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Author: The Deadly Hook ......... Feedback LoopHe wasn't sure when it became a problem, really. When every word, every sound, became drenched in blood. It'd been too long to tell. Weeks? Months? Weeks that seemed like months? More than a year? No, it couldn't have been that long. They hadn't been at the law firm that long, and it had certainly never been this way before. But time really had stopped meaning anything, hadn't meant anything for awhile now. It all seemed the same, one day blurring into the next, misery and horror and death death death hanging over the heads of everyone he talked to, every song on the radio, every commercial on TV. Doom and gloom and destruction and oh baby baby where did our love go we're all gonna die. He can barely remember why he'd thought coming to this dimension had been a good idea anyone. Oh, yes. That was it. The music. Of course the music. Wonderful and joyful and glorious, like nothing that existed where he'd been from. It had been his siren song--and wasn't that just ironic right there, toodlekins? Siren song. Not like anyone in his dimension would have even known what a siren song was, but he knew. You betcha. He'd known it in his cells long before he ever knew what it was called. And he'd followed that sound, hypnotized, to wherever it led, sure it was going to be the promised land. But unfortunately, it'd turned out to be here instead, and if he'd ever bothered to make a study of earth education, other than seeing every musical in existence or collecting recordings of opera singers and pop stars as if they were precious metals, that is.... well, he might have known then, wouldn't he? That the point of sirens was that they led you onto the rocks to your ulimate destruction. But he hadn't wanted to know - heck, why should he? Warrior legends were all anyone talked about in his own dimension, no need to add memories of more from a culture that wasn't even his, even if some of those movies about the ancient Greeks were fun to watch. He was no warrior. He'd never wanted to be. But who was he now, other than a guy whose head buzzed with visions of destruction every time someone opened his mouth. Nothing to do about it. No way out for any of them, if what he saw was right, no matter how crazy it sounded. and the heavens open and there's nothing but water and swirling dark, and pale, grasping flesh, and the screams, oh god, the screams Someone's cell phone rang down the hall and he could hear the death in it. Jingle jingle jingle all the way and baby you'd BETTER fear the reaper can you hear me now? He was fairly sure that he knew when it all started, that was the funny thing. When it all began to go wrong. It had been when Angel's ghost buddy first came to call. Oh, it certainly wasn't his fault, that's for sure. Lorne could tell much even without hearing him sing. Spike had brought a cloud of sadness with him when he'd appeared in a storm of ashes and sparks, and it was like a constant background noise around him, electronic feedback of the soul. Spike was just a pawn. Worse, he knew it. Lamented it in some deep place, wished to God he could change it, tried to. But he couldn't change anything. None of them could. And those were the happy times, that was the ironic thing. An idyll compared to now, hoo-boy. All that new power at his command, all the celebrities and contracts and Sea Breezes and no-foam lattes on demand. A personal assistant at his beck and call. Employees butchering show tunes for his approval and no real notes of disaster in the offing, not then. Just your garden variety, yikes, there's some serious evil there, boss, better show that one the door. Certainly nothing they couldn't handle. But Angel... well, Angel had changed. Whatever was coming, it was Angel that wouldn't be able to handle it. Once Spike was there he got distracted, and then angry, and now...? Well, easier sometimes to avoid the boss altogether rather than have to pick up on the simmering cauldron of bad thoughts and feelings and memories that he was throwing around. And then the dreams had started... well, after that, when his assistant had told him about the procedure that could remove your sleep? Brother, he hadn't been able to schedule an appointment fast enough for that one. That Lindsey had been the one to bring Spike back--well, he really should have realized that sooner. If he'd been thinking straight, he might have thought to have done a reading on Spike, tried to see what the music said about his path, where he'd been and what it was all about. But he hadn't really thought of it--not with all that static in the way from him and from the boss, their two loud signals kicking up noise like the drumming of rain on a rooftop. Not to mention that there was a part of him that just shied away from the idea - he'd done readings on demons and humans and vampires, but never any ghosts, and when it came right down to it he'd hadn't really wanted to know what he'd might have learned if he'd asked to hear Spike sing. Better to keep to his own job, his own world of dealmaking and power lunches and the fragile egos of stars. Until the no-sleep situation backfired on him, and the nightly torment of Daliesque dreamscapes began again. That's when it really got worse, and every voice began to quietly broadcast its destiny at him. But like everyone always says, hindsight is 20-20. It was downright deafening now, that feeling of you could have done something, you could have