Jim Beardsley

Jim Beardsley is a character I created several years ago for an abortive modern-day supernatural free-form play-by-post game. The following is my character proposal for the game, including a brief description followed by a background story. I'll also throw in a pic I found online for use as Jim's portrait. If the pic is you, and you don't want it here, just send me a pic of yourself in a different pose as evidence it's you, and I'll remove it.

Also, a bit of profanity. Skip this post if that offends you.

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Jim, 39, is 5’10”, 195 lbs, with short, dark brown hair and brown eyes. He typically wears jeans and T-shirts, or occasionally sweaters if it’s cold; a NY Yankees ball cap, and a long tan raincoat if conditions call for it. He has a concealed-carry license issued in New York, and carries a compact Glock 9mm in an ankle holster on his right ankle. If he knows events are likely to get chaotic, he’ll often wear the Glock in a shoulder holster under his raincoat instead of in the ankle rig. He also carries a police-style shotgun in his RV for when things get really ugly

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Jim Beardsley’s family have always been firefighters. His grandfather, father, and brothers all served in the New York City fire department. But when Jim announced his intention to become a police officer instead, his family wasn’t surprised; Jim had always been a rebel. Jim attended NYU and obtained a degree in criminology, and then graduated third in his class at the police academy.

For 10 years, Jim was a good cop, slogging away on the beat, without the drive and ambition to take the sergeant’s exam – better pay, yes, but more paperwork. Jim enjoyed the beat, the recognition of the local shopkeepers and street vendors, the thrill of taking bad guys off the street. He had an excellent working relationship and a strong friendship with his partner, Steve Abrams, and everything was just fine.

Enter September 10, 2001. Jim and Steve were pulling a do

uble whammy, working the graveyard shift after a full afternoon on the job. They did this together as a matter of course whenever either of them needed a few extra bucks. Jim’s mother’s birthday was September 14, so he needed the dough to buy her a new television she wanted.

At 11:47 p.m., dispatch radioed in a robbery in progress on the pair’s beat, a block from their present location. A quick job later, and they saw the whole thing through the window of the corner Mini-Mart – a lone gunman was still inside, helping himself to the register. Signaling to Jim, Steve jogged around back. This was common…Jim drew his piece and counted to 50 before stepping into the store to attract the robber’s attention. Seeing Jim, the robber swung the .38 revolver aw

ay from the shopkeeper toward Jim, who fired twice. Both rounds caught the junkie in the torso, putting him down hard.

Jim radioed the shoot into dispatch, and then began to wonder what happened to Steve. After checking on the shopkeeper’s welfare, he cautiously made his way through the back of the store to the back door, which was bolted from the inside. Figuring Steve simply couldn’t get in, Jim unbolted the door and cracked it open. There, outside in the alleyway, was the sight that would change Jim’s life forever.

The creature was humanoid, but the similarity to humanity ended with the head, two arms, torso, two legs. The creature wore no clothing over its black, rubbery skin. It held Steve’s limp form in the two crab-claws that passed for its hands, and it was rending great gobbets of flesh from Jim’s partner’s body. Instinctively Jim drew his gun and shouted “Freeze, motherfucker! NYPD!”

What happened next, Jim can’t explain. The creature looked at him with its huge glowing red eyes and vanished into thin air, dropping Steve with a wet thud. Jim simply went cold. Instead of running to his friend’s aid, instead of searching for the creature, instead of doing anything, Jim ran. He ran back through the store, vaulted the counter, and out the front door. And then he kept running.

The next thing Jim remembers, he was waking up in Central Park, cold and damp from the dew. Far to the south, the sky was filled with smoke.

Jim’s family died that day, fighting to rescue innocent victims trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center buildings. His father, a respected captain in the FDNY, and two brothers. He was too late. There was nothing he could do.

For the next couple of weeks Jim threw himself into his work, working ground-zero duty for 24 hours at a time before collapsing for 12 hours of nightmare-filled sleep. He began hitting the bottle to erase those nightmares from his mind, those two soulless red eyes, burrowing into his mind. That awful plopping thud of Steve hitting the pavement. The imagined screams of his father and brothers as tons of rubble collapsed upon them.

After two weeks, Jim’s captain finally noticed that, in the confusion, Jim had never undergone the mandatory departmental psych screen following a shoot and the death of a partner. Under protest, Jim met with the good Dr. Krzansky. The sessions were worthless at first…Jim denied that anything was wrong. Krzansky knew better, and prescribed weekly visits. Finally Jim opened up some, revealing some of his feelings of loss and helplessness without revealing the freaking monster he saw. Krzansky helped Jim realize that he did nothing wrong. Through a lengthy process, he was finally able to translate his fear and self-loathing into hatred for the creature and vowed to learn what he could about the supernatural and vampires in particular (that’s what he figures the creature was) in an effort to exact some revenge for his partner and family.

Unfortunately, this new commitment – Jim’s new … hobby – caused his work with the NYPD to suffer. He traded depression for OCD, relentlessly tracking down any supernatural hint he could find. In between leads, he drank heavily. As a result, he spent most of his time on his captain’s shit list.

Oddly enough, his luck changed in 2007. A regular player of the New York State Lottery, Jim finally managed to hit a winner. After taxes, he pulled in just under $5 million, which he managed to invest at approximately 10 percent interest.

Jim’s passion for law enforcement had long since died. He quit his job without a thought and invested in a small recreational vehicle, outfitted with paranormal investigations equipment. Since then, he’s traveled the country from one paranormal rumor (discovered via Internet) to the next. None of his leads has panned out and, as he pulls into Seattle, he’s beginning to get a bit discouraged.

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