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May. 23rd, 2005 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyWelcome To The Slaughterhouse - Part 3 of the annotated version (chapters 9-10)
Continued from here.
Chapter 9: The Saw Is Family
Chapter title: classic line from TCM 2.
Tara wasn't sure how long she'd been kneeling over her father when Dawn joined her. For several minutes the two girls just held each other, shaking. Then Tara remembered.
"Willow...?"
She let go of Dawn and rushed to her girlfriend's side, terrified that she would be too late. Willow showed no reaction when she knelt down beside her, but whatever protection spell Tara had managed to cast yesterday had worked; she was still breathing, if only very slowly. Tara lifted the bandage and gasped at the damage; spell or not, Willow would need help very soon if she was going to make it. She racked her brain for healing spells, coming up with one her mother had used on her when she was little and had been badly beaten by her father. It sounded childish, but it worked. The damage was too severe for her to heal completely — Willow would need surgery — but she could at least kill some of the pain and give her enough strength to hold on for a few more hours.
This, of course, is the obligatory fake happy ending that every self-respecting slasher movie must have.
Tara rubbed her palms together and placed them on the bloody gash in Willow's stomach, trying to ignore the fact that she had oil and dirt all over her hands; there was no time to worry about infections. "Panacea, Panacea, Take away the pain, As it was, so shall it be-a, Help my girl to smile again."
Panacea: Greek goddess of healing.
She felt the power passing between them, she herself growing weaker as Willow grew stronger, though it felt easier than she'd expected — as if there was some other power helping out. She could have sworn she saw something small glowing in Willow's fist, but when it uncurled there was nothing there. The gash didn't close but the bleeding seemed to stop and some color returned to Willow's cheeks.
Tara's mother stepping in for the last time via the crystal. Awwww.
Then Tara's heart did a double backflip as Willow's eyes fluttered open. "Hey." Her voice was weak, barely audible, but there was a hint of a smile on her face.
"Hey sweetie." Tara smiled and ran her finger down Willow's cheek, drawing a line of blood and motor oil. "Don't try to move, we're going to get you to a hospital. You need some needlework. I'm going to let you sleep now, OK?"
"OK. Tara?"
"Yeah?"
"Happy birthday."
That's a bit over the top, but hey, Willow's a bit out of it still.
Tara kissed her forehead. "See you in a few hours." She called down Morpheus' blessing on Willow, who was soon out of it again — but this time sleeping soundly, not leaning on death's door.
And then the doorway darkened. Tara and Dawn both spun around to see Leatherface standing there, staring at the scene before him. Whimpering, he walked up to his father's corpse and bent down to pick up the severed head. He poked it gently, as if to make it talk.
Awww, poor Leatherface. The sad bit about Leatherface in this story: yes, his father treated him like shit, but it's all he ever knew, and he (who doesn't have a family anymore) doesn't know what to do without him.
"It's OK, Bub... Robert." Tara spoke to her brother as softly as she could. "You're free now. He can't hurt you anymore."
Leatherface looked up from the head to Tara, absently fingering the hideous mask on his face and saying something unintelligible.
Tara smiled at him. "That's right, you won't have to wear that anymore. You don't have to hide." When he responded by bending over the body of their father and picking up the bloodied chainsaw, looking at it curiously, she felt for him. "Yes, I did that. I had to. Everything's going to be fine now, you're going to get the help you need and..." She trailed off as he gently pulled the strap on the chainsaw, petting the growling machine as if it were a small, deadly animal. Tara raised her voice. "Robert, no! You don't have to... we're free now! He can't -"
They say if you keep a bird in a cage for long enough, it will return to it even if you set it free. And when Leatherface turned away from the corpse of the man who'd decided everything for him his entire life he looked at his sister. His sister who had gone away and left him here, and then come back only to take away everything he had ever known.
With a howl of sorrow, Leatherface revved the saw and charged the three women. Tara was still yelling, desperately pleading with him and between that and the scream of the chainsaw filling her ears, everything else seemed to fade out. So when blood suddenly spurted out his belly and he stopped dead in his tracks, she wasn't sure what was happening; she watched her brother teeter briefly before toppling over onto the saw and uttering a bubbling scream as it dug into his body. Then the saw stalled and Tara turned her head towards Dawn who was gripping the shotgun tight, still pulling the trigger over and over again even though she had already emptied both barrels at him.
Its always the smallest, most helpless girl who kills the monster.
Slowly, Tara put her hand out and took the gun away from Dawn. Then she got up on shaky legs and walked over to where Leatherface was lying. A large pool of blood was forming around him and smoke rose from the busted chainsaw, yet somehow he was still alive.
From behind her, she heard Dawn’s tiny, shivering voice. "No, get away from him, he killed Buffy, and—"
"I know." Tara cut her off. "And he's paying for it. But he's my... my brother." She sank down beside him, gently removed the horrific mask and for the first time in years looked at his face. She wished she had any tears left, but she just felt empty.
"Are you going to..." Dawn was surprised to see that under the mask, Leatherface’s own face was... normal. Not good-looking, but not exactly ugly, either. "Are you going to h-heal him?"
I liked this twist; everyone assumes that Leatherface is horribly disfigured, but...
But Tara just slowly shook her head. "Some things can't be healed, Dawn. I thought I could reach him, but... If people keep telling you you're a monster, treating you like one, sooner or later you believe them. He never knew anything else. He put on the mask to hide what he really was and he became the monster."
Leatherface's left eye opened and for a second he seemed to try to get up, but the high-pitched groan of pain that escaped his lips made it clear that he wasn't going anywhere. With a last effort he managed to put his hand on Tara's shoulder, and she responded by putting her arms around him. "Shhh, Robert... just be still. It won't hurt much longer." For a few minutes, Dawn watched in awkward silence as the two siblings held each other and Leatherface's breathing grew ever more labored.
And then it stopped.
* * *
Epilogue: two and a half years later
Riley edged the SUV onto the dirt road, hearing the gravel rattle under its wheels. He hadn't been out here since he helped them move, after Joyce's death left them only pain and a fight that was no longer theirs in Sunnydale, and so he had had to ask directions from a neighbor. Fortunately, that hadn't been a problem at all.
"Sawyer farm? Sure, I know it. Just go on ahead about three miles, and there's a li'l dirt road on your right. Follow that for a mile or so and you can't miss it. Say hi to the girls for me."
Of course, this is the exact opposite of the neighbours' reaction earlier.
When he reached the house, he noticed how different it looked. The courtyard was cleared of all the wrecks and junk, the house had a fresh coat of paint and the surrounding fields weren't growing wild anymore. He got out. "Anybody home?"
A woman in a wide-brimmed hat came out of a newly built greenhouse, and when she looked up and smiled he recognized Tara. Except she was different; not just the tan and the work clothes, but something about the way she carried herself, confident, secure — and strong, he noted when they hugged. There were the obligatory "so good to see you" variations that tend to pass between two people who have a history together and like each other yet never really knew each other all that well. He asked about the others.
"Dawn's out working somewhere, but Will is —"
"Hey there, mister!" Willow poked her head out the door with a big grin on her face and came jogging up to him.
Riley hugged her. "Great to see you again, Will." It really was; last time he'd seen her she had still been recovering from intestinal surgery - not to mention losing most of the people she loved - and had seemed merely a ghost of herself; now she had a few more lines around her eyes, but she had put on some weight (it suited her), she was freckled from the sun and looked as full of life as he remembered her from the summer they'd all spent together a long time ago.
I always imagined that Alyson Hannigan would be at least as gorgeous, if not more so, with a little more meat on her bones. Also, see below...
They sat down on the porch with a big pitcher of lemonade that Willow brought. "So, what's the big news that got the supersoldier defender of Sunnydale all the way out here?"
Basically, my idea of post-Leatherface Sunnydale: Riley sticks around, gets the army (the one he takes off to Central America with in canon) to take care of the hellmouth, and gets Faith out of prison to take Buffy's place (in the fight; I'm not going Failey on you.)
Riley knew Willow was kidding, but still felt a pang of guilt at having been such a stranger. It had just been hard, with Buffy gone and with everything going on back in Sunnydale... which of course was what brought him here. He took a deep breath. "It's Faith."
"What about her?" Willow immediately went on the defensive, then saw the look on his face. "Oh. I'm sorry. I mean... oh. You mean she's... isn't she?"
Riley nodded. "There was another apocalypse, some hellgod wannabe tried to open the hellmouth. "
That would be Glory, who's spent 2 years looking for her key (which nobody knows exists anymore) and finally makes some sort of last-ditch effort.
