The end of the world was imminent, the latest Big Bad threatening to destroy it. Buffy had saved a weapon or protective device onto a USB drive—it was the USB I use in real life when teaching, a red and white one with a cap. She was dating Riley and had accidentally left the cap at his, perhaps sewn into the bed mattress or under it. I wondered why she couldn’t use the USB without the cap, but she hurried to Riley’s to look for it. He lived in a white warehouse-type place that was bare of much decorative furniture, cluttered with metallic desks and military machines. He wasn’t there but had left a message for her on an 8.5″x11″ white piece of paper taped to a table amidst a jumble of papers and old electronics. I think the message had something to do with him finding the USB cap. I went onto the computer—a slick, fancy Apple—and somehow my mom was with me. All the icons on the screen began moving on their own, cascading in a pattern, and I thought it had a virus. I was frustrated and angry since I had just purchased expensive anti-virus software for my iMac in reality. But then the computer restarted on its own and seemed fine.
We were living in a compound, a dark building of several storeys, well-furnished and with stairway passages. The Big Bad was already there—she was a thin, witch-like creature who was attacking Willow by throwing something. But the object bounced off the air around Willow—she’d done a deflecting spell and made a smug comment about it. Then I think Buffy came to the rescue with the USB.
It was as if I were inside my novel, on the shores of Kyrion. Except it looked different. The ocean waves washed up along a sidewalk that led to a beautiful castle with pointed towers, such as from a Disney princess story. I was with my friend from high school, [Nellie]. It had just rained and the sidewalk was wet beneath our feet as we walked towards the castle. I was thinking about a beast that had to be killed every year. I wondered who had killed it this year and thought it’d been no one important—no one who was a central character in my novels. I imagined into the future of my novel, seemingly generations later, that the beast slayer was Cyrian’s son.
When we arrived at the castle, it was no longer a romantic princess castle but a fortress crowded with refugees fleeing from the Big Bad. It was Christmas and snowing. There was a tall, beautiful Christmas tree just outside the open portcullis. Giles was rounding up the refugees, most of whom were lining up inside, bundled in rags of winter clothing. Only one man stood outside next to the Christmas tree for the view, and as [Nellie] and I entered, another man came out to line up behind the man. Inside, I took my place in the long line, which wound through the castle; I stood next to a low stone wall that separated me from a quiet snowy courtyard, in a kind of cloister.
Giles herded us onto a school bus to drive us to safety. I sat in the middle of the bus towards the back by the window. I was drinking from an odd thermos—it was metallic and stout, with a black grated opening that I couldn’t close. I put it down, balancing it on my backpack on the floor, when I noticed a small gremlin next to me beneath the window; it started chewing my right hand and I hurriedly threw it out the window, some of its long, brown, spike-like teeth breaking off on my hand as I did. I felt satisfied and proud of myself, thinking that I no longer had to be afraid of those things.
Our bus drove past a field where four guys were standing in a rectangular formation; there were a few mystical women not far on a low adjacent hill. I noticed one of the men was Riley. As if in a trance, the men pulled their own hearts out in unison, although they were still alive, much like in the show Once Upon a Time. I thought the men had been put under a spell by the women, to give their hearts to the women in subservience. I imagined Buffy trying to save Riley, driving the bus into the field; but the bus tips over, sinking headway into the grass, and that people [see] me trying to get to Buffy in the bus, reaching for her to grab my hand and shouting, “Slayer! Slayer!”
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