Post by somethingwicked on Sept 11, 2020 8:09:12 GMT -5
“The drunkards in recovery have a term I like. It’s called a moment of realization. Some of them have them in bars, some have them in gutters. I had mine in a greasy spoon, while eating a hamburger.”
The light bears back the darkness and we see Roger Wright and Vincent Black sitting at a diner counter. Roger, several bites into his hamburger, and Vincent, looking at a veggie burger with the kind of dissatisfaction one could only have for a veggie burger. As they sit in silence as they are both prone to do, Vincent suddenly takes shape and expression as if his very bones had caught fire.
“Roger. I’m sorry, I have to go.” Vin said, standing up and heading toward the door. “Thanks for getting me out of there. Just know, whatever happens, I’ve got your back.”
“See, when you say it like that..” Roger chuckled. Things were bad in the Wright world. His daughter was heart broken at the loss of Ani, or the imagined loss, as it were. The woman he’d fallen in love with was in the company of the enemy and refused to leave because of a man he thought he’d call friend. Now, Vincent Wolf was telling him this. No matter what happens, yada yada. No matter what happens, Roger thought, I’ll be just fine. “Don’t worry about me, Vin. Do what ya gotta.”
Vin hauled ass out the door and put his feet to the pavement. It hasn’t occurred to him in the excitement of his epiphany that Roger has driven. It mattered not. He could run this distance with one leg if he had to. And he was going to with both legs, as if he had four. Which technically speaking, he did have three.
An hour and a pound of sweat later, Vincent was at a different but almost identical diner. It was down the road from the high school gym he’d been forced to perform in and most, if not all of the other performers could be found there. They say around talking about their highs and lows, giving each other advice and taking advice from people who should not be giving it. They saw him coming and were shocked, but also drunk. As drunk people tend to do, they were a little more energetic than he would like.
“Children. Quiet. The kid who performed tonight. The one with the..ugliest fucking moonsault I’ve ever seen. What’s his name? How do I find him?”
“Ummm.” The kid with the turban and terrible act responded in an way so intelligent it was almost as if he was the groups Nobel prize winner. “You mean the weird guy?”
“Yes. The weird guy.” Vin was losing what little patience he was not known for having. He needed answers and he needed them soon. If he didn’t figure this out just right now and get the ball rolling, the idea might leave him. His muse would rot and die and he would suffer further embarrassment instead of dishing some out.
The table full of future openers and roadies avoided eye contact with him and each other as well. They didn’t want him seeing what they all thought. That the weird kid wouldn’t be one of them for long. But try telling Vincent Wolf that. The one who was also the weird one.
“He doesn’t hang out with us. He gets paid and gets lost. Doesn’t always show either. Maybe the fat ass has an address? Doubt it tho. Taxes and shit.”
Vin was familiar with the practice. Pay your guys off the book, don’t keep records, no one can question you as to where your money went. In business as in life, it was not what you did, it’s what they could prove.
“If you hear from him, I want you to contact me.” He pulls a black card with silver lettering from his back pocket, and slid it onto the table. “You call me immediately. I’ll make it worth your while.”
There are few people in this business who can cause the kind of chaos that Vincent Black could in his heyday. That day is long gone. But while thinking of those days, and how he began, he suddenly had another
If Vincent could not talk to the chaos being, then he would do the next best thing. He left that diner and went to the offices aka the trailer that belonged to the fat guy who ran the promotion. Inside he would find a stack of applications, all of which would be marked with a sticker or some sort of code. Vincent hoped it would be easy to discern. The pictures included with each were especially nice to see. Grabbing the file he required, he sat down and pulled out a small leather bag. From that bag he pulled out a scalpel, a glue stick, a small old fashioned label maker, an ink pad, and did his magic. By the time it was done, the application for Gym Rat Wrasslin was now a much more detailed, and greatly exaggerated, OPW one.