"Faith stopped it and as far as we can tell she closed it for good, she just... didn't make it out again. She did good work these last two years, I think you would have... She never did get along with the troops, though", he smiled, gazing off into the distance. Willow shifted uncomfortably on the couch as if she wanted to say something, but settled for cuddling closer to Tara who put her arm around her and kissed the top of her head. They sat in silence for a while before Riley decided to change the subject. "So how are things here?"
"Oh, we're doing pretty good." Tara took a sip of lemonade. "It's hard work, but the neighbors help out sometimes. I guess they're all happy to be rid of my folks, but of course none of them would ever mention it so it's all pretty much don't-ask-don't-tell. And Dawn's going off to college next fall, at least we hope so..."
The don't-ask-don't-tell could refer either to their relationship or to Tara's old family.
"Oh, she'd better," Willow grinned, putting her hand on Tara's and squeezing it warmly. "I could definitely go a few more years without another teenager in the house."
"How is Dawn anyway? I mean, last time I saw her..."
Tara and Willow shared a look, as if deciding who was going to go first. "Well, she's..." Willow started and then hesitated, and Tara continued.
No, Dawn might not be 100% OK.
"She's had it rough. The first few months... well, you know what she was like. She thought she'd lost everyone. Everything that happened here, and then being the one to find Joyce... it took her a lot of time to learn to live again. But I think this place has been good to her, all the work has helped take her mind off things, and she's really taken to it..."
"Plus, y'know..." Willow sighed sadly. "She's Buffy's little sister, and Summers women — tough as extra tough nails. I'm not saying she's all yay-me-my-life-rocks every single day, but she's a trooper. She's going to be fine."
For a while, they talked about other stuff — farming, mostly — but eventually Willow leaned forward and gave him a mock-stern look. "OK, Riley. We all know there's something you wanna say, and you may as well say it."
"That obvious, huh?" He smiled sheepishly. "OK, well... I guess I just don't see how you can live here, after all that's happened. I mean, you've done great things with this place, but..."
Tara looked out over the field for a long time before answering. "There's nothing wrong with this place, Riley. The evil was what my family did and I've promised to make up for it. There's been so much blood spilt here, all we can do is to try and restore some balance, try and cleanse the earth. We grow responsibly, we don't use pesticide, we don't eat meat..." (Riley blushed a little; he couldn't help it, he was a guy.)
Call-back to the dumb Xander joke in the second chapter, and also to the promise Tara made to save Willow's life.
"Also, being on first-name basis with a coupla fertility goddesses doesn't exactly hurt the crops... not that we'd use that for personal gain or anything, of course", Willow quickly added when Tara shot her an amused glance.
Here's something no one has remarked on, so it's obviously a little vaguer than it could have been: fertility goddesses, some extra weight, the waiting a few years before there's another teenager in the house... there are hints here that Willow might be pregnant. I'm not saying she is or she isn't, mainly because that would mean I might have to write a sequel, but if she is, then it's a) sort of an extra happy ending, and b) sort of an extra creepy ending. Because, of course, it's still the same farm and as long as there's a family on it...
"Say, big fella, we're going to be starting dinner — you are staying for dinner, aren't you?"
"Wouldn't miss it. Do you need any help?"
"Nah. You just take a walk, get a feel for the place. Tell you what, if you want... I mean, of course they're not actually buried there, but we..." Willow took a deep breath and then pointed. "Over under the big elm. We just needed someplace to... y'know. Remember."
A few minutes later Riley sat down on the bench under the elm, looking at the nine plain crosses planted there. Anya, Xander, Giles, Buffy and, somewhat apart from them, the Maclay family.
Eugene, Grandpa, Donnie, Leatherface and Tara's mom. "Remember" being the operative word.
For a while, he just sat there, thinking back on how good life had been for a short while. Of course, he'd been to the scoobies' real graves back in Sunnydale, but for some reason it seemed right that they should be here too - close to the few people who still remembered and loved them. He was deep in thought when suddenly the relative silence was ripped apart by the howl of a small two-stroke engine. Riley looked up in surprise and thought the sound must be coming from the back of the house. A farmboy himself, he knew what it was: a chainsaw cutting something up. He got up to investigate.
At first he didn't recognize her. His mental image of Dawn was still the lanky young teenager whom he'd first run in to at Buffy's dorm right around the time they started dating, but that was almost four years ago and that girl was long gone. In her place was a tall, slim but well-muscled young woman in a work shirt and dungarees, her hair hanging in her face as she worked. She was cutting up firewood with a shiny new chainsaw, a small but powerful tool that seemed to cut through even the toughest branches with no trouble at all. Riley watched her admiringly; she was pretty handy with that thing, he wasn't sure he would have gotten through the pile of wood half as fast as she did.
When she turned the saw off, he cleared his throat. She spun around, and for a second something about the expression on her face scared him. Before he could quite put his finger on it, though, she put on a big smile that seemed almost perfectly normal.
No, Dawn is NOT 100%. And there's the obligatory Dam-dam-DAAAAAAAA! creepy horror ending for ya.Unless you want to read the alternate ending, which... um...
THE END...?
Sick, Twisted And Evil Alternate Ending: Off With Her Head
Chapter title: From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, obviously.
Author's note: I posted the last chapter to my usual hunting grounds and got feedback saying "cute ending, but where's the gore?" Words like "chicken" and "pussy" were used — in jocular fashion, but still: irksome. So I said to myself, "Self", I said, "if they want gore, fine, give'em gore." I opened a bottle of whisky, put on a Black Sabbath record and typed until 4AM, making sure to make it as dark, repulsive and disturbing as I possibly could and then some. It scares me a little that this stuff came out of my head. I'm a pretty nice guy, really. But here it is.
All of the above is true.
Last warning: If you thought the previous chapters were too nasty, they are Disney candyfloss and adorable little puppies eating ice cream in the summer sun compared to this one. I'm going to The Special Hell for this chapter, and anyone who reads it will be right there with me getting poked in the ass by the same pitchfork, burning in the same pot full of molten lava, listening to the same Coldplay records. If that's not your thing, STOP READING. NOW.
Don't say I didn't warn you. Now, let's pick up where we started the last chapter, with Tara healing Willow.
* * *
I was a bit disappointed that I had let Willow live – not because I don't love Willow, but because it's a slasher movie, damnit, and if more than one of the girls make it, it's simply not a good slasher movie. There was simply still more nastiness to squeeze from this premise, more taboos to break.
...Tara kissed her forehead. "See you in a few hours." She called down Morpheus' blessing on Willow, who was soon out of it again — but this time sleeping soundly, not leaning on death's door.
And then the doorway darkened. Tara and Dawn both spun around to see Leatherface standing there, staring at the scene before him. Whimpering, he walked up to his father's corpse and bent down to pick up the severed head. He poked it gently, as if to make it talk.
"It's OK, Robert." Tara spoke as softly as she could. "You're free now. He can't hurt you anymore."
Leatherface looked up from the head to Tara, absently grabbing at his face and saying something unintelligible.
Tara smiled at him. "That's right, you won't have to wear that anymore. You don't have to hide." When he responded by bending over the body of their father and picking up the bloodied chainsaw, looking at it curiously, she felt for him. "Yes, I did that. I had to. Everything's going to be fine now, you're going to get the help you need and..." He collapsed in wretched sobs over his father. She got up to join him but he gave her a violent shove, sending her tumbling across the room. Then he he lifted the body with one arm, grabbed the chainsaw in the other, and after one final hurt look at his sister, climbed back up the steps and slammed the door behind him. Dawn ran after him, but the door was locked and all she could do was to pound her fists against it.
"HEEEEEEEEELP! SOMEBODYYY! HEEEELP!"
Tara slowly sat up, starting to realize what had happened. "Dawnie, please don't... there's no one within miles and even if there was, this place is soundproof. Pa used to lock Robert in here when he was a kid. He'd scream for days, but you could stand right outside the door and barely hear it. Once you're locked in here..." her voice shivered, "you don't get out until he lets you out."
"Well can't you... you know... magic it open?"
Tara looked at the door, then looked at Willow, and then shook her head. "I can't... right now the magicks are all that's keeping her alive. If I use some of that to try and break down the door, she'll..."
"What about the gun? On TV they always —"
"No. It's a shotgun, not a rifle. The door's too thick, and there's a padlock on the outside."
Again, I know squat about firearms.
Dawn swallowed hard, her lip trembling. Then she turned back to the door and beat her fists bloody against it, clawing her nails out, screaming for help until her voice was down to a whisper. When she couldn't scream anymore, she stumbled down to where Tara was sitting with Willow and lay down beside them, trying not to panic. "Riley knows we're here. Riley knows. He'll..."
