TITLE: Dark Room (1/?)
AUTHOR: Wicked Raygun
E-MAIL: wicked_raygun@yahoo.com
SUMMARY: Where does a person draw the line between love and obsession?
RATING: R. Just to be safe anyway. Nothing *really* bad is going to happen. Trust me.
SPOILERS: General spoilers for seasons 1 through 6. Any spoilers from season 7 simply happen because they fit with the story I want to tell.
DISCLAIMOR: I refuse to believe this is necessary. Does anyone here actually believe I own this stuff in any way? Well. To the folks who do own a piece of the Buffster and/or her friends and enemies, I mean you no harm. I'm simply borrowing your toys to put on a little puppet show. I promise to bring them all back in near-mint condition. Even Spike.
FEEDBACK: Everyone needs a little love. It makes the world go round and writers post faster.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: If you're expecting fluffy bunnies and cute endings run away in fear right now. I'm writing a mature story, where adult themes such as violence, rage, obsession, stalking and, yes. gasp, even sex are mentioned. If you cannot deal with that, please, go somewhere else. Or better yet, just grow up.
Special thanks must be given to my online friend Lori Bush, who is an amazing writer who for some reason that I cannot begin to comprehend seems to actually want to read my work and help me improve it. Here's hoping her sanity doesn't kick in anytime soon. For those of you who are interested in reading one or ten of her fabulous stories, they can be found here:
http://tedjoxertimandmore.homestead.com/XanderStories.html
Please leave many, many reviews so that she may be inspired to write many more stories.
Also, for those who are interested in some of my other work, it can be found here:
http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=79383
Now, onto the show.
~~~~~~***~~~~~~
The first thing she became aware of was a bitter, coppery taste in her mouth. Blood, some distant part of her consciousness told her - not a comforting thought.
A low, scratchy moan was heard as she tried to swallow away the horrible taste. Not only did that not work, but she inadvertently triggered her gag reflex and coughed and retched painfully as her stomach threatened to violently spill out its contents. Her parched throat, sore and scratchy from an abundance of phlegm and blood, needed water, but her slowly returning mental faculties deemed that it probably wasn't the best idea, just yet.
She breathed slowly and purposefully, consciously attempting not to swallow again. She was much more alert now, but still felt drowsy and detached from her senses, aside from an aching throb in her lower back, a burning sensation of damaged skin around her wrists, and a thick comforter covering her body - her nearly naked body.
That last realization woke her up a bit more, and this time she tried to open her eyes to get a better bearing on where she was because while she was still not quite fully aware of her surroundings, she was more than sure that she wasn't in her own apartment. She opened her eyes then winced and blinked rapidly as the all too bright light attacked her vision. Everything she could take in was blurry and distorted - nothing resembling shapes, just odd blobs of colors.
That was when she was startled by a warm, wet rag being applied to her forehead. Suddenly, images came back to her - horrible, terrifying images - and she shrieked and flailed her arms wildly.
"No!" she screamed. Then one of her arms hit something very hard, which was followed by an, "oof" sound.
Escape, she thought. Must escape.
So she jumped up, stumbled blindly to her feet and tried to run away, only to lose her balance and fall hard on her face. Still panicking, she crawled desperately across the floor, ripping out a fingernail in her urgency. She managed to get onto her knees and tried once again to get to her feet, when someone grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air. Feeling trapped, she screamed as she kicked her legs and swung her arms about wildly, wanting to hurt her captor enough to get away.
"Shh!!" she heard. "Quiet! It's okay now. Everything's okay now."
Completely overcome, she passed out.
~~~~~~***~~~~~~
When she came to, it was to the sound of arguing.
"What did you do to her?!?" one voice nearly yelled.
"I didn't do anything!" snapped the other defensively. "I was just trying to help her!"
"By doing what? Scaring her half to death?" said the first voice quieter than before, but with no less frustration.
"No, I just put a cool, wet rag on her forehead. That's what the always do on TV!""
