Post by stratford on Oct 12, 2020 11:30:24 GMT -5
moments after stairway 2 heaven went off the air
My fist rattled aggressively into the plasterboard wall, crumbling the cheap material effortlessly, leaving a vaguely fist-shaped hole in the wall that made a makeshift corridor leading from the curtain back to the changing areas in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
A mixture of sweat, blood and exhaustion clouded my vision as I moved unsteadily through the commotion of stage hands and other non-descript staff going back and forth, trying their best to carry out their duties in a timely fashion so that they could get back to their motel or coach and get some rest for the night before onto the next venue for Showcase. They were mindful to sidestep as I stumbled, which I appreciated.
Adrenaline coursed through me, and whilst my body physically struggled to put one foot in front of the other, my mind willed me forward. I could feel a throbbing sensation on the crown of my skull, radiating through my body, and every time I swallowed I could feel the bruising on my throat from where that steel chair had been rammed with such vigor into my larynx. I could feel the red haze descending again, I wanted nothing more than to wash the taste of Riggs’ boot off my tongue.
“FUCK.” I screamed, driving my arm into an arrangement of fruit on a foldout table.
I should probably conserve my energy. I should probably have let the medical professionals continue their work on me like I was told, but none of that mattered. I was consumed, I was drowning, I couldn’t think straight because I was blinded by anger. Blood was rolling down through my sodden eyebrows and into my eyes again. Pawing the blood away with the back of my hand, I close my eyes tight, trying to shake loose this fog in my mind. Trying to think clearly. It isn’t coming, though.
Why today? On this day?
“That motherfucker.” I growl low, white-knuckling the foldout table now, “Arrogant motherfucker. He couldn’t let that moment go. No. He picked THAT moment.”
I’m going to pick up this table and launch it at the wall. I can’t keep it in. How fucking dare he? I didn’t fucking win, but somebody else did. That was Xavier’s moment, and that self-serving son of a bitch had no care for him in the world. You’d think, despite their differences, despite their history, he’d give him the respect of his moment, on family name alone. Damon Riggs just couldn’t, though, could he? That’s exactly the sort of person he is. He’d step on his kid if it meant his name could be on a marquee, that much I know. Despite the lactic acid coursing through my muscles, every single one of them seizing up, feeling like they’re ready to burst, I dig deep, and with a deep grunt, the table explodes into a confetti of splinters, with a cascade of falling apples drumming onto the concrete along with the aluminium frame. Immediately, the commotion around me comes to a halt. The poor kids who are just trying to earn a crust are awestruck. They don’t know what to do, they weren’t trained for this. A few of them mutter and mumble, and fluster as they try to make sure they aren’t caught in the crossfire, in case I start again, or pick one of them to take my anger out on.
I don’t know why, but I can feel myself welling up, my eyes were already burning and full of blood that is gushing from a wound on my hairline. Overwhelmed, is how I felt. Overcome. Anger, sadness, disappointment, stirred into this confused pot of bloodied fatigue. I wanted to crumble. I wanted to fall to my knees and crumble. I wanted to give up, to give in, to sit on the floor and wait to be taken, but I knew that I couldn’t. That was the old Stratford, the one that, like a shrinking violet, slunk into the shadows and disappeared for a decade because he couldn’t cope the the cost of his actions.
I remembered what it was like with my left hand around Riggs’ throat, thumb pressed against his carotid, whilst I drove his own baseball bat into his face, not too dissimilar to what had just happened to me. I remembered the drive that the action had evoked in me, the feelings it ignited. I hadn’t come this far to collapse in a corridor. I steady myself on the plasterboard wall, smearing diluted blood from my hand into the fibre.
With my free hand, I push yet more sticky thick crimson fluid from my face again, feeling like I’m losing the battle to keep my face clear, the pain pulses through me again, causing me to wince and tense my spine up, squeezing my eyes closed, the blood pools and gushes down my cheek again. Staggering, inching closer to the lockers.