Riiiight.
"I-I'm sure he will, Dawn. We just have to wait." They knew they were both thinking the same things; if he's OK, if he finds the house, if Leatherface doesn't find him first...
* * *
Day 2
"Tara? I'm hungry."
They haven't eaten for at least a day before they get locked in, they've been through a lot, and at least Dawn doesn't exactly have a whole lot of body fat to live off of. People can survive for a long time without food, but... what the hell, it's fiction.
Tara sat with Willow's head in her lap, softly stroking her hair. It was taking all her power just to keep Willow here. "I know, sweetie. I am too." They had gone through the entire basement searching for tools that could help them get out, and when that failed, for anything edible. There was a tap with fresh water in a corner, but otherwise nothing useful; boxes containing some of Tara's mother's clothes — at least they could make fresh bandages for Willow — a few books, various junk, and that was it.
It was hot in here, but stripping down to their underwear and drinking a lot of water helped some. It didn't help Giles, though; his body had been lying in this temperature for two days now and was becoming very ripe. The stench and constant buzzing of flies was almost deafening, even after they gathered the nerve to dump an entire box of clothes over him and shove him into the furthest corner.
"The stench was deafening"? Oy.
Dawn held up one of the books they had found. "Is this any good? I don't think I..." She frowned. "I can't remember if I've read it."
Tara looked at it and smiled. "'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland'. My mother used to read it to me all the time." She took the book, and they both huddled around Willow as Tara read until the sun went down.
Why Alice? Well, it's a creepy book. It's got the whole underground subconscious symbolism thing going. Plus, it's a way to get people to expect a "it was all a dream" ending. Mwahaha.
"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge..."*
* * *
Day 3
"Tara! I got it!" Dawn had managed to use the barrel of the shotgun to punch out the small ventilation opening near the ceiling and now a thin shaft of sunlight lit up the dusky basement. Dawn put her head up to the opening and looked out; it was a beautiful summer's day, and she could see a butterfly fluttering across the lawn just over a foot away from her.
So close to normality, yet so far.
But the hole was so small. She could barely force her arm through it, scraping it bloody on the sharp remains of the metal grid that had blocked it to keep rats and rain out. When she pulled her hand back in she had a fistful of grass. She stared at it for a few seconds — green, glistening, fresh — before stuffing it in her mouth and chewing.
"No, Dawn!" Tara tried to stop her, but she refused to open her mouth. "You can't eat that. It won't do any good, you can't digest it."
"I know." Dawn swallowed. "But it tastes like food." She got up again and got a second fist of grass, which she offered to Tara. She hesitated, but the rumbling in her stomach was loud enough to shout down her brain. She took it and ate.
For both of them, it came out both ends a few hours later. Green, sickly. They tried again.
* * *
Day 4
OK, I tried to keep this next bit horrifyingly... not realistic, but making sense. It's a difficult setup, so it had to be shown to be a pure act of mercy and love. (Which, of course, would then be perverted.)
Willow was thrashing in her sleep, groaning, her cheeks burning up with fever. Tara was doing her best to keep her still as she dabbed at her face with a wet rag, but it was obvious that her girlfriend was in a lot of pain.
Dawn couldn't understand how she could let this go on. "I think she's waking up. Shouldn't you be healing her again?"
Tara had known this moment would come, and shook her head slowly. "I... I've been trying for hours, Dawnie. I have n-n-nothing left, I'm tapped out."
She carefully lifted the bandage. At first the spell had kept the infection in check, but the wound wasn't healing — on the contrary, it was opening up again, and for the first time in two days the bandage was again soaked wet with Willow's blood.
Dawn tried to get up to sit by Willow's side, but she was too light-headed and settled for crawling over on all fours. "But there's gotta be something... I mean, can't you see that she's hurting?"
"She's dying, Dawn." Tara's voice was surprisingly forceful considering how weak she felt... or maybe it was just that they'd gotten so used to whispering that anything spoken at normal level sounded like a jet plane taking off. "Unless she gets to a doctor immediately, she's going to keep getting worse and she's going to die. It'll take hours and it will hurt like nothing I can imagine. A...and since I can't even keep her asleep anymore, sh-she's going to be awake the whole time..."
When did Tara become a doctor? Oh well.
Dawn looked at her and then shakily pulled herself up to the ventilation shaft. Somewhere far off, she thought she could hear a small engine revving. "HEEEEEEEELP! RIIIIILEEEY!" Her voice probably didn't even carry to the end of the lawn, but it was loud enough to wake up Willow.
That engine might be Leatherface cutting Riley up. Or just another farmer taking down a tree. We never know.
The redhead was even paler than usual, her eyes at half mast and sweat pearling on her face. She tried to speak; at first nothing came out, and the second time around only the last part of the sentence made it. "...ospital?"
"Not yet." Tara's hand trembled as she gently carressed her cheek. "Something came up."
"I think..." Willow grimaced in pain. "Not to be a... party-pooper or anything, but... bu..." Tara almost allowed herself to hope that Willow was going to pass out. She almost did, but then she cried out in agony and was conscious again. "...I should probably get there soonish. Feeling real f-funky here."
"I know. It'll be better soon, I promise. Will?"
"Y-yeah?"
"You know I love you, right?"
"Of c-"
"You know I'd give my life for you? You know I'd do anything to make you stop hurting?"
Willow nodded. "Me too."
Which, of course, is pretty much the answer Tara is fishing for. Willow saying she would die for Tara, because well, she's about to.
"I know. And I have something here that will take the pain away. But I... I can only do it one time, so you just let me know when it gets real bad and I'll make it right for you. OK, sweetie?"
It was anybody's guess whether Willow understood what Tara was getting at, but she nodded weakly. Tara kissed her and then held her, whispering private things in her ear as she waited. It took about half an hour; then Willow squeezed her hand as the pain grew unbearable. "Tara... please..."
Their eyes met. "OK. Close your eyes and open your mouth." Willow complied. "I love you." Tara put the shotgun to Willow's mouth and pulled the trigger. The blast left both Tara and Dawn deaf for several minutes, and Willow dead for a whole lot longer than that as the top half of her head dissolved into a rainbow-like fountain of pinkish brains, copper curls and crimson blood stretching from her upper jaw to the wall two feet away. Dawn remained sitting at Willow's feet unable to look away, while Tara stumbled into a corner where she huddled, shaking, until night fell and everything was dark.
Is this horrible? I don't know. It struck me afterwards that there is no scene in this that couldn't be made worse; for instance, what if Dawn tried to stop Tara and half-deflected the shot away from Willow, so it only took her face off but didn't kill her, and Willow is screaming in pain like some faceless monster and Tara has to beat her to death with the shotgun and... see, this is the NICE version. ;-) Then again, I used that idea in the end of this...
* * *
Day 5
Dawn was too weak to even stand up and reach the ventilation shaft. Not that it mattered; they had picked every square inch they could reach free of grass, and there was no food anywhere. She had ripped out a tooth trying to bite a chunk out of her shoe, and it was hurting bad. She was even almost too tired to cry. Almost. At some point she thought that Buffy was sitting next to her, stroking her hair like she always had when something was wrong... but when she looked up it was Tara.
"How are you feeling?"
"I wanna go home." Dawn sniveled. "I'm so hungry and I'm tired and I just wanna go home. Why can't we just go home... why isn't there any food..."
"There is." Tara's fists were clenched almost as tightly as her jaw as she seemed to make a decision. "We have fresh meat."
Five days is a little too quick to decide to eat Willow, perhaps. But hey, it's now or never; she'll spoil otherwise, and Tara needs to eat to be able to magic them out of there. I might have made it clearer.
Dawn looked at her and frowned before she realized what she was talking about. "Are you INSANE?!"
"Dawn, I know it's..."
"It's WILLOW!"
"No. It's not her." Tara rocked her, sobbing herself now. "It's not her. She's gone."
Echoing Buffy on Joyce in "The Body".
"Where did she... I mean, shouldn't we have given her last rites or something?"
"I don't know. I have no idea, Dawn, we never talked about that... Jewish stuff... but I have to believe she's someplace good. She was the best... the best person I ever... and she would want us to-"
"How can you SAY that?"
"Do you wanna die?" Tara tried to get to her feet, but stumbled and fell on top of Dawn. It took them a lot of effort to just disentangle, each limb seemed to weigh a ton. "I'm done, Dawnie. This is it. No one's coming for us, and I spent too much energy trying to save..." She couldn't even say it. "I need to eat something or I'll die. Soon. She died trying to save me, and Buffy died trying to save you. What the hell was the point if we're just going to give up? W-we have to be strong, Dawnie..."
