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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:29
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This story was written from the viewpoint of my housemate. Hope you like it:
Back in Britain, we found a nice four bedroom house to rent. There were four of us: me, Willcox, Benway, and JediKnight. Ultimately, however, JediKnight proved to be too hot for the university to handle and they kicked him out. That left only three: me, Willcox, Benway and no fourth person.
We started casting about for a replacement and found one. A dude named Alistair was looking for a house and we got in touch with him by email and arranged to meet. Ali had been living in the dorms for a while and was sick of waking up to the sound of freshmen humping each other at 2am in the morning so he was delighted to hear that we were leasing out a room.
It turned out that Ali was a girl, not a boy - her name was [blank, ahem, la di dah...] and she was an English literature student just like myself, but she was also doing a minor in biochemistry (which she was later to drop). She was frank and forthright about her foibles and quibbles - she tended to suffer from insomnia and would frequently go out to DJ the student radio program, she didn't like spiders, and she preferred taking the bus rather than biking.
All in all, we liked her and signed the deal. She proved herself a good drinking companion and was not in the least bit intimidated by the three lads in the house.
However, there was one thing that she failed to tell us about herself. With new housemates, sometimes you could hear terror stories about drug lords and prostitutes. Well, Ali was neither of these things. Ali was an Assassin.
At the university, the various societies and clubs hold fetes at the start of term to try to get your subscription money. Once you join, you are allowed to take part in their various activities and events. Ali had joined a group of people who competed to kill each other and be the last one standing.
The rules were simple. Each assassin would be given the name and address of another assassin and assigned to kill him or her. You did not know who was coming after you, only whom you were going after. Each assassin lived in paranoia of being killed by a stranger because if one failed, your new hitman would be drawn from a pool of remaining assassins.
Killing somebody did not actually mean killing them. In fact, injuring anybody physically was strictly forbidden. The way you scored a "kill" was to use props or clearly labelled fake weapons to imitate a real assassination. More rules governed this, including that all knives had to be clearly made of rubber and had to be marked "KNIFE" and all guns had to be water propelling - ball bullets were forbidden. Endangering the safety of innocent bystanders, and otherwise disturbing the peace, were also forbidden.
Finally, one of the most longstanding rules was that you could not break any laws of the land during this. If you fell afoul of the law in any case, you would be kicked out of the Assassin's Guild and all your previous accomplishments wiped from the record.
Well, Ali didn't tell us about this until one day when a tall dark stranger arrived at the front door dressed in jeans, T shirt, and book... in other words, he had "blatantly unsubtle agent in disguise" written all over him. He asked to speak with Alistair, and so I fetched Willcox.
The guy pulled out a water pistol and shot Willcox in the stomach. Willcox gave out a great roar of fury and tackled the hapless assassin, finally overpowering him as Benway dialled the assassin bureau's president to report the offense. When the confirmation finally came through, the would-be assassin was almost in tears.
After that, no other assassins bothered the household. It was just too risky. Ali herself was overjoyed to hear that her assassin had been disqualified, although it still meant that she wasn't in the clear yet. Eventually, the other assassins would kill each other off until one remained, and that one would get Ali as a target.
The assassinations went on in the secret world of the society, until two weeks before the semester's end, when Ali received word that all others had been eliminated and that there was only one left to kill her. However, in light of the fact that she had not killed a single person (and in fact had pretty much withdrawn from the society in deed if not in word), she did not get the privilege of knowing who this was going to be, even though she was also assigned to kill him.
She told me the good news over dinner and I fixed her a nice tea of chicken Valdostano (a recipe I still love but sadly cannot eat, owing to my weight watching). Willcox came home and marvelled at the little feast, and congratulated Ali when we told him why. Finally, Benway came home, tired from a day at the lab, and we broke the news to him that Ali was the finalist in the society without hardly lifting a finger.
Benway beamed and went upstairs to get a present for Ali.
