August 17, 1912
Title: August 17, 1912
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: The Lost World
Disclaimer: It’s a normal hazard of life in a big city, but as you would expect when it happens to Spike, it can’t be anything other than amusingly excessive.
Summary: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and The Lost World characters are the property of their original owners.
Sucking out with an actual impolite slurping noise the very last drop of blood from his victim, Spike removed his teeth from the neck of a still-warm corpse. The vampire then casually dropped the body onto the ground by a heap of garbage lining the London alley chosen for tonight’s kill. Kicking some stray items of rubbish onto this man’s limp form, Spike made sure while thoroughly hiding the newest evidence of a demon’s atrocity that he didn’t scratch or stain his new boots stolen several moments before from that dead bloke. In spite of everything, a proper gentleman took pride in his neat and tidy appearance at all times.
Once he’d made sure nobody would discover what’s-his-name with the torn throat until he started stinking up even further the already fetid passageway, Spike’s attention was suddenly caught by the increasing noise coming from a few streets over. It was the sound of a very large number of people gathered together, who hadn’t been there a couple of minutes ago. Mildly intrigued at what would cause this abrupt assembly of humanity during sometime around midnight in the last half of August, Spike wandered towards the indicated direction to satisfy his curiosity.
To the vampire’s surprise when he came to Regent Street, a big crowd of close to a thousand people nearly filled this avenue to capacity. All of these persons seemed to be in their most cheerful mood, with excited chattering and occasional shouts of “A procession! A procession!” being expressed by random participants in tonight’s march through London. Glancing around, Spike saw at the forefront of the crowd four men being carried along the shoulders of their elated bearers.
Squinting at there, Spike didn’t recognize any of those chaps who’d evidently just done something really impressive, judging by the sheer conviviality of the crowd. Well, it didn’t matter all that much to Spike anyway, now that he’d found out what was going on. Turning to disappear back into the summer night, the undead demon paused at catching sight of one particularly odd-looking fellow being lightheartedly borne along by his volunteer porters.
That bloke there, his head twisted around to shout at the others in an action which fully showed his face, he looked exactly like one of those primitive chappies in the newspaper cartoons, all dressed in furs and carrying crude wooden clubs, as they’d been portrayed ever since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. What were they called...? Oh, yes, a ‘cave-man’.
Chuckling to himself, Spike then went off to seek some more vicious amusement. Eventually, this took him to Hyde Park. Strolling around in the dark there, the vampire assured himself that if only he kept looking, sooner or later he’d stumble across some couple taking furtive advantage of the privacy provided by the park’s shielding greenery. Whether it was an amorous middle class lad and his lassie, or a businesslike lady of the evening and her customer, Spike would be more than happy to have fun with either type. Not that those unfortunate humans would find it very enjoyable, but who cared about what they wanted?
Making his way along a graveled path towards one of the park’s illuminated, newfangled electric lamps, Spike all of a sudden heard a truly strange swishing sound coming from overhead. Stopping short to glance up, not even a vampire’s speedy reflexes were quick enough for Spike to do anything but have his eyes begin to widen in dawning horror at seeing what was descending directly at his uplifted visage.
SPLAT!
Reeling around while wrathfully combining frantic spitting, inarticulate threatening roars, and desperate wipes with both hands at his face, Spike finally scraped off from there enough of the newly-applied, white, sticky ooze reeking to high heaven of fish to behold who’d just done this to him. Standing there on the path while a supremely foul substance slowly dripped down his jacket, Spike nevertheless ignored this to gawk in sheer disbelief at the bizarre beast now perched atop the upper crosspiece of the park lamp.
It was some sort of a gigantic flying creature with enormous leathery wings presently wrapped around its body. There wasn’t the slightest sign of any feathers covering that thing, just bare, greyish scales from head to the talons gripping the lamp crosspiece. A lengthy beak overtopped by two glowing red eyes unblinkingly regarding Spike made up the rest of this fantastic animal.
