TITLE: "Normal again" (8/8?) part III
(Because of length, cut in five 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.
SUMMARY: based on the 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 an asylum.
THANK YOU: For your patience, your support and your comments on the story.
ACT 8: I should hide from you. Hide my face. You know what I did.
SCENE 5
A thick folder the size of a small novel lay on her desk, the name of the patient neatly written on a white label rimmed by a metal frame. She sat down and opened it. Her fingers went over the first page and unconsciously lingered at the troubled young man's photo that was secured to the file with a small paperclip. Buffy couldn't help but to anguish herself by noticing that he looked much healthier, much saner on that picture then he did now, bound down to his bed, wrapped in a cold cocoon of utter discomfort. She shook her head, trying to set aside these distractive emotions that kept her from thinking clear. What was important right now was to help William to recover. She had to figure out what was causing his strange behaviour, what was frightening him so much that it made him stop functioning properly. Pinching her nose-bridge, she shook her head again, and then started to go through the file:
Patient 17. Byron, William August. M. 26 yrs. Prev. Hosp: None
Initial Diag: Schizophrenia.
Testing: Tests show high (140-150) intelligence, but thinking patterns disturbed by illness. Many questions were answered incorrectly or were misinterpreted due to patient's strong imagination. Personality tests show typically schizophrenic pattern with compulsive and masochistic components. Intention to extreme violent behaviour.
Interview (Initial): The patient appeared calm and logical in his thinking in the beginning of the interview, but as it progressed and the questions became more personal, logic began to fall away and at several times, he became extremely anxious. Patient believes himself to be a century old vampire called Spike. His delusion has become so severe that he has constructed an entire imaginary world on its own to support that belief, a place populated by characters of myth and a group of humans who are his friends, though he speaks of them most dubiously. Throughout the entire interview, patient tried to impress examiners with his wit as a way of obstructive defence, showing no fear and rebelling against every word of criticism that was to question his identity. Finally, near the end of the session, the patient's attitude changed from controlled to visibly angry, and he began to speak loudly, accusing examiners to trick him into telling what they wanted to hear. "I told you the truth, as I promised her that I would. Now are you head-buggers going to help me or not?" It was considered advisable at that moment to terminate the interview.
Family History: Born London, England, August 1976. One sibling, Liam, born 1971. Father, William Jacob, born 1945, English college teacher, migrated with his family to America in 1981 where they lived in a suburb in SunnyDale till 1995, died of stroke in 1995. Mother, Lily Anne Miller, born 1951, died in car accident in 1991. Patient's birth was normal. Family situation was stable and protective. Liam recalled incidents of mild taunting of his younger brother by his schoolmates because he refused to give up the cockney accent that he had picked up from his father. Puberty was normal physically, but patient suffered severe emotional problems at the age of 16 due to lost of his mother. Caused trouble at school, including a severe incident in which he had almost drowned a fellow classmate in a toilet bowl. Patient was suspended and ran away from home at the age of 17. Family lost contact with him till in the winter of 1995 William Jacob suffered a stroke and was hospitalised in the county hospital. Two day later, patient showed up at his parent's house, according to Liam frightened and confused, his appearance neglected as if he had been wandering the streets for the past three years. He asked about his father and Liam took his sibling to the hospital to see him, but they arrived too late. After his father's death, patient moved in with his brother in Los Angeles, till in early 1997, he decided to return to his hometown and move back into the abandoned parental house. He re-attended college and took writing classes, determined to become a writer. Patient visited his brother frequently and his mental and physical health improved till an unfortunate car accident in June 1997 caused him to slip into a three-month long coma from which he awakened in a catatonic state. Patient was submitted to the clinic in 1998 with approval of his brother. Patient stayed in catatonia without any sign of improvement in response to given medications or treatments. Chances at recovery were considered small to non-existing, till in spring 2002 an improvement in his condition was observed, patient started to fight back and finally succeeded in obtaining full consciousness on 15th of May 2002.
She turned the pages, her tired eyes glanced at a collection of graphs, showing various tests scores. William's personality dissected on paper, explained in numbers and compared to the normalized standards of sanity. She laughed, bitterly. How arrogant these people were if they believed that they could just decipher something as complicated as the human mind in a couple of tests and interviews. She had been working with William for a period of three long months and she still couldn't fully understand him, let alone the high and mighty physiatrists at the board who had decided that he was best addressed to as "patient 17" instead of just William. She pinched her nose-bridge again, slightly aware that she was starting to take over the hardly favourable habits of her mentor (thank God I don't wear glasses, she thought) when a knock at her office-door startled her.
"Um, come in. I'm still awake." She answered, only half joking.
The door opened and Mike came into her office, the anxious expression on his face predicting no other but bad news.
"Dr Summers. I think you need to come to see William."
Buffy just got the most terrible feeling sinking into her stomach. "What is going on? Did something happen to him?"
"I don't exactly know what happened." The orderly explained, grimly. "But he has to go see a physician. He's bleeding."
SCENE 6
" How could I've been so blind." Buffy whispered. She clutched her fingers together, anxiety getting the better of her. "This is awful."
Mike, who had been sitting next to the young doctor in the waiting room ever since they brought William to the clinic's emergency ward, gazed up at her.
"I should have seen it through his frenzy. Recognized the symptoms. It was so obvious."
"Don't blame yourself, Dr Summers. I haven't noticed anything either, and I was the one who was supposed to keep an eye on him all day."
"How could this have happened? Who would do such things?" She just couldn't say it out-loud, the one syllable word carrying such a horrible meaning. It baffled her mind that someone would ever want to hurt William like this. As if he hadn't already gone through far more than enough.
Mike kept looking at her in silence, eyes unblinking, analysing the events that he had witnessed on this awful day. Finally he cleared his throat and decided to tell the young doctor what was exactly on his mind. Mike was a good-hearted man, honest to the bone with a down to the earth wit. He had a way of putting things rather straightforwardly, unpolished and hard, but whatever he said came directly out of his heart. "Dr Summers. I don't know if I should say this, but - I got a feeling that Will's brother has something to do with this."
Buffy, who had been staring down at her sweaty hands the whole time, gazed up at the orderly, her expression first puzzled and then, as the words sunk in, horrified.
"You -You mean Liam?" She stuttered. "No. Oh no, that's not possible. Liam loves him. He - He cares about him more than anything else in the world. He would never do this."
"But he was also the last person who was alone with Will for more than half an hour before he suffered that relapse."
"That could have been just a coincidence. It might have nothing to do with this."
"Will was calling him a monster." He said, very seriously. "And he tried to kill him."
Buffy shook her head, the inner voice of reason begging her to reconsider what Mike was telling her, but her heart fleeing in denial for the truth was too sick and too terrible for her to possibly accept.
"Listen Dr Summers. I'm almost sure that he got something to do with this. I saw it in Will's eyes. He was absolutely terrified of him. I'm telling you, it wasn't mad raging hatred that made him pick up that chair and try to smash it down on his head. It was dead threatening fear that drove him to it."
"Will has this delusion in which a vampire called Angelus has bugged him for decades." She muttered, trying to think of some facts that could serve as an excuse so she wouldn't have to suspect the guilt-ridden older brother. "Maybe he was looking at Liam and saw something in him that made him think that Liam was Angelus. Something that scared him and made him to react like that."
"Perhaps." Mike looked away from her, questioning his own judgement for a brief moment. "But even so, don't you think that he has made up Angelus to look like Liam for a reason? Did he ever tell you what this vampire guy had done to him, given you any clues?"
Buffy swallowed, the noose of anxiety tightening around her neck. "Well, he did. In our private sessions, he once told me that Angelus was - abusive, evil. And he described him as his mentor, even his creator." She rubbed her eyes, a haze of tiredness settling in front of them. "Mike, look, we shouldn't just leap into conclusions here. We don't even know if it happened recently or that the wounds were from a couple of days before. It might have been one of the patients on the ward."
"You have been working on our department for what? Five years now? You know this has never happened before."
