Chapter 5: Journey of Becoming
In this new phase of the afterlife journey, things truly are bizarre, not to mention quite disconcerting. Fortunately, Spike has a guide to explain what the heck is going on during this phase. (As before, each drabble's title is the prompt on which it's based.)
Puppet Spike
Spike's awareness returns a little early and he gets a view behind the curtain, in a way.
-oo-00-oo-
He awoke as a zinging bolt raced along his nerves like a lightning strike, entwining within each bone, muscle, and organ. Each of those felt like they were being touched, molded, and moved without his volition. It seemed like it ought to be excruciating. Instead, it felt intrusive as hell.
Sensations overwhelmed him. He struggled to name them until, overwhelmed, he simply accepted them as they came. They were more like poetry, loyalty, foolishness, bravery, hope, temper, adaptability, introspection, and impatience. They raced through him, from his core up through his brain like tiny fishes tickling and quivering in the dancing waters of a stream.
An infusion of emotions quickly followed, coming from all directions. Anger, sorrow, happiness, exultation landed in quick succession. Then another feeling seemed to swamp them all. It felt like passion, like love; almost more than could fit inside his skin. It was like having so much blood flowing in his system that he was near bursting.
It was overwhelming until, somehow, his entire self adjusted to comfortably contain it all.
In the momentary lull, he collected himself to open his eyes, which seemed almost stuck together. When he finally raised his lids, they felt sticky and dry. His lashes seemed unusually thick and visible. Blinking to clear his vision, he seemed surrounded by colored strings and yarn. It was as though the knitting demon's entire shop had exploded with him at the center.
Again, with more effort than he thought should be required, he looked around. And then he gazed down.
And… bloody, buggering fuck.
The various yarns did, indeed, center on him. As he watched, various sets of them independently gathered and clumped themselves into complex shapes that absorbed into him. The process tingled and pricked. It slithered like Lloyd's sodding beetles under his skin.
But what really sent his mind skittering was that he looked like a giant effing sweater. He lifted his hand to confirm what he was seeing. And yes, unbelievably, he seemed to be a knitted version of himself. His fingers were pale, knotted spirals of, well, yarn. Raising one to touch his cheek, he found a similar woven nap under his fingers. His lips, teeth, nose, eyebrows, and even hair felt textured and cottony.
Spotting a set of strings that moved with his arm and fingers, he realized it was even worse than he'd imagined. He was a knitted, puppet version of Spike.
Moving his other arm, he confirmed that the strings lifted it. Then he tilted his head upward, which gave him a dizzying glimpse of strings running to his noggin. In the distance, he could just make out the outline of a puppeteer's cross-frame in the gray fog above his current room.
"What the hell?" he shouted in an embarrassing, wee puppet voice. " Oi , fun's over. I'll have your intestines for breakfast or the horn on your snout for my dagger if you don't end this… this indignity."
Growling with as much menace a knitted, puppet vampire could muster, he looked for the doorway back to the sodding knitting demon's workshop. But he was no longer in the rhino-faced tosser's waiting room. Or, if he was, the room was now empty. The chair under him seemed to be the only furniture.
He attempted to stand, only to discover that his legs weren't quite stringed-up enough yet to work. But his arms functioned, so he moved them in a frenzy.
"This isn't bloody funny," he yelled, trying to stay on his feet.
"Settle down, big guy," a voice at his feet squawked.
Peering down, Spike saw a pair of two-legged, furry creatures that looked like turquoise… something-or-others. Ah, meerkats. Now that he'd spotted them, he saw another pair had crawled up to his knee, where they were apparently attaching more puppet strings.
"Who the sodding hell are you?" As he spoke, he felt a twinging poke from the creatures at his knee. He still couldn't move it enough to kick off the pests.
The two blue whats-its still on the ground had both crossed their forearms like annoyed fishwives. Or, like Dawn, when she was dressing him down. Same difference.
"Sit down," the larger of the two instructed. "We have a lot still to do."
The other replied, "If this is what he's like now, I can't imagine what he'll be like when he's back to himself."
One of the blue whats-its on his leg crawled up higher and pulled on something. Suddenly, Spike landed back in the chair with a thump.
"What the bloody hell?" Spike repeated.
The largest creature shook its head. "We don't fit-out demons too often. So sue us: you woke up early. Consider this a metaphor that helps your brain understand what's going on while you're being prepared to reenter the mortal plane. You'll get real skin, don't worry."
"This is a metaphor of what, now?" he asked. But didn't get far because one of the blue whats-its had scaled its way up to his shoulder. With a disorienting, darting motion, the creature peered beadily into his eyes close-up-and-personal like. Then he felt a prick in his neck, followed by a cool sensation. Bloody hell, he'd been roofied by a turquoise meerkat.
His eyes closed but, in the moment before he surrendered to unconsciousness, he realized something both profound and hilarious. Right now, he was like a knitted version of the "cookie dough" Buffy had imagined herself to be that night before they'd brought down the First. He was still being put together and not quite in his final form. His last image, before he conked out, was of two knitted cookies making googly eyes at each other.
Nudes of Spike
Spike's journey through the afterlife is nearing the end. This time, instead of experiencing memories, he's re-loaded with them in preparation for entering his soul's next phase. Taken through galleries that show him who he's been and who he might become, he regains his sense of self and chooses his desired mission. He is ready to take control of his life when he returns to the mortal world.
