I knew it was going to be an ugly morning when my feet hit the floor. But what can you do when you're the two-bit schmo doing hardcore I.T. support? Nothing, but serve up the answers on a silver platter for the pencil-necked moron who doesn't have the brains to push a mouse button. It's a double-hosed douchebag: wet and nasty if you do, moist and gross if you don't.
Today was the usual, you could smell it in the air. Pungent, sulfurous, and acrid, the odor creeped into my schnoz and poked me in the olfactories. And that was just in my jalopy on the way in. Damned Taco Bell.
The rent-a-stiff in the guardhouse asked for my badge at the gate. I answered by undoing his dental work with my knuckles. No one fucks with me when I'm on the clock. He'll do himself a favor by keeping his pulpy mouth shut next time. I snuffed out my Camel on his forehead and hoofed into the factory.
It was a dirty place, the plant floor, littered with the alloy bodies of ships gone bad, a graveyard of military flotsam permanently dry-docked. The foreman gave me lip about his hard drive making noise. It did make noise...when I force-fed it to him, stuffing his gaping pie-hole with eighty gigs of pure magnetic media. It was the first and last time he called support.
This wasn’t some joy walk. Word on the street was some lug was shelling out his share of beatings. The victim: a hapless Dell monitor. Being the cold gumshoe I am, witnessing the gore firsthand was old hat to me. Even with my iron gut, I felt my eggs gurgling up my gullet. It was vile. Bruised power cord, shattered color controls, burn-in on the screen. Made me want to throw a Technicolor yawn all over the pavement.
What kind of man beats a defenseless monitor? The kind of man standing four feet in front of me. I knew him from the machine shop. The monster’s name was Slammer. Dick Slammer.
“Slammer,” I called out, “your time is up, punk.”
Three hundred twelve pounds of grain-fed turns his blimp of a head at me and smiles, thin reedy lips opening to reveal a single tooth. “Whadya want, pal?”
I jabbed my pointer right in the center of his beanbag chest. This guy had more tits than an LJ porn community. “Look here, Slammer, I been watching you. It’s over.”
He made a motion for his piece, but I realized it was only a spoon stuck in his chins. “Wad are you gonna do ‘bout it, pal.”
“Hey,” I grabbed his collars and pulled him across the workbench, “the name’s Penguin, and you don’t forget it. Got it?” I bounced the ape’s head on the bench and then yanked his ear over to the vice. Three tight turns, and Little Lulu was calling for his Mama. I had his lobe locked down.
“Whoa, hey, wait,” he wimpered, “I’ll stop.” Oh,the short bus was crying now.
“Have some of your own medicine, tough guy,” I told him, kicking his cedar trunk ass. “Wassamatta, tough guy? You got a bo bo?” A kick to the gut. “Where’s your CD-ROM now? Huh? Where?” It was no good. He was out, the big pussy. I folded his sorry ass into a lard tub and tossed him out the door. There’ll be no abuse on my rounds.
It’s an ugly world out there, but somebody has to deal with it. Revenge is not on my mind. Just payback.
With one less dirtball to worry about, the morning felt a little better, a little lighter. My job here was done.
January 27, 2005 is
LiveJournal Rabbit-Hole Day
"Let's have a day
where nobody's life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring
you some strange new tale. Let's all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours
and see what's there. It will be beautiful."
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