[Apocalypse Roulette] Claude Janvier: Check Out Any Time You Like

[Fayth]

The basement is cold, dark, and empty- but then, the basement was always cold, dark, and empty.


No matter the season, no matter the clothes you wore, the basement of AngioTech Pharmaceuticals was chilly. The lightbulbs flickered and ran far dimmer than they would in any other place, and burned out twice as fast no matter what brand they were or how often the electrical wiring was inspected and repaired. And, despite managerial insistence that the basement be cleaned just as often and as well as the rest of the building, Claude had never seen anyone go in or out of it except him.


It's just another night. The floors require mopping, there's another burnt-out light-bulb just down the hall, and somehow there's a streak of dirt on the ceiling despite no one coming down here ever.


And then- there is a thunk. Somewhere, in the seemingly-endless hallways, is a thunk that does not come from Claude.

 

[Monalfie]

Another dark, cold day cleaning out the basement. Another day that Claude was forced to figure out how the basement somehow got dirtier and requiring of more work than the rest of the building for no reason. He pulled out his mop and swung it at the ceiling in the patch of dirt that had somehow magically appeared on the ceiling. "Fucking bullshit, I swear there's a boot print in that patch." The grumbling decreased to muttering as some of the mop water dripped down onto the floor. "Cleaning the ceiling, probably get damn shocked. Break my neck and nobody else will bother cleaning this cursed shithole."


The janitor's mutterings were nothing new as there was little else to pass the quiet time of cleaning besides bitching to himself. It wasn't as though there was anyone to hear his complaints. Claude had just opened his mouth to let out a list of what would happen to the building if he died, a colorful narrative about haunting the place, when he heard the sound. Sounds themselves were not strange, the flickering of bad bulbs or the squish of his mop. Yet, he had never seen another soul in the basement, let alone heard such a a noise coming from it.


"Fuck me." Claude whispered to himself, readying to take a drink from his hip flask before returning it inside his jacket. He could already imagine what it might be. Some mob trying to get rid of a snitch's body, probably would kill him for seeing it. Or some CEO's daughter and her teenager friends coming to smoke pot and beat up the innocent old man. Probably Satan crawling up from the Pit to start the End of Days. Lord only knew he was close enough to Hell in the basement. But he swallowed again, mustering a small amount of courage before calling out in a slightly cracking voice, "Hello?"

 

[Fayth]

The basement is still, his call echoing from the walls. A few drops of water fall from the ceiling where the mop was just seconds earlier. After that, the silence is pierced only by occasional drips of dirty water from the ceiling. Just when the quiet has stretched on long enough to maybe make him think he imagined the noise, it comes again: thunk.


There's exactly one way in or out of the basement, and that's the elevator. The place is probably breaking a bunch of disability laws by not having it be big enough to fit a wheelchair in, and a bunch of fire code laws by not having any stairs, but for as long as he's been working there, it's just been the one elevator. The basement is labyrinthine, but after cleaning it so often, Claude has a sixth sense for which way the elevator is in, and that noise - almost as if someone has fallen; definitely the sound of a body hitting a surface - is between him and it.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude remained still like a startled deer and waited with his fight or flight sense on alert. Though, it didn't seem like much of a choice to him, flight. Damn if he'd get killed by anything without being drunker. He kept his pose, eventually figuring someone had dropped something down the elevator shaft or something. Slowly he raised his mop in preparation to clean the ceiling when it came again, a sound that had likely been the last thing the previous janitor had heard before dying. Granted, he admitted he wasn't sure if the last janitor had died or quit, but it seemed possible, a question to ask before demanding a raise.


While he was a janitor, Claude had no particular love of cleaning or even cleanliness. His own dirty appearance was enough proof of that. He put his mob back in the bucket and was preparing to leave the rest of the basement uncleaned before he belatedly realized where the noise came from, the elevator. It even sounded like a damned body, as well as he could tell. There would be no escaping without getting past whatever was making the noise. He glanced at the wall next to him for a moment. "I could try digging..." He frowned, realizing that wouldn't work.


Cursing once again in his mind, Claude pulled his mop from the bucket and held it out in front of him like a weapon. As an afterthought, he pulled his cross necklace out from under his shirt and wrapped it around the end of the mop handle. Thus armed, the old man slowly began making his way through the cold hallways before trying to peer down at where the elevator stood.

 

[Fayth]

Claude's steps would have been near-silent in any other circumstances, but here where the walls echoed and any other sound was absent, they click with all the subtlety of a raging bull. As he turns the corner, the thunk is heard once more, and finally he has the elevator in his sight.


There, staring at the elevator door as if she cannot understand its' very existence, stands a woman. Her stereotypical scientist whites hang loosely from her body, hands peeking out of the sleeves. Her head dips in front of her, tilting to the side. A hank of blonde hair obscures the side of her face where it has fallen loose from the bun at the back of her head.


