Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Tales of the Slayers!
Following Whedon’s Fray limited series, Tales of the Slayers presents eight short stories about eight different Slayers over the course of history, starting with the First Slayer and ending with Melaka Fray.
No other introduction necessary! This post is going to be rather long, you don’t need me yap yap yapping any further. Sit back and relax as I do, indeed, as it turns out, yap yap yap further.
Tales of the Slayers #1 [February, 2002]
“Prologue”
Written by: Joss Whedon
“I am alone. There is a fight… but it will be brief. There is a beast… but it will be dust.”
A fucking feral, snarly young woman stabs this monster right through its cold, black, smelly heart. She looks like she’s saying this as she does it: “RAAAARRRGHH!” How’s that for painting a picture?
The beast indeed crumbles to dust. Another young woman, far from feral, approaches the First Slayer: “Excuse me. I have been sent to you. Please do not be angry at my intrusion. I bring gifts, food and supplies from the village. Our elders thank you for saving us from the demons…”
The First Slayer merely glares like she can’t understand a word this woman is saying.
“…and ask that you leave,” the woman finishes sheepishly. She sets down a basket of fruit, looking all tasty and juicy as the dickens. “They say you are part demon.”
I think the First Slayer understands this. She glowers.
“They say that the shadowmen made you born with demon inside and that’s how you are able to fight the vampires.”
Guilty as charged! Heh heh heh. You read me like a book! Aw shucks.
This young woman knows everything about Slayer lore, like she had caught up on all seven seasons of Buffy before approaching this prehistoric-looking Slaymaster. “They say that when you die, there will be another girl chosen. And then another, for always. And you will be in them and they in each other and you will never die.”
Yeah, ok there lady. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
The First Slayer finds all this information comforting. That she is strangely not alone. That there will be others like her. That she will “never die”, which is a lie. Oh, she’ll die all right. She’ll be hit by a car.
“Righteous”
Written by: Joss Whedon
Some time in the Middle Ages, a man finds a young woman in a church kneeling at an altar in front of one of them crossed Jesuses. He’s there to inform her of her Slayerdom, but she doesn’t believe a word of it. When asked why not, she simply says “For God is good, and God is kind, and would not curse me so.”
Yeah, good luck with that, sister.
Eventually, and it takes a while, she realizes that she is powerful and strong beyond normal mortal teenage girls and accepts her destiny. “And so she trained, she studied, fought, preparing for her war. She soaked up all that could be taught, and still desired more.”
Poetry! How quaint and medieval. I’m picturing one of those bard nerds softly strumming a lute. Over time, she started to really attract the attention of ugly pug-faced boys and fat pedophiles alike. But none of that business, she has a job to do. She can’t be no one’s wife. She’s a strong, independent woman! Plus, boys are icky. And, also, there’s this really bad nogoodnik vampire named St. Just who keeps harshing her mellow. He’s been terrorizing everyone for decades like a real jerkass, so her mission is to find something pointy and stick him with it.
The reverend of Medieval Slayer’s town is all like “we ain’t scared of no vampire! We’ll put up these large metal walls!” And they did. But, shit, St. Just can climb walls! And then he did. And it was rough.
Oh who will save us?! Who? An army? The police? Superman? God? Will God save us? Please tell me that at least God will give it a shot.
Nope.
Rain on my wedding day, will you? Bridezilla is here to fuck you up.
It takes about two seconds for Medieval Slayer to poke this guy something fierce. That’s it. Bye bye, St. Just. That was easy.
“His brothers, hissing, vengeance vowed, as from the town they fled. ‘We’ll break you girl, we’ll see you cowed!’… ‘Please try’, was all she said.”
Unrest still pervaded the sleepy town. One particular priest, a real buzzkill, implored upon the townsfolk to see the real threat! Not vampires, no no no. A fucking witch is on their hands.
“The girl has power like none before. ‘Tis evil, by Saint Paul. She walks with Darkness, Satan’s whore. She’s here to damn us all.”
Fiddlesticks. Medieval Slayer lies sleeping peacefully in her bed when she is abducted. Strapped to the stake and lit with fire, she burned alive. She pleaded, oh yes, she pleaded heartily for mercy. But fuck mercy! This is the Middle Ages! Shit’s rough, deal with it.
