Mad World II
Disclaimer: Don't own nothin'.
Second Chappa'. Enjoy.
April 3, 2004 - 9:13 A.M
The walls were white, the ceiling was white, and the floors were all white. It was the most sickening colour Robert Hardsmann had ever seen. Every time he had to walk downstairs in the laboratory he couldn't stand to look at anything unless it had some shade of colour in it somewhere. His shoes were what he usually looked at. Normally if one were to go downstairs appropriate lab wear would be required, however all of the test subjects were in research today and no toxic or general harm could be administered. Robert absently checked his reflection in the glass, sliding doors that led him down one last white hall. He would be leading the board meeting today, and public speaking unnerved him.
Just tell them what you have to say, keep your notes close in hand, and make sure you get the points across.
Today he would be speaking about the new stock foreclosures. If the USIU raised their investments any higher, they would surely be in trouble. He glanced down at his notes once more. Stock foreclosures, the new foreign policies, and …
Where's my page about the Slayer? Shit, I don't know a thing about that proposition without my notes. Hell, here it is, mixed in with page three on accident. Phew.
Robert was certain not one person in that room would be happy about the Slayer proposal. They had just gotten her in grips last year. And she was definitely an asset to the company. Getting rid of her now would only make things worse, offensive to what Ted Glickman, the young, new, college-graduate CEO would say. Ted was the kind of Boss you'd want if you worked at a Toy Store. He was never quite "with the program", and every decision he had made since his arrival last year was towards only his own well being. Officious little prick…
Robert took one last inhale of fresh breath before arriving at the meeting quarters. Finally, some colour to rest his blinded eyes. He opened up the door and stepped into the mahogany coloured room. 18 different eyes turned to greet him.
Gulp… let's just get this over with, Rob. Get a hold of yourself.
"Robert! Great of you to join us… Ladies and Gentlemen, the head of our Demon Research and Specialty department, Robert Hardsmann!" Officious little prick officious little prick officious little prick….
Ted, sitting at the end of the long, board meeting-esque table stood up and clapped briefly at Robert's arrival. The rest of the members of the room, each seated in their own comfortable office chair followed in suit. The chairs swivelled and spun a little too quickly in Robert's mind.
"Right so, er…" Good, good strong, solid start, Rob…
"Um…"
Shit.
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Four Hours, twenty minutes, seven seconds later
"So, in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, as a result from the new foreclosures, and foreign policies unit, we, as a company believe our "family" will grow together, closer and warmer, if we can all agree on the idea at hand. Now, wait, wait a moment… I know there will be disagreement, but if we could all just wait our turns and speak our thoughts one by one-…"
"The Slayer provides us nearly all of our prophecies, theories..!"
"She can't be missing!"
"FIND HER!"
"Giveit another chance!"
A cacophony of yelling erupted in the board room. People were standing out of their seats, pointing fingers, screaming out refusals, and shooting glares towards Ted Glickman. Only one member of the chaos room sat in complete and utter conquest. Robert Hardsmann sat in his own office chair, head in one hand, and a sick green look across his face. He couldn't believe he had vomited in front of the Board of Directors, the visiting Foreign Policies Unit, the President of the Human and Demon Interaction Sector, and the CEO of his company.
He had spoken two words, glanced only once at his audience, and went sick to his stomach, forcing Ted Glickman to take over. He was surely in some trouble after this, he knew it.
Ted stood at the front of the room, holding his hands out, trying to calm everyone down. Finally, he grabbed a nearby chair, stood atop it and nearly screamed.
"STOP! Everyone! Just stop! Please, let me explain…"
And finally, like magic, the voices died down to a dull roar, then to nothing at all. Ted cautiously moved off the chair, set it back beneath the table, then stood in his original position at the head of the room. He straightened his tie, smoothed his strawberry blonde hair down once more, and then flashed a wide smile. "Now, everyone, if you'll please just listen. The Slayer was first introduced to us as a tool, rather than a weapon. When the rumours were made out to be true, that the Slayer had indeed been returned to our world and was being kept in solitude by what remained ofWolfram and Hart, we decided it would be to everyone's best interest to have her on our team, rather than theirs. Once the trade agreement was made, the money paid, and the Slayer transported to us, we knew it was time now that the prophecy had been fulfilled. It had to have been, correct? A warrior returned to her rightful place, her mind belongs to the Powers that Be. It was with our best interest that we use her to the better in telling us some of what the Powers that Be was giving her. The plan has indeed worked fine, up until these last couple of months, but , as everyone is aware of, the visions she was providing us with were being rendered useless as of April. She is seeing things that have already happened, or that we already are informed about. We have no use for her now. She cannot help this company in any way. So there particuarly is no urgent need to find her again. She's dissapeared on the premises, we believe, though the tracking device has fallen uneffective. The system stopped working yesterday morning."
A cough sounded nearby. Then a slight moaning of the springs in the chairs. Ted knew he had gotten through. The Slayer would be terminated, he hoped, and nobody would even remember she had been used. With one simple speech he changed the minds of every member in that room. Except for old Hardsmann over there. Poor guy, he didn't know what to do with him.
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Buffy Summers stirred. Something was… poking her.
A pencil, maybe? Something she had accidentally slept on?
Oh, and a voice. Well, the voice wasn't poking her, but her just half-awake mind discovered there was something poking her, and a voice.
"Miss Summers?"
…
"Ahem. Miss Summers?"
… ……..
"AHEM!"
"Oh, huh! What? Yes? Um… y-yes, Mr. Adams?"
Buffy glanced up, head full of slightly dishevelled hair, and pillow lines, except her pillow lines were more like desk lines.
