Title: School Haunting
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400
Spoilers: I Only Have Eyes for You.
Summary: Something weirder than usual is going on at Sunnydale High as the Sadie Hawkins Dance approaches.
Written For: Challenge 309: Amnesty, using Challenge 26: School.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters; they belong to the great Joss Whedon.


Walking through the school corridors so late at night is sort of eerie. This isn’t the first time Buffy and her friends have been here after dark, the library being sort of their second home; all night research sessions are not unheard of when trying to figure out what kind of nasty they’re dealing with, but this… This is a whole other level of eeriness beyond anything any of them have experienced before and it’s WAY creepy. They get the sense that the school doesn’t want them here.

Forget the guy threatening his girlfriend with a gun that mysteriously vanished. Forget the arm coming out of Xander’s locker and trying to drag him in, not that he was ever gonna fit. Even forget, if anyone ever can, the food in the school cafeteria turning into hundreds of snakes; Buffy’s pretty sure half the school went vegan after that. Whatever’s going on here just upped its game.

Cordelia gets a seriously gross vision of her face rotting away where a snake bit her, and on the landing the demonic arm from Xander’s locker makes a reappearance, trying to pull Willow into the floor. Thankfully Giles is just in time to save her.

Still, they can’t give up; they came here for a purpose and they have to follow through. Scattered throughout the school they do the best they can with the spell Willow researched, only it doesn’t look like their attempt at exorcism is working. Not unless it’s supposed to result in thousands of wasps chasing them through the hallways, and Buffy somehow doubts that.

Worse, now they’re trapped inside the building with the massive, angry swarm. If not for Buffy using her Slayer strength to kick open the doors blocking their escape, they’d probably all get stung to death, which wouldn’t be a pleasant way to go. Not that there ARE any pleasant ways of getting killed.

They stop as soon as they’re far enough away that they’re out of immediate danger, and look back at Sunnydale High’s main building from the outside… There’s a wall of buzzing insects surrounding the school now, so many they must number in the millions. It’s definitely not natural; are there even that many wasps on the planet? One thing is for sure: nobody is getting in or out through that.

Plan A obviously didn’t work; time to come up with a Plan B.


The End