What the fuck I did on my blog-vacation

In which Robin finishes whatever the fuck he was writing about before;

Where the fuck was I with this?

The basement. Cellar. Dungeon. Whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit.
Right.
Cold. It was cold.

Of course it was cold it's practically fucking winter outside. Never mind that it's nearly bloody April.

Concrete floors don't help that. There's a little drain, like the kind you find in boiler rooms or old laundry rooms, rusted round little drain with holes in it.

There's a bit of pipe, big metal pipe, running along the wall above me. It's got those little C-shaped brackets holding it in place and then it heads up into whatever is above I suppose. Wall's pretty cracked. Old building from the looks of it. Old or not taken care of. Frost damage, or just wear. Fractures around the brackets.

I'm handcuffed to it. Just the one hand. Honest to god handcuffs.

Guess they couldn't find the zip ties? Pockets are empty. Which is a shame.

I can do handcuffs. Zip ties would have been a bit of a problem.
Long story, I had a friend in police foundations.

The plumbing looks... old. It's not copper. I don't think they make copper piping this big. Not old enough to be lead but it's black under the dust, like one of those old-school frying pans, or the stereotypical wood burning stove. There's a busted, rusty water heater over to one side of me and an old beat up washer and dryer on the other side. Furnace on the other side of the water heater. The whole place can't be much more than 7 x 9, low ceiling. The door's pretty low too. Maybe it's under something else?

Don't have my phone, so I don't know how long I'm waiting there. Time does that... stretching thing. Footsteps. Some fucker in a mask opens the door. Big white mask, no mouth, sort of shield shaped? Really pointy chin. Tall guy, big black coat on the shoulders, pinstripe suit.

He reaches up to brush the snow off with his hand and...

Oh god. His hand. His hand is... it looks like it's just flayed skin but that's not right. That can't be right. It's not really a hand. It's a claw. His hand is a claw. A mangled, broken why is it so red. Red like... raw meat. Makes you want to throw up just looking at it.

There's another one with him. Shorter, lanky. Still taller than me Fucking hockey mask. Like he's Jason Fucking Voorhees. Big, baggy, beat-up sweater hanging off of them... kid? Holes in it. Pinstripe doesn't do any talking. Just stands there, for all the world acting if he were the grim fucking spectre of death itself.

The kid? The kid talks a lot. Talked a lot. Big talker.

Ha. Solved that problem, didn't you? Solved it quite well. Don't look at me like that, the bastard had it coming and you know it. This jog any memories?

"Going to fly away little bird?"
Posturing. He's fucking posturing. The fucking bastard.
"Can't run now!" Laughter.
"Not so tough now!" More laughter. kick in the gut. More laughter, and a few more kicks. ribs ache.
"Scared little birdy. We're going to clip your wings." Laughing again. Like a cut-rate villain. Don't think he was all there.

And then he fucked up.

"You know what happens next?" Laughing. Getting closer. "We find your family. And we cut them all- wait." He pauses. You can hear the grin in the voice. "Yours is dead, isn't it?"

That seems like a mistake to me.

"Poor little bird, all alone."
He made to kick me again. Grabbed his other leg by the ankle with my legs. Don't think he saw that coming. Tripped up fell backwards like he'd had a carpet jerked out from under him. Skull made a nice cracking sound when it hit the floor. Not sure if I was grinning by this point.

Not sure what happened next.

Well no, that's a lie. We can infer some things that happened between A and B. By the time you came to, the unlucky bastard was a bloody wreck on the floor, and there was a bloodstained pipe in your hand.
No, still not over that?

Excuse me while I take the opportunity to attempt to empty my already empty stomach a second time.

You said "wreck" right?

I did. It's more that he's a loosely connected set of chunks that have been smeared across the floor. Connect the dots, it's not hard. I imagine it is pretty hard to laugh when you're spitting your teeth out onto the floor. Harder if you're coughing up blood. And I would suppose it's pretty much impossible to laugh when you're dead.
Some people just have no class.

His buddy with the fucked up... hand-thing, must have fucked off. There's a big hand-shaped smear on the wall near where he was standing. Not sure what it's made of, not going to bother finding out. Still needed to get the handcuffs off, but that's less of a problem now.

Plenty of tools. Didn't take much work to get free.

They had a pretty good set-up here. It's an old shop of some sort. Maybe did auto work, judging by the big doors and the lifts. Maybe a chop-shop. Has that kind of feel to it. Grungy, sketchy. The bits of car might be mine. Found a couple odds and ends that look like they were mine. There's a few things that look like graves out back. Doubt I'm the first to have wound up here.

Murdering fucks. Deserved what they got.

Someone's been living here, judging from the cot, the wi-fi and the shitty netbook. Can't find my laptop. Not like there was anything important on it.

Now I need a new coat

I can pick up the signal from the service centre on the other side of the highway from the parking lot over here. Barely.

They haven't really started over here. They've just shut down the service centre. I expect they'll tear it down soon enough. With any luck no one will notice.

I pulled into the service centre just about sunset. It's farm country here, one of the places around here is big on tomatoes. They're quite good actually. I didn't see how they got in. Two of them. Boy and a girl.

