NOTE: There's an update on this entry down below, for those of my regular audience who have already read this notation. Scroll down.

This will be a short one because I'm furious and sick at heart.

For the second time in as many weeks, Paul and I have apparently been robbed by someone we stupidly and foolishly trusted.

We were setting up to play a game of HeroClix tonight, and I noticed that my Vision, a Unique piece I bought as a single for $15 (the only one I've paid anything like that kind of money for to date, and a piece I personally loved and took great pride in owning) was missing.

Paul checked his, and it seems his own unique Lady Deathstrike is also missing.

These pieces couldn't have been misplaced. I remember putting the Vision down in his usual place... right behind the Scarlet Witch, hovering protectively over her, in the midst of their fellow Avengers, when I last set my clicks out on my bookshelf several days ago. I don't remember seeing him since, so he disappeared at some point within the last week, probably within the last few days.

We have really only two suspects, and I don't believe that Paul's 'girlfriend' would know enough about HeroClix to single out two Uniques. Plus, you can't pawn HeroClix nor can you easily sell them for cash; what you CAN do with them is take them to local comics shops and trade them for store credit. This would indicate they were stolen by someone who knows something about the game and who would like to increase his clix collection by trading a few uniques for a couple of boosters.

That narrows it down to one guy.

Of course, if/when confronted, he'll deny it. Tomorrow I plan to start calling all the local shops to see if those two figures have turned up at any of them, and if they have, if the clerks there remember and can describe who brought them in. Our prime suspect is rather distinctive in appearance and demeanor. If I find them, I doubt I'll be able to recover them... comics shops can't afford to just throw away merchandise, even if it does turn out stolen... but at least Paul and I will know who to bar from our premises.

I am just so upset by this right now I really can't type any more. I trusted this person. I invited him into my home. Just like Chad, Paul's 'friend' who stole $40 from us a few weeks ago.

And, although it was just a stupid piece of plastic, I loved that Vision click, and it sucks that he's gone because I trusted the wrong person.

Paul is upset too, although he really wasn't all that attached to his click. He knows what the Vision meant to me, and he's also rather pissed and distraught at the thought that someone we trusted would do this to us.

Well... I'll make some calls tomorrow.

I had kind of a depressing day at work, too... as always, I'm surrounded by attractive women who simply don't find me remotely desirable, and that just gets old, really fast, especially when you really really like one of them... but, you know, I should be used to that by now.

Oh, well. I'm going to bed.

FUCK, this sucks.

Update: Wednesday January 28 2004

It was Scott.

I'm absolutely sick about it, not only on my behalf, but even more so on Paul's, because Scott is probably Paul's closest friend right now, and this news is hitting him even harder than it's hitting me. But, there is no doubt. I called a few comics places, and the third one I called... Hooked On Comics, the place Scott buys most of his HeroClix... described the guy who had come in with a Unique Vision yesterday to a T. Scott also mentioned to us, when he showed up last night with some new clicks to try and trade with us for Paul's Vet Flash and my Unique Superman, that he'd pulled a Unique Ronan the Accuser and had traded it for store credit, with which he'd bought the new stuff. The owner of Hooked On Comics mentioned, without me prompting him, that along with the Vision, 'the guy' had traded him a Ronan the Accuser.

As with Chad, the guy who stole the $40 from us two weeks ago, I can easily follow Scott's chain of resentment-fueled non-reasoning. When he offered to drive me over to the flea market last weekend, he wanted $5 in gas from me. I told him I'd either give him the $5 or I'd make him a nice trade, if I pulled anything from whatever boosters I bought that was cool and I really didn't much want to keep. When I pulled the Unique Superman, I was so thrilled that despite the fact that Scott obviously coveted it, and obviously, on some level, felt he was entitled to it, I refused to trade it to him, and instead, I just gave him the $5 he'd asked for, which was basically all the rest of the money I had in the world at that point. Some of that was because I wanted to keep it, but some of my motivation, I admit, came from my childish enjoyment of the fact that I had something Scott wanted, and last month, when Scott pulled something I badly wanted out of a booster that should have been mine, he simply traded it away for store credit instead of trading it to me.

Scott has tried furiously over the last week to get that Superman off me and obviously he felt I had no right to withhold it from him, so just as obviously, he felt justified in taking my Vision to trade for stuff I'd find irresistable. And in fact he succeeded in that attempt very well. Scott knows what I like; he very cold bloodedly traded my Vision for a Veteran Green Lantern and a Veteran Iron Man, and I did indeed give up the Unique Superman for those pieces in a trade last night, prior to me actually noticing the Vision was missing.

You have to either give Scott props for an absolutely reptilian poker face, or heap scorn on him for reckless stupidity... hours after stealing a click he knew I loved (he was there when I bought it and he's heard me wax rhapsodic about owning it many times), he came back to trade with me using stuff he'd swapped that stolen click for, not knowing whether I'd have noticed it was missing or not.

