Post by somethingwicked on Jun 30, 2020 12:30:23 GMT -5
A Manilla envelope sits on a dark mahogany desk, with the word ‘urgent’ written in red marker, and underlined as well as circled. A feature that causes our new point of view, Vincent Black, to roll his eyes. Having spent so much time alone in his earlier years, things like this still bother him. People still bother him. Except for those he’s created himself, or helped in the creation, all people bothered him in some way or another. And if the overuse of a red marker was not a clue to the annoyance awaiting within the envelope, the handwriting was a dead give away.
Slowly unfurling the string that secures the envelope closed, he remembers the fight he had getting the OPW head office to actually send a physical copy of his contracts, rather than a digital one. Everyone wants everything to be digital. Because god forbid you should have to touch everything. God forbid you should have to read something without using a feature to find the parts that only pertain to you. As Vincent pulls the contract out, he finds one bonus of going digital, And that is that you can’t stuff a digital envelope with glitter so it gets all over the person when they open it. Dropping the contract to the table, it produces a small gust of glitter that puffs up into the air, spreading more so than the initial reveal. Vincent Black takes a deep breath, and looks at the contract. Other than the glitter, a simple yellow, albeit glittery post it, sits on the front page of said contract. “From me, to you, love X.” in red magic marker. The X is circled, and it is underlined.
“I should’ve absorbed him when I had the chance.” he says, frustrated by the amount of sparkling fragments spread about. Taking off his shirt and pants, he is quickly reminded why the glitter is something X would use. Having a penchant for the cheaper of the sexes, Xavier spent a lot of time with strippers, dancers, and other such females he could pay to go away. Many of whom relied on glitter the way normal people rely on senses of humor, or skill at a job that isn’t just not wearing clothes. Not to say that being naked is a bad thing. And Vincent has a lot of respect for women who have taken the supply and demand aspect of sex and made a career out of it. He would never bash them for that. But for associating with his brother, he could not forgive. He takes a deep breath, and is about to curse, when there is a knock at the door. 2, sheepishly beckons him. A whisper in the ear, and Vincent is off, like lightning covered in grease.
Coming back to him, he enters a small room with a small round table. Seated around the table are his siblings, Kal X, Sarah, and Jack. Vin looks to his wife, who also has a lot of concern on her face. Kal stands up, and steps to the middle of the room. He looks out at his siblings, at their partners and wives, and he takes a deep breath, Preparing for the fight to come.
“I brought you all here, because I’m tired of the way things are. We’ve somehow become more concerned with our jobs than we have this family. And I’ve sat by and watched it happen for long enough. I am, asking you, to allow me to take the steps necessary to bring Xavier home.”
“Are you insane?” Vincent says, his eyes almost leaving their homes in his face.
“Kalvin, I believe your heart is in the right place, but your mind has left you.” Voodoo adds, shaking her head in disgust, disbelief, and disdain.
“I understand your point. But that, is business. That is your job. You can feel free to be mad that he’s currently better at his job than you are at yours, but you’re not going to stand in this room and tell me that because you’re on different sides of a chess board, that he’s not our family.”
“Big, he turned on this family!”
“NO MOTHER FUCKER HE TURNED ON YOU!” Kal says, raising his voice for the first time in years. The room chills everyone in it to the bone. And every breath becomes quieter thanks to it. “You kicked him out of the fucking family because he had issues. Which one of us doesn’t have issues?? You gonna kick Jack out for being a workaholic? Maybe you wanna kick me out because I got sick and made us look weak? WHO THE FUCK said you get to say who is family and who isn’t? He looked at his rich father, and told him ‘fuck you, i’m a Wolf.’ and lost MILLIONS, on top of the fact that everyone he ever loved won’t talk to him. And you kick him out?”
“I apologized!”
“SORRY AIN’T SHIT! You cost him his family. The family, by the way, that he chose over the one he grew up with. He is one of us and you threw him away like trash. None of us went after him. None of us tried to stop him. We all knew he was missing, several of us kept tabs but we just waited. We waited for our brother to come back. I’m done waiting. And for the record, Vin. You try kicking me out of this family, and I’m not hitting you with a shovel. I’ll hit you with a fucking car.”
“He’s literally tearing the family apart.”
“No, Red. He isn’t. We are. By sitting by and doing nothing. He is not some hired hand we can just say ‘fuck it’ and fire. He’s our blood. He’s our brother. Who when everyone of us were mad at him, And turned against him, what did he do? He went out and hunted down the man who hurt Sarah. Because even when we didn’t love him, he still loved her. And I’m going to bring him back. I didn’t ask you here to try to convince me otherwise. I asked you here so you can say what you want, and watch me DO IT FUCKING ANYWAY.”
