Ananas and the Man

Disclaimer: All characters belong to their respective owners, namely Mutant Enemy and Nickelodeon.

Author's Note: I'm actually a bit frightened by this, since it is my brain that thought up this twisted little idea. Thoughts of Angel being a Vamp-in-the-Box had been playing on my mind a bit, and then I let it wander off the leash. FAR off the leash. It screamed at me to be written, and would not let me go to bed until I did. It's a one-shot. I promise.


Angel stared at the cage surrounding him. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was enough to be a cell out of which he could not free himself. His own son had imprisoned him. That should have been enough. Instead, he went one step further and tossed the steel box into the Pacific Ocean.

He had raged at his bonds, at the hinges in the steel box. The small opening in the front was enough to see through, but not enough to get at anything outside it, even if his hands were free. The chains that held him were forged of steel, but they might as well have been the chains that held Prometheus. His imprisonment seemed unending. The torture of being trapped underwater watching nothing else but the fish was akin to the vultures that pecked at Prometheus's liver by day, only to have it grow back at night. What crime against the gods had he committed, to be condemned by his own son?

Angel knew the answer to that question. He had slept with Darla in a fit of rage mixed with apathy. Wait, he hit her and threw her onto the bed, then he slept with her. She always did like it rough. The punishment for that sin was the unnatural birth that resulted. Connor should not have been alive, let alone conceived, for the sheer impossibility of the biology. They were both vampires. Connor was a human baby that somehow grew inside a dead thing. Tears would have teemed down Angel's cheeks were they not submerged in saltwater already.

He tried to raise Connor well. He was denied the chance by Wesley, who believed the prophecy and took away his only son, his only hope of having a family, of having hope for the future. Connor was alive, human, and of his blood. He had thought that opportunity had passed him by almost 250 years ago. When he was human, the thought of settling down and having a family was almost an abhorrent thought. Why be saddled with a wife and children when there was a whole world to see? There was more fun to be had in the local tavern, boozing and whoring, than would be had with a cold, shrewish wife and snot-nosed brats. The last thing he wanted to do was become his father: bitter and jealous of other men, of their success and freedom. He was going to make something of his life, something substantial.

Darla changed that dream into an unending nightmare land, where he was the monster that roamed it.

His crimes against nature he once considered art. His torture of his victims' bodies and minds were pleasurable. He loved to hear them scream. One scream from a gypsy girl ended the joyride, as her family cursed him with a soul. He had thought that punishment was enough. He had that punishment for a hundred years. After a hundred years, the spell on the fairy tale character is supposed to be broken by a kiss. Again, it was Darla that turned his world upside down, and continued the nightmare.

The weight of his reality hit him as he descended in the ocean. It seemed like he was falling for days, though it may only have been a few hours. Time, trapped in an inescapable box in the ocean, is irrelevant. He did not need to breathe; his lungs were redundant. However, the pressure was starting to press on him. So was the hunger. The curious fish that swam into his box to nibble at him like bait could only sustain him for so long. The blood in a fish was akin to one cherry for a human: tasty, but hardly filling. They were also fun to count, as well as guessing which colour fish would come in next, but that would only be amusing for so long.

It had been almost a month from his count. He tried to keep track of the days, but without a working watch or light it was difficult. The watch had ceased to function at the first splash of water. He was never buying a watch off a man's coat again. That was provided he would escape his watery hell. Hell was a lot wetter than he remembered.

The hunger was gnawing at his insides and screaming in his veins. A starving vampire was not a pretty sight to behold. The skin grew taut across the bones and paler than it had been before. The veins that were once infused with blood were crying in vain to be fed. Pain coursed through his system. It was as close as Angel could get to Hell without actually going there again.

He felt his mind wandering and wondered if what he was experiencing was real or not. Were the fish he was using as sustenance really there, or was he back at home, chewing on his pillow in a fevered, nightmare ridden sleep? Would Cordelia be waiting for him when he surfaced? Would he surface? The thoughts running through his head were the only thing reminding him that he still existed. He hated them.

His box was settled on a sandbank with not much surrounding him. As he glanced listlessly across the ocean floor, he noticed something a bit further out. A pink starfish ran across the floor. That couldn't be right; starfish don't run, they more or less creep along. Angel didn't know much about marine biology, but he knew that starfish certainly did not wear Hawaiian-print shorts. A bright yellow square ran towards the starfish with a butterfly net. No, not towards the starfish, but behind it; it was trying to catch a jellyfish. Angel blinked again, and more of the seascape came into focus. Three small outcroppings appeared in the sand behind the two figures. One was a round rock. The starfish ran away from the yellow square and flipped the rock up to run underneath it. Beside it was a tall grey monument that looked like an Easter Island carving, with a large nose and ears. The yellow square flailed its arms and legs and ran around in a circle several times, before opening the door to the third building. It looked like… a pineapple? Who lives in a pineapple under the sea!

Angel closed his eyes, and hoped a very large fish would come along and take his box away from his madness. He thought Hell was bad. This was far, far worse.

fin