[fiction] The University of Hard Knocks, and The Janitor of Doom Options

[Wounded Ronin]

This is a piece of fiction which I had originally entered for the Tisoz fiction contest. However, I have decided to withdraw it from the contest because I felt like I entered the contest with certain mistaken assumptions about how it would be run. ( http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?act=...t=0#entry409090 and http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=0&#entry409456 )

Since I have withdrawn from the contest I can now share the story immediately with the rest of the DSF community.

This story is the first episode out of two episodes. It's actually written from the perspective of a SR3 character whom I used many years ago.

In keeping with the various gender role playing discussions which have come up on DSF I'd be very appreciative if you, the reader, think that I have given a convincing female voice, even though I am a male author. I would be very interested to hear your opinion on this matter.


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The University of Hard Knocks and The Janitor of Doom


Chapter 1

I like my apartment. Since people generally consider more spacious to be worth more money I
surmise that most people would disagree with me because I'm living in an urban studio apartment
which resembles a shoebox in terms of both size and geometry.

The term "urban studio apartment" often conjures up all sorts of ideas about kitchenettes which
make you smell your dinner all night and tiny bathrooms with the shower head strategically aimed
at the toilet bowl. In the case of my urban studio apartment I'm getting even more of that sort of
charm because it's situated in a slum of Boston where many pizza and Chinese food restaurant
refuse to deliver. This means that my walls are a little bit dirtier, my roof is a little bit leakier, and
my toilet facilities are just that much more disgustingly retro.

It goes nicely with my mental state these days. I've been working in the shadows for as long as I can
remember, and I've operated in places as different as Quebec and the CAS, and I've even worked
with a man who is long dead in the frozen north but who I still have nightmares about, but I've
never been on my own before. Working alone is depressing on a professional level. Johnsons
wonder what kind of crazy person would take the job by herself. The risks are a lot higher because
there's no team. There's only meticulous planning but when accident and error choose to urinate on
my plan it may very well be time for me to check out of Hotel Life. It would be nice if I could work
out of the shadows but unfortunately my previous C4 related antics make that less feasible.

Of course this shouldn't even be a problem. If I were smart I'd simply hook up with a new team of
people whom I don't trust, hope they don't use me as cannon fodder, and decrease (probably) my
overall statistical risk in the field. The problem is that I'm not smart, at least not all the time. I feel
as if my mind right now is a hamster in a wheel. A hamster in a wheel with an electric shock probe
up its small hamstery rectum. It spirals around in a kind of nihilistic whirlwind of depression and I
have trouble gathering the personal and mental resources with which to take actions I know I can
(probably) accomplish. When my emotions defeat my meticulous side I truly hate myself. This
happens more often than I want you, or anyone, to know.

So I can lean back in my armchair which smells of mold and feel the cloth rubbing against the back
of my neck as if it's the hate that bounces inside my head for my lack of rationality from my left
temple to my right and back again. I can look at my dusty tortoise terminal with my stocks of C4
balanced neatly on top of it, my mattress with sheets twisted like large white rubber bands, and the
overturned cardboard shipping boxes that are my nightstand and dining table and drink in the lack of
lighting which fills the air around me as thick as a fat man's fart when I only have the trideo on. The
environment suits me when I try to shrink backwards into my chair away from the world. When I'm
alone here is one of the few times I feel like I can hide and rest. Hamlet really did have the right
idea when he said, "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space but I
have bad dreams."

When I have bad dreams like this I turn to drinking alcohol. I said alcohol and not synthahol. I feel
like if a person is going to go through the trouble and expense to do something self destructive it
might as well be done right. If I die of alcohol poisoning after drinking way too much Grey Goose
at least I went out with a bang. If I die with piss in my panties after drinking too much White Wolf
that's more than just death. That's eternal humiliation. I'm pretty convinced there's a special hell
somewhere for those who expire on hard liquor which costs less than a fifteen minute theraputic
massage.

Mixed drinks are really one of my passions. They combine the requirements of both art (inspiration
and intuition) and science (factual knowledge and methodical, meticulous application of the mind).
At present I'm drinking historically accurate 1930s era martinis. They must be one part vermouth
to five parts gin and contrary to popular expectation they must be stirred and not shaken. Since
presentation is an important part of any martini stirring is preferable to shaking because it's less
likely to create bubbles and cloudiness which would spoil an otherwise pristine visual image of the
chilled cocktail sitting in a crystal martini glass. Contemporary martinis have less vermouth than
their historical counterparts because of commercialization, otherwise known as dumbing down.
Basically, back in the 1930s martinis were more sophisticated with stronger tastes because they were
the bailiwick of the wealthy and well educated. As time went on bars had to tailor their drinks to
Joe Public and as a result the strong taste of vermouth was gradually edited out until now most
bartender's guides actually only prescribe a few drops of vermouth in the martini.