Which turned out to be a pump action water shotgun.
With which he shot her in the face.
The Assassination Society President dropped by the house in person to congratulate Benway for taking out the final enemy in the society, and to announce that Benway won the 150 GBP award. He also got a series of Airsoft weapon replicas, and a nifty brass plaque with his name and the year on it. Ali got nothing. Except very annoyed and sulky.
* ~ * ~ *
There is an addendum to this fictitious story. Benway, drunk and flushed with victory, took his newly-won Airsoft Magnum pistol, AK47 Kalashnikov rifle, and Daewoo Jackhammer combat shotgun, and dressed himself up in James Bond outfit. He decided to take a few pictures of himself holding aloft this heavy weaponry in the Photo-You-Quick booth at Boot's opticians, taking advantage of their 1-hour-photo developing service.
Boot's opticians, you may remember, were the same nosey bastards whose curiosity led to police arrests of a prominent female news anchor on ITN's news network in the mid 1990s, after they saw pictures of nude children in her roll of film. It later turned out that the children were her own, and they had been playing in a splash pool in her back yard. Boot's did not pay compensation of any sort for this violation of her privacy.
In the heady days of post-Dunblane shooting vigilanteism, Boot's opticians took a very dim view of Benway's photographs. They called the police and gave them Benway's phone number. The police came to our door and took Benway to the police station for questioning.
When the Assassination Guild president heard of this, he immediately struck Benway's name from the roster and unceremoniously removed him from the society. He held a council with senior members and decided that the second-to-last assassin standing would in this case receive the prize.
Benway was stripped of his trophy and Airsoft weapons in absentia. His student account was charged GBP 150 to recoup the cash prize. Everything went to Ali instead.
Benway was acquitted of illegal possession of firearms, and accepted an internship offer in Switzerland. He never spoke to Ali again.
The end.
Last edited by Alinestra Covelia on 16-07-2003 at 09:11
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OneFootInTheGrave
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Kuzelj
Nov 2000
time: 05:29
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quote:
To: Microsoft Lawyers, Inc.
From: Azathoth, Nyarlathotep and Hastur, Elder Attorneys.
Sirs:
Our agents among the mortal herd have brought to Our attention your
recent product entitled Windows '95. Therefore We now give you
statutory notice of intent of proceedings to be taken against Microsoft
by the Many-Angled Ones.
With this suit We will show that Windows '95, and to a lesser extent
all of the Microsoft range of products, infringe upon the recognised
"look-and-feel" of the Elder Gods, for the following reasons:
o Windows '95 is a crawling abomination from the darkest pits of Hell;
o No man can be in it's presence for too long without being driven into
gibbering insanity;
o A cult who worship it exist in secret amongst the mortal herd;
o Those who associate with it for too long develop common physical
characteristics, to wit: pale, clammy skin, bulging eyes, generally
unkempt physical appearance, tendency towards nocturnal living, change
in diet to that which normal men do not eat (in your case tacos,
burgers and Jolt Coke; in Ours, human flesh, Fungi of Yuggoth and the
blood of Alien Gods);
o Mysterious tomes that purport to explain this phenomenon are reputed
to exist; they are bound in an unnatural substance and only available
at a terrible cost to the user.
o The Microsoft range of products seek to utterly dominate the world,
and force all who dwell there to live in eternal damnation.
As you can see, Our case is very strong, especially when you consider
that most judges prefer not to have chittering things with tentacles
for faces scoop out their brains and eat them.
We hope that you will consider these points carefully and settle out of
court, since it is not Our intention to have your senior partners spend
the rest of their mercifully short lives under heavy sedation in a
maximum security psychiatric hospital. After all, it was the Lords of
the Outer Planes who gave humanity lawyers in the first place.
Respectfully yours,
pp. J. Arthur Hastur, LL.B., B.C.L, B.D |
rather old, but fits in here... 
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16-07-2003 08:40
ACK!
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