice so weak that it was barely audible. The cold inside of my stomach gushed through my body and I hugged myself, trying to find some warmth and comfort. "I didn't mean to - Please - Please, you have to believe me! I'm not lying to you! I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy!"
My body started rocking back and forth as I hugged myself even tighter. My heartbeats drummed in my ears and the noise was soon accompanied by a dull pounding when I hit the back of my head against the wooden table-leg repeatedly. My glossy eyes pleaded with him to understand. "I'm not crazy, Liam. I'm not crazy - I'm not crazy - I'm not crazy -"
I had to admit that I must have looked rather unconvincing.
Liam crouched down beside me again. His features gentle, composed. He raised his arm and placed his hand on my damp face, wiping some of the tears and sweat off my cheeks and stroking back wet strings of hair from before my eyes. I breathed in deeply trying to calm myself, as even these little gestures of kindness was threatening to bring me to tears.
"Poor William. My poor little childe. So very confused."
I froze, the words hitting me like a cold gush of wind on the first proper winter-day. Panic caught me by the throat, choking the air out of my lungs. Inside my head I could hear the last bit of reason slam the door behind him and lock up the place so that the terrible nightmares lurking in the dark couldn't get out to wreck havoc. The problem was that the wanker had kind of forgotten to let me out first.
"Angelus?" I whispered, my eyes set in an expression of pure horror and disbelief.
A demonic half smile crept up his face that looked downright horrendous with the caring look he gave me, as if some part of Liam was still in there somewhere, trapped inside with that monster. His grabbed me by my hair and yanked my chin up, making me stare right into his eyes. They were blacker then night, his pupils lost in pools of darkness.
"So you figured it out at last. What took you so long? Too busy with brawling your eyes out, Will?"
"Liam - Where is Liam?" I stumbled, feeling smaller and more helpless by the minute.
"He ran with his tail between his yellow legs as soon as you told him about our weekly rendezvous. Nice guy, that Liam, never much of an open-minded fellow though. I guess you've scared him off with your little confession." He gave me a huge grin, exposing his teeth like a shark would, right before he took a bite out of your soddin legs. "May not be back for a seriously long time. Heck, who knows, perhaps this time you really blew it and he's moving out permanently, leaving me in charge." He raised his other hand and pinched my nose in an almost affectionate kind of way as if he was trying to charm a child. "That means that I'm gonna be in charge of you too, my dear little brother."
He tugged me up, pulling me by my nose, pinching hard enough to give me a nose bleed. He tossed me over the table. I hit it with a wheeze and my hips struck painfully on the sharp edge. I struggled to get back up, but the crushing weight of Angelus' body pushed down on my spine and the back of my neck as he forced me down with his knee and hands. The pressure on my chest pushed the air out of my lungs, and the flat wooden surface stung in my ribs.
I was trapped, unable to move or defend myself like a wriggling rain-worm strapped under a giant microscope for him to toy, probe or cut open. My heart quivered. Fear blinded my every thought and paralysed me as it had done so many (too many) times before when I was left at the mercy of this ruthless man. He leaned forward, his mouth brushing my neck, breathing on my skin with his hot breath.
"And so it ends." He whispered in my ears. He unbuckled his belt and zipped open his pants, crushing me with his weight. "Just like how it had once begun. Me, on top. You, at the bottom, helpless, weak, a rotten pile of misery. Face it, Will. You're mine. I broke you centuries ago. You don't think a little mind trip into whatever alternative reality you've created can stop me from claiming you?" He hissed, baring his teeth in a furious snarl. "Nightmares don't just stop haunting the weak because you've decided to pretend to be someone-else, someone stronger. Someone you're not. You cannot outsmart them or fight your way out. Sooner or later, they will get to you eventually. And when they do -"
He yanked down my pants and knickers, and a sudden cold struck my flesh as my arse became exposed.
"They gonna make sure that your life turns into a living hell."
I trembled out of shame and fear, the knowledge of what he was going to do to me wiping out every thread of resistance that I could have offered. I bit on my lower lip and pushed out ragged breaths between my sobs, praying that it would be all over soon.
You would think that after so long, it wouldn't hurt that much anymore, but it bloody well did.
He slammed his cock inside of me. I could feel it, hot and hard, tearing my innards as it pushed through with the vindictiveness of a punch in the stomach. Pain seared my body, dry as a bone as I was when he forced himself on me. My stomach banged on the table with every violent thrust that provided him pleasure and caused me agony, while shame crept up my tears stained cheeks.
I had lost everything. My brother. My will to fight. Perhaps even my ability to reason. No sense of self-worth was left in me. Everything was so fucked up, and there was no way out of this hell because it was real. It was reality. Angelus was right, I could pretend to more then I was, hide myself behind a brave façade, a different name perhaps, but eventually, the monsters would smell my fear and find me. Rip me apart. Tear me to pieces.
I was beaten, lost in darkness. My will to live gone. Nothing Angelus could do or say could ever affect me anymore. I just didn't seem to care what would happen to me after all this. I had hit rock bottom.
He used me as it pleased him. His cock growing harder with every demeaning act he forced me to perform on him, with every pain that visibly struck me as he tortured my flesh. It didn't matter anymore. I took everything he bestowed on me, letting him rape my body and poison my mind. I was no longer there. The lights were still on and the kettle was boiling over, but the owner had left the building, witnessing his own predicament though a window of blurry tears.
If it wasn't for what he had said just after he had pulled his cock out of my gob, I might had stayed in that cocoon state forever. Letting him do these horrible things to me, while I was condemned to spend the rest of my life behind padded walls.
"You know, Will. I look at you right now, and I'm amazed. I never would have thought that you would be given up so easily. This whole alternative reality thing has really driven you around the bend." He swapped away a pale string of cum dripping down the corner of my shivering lips while I kept staring up at him, meekly. "I'm not complaining here of course. That must be your best blowjob ever, especially if you include all the times you tried to bite off my nuts as some kind of revengeful foreplay. Although it might be that I kinda miss the old fangs scraping part." He traced his fingers over my face, and then pushed his thumb into my mouth, I closed my lips around it and suckled on it, my body reacting on impulse in a way that had been beaten into me a long, long time ago.
The monster smiled, Sylvester grinning on his Tweety-bird. "Such a good lad you are. So very obedient. Just like a fucking dog. And this the result of what? Three-four months of psycho-therapy under Dr Buffy's maternal care? Christ, I would love to see what a whole year under Dr Bitch's Spartan treatment would do to you." He giggled gleefully." There would be absolutely nothing left."
My eyes grew wide in frenzied horror, and Angelus stared back at me, cocking his head to one side and showing me that predatory grin again.
"You don't think Liam is going to leave you to Dr Summers are you? Don't be so naïve, Will! Not a chance after what had happened today! The poor guy thinks you've snapped out completely. Lost every bit of trust that he had in seeing you getting better under her care, although it wasn't much to begin with. It's just taking too long for him. Didn't he tell you that he came here a day earlier to speak to Dr Walsh? He's arranging to get you transferred into her ward. She's gonna get to you, little brother, like a hungry shark closing in on a piece of wriggling bait. I'm afraid it's bye- bye Dr Buffy and say hello to a bit of old fashioned treatment, something to flash the madness out of your mind, so to speak."
The message hit me like a bomb. Gone was the sense of numbness, of deadness that had allowed him to use me like a helpless, worthless being. Buffy, he was going to take her away from me. He was going to hand me over to that cold-hearted bitch-doctor who was going to lock me up into solitary confinement for the rest of my life. No chance of seeing Buffy again. No one left to give me comfort, no kindness or love to chase away the darkness that was threatening to engulf me.
No hope that everything would eventually turn out to be all right.
Angelus kept looking at me as if he was studying an amusing new species of bug, something vulnerable and revolting like a worm or a maggot, something easily squashed.
"Ah, don't look like that, Will. You know it's not my fault that it has to end like this. You only got yourself to blame here. If you've acted a bit saner around Liam, perhaps have acknowledge him as your brother, he wouldn't have ended up asking me to help him out. Honest Will, that tongue of yours isn't really connected to your brains, is it?"