I'm on my fifth 1930s martini right now, so I have to apologize to you for how my thoughts are
starting to run together. I try to stay methodical but sometimes things run together a bit when we get
to martini number five and beyond.

In the background my trideo is relaying some news from Quebec which is not news at all but rather
a boring cultural spot which was recorded sometime else but is now playing at 3AM because there's
nothing better to broadcast.

Les héros imaginaires ne vieillissent jamais, surtout s'ils nous sont familiers comme l'est Arsène
Lupin. Malgré son apparence un peu désuète, avec son chapeau haut de forme, sa cape et son
monocle, il s'impose aujord'hui à l'écran comme dans les livres de Maurice Leblanc il y a presque
un siècle.

Damn. I'm meeting a Johnson later today.


Chapter 2

The Johnson at the club asked me if I wanted a drink and I didn't try to sound too eager when I
replied because I'd feel very frustrating if that were the real reason I'm only getting 1500 nuyen for
this run. If I don't waste any money by using bullets on people that will be rent for this month and
five hundred left over for my booze.

"Saw-ter", he'd asked me, "what language is that?"

"Sauter. French," I replied, but I left out "you monolingual moron", which leaves me
confident that I didn't drink too much at the meet.

Right now I'm shuffling through my apartment readying the things that I need for the run. I've
pulled on a clean nondescript pair of jeans but I'm looking for a clean grey sweatshirt since body
odor tends to make people remember you. I grope one-handed in the darkness with my bottle of
water half empty in my left hand. I pause for a moment, lean over, and look at myself through the
darkness obscuring the bathroom mirror. My pale skin contrasts with my neatly short black hair,
my underwear, and most distressingly with my eyes which are still kind of reddish from all that
alcohol. I take another big swig of water in vain.

The Johnson had been telling me that he wanted some files stolen off of a computer at Harvard
University.

"A basic datasteal?"

"No. A fundamental one. The system where the data is being kept doesn't even have any security
that I know of and the building isn't a very secure one."

"No security?"

"It's not totally unguarded. There's university security. I need someone who has demonstrated
solid infiltration skills in the past who won't be intimidated if something goes a little bit wrong but I
also need someone intelligent enough to bring back the right file. I'm putting down the money so I
can be sure that the job's done right tonight and I won't have to frag around with second attempts or
any of that nonsense."

"What a paean of encouragement."

"There's a paper being written at the Harvard University physics department. Professor Mulvhill
believes that he can prove that everything in the universe has behavior that can be modeled with
multiple six sided dice. However, he is trying to keep this groundbreaking discovery secret until he
can publish it in an academic journal. I want to see his work before that happens. Take this disk
and put the data on it using the university's tortoise terminal. You can email it to me at any matrix
café. Once I've got the files I'll activate the credstick I gave you and you'll be able to access the
funds."

I was confident that the job being offered to me was too good to be true but financially I had very
few options but to accept it. Besides, the meager pay could be construed as evidence that the job
was merely a bad job, rather than a classic "too good to be true" job with a huge payout.

I finally procure my clean grey sweatshirt and pull it over my head. I had began to extend my hand
towards the concealable holster hanging on my front doorknob which snuggled my Browning Max
Power but after a moment of contemplation I decided not to bring it with me.

My plan is to effortlessly blend in with my surroundings at Harvard by appearing to be a student
wearing a grey sweatshirt and blue jeans. Since I'm still a twentysomething it would be a flawless
disguise. If my subterfuge were to succeed bringing a gun or armor could blow my cover if
someone were to detain me while if I had no equipment, or only had an electronics kit, I would have
a better chance of being able to claim to be an engineering student. On the other hand, if the job
were a set-up then probably the firepower provided by a single suppressed heavy pistol would be
insufficient to make any sort of significant difference in my favor especially since I don't have any
cyberware or magical enhancements. Leaving my sidearm and armor behind is a calculated risk.

In the end I set out for the tube station to visit Harvard with only a black canvas backpack and an
electronics kit. At least I know now that I won't waste any bullets.



Chapter 3

When it's 11:00 at night on a university campus there are lights and students everywhere. The
important thing to recall is that the students will generally be going to the dormitories, dining halls,
and frat houses. With the exception of a few truly strange and depraved individuals, like physics
students, nobody flocks to the academic buildings. I crouch down and use my electronics kit on the
physics building maglock with confidence that if anyone is going to spot me they'll be skinny, frail,
and inside the building rather than outside.

Has it really come to this? I'm breaking into an unguarded building to steal and unguarded file.
Realistically it's quite unlikely that anything calamitous will happen to me tonight especially since I
left my weapons at home. What kind of shadowrunner am I, now?

