Applying what you've learned.

It’s very easy to justify blackmailing a flawed man, a pervert who bases much of his life on the pursuit of young tail; I honestly didn’t even have to think twice about my exploitation of Roland. He was merely playing the game badly, and I would’ve been foolish not to take advantage of him. On the other hand, Mat Salec was innocent; he was simply a principled man doing what he could to make the world a better place.

That’s what made my job so hard.

"I - I’ll never tell you…" Salec shivered, his clothes soaked and tied to a chair inside of a freezer unit. He, of course, would eventually tell me exactly what I wanted to know; at this point, I had only been working on him for about fifteen minutes. I poured another bucket of ice water over his head and stepped out of the freezer for a few moments.

Roland led me to the restaurant where Mat Salec worked, and from there, it was a piece of cake. He was a college student serving at a big chain restaurant for a few extra bucks on the weekends; inevitably, one night, he was scheduled to close, and I simply locked him in the building and smacked him around a little bit until he realized running simply wasn’t going to be successful.

I looked down at my hands and rubbed my bleeding knuckles as I let Salec freeze his ass off for a few minutes; the kid fought me more than I would’ve preferred, and I probably broke his orbital bone - and a bone or two in my hand - in the initial scuffle. He was clearly scared, and rightfully so; if my time being tortured by Julie taught me one thing, it was how to quickly sap the hope out of a person and get them to sing like a teenaged girl lining up to try out for American Idol.

After about five minutes, I popped two Xanax and let my stomach settle before I walked back into the room. I wasn’t so worried about Salec overdosing himself on adrenaline and stabbing me with an icicle he broke off of his earlobe, but I genuinely felt bad for the kid. As I walked back in with a full bucket of water in my hand and a baseball bat under my arm, I could see Salec both shivering and cowering.

"Look, kid, don’t fool yourself. No matter how much television you watch, you’re not Jack Bauer; you’re not a fucking action hero. And, even if you were," I poured some more water on his lap, "everyone has a breaking point. I know mine, and to be honest with you, I’m more than willing to sit here with you until we’ve found yours."

If he wasn’t tied to the chair, the kid would be doubled over in pain; his body temperature had to be threatening hypothermia, but he had enough color in his face that I knew he wasn’t quite ready to kill over yet. I started tossing the baseball bat between my two hands as he started to sputter, "You don’t know what you’re doing. You… don’t know who you’re working for!"

I caught the bat with my left hand and menacingly lined his left kneecap in the path of my swing. Doing my very best Manny Ramirez impression, I tapped my shoes and got ready for the pitch. "And what do you know about them, exactly? Besides, of course their IP address."

"I-" he stammered, blinking rapidly and shivering, "I know they’re trying to manipulate the world. I know they’re trying control us, and I know they need to be stopped."

Smirking, I took a step forward and unleashed an upper-cut swing that crunched his right fibula and prompted a whelp of agony from Salec. "You don’t know shit about them. Fucking figures."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! Fucking-just… let me go! I don’t know what you want me to tell you… AAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Another swing took out his ankle and rendered his right leg completely shattered. "Yeah, I’d say you’re going to need crutches. That’s got to hurt, doesn’t it?"

"M-my le…"

"Here, bro, my bad. How about we put some ice on that?" I was actually grinning as I poured the rest of the two gallon bucket of ice water over his head and made him scream in agony. He started choking on his own tongue, which convinced me that maybe I should lighten up on the kid.

CRRRACK!

…after I hit him in the sternum with the butt end of the bat, anyways. After pulling him out of the freezer, I kicked over his chair and left him tied up, laying with his face pressed against the kitchen tile. Maybe I just wasn’t asking the right questions, or maybe the kid didn’t know anything, but I felt like I was wasting my fucking time beating the living shit out of him. I reached into my pocket to fire up a cigarette, but as I listened to his muffled sobs and saw the blood pooling under his leg on the tile floor, my hands started shaking again.

I finally fired up my lighter and my cigarette caught a light; I drew the smoke into my lungs and closed my eyes for a second, trying to ignore his murmuring screams and muted cries for help.

My job was to find and eliminate Peter, not to worry about peons like this fucking twat. Peter did this to him, not me; if Peter hadn’t involved innocents like Mat Salec, the fight would’ve been much cleaner.

Ignoring the fact I had just swallowed two pills, I gathered up as much saliva as I could and downed another Xanax before turning back around to address the poor kid. "I don’t really want to hurt you, Mat. It’s not my goal to have you leave this place in a body bag. But, you’re going to have to start talking. Who gave you the target for the worm? Who was your source?"

He wavered. I knew he would. At first, he had exuded a frightened confidence, but now, he wasn’t as sure. He had to have felt his leg; he knew how close he was to hypothermia. Surely, I thought, he wouldn’t hold out much longer. "N-no, this is too important. You can kill me, but I’ll never talk."

