TITLE: "Normal again" (8/8) part V
(Because of length, cut in six? 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: Solace
SCENE 12
The corridor was filled with loud, hectic voices, and Buffy found herself rushing, her feet automatically bringing her back to the seclusion room where she had left him last night. She found Mike standing there in front of the doorway. His massive body barricading any possible escape routes. From inside the padded cell she could hear William scream.
"Buffy! Where is Buffy?" He sounded scared, lost.
"Dr Summers is not in yet. She'll come to see you as soon as she's here."
"She promised to be here! She's not here. She promised - she promised me. She's not here. Not here."
"Will, calm down!"
Her feet felt heavy, like there were pebbles in her shoes, as she walked into the tiny room. William was no more but a small curled up form, arms wrapped over his head, his face hidden between pulled up knees. The colourless hospital garb he wore seemed far too big for him.
"I'm here, William." She said in a gentle voice.
The confused young man looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. As he caught sight of her, his restless blues caught a spark of light, and his cracked lips mouthed her name in a soft sigh.
She knelt down before him, her hand gently caressing the damp curls of ruffled hair.
"I thought you were gone."
"No silly." She smiled, distressed by his neediness. "I had to go home to recharge the batteries. But I'm back now. As promised."
"I thought - I watched you die. I killed you."
For a short moment she didn't know how to react, his odd and sudden assertion frightening her, though she could never imagine him capable of doing her any harm. Nevertheless, she shot a short glance over her shoulder to Mike, to see if the sturdy orderly was still around.
"It's all right." He nodded, trying to calm her. " I think it was only a dream. Or a vision. Hard to tell. He wasn't very clear."
William gazed at the other side of the room. There was someone there who was demanding his attention.
"Yeah, that's you. How come you're still around then? Told you I'm gonna stay. Don't you have any bad poetry to write, you nonce?"
"Will." She tried, her voice rasping like dry paper. "Who are you talking to?"
"To him." And he nodded his head in his invisible companion's direction. "Will Byron, the righteous soul? You should meet him, a real spineless git he is! Talks of guilt and sin and seeking penitence, embrace the bleedin light of his allmighty God and more of that rubbish." He mocked, hot anger gripping his voice. "You're full of it! If that God of yours is so Goodie Good, why did he let her die then? He's a bloody murderer, that's what he is! Stupid old goat, two-faced Janus, pretentious pimp who wants to whore me to his great big plans! I HATE Him! I bloody HATE Him!!!" His fist lashed out and struck himself on the cheek, and Buffy heard the crunch of knuckles bruising bone.
"Mike! Get in here!"
William kept hitting himself. His cheeks turned crimson while he kept muttering his string of words fed on his anger and self-loathing.
"I HATE Him! He killed you Buffy! I killed you! I hate him. And you - You can stick your soddin redemption up your soddin arse!! It's all over, you hear me?!! No more funny head-trips, no more crazy Spike! I'm through with being a bloody string-puppet! Never needed Him. Never needed anyone!"
He barely fought them back when harsh hands pushed him face down on the padding, his nose and mouth digging deep into the dust coloured cloth till he could hardly breathe. It didn't matter. They could do whatever they liked to him and he would endure it without so much as a whine. It wouldn't last, he knew. This world of barred windows and cramped up white walled spaces wasn't going to be his home for the rest of his life. His eyes kept staring up at her as he was down there on the floor, observing anxiousness drawing deep lines in her pretty face. It made his heart squirm. She didn't know it yet, of course. Didn't know that everything he had to suffer was well worth suffering for because of her. She didn't know, that he was now as sensible as a piece of toast and a cuppa thee in the morning and that had made his choice.
He was going to stay here, with her, at all costs. Even if it meant he had to go through hell itself.
"He told me that I was going to make you happy." He mumbled, giving her a boyish, shy smile. He uttered a soft whimper when the thin needle entered his arm and spread the familiar numbness over his body, but apart from that, he kept smiling at her, hardly blinking his eyes, afraid to fall asleep too quickly.
"You shouldn't listen to those voices." She managed to say, the words choking her. "They're making you crazy."
"Oh no! I'm sane now, Buffy." His tongue felt heavy. As did his head. So incredibly heavy, that he had to lie down and rest. "I figured it out. Really, I did. I'm a demon. A soulless monster. But I love you and I'll be good. I'll make you so happy Buffy! For You, I want to forget who I was. I want to be Will Byron."
Buffy put his head against her chest, cradling him as though he was a small child. She could feel the drumming of his heart against her own, though his was slowing down by the drugs and hers was still as fast-paced as that of a frightened rabbit. She couldn't think of anything to say to him, her heart saddened by the condition he was in. Months of pain striking efforts to built up his sanity, to help him to recover from his illness, only to see him relapse into a state of delusion that was even worse than anything she had seen on him before. She wished she could make him stop referring to himself as a soulless, evil thing, but her wits left her completely blank.
"Shshshsh." She finally hushed, pushing her lips against his ears. "Shshshshsh. Don't say a word. It will be all right, Will. It will be all right. I promise.
I'll never let anybody hurt you again."
SCENE 13
London nights were chilly in November, with pools of mud and dung turning into icy surfaces and the maze of back-street alleys around the Seven Dials becoming covered by a layer of brittle frost. The whores were out in spite of the freezing cold, showing pale skin underneath their colourful high-cut dresses, their tits spilling over the fabric like milk over a rim. Thieves were out too, so were the bully-men, throatcutters, gamblers, cullies and boozers*. There was plenty of violence; a drunken gentleman got robbed from his purse and got a knife thrust in his great fat belly, while somewhere away from the scarce pools of gasoline streetlights, a bully-man cut off a disobedient girl's nose as a punishment. With such a hideous deformity ruining the merchandise, she would starve on the streets the coming winter.
There were other things, dark things that called these shady alleys their home and had made it into their hunting ground. But even they were the lowest of the low, scavenging rats compared to the sophistication of the greater evil (Evil with a capital E, I supposed) living their endless existence in the better parts of town.