I imagine he planned to blame Paul's new girlfriend, or maybe Kyle (whom Paul and I were both hoping fervently would turn out to be the culprit) if I'd noticed and was upset. I don't think he even remotely thought I'd just call around various shops to find out who had brought in a Vision (it took me a while to think of it, too).

It puts Paul in a horrible position, because Scott is his closest friend, and I simply will not allow Scott in our house any longer while I'm living here. Paul can do what he likes after I move out (hopefully in a month) but... well... regardless of his own rationalizations, someone I trusted and liked and welcomed into my home stole from me... stole something he knew I treasured and cherished... did it cold bloodedly in order to get over on me.

I am dreading the next time Scott comes over; I will have to confront him and I don't know what is going to happen. But I know what he did; it's irrefutable. (The owner of Hooked On Comics even offered to hold the piece for me if I wanted to come in and buy it back... at $19.95, it's book value. What a prince.)

All right. Well, I've lost another near-friend... I will never forgive Scott for this, even if he got the click back for me... but the news isn't all bad. I got a wonderfully thoughtful Christmas present from Scott Shepherd in the mail today, something that normally, without all this crap and stress and backstabbing and betrayal, would have made my whole week... a DVD of THE COMMITMENTS, one of my favorite films, and one I haven't been able to watch for four years or so, since my videotape copy of it went down in the Great Pawnshop Purge of 1999.

So, thanks for that, Scott, I needed a boost. Especially from someone named Scott. ;)

Tammy Ruplinger and Mike Norton have both also put boxes of clix in the mail to me this week, hopefully I should have those tomorrow and Friday, and that will be lovely as well... except Scott was one of the people we played with most, and whom I most enjoyed showing new acquisitions to, and now I won't be able to do that any more.

Fuck.

I'm grateful for all the support that has come in from you folks today. If I don't answer individual emails for a little while, it's because I'm just too sick to talk about this more than once.

Oh, I asked a woman I liked a lot out at work today. She turned me down, but she was very nice about it. Still, my unbroken rejection streak continues.

I hope Scott doesn't show up tonight, but he probably will roll up at some point. Paul's working until 11, so if he does show, I'll have to deal with him. I'm not looking forward to that.

Okay... Scott just rolled up while I was finishing typing this. He denied it to my face, and was still denying it when he got back into his truck and drove off, but I told him he's not welcome here any more and I'd call the cops on his ass for trespassing if he came around again while I was living here.

He denied it... open mouthed, open handed, 'what are you talking about, stole your Vision', perfect look of outraged innocence... but when I screamed at him "Red ballcap! Skinny guy! Brought in a Vision and a Ronan the Accuser! GET THE FUCK OUT!" I saw his facial expression change just a little bit. I didn't need it, but you know? If I hadn't known beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'd have probably believed him.

FUCK.

Thanks, once again, to those of you who are truly my friends. It's a sad sad statement about the sort of person I am that the only people who I seem to be able to trust are those I've never met in person, but honestly, I am deeply appreciative of all of you.

Later (4:30 A.M., Thursday morning)

And the shit just keeps rolling downhill.

Paul and I just had a huge fight. He basically used the Scott thing as an excuse to go out with Dawn tonight, so he would "have someone not in the middle of this mess to talk to about it". Fine, whatever. So instead of coming home and talking to me about this, he went out with her and they came in at 2:30 a.m., woke me up being noisy, and then Paul and I had a discussion that escalated into a screaming match about the Scott thing.

Oddly, Paul started screaming first, which isn't normal for our exchanges.

The upshot is, Scott denies this whole thing vehemently. His story is, the proprietor at Hooked On Comics clearly made a mistake of some sort, my Vision piece is simply lost and will turn up eventually, and when that happens, Scott expects a fulsome apology.

Paul is... how shall I put this... while he is willing to admit that the evidence is highly convincing, and that it seems very very very very very unlikely that Scott is innocent, nonetheless, Paul insists on maintaining some shred of doubt on Scott's behalf. He's willing to ban Scott from the premises while I'm living here, but makes no promises as to what he'll do regarding Scott once I move out, and he maintains that there is a possibility I am simply mistaken.

That's on the one hand. On the other hand, Paul is positioning himself as morally superior to me over this, because, unlike me, he is capable of forgiving and forgetting. Unlike me, he believes in redemption. So, even if he were to become convinced that Scott is lying, well, he's just so magnanimous and big hearted (unlike me, the cynical, cold hearted, callous, unforgiving Scorpio creep he is forced to share space with here in the Land of Harmony and Spiritual Love), and he has been friends with Scott so long, that he is willing to give Scott another chance.