“The town made merry, gamboled, dined. They’d nothing now to fear. They burned the darkness from my mind. The world at last was clear. For God is good, and God is kind… but He’s not welcome here.”
Nice ending! Everyone lived happily ever after… except, of course, for everyone.
“The Innocent”
Written by: Amber Benson
Paris at the height of the French Revolution. Somewhere around 1790, give or take 12,000 years. I’m not much of a historian. A man dressed like a homosexual pirate and a woman dressed like a Victorian-era harlot are chasing a vampire up the side of a very large building. The man slips and starts falling; she grabs his hairy ankle which sends her flying down as well. He grabs onto a bust, she lands with a SPHLATT on the concrete. “SPHLATT”, I assume, is the French translation of “SPLAT”. She is barely hurt, of course, being the tough Slayer that she is. The vampire had been thrown down as well, having been impaled upon some not-so-wooden fence spikes. He lifts his head with newfound grim determination! But he is quite stuck at the moment, heh. Uhm…
Slayer Lady grabs her pointy wood and leaps toward the vampire. “No!! S’il vous plait!!!” he screams. Into dust, you become, you wretched beast from the fiery depths of Inferno or Cleveland.
Claudine, she is named. The gay pirate has no name yet, so I’m going to call him Cyrano. He has news of another vampire in the premises. “An aristocratic tyrant who feeds from the poor in order to slake his unnatural thirst.” Cyrano will take her to him, but they needs must let the night settle a bit first. I’m thinking this Cyrano cat ain’t one to be trusted either.
He indeed, though, does take her to him. She finds him right away in his ornately decorated house full of books with titles like “VAMPING THROUGH THE AGES” and “HOW TO DRINK A BLOOD”. He calls Claudine “filth” and then scurries away from the big pointy stick she has in her tight little hand.
She stabs him right through the back. He bleeds. She looks in horror. “Please… not the children…” he begs. In another room, a woman and three kids are begging for their lives. Claudine, covered in blood, is crying on the floor. Gay pirate has made a murderer out of her!
A tale as old as time. Woman loves Man. Man lies to Woman. Woman calls Man a bastard and plans to dangle him off an overpass.
Still covered in blood, Claudine finds this son of a bitch and gives him whatfor. “He was an aristocratic pig who deserved to die,” he says, wringing his hands evilly. “They all deserve to die. They hide from Madame Guillotine, but I will find them and send my angel of death to destroy them.”
Claudine spits in his face, and she must have some of that nice hydrochloric acid-y spit because he slumps down against the wall and cries.
This one ends with some introspection. Evil is everywhere, and not just in the demons. It’s in the people you love. The people you trust. Sometimes in your own reflection. Sometimes they’re CEOs of giant corporations. Mostly they’re CEOs of giant corporations. And billionaires. Aristocratic pigs, the lot of them. Honestly, I can get on board with Gay Pirate’s ideology!
“Presumption”
Written by: Jane Espenson
Porter Hall, Somersetshire, 1813. Speaking of aristocrats, there’s a gaggle of those motherfuckers now. A house in the neighborhood is holding a ball, and one young woman isn’t going to be swayed so easily by an evening of fanciful merriment! “Catherine, dear sister, you have been so thoughtful and low lately. Won’t you allow even these festivities to bring you cheer?”
Hell no. Catherine’s got her sinister eyes on a tall, blond drink of water descending the stairs as we speak. “Does fate ever ring a bell when a certain two young people are brought together?” she asks herself. The blond man reaches the bottom of the stairs and gifts young Catherine with a kiss on the hand. “Somersetshire contains many young women of estimable intelligence, wit and perception. And yet most of these women are possessed of a sadly incorrect fancy. They believe that the dead stay dead… always.”
Yeah, that’s a stupid thing to think! These dumbass women, expecting people who have had their heads blown off with cannons and muskets to come knocking on their doors the next day asking for their WiFi passwords.
Catherine can feel that this guy’s hand is -300°F, so she’s definitely on to him and his nefarious ways. She pretty much tells him that, since this is a small neighborhood with not very many unwed men, that most of the local ladies are drooling over him. Looking to slobber that knob, so to speak. So he needs to figure out which comely lass will best suit his needs! Perhaps he likes beef bourguignon over foie gras! Maybe he likes Burger King over McDonalds. Only the right woman will be able to satisfy his very specific tastes! Figure it out quick. Everyone is looking.