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Don't ask me
Don't ask me
What you know is true
Don't have to tell you
I love your precious heart
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The hissing of blistering water drowns out the sounds of the rest of the world, as I let the cascade consume me. I cup my hands, and allow the water to pool into them like a makeshift cup, then I drop my hands to my side, allowing the reservoir of hot water slap to the tiles below me, devastating the even and steady swirl of sanguine circling the drainage grate below
My sodden hair sticks to my face, creating ravines for the shower water to traverse down my skull and onto my chest. I dip my head again, allowing the water to hit directly on the top of my back, the run-off water reaching my lips before dropping to the shower floor. Deep breath in. Stand straight, stretching upwards, behind the stream now, water hitting my chest and running down. The beads of water feel like hundreds and thousands of tiny needles prickling my sensitive skin, fire simmering on the surface of my body, from head to toe, frayed nerve endings from a frenetic and exhilarating battle that took literally everything out of me.
Exhale.
I’m trying to exorcise these feelings. Those creeping, nagging, doubting feelings that itch at my brain, that prod and needle and toy with me from a distance just out of reach. I can’t quieten them, I can’t do anything about them.
What if?
What if I had an extra moment of stability, ascending my ladder?
What if I had a little less grease on my hands from the fight?
What if I spent an extra ten minutes warming up, instead of sitting there, eyes closed, head back, Michael Hutchence’s voice echoing in my head, replaying what I had imagined Demi looked like when she snuck into the arena and left me that good luck token?
What… if…?
Everything. Months and months of planning, over a hundred scenarios game-planned out, blueprinted, traced, rehearsed. Re-rehearsed, recited, revised. For this? For failure? For nothing?
The difference, up there on those ladders, was minimal. Negligible, nothing. Less than the circumference of a gnat’s pubic hair. Less than anything you could perceive with the human eye. But yet it happened, it slipped through my fingers. The opportunity, the title, the status, the plans for the future, everything. Laying on my back, looking up at the lights in the arena, a dark shadow looming over me, raising the fruits of his labour aloft.
He was broken and beaten, no different to me.
But different.
My desolation was his elation.
My heartbreak was his most joyous moment.
My devastation was his elevation.
My defeat, his victory.
As I carefully clasped my hand around the chrome handle that controlled the shower and swung it left to turn the water off, I vowed to myself that there would be no more ‘what if’s’. If the opportunity arose again, I knew I would take his fucking head off and not leave anything to chance.
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I told you
I told you
That we could fly
'Cause we all have wings
But some of us don't know why
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The crisp, rough fibres of a clean but old white towel absorbed the beads of water running down my welted chest, and then I brought the towel up to my face, and daubed it carefully against my face, not wanting to aggravate the laceration that ought to be stitched. Reaching into my gear bag, I unzipped an inside pocket and pulled out a small medical kit. My eyes focused forward, looking at the wall, not wanting to lean down to look, I fingered around in the small nylon bag trying to find what I was looking for - butterfly stitches, cotton and gauze.
It wasn’t going to work, doing this blind, so I put the towel down on the bench, and looked down into the medical kit. Of course, what I needed was buried beneath stuff that nobody would ever use. Like bandaids and alcohol swabs. Withdrawing the small packet of butterfly stitches and a roll of gauze, I put them on my towel, the sound of the zip breaking the palpable silence in the room as it rounded the bag and closed.
Three steps to the left and I was in front of the mirror, naked from head to toe, feeling physically and emotionally like I wanted the world to swallow me up and take me back to when I was last this stripped bare of everything, I wanted to crawl back inside the womb and never be born.
Physically, I saw a man standing before me. Lithe, muscular, tattooed.
But destroyed. I could barely stand up straight, every one of those defined muscles were screaming at me, burning, throbbing. Several lacerations were seeping sanguine, but I could feel my pulse beating through the gash on my head, the one taking all of my attention.