The motionless standoff between this pair of unearthly beings was soon ended by the winged creature bobbing its head once, and then giving a harsh, rasping caw sounding suspiciously like genuine derision. Right after this, it jumped off the park lamp, unfurling its wings in mid-air, and swooped down low to one side away from Spike. Giving several vigorous strokes of its upper limbs covered by the extended skin there, the flying creature soon gained enough altitude to rise up and disappear into the night sky.
Watching all this in utter incredulity, Spike shook himself out of his daze far too late to reach down to the gravel path, pick up a handy stone, and vindictively chuck it at that soddin’ strange bird who’d just shit all over him! All the fuming vampire could do was to shake an incensed fist into the direction of where that damn thing had vanished, flying someplace to the west.
Spike’s bad mood wasn’t improved at all either by glancing down at the putrid guano beginning to harden all over his body. He promptly groaned in despair, “Bleedin’ hell, if any demon I know sees me like this -- or even catches a whiff of it -- I’ll never live this down! There’s no choice; I’ll just have to take a quick dip in the Serpentine, and then lie low somewhere well away for a while.”
Grumbling to himself, Spike set off at once to accomplish that hurried strategy. He soon became lost in the August darkness, and the vampire indeed successfully carried out the plan quickly conceived by him. Making a hasty departure from London, Spike spent the next several weeks hiding elsewhere in England until he was quite sure there weren’t any rumors among the local supernatural community about a certain fiend’s hilarious encounter with the damned biggest ever plucked pigeon evacuating its bowels directly onto that unlucky prat’s head.
During all this, Spike never thought to read the London newspapers, so he missed the stories there about Professor Challenger and the expedition to South America in which this scientist and his associates eventually brought back evidence of their adventures at what was soon called ‘The Lost World.’ Alas, during the evening lecture in this city where the good professor thoroughly routed all of his detested critics and as a result was carried off in triumph by the crowd, the only living example of a genuine pterodactyl escaped back into the wild.
In the process of its flight from captivity, that same winged dinosaur soaring over London also showed that the instinct for every avian to unerringly target with their plunging poop those land-bound dirt grubbers has been staunchly handed down from the Cretaceous Period to just after the Edwardian Era.
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: The Lost World
Disclaimer: It’s a normal hazard of life in a big city, but as you would expect when it happens to Spike, it can’t be anything other than amusingly excessive.
Summary: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and The Lost World characters are the property of their original owners.
Sucking out with an actual impolite slurping noise the very last drop of blood from his victim, Spike removed his teeth from the neck of a still-warm corpse. The vampire then casually dropped the body onto the ground by a heap of garbage lining the London alley chosen for tonight’s kill. Kicking some stray items of rubbish onto this man’s limp form, Spike made sure while thoroughly hiding the newest evidence of a demon’s atrocity that he didn’t scratch or stain his new boots stolen several moments before from that dead bloke. In spite of everything, a proper gentleman took pride in his neat and tidy appearance at all times.
Once he’d made sure nobody would discover what’s-his-name with the torn throat until he started stinking up even further the already fetid passageway, Spike’s attention was suddenly caught by the increasing noise coming from a few streets over. It was the sound of a very large number of people gathered together, who hadn’t been there a couple of minutes ago. Mildly intrigued at what would cause this abrupt assembly of humanity during sometime around midnight in the last half of August, Spike wandered towards the indicated direction to satisfy his curiosity.
To the vampire’s surprise when he came to Regent Street, a big crowd of close to a thousand people nearly filled this avenue to capacity. All of these persons seemed to be in their most cheerful mood, with excited chattering and occasional shouts of “A procession! A procession!” being expressed by random participants in tonight’s march through London. Glancing around, Spike saw at the forefront of the crowd four men being carried along the shoulders of their elated bearers.
Squinting at there, Spike didn’t recognize any of those chaps who’d evidently just done something really impressive, judging by the sheer conviviality of the crowd. Well, it didn’t matter all that much to Spike anyway, now that he’d found out what was going on. Turning to disappear back into the summer night, the undead demon paused at catching sight of one particularly odd-looking fellow being lightheartedly borne along by his volunteer porters.