Maybe you shouldn’t have shown up completely nude from the waist down, sir.
“I do not like thinking that every woman is watching me.”
“Then you are correct to frown upon me for daring to bring it to your attention. A terrible sin indeed.”
Well, this lady won’t want to go to the Bone Zone anytime soon! Pah! Away with you, wench! He will find a bird who is a little less mouthy. Good day.
Having solidified the necessary dislike of the enemy, the mouthy Slayer plans her attack… yes yes…
Catherine’s sister asks later why this guy stopped dancing and stormed off in a huff. “He is a man who strives to look and behave the best of any man in the room, then resents it when his cares draw the attention they seek. An unpleasant mix of presumption and resentment.” In short, this vamp’s a douchebag and he’s gonna get hella staked soon anyway, so put it out of your mind.
In the card room, where one goes to play cards at these aristocratic blowjob parties, the Dapper Vampire named Edward sulks as his brother prods him. How did he let a lady strike him so dumbly? “I thought for a moment you had singled her out as a likely target, but now you back away.”
Nah, he’s regrouping. An even better plan awaits! He’s going to beat Catherine at her own game by, like, talking and saying a lot of fancy, big words…
Edward offers to pour his lady some punch. “Tell me, are you always so free in speaking with men new to your acquaintance?”
“I see no point in waiting until I have made a friend to insult him,” she says, smiling over her cup. “In fact, I would rather not insult a friend.” OH SNAP! GET SOME ICE FOR THAT BURN, EDWARD. YOU JUST GOT DUNKED UPON, GUY.
Edward is sly now. He sees that this woman is pushing the boundaries that her position restricts! “The terrace,” he motions toward a set of double doors.
Time to pound that pussy, off-limits terrace-style.
They find themselves alone on the terrace, and then…
A TWIST! SHE TURNS AROUND ALL FANGY! HE LIFTS UP A LARGE WOODEN STAKE! *STAB* A DISINTEGRATING SKELETON SHE BECOMES! THIS WAS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED! I’M ON THE FLOOR WRITHING AND PALPITATING!
“Catherine was a vampire, but she was right. The life of a lady offers many limitations.” It seems that this “Edward” is a woman of the female persuasion! “Those limitations were why the Slayer had given up the life of a woman years before. To live as a free woman, Miss Elizabeth Weston had to live as a man. I will not say she lived forever, nor even long. But while she lived, the assumptions of others protected her, as a coat thicker than cloth.”
You go gurl.
“The Glittering World”
Written by: David Fury
“The Navajo tell of a time in ‘the great before’… when the land bounded by the sacred mountains was barren, arid… dead…”
BORING! Talk at me about sacred mountains and I glaze over tout suite. The land is full of ghoulies and ghostlies, demons and vampires and wizards and gremlins and lawyers. The mythical place is where Twins were sent: To Bajishchini, to fertilize the earth, and Naayeeneizghani, to slay the monsters! One of these twins is way cooler than the other twin.
Naahaabaamaafaashaanaa rides a horse across this blighted land, which looks like we’re in Wild West Times. She traverse down the dusty trail through a small town. “Lovely” music emanates from a saloon, and by “lovely” I mean “awful and screechy”. Drunken revelry! A man who looks like that asshole from Deadwood cleans a glass behind a bar. Just rubbing the shit out of it with what I assume is a filthy rag. The Slayer approaches, snatches the glass right out of his hands, and fills it herself. “Looking for a vampire,” she says simply.
This draws the attention of a couple of rowdy boys! Two approach her from behind, and without missing a beat she splashes one in the face with her drink and slashes the other with a broken bottle.
Then it’s kablooie dust time.
♫ ♫ Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame… ♫ ♪ ♫
After destroying a handful of others, she grabs the bartender by the scruff. “You know who I am now. So don’t make me ask twice… where is she?”
Upstairs, lassie! I hope you whittled something nice and sharp, now. And–
Oh. She decides to walk out of the saloon and toss some dynamite in there instead. The whole thing blows up, and taking everyone down. To Chinatown.
Everyone except one: some floating Native American chick hovering above the wreckage. “You have found me. Unfortunately for you.”
“You killed my Watcher?”
“One less white man.”
“Like your father?”
