a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be

It took a mighty while, but Buffy finally fell back into the groove of routine again. She'd wallowed in her rising and waning depression for long enough. But every time she tried to seemingly pull herself out of it, some stranger's face on the subway would send a familiar shudder down the length of her spine, and she'd be sucked right back in. The night she had been roofied at a downtown dive was just the tip of the iceberg. It peeled open the scar tissue from Jason, held together by the thin skin of her half-assed attempt to go to therapy and her laboring alcohol dependancy.

Then Leslie came home for the holidays and washed all those worries away. She had her kid sister to focus on then. Everything else could wait. But the moment Buffy left the airport, after dropping Leslie off for her flight back to school, she could feel the crushing weight creeping up on her. Jason and those strange men at the bar, Sebastian, the gory details of her hunts. She was disgusting. Despicable. She deserved everything that happened to her.

Buffy wasn't so sure what was the final straw that made her snap out of it. Maybe it was the yoga. Maybe it was the awkward conversation she had with Alekai at the airport bar. But she picked up her phone and finally started answering the emails from the Council again. She was rusty in the beginning. Her kills were sloppy and long-winded. She injured herself a few times - a rolled ankle here and a deep gash from a knife over the underbelly of her arm there. But she got the job done, and along the way, Gia Jones started to feel more like herself again.

She'd stopped drinking. Well, not cold turkey. She stopped drinking so much. She felt like the fog was lifting. What it was about to reveal, however, is what scared her. She didn't want to fall into the monotony of her southside, suburban neighborhood. She wasn't like those other women in yoga class. The drinking made her edgy. Or maybe, it just made her a drunk.

It was just after midnight and Buffy had bagged a vampire near the end of her list. He was some kind of "serial killer", or at least that's what some local crime podcaster was calling him. In the end though, he was as meek as a house cat. She ended him with a simple stake to the neck. But the kill made her feel good. It cracked open her chest, and she could breathe again. She felt sharp, alive, the opposite of drunk. So she forwent the train ride back to her Dupont Circle street, and decided to walk instead.

Sacrosanct was crawling with supernaturals, but this was still the suburbs, for Christ's sake. She passed by the manicured lawns and charming brick-laiden driveways without giving any one of them a second thought or glance. But the longer she walked, the duller her high from her recent kill became. The familiar knock at the back of her skull returned, thudding quietly at first, but picking up a strong staccato beat over time. She debated pulling out the small glass bottle of whiskey she had tucked in her knapsack. At first, she was able to roll it off. I don't need it, she told herself. But a few steps down the street and she'd feel that same knock, knock, knock. She craved the burn of the whiskey sliding down her throat.

Buffy gave in. The well-lit streetscape panned over a lake at the end of the hill. She trudged toward it, veering off the asphalt and into the dewy grass before plopping down at the bank. Buffy removed her shoes and socks, and stuck her bare feet into the cold water. Then her clammy hands went searching for the bottle in her bag. She hesitated before bringing it to her lips, the familiar sense of guilt washing over her, if only for a second. Then she tossed it back for one big sip. She let the shame envelop her. Another one or two glugs and that feeling would go away, anyway. But before she could bring the bottle back to her lips, her brown-eyed gaze caught sight of someone else farther down the bank.

She watched the man take off his shirt with interest. The hairs on the back of her neck stood in familiarity - revealing that the half-naked stranger was a dark hunter, like her. She waits, holding her breath, hoping - wishing - for him to keep undressing. But he stops just before he got to his trousers. Buffy's heart is pounding in her ears and she can't look away from him. She feels suddenly embarrassed, like one of those creeps at a porno movie theater. She takes another swig from her bottle, but it comes rushing at her mouth too fast, and she begins to cough as the burn goes down the wrong pipe. Shit, she thinks, as tears fill her eyes. Did he hear me?

GIA BUFFY JONES