Buffy fell silent. She knew that the orderly was right. The patients who fell under her care were mostly victims to light cases of Schizophrenia, who came to her scared and in distrust but regained their faith in people after much care and hard work. They were colourful individuals, even more emotional than perhaps the average Wall Street stockbroker, but none of them were this disturbed or evil to could have done this to a fellow patient.
"Dr Summers?"
"Yes." She answered, standing up immediately and feeling guiltily relieved that she could escape from the horrific notion that Mike had planted in her mind. In front of her stood a dark-haired doctor in his early forties with tired eyes and a grey tan, his green uniform and doctor's coat crumpled and stained. A nametag carelessly fastened to his clothes introduced him as doctor Welter, but the physician himself didn't even offer her so much as a hand. He went straight to the point, as if he was an important man always delayed for his next appointment. Brows furrowed, he read aloud from the form on his clipboard.
"Patient number 17, mister William Byron. He's under your care?"
"Yes, he is. How is he?"
"He has been raped." He stated, indifferently. "The assault had caused some damage to the rectum, tore the muscles apart, which explains the bleeding. And the sphincter is damaged, also torn. The first complication cannot be treated and has to heal for itself. The second one can be treated and one of my students is currently attending him as we speak."
She was baffled for a moment, having expected a compassionate doctor, someone who would bring the bad news to her in a careful, comforting way. However, this Dr Welters guy was utterly blunt and offensive, chillingly cold. Telling her about Williams condition as if he was reading up a grocery list, and dealing with the rape issue itself as if, well, as if it wasn't an issue at all.
"If you could fill in the forms at the nurse station, and get back here in let's say, ten minutes?" The doctor continued. "He should be ready by then."
"Doesn't he need to be taken into the hospital ward?" Buffy asked, agitation starting to build up in her voice.
"Hardly. He needs a couple of stitches to get the wounds to start healing. That's all."
"I'm sorry, but I really don't get this. You're sending him away, just like this, after he's been raped? Doesn't he need monitoring or anything?" Her voice was loud and rising. Her frustration no longer concealed. "Don't you think he needs more then just a bit of clumsy needle work?" She spat, sarcastically.
Doctor Welter looked at her with a tinge of contempt on his worn-out face. "Look Dr -" he gazed down at his form again to recollect the foolish girl's name. "Summers. The hospital ward in this clinic has only enough beds for six patients. This, if it has eluded you, is a madhouse. I got people cutting their wrists and bleeding themselves dry in the toilets on a daily basis. I had a woman this afternoon, who had tried to amputate her own leg with a blunt plastic spoon because she believed she saw Satan's face on it. I can't take them all in and the staff and I are still working ourselves into an early grave at ten in the evening to keep up with the damage that you so-called specialists have done. Don't expect us to do your work as well."
His words weighed heavy on her soul, and made it impossible for her to continue to vent her frustration on the physician. "I didn't mean to be offensive." She tried, apolitically.
"But you was." He stated acidly. "Now excuse me, I have another patient to attend to; another casualty of physical abuse that I have to stitch back together ever so clumsily. If you were so kind to remove yours from the emergency room and clear the space for the next patient?"
Buffy wanted to say something, but the doctor turned around and strode off to the double doors and disappeared inside.
"Are you all right?" Mike asked, observing the paleness on her face. "Man, that guy is a complete jerk."
"I'm all right." She muttered softly.
"Don't feel bad about yourself because of what he said. Doctors like him get nothing but the worst cases sent to them. They never get to see what good you and others like Dr Giles have done. I've seen it, and I know how much you mean to people like William."
Buffy answered his kindness with a small, wavering smile. She partly believed that what Mike told her was right, but a bigger part of her was still shaken by the words of the bitter doctor. In a certain way, they had been true. She had panicked after she had seen the blood on the towels, the diluted red pools of water on the shower room floor. Mike had led William there for him to take a warm shower after he was released from the cold pack. However, William had been shivering continuously, unable to move his hands and wash himself, so the orderly had tried to help him with it, soaping him in and scrubbing the suds off his chest and back. It wasn't until the orderly was drying him off with the clean white towels that he noticed that there was blood running between his legs. She came to see William immediately after she had been informed by the orderly, and the very sight of her patient had shocked her then. He had been standing there, shivering in the cold in his bare form, hugging himself tightly. He didn't dare to move, couldn't speak or look her into the eyes. Kept his gaze to the floor, terribly ashamed. The pain he felt wasn't physical, but she knew that it must be as ever as great as real physical pain, and it had reached her. Violated her as he had been violated. Her first impulse was to run away, to escape all that agony that she had seen on his sad face, deny its existence. Deny the guilt. Then, after a moment of silence in which she had fought against her tears, she decided that she should react professional and composed as she was trained to, running down a protocol in her head so she didn't had to think too much of what she was actually feeling. She asked Mike to clean him up and bring him a new set of clothes. She helped him to get dressed, moving him as gently as she could. Their eyes met only once, when Buffy had to repeatedly asked him to raise his arms so she could shrug a shirt over his shoulders. The blue in his eyes had somewhat paled, made less lifelike by a far-away look. She knew then that she had to act quickly. William was starting to fade away into his own secure little world again, but after all that was so cruelly done to him, she couldn't possibly blame him for shying away from reality. She herself, had troubles accepting. In his troubled eyes lay too much responsibility, too many consequences for her to face regardless how she would react.
She told Mike that she wanted to speak to William alone for a moment, and asked the orderly to wait for them outside. As she walked over to the double doors entering the emergency room, she knew that whatever great jerk Dr Stitch-a-lot-Welter was, that the man still had a point. She couldn't just run away from her problems. She had to find the courage to face them, head-on. Be strong for his sake, because he needed her to be there for him more than ever before.
It was time to pick up her heart and start taking care of the things that were her responsibility.
SCENE 7
William knew that he had been bad, he must have been. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, right? That's what he was made of. Just like all the other naughty boys who were brought here. He couldn't see them, obscured as they were from his eyes by endless green rows of curtains, but he knew that they were there because he could hear them, screaming, singing, and crying. William himself didn't participate, he felt already too ashamed to allow him self to indulge into such lucky display of full madness. He was lying on his belly on a cold metal examination table, his trousers and knickers down to his ankles and his shirt tucked up, his bare flesh horribly exposed. A nervous young man with sweaty palms and unsteady hands was in charge, tormenting him with scalpels and needles. He didn't say much either, just concentrated on the infliction of pain like a professional executioner would, the cutting of already injured flesh, the sharp sting of a needle, followed by a red hot track as the thread was pulled through. Torture had become an art in his inexperienced hands. William bit on his lower lip, not allowing himself to scream. It served him right to be tormented in this sterile hell. He shouldn't have let them know. Let them see what had been done to him. Now that they knew how he truly was inside, how small he was and how ugly and dirty, how used, he was so terribly afraid that she wouldn't come to see him anymore. That look she had given him while he stood there in the cold and damp room, his body paralysed by the shock of being exposed, his shameful little secret stripped naked before her eyes in sinful puddles of blood - that look had been one of utter horror and disgust. He had frightened her, he knew for he had recognized the fear. He knew because she had brought him here and abandoned him, leaving the disgusting little thing to the hands of an acid doctor with a withered humanity, let him probe and touch him till he was bleeding again. And then, there were the voices coming from those who just wouldn't allow him to rest, that sang to him the harsh truth that she might no longer care.
William barely dared to look up at them. The two, translucent figures standing at the head of the table, supervising his punishment with much interest and a hardly disguised sense of glee. A gentleman dressed in a Victorian outfit, long tailed coat, proper white shirt and cuffed sleeves, a generous moustache obscuring his upper lip, his dark hair combed back carefully and shining with grease. Next to him stood a woman, also Victorian with her wide, elaborately decorated dress and her tiny, corset captured waist. She was hardly beautiful, but she had the air and the manners of a sophisticated English Lady.
The man had a railroad spike buried through his skull, just above his right eye-socket.