“Father… you mean the cavalry scum who poisoned my mother with his seed! Mixing my blood… damning me to never feel a part of either world… never belonging…”
Oh boo hoo. Get killed already! This young whipper-snapper declares that she has finally found her world, and it’s the boogity-boogity world of monsters and mayhem.
They fight. Ms. Monster stabs Slayer with a knife and pretty much guts her. Bleeding out, she is able to grab her own Mr. Pointy and reduce this being to dust. She slumps onto her horse and lets it walk on while she, presumably, dies.
What a fantastic story! It’s being told to a white businessman by a non-white Man of God kinda man out in the middle of the desert. Mr. Business Man thinks it’s a load of supernatural hooey! Mr. Pastor just wants to inform this Man of Business, who intends to build a town on the property, that the land is accursed!
Mr. Business Man doesn’t care! He’s gonna build a town anyway.
You look ravishing today, Mr. Mayor. Is that snake oil on your comely bowtie?
“Sonnenblume”
Written by: Rebecca Rand Kirshner
“The end of my fourteenth year was a strange time. One minute, I felt like I was almost an adult, like I was just about to bloom and understand everything in the world. And the next minute I was still a kid who missed my father and wanted a bicycle and secretly kissed my pillow pretending it was a boy.”
All right, now we’re talking! I’ve kissed a few pillows in my day! We’re in Nurember, Germany during Hitler times, and our protagonist is heiling and marching along with her fellow identically-garbed schoolmates. Hundreds of them in formation as they watch Mr. Sunshine Hitler himself rally the crowd! Those certainly were the days. Well, they were days at least.
Little Sonnenblume shops at a bakery. For 40 pfennings she gets the best loaf of bread in town! The little girl of the shop owners comments upon Sonnenblume’s outfit. She wants to wear one just like it some day! Hail the Empire!
Obviously this is a Jewish family. The father is mortified that he just heard such a thing from his daughter, and he tells Sonnenblume to go home. And she sadly does! An uplifting tale so far.
“Being alone can be scary. And sometimes I want to be just like everyone else.”
A vampire who looks like Bela Lugosi is attacking a woman in the alley!
I vant to suck your dick!
Sonnenblume breaks her rolling pin in half, revealing pointy wood! Vampire gone.
“But I’m not like everyone else.”
Her mother later chastises her for ruining a perfectly good rolling pin. Also, do her eyes deceiver her, but did Sonnenblume buy Jew bread? To your room with ye, child!
Sonnenblume spends her day training; doing push-ups and pull-ups while wearing her shirt with the little swastika on it. “I mean, I know vampires are evil. But is… are there other things that are evil? People? People that are evil?”
She learns that Germans are great and Jews are evil and Germans shit diamonds and ambrosia and Jews are injecting everyone with poisoned nanobots. She goes to bed and thinks about all the Jew-hating she will indulge herself in for years to come.
The next morning, Sonnenblume walks down the street with a couple of friends. The Jewish baker woman is sweeping outside of her shop and says hi. Her friends give her some shit for this, so action must be taken! “I’d rather eat shoes than eat something you baked, you dirty Jewess!” Check and mate, Sonnenblume. This won’t make you feel strangely regretful and sad at all!
November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht. Windows getting smashed, Jews getting trucked away to concentration camps. Sonnenblume watches Nazi Party forces terrorize the family who owns the bakery. While the commanders laugh in the street, the family is able to slip away unnoticed… unnoticed by anyone except Sonnenblume. When asked by an officer if she knows where they went, Sonnenblume cracks him in the face.
“It’s my duty to fight evil,” she thinks. “And I finally recognize the real evil here. And now I will fight it. And now I will begin.”
“Nikki Goes Down!”
Written by: Doug Petrie
We all remember Nikki Wood, right? Slayer from the 1970s, Robin Wood’s mother, killed by Spike. She goes down!
Nikki wakes up in a Harlem apartment with Li, her cop fuck buddy. “He wakes up. Li doesn’t tell me he’s on stakeout. I find out anyway. I follow.”
“He doesn’t know I’m the Slayer.”
Li is trying to bust a drug smuggler… but he’s not smuggling drugs. Oh no, sir, he’s smuggling blood-sucking demons with the pointing fangs and the garlic allergy and whatnot. These vampires bust out of crates and start doing the bitey bitey thing at Li’s team. Good thing Nikki is there with her sharp stick, but some men are already lost. She hopes Li is ok as she fights off these hooligans!
