Like (but not quite) a Thief in the Night

So... Bezel still hasn't relented and neither have I, but there have been other developments (as those of you who read the comments know).  Nathan, a good friend turned saboteur, recently invaded the home of my sweet and elderly neighbors, the Jorgensons. (I'm not sure how - maybe he was posing as some sort of repairman or something.) He did this so that he could install a wireless router in their home and trade the password to Beezle, who now values an internet connection as much or more than he values souls.

I assume that their transaction occurred on the night that I caught Nathan giddily trotting up the stairs from the basement at three in the morning. Though he was bright and chipper, I was sluggish and groggy. The evening went something like this:

"Nathan?"

"Oh, hi! There you are. I was just... looking for you."

"In the Basement? What time is it? What are you doing in my house?" (It should have occurred to me at this point that the alarms had never gone off. I wish that I'd asked about that. I wonder if he payed Will to turn them off.)

"It's time too... play Starcraft! I couldn't sleep, and we all know that you don't sleep, so I came to see if you wanted to play."

I yawned and said, "Why would I be sleeping right now?"

Nathan rolled his eyes and said, "Don't even give me that crap. You don't ever go to bed, at least not when normal people do. Don't even try to deny it, we all know that you hate your body and stay up all night playing games, 'cause you're definitely not writing. I haven't seen any new 'Amar' from you since I made you write last Saturday.

I rubbed the back of my hands across my eyes and managed, "Why didn't you just try to get me on g-chat?"

"Because, it is fact that you never log off when you're done at the computer and nobody in the entire freaking world can ever find you when they want to. Did you get your phone yet?"

"No... it's on it's way though," I slurred.

"Your stupid phone company takes longer than one of my Grandma's rants on Obama and government conspiracies. Do you know how long those are? They are freaking long. Anyway, you look like you're too tired to be any good at all tonight. We'd just get raped. Hard. So... go to bed, and I'm going home. Also, I'm taking this pie that Wadsworth left on table. Don't even try to say 'no' because you mooch from me and Bec all the time." (It's true. Nathan and Rebecca Major kept food in my mouth before I had Wadsworth. Now they and Derek's family take turns feeding me me on Wadsworth's days off.)

I gestured my assent and turned to stumble up the staircase toward my bedroom, and Nathan went after the pie. From the landing I heard the front door rumble open a few seconds later and Nathan yelled up at me, "And don't forget to write tomorrow. You haven't written for at least a week, retard. At least update 'Mansion House.'"

That was the end of the exchange, and until these recent comments on 'Riverman Johnson' I didn't think anything more of it. Now, we know "the rest of the story," or at least some of it anyways.

At first I was troubled when I realized that Beezle had another way to get at the internet.  My thought was that if Nathan became Beezle's internet provider, I would lose my one and only bargaining chip. Now though, I see that the nature of things has in truth turned to my advantage. You see, Nathan didn't take three important facts into consideration:

Fact 1: Beezle is in my basement. There's something about concrete and earth that impedes even the hardiest of signals.

Fact 2: Beezle's lair messes with traditional physics. Die hard Mansion House followers may remember that when I entered my basement for the first time, I was immediately taken by the sheer volume of the place, and realized that it couldn't possibly fit inside the mansion. The chandeliers were sitting exactly where my study and front parlor should have been. It's got something to do with inter-dimensional space-time physics or something. I don't understand it, but there it is.

Fact 3: As a direct result of fact one and fact 2, Beezle's wireless internet is comparable to bad dial up. It's worse than my family's internet connection was in the 90's when my dad's 386 would take over a minute to upload a page on a good day.

Beezle has been accustomed to the luxury of my cat5 connection, and he's not taking this reduction in speed well. In his words, "WITH THIS... IMPOSSIBLY SLOW CONNECTION, BROWSING THE INTERNET HAS BECOME A SPECIAL KIND OF HELL."

That's how I know i'm making progress with Beezle. He admits now, that it's not enough. Two days ago he couldn't stop trying to convince himself vocally that what he had was enough. You'd think that it would be the same for him as if there was no internet. It's not. He's so addicted that he can't help but sit there and wait for each page to load. I can tell when there's a spike in his download speeds because I can literally hear him scoot forward in anticipation. It might be that with the powers of the internet so close to Beezle, and yet, so far away, I may be able to reach an acceptable treaty with him.

The best part is that I've noticed a decline in the strange negative coincidences in my life. This could be because Beezle is so drawn to suffer through surfing that he doesn't have time to attack me. However, it might just be that he's switched targets... last week Nathan's phone died at an inopportune moment. Because of this, and other odd circumstances, he and his wife spent the entire evening trying to find each other instead of relaxing in their house. That could just be coincidence. I sincerely hope that it is. Otherwise, thank you Nathan. You've always been the kind of friend that was willing to take one for the team. (Rebecca, I sincerely apologize.)

-Lord Secrest