But who am I kidding? Without cyber or magic doing any real job on my own would almost be
suicide. As an electronics and demolitions specialist I'm a team player, a support structure, but not
a superstar. As long as I'm too afraid to hook up with a new team this sort of drek will be my lot.
The problem is that I can be rather shy. It's hard for me to approach someone and ask for his or her
trust especially when I'm effectively requesting that trust with their life.

The heavy exterior door swings open to reveal a clean tile hallway extending to my left and my right
with flourescent lights buzzing cheerfully overhead. I stuff my electronics kit in my backpack and
walk down the hallway trying to imitate the pace of a student who drinks too much soykaf. Looking
worried or hurried will probably draw attention to me but I probably need to be gone before a
security guard or custodian notices how the maglock on the front door is dismantled and bypassed.

I stride energetically with a cup of lukewarm McHugh's soykaf in my left hand searching for stair
access to the other floors of the building. I realize that I don't know where the terminal is that I'm
supposed to be looking for. Passing a classroom to my right I see a young man wearing a polo shirt
and wrinkled khakis sitting at a wooden table who appears to be studying from a physics textbook.

I take a large swig of the soykaf to overcome my reticence and approach him with loud thumping
footsteps. As I enter the classroom the man turns around to gaze upon me.

"I haven't seen you before."

"I'm a grad student."

"What? I know all the physics grad students. I've never seen you before."

"Well, I'm an astronomy grad student."

"What? How did you get in here?"

"The door was open. Don't worry, I closed it. Listen, I need you to help me."

The man suddenly seemed more interested in me now that a female was asking for his aid. He got
up out of his chair and turned to face me fully.

"I heard that Professor Mulvhill is working on a paper about how all of natural science and physics
can be modeled on the basis of d6 probability. I really want to take a look at it; could you tell me
where it is?"

The man's mood abruptly changed for the worse.

"How do you know about that? That's not supposed to be public information."

"It's not?"

The man cocked his head and gazed at me as though he were trying to make me melt like a frozen
confection on a sultry summer's day.

"I'm going to call Professor Mulvhill. He needs to know if someone is coming here asking about his
paper. What's your name?"

A better woman would be able to deflect this line of conversation but for one such as myself it is
time to change tactics.

"Here, catch!"

I throw my backpack containing my electronics kit at the student. As he grabs it I hop forward and
deliver a rear leg front kick into his groin. I strike using the surface of my shin and throw the strike
upwards for maximum penetration. I don't train unarmed combat beyond a basic workable level
nor am I particularly large or strong but against an untrained physics student who studies at the
physics building late into the night everything is a free shot. He bends awkwardly at the waist still
clutching my backpack. I hesitate for a moment, thinking too much about my next move, but he still
doesn't recover in the time that a skilled fighter would have retaliated. I finally grasp him by the
ears and jerk his head straight down since he's already bent forward. He teeters and I slam a knee
into his face once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times; I keep pulling his head about
by his ears each time so by the time he's dropped my bag his hands are never in quite the right place
to protect himself. Blood begins to drip to the floor and stain my new jeans when he tilts to the side
and falls, dazed.

I straddle his hips so I can pound my fists once, twice, into his solar plexus. I begin to feel
something stir inside of me; the desire to do the same kinds of things to other people that were done
to me when I was a teenager. When I'm in these situations the urge erupts out of my subconscious
like a flight of bats erupting from a recently opened trapdoor leading to a subterranean cavern.
Adrenal energy makes my hands shake and charges my body with an intense feeling of purposeless
purpose. My voice begins to shake, and it becomes very soft. "Where is the data?"

"Uhh...uhh...ughh...I can't tell you..."

I don't say anything. I shuffle on my knees up his body, turn myself around, and pin his arms down
by his biceps with the weight of my body while I begin to unfasten his pants with my hands.

"What are you doing!?"

"You have one last chance to tell me."

"I can't!"

I pull my bag across the floor to me and pull out my electronics kit. Time to improvise. I produce a
pair of pliers. I use the pliers to grip a clump of the young student's pubic hair and I pull it out.
There's so much emotion and adrenaline coursing through my body that the motion looks jaunty.
The student howls in agony with a cry that echoes through the hallways and to my chagrin I realize I
can't gag him if I want him to tell me something. In any case, I can't give him a chance to rest and
gather his strength; I have to keep him mentally off guard. I grip another clump and pull it free, and
then another, and then another. His screams continue, louder each time, the pitch rising. What
comes to my mind is some kind of choir boy. I work my way downwards until I've gripped hairs on
his scrotum in my pliers.

"Tell me."

I can feel the muscles in his biceps spasming erratically and can feel his jagged breathing pattern on
my backside. I give him a moment to find the words.