A bitter anger rose inside of me and filled my mouth with the taste of copper. What right did he have to tear her away from me? Buffy's presence was the only thing that I had in my miserable existence that made me wanne live. Without her constant support and care, I would have slit my wrists months ago. He could not take her. I wouldn't let him. I forced myself to take control again, stop my wracking sobs and to draw in slow steady breaths, swallowing my fears.
"You can't do this." I said, voice trembling. "I need her. I need her more then anything else. She's the only one who keeps me sane around here."
"Well, looks like she's not doing a very good job. You know, I think I kinda agree with Liam. You've become beyond pathetic, Will. You used to be a predator, a killer, now look at you. You dropped all the way down the food-chain. Even grass can kick your ass now."
"I don't know - I don't understand why you can get here. You don't belong here. You're not real!" I said, louder now. "There was no Angelus. There had never been an Angelus. There are no such things as vampires."
"Oh no, you're right. And Steward and company aren't really demons, they're just special in a very freaky sort of way." He chuckled maliciously. "Tell you what, if Liam decides he rather doesn't come back from his vacation to the far boundaries of insanity, I'll help you out. Tell Giles that I'd rather have you transferred to Dr Walsh's care immediately. That pretty blond thing isn't good for you at all."
I let out a ragged roar, a primitive, maddened scream as white hot anger hit and blinded me from my fears and anxiety. I jumped up, faced my tormentor and drove my fist at him. I hit him hard, crunching my knuckles on his jaw and sent him reeling over, crashing down on the table. He snarled at me, his features twisting in pain, a rich trickle of blood down ran his chin. Although I was a bit amazed that I had pulled it off to hurt him, I didn't give him much time to recover from my lucky shot.
Snarling like a furious dog, I drove my elbow on the back of his neck, just before he could struggle back up. He screamed in pain, and slammed back on the wooden surface, cursing me for all that it was worth.
"You treacherous, poisonous childe!" he roared. "I'm gonna make you pay for this. I'm gonna make you pay for this dearly. You're never gonna see that little bitch of yours ever again!"
I swallowed hard. Wicked evil vampire or not, he really shouldn't have said that.
"You are not taking her away from me!" I hissed, as fury drove me to violence, a fury so scarlet and bright that I could hardly believe that it had been inside me for all these months. My hands grabbed something nearby, one of the chairs made out of massive heavy wood, and raised it above me head, ready to smash in his soddin skull. Pounding in on this monster's ribs, creaking his limps and pulverizing his flesh till he was no more then a bag of skin covering ruptured organs and broken bones. Images flashed through my mind, dark, violent and wicked. I've done this before. I had tortured and maimed and killed without remorse. Taken revenge on others for less then what I had to endure today. I could do it again.
I could kill him.
I could kill him before he murdered the last bit of humanity that I had left.
The chair came down before my eyes. There was a noise coming from my back, and then a scream. Hands wrapped around my wrists, strong hands that pulled me over and drove me off balance. The chair came down, smashing on the table and sending bits of wood flying through the air. The back of the chair broke off, and left a deep pale dent in the polished surface, barely an inch away from Angelus' head.
"NO!" I screamed, thrashing my legs and arms around like a professional nut when strong arms wrapped around my waist and dragged me away from him. "NO! You've got to let me kill him! He won't let me live! He won't let Liam live!"
"William!" Mike shouted. "Calm down!"
"He's a bloody monster! God! Can't you see that? A monster! A ruthless, murderous monster!"
"He's your brother, Will! Look at him! He's badly hurt! You have to calm down!"
I screamed as I went down. My arms were forced on my back, held sturdily in the hands of the broad orderly. I struggled, fought him with a strength that came from a mad mind, my eyes bulging and white rimmed. Although he had more then a good twenty pounds of muscle weight over my skinny form, my crazy strength tipped the scale and I managed to roll over to one side, slamming Mike against a corner. He hit it with his back, painfully.
"Dammit! Greg! Barry! Someone! I need help! He's losing it!"
Frantic footsteps followed, after which more hands reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me down to the ground. My right cheek slammed on the tiled surface, muffling my screams. Someone straddled me from behind and sat on my legs. A knee was pushed in my back and a hand forced my head down. From the corners of my eyes, I could see one of the orderlies stick a syringe with a thin needle into a small bottle of clear liquid and fill it up, and my mind went completely crackers.
"NO!!! Don't stick that thing in me!! No!! Please! I'm telling you, I'm not crazy! I don't wanne get jabbed with that!! Stay away from me!!"
My pleading didn't help of course, why would it? Mike had my arms locked in his sturdy grip and my left sleeve was tucked up. I felt a cold hand on my upper arm before the needle went in. Warmth spread under my skin, numbing warmth that was almost comforting. I wheezed and sobbed, the strength fed by the rage and panic that had soared through me leaking out of every cramped and aching muscle, leaving me weak.
I didn't had the energy left to blink or close my eyes, so I just stared out, exhausted from emotional and physical abuse, Mike and another guy I didn't know by name squatting down bside to keep an eye on me while the others helped out Angelus. He wasn't much hurt, this monster wearing my brother's face, only a superficial cut ran from under his right eye to the hollow of his cheek. He looked as if he had just awakened from a bad dream, brushing off his face with trembling hands, his tan as pale as a sheet of paper. When he saw me there, curled up on the floor like a wounded rodent, his eyes grew wide in disbelief.
By the time he staggered over to me, his shoes dragging over the tiles, my vision had already blacked out and I had drifted off to someplace else.
SCENE 8
I welcomed the darkness that had come to me like a dear old pale. My aching body ached no more. My troubled mind finally found some peace. There was no pain, no distress, no memories. It was only William on standby mode, period.
But of course that happy moment wasn't meant to last.
When I woke up, I smelled something sour, something rancid enough to make me wanne puke my guts out, again that was. I was lying down on a soft surface, but my limps were not restrained as I had expected them to be. I moved them, frantically, struggling against invisible hands, which seemed to be everywhere, grabbing me by my wrists, my ankles, pushing me back on my chest. Unlike Mikester and company, they weren't quite that strong and I easily fought them off, pushing them aside, while yelling out in a loud, hectic voice coming from deep down my throat. Voices came, female and male, screaming and yelling at me, almost sounding as hectic as I did.
"Stop this Spike! You crazy vamp! Stop trashing around!"
"Xander! You've to hold him down, he has to finish this antidote to fully recover!"
"Yeah, as if I can hold him back! Look what he has done to Dawn! Why did that freaking chip of him didn't give his brains a good fry? Is it busted or anything?"
"He didn't mean to hurt her! The chip won't go off when he has no intention to harm anyone."
Although I dreaded it, I opened my eyes to see in what kind of hell I once again had ended up.
Alexander Harris and Willow Rosenberg were hovering around me like angry hornets. Harris had me pinned down by my wrists and sat on my legs, securing me on the bed. Red was balancing a plain mug with the hardly amusing print "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" in front of my face. It was half-filled with a gooey black fluid that smelled like the London sewers after an outbreak of stomach-flu. Red held me by my chin.
Just my luck. I get abused by a gay version of count Drac the Horny and my crazy feeble mind responded with a free trip to this self-created hellhole.
"Get off me!!" I yelled to the imaginary witch and whelp. I knew better then to acknowledge that they were really there. Took me bloody well three months of therapy to get this sorted out and I wasn't gonna make all that hard work go wasted just this easily. "Sod off! I don't wanne have anything to do with you! You're not real!!"
Harris looked at me as if I had just grown an extra head. "Will, what is he rambling about?"
"It's the poison talking. Keep him steady. I'm gonna try again."
Red grabbed my cheeks between her fingers and thumb and forced my mouth open. She brought the mug to my lips and the foul liquid was close enough to send stench waves up my nostrils. I shook my head and whimpered rather pathetically.
"Don't worry Spike. You'll get better as soon as you drink this all up. I'm sorry that it smells so yucky, but I really didn't have to time to add a strawberry flavour to it. Just - try to swallow it up in one good gulp."
