(no subject)
More Dublin By Night, in which our hero discovers what the little Health chart on the stats sheet is for...
... and promptly descends it like a greased ladder.
Dustin Bradshaw
December 2, 2010 (Thursday)
I woke up the next morning on Peel’s secondhand sofa with a crick in my neck, his half-ton mutt snoring on my chest, and his proposition on my mind. (Y’know, Peel’s. Not the mutt’s.)
See, I owed my man Peel some money too… He was the $200 debt. And while handing over the last $50 I had in my wallet was enough to pave my way to a safe place to sleep for the night, Peel knew me well enough to see just how desperate I was at a glance.
I needed to get out of town. Peel needed the rest of the money and someone to run a bit of product over to Dublin for him (over all the fuckin’ weird places). There was an obvious solution to everyone’s problems here and, although it wasn’t exactly going to be cotton candy and Disneyland fun times for me, there were a lot of worse ways that it could’ve gone down.
Like, say, waking up properly to the thud-thud-thud of Mr. Crowbar knocking on Peel’s apartment door.
I regarded my only unconditional ally in the city with dismay. The mutt whined and slunk off into kitchen, abandoning me to my fate. I groaned and scrubbed my hands over my face, shaky and stupid as my brain tried to accelerate from cozy sleep time to fight-or-flight mode in the space of a few seconds.
I unlocked Peel’s door, swung it open, and said “Hi!” with a smile. “It’s okay, man, it’s all good. I got the money for you in here. That’s why I came here, right? To get the rest of your cash.”
Now, I swear it wasn’t as stupid a move as it sounded. It was the first step in my very clever plan, which involved inviting the guy in, dodging past him, and hightailing it for freedom.
It was a simple plan. It was a brilliant plan. It was a plan which definitely didn’t take into account the other two bruisers lurking out in the hallway behind Mr. Crowbar.
They took me to this warehouse and tied me to a chair, just like something out of an early Bond movie. Except if I were James Bond, there’d be some hot babe with a Russian accent involved and my watch would sprout a nifty little laser to cut the ropes in the nick of time.
Unfortunately, this was my life, so I was stuck with Mr. Crowbar & Company, and I had already pawned my watch the week before. I twisted my hands around, trying to loosen the ropes that had been tied tight enough to make my fingers tingle.
“Stop fidgeting,” Mr. Crowbar said.
“Come on, I’m just getting comfy,” I protested.
He slapped me hard enough that my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek and ears rang. I swallowed a mouthful of my own blood and snarled “Motherfucker, you are gonna be in for worlds of hurt when I’m untied…”
At which point, they produced a hose.
Now, as a local, I happen to know that there’s a special scientific phenomenon unique to Edmonton winters. When you’re outside or, say, in a poorly insulated warehouse, time slows down. Five minutes feels like half an hour as your extremities go numb and you shiver so hard that you can hardly breathe or think. Multiple that by the effects of being drenched with a blast from a firehose, right down to the skin, and I didn’t have the first clue how long they kept me there like that because it felt like years.
By the time the big boss finally deigned to stroll in, I was shivering so violently that my muscles ached and I couldn’t speak. Which was probably a good thing, because the big boss was, uh… Well, the name was obviously meant to be ironic.
“You have a week to get us the money,” he informed me, folding his arms in the shadow of his bruisers looming on either side of him. “One week.”
I grinned at him, teeth chattering, and did not make a single solitary comment about him siccing the rest of the Lollipop Guild on me.
“S-s-sounds good to me,” I stuttered. “G-g-gonna have to untie me before I can d-d-do anything though. Hard to make money s-s-stuck in here…”
He nodded his brute squad forward and I had just enough time to think ‘Well jeez, it shouldn’t take three of them to untie me’ before the pounding started.
I like to think me and Mr. Crowbar had bonded somewhat over the course of this difficult time. It was the only explanation for why he didn’t break anything.
I gagged and coughed when they finally backed off, the air blasted out of me by a well-aimed blow to the gut (Hulking Henchman Two obviously wasn’t a kindred spirit), the ropes keeping me from doubling over like I wanted to.
“One week,” the Big Boss reiterated, like I would’ve forgotten already. He walked up to me, which put us approximately eye-to-eye. (I might’ve giggled hysterically, just a little.) “One week to get the six grand, or else I start breaking bones. I generally like starting with the fingers.” He put his fist around my left pinky and bent it back, far enough to hurt. “Like this one…”
I figured he was going to stop, like Peel always did. You know, ha ha, going to break all your bones, you little junkie twerp, nah, just kidding, I love ya, man…
There was a disturbingly loud crack and a scream tore itself out of my throat. My finger stayed right where he’d put it, pointing straight up at the distant ceiling at an angle that would’ve been funny if it hadn’t hurt bad enough that it made my vision fuzz grey for a minute.
So that was my Thursday. Hard to remember because, as the Big Boss nodded his boys forward again for their cage-fighter fists to bear me off to sleepytime once more, it felt very much like a Monday.
* * *
ETA: Things I learned during this scene. When the storyteller goes "What do you do?" and you go "I SWEAR REVENGE!" and she pauses and goes "... really? Out loud?", it is probably a wise idea to reconsider before going "YUP!"
