It lives.
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It hadn't taken long for the pizza to be remade and them to finish it off. With their bill handled already by Lindsey, once they finished, they headed out toward the pier. Bus fare wasn't all that expensive, and soon enough, they could see the top of the Ferris wheel from their moving vantage point.
The Santa Monica Pier had certainly expanded since Buffy had spent her time in the hospital. The famous carousel, Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome, built in 1909, had been joined by a Ferris wheel, a few arcades, a wooden roller coaster, and a number of smaller amusement park rides. Sammy regaled her friend about the opening as the pair made their way from the bus stop toward the entrance. The Hippodrome played its jaunty tune, and the smell of funnel cake wafted toward them.
"Come on, Buffy, we should do the Wheel first, and then the Hippodrome. I know it's a little lame, but it's a bit of our history."
"Thus we must bask in its lame-y goodness, I understand, Sammy. Sure, we can do that, and I think I hear the screams of a roller coaster calling to me. We're here to have fun, right?" Buffy smiled at her friend, and then shifted to a frown as something caught her eye. No, it couldn't be that. This was going to be her nice day out with her friend, and this wasn't Sunnydale.
"What's wrong, Buffy?" Sammy couldn't be exposed to that sort of thing if she saw what she thought she did. And if she didn't really see it, it was simply a part of her crazy, and Sammy really didn't need to see the nothing.
"Nothing, Sammy… It's nothing… Thought I saw something over there." Why couldn't she stop her mouth there? Sight, sound, life and death all around… She didn't. Nothing was in the makeshift alley between the Ferris wheel and the Hippodrome. She had to have been certain on that.
"What did you see? It doesn't look like nothing…" Damn it, Sammy, leave it alone. Buffy didn't want to go into that alleyway and find what might be there, what she knew was there. It was waiting to ruin the day, and… Sammy was following her gaze. Damn it. "Buffy, is that…?"
Buffy had no choice but to follow her friend as Sam went into the alley. It really was a pretty secluded area. The Hippodrome lied inside the building to the left of them, separated by a solid wall, and a fence separated the Ferris Wheel's area from it. The entrance to the Ferris Wheel cars laid on the opposite side to where they were looking, and it looked like this alley usually was used for maintenance, likely done after the park had closed for the day, given what the pair found.
Sammy's face was turning white. Damn. It was real. Buffy hadn't wanted what she saw to be real. The hand laid in the center of the alleyway attached to an arm that had been severed at the elbow.
"I-It's alright… it must be a prop or something for the haunted house... Or someone lost their fake arm…." Sammy sounded nervous. Who wouldn't be? After all, it wasn't often that one got to see something like this. Arms and ears and legs and nose…. Okay, now the creepy voice was misquoting song lyrics for children. … It even sounded like a child this time.
"Someone lost a hell of a lot more than that…" Buffy could see other body parts strewn further down, a man's torso, a leg, a foot, an ear…. She couldn't see the head, but it had to be somewhere around. Her eyes flicked around the alley. Scuff marks on the dumpster and the ground near the base of the fence indicated some sort of struggle. A slight bit of blood spatter speckled among the rust on the fence.
"I… It's… what, it's I… Buffy, I don't know…" Sammy must have spotted the torso. Great. This was supposed to be a fun day out for the two of them, but it appeared that even in the real world, the dead chose to interrupt her days of fun. She needed to calm Sammy down. Wigging out about the dead body wouldn't help the situation.
"Sammy, I know that things are all disturbing, and it has you seriously wigged. I'm going to be honest, this is really wiggy for me too." What was missing about the scene though? If the victim died here, and he was torn apart here, something should be here that wasn't…. "The cops! We need to call the cops, and let them know about the body. Sammy, I think I saw a payphone over by the funnel cake. You should also get something to drink."
That's right. It was the job of the police to deal with something like this. She wasn't the Slayer, and this was probably the work of some sick person. She'd just stay with the scene until Sammy managed to get the cops called and security over to help secure the crime scene. The police, presumably, were competent enough to solve a murder case like this one.
"O-okay, Buffy. I'll go call them... What are you going to do?" Good. Sammy was a good friend, worrying about her right now. It was up to her to return the friendship that the girl offered.
"I'll make sure nobody comes in until you get park security or the cops over here. I'd come with you, but somebody needs to make sure that the scene isn't disturbed further." Buffy said, trying to offer a comforting smile to Sammy. The headless are always such great conversationalists. Terrible listeners though.
"Be careful, Buffy. I don't like leaving you here alone." Sammy's face, though still ashen white from what she'd seen, managed to convey the amount of worry she had put into that statement. Sammy didn't know as much about Sunnydale as her parents did, but she knew enough.
Buffy pat Sam on the hand and nodded. "I'll be careful. Now go, get the cops. This won't stay unnoticed forever, and people probably saw us come in."