It was scum feeding on scum in here. In the West End, the civilized codes of the Victorian era had never reached the poor and life was much the same as it was a hundred years ago.
It was still every man for him-self.
I clutched on to my last bottle of gin like it was a dying thing. Scuttling through the filthy alleys in a hasty pace, hardly able to feel my feet. I'd figured that they had turned into clumps of ice by now. My clothes were too tattered, with holes showing skin and letting in the bloody cold. I had nicked a blanket from a dead beggar frozen stiff in an alley at the back of St. Paul, but still, without regular feeding, my body felt like ice with only the occasional gulp of gin warming my stomach. The booze helped. My mind was pleasantly dazed with less pleasant memories fading like the letters on yellowing newspaper. Who said I gave a bloody shag about them? Who said I needed anyone to survive? I was my own man now, I was. With the liberty to starve and freeze off my skinny dead arse out on the open streets as I wished.
Who said I gave a lousy penny about myself anyway?
Dawn was bound in one-hour time. I needed to find a shelter for the day.
I turned in and out of alleys, my feet dragging me in wide circles through a maze of stinking poverty. Cramped rooms with ridiculously large families, already up before dawn to make ready for a long day of slaving for the reward of a lousy shilling in the evening. Brats with rags covering their shivering bodies compared to which my ripe outfit seemed luxurious. Adults who were no more but skins on bones, the men red-eyed and covered in masks of sooth, the women worn like old shoes of giving child -birth and hard labour with sunken cheeks the colour of ashes. One look at them, and I had lost my soddin appetite. Not that I had any these days, unless you counted my recent stormy love affaire with Lady Gin, that was. That cheap devilish whore was difficult to let go.
No vacant dwellings or empty rooms where I didn't need an invitation to get in. Another half an hour was easily wasted. I was tempted, my stomach growling, to make one of those wretched families invite me in, but I hadn't had the taste of human blood in my mouth for weeks and I was afraid that it would still make me sick to my stomach.
Finally, I found a cellar that seemed abandoned. The narrow window was covered by a panel of rotting wood, easily disposed. I crawled inside, letting myself drop on the dirt floor like a sack of coal. Sleep came immediately, and was, for the first time since days, blissfully dreamless.
I woke up with a heavy weight pressing on my chest, the green bottle of gin rolled away from my hand, which was frozen so solid that it hurt as hell only trying to wriggle my bloody fingers. I blinked my eyes sheepishly, just when a dollop of spit came down on my cheek. The sack of anvils on my chest was a muddy leather boot to which a tall man was attached. His yellow eyes jumped out of the dim shadows. Another fellow demon, oh that's just great, such a lucky chap I was!
"Oi! Get up ye stray-dog! Or do I have to teach ye how?"
I staggered up, wiping the disgusting muck off my face with a dirty sleeve and probably smearing dirt all over myself. My mind raced, it was a good thing that I was already dead or my heart would have leapt straight out of my rib-barrel. There were vamps all around me, clothed in brownish poormen's rags like mine but without the crust of mud and gaping holes in the cheap cloth to make them look like desperate beggars. Most of them hunched down in the dark corners of the cellar, watching me with far too much interest than that it could ever be considered healthy for a half year old fledgling like myself, and I shuddered.
"I - I am terribly sorry. I didn't know this place was already taken." I muttered, eying at the wanker from underneath my lashes, my head bowed. So far, I had only met one or three of my kind apart from my Sire's twisted little family, and I wasn't sure how to behave towards them. The Poof claimed that he had taught me about everything I needed to know to keep myself out of trouble. Yeah, right, the Great Angelus Education was a bit lacking when it came to the codes of conducts towards other demons if you asked me.
He grinned at me, white fangs glittering between rows of brown rotting teeth. One of the lurkers gave me a long hard stare, clutching a fag between his dirty fingers while blowing rings of smoke through his nostrils.
"I know that skinny thing." The fag-blower barked. "He's one of Angelus' clan. Aren't you, boy?"
I kept my gob shut, not knowing what to expect if I told them that he was right. One of the three I had ever met. Just my bloody luck.
"Did you got tossed out? Angered the crazy old goat or one of his misses? It's that why you're strolling the streets and smell like you've been eating horse dung?"
"Talking to ye lad! Don't play dumb with us!"
A punch in my stomach, hard enough to knock the air out of my dead lungs, was more than sufficient to persuade me that I better spill the beans if I wanted to keep most of my flesh further agony-free.
"Yeah, and what's to it if I was?" I asked, stupid anger making me act all bold and fearless, while I was actually crapping myself.
The disgusting toothy grin on leather-boots' face widened. "Fierce one. Cocky too. Must have learned a thing or two from the Grand Pillock himself." He turned to the others, his face half hidden by shadows, and snapped his fingers. Four of them appeared, coming toward me. I staggered back, tripping over something in the darkness. It was the body of a girl, drained from every drop of blood, her skin felt like ice and her brittle dress cracked underneath my weight. I struggled back up and tried to fight them off.
"Get away from me you cocksucking git! You ugly tossers!
A punch on my jaw that made the room burn in fiery colours. The crunch of splitting bones followed by the rich taste of blood on my tongue. Not exactly the kind of blood I longed to taste, but I swallowed it down hungrily nonetheless, such a disgusting, hopeless thing I was.
Another blow that creaked my ribs, and I became silent without even so much as a whimper. They dragged me to the demon with the serious dental problems and tossed me in front of his boots. I kept my head to the ground, spitting out a wasted tooth.
He knelt down beside me. His breath smelled like the poorpits in the London graveyards during high summer, and I had trouble keeping myself from puking my guts out. I wished the wanker could keep all the "evil" self-involved jabbering to himself. We both knew what was coming. I was going to get hurt and he was gonna have a jolly good time making it hurt. So, what was new then?
"Nice." He breathed, tearing my tattered shirt, running callused fingers over my dirt-covered neck. I hadn't had a bath in weeks. I was filthy with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, skinny as a dried corpse. Surely he wouldn't be interested? I can't imagine anybody nutters enough to want to enter a body like mine. A heap of dead flesh, covered by bits of broken skin.
