Good Morning Kitties! Chapter Thirty Four: Thank You Very Much… The Name’s Willow…I’m Here Through Thursday….Try The Cube Steak….It’s Out of This World…..
Getting out of Club Discotekka was as easy as finding the Big Red Door.
Leaving Casa de Oogly was as easy as another door right outside the Big Red Discotekka door… A bright green buzzing neon sign marked it as EXIT.
With a collective rush of relief…all four of us clamber out into the brisk night air…
We’ve escaped! We’ve won! This is surely the end of a bizarre…yet oddly not surprisingly weird …day on the Hellmouth….. Time to put up our feet…watch some relaxing monster movies… and continue the little kissifest Tare and I started back there in Club Discotekka…. Oh yeah….
Already…all of the events of this VERY long night were beginning to fade, and swirl, and feel more like the memory of a bad dream…well besides the kissing…
…..My lips still have that bruisy-good ache…and …. we are just going to have to have a little more hair of the…..
Too easy…
The whole thing. The deal making with Mother…the escape from the house…one might say… waaaay too easy.
Well…..One can just say that again, I’m thinking.
You would think living on the fricken Mouth of Hell all my life would teach me the most basic rules. You know…the old: Everything I need to know I learned on the Hellmouth.
#1. Substitute teachers are almost always bugs, demons, or seeking a convenient Apocalypse.
#2. If Buffy has a crush on it…there’s a 90% chance it’s going to try to kill us later…so be prepared….
#3. If it looks like a duck…walks like a duck…and smells like a duck…. It’s a duck from Hell…kill it.
#4. Killing things in Sunnydale isn’t always the answer….sometimes you have to beat them with something blunt and heavy first….
#5. Nothing is ever that easy…and nothing that appears easy ever comes without a hefty price tag…you just have to know where to look….
And from looking around outside here….I’m getting the feeling that the very moment Mother agreed to let us all go scott free…was simultaneous with the moment some karmic grocery clerk stamped a big ol price tag right on our….."scott free", lily-white…..
" Ask me what I’m thinking right now…" Buffy says…staring out at the scenery off the stoop of the house with outright awe. Her face is tinged blue by the full moon high in the night sky. A cool breeze plays with her hair. It rustles her tux jacket. She puts her arms around herself….
I…on the other hand am freezing my poorly covered buns off! It’s not easy being sleazy….
" I’m guessing you’re thinking the same thing we all are…" Spike says, unable to tear his eyes away from Main Street.
"Well if you are thinking that Mother gave us the big old shaft on this one…"
" THAT would be the thought…."
" Yep…"
" Uh huh…" We all agree. I keep a firm hold on Tara’s hand. She gives mine a squeeze for good measure. Her touch is the only thing keeping me warm right now.
We all mutually step off the porch of the House just as we hear….
" Don’t step off the….!!! D’oh!"
And as suddenly I can only imagine it had appeared…the house is gone…and all that’s left…. Is us…
….us…and a terribly out of breath Xander….
He leans forward and props his palms on his knees, catching his breath
" Where’s Dawn? Where’s Anya?" I can hear the panic edging into Buffy’s voice. Panic is not a good colour on Buffy. It washes her out.
" Right here." Dawn says, rounding the corner with Anya. " We’ve been trying to get back in forever…well not literally…"
" What’s going on here? What’s with the….. all THIS? " Tara asks pointing out at the landscape.
Anya has seemed to come to terms with the bunnies on her pants. She is distinctly ignoring her body from the waist down.
" I’m thinking this is more or less my fault…in a ‘how was I supposed to know this would happen’ kind of way."
" And that means?" Spike prompts. He’s looking around with an odd expression I can’t quite place. Sniffing the air, with that dreamy little…
" Well… the deal we made… was for the body switcheroo, the friends back, and the location of the door back to our reality….."
I look around again…a brambly tumbleweed bounces by… and then it dawns on me.
" But we didn’t specify that we wanted to go home….right?" I say…already exhausted with the thought of even one more minute away from my nice…cushy bed…and normalcy. And a place where Tara and I can talk in private…
" Right. And there’s the loophole. She figures she could play with us all she wants… because as long as we are…HERE I can’t tell D’Hoffren anything… so we’re in limbo.
" And by play with us you mean…like chess…a battle of the brains…of steely determination and survival and so forth?"
Anya makes a face, shrugs…hems and hahs…
" I think she means more like a cat…with a mouse…before it eats it…" Dawn says, trying to help. Which in my humble opinion doesn’t do much for me or my vivid imagination….
" So bottom line is she stuck us in a skin that doesn’t have a door into our world to escape from?"
" Oh there’s a door." Xander says.
" So what’s the problem?" Buffy is getting annoyed with the purposefully veiled conversation.
" Well…you remember in high school History class…the total lack of people talking about Sunnydale…in a historical sense….of any kind…?"
" Spit it out Xander." Spike growls impatiently. He seems to know exactly what’s going on. " The girls are waiting."
" Well…" Xander looks at Anya who gives him the " I’m not saying it" look.
" Oh bloody hell! There is no Sunnydale history because of what you call selective memory. Xander is trying to tell you that Mother is giving us a little taste of Sunnydale’s history…and if you go back far enough, my lovelies…it was quite literally a HELL ON EARTH." Spike says.
I now recognize the look on Spike’s face. He’s looking around like a man who had found El Dorado…or at least a nice patch of warm beach on an island vacation…..
" It doesn’t look like a Hell on Earth." I say, hopefully. I squeeze in closer to Tara. Even as a french maid…she’s got more on than me.
" Oh…they kept a tidy appearance…to lure the humans in…You know….Sunnydale…a great place to put up stakes…" He says with a small smile.
Ha ha, Spike…you’re a hoot.. a regular comedian…
" And you haven’t seen what we’ve seen." Dawn says, and does a visible shiver. Even in the blue light of the moon, her little face is a bit pale.
" What have you seen?" Buffy asks. Her voice a little on the fraidy cat side all of a sudden. I think it’s mostly coming from that eeky smile on Spike’s face that is wholly unnerving.
" The Magic Box." Dawn says and shudders again….
TBC……