There was an exasperated sigh, and then, "Damn it, Dawn, she was just held captive by a cult of demon tapeworm worshippers and just had a python mystically stomach-pumped out of her; a cool forehead is the least of her worries."
Cult?. Demons?. Tapeworms!
She looked around and found herself on a couch in someone's living room. That did nothing to lessen her confusion and growing fear. The things she was remembering just couldn't be real. Could they? She shook her head trying to forcibly clear from it all the mental clutter that made everything feel so unreal. When that was done, she still found herself on a couch. in someone's living room. with the voices of two people talking about demons.
The world was seeming more and more unreal by the second.
And, as a suddenly important fact, she was still nearly naked. She looked about her and saw a comforter on the floor. She vaguely remembered throwing it off of her and fighting off someone - one of the people arguing about demons apparently. She felt very foolish. From what she could gather, these people had helped her. from a cult of demon tapeworms.
Her rational mind simply refused to wrap itself around that concept yet, if she had even understood it correctly in the first place.
With a sudden bout of self-consciousness about her body, she took the comforter from off the floor and wrapped it over her shoulders and around herself, and her hands gripping the material tightly. She stood up slowly, wanting to confront the people who helped her - they were still arguing.
"Oh, like you've never done something that you saw on TV!"
"Nothing THAT clichéd!"
She cleared her throat.
The two young women stopped arguing immediately, looked at her with wide eyes, their mouths open in mid-speech, probably thinking the same thing: How long was she awake?
There was a long silence. After awhile, she decided to get the conversation started so she could understand just what the hell was going on.
"Hi, my name's Morgan. I think you saved me from some demonic tapeworms," she said shyly.
The smaller, blonde woman glared at the taller brunette, obviously blaming her for something. The brunette, meanwhile, was sputtering nervously. She then faked laughing and said, "Demonic tapeworms! Wow, that's a good one!" She faked a chuckle that sounded horribly strained, the continued, "I'll have to remember that one!"
Now the blonde woman was staring at her as if she was mentally retarded. Her attention was brought back to Morgan when she heard her gasp. What happened was that Morgan had just realized why the two women looked eerily familiar: They were friends of her favorite camera subject - her Soul Searcher; her Xander - they were Buffy and Dawn Summers. and this was apparently their home.
Morgan had never before felt so terrified - if one didn't count the being kidnapped, anyway.
She was very aware that what she was doing bordered heavily on stalking, but she had rationalized that as long as she never got personally involved with her subject, then everything was safe and okay. It was a flimsy and flawed logic, she knew, but she clung to it desperately to prove to herself that she wasn't insane. But now, she had crossed that line that she had been dreading and she felt.
It was then she remembered. HE had saved her.
She gasped again then took a fearful step back before saying, "This is all real, isn't it?" Buffy and Dawn didn't know how to respond to that. "Oh god, this is all real," she said, answering her own question.
Buffy and Dawn, for their part, were starting to think that the old Sunnydale curse of denial of all things supernatural wasn't going to kick in any time soon. That wasn't a good thing in either of their minds. Normally, anyone that survived a demon encounter shrugged it off as a natural disaster or gang violence. Morgan, however, was not doing that.
Not that Buffy wasn't going to try, though.
"Listen," she began, "you just had a really bad experience. I know it's hard to take-in right now - what happened to you was really traumatic - but you can get through it. Lots of people live perfectly normal lives after being." she hesitated. "Uh, being the subject of a high school prank. Teenagers can be such monsters." That was always the best way to deal with these situations, Buffy found. Just mention casually a plausible explanation for what happened and the victim, wanting to believe, would fill in the rest later.
"No!" Morgan nearly yelled. "That's not true! He was there! He saved me!" She was backing away as she spoke, looking paranoid and desperate, until the back of her legs touched the couch again. But rather than break into more hysterics she spoke quietly, "I saw him." Her eyes wide and her body trembling she slipped to the floor.
"I want to go home," she whispered as Buffy approached her cautiously.
"Okay," said a deep voice from somewhere behind her. "I'll take you."
And there he was.