He lowered his head, greasy strings of hair brushed over my bare back, and I was slightly aware that it tickled like Dru's gentle fingertip touches. Whatever you do, don't start sobbing like a bloody nonce, I thought. And keep your gob shut, even if you have to bite off your tongue to do so. Just think of Dru. Shut out the rest. That way, you would be able to take it.
Corpse-breath surprised me. Or maybe he didn't, really. He wasn't interested in shagging my dead cadaver after all. Didn't thought of this to be possible because I was sure that I had nothing else worth to take. But I had. And I didn't realize it until the very moment he sunk his pearly whites into my neck and ripped a hole in there the size of a shilling. You see, Dru's blood came from Angelus who became of Darla who was the throat- ripping favourite of the Master. The long linage of the insane Aurelius clan, its pure and wholesome blood as precious and as much priced as bloody oranges in December.
They drained me, hungry wolves licking blood from the smaller wounds on my legs, my thighs, my arms, my chest. One really sick pervert bit me in the tip of my limp cock, and suckled on it till it rose, making it ache and throb at the same time. A girl with wild manes of flaming red hair stuck her tongue in my mouth and scraped her black nails over my genitals till they wept blood. I took all of this in silence, too weakened now to even cry. My body was a cold statue, only moved when it was dragged, handed over from one hungry mouth to the next like a piece of mouldy bread amongst the starved.
It baffled my mind afterwards, but they let me live and even let me stay in their shelter till twilight. After that, they threw me on the streets and warned me never to come back if I didn't want to have my legs cut off and be kept by them as a barrel of easy blood. It sounded fair enough to me. The fag-blower needed one last laugh and took my tattered shoes away. There was a large hole in the right one that let the cold and the damp in, but I really did miss them once I stepped outside barefooted on the frozen cobbles.
Swaying like a drunk from blood-loss, I moved away from their scornful laughter and out of the reach of their sharp stones. My feet carried me reluctantly while I left a track of blood behind that excited stray dogs, and I got chased by a pack of hungry mutts till a couple of humans took pity and bashed them away from me with shovels.
"Are you all right, lad?" One of the two men asked, his face black of sooth. A coalman, busy shoving the dark lumps down a pipe into a rich wanker's cellar. His large black hand shook my shoulder as if he wanted to make sure that I was still alive. I stared at the tiny silver cross dangling around his thick neck, the only thing on him that wasn't covered in dirt.
"No." I sobbed, softly. Not quite myself. "Not all right. Never gonna be all right. Never again."
The large man shook his head. "You need help. Go to the St. Giles cathedral. Find a shelter for the night. You're skin on bones and bleeding. I'll take you there myself if you can wait."
I didn't want to go to any church. Never entered one since I was turned. I was pretty sure churches were a big no-no for the likes of me. Vampire, right? Dedicating his wretched un-life to the wrong side. For as much as I knew, I could be set on fire like I was taking a stroll in the sun as soon as I entered The House of God. However, that notion didn't startle me as much as it should, and I was too much in need to refuse the man's kindness. The coalman helped me in the back of his cart and covered my shivering form with a emptied bag, since I had lost my blanket somewhere out there on the muddy streets. Rough cloth with black stains scraped over my wounds, but still I was grateful.
As the cart started to move, I sat very still between the sacks of coal, pretending to be one myself with my bony knees drawn up and pressing against my sunken belly. Just a lump of dirt, cold and unfeeling. Nothing could harm me now.
They brought me to the gates of the cathedral, where a friendly priest helped me inside, his hands burning hot on my frosted skin. A rosary hung from his wrinkled neck. The sight of the small wooden crucifix dangling from the strand made me wonder how much it would hurt if I pressed it on my flesh. Would it make me smoke like a ham on glowing cinder? Or would I just burn, like ordinary criminals did at the stakes?
I swallowed and held my breath as we crossed the threshold and entered the St. Giles, expecting to be punished for my sins with the wrath of God shattering my bones and scorching my flesh, but nothing happened. No thunder, no storm, no rage of the righteous raining burning ashes down on me from the skies. Just rows of neatly ordered pews and marble pillars. Just the familiar stagnant air, faintly smelling of mould. Just miserable little ol' me, still very un-alive and shaking on my legs, prone to lose consciousness any minute.
"Were you lost, my son?" The priest asked, gently. Observing my shock and misery in general.
I wanted to tell him to go sod off, that there wasn't a reason to pretend to be good and virtuous anymore because obviously, God was sodden blind. He had let me in! Me, this lowest of creatures, this filthy evil thing that had murdered so many and probably was going to kill more if I wasn't getting dusted on time! I wanted to say that there was no justice in this world, no reward to kindness and bare my fangs to rip out his throat, just to show him that I was right. Stab the mercy out of his bloody eyes. Tear his kind heart from his potbellied body and toss it on the ground right before his feet. THAT, was what his sodden righteousness was worth to me.
But instead, I broke down in tears and nodded warily, my body shaking. He took me in his arms and let me cry on his shoulders, and I wept till dark stains the size of cauliflowers ruined his robe, carefull not to touch the crucifix resting on his chest.
"God knows forgiveness like no other." He said. "All you have to do is open your heart to accept it, my child."
I had no soddin clue what came over me then, but all I could do was cry that it was bloody well too late for me now to regret anything. That it was done.
I was sure to rot in hell.
SCENE 14
She didn't know what to think of this, but it wasn't catatonia, yet. His eyes were still opened, but that didn't mean anything. He had that far away gaze on him that didn't predict much good. When she talked to him, asked him a question, he would just smile to her and repeat the words she had used to comfort him this morning.
"Shshsh." He would whisper. "I'm all right. Everything's going to be all right. London is far away. Long ago. I'm not really there, am I?"
"No Will. You're here in the clinic. You're taken good care of."
"Shshsh" Putting a finger on his lips. "No need to disturb anyone. Sleeping dogs and such. It's all right, Buffy. Let me deal with them. It will be over soon."
