Ok. For this chapter it's not the most relevant of all of them. If you're really a more fast paster then i'd probably skip the chapter but i kinda thought it was needed. This chapter goes into further detail of Marian, her work and what she does and her dry personality. She's a bit cocky, pretty wry but very self disciplined and dedicated hard worker.
#3 days later#
I’m in the shooting range. It’s obligatory to know how to use a gun in the force but we do more physical training than any of the other F.B.I groups. We try hard to make the comparison concealed. The hours we put in are probably regrettably more than the hours we put in for our “daytime” files. Most agents just learn the stuff and get their licence. We need continuity to keep fit and keep our aim. If you don’t keep shooting every day you’re going to slightly go off the lines. Besides shooting, we also have a range of fighting courses we can select from. I was just a teenage street fighter before they found me offing some vampire that was lurking in an alleyway. A lot of my learning has been from here. It’s constant pushing of the boundaries of what our bodies can do, humanly. Our squad directly offers Kung Fu, Karate, and Tae-Kwon-Do. There’s also a self-defence course we can take called RAD (Rape Aggression Defence.) Only a few of the women from our thirteen has chosen the option, including me. All the men refuse to. I don’t know, a tough thing maybe? They don’t realise no matter how tough they are, girl vampires will bend their bones to put them in whatever position they want them in. We also have boxing, kick boxing and a few other teachings about self-defence, blocking, self-discipline, pressure points, all that. I go for the more aggressive sports. Boxing and ‘weak spots’ are my two majors. I practise hard in contemporary.
I’m wearing big thick red earmuffs. The shooting range is huge like a factory. There are only two of us in here. The other is a woman that’s far more geared up then I am. Her gun is a lot longer too. Her light brown hair is pulled back in a bun. She’s a robust shaped woman. Not bad looking in a scary, butch kind of way. She has the professional half-cut gloves. She has the marketing blue hat and black, white and yellow clothes gear that goes with her gun. She looks like she was shot out of a gun at birth and her umbilical cord is still attached to it. Every aim was her bullseye. You could earn intimidation and respect like that pretty quick. Me, personally, I wasn’t a magnificent gun lover. I’d prefer to stake the bastard but if wooden bullets worked what was the problem? You get to choose your targets and if you want them moving or not. There are targets like dartboards, that are black and we mentally imagine bullseye as the heart. For the human-size posters we actually have the chest/heart section squared red. That’s the target I’m using now. It’s moving forward and back on a long, grey railing. Keeping my hands steady and my lovely Browning Hi-Power steady as my eyes on the target I shoot. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
An Asian man in his late twenties walks inside the doorway, finding Marian by the stands shooting. Another man leaning against the wall near the doorway, quickly runs over to the Asian man, wearing ear plugs.
“You better take these” he shouts over the noise to the Asian man, holding out his hand holding the yellow ear plugs.
“No thanks, I think I’ll be all right” he shouts over the ear-splitting noise, covering both his ears; dressed in a blue suit. He goes to walk off before the man grabs his arm and suggests again he take the ear plugs. This time he agrees and stars shoving them in his earlobes on the walk over to Marian.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
“Marian…Marian! Marian!!” The Asian stands beside her, unable to bellow louder than the gunfire. He taps on her shoulder. Marian turns around shocked, and then takes her earmuffs off.
“What?” I shout loudly over the noise to Aki. He’s not trained in guns so I figure straight away he has to be here with some kind of news; an update maybe on the cult case? What was I kidding? It wasn’t a case, it was an encyclopaedia we lived on. Hopefully he had news.
“The police investigation squad, are they on our case?” He shouted. Oh, the city police. I was wrong. He wasn’t here for that.
“Just mine,” I shout. BANG! BANG! BANG! “I’ll deal with it.”
“I know you’re a one woman show, but if this crashes we could all fall down. Shut them down before they find something they really don’t want to find. Deal with whatever mess you’ve got yourself into.”