******To*Be*Continued******
AUTHOR: Wicked Raygun
E-MAIL: wicked_raygun@yahoo.com
SUMMARY: Where does a person draw the line between love and obsession?
RATING: R. Just to be safe anyway. Nothing *really* bad is going to happen. Trust me.
SPOILERS: General spoilers for seasons 1 through 6. Any spoilers from season 7 simply happen because they fit with the story I want to tell.
DISCLAIMOR: I refuse to believe this is necessary. Does anyone here actually believe I own this stuff in any way? Well. To the folks who do own a piece of the Buffster and/or her friends and enemies, I mean you no harm. I'm simply borrowing your toys to put on a little puppet show. I promise to bring them all back in near-mint condition. Even Spike.
FEEDBACK: Everyone needs a little love. It makes the world go round and writers post faster.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: If you're expecting fluffy bunnies and cute endings run away in fear right now. I'm writing a mature story, where adult themes such as violence, rage, obsession, stalking and, yes. gasp, even sex are mentioned. If you cannot deal with that, please, go somewhere else. Or better yet, just grow up.
Special thanks must be given to my online friend Lori Bush, who is an amazing writer who for some reason that I cannot begin to comprehend seems to actually want to read my work and help me improve it. Here's hoping her sanity doesn't kick in anytime soon. For those of you who are interested in reading one or ten of her fabulous stories, they can be found here:
http://tedjoxertimandmore.homestead.com/XanderStories.html
Please leave many, many reviews so that she may be inspired to write many more stories.
Also, for those who are interested in some of my other work, it can be found here:
http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=79383
Now, onto the show.
~~~~~~***~~~~~~
The first thing she became aware of was a bitter, coppery taste in her mouth. Blood, some distant part of her consciousness told her - not a comforting thought.
A low, scratchy moan was heard as she tried to swallow away the horrible taste. Not only did that not work, but she inadvertently triggered her gag reflex and coughed and retched painfully as her stomach threatened to violently spill out its contents. Her parched throat, sore and scratchy from an abundance of phlegm and blood, needed water, but her slowly returning mental faculties deemed that it probably wasn't the best idea, just yet.
She breathed slowly and purposefully, consciously attempting not to swallow again. She was much more alert now, but still felt drowsy and detached from her senses, aside from an aching throb in her lower back, a burning sensation of damaged skin around her wrists, and a thick comforter covering her body - her nearly naked body.
That last realization woke her up a bit more, and this time she tried to open her eyes to get a better bearing on where she was because while she was still not quite fully aware of her surroundings, she was more than sure that she wasn't in her own apartment. She opened her eyes then winced and blinked rapidly as the all too bright light attacked her vision. Everything she could take in was blurry and distorted - nothing resembling shapes, just odd blobs of colors.
That was when she was startled by a warm, wet rag being applied to her forehead. Suddenly, images came back to her - horrible, terrifying images - and she shrieked and flailed her arms wildly.
"No!" she screamed. Then one of her arms hit something very hard, which was followed by an, "oof" sound.
Escape, she thought. Must escape.
So she jumped up, stumbled blindly to her feet and tried to run away, only to lose her balance and fall hard on her face. Still panicking, she crawled desperately across the floor, ripping out a fingernail in her urgency. She managed to get onto her knees and tried once again to get to her feet, when someone grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air. Feeling trapped, she screamed as she kicked her legs and swung her arms about wildly, wanting to hurt her captor enough to get away.
"Shh!!" she heard. "Quiet! It's okay now. Everything's okay now."
Completely overcome, she passed out.
~~~~~~***~~~~~~
When she came to, it was to the sound of arguing.
"What did you do to her?!?" one voice nearly yelled.
"I didn't do anything!" snapped the other defensively. "I was just trying to help her!"
"By doing what? Scaring her half to death?" said the first voice quieter than before, but with no less frustration.
"No, I just put a cool, wet rag on her forehead. That's what the always do on TV!""
