A Window, A Light...

ASTL was pretty good even though I was only really there for about half of it.

Some sketchy ass dude who started showing up to our Cantown charity events offered to pay us a little more than half the room cost to sleep in the room we rented for our camera dudes, and after everyone okay'd it, it was set up. We didn't know him real well and he kind of made me uneasy in a way I couldn't really peg, but he wasn't frothing at the mouth or anything and we're pretty tight on cash.

So, this dude, who's name is Alex C. Shields, starts showing up all the damned time. He walks his ass into our room at weird times, he's touching up on people, leaving shit in our room, and basically getting way too fucking personal. At the time, we all just kind of figured his awkward nerd-self was just tone-deaf, but in retrospect it's pretty much stone-basic PUA bullshit. It came to a surprising head when several of us went to breakfast in the morning - Katie, myself, and a few friends. One of them was this 17-year old kid who'd been going to Cantown for a while and had been ditched by his friends - we knew him pretty well, so we're all just sitting at breakfast eating eggs, drinking coffee, and all that tired Sunday morning breakfast whatever when Alex moseys up and sits his ass down without so much of a how-do-you-fucking-do.

And starts poking the 17 year old in the arm.

Listen, you shit, no touching. You're 30, you're squinty-ass eyes look like a hungry weasels', and, quite honestly, you've been sticking your dick in our business from the word 'go'. I didn't say that, though. No. I'm a lot classier and I don't want to start a fucking row while I'm trying to enjoy my bacon. I just said, "No touching!" Dude jumped a little, then starting poking the air right by the kid again just like a shitty 8 year old in the back of the car trying to piss off his sister. "Just stop it, man. We're at breakfast. No touching."

And he stops. I mean, he doesn't stop butting into our conversations at awkward times and making shitty jokes, but at least he's not rubbing on people anymore. Just trust me that the touching wasn't wanted, okay? There's a whole thing about this, and trying to go over it makes just makes me think of the snake trying to swallow a cow. Even if you can do it, you're going to be more miserable than when you started, so I'm just not. So, trust me on this. If you want to know, I'll tell you later.

We get up to our rooms, and he follows us. I remember Katie and I talking about how frustrating and weird that he keeps leaving shit in our room - some of it's innocuous, like a bottle of liquor or a bag of chips, but some of it's pretty bizarre and pretty large. Like a strung compound bow and a tactical vest. Dude came by at, like, 2 AM with two girls on his arms from the rave last evening looking for his fucking cellphone charger then just fucked off without taking anything back last time we talked to him before breakfast, so I'm just like, "While we're here, you've got a lot of shit in our rooms you should probably take out." Because it's Sunday. Checkout for him is noon and it's 10, so. You know. Fuck off.

He makes puppy dog eyes, like, "But.... there's not that much stuff in there." to which we reply that it honestly doesn't matter if it's a half-eaten Hostess cupcake and a bottle of lube, it's gotta go. So he mutters about getting a cart for his stuff and trundles off. I grab as much stuff as seems relevant - Katie has to stay for the whole day to film Sunday wrap-up, and I head out for home since I've got to take care of the pets and then I've got work in the evening. I go down to get in my car and, far from bringing a cart up, I see this dude just gangster-driving right next to me, staring me down as I'm getting into my car.

Whatever.

Let me tell you, Sunday was a fucking beautiful day. I'm listening to my stupid ass rpg character themed soundtrack and pull into my driveway just as Sinatra's take on "The Girl From Ipanema" wraps up. I mean, it's even the last track on the CD. That's pretty much perfect. Except that there's a hissing sound that I'm fairly sure isn't part of the soundtrack. The fact that it's continuing despite the car being totally off confirms it. My tire's leaking.

This - I assume - is just bad luck. By which I mean that it's bad luck of the same stripe that caused one of my cars to simultaneously fall apart at the axle and had the hoses on the radiator burst at the same time, or the bad luck that causes me to be laid off right after my contract is renewed, or one of the many other extensively varied flavors of terrible fortunes I have demonstrated over the years. But no. While the luck is certainly bad, this is not the wear-and-tear brand of terrible luck that's as frustrating as it is held to be blatantly inevitable by the deterioration or order into uniform chaos that is thermodynamics at the personal level, but rather a specific brand of formulated malice that you tend to expect from 4 year olds that haven't developed a superego and man-children 30-year old sociopaths that fancy minors.

I finally get ahold of Katie and secure a ride, but in the meantime, I want to know what the hell is causing my tire to deflate. There's a half-inch wide piece of metal sticking about a quarter-inch out of the tire near the groove of the rain treads. I get some pliers to wrench this fucker out, but it doesn't wanna go so I just keep pulling and pulling. Finally, I get the whole thing - it's one prong of a safety scissors blade. That's 2.5 inches of safety blade that had been neatly clipped from the whole scissor right where the bold creating the fulcrum had used to be - which is to say that it is a manufactured spike. Which is to say that my tired had been spiked.

tl:dr, a pedophile spiked my car tire. I don't have solid proof, but I am sitting on a pile of circumstantial evidence, for all the good it does me.

But if you're sitting there, very reasonably, thinking "But just getting a little too friendly with a kid isn't that bad."

http://elendraug.tumblr.com/post/48162702708/schlongstick-elendraug-horriblycrazy

Just, like, check it out. I'll wait.

The con staff are taking it pretty seriously, but the information didn't really come out until the whole thing was over. Since nothing got reported while the con was going, there's not all that much they can do. He's also a registered sex offender for violently accosting a 14 year old, but that's apparently old news. I gotta see if my insurance will take care of the tire tomorrow, and Katie's getting statements to file a report with the police. It's a lot worse than what I saw; it looks like we had a real, genuine creeper on our hands. I'm going to go have a drink, now.