She poured it into me, pinching my nose shut so I wouldn't mind the horrible taste too much. It didn't help though, a couple of mouthful of whatever had drowned in that brew and I started retching. I must had done it before, because my black T- shirt was all covered by it, so were the plain white sheets on the bed. Which explained the sour stench that my nose picked up. I gagged some more, my stomach objecting to the idea that I had been lying in my own filth. I struggled free from Harris' grip, and slapped the fancy novelty mug out of the witch's hands. It landed on the sheets and rolled off the bed, spreading a black stain over the cloth and ruining the carpet.
"Spike! You crazy idiot!" Harris snapped. "That's the antidote you've just wasted! Any idea how long it took to get this for you?"
"I don't wanne have your soddin stinkin antidote!" I yelled, rolling my eyes at this very annoying delusion. "You're trying to keep me here, aren't you? You're trying to keep me here so you could all continue to point and laugh at the useless vampire with the government chip in his head. The sad excuse of a demon that hops along with the Slayer like a love sick horny toad."
"Glad you can admit that you're useless and a toad, but we are not doing any of those things. We were trying to save you from demon poisoning."
"You're not real, Harris. And Red here is not real either. This is all in my mind. I'm sick. I need - I need Buffy. She will make me better. She - She always does."
"Buffy is downstairs, taking care of Dawn." Willow said. The witch was trying to mob up whatever was left of the potion with a Kleenex tissue, but was failing miserably since most of it was already soaked into the cloth. "It's probably better for you not to see her right now. She's kinda upset, because - " The witch hesitated for a moment.
"You hurt Dawn, Spike." Harris explained. "You shoved her away when she saw you stirring in your sleep and tried to help. She landed rather badly." He paused for a moment, eying at me with a tinge of anger showing on his face. "You might have broken her wrist with your wicked demony strength here. So yeah, Buff was really upset and might break some bones of yours if you happened to ask for her right now. So I wouldn't advise you to call her."
I blinked my eyes at the two of them, feeling a pang of guilt welt up as the words sunk in. Little Bit. I've hurt Little Bit. The one person in this world that I had sworn to protect with my own life. How could I have done this to her? She had only tried to help me. Probably wanted to wake me up from that horrible nightmare I was having. The institution, Liam and Buffy, they were keeping me there, away from her.
Keeping me grounded in reality.
My mind straightened up, and I sucked in a deep breath of air. Although there was a comfy warm blanket draped around my shoulders, I was horribly cold and suddenly I shivered at the thought of actually being inside this clinically dead body. Spike the vampire was nothing more but a walking - wise creaking corpse.
This wasn't right. This wasn't real. I was losing it again. Fleeing into this imaginary world of mine, the one with all the monsters from which one had escaped and had turned my real life and that of my brother's into a soddin nightmare. I had once believed in all of this, my self- created fantasy where I could hide and pretend to be more then William ever was, but I could no longer afford to keep that up.
I can't keep running back into this place, or it will swallow me whole. Angelus was the perfect example of one of these imaginary playmates gone dangerous. Dawn, whatever compassion I felt for that little girl, she wasn't a real person. I could hurt her, even kill her and no-one would have really died. It was just all in my head.
And I wanted to get it out.
"It's alright Spike." Red tried, being the most adorable little witch my sickly mind had ever created. "Dawn is not angry at you. She knew you didn't do it on purpose. Don't blame yourself."
I looked at her, blankly, trying to allow her words to sink in without letting it affect me on any emotional level. To my own amazement, I succeeded. I didn't feel bad about hurting Little Bit. I didn't really feel anything at all.
Lifting my chin, I stared up at Harris with probably a very mad grin plastered on my face.
"I don't care what happened to her. She isn't a real person anyway. I made her all up, I did."
Harris frowned and looked down at me.
"I - I don't want to be crazy anymore. And I don't want to keep talking to you both. Soon I will wake up and find myself having a crackers conversation with a padded wall." I giggled hoarsely, giddy little insects tickling up and down my throat. "Bloody hell, I have no soddin idea why I torment myself like this. Harris, you must be one of the most aggravating delusions ever made up by a nut to keep himself busy. I must have been bored out of my brains while I was off to keep you wandering around to annoy the hell out of me."
The anger that had been showing previously melted off his face, and for some funny reason, the whelp looked quite concerned.
You're delusional, Spike." He stated, turning towards the witch. "He's delusional. He's as high as a kite. Will, I don't think he got enough of the antidote inside to work off the poison."
"He didn't even finished half of it." Red said, eying at me worryingly. I returned her gaze with another gleeful little giggle and started bopping my head up and down the cushions. "And from the part that we did got into him, isn't much left either." She cleaned some of the black stuff dribbling down my chin. I gave her a huge, wide-eyed grin, and she shivered. "That toxin, it's nibbling away his mind. Look at him. You can hardly call that normal behaviour, even for Spike."
I burst into laughter, loud and hollow, with no real glee to make it sound less scary. I was hurting inside, I was breaking to pieces, but I couldn't tell them what was going on, why I didn't wanne play this little game I've started anymore. What use would it be to explain things to a bunch of made- up people anyway?
Red's facial expression went from concerned to plain terror.
"I have a look in the kettle. See if I can scrape out some last burnt bits from the bottom. Otherwise, it's back to the kashma'nik in the cellar and try to get some more juice out of it to remake the potion. Could take a while though, and I don't think Spike is going to just lie there and wait."
"I kind off expect him to go bunching off the walls as soon as I let go." Harris opted, his voice sounded ridiculously serious, making me all giddy again. "We better strap him down with something till he gets his mind straight."
Red was hesitating; I bet she felt sorry for me. She always did. Even that time when I couldn't bite her after the government soldier boys had me chipped, she felt sorry for me that I was all down about it, just ignore the fact that I had really wanted to eat her. Now, so much sympathy and selflessness coming from one person. That is just surreal.
"Do we have to? It seems kind off cruel. Maybe you can hold him down for a while and - "
"Will! Look at him. Then go down-stairs and take a look at Dawn's arm. You want this potential dangerous vampire go rampant on any of us again?"
"He can't really hurt us, unless he doesn't really mean to." Willow frowned, visibly confused.
"Which is the only fact that keeps me from staking him right now." Harris said, voice dripping of sarcasm. "Look, I can't hold him for much longer, Will. I may look like a handsome young stud in the prime of his life with an impressive amount of muscle built up by hard labour, but I'm still human. Spike is not. If he accidentally wants to snap off my arm to get free with no real intention in doing so, I can do zippo about it but perhaps only scream in great agony. We have to tie him down."
I decided I had enough of the whelp's japing already, and proved his point by launching myself at him. Although my wrists were still pinned down above my head, my arms weren't stretched enough to restrain too much of my movements with my upper body. Harris backed up, fear lightening up in his eyes. Somehow he still managed to keep his grip on my wrists. I buckled my legs and hips, trying to toss him off, but he was a bit overweight and I wasn't really trying too hard. I bounced my hips up and down the bed a couple of times, making it squeak like a whole nest of soddin mice.
"Get something to tie him down!" He yelled. "Get something now!"
I giggled and screamed when Red came back together with Tara, and both witches started to tie me down to the iron-framed bed. They used sets of heavy chains, the type to chain up expensive motorcycles to streetlights, and Tara did something to it, added some kind of binding spell. I felt raw energy soaring though the rattling chains, a tension in the air that wrapped itself around my wrists and ankles. If it had been hard for me to get myself Houdinied out of these restrains before, the addition of her magic made it almost impossible.
That was when I really started to panic.
I had kept myself relatively quite with Harris, but that was because I wasn't expecting them to be able to keep me here for long. I figured I would wake up pretty soon, as long as I refused to drink that crazy juice that Red's offering me, I wouldn't get lost in here. But now, with something as physical and as present as steel and magic holding me down, I wasn't sure about that anymore.
"You can't do this to me!" I pleaded, trying to sound as sane as possible. "You can't keep me here! I don't want to be here. This was supposed to be all in my head. Created by my wonky brains to make me feel all better, but I feel awful." I gazed back at both witches, and I saw pity in their cute but troubled faces. "Please, let me go. I won't trouble anyone. I just wanne go back to my world and see Buffy. I need her. She's the only one who can make me sane again. You can keep this soddin reality that I've made. It's all yours."
