I'm coming apart at the seams
Pitching myself for leads in people's dreams
Now buzz, buzz, buzz
Doc, there's a hole where something was
Doc, there's a hole where something was
-Fall Out Boy-
Chapter 3
Buffy knew she was dreaming the instant she found herself standing in the grubby waiting room. The bzzt bzzt bzzt of the blinking florescent light kept an uneven beat with the tinny warbling of Madonna singing “Borderline” through a cheap Muzak system.
She was standing in front of a display of tires lining the wall; their rubbery scent permeated the room. Just beneath the row of tires was a line of grimy plastic chairs, bolted to the wall. On a low table next to the chairs was a scattering of skuzzy magazines which were hosting a small colony of alarmingly large insects, crawling across the titles in a drunken line. She shuddered and she took an involuntary step backward.
“Fucking bugs,” she mumbled, as she turned around.
The wall behind her was taken up by a dirt-streaked service counter. Just behind that, tacked to the faded wood paneling were two signs, the smallest of which proudly proclaimed “Accident Free for 1 Days!” The larger sign read “Sears – Automotive” in a particularly obnoxious shade of blue.
“Sears, where America shops,” Buffy muttered. Figures that she'd finally get a mall dream only to end up in the worst place a mall had to offer: a craptastic waiting room in the Sears’ tire department.
This was so not going to happen.
She turned to leave only to find that the exit didn't appear to be on the far side of the room. Turning back around to the counter, a little more slowly this time, she found that this side of the room didn't appear to have an exit either.
Bzzzt! The florescent light spat, causing Buffy to jump up with a start. It flickered, then dimmed, casting flickering shadows over the room. Creepy. Definitely creepy.
In the background, 'Borderline' droned on.
Buffy turned around the room again, slowly, careful not to miss anything. The room was suffocatingly small, bringing on sharp pangs of claustrophobia. As an insectile skittering of fear ran across the back of her neck, she fought back the fear she felt rising from her stomach’s core. Small spaces always made her feel trapped, as imprisoned as she’d been when she woke up in her grave so many years ago. Just beneath the scent of tires and sweat, she could detect the subtle tang of a sour odor – like rotting meat.
As her fight or flight instinct began to kick in, she turned back to the yellowing service counter, still searching for some kind of exit, only to see the same filthy service counter and...a bell. Hey! That was new. At least it seemed new. Next to the rusty bell was a scrap of grimy paper, upon which were scrawled the words: ring me.
She touched the top of the bell gingerly – instinctively limiting her contact with this place as much as humanly possible. It creaked out a tired brrrng. Buffy waited, tapping a nervous foot. Nothing. Brrrng, she rang again. More nothing.
She turned around, her back to the service counter, examining the wall for something she might have missed earlier, only to find the same tired scene of tires, chairs and magazines. The insects were still there too, weaving a conga line through the magazine pile. And now that she'd gotten a closer look, she noticed that these magazines weren't the standard waiting room reads of “Ladies Home Journal” and “Car and Driver.” Grubby and worn, they featured such charming titles as “Hot Asian Sluts” and “Titties and Kitties.” That one stopped her, because, really? A boob-and-cat fetish? That was a thing?
Her dream Sears sucked.
“Welcome. Can I help you?” A male voice spoke from behind her, startling her so completely that she jumped and let out a yelp. If she'd not been so distracted by the skanky magazines and the entire creepy atmosphere of the Tire Center from Hell, she might have recognized the voice. But she spun around too quickly for that and was therefore absolutely unprepared for -
Warren.
Warren Mears, standing there as real as the last time she'd seen him. Well, except he had his skin on now and was wearing a bright blue shirt announcing that he was part of the “Sears Blue Crew!” The florescent light gave another bzzt, pop; bluish light danced across Warren’s skin, casting deep shadows beneath his eyes.
“Hello, Buffy,” he said, drawing out the greeting with relish. His mouth split into a wide grin.
Her heart galloped a steady pace within her chest, but she carefully composed her face into her best Slayer mask. Folding her arms across her chest, she nodded at him. “Nice digs. Cut-rate afterlife must suck. How’d you end up here? Get fired from Hell's Chuck E. Cheese?”
“It's your dreamscape, Princess. Whine to your subconscious about it.”
Buffy glanced quickly around the room, futily hoping that an exit had somehow materialized, much as Warren had. No dice.
”Miss me Slayer? I've missed you. That's the one thing I really miss in the afterlife. The fun I could be having with you and all your pals. Well, that's not entirely true. I also missed the revamped “Battlestar Galactica,” because, you know, I was dead.”
His dark eyes stole a glance beneath the service counter, his hands busy fiddling with something for a moment, before he looked back at Buffy with a bitter gaze.
“Do you think I blame you?” he asked.
“Good God, no!” she burst out. “Because it would be insane to blame me. But...oh wait, I guess that would be the point.”
