The Stalker Epilogues and Author Notes
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Life Out Of Joint - Chapter 7/7: Epilogue And Author's Notes free porn video
LIFE OUT OF JOINT by Crazy Baron
Chapter 7/7 -- Epilogue and Author's Notes
Synopsis:
Whatever happened to Mr. Caldwell?
*****
EPILOGUE
"I've got to be going," I say as I give my mother a quick kiss on the
cheek. "Duty calls."
"Promise me you'll take care of yourself, dear," she responds. She has a
warm smile on her lips but I can clearly sense that beneath her calm
exterior she worries about me--as she does every time I go out at night.
She is no longer openly anxious, let alone protesting my being the
Chosen One or trying to stop me, but I know full well that despite her
confidence in me she is still concerned for my safety. She cares deeply
for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Can I come too and hang out with your friends?" my little sister, who
has just turned twelve, asks with a hopeful sparkle in her eyes.
"Absolutely not!" Mom tells her in a determined tone of voice. "Dawn,
you're staying here."
"It's not fair!" she whines, as usual. "She gets to stay out all night
and I just have to do my homework and go to bed early, like some little
child!"
"Mom's right," I say to the youngest of our little family. "It's way too
dangerous for you. Maybe one day, when you're older. We've had this
conversation many times before."
She departs in a dramatic huff and runs upstairs while Mom walks with me
to the doorway.
"I'll be back a little later," I say. "You can go to bed; I'll let
myself in."
"Good luck, and be careful, Buffy," she says and touches my shoulder
gently.
With that, I step outside and close the door behind me. It's absolutely
amazing how I can put aside my own self, all that is Michael Caldwell,
and assume another personality and life. It happens automatically,
without any conscious effort from me. At times, I actually feel as if I
truly belonged here with these sweet, cuddly people who are not even
supposed to exist outside of a TV screen. I think of them as my real
mother, my real sister and my real friends, until I remind myself that
this is not who I am in actuality. My mind is disguised just as
perfectly as my body is, but it is anyone's guess how long I can keep
this up without the disguise becoming my permanent self.
The sun has already set and the streetlights are on. Even though a soft,
cool breeze is coming in from the sea over the nearby hills, freshening
up the air, it is pleasantly warm compared to Greensville in early
November. I walk on at a steady pace, keeping my eyes and ears open for
the slightest indication of trouble, but I'm neither feeling jittery nor
in a hurry. I have confidence in myself and I know from experience that
I can deal with many kinds of threats, so I'm simultaneously able to
enjoy the late night stroll and remain alert.
Lots of windows are lit in the houses that line the suburban street.
Behind them ordinary people are watching television, having a late night
snack or just spending time with each other, blissfully unaware of the
dangers that lurk outside. It is part of my job to make sure they stay
that way. Near the corner of Revello and Mathieson there is a particular
house that usually has a second-floor window open, and very often I can
hear somebody playing songs on their stereo inside as I pass by. Whoever
lives in the house has an excellent taste in music: they listen to
classic 1960s and 1970s rock, much like I used to. On one of the first
nights of my life here, as I was extremely reluctantly going on my first
patrol, scared nearly to death, the sounds of "Moonlight Mile" by the
Rolling Stones carried through the window. Immediately I felt better; it
was as though someone had given me a subtle, secret hint that everything
will be alright. Tonight there is no song playing, but the lights are on
in the upstairs windows. In my thoughts I wish the occupants of the
house all the best and carry on with my mission.
I have now spent almost three months here. So far, I have survived more
than ten directly life-threatening situations, going by a quick count,
and faced off against five or six different types of demons or monsters,
in addition to the usual vampires. I never really had any skills to
speak of in martial arts, but fortunately my loaned body is very adept
at them, and I often find myself instinctively performing hand-to-hand
combat moves I thought were just as impossible or unlikely as the foes
that challenge me on an almost daily (or, to be more accurate, nightly)
basis. I have been quite badly beaten on a couple of occasions, but I
heal quickly and experience nowhere near the amount of pain this sort of
punishment would cause to a normal human being. In addition, I have my
new friends as help and backup, and they have proven themselves nothing
short of indispensable.
