Stripped, Raped, and Strangled

Joined: 25 Dec 2007 Posts: 1

Waking up, face-down and in a puddle of your own piss and puke is never a bright, cheerful way to start the day. Finding a shattered bottle of Jack Daniels in the pocket of the coat that you're wearing, when the coat is the only thing that you're wearing, is even worse. Especially when the coat isn't even your own. Finding the broken shards of glass with your hand is probably a suitable misery to stack on top of the shit pile. This, and he hasn't even gotten off of the floor yet. So you get up. You walk around for a minute, finding a cigarette and lighting it. Breakfast. You stretch, scratch, and enjoy the nice, solid chunk of morning wood that you've got going. You have to savor every moment when you've drank so much fucking alcohol that getting an erection is like Christmas. Once a year. Once the initial shock of having woken up again starts to wear off, you begin to get restless. Damn, that's a good cigarette, but the stomach doesn't agree. It wants food. You've gotta agree, or else this is just going to turn into a worse argument that the one that caused your third wife to break up with you. On the couch, there's a gunbelt. Remnants of history in the Los Angeles Police Department. You strap it on, clicking the buckle together so that at least your waggling penis can rest on something during it's hard work of helping to guide you. Bless it's little fucking heart.

You stumble through the assortment of clothing, beer bottles, more clothing, emptied cigarette packs, unfamiliar clothing, and follow the smell to the kitchen. It smells like death, but you don't care. You're here for what? Five hours a day? Four and a half of those are spent sleeping, usually. Ahh! The kitchen! You've made it! You grab the blender pitcher from the base and walk around on the slick surface of the tile, gathering up ingredients for your wanton stomach. Left over pizza. A stale, cold mug of coffee. A piece of cheese that, for some reason, is stuck to the door of the cabinet. Pieces of steak that are left in a pan, that you don't even remember cooking. Then you hit the icebox. Mustard. Ketchup. An onion. Worchestershire sauce. Small packets of horseradish from some restaurant. The rest of the Robitussin and Pepto Bismol. That should do it. It had better do it, at least, since there's nothing edible left to put into the infernal machine. Shuffling back across the kitched, pale asscheeks clapping together, you set the pitcher back on the base and hit the button marked 'Puree'. In just seconds, you have a breakfast shake that would kill a homeless person. Eat your heart out, Rachel Ray. Thirty minute meals, my ass. You choke down the concoction, taking satisfaction in the fact that at least it isn't made of dog or cat, like the hotdogs you're going to be eating for dinner. Fucking hotdog vendors. Animal control would have a field day with them. Animal control HAS had a field day with them in the past. Serves 'em right.

You're fed, now. And at least one-quarter dressed. The general position of the sun as it attempts to burn the eyeballs right out of your sockets would tell you that it's almost noon. Good. Good. You're ahead of schedule. This day isn't going to slip past like the last one did. You've got it's number. Now. How to start. Morning news? No luck. The television hasn't worked in months. Radio? Damn it all. You wouldn't be able to find it in this mess, if you wanted to. Newspaper? You'd be surprised at how close newspaper can feel to toilet paper, when you don't want to run to the store with a little asshole talking shit behind your back. With the official decision to give up on the whole 'update of the city' thing, you start to look for pants. That can't be too hard, right? It's not, actually. There's at least twenty pair laying on the ground. You take a pick, coming up lucky. The stains on this pair aren't noticeable. So you slip into them, and give 'em a little button. Some people say that God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps he does. If there was such a thing as a miracle, it might be when you stop in the hallway and nudge the bottom corner of a picture frame, straightening it out a bit. That's the most cleaning that this house has seen in almost a year. You forget about the world for just a second, as fingertips run over flawless glass, showcasing a picture of you. You're smiling. There are not black circles beneath your eyes. You don't look pissed off. Or sad. Or terrified. You look...content. You couldn't have been more than twenty at the time. A woman rests in your arms. She's an angel, looking up at you from her nestled spot, with big and beautiful doe-like eyes. It's a wedding picture. Yeah. God does work in mysterious ways. That holy fucking puppet master. You caress the picture, and move on. Walking away from it is worse than waking up in the morning.