Vincent smiled, and stood up. As he did we fade into a shot of Vincent exiting Johnny Stylez office. He makes his way down to the recruitment office, making small talk with the old head that works there. He hands him the file, and in an instance, Vincent Black’s retirement plan was in motion. Johnny was a fool. An absolute one at that. He would see this application and he would jump at the chance to hire someone this talented. Someone this well trained. Someone this fabricated to cheapen his product the way his product had cheapened Vin. It was the long game, But Vin never shied away from that in his younger days, and he had far more patience now.
He exited the office and laughed. It wasn’t nearly as hard as he felt it might be. Johnny has been eager to get him out, but to keep him on the payroll. Johnny could keep the infamous PhreeQ on a leash so to speak. Vin would give him that honor in exchange for a paycheck, and the opportunity to torch OPW from the ground up.
But then he heard it. It was low at first but got louder a second later. He was sure it was a hallucination. Some part of his brain was fucking with him. Perhaps it was the memories from earlier. Perhaps it was the reality of retirement pulling him backward. Perhaps someone was watching an old tape. One that had her on it. The her he had not heard in over 10 years.
And then she was in front of him.
She’d lost weight. Gained it back tho, in muscle. She still had the same look about her. She had always had this way of moving that made you want to keep watching. As if every move was rehearsed in front of an audience and fine tuned to their suggestions. She was as captivating as they came. And she was his best fucking friend.
She didn’t see him at first, but as he moved toward her, she suddenly sensed him. She turned on her heels, hunched down and put her arms out like some tatted up anorexic sumo. Her lips parted and her face lit up. One moment they were across a hall, staring at each other. The next, they were in each other’s arms, hugging tightly. They separated, and she looked at him. Pointing to his head.
“Hairs different. Not good or bad. Just like, not bleached. I dig it.”
“It’s been a long time, Vhod. Where the fuck did you go?”
“Crazy.” She said, smiling. A pause between that and an “Er. How’ve you been? You’ve got kids I heard?”
“I do.” He says, looking at her as she looks at him with an odd expression. He finally realizes what she’s mulling and sets her right. “I’m not gonna make you look at pictures.”
“Oh thank you. Like how do you get out of that?”
“I don’t usually get shown pics of kids. I give off a vibe.” Vin paused. “Hey, there’s a kids karate place near, wanna go bet on kids fights?”
“I’d love to.” She said, nodding. So many people were going to ask where she’d been, why she left. Not him. Never him. As someone who was prone to vanishing, he knew the comfort in it. As they walked out, we suddenly get interrupted by the clang of weights dropping to the floor. Vincent Wolf stands over time, swear dripping from his arms, anger emanating from his eyes and flaring nostrils. His hands and knuckles still white from reduced blood flow, and his arms shaking. Not from weakness. But with rage.
He leans down, and pulls the safety pin from one set of weights, and increases them by a large plate. He then replaces the pin and does the same to the other side. He lets out a growl, guttural and almost demonic. The weight rises and hoists above his head, before crashing down once more.
“Do you remember when I came into this business, and they laughed at me? ‘Some UFC reject could never make it here.’That I was wasting my time?”
“Do you remember when they found out who I was related to, and said things such as ‘he’s only going to dilute the name of Kal X Wolf.’ And made me feel like everything I did wasn’t for me, but to him?”
“Do you remember when I first started working with Damon Riggs, and they said that I was looking for a dress to hide under? For a hand to hold? For a dick to suck so I wouldn’t be alone in the prison yard, so to speak?”
“If you do, you’re one up on me. Because I did not. My start to this business, so many years ago, might as well have been a story told to me rather than a list of happenings. A tv show I watched rather than lived. It was that far removed from my mind. From my being, really.”
“I have become numb to certain...occurrences. Accepting of things today that I’d have never even entertained them. And I’ve done so out of guilt, and fear, and doubt , and a list of other things that don’t belong in this business, or furthermore, inside me. I did not get here through fearful actions or doubting who I was. I got here by steamrolling anything that would deny me. Because I wanted the world and all it contained. And then the worst thing that can happen, did.”
“I got it.”
