A quick lesson children. Hitting like a girl doesn't mean the person can't hit. It means they're going to hit you where it matters.

You learn pretty fast, if girls actually fight? They're not the fairest people in the world. And if you've still got some sort of deluded sense of honour about not hitting the "fairer sex", how the everloving fuck aren't you dead already?

Case in point. I'm currently nursing a black eye, among other bruises, scrapes and a rather unpleasant cut across the ribs.

But she's dead, so it's not like I'll be indulging the habit.

I didn't think it would be this easy.

It occurs to me that I've been deliberately vague about where I am and where I'm going.

I'm not a long-term plan sort of guy. Never have been, consequences be damned.
You see, the more you think about something I figure, the more you're going to worry about what happens afterwards. Especially if it goes wrong.

No one will ever let you forget those fuck ups. No one. So you live with them. Wear them like armour.

So what have I been doing? I don't stop driving. Not for more than a few hours at a stretch. I've got a map in case I get lost. I've got the internet. But I wake up and I drive. Not much in the way of a course. Maybe wake up with a direction in mind. "Going east today" maybe. And from there, just roll with it.

Plans go wrong. It's like something made to live in a vacuum, or under extreme pressure. Do you know what happens to things that live under those conditions when they're exposed to the real world? Boom. Messy.

Get to the point.

Right. So, imagine my surprise. I stop for gas somewhere yesterday, and the missing posters... dear god the missing posters.

Seven children, in the past... four months I seem to remember. Bang. Gone, right out of their houses.
Sounds like anyone we know?

My interest was... piqued, for lack of a better word, so I stuck around.

And I found something. What, you might ask? We're talking about Them. It's little busy hands and feet.
Just one, not that you'd expect more. Small town. Statistics... It's touch was everywhere. You could see it... feel it. In that sort of ghost town way. This place is not for the living.
I drove by one of the local schools? Bloody thing drawn in chalk. Operator symbols. Fucking everywhere. Like they were mushrooms, and it had just rained.

Not important.

In any case, I found the bastards. It didn't take too much digging. Imagine their surprise. I'm probably a crappy shot, but a gun is a gun, and pointing one at someone, especially if you've just burst in the door and caught them with their metaphorical pants down, does a lot to put a little menace into what you're about to say.

I found them. Two of them, small building on the outside of town.

The funny thing is, you're also a lot less menacing if you're in the middle of making waffles.


One of them starts to get up, looks like he's scared. About to do something stupid. The other is busy holding a bloody waffle iron. I had to stop myself from laughing a little.
"Sit down."
He doesn't argue.
"You're the brains?"
Waffles nods. "Yeah."

Not much brains in either of them, to be perfectly honest.

"There any more of you?"
Waffles manages to stutter out a: "N-n-no"
Point the gun at him a little more emphatically.
"I don't remember asking you a damn thing."
Scared guy shakes his head.
Now, at this point, Waffles thinks he can talk his way out of it, like it was some kind of misunderstanding.
So I point the gun at him.

Not so much point as slam it into the back of his head.

That shuts him up.
"Did I break your concentration? "No? Guess you were finished then. Let me offer you a reply."

Bang. Waffles is down.
Bang. Scared guy takes one in the gut.

Roll credits, get the hell out of there.

Rocked the boat

Someone tried to kill me today.

That feels new, oddly enough. It's not that it's never been a possibility, but this time it was different.
You can kill people lots of ways, we're fragile, breakable little things.  Before it was always a chance that you'd live through being stabbed or bludgeoned. This one had a gun.

Stupid. Was he trying to get himself killed?

Maybe. That's the point of a gun. You can, presumably not kill someone with it, but at the end of the day, it's what it was made for. Killing. Using it another way goes against what it was made for. Against it's... purpose, so to speak.

He's not exactly doing so well.
Bullet wounds will do that.

Gun's mine now. Not doing so well though. But I'm still alive.

The important bit, right?

Right.

Back on the fucking road then.

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.

Air Raid Sirens

Bit of a bad season. Lots of dead people. Didn't know any of them, but I try to keep up with the obits. I have to keep score somehow, right? We've actually got confirmation that Zeke Strahm, face-punching, gun-toting, ex-cop wunderkind is dead. Not pretty at all, had to happen eventually.

This isn't the time or place for heroes. It's time to start looking for cover.
Air raid sirens and thunderclouds. Hope I can run fast enough. You're dead if you stay still, and standing on the high ground is just asking to be struck by lightning.
Anyone who says otherwise is fucking mental. Delusional, to a man. Some of them had fucking messiah complexes.
Heroes get killed. No question. It's just a matter of how many people are unlucky go with them.

Time to get back on the road. A knife wound and broken fingers obviously weren't disincentive enough for some people.

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?

I am a bastard. I think I've made that abundantly clear. I make no apologies for it. I like it. It works.
Until I'm given reason to feel otherwise, I don't like you. I'm not a fucking fan of people, in case we've missed that little fact.  I look out for myself, it's worked out.


I don't even known why I'm still writing this. I don't need to fucking justify myself.

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.

So, winter is actually here, negative temperatures, about a foot of snow and BLINDING AS FUCK ALL if you decide to look outside while the sun is up. Fucking albedo.

I'm not going to starve to death, which is nice. On the other hand, I had to deal with the Grocery Store which was simply lovely. See the link for my earlier notes about that particular establishment.

Also, I have a new follower. Well that's interesting.
Let's see... I'm going to guess this is about trolling, judging by the timing, so if you intend to upbraid me for it SOD OFF.
Is that clear? Granted, if anyone else has bothered to find their way over here, feel free to try to troll me back.
Or, I suppose it would be more appropriate to say:

Come at me bro.

The Movie

So, that whole date thing which I seem to have accidentally engendered is tonight.
Not quite sure how that'll go. I'm confident that I'll make an absolute fucking prat out of myself or be perfectly unable to shut up.

I'm still not sure that anyone actually reads this (not even the prof who suggested we start these things [HI ROY]) but if you'd like to try to help me calm down, I'd be more than willing to accept aid. Or troll you, I'm not sure where that particular mood-aspect is leaning at the moment.

Try not to take it personally if I do, it's just the World and I keeping track of who's winning.