by Quatermass » Wed Jan 05, 2011 5:13 am
Indecisive Ian, he of the red hair and wild, manic eyes, watched the Assassin class file out. "Offler's Tusks," he sighed. "I swear that the Assassins Guild is getting worse and worse. Get those books out of L-Space? Buddy, I knew the Librarian of Unseen University, before he became an ape. He wouldn't let you get such dangerous books, not even if you were holding a gonne to his face." Not that Professor Pooh Garrotte heard him. Nobody heard him.
Indecisive Ian was a ghost, not to put too fine a point on it. His life was a sorry series of crappy decisions and an inability to stay in more than one profession long enough to learn much (except that he didn't want to learn anything from said profession). Wizardry, thievery, 'seamstress' (that was an experience that he would rather forget), fool (being nobody's fool, he was only signed onto the Guild for all of a minute), he'd tried them all. He was about to try and commit to being an assassin when Lord Downey had invited him up to his office for a sherry and an almond slice.
It was then, under the blue-starred gaze of Death, that Ian made perhaps the only decision he stuck to for his life (or afterlife, rather). He decided to become a ghost, and haunt the Assassins Guild. Specifically, a poltergeist. Unfortunately, he was only able to pick up a small book, and throwing it was a different matter. But he thought that with a few more decades of practise, he would be able to throw things willy-nilly. As it was, he had enough fun emptying Lord Downey's liquor bottles while Downey was off meeting the Patrician.
Yawning, Ian decided to take a walk. While not completely confined to the grounds of the Guild, he did have a limited amount of time that he could spend elsewhere. He often spent it annoying mediums and necroman- sorry, wizards who specialised in Post-Mortem Communications.
Mediums and *cough*, specialists in PMC were better company than the other resident ghost of the Assassins Guild.
***
The smell of a stealth archaeologist's office is quite nauseating at any time, given that it smelt of old and dead things. Jack Glue, who preferred this to his usual name of 'Jimmy', didn't have any senses anymore to awaken and revolt from such a smell, and in any case, he would have tolerated it. Not only was he old (technically) but he was also dead. And he was haunting one of the noted female teachers of the Guild, Miss Alice Band.
In his mind, even when alive, Glue thought himself Blind Io's gift to women. Lorenzo the Kind, his employer, thought Glue a useful blunt instrument for disposing of opponents who were unable to be detained at and for Lorenzo's pleasure. But those who knew Glue, or read of him, thought that he was, at best, a misogynistic sexist dinosaur, even by the standards of the time. Working for a monster like Lorenzo the Kind just made him worse.
Although female students were not allowed in the Assassins Guild until relatively recently, it was one who assumed a boy's identity in order to be taught here that captured and incapacitated Glue during the ill-fated mission that Lorenzo sent him on to murder the head of the Guild. This was during the Ankh-Morpork Civil War. Said female student was one of Miss Band's ancestors.
After Lorenzo was overthrown, the Assassins Guild decided to be creative in how they dealt with Glue, instead of their usual cool, professional selves. They sent for the finest adhesive craftsmen in Ankh-Morpork, and asked that a few of Lorenzo's technicians be spared to help Glue be turned into, well, Glue.
And then, Glue met Death, fully expecting to be taken to his eternal reward. Death, who had witnessed Glue's various killings and heard the sardonic one-liners afterwards, was disgusted. Things happened, and Glue was now the senior ghost haunting the Assassins Guild.
He stared at a portrait of Band on the wall. "Oh, Mish Band," Glue said, "One of theshe daysh, you will fall victim to Death. And when he comesh for you, I will be waiting."
Death, and Miss Band, had either of them heard, would have made plans for other contingencies. Eternity with Jimmy Glue was clearly not the sort of afterlife she had in mind.
(Sorry y'all. I wanted to set the scene for my characters. And yes, I am not a fan of Sean Connery's Bond.)
The Doctor: There's one thing you never put in a trap, if you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there's one thing you never, ever put in a trap... Me.
-Doctor Who: The Time of Angels
