But is it Really Art? Chapter 1

1

About an hour after sunset, 15-year-old Dawn Summers came into the living room of the Summers' house. The full figured, Sunnydale High School Sophomore, went over to the coffee table to straighten up a small pile of magazines.

She took one look at the magazine on the top of the pile and gagged. "Blagh! This is so gross!

"Spike!" She howled in outrage, "You're a total pervert!"

Dawn hurried out of the living room, into the dining room. Spike the vampire sat at the table beside her sister Buffy, the former Vampire Slayer; who'd recently been "Retired by reason of death". They both had porcelain mugs of warmed up blood in front of them. The newly undead Buffy had said it was pigs' blood. Dawn wasn't sure whether to believe her or not.

Before he'd killed her, Spike had been Buffy's not very secret lover. Now that she was just as undead as he was, she'd invited him to move into the house with her and Dawn.

He spoke to Dawn with annoyance. "What is it now Niblet?"

This time he used that term without endearment.

"It's this magazine you subscribe to!" Buffy's sister declared.

She held the copy of that month's issue of "Undead Life" magazine that she'd picked up from the coffee table.

"Look at that picture on the cover!" Dawn threw the magazine down on the table, in front of Buffy and Spike. "It's two dead women, who are naked!"

Spike now spoke with patience. "It's a magazine that caters to vampires, Little Bint. This type of artwork appeals to us."

"'Artwork'?" Dawn shuddered. "This isn't a painting, or a charcoal sketch. It's a photograph! They're real women, and they really are dead, and they've got a lot of yucky looking strings wrapped around them from head to toe. What kind of 'art' do you call that?"

Buffy spoke with a smile, "It's called 'Necrophilic Art' Dawn."

"I know what it's called!  'Necrophile' means being a pervert, who is sexually attracted to dead people!"

"It's not a perversion," her sister said, "to those of us who are dead people, Dawn."

Dawn shuddered. Then she spoke with hesitation. "Buffy, does this kind of 'artwork', appeal to you too?"

"Yes Dawn it does. I think it's very beautiful."

The girl sighed.

"Now look at what it shows." Buffy pointed. "Here, under a full moon, out in the New England woods, is a beautiful dead woman in her late thirties, named Lorelei Gilmore. She's lying beside the corpse of her very attractive teenage daughter Rory, who was a potential Vampire Slayer. They were killed by a swarm of spiders that wrapped their nude bodies in spider webs."

Dawn repeated nervously, "Spider webs?"

"That's right. I think it's a strangely beautiful thing to see."

Her sister asked, "But would you really want to hang it on the wall?"

Buffy thought it over. "I'm not sure."

Spike said, "I wouldn't mind hanging it on mine, if it's included in a dead nudies calendar."

Dawn sighed again. Then she said, "Eeeew."

She pointed to the dead girl in the picture. "She's about my age. If I end up looking like her, would you think that was a beautiful piece of art too?"

"Don't worry Dawn." Buffy laughed slightly. "You're so much better looking than she is. I have no doubt that you'd make a much more beautiful nudie corpse, than Rory Gilmore. Don't you agree Spike?"

"No doubt about it." He told Dawn, "I can hardly wait to see you on my calendar, Niblet, in full color glossy."

Then Buffy and Spike both chuckled, as Dawn stormed out of the room.

As her younger sister stamped up the stairs to her room, Buffy called out. "I really think you should take a good look at this magazine Dawn! Then maybe you'll start to understand where Spike and I are coming from!"

The girl shouted back, "I don't want to know any more about it, than I already do! It's all just too gross!"