She continues to stare at the elevator for a few seconds, then lunges forward. The sound her body makes when she collides with the elevator door is undoubtedly the sound Claude heard before.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude froze once again as he finally sighted both the elevator and what had been causing the odd sound. Salvation and damnation right next to each other. His first instinct was to rush forwards and crack his mop over the bitch's head for scaring the shit out of him. He had already raised the mop above his head like a samurai about to strike. Yet, despite having had a bit to drink that morning, he held the desire in check. The headlines already filled his head, Drunk Janitor Kills Defenseless Woman in Berserk Blitz. That's just the sort of shit that reports sat around waiting for. The story practically wrote itself.


But as he observed the woman from his distance, Claude couldn't deny her behavior was slightly odd as she jumped against the elevator door. More possibilities swarmed his now frenzied mind. Probably some techie from a second hidden basement beneath, he'd seen those Resident Evil movies. Or maybe some monster wearing people skin and was preparing to jump out to get a second victim. That was always how it started. First a dumb lab tech died before taking some janitor who nobody would notice missing. But he couldn't think like that! Someone would miss him, like his cat.


After making a mental note to himself to get more cats to build more worldly worth, Claude came up with the best plan he could figure off-hand. He slipped off one of his heavy work boots and tossed it down the hallway at the woman. As the boot left his hand, he already started regretting the choice as he felt the cold around attack his foot. But he pushed the feeling away as he watched it arc in the woman's general direction, his intent to hit the wall near her.

 

[Fayth]

Throwing boots isn't a well-honed skill of Claude's, but he manages to throw it just past her. The boot hits the wall with a very audible impact in the quiet of the basement. The woman's head snaps in that direction, and her entire body tenses up. A few seconds later, her attention returns to the elevator, and she moves forward again. Her head hits the elevator door once more, and she stumbles backward, trying to regain her balance.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude fought down his immediate urge to start cursing at the woman's odd reaction. Things were just getting progressively worse. Not he was without a boot and the woman had even looked at right at the damned thing before turning back to run into the elevator. He failed to understand the behavior at first. She didn't seem drunk to him as her reaction to the boot was anything but reasonable. The idea that someone had given a mentally handicapped woman a lab coat was equally baffling. It only reinforced that some demon was trying to cause some evil.


But it still left the question of what to do. He didn't want to go back cleaning a shitty basement when some deranged woman was pulling a crazy with his elevator. Eventually he'd need to get upstairs and he couldn't really do that with the woman in the way. But if she was actually a retarded woman, then a blitz attack would go over even worse. Janitor Fondles then Kills Unarmed Retarded Woman. They'd be juicing up the electric chair for that, no matter what the laws said. But he was a man and he swallowed deeply while steeling himself for what he planned to do.


Several heartbeats passed as Claude continued to struggle internally with his decision before he forced the words out. "H-hey." He cleared his throat quickly before speaking louder. "Hey, are you there?" Regretting the choice of words, the janitor readied his mop like a samurai sword for anything.

 

[Fayth]

At his words, the woman freezes. She stares at the elevator for another second more, then turns her head slowly to look at him.


The other side of her face is a wreck. The side he saw when first coming around the corner was whole if a little pale, but the other side is a bloody, broken mess, an entire chunk of her jaw missing. There's a huge hank of hair gone on that side, and her cheekbone is clearly visible through a long tear in the skin. Her eyes, hazel and possibly pretty under other circumstances, are vivid as she stares at him. Then, she coughs, lungs spasming, and starts to walk toward him, one unsteady step after another.

 

[Monalfie]

"Fuck!" Claude couldn't help but shout out, jumping back even further in his sudden alarm. For all his thoughts, he'd still been holding out some hope that the woman was merely confused or drunk. But it seemed she was missing half her face and somehow was still stumbling about. It hardly made sense how anything could be thinking in so much pain. He soon came back to reality as he realized that the woman was coming directly towards him. Fight or flight kicked in once again as the janitor began backing up quickly to put more distance between him and the woman.


He'd only gone ten paces when Claude realized he needed a better plan than running away. Who knew how many more face crushed people were down here that he didn't know about, diseased or somehow possessed, things he clearly didn't want to get involved with. He took a quick glance over his shoulder before figuring that getting out of the basement was a good idea. A famous quote came to his mind from a master tactician, 'You don't ever wanna fight in a basement.' Nodding, his plan was now set. He slowed his retreat and instead stopped to stand in front of an entrance to a hallway that he knew looped in a square.


Sweat made the janitor's hands clammy as he waited for the woman to get closer, weakly tapping the ground with his mop. His mind still raced at what might be going on. It couldn't really be a demon, those things went after evil people. No sympathetic thoughts went through his mind as his only goal was self-preservation. He didn't want anything to do with whatever was going on.