"Okay Will." She said, her voice breaking. "I'll wait for you to come back."
"Please come back."
SCENE 15
The angry mob passing down Russel Street had a devastating energy. It was like a roaring beast of destruction, smashing windows, breaking doors, looting shops. Thousands of angry voices shouted as one, the unison of their words bringing goose-bumps to my skin. With white knuckled fists and the same anger rising in my voice, I walked with the crazy horde. Men and women slapping me on my back comradely, slinging arms over shoulders. I was sure that most of them were as drunk as a vicar on Sunday. It didn't matter to me what message they tried to deliver, what cause it was that they fought. I walked in any riot, whether it consisted of angry factory workers calling for a six pence raise, or the desperate poor demonstrating against the price of bread.
"Two pence more for daily bread, means thousands more, starved to death!"
They had very cunning cat-phrases, you have to give them that, the bloody simpletons.
I was a stranger now to most of the human emotions, as I should be. Kindness was something that couldn't be found anywhere in my dictionary, as was the word gratitude. After my wounds were healed, I left St. Giles without so much as leaving a note to thank the priest, who had so painstakingly nursed me back to good health (I had a good suspicion that he knew what I was, as he kept the curtains of my bedroom closed without me having to ask and brought me broths so thick with pig's blood that it would make any normal bloke have the pukers.) but I was stacked with a sack full of church silver, that I had pawned immediately for booze and blood. Just a lesson for him to be learned, so he would never think of taking someone with the likes of me in again. I mean, yeah, I took the Old Man's silver, but do you think the next vamp-in-need would be satisfied with taking only that then?
The point was that I walked with the crowds because their anger was something that I could identify with. The itching force buzzing close underneath the skin. The desire to wreck havoc, to smash and mutilate. The general feeling that WE were wronged and someone else had to pay. It made feel alive again. It made me feel that I was part of something, however bloody stupid.
Besides, I had nothing better to do but to get myself pissed and sheltered before sunrise anyway.
The coppers were not idiots. They knew better than to mess with a crowd of thousands, but the real trouble started when the whole soddin war-fleet had to squeeze its way through the narrow passage of Princes Street, and our group got isolated. Now, forty men and women with starved postures and weakened strength and one pretty pissed vampire, that was a company the coppers could take.
I fought like a maniac, cracking one officer's skull with a heavy brick and whacking several others on their limps with a lead pipe that I had brought with me to the demonstration in case there was a mighty good brawl coming up. Not caring who I was hitting really, and I whacked a fellow rioter full in the face by accident, breaking his nose.
"What are you doing you crazy bastard? You're supposed to hit them, not us!"
"Oh, is that right?"
I smashed the pipe on his kneecaps, and he went down, screaming and cursing.
I still had time to have a good laugh about it, before what seemed the whole remaining team of bloody rioters came flying around my neck. Useless to say that even with the advantage of my vampire strength, I was no match for them all and was destined to be smashed into vamp-powder, but the coppers were fast, and clubbed down most of them, or made them too busy with running away to keep themselves occupied with me. Just as I started to lose the feeling in my limps, the rain of angry fists and feet ceased and I got pulled up by two officers. My brains hopped like soddin Moris dancers in my skull as I raised my head to look at them.
"Can you walk?" One of the coppers asked.
"Yeah, I think sslo. If I musst." I slurred, my lips cut and swollen like burst cherries.
"Good." And his club exploded on the back of my head, sending a bright pain into my skull that shattered like crows from a field. I fell with my face down in the mud, barely aware that they were tying my hands together with a rough rope.
"Drag him up the cart!" Barked the officer. As I brushed by, I eyed him briefly, and saw him nursing the wound on his forehead with a reddened handkerchief. No wonder he was so crossed.
The cart was a filthy wooden cage on wheels packed with arrested rioters. Most of them were terrified, wore their fear like a thick cloud of stench, forgetting all about their pigheaded anger and bitter resentment that had made me give them at least a thimble full of respect before, but now they earned nothing but my deepest loathing. The coppers tossed me right into the pile of human misery, and I landed between a frail woman with white- rimmed eyes and wild windswept hair and a heavy, sweaty pillock, wetting himself like the oversized baby of a French trollop.
"We're dead!" He whined, sending much dreaded pain waves into my skull. The bloody lump at the back of my head throbbed like a second heart, an alive one that was. "They're gonna lock us up in the Tower! We sure to get the noose for this!"
"That, or all of you wankerlsss die of gaol fever in there." I muttered, blinking blood out my eyes. The giant toddler just glared at me, and didn't dare as much as move a finger. Just as I thought, not enough balls to be a man. How pathetic.
I crawled to the back, pressed my face against the cool bars, and watched how outside the sky of London glowed like cinder, rampant fires filling the air with the smell of burning ashes. I didn't care much if the Tower was the place that I was going too. From the stories I had heard about it, the place was dark, and dank, and bloody awful. Pretty much like my average hideout, really. I had run out of my last penny for days now, had to catch strays and rats to keep myself fed. Did try to rob humans once by frightening the living daylight out of them, but I ended up getting chased by an angry crowd with burning crosses and garlands of garlic. People did get awfully smart these days.
The worst thing was, that even after two long months, I still couldn't take a drop of human blood in me without gagging like a sissy sipping on his first drag of Whiskey.
Face it Will, you're screwed. I thought bitterly. You can't go back, and you can't on like this either. What use will it do to struggle on? To tempt fate? Better surrender here and now and wave with the white hankie before God or Lucifer or whoever was up and down there decide to drop the big heavy curtains on you. And if they want to hang me for ruining one of the coppers' stunning features - well, I will be let off easy considered all the harm I've done, now won't I?
TBC
Next part will be published coming Wednesday.
A couple of strange British words here that need a bit an explanation;
Cullies: guys who seek out the ladies and pay them after fornication. In Dutch we call them "hoerenlopers". Can't find a proper English translation for this word in my dictionary though. Funny innit?
Bully-man: That I -could - find in my dictionary, it simply means pimp.
