My teacher likes strong female characters. I'm not usually much for writing women, I like to try and get inside men's heads more, but I got slapped upside the head with this while in the shower and I think it's worth workshopping.

If you could please read this and tell me what you think-- especially any flaws, anything that needs FIXING, anything you DON'T like-- so I can edit/adjust before, um, noon when I need to print and collate all these copies for my classmates omfg they're going to READ this excuse me while I spaz the fuck out--
Okay. So please read this and tell me if anything needs fixing, or even if you like it. And so many thanks to railway and kikkirhodes for coaching me to a better ending. Oh! And especially if you have a better idea for a title, PLEASE do tell me, I suck at titles.


Random Acts of Violence


    You're getting used to living out of hotels. Every one is the same, cookie-cutter rooms, two beds, a dresser, a table, a phone. The bad art over the beds changes, as does the wallpaper, the carpet, the bedspreads, but it's the same basic room everywhere you've been.

    Boston. Atlanta. Washington, D.C. San Diego, San Antonio. Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's and state colleges in fourteen states, you've visited the campuses and eaten the cafeteria food and checked out the bars, the coffee shops, the libraries and shopping malls, the municipal transit systems.

    Every hotel has a nightstand between the two beds. Every nightstand has a drawer. Every drawer has at least two books: The Holy Bible and the local phone book. You only care about one of the books.

    And tonight, you're in some tiny town in New York, some throwaway college town with more cows than people and too few people to maintain the campus, if the state of the buildings and the rumors about the programs are true. The hotel room is the same as the one in New Hampshire you stayed in two days ago, which was identical to the one in Arizona last week. The carpet is the same brown, and here it reminds you of dead leaves more than the dust it brought to mind in Arizona. The bedspread is optimistically blue, but looks more like the drab grey of the skies above this town.

    Like in every town before this one, you've recorded the important information in your notebook. Quality of the food service (better than at most public schools), shopping opportunities (few, without a car, which you really don't want to blow that much money on for gas), points of interest (none within an hour's radius), appearance of students (interesting, if a bit soul-sucked), and so on. The last thing to note is the mark you leave on the town-- tonight's entertainment, as it would be. Dropping the phone book on the bed that's temporarily yours, you flop down and leaf through it. It's a skinny tome, standard sized for a phone book but much less thick than most you've had the pleasure of amusing yourself from these past few months.

    When you hold it up by the pages, bound spine resting on the bed, and let it fall open, it never opens to the same page twice. Perfect. This time for real, then, and you close your eyes before letting it go again, bring one perfectly polished nail down onto a page.

    Jarvis, Robert. 674-6595. You leave the phonebook on the bed, saunter across the room to your charging cell phone. Voice mail-- probably from your parents, and therefore not urgent. Pulling the charger out, you dial the number for Jarvis, Robert, area code first, and wait through the ring.

    "Hello?" The voice on the line is rough, deep; you either interrupted his sleep or his drinking. You smile, remembering what your chorus leader had told you, a smile brightens up your voice in any situation.

    "Hello, is this Robert Jarvis?" His grunted affirmation doesn't give you a clue one way or another on his actions. This room is the same as every other, and that means it takes eleven measured steps from door to windowed wall, you can pace it in exactly seven seconds going one way. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

    "No, 'm awake..." Definitely drunk. Your lip curls a little; this call won't take long. "Who th'ell is this?"

    "Did you know that the name Robert means 'bright fame'?" It's a common one, you didn't even need to consult your little book of baby names. "A very auspicious name. You probably go by Bob, though, am I right?"

    "That's what they call me." He sounds worried now, guarded. "Who is this?"

    "My name is Alice. Alice Veritas Firinn. My parents had a real, how do I put this? Kind of a cultish fascination with the truth. Alice is Greek, Veritas is Latin, and Firinn is Irish, and they all mean the same thing. 'Truth.'" You pause here, give him a moment to catch up, but he doesn't say anything. "I'd like to be truthful with you, Bob. I don't know you, and you don't know me. But when I get off the phone with you, I'm going to go kill a person." Far past smiling, it's hard for you to repress a giggle at this point. So many conversations flowing through the same track of disbelief, so many pleas you've heard, or obscenities, or threats. So far, only one of these random calls has kept you interested enough to talk for more than ten or fifteen minutes; one town escaped your boredom by quenching it, however briefly.

    "You what? I don' get-- miss, you're kidding, right?"

    "I don't joke around. The truth is rarely funny, after all." The smile slips a little; you're getting sick of this persona you've built for yourself. Maybe in the next town you'd call yourself Justice or something equally ironic. Alice lasted for almost a month, not bad for a spur-of-the-moment alias. "The truth is actually pretty painful, Bob. Not funny at all. Not fair. Not just. Wouldn't you agree?"

    "Y-yeah. S'not real amusing." Oh, Bob sounds sad. Sucks to be Bob, boring drunk Bob boring you half to death. You can return the favor.

    "You know, the truth is, life just sucks, doesn't it, Bob? It's hard to get ahead, hard to keep waking up in the morning, dealing with the same old shit day after day. It never goes away, just piles up higher and higher. You know what I mean, Bob. I know you do." What do you know about life, anyway? You're still too young to drink, barely able to buy cigarettes and scratch tickets. But you do know death, intimately, how to cause it, what happens to the body at the moment it occurs. You know that anyone as drunk as Bob at this early hour of the evening, especially on a Tuesday, probably has some serious piles of shit to deal with.

    "I know. I know." Somewhere along the line, you started preaching to a well-converted choir. Well, some people do just need one little push to take matters into their own hands; you're more than happy to deliver it.

    "You might as well check out now, Bobby boy. Trust me, things will not get better, and that's the god's honest truth." He makes a weak sound, almost a sob, and your smile returns as you hang up the phone.

    That was a new one. You'd never pushed someone to suicide before, assuming Bob was taking your advice. Maybe there'd be two corpses on your tab against this city in the morning. Leaning over to tie your shoelaces more securely, the phonebook falls to the floor before you, open to a new page. You close your eyes, drop one finger to the thin paper.

    Gilker, Theresa. 81 Broad Street. It's raining out there, beyond the cookie-cutter domain of the hotel walls, and you think that maybe tonight would be a good night for an evisceration, something slow and leisurely and messy as hell. A cheap plastic poncho covers your clothes, clings to your hair, and you walk away from the hotel, toward a bar and a pay phone, the posted number of a local taxi service. It takes five minutes for a cab to get there, while you find every leak in the poncho by slowly spreading wetness against your skin; the ride to 81 Broad is ridiculously short, and the cab fare inflated. You finger the knife strapped against your leg and smile at the driver, letting that angry, hateful grin carry you up to the front door of Gilker, Theresa's house. The street is busy, a main throughway for the little town, and you wonder, as you knock on the door, how long it would take someone to notice if you painted the picture window with Theresa's blood.