“I got the car collection I always wanted, the kids, the house, the boat, the power, the money, and the success. Not just in this business. But in anything I touch. The two albums that PHRQ SHW put out went gold. My photography is sought after by collectors everywhere, and while my children’s book was deemed too dark for any kid to read, the more disturbed adults have taken to it. And since they’re the ones with money, doesn’t that make sense?”
“The summation I’m trying to work toward is that I lost my hunger because I had eaten, and gotten my fill. I lost my drive because there was no one else to see and nowhere else to go. I had dropped my weapons because the battlefield was only decorated with the dead and dying and not with one warrior but myself.”
“But there is something to be said, isn’t there? About having dessert. About taking a drive for the scenery. About propping up a dead and decaying corpse and laying waste to it simply for the comfort the fucking sounds bring you.”
“I am not here to recapture or recreate or even revenge. I am here for rebirth. And the pussy that is going to bring me back into this world is none other that Johnny Stylez.”
“Johnny Stylez, who took my name off the books and made me travel to arenas just to find out I wasn’t working.”
“Johnny Stylez who not only encouraged my brother to bash me with a shovel, but celebrated it.”
“Johnny Stylez who told me to dress up as a fat fuck president and then had the balls to replace me as to fuck over Roger Wright one more time.”
“JOHNNY STYLEZ. Who once claimed that my children, were his. And that my wife, was his whore.”
“I hope you remember all of that, John. Because I fucking do.”
“I recall every slight, every backhanded comment, every abuse of power you have used in order to fuck with me, and I am done letting them slide.”
“I did it because he wanted me out of his way. I failed to realize that I don’t have to be in his way, to be in yours.”
“And that, Mr. Stylez is precisely what I’m intent on doing. You’ve seen to the lack of trust they all have for me and fed it. I’ve done so as well. But what I lack in backup, I make up for with upfront. And I’m going to be very upfront with you right now. I do not expect to win.”
“The deck being stacked as it is and the amount of people you have watching your back, makes it a fool’s endeavor. To think that any of them would even allow me to approach the precipice to your defeat is laughable. So instead of beating you, I’ll just have to settle for beating you.”
“For inflicting as much damage as possible in the smallest amount of time feasible. To take my moments, as someone else might say, and break pieces of you in payment for the pieces of me you’ve damaged. The me that you’ve dealt with could only do so much. Stuck in this middle ground, the limbo which we worked together to capture me within. Now we shall work together again to get me out.”
“The fuck out? Naw, Johnny. The PhreeQ out. The PhreeQ who set this fucking business on fire from the moment he stepped foot in its peripheral vision. The PhreeQ who acquired what he wanted when and how he wanted it, regardless of who what or where. That is who we are going to free, Johnny. All we have to do, is call his name. Not with our voices. With our blood, our sweat, and our tears. More yours than mine, more because of me than for me.”
“Soak whatever it is that you soak, John. Lick that plastic piece you call a wife good and long. As of now, it’s 4:19, and you have got a minute. But. You only have a minute. The longest and hardest minute you have ever had. And the last one you might have while being able to see out of both eyes, and chew solid food.”
“Jim Morrison once asked, is it better to burn out or fade away. I ask you, John. Will you burn out? Will you let all that you’ve accomplished waste you away to less than the nothing we all thought you were? Will you fade out, forgetting how to be the person you wished yourself into, and vanishing into the distance of your own world? Or will you PhreeQ out, and realize that the house of cards you constructed around yourself has began to shake and at any given second, will fall down around you, slicing you and bleeding you like the pig you are? Chances are high for all possibilities, John. But if I were a betting man. And I am a betting man. I’d bet that you won’t fade out, you won’t burn out, PhreeQ out, bow out. Fuck naw. You’re gonna BLACK OUT.”
Vincent steps into the light and we see the shirt adorned upon his sweat drenched form is not a Vincent Wolf shirt. But a Vincent Black. He smiles like the devil that caught the pope at the kindergarten dressing room, and slowly backs into the darkness, leaving us for the void to devour, as he allows it to do the same to him.
“You helped me remember it all. Now it’s time for me to make sure you never forget.”