"What about..." Dawn hated herself for having to choose. "What about Giles?"
"He's spoiled. You can smell it. If we eat him, we'll just get sick."
"This IS sick!"
That's Dawn rebelling at being in this fanfic. Heh.
"I know." Tara hugged her. "But it's our only chance."
It took them a few minutes to make their way over to Willow's body. Tara had draped an old shirt over her girlfriend's ruined head.
"How do we..." Dawn swallowed. "How... we don't have a n-knife or anything."
"We'll have to use our teeth." Tara removed the stiff and dry bandage around Willow's stomach. "W-we'll start around the wound and w-w-work our way..."
Over the last two days, hunger - like the stench of death - had become something so mundane that they'd almost forgotten it. Now they remembered. Thousands of years of civilization and millions of years of evolution took a back seat as something older took over. Survive. Eat. Gorge. The roar of hunger in her stomach made Dawn forget the pain in her jaw. For her eleventh (or was it twelfth? She wasn't sure) birthday her mother had served veal. It had been rare, with a delicious red sauce and yams, and incredibly tender. The best meat she'd ever had.
Dawn's fake memories are starting to unravel here.
She thought about that as she chewed. And bit. And tore. And chewed. And bit. And tore. And chewed.
* * *
Day 6
Wake up.
Try not to throw up.
Eat.
Try not to throw up.
Think.
"Tara?"
They hadn't spoken to each other since yesterday. Tara seemed to be retreating into herself, moving only to get a piece of meat and then curling up in a corner with her arms around her head. Dawn, on the other hand, felt stronger; she'd been able to keep most of what she ate yesterday and this morning, and as long as she didn't think about it or look at Willow's...
(it's not her, she's gone)
...Its body she found she could actually both think and move better than yesterday. And she remembered that there was something Tara had to do.
What's starting to happen here is that they both know they've done something truly horrible and can't really handle it. Tara, for all of her intimations that it's not really Willow, can't NOT see it as Willow, and the guilt is pretty much turning her into a feral state. Whereas Dawn manages to see it as nothing but a body, but in return starts to lose her "true" humanity – represented by her fake memories etc – completely.
"Tara? Shouldn't we be trying the door?" Ignoring her sobs, Dawn pulled the apathetic Tara halfway across the floor before Tara found her feet and began to walk on her own. They reached the door together and Dawn did her best to support the older girl as she let her hands roam over the door, settling on the lock.
Tara took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing. She had eaten, she had slept, she had recharged. It should be enough. Then she pushed with everything she had. "Aperi!" The lock clicked open, the padlock broke and the door swung open all of two inches before stopping dead against something. She peeked through the crack, then exhaled violently, stumbled back to her corner and began laughing hysterically.
Leatherface had made sure they wouldn't get out. A heavy old wooden dresser - roughly the size of a Coke machine - was pulled in front of the door, blocking it as effectively as you'd please.
And of course, Tara would have needed Willow to help her move an object the size of a Coke machine.
* * *
Day 7
Dawn looked at It, her mind's artillery effectively shooting down any thoughts that tried to use the W word. It was now dressed only in a pink short-sleeved blouse pulled up to expose the huge gap in Its stomach. The legs had had the most meat and they'd worked some pretty good chunks out of them. But something was new; when Dawn had gone to sleep yesterday It had still been wearing panties, but Tara had obviously fed during the night. The area between Its legs was a gaping red hole, and Dawn again had to fight the gag reflex; she wasn't sure if it was because of the image of Tara lying between Its legs eating or her own immediate reaction - Damn, why didn't I think of that, it must have been a lot easier to chew... She looked at Tara who was weeping in her sleep, blood drying on her dirty face, only the area under her eyes kept clean by a constant flow of salt water.
And again, I could have made this worse. I could have shown Tara actually kneeling down, pulling Willow's panties down, and sinking her teeth int... gyeaaaah.I feel dirty just writing THIS.
Dawn turned back to It with dismay. The exposed skin was turning gray, and when she tried to bite a chunk out of Its leg it not only tasted bad but also seemed a lot tougher than it had been yesterday. The food was spoiling; she'd better eat as much as possible today, by tomorrow it would probably be too late. An idea struck her and she unbuttoned the blouse
(Pink... Willow always liked pink...)
carefully, making sure she didn't rip out any buttons even though her hands shook. She ran her hands over Its exposed breasts; they seemed whiter, more supple than the rest of her, as if the blouse had kept that part of her fresher than the rest. She grabbed the left breast with both hands and bent down to take a bite.
"NO! M-m-mine!"
Again: Dawn is damned because she stops seeing Willow as Willow in order to be able to eat her. Tara is damned because she can't stop seeing Willow as Willow... and still has to eat her.
Suddenly Tara was on her, dragging her away, and for a few seconds they struggled, fighting like dogs over a bone, kicking, scratching, biting, Dawn pulling at Tara's hair. Eventually the larger woman got the upper hand and pinned Dawn down. They stared at each other, teeth bared, until the feral expression on Tara's face melted away into one of unimaginable grief. "Dawnie, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... but I can't let you... not there. There's enough for both of us, but... not there. That's mine. Sh-she's..." She grabbed one of Its stiff arms and angled it up towards Dawn. "H-here, the palm is the best bit, I-I've been saving them for you..."
Apparently, this is true. The palm of the hand is the most succulent meat on the human body – lots of little muscles getting constant workout. Aztec paintings of ritual cannibalism always show the priests eating the sacrifices' palms.
And they ate.
* * *
Day 8
The heat and stench weren't as bad anymore. They were used to it, like rats living at the city dump don't complain when someone drops off a truckload of bad shrimp. And for now, the hunger was gone. Despite the foul taste, they had been able to keep what they ate yesterday. But they also knew it was the last meal for a while; they had tried to eat a little more today, but It tasted awful and only Tara had been able to keep anything down. And so they sat, waiting.
As the light started to dim, Dawn found the book they'd been reading from, but it had been lying right by Willow's head and was ruined, soaked through with dried blood so you couldn't even turn the pages.
"Tara?" No answer. "How does it end?"
Dawn had almost forgot that she asked when Tara finally responded. "She wakes up. It was all a dream." There was a pause, and then Tara recited from memory. "She pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days."*
Dawn nodded. That was a happy ending. "Tara? Is this a dream?"
There was no answer.
And Tara stops speaking.
* * *
Day... 12, possibly 13
Dawn drank some more water. The hunger was gnawing in her stomach as she crept back to her corner. It was the most curious feeling; for the last... however long it had been since Tara had stopped talking, she had been trying to remember what happened before all this. For some reason her memories seemed to get foggier all the time; the last 3-4 months were pretty clear, but anything before that was weird. She could remember her mother, and Buffy, and she knew there had been stuff before this summer but... she just couldn't remember any of it.
She wondered if Tara had the same problem. She never answered anymore. Occasionally she'd call out Willow's name in her sleep, but mostly she just sat in her corner. Lately she'd taken to staring at Dawn. Dawn knew because she stared back.
Both of them have given up that shred of humanity that's supposed to keep you from doing something like this.
She was so hungry.
* * *
Day ?
The struggle was not as brief as it would have been if either of them had been strong enough to stand or kick, but not very long either. There was a weak groan as teeth sank into emaciated flesh and one pair of hands was forced to let go of the shotgun. There was a blast. There was a scream of pain, followed by a sickening crack as the shotgun was brought down like a billy club on the wounded girl's head. There were sobs.
And then there was chewing.
Who kills whom here? Honestly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, Tara is the one who has gone the furthest into a feral state, and would perhaps not hold back in a fight to the death. On the other hand, Dawn may still have that shell that Mr Maclay dropped in chapter 8, and also most of the last few sections have been told from Dawn's POV, so... I'd say 60/40 in Dawn's favour. Of course, it's pretty much moot anyway, since the winner is probably just buying herself a week or two extra.
* * *
...night... not sure... many many
This was partly inspired by Stephen King's short story "The Survivor Type", I guess. Didn't occur to me until afterwards, but credit where credit's due.
Hungry.
The pain when she bit into her own hand was intense, but not as bad as that in her stomach, and it kept her from passing out. There was a lot of blood, but it tasted so good. She lapped it up and kept gnawing until the first finger came off. Not much meat on it, but every little bit helps.
And after all, she was right-handed. Lots of people get by with one arm.
Hungry.
Eat.
Survive.
END
* Excerpts from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" are written by Lewis Carroll and are in the public domain.
Author's note: There you go. Don't EVER tell me my stories aren't gory enough. Please. I like being able to sleep at night.
If this were a movie I'd end it by blasting "Chainsaw" by The Ramones, so go put that on now.