At that, Sammy scurried out of the alleyway, leaving Buffy alone with the dead man and her thoughts. Cigarette smoke started to filter in through her nostrils as she looked over the alleyway.
"Funny, innit?" She could feel his breath on her ear as she continued to examine the alley. She knew if she turned, she'd spot the bit of Sunnydale that seemed to have come home with her. "Bird like that, having a crush on you, Slayer? There's no way you didn't notice it."
"Leave it, Spike." Buffy ground out as she stepped toward the body parts, careful not to touch anything to disturb the scene. The way they were strewn about, it was almost as if a wild animal had attacked the person, but something about the way the parts laid in the street had her sure that this was no animal.
"I mean, a bloke has a right to know when he's being replaced. So, you like Glenda and Red now, Slayer? Won't deny that being replaced like that makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. Well, maybe a little more than that." Spike stayed behind her, letting her continue to look around.
"I said leave it, Spike." Buffy growled out. She knew she was missing something, something that made her spidey-sense tingle. She just couldn't put her finger on it, especially as she shouldn't even have said spidey-sense. "If you aren't going to be helpful, maybe you should just go away."
"Now, I can't do that, Slayer, can't make me. But that thing you keep missing, where's the blood?" Arm's bleed, torsos too. Kine are sweet and so are you.
Buffy glanced around the alleyway. Crime like this… dismemberment like this… it's messy work. She'd encountered similar scenes in Sunnydale. When the vampires weren't the ones doing the dismembering, there usually was a lot more blood, significantly so. Vampire dismemberment scenes by contrast, similar to this one, were nigh bloodless. Vampires rarely tended to waste blood by letting someone bleed out. It just didn't make sense to do.
"No blood. They could have drained the victim before they dismembered him." Buffy said, glancing back toward where she'd heard Spike's voice, catching only a glimpse of the black coat before that.
"You've seen the alley. Bloke put up a bit of a fight. No time to set up anything elaborate to drain the blood without somewhere to place it." Spike was right again. The scuff marks showed resistance, but they weren't significant. "There's only one way that this bloke could be in the condition he's in without something very elaborate."
Another glance back toward Spike's voice gave her a vision of his game face, fangs extended. "Vampires. You're claiming vampires did this. Spike, vampires aren't real. You aren't real."
There, she laid down the gauntlet. Vampires couldn't be real because Sunnydale wasn't real. She wasn't the Slayer. There was no such thing as vampires, demons, werewolves, living mummies, fairies, and anything else that goes bump in the night. The world wasn't filled with such darkness like Sunnydale, her hallucination. Yet this body had her thinking in other directions.
"That hurts, Slayer. I might cry. Ever think that just because good ole Sunnyhell might not be real (and I'm not sold on that anyway) it doesn't mean that nothing is real? I mean, look at the evidence in front of you, Slayer." Maybe he was right. Maybe the…. If she let her thoughts continue further in that direction, she might have been accepting the presence of the supernatural. She couldn't let that happen. The supernatural couldn't be real; this was probably the work of some serial killer or something, but every instinct in her screamed that it was the work of something that drank blood.
"The Slayer is something my mind made up due to the stress of seeing my parents fight. Vampires aren't-" Buffy said with a flat voice.
"The Watcher, Slayer. Merrick. From your bird, 'e's real. If everything was the fault of your mind, wouldn't 'e also be that?" Spike was right. Even if he wasn't real, he was right. Buffy hadn't really felt like she was all that much weaker than how she felt in Sunnydale, but she had figured that if it were a hallucination, she'd pretty much feel like she had the same strength regardless. What if the Slayer was real? Or if it wasn't, what if vampires were?
"Miss, please step away from the scene. The police are on their way." Buffy looked toward the alley's entrance, and the smell of burning cigarettes faded to a faint hint. The park security was a dark-haired Hispanic man. She could have pretended that she didn't hear him, but there'd be no point.
"All right." Buffy forced out a smile, and she stepped up to the security guy. "Where do you want me to go?"
"The police are going to need to speak to you and your friend; I'll take you somewhere comfortable so you can wait for them." Buffy glanced back toward the alley, looking for any sign of Spike's presence. Nothing. He must have just been a hallucination. She was crazy, after all.
Buffy turned her attention back to the security officer. "Lead on, MacDuff." The Bard said Lay On, and he spoke of fairies. Mayhap he was a Changeling who knew too much. Or perhaps he was simply a wordy kine.
Ignoring the voice, Buffy followed the officer toward where she expected Sam would be waiting. The two would likely have to answer questions about why they were there and how they found the body, all things she expected and had answers for. She just couldn't give the impression that the body was attacked by vampires. That would probably land her back in the asylum for sure if it got out that she believed that. What would be worse is if she was right.