"Third floor. Room 312. The password is ‘Kenson'."

I release the hairs and feel his body spasm under mine. I turn myself around so that I can look at
him in his face (a good fighter would have shucked me then) and gaze upon his pale head rolling
back on the floor.

"I'm sorry I hurt you. I have certain mental issues I'm acting out."

I can't afford any witnesses. While the student is still confused by my previous utterance I drop an
elbow into his left eye socket. He screams again, clenches his eyes shut, and rears his head back
forcefully. This gives me the chance I need to begin stabbing at his carotid arteries with my pliers.
My pliers aren't particularly sharp but luckily the student doesn't have very much muscle in his
neck. After maybe 5 minutes of stabbing I've gotten a good flow of blood from his left carotid
artery (and a lot of meat just caked on my pliers) and his struggles grow weaker. Now my arms
throb with fatigue and the exertion, combined with all the alcohol I drank earlier, is giving me a
mild headache again.

Frag. Frag. FRAG! I got carried away again. Episodes like his is why I used to C4 so many
buildings all over Boston. I'd get carried away like this, I'd leave a mess, and then I'd have to
destroy the evidence. But I don't have any C4 with me now, since that was part of my student
disguise. The student disguise which is now spattered with bright red arterial blood in a classic
forensic spatter pattern. I can feel the warmth on my face and in my hair. And all the screaming
that happened just now. The building must be deserted or else someone would have come.

I realize that I'm afraid to look in a mirror and I drop my pliers and stand unsteadily. I put my hand
to my throbbing forehead and leave a print. I walk unsteadily to my paper McHughs cup and gulp
the rest of the soykaf to make my headache go away but now there's a handprint on the paper cup.
The diuretic properties of the caffiene combined with all the water I drank before I left are making
my bladder swell but for right now going to the restroom and seeing the mess of myself, confronting
the utter foolishness of what I've done in the mirror, is the most horrifying thing I can imagine. I
wipe my hands dry on my jeans and crush the McHugh's cup in my shaking fist before wedging it in
my jean pocket. I survey the room and see the evidence I'm leaving behind; footprints and
handprints.

After a moment of icy indecision I grasp the dead student by the hair and pull him towards a
janitor's closet just outside the classroom in the hallway. It's trivial for me to open the maglock
securing the janitor's closet and inside I find a rolling mop bucket and bottles of ammonia. I can use
the ammonia and the mop to try and clean up my mess. Thank goodness that universities believe in
creating jobs for the community and therefore rely on human custodians whenever possible instead
of automated cleanup.

I should retrieve the data first. Once I've got the data on my disk I can stop back here and clean up
my mess. The mission always comes first. I grab my pliers, wipe my feet on the mop, and run to the
third floor with my electronics kit.

In minutes I'm putting the neural hat on my head and sliding my disk into the drive. I'm waiting for
the data to finish downloading when all of a sudden my whole body rattles. White flashes and then
an expanding sea of whiteness cover up and consume the virtual reality of the files I'm seeing
through the tortoise access.

This can't be ICE because I had the password! All of a sudden I'm back in the physical world as
my body falls off the chair to the side and my head is upended towards the ground. My hand does
not respond as I will it to cushion my fall and my skull impacts with the ground and my neck twists
painfully. When I see an elderly man dressed as the custodian bend over to push the contact points
of his taser against my carotid artery the experience is entirely emotional and quite devoid of
rationality.



Chapter 4


My skin wishes it could recoil from the cold that it's feeling and my upper back bellows an
inarticulate protest of acute discontent. I try to open my eyes but that doesn't seem to work. My
arms start to move but then stop, and I feel pain in my wrists. I can't see yet but I can hear a male
voice with a CAS accent.

"Mornin', darlin'. Yuh left one hell of a mess tuh clean up!"

My arms still aren't functioning properly. I try to roll over to my other side (my left knee reports
agonizing pain from being pressed too long against the floor) but as I roll over my back fire-like
pain erupts from my shoulders. I feel large chain links, like cookie cutters of misery, pressing hard
into my wrists and the flesh of my right buttock detects a large and heavy padlock shape.

Flesh of my right buttock? Am I naked?

"Rise and shine, darlin'."

Before I can process any more observations through the shroud of my confusion and rising feelings
of alarm I feel a calloused hand grip my right upper arm and shove me back over on my left side.
There so much pain from my overtaxed joints that I make a sound.

"It's 2 AM, darlin'. Almost time tuh make the doughnuts!"

Horrifying events can come rushing onto you with a berserker-like ferocity when you're helpless
and disorientated. The next thing I was aware of was my left breast being pressed to the ground and
a boot-print on top of it. The calloused hand on my upper right arm pulls my upper body up off the
ground while my left breast remains pinned to the ground by the booted foot.