Texas chain saw massacre
They took my baby away from me
But she'll never get out of there
She'll never get out of there...
Continued from here.
Chapter 9: The Saw Is Family
Chapter title: classic line from TCM 2.
Tara wasn't sure how long she'd been kneeling over her father when Dawn joined her. For several minutes the two girls just held each other, shaking. Then Tara remembered.
"Willow...?"
She let go of Dawn and rushed to her girlfriend's side, terrified that she would be too late. Willow showed no reaction when she knelt down beside her, but whatever protection spell Tara had managed to cast yesterday had worked; she was still breathing, if only very slowly. Tara lifted the bandage and gasped at the damage; spell or not, Willow would need help very soon if she was going to make it. She racked her brain for healing spells, coming up with one her mother had used on her when she was little and had been badly beaten by her father. It sounded childish, but it worked. The damage was too severe for her to heal completely — Willow would need surgery — but she could at least kill some of the pain and give her enough strength to hold on for a few more hours.
This, of course, is the obligatory fake happy ending that every self-respecting slasher movie must have.
Tara rubbed her palms together and placed them on the bloody gash in Willow's stomach, trying to ignore the fact that she had oil and dirt all over her hands; there was no time to worry about infections. "Panacea, Panacea, Take away the pain, As it was, so shall it be-a, Help my girl to smile again."
Panacea: Greek goddess of healing.
She felt the power passing between them, she herself growing weaker as Willow grew stronger, though it felt easier than she'd expected — as if there was some other power helping out. She could have sworn she saw something small glowing in Willow's fist, but when it uncurled there was nothing there. The gash didn't close but the bleeding seemed to stop and some color returned to Willow's cheeks.
Tara's mother stepping in for the last time via the crystal. Awwww.
Then Tara's heart did a double backflip as Willow's eyes fluttered open. "Hey." Her voice was weak, barely audible, but there was a hint of a smile on her face.
"Hey sweetie." Tara smiled and ran her finger down Willow's cheek, drawing a line of blood and motor oil. "Don't try to move, we're going to get you to a hospital. You need some needlework. I'm going to let you sleep now, OK?"
"OK. Tara?"
"Yeah?"
"Happy birthday."
That's a bit over the top, but hey, Willow's a bit out of it still.
Tara kissed her forehead. "See you in a few hours." She called down Morpheus' blessing on Willow, who was soon out of it again — but this time sleeping soundly, not leaning on death's door.
And then the doorway darkened. Tara and Dawn both spun around to see Leatherface standing there, staring at the scene before him. Whimpering, he walked up to his father's corpse and bent down to pick up the severed head. He poked it gently, as if to make it talk.
Awww, poor Leatherface. The sad bit about Leatherface in this story: yes, his father treated him like shit, but it's all he ever knew, and he (who doesn't have a family anymore) doesn't know what to do without him.
"It's OK, Bub... Robert." Tara spoke to her brother as softly as she could. "You're free now. He can't hurt you anymore."
Leatherface looked up from the head to Tara, absently fingering the hideous mask on his face and saying something unintelligible.
Tara smiled at him. "That's right, you won't have to wear that anymore. You don't have to hide." When he responded by bending over the body of their father and picking up the bloodied chainsaw, looking at it curiously, she felt for him. "Yes, I did that. I had to. Everything's going to be fine now, you're going to get the help you need and..." She trailed off as he gently pulled the strap on the chainsaw, petting the growling machine as if it were a small, deadly animal. Tara raised her voice. "Robert, no! You don't have to... we're free now! He can't -"
They say if you keep a bird in a cage for long enough, it will return to it even if you set it free. And when Leatherface turned away from the corpse of the man who'd decided everything for him his entire life he looked at his sister. His sister who had gone away and left him here, and then come back only to take away everything he had ever known.
With a howl of sorrow, Leatherface revved the saw and charged the three women. Tara was still yelling, desperately pleading with him and between that and the scream of the chainsaw filling her ears, everything else seemed to fade out. So when blood suddenly spurted out his belly and he stopped dead in his tracks, she wasn't sure what was happening; she watched her brother teeter briefly before toppling over onto the saw and uttering a bubbling scream as it dug into his body. Then the saw stalled and Tara turned her head towards Dawn who was gripping the shotgun tight, still pulling the trigger over and over again even though she had already emptied both barrels at him.
Its always the smallest, most helpless girl who kills the monster.
Slowly, Tara put her hand out and took the gun away from Dawn. Then she got up on shaky legs and walked over to where Leatherface was lying. A large pool of blood was forming around him and smoke rose from the busted chainsaw, yet somehow he was still alive.
From behind her, she heard Dawn’s tiny, shivering voice. "No, get away from him, he killed Buffy, and—"
"I know." Tara cut her off. "And he's paying for it. But he's my... my brother." She sank down beside him, gently removed the horrific mask and for the first time in years looked at his face. She wished she had any tears left, but she just felt empty.
"Are you going to..." Dawn was surprised to see that under the mask, Leatherface’s own face was... normal. Not good-looking, but not exactly ugly, either. "Are you going to h-heal him?"
I liked this twist; everyone assumes that Leatherface is horribly disfigured, but...
But Tara just slowly shook her head. "Some things can't be healed, Dawn. I thought I could reach him, but... If people keep telling you you're a monster, treating you like one, sooner or later you believe them. He never knew anything else. He put on the mask to hide what he really was and he became the monster."
Leatherface's left eye opened and for a second he seemed to try to get up, but the high-pitched groan of pain that escaped his lips made it clear that he wasn't going anywhere. With a last effort he managed to put his hand on Tara's shoulder, and she responded by putting her arms around him. "Shhh, Robert... just be still. It won't hurt much longer." For a few minutes, Dawn watched in awkward silence as the two siblings held each other and Leatherface's breathing grew ever more labored.
And then it stopped.
Epilogue: two and a half years later
Riley edged the SUV onto the dirt road, hearing the gravel rattle under its wheels. He hadn't been out here since he helped them move, after Joyce's death left them only pain and a fight that was no longer theirs in Sunnydale, and so he had had to ask directions from a neighbor. Fortunately, that hadn't been a problem at all.
"Sawyer farm? Sure, I know it. Just go on ahead about three miles, and there's a li'l dirt road on your right. Follow that for a mile or so and you can't miss it. Say hi to the girls for me."
Of course, this is the exact opposite of the neighbours' reaction earlier.
When he reached the house, he noticed how different it looked. The courtyard was cleared of all the wrecks and junk, the house had a fresh coat of paint and the surrounding fields weren't growing wild anymore. He got out. "Anybody home?"
A woman in a wide-brimmed hat came out of a newly built greenhouse, and when she looked up and smiled he recognized Tara. Except she was different; not just the tan and the work clothes, but something about the way she carried herself, confident, secure — and strong, he noted when they hugged. There were the obligatory "so good to see you" variations that tend to pass between two people who have a history together and like each other yet never really knew each other all that well. He asked about the others.
"Dawn's out working somewhere, but Will is —"
"Hey there, mister!" Willow poked her head out the door with a big grin on her face and came jogging up to him.
Riley hugged her. "Great to see you again, Will." It really was; last time he'd seen her she had still been recovering from intestinal surgery - not to mention losing most of the people she loved - and had seemed merely a ghost of herself; now she had a few more lines around her eyes, but she had put on some weight (it suited her), she was freckled from the sun and looked as full of life as he remembered her from the summer they'd all spent together a long time ago.
I always imagined that Alyson Hannigan would be at least as gorgeous, if not more so, with a little more meat on her bones. Also, see below...
They sat down on the porch with a big pitcher of lemonade that Willow brought. "So, what's the big news that got the supersoldier defender of Sunnydale all the way out here?"
Basically, my idea of post-Leatherface Sunnydale: Riley sticks around, gets the army (the one he takes off to Central America with in canon) to take care of the hellmouth, and gets Faith out of prison to take Buffy's place (in the fight; I'm not going Failey on you.)
Riley knew Willow was kidding, but still felt a pang of guilt at having been such a stranger. It had just been hard, with Buffy gone and with everything going on back in Sunnydale... which of course was what brought him here. He took a deep breath. "It's Faith."
"What about her?" Willow immediately went on the defensive, then saw the look on his face. "Oh. I'm sorry. I mean... oh. You mean she's... isn't she?"
Riley nodded. "There was another apocalypse, some hellgod wannabe tried to open the hellmouth. "
That would be Glory, who's spent 2 years looking for her key (which nobody knows exists anymore) and finally makes some sort of last-ditch effort.