We hear a low laugh, one of pure uncut hatred and dripping with intent, and then, nothing at all.
The light bears back the darkness and we see Roger Wright and Vincent Black sitting at a diner counter. Roger, several bites into his hamburger, and Vincent, looking at a veggie burger with the kind of dissatisfaction one could only have for a veggie burger. As they sit in silence as they are both prone to do, Vincent suddenly takes shape and expression as if his very bones had caught fire.
“Roger. I’m sorry, I have to go.” Vin said, standing up and heading toward the door. “Thanks for getting me out of there. Just know, whatever happens, I’ve got your back.”
“See, when you say it like that..” Roger chuckled. Things were bad in the Wright world. His daughter was heart broken at the loss of Ani, or the imagined loss, as it were. The woman he’d fallen in love with was in the company of the enemy and refused to leave because of a man he thought he’d call friend. Now, Vincent Wolf was telling him this. No matter what happens, yada yada. No matter what happens, Roger thought, I’ll be just fine. “Don’t worry about me, Vin. Do what ya gotta.”
Vin hauled ass out the door and put his feet to the pavement. It hasn’t occurred to him in the excitement of his epiphany that Roger has driven. It mattered not. He could run this distance with one leg if he had to. And he was going to with both legs, as if he had four. Which technically speaking, he did have three.
An hour and a pound of sweat later, Vincent was at a different but almost identical diner. It was down the road from the high school gym he’d been forced to perform in and most, if not all of the other performers could be found there. They say around talking about their highs and lows, giving each other advice and taking advice from people who should not be giving it. They saw him coming and were shocked, but also drunk. As drunk people tend to do, they were a little more energetic than he would like.
“Children. Quiet. The kid who performed tonight. The one with the..ugliest fucking moonsault I’ve ever seen. What’s his name? How do I find him?”
“Ummm.” The kid with the turban and terrible act responded in an way so intelligent it was almost as if he was the groups Nobel prize winner. “You mean the weird guy?”
“Yes. The weird guy.” Vin was losing what little patience he was not known for having. He needed answers and he needed them soon. If he didn’t figure this out just right now and get the ball rolling, the idea might leave him. His muse would rot and die and he would suffer further embarrassment instead of dishing some out.
The table full of future openers and roadies avoided eye contact with him and each other as well. They didn’t want him seeing what they all thought. That the weird kid wouldn’t be one of them for long. But try telling Vincent Wolf that. The one who was also the weird one.
“He doesn’t hang out with us. He gets paid and gets lost. Doesn’t always show either. Maybe the fat ass has an address? Doubt it tho. Taxes and shit.”
Vin was familiar with the practice. Pay your guys off the book, don’t keep records, no one can question you as to where your money went. In business as in life, it was not what you did, it’s what they could prove.
“If you hear from him, I want you to contact me.” He pulls a black card with silver lettering from his back pocket, and slid it onto the table. “You call me immediately. I’ll make it worth your while.”
There are few people in this business who can cause the kind of chaos that Vincent Black could in his heyday. That day is long gone. But while thinking of those days, and how he began, he suddenly had another
If Vincent could not talk to the chaos being, then he would do the next best thing. He left that diner and went to the offices aka the trailer that belonged to the fat guy who ran the promotion. Inside he would find a stack of applications, all of which would be marked with a sticker or some sort of code. Vincent hoped it would be easy to discern. The pictures included with each were especially nice to see. Grabbing the file he required, he sat down and pulled out a small leather bag. From that bag he pulled out a scalpel, a glue stick, a small old fashioned label maker, an ink pad, and did his magic. By the time it was done, the application for Gym Rat Wrasslin was now a much more detailed, and greatly exaggerated, OPW one.
Vincent smiled, and stood up. As he did we fade into a shot of Vincent exiting Johnny Stylez office. He makes his way down to the recruitment office, making small talk with the old head that works there. He hands him the file, and in an instance, Vincent Black’s retirement plan was in motion. Johnny was a fool. An absolute one at that. He would see this application and he would jump at the chance to hire someone this talented. Someone this well trained. Someone this fabricated to cheapen his product the way his product had cheapened Vin. It was the long game, But Vin never shied away from that in his younger days, and he had far more patience now.