 

[Fayth]

The woman coughed some more, trailing after Claude. Her body rippled from the abdomen up, almost as if she were going to vomit, with every cough. A few drops of blood fell from the side of her face, speckling the previously-clean tile with dark red. Her eyes stayed fixed on him, unblinking, and her step was steady if ungainly as she advanced to just a few feet in front of Claude.

 

[Monalfie]

As he held his ground and the woman grew closer, Claude was still unsure of what to make of her condition. It almost bothered him enough to comment that she was dripping blood on the floor he had cleaned. The lab coat, in conjunction with her constant almost heaving actions, once again reminded him of Resident Evil. He struggled to recall any facts from that movie. Sadly, he had been drunk out of his mind when the film had came on and any facts were slow in coming back. He tried to push that out of his mind as the woman grew closer. Before she reached him, the janitor began moving down the side hallway. Stopping halfway through it, he looked back and tapped his mop shakily again to make sure she followed.

 

[Fayth]

Obligingly, the woman followed him, her hacking cough becoming deeper and wetter. It was a phlegmy, deep-lung cough, the kind that can only come from very ill lifetime-smokers.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude was equal parts thrilled and sad to see the woman had decided to indeed follow him down the hallway. Having taken the bait, it was almost like fishing, if one was trying to catch a gross, bloody lady. He continued his tactic around the different hallways until he had reached the last hallway before returning to the main one. He waited until the thing rounded the last corner to be in the final hallway of the circuit before sprinting away for all he was worth. Such a task was decidedly uncomfortable and awkward with only one boot on. But he didn't look back as he rushed down the hallway and began pressing the elevator button ten or twenty times.


Glancing back over his shoulder while waiting for the elevator, the janitor glanced over his shoulder in-case the stumbling woman came back into the main hallway. He also quickly picked up his boot and waited.

 

[Fayth]

The elevator, surprisingly enough, was already on the basement level. Perhaps the woman had stumbled into the call button, or perhaps no one else had yet used it because of the hour. Either way, the elevator immediate opened in front of Claude, revealing a brightly-lit, empty chamber.

 

[Monalfie]

Blinking, Claude was surprised that the elevator opened so quickly. He quickly jumped inside before pushing the ground floor button, putting his boot on in the meanwhile. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, he slumped against the back wall before considering what to do. It seemed like a good idea to call the cops once he was outside. After all, at no point had he been stupid enough to touch the woman. They couldn't possibly pin what happened to her on him. But the main thing he desired at that moment was a nice, strong drink. Slowly his mind started telling him to just leave and pretend nothing had ever happened. Better to say he skipped some cleaning to get a drink, perhaps dodging any police involvement.


He finally stood up and wiped off his sweaty brow as the elevator reached the ground floor. He put his cross necklace back around his neck, holding the mop casually at his side as the doors opened.

 

[Fayth]

An empty, quiet hallway greeted him.

The lobby was constructed in such a way that the elevator was hidden in the back of the ground floor. At the end of the hallway was a large desk behind which a secretary sat during the daytime, screening visitors to make sure no one unsavory got into the building. The color scheme was ugly as sin and since nothing would grow in the building due to some sort of strange mold, the fake plants added to the tackiness. The rest of the building was classy, but for some reason no one would fix the sheer offensiveness of the lobby.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude exited the elevator, trying to his best to appear casual while likely failing horribly. There was little he'd like to do more than run out of the building at full speed. Yet, he held back his instinct and slowly walked down the hallway to the lobby. He was confused at the distinct lack of people, his fear being put to the side at the oddness of it. His distinct method of avoiding looking others in the eyes made it hard for him to remember how many people worked in the building. But he knew it was unusual for it to feel this empty. He simply focused on ignoring the fact. The entire thing would probably make more sense once he had a nice drink. Walking at an even pace, he made to leave the building.

 

[Fayth]

Barely visible, head peeking out from the side of the desk, is a person. Head turned away from Claude, all he can tell is that the person in question has long dark hair.

 

[Monalfie]

Claude was prepared to walk straight out of the building when he noted someone's head barely sticking out from the cover of the desk. His step stuttered for a moment before he stopped, righting himself and looking at the shape that identified a person. Yet another god damn decision to make. Why someone was sitting behind the desk like that was beyond him. But it might be a blessing in disguise as he could perhaps use the person as a means to build an alibi. He could always say he was talking to this person whenever the woman in question was getting all damaged, assuming the thing was actually a person.


Nerves less rattled than before, the janitor walked heavily over to the desk and tapped his fingers across the wooden surface as he tried to get a better look at the person. "Yo, what's kickin'?" He once again wanted to sigh at his odd word choice, but instead waited for a response.