The woman had not yet uttered a coherent word. Her lips had been sewed together with rough stitches, leaving her delicate mouth a raw festering mess.
The man loomed over his shoulders, and William couldn't restrain himself from uttering a small yelp of fright when blood spilled from the horrific wound, down the short, rusty pin and dripped on the back of his hand.
"What's the matter dear William? Never seen blood on your hands before?" The ghostly figure asked, his question not bearing any malice or reproach. It was merely a statement, as if the gentleman was in the mood for a bit of a social chitchat. He tilted his head to the right, and white wriggling maggots fell out of the empty eye. William whimpered and coiled up, horrified.
"Look, can you just keep still for a minute? " The med student asked, irritated. "You've almost broken the fucking thread. You want me to start all over again?"
He tried to relax his muscles, although they were tight as cords. The needle went in his raw wounds again, and he felt how the thread pulled painfully on his flesh.
"Oh my." The phantom gentleman muttered, shaking his head in dismay. "Such appalling language, coming from an academic. Such lack of good manners. Things have certainly changed since our last encounter."
The woman next to him mumbled something, giving her opinion with sealed lips. The man sighed deeply and rolled his eyes.
"Priscilla, my dear. You know that we can't understand you when you're like this."
The woman scowled at her ghostly companion, indignation written all over her pale, skull-like features. She turned toward the small table next to William, where various operation equipments had been spread out on a green fabric. She grabbed a pair of miniature scissors and started cutting through the stitches.
"No!" William yelled, panicking. "Don't! Don't let her!" Then, suddenly remembering, added; " I had a good reason for doing that!"
"I'm afraid I cannot withhold her." The English gentleman stated, almost compassionately. "Well, you know how she is. Her tongue cannot be silenced when there are matters to be said."
"I said hold still!" The med student snapped. "Are you besides crazy also deaf or something? Man. my last shift for today and I have to get this crazy fruitcake.
William groaned and watched sullenly how the last thread was cut. Priscilla put away the instrument and moved her jaw, cautiously. Her peeling lips cracked as she tried to pull them into a proud smile, bits of black thread still sticking out of the red rotting flesh like spikes from a dried cactus.
"There." She muttered. "Much better. Honestly Steven, I was getting quite upset about this whole sit -" her phrase was cut short as she suddenly leaned forward, her throat working frightfully. She tried to shield her unseemly behaviour from sight by placing her hand before her mouth. Then she gagged and threw up a pile of stinking mouse carcasses that landed in front of her expensive looking shoes. She looked at it in full horror, her face paling into a yet unknown colour of translucent white.
"Priscilla dear." Steven Rathbone tried rather cautiously in an attempt to calm down his fiancé. "Now don't get upset now. You knew that this would happen."
Priscilla Schnubly, an full blooded aristocrat and well respected member of the higher social circles of Victorian London, let out a terrifying shriek that caused goose bumps to form on William's skin and tied his stomach into a cold knot of fright. The scorned lady turned to him, her carefully made up eyes no longer indifferent and patronizing, but raging and accusing, hatred aging her skin and hardening the corners of her misshapen mouth.
"You!" She shouted. "You did this! You sick, pathetic little whore!"
William uttered a small terrified sound, then tried to coil up again, his heart racing.
"You murdered me!" She shouted. "You filled my mouth with rodents and sewed my lips together, threw me in a hole in the ground and buried me alive! Just because mister William Byron here is afraid to hear someone tell the truth in his snobby little face, exposing you for just what you are, which is nothing but a sad, worthless, gutless little worm!"
"You stupid nutcase!" Yelled the agitated med student. "Look what you've done! You made me lose the fucking thread!"
"I - I am sorry." William stuttered, guilt sweeping up and clearing some of the paralysing fear out of his mind. "I - didn't mean to." He swallowed, tears pushing to the surface. "Please. Forgive me." These were words coming from his heart. It wasn't a pretentious way to deceive his personal demons, and he was slightly surprised by his own honesty.
"Poor William." Steven Rathbone said. "As if these kind of things can be taken care of so easily by uttering those two simple words. It's much more complicated than that."
"Yeah, whatever." The med student muttered, opening a new package of sterilized thread. "Anyway, it's your ass that's bleeding, not mine. It's just that I got more to do than listening to your overripe crazy talk all night."
"Is that why you're here?" Priscilla snapped, her long ghostly neck stretching toward him like an elastic string of pastry. "To be forgiven? Do you think that allowing yourself to suffer all this will make it easier for you, soften the guilt that is eating you up from the inside?" She laughed at him, high-heartedly, shrill and cold like the December wind howling through an abandoned building. "You're a fool William Byron. Punishments are not suffered by the fallen because there is forgiveness to be earned. They are endured by the wicked because that is all what they deserve."
"That's why it's so foolish of you to put all your trust into that girl, um Miss Buffy Summers, wasn't that her name?" Rathbone opted. "She won't pity you, neither will she ever be able to love you. Face it my boy, you don't deserve her love. You're not good enough for her. You're totally beneath her class, physically and morally."
"She had seen you how you truly are." Priscilla taunted. Shifting around William with ghostly grace, her body vanishing into the steel table, cutting through it like a ship sailing through fog. "Stripped from all the pretentious confidence and stubborn strength that protects you from the outside world. The pathetic, weak, disgusting thing that hides itself from the light. And she had been repulsed, utterly horrified."
William shook his head, tears blinding his eyes. "Please, stop this."
"Don't be such a cry baby. I'm almost done." The med student muttered. "Could have been finished already if it wasn't for you thrashing around."
The vengeful phantom smiled broadly, content with the visible agony she had caused. "You know that she doesn't want anything to do with you anymore. She left you here after she had seen how ugly and dark you are inside. Left you all by yourself. Let the sadistic doctor tie you up. Violate you like the stupid little whore that you are. Left you here to be punished and bleed."
"No, no no no." William muttered, sinking his head between his arms, folding his hands over his ears. "Enough. No more. Please, I beg you."
"Begging doesn't help, William." Rathbone said, his voice turning grim. "Neither does praying. It didn't help me at least."
"We pleaded for our lives and you killed us all the same." Priscilla stated, bitterly. "The heartless monster won't let us live, even after we had begged him in tears, scraping our knees bare over the gravel." She leaned closer, her hatred for him burning fiercely in her eyes. "You tormented us." She hissed.
"Tell us you don't deserve what it's done to you today, William." Rathbone came also closer to him, his expression no longer socially friendly, but bleak and hostile. "Tell us and we will leave. Allow you to be left alone and to be able to rest at last."
"I can't. I can't tell you that." William sobbed, his shame burning on his cheeks, hidden in darkness. "I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
"That's exactly what we thought." Priscilla remarked, a malicious tinge sounding through her voice.
"Poor little William. Deserted by everyone."
William peered up at Rathbone who grabbed the blood crusted end of the railroad spike and pulled it out of his eye, rusty iron scraping over pieces of bone. A dark gush dripped down his right cheek making him look like he had been weeping tears of blood, while pale, black headed maggots wriggled in his empty socket, a thousand tiny eyes shifting inside his skull. Rathbone gazed at the murder-weapon in his hand, then turned his head toward the terrified William and smiled, a nightmare vision of death. "Lost and alone" He muttered, callously. "Nothing left to live for but to be castigated for the evil he had done."
SCENE 8
"I can't. I can't tell you that. I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
Buffy heard him before she saw him, his strange emotional ramblings coming from behind the drawn curtains. She shifted them aside and stepped inside the tiny, secluded space. William was lying face down on the operation table, gazing up to an empty spot in the air with wide-open eyes while panting in frantic horror.
"William?" She tried. Walking over to him cautiously.
"I won't try too hard if I were you." A nervous looking young man told her, throwing away his blood tainted gloves and cleaning up the place. "I mean the lights are on, sure, but there's nobody home in there."
"Could you leave us for a minute?" She asked.
"Sure, whatever. It's time for a break anyway. Could use a good nicotine rush after having to put up with this crazy nut here."