stopped it. Hey, it was easier to think on that, the guilt, than to think about what was going to happen, and how it was going to end, for all of them. Lindsey was haunting him now. He could see the Lindsey of the past, and how he linked into all this - tendrils going back for years and years to when he'd first signed on at Wolfram & Hart, idealistic and not knowing what he was really in for - and he could see the Lindsey of the future too, short as it was going to be. He could see the part that he himself played in all of it, and wasn't that just the kicker? The things that were gonna happen and that he was gonna do, and when it came right down to it, fate was a bitch. But that was still a ways off yet, and Lindsey was standing right in his office right now, all cowboy boots and crooked smile. The image of that, so different from the last time he'd seen the man, starring in his nightly nightmare, that he couldn't even be suprised. Hard to get impressed by someone you haven't seen in years when they popped up hard on the heels of prophetic visions of water and tentacles and an awful booming chorus of voices straight out of a hellscape. Like an Esther Williams water show with a side order of nauseous. Dark dimensional portals opening everywhere, robed figures chanting, the heavens raining raining raining, all that water choked with psuedopods and suckers and beaklike teeth. If he had a recording of that dream, he could have sold it to any studio in Hollywood in a hot minute. Gotterdamerung served wet. And Lindsey had been right in the middle of it, waving a red umbrella like he could hold back Niagra with it, dancing like some manically happy hoofer doing summer stock of Singin' in the Rain. Eve had been there too, swamped in a yellow rain slicker way too big for her, only she hadn't been dancing or singing. Her face had just been all open yammering mouth, her voice an annoying whine. Lindsey just kept grinning, oblivious to all that pale, writhing flesh spilling out of that dark, swirling space. Oblivious to the tentacles coming to tear him apart. There'd even been a fat lady singing. "I've got an appointment somewhere else in a minute," Lindsey was saying now, in the real world. Funny little squinty grin. Had his hair ever been this bad before? "That so?" Lorne found himself answering. Without even realizing it, he'd put a hand to his forehead, begun to massage his temple. It had become a habit recently, along with a new recipe for Sea Breezes that were a whole lot more Sea and a whole lot less Breeze. He still couldn't shake the image from last night, from his dream, the singing fat lady that wasn't. Something more like the witch in Disney's Little Mermaid, something swollen and horrific with an overbearing warble of a voice. She'd been brandishing a trident. A Trident of Evil. He really had to start hanging out with different people. "Just thought I'd stop by, visit an old friend. Got something you might want." He held up a little vial. death death death death death no escape for anyone not even on Noah's ark there won't be anything left to put on a boat if there was one "It's to calm the visions a little, make them less... intense," Lindsey said calmly, turning over the small bottle in his fingers. "I mean, it's gotta be painful for you. Empathy maybe getting a little hard to take these days? Hills too alive with the sound of music?" "Where'd you get that daily news, All About Eve?" Lorne asked. If he'd felt better, he'd be upset by how hoarse his voice sounded. Right now he couldn't give a damn. "Should've known better, just from the name. Not the Biblical one, because who thinks biblically these days. Bette Davis. That never ends well. Always getting stabbed in the back when you least expect it. It's almost a theme." Lindsey shrugged, grinned. "Yeah, funny that. Kinda goes with the place." He gave Lorne a hard look. "Must be tough, knowing what's going to happen. What's coming." And he'd known then, even before Lindsey said it, that the man had no real idea what he'd set in motion. He'd done all this - launched Lorne's nightmares, done some kind of magic that had blown his simple little talent for reading emotions and destinies totally out of proportion, and it had all been just to distract him, just to keep him from seeing what Lindsey didn't want him to. To cover his tracks. It had honestly never occurred to him what else Lorne might really see. "What's it do?" Lorne croaked. Not as if it really mattered, but he had to ask. For form's sake. Whatever antidote Lindsey had, he knew he was gonna take it. He'd have run off on a trip to the Alps if that would have made the visions go away, holed up on an ice flow someplace where no one could find him, not even by Saint Bernard. If Lindsey offered him a shot of poison he'd take it, as long as it would damp down his talent to where he couldn't see the dreams anymore, couldn't read anyone else's future, couldn't see how they were all the same. He knew what effect Lindsey's potion was going to have - it was fix it so he could barely see past the end of his nose unless someone sang an aria at him through a bullhorn, but he didn't care. Right now that sounded like heaven. And a few months of peace and quiet in the old noggin certainly wouldn't change anything. Nothing would. He nodded, barely listening to Lindsey's answer. Reached for the vial. Shuddered when their fingers touched. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss. [end]
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