“Wait. We should vote.” Sarah says, standing up. “All in favor.” Every right hand in the room raises. From Jackson Wolf and his wife Eve, to Murphy Doyle Maher, Sarah’s boyfriend. “Ok then. Against?”
They do not raise their hands. They do not say a word. They simply turn on their heels and leave, each angrier than the other with each passing second. Kal looks to Sarah, and nods.
“Please, text him and set up a meeting.”
“Where tho?”
“...I got an idea.”
We fade to an exterior shot of Voo and Vincent, sitting on a bench, both looking aggravated, with their eyes looking shifty.
“This...is insanity.”
“My love, it was only a matter of time. All we can do now is plan accordingly.”
“...yes. You’re right. Him being here, if he chooses to come, will allow us privy to certain aspects of his behavior. We can utilize that for the end game.”
“And that is what this is all about, remember? The end game. The finally. Let him have his fun. We may be losing a few here or there. But in the end...we shall see him grovel.”
“If there’s anything left of him to do so…” Vin replies, a smark etching easily across his face.
We fade into a dark room with just a pair of eyes, Vincent Black’s eyes, being illuminated by a small source of transient light. As he stares into said light, his words fill the silence.
“I know the way your mind works, Xavier. I know that you’re having fun with all of this. Acting as if you’ve got some sort of advantage to all of this. You’ve got the numbers, yes. You’ve got the talent, now with Anicka on your side of things. You have the powers that be in your pocket. You’ve got pretty much everything one could need to be successful in an endeavor such as this. Save for one very important thing. You are not hungry.”
You are full.
“You’ve been very fortunate to obtain all that. By fortunate of course, I do not mean any of this was handed to you. You’ve eaten well, but not because someone put it in a bowl. You learned to hunt. To use trickery devices of all sorts to obtain your prey, whatever that shall be. If I wasn’t disgusted by the people you choose to do it with, I’d be proud. After all, you went from being a loud mouth cunt with nothing to offer this business, other than an expensive haircut...To a successful loud mouth cunt with something other than a haircut to offer. As I said, though, dear brother. You have hunted, and you have fed. And now, now you are full. You’ve always been full. Just not full of success.”
Full of shit.
“You came into this business telling everyone and anyone that you were someone not to mess with. And everyone and anyone who wanted to disprove that, did. You were a black mark on the history of Kal’s legacy. The Protege that could not be less Pro. You stumbled and you faltered and you failed each and every time. And in the end, it took me running you out of dodge to motivate you to not be a joke. Well, a less funny one. Thankfully, you’ve found a few amusing individuals to make up for that fact, in the way of Johnny Stylez and Blair Buchannen. Blair and Johnny, The No frills Vin and Voo if there ever was one. The Zoon to our iPod, the Season 8 of Game of Thrones to literally any other media. If the way the music of Dave Matthews Band makes me feel could be given a tiny penis and an overused vagina, it would be your tag team partners. I am sure you disagree. I am sure you would much rather have those two, than my wife and myself. I am sure you are telling yourself that right now. Tell them as well. Maybe one of you will believe it. Believe this, Xavier. You can dress them up, you can teach them to sit and speak, but you can’t make them into us. Doesn’t matter what kind of polish you use, or what kind of rag you put it on, at the end of the day, your efforts will be for nothing...”
Shit don’t shine.
It Crumbles
“Just as they will. Just as you will. Just as we shall force you to. I know that you think you have us on the ledge. I know you think this is some sort of spartan style war that is going to allow you to move forward untl the only way for us to go is backwards, and down. But you forget what true wolves do when cornered. They do not retreat. They do not relent. They die with their teeth around your throat, and by all means, tell yourself that the destruction you have coming is nowhere near possible. Convince you and yours that who we are is insignificant, and meaningless in the world you’ve built. But in your own words, hell is just a moment, and it is always a moment away. And that moment, Xavier…”
Vincent is interrupted by the sound of something hitting glass in the room he’s in. Standing up, he steps to a small door, and opens it. Sunlight pours in, and the sound of the city, as well as the waves, overtakes our audio. We follow Vincent as he walks to a small window of the boats cabin, and dislodges a golf ball from it’s center. Vincent looks out into the distance, and see’s a group of people laughing amongst themselves.
“Dear brother, it’s much closer than you think.”
And as a smile creeps across Vin’s face, the darkness creeps across the screen, and returns us once more to the void, to the silence, to the darkness from which we came.