However, I'm just as much in the dark as they are when it comes to
anticipating what will happen next. While I admittedly cannot remember
very much from reading Joanna's episode guide, I'm still all but certain
that many of the events that have taken place after my arrival here were
not part of the show's story arcs as they were originally written and
filmed years ago. It actually seems to me that this is probably an
alternate timeline within an alternate universe--perhaps cobbled
together by my imperfect memory, if my experiences are not objectively
real after all. So, I have no choice but to muddle through, one day at a
time, and try not to get myself killed along the way.
One thing that admittedly bothers me is that I don't know whether or not
I am the only one from my reality who has ended up here. I have made
some discreet and roundabout inquiries with both Willow and Dawn to find
out if they are actually Jake and Scott, respectively, but I haven't
managed to get an intelligible answer from either. They obviously do not
understand what I have been driving at and I have decided not to press
them anymore. I'm tempted to bring up the subject somehow with Giles,
who is apparently one of the most knowledgeable people here, but so far
I haven't had the opportunity or the nerve to do that. Our investigation
into the reality distortions did not lead anywhere in the end, and
because new threats and crises keep emerging at a steady pace, we could
not devote more time to it. Still, I feel that the solution to my
trouble may lie there, and I will definitely return to pursuing it as
soon as I possibly can.
Of course, I realize that all this is very likely a mere fantasy playing
out in my mind and that I could be in a severe psychosis, hopefully
hospitalized safely somewhere. That is undoubtedly the most probable
explanation. Then again, there is always the possibility that I have
unwittingly found a crack in the fabric of the Multiverse that sent me
into a different reality, or maybe some great power beyond human
comprehension--perchance even the Old One Himself--is simply toying with
me for amusement. I might even be dead right now and in a special
personal Purgatory, given a chance at redemption, especially if I
actually did shoot up the campus. As strange as it may sound, I take
comfort in the latter scenario; at least my suffering would then have a
meaning and purpose.
Be that as it may, my fate is beyond my control at this point. I can
only keep playing along until something decisive happens and the
delusion (if that is what this is) comes to an end. In practice, there
is hardly any difference to me whether it means the doctors finally
getting my treatment plan right, the reality-warping energy beings
becoming tired of bullying their poor guinea pig, or my soul getting
cleared for admission to Heaven. I don't know what I am supposed to do
to earn my release, as nobody has given me a list of tasks to perform to
complete my quest. I must simply adapt and live the life of this
fictional heroine, imagined and created by a man from another universe.
All is quiet at the new town cemetery. We are not expecting any unusual
paranormal activity this night. At most, a couple of recently sired and
relatively weak vampires might be on the prowl, looking for hapless
victims. I scan the darkness intently, but my heightened senses do not
pick up any signs of movement, just the light breeze rustling the leaves
of the trees. Then again, I have already learned that one can never be
too careful in this town. It's best to be prepared for anything, at any
time.
When these strange events started occurring in my life, I first wondered
how they could happen; then why; and finally, why they happened to me
and not someone else. However, I have come to understand that I may
never know the actual answer to any of those questions. As I stand here
now, staring into the dark of the night all around me, I am no longer
afraid, but determined to see this through. Whatever may come, I will
never give up the fight to retain my identity and eventually to return
to what I once knew as the real world.
*****
AUTHOR'S NOTES
(Or, Shameless Self-Indulgence a la Crazy Baron)
As this story has turned out to be one of the longest pieces of literary
composition ever written by me, regardless of its artistic merits or
lack thereof, I thought it might be appropriate to include a few brief
comments for the benefit of the reader. If someone actually was
persistent and curious enough to struggle through to the end, such a
person deserves not only my thanks but perhaps also some clarifications
and a little background information.
The first idea of a story about transforming skinsuits occurred to me
around 2002 or 2003, at a time when I was actively reading that sort of
fiction online. It wasn't particularly original, of course, but I
nevertheless believed I could try my hand at it. If memory serves, this
germ had matured enough by early 2004 for me to start the writing
process. The tale that I had in mind was far less ambitious than the
final product: it basically covered just the mid-2000s Halloween party
and its immediate aftermath, with a clear-cut ending and a reliable
narrator. I initially aimed at a size of about 50 to 80 kilobytes in
plaintext (around 10,000 words or a bit more) so that the whole story
could be easily read in one sitting and written in a couple of months,
keeping in mind the fact that the so-called real life has a bad habit of
interfering with projects like this. Nearly all of the essential
characters and much of the plot set in Greensville were already in place
at this stage, and the text still contains long passages that have
undergone little more than superficial revisions since then.