He strode off, plucking lose bits of tread from his sleeves. "Just don't let him break anything in here. Oh, and if that old slave-driver Dr Welter asks about me, tell him that I have already moved on to the next patient, will-ya?"
"Sure." Buffy said, faking a smile to appear polite. "No problem."
She waited till the rude med student had vanished behind the curtains, and turned to William, who was still staring straight out into the empty space in front of him, his head tilted slightly to one side as if he was listening carefully.
"William?" She crouched down beside him. "Will, what are you doing?"
He turned his head and looked at her, startled. His cheeks damp of fresh tears. Then returned his gaze to the spot in the air, furrowing his brows worriedly.
"Will, what's going on?" She asked softly, careful not to frighten him.
"I -" He paused, licking his dry lips, looking at her again, but averting his eyes shamefully when he noticed that she was studying him. "I was talking to them. Asking them to forgive me."
"Asking who? And why? I mean, you didn't do anything wro-"
"I did. I did horrible things. I - I murdered people. Taking revenge. A monster, a murderer. I have blood on my hands." He lifted both his hands from the surface and held them up to show it to her. "See? Blood. Blood everywhere."
"I don't see any blood, William." She assured him, trying to remain calm. "There isn't any blood. You haven't hurt anybody."
He bowed his head, pressing his hands to his ears as his invisible demons started shouting at him again. "I hurt people. They are yelling at me. Dead inside. Dead and dark and ugly. You've seen me. You've seen what I am and you ran away from it."
"I didn't run away." She said, her heart feeling heavy. "I helped you to get dressed and brought you here with Mike to see the doctor, remember?"
"You wanted to. I saw it in your eyes. You were afraid of me. Disgusted."
"That isn't true! It wasn't like that. I was -" She paused, taking in a deep breath to calm her rampant emotions. "I was shocked. I didn't know what to think. I guess - I was weak."
She gazed into his eyes, and was relieved to find them looking at her instead of staring at the phantoms in his head.
"I'm sorry, Will. I should have been there for you."
She reached out and gently, she grab hold of his hand, holding it up in front of him. "There's no blood, Will. Your hands are clean. Whatever these gutless bullies tell you that you've done, it isn't real. You're not a monster. You're William August Byron. You're a good man."
She felt relieved as she saw how his face lightened up a bit when she spoke these words to him.
"I don't want your pity." He said, his voice not angry, but sad. "Don't deserve any. Liam got all hurt because of me."
"Liam, did he - did he hurt you? Frighten you? Is that why you attacked him?"
William whimpered and hid his face from her, making her regret her impatient questioning immediately.
"Will? Don't be afraid, tell me what happened."
"It wasn't his fault." He muttered softly. "I deserved it."
"That's - That's not true!" She was only slightly aware that her voice was louder than she wanted it to be, so filled with sudden anger was she. "Nobody deserves that. Especially not you. What happened wasn't your fault, Will! Please don't feel guilty or ashamed about yourself."
William blinked his eyes in confusion. "So you're not angry with me? You didn't bring me here because - because you wanted me to be punished?"
"I brought you here because I wanted to help you." She said, hardly in control of the trembling in her voice. "I want to see you get better again."
He closed his eyes, concentrating on his own thoughts while trying to shut out the endless string of insults that he got hurled to his head by the two unforgiving phantoms. Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked at her ever so shyly.
"Do you - Do you love me?"
Buffy was startled, the sincerity sounding in his voice made her believe that it wasn't his illness that had driven him to ask this peculiar question, but she wasn't sure it was his full sanity either.
"Why are you asking me this?"
"Please tell me you do." He said desperately, almost pleading. "If you do I can tell them that they are both bloody lairs and tell them to sod off. Get them out of my head. But if you don't - Then I think I have to believe them." He was very serious about it. "Please. Tell me you care about me." He averted his eyes, barely able to look at her.
"I don't know." She hesitated when she saw him shrink away from her answer, fluttering his eyelids nervously, his eyes dashing from her face to the floor and back again. Maybe I should lie, she thought, tell him that I did love him. I must care about him enough to pull that off. He's too confused right now to notice the difference anyway. But as she pondered about the lie, she realized that it wasn't that far off from the truth at all.
She did have feelings for him.
"I -do - love you." She furrowed her brows, confused about her own confession, but feeling relieved at the same time to have these words off her heart at last. "I didn't realize it before." She watched how his eyes widened, staring at her, making her feel somewhat embarrassed. "Stupid, isn't. It took you getting all ramblingly insane to make me see it."
He looked at her now, right into the eyes, a great gratitude showing on his face. "Better late than never." He said, giving her a slight nod. "Thank you, Buffy."
"Yeah, well." She muttered, his honesty sending butterflies into her stomach. He just gave her the sweetest look, mesmerized as he was by her presence. "No need to if telling you this can help you with getting those crazy voices out of your head. Are they going away now by the way?"
"Who?"
Buffy gave him a slightly suspicious look.
"Oh, um." William reluctantly tore his gaze off her and glanced around, looking for the vindictive spirits that had tormented him just minutes before, but they were nowhere to be seen. "I think they're gone." He said, a bit confused.
"So you don't have to yell at them to them get out?"
"Guess not. They just disappeared, but they were not much than thin air to begin with."
"God, I really hope that you're not faking this to get me to say this to you! Because if you are -"
"No! I wasn't faking them!" He protested loudly. Sounding hurt. "They were here! They were telling me things. Tormenting me. Made me afraid to lose you. But you chased them away." He calmed down again, his mind half lost, half lucid. "You always chase the bad things away. Help me, even when I don't deserve your help. You're the only one who keeps me sane."
Buffy smiled, touched by his words. His eyes showed a sadness and loneliness that reflected his soul. His words and gestures all cried out a silent craving for love, so intense that it was aching. It filled her heart with a deep affection for him. And for a moment, she forgot who she was and who he was and all about the narrow-minded, cold world around her. She leaned forward, her eyes half-closed, her lips moist and anticipating, her hands gently folding over his flushed cheeks.
She found herself kissing him.
There was a part of her, the sane part she supposed, that was all ~ Oh, my God, what the hell am I doing! ~ while wishing that she would stop before someone came in and saw her taking advantage of her feeble minded patient. (Because that was exactly what it was when one considered the codes of conduct for a practicing psychiatrist; shameless abuse. Manipulation of a man who wasn't quite sane enough to distinguish empty spots of air from real persons of flesh and bone, let alone get himself sorted out to come to the rash conclusion that he was deeply in love with her.) However, the emotional, perhaps more primal part of her, pleaded not to stop for the sensation of his mouth on hers was overwhelming. His kisses were tender, painfully shy at first, but became fiery and passionate as he realized that she wanted him. Truly wanted him. He closed his eyes and let her lips caress his, making it buzz and tingle, filling up on electricity coming from her soft flesh. It was everything he dreamed of; it was warm and affectionate and blindingly bright, a glimpse of heaven that he would never set foot on. It was complete.
It was love. Her love. Unconditionally in return.
Her touch ebbed away. Slowly, but still so very painful was that departure. He leaned toward her, trying to linger to those lips for precious seconds longer, but eventually, he had to let her go.
He opened his eyes again and smiled, dumb-folded, almost unable to believe to be so very fortunate.
"Strawberries." He whispered, looking into her eyes, lost in them like Odysseus on his ocean, never able to find shores.
Buffy brushed a lost lock of his hair back to his ear and gave him a puzzled look.
"Your lips." He explained, smiling timidly. "They taste like summer strawberries."
TBC
Second part of this chapter will be posted here on ff.net coming Thursday. Yes, I do know that I am evil and will be loathed, spit on and dragged through the gutter by you for quitting this chapter at the point when things finally starts to take a right turn for our poor Spike/William, but 6990 words is no doggy-fart either, so don't give me any of that lip. (
And yes, I do realize I've screwed up William's age. I'm gonna fix that up by revising the old chapters, he's now officially 26 in this twisted little tale.