He exited the office and laughed. It wasn’t nearly as hard as he felt it might be. Johnny has been eager to get him out, but to keep him on the payroll. Johnny could keep the infamous PhreeQ on a leash so to speak. Vin would give him that honor in exchange for a paycheck, and the opportunity to torch OPW from the ground up.
But then he heard it. It was low at first but got louder a second later. He was sure it was a hallucination. Some part of his brain was fucking with him. Perhaps it was the memories from earlier. Perhaps it was the reality of retirement pulling him backward. Perhaps someone was watching an old tape. One that had her on it. The her he had not heard in over 10 years.
And then she was in front of him.
She’d lost weight. Gained it back tho, in muscle. She still had the same look about her. She had always had this way of moving that made you want to keep watching. As if every move was rehearsed in front of an audience and fine tuned to their suggestions. She was as captivating as they came. And she was his best fucking friend.
She didn’t see him at first, but as he moved toward her, she suddenly sensed him. She turned on her heels, hunched down and put her arms out like some tatted up anorexic sumo. Her lips parted and her face lit up. One moment they were across a hall, staring at each other. The next, they were in each other’s arms, hugging tightly. They separated, and she looked at him. Pointing to his head.
“Hairs different. Not good or bad. Just like, not bleached. I dig it.”
“It’s been a long time, Vhod. Where the fuck did you go?”
“Crazy.” She said, smiling. A pause between that and an “Er. How’ve you been? You’ve got kids I heard?”
“I do.” He says, looking at her as she looks at him with an odd expression. He finally realizes what she’s mulling and sets her right. “I’m not gonna make you look at pictures.”
“Oh thank you. Like how do you get out of that?”
“I don’t usually get shown pics of kids. I give off a vibe.” Vin paused. “Hey, there’s a kids karate place near, wanna go bet on kids fights?”
“I’d love to.” She said, nodding. So many people were going to ask where she’d been, why she left. Not him. Never him. As someone who was prone to vanishing, he knew the comfort in it. As they walked out, we suddenly get interrupted by the clang of weights dropping to the floor. Vincent Wolf stands over time, swear dripping from his arms, anger emanating from his eyes and flaring nostrils. His hands and knuckles still white from reduced blood flow, and his arms shaking. Not from weakness. But with rage.
He leans down, and pulls the safety pin from one set of weights, and increases them by a large plate. He then replaces the pin and does the same to the other side. He lets out a growl, guttural and almost demonic. The weight rises and hoists above his head, before crashing down once more.
“Do you remember when I came into this business, and they laughed at me? ‘Some UFC reject could never make it here.’That I was wasting my time?”
“Do you remember when they found out who I was related to, and said things such as ‘he’s only going to dilute the name of Kal X Wolf.’ And made me feel like everything I did wasn’t for me, but to him?”
“Do you remember when I first started working with Damon Riggs, and they said that I was looking for a dress to hide under? For a hand to hold? For a dick to suck so I wouldn’t be alone in the prison yard, so to speak?”
“If you do, you’re one up on me. Because I did not. My start to this business, so many years ago, might as well have been a story told to me rather than a list of happenings. A tv show I watched rather than lived. It was that far removed from my mind. From my being, really.”
“I have become numb to certain...occurrences. Accepting of things today that I’d have never even entertained them. And I’ve done so out of guilt, and fear, and doubt , and a list of other things that don’t belong in this business, or furthermore, inside me. I did not get here through fearful actions or doubting who I was. I got here by steamrolling anything that would deny me. Because I wanted the world and all it contained. And then the worst thing that can happen, did.”
“I got it.”
“I got the car collection I always wanted, the kids, the house, the boat, the power, the money, and the success. Not just in this business. But in anything I touch. The two albums that PHRQ SHW put out went gold. My photography is sought after by collectors everywhere, and while my children’s book was deemed too dark for any kid to read, the more disturbed adults have taken to it. And since they’re the ones with money, doesn’t that make sense?”