Interestingly, when Paul related Scott's impassioned plea of innocence second hand to me, he mentioned that Scott had mentioned that he was especially hurt at my accusation because "no one had accused him of stealing in a long long time... he used to be a total klepto and none of his friends would trust him, back in high school, but he hadn't been that way for a long, long time".

On the TV shows I watch, detectives and lawyers would regard that as a fairly damning revelation. Paul regards it as more evidence that people can change and he is just a much nicer person than I am in that he believes that and clearly I do not.

I'm too upset to get any more sleep tonight, so I'll just drag ass around at work tomorrow. Our last test is in the morning. My trainer seems to like me a lot, so after I take it, presuming I pass, I'll ask her if I can just go home for the rest of the day (assuming I feel horribly tired... I may not, sometimes I can go a night without sleep and not really feel it). Maybe she'll let me go, maybe she won't, I don't know. But regardless, I won't sleep tonight, at all.

What troubles me about this horribly, on Paul's behalf, is that by my analysis, Scott is quite simply a sociopath, and Paul is clearly going to forgive him the minute my intrusive, annoyingly callous ass is out of here, because that's more emotionally convenient than, well, facing up to the fact that Scott is a sociopath.

Let me outline my reasoning for using that word, which I do not apply in any hyperbolic manner:

As I understand it, 'sociopath' can be defined in many technical ways, but what they all basically boil down to is, a sociopath is someone who does not regard other human beings as being 'real' or 'valid'. They have no real human feelings. They look at other human beings as either obstacles or tools in regard to their own personal goals. Many sociopaths can brilliantly simulate human emotion, but they do so because they have learned that this is an effective technique for manipulating the frequently annoying and obstreperous supporting characters in their life into doing what they want them to do.

One thing I didn't mention in my previous account of this is that when Scott came over last night to trade with us, knowing full well that I might have noticed the Vision being missing by then and no doubt having a plan to misdirect any blame elsewhere, he brought his four year old son Nathan along with him.

Now, Nathan didn't perceive his father doing anything bad, but, nonetheless, my point is, if Scott had any real human feeling, he should have been ashamed and hesitant to lie to two people who trusted him (which he did, in the most contemptible way) whom he had just victimized, with his four year old son watching.

Scott was not hesitant at all. Scott lied perfectly, with utterly serpentine coolness. He smiled and grinned and behaved like our good buddy, as he offered to trade me several items that he had carefully selected in the knowledge I would want them... items he had purchased with credit he got from stealing a piece of my property that he knew I treasured.

During the course of this, he even told us that he had traded a Ronan the Accuser unique, "and some other stuff", for these new items, which he thought we might be interested in. Since "and some other stuff" was, basically, the click he had stolen under Paul's half asleep nose earlier in the day, a theft only made possible by Paul's implicit trust in him, that was an utterly loathsome prevarication... as well as a completely calculated, knowing one, as well.

All of this, in front of his four year old son.

Someone who will do that has no scruples, no ethics, no morality, no sense of shame or embarrassment or guilt, no human feeling.

Scott rolled up here today clearly expecting me to greet him as a friend and play clix with him. He had to be aware that I would almost certainly have noticed the Vision's absence by that point, and no doubt he planned, in that eventuality, to commiserate with me while subtly encouraging me to suspect Dawn, or Kyle, or, I don't know, the Tooth Fairy, of the theft.

It is, at this moment, occurring to me to wonder if Scott did not have my newly re-bought Vision piece in his pocket when he showed up, and if he wasn't planning to simply put him back and hope I hadn't noticed... or, if I did notice, to simply plant him somewhere... under the couch, maybe... and then helpfully 'discover' him for me at some point.

If so, he must have been extremely frustrated when I would not even listen to him, much less allow him into the house so he could carry out that plan. No doubt, in that case, he's practically desperate to get access to the house, so he can plant the Vision and then demand an apology when we 'find' it.

I almost hope Paul lets Scott in to follow that strategy, because the proprietor at Hooked On Comics told me that he had repriced the Vision at $19.95, removing the original $20 price tag that was on the underside of his base when I bought him from the flea market (I left it there so I could brag about how much he was worth). So if we 'find' that Vision, then it will either have no price tag at all on the base, or the wrong one, and that should be enough proof even for Paul.

Anyway, back to my 'sociopath' thing... Scott clearly has no feeling that what he did was wrong. He was obviously willing to simply lie about this to Paul and I for the remainder of our association with him, cheerfully dissembling with every breath he ever took in our presence, and just as clearly, this did not trouble him in the slightest.

Obviously, he's distraught now, but he in no way acknowledges (or evidences) guilt, or any indicator that he understands that what he did was wrong. He's simply concerned about the social consequences of being caught. He knows that what he did, in other people's eyes, is a despicable and unforgivable act (except, apparently, for Munificent Paul) and he's frantically doing damage control... deny deny deny, while probably hatching schemes, each one more complexly hairbrained and situation-comedy-esque, to somehow manipulate our perceptions in such a way as we do not believe he ever actually did what I, at least, know for a fact he did.