There was an exasperated sigh, and then, "Damn it, Dawn, she was just held captive by a cult of demon tapeworm worshippers and just had a python mystically stomach-pumped out of her; a cool forehead is the least of her worries."
Cult?. Demons?. Tapeworms!
She looked around and found herself on a couch in someone's living room. That did nothing to lessen her confusion and growing fear. The things she was remembering just couldn't be real. Could they? She shook her head trying to forcibly clear from it all the mental clutter that made everything feel so unreal. When that was done, she still found herself on a couch. in someone's living room. with the voices of two people talking about demons.
The world was seeming more and more unreal by the second.
And, as a suddenly important fact, she was still nearly naked. She looked about her and saw a comforter on the floor. She vaguely remembered throwing it off of her and fighting off someone - one of the people arguing about demons apparently. She felt very foolish. From what she could gather, these people had helped her. from a cult of demon tapeworms.
Her rational mind simply refused to wrap itself around that concept yet, if she had even understood it correctly in the first place.
With a sudden bout of self-consciousness about her body, she took the comforter from off the floor and wrapped it over her shoulders and around herself, and her hands gripping the material tightly. She stood up slowly, wanting to confront the people who helped her - they were still arguing.
"Oh, like you've never done something that you saw on TV!"
"Nothing THAT clichéd!"
She cleared her throat.
The two young women stopped arguing immediately, looked at her with wide eyes, their mouths open in mid-speech, probably thinking the same thing: How long was she awake?
There was a long silence. After awhile, she decided to get the conversation started so she could understand just what the hell was going on.
"Hi, my name's Morgan. I think you saved me from some demonic tapeworms," she said shyly.
The smaller, blonde woman glared at the taller brunette, obviously blaming her for something. The brunette, meanwhile, was sputtering nervously. She then faked laughing and said, "Demonic tapeworms! Wow, that's a good one!" She faked a chuckle that sounded horribly strained, the continued, "I'll have to remember that one!"
Now the blonde woman was staring at her as if she was mentally retarded. Her attention was brought back to Morgan when she heard her gasp. What happened was that Morgan had just realized why the two women looked eerily familiar: They were friends of her favorite camera subject - her Soul Searcher; her Xander - they were Buffy and Dawn Summers. and this was apparently their home.
Morgan had never before felt so terrified - if one didn't count the being kidnapped, anyway.
She was very aware that what she was doing bordered heavily on stalking, but she had rationalized that as long as she never got personally involved with her subject, then everything was safe and okay. It was a flimsy and flawed logic, she knew, but she clung to it desperately to prove to herself that she wasn't insane. But now, she had crossed that line that she had been dreading and she felt.
It was then she remembered. HE had saved her.
She gasped again then took a fearful step back before saying, "This is all real, isn't it?" Buffy and Dawn didn't know how to respond to that. "Oh god, this is all real," she said, answering her own question.
Buffy and Dawn, for their part, were starting to think that the old Sunnydale curse of denial of all things supernatural wasn't going to kick in any time soon. That wasn't a good thing in either of their minds. Normally, anyone that survived a demon encounter shrugged it off as a natural disaster or gang violence. Morgan, however, was not doing that.
Not that Buffy wasn't going to try, though.
"Listen," she began, "you just had a really bad experience. I know it's hard to take-in right now - what happened to you was really traumatic - but you can get through it. Lots of people live perfectly normal lives after being." she hesitated. "Uh, being the subject of a high school prank. Teenagers can be such monsters." That was always the best way to deal with these situations, Buffy found. Just mention casually a plausible explanation for what happened and the victim, wanting to believe, would fill in the rest later.
"No!" Morgan nearly yelled. "That's not true! He was there! He saved me!" She was backing away as she spoke, looking paranoid and desperate, until the back of her legs touched the couch again. But rather than break into more hysterics she spoke quietly, "I saw him." Her eyes wide and her body trembling she slipped to the floor.
"I want to go home," she whispered as Buffy approached her cautiously.
"Okay," said a deep voice from somewhere behind her. "I'll take you."
And there he was.
******To*Be*Continued******