My eyes flew open as pain flowed through my system and overflowed out of every receptor like a
keg overflowing simultaneously from the mouth of every frat boy at a party. I scream with a voice
ripped from my primal hardwired reactions as a living being; it is an inarticulate, powerful scream
that I hadn't made in many years and it instantly made my throat feel lacerated. My vision was
blurry and now seems to fly backwards into more blurriness. There is no eye in my hurricane of
sensation.

I honestly have no idea how long I am held like that but eventually I am dropped. I don't feel cold
anymore. My vision clears, slowly, as if it first wished to check if it was safe to come back or if it
would be better to run away forever. I am laying on a red tile floor covered with cracks and spots of
grease. Above me is a ceiling fan with an ancient fluorescent light; the graveyard of many insects.
The room itself is no more than twenty feet by twenty feet; it is like a modified hallway or closet
prepared for occupancy. A bed and a small kerosene stove are on one side of the room, pressed
against a waterstained white drywall. Opposite them is a metallic front door and a wooden door
which probably leads to a closet or shower. My tormenter is the custodian who had tasered me back
at Harvard. He looks like a Caucasian, skinny, about 60 years old, with stringy arms suggesting a
career of handiwork. He has long but thinning white hair and he still wears the polo shirt and slacks
of a custodian. He looks at me with the unselfconscious exaggerated grin of someone who has just
found something very good to eat.

"Sorry ‘bout takin' yer clothes, darlin'. You done went and peed yourself when I zapped you."

The man reaches under a trashbag stacked against the wall and pulls out my panties and pitches
them onto my face. Since I am immobilized they land on my head, covering my eyes and nose.
They are damp and smell overwhelmingly of caffeinated urine. Reflexively I retch and gag while
my mind runs in furious circles desperately intellectualizing my situation. When he didn't remove
them after a moment I realized that either this man was a sexual predator who would likely degrade
me and then kill me, or else he was about to interrogate me and was using humiliation as a
preparatory tool. For the first time in my life I feel a wish swimming deep inside my belly that I be
subjected to torture interrogation and not something else.

"You're one sick little bitch, darlin'. You slashed up a young man like you was Jeffery ‘frickin
Dahmer. But you also were downloadin' some data. I got me thinkin', you're a psycho bitch, but
you also are gettin' some data. You must be one of ‘dem shadowrunners."

Fear, nausea, endorphins, and adrenaline are mixing to form the mother of all cocktails deep in my
belly. I think I'm quivering with fear; no, an adrenal dump. I feel his boot press threateningly into
my left breast again.

"What did you download, darlin', how much were you gunna sell it for, and who can I sell it to?"

It occurs to me that if I told him he'd probably kill me, especially if he had no problem cleaning up a
mutilated body. The urine on my underwear was beginning to irritate my face. Somehow, I don't
want to die to a southern janitor with a rustic accent, nor do I want to beg him for anything.
Mentally, I'd begun to associate him with people who buy Southern Comfort because it's cheap and
because they utterly lack mental sophistication.

I shake the underwear off my head and mimic his accent: "Eye was gunna trade it at a hoe down!
Haw, haw, haw!"

Frag! Frag! FRAG! I got carried away again. That was irrational. It was my emotion and the
adrenaline! This is going to hurt...

My eyes widen as I see his foot draw back and slam horizontally into my left breast. The pain and
the shock drive the wind from me, but this is just the beginning.

"DAMN YANKEE BITCH!"

The janitor drives kick after kick into my chest and belly. At first I clench my abdominal muscles to
take the hits but he is too strong and I feel like I am suffocating, never able to draw breath.
Eventually he lands a solid hit to my liver region that is simultaneously accompanied by shooting
pain from my floating ribs as well as the sickening internal pain and weakness that accompanies a
solid liver shot. I can no longer breathe. The impacts continue. I know my organs will be damaged
and my ribs may be driven through my liver. I thrash in agony, helplessly, but I begin to feel more
distant as my vision begins to go white again.

The janitor's stopped. He's giving me a chance to recover. I feel like I'm sinking back into my
body but now I'm curled forward and I don't want to move. Tense sweat trickles over my bare skin
and internal pain, intense and frightening, rests only one centimeter away in any direction. I'm still
not sure if I'm going to die now or not.

The janitor pants and wipes crystals of perspiration from his face and arms. Maybe I live now only
because he's old. "Well...darlin'. Still feelin' uppity?" He presses his boot lightly on top of my
liver, where he can see a stain of purple and yellow begin to spread. I'm still afraid to move, afraid
of the sea of pain superceding all my senses. I have no control over the kitten-like whimper that I
make.