That bloke there, his head twisted around to shout at the others in an action which fully showed his face, he looked exactly like one of those primitive chappies in the newspaper cartoons, all dressed in furs and carrying crude wooden clubs, as they’d been portrayed ever since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. What were they called...? Oh, yes, a ‘cave-man’.
Chuckling to himself, Spike then went off to seek some more vicious amusement. Eventually, this took him to Hyde Park. Strolling around in the dark there, the vampire assured himself that if only he kept looking, sooner or later he’d stumble across some couple taking furtive advantage of the privacy provided by the park’s shielding greenery. Whether it was an amorous middle class lad and his lassie, or a businesslike lady of the evening and her customer, Spike would be more than happy to have fun with either type. Not that those unfortunate humans would find it very enjoyable, but who cared about what they wanted?
Making his way along a graveled path towards one of the park’s illuminated, newfangled electric lamps, Spike all of a sudden heard a truly strange swishing sound coming from overhead. Stopping short to glance up, not even a vampire’s speedy reflexes were quick enough for Spike to do anything but have his eyes begin to widen in dawning horror at seeing what was descending directly at his uplifted visage.
SPLAT!
Reeling around while wrathfully combining frantic spitting, inarticulate threatening roars, and desperate wipes with both hands at his face, Spike finally scraped off from there enough of the newly-applied, white, sticky ooze reeking to high heaven of fish to behold who’d just done this to him. Standing there on the path while a supremely foul substance slowly dripped down his jacket, Spike nevertheless ignored this to gawk in sheer disbelief at the bizarre beast now perched atop the upper crosspiece of the park lamp.
It was some sort of a gigantic flying creature with enormous leathery wings presently wrapped around its body. There wasn’t the slightest sign of any feathers covering that thing, just bare, greyish scales from head to the talons gripping the lamp crosspiece. A lengthy beak overtopped by two glowing red eyes unblinkingly regarding Spike made up the rest of this fantastic animal.
The motionless standoff between this pair of unearthly beings was soon ended by the winged creature bobbing its head once, and then giving a harsh, rasping caw sounding suspiciously like genuine derision. Right after this, it jumped off the park lamp, unfurling its wings in mid-air, and swooped down low to one side away from Spike. Giving several vigorous strokes of its upper limbs covered by the extended skin there, the flying creature soon gained enough altitude to rise up and disappear into the night sky.
Watching all this in utter incredulity, Spike shook himself out of his daze far too late to reach down to the gravel path, pick up a handy stone, and vindictively chuck it at that soddin’ strange bird who’d just shit all over him! All the fuming vampire could do was to shake an incensed fist into the direction of where that damn thing had vanished, flying someplace to the west.
Spike’s bad mood wasn’t improved at all either by glancing down at the putrid guano beginning to harden all over his body. He promptly groaned in despair, “Bleedin’ hell, if any demon I know sees me like this -- or even catches a whiff of it -- I’ll never live this down! There’s no choice; I’ll just have to take a quick dip in the Serpentine, and then lie low somewhere well away for a while.”
Grumbling to himself, Spike set off at once to accomplish that hurried strategy. He soon became lost in the August darkness, and the vampire indeed successfully carried out the plan quickly conceived by him. Making a hasty departure from London, Spike spent the next several weeks hiding elsewhere in England until he was quite sure there weren’t any rumors among the local supernatural community about a certain fiend’s hilarious encounter with the damned biggest ever plucked pigeon evacuating its bowels directly onto that unlucky prat’s head.
During all this, Spike never thought to read the London newspapers, so he missed the stories there about Professor Challenger and the expedition to South America in which this scientist and his associates eventually brought back evidence of their adventures at what was soon called ‘The Lost World.’ Alas, during the evening lecture in this city where the good professor thoroughly routed all of his detested critics and as a result was carried off in triumph by the crowd, the only living example of a genuine pterodactyl escaped back into the wild.
In the process of its flight from captivity, that same winged dinosaur soaring over London also showed that the instinct for every avian to unerringly target with their plunging poop those land-bound dirt grubbers has been staunchly handed down from the Cretaceous Period to just after the Edwardian Era.