"Faith stopped it and as far as we can tell she closed it for good, she just... didn't make it out again. She did good work these last two years, I think you would have... She never did get along with the troops, though", he smiled, gazing off into the distance. Willow shifted uncomfortably on the couch as if she wanted to say something, but settled for cuddling closer to Tara who put her arm around her and kissed the top of her head. They sat in silence for a while before Riley decided to change the subject. "So how are things here?"
"Oh, we're doing pretty good." Tara took a sip of lemonade. "It's hard work, but the neighbors help out sometimes. I guess they're all happy to be rid of my folks, but of course none of them would ever mention it so it's all pretty much don't-ask-don't-tell. And Dawn's going off to college next fall, at least we hope so..."
The don't-ask-don't-tell could refer either to their relationship or to Tara's old family.
"Oh, she'd better," Willow grinned, putting her hand on Tara's and squeezing it warmly. "I could definitely go a few more years without another teenager in the house."
"How is Dawn anyway? I mean, last time I saw her..."
Tara and Willow shared a look, as if deciding who was going to go first. "Well, she's..." Willow started and then hesitated, and Tara continued.
No, Dawn might not be 100% OK.
"She's had it rough. The first few months... well, you know what she was like. She thought she'd lost everyone. Everything that happened here, and then being the one to find Joyce... it took her a lot of time to learn to live again. But I think this place has been good to her, all the work has helped take her mind off things, and she's really taken to it..."
"Plus, y'know..." Willow sighed sadly. "She's Buffy's little sister, and Summers women — tough as extra tough nails. I'm not saying she's all yay-me-my-life-rocks every single day, but she's a trooper. She's going to be fine."
For a while, they talked about other stuff — farming, mostly — but eventually Willow leaned forward and gave him a mock-stern look. "OK, Riley. We all know there's something you wanna say, and you may as well say it."
"That obvious, huh?" He smiled sheepishly. "OK, well... I guess I just don't see how you can live here, after all that's happened. I mean, you've done great things with this place, but..."
Tara looked out over the field for a long time before answering. "There's nothing wrong with this place, Riley. The evil was what my family did and I've promised to make up for it. There's been so much blood spilt here, all we can do is to try and restore some balance, try and cleanse the earth. We grow responsibly, we don't use pesticide, we don't eat meat..." (Riley blushed a little; he couldn't help it, he was a guy.)
Call-back to the dumb Xander joke in the second chapter, and also to the promise Tara made to save Willow's life.
"Also, being on first-name basis with a coupla fertility goddesses doesn't exactly hurt the crops... not that we'd use that for personal gain or anything, of course", Willow quickly added when Tara shot her an amused glance.
Here's something no one has remarked on, so it's obviously a little vaguer than it could have been: fertility goddesses, some extra weight, the waiting a few years before there's another teenager in the house... there are hints here that Willow might be pregnant. I'm not saying she is or she isn't, mainly because that would mean I might have to write a sequel, but if she is, then it's a) sort of an extra happy ending, and b) sort of an extra creepy ending. Because, of course, it's still the same farm and as long as there's a family on it...
"Say, big fella, we're going to be starting dinner — you are staying for dinner, aren't you?"
"Wouldn't miss it. Do you need any help?"
"Nah. You just take a walk, get a feel for the place. Tell you what, if you want... I mean, of course they're not actually buried there, but we..." Willow took a deep breath and then pointed. "Over under the big elm. We just needed someplace to... y'know. Remember."
A few minutes later Riley sat down on the bench under the elm, looking at the nine plain crosses planted there. Anya, Xander, Giles, Buffy and, somewhat apart from them, the Maclay family.
Eugene, Grandpa, Donnie, Leatherface and Tara's mom. "Remember" being the operative word.
For a while, he just sat there, thinking back on how good life had been for a short while. Of course, he'd been to the scoobies' real graves back in Sunnydale, but for some reason it seemed right that they should be here too - close to the few people who still remembered and loved them. He was deep in thought when suddenly the relative silence was ripped apart by the howl of a small two-stroke engine. Riley looked up in surprise and thought the sound must be coming from the back of the house. A farmboy himself, he knew what it was: a chainsaw cutting something up. He got up to investigate.
At first he didn't recognize her. His mental image of Dawn was still the lanky young teenager whom he'd first run in to at Buffy's dorm right around the time they started dating, but that was almost four years ago and that girl was long gone. In her place was a tall, slim but well-muscled young woman in a work shirt and dungarees, her hair hanging in her face as she worked. She was cutting up firewood with a shiny new chainsaw, a small but powerful tool that seemed to cut through even the toughest branches with no trouble at all. Riley watched her admiringly; she was pretty handy with that thing, he wasn't sure he would have gotten through the pile of wood half as fast as she did.
When she turned the saw off, he cleared his throat. She spun around, and for a second something about the expression on her face scared him. Before he could quite put his finger on it, though, she put on a big smile that seemed almost perfectly normal.
No, Dawn is NOT 100%. And there's the obligatory Dam-dam-DAAAAAAAA! creepy horror ending for ya.Unless you want to read the alternate ending, which... um...
THE END...?
Sick, Twisted And Evil Alternate Ending: Off With Her Head
Chapter title: From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, obviously.
Author's note: I posted the last chapter to my usual hunting grounds and got feedback saying "cute ending, but where's the gore?" Words like "chicken" and "pussy" were used — in jocular fashion, but still: irksome. So I said to myself, "Self", I said, "if they want gore, fine, give'em gore." I opened a bottle of whisky, put on a Black Sabbath record and typed until 4AM, making sure to make it as dark, repulsive and disturbing as I possibly could and then some. It scares me a little that this stuff came out of my head. I'm a pretty nice guy, really. But here it is.
All of the above is true.
Last warning: If you thought the previous chapters were too nasty, they are Disney candyfloss and adorable little puppies eating ice cream in the summer sun compared to this one. I'm going to The Special Hell for this chapter, and anyone who reads it will be right there with me getting poked in the ass by the same pitchfork, burning in the same pot full of molten lava, listening to the same Coldplay records. If that's not your thing, STOP READING. NOW.
Don't say I didn't warn you. Now, let's pick up where we started the last chapter, with Tara healing Willow.
I was a bit disappointed that I had let Willow live – not because I don't love Willow, but because it's a slasher movie, damnit, and if more than one of the girls make it, it's simply not a good slasher movie. There was simply still more nastiness to squeeze from this premise, more taboos to break.
...Tara kissed her forehead. "See you in a few hours." She called down Morpheus' blessing on Willow, who was soon out of it again — but this time sleeping soundly, not leaning on death's door.
And then the doorway darkened. Tara and Dawn both spun around to see Leatherface standing there, staring at the scene before him. Whimpering, he walked up to his father's corpse and bent down to pick up the severed head. He poked it gently, as if to make it talk.
"It's OK, Robert." Tara spoke as softly as she could. "You're free now. He can't hurt you anymore."
Leatherface looked up from the head to Tara, absently grabbing at his face and saying something unintelligible.
Tara smiled at him. "That's right, you won't have to wear that anymore. You don't have to hide." When he responded by bending over the body of their father and picking up the bloodied chainsaw, looking at it curiously, she felt for him. "Yes, I did that. I had to. Everything's going to be fine now, you're going to get the help you need and..." He collapsed in wretched sobs over his father. She got up to join him but he gave her a violent shove, sending her tumbling across the room. Then he he lifted the body with one arm, grabbed the chainsaw in the other, and after one final hurt look at his sister, climbed back up the steps and slammed the door behind him. Dawn ran after him, but the door was locked and all she could do was to pound her fists against it.
"HEEEEEEEEELP! SOMEBODYYY! HEEEELP!"
Tara slowly sat up, starting to realize what had happened. "Dawnie, please don't... there's no one within miles and even if there was, this place is soundproof. Pa used to lock Robert in here when he was a kid. He'd scream for days, but you could stand right outside the door and barely hear it. Once you're locked in here..." her voice shivered, "you don't get out until he lets you out."
"Well can't you... you know... magic it open?"
Tara looked at the door, then looked at Willow, and then shook her head. "I can't... right now the magicks are all that's keeping her alive. If I use some of that to try and break down the door, she'll..."
"What about the gun? On TV they always —"
"No. It's a shotgun, not a rifle. The door's too thick, and there's a padlock on the outside."
Again, I know squat about firearms.
Dawn swallowed hard, her lip trembling. Then she turned back to the door and beat her fists bloody against it, clawing her nails out, screaming for help until her voice was down to a whisper. When she couldn't scream anymore, she stumbled down to where Tara was sitting with Willow and lay down beside them, trying not to panic. "Riley knows we're here. Riley knows. He'll..."
Riiiight.