Red shook her head and pulled the blankets over my shoulders, tugging me in like I was somekind of wounded fury animal that needed maternal care. Tara looked at me with very sad eyes. Tara was a kind girl and had gone through a lot. I remembered that she had some trouble with her family. They didn't really like her and she had spent most of her life worrying about how wicked she must be to have her own family treat her like that.
I knew how much that must have tormented her.
"Xander, can you please keep an eye on him?" She asked. "It's just that I've never done this spell before. I don't want him to get hurt or anything."
"Right." Harris said, inspecting the restrains. "Got it. One hourly checks on Spike, consider it done."
Tara turned away and left the room with Willow, going down-stairs to the kitchen to scrape out the kettle, leaving me alone with the whelp. I was close to brawling my eyes out, but I swallowed hard to keep the tears from falling, because I just didn't want to give the bloody twat the satisfaction of seeing me cry, ever. He looked at me without saying a word, a strange expression on his face that I couldn't quite place. Then he walked up to the door, ready to leave.
"Spike." He said unexpectedly, and turned around. "I'm sorry. I 'm sorry that I had to do this. But you really shouldn't go back to where ever you were. That place wasn't real." He sighed. "Look, just get better, okay? Things are bad enough already without us having to worry about you."
He switched off the lights. With the heavy brown curtains drawn closed, the room was left in a dim hazy. I stared at the ceiling for a while, listening to the sounds rising up from downstairs, my eyes leaking tears.
TBC
AUTHOR: Richard Bachman
EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com
SITE: nope
FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!
DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.
WARNING: Skip this chapter if your fainthearted.
SUMMARY: based on episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in a mental institution.
THANK YOU: For your patience. I love to write, but unfortunately, I also have to do other stuff for a living.
ACT 7: Back from hell and here again.
SCENE 7
There were things in life that weren't quite that easy for me to understand anymore ever since I had found myself a reluctant citizen of Sunny D's residential home for basket cases. My memories had to be one of them. Ranking high at the top of my list of soddin mysteries that is the burden of being mister William August Byron. If I were indeed the vampire called Spike I once had so firmly believed to be, I shouldn't be remembering anything, shouldn't be evoked to certain feelings of melancholy when observing these silly family snapshots. Shouldn't recognize the old folks in the pictures to be my dear mom and dad or remember that warm summer day back in '90, when my parents took us to Lake Michigan to spend the holidays. And that photo with my brother Liam in a yellow ducklings swimming gear, raising two fingers to form rabbits ears above my head shouldn't had brought a smile on my face.
But it did.
"Do you remember that we went swimming, and mom told us to stay in the children's area?" Liam asked, his eyes hopeful. We were sitting around the table in the tiny visiting room, my brother and I. A pile of photographs was spread out on the table.
"Yeah." I said, brushing through a series of photos. " It was daft though. The water in the deepest spot didn't even come up to my chest. You could hardly call it swimming. It was more like waddling." I opted. "And we were dipping in yellow kiddie pee. That place was for babies and toddlers."
"So you convinced me that we should swim out into the lake. Get past the orange safety line and try to get to that rack that was floating right in the middle of the bay."
I nodded, the memories of that day flooding in like a rich, heavy fluid pouring into a glass of water, sinking into the bottom of my awareness, feeling so very real that I had no trouble letting it displace the memories of other, much darker days.
"I thought that it would be a laugh. All the older and cooler kids were there, and I was almost twelve. I figured I could swim thirty feet into the open without cramping out in panic." A grin crept up my face. "Guess I was wrong eh?"
Although he rolled his eyes, his widening smile and the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes reassured me that his annoyance was only badly faked. "Will, you started to panic as soon as you couldn't touch the bottom anymore. I got the scare of my life when I looked back over my shoulder and saw that you were gone with only your pale little arms sticking above the water. "
"I almost drowned." I uttered, and closed my eyes for a sec. Although it had happened more then a decade ago, the panic of that moment, of not being able to breathe and the sensation of sharp cold water penetrating my lungs, the stinging in my nose and the noise of rising bubbles rushing my ears, stuck out in my memory, forming a recollection that was as solid as a rock and as clear as the soddin lake itself. Why did I remember this now? Why couldn't I remember this yesterday or the day before? Did that car accident have something to do with it? Wipe my memories clean, locked them up in a dusty closet in the back of my mind, till my dear brother here was so kind to open them for me with his treasured stack of family snapshots, making me remember how it was to live this normal life of a normal kid who had grown up into a not so normal bloke. Well, not in the mental-department at least. After three months of relentless therapy, I wouldn't dare to even give a second though of me being an evil blood thirsting vampire. That chapter had passed. I had given up on it, although I had troubles adjusting to my new role being the pathetic nut of the loving Byron family.
My head buzzed, as if it had just become heavily loaded. Somewhere in the dark, a small part of me was objecting to the invasion of these light, warm, and very forceful recollections, and clung desperately on the last bits of insanity that was left; mental images of blood and death and sin that was supposed to be worth a century of time in the life of a ruthless vampire, but had proven to be nothing more but my own sweaty delusions at the end. My hands shaking, I covered my eyes and tried not to listen to the merciless throbbing in my temples.
"Will, are you all right?" Liam asked. He sounded awfully concerned and I cursed whoever was supposed to be up there and had decided to make my life a living hell for letting my brother care for me this much. I couldn't hate him when he was kind to me. When he was also Liam as much as he was Angelus. Bloody hell, now I was letting him screw with my mind as well! Soon there would be nothing left of me but a bloody appendix attached to the poofter's cock. Some mindless idiot that opened his mouth and swallowed on command. Such a pathetic, fucked-up mess I was.
"Will? What is it? What's wrong?" I heard him push back his chair, the legs scraping on the tiles and walked over to me, his steps wary. I flinched as if struck by a blow as he placed his large hand on my shoulder.
"Please Will." His voice was calm, masking his anxiety underneath. "Tell me what's wrong. I want to help."
I swallowed hard. Tears stinging my eyes as I looked up and gazed at his grim expression. "You saved me that day. You saved me from drowning."
"I did." Liam said. A small smile crept up his face, lighting up the bleakness in his eyes. Hope tends to do such silly things to him.
"I don't want to remember it." I uttered. Distress clouded my judgement, loosening my vigilance around my brother that had been up and running ever since the first time Angelus came out to play. But I couldn't help it. My heart felt so heavy that I thought that it would bloody well sink to my toes if I didn't throw this out of my system. Tell my brother to stop torturing me with this before he drove me into complete madness and I ended up strapped in a straightjacket for the rest of my miserable life.
You could say that I was pretty much like a soddin elephant hopping on a minefield.
"I don't want to know how good you've been to me!" I hissed, anger rising like bitter bile, desperation choking my throat. I grabbed a couple of photos from the table, my hand clawing on them like a vulture holding on a dead furry animal. Liam's eyes widened in horror as I started ripping them into pieces. "I don't wanne remember how mom used to bake cookies with us at Christmas or how dad used to turn our home into a ghost-palace to scare to crap out of our friends at Halloween. I don't wanne know how much they loved me before each of them died." My vision became blurry as my fight against my tears left me defeated. "I don't wanne remember my family. They're gone now. All gone. There is no one left but me."
"What are you talking about, Will? I'm not gone. I'm still here for you! Please don't do this to yourself." Liam stuttered, no longer trying to sound calm. He stared at me with eyes wide in shock as if I had gone mad, or madder.
"Oh, you are gone too." I said. I licked my lips, tasting salty tears. "Only you don't realize it yet. Please, stop torturing me like this. Just -just leave me alone. Don't try to make me care about you. Let me remember all these things that you ever did for me. We can't be brothers anymore. Not without you driving me to the point of snappin."
"But-But why? I don't understand. What-What have I done, Will? Tell me what have I done!"
I rolled my eyes, aggravated. The dull throbbing in my head had become a mad pounding, but it almost seemed merciful compared to the agony and frustration I felt, the crimes my brother had committed becoming more painful every minute past as memories of our shared childhood filled my heart with love and respect for him. It hurt like hell.
"Why-" I managed to say, although my voice was barely more but a whisper. "Why can't you just stop caring about me? Why won't you just let me hate you?"