However, my confidence in my ability to complete the piece in a timely
manner was not to last. It became apparent very soon that the story I
wanted to tell could not be compressed into a neat, easily manageable
length. Writing it became a protracted undertaking that progressed in
fits and starts over several years. Whenever I had the time and the
inspiration, I would write a scene or two, without regard to
chronological order, or revise parts of the existing text. This
continued until the late 2000s when I began to realize I was heading for
a dead end. My little story was now more than 400 kilobytes in length,
with substantial portions still unwritten; and, what was worse, I was
uncertain of how it should end. I had grown increasingly dissatisfied
with it and knew I would have to rewrite it almost entirely before it
could ever be published. In addition to all this, I had started to feel
that the passage of time had made references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
outdated to a certain extent. While the show still had a considerable
following then and continues to have one today, it was of course no
longer as relevant as it had been when I first conceived of my story.
So, in 2009, I abandoned the text, assuming that it would probably never
be finished, and it did indeed languish on the hard drives of several
computers for some eight years, waiting for its ultimate fate.
In late 2016, I happened across a reasonably well written (non-TG) story
about a woman who gains the power to shapeshift. The premise and the
early chapters attracted my interest, but as the story went on, it gave
me cause for concern, as the woman was gradually revealed to have an
almost God-like ability to change reality itself around her. This is
almost always a sign of bad storytelling, and I was wondering why the
author would commit such a cardinal error when a thought occurred to me:
"What if it's all in her head?"
At that moment, I suddenly realized I had solved the puzzle of how to
end my skinsuit story. Almost every missing piece fell into place very
quickly after that, practically in a matter of days, and all that
remained was to work out the details and type the text in. Admittedly
that still took a fair amount of time, but the story (apart from a few
minor corrections) was finally finished in late October 2018, and my
intention was to publish it on or just after Halloween that year.
However, my professional and private life again intruded and brought
about yet another unforeseen delay.
For the reasons explained above, the text as it stands now is an amalgam
of ideas from two different decades and from a person who changed
considerably in between. The parts set in the mid-2000s and in the late
2010s, respectively, were actually more or less written in those time
periods, giving the whole a certain patchwork-like flavor. I decided not
to make a conscious effort to level out all the differences in style, as
I believe that it adds a sort of authenticity to the story. The final
product does differ substantially from my original outline, most
importantly in that it includes multiple levels of time and/or reality,
but it is also considerably darker overall with its underlying themes of
mental illness and violence. Especially the main character, Mike
Caldwell, is distinctly more troubled than in the original conception.
However, I like to think that the changes were for the better.
Without question, real people and situations have served as a major
source of inspiration for me, just as they fill that function for almost
any fiction writer anywhere, I believe. Even though the basic plot in my
story is obviously a matter of pure imagination, there are elements,
both subtle and not so subtle, that some who are personally familiar
with me might recognize. That said, I must stress that none of the
characters here is supposed to be viewed as an insertion or a caricature
of an actual person from my own life, no matter what deliberate or
coincidental similarities there may be. In particular, this goes for our
hero, Mr. Caldwell. It does seem that whenever I write a story, my
protagonists and even antagonists unavoidably take on small bits and
pieces of me, of my personality, my background and my way of thinking--
especially if I use first person narration, as in here; still, the
reader should absolutely not think of Mike Caldwell and the author as
being the same person in any manner whatsoever. Mike is not intended as
a proxy of me, and I do not necessarily share his opinions or his
outlook on life. (I do share his taste in rock music and his occupation
in science, though, perhaps along with some of his basic personality
traits.) This tale is in no way autobiographical, nor is it even a
fantasy of mine, if that is taken to mean something that I honestly wish
would actually happen to me.
Furthermore, my story is not intended to be an allegory, a study of
social issues, or an advertisement for a particular political viewpoint
of any kind. I have admittedly touched on a few weighty matters here, at
least in passing, but I don't regard this as an adequate or appropriate
format for addressing them seriously. There is no plain or hidden
message as such to be gleaned from the story; its only real purpose is
to entertain. Should just one person read it through and feel that it
was worth his or her while, I can consider it to have succeeded.
PS. I would also like to take the opportunity to ask if you, dear
readers, might be interested to see a sequel to this story. As a matter
of fact, I have already done some work on one, but I'm unfortunately not
in a position where I can promise it will definitely be completed in a
timely manner, or indeed at all. I can, however, give it my best shot.
-- C.B.
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