"Big fucking mistake."

I closed my eyes, wound up, and started swinging. It wasn’t my fault this piece of shit wasn’t cooperating; I did what I had to do. I listened beyond his screams and my body shook; I kept swinging and swinging and he kept screaming louder and louder.

I did what I had to do?

I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to break the kid’s legs or bruise his kidneys. I didn’t have to crack his ribs or smash his collarbone. I didn’t have to do any of this, but as I detached myself from the situation, I grasped for reason.

"Please, stop!" he screamed, "I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!"

The bat kept raising itself and lowering itself. The cracks were getting louder and louder, while the screams started getting softer and softer with every thud.

I didn’t have to do anything, but I kept swinging.

"I-I give up, it was a guy named Peter. I know how to contact him, I know how to find him, just please… let me…"

CRACK!

I was in the driver’s seat. Didn’t matter what this faggot had to say. I asked him to tell me and he didn’t believe that I’d fucking kill him if he didn’t. Was it my fault? Was it my choice? Didn’t matter. The bat sure didn’t care.

Screams turned to shouts turned to moans turned to whimpers.

"He’s… in… the city… he’s going… to do the job… himself..."

The bat smacked against his ribcage again. He gasped. My eyes stayed closed.

"The worm is just…" He began coughing up blood, and I finally opened my eyes. Tears were streaming down the kid’s face, and as I lifted the bat above my head for the deathblow, he gave a final, resigned plea. "Please, man, don’t kill me."

He knew it didn’t matter what he said at this point, and as I started to lower the bat onto his skull, I heard the sound of glass breaking in the front of the restaurant. The shatter was followed by a rattle, and the rattling was followed by a hiss. When the canister hit the far wall closest to the kitchen, I ran out and the fumes burned my eyes and sent me into a coughing fit.

I closed my eyes and dropped the bat, gripped my pistol and took off towards the front door; breaking through it and rolling to the ground, I was unsurprised by the deafening crack of rifle fire and shattering glass just above my head. When I opened my eyes and scanned my field of vision for the target, I didn’t immediately see who was shooting at me.

He saw me, though.

Ordinary

If Judd Apatow had Skylar Thomas’ comedic timing, Superbad would’ve been about as funny as Schindler’s List.

It’s amazing; we get to the finals, and the taint dude thinks he’s a regular Dave Dexter with his chortle inducing Office parodies and youtube clips and photoshoppisms and whatnot; here’s the problem, faggot: you’ve never really been that funny. I don’t know why it’s taken someone so long to tell you this, but watching you try to be funny is like watching Keanu Reeves try to do stand-up. I mean, for the love of Christ, you’ve got the charisma of John Kerry on valium. But still, I’ve got to give you credit: you’re a paraplegic one week, a redheaded alcoholic whore with sagging tits the next. Who knows what he’ll be next week?!? Stay tuned! Or don’t.

The thing is, the book on you for many, many years now has been "great ideas, poor execution." When it comes down to it, you are what you are: a seriousface.gif action figurine with repairable limbs who can’t quite drop a zinger to save his life. You know why I bothered fucking going after you in the last round, even though I didn’t have to? Predators typically attack the weakest little animal in the pack, because they’d rather not expend much energy. You pretty much confirmed my suspicion that I can fucking tear you apart limb by limb and all you’ve got to come back at me is some weak ass shit about 8 Mile.

Wanna know why everyone’s coming after you this round? Hint: it’s not because you’re the guy to beat. It’s because you’re a fucking joke that thinks he can make up for being completely devoid of creativity by throwing together some "hey-can-you-imagine-this?" semi-parody and about twenty minutes of filler where you try try try to hit your opponents hard with some lyrical stylings (no mike steele), but fail fail fail because you can’t fucking string together an sentence under forty-five words.

Here’s a tip: brevity rules.

Watch: You’re fucking boring. You’re not funny. I don’t need to get complex with this shit. You’ve never been anything more than filler. You’re the epitome of ordinary. You’re the exact kind of twat people like me love to face.

The beauty of it is that I can sit here and say whatever the fuck I want about you, and I will never be afraid of your reply. I’m never afraid to watch your shit, because at the end of the day, I know that the sharpest thing you’ve got to say is <a href=http://boring.com>Stab Your Taint!</a>, with a steady dose of five year old cheese rock in the background.

So, Skylar, how about this: skewer someone. Make a name for yourself. Make everyone forget that your crowning glory was being the champion of an irrelevant federation whose members are universally scorned for being a bunch of pantywaist twats who bitch about people talking about shit that happened "off camera", however that works.

Or better yet, don’t.

Keep being ordinary.

And watch as I fucking trounce you, just like I always do.

Tool -- "Reflection"