"Because I can't." He crouched down beside me. His hand on my shoulder trembled. "I can't let you hate me. I can't let you slip away. We're family, Will. The same blood runs through our veins. Nothing in this world is more important to me then you are."
His words hit me hard in my sub-consciousness and sent shivers down my spine. I had heard them before, in another time and perhaps in another world, and I knew what worth they were coming from him. I wanted to jump up out of my chair and call him a bloody liar. Wanted to break something, trash the room and scream my lungs out. But I was hurt and undone, and all I could do was start sobbing like a child.
I slipped off the seat, my body weak and cold. I wanted to hide away somewhere dark, curl myself into a tight little ball, put this ugliness all far behind me. Instead, I crawled under the table, pulled my legs up against my belly and pushed my knuckles into my mouth, biting on them till I had the coppery taste of blood on my tongue and my sobs were muffled into soft whines.
Liam looked at me, his restless eyes showing endless pity and the corners of his mouth were strained, and trembling. "Please tell me what's wrong, Will." He uttered, his own emotions barely under control. "I beg you. Please tell me what's going on. I can't bear seeing you like this."
I gazed up at him, this man who was supposed to be my brother, my family, my blood. My mind was numbed and my resolve was broken, tired of fighting a brawl that was already lost. I didn't want to lie to him any longer to keep myself safe. Could no longer deny myself from facing the truth either. Angelus had done something to me that could never be undone. He had taken a part of me, a part of my being that I needed to be able to trust and care about others, and had turned it into something ugly. My emotions were so fucked up now that I couldn't distinguish seething hatred from true love and even if I did finally acknowledge it, this supposedly pure and upright virtue was constantly tainted by a haze of blinding jealousy and became eventually poisoned by my own selfishness.
Angelus was a soddin monster with a capital M, and he taught me well.
I loved my brother, I really did. He was a kind and selfless guy who wouldn't hurt a fly and wished nothing but to see me happy. I got a head- full of memories to proof that. But I had to tell him about Angelus. Perhaps he already knew. Like I told you, I was having nightmares confronting him about his nasty evil twin. Perhaps he didn't know or he just pretended he didn't so he could live with it. It wouldn't matter. I just wanted to get it over with and had this burden off me before Angelus came back to finish his job on me.
Swallowing hard, I gathered the last bit of courage that I had left and told him what was on my mind.
"You - You hurt me. You let him hurt me."
Liam's face paled, his mouth dropped open as if I had just shoved an icicle through his heart.
"I never - What do you mean? I don't understand. I would never, never hurt you - "
"Not you. Him. Angelus. It was Angelus. Every time you came for a visit. He appeared and - and - "
"Angelus? Who is Angelus? " There was a spark of terrified recognition in his eyes. "Him. You don't mean - No, Will. No! That's not possible!"
"It was him. You lost control over yourself a couple of months ago and when you did, you became him. He tortured me, Liam! I couldn't fight him off. Believe me, I tried but he was stronger then me. I couldn't stop him."
"No! No! No! That couldn't have happened. I haven't had a blackout in years. You must have dreamed it! You must have been delusional! There's something seriously wrong with you, Will." He stood up again, looking down at me, a sane man who had observed his brother's madness in its full ludicrous glory and was absolutely horrified and disgusted by it.
"Why are you doing this to me, Will? I only want you to become better again, for things to go back to normal between us. But you keep making up all these terrible things about me."
"I'm not lying!" I yelled through my tears. "You have to believe me, Liam! He was really here, and - and he raped me! He bloody raped me!"
Liam shook his head in dismay. "Lies William. All lies. You're very sick, my little brother. I had hoped that these three long months under Dr Summers' care would have helped you to recover from your madness. But it only gets worse." He sagged over, leaning with his knuckles on the table, his expression grim. "Perhaps I should have listened to Dr Walsh after all. She told me that your condition was far too severe to expect any improvement when I continued to allow Dr Summers to put you in social therapy."
A wave of panic hit me when he dropped the name. Walsh, I knew her. Skinny dried up old hag with a heavy scent of antiseptics lingering around her permanently. I only met her once as she brushed by in the corridors while I was on my way to group therapy, and she had eyed at me with a sort of unsettling predatory covetousness. And Buffy had mentioned her once or twice, used her as a boogieman to scare me off when I misbehaved myself, although everything coming from her pretty little mouth was as much threatening to me as a basket filled with fluffy kittens.
The thought of being subjected to Dr Walsh on the other hand, did easily scare the crap out of me.
"What do you mean?" I muttered, lips trembling.
Liam loomed over me, tall and massive, as self-assured and unyielding as the real Angelus would have been, addressing this ungrateful, lunatic childe. His hands slipped into the pockets of his dark coat where they formed bulges under the leather, as he bald his fists. His nostrils flared with every breath he took and a paralysing cold sunk into my stomach when the last sane part of my mind reminded me of how painful it was to have his knuckles bruising my skin and creaking my bones. How much brute strength could surface in this man when he was in rage and how weak and defenceless I myself was at this very moment.
I didn't dare to look into his eyes. Afraid to see that his soul had fled the place and the monster had already taken over control.
"Christ Will. I don't know how to say this, but -" He sighed, his voice dangerously calm. "It's time for you to face the facts here. You just can't keep blaming me for everything what had happened to you. I am not the one who's mad, William! I'm a sane, healthy man. You're the one who's suffering from delusions, from the ridiculous idea that you're a century old vampire called "Spike". " He spat the name out as if he was tasting something vile. "You made up this entire world where people are constantly bugging you, misunderstanding you, and casting you out like a fucking pariah. And still, you can't help yourself from fleeing back into this hell you've created and turn your back on the people who truly loves and cares about you. Why Will? Why do you want to torment yourself like that?"
I couldn't speak, my tongue useless, my mind gone. All I could do was weep with hollow eyes and shake my head feverishly. Staring at him from down on the floor like a sinner begging to his God almighty for forgiveness. His hands slipped out of his pockets and smoothened his hair. A pained grin appeared on his face.
"And then you invent this vampire character called Angelus. A ruthless, evil man that you hate and loathe and spends every breath cursing him till you almost choke in it. He looks like me, sounds like me. Tell me Will, do you really hate me so much that you have to make him up to hurt me? Because if you did, congratulation on a job well done." His voice sounded sarcastic, angry, hurt. It added guilt to my growing collection of maddening emotions that were ripping me apart. I continued to shake my head, terrified that he wouldn't listen, that he didn't understand that I was only trying to warn him. I wasn't mad at him. I didn't hate him. He was the only family I got left.
And Angelus was taking him away from me, wiping him out before my very eyes. There was nothing I could do about it.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I blurted out with a voice so weak that it was barely audible. The cold inside of my stomach gushed through my body and I hugged myself, trying to find some warmth and comfort. "I didn't mean to - Please - Please, you have to believe me! I'm not lying to you! I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy!"
My body started rocking back and forth as I hugged myself even tighter. My heartbeats drummed in my ears and the noise was soon accompanied by a dull pounding when I hit the back of my head against the wooden table-leg repeatedly. My glossy eyes pleaded with him to understand. "I'm not crazy, Liam. I'm not crazy - I'm not crazy - I'm not crazy -"
I had to admit that I must have looked rather unconvincing.
Liam crouched down beside me again. His features gentle, composed. He raised his arm and placed his hand on my damp face, wiping some of the tears and sweat off my cheeks and stroking back wet strings of hair from before my eyes. I breathed in deeply trying to calm myself, as even these little gestures of kindness was threatening to bring me to tears.
"Poor William. My poor little childe. So very confused."
I froze, the words hitting me like a cold gush of wind on the first proper winter-day. Panic caught me by the throat, choking the air out of my lungs. Inside my head I could hear the last bit of reason slam the door behind him and lock up the place so that the terrible nightmares lurking in the dark couldn't get out to wreck havoc. The problem was that the wanker had kind of forgotten to let me out first.
"Angelus?" I whispered, my eyes set in an expression of pure horror and disbelief.