Then she gets knocked out cold.
Then she wakes up.
And Li is dead.
And the cops show up and point their guns at the black lady, because of course. They shoot at her while she runs off the dock and into the water, losing them.
Eh, there’s plenty of other fish in the heavily polluted NYC river.
“Spend the day beating information out of anything that walks, crawls, or slithers. They all point me in the same direction.” Aha, Jersey City! Barring that, some dude named Le Banc which should not be confused with Le Blanc, specifically Matt LeBlanc who is fat as shit here in the year 2023.
Le Banc is having a party, which Nikki crashes looking like Janet Jackson. Stake in hand, she confronts Le Banc and his ragtag team of ghoulies and demons. A large bat-like creature attacks, and Nikki pushes it right out of the glass window of the high rise suite. Flying it high above the earth like a lovely Hell Pegasus, Nikki remembers her crippling fear of heights as she stabs the creature repeatedly in the neck. Then she takes her pearl necklace off and starts choking the motherfucker in mid-air. They start dropping down fast. “This thing owns the sky. But the streets are mine.”
Nikki gets the bright idea to descend right into a subway station entrance and start flying the uncontrollable beast though the subway tunnel. “We ride through the darkness.” Nikki leaps from the bat at the last minute before an oncoming train smashes it like Gallagher with a hammer. And that’s the end of that chapter!
There’s still the matter of Le Banc to take care of. How you doin’? He and his cronies are hanging out on a yacht dealing in very important business dealings such as who gets to kill the next prostitute they all fuck. On the banks of the river, Nikki’s got a goddamn crossbow the size of Kansas aimed at Le Banc’s pointy head.
And that’s a wrap!
“Tales”
Written by: Joss Whedon
Our tales of the Slayers ends with good ol’ Melaka Fray, the Slayer from the far future! Click that link and read all about her, why don’t ya?
“This isn’t going great,” she mutters, fighting a couple of demons it what looks like a sewer. “I know why, too. These guys are old. Educated. They know all the Slayer’s moves.”
Good thing Fray doesn’t know any Slayer’s moves! She uses this to her advantage and kills them.
I don’t even know the ol’ one-two-buckle-my-shoe, see?
Poor Fray, she didn’t inherit any of the previous Slayer’s subconscious memories. She has to do all this shit on the fly, but at least she’s good at it. She knows she’s the only one in the world to fight these vampires. And she know she’s got a Stouffer’s lasagna in the oven.
As you may recall, Fray works for some fish guy named Gunther. Stealing from the rich and all that. After satisfyingly slaying the two creeps, she approaches a box that she was hired to loot…
“SKREEE!” I dang howler monkey jumps out! Dumb! Fray is perplexed as the thing mutters and saunters away with her scythe. “Hey! Gimme that back!”
Fray follows the monkey down the hole, which leads to the outside. 10,000 feet above ground. They were in a blimp this whole time! Some sort of airship, anyway. In the year 2023 there are only 25 blimps in existence! They ain’t makin’ more blimps, I’ll tell you that much for free.
“No way. No way,” she thinks as she and howler demon monkey bounces around flying cars and floating traffic lights. “That scythe is my only connection to the whole Slayer heritage thing. And it kills great.”
Howler monkey leads her to a collapsed building with a giant sigil on the floor. A red circle around an image of a scythe. Her scythe! The scythiest scythe in town! She jumps down onto the floor. The room used to be a library.
Fray pulls out a book called “Watchers Diary”, which contains 4,000 pages of Giles recounting pulling his pud by the playground fence. “It’s all here. The battles. The tricks… the fears and the victories… all the girls, so different, who lived as I do…”
She sees visions of all the Slayers we just talked about! Sonnenblume! Matilda! Old Beatrice! Fanny Holmson! Knickerbocker Struthers! David Lee Roth! “All their stories are laid before me and… my hands are shaking.”
Fray’s gonna cheat and read through all this shit, it seems. I didn’t even know she was literate, this street rat.
OK, story’s over.
Final Thoughts
What a trip! And by that I mean I just tripped. I tripped on the sidewalk and broke all 45 of my teeth.
I hope you enjoyed this extra long post as much as I enjoyed spending a week writing it.