"Ready to talk, darlin'?"

I realize all at once with a hungry intensity how much I do not want to die. In a movement which
surprises myself even more than it does the janitor I thrash my head back and forth. I signal "no"
with the desperation of a lost fisherman clinging to a log in the sea. I feel my wet clumped strands of
hair sway.

"I reckon that data's gotta be worth a fortune if yuh won't talk after that, after all, darlin'. I reckon
I might kill yuh if I beat yuh anymore, but I reckon there's more than one way tuh get tuh a yankee
bitch."

The janitor jogs into his restroom. If I'm going to die sooner or later I'm dying with a clear
conscience. I try to shout after him but using my voice causes me pain and instead of a shout I make
a broken wheeze: "I'm not a yankee. I'm French Canadian. You abysmally stupid redneck. You
probably drink SoCo and like it."

Frag. Frag. FRAG! Not again. I amend: "Please don't beat me again."

The janitor ignored (or didn't hear) me but returns holding a stun baton. He gazes eagerly at the
stun baton like an eight year old kid gazing at a hot dog.

"I reckon that if I were youngah, I'd still be able tuh get it up. As it is, I gotta use one uh these."

My voice grows stronger by some miracle: "...please no..."

"Yuh ready tuh talk?"

My eyes clench shut. Hot tears ooze out from under my lids. I hate when my emotions overcome
my rationality. I shake my head again and didn't open my eyes...

The sickening horror of feeling my flesh stretched to painful excesses is only momentary before the
janitor turns on the current. My body hops and thrashes like a marionette with an autistic puppeteer.
I try to scream but instead I produce only a loud bellow that modulates itself as my teeth crash
together and my body leaps. I feel heat spray from my nether regions and I don't know whether it's
blood or urine. Somewhere, I can hear my chain clattering against the tiles. The searing burn from
my most sensitive skin burns away my thoughts into the all-consuming redness...

Redness...

Through the redness I can see a man reaching for me. Suddenly I'm smaller and younger and know
less about the world. The man reaching for me is also younger than the janitor, middle aged and
strong. Like a modern knight he is resplendent in his heavy armor and he holds a machine gun at
mid barrel in his left hand as he reaches for me with his right.

I need to banish him and take back what is mine or else I know I will die, but

Burning redness is all there is.



Chapter 5



It's pitch dark. I'm lying face down on the tiles. I'm cold. Very cold all over. I don't have the
energy to call it ‘frigid', or say that the room is ‘gelid'. So cold.

I try to move my right leg. I hear a scraping sound and a burst of pain squeezes one more groan
from me. The stun baton is still in there and it just twisted to the side as it scraped across the floor.
My right knee bumped into something small but heavy, which slid away through liquid.

A battery pack. He used more than one battery pack on me.

I'm still alive. I'm still alive. I'm still alive.

My head is filled with the expanding cotton candy of twisting hellacious pain. I don't think. I move
on autopilot. As my abdomen protests, I anchor my knees on the ground and push my butt in the air.
I feel colder and realize I'm lying in liquid; my hair is soaking in it. As delicately as I can I try to
roll over to one side and sit up, but my arms and legs are weak, and I slip in the cold liquid and
crash down on my back. The stun baton twists sharply and falls out, rolling in the liquid. I hear
myself make a hoarse strangled noise and I realize that my throat feels like I just chewed and
swallowed a lightbulb. I feel some clods side down off my face and I realize that I must be lying in a
puddle of my own urine, vomit, blood, and who knows what else.

Slowly, so slowly, I sit up. I'm cold. My arms are still chained behind my back.

The door opens and light streams in from the outside. I can't see for a moment but I hear that voice
again.

"Awake, dhaarrlin'?"

I smell...SoCo! And I hear a drunken lisp. I was right about this man. I guess that means I made
the right choices up until now.

The door slams shut and the light turns on. My tormenter has changed to cotton shorts and a tee
shirt and in his right hand he clutches a nearly empty bottle of SoCo.

"Uh...uh...wentsh out tuh buy more stun baton batt'ries fuh yuh...but if they aren't hard tuh at
threeish in tuh mornish. I'll just have tuh beat yuh wish old ones insteadsh."

I sit like Br'er Rabbit's tar baby. I think he broke my brain. Stumbling badly the janitor dropped
his bottle on the floor and leaned on the wall near the trashbag. He pulled out one of the socks I was
wearing when I went to the campus. Dumbly, I stared at him as he walked back to me, picked up
the stun baton battery from where it lay, and dropped it into my sock.

"Whersh do I sell duh datash?"

The battery, slung in my sock, swings through the air and connected with the top of my skull. I felt
a sharp pain on the impact, but I was exhausted. I waited like a stone Buddha for the next one.