A demonic half smile crept up his face that looked downright horrendous with the caring look he gave me, as if some part of Liam was still in there somewhere, trapped inside with that monster. His grabbed me by my hair and yanked my chin up, making me stare right into his eyes. They were blacker then night, his pupils lost in pools of darkness.
"So you figured it out at last. What took you so long? Too busy with brawling your eyes out, Will?"
"Liam - Where is Liam?" I stumbled, feeling smaller and more helpless by the minute.
"He ran with his tail between his yellow legs as soon as you told him about our weekly rendezvous. Nice guy, that Liam, never much of an open-minded fellow though. I guess you've scared him off with your little confession." He gave me a huge grin, exposing his teeth like a shark would, right before he took a bite out of your soddin legs. "May not be back for a seriously long time. Heck, who knows, perhaps this time you really blew it and he's moving out permanently, leaving me in charge." He raised his other hand and pinched my nose in an almost affectionate kind of way as if he was trying to charm a child. "That means that I'm gonna be in charge of you too, my dear little brother."
He tugged me up, pulling me by my nose, pinching hard enough to give me a nose bleed. He tossed me over the table. I hit it with a wheeze and my hips struck painfully on the sharp edge. I struggled to get back up, but the crushing weight of Angelus' body pushed down on my spine and the back of my neck as he forced me down with his knee and hands. The pressure on my chest pushed the air out of my lungs, and the flat wooden surface stung in my ribs.
I was trapped, unable to move or defend myself like a wriggling rain-worm strapped under a giant microscope for him to toy, probe or cut open. My heart quivered. Fear blinded my every thought and paralysed me as it had done so many (too many) times before when I was left at the mercy of this ruthless man. He leaned forward, his mouth brushing my neck, breathing on my skin with his hot breath.
"And so it ends." He whispered in my ears. He unbuckled his belt and zipped open his pants, crushing me with his weight. "Just like how it had once begun. Me, on top. You, at the bottom, helpless, weak, a rotten pile of misery. Face it, Will. You're mine. I broke you centuries ago. You don't think a little mind trip into whatever alternative reality you've created can stop me from claiming you?" He hissed, baring his teeth in a furious snarl. "Nightmares don't just stop haunting the weak because you've decided to pretend to be someone-else, someone stronger. Someone you're not. You cannot outsmart them or fight your way out. Sooner or later, they will get to you eventually. And when they do -"
He yanked down my pants and knickers, and a sudden cold struck my flesh as my arse became exposed.
"They gonna make sure that your life turns into a living hell."
I trembled out of shame and fear, the knowledge of what he was going to do to me wiping out every thread of resistance that I could have offered. I bit on my lower lip and pushed out ragged breaths between my sobs, praying that it would be all over soon.
You would think that after so long, it wouldn't hurt that much anymore, but it bloody well did.
He slammed his cock inside of me. I could feel it, hot and hard, tearing my innards as it pushed through with the vindictiveness of a punch in the stomach. Pain seared my body, dry as a bone as I was when he forced himself on me. My stomach banged on the table with every violent thrust that provided him pleasure and caused me agony, while shame crept up my tears stained cheeks.
I had lost everything. My brother. My will to fight. Perhaps even my ability to reason. No sense of self-worth was left in me. Everything was so fucked up, and there was no way out of this hell because it was real. It was reality. Angelus was right, I could pretend to more then I was, hide myself behind a brave façade, a different name perhaps, but eventually, the monsters would smell my fear and find me. Rip me apart. Tear me to pieces.
I was beaten, lost in darkness. My will to live gone. Nothing Angelus could do or say could ever affect me anymore. I just didn't seem to care what would happen to me after all this. I had hit rock bottom.
He used me as it pleased him. His cock growing harder with every demeaning act he forced me to perform on him, with every pain that visibly struck me as he tortured my flesh. It didn't matter anymore. I took everything he bestowed on me, letting him rape my body and poison my mind. I was no longer there. The lights were still on and the kettle was boiling over, but the owner had left the building, witnessing his own predicament though a window of blurry tears.
If it wasn't for what he had said just after he had pulled his cock out of my gob, I might had stayed in that cocoon state forever. Letting him do these horrible things to me, while I was condemned to spend the rest of my life behind padded walls.
"You know, Will. I look at you right now, and I'm amazed. I never would have thought that you would be given up so easily. This whole alternative reality thing has really driven you around the bend." He swapped away a pale string of cum dripping down the corner of my shivering lips while I kept staring up at him, meekly. "I'm not complaining here of course. That must be your best blowjob ever, especially if you include all the times you tried to bite off my nuts as some kind of revengeful foreplay. Although it might be that I kinda miss the old fangs scraping part." He traced his fingers over my face, and then pushed his thumb into my mouth, I closed my lips around it and suckled on it, my body reacting on impulse in a way that had been beaten into me a long, long time ago.
The monster smiled, Sylvester grinning on his Tweety-bird. "Such a good lad you are. So very obedient. Just like a fucking dog. And this the result of what? Three-four months of psycho-therapy under Dr Buffy's maternal care? Christ, I would love to see what a whole year under Dr Bitch's Spartan treatment would do to you." He giggled gleefully." There would be absolutely nothing left."
My eyes grew wide in frenzied horror, and Angelus stared back at me, cocking his head to one side and showing me that predatory grin again.
"You don't think Liam is going to leave you to Dr Summers are you? Don't be so naïve, Will! Not a chance after what had happened today! The poor guy thinks you've snapped out completely. Lost every bit of trust that he had in seeing you getting better under her care, although it wasn't much to begin with. It's just taking too long for him. Didn't he tell you that he came here a day earlier to speak to Dr Walsh? He's arranging to get you transferred into her ward. She's gonna get to you, little brother, like a hungry shark closing in on a piece of wriggling bait. I'm afraid it's bye- bye Dr Buffy and say hello to a bit of old fashioned treatment, something to flash the madness out of your mind, so to speak."
The message hit me like a bomb. Gone was the sense of numbness, of deadness that had allowed him to use me like a helpless, worthless being. Buffy, he was going to take her away from me. He was going to hand me over to that cold-hearted bitch-doctor who was going to lock me up into solitary confinement for the rest of my life. No chance of seeing Buffy again. No one left to give me comfort, no kindness or love to chase away the darkness that was threatening to engulf me.
No hope that everything would eventually turn out to be all right.
Angelus kept looking at me as if he was studying an amusing new species of bug, something vulnerable and revolting like a worm or a maggot, something easily squashed.
"Ah, don't look like that, Will. You know it's not my fault that it has to end like this. You only got yourself to blame here. If you've acted a bit saner around Liam, perhaps have acknowledge him as your brother, he wouldn't have ended up asking me to help him out. Honest Will, that tongue of yours isn't really connected to your brains, is it?"
A bitter anger rose inside of me and filled my mouth with the taste of copper. What right did he have to tear her away from me? Buffy's presence was the only thing that I had in my miserable existence that made me wanne live. Without her constant support and care, I would have slit my wrists months ago. He could not take her. I wouldn't let him. I forced myself to take control again, stop my wracking sobs and to draw in slow steady breaths, swallowing my fears.
"You can't do this." I said, voice trembling. "I need her. I need her more then anything else. She's the only one who keeps me sane around here."
"Well, looks like she's not doing a very good job. You know, I think I kinda agree with Liam. You've become beyond pathetic, Will. You used to be a predator, a killer, now look at you. You dropped all the way down the food-chain. Even grass can kick your ass now."
"I don't know - I don't understand why you can get here. You don't belong here. You're not real!" I said, louder now. "There was no Angelus. There had never been an Angelus. There are no such things as vampires."
"Oh no, you're right. And Steward and company aren't really demons, they're just special in a very freaky sort of way." He chuckled maliciously. "Tell you what, if Liam decides he rather doesn't come back from his vacation to the far boundaries of insanity, I'll help you out. Tell Giles that I'd rather have you transferred to Dr Walsh's care immediately. That pretty blond thing isn't good for you at all."
I let out a ragged roar, a primitive, maddened scream as white hot anger hit and blinded me from my fears and anxiety. I jumped up, faced my tormentor and drove my fist at him. I hit him hard, crunching my knuckles on his jaw and sent him reeling over, crashing down on the table. He snarled at me, his features twisting in pain, a rich trickle of blood down ran his chin. Although I was a bit amazed that I had pulled it off to hurt him, I didn't give him much time to recover from my lucky shot.
