doyle: tardis (angelwes)
[personal profile] doyle
Continuing my experimentation with super-short fic: 21 25-word drabbles, all about dreams.

21 Dreams in Sunnydale (and LA)

Electric Barbarella - Warren

Katrina. Baby. She'll be perfect this time, but how the hell is he supposed to finish her when someone keeps dripping blood on the circuitboards?



Miscellany - Andrew

He dreams of:

Buying Action Comics #1 for ten cents at a garage sale.

X-ray vision.

Warren.

Metropolis.

Klingon sonnets.

Jonathan's blood on his hands.

Madonna and Child - Angel

It's a perfect tableau; golden-haired woman holding a baby boy on her knee, but when he looks up from his half-finished sketch, they're both gone.

Her Reply - Anya

Xander asks her if she has nightmares about the men she cursed.

She says no, and is puzzled when her honesty seems to trouble him.

Prophecy Girl - Buffy

New thought - will the new Slayers get the Dreams? She wants them back. Mystical, baffling, better than dreaming of clumsy words and hands on fire.

Teenage Kicks All Through the Night - Connor

He dreams about Tracy. Hockey practice. Sometimes, guiltily, about Ms. Thomson and the sheer blouses she wears to class.

Wolfram & Hart do excellent work.

The Philosopher and the Butterfly - Cordelia

So is she an actress dreaming she's a champion or a champion who dreamed she was an actress? Either way, she needs a better word.

Across the Universe - Dawn

She remembers her normal-girl dreams. Shopping. Boys. Not the others, because the Key's suddenly human brain can't comprehend the dreams where she holds the universe.

Like Mrs. Rochester, or a Student of Boolean Mathematics - Fred

/* That dream about the time Gunn and me ate ice-cream on the beach. Oh! And I laughed cuz he dropped his and we… */

#include [regrets.h]

After the End - Giles

He dreams in statistics. Three hundred and fifty-eight Slayers. Some sixty countries, God knows how many languages. Five dead already, three of them like Chloe.

Heart of Darkness - Gunn

This is a dream, or maybe a memory, but either way it's not his. He looks down at the reflection in the waterhole and growls.

Dreams in Which I'm Dying - Jonathan

"Warren," he says, "What're you doing in that stupid rabbit suit?"

Warren's eyes are glassy, false. "What are you doing in that stupid Jonathan suit?"

Waking Moment - Lilah

No rest for the wicked? Some things are clichés because they're true. In Hell, Lilah doesn't dream. She thinks about Wes, often, but that's different.

Kindergarten Math - Lindsey

He has nightmares where his arms end in bloody stumps at the wrist and Angel refuses to help, simultaneously mocking him and not seeing him.

No Business Like - Lorne

"And then Frank says, 'Lorne, Pally, you gotta find the cheese!'"

Sammy and Dean laugh uproariously. Bette and Barbra mix them another round of cocktails.

Sense Memory - Riley

When he wakes up, gasping, his arm is tingling just below the elbow, and he finds himself feeling there for scars that faded long ago.

Every Night - Spike

Day ninety-eight: awake, he can relive it, and he saves her. But his subconscious is more honest, and in his dreams she always, always falls.

Juxtaposition - Tara

She's singing on the bridge, and she can smell wildflowers all around them, but when Willow turns around it's Dad not Willow and stop, stop.

False - Wesley

The dream about a goddess and a rain of fire surprises him in its vividness, but later he dreams about killing his father, and forgets.

Advice - Willow

Don't listen to the others. They're right, about you changing since the Slayer spell, but what you are, what you'll become, they can't imagine.

Beggars Would Ride - Xander

After Jesse, he wished he could stop dreaming about the dead. But now Anya's gone and he takes it back. He takes it all back.

on 2004-01-07 07:47 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] amberwaves2.livejournal.com
Oh, I love these. All of them. I'd list all of the ones I really adored, but since that's more than half, I'll just list a few of the not-so-obvious ones -- Warren, Fred, Gunn, Jonathan, and Xander. Naturally I loved the Buffy, Riley, and Spike ones, and the Willow and Cordelia ones, too -- let's just say I loved 'em all, because I did. ;)

Electric Barbarella is especially creepy and wonderful.

on 2004-01-07 08:40 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] harmonyfb.livejournal.com
These are just plain brilliant. So simple, and so powerful in such a small amount of words. Wow. I especially like the one for Connor.

on 2004-01-07 09:26 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] janedavitt.livejournal.com
Those were wonderful, really wonderful. So many of them just sparked cascades of thoughts and images in my head; I feel all fizzy inside ;-)

on 2004-01-07 10:45 am (UTC)
ext_52017: (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] janeway216.livejournal.com
These are loffly, loffly. The programmer in me demands that I make one correction, however. ;-) The include statement in Fred's story should read

#include <regrets.h>

Then the thing will have been written in 100% proper C. ;-)





*is dork, translates Fredficlet into other programming languages*

C++
//That dream about the time Gunn and me ate ice-cream on the beach.
//Oh! And I laughed cuz he dropped his and we…

using namespace regrets

C#
///That dream about the time Gunn and me
///ate ice-cream on the beach. Oh! And I
///laughed cuz he dropped his and we...

using System.Regrets;

Visual Basic.NET
' That dream about the time Gunn and me
' ate ice-cream on the beach. Oh! And I
' laughed cuz he dropped his and we...

Imports System.Regrets

:-P

on 2004-01-07 10:47 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] paratti.livejournal.com
Great stuff.

on 2004-01-07 11:22 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] doyle_sb4.livejournal.com
Hee! And considering I have to turn in a C project in 2 weeks you'd think I could get the include statement right...

on 2004-01-07 01:42 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] raskazzptitsa.livejournal.com
Lovely and/or creepy and/or sad, all. I'm amazed how much you got into so few words. And here I thought plain drabbles were impressive ;)

on 2004-01-07 01:43 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] doyle_sb4.livejournal.com
Hee! I just have a very low attention span *g*

on 2004-01-07 03:06 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] viciouswishes.livejournal.com
These are excellent. You did a great job catching their feelings in snippets. I really loved Giles, Anya, Fred, and Wesley's. And I laughed at Jonathan's. I love the Donnie Darko references.

on 2004-01-07 05:23 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] deadmarshes.livejournal.com
All of them are beautiful and shiny!

on 2004-01-07 06:07 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] willshenilshe.livejournal.com
Ye gods and dogs, this was so twisted and gorgeous. Each one of them hit me in a special place that made me gasp. I particularly love Angel's, Dawn's, Giles', Jonathan's, Lindsey's, Tara's, Wesley's... okay, I loved them all. *Brilliant* stuff!

on 2004-01-07 06:21 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] maybedarkpink.livejournal.com
So few words, so much meaning, so much beauty. Your shiny talent makes me weep in jealousy!

on 2004-01-09 03:38 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] resmin.livejournal.com
Each of these is wonderful in its own right, but I think the Giles and Xander ones hit the hardest. Wonderful concept.

on 2004-01-10 07:24 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] moireach.livejournal.com
Oh, what an emotional rollercoaster. Giles is like a punch in the stomach. Love Xander, Warren, Tara and Jonathan, too. I'm so very impressed.

(Also. hello.)

on 2004-01-11 03:34 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] doyle_sb4.livejournal.com
Hi - and thanks!

on 2005-02-18 09:06 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] leni-ba.livejournal.com
*gapes* I like that you jump from a season to another, makes it even more dreamlike.
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