The next one never came. The janitor, staggering drunk, falls over backwards with his backswing. I
stare at him but he doesn't get up no matter how long I stare at him, and his clothes keep soaking in
my blood and body fluids. I attempt to cogitate but I fail. I fall back on instinct. I use my feet to
shuffle forward, towards the janitor, and then a little bit past him. I rotate, align my hands with his
pocket, my task made easier by the large pockets of his cotton shorts. I feel a maglock card, a
credstick, and...an old fashioned key. My mind disintegrates into excitement for a moment.

I pass the key to my left hand, plant my left hand on the ground palm-up, and twist my right hand to
guide the lock onto the key. I feel my eyes closing with a drunken kind of excitement as...pop! The
padlock comes undone. My shoulders scream anew as my arms go back to their normal position but
I'm still so mentally, emotionally, and physically numb that I wobble towards the bathroom while
making vague pain noises. My arms reach forward to scrabble at the door handle and I see dark
bruising and broken skin all about my wrists.

Somehow the bathroom door swings open for me and I'm confronted by a mirror. Dried blood,
probably the grad student's, is caked in my hair. Fresh blood dribbles down my face from where I
was struck with the battery. I can only see my torso, aflame with dark violet bruises, in the mirror
down to my breasts and I notice that my left breast has swollen from trauma so that it looks bigger
than my right one. My skin glistens with a rancid sheen of my sweat, urine, and bits of
semicoagulated blood. The mirror swings aside to reveal a medicine cabinet. I hear bottles falling
into the sink but I see now only a bottle marked IBUPROFEN 300 Mg.

300 milligrams, 600 milligrams, 900 miligrams, 1200 miligrams, 1500 miligrams, 1800 miligrams,
2100 miligrams, 2400 miligrams. There, I've taken 2400 miligrams. 2400 miligrams is safe. I'll
be ready soon. Later my stomach will hurt.



Chapter 6



There's something very liberating about driving about on the smaller highways outside of city limits
at 4 AM on a Sunday when absolutely no one is on them. The east coast sunrise is a glorious pastel
pink and purple. Back when I was in middle school I knew a very intelligent girl who actually
studied Greek. She told me that Homer's scene-opening refrain in the Illiad, "the rosy red fingers of
dawn", was in Greek the best poetry she ever read. When I look out at the east coast sunrise, which
I see so seldom in the city, I'm tempted to learn some Greek sometime as a hobby just so I can
evaluate Homer's refrain for myself.

I'm wearing only the janitor's trenchcoat so I consider this morning drive an experiment in nudism.
The other reason that I consider this an experiment in nudism is that the janitor himself is being
dragged, naked, along the highway at 40 miles per hour chained by his wrists to the rear bumper.

I bundled him in the trunk of his own Americar to get him safely out of the city, woke him up out
here, and have been driving ever since. At first his hysterical screaming was an appropriate
commentary on the distasteful Country Western music which I perversely played over the car radio
but it seems to have stopped maybe 40 minutes into our drive after I went around some hair pin
turns. I can still hear the thudding and bumping of his body, though. I forgot to tell the janitor that
he's now officially named "Hector". Too late now.

Unfortunately, now that I've calmed down, my stomach is really starting to hurt from all that
ibuprofen; I've got a lot of excess stomach acid. At the same time, though, I'm also feeling
ravenously hungry, which is an unusual combination of feelings. As soon as the morning exercise is
complete I'll have to get back home (I'll probably enter by the fire escape), get presentable, and then
go out for breakfast. I'm going to stop by one of those high-class diners that serves organic foods,
and no soy products. After that, I'm hitting a damn bar. Now that I've got the Johnson's disk in my
trenchcoat pocket here with the Johnson's credstick comfortingly lying across it I can afford it.
Broken ribs usually aren't very dangerous so I'm going to explicitly prioritize these activities over
seeing my street doc.

They tell me that "Homer" means "to stitch together." Hee.

[Shadow]

Dude, this girl is whacked. Nice story, I like the 'voice' you write in. You should submit to the offical page.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Backgammon]

Wow, reminds me of those torture movies, you know, like Wolf Creek or Hostel or others I've seen without knowing the title.

Very good writing. I just came out of a big phase of 1st person perspective, so I liked the style. It's always different and adds some complexity to story telling, you did very very well.

If your goal was to tell us this bitch is a psycho and that CAS Janitor are awefull, awefull human beings, then you've succeeded splendidly.

Since you ask about the cross-gendre thing: it's hard to say anything, I think. Did you succeed in making me believe she's a woman? Yeah. Did you miss things? Maybe. Can't really tell, you know. She is how you wrote her to be. A female author would have done things differently maybe, but she wouldn't be the same character then.