Cheers Richard
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.
SUMMARY: based on the 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 an asylum.
THANK YOU: For your patience, your support and your comments on the story.
ACT 8: I should hide from you. Hide my face. You know what I did.
SCENE 5
A thick folder the size of a small novel lay on her desk, the name of the patient neatly written on a white label rimmed by a metal frame. She sat down and opened it. Her fingers went over the first page and unconsciously lingered at the troubled young man's photo that was secured to the file with a small paperclip. Buffy couldn't help but to anguish herself by noticing that he looked much healthier, much saner on that picture then he did now, bound down to his bed, wrapped in a cold cocoon of utter discomfort. She shook her head, trying to set aside these distractive emotions that kept her from thinking clear. What was important right now was to help William to recover. She had to figure out what was causing his strange behaviour, what was frightening him so much that it made him stop functioning properly. Pinching her nose-bridge, she shook her head again, and then started to go through the file:
Patient 17. Byron, William August. M. 26 yrs. Prev. Hosp: None
Initial Diag: Schizophrenia.
Testing: Tests show high (140-150) intelligence, but thinking patterns disturbed by illness. Many questions were answered incorrectly or were misinterpreted due to patient's strong imagination. Personality tests show typically schizophrenic pattern with compulsive and masochistic components. Intention to extreme violent behaviour.
Interview (Initial): The patient appeared calm and logical in his thinking in the beginning of the interview, but as it progressed and the questions became more personal, logic began to fall away and at several times, he became extremely anxious. Patient believes himself to be a century old vampire called Spike. His delusion has become so severe that he has constructed an entire imaginary world on its own to support that belief, a place populated by characters of myth and a group of humans who are his friends, though he speaks of them most dubiously. Throughout the entire interview, patient tried to impress examiners with his wit as a way of obstructive defence, showing no fear and rebelling against every word of criticism that was to question his identity. Finally, near the end of the session, the patient's attitude changed from controlled to visibly angry, and he began to speak loudly, accusing examiners to trick him into telling what they wanted to hear. "I told you the truth, as I promised her that I would. Now are you head-buggers going to help me or not?" It was considered advisable at that moment to terminate the interview.
Family History: Born London, England, August 1976. One sibling, Liam, born 1971. Father, William Jacob, born 1945, English college teacher, migrated with his family to America in 1981 where they lived in a suburb in SunnyDale till 1995, died of stroke in 1995. Mother, Lily Anne Miller, born 1951, died in car accident in 1991. Patient's birth was normal. Family situation was stable and protective. Liam recalled incidents of mild taunting of his younger brother by his schoolmates because he refused to give up the cockney accent that he had picked up from his father. Puberty was normal physically, but patient suffered severe emotional problems at the age of 16 due to lost of his mother. Caused trouble at school, including a severe incident in which he had almost drowned a fellow classmate in a toilet bowl. Patient was suspended and ran away from home at the age of 17. Family lost contact with him till in the winter of 1995 William Jacob suffered a stroke and was hospitalised in the county hospital. Two day later, patient showed up at his parent's house, according to Liam frightened and confused, his appearance neglected as if he had been wandering the streets for the past three years. He asked about his father and Liam took his sibling to the hospital to see him, but they arrived too late. After his father's death, patient moved in with his brother in Los Angeles, till in early 1997, he decided to return to his hometown and move back into the abandoned parental house. He re-attended college and took writing classes, determined to become a writer. Patient visited his brother frequently and his mental and physical health improved till an unfortunate car accident in June 1997 caused him to slip into a three-month long coma from which he awakened in a catatonic state. Patient was submitted to the clinic in 1998 with approval of his brother. Patient stayed in catatonia without any sign of improvement in response to given medications or treatments. Chances at recovery were considered small to non-existing, till in spring 2002 an improvement in his condition was observed, patient started to fight back and finally succeeded in obtaining full consciousness on 15th of May 2002.
She turned the pages, her tired eyes glanced at a collection of graphs, showing various tests scores. William's personality dissected on paper, explained in numbers and compared to the normalized standards of sanity. She laughed, bitterly. How arrogant these people were if they believed that they could just decipher something as complicated as the human mind in a couple of tests and interviews. She had been working with William for a period of three long months and she still couldn't fully understand him, let alone the high and mighty physiatrists at the board who had decided that he was best addressed to as "patient 17" instead of just William. She pinched her nose-bridge again, slightly aware that she was starting to take over the hardly favourable habits of her mentor (thank God I don't wear glasses, she thought) when a knock at her office-door startled her.
"Um, come in. I'm still awake." She answered, only half joking.
The door opened and Mike came into her office, the anxious expression on his face predicting no other but bad news.
"Dr Summers. I think you need to come to see William."
Buffy just got the most terrible feeling sinking into her stomach. "What is going on? Did something happen to him?"
"I don't exactly know what happened." The orderly explained, grimly. "But he has to go see a physician. He's bleeding."
SCENE 6
" How could I've been so blind." Buffy whispered. She clutched her fingers together, anxiety getting the better of her. "This is awful."
Mike, who had been sitting next to the young doctor in the waiting room ever since they brought William to the clinic's emergency ward, gazed up at her.
"I should have seen it through his frenzy. Recognized the symptoms. It was so obvious."
"Don't blame yourself, Dr Summers. I haven't noticed anything either, and I was the one who was supposed to keep an eye on him all day."
"How could this have happened? Who would do such things?" She just couldn't say it out-loud, the one syllable word carrying such a horrible meaning. It baffled her mind that someone would ever want to hurt William like this. As if he hadn't already gone through far more than enough.
Mike kept looking at her in silence, eyes unblinking, analysing the events that he had witnessed on this awful day. Finally he cleared his throat and decided to tell the young doctor what was exactly on his mind. Mike was a good-hearted man, honest to the bone with a down to the earth wit. He had a way of putting things rather straightforwardly, unpolished and hard, but whatever he said came directly out of his heart. "Dr Summers. I don't know if I should say this, but - I got a feeling that Will's brother has something to do with this."
Buffy, who had been staring down at her sweaty hands the whole time, gazed up at the orderly, her expression first puzzled and then, as the words sunk in, horrified.
"You -You mean Liam?" She stuttered. "No. Oh no, that's not possible. Liam loves him. He - He cares about him more than anything else in the world. He would never do this."
"But he was also the last person who was alone with Will for more than half an hour before he suffered that relapse."
"That could have been just a coincidence. It might have nothing to do with this."
"Will was calling him a monster." He said, very seriously. "And he tried to kill him."
Buffy shook her head, the inner voice of reason begging her to reconsider what Mike was telling her, but her heart fleeing in denial for the truth was too sick and too terrible for her to possibly accept.
"Listen Dr Summers. I'm almost sure that he got something to do with this. I saw it in Will's eyes. He was absolutely terrified of him. I'm telling you, it wasn't mad raging hatred that made him pick up that chair and try to smash it down on his head. It was dead threatening fear that drove him to it."
"Will has this delusion in which a vampire called Angelus has bugged him for decades." She muttered, trying to think of some facts that could serve as an excuse so she wouldn't have to suspect the guilt-ridden older brother. "Maybe he was looking at Liam and saw something in him that made him think that Liam was Angelus. Something that scared him and made him to react like that."
"Perhaps." Mike looked away from her, questioning his own judgement for a brief moment. "But even so, don't you think that he has made up Angelus to look like Liam for a reason? Did he ever tell you what this vampire guy had done to him, given you any clues?"
Buffy swallowed, the noose of anxiety tightening around her neck. "Well, he did. In our private sessions, he once told me that Angelus was - abusive, evil. And he described him as his mentor, even his creator." She rubbed her eyes, a haze of tiredness settling in front of them. "Mike, look, we shouldn't just leap into conclusions here. We don't even know if it happened recently or that the wounds were from a couple of days before. It might have been one of the patients on the ward."
"You have been working on our department for what? Five years now? You know this has never happened before."
