JimSoft Insanitarium -> Insane Stories -> Jed Shoehorn--Freelance Janitor
By Nomad

At precisely 8am on a particular Tuesday, a small digital alarm clock began buzzing. Attached to the small alarm clock was a complex system of wires, amplifiers, speakers and a microphone. These speakers were pointed in the direction of a 5-foot long mouse cage, in which a recently startled mouse was running with terror. After running for the distance of 5 feet, it crashed into the opposite wall of the cage, which swung open and fell off. There was a ceiling fan in the room, which was operated by a pull string. Subsequently, the now-falling metal door of the mouse cage was tied to it with a length of string. This string became tight as gravity pulled the metal toward the ground, thus turning the fan on. Neatly resting on the top of the fan was a large jug full of melted ice (which had been melting since the previous night, and was now simply very cold water). After three rotations the jug fell from the fan. The jug and its contents covered the bed below, and the person lying in it.

Something along the lines of "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" could be heard, as the person covered in freezing cold water ran toward the shower, craving nice warm water. This is how Jed Shoehorn, the Freelance Janitor, reached consciousness by 8:01am on this particular Tuesday.

As per usual, Jed stood in the shower for a while, thinking how pointless his invention was, and how annoying it was to be covered in freezing water, and how he would never do it again. But after the warm water seeped in, he would always realise that he is now warm and very much awake, and that perhaps it indeed was pretty good after all. He then thought a little bit about what sort of shampoo flavour he should buy when the current one runs out, and about how every morning his entire career was put into the hands of a little mouse. If that mouse happened to die or if it decided that it liked the loud buzzing of his alarm clock, it wouldn't run from it anymore, and then Jed would never make it to work on time. But once again he argued with himself, saying that there was no real time that he had to be at work, and that getting up at 8 every morning was in fact quite silly.

You see Jed called himself a "Freelance Janitor". That is what the golden plaque on his apartment door said, and it was also engraved into a large pile of golden plaques resting on his kitchen table (since he had to replace the one on the door each time the cleaning lady ripped it off). Jed had no real workplace or employer. All he had was a neat yellow important-looking pair of overalls, a large grey important-looking van, and a slightly smaller grey important-looking trolley, with brooms and chemicals sticking out of it at all angles. Every now and then Jed would walk into an important-looking office and pick up his paycheck. He never officially worked for any of the companies, and he never really cleaned anything. But busy secretaries never failed to give him some form of payment.

After Jed had finished his shower, he put on some casual baggy clothes, then a tuxedo over the top, and then his overalls over the top of that. He walked out of his bathroom, picked the mouse up and put it back in it's cage, then turned his digital alarm off. He approached his fruit bowl with caution and stared at it for a long while. Suddenly, he snatched up a piece of fruit and bit into it. "Ouch." he said as he bit into the realistic-looking piece of plastic fruit. He tried again. Success! He bit into the one and only real apple in the bowl, chewed a few times and swallowed. He tossed the apple into his bin (on top of the 40 or so other apple carcases), grabbed his briefcase, picked up a golden plaque, then opened his door and stuck it on. He was about to close his door, but something occurred to him. He reached down, picked up a second plaque, walked across the hall, and then stuck it to the door opposite of his. He then closed his door and walked into the elevator at the end of the hall.