Aki was quick to get away from the noise. I sighed but no one could hear it. How was I going to shut them down exactly? Clearly that Mr Herwin fellow was motivated on convicting me. Would this all just blow over? If they couldn’t find any strong evidence would they subside to find other leads? I didn’t know but I couldn’t rest luck on this kind of thing. I needed surety by building some faulty fundamental back-up why it couldn’t possibly be me. I needed to plan, but right now all I needed to do was get back to work.
#Two work days later#
I’m sitting at my desk. I always kept my station clean and very organised. That’s right; as hard as it is to believe. Us slayers have cubicles. People need a waged job. We had bills. We had loans for living just like the regular next fat guy. Right now I’m on “phone patrol.” Or that’s what we call it. A lot of the time we get calls from very stressed out people in uncomfortable circumstances and we’ve been approved licenced to have brief or in-depth conversations with these individuals or groups, whatever, giving streetwise tips and survival advice if it’s suited to their predicament. Sometimes it would be appointments and I’d have seatings with a man or a woman, couples, friends, families; it was a shunned way of verbally giving a victim a gun. We just gave them the information they needed to know. For now, there were no calls. It wasn’t the regular busy day so I took the opportunity sending some faxes. This is how we shared our Intel’s with anything at all about the cult; it didn’t have to be conclusive; Just a scratch of detail. Most of the cases we did, we did alone but this one we all engrossed together for a pending six years. For example, if one was spying on a group that came from inside the cult they’d write any notes down they could and then copy out for the rest of us so we didn’t have bits and pieces everywhere but we could all study it in our own cubicles. The problem was we barely had anything. We had some random pieces of information, some notes, only one photo and that wasn’t even that good. It was of David standing in the middle. It had to look like a photo bomb to get them in the picture. If it was directly pointed at them, they would have known. Vampires were masters at obscurity and this cult have outdone themselves. This was the only case that was non-closure. We could burn up, stake and exterminate the rest but this one. The phone rang. I picked up.
“Miss Hamilton speaking, you’ve called the V.D.P. What is your problem?” Yes, that was our pickup line. For this number anyway; we had others.
I hear a frightened woman’s voice at the end of the line. “S-some attacked me early this morning. I got away but… I was jogging my usual morning run through the park and hands just grabbed me.”
“Can you identify if it was man or woman, colour? Could you make a description?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” she sobbed. “That’s not why I called,” she cried. I played with my finger curling around the phone cord. She took a while to continue, “What I want is to make it not happen again.”
I nodded. “Tell me, you said this was your usual morning run?”
“Yes? But I got away because I’m a good runner.” She was still whimpering.
“Let me tell you something, it won’t always depend how good of a runner you are, if next time the offender has a gun or is close-up to you and has a weapon.” Yes, we were also known for our bluntness but apparently the customers liked it. We got straight to the point and didn’t waste time with idle chitchat. “You firstly have to get out of the habit of going on scheduled timed runs, because culprits like to pattern their victims to plan their attacks. I’d also strongly suggest another park.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. In fact I’ve moved out of my area. I know it was a dramatic thing to do but all I could think about when I was there was that the person or more like that one were around.”
“Steps to safety are nothing to be embarrassed about unless you moved to a more highly crime rated area. Tell me, when you were going on your runs did you listen to music?”
“What?”
“Music, IPod, whatever. Did you jog to music?”
“Yes” she answered.
“Well, you’re going to have to stop that. When you’re out and it doesn’t matter where, you can’t get distracted, especially by technology. That includes a cell phone. Attackers are looking for easily distracted people who aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. It makes you an easy picking.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Good. Another thing I want to talk about to you, for future reference only, is when you’re going on your morning, midday jogs trust in your gut instinct. Normally it’s always accurate. You have three instincts” I held up three fingers even though this was a phone conversation. “You have flight, fight and freeze. Be cautious of that. Another thing, I’m guessing you always keep your hair in ponytails or a bun when you’re on your runs?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’ll help, but remember a bun is better than a pony tail as pony tails are still easy to grab onto. Also, remember to use your loudest voice to grab attention if you feel someone closing in. Even with no one there it can frighten them off sometimes. Better to look crazy then dead.”
She mumbled in agreement.