Buffy fell silent. She knew that the orderly was right. The patients who fell under her care were mostly victims to light cases of Schizophrenia, who came to her scared and in distrust but regained their faith in people after much care and hard work. They were colourful individuals, even more emotional than perhaps the average Wall Street stockbroker, but none of them were this disturbed or evil to could have done this to a fellow patient.
"Dr Summers?"
"Yes." She answered, standing up immediately and feeling guiltily relieved that she could escape from the horrific notion that Mike had planted in her mind. In front of her stood a dark-haired doctor in his early forties with tired eyes and a grey tan, his green uniform and doctor's coat crumpled and stained. A nametag carelessly fastened to his clothes introduced him as doctor Welter, but the physician himself didn't even offer her so much as a hand. He went straight to the point, as if he was an important man always delayed for his next appointment. Brows furrowed, he read aloud from the form on his clipboard.
"Patient number 17, mister William Byron. He's under your care?"
"Yes, he is. How is he?"
"He has been raped." He stated, indifferently. "The assault had caused some damage to the rectum, tore the muscles apart, which explains the bleeding. And the sphincter is damaged, also torn. The first complication cannot be treated and has to heal for itself. The second one can be treated and one of my students is currently attending him as we speak."
She was baffled for a moment, having expected a compassionate doctor, someone who would bring the bad news to her in a careful, comforting way. However, this Dr Welters guy was utterly blunt and offensive, chillingly cold. Telling her about Williams condition as if he was reading up a grocery list, and dealing with the rape issue itself as if, well, as if it wasn't an issue at all.
"If you could fill in the forms at the nurse station, and get back here in let's say, ten minutes?" The doctor continued. "He should be ready by then."
"Doesn't he need to be taken into the hospital ward?" Buffy asked, agitation starting to build up in her voice.
"Hardly. He needs a couple of stitches to get the wounds to start healing. That's all."
"I'm sorry, but I really don't get this. You're sending him away, just like this, after he's been raped? Doesn't he need monitoring or anything?" Her voice was loud and rising. Her frustration no longer concealed. "Don't you think he needs more then just a bit of clumsy needle work?" She spat, sarcastically.
Doctor Welter looked at her with a tinge of contempt on his worn-out face. "Look Dr -" he gazed down at his form again to recollect the foolish girl's name. "Summers. The hospital ward in this clinic has only enough beds for six patients. This, if it has eluded you, is a madhouse. I got people cutting their wrists and bleeding themselves dry in the toilets on a daily basis. I had a woman this afternoon, who had tried to amputate her own leg with a blunt plastic spoon because she believed she saw Satan's face on it. I can't take them all in and the staff and I are still working ourselves into an early grave at ten in the evening to keep up with the damage that you so-called specialists have done. Don't expect us to do your work as well."
His words weighed heavy on her soul, and made it impossible for her to continue to vent her frustration on the physician. "I didn't mean to be offensive." She tried, apolitically.
"But you was." He stated acidly. "Now excuse me, I have another patient to attend to; another casualty of physical abuse that I have to stitch back together ever so clumsily. If you were so kind to remove yours from the emergency room and clear the space for the next patient?"
Buffy wanted to say something, but the doctor turned around and strode off to the double doors and disappeared inside.
"Are you all right?" Mike asked, observing the paleness on her face. "Man, that guy is a complete jerk."
"I'm all right." She muttered softly.
"Don't feel bad about yourself because of what he said. Doctors like him get nothing but the worst cases sent to them. They never get to see what good you and others like Dr Giles have done. I've seen it, and I know how much you mean to people like William."
Buffy answered his kindness with a small, wavering smile. She partly believed that what Mike told her was right, but a bigger part of her was still shaken by the words of the bitter doctor. In a certain way, they had been true. She had panicked after she had seen the blood on the towels, the diluted red pools of water on the shower room floor. Mike had led William there for him to take a warm shower after he was released from the cold pack. However, William had been shivering continuously, unable to move his hands and wash himself, so the orderly had tried to help him with it, soaping him in and scrubbing the suds off his chest and back. It wasn't until the orderly was drying him off with the clean white towels that he noticed that there was blood running between his legs. She came to see William immediately after she had been informed by the orderly, and the very sight of her patient had shocked her then. He had been standing there, shivering in the cold in his bare form, hugging himself tightly. He didn't dare to move, couldn't speak or look her into the eyes. Kept his gaze to the floor, terribly ashamed. The pain he felt wasn't physical, but she knew that it must be as ever as great as real physical pain, and it had reached her. Violated her as he had been violated. Her first impulse was to run away, to escape all that agony that she had seen on his sad face, deny its existence. Deny the guilt. Then, after a moment of silence in which she had fought against her tears, she decided that she should react professional and composed as she was trained to, running down a protocol in her head so she didn't had to think too much of what she was actually feeling. She asked Mike to clean him up and bring him a new set of clothes. She helped him to get dressed, moving him as gently as she could. Their eyes met only once, when Buffy had to repeatedly asked him to raise his arms so she could shrug a shirt over his shoulders. The blue in his eyes had somewhat paled, made less lifelike by a far-away look. She knew then that she had to act quickly. William was starting to fade away into his own secure little world again, but after all that was so cruelly done to him, she couldn't possibly blame him for shying away from reality. She herself, had troubles accepting. In his troubled eyes lay too much responsibility, too many consequences for her to face regardless how she would react.
She told Mike that she wanted to speak to William alone for a moment, and asked the orderly to wait for them outside. As she walked over to the double doors entering the emergency room, she knew that whatever great jerk Dr Stitch-a-lot-Welter was, that the man still had a point. She couldn't just run away from her problems. She had to find the courage to face them, head-on. Be strong for his sake, because he needed her to be there for him more than ever before.
It was time to pick up her heart and start taking care of the things that were her responsibility.
SCENE 7
William knew that he had been bad, he must have been. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, right? That's what he was made of. Just like all the other naughty boys who were brought here. He couldn't see them, obscured as they were from his eyes by endless green rows of curtains, but he knew that they were there because he could hear them, screaming, singing, and crying. William himself didn't participate, he felt already too ashamed to allow him self to indulge into such lucky display of full madness. He was lying on his belly on a cold metal examination table, his trousers and knickers down to his ankles and his shirt tucked up, his bare flesh horribly exposed. A nervous young man with sweaty palms and unsteady hands was in charge, tormenting him with scalpels and needles. He didn't say much either, just concentrated on the infliction of pain like a professional executioner would, the cutting of already injured flesh, the sharp sting of a needle, followed by a red hot track as the thread was pulled through. Torture had become an art in his inexperienced hands. William bit on his lower lip, not allowing himself to scream. It served him right to be tormented in this sterile hell. He shouldn't have let them know. Let them see what had been done to him. Now that they knew how he truly was inside, how small he was and how ugly and dirty, how used, he was so terribly afraid that she wouldn't come to see him anymore. That look she had given him while he stood there in the cold and damp room, his body paralysed by the shock of being exposed, his shameful little secret stripped naked before her eyes in sinful puddles of blood - that look had been one of utter horror and disgust. He had frightened her, he knew for he had recognized the fear. He knew because she had brought him here and abandoned him, leaving the disgusting little thing to the hands of an acid doctor with a withered humanity, let him probe and touch him till he was bleeding again. And then, there were the voices coming from those who just wouldn't allow him to rest, that sang to him the harsh truth that she might no longer care.
William barely dared to look up at them. The two, translucent figures standing at the head of the table, supervising his punishment with much interest and a hardly disguised sense of glee. A gentleman dressed in a Victorian outfit, long tailed coat, proper white shirt and cuffed sleeves, a generous moustache obscuring his upper lip, his dark hair combed back carefully and shining with grease. Next to him stood a woman, also Victorian with her wide, elaborately decorated dress and her tiny, corset captured waist. She was hardly beautiful, but she had the air and the manners of a sophisticated English Lady.
The man had a railroad spike buried through his skull, just above his right eye-socket.