As for the official submition, reading the guidelines, I think they ARE looking to take the fiction to new levels. You'd have to ask, but I don't think you're that much out of line. Consider the last submition that had the beeting of live dogs to death.

[Wounded Ronin]

Thanks for your comments, Backgammon.

I suppose that there's no harm in at least asking the SR people if this fiction would be an acceptable piece to submit. All they can say is, "No, you bloody freak!" So, I'll send an email to srfiction@dragonwriter.net as was suggested on http://shadowrunrpg.com/fanpro/webfiction_...uidelines.shtml

Just for kicks, if I get a dramatic rejection I'll update this thread. :P

[Wounded Ronin]

Well, here's a copy of the email I sent to the address that the SR official site gave for fiction submissions:

======================


I would like to ask if a piece of fiction I have written would be appropriate to submit as fiction to the offical SR website.

At Dumpshock Forums, I've posted a piece of fiction which I had never intended to submit to the official SR website as a fiction submission. I didn't feel that my story was appropriate to represent a commercial product because of dark and violent content, and also because it was written about a 3rd edition character I used to play instead of dealing with 4th edition. However, two people on that forum, including the famous Backgammon, have urged me to do so, and I figure that there's no harm in asking if the writing is appropriate to submit or not.

The story is here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...opic=13334&st=0

Since on the website you ask for a summary of the story, I will summarize it very succinctly here: a down and out shadowrunner who is interesting because she combines Int 7 with alcoholism and a low Wil score is sent on a simple misson by a Johnson. Her sociopathic uncontrolled emotions mess up the run as usual, changing the otherwise intelligent operative into a loose cannon. Through intense bad luck the main character is captured by a psychopathic, murderous janitor and endures grisly torture for a time but is able to escape and takes her revenge by dragging the janitor behind a vehicle so he is dismembered and dies.

I don't presume anything for this story, but I figured that there'd be no harm in asking if it would be appropriate to submit or not. Thank you for your kind understanding and patience in this matter.

[Crusher Bob]

They taught you dark sarcasm in school, didn't they, WR?

[Backgammon]

WTF I'm famous? That's cool :) [EDIT: It occurs to me maybe you're confusing me with BlackJack. Or you're on drugs. Rad.]

Anyway, I'm glad you're looking into submitting to srrpg. I'd honestly be proud to have dark stuff like this representing SR, I think it's exactly where SR aught to be.

However, just so you don't get your hopes up, I don't think you can submit something that has been previously 'published', so your current works are not eligible. But whatever else you write aught to be good too. And if srrpg dun want it, keep posting, I love it!

[Kurb]

This was amazing...makes me want to continue with my writing. You've captured the aspect of a woman's perspective as well as how I envision most 60 year old men with that kind of job in the future. Please may I have some more?!

[jklst14]

As a fan of ultraviolence, I enjoyed your story. In particular, I liked the main character's voice and how it's flippant/sarcastic nature contrasted with the rather disturbing plot of the story. And I would definitely be interested in seeing more of your fiction.

One suggestion - Some people will probably find this story pretty disturbing so maybe you should put a disclaimer at the beginning.

[eidolon]

WR, I liked this one a lot. I personally don't take my SR to this extreme, but it fits well with some of the more harsh aspects of the world. Good job on the character and the narrative structure.

(I have a buddy, on the other hand, who is the reason our group never keeps female players...he'd love "official" SR to be like this.)

[Witness]

I fear that they won't be able to take this particular story (or the other), because having posted them up here they are now already 'published' in a sense.

[PH3NOmenon]

Though i don't really care for that much graphical violence in what i read, i have to say it was well written and very enthralling.


Also... i have to say, that's one hell of a unprofessional shadowrunning chick you got there... :)

[nezumi]

Very good. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't read it at work (in regards to violence). A good balance between describing the painful actions taken and actual graphic descriptions of these things happening.

I would have been more inclined to believe she was a woman if she were an elf lesbian, though.

[Wounded Ronin]

It looks like those of you who pointed out that the story has already been published and is hence ineligable called it right. Here's the email I got.

[Wounded Ronin]

[hyzmarca]

I like this girl. Hector, indeed. It is important to be able to make intelligient quips and puns while torturing someone to death.

[emo samurai]

Goddammit... why do they do that, not publishing pre-published stuff? Dumpshock doesn't even own your stories, and you're giving them permission...

[winterhawk11]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Shadow]

Hey Wounded, I really hope you plane on submitting to the SRRPG website. I think you would have a great shot.

emo samurai,

It is the standard with published works that you let a prospective publisher know if it has been published before. Most publishers are only interested in non-published works. The reason is pretty obvious.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Backgammon]

[Wounded Ronin]

Wow, that's very kind of you. Thanks for the encouragement! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)