In the elevator, Jed quickly took off his overalls and stuffed them into his briefcase, making him look like a guy in a tuxedo with a briefcase. He formed a look of utter carelessness on his face (which he had practised many times in front of his bathroom mirror) and the elevator went "Ding!" It was the ground floor. The doors slid open, and Jed stepped out, and came face to face with two burly men with slicked-back hair and mean snarls on their faces. It took a lot of effort to keep the look of carelessness on his face, but he managed it, and walked past the two thugs without even hesitating. Just as he thought he was free, one of them called to him. "Hey you!"
Jed turned (very a careless and irritated way), and said "Errr.., what is it man? Speak up, I'm in a rush today."
It was perfect. Jed's snobbery skills worked brilliantly. The two thugs looked at the ground fiddled with their fingers. "We was just wonderin' if you'd a janitor guy." He said, in a slightly frightened voice.
"A JANITOR GUY?" Jed exclaimed, "Of course I've seen a janitor guy. I've seen thousands of them."
"But…" the thug replied, "Have you seen one in da buildin' yer just left?"
"Good God no. Why would an apartment building have a janitor guy? Please, I'm in a rush today, and I'm probably already late. Good day."
And with that, he walked a few meters, opened the door of his van, and then drove off. The painted words "Freelance Janitor" sparkled in the light as he drove out of the parking complex and into the sun, and a smile crept across his face as he heard the screams and curses of the two thugs. "Haha," he said to himself, "they were beaten by the very man who they were trying to beat…. up…. or something along those lines."
He got onto the straightest road he could find and turned on cruise control. He then let go of the steering wheel and went into the back of the van. He drew a broom from his trolley, and propped it against the steering wheel, just in case of emergencies. He then flicked his open, dropped it on the floor, and put his overalls back on with one hand, while overtaking a bus with the other arm. Jed was very lucky that he practised changing his clothing a lot. In fact, if he hadn't done a spontaneous clothing-change that very morning, he would have been beaten to a pulp by two thugs. In some ways, Jed was a very lucky guy. He didn't feel particularly lucky, but if he went back at the end of the day and counted all the times he had been lucky during its course, he'd realise how insanely lucky he was.

Jed found his way back to the driver seat and continued driving. In the distance he could see an appealing building. "Oooh! It's blue.. and… shiny!!" he thought to himself as he drove in its general direction. The morning had gone pretty well for Jed. His pet mouse had woken him up on time. Usually this wouldn't matter, but in this case if Jed had awoken even a few seconds later than he had, he would have walked down his hall, and when the elevator doors slid open, he would have came face to face with two thugs who had been paid to hurt him. Instead he had successfully beaten the two thugs. The two thugs decided to destroy the next best thing instead: Jed's apartment. But that had failed also, leaving both of the thugs dead (but that is a different story all together). But the fact is that someone wanted Jed hurt. This didn't really surprise Jed, considering that just about every second person in the world was trying to hurt or kill him. Not only all his thousands of "employers" either. All the way through school and college Jed had found himself very lucky. In fact he was too lucky. He failed a major maths project on probability once because the coin always landed on its edge. Even after he changed coins several times, and then tried using a note, they all landed on their edge. After he wrote his results and finding into his project, his teacher thought it was a joke. He screwed it up and threw it directly at Jed, but at that very moment, the entire room collapsed and injured everyone except Jed, and also managed to deflect the ball of from hitting him. So, in this way, he managed to get a whole school full of people to want to hurt him, and that was just on his first year. Jed was lucky to the point of unluckiness, but in effect, that unluckiness always ended up good for him in the end. It was all terribly confusing to Jed, so he figured he'd just try to ignore it.