-oo-00-oo-
Spike awoke with a start when—boom, boom, boom—a row of spotlights popped on. They illuminated an arched hallway on the other side of the room. He swore it hadn't been there before.
"What the…?" his groggy voice ground out. He grunted because it still sounded like his puppet voice. But, looking down, he saw something closer to skin instead of the fancy knitwork from before. Bit of a relief, that was. Incongruously, his mind surfaced that Peter Gabriel earworm: I kicked the habit. Shed my skin. This is the new stuff I go dancing in.
Clearly, he was delirious.
Blinking, he watched while clothes quickly enfolded him. They resembled what he'd worn in the First's cavern, although thank Christ he wasn't wearing Angelus' cursed amulet. Instead, a party necklace of tiny, illuminated skeletons hung loosely around his neck. Seemed appropriate.
"Ah, you're awake." One of the turquoise meerkats peered up at him. "We have to hurry. Follow me." It started toward the illuminated hallway, waving Spike forward.
"Right then," he replied. Because, hell, why not? He stood, pleased that he could now walk.
The hallway ushered in a virtual picture show. With each footfall, images flew into his awareness like playing cards tossed into a pile. A sepia tinted photo showed him as an infant in swaddling. Another flashed by, showing him as a lad in short pants with his parents on a long-ago, happy trip to the Brighton shore.
Other images of childhood and college days followed, ending in a portrait he remembered. It was the last ball to which he'd escorted his mother before she became too infirm to mingle. He'd forgotten the joy and pride radiating from her as she stood arm-in-arm with him.
He wanted to linger on that image, but—flip, flip, flip—others superseded it. Next he saw Drusilla's beautiful and otherworldly smile, Darla's speculative regard, and Angelus' early camaraderie. Snaps captured him happily shattering social mores that no longer bound him. Internally, exultation jostled with confusion at images where he'd impaled tormentors from his human life. His demon rejoiced while his soul, not horrified, nevertheless reeled.
Another volley of images reminded him of whirlwind days, globe-traversing voyages, and glorious fistfights, Others were scenes of fleeing mobs and coddling Drusilla. An image of him and Dru coupling atop a pair of blood-splashed victims elicited dueling feelings of ecstasy and repugnance. Demon and soul, disagreeing. I'm not that Spike anymore, he acknowledged. Interestingly, that settled both essences within him.
Additional images flashed by. He fought the Chinese slayer, Nikki, and then Buffy. They each embodied the thrill of battle with a perfectly matched equal. And yet, fighting Buffy was different. With love acknowledged, it became a true dance , he thought, settling the renewed fluttering of his soul. And, again, his demon seemed pleased. Since when were his divisions in cahoots?
A final image showed him after Buffy pummeled him outside the Sunnyvale PD. His soul shied away, no-no-no , while his demon reassured that this was how its kind loved. Stunned, Spike finally understood why Buffy had felt she was using him. Unlike his demon, both his soul and hers saw punishment from a lover as fundamentally wrong. He and his demon had never understood it that way before.
Distracted, he turned into a small atrium, at which point the barrage of images ceased. Instead, a semi-circle of life-sized statues depicted Spike through his adult phases.
"I'm naked as a bloody jaybird," he mumbled at the nude Spike carvings. "Not that I mind particularly. Waste of time, modesty is."
Peering closer, he felt each statue's unearthly vitality. The series began with human William, abashed at his carved nudity. Good form, old chap," Spike applauded his former self, ignoring his soul's squirming. The next statue, a vampire still sporting William's long floofy hair, had the knowing confidence gifted by his demon. Face and body alone revealed so much.
Each one after that showed how Spike had successfully recreated himself over time. Pride bloomed in him, almost like warmth in his chest.
His thoughts fled as a disembodied voice boomed. "Only moments to spare."
"He still has an important choice to make," another replied.
Harrumphing, a third voice said, "He's almost there. Let him skip to the end."
With that, Spike sped with vampire acceleration down the hall until he reached a tryptic of life-sized portraits.
On his left, an almost photographic depiction of himself seemed ready to stride off the canvas. Despite the figure's vigor and modern clothes, he'd let his hair return to its rumpled William styling.
In the center, an image in the style of an oil painting showed Spike with slicked back hair and a leather jacket fighting back-to-back with Angelus. Their faces reflected joyous battle. And was that a sodding dragon flying above them?
The third showed Spike striding on Buffy's left side, her lieutenant, with weapons in hand. They looked tousled and exhausted, as though returning from a fight. He stopped there. Any of these three depictions might be him, but this was where he'd want to be. He'd been around for so many years and knew she was the one . He'd never spoken words more true than those he'd told her before they'd fought the First.
He smirked as lyrics from Giles' quixotic Cream song popped into his mind. Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell. And you know you cannot leave her. For you touched the distant sands with tales of brave Ulysses. He was no brave Ulysses. But yet, his wandering had ceased when he'd accepted his purpose was to support the woman who'd shown him the power of his heart. Buffy , his demon and soul echoed in agreement.
Then the lights went off—boom boom boom—as he felt uplifted in spirit and body.
.
To be continued...