Never Ever Tell by Lilachigh



Chap 31 Please help me!


Shona - “Your Troubles are my Troubles” - sat in her office at the Sunnydale Press newspaper office, ruffled her short blonde hair and glared at the piles of mail on her desk. She hated her job as an advice columnist with a vengeance - but it paid the bills, which seemed to multiply every day.

She felt worried. Her boss was moaning that her column wasn’t sexy enough, “I need more heat on the page!” he’d yelled this morning. “You’re too cold. I want to see letters from people with real exciting problems.”

“He should read some of this rubbish,” she muttered now and picked up the latest bundle the messenger boy had just delivered.

There was a computer printed letter – no address or name, of course, but most of the writers wanted to be anonymous. They looked forward to reading her replies in the newspaper.

“Dear Shona, please help me. I’ve always had trouble finding boyfriends and the one man I loved left me. Now I’ve fallen in love with a girl and my friends all hate me because I’m gay. Why are they being so judgemental?”

How about this next letter? Printed on the back of what looked like an old pizza order form.

“Dear Shona, Please help me. I’m a young, healthy man with an upwardly mobile job selling frozen confectionery. I do have problems attracting the wrong type of girls – my present one has a very weird past – but my biggest worry is that my old school friends have left me behind. They’re more interested in their own lives and have shut me out….”

Shona sighed and threw the letters to one side. Ah, this one looked more interesting. At least it was written on decent paper. Tiny cramped handwriting, though – reminded her of her last teacher at college. It was signed E. Rayne, but she doubted that was his real name.

“Dear Madam, I have never written to an advice columnist before, but I find myself in an emotional and economic dilemma. My lifetime’s work seems to be at an end, as my charge no longer needs my guidance. I am looking for input from all professional and amateur sources which could be of use in my assimilation of – ”

Shona found herself nodding off, threw the letter in the bin and drank a large mouthful of coffee. God, how was she going to find anything ‘hot’ to reply to?

Ah, this one was a little better. Severe blue paper with black lines, obviously taken from some sort of official notepad. The margins were exact on each side, as if a ruler had been used. A crisp, military style of writing. She wondered if the sender was in the military.

“Dear Madam, Your help would be appreciated with the following: item one, girl friend who is superior to me in some aspects of physical life, not I add, sexual – why do I find this difficult to cope with; item two, I have a growing need to get involved with those business associates of hers with whom she is in competition. Would you advise me to continue with this activity?’

The next letter was puzzling. It was printed in very big letters on a piece of paper that seemed to be splattered with what could have been spots of blood. WHO AM I? it read.

Well, that’s the question we all ask, Shona thought grimly. God, if only someone would send her a letter she could really work on. Something sexy and poignant, hot and tender. But who was likely to have that sort of problem in Sunnydale….

Buffy had been circling the block where the editorial offices of the Sunnydale Press were situated for an hour. It was getting dark, but there were still a few lights on in the offices. She clutched a small pink envelope in her hand.

She felt silly, but she needed to talk about her problems to someone and a stranger seemed like a good idea. None of her friends would understand and as for Riley – well, he’d have freaked if he’d read her letter. She hadn’t given a name or address, but perhaps Shona would print her reply in the newspaper.

Wearily Buffy leant against a wall. When they’d sorted out the Jonathan problem, she’d hoped life would settle down. OK, she and Riley did seem much closer. He wanted sex all the time. And she didn’t mind if it kept him happy. She knew she was so pretending, acting out the besotted girlfriend, lots of moans and groans and yes, it was all fake, but then she spent much of her life acting so that was no biggie.

Making love to Riley was very nice, very comforting in an ‘I’m a nice normal girl with a nice normal guy’ sort of way. But at the back of her mind, all the time, was a memory of a dream she’d had a few days ago – a silly dream in which Jonathan Levinson had ruled Sunnydale, as if! — and in the middle of the dream she had had to have sex with Spike in order for a plan of Jonathan’s to work.