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: Solace
SCENE 12
The corridor was filled with loud, hectic voices, and Buffy found herself rushing, her feet automatically bringing her back to the seclusion room where she had left him last night. She found Mike standing there in front of the doorway. His massive body barricading any possible escape routes. From inside the padded cell she could hear William scream.
"Buffy! Where is Buffy?" He sounded scared, lost.
"Dr Summers is not in yet. She'll come to see you as soon as she's here."
"She promised to be here! She's not here. She promised - she promised me. She's not here. Not here."
"Will, calm down!"
Her feet felt heavy, like there were pebbles in her shoes, as she walked into the tiny room. William was no more but a small curled up form, arms wrapped over his head, his face hidden between pulled up knees. The colourless hospital garb he wore seemed far too big for him.
"I'm here, William." She said in a gentle voice.
The confused young man looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. As he caught sight of her, his restless blues caught a spark of light, and his cracked lips mouthed her name in a soft sigh.
She knelt down before him, her hand gently caressing the damp curls of ruffled hair.
"I thought you were gone."
"No silly." She smiled, distressed by his neediness. "I had to go home to recharge the batteries. But I'm back now. As promised."
"I thought - I watched you die. I killed you."
For a short moment she didn't know how to react, his odd and sudden assertion frightening her, though she could never imagine him capable of doing her any harm. Nevertheless, she shot a short glance over her shoulder to Mike, to see if the sturdy orderly was still around.
"It's all right." He nodded, trying to calm her. " I think it was only a dream. Or a vision. Hard to tell. He wasn't very clear."
William gazed at the other side of the room. There was someone there who was demanding his attention.
"Yeah, that's you. How come you're still around then? Told you I'm gonna stay. Don't you have any bad poetry to write, you nonce?"
"Will." She tried, her voice rasping like dry paper. "Who are you talking to?"
"To him." And he nodded his head in his invisible companion's direction. "Will Byron, the righteous soul? You should meet him, a real spineless git he is! Talks of guilt and sin and seeking penitence, embrace the bleedin light of his allmighty God and more of that rubbish." He mocked, hot anger gripping his voice. "You're full of it! If that God of yours is so Goodie Good, why did he let her die then? He's a bloody murderer, that's what he is! Stupid old goat, two-faced Janus, pretentious pimp who wants to whore me to his great big plans! I HATE Him! I bloody HATE Him!!!" His fist lashed out and struck himself on the cheek, and Buffy heard the crunch of knuckles bruising bone.
"Mike! Get in here!"
William kept hitting himself. His cheeks turned crimson while he kept muttering his string of words fed on his anger and self-loathing.
"I HATE Him! He killed you Buffy! I killed you! I hate him. And you - You can stick your soddin redemption up your soddin arse!! It's all over, you hear me?!! No more funny head-trips, no more crazy Spike! I'm through with being a bloody string-puppet! Never needed Him. Never needed anyone!"
He barely fought them back when harsh hands pushed him face down on the padding, his nose and mouth digging deep into the dust coloured cloth till he could hardly breathe. It didn't matter. They could do whatever they liked to him and he would endure it without so much as a whine. It wouldn't last, he knew. This world of barred windows and cramped up white walled spaces wasn't going to be his home for the rest of his life. His eyes kept staring up at her as he was down there on the floor, observing anxiousness drawing deep lines in her pretty face. It made his heart squirm. She didn't know it yet, of course. Didn't know that everything he had to suffer was well worth suffering for because of her. She didn't know, that he was now as sensible as a piece of toast and a cuppa thee in the morning and that had made his choice.
He was going to stay here, with her, at all costs. Even if it meant he had to go through hell itself.
"He told me that I was going to make you happy." He mumbled, giving her a boyish, shy smile. He uttered a soft whimper when the thin needle entered his arm and spread the familiar numbness over his body, but apart from that, he kept smiling at her, hardly blinking his eyes, afraid to fall asleep too quickly.
"You shouldn't listen to those voices." She managed to say, the words choking her. "They're making you crazy."
"Oh no! I'm sane now, Buffy." His tongue felt heavy. As did his head. So incredibly heavy, that he had to lie down and rest. "I figured it out. Really, I did. I'm a demon. A soulless monster. But I love you and I'll be good. I'll make you so happy Buffy! For You, I want to forget who I was. I want to be Will Byron."
Buffy put his head against her chest, cradling him as though he was a small child. She could feel the drumming of his heart against her own, though his was slowing down by the drugs and hers was still as fast-paced as that of a frightened rabbit. She couldn't think of anything to say to him, her heart saddened by the condition he was in. Months of pain striking efforts to built up his sanity, to help him to recover from his illness, only to see him relapse into a state of delusion that was even worse than anything she had seen on him before. She wished she could make him stop referring to himself as a soulless, evil thing, but her wits left her completely blank.
"Shshshsh." She finally hushed, pushing her lips against his ears. "Shshshshsh. Don't say a word. It will be all right, Will. It will be all right. I promise.
I'll never let anybody hurt you again."
SCENE 13
London nights were chilly in November, with pools of mud and dung turning into icy surfaces and the maze of back-street alleys around the Seven Dials becoming covered by a layer of brittle frost. The whores were out in spite of the freezing cold, showing pale skin underneath their colourful high-cut dresses, their tits spilling over the fabric like milk over a rim. Thieves were out too, so were the bully-men, throatcutters, gamblers, cullies and boozers*. There was plenty of violence; a drunken gentleman got robbed from his purse and got a knife thrust in his great fat belly, while somewhere away from the scarce pools of gasoline streetlights, a bully-man cut off a disobedient girl's nose as a punishment. With such a hideous deformity ruining the merchandise, she would starve on the streets the coming winter.
There were other things, dark things that called these shady alleys their home and had made it into their hunting ground. But even they were the lowest of the low, scavenging rats compared to the sophistication of the greater evil (Evil with a capital E, I supposed) living their endless existence in the better parts of town.