Snarling like a furious dog, I drove my elbow on the back of his neck, just before he could struggle back up. He screamed in pain, and slammed back on the wooden surface, cursing me for all that it was worth.
"You treacherous, poisonous childe!" he roared. "I'm gonna make you pay for this. I'm gonna make you pay for this dearly. You're never gonna see that little bitch of yours ever again!"
I swallowed hard. Wicked evil vampire or not, he really shouldn't have said that.
"You are not taking her away from me!" I hissed, as fury drove me to violence, a fury so scarlet and bright that I could hardly believe that it had been inside me for all these months. My hands grabbed something nearby, one of the chairs made out of massive heavy wood, and raised it above me head, ready to smash in his soddin skull. Pounding in on this monster's ribs, creaking his limps and pulverizing his flesh till he was no more then a bag of skin covering ruptured organs and broken bones. Images flashed through my mind, dark, violent and wicked. I've done this before. I had tortured and maimed and killed without remorse. Taken revenge on others for less then what I had to endure today. I could do it again.
I could kill him.
I could kill him before he murdered the last bit of humanity that I had left.
The chair came down before my eyes. There was a noise coming from my back, and then a scream. Hands wrapped around my wrists, strong hands that pulled me over and drove me off balance. The chair came down, smashing on the table and sending bits of wood flying through the air. The back of the chair broke off, and left a deep pale dent in the polished surface, barely an inch away from Angelus' head.
"NO!" I screamed, thrashing my legs and arms around like a professional nut when strong arms wrapped around my waist and dragged me away from him. "NO! You've got to let me kill him! He won't let me live! He won't let Liam live!"
"William!" Mike shouted. "Calm down!"
"He's a bloody monster! God! Can't you see that? A monster! A ruthless, murderous monster!"
"He's your brother, Will! Look at him! He's badly hurt! You have to calm down!"
I screamed as I went down. My arms were forced on my back, held sturdily in the hands of the broad orderly. I struggled, fought him with a strength that came from a mad mind, my eyes bulging and white rimmed. Although he had more then a good twenty pounds of muscle weight over my skinny form, my crazy strength tipped the scale and I managed to roll over to one side, slamming Mike against a corner. He hit it with his back, painfully.
"Dammit! Greg! Barry! Someone! I need help! He's losing it!"
Frantic footsteps followed, after which more hands reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me down to the ground. My right cheek slammed on the tiled surface, muffling my screams. Someone straddled me from behind and sat on my legs. A knee was pushed in my back and a hand forced my head down. From the corners of my eyes, I could see one of the orderlies stick a syringe with a thin needle into a small bottle of clear liquid and fill it up, and my mind went completely crackers.
"NO!!! Don't stick that thing in me!! No!! Please! I'm telling you, I'm not crazy! I don't wanne get jabbed with that!! Stay away from me!!"
My pleading didn't help of course, why would it? Mike had my arms locked in his sturdy grip and my left sleeve was tucked up. I felt a cold hand on my upper arm before the needle went in. Warmth spread under my skin, numbing warmth that was almost comforting. I wheezed and sobbed, the strength fed by the rage and panic that had soared through me leaking out of every cramped and aching muscle, leaving me weak.
I didn't had the energy left to blink or close my eyes, so I just stared out, exhausted from emotional and physical abuse, Mike and another guy I didn't know by name squatting down bside to keep an eye on me while the others helped out Angelus. He wasn't much hurt, this monster wearing my brother's face, only a superficial cut ran from under his right eye to the hollow of his cheek. He looked as if he had just awakened from a bad dream, brushing off his face with trembling hands, his tan as pale as a sheet of paper. When he saw me there, curled up on the floor like a wounded rodent, his eyes grew wide in disbelief.
By the time he staggered over to me, his shoes dragging over the tiles, my vision had already blacked out and I had drifted off to someplace else.
SCENE 8
I welcomed the darkness that had come to me like a dear old pale. My aching body ached no more. My troubled mind finally found some peace. There was no pain, no distress, no memories. It was only William on standby mode, period.
But of course that happy moment wasn't meant to last.
When I woke up, I smelled something sour, something rancid enough to make me wanne puke my guts out, again that was. I was lying down on a soft surface, but my limps were not restrained as I had expected them to be. I moved them, frantically, struggling against invisible hands, which seemed to be everywhere, grabbing me by my wrists, my ankles, pushing me back on my chest. Unlike Mikester and company, they weren't quite that strong and I easily fought them off, pushing them aside, while yelling out in a loud, hectic voice coming from deep down my throat. Voices came, female and male, screaming and yelling at me, almost sounding as hectic as I did.
"Stop this Spike! You crazy vamp! Stop trashing around!"
"Xander! You've to hold him down, he has to finish this antidote to fully recover!"
"Yeah, as if I can hold him back! Look what he has done to Dawn! Why did that freaking chip of him didn't give his brains a good fry? Is it busted or anything?"
"He didn't mean to hurt her! The chip won't go off when he has no intention to harm anyone."
Although I dreaded it, I opened my eyes to see in what kind of hell I once again had ended up.
Alexander Harris and Willow Rosenberg were hovering around me like angry hornets. Harris had me pinned down by my wrists and sat on my legs, securing me on the bed. Red was balancing a plain mug with the hardly amusing print "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" in front of my face. It was half-filled with a gooey black fluid that smelled like the London sewers after an outbreak of stomach-flu. Red held me by my chin.
Just my luck. I get abused by a gay version of count Drac the Horny and my crazy feeble mind responded with a free trip to this self-created hellhole.
"Get off me!!" I yelled to the imaginary witch and whelp. I knew better then to acknowledge that they were really there. Took me bloody well three months of therapy to get this sorted out and I wasn't gonna make all that hard work go wasted just this easily. "Sod off! I don't wanne have anything to do with you! You're not real!!"
Harris looked at me as if I had just grown an extra head. "Will, what is he rambling about?"
"It's the poison talking. Keep him steady. I'm gonna try again."
Red grabbed my cheeks between her fingers and thumb and forced my mouth open. She brought the mug to my lips and the foul liquid was close enough to send stench waves up my nostrils. I shook my head and whimpered rather pathetically.
"Don't worry Spike. You'll get better as soon as you drink this all up. I'm sorry that it smells so yucky, but I really didn't have to time to add a strawberry flavour to it. Just - try to swallow it up in one good gulp."
She poured it into me, pinching my nose shut so I wouldn't mind the horrible taste too much. It didn't help though, a couple of mouthful of whatever had drowned in that brew and I started retching. I must had done it before, because my black T- shirt was all covered by it, so were the plain white sheets on the bed. Which explained the sour stench that my nose picked up. I gagged some more, my stomach objecting to the idea that I had been lying in my own filth. I struggled free from Harris' grip, and slapped the fancy novelty mug out of the witch's hands. It landed on the sheets and rolled off the bed, spreading a black stain over the cloth and ruining the carpet.
"Spike! You crazy idiot!" Harris snapped. "That's the antidote you've just wasted! Any idea how long it took to get this for you?"
"I don't wanne have your soddin stinkin antidote!" I yelled, rolling my eyes at this very annoying delusion. "You're trying to keep me here, aren't you? You're trying to keep me here so you could all continue to point and laugh at the useless vampire with the government chip in his head. The sad excuse of a demon that hops along with the Slayer like a love sick horny toad."
"Glad you can admit that you're useless and a toad, but we are not doing any of those things. We were trying to save you from demon poisoning."
"You're not real, Harris. And Red here is not real either. This is all in my mind. I'm sick. I need - I need Buffy. She will make me better. She - She always does."
"Buffy is downstairs, taking care of Dawn." Willow said. The witch was trying to mob up whatever was left of the potion with a Kleenex tissue, but was failing miserably since most of it was already soaked into the cloth. "It's probably better for you not to see her right now. She's kinda upset, because - " The witch hesitated for a moment.