"I-I'm sure he will, Dawn. We just have to wait." They knew they were both thinking the same things; if he's OK, if he finds the house, if Leatherface doesn't find him first...
Day 2
"Tara? I'm hungry."
They haven't eaten for at least a day before they get locked in, they've been through a lot, and at least Dawn doesn't exactly have a whole lot of body fat to live off of. People can survive for a long time without food, but... what the hell, it's fiction.
Tara sat with Willow's head in her lap, softly stroking her hair. It was taking all her power just to keep Willow here. "I know, sweetie. I am too." They had gone through the entire basement searching for tools that could help them get out, and when that failed, for anything edible. There was a tap with fresh water in a corner, but otherwise nothing useful; boxes containing some of Tara's mother's clothes — at least they could make fresh bandages for Willow — a few books, various junk, and that was it.
It was hot in here, but stripping down to their underwear and drinking a lot of water helped some. It didn't help Giles, though; his body had been lying in this temperature for two days now and was becoming very ripe. The stench and constant buzzing of flies was almost deafening, even after they gathered the nerve to dump an entire box of clothes over him and shove him into the furthest corner.
"The stench was deafening"? Oy.
Dawn held up one of the books they had found. "Is this any good? I don't think I..." She frowned. "I can't remember if I've read it."
Tara looked at it and smiled. "'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland'. My mother used to read it to me all the time." She took the book, and they both huddled around Willow as Tara read until the sun went down.
Why Alice? Well, it's a creepy book. It's got the whole underground subconscious symbolism thing going. Plus, it's a way to get people to expect a "it was all a dream" ending. Mwahaha.
"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge..."*
Day 3
"Tara! I got it!" Dawn had managed to use the barrel of the shotgun to punch out the small ventilation opening near the ceiling and now a thin shaft of sunlight lit up the dusky basement. Dawn put her head up to the opening and looked out; it was a beautiful summer's day, and she could see a butterfly fluttering across the lawn just over a foot away from her.
So close to normality, yet so far.
But the hole was so small. She could barely force her arm through it, scraping it bloody on the sharp remains of the metal grid that had blocked it to keep rats and rain out. When she pulled her hand back in she had a fistful of grass. She stared at it for a few seconds — green, glistening, fresh — before stuffing it in her mouth and chewing.
"No, Dawn!" Tara tried to stop her, but she refused to open her mouth. "You can't eat that. It won't do any good, you can't digest it."
"I know." Dawn swallowed. "But it tastes like food." She got up again and got a second fist of grass, which she offered to Tara. She hesitated, but the rumbling in her stomach was loud enough to shout down her brain. She took it and ate.
For both of them, it came out both ends a few hours later. Green, sickly. They tried again.
Day 4
OK, I tried to keep this next bit horrifyingly... not realistic, but making sense. It's a difficult setup, so it had to be shown to be a pure act of mercy and love. (Which, of course, would then be perverted.)
Willow was thrashing in her sleep, groaning, her cheeks burning up with fever. Tara was doing her best to keep her still as she dabbed at her face with a wet rag, but it was obvious that her girlfriend was in a lot of pain.
Dawn couldn't understand how she could let this go on. "I think she's waking up. Shouldn't you be healing her again?"
Tara had known this moment would come, and shook her head slowly. "I... I've been trying for hours, Dawnie. I have n-n-nothing left, I'm tapped out."
She carefully lifted the bandage. At first the spell had kept the infection in check, but the wound wasn't healing — on the contrary, it was opening up again, and for the first time in two days the bandage was again soaked wet with Willow's blood.
Dawn tried to get up to sit by Willow's side, but she was too light-headed and settled for crawling over on all fours. "But there's gotta be something... I mean, can't you see that she's hurting?"
"She's dying, Dawn." Tara's voice was surprisingly forceful considering how weak she felt... or maybe it was just that they'd gotten so used to whispering that anything spoken at normal level sounded like a jet plane taking off. "Unless she gets to a doctor immediately, she's going to keep getting worse and she's going to die. It'll take hours and it will hurt like nothing I can imagine. A...and since I can't even keep her asleep anymore, sh-she's going to be awake the whole time..."
When did Tara become a doctor? Oh well.
Dawn looked at her and then shakily pulled herself up to the ventilation shaft. Somewhere far off, she thought she could hear a small engine revving. "HEEEEEEEELP! RIIIIILEEEY!" Her voice probably didn't even carry to the end of the lawn, but it was loud enough to wake up Willow.
That engine might be Leatherface cutting Riley up. Or just another farmer taking down a tree. We never know.
The redhead was even paler than usual, her eyes at half mast and sweat pearling on her face. She tried to speak; at first nothing came out, and the second time around only the last part of the sentence made it. "...ospital?"
"Not yet." Tara's hand trembled as she gently carressed her cheek. "Something came up."
"I think..." Willow grimaced in pain. "Not to be a... party-pooper or anything, but... bu..." Tara almost allowed herself to hope that Willow was going to pass out. She almost did, but then she cried out in agony and was conscious again. "...I should probably get there soonish. Feeling real f-funky here."
"I know. It'll be better soon, I promise. Will?"
"Y-yeah?"
"You know I love you, right?"
"Of c-"
"You know I'd give my life for you? You know I'd do anything to make you stop hurting?"
Willow nodded. "Me too."
Which, of course, is pretty much the answer Tara is fishing for. Willow saying she would die for Tara, because well, she's about to.
"I know. And I have something here that will take the pain away. But I... I can only do it one time, so you just let me know when it gets real bad and I'll make it right for you. OK, sweetie?"
It was anybody's guess whether Willow understood what Tara was getting at, but she nodded weakly. Tara kissed her and then held her, whispering private things in her ear as she waited. It took about half an hour; then Willow squeezed her hand as the pain grew unbearable. "Tara... please..."
Their eyes met. "OK. Close your eyes and open your mouth." Willow complied. "I love you." Tara put the shotgun to Willow's mouth and pulled the trigger. The blast left both Tara and Dawn deaf for several minutes, and Willow dead for a whole lot longer than that as the top half of her head dissolved into a rainbow-like fountain of pinkish brains, copper curls and crimson blood stretching from her upper jaw to the wall two feet away. Dawn remained sitting at Willow's feet unable to look away, while Tara stumbled into a corner where she huddled, shaking, until night fell and everything was dark.
Is this horrible? I don't know. It struck me afterwards that there is no scene in this that couldn't be made worse; for instance, what if Dawn tried to stop Tara and half-deflected the shot away from Willow, so it only took her face off but didn't kill her, and Willow is screaming in pain like some faceless monster and Tara has to beat her to death with the shotgun and... see, this is the NICE version. ;-) Then again, I used that idea in the end of this...
Day 5
Dawn was too weak to even stand up and reach the ventilation shaft. Not that it mattered; they had picked every square inch they could reach free of grass, and there was no food anywhere. She had ripped out a tooth trying to bite a chunk out of her shoe, and it was hurting bad. She was even almost too tired to cry. Almost. At some point she thought that Buffy was sitting next to her, stroking her hair like she always had when something was wrong... but when she looked up it was Tara.
"How are you feeling?"
"I wanna go home." Dawn sniveled. "I'm so hungry and I'm tired and I just wanna go home. Why can't we just go home... why isn't there any food..."
"There is." Tara's fists were clenched almost as tightly as her jaw as she seemed to make a decision. "We have fresh meat."
Five days is a little too quick to decide to eat Willow, perhaps. But hey, it's now or never; she'll spoil otherwise, and Tara needs to eat to be able to magic them out of there. I might have made it clearer.
Dawn looked at her and frowned before she realized what she was talking about. "Are you INSANE?!"
"Dawn, I know it's..."
"It's WILLOW!"
"No. It's not her." Tara rocked her, sobbing herself now. "It's not her. She's gone."
Echoing Buffy on Joyce in "The Body".
"Where did she... I mean, shouldn't we have given her last rites or something?"
"I don't know. I have no idea, Dawn, we never talked about that... Jewish stuff... but I have to believe she's someplace good. She was the best... the best person I ever... and she would want us to-"
"How can you SAY that?"
"Do you wanna die?" Tara tried to get to her feet, but stumbled and fell on top of Dawn. It took them a lot of effort to just disentangle, each limb seemed to weigh a ton. "I'm done, Dawnie. This is it. No one's coming for us, and I spent too much energy trying to save..." She couldn't even say it. "I need to eat something or I'll die. Soon. She died trying to save me, and Buffy died trying to save you. What the hell was the point if we're just going to give up? W-we have to be strong, Dawnie..."
"What about..." Dawn hated herself for having to choose. "What about Giles?"