They couldn't have been much more than teenagers. 15-16, best guess. It was the giggling that set me on edge. I couldn't figure out which of them was doing it. Masks were a permanent sort of grin. Like a clown's facepaint. It's disturbing.

I didn't see her pull the knife on me. That cost me. Pulled my arm up to protect myself and she sliced me across it. Bandaged now, but it bled pretty nice. I'll have to stop and clean it properly I expect. Don't know if I'll need stitches. wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last


Her buddy grabbed me from behind. He was taller than me. Bad luck for him. I've always been of a mind that the longer someone's legs are the better. It just means the soft, squishy bits are a little easier for me to get at.
In this case it meant pushing him back into a wall, slamming my shoulder into his gut and my elbow into his crotch and trying to get his chin with my head. Headbutting people generally isn't a good idea, but you work with what you've got.

Bubbles Mcgiggle was harder. She was all over the place. Wouldn't stop moving. Few more shallow cuts. Going to need a new coat, she put enough holes in this one. Couldn't keep her hand still though. She was shaking the whole time. Like she was freezing cold, or having a walking seizure. And the damn laughing. I'm sure I missed part of it that only dogs would hear.

I'm sure I got lucky. She tripped over a bit of uneven floor. Almost got me in the neck when she flailed the damn knife around. More broken fingers after that. Boots are good. She didn't stop laughing when I stepped on the hand with the knife in it. It got worse. Lanky was a little less inclined to come at me when I took the knife off of her. Not entirely disinclined. I'm no good with knives. It's a whole bag of snakes that I'm not willing to open up. Lanky got it in the shoulder and I booked it.

Lesson learned? Not in the fucking slightest. I'm not dead yet, right?

Don't stop me now

Should have known better. Did you really think I would just ignore something like that? Did you think you'd get away with it? Honestly, did you?
Miranda is dead. Frankly, I'm doing just fucking fine with that.
The problem is that someone trying to mess with me by using her email account is quite far from fine. That's just rude. More precisely, it's people fucking with me, which is something I really can't stand.

Now, the dumbass responsible? He's getting his just desserts at the moment.
He tried to run. But you don't get points for trying. He didn't run fast enough. Steel toes are good for kicking the shit out of someone. Might have been taller than me, but he's a scrawny little bastard. And that plastic mask of his wasn't worth shit.

What does this would-be antagonist have to show for his trouble?
Two hands worth of broken fingers, more bruises than I'd care to count, maybe a rib or two broken, and some missing teeth. Don't think done yet. He's still got thumbs. And the ability to walk. Those are a little harder and I figured I'd take a break before getting back to work.
Can't say I haven't been enjoying myself.
That'd be lying.

A brief interlude of violence

Of course.
Of course someone is fucking with me.
Of course someone has decided that THIS! This must be the correct moment to fuck with me.
Which means that the logical thing to do is to keep going in the direction I was going and let them keep on at their little games.

But you know what? You've caught me in a bit of a bad mood. Not feeling the logical vibe today. What I am feeling is a terrible desire to find the party responsible and break a few of their fingers. For starters. I'm given to understand that fingers are necessary for operating a keyboard and I'd rather permit the person or persons responsible to do so for the foreseeable future.

So I'll tell you what asshole. This is your notice. I'm turning my car around. If you would like to avoid pain, seriously bodily harm and assorted very unpleasant words that I would like to have with you, you should step away from that account you just broke into, and start running at the sound of the tone.

I don't take kindly to people fucking with me by using dead people.


Beep.


Post Script: Sorry if this gets to you two or three days late. There's not much in the way of free internet between where I am at the moment and my destination. I'll probably have arrived by the time it gets there. But you've got to see to the formalities when you're dealing with mad people.

Pardon me, there's a spot of violence I need to be doing. I'll let you know how that goes, shall I?

Assault, Breaking and Entering, and Jaywalking

So, I might just have committed a felony or two. Running down my (admittedly limited) knowledge I've just stolen, and committed assault and just a little bit of battery.

No one's heard from Miranda. Radio silence. Total radio silence.

Observations then? Just the facts?
I'm jumpy. It's interesting in a way. You get complacent. I wonder if this is how monkeys feel? You know, climbing trees to stay out of reach of things with bigger teeth and claws.

But yeah, jumpy. I really can't stand sitting around. I can hardly manage to write this post. It's like being on an adrenaline rush. Right after you've gotten scared or hit something in the face. It's just gogogogogogogo. Incessantly.

That's why I've got a car now. I've been keeping a low profile. Big crowds, transit (thank god for bus passes), trying to fade into the background noise. It worked for a little while. I saw it yesterday though. Standing in the middle of the street. I don't know how you can tell if it doesn't have a face but it was... watching me. It's mid-day and it's just standing there, nine-foot-tall and suited and faceless AND NO ONE NOTICES.

No one. Not even a blink. They just sort of stepped around it. It's like they knew something was there, but they weren't noticing just what was there.

And then I blinked. Lost line of sight. And it wasn't there. Almost freaked out. Would have had mall security called on me. Not safe in Ottawa. Not any more.

But I saw it this time. That's the important thing. I saw it.