Every detail - the chill feel of his naked body on hers, the texture of his skin, the way he‘d stripped off her clothes and made love to her, even the sounds she’d made when she’d come and come in sobbing, crashing orgasms
- yes, everything was crystal clear in her mind.

And she wondered every time that Riley made love to her, would this be the time when she experienced something close to what her body recalled? She didn’t believe it could ever be as sensational as she remembered between two people. Jeez, how could you cope if you knew those sorts of feelings and sensations were only a touch away? That you would only have to smash down a crypt door, reach out, grasp a slim, taut body and let him touch you, take you, made you feel –

Anyway, she knew it had only been a dream, Jonathan hadn’t really ruled Sunnydale, he’d just altered people’s perception of reality. So surely everything that she’d done during that time was a figment of her imagination.



She could imagine sex with Spike being wonderful, but obviously in real life it wouldn’t be. She shuddered and watched as a few more people left the newspaper offices. Once the building looked empty, she’d slip the envelope onto the front reception desk.

Buffy lifted the flap and pulled out her letter.

“Dear Shona, please help me. Please! I have a really great boyfriend and although we make love all the time, I fake my responses. I know this is bad, but he’d be so upset if I ever told him. My problem is this, I have a vivid imagination and can picture having sex with a man I detest. In this dream I am not faking anything. Will you please tell me how to resolve this? I attend UC Sunnydale and have a part time job which can be very demanding. B.”

Buffy read it through again, then sighed as she licked the envelope flap shut.
She hurried inside the now empty building and dropped the letter on the counter, wondering how long it would take for a reply to appear in the newspaper.

As she hurried away down the street, keen to do a quick patrol, Spike came round the corner. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of her vanishing into the dusk.

Slayer! God, the bitch haunted his every move. He couldn’t even walk down the Sunnydale streets without nearly bumping into her. He lit a cigarette, enjoying the little thrill of danger that the flaring flame from his lighter always gave him.

The last person he needed to speak to this evening was Buffy Summers. He’d had the weirdest dream about her a couple of nights ago. He couldn‘t get it out of his soddin’ head – the passion, the heat, the feel of her tight hot pussy. Even now he could feel himself stiffen and stir; he needed to be home in the privacy of his own crypt, not hanging around street corners like some pathetic wanker!

‘Instead of a ordinary wanker,’ a voice inside his head jeered and he kicked through the glass door of the nearest building in sheer frustration.

The next morning, Shona, “Your Troubles are my Troubles” felt a little more positive. She’d charmed her way out of getting a ticket because she’d parked too close to a fire hydrant. It was a trick she‘d used before and probably would again. Boy, would her readers be surprised if they knew how she managed that!

And she’d had a stroke of luck. There had been two letters waiting for her when she arrived at the newspaper, both obviously hand delivered.

The one from a girl – pink envelope and neat handwriting – was all about orgasms and sex. Just what her editor had wanted.

But it was the second one that had caught her attention. The paper stank of cigarette smoke when she tore open the envelope, but the letter inside was beautifully written in real black ink with what looked like an old-fashioned pen, one with a nib. The spelling was odd – she wondered if the writer was British – but it was the content that was interesting.

“Dear Shona, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll help me. I’ve been in love twice in my long life so know what it’s supposed to feel like. What I want to know is what the hell is this emotion that’s killing me today? Why do I look at a certain girl and want to slaughter her one minute and make love to her the next? Why am I dreaming about her? This isn’t right and I want it to bloody well stop. You’re the expert. You tell me. Yours sincerely. W.
P.S. Do you pay for these letters, if so how much?”

Shona smiled and began to enter the contents of this note onto her screen.
She would use both the letters and hoped that B and W would read her replies. She laughed. It was a shame she couldn’t get the two of them together. They’d probably get on really well. There was enough passion in both of them to set the whole of Sunnydale alight.

She sighed. Oh well, that was just a silly thought. If people were destined to be together, life would bring it about sooner or later.


To be continued