"He's spoiled. You can smell it. If we eat him, we'll just get sick."
"This IS sick!"
That's Dawn rebelling at being in this fanfic. Heh.
"I know." Tara hugged her. "But it's our only chance."
It took them a few minutes to make their way over to Willow's body. Tara had draped an old shirt over her girlfriend's ruined head.
"How do we..." Dawn swallowed. "How... we don't have a n-knife or anything."
"We'll have to use our teeth." Tara removed the stiff and dry bandage around Willow's stomach. "W-we'll start around the wound and w-w-work our way..."
Over the last two days, hunger - like the stench of death - had become something so mundane that they'd almost forgotten it. Now they remembered. Thousands of years of civilization and millions of years of evolution took a back seat as something older took over. Survive. Eat. Gorge. The roar of hunger in her stomach made Dawn forget the pain in her jaw. For her eleventh (or was it twelfth? She wasn't sure) birthday her mother had served veal. It had been rare, with a delicious red sauce and yams, and incredibly tender. The best meat she'd ever had.
Dawn's fake memories are starting to unravel here.
She thought about that as she chewed. And bit. And tore. And chewed. And bit. And tore. And chewed.
Day 6
Wake up.
Try not to throw up.
Eat.
Try not to throw up.
Think.
"Tara?"
They hadn't spoken to each other since yesterday. Tara seemed to be retreating into herself, moving only to get a piece of meat and then curling up in a corner with her arms around her head. Dawn, on the other hand, felt stronger; she'd been able to keep most of what she ate yesterday and this morning, and as long as she didn't think about it or look at Willow's...
(it's not her, she's gone)
...Its body she found she could actually both think and move better than yesterday. And she remembered that there was something Tara had to do.
What's starting to happen here is that they both know they've done something truly horrible and can't really handle it. Tara, for all of her intimations that it's not really Willow, can't NOT see it as Willow, and the guilt is pretty much turning her into a feral state. Whereas Dawn manages to see it as nothing but a body, but in return starts to lose her "true" humanity – represented by her fake memories etc – completely.
"Tara? Shouldn't we be trying the door?" Ignoring her sobs, Dawn pulled the apathetic Tara halfway across the floor before Tara found her feet and began to walk on her own. They reached the door together and Dawn did her best to support the older girl as she let her hands roam over the door, settling on the lock.
Tara took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing. She had eaten, she had slept, she had recharged. It should be enough. Then she pushed with everything she had. "Aperi!" The lock clicked open, the padlock broke and the door swung open all of two inches before stopping dead against something. She peeked through the crack, then exhaled violently, stumbled back to her corner and began laughing hysterically.
Leatherface had made sure they wouldn't get out. A heavy old wooden dresser - roughly the size of a Coke machine - was pulled in front of the door, blocking it as effectively as you'd please.
And of course, Tara would have needed Willow to help her move an object the size of a Coke machine.
Day 7
Dawn looked at It, her mind's artillery effectively shooting down any thoughts that tried to use the W word. It was now dressed only in a pink short-sleeved blouse pulled up to expose the huge gap in Its stomach. The legs had had the most meat and they'd worked some pretty good chunks out of them. But something was new; when Dawn had gone to sleep yesterday It had still been wearing panties, but Tara had obviously fed during the night. The area between Its legs was a gaping red hole, and Dawn again had to fight the gag reflex; she wasn't sure if it was because of the image of Tara lying between Its legs eating or her own immediate reaction - Damn, why didn't I think of that, it must have been a lot easier to chew... She looked at Tara who was weeping in her sleep, blood drying on her dirty face, only the area under her eyes kept clean by a constant flow of salt water.
And again, I could have made this worse. I could have shown Tara actually kneeling down, pulling Willow's panties down, and sinking her teeth int... gyeaaaah.I feel dirty just writing THIS.
Dawn turned back to It with dismay. The exposed skin was turning gray, and when she tried to bite a chunk out of Its leg it not only tasted bad but also seemed a lot tougher than it had been yesterday. The food was spoiling; she'd better eat as much as possible today, by tomorrow it would probably be too late. An idea struck her and she unbuttoned the blouse
(Pink... Willow always liked pink...)
carefully, making sure she didn't rip out any buttons even though her hands shook. She ran her hands over Its exposed breasts; they seemed whiter, more supple than the rest of her, as if the blouse had kept that part of her fresher than the rest. She grabbed the left breast with both hands and bent down to take a bite.
"NO! M-m-mine!"
Again: Dawn is damned because she stops seeing Willow as Willow in order to be able to eat her. Tara is damned because she can't stop seeing Willow as Willow... and still has to eat her.
Suddenly Tara was on her, dragging her away, and for a few seconds they struggled, fighting like dogs over a bone, kicking, scratching, biting, Dawn pulling at Tara's hair. Eventually the larger woman got the upper hand and pinned Dawn down. They stared at each other, teeth bared, until the feral expression on Tara's face melted away into one of unimaginable grief. "Dawnie, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... but I can't let you... not there. There's enough for both of us, but... not there. That's mine. Sh-she's..." She grabbed one of Its stiff arms and angled it up towards Dawn. "H-here, the palm is the best bit, I-I've been saving them for you..."
Apparently, this is true. The palm of the hand is the most succulent meat on the human body – lots of little muscles getting constant workout. Aztec paintings of ritual cannibalism always show the priests eating the sacrifices' palms.
And they ate.
Day 8
The heat and stench weren't as bad anymore. They were used to it, like rats living at the city dump don't complain when someone drops off a truckload of bad shrimp. And for now, the hunger was gone. Despite the foul taste, they had been able to keep what they ate yesterday. But they also knew it was the last meal for a while; they had tried to eat a little more today, but It tasted awful and only Tara had been able to keep anything down. And so they sat, waiting.
As the light started to dim, Dawn found the book they'd been reading from, but it had been lying right by Willow's head and was ruined, soaked through with dried blood so you couldn't even turn the pages.
"Tara?" No answer. "How does it end?"
Dawn had almost forgot that she asked when Tara finally responded. "She wakes up. It was all a dream." There was a pause, and then Tara recited from memory. "She pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days."*
Dawn nodded. That was a happy ending. "Tara? Is this a dream?"
There was no answer.
And Tara stops speaking.
Day... 12, possibly 13
Dawn drank some more water. The hunger was gnawing in her stomach as she crept back to her corner. It was the most curious feeling; for the last... however long it had been since Tara had stopped talking, she had been trying to remember what happened before all this. For some reason her memories seemed to get foggier all the time; the last 3-4 months were pretty clear, but anything before that was weird. She could remember her mother, and Buffy, and she knew there had been stuff before this summer but... she just couldn't remember any of it.
She wondered if Tara had the same problem. She never answered anymore. Occasionally she'd call out Willow's name in her sleep, but mostly she just sat in her corner. Lately she'd taken to staring at Dawn. Dawn knew because she stared back.
Both of them have given up that shred of humanity that's supposed to keep you from doing something like this.
She was so hungry.
Day ?
The struggle was not as brief as it would have been if either of them had been strong enough to stand or kick, but not very long either. There was a weak groan as teeth sank into emaciated flesh and one pair of hands was forced to let go of the shotgun. There was a blast. There was a scream of pain, followed by a sickening crack as the shotgun was brought down like a billy club on the wounded girl's head. There were sobs.
And then there was chewing.
Who kills whom here? Honestly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, Tara is the one who has gone the furthest into a feral state, and would perhaps not hold back in a fight to the death. On the other hand, Dawn may still have that shell that Mr Maclay dropped in chapter 8, and also most of the last few sections have been told from Dawn's POV, so... I'd say 60/40 in Dawn's favour. Of course, it's pretty much moot anyway, since the winner is probably just buying herself a week or two extra.
...night... not sure... many many
This was partly inspired by Stephen King's short story "The Survivor Type", I guess. Didn't occur to me until afterwards, but credit where credit's due.
Hungry.
The pain when she bit into her own hand was intense, but not as bad as that in her stomach, and it kept her from passing out. There was a lot of blood, but it tasted so good. She lapped it up and kept gnawing until the first finger came off. Not much meat on it, but every little bit helps.
And after all, she was right-handed. Lots of people get by with one arm.
Hungry.
Eat.
Survive.
END
* Excerpts from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" are written by Lewis Carroll and are in the public domain.
Author's note: There you go. Don't EVER tell me my stories aren't gory enough. Please. I like being able to sleep at night.
If this were a movie I'd end it by blasting "Chainsaw" by The Ramones, so go put that on now.
Texas chain saw massacre
They took my baby away from me
But she'll never get out of there
She'll never get out of there...