"You hurt Dawn, Spike." Harris explained. "You shoved her away when she saw you stirring in your sleep and tried to help. She landed rather badly." He paused for a moment, eying at me with a tinge of anger showing on his face. "You might have broken her wrist with your wicked demony strength here. So yeah, Buff was really upset and might break some bones of yours if you happened to ask for her right now. So I wouldn't advise you to call her."
I blinked my eyes at the two of them, feeling a pang of guilt welt up as the words sunk in. Little Bit. I've hurt Little Bit. The one person in this world that I had sworn to protect with my own life. How could I have done this to her? She had only tried to help me. Probably wanted to wake me up from that horrible nightmare I was having. The institution, Liam and Buffy, they were keeping me there, away from her.
Keeping me grounded in reality.
My mind straightened up, and I sucked in a deep breath of air. Although there was a comfy warm blanket draped around my shoulders, I was horribly cold and suddenly I shivered at the thought of actually being inside this clinically dead body. Spike the vampire was nothing more but a walking - wise creaking corpse.
This wasn't right. This wasn't real. I was losing it again. Fleeing into this imaginary world of mine, the one with all the monsters from which one had escaped and had turned my real life and that of my brother's into a soddin nightmare. I had once believed in all of this, my self- created fantasy where I could hide and pretend to be more then William ever was, but I could no longer afford to keep that up.
I can't keep running back into this place, or it will swallow me whole. Angelus was the perfect example of one of these imaginary playmates gone dangerous. Dawn, whatever compassion I felt for that little girl, she wasn't a real person. I could hurt her, even kill her and no-one would have really died. It was just all in my head.
And I wanted to get it out.
"It's alright Spike." Red tried, being the most adorable little witch my sickly mind had ever created. "Dawn is not angry at you. She knew you didn't do it on purpose. Don't blame yourself."
I looked at her, blankly, trying to allow her words to sink in without letting it affect me on any emotional level. To my own amazement, I succeeded. I didn't feel bad about hurting Little Bit. I didn't really feel anything at all.
Lifting my chin, I stared up at Harris with probably a very mad grin plastered on my face.
"I don't care what happened to her. She isn't a real person anyway. I made her all up, I did."
Harris frowned and looked down at me.
"I - I don't want to be crazy anymore. And I don't want to keep talking to you both. Soon I will wake up and find myself having a crackers conversation with a padded wall." I giggled hoarsely, giddy little insects tickling up and down my throat. "Bloody hell, I have no soddin idea why I torment myself like this. Harris, you must be one of the most aggravating delusions ever made up by a nut to keep himself busy. I must have been bored out of my brains while I was off to keep you wandering around to annoy the hell out of me."
The anger that had been showing previously melted off his face, and for some funny reason, the whelp looked quite concerned.
You're delusional, Spike." He stated, turning towards the witch. "He's delusional. He's as high as a kite. Will, I don't think he got enough of the antidote inside to work off the poison."
"He didn't even finished half of it." Red said, eying at me worryingly. I returned her gaze with another gleeful little giggle and started bopping my head up and down the cushions. "And from the part that we did got into him, isn't much left either." She cleaned some of the black stuff dribbling down my chin. I gave her a huge, wide-eyed grin, and she shivered. "That toxin, it's nibbling away his mind. Look at him. You can hardly call that normal behaviour, even for Spike."
I burst into laughter, loud and hollow, with no real glee to make it sound less scary. I was hurting inside, I was breaking to pieces, but I couldn't tell them what was going on, why I didn't wanne play this little game I've started anymore. What use would it be to explain things to a bunch of made- up people anyway?
Red's facial expression went from concerned to plain terror.
"I have a look in the kettle. See if I can scrape out some last burnt bits from the bottom. Otherwise, it's back to the kashma'nik in the cellar and try to get some more juice out of it to remake the potion. Could take a while though, and I don't think Spike is going to just lie there and wait."
"I kind off expect him to go bunching off the walls as soon as I let go." Harris opted, his voice sounded ridiculously serious, making me all giddy again. "We better strap him down with something till he gets his mind straight."
Red was hesitating; I bet she felt sorry for me. She always did. Even that time when I couldn't bite her after the government soldier boys had me chipped, she felt sorry for me that I was all down about it, just ignore the fact that I had really wanted to eat her. Now, so much sympathy and selflessness coming from one person. That is just surreal.
"Do we have to? It seems kind off cruel. Maybe you can hold him down for a while and - "
"Will! Look at him. Then go down-stairs and take a look at Dawn's arm. You want this potential dangerous vampire go rampant on any of us again?"
"He can't really hurt us, unless he doesn't really mean to." Willow frowned, visibly confused.
"Which is the only fact that keeps me from staking him right now." Harris said, voice dripping of sarcasm. "Look, I can't hold him for much longer, Will. I may look like a handsome young stud in the prime of his life with an impressive amount of muscle built up by hard labour, but I'm still human. Spike is not. If he accidentally wants to snap off my arm to get free with no real intention in doing so, I can do zippo about it but perhaps only scream in great agony. We have to tie him down."
I decided I had enough of the whelp's japing already, and proved his point by launching myself at him. Although my wrists were still pinned down above my head, my arms weren't stretched enough to restrain too much of my movements with my upper body. Harris backed up, fear lightening up in his eyes. Somehow he still managed to keep his grip on my wrists. I buckled my legs and hips, trying to toss him off, but he was a bit overweight and I wasn't really trying too hard. I bounced my hips up and down the bed a couple of times, making it squeak like a whole nest of soddin mice.
"Get something to tie him down!" He yelled. "Get something now!"
I giggled and screamed when Red came back together with Tara, and both witches started to tie me down to the iron-framed bed. They used sets of heavy chains, the type to chain up expensive motorcycles to streetlights, and Tara did something to it, added some kind of binding spell. I felt raw energy soaring though the rattling chains, a tension in the air that wrapped itself around my wrists and ankles. If it had been hard for me to get myself Houdinied out of these restrains before, the addition of her magic made it almost impossible.
That was when I really started to panic.
I had kept myself relatively quite with Harris, but that was because I wasn't expecting them to be able to keep me here for long. I figured I would wake up pretty soon, as long as I refused to drink that crazy juice that Red's offering me, I wouldn't get lost in here. But now, with something as physical and as present as steel and magic holding me down, I wasn't sure about that anymore.
"You can't do this to me!" I pleaded, trying to sound as sane as possible. "You can't keep me here! I don't want to be here. This was supposed to be all in my head. Created by my wonky brains to make me feel all better, but I feel awful." I gazed back at both witches, and I saw pity in their cute but troubled faces. "Please, let me go. I won't trouble anyone. I just wanne go back to my world and see Buffy. I need her. She's the only one who can make me sane again. You can keep this soddin reality that I've made. It's all yours."
Red shook her head and pulled the blankets over my shoulders, tugging me in like I was somekind of wounded fury animal that needed maternal care. Tara looked at me with very sad eyes. Tara was a kind girl and had gone through a lot. I remembered that she had some trouble with her family. They didn't really like her and she had spent most of her life worrying about how wicked she must be to have her own family treat her like that.
I knew how much that must have tormented her.
"Xander, can you please keep an eye on him?" She asked. "It's just that I've never done this spell before. I don't want him to get hurt or anything."
"Right." Harris said, inspecting the restrains. "Got it. One hourly checks on Spike, consider it done."
Tara turned away and left the room with Willow, going down-stairs to the kitchen to scrape out the kettle, leaving me alone with the whelp. I was close to brawling my eyes out, but I swallowed hard to keep the tears from falling, because I just didn't want to give the bloody twat the satisfaction of seeing me cry, ever. He looked at me without saying a word, a strange expression on his face that I couldn't quite place. Then he walked up to the door, ready to leave.
"Spike." He said unexpectedly, and turned around. "I'm sorry. I 'm sorry that I had to do this. But you really shouldn't go back to where ever you were. That place wasn't real." He sighed. "Look, just get better, okay? Things are bad enough already without us having to worry about you."
He switched off the lights. With the heavy brown curtains drawn closed, the room was left in a dim hazy. I stared at the ceiling for a while, listening to the sounds rising up from downstairs, my eyes leaking tears.
TBC