“The summation I’m trying to work toward is that I lost my hunger because I had eaten, and gotten my fill. I lost my drive because there was no one else to see and nowhere else to go. I had dropped my weapons because the battlefield was only decorated with the dead and dying and not with one warrior but myself.”
“But there is something to be said, isn’t there? About having dessert. About taking a drive for the scenery. About propping up a dead and decaying corpse and laying waste to it simply for the comfort the fucking sounds bring you.”
“I am not here to recapture or recreate or even revenge. I am here for rebirth. And the pussy that is going to bring me back into this world is none other that Johnny Stylez.”
“Johnny Stylez, who took my name off the books and made me travel to arenas just to find out I wasn’t working.”
“Johnny Stylez who not only encouraged my brother to bash me with a shovel, but celebrated it.”
“Johnny Stylez who told me to dress up as a fat fuck president and then had the balls to replace me as to fuck over Roger Wright one more time.”
“JOHNNY STYLEZ. Who once claimed that my children, were his. And that my wife, was his whore.”
“I hope you remember all of that, John. Because I fucking do.”
“I recall every slight, every backhanded comment, every abuse of power you have used in order to fuck with me, and I am done letting them slide.”
“I did it because he wanted me out of his way. I failed to realize that I don’t have to be in his way, to be in yours.”
“And that, Mr. Stylez is precisely what I’m intent on doing. You’ve seen to the lack of trust they all have for me and fed it. I’ve done so as well. But what I lack in backup, I make up for with upfront. And I’m going to be very upfront with you right now. I do not expect to win.”
“The deck being stacked as it is and the amount of people you have watching your back, makes it a fool’s endeavor. To think that any of them would even allow me to approach the precipice to your defeat is laughable. So instead of beating you, I’ll just have to settle for beating you.”
“For inflicting as much damage as possible in the smallest amount of time feasible. To take my moments, as someone else might say, and break pieces of you in payment for the pieces of me you’ve damaged. The me that you’ve dealt with could only do so much. Stuck in this middle ground, the limbo which we worked together to capture me within. Now we shall work together again to get me out.”
“The fuck out? Naw, Johnny. The PhreeQ out. The PhreeQ who set this fucking business on fire from the moment he stepped foot in its peripheral vision. The PhreeQ who acquired what he wanted when and how he wanted it, regardless of who what or where. That is who we are going to free, Johnny. All we have to do, is call his name. Not with our voices. With our blood, our sweat, and our tears. More yours than mine, more because of me than for me.”
“Soak whatever it is that you soak, John. Lick that plastic piece you call a wife good and long. As of now, it’s 4:19, and you have got a minute. But. You only have a minute. The longest and hardest minute you have ever had. And the last one you might have while being able to see out of both eyes, and chew solid food.”
“Jim Morrison once asked, is it better to burn out or fade away. I ask you, John. Will you burn out? Will you let all that you’ve accomplished waste you away to less than the nothing we all thought you were? Will you fade out, forgetting how to be the person you wished yourself into, and vanishing into the distance of your own world? Or will you PhreeQ out, and realize that the house of cards you constructed around yourself has began to shake and at any given second, will fall down around you, slicing you and bleeding you like the pig you are? Chances are high for all possibilities, John. But if I were a betting man. And I am a betting man. I’d bet that you won’t fade out, you won’t burn out, PhreeQ out, bow out. Fuck naw. You’re gonna BLACK OUT.”
Vincent steps into the light and we see the shirt adorned upon his sweat drenched form is not a Vincent Wolf shirt. But a Vincent Black. He smiles like the devil that caught the pope at the kindergarten dressing room, and slowly backs into the darkness, leaving us for the void to devour, as he allows it to do the same to him.
“You helped me remember it all. Now it’s time for me to make sure you never forget.”
We hear a low laugh, one of pure uncut hatred and dripping with intent, and then, nothing at all.