“Attackers usually have an idea of how the attack will happen. Making noise gets them off their guard. Fight like a psychotic cat, scream loudly, disrupt that idea; And this new area with new parks? I’m guessing it’s bigger? Sometimes they attack at places too loud for people to hear a cry for help so stay away from those places. Obviously parks have parking lots. Watch out for suspicious vehicles, vans, angles or sides that could trap people in. I would also strongly suggest for you to take your dog on runs and if you don’t have one it would be good to get one. Large dogs are intimidating to predators. Even the small ones make a lot of noise and unwanted attention. Have I helped?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, dramatically. Thank you so much” she sounded teary in gratitude.
“Okay, last thing I’m going to suggest, is if it ever happens again try to leave identifying marks on them. That way it can help bust the culprit. By the way, never go running at night. We all know that’s when the crazies are out.”
“Thank you so much!”
“Thanks for your call.” I hung up.
And just like that. All it is, is giving tips and advice. That’s what a surprise mass amount of people in the world want, more than public attention and exposure to being a victim. They just want to know how to prevent it. That’s where we’ve come in. It’s a lot better idea trying to help them prevent recurrence then just ignoring them because they’re refusing to prosecute out of fear. They’re just human. Sometimes I’d be on “phone patrol”, sometimes Reece or Dan would be. There were only thirteen of us so we all did bits and pieces and all shifted around doing different things. Some days were just filing. I hated those days. I thought about the group of us. There were thirteen of us. Of course there was me, AKA the bitch. There was Aki; he had only been with us for five years so his accent was still strong. Then there was Lain, Aaren, Abner, Maralee, Ross, David, Kacy, Lassen, Dan, Reece and Wildo. Yep, that’s right. Out of a group squad of thirteen there was only three females including me. That was okay though. None of us stereotyped each other. That was the beauty in our professional relationships. It only made us girls work harder anyway.
#The next day at work#
I was talking on the phone again. Another victim. I had “phone patrol” until lunch then Abner would take over and I’d join a few others in the same fighting courses we shared for the rest of the day.
“You’re trying to say that he tried to fight off your clothing?” I rummaged the few understandable words through sobbing and tears.
“Yes,” the woman cried but the word was understandable.
“Would it be okay to ask how you were dressed? I’m not saying how provocative, not that at all, but what type of clothing, meaning how easy it was to undress.”
“I wasn’t showing my legs. Not even cleavage! I was dressed in a long skirt. I also had on a blouse over top.” She sobbed so loudly the phone made weird noises.
“I understand. Revealing clothes can be dangerous depending on the people you’re around, but that’s not what I’m focused on. Long skirts, dresses, these are postponements when running. It makes us vulnerable. Heels are a major. As odd as it might sound, what I want to talk to you about is clothing. Do you have the time for this?” I say carefully, softly.
“Yes” she cries.
“We’re not going to talk about revealing clothes. We’re going to talk about harder-to-remove clothing. I don’t know you’re fashion style, ma’am, but overalls and one-piece jumpsuits and rompers are great for this. There are others too. They make it harder for someone to remove clothes forcefully. Avoid clothes that are held by elastic waists, these are easier to remove. Okay? Me personally, I keep to uniforms, pants always; Lots of buttons. Two layers of them actually. My hair is either always up in a ponytail or bun but a bun is safer. It gives them nothing to grab. When I can’t wear sneakers I wear flats. I haven’t worn heels since I was sixteen,” I laugh. I quickly realise this isn’t a time to be laughing and immediately stop myself. “You just have to find the right things. Belts are great. The more items the attacker has to remove the better. Buttons on the back are also good. Al-”
“I’ll change the wardrobe.” she cuts in. She’s not crying anymore. She just sounds monotone, maybe a little croaky. “…Yes…Is there anything possibly else you could help with?”
After she allowed, I took back my place of not shutting up. “I would suggest from now on you carry a defensive item like a pocket knife only if you know how to use them. If you don’t, they can get turned around and used on you. No one wants that. Try to get a weapon carry permit; if you can’t at least you can say you tried.”
“Okay.”