It was scum feeding on scum in here. In the West End, the civilized codes of the Victorian era had never reached the poor and life was much the same as it was a hundred years ago.
It was still every man for him-self.
I clutched on to my last bottle of gin like it was a dying thing. Scuttling through the filthy alleys in a hasty pace, hardly able to feel my feet. I'd figured that they had turned into clumps of ice by now. My clothes were too tattered, with holes showing skin and letting in the bloody cold. I had nicked a blanket from a dead beggar frozen stiff in an alley at the back of St. Paul, but still, without regular feeding, my body felt like ice with only the occasional gulp of gin warming my stomach. The booze helped. My mind was pleasantly dazed with less pleasant memories fading like the letters on yellowing newspaper. Who said I gave a bloody shag about them? Who said I needed anyone to survive? I was my own man now, I was. With the liberty to starve and freeze off my skinny dead arse out on the open streets as I wished.
Who said I gave a lousy penny about myself anyway?
Dawn was bound in one-hour time. I needed to find a shelter for the day.
I turned in and out of alleys, my feet dragging me in wide circles through a maze of stinking poverty. Cramped rooms with ridiculously large families, already up before dawn to make ready for a long day of slaving for the reward of a lousy shilling in the evening. Brats with rags covering their shivering bodies compared to which my ripe outfit seemed luxurious. Adults who were no more but skins on bones, the men red-eyed and covered in masks of sooth, the women worn like old shoes of giving child -birth and hard labour with sunken cheeks the colour of ashes. One look at them, and I had lost my soddin appetite. Not that I had any these days, unless you counted my recent stormy love affaire with Lady Gin, that was. That cheap devilish whore was difficult to let go.
No vacant dwellings or empty rooms where I didn't need an invitation to get in. Another half an hour was easily wasted. I was tempted, my stomach growling, to make one of those wretched families invite me in, but I hadn't had the taste of human blood in my mouth for weeks and I was afraid that it would still make me sick to my stomach.
Finally, I found a cellar that seemed abandoned. The narrow window was covered by a panel of rotting wood, easily disposed. I crawled inside, letting myself drop on the dirt floor like a sack of coal. Sleep came immediately, and was, for the first time since days, blissfully dreamless.
I woke up with a heavy weight pressing on my chest, the green bottle of gin rolled away from my hand, which was frozen so solid that it hurt as hell only trying to wriggle my bloody fingers. I blinked my eyes sheepishly, just when a dollop of spit came down on my cheek. The sack of anvils on my chest was a muddy leather boot to which a tall man was attached. His yellow eyes jumped out of the dim shadows. Another fellow demon, oh that's just great, such a lucky chap I was!
"Oi! Get up ye stray-dog! Or do I have to teach ye how?"
I staggered up, wiping the disgusting muck off my face with a dirty sleeve and probably smearing dirt all over myself. My mind raced, it was a good thing that I was already dead or my heart would have leapt straight out of my rib-barrel. There were vamps all around me, clothed in brownish poormen's rags like mine but without the crust of mud and gaping holes in the cheap cloth to make them look like desperate beggars. Most of them hunched down in the dark corners of the cellar, watching me with far too much interest than that it could ever be considered healthy for a half year old fledgling like myself, and I shuddered.
"I - I am terribly sorry. I didn't know this place was already taken." I muttered, eying at the wanker from underneath my lashes, my head bowed. So far, I had only met one or three of my kind apart from my Sire's twisted little family, and I wasn't sure how to behave towards them. The Poof claimed that he had taught me about everything I needed to know to keep myself out of trouble. Yeah, right, the Great Angelus Education was a bit lacking when it came to the codes of conducts towards other demons if you asked me.
He grinned at me, white fangs glittering between rows of brown rotting teeth. One of the lurkers gave me a long hard stare, clutching a fag between his dirty fingers while blowing rings of smoke through his nostrils.
"I know that skinny thing." The fag-blower barked. "He's one of Angelus' clan. Aren't you, boy?"
I kept my gob shut, not knowing what to expect if I told them that he was right. One of the three I had ever met. Just my bloody luck.
"Did you got tossed out? Angered the crazy old goat or one of his misses? It's that why you're strolling the streets and smell like you've been eating horse dung?"
"Talking to ye lad! Don't play dumb with us!"
A punch in my stomach, hard enough to knock the air out of my dead lungs, was more than sufficient to persuade me that I better spill the beans if I wanted to keep most of my flesh further agony-free.
"Yeah, and what's to it if I was?" I asked, stupid anger making me act all bold and fearless, while I was actually crapping myself.
The disgusting toothy grin on leather-boots' face widened. "Fierce one. Cocky too. Must have learned a thing or two from the Grand Pillock himself." He turned to the others, his face half hidden by shadows, and snapped his fingers. Four of them appeared, coming toward me. I staggered back, tripping over something in the darkness. It was the body of a girl, drained from every drop of blood, her skin felt like ice and her brittle dress cracked underneath my weight. I struggled back up and tried to fight them off.
"Get away from me you cocksucking git! You ugly tossers!
A punch on my jaw that made the room burn in fiery colours. The crunch of splitting bones followed by the rich taste of blood on my tongue. Not exactly the kind of blood I longed to taste, but I swallowed it down hungrily nonetheless, such a disgusting, hopeless thing I was.
Another blow that creaked my ribs, and I became silent without even so much as a whimper. They dragged me to the demon with the serious dental problems and tossed me in front of his boots. I kept my head to the ground, spitting out a wasted tooth.
He knelt down beside me. His breath smelled like the poorpits in the London graveyards during high summer, and I had trouble keeping myself from puking my guts out. I wished the wanker could keep all the "evil" self-involved jabbering to himself. We both knew what was coming. I was going to get hurt and he was gonna have a jolly good time making it hurt. So, what was new then?
"Nice." He breathed, tearing my tattered shirt, running callused fingers over my dirt-covered neck. I hadn't had a bath in weeks. I was filthy with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, skinny as a dried corpse. Surely he wouldn't be interested? I can't imagine anybody nutters enough to want to enter a body like mine. A heap of dead flesh, covered by bits of broken skin.