... and promptly descends it like a greased ladder.
Dustin Bradshaw
December 2, 2010 (Thursday)
I woke up the next morning on Peel’s secondhand sofa with a crick in my neck, his half-ton mutt snoring on my chest, and his proposition on my mind. (Y’know, Peel’s. Not the mutt’s.)
See, I owed my man Peel some money too… He was the $200 debt. And while handing over the last $50 I had in my wallet was enough to pave my way to a safe place to sleep for the night, Peel knew me well enough to see just how desperate I was at a glance.
I needed to get out of town. Peel needed the rest of the money and someone to run a bit of product over to Dublin for him (over all the fuckin’ weird places). There was an obvious solution to everyone’s problems here and, although it wasn’t exactly going to be cotton candy and Disneyland fun times for me, there were a lot of worse ways that it could’ve gone down.
Like, say, waking up properly to the thud-thud-thud of Mr. Crowbar knocking on Peel’s apartment door.
I regarded my only unconditional ally in the city with dismay. The mutt whined and slunk off into kitchen, abandoning me to my fate. I groaned and scrubbed my hands over my face, shaky and stupid as my brain tried to accelerate from cozy sleep time to fight-or-flight mode in the space of a few seconds.
I unlocked Peel’s door, swung it open, and said “Hi!” with a smile. “It’s okay, man, it’s all good. I got the money for you in here. That’s why I came here, right? To get the rest of your cash.”
Now, I swear it wasn’t as stupid a move as it sounded. It was the first step in my very clever plan, which involved inviting the guy in, dodging past him, and hightailing it for freedom.
It was a simple plan. It was a brilliant plan. It was a plan which definitely didn’t take into account the other two bruisers lurking out in the hallway behind Mr. Crowbar.
They took me to this warehouse and tied me to a chair, just like something out of an early Bond movie. Except if I were James Bond, there’d be some hot babe with a Russian accent involved and my watch would sprout a nifty little laser to cut the ropes in the nick of time.
Unfortunately, this was my life, so I was stuck with Mr. Crowbar & Company, and I had already pawned my watch the week before. I twisted my hands around, trying to loosen the ropes that had been tied tight enough to make my fingers tingle.
“Stop fidgeting,” Mr. Crowbar said.
“Come on, I’m just getting comfy,” I protested.
He slapped me hard enough that my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek and ears rang. I swallowed a mouthful of my own blood and snarled “Motherfucker, you are gonna be in for worlds of hurt when I’m untied…”
At which point, they produced a hose.
Now, as a local, I happen to know that there’s a special scientific phenomenon unique to Edmonton winters. When you’re outside or, say, in a poorly insulated warehouse, time slows down. Five minutes feels like half an hour as your extremities go numb and you shiver so hard that you can hardly breathe or think. Multiple that by the effects of being drenched with a blast from a firehose, right down to the skin, and I didn’t have the first clue how long they kept me there like that because it felt like years.
By the time the big boss finally deigned to stroll in, I was shivering so violently that my muscles ached and I couldn’t speak. Which was probably a good thing, because the big boss was, uh… Well, the name was obviously meant to be ironic.
“You have a week to get us the money,” he informed me, folding his arms in the shadow of his bruisers looming on either side of him. “One week.”
I grinned at him, teeth chattering, and did not make a single solitary comment about him siccing the rest of the Lollipop Guild on me.
“S-s-sounds good to me,” I stuttered. “G-g-gonna have to untie me before I can d-d-do anything though. Hard to make money s-s-stuck in here…”
He nodded his brute squad forward and I had just enough time to think ‘Well jeez, it shouldn’t take three of them to untie me’ before the pounding started.
I like to think me and Mr. Crowbar had bonded somewhat over the course of this difficult time. It was the only explanation for why he didn’t break anything.
I gagged and coughed when they finally backed off, the air blasted out of me by a well-aimed blow to the gut (Hulking Henchman Two obviously wasn’t a kindred spirit), the ropes keeping me from doubling over like I wanted to.
“One week,” the Big Boss reiterated, like I would’ve forgotten already. He walked up to me, which put us approximately eye-to-eye. (I might’ve giggled hysterically, just a little.) “One week to get the six grand, or else I start breaking bones. I generally like starting with the fingers.” He put his fist around my left pinky and bent it back, far enough to hurt. “Like this one…”
I figured he was going to stop, like Peel always did. You know, ha ha, going to break all your bones, you little junkie twerp, nah, just kidding, I love ya, man…
There was a disturbingly loud crack and a scream tore itself out of my throat. My finger stayed right where he’d put it, pointing straight up at the distant ceiling at an angle that would’ve been funny if it hadn’t hurt bad enough that it made my vision fuzz grey for a minute.
So that was my Thursday. Hard to remember because, as the Big Boss nodded his boys forward again for their cage-fighter fists to bear me off to sleepytime once more, it felt very much like a Monday.
* * *
ETA: Things I learned during this scene. When the storyteller goes "What do you do?" and you go "I SWEAR REVENGE!" and she pauses and goes "... really? Out loud?", it is probably a wise idea to reconsider before going "YUP!"