Slowly, almost tenderly, he pulled an object from beneath the counter and Buffy caught the black metal sheen of a gun.
Warren licked his lips, his tongue dark red and reptilian. “I'm three feet away from you Buffy. Do you think I'll miss this time?”
He cocked his head, then cocked the gun.
Buffy shook her head, full of blind terror.
Warren stroked the barrel of the gun like a lover - drawing it out, loving it. “This is where I say 'You think you could just do that to me? You think I would just let you get away with that? Well, think again.' Then I pull the trigger, the gun says bang and your world goes boom.
A grin slashed across his face just before he pulled the trigger.
The gun said bang.
The air whooshed out of her as the blast from the gun hit her solidly in the chest, lifting her off her feet before dropping her hard onto her ass, onto the dirty linoleum floor.
Slayer instincts in overdrive, she immediately sprang to her feet, her hands and eyes scrambling towards where she expected to find a ragged cavern torn through her midsection, and yet…she was whole, unmarked.
Warren leaned over the counter, less than two feet away from her. His eyes skittered madly about like dark, jeweled beetles. Soft tendrils of mist curled from the gun, stroking the barrel with gentle fingers.
He cackled with glee. “Slayer, the look on your face is priceless. Just priceless.”
“I'd call you a douche bag, Warren, but that would be an insult to actual feminine hygiene products.”
“You knew it was a fucking dream, Buffy – and yet you fell for it. Scratch the Slayer hard enough and you'll find a dumb blonde down underneath.”
She glared at him. If her mind had really constructed this Sears from hell, couldn't she conjure up some Slayer powers and kick this nerd’s sorry ass?
As if he could read her mind, Warren answered her unspoken question. “No.”
She looked at him. “It might be your movie set, Buffy. But I'm the writer, the director. You can play here, but I'm your George Lucas.”
“With your dialogue, a fitting comparison,” Buffy mumbled.
“You did not just disrespect George Lucas.”
“Really? The guy that wrote 'Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo.' You're going to stick with that?”
“That is...entirely beside the point. That's not why we're here.”
“Well, why are we here then, Warren? Why don't you get whatever it is off your polyblend covered chest so I can get on with my date with the shoe department at Macy's.”
“I represent the Powers That Wanna Be,” Warren said, as he handed her a business card with a flourish.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Buffy asked, rolling her eyes.
The card read: The Powers That Wanna Be – 'When You're Number Two, You Try Harder! - Warren Mears, Official Emissary.”
Buffy shook her head, incredulous. In the background Madonna's song ended and an especially annoying tune about a sexy tractor took its place. Her subconscious had a playlist that bordered on evil.
“The Powers That Wanna Be have taken a great interest in you, Buffy,” Warren said, his voice full of self importance. “You and your 'William.' And god, isn't he a laugh riot? Spike used to actually intimidate me. He used to be a bad ass. If I had any idea that the whole sex-wrapped-in-leather package was really just hiding a teary-eyed mama's boy, I'd have staked the little pussy myself.”
“Warren? You're working for an entity that sounds like a Spice Girls cover band.”
“You really should watch your mouth, little girl. Underestimating the PTWB would be a pretty huge mistake. We're not as old as the First Evil, but we're the up-and-comers, impacting the world in a much bigger way than those dusty bastards.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“We're like oxygen, baby. We're everywhere and in just about everything. From the small to the absolutely huge.”
He seemed to be gearing up for something, so she let him talk, hoping that once he’d finished his sales pitch, she could find a way out of here. Or, perhaps, wake up, wrapped in William’s arms. That option was absolutely chuck full of good.
“You know those things that chip away at your soul on a daily basis? That would be us. Racial slurs and gay bashing? That's us. Almost every person who works at Fox News? Us. Every time Kim Kardashian is featured as ‘news,’ that's the Powers That Wanna Be.
“Yeah, Bill O’Reilly and the Kardashians. Quaking with fear here. I get it, Warren.”
“Not quite. Not quite, you don't. But you will. You see, Buffy, although we’re good at the small things, it's the big picture where we really knock it out of the park. When it comes to large-scale mindless violence and fear – that’s us too, feeding scraps to the beast. Celebrating man's inhumanity to man. Chemical warfare, child soldiers, Rwandan genocide: you have no idea.”
“Sounds great, Warren. I'll be sure to tell Bono about you next time I see him. I'm sure he can start a fund or something. In the meantime, I really don't get what any of this has to do with me.”
“Me, me, me. You self-centered bitches will be the death of me,” he snarled. “Oh, wait... you already were.”
“Warren? I didn't think it was possible, but you're even more tedious in death than you were in life.”
“You should take this more seriously, Buffy. You laughed me off before and Tara ended up dead. As I remember, the whole world came close to ending.”
“But it didn’t, Warren. You did. You're dead.” Her fingers itched to smack the smug smile from his twisted mouth.