He lowered his head, greasy strings of hair brushed over my bare back, and I was slightly aware that it tickled like Dru's gentle fingertip touches. Whatever you do, don't start sobbing like a bloody nonce, I thought. And keep your gob shut, even if you have to bite off your tongue to do so. Just think of Dru. Shut out the rest. That way, you would be able to take it.
Corpse-breath surprised me. Or maybe he didn't, really. He wasn't interested in shagging my dead cadaver after all. Didn't thought of this to be possible because I was sure that I had nothing else worth to take. But I had. And I didn't realize it until the very moment he sunk his pearly whites into my neck and ripped a hole in there the size of a shilling. You see, Dru's blood came from Angelus who became of Darla who was the throat- ripping favourite of the Master. The long linage of the insane Aurelius clan, its pure and wholesome blood as precious and as much priced as bloody oranges in December.
They drained me, hungry wolves licking blood from the smaller wounds on my legs, my thighs, my arms, my chest. One really sick pervert bit me in the tip of my limp cock, and suckled on it till it rose, making it ache and throb at the same time. A girl with wild manes of flaming red hair stuck her tongue in my mouth and scraped her black nails over my genitals till they wept blood. I took all of this in silence, too weakened now to even cry. My body was a cold statue, only moved when it was dragged, handed over from one hungry mouth to the next like a piece of mouldy bread amongst the starved.
It baffled my mind afterwards, but they let me live and even let me stay in their shelter till twilight. After that, they threw me on the streets and warned me never to come back if I didn't want to have my legs cut off and be kept by them as a barrel of easy blood. It sounded fair enough to me. The fag-blower needed one last laugh and took my tattered shoes away. There was a large hole in the right one that let the cold and the damp in, but I really did miss them once I stepped outside barefooted on the frozen cobbles.
Swaying like a drunk from blood-loss, I moved away from their scornful laughter and out of the reach of their sharp stones. My feet carried me reluctantly while I left a track of blood behind that excited stray dogs, and I got chased by a pack of hungry mutts till a couple of humans took pity and bashed them away from me with shovels.
"Are you all right, lad?" One of the two men asked, his face black of sooth. A coalman, busy shoving the dark lumps down a pipe into a rich wanker's cellar. His large black hand shook my shoulder as if he wanted to make sure that I was still alive. I stared at the tiny silver cross dangling around his thick neck, the only thing on him that wasn't covered in dirt.
"No." I sobbed, softly. Not quite myself. "Not all right. Never gonna be all right. Never again."
The large man shook his head. "You need help. Go to the St. Giles cathedral. Find a shelter for the night. You're skin on bones and bleeding. I'll take you there myself if you can wait."
I didn't want to go to any church. Never entered one since I was turned. I was pretty sure churches were a big no-no for the likes of me. Vampire, right? Dedicating his wretched un-life to the wrong side. For as much as I knew, I could be set on fire like I was taking a stroll in the sun as soon as I entered The House of God. However, that notion didn't startle me as much as it should, and I was too much in need to refuse the man's kindness. The coalman helped me in the back of his cart and covered my shivering form with a emptied bag, since I had lost my blanket somewhere out there on the muddy streets. Rough cloth with black stains scraped over my wounds, but still I was grateful.
As the cart started to move, I sat very still between the sacks of coal, pretending to be one myself with my bony knees drawn up and pressing against my sunken belly. Just a lump of dirt, cold and unfeeling. Nothing could harm me now.
They brought me to the gates of the cathedral, where a friendly priest helped me inside, his hands burning hot on my frosted skin. A rosary hung from his wrinkled neck. The sight of the small wooden crucifix dangling from the strand made me wonder how much it would hurt if I pressed it on my flesh. Would it make me smoke like a ham on glowing cinder? Or would I just burn, like ordinary criminals did at the stakes?
I swallowed and held my breath as we crossed the threshold and entered the St. Giles, expecting to be punished for my sins with the wrath of God shattering my bones and scorching my flesh, but nothing happened. No thunder, no storm, no rage of the righteous raining burning ashes down on me from the skies. Just rows of neatly ordered pews and marble pillars. Just the familiar stagnant air, faintly smelling of mould. Just miserable little ol' me, still very un-alive and shaking on my legs, prone to lose consciousness any minute.
"Were you lost, my son?" The priest asked, gently. Observing my shock and misery in general.
I wanted to tell him to go sod off, that there wasn't a reason to pretend to be good and virtuous anymore because obviously, God was sodden blind. He had let me in! Me, this lowest of creatures, this filthy evil thing that had murdered so many and probably was going to kill more if I wasn't getting dusted on time! I wanted to say that there was no justice in this world, no reward to kindness and bare my fangs to rip out his throat, just to show him that I was right. Stab the mercy out of his bloody eyes. Tear his kind heart from his potbellied body and toss it on the ground right before his feet. THAT, was what his sodden righteousness was worth to me.
But instead, I broke down in tears and nodded warily, my body shaking. He took me in his arms and let me cry on his shoulders, and I wept till dark stains the size of cauliflowers ruined his robe, carefull not to touch the crucifix resting on his chest.
"God knows forgiveness like no other." He said. "All you have to do is open your heart to accept it, my child."
I had no soddin clue what came over me then, but all I could do was cry that it was bloody well too late for me now to regret anything. That it was done.
I was sure to rot in hell.
SCENE 14
She didn't know what to think of this, but it wasn't catatonia, yet. His eyes were still opened, but that didn't mean anything. He had that far away gaze on him that didn't predict much good. When she talked to him, asked him a question, he would just smile to her and repeat the words she had used to comfort him this morning.
"Shshsh." He would whisper. "I'm all right. Everything's going to be all right. London is far away. Long ago. I'm not really there, am I?"
"No Will. You're here in the clinic. You're taken good care of."
"Shshsh" Putting a finger on his lips. "No need to disturb anyone. Sleeping dogs and such. It's all right, Buffy. Let me deal with them. It will be over soon."