Psychologically, I couldn’t have been further from the man that I saw in the mirror. I recognised him, I knew him, but I wasn’t him. I felt infantile, weak, truly and utterly debased.
What I felt, in this moment, was ego death.
I could feel my upper teeth clinging to my lower lip, a telltale sign of anxiety, uncertainty. Wadded cotton swathed downward from the laceration, pulling the two separated parts of the skin apart, just briefly, as I ran a swab dunked in iodine across the wound. I winced, I hated this part. It was worse than the injury itself, but imperative to protect myself from infection.
I had never allowed hired help to attend to my wounds as a professional wrestler. I had always mattered more to myself than to be yet another stitch that a poor overworked EMT has to put into yet another blading ‘sports entertainer’.
Demi always used to do this for me. She’d straddle my legs as I sat down on the bench, and she’d have me as good as new in a moment or two, her eyes never breaking gaze with mine, doting on me delicately. She could use a needle, too. She’d sewn me up with a needle and thread on multiple occasions, not a hint of hesitation as she diligently put her doll parts all back together again, over and over again, tirelessly and thanklessly.
Right now, I wished she was here, doing this for me.
I needed so much more than the physical stitches, I needed the mental ones too.
In a pinch, I can sew myself up, I could let an EMT do it if I really needed, but there were some wounds that nobody knew how to reach but her.
So, staring intently at my trembling finger in the mirror, I will myself to act with the precision that she would have, placing one side of the butterfly stitch on in my hairline, the other side sticking to my forehead. I was going to need a couple more, at least. The second one went on with slightly more confidence, and by the time I got to the third and final one, I was barely paying attention.
It was in this moment that I turned and saw something out of place on the bench behind me. I’m not usually a stickler for detail, but this was odd.
“Holyyy.” I trail off, I already know what it is.
Demi.
A few hours earlier, when I arrived in the locker room, a camera crew followed me inside, the Producer made certain that they caught my reaction on film as I encountered a ring of gardenia waiting for me. The fact that the Producer knew about it? I wasn’t sure if it was a game he was playing. I had my wings, like he told me I’d need, and now I had my crown ready to ascend the stairway.
I thought it was allegory. Symbolic. A reminder of what I fought this hard for.
But this, set perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the bench behind me, caught my eye in the mirror. This was her calling card, her calling card. Our secret. Set perfectly in place, not a millimetre ajar. A sheer square napkin, and from across the room, I knew what I’d find when I got there. Her scent would be laced through it, sickly pecan and tobacco smoke - I knew that even if she’d changed her perfume, she’d have put it on the napkin - if it were genuine. And it’d have scrawled scripty handwriting, in pillar box red lipstick.
FIND ME
There it was. She was here. Right now.
A wave of emotion rushes through me. Like a shot of epinephrine, all the hairs on my body stand and my breath escapes me.
She’s outside. Always outside. Always hiding. Never too obscured that I wouldn’t find her. The game was to be caught.
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I was standing
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart
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Right or left? Right, or left?
Left, in New Orleans, we would always take the left fork whenever one would appear -- then we knew that going right would take us back home.
“So... predictable...”
Her delicate hands clasped around my head, obscuring my vision from behind. Blindfolded me.
I couldn’t utter a word, the lump in my throat was the size of an avocado stone. For a moment, I just stayed there, frozen in the moment. Letting years and years of imagining what this moment would be like, whether it would ever even exist wash over me.
In my head, this could go one of a million different ways. And believe me, I had run the numbers, I had gone through the playbook. On repeat.
The one variable that I didn’t know was how I was going to feel.
In my imagination, it’d been elation, relief, desperation, something. Passion, delight. Anger. Something. I’d imagined running into her at the grocery store with a horde of miniature delinquents from various walks of life, all taken under her rag and bone umbrella. I’d imagined running full speed across a Pacific beach into each other’s arms, in slow-motion, like on Baywatch or something. I’d imagined her standing over me, snarling, holding Riggs’ hand and pushing my head down with the sole of her boot, in my darker moments.