“And even while dead, I managed to cause a bit of chaos, bring a little more death to your world. Point is, underestimating me has always been a bad mistake. But you never learn, Slayer.”
She looked at him, her patience as thin as phyllo dough. “So why are you bothering me?”
“Because I wanted to gloat a little. And I wanted you to know about us – about what was about to happen. You see, the Powers That Wanna Be have taken a great interest in you and your limp-wristed hubby and they’ve given me a mission to stop you.”
“Stop us from doing what? You guys have a thing against wineries?”
Warren ignored her and continued, “It seems that when you make your home in California, the two of you will end up sticking your white hat noses into some business that doesn't belong to you. The Cliff Notes version of this is that, left unchecked, you and Willie-boy are going to stop the opening of the Sunnydale Hellmouth.”
The florescent light gave another pop; with a snapping sound one of the overhead lights flickered and then died – throwing the room into deep shadows.
“We can't allow this to happen, so the PTWB have given me the mission of stopping you. So I’m sending a little surprise William’s way tomorrow night when I let my surprise out of her cage.”
Buffy met him with bravado. “Ah, and in the fine tradition of cartoon villains everywhere, you're describing your nefarious plan to me in great detail so that I can save the day at the last minute? Great thinking, Warren! That George Lucas comparison is becoming more appropriate all the time.”
“You will stop disrespecting Lucas!” Warren snapped. “And I'm not done. What the creature’s going to do isn’t even the best part. You see, you're not going to remember any of this when you wake up. And that’s not all. The metric fuckton of stuff you’re about to forget is the real genius of this whole thing.”
Warren was really simmering now. Even in the dimly lit room, she could see his expression had a kind of mad glow about it. She could do little else but watch as thoughts seemed to buzz and crash inside his head.
“The Powers That Wanna Be are going to give you a re-do of their own, only this time your ‘reward’ will be what you really deserve. When you wake up, you'll remember nothing of your life as Elizabeth. You're not going to remember Spike's sacrifice at the Hellmouth either, or any of the nasty things you two used to do together in the dark, so long ago.”
“What will you...? When will I...?”
“We're going old school, Buffy. Your rewind will bring you back to when you will be the most desperate to return to your own time and when you'll find 'William' to be the most reprehensible.”
She could only stare at him in response.
“When you wake up, to you, it’s going to be February of 2001. You remember what things were like ten years ago, don’t you? Your mom was sick, but not quite dead yet. Your sister was on the shit list of a Hell-God. You’ll be dying to get back to Sunny-D. And your feelings for Spike? Not at a high point.”
When Buffy didn’t respond, he continued. “Remember the night he chained you up in his crypt? Tried to stake Drusilla? Told you he ‘loved’ you? When you wake up, you’ll only have memories up to that night. To you it’ll be the morning after a love-sick Spike went psycho on you. How do you think you’re going to respond to Weak Willie then?”
“You're bluffing. Like you bluffed with the gun,” She fought a losing battle against the panic rising up, like bile in her throat, making her voice tremble.
“We'll see,” Warren said with a smug smile. “Sweet widdle William who wuvs his wife is about to wake up to a punch in his face. I couldn't ask for better than knowing what you're about to do to the guy. Makes me wish this crappy century had spy cams, because the look on your face is going to be hysterical.”
“This is a dream, just a dream. I’ll remember William,” she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded so weak, so worried.
“Yeah, just keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. But I have a feeling that having a wife who’s stark-raving mad might just put the kibosh on the California Dreaming. As if the surprise in the cargo hold weren’t going to take care of him anyway. I just had to add this last part for shits and giggles.”
Buffy glared at him, wanting to disbelieve, hoping that this was just a nightmare. But her long-dormant Slayer sense woke, stretched and yawned - and something in the core of her flinched, knowing that he wasn’t bluffing and this was no mere dream.
“Revenge really is a dish best served cold. Sun's gonna rise and buh-bye Sweet William,” Warren chortled.
“I’ll remember William,” she chanted, dropping her eyes to the floor. If she just willed it. If she only wanted it badly enough. That would be enough, wouldn’t it? It had to be. “I’ll remem…”
“Tick, tock. Tick fucking tock, Slayer. Time to get what you deserve.” Warren looked overhead at the barely-there florescent light, flickering an unsteadily rhythm. He fashioned his fingers into the shape of a gun and pointed his hand at the light. Squeezing his trigger finger, he simply said “Bang.”
Bzzzzt! Pop! The light snapped out and all was darkness.
~*~
Far out to sea, one hundred and eighty miles west of Ireland, a couple slept entangled in one another’s arms aboard a ship bound for America. The bride mumbled and tossed in her sleep. “I’ll remem…”
Her groom was lost to his own dreams and slept on, undisturbed.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Many thanks to DoriansKitten, Lutamira and MsJane for beta help.