I was Meditating, damn it

TITLE: I was meditating, damn it!

Author: Shawn Dorca

Rating: R for violence

Summary: Faith, in solitary confinement again, responds badly to being intrrupted.

Credits:   Songs- "Most people I know think that I'm crazy" performed by Billy Thorpe, and owned by whoever owns it but not me. "Saturday night in Toledo Ohio" is by John Denver, owned by his estate, apparently.

 

Song comments: I tried to write the lyrics of "Most people I know think that I'm crazy" the way they are sung. IT WAS NOT A SERIES OF TYPOS, THOSE WORDS ARE STRETCHED OUT IN THE SONG.

Apologies: I don't know if the Shao Lin are actually Buddhist, I am assuming it, and the monastary in California is my own invention. I do not mean to insult anyone or their religion.

       “Just another day in stir.”  Faith muttered to herself, as she finished her wake up exercise routine.  She was trying to develop a more systematic approach to life, and to not being a psychotic low-life slut.  Solitary confinement allowed her to develop her skills, which was good considering the amount of time she seemed to spend here.

 

            Actually she liked being a psychotic low-life slut, except for the guilt about killing innocent people.  Her time in prison had convinced her there were a lot of humans every bit as demonic as the worst vampire, confirming a childhood belief and creating one more difference between her and Buffy. 

 

            “But somehow I don’t think telling B that she’s a bigot is gonna make her forgive me more readily.”  Lot’s of time in solitary to develop the planning skills taught to her by the Mayor. Not to mention the meditation and Tai Chi learned from Angel, hard though it was to believe he knew all that.  Developing alternate scenario’s for accomplishing a task was part of it, but all her attempts at developing a “make up with the Scoob’s” strategy ended in failure.  “Demon’s as the next unfairly stereotyped minority, true but a very hard sell.”

 

            The dark slayer was meditating on this when the peace of solitary confinement was broken by the slamming of steel doors and shouting voices.  The outer blank steel door to her cell slid open and a group of guards was pushed in by some armed prisoners.  They were all shoved into her cell, looking functional if messed up and terrified. 

 

            Faith backed up as far away from the door as she could get the guards pushed as far to either side as the could get, with the inmates standing in front of the closed bar steel door pointing shotguns.  It was assumed that the dark-haired girl was  retreating in fear.  That was a mistaken assumption.

 

            Prison Officer Gilda Rasheed was numb with terror. Being locked in by the inmates was bad enough, since it meant that the majority of the prison must have fallen to them, but being locked up with Faith!!  All of them had seen security tapes of the slim dark haired girl fighting, taking down five and six gang members at a time.  It was like being locked in a cage with a tiger, a hungry tiger.  She thought the way the lunatic in the cell with them was looking at the inmates on the other side of the door, like they were gazelles and she was a lion, would live with her all her life, however many seconds that turned out to be.

 

            Suddenly there was a blur of movement, and Faith did a running kick to the door that tore it off its mountings and smeared the inmates against plain steel outer door like big insects against a car windscreen.  Then she opened the outer door, which had not been locked.  The young girl looked back at them with a shotgun taken of a recently squished rioter in her hand.

 

            “Well, are you coming or just breathing heavily?”  And with that she walked off down the hall, leaving a stunned group of guards to collect themselves after this latest violent twist in a very violent and twisted day.

 

            It turned out to be a beautiful day outside, a good southern California day.  A clear blue sky that provided a magnificent backdrop to flying things, such as birds, police helicopters, brain matter mixed with skull pieces, that were part of the performance art masterpiece that the dark slayer performed that day.  Her reputation helped, creating fear induced paralysis in some people, and screaming panic in others. 

 

            The guards that followed in her wake were a small group, but actually welcomed by any who lived through Faith’s passage.  The survivors had had an object lesson in real violence, and after the gang riot, the guard counterattack, the gang victory with its murders and night-stick rapes, followed by the singing angel of death, guards with shotguns and pistols looked like the Salvation Army.

 

            Faith had begun with a weapon taken of one of the corpses outside her cell, running down the halls shooting anyone vaguely threatening.  Slayer senses allowed her to move and fight with  literally inhuman  speed and accuracy.  Looted kitchen knives and shanks, plus bits of broken furniture and eventually a 9mm Glock pistol from the armoury, all added to the bodycount. 

 

             Occasionally the action slowed down as she stalked an elusive kill.  It was at these times she sang, her voice bouncing around whatever room her prey, for that is what the rioters had become, were hiding in.  Some were oldies that her mother had been fond of, but a favourite was one a biker she had known in Boston had learned while on Navy shore leave in Australia. 

 

            “Most people I know, think that I’m Craaazeeeeee,

             and , I know at times, I act a little a haaaaazeeeee BUT,

            if that’s my way ,

            and you should know iiiiiiiiit then,

            in every way,

            help me to show iiiiiiiiiiit,

            ...”

         

             Most people in the California Womens Prison did think that Faith was Crazy, or at least a dangerous killer.  However at least it suited the occasion, unlike her second favourite choice, and old John Denver number.

 

              “Satuday night,

                in Toledo, Ohio is like being nowhere at all,

               all through the day how the hours go by,

               you sit in the park,

               and watch the grass die...”

 

            Being stalked by the prisons most feared loner psychopath was bad enough without having to listen to her butcher John Denver songs, especially one about how boring things are.  A bored psycho with a terrible singing voice and tunes no-one else even knew, it allowed some very dangerous people to learn what it feels like to be a cornered  mouse.   To know only fear and a sick certainty of a painfull death.  Others, the more fortunate who were not in whatever room this little drama was playing in, would wait for the song to suddenly end.  Normally without even a scream.

 

            The day ended with Faith in the Prison Hospital under heavy sedation.  Her injuries in no-way required the sedatives, but, after her little show it was felt better to err on the side of caution.  Although it was rapidly becoming the accepted wisdom that sending her to Mars, or possibly Alpha-Centaruie was the only truely safe option.  The only comment she gave, that she was always grumpy after being interrupted meditating, and that stupid bitch who tossed the guards in her cell knew it, served to reinforce the view. 

 

            A viewing of her solitary confinement security tapes confimed all their fears.  Faith seemed to spend her time in solitary meditating, practicing Tai Chi, and   various martial arts.  Her ability to leave whenever the mood took her having been demonstrated, clearly she was simply enjoyed the solitude.  Escape from the general population would be laughably easy, she simply had decided to stay in prison of her own accord.    

 

            “And that, govenor, is how Faith Spencer came to be transferred from the California Womens prison to our monastery.  Your predecessor felt that since only her self discipline and determination to find her dharma was preventing her from causing harm, she would be safest in a place that was devoted to it.”  The buddhist monk led his guest through the gardens, to a grassy area where the instructors class was being taught by the only woman ever accepted as a Shao Lin monk.