Out of habit, you pick up a white shirt and slip into it, starting to button up the front, one at a time. You could just as easily wear a tee shirt, but you don't. Old habits die hard. Harder than you might think. You roll down the sleeves and fasten the cuff on each one, giving them both a nice little tug and straightening them out. Fuck the coat. It's not going to be cold out. You take the gun belt off and toss it back onto the couch. No more pretend for the morning. You take up the shoulder holster and strap, and work it around your thin, almost gaunt frame. It's still got the Mark XIX Desert Eagle in it. What a beautiful gun. The barrel is so accomodating that you don't even need a girlfriend. You can just fuck your fucking gun. And if there's an accident, and it blows your shit off, well, that'll teach /it/ to go on strike, won't it? You walk into the next room over, snagging a pair of shoes as you go, and picking up a duffel bag. This room wouldn't make sense to someone who didn't watch horror movies. The walls are lined with books that range from Occultism, to how to turn pennies into pipebombs, to street medicine. You pack your bag for the day. Handful of ammunition. Vial of oddly cold water. Hand mirror. Sharpened chair leg. Silver garotte wire. Dog whistle. Mace. An extra pistol, this one a normal nine. The tools of the trade, right? What is it that you do for a living, anyway? You piss people off. A lot. People with big giant teeth, and people that are more wolf than human. The stuff that legends and myths are made of. There has to be a safer occupation out there. Why do you do this hazardous job? If you knew that, well, maybe you wouldn't feel so miserable when the cops arrest you after saving a child from a werewolf, or setting a vampire on fire because it was raping the free will from an innocent woman. So she was a stripper. She had a kid to feed. That doesn't make her prey. Those things that go bump in the night have no right to judge the lives of the human population. To pick, on a whim, who will live and who will die. Neither do you, really. You're just as big of a hypocrite as them, and you do know that two wrongs don't make a right. But damn, does it feel good. And when the cops do show up and put the cuffs on you for killing a 'man', then at least you get the satisfaction of knowing that someone up there still cares enough to at least hate you. You've never been sentenced, though. It's hard to sentence someone when there's nothing left but a pile of ash, and the body is missing. Of course, you're not stupid enough to ignore the small, almost imperceptible amount of luck that has carried you this far in life. That, or it's been divine will that you survive to be shat upon each morning.

You toss open the door to your apartment and head out into the big, wide world. The sun and sound are like blaring, terrible torture devices, crushing your skull in and causing your brain to curl in on itself in an attempt to escape the devious machinations of nature. You ignore it. This is normal. It's just life. You at least woke up this morning, right? Even if it was more painful than suicide. You don't have the balls for suicide. You figure, if you force enough alcohol through your liver, and chain-smoke three packs a day, at least you won't have to wake up at some point. Hell, if you're lucky, it won't even count as suicide. And if it does, well, here's hoping that you've put away enough raging monsters and bloodsucking neck biters to at least get into Heaven with just a slap on the hand. At least, that would be the case if you still bothered to hope anymore. At this point, the only reason that you care about getting in, anyway, is just to see what this 'God' character is all about, and why everyone is making such a big fucking fuss over his all-mighty, omnipotent, lily-white ass.

You're Adrien Cross. The only listing in the phone book under Occultist. Are you a hero? Nah. Are you a savior? Not at all. You don't believe in heroes, or saviors, or vague, archaic concepts like peace and goodwill. You've just, unlike the rest of the population, opened your mind to the fact that we're not alone out there, or at the top of the food chain. In fact, you're pretty sure that humans get pushed around and bullied, a lot. Most of them never know it. But you do. And so when something bumps in the night, you're there to bump back. Is it healthy? No more than chain smoking and alcoholism. Is it right? Yes. You know this, because even if good and evil aren't as black and white as people think them to be, and even if God really has pissed all over every dream and hope that you've ever had: You still know right from wrong. 'What's their excuse?' you wonder.