“I’m pretty sure you would know these but its protocol to go through the basics.” She made a hum to continue. I think I was making her feel better. “Always call 911, if you can’t, shout or scream it. It’ll get people’s attention. You can always take self-defence classes. A good one for you might be R.A.D. That’s R, dot, A, dot, D. There are plenty of others. If you go to parties, go in groups with your friends and don’t ditch or leave each other. Ever. Treat your drink like a million dollar bill. Don’t let anyone touch it. GHB dissolves immediately. Also, only accept drinks if the bartender delivers it himself. Work on being assertive and if you ever are in the incident where you’re being forced to drive by a potential rapist or murderer don’t take them where they want to go. Make sure your seatbelt is on, odds are there’s are not cause they’re rushing. Crash into a tree. It’ll injure them and surprise them. Better to get injured than potentially murdered in some secluded place. Am I giving too much? Have I frightened you?”
“No, please go on. I need as much of this as possible. All the other places I’ve gone to, talk groups or called over the phone, they’ve just been about dealing and preparing for my emotions. That’s not what I need to prepare for.”
“Okay? I’ll go on. It’s a stereotype, but seriously, stay away from vans. Better to hurt their feelings than get thrown in. I’ve said this one to a lot of people and I’m going to say it to you; Practise being careful when going into your house or car. Almost like drills that will come second nature. be aware of your surroundings at all times. Keep personal information private, just a last name and a photo could be useful to a good hacker. Never meet people off the internet. People say it’s the new thing; just don’t do it.” She hummed again. I went on. She wanted it. “Understand vulnerable factors and destroy them,” I karate chopped my hand, leaving the phone between my head and shoulder, quickly grabbing the phone back in my hand.
“Anymore?” She asked.
“It may sound ridiculous but walk confidently. Back straight, head up. Predators like trying to find weaknesses and then eat them up. Attackers will go for the ones they think can’t defend themselves. Confidence alone can be power. If it does happen, you have to mentally prepare. You must do everything in your power to escape even if it means hurting yourself. A lot of rapists kill their victims so they can’t be identified. Take your extreme fear and turn it into fighting anger.”
“Thank you. You’ve been really helpful. I’ll do all of this.”
“The safer, the bolder, the better; I’m going to leave you with one more thing. Caution; That’s it; Caution. Caution prevents anything from ever potentially happening. If you have strong caution, maybe even sometimes over caution it could help you a lot. Don’t worry about looking like an alarmist just as long as you’re safe. But check out the R.A.D course?”
“I will. Thank you. Your line has been more useful than all the others combined. I’ll check it out.” She hung up. I dropped down the phone.
#MY WORK#
We’re training in stick fighting. Our sticks are nearly as long as us. We’re in a big and opened up empty room, barefooted on blue carpet. I’m contending against four others. We’re all in white. I block their hits. They try to circle me in. My eyes search out for the worst in bad footwork. I attack, breaking the chain.
I lay my head on my pillow. I get up for another day.
The girls’ and I take the course for R.A.D. The instructor asks the volunteer man to get dressed up. He’s a good guy. The type I’d have a coffee with if I ever socialised. He straps up in a big body of red foam and hockey helmet. You can’t see him by the end of it. He’s just a fully covered red body. All we strap is our knee protectors, elbows, hands and helmet. We use him as our fighting doll. Sweet chap.
I lay my head on my pillow. I rise to another day.
I hang with the boys in the boxing room. The place is pretty self-duty. Nothings ever set up. You have to do that. We all walk over to find our own rightly weighed boxing bags and have to carry or drag, whichever one you can make out, and chain it up yourself to start dishing out the whacks. Only Dan would drag. The boys made fun of him. He needed to pick up the pace. We all threw punches for the rest of the day.
I lay my head on my pillow. I get up for another day.