Jed rounded the corner and came onto the road of the tall shiny building. "Oooh, shiny!" he said to himself as he drove toward the boom gate. A large signs with the words "Nancanco" printed across them were plastered al over the entrance, showing that this was another huge rich company, which did fundamentally nothing. He drove his van up to the boom gate and then stopped. There was a white stall to the side of it with a security guard inside. The security guard had a little plastic hat and a big moustache, and from the expression on his face he must have eaten a raw lemon. That, or maybe he just felt that he was the most important person in the universe. Jed slowed his van to a halt, turned, and quickly nodded at the guard, then turned back to face the boom gates. In most cases, the security guard would try to get his attention for a while, and then be too lazy to get up, and they'd eventually just let him through. But this security guard was strangely different. He didn't move from his seat at first, and followed the usual procedure of trying to catch his attention with hand gestures and calls. He examined the janitor van and the look of importance on Jed's face, and his finger hovered above the button. But then he decided against that. He did what no security guard had done before. He stood up, opened the door of his booth, walked to Jed's van, and then knocked on the window. This had never happened to Jed before, and he was quite surprised, but he didn't show it. He still had 4 or 5 aces up his sleeve. He quickly glanced at the security guard's badge then wound down the window. "Good Morning Trevor! Is there a problem?"
Trevor was taken aback by this. He didn't recognise Jed, but he felt that he should. In fact, he felt that if he didn't recognise this janitor, the janitor would feel offended by him, and then he would feel guilty. He narrowed his eyes on Jed's face. Jed was smiling at him with that "Hey there Trevor, I've known you for years! Remember that time at that party once?" look. It was convincing. Perhaps a little too convincing. Trevor felt that he had to take this one step further, just in case.
"Hi there!" said Trevor. "I'm terribly sorry about all this, but I need to check your clearance card. Some of them have them have been playing up recently, and a I've been asked to check everyone's this morning."
Jed was slightly worried. The nod had failed. The familiar friend routine had failed. Now there was only one option left. "No problems," Jed replied, "It should be in my wallet somewhere. I haven't removed it in years, so it's probably still there."
He reached under his seat and picked up a specially prepared, extremely large and chunky wallet. He opened the wallet and about 250 cards spilled onto the ground. "Oh no," he said, "Now I've done it. This'll take me years to find it now. Hey, can I just leave all these with you and you can go through them and find my card, and then you can give it back to me on the way out?"
"Errr," Trevor considered this for a moment. "Okay then."
A grin formed on Jed's face. He had wanted to do this for years, but had never had the chance. This annoying bucket had been sitting in the front of his van for years now, and now it would finally serve its purpose. Jed opened his door a few inches and at the same time, kicked the bucket over. All the cards from his chunky wallet, and about 700 more from the bucket all flew out the bottom of the door and formed a mound around the security guard's feet.
"Heh," said Jed, "It seems that wallet held a lot more cards than I would have thought."
Trevor looked at the pile of cards at his feet, then back up at the cheesy grin on the janitor's face. He regretted it. He regretted it all. He had the whole day planned out. He would have read a book for a few hours, then watched Oprah on his little TV, then read the paper for a while, drank a few coffees, and maybe read some more of his book. Now he was doomed to go through this sea of cards for the day, all because he had suspected this one janitor. "What's a janitor going to do?" he thought. "The janitor isn't going to bring down the company or the building. He's just a poor janitor just trying to get his job done."
And with that Trevor said "Ah, never mind. Just show it to me on your way out."
Jed climbed out of the van and quickly scooped all the cards back into his bucket, while Trevor retreated back to his booth. Trevor took a long sip of his coffee, pressed the boom gate button, stared out into space for a while, took another sip from his coffee, and then went back to reading his book.
"Phew, that was a close one." Thought Jed, as he drove under the boom gate and into the parking area. He parked his van in a place that wasn't an actual parking spot (but it looked as if a parking spot could be there), and climbed out of his van. He went to the back of the van and opened the double doors. He grabbed his large trolley and pulled it back, and it landed on the concrete with a loud crash. "I should really get a ramp for this" he thought, as he locked the van and pushed his squeaky trolley toward one of the many entry points.
Jed's trolley wasn't really squeaky. In fact, in dictionary terms, it probably wasn't a trolley at all. He had added so many modifications to it that it might be labelled "a great step in modern art" or maybe "a trolley-shaped utility thing". The first thing he added to his humble trolley was something he called a "squeak switch". Using a strange pulley system, he could make the wheels of his trolley squeaky or silent just with the flick of a small switch. Jed's trolley looked like it was filled with thousands of chemicals and cleaning instruments, but in fact it only had about 10 of these items, and the rest was the result of a clever system of mirrors. This enabled Jed the ability to build a door into the side of the trolley, where he could enter it and, although it was a little cramped, inside he had a small TV, a coffee machine, a small motor, and a steering wheel. On the outside he had several small cameras installed so that he could see where he was going through his mini-TV while he was driving it. But he had only ever driven the thing once or twice, considering the fact that people get quite alarmed when they see a janitor trolley full of chemicals racing down a hallway.

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