The woman had not yet uttered a coherent word. Her lips had been sewed together with rough stitches, leaving her delicate mouth a raw festering mess.
The man loomed over his shoulders, and William couldn't restrain himself from uttering a small yelp of fright when blood spilled from the horrific wound, down the short, rusty pin and dripped on the back of his hand.
"What's the matter dear William? Never seen blood on your hands before?" The ghostly figure asked, his question not bearing any malice or reproach. It was merely a statement, as if the gentleman was in the mood for a bit of a social chitchat. He tilted his head to the right, and white wriggling maggots fell out of the empty eye. William whimpered and coiled up, horrified.
"Look, can you just keep still for a minute? " The med student asked, irritated. "You've almost broken the fucking thread. You want me to start all over again?"
He tried to relax his muscles, although they were tight as cords. The needle went in his raw wounds again, and he felt how the thread pulled painfully on his flesh.
"Oh my." The phantom gentleman muttered, shaking his head in dismay. "Such appalling language, coming from an academic. Such lack of good manners. Things have certainly changed since our last encounter."
The woman next to him mumbled something, giving her opinion with sealed lips. The man sighed deeply and rolled his eyes.
"Priscilla, my dear. You know that we can't understand you when you're like this."
The woman scowled at her ghostly companion, indignation written all over her pale, skull-like features. She turned toward the small table next to William, where various operation equipments had been spread out on a green fabric. She grabbed a pair of miniature scissors and started cutting through the stitches.
"No!" William yelled, panicking. "Don't! Don't let her!" Then, suddenly remembering, added; " I had a good reason for doing that!"
"I'm afraid I cannot withhold her." The English gentleman stated, almost compassionately. "Well, you know how she is. Her tongue cannot be silenced when there are matters to be said."
"I said hold still!" The med student snapped. "Are you besides crazy also deaf or something? Man. my last shift for today and I have to get this crazy fruitcake.
William groaned and watched sullenly how the last thread was cut. Priscilla put away the instrument and moved her jaw, cautiously. Her peeling lips cracked as she tried to pull them into a proud smile, bits of black thread still sticking out of the red rotting flesh like spikes from a dried cactus.
"There." She muttered. "Much better. Honestly Steven, I was getting quite upset about this whole sit -" her phrase was cut short as she suddenly leaned forward, her throat working frightfully. She tried to shield her unseemly behaviour from sight by placing her hand before her mouth. Then she gagged and threw up a pile of stinking mouse carcasses that landed in front of her expensive looking shoes. She looked at it in full horror, her face paling into a yet unknown colour of translucent white.
"Priscilla dear." Steven Rathbone tried rather cautiously in an attempt to calm down his fiancé. "Now don't get upset now. You knew that this would happen."
Priscilla Schnubly, an full blooded aristocrat and well respected member of the higher social circles of Victorian London, let out a terrifying shriek that caused goose bumps to form on William's skin and tied his stomach into a cold knot of fright. The scorned lady turned to him, her carefully made up eyes no longer indifferent and patronizing, but raging and accusing, hatred aging her skin and hardening the corners of her misshapen mouth.
"You!" She shouted. "You did this! You sick, pathetic little whore!"
William uttered a small terrified sound, then tried to coil up again, his heart racing.
"You murdered me!" She shouted. "You filled my mouth with rodents and sewed my lips together, threw me in a hole in the ground and buried me alive! Just because mister William Byron here is afraid to hear someone tell the truth in his snobby little face, exposing you for just what you are, which is nothing but a sad, worthless, gutless little worm!"
"You stupid nutcase!" Yelled the agitated med student. "Look what you've done! You made me lose the fucking thread!"
"I - I am sorry." William stuttered, guilt sweeping up and clearing some of the paralysing fear out of his mind. "I - didn't mean to." He swallowed, tears pushing to the surface. "Please. Forgive me." These were words coming from his heart. It wasn't a pretentious way to deceive his personal demons, and he was slightly surprised by his own honesty.
"Poor William." Steven Rathbone said. "As if these kind of things can be taken care of so easily by uttering those two simple words. It's much more complicated than that."
"Yeah, whatever." The med student muttered, opening a new package of sterilized thread. "Anyway, it's your ass that's bleeding, not mine. It's just that I got more to do than listening to your overripe crazy talk all night."
"Is that why you're here?" Priscilla snapped, her long ghostly neck stretching toward him like an elastic string of pastry. "To be forgiven? Do you think that allowing yourself to suffer all this will make it easier for you, soften the guilt that is eating you up from the inside?" She laughed at him, high-heartedly, shrill and cold like the December wind howling through an abandoned building. "You're a fool William Byron. Punishments are not suffered by the fallen because there is forgiveness to be earned. They are endured by the wicked because that is all what they deserve."
"That's why it's so foolish of you to put all your trust into that girl, um Miss Buffy Summers, wasn't that her name?" Rathbone opted. "She won't pity you, neither will she ever be able to love you. Face it my boy, you don't deserve her love. You're not good enough for her. You're totally beneath her class, physically and morally."
"She had seen you how you truly are." Priscilla taunted. Shifting around William with ghostly grace, her body vanishing into the steel table, cutting through it like a ship sailing through fog. "Stripped from all the pretentious confidence and stubborn strength that protects you from the outside world. The pathetic, weak, disgusting thing that hides itself from the light. And she had been repulsed, utterly horrified."
William shook his head, tears blinding his eyes. "Please, stop this."
"Don't be such a cry baby. I'm almost done." The med student muttered. "Could have been finished already if it wasn't for you thrashing around."
The vengeful phantom smiled broadly, content with the visible agony she had caused. "You know that she doesn't want anything to do with you anymore. She left you here after she had seen how ugly and dark you are inside. Left you all by yourself. Let the sadistic doctor tie you up. Violate you like the stupid little whore that you are. Left you here to be punished and bleed."
"No, no no no." William muttered, sinking his head between his arms, folding his hands over his ears. "Enough. No more. Please, I beg you."
"Begging doesn't help, William." Rathbone said, his voice turning grim. "Neither does praying. It didn't help me at least."
"We pleaded for our lives and you killed us all the same." Priscilla stated, bitterly. "The heartless monster won't let us live, even after we had begged him in tears, scraping our knees bare over the gravel." She leaned closer, her hatred for him burning fiercely in her eyes. "You tormented us." She hissed.
"Tell us you don't deserve what it's done to you today, William." Rathbone came also closer to him, his expression no longer socially friendly, but bleak and hostile. "Tell us and we will leave. Allow you to be left alone and to be able to rest at last."
"I can't. I can't tell you that." William sobbed, his shame burning on his cheeks, hidden in darkness. "I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
"That's exactly what we thought." Priscilla remarked, a malicious tinge sounding through her voice.
"Poor little William. Deserted by everyone."
William peered up at Rathbone who grabbed the blood crusted end of the railroad spike and pulled it out of his eye, rusty iron scraping over pieces of bone. A dark gush dripped down his right cheek making him look like he had been weeping tears of blood, while pale, black headed maggots wriggled in his empty socket, a thousand tiny eyes shifting inside his skull. Rathbone gazed at the murder-weapon in his hand, then turned his head toward the terrified William and smiled, a nightmare vision of death. "Lost and alone" He muttered, callously. "Nothing left to live for but to be castigated for the evil he had done."
SCENE 8
"I can't. I can't tell you that. I deserve this. I deserve to be punished."
Buffy heard him before she saw him, his strange emotional ramblings coming from behind the drawn curtains. She shifted them aside and stepped inside the tiny, secluded space. William was lying face down on the operation table, gazing up to an empty spot in the air with wide-open eyes while panting in frantic horror.
"William?" She tried. Walking over to him cautiously.
"I won't try too hard if I were you." A nervous looking young man told her, throwing away his blood tainted gloves and cleaning up the place. "I mean the lights are on, sure, but there's nobody home in there."
"Could you leave us for a minute?" She asked.
"Sure, whatever. It's time for a break anyway. Could use a good nicotine rush after having to put up with this crazy nut here."