Note to self: Desks are not beds. Get some real sleep.
A short, more stout British man stood beside Buffy's desk, hidden almost behind a many potted plants, hanging and sitting in décor around the library's walls, glared slightly over his cotton white moustache, falling limp over his beet red, thin lips.
"Miss Summers, if you plan on working for the Centerville Public Library, I suggest attempting some real wo-…"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Adams. Real work. I … completely agree." Buffy knew, for she had worked at the Centerville Public Library for two years now, that it was best to never let this Adams guy get going on his complaints and arguments. Brits, she knew from experience, were hard to shut up.
"Rightly so. And this real work we both fondly speak of, Miss Summers, would be…?"
"Um…" Yeah, like Slayers were really meant for categorizing books front wards, backwards and alphabetical from Z-A. "Like… helping the friendly book readers?"
A sigh came from the thin red lips again before Mr. Adams turned and trotted away, withering, veiny hands disappearing in his pockets. "Correct, Miss Summers. That is correct."
Phew.
That was the second time this week she had been caught sleeping on the job. Not that she, you know, slept on the job very often. It only happened the times she liked to pretend she still had that other job, the one that required patrolling all the cemeteries in the city for hours of the night on end. It always made her tired, considering she didn't take part in that job much anymore.
Stifling a brief yawn, Buffy glanced around the near empty library. She had been woken up for this? There was nobody here! There was nobody to help! And by God, she was not categorizing one more book. Her brain was in shambles from so much categorizing. And who knew you should categorize things in so many different ways? Her intense training, two years ago once she had gotten the job, showed her the many, many ways you could do so.
She glanced at the clock once more. 3:38. She could leave in just seven more minutes…
And these she knew, would be the seven longest minutes of her life.
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The house was warm when Buffy arrived. The air conditioning, still broken, a remnant in the back of her mind, both illusion and physical being waiting patiently to be fixed, hummed and squealed before falling silent and letting the hot air drift out through the mistakenly cracked window. The warm climate didn't bother her much anymore. The machine hadn't worked for awhile. She was used to it. It was compatible.
Her house keys flattened and jingled themselves on the nearly three-legged side table as she entered, falling delicately, ringing deafly before providing another comfortable silence. The picture in the frame besides the key's home was one of her favorites. That's why she had acctually taken time to frame it. Two figures sat across from each other in the background behind Dawn and Willow, the subjects of the photos. One blur which Buffy later identified as Faith, the other as her, showed a glance between two slayers, one whose eyes were vivid, awake in a daydreaming world Buffy had never been able to conquer, and the other staring at the brunette. "It was just a mistake," Buffy later argued. "Coincidence is all."
Buffy moved with extra certainty, flipping light switches, throwing on the light in the refridgeraitor before a selection was made, pressing buttons on the a telephone to discover not one person had called her during the day, and finally letting her glances continuously avoid the basement. Her dinner was prepared as usual, stuffed in the microwave, more buttons were pressed, and removed before being left to cool for the suggested minute and a half. She watched novicly as the steam rose to the top of the low ceiling, separated, and departed. The steam dissapeared. She began to eat.
The Slayer lived alone on 73 Nightshade View, Cleveland, Ohio. Her sister had departed for college, as expected, two years ago. She had returned home briefly after every major that turned to boredom on her. This one would stick, though, she hoped. Aqua Marine Science. Or... something of the other. She wasn't sure what they were calling it these days.
Willow, gone too. Nothing to say about that.
Buffy sat and ate in silence. On these lonely evenings she usually developed a queenly iciness towards the imagined other inhabitants of this house. Some were imagined, sitting lone in the living room, watching the 15'' television with legs curled comfortably beneath them and looks of slight boredom, slight amusement at what was playing. One was real. To her, the vision living in her basement, a pitifull frown always upon its lips, had been defeated. She had discovered with much excitement the vision she was continuously being bothered with, sprinting towards her down the street in nothing but a robe like sheet, tags attatched to her wrist and feet bare as they ran the race with cold ashphalt. It was corporeal. She hadn't wanted it to escape, so kept it comfortable, so she believed, downstairs.
Every day, or every other day, depending on how tired she was, Buffy would amusingly bring food to the corner of the downstairs basement, nourishment for an ill-treated savage.She knew it was silly, ridiculous even to be feeding a vision of her own mind, but every day the things she had previously adminstered would dissapear from the spot in which she had placed them. She hadn't been down there in three days now. But from above the swamp of a chamber below, the primitive cries of terror through a mouth of cotton were undeniable, making their way out of an abyss of time.
Buffy moved down the basement steps with the cautious foot of a traveler in a foreign land. She fumbled, dancing down the stairs, fighting a jungle of cobwebs before finding the long, gold chain, and yanking it. The pull on the chain allowed the low, dull light to fill the room, enough for the Slayer to see, enough for her enemy to swoon at the sudden brightness.
A black, shadowed figure against the wall, Buffy's prisoner raised her head and showed the sweat and tear faced cheeks, stained and streaked with blood, dried and fresh.
"You're not real." She told it, a strange wince of a smile resting on her lips. "If you were really her you'd be out of here by now. Not even chains could hold her." A soft hiccup of breath was the response back. Buffy fumed. "Don't act like you're real! Don't act like you need to breathe! You don't! You don't!" Buffy was nearing the shrinking animal, her fists and palms flying with minds of their own. "You're not real! You're not... her. DON'T!"
A face of blood appeared from its hiding place to greet her.
It was the first time Buffy had really seen the eyes of her captive. Her real, blinking, crying, veiny eyes, masked with confusion and fear watched Buffy in the beauty of their silence.
"Buffy?"