The whistle sharply blows. We run! Time is limited to make the white line, if you don’t get it you get cut. The whistle blows! Next white line! Whistle! Run! Ross gets cut. Whistle blow! Run! Whistle! We all have to stop instantly, practise our breathing. The whistler walks down the line of us. If we can’t relax our breathing quickly enough we get cut. Two more go. Whistle! We all start running. FASTER! FASTER! Our time gets shorter. We have to be quick runners. The whistle blows! We line up and try to concentrate on our breathing. Only one gets cut this time. We move onto the next track now having to overthrow obstacles trying to out beat the timer. Tick, tick, tick. There’s only three of us left. The whistle blows! We all make it. We line. Our breathing soothes and relaxes. The whistle hurts our ears from the next blow. We embrace the next obstacle. Climbing over things and dodging around sharp things quick but carefully not to touch. I make it. The whistle blows! The two respire, they’re still at the obstacle. I relax my breathing. The whistler marches up to me, I don’t puff I don’t wheeze. (It’s a training practise through the nose and mind, prepare and relax.) The whistler grabs my arm and lifts it, shouting, “WINNER!”
I lay my head on my pillow. I rise to another day.
We carve our own stakes with pocket knives. We all sit down together doing this until we’ve made our quota. We plant trash bins, posts, transferable walls, things you’d find on the street, all around the room. We also have electrified automatic posters that jump out from the walls. They’re made to look human but the way we think, we wouldn’t even need fangs to see them. When we’re ready we take turns playing gang-up, a different person each time playing human. The human also has to shoot up or stake all the moving objects at the same time. If the human hits the heart, person out. The fighting isn’t soft or pretty. After that we all do individual training. We use our stakes for stabbing things. All sorts of things. Could seem odd-looking if you’re crazily plunging a stake through things that aren’t even shape figured as humans, but stabbing isn’t just about the physical power. It’s about the mental preparedness. The kind of mind set needed. No hesitations.
I lay my head on my pillow. I get up for another day.
Today I walk back into the boxing room. Some people are already at it at the bags. I’ve been working full board these two weeks, trying to warm up for the cult. I hope it’s all worth it. I squeeze my water bottle that’s sweaty in my palm and take a scull of water. You could imagine our bodies have to be top notch. That means we have to treat our bodies like temples. To have this job we gave up a lot. Family, friends, socialisation for one. No drinking, ever. No smoking, either. We’re strict. Of course no illegal drugs. We have to have healthy and nutritious diets too. We have to fit in best hours of sleep as we possibly can with the job. We have to keep fit and stimulated. I lay my sweat towel down and carry my bag to the chain. I’m not a really muscular woman. Okay, perhaps more than most but not poking someone’s eyeball out muscular. All the boys are bigger than me but that’s okay because I’ve taken them on before and won. Size isn’t all that counts in a fight. Method is. I slide on the gloves and start punching away.
I lay my head on my pillow. I rose to another day.
It now is only one day until I fight the head leader of the great cult of the vampires. I’m not scared because the worst he can do is kill me. If I was to die on this mission I would almost be fine with it. I wouldn’t be happy or grateful but fine, because I know I will have died trying and have saved hundreds of lives by killing all the vampires I have through the years. It’s honourable. To die on this mission would be the most proudly way to go for me. I don’t do many exercises today, just a few small ones for limbering up. I’m keeping all my energy for the big game tomorrow. Today I will spend my hours at home, calling the very little amount of people I have left, telling them I remember them and that I love them. I don’t expect any returns. I stir my tea, sitting at the kitchen table, thinking about what I have accomplished and what I have not through the years as I nibble on a piece of bread with butter. It feels weird just to sit & do nothing. No work today; Just mentally preparing. This is the day of memories to me. I can’t stop concentrating on all the things that are bad, it’s not like a switch you can shut off but I try to focus more on the good. My dog I had when I was seven that was named Scruffy; so it’s cliché, so what, he looked like a Scruffy. The first time I dyed my hair red at fifteen. My small eighteenth party with my friends. When I graduated at school and went on to university at nineteen; Mum couldn’t stop crying from how proud she was of me. Sadly Mum is gone and I haven’t spoken to Dad for several years now. Today will feel quick as the others felt more slow. I’ll soon train in my work out room to limber then reread the files on the cult to refresh my mind. I’ll need long hours of sleep tonight. Tonight I will dream of many things, hopefully good.
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