He strode off, plucking lose bits of tread from his sleeves. "Just don't let him break anything in here. Oh, and if that old slave-driver Dr Welter asks about me, tell him that I have already moved on to the next patient, will-ya?"
"Sure." Buffy said, faking a smile to appear polite. "No problem."
She waited till the rude med student had vanished behind the curtains, and turned to William, who was still staring straight out into the empty space in front of him, his head tilted slightly to one side as if he was listening carefully.
"William?" She crouched down beside him. "Will, what are you doing?"
He turned his head and looked at her, startled. His cheeks damp of fresh tears. Then returned his gaze to the spot in the air, furrowing his brows worriedly.
"Will, what's going on?" She asked softly, careful not to frighten him.
"I -" He paused, licking his dry lips, looking at her again, but averting his eyes shamefully when he noticed that she was studying him. "I was talking to them. Asking them to forgive me."
"Asking who? And why? I mean, you didn't do anything wro-"
"I did. I did horrible things. I - I murdered people. Taking revenge. A monster, a murderer. I have blood on my hands." He lifted both his hands from the surface and held them up to show it to her. "See? Blood. Blood everywhere."
"I don't see any blood, William." She assured him, trying to remain calm. "There isn't any blood. You haven't hurt anybody."
He bowed his head, pressing his hands to his ears as his invisible demons started shouting at him again. "I hurt people. They are yelling at me. Dead inside. Dead and dark and ugly. You've seen me. You've seen what I am and you ran away from it."
"I didn't run away." She said, her heart feeling heavy. "I helped you to get dressed and brought you here with Mike to see the doctor, remember?"
"You wanted to. I saw it in your eyes. You were afraid of me. Disgusted."
"That isn't true! It wasn't like that. I was -" She paused, taking in a deep breath to calm her rampant emotions. "I was shocked. I didn't know what to think. I guess - I was weak."
She gazed into his eyes, and was relieved to find them looking at her instead of staring at the phantoms in his head.
"I'm sorry, Will. I should have been there for you."
She reached out and gently, she grab hold of his hand, holding it up in front of him. "There's no blood, Will. Your hands are clean. Whatever these gutless bullies tell you that you've done, it isn't real. You're not a monster. You're William August Byron. You're a good man."
She felt relieved as she saw how his face lightened up a bit when she spoke these words to him.
"I don't want your pity." He said, his voice not angry, but sad. "Don't deserve any. Liam got all hurt because of me."
"Liam, did he - did he hurt you? Frighten you? Is that why you attacked him?"
William whimpered and hid his face from her, making her regret her impatient questioning immediately.
"Will? Don't be afraid, tell me what happened."
"It wasn't his fault." He muttered softly. "I deserved it."
"That's - That's not true!" She was only slightly aware that her voice was louder than she wanted it to be, so filled with sudden anger was she. "Nobody deserves that. Especially not you. What happened wasn't your fault, Will! Please don't feel guilty or ashamed about yourself."
William blinked his eyes in confusion. "So you're not angry with me? You didn't bring me here because - because you wanted me to be punished?"
"I brought you here because I wanted to help you." She said, hardly in control of the trembling in her voice. "I want to see you get better again."
He closed his eyes, concentrating on his own thoughts while trying to shut out the endless string of insults that he got hurled to his head by the two unforgiving phantoms. Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked at her ever so shyly.
"Do you - Do you love me?"
Buffy was startled, the sincerity sounding in his voice made her believe that it wasn't his illness that had driven him to ask this peculiar question, but she wasn't sure it was his full sanity either.
"Why are you asking me this?"
"Please tell me you do." He said desperately, almost pleading. "If you do I can tell them that they are both bloody lairs and tell them to sod off. Get them out of my head. But if you don't - Then I think I have to believe them." He was very serious about it. "Please. Tell me you care about me." He averted his eyes, barely able to look at her.
"I don't know." She hesitated when she saw him shrink away from her answer, fluttering his eyelids nervously, his eyes dashing from her face to the floor and back again. Maybe I should lie, she thought, tell him that I did love him. I must care about him enough to pull that off. He's too confused right now to notice the difference anyway. But as she pondered about the lie, she realized that it wasn't that far off from the truth at all.
She did have feelings for him.
"I -do - love you." She furrowed her brows, confused about her own confession, but feeling relieved at the same time to have these words off her heart at last. "I didn't realize it before." She watched how his eyes widened, staring at her, making her feel somewhat embarrassed. "Stupid, isn't. It took you getting all ramblingly insane to make me see it."
He looked at her now, right into the eyes, a great gratitude showing on his face. "Better late than never." He said, giving her a slight nod. "Thank you, Buffy."
"Yeah, well." She muttered, his honesty sending butterflies into her stomach. He just gave her the sweetest look, mesmerized as he was by her presence. "No need to if telling you this can help you with getting those crazy voices out of your head. Are they going away now by the way?"
"Who?"
Buffy gave him a slightly suspicious look.
"Oh, um." William reluctantly tore his gaze off her and glanced around, looking for the vindictive spirits that had tormented him just minutes before, but they were nowhere to be seen. "I think they're gone." He said, a bit confused.
"So you don't have to yell at them to them get out?"
"Guess not. They just disappeared, but they were not much than thin air to begin with."
"God, I really hope that you're not faking this to get me to say this to you! Because if you are -"
"No! I wasn't faking them!" He protested loudly. Sounding hurt. "They were here! They were telling me things. Tormenting me. Made me afraid to lose you. But you chased them away." He calmed down again, his mind half lost, half lucid. "You always chase the bad things away. Help me, even when I don't deserve your help. You're the only one who keeps me sane."
Buffy smiled, touched by his words. His eyes showed a sadness and loneliness that reflected his soul. His words and gestures all cried out a silent craving for love, so intense that it was aching. It filled her heart with a deep affection for him. And for a moment, she forgot who she was and who he was and all about the narrow-minded, cold world around her. She leaned forward, her eyes half-closed, her lips moist and anticipating, her hands gently folding over his flushed cheeks.
She found herself kissing him.
There was a part of her, the sane part she supposed, that was all ~ Oh, my God, what the hell am I doing! ~ while wishing that she would stop before someone came in and saw her taking advantage of her feeble minded patient. (Because that was exactly what it was when one considered the codes of conduct for a practicing psychiatrist; shameless abuse. Manipulation of a man who wasn't quite sane enough to distinguish empty spots of air from real persons of flesh and bone, let alone get himself sorted out to come to the rash conclusion that he was deeply in love with her.) However, the emotional, perhaps more primal part of her, pleaded not to stop for the sensation of his mouth on hers was overwhelming. His kisses were tender, painfully shy at first, but became fiery and passionate as he realized that she wanted him. Truly wanted him. He closed his eyes and let her lips caress his, making it buzz and tingle, filling up on electricity coming from her soft flesh. It was everything he dreamed of; it was warm and affectionate and blindingly bright, a glimpse of heaven that he would never set foot on. It was complete.
It was love. Her love. Unconditionally in return.
Her touch ebbed away. Slowly, but still so very painful was that departure. He leaned toward her, trying to linger to those lips for precious seconds longer, but eventually, he had to let her go.
He opened his eyes again and smiled, dumb-folded, almost unable to believe to be so very fortunate.
"Strawberries." He whispered, looking into her eyes, lost in them like Odysseus on his ocean, never able to find shores.
Buffy brushed a lost lock of his hair back to his ear and gave him a puzzled look.
"Your lips." He explained, smiling timidly. "They taste like summer strawberries."
TBC
Second part of this chapter will be posted here on ff.net coming Thursday. Yes, I do know that I am evil and will be loathed, spit on and dragged through the gutter by you for quitting this chapter at the point when things finally starts to take a right turn for our poor Spike/William, but 6990 words is no doggy-fart either, so don't give me any of that lip. (
And yes, I do realize I've screwed up William's age. I'm gonna fix that up by revising the old chapters, he's now officially 26 in this twisted little tale.
Cheers Richard