"Okay Will." She said, her voice breaking. "I'll wait for you to come back."
"Please come back."
SCENE 15
The angry mob passing down Russel Street had a devastating energy. It was like a roaring beast of destruction, smashing windows, breaking doors, looting shops. Thousands of angry voices shouted as one, the unison of their words bringing goose-bumps to my skin. With white knuckled fists and the same anger rising in my voice, I walked with the crazy horde. Men and women slapping me on my back comradely, slinging arms over shoulders. I was sure that most of them were as drunk as a vicar on Sunday. It didn't matter to me what message they tried to deliver, what cause it was that they fought. I walked in any riot, whether it consisted of angry factory workers calling for a six pence raise, or the desperate poor demonstrating against the price of bread.
"Two pence more for daily bread, means thousands more, starved to death!"
They had very cunning cat-phrases, you have to give them that, the bloody simpletons.
I was a stranger now to most of the human emotions, as I should be. Kindness was something that couldn't be found anywhere in my dictionary, as was the word gratitude. After my wounds were healed, I left St. Giles without so much as leaving a note to thank the priest, who had so painstakingly nursed me back to good health (I had a good suspicion that he knew what I was, as he kept the curtains of my bedroom closed without me having to ask and brought me broths so thick with pig's blood that it would make any normal bloke have the pukers.) but I was stacked with a sack full of church silver, that I had pawned immediately for booze and blood. Just a lesson for him to be learned, so he would never think of taking someone with the likes of me in again. I mean, yeah, I took the Old Man's silver, but do you think the next vamp-in-need would be satisfied with taking only that then?
The point was that I walked with the crowds because their anger was something that I could identify with. The itching force buzzing close underneath the skin. The desire to wreck havoc, to smash and mutilate. The general feeling that WE were wronged and someone else had to pay. It made feel alive again. It made me feel that I was part of something, however bloody stupid.
Besides, I had nothing better to do but to get myself pissed and sheltered before sunrise anyway.
The coppers were not idiots. They knew better than to mess with a crowd of thousands, but the real trouble started when the whole soddin war-fleet had to squeeze its way through the narrow passage of Princes Street, and our group got isolated. Now, forty men and women with starved postures and weakened strength and one pretty pissed vampire, that was a company the coppers could take.
I fought like a maniac, cracking one officer's skull with a heavy brick and whacking several others on their limps with a lead pipe that I had brought with me to the demonstration in case there was a mighty good brawl coming up. Not caring who I was hitting really, and I whacked a fellow rioter full in the face by accident, breaking his nose.
"What are you doing you crazy bastard? You're supposed to hit them, not us!"
"Oh, is that right?"
I smashed the pipe on his kneecaps, and he went down, screaming and cursing.
I still had time to have a good laugh about it, before what seemed the whole remaining team of bloody rioters came flying around my neck. Useless to say that even with the advantage of my vampire strength, I was no match for them all and was destined to be smashed into vamp-powder, but the coppers were fast, and clubbed down most of them, or made them too busy with running away to keep themselves occupied with me. Just as I started to lose the feeling in my limps, the rain of angry fists and feet ceased and I got pulled up by two officers. My brains hopped like soddin Moris dancers in my skull as I raised my head to look at them.
"Can you walk?" One of the coppers asked.
"Yeah, I think sslo. If I musst." I slurred, my lips cut and swollen like burst cherries.
"Good." And his club exploded on the back of my head, sending a bright pain into my skull that shattered like crows from a field. I fell with my face down in the mud, barely aware that they were tying my hands together with a rough rope.
"Drag him up the cart!" Barked the officer. As I brushed by, I eyed him briefly, and saw him nursing the wound on his forehead with a reddened handkerchief. No wonder he was so crossed.
The cart was a filthy wooden cage on wheels packed with arrested rioters. Most of them were terrified, wore their fear like a thick cloud of stench, forgetting all about their pigheaded anger and bitter resentment that had made me give them at least a thimble full of respect before, but now they earned nothing but my deepest loathing. The coppers tossed me right into the pile of human misery, and I landed between a frail woman with white- rimmed eyes and wild windswept hair and a heavy, sweaty pillock, wetting himself like the oversized baby of a French trollop.
"We're dead!" He whined, sending much dreaded pain waves into my skull. The bloody lump at the back of my head throbbed like a second heart, an alive one that was. "They're gonna lock us up in the Tower! We sure to get the noose for this!"
"That, or all of you wankerlsss die of gaol fever in there." I muttered, blinking blood out my eyes. The giant toddler just glared at me, and didn't dare as much as move a finger. Just as I thought, not enough balls to be a man. How pathetic.
I crawled to the back, pressed my face against the cool bars, and watched how outside the sky of London glowed like cinder, rampant fires filling the air with the smell of burning ashes. I didn't care much if the Tower was the place that I was going too. From the stories I had heard about it, the place was dark, and dank, and bloody awful. Pretty much like my average hideout, really. I had run out of my last penny for days now, had to catch strays and rats to keep myself fed. Did try to rob humans once by frightening the living daylight out of them, but I ended up getting chased by an angry crowd with burning crosses and garlands of garlic. People did get awfully smart these days.
The worst thing was, that even after two long months, I still couldn't take a drop of human blood in me without gagging like a sissy sipping on his first drag of Whiskey.
Face it Will, you're screwed. I thought bitterly. You can't go back, and you can't on like this either. What use will it do to struggle on? To tempt fate? Better surrender here and now and wave with the white hankie before God or Lucifer or whoever was up and down there decide to drop the big heavy curtains on you. And if they want to hang me for ruining one of the coppers' stunning features - well, I will be let off easy considered all the harm I've done, now won't I?
TBC
Next part will be published coming Wednesday.
A couple of strange British words here that need a bit an explanation;
Cullies: guys who seek out the ladies and pay them after fornication. In Dutch we call them "hoerenlopers". Can't find a proper English translation for this word in my dictionary though. Funny innit?
Bully-man: That I -could - find in my dictionary, it simply means pimp.
Cheers Richard