It troubles me that Paul is going to forgive this guy and continue to accept him as a friend, because Scott didn't just screw and betray me, he screwed and betrayed Paul. He burglarized Paul's home and broke Paul's trust as well as mine. And if he'd do that to Paul, he'll do worse if he feels he has a good reason to and thinks he can get away with it.

I don't know. Chad and Mel also know Scott; maybe, if they think this is also worth worrying about, I can get them to talk to Paul about this. Or maybe it isn't worth worrying about. I know it would be simple enough to prove this or disprove it... all Paul has to do is ask Scott to drive him in to Hooked On Comics and walk in with him and stand there while Paul asks the proprietor if Scott is the guy who came in with a Unique Vision a few days ago and traded it for a Veteran Iron Man, among other things.

Scott won't do it, of course... I imagine he'd blow up at the suggestion and insist that he isn't going to all that trouble to prove his innocence and if Paul is his friend, Paul is just going to have to trust him... and Paul will. Ultimately, Paul will decide to give Scott the benefit of the doubt... and Scott shouldn't have it. Someone who will steal from friends without the slightest twinge of remorse afterwards is simply not someone who should be trusted in any way, and that worries me... Paul should not be trusting this guy.

Ultimately, though, I probably can't do anything about that, any more than I can do anything about the fact that Paul is 'friends' with a married woman who has at least one other extramarital lover besides Paul, or that Paul smokes way too much dope.

One of the things Paul is very angry at me about is that I did not allow him the opportunity of approaching Scott first to handle this his way. He wanted to sidle up to it subtly, watching Scott's reactions as he mentioned that, first, my Vision was missing, and we suspected a few different people might have stolen it, and then, gradually, drop the bomb that I'd called Hooked On Comics and discovered that someone of Scott's description had brought in a Vision click the day before. Paul wanted to edge into that, seeing how Scott responded at every stage, and he's very aggravated with me that I pre-empted that.

I explained to him that, first, he hadn't told me any of that (he didn't; he was at work when I called to tell him what I'd found out over the phone, and he couldn't take the time to talk about it) and second, his strategy would have required me to welcome Scott in and treat him as a friend when Scott showed up at the house earlier tonight, and knowing what I knew, that was simply impossible... I cannot prevaricate in that fashion, it's just not in me.

Anyway, I don't need any further indications of Scott's guilt in this. There's simply no way the proprietor at HOC, trollish though I know him to be, would have any reason to make up a story like that while speaking to a total stranger over the phone. He described Scott perfectly without me prompting him in the slightest, and he added the detail regarding Scott also trading the Ronan Unique without me prompting him, and then he confirmed that Scott had specifically selected, among other pieces, the Veteran Iron Man ("the one with the red ring around the base" was how he put it).

So I have no doubt Scott did it, but Paul... well, Paul still feels it's possible that I made a mistake, or the proprietor did, and this is all a horrible misunderstanding... and if it's not, well, Scott should be forgiven, because, well, Paul feels he doesn't have any other friends (which is nonsense; Paul makes friends far more easily than I do) and that Scott has done many favors for him (and me, too, Paul not very subtly hints) and he deserves a little love.

FUCK that. You don't come into my house, steal something you know I love, use the spoils of that theft to get over on me while lying to me, then continue to lie about it to me and to others who trust you, and remain my friend, or even anyone I'm willing to ever voluntarily associate with again.

I am, at this moment, also very concerned about something else... Scott knows, because until today I trusted him, that I'm getting a couple of packages of clix in the mail this week, and he even knows that one of them contains several Uniques... and he's pissed at me.

He also probably knows that if no one answers the door when the mail truck pulls up, the delivery person will simply leave packages on the porch. He even knows roughly what time our mail gets here every day, and Paul's sleep schedule, and my work schedule.

And he's a sociopath who will steal clicks if he feels entitled to do so, and right now, I suspect he feels very entitled.

Hell, for Scott, simply a resentful "Well, I don't fucking have some guy up north or some chick who's never met me sending me boxes of fucking clicks for free, I have to pay for all mine, and Darren's being an asshole, so maybe I should just redistribute the wealth a little, he doesn't deserve all that" would most likely be all the rationalization he'd need to drive by here around 12:30 or 1:00 tomorrow to see if any packages happened to be out on the porch.

Which I suppose is my way of saying, if anyone is going to send me any packages in the future and you can check a 'signature required' box on the form, please do so. I'll walk over to the carrier annex and pick up packages if I have to.

I'm feeling really tired, but I have to be up and getting ready for work in less than two hours, so sleep won't really do much for me at this point. Time to finish watching THE COMMITMENTS and maybe read a little, or something.