Yet, here she was, her touch so familiar it felt like only yesterday when she had last clasped her hands over my eyes, excited to show me the gardenia she’d harvested from Elise’s plot and replanted in our garden.
I could feel her breath on my neck, billowing gently against the pricked up hair.
“Left for adventure..” I smiled, reaching my hands up and placing them on hers, gently peeling them away and interlocking them with mine.
“Right, to go home.” she retorted, a playful melody in her voice, as though this was a typical call and response between us.
I was still lost for any real words of meaning. I just stared at her. Her ringletted ebony hair framed her narrow pale face, juxtaposed against her pillar box red lips. One eyebrow arched slightly higher than the other as she tried to decipher Stephen Stratford in the flesh for the first time in more than a decade.
“You found me.” her words were soft, and she left her lips ajar, as if she had more to say.
My hand moves from hers, to her wrist, and I took it in my hand as I always did.
“Demi. I can’t believe yo-” I start to stutter.
Inhale.
This is Demi. Not a stranger.
Exhale.
“You found me, in the end.” She reached forward and put her thumb against my chin.
She pulled herself closer, but not into my personal space. Her red-tipped finger reached toward my face, luring me close enough to take a big inhalation of gardenia fragrance. Different from the one on the napkin, but so her.
“You should have waited, and let me do this for you. Whoever did this should have their license revoked.” Her finger ran across the steri-strips holding my face together, and she spoke to me as though the past thirteen years had passed in a blink.
“Some things never change, Dem’.” I offer, softly.
“I’m sorry, Stephen.” She started, “I’m sorry about tonight. I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have, unless I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“Me too.” I nod.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I would have chalked this down to the symptoms of a severe concussion. But she was here, in the flesh, talking to me like nothing had ever happened.
“Are you okay?” She smiled, letting her thumb linger on my cheek a little long.
“I will be.” I said, not sure if I was being truthful or not.
“Fast food? After-show tradition?” She offered a smile, trying to cheer me up.
“Demi,” I start. I’m not sure why I started. “I, uh, it isn’t my tradition anymore.”
As soon as the words escaped my lips, I felt that twist in my stomach. You know the one, when just a little too much truth escapes, and you see that glimmer of hope in her eyes snuffed. She blinked just a little slower than usual, as if taking a moment to cognitively process what was happening. She sharply inhaled.
“Stephen.” The tone had shifted. “You don’t seem all that happy to see me.”
It was both a question and a statement. It didn’t require an answer, the damage was done.
“I am happy, but I’m preoccupied,” I answered anyway, her eyes narrowing. “Riggs --”
“Damon?” she cut me off abruptly, “I’m standing right here and you’re thinking about fucking Damon Riggs? Who fucking cares about Damon Riggs?”
She was apoplectic. But I was also incensed. I knew I had fucked up, but I didn’t know how deep I’d fucked up yet, and so I kept going.
“I fucking care, Demi. Me. He ruined everything! I lost everything because of him.” I appealed, hoping she understood.
We were no longer touching, we were at arms length, full of negative body language. The narrow crumbled white brick walls felt like they were closing in on me.
“Oh no, don’t you blame this all on him.” She started in on me, finger rising to point at me. “Your single-minded obsession with him ruined just as much as Damon did, and I can see now what a giant mistake it was coming here. I’m leaving.”
And in that moment, the trap door beneath my feet gave way. I was free falling, every thought, fear, or anxiety about seeing her came bubbling up and consumed me. Each of those scenarios that I had imagined over the past decade and more, the good and bad, all felt out of reach, disappearing. Slipping through my fingers, I was falling. Falling off that ladder, watching him stand over me with the belt.
What have I done?
“Demi..no… Demi.. wait ..” I stutter, watching the silhouette from behind take increasingly rapid steps away from me towards the main parking lot.
“Don’t, Stephen. Just fuck off and leave me alone. I’m going home.” she spits, not looking over her shoulder even once.
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I was standing
I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
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