Returned To Owner

RETURNED TO OWNER --- STRIFE OPERATIONS — WEAPONS & PROPERTY CONFISCATION RECORD EVENT: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 11 · THE FOUNDRY SUBJECT: "TOXIC WASTE" RANCID BOUT: RANCID vs. STATIC — STANDARD RULES ITEMS SURRENDERED TO OFFICIALS: 3 ITEMS RETURNED TO SUBJECT POST-EVENT: 0 STATUS: HELD IN SECURE STORAGE PENDING DISPOSAL 1 · Kendo stick, wrapped in razor wire, approx 39 in. · Pre-bell, entrance ramp · Sr. Official · Receipt 11-A-004 2 · Chain, steel, approx 4 ft, one end taped · 06:02 · Sr. Official · Receipt 11-A-011 3 · Fluorescent tube, 4 ft, intact at surrender · 08:14 · Jr. Official · Receipt 11-A-017 NOTE FROM OPERATIONS: Subject surrendered all three items voluntarily and without dispute. No physical resistance was offered on any of the three occasions. Subject was described by two officials as "polite" and by one as "weirdly nice about it." --- The following was received by the STRIFE production office nine days later. It is four sheets of lined paper, folded twice, delivered by hand to the loading bay by somebody who did not wait. It is reproduced here in full because there is no rule against it and because the man asked. --- hello so somebody in that office has got a form with three things on it and my name at the top and i want them all back please. hardcore rules means nothing gets took off me. that is what the word means. i looked it up to be sure and i was right. i am going to go through them one at a time because i think that is fair and because i have been thinking about each of them separately for nine days now. ITEM ONE. THE STICK. give it back. the razor wire on it is mine, i put it on myself, took me two hours and i bled doing it which i think makes it more mine than most things anybody owns. your fella took it off me on the ramp before i even got to the door. before the bell. i hadnt done anything yet. he put his hand out and i gave it him and i said thank you. do you know why i said thank you because nobody has ever done that to me before. thirty odd years and nobody has ever stood in front of me and said you cannot have that. in a junkyard in ohio a man once took a bottle off me and i put him through a fence. but this fella just put his hand out and looked a bit sorry about it and i gave it him and it was the strangest thing thats happened to me in years. i thought about it for about a week after. anyway thats over. give it back. ITEM TWO. THE CHAIN. six minutes and two seconds. your record is right. i had it about eleven seconds. i want to be honest on this form because it is a form. i was not going to use the chain. i had already worked out by six minutes that hitting him with things was not the way in. he takes it. he takes everything. you could drop a car on that man and he would get up and check the tyres. i got the chain out because i wanted to see what he did when i had a chain. and he did nothing. he just waited. he watched me get handed the thing and watched me hand it over and he waited for me to come back like i was picking up shopping. so i dont need the chain. but i want it back anyway because it is mine and because i am going to hang it on the cage wall on saturday and leave it there all match without touching it, and i would like everybody in that building to spend fifteen minutes wondering when im going to. ITEM THREE. THE TUBE. give it back if it is still in one piece and if it isnt then dont worry about it, i have got plenty. eight minutes fourteen. i want to say something about that one. i handed the tube over and then i went back in and about forty seconds later i got hold of a bin lid, and i hit him in the face with it. and nobody took the bin lid off me. thats the whole thing. thats the whole entire thing and ive not been able to stop thinking about it since. they take the stick, they take the chain, they take the tube, and then i pick up a lid off the floor and do the one thing on gods earth that man will not do, and everybody just watched. not the head. thats his rule. its the only one im sure of and im not guessing at the others out loud in case i get one right and he goes and changes it. not the head. for him. nobody wrote that down for me though did they. ITEM FOUR. there is no receipt number for this one because nobody took it off me. aluminium plate housing off the apron LED strip, about fourteen inches, come loose in the second corner sometime around eleven minutes. i hit him with it at twelve. and then at the end of the night i walked out of that building with it down the front of my tights and about nine people watched me do it and not one of them said a word. im not asking for it back. ive got it. its on the shelf in the van next to the radio. im putting it on the form because i want it on the form. i want somebody in that office to type it into a computer. i want it to exist on paper that i have got it, so that on saturday when it turns up nobody has to do the bit where they act surprised. it has got his blood on it still. i havent cleaned it. i thought about cleaning it and then i thought no. ITEM FIVE. this one isnt yours to give back so ill just tell you about it instead. fourteen minutes. i crawled over and got the housing and i went back and i put it in his hand and i closed his fingers round it. then i got on my knees in the middle of that cage in front of eight thousand people and i put my chin up. go on, i said. im not gonna tell anybody. and he picked it up. he picked it right up over his head and all your lights went red, which by the way was a lovely touch and i dont know if that was a fella on a desk somewhere or if the cage just knew, but it was lovely. and i watched it the whole way up. i didnt shut my eyes. im not being hard about that, i genuinely just wanted to see it. and he put it down. opened his hand and let it drop and stepped over it and then walked me to the middle of the cage where theres nothing to hold onto and beat me, properly, cleanly, better man on the night, no complaints from me and none coming. so he kept it. fine. he kept it. and then that man has walked into and out of every room he has ever been in and looked at it. every single one. coming and going. fifteen years of it. hes done it every night he has ever worked here and it is the most him thing about him. he didnt do it that night. he went straight out the door and he never looked back at the room and one of the fellas on the desk clocked it and said it out loud on the telly. he wanted out. thats item five. thats what im actually asking for back and none of you have got it in a cupboard. --- right so heres what saturday is. they have made it hardcore which means i can keep everything, which means the office has finally caught up to where i already was nine minutes into the last one. everything is legal for me. nothing is legal for him. except nobody made him do that. he did that. he wrote four rules down for himself years ago over something he wont say out loud and he has kept them every night since including the night it was easy. the posh fella on the desk said it and he was right and i think he might be the only honest man in this company. he said he kept it on the easiest possible night. winning anyway. everybody watching. so lets have a hard one. im not going to hurt him more than i have to. i want that written down as well, in the same handwriting as the rest of it, so that when it goes bad nobody can say i was building up to something. i have got no grudge. hes better than me. ill say it to his face in a room with the lights on and id say it under oath. i just want to see whats on the other side. thats it. thats all it has ever been. hes got a door in him that has never once been opened and i am the only person alive who is interested enough to keep knocking. and heres the bit i dont think anybody has worked out yet, so ill just put it on the form. if he holds it saturday, he loses. because i am going to get on my knees again and i am going to put something in his hand again and i am going to give him my face again, and this time hes tired, and this time hes bleeding, and this time hes winning by about that much — and hes going to have to stand there and decide, and whatever he decides is going to cost him the eleven seconds. that is all it takes. eleven seconds of a man having a think. and if he does hold it and i go and win off the back of it, ill take it, but i want it noted right here in advance that a win is the boringest thing that could happen to me on saturday and it is not what i came for. what i came for is one second where he isnt sure. give me my stuff back. rancid (the fourth sheet has one more line on it, written sideways in the margin in different pen, added later) tell him i said hello. tell him i noticed he didnt look at the room.