Slowly unfurling the string that secures the envelope closed, he remembers the fight he had getting the OPW head office to actually send a physical copy of his contracts, rather than a digital one. Everyone wants everything to be digital. Because god forbid you should have to touch everything. God forbid you should have to read something without using a feature to find the parts that only pertain to you. As Vincent pulls the contract out, he finds one bonus of going digital, And that is that you can’t stuff a digital envelope with glitter so it gets all over the person when they open it. Dropping the contract to the table, it produces a small gust of glitter that puffs up into the air, spreading more so than the initial reveal. Vincent Black takes a deep breath, and looks at the contract. Other than the glitter, a simple yellow, albeit glittery post it, sits on the front page of said contract. “From me, to you, love X.” in red magic marker. The X is circled, and it is underlined.
“I should’ve absorbed him when I had the chance.” he says, frustrated by the amount of sparkling fragments spread about. Taking off his shirt and pants, he is quickly reminded why the glitter is something X would use. Having a penchant for the cheaper of the sexes, Xavier spent a lot of time with strippers, dancers, and other such females he could pay to go away. Many of whom relied on glitter the way normal people rely on senses of humor, or skill at a job that isn’t just not wearing clothes. Not to say that being naked is a bad thing. And Vincent has a lot of respect for women who have taken the supply and demand aspect of sex and made a career out of it. He would never bash them for that. But for associating with his brother, he could not forgive. He takes a deep breath, and is about to curse, when there is a knock at the door. 2, sheepishly beckons him. A whisper in the ear, and Vincent is off, like lightning covered in grease.
Coming back to him, he enters a small room with a small round table. Seated around the table are his siblings, Kal X, Sarah, and Jack. Vin looks to his wife, who also has a lot of concern on her face. Kal stands up, and steps to the middle of the room. He looks out at his siblings, at their partners and wives, and he takes a deep breath, Preparing for the fight to come.
“I brought you all here, because I’m tired of the way things are. We’ve somehow become more concerned with our jobs than we have this family. And I’ve sat by and watched it happen for long enough. I am, asking you, to allow me to take the steps necessary to bring Xavier home.”
“Are you insane?” Vincent says, his eyes almost leaving their homes in his face.
“Kalvin, I believe your heart is in the right place, but your mind has left you.” Voodoo adds, shaking her head in disgust, disbelief, and disdain.
“I understand your point. But that, is business. That is your job. You can feel free to be mad that he’s currently better at his job than you are at yours, but you’re not going to stand in this room and tell me that because you’re on different sides of a chess board, that he’s not our family.”
“Big, he turned on this family!”
“NO MOTHER FUCKER HE TURNED ON YOU!” Kal says, raising his voice for the first time in years. The room chills everyone in it to the bone. And every breath becomes quieter thanks to it. “You kicked him out of the fucking family because he had issues. Which one of us doesn’t have issues?? You gonna kick Jack out for being a workaholic? Maybe you wanna kick me out because I got sick and made us look weak? WHO THE FUCK said you get to say who is family and who isn’t? He looked at his rich father, and told him ‘fuck you, i’m a Wolf.’ and lost MILLIONS, on top of the fact that everyone he ever loved won’t talk to him. And you kick him out?”
“I apologized!”
“SORRY AIN’T SHIT! You cost him his family. The family, by the way, that he chose over the one he grew up with. He is one of us and you threw him away like trash. None of us went after him. None of us tried to stop him. We all knew he was missing, several of us kept tabs but we just waited. We waited for our brother to come back. I’m done waiting. And for the record, Vin. You try kicking me out of this family, and I’m not hitting you with a shovel. I’ll hit you with a fucking car.”
“He’s literally tearing the family apart.”
“No, Red. He isn’t. We are. By sitting by and doing nothing. He is not some hired hand we can just say ‘fuck it’ and fire. He’s our blood. He’s our brother. Who when everyone of us were mad at him, And turned against him, what did he do? He went out and hunted down the man who hurt Sarah. Because even when we didn’t love him, he still loved her. And I’m going to bring him back. I didn’t ask you here to try to convince me otherwise. I asked you here so you can say what you want, and watch me DO IT FUCKING ANYWAY.”
“Wait. We should vote.” Sarah says, standing up. “All in favor.” Every right hand in the room raises. From Jackson Wolf and his wife Eve, to Murphy Doyle Maher, Sarah’s boyfriend. “Ok then. Against?”
They do not raise their hands. They do not say a word. They simply turn on their heels and leave, each angrier than the other with each passing second. Kal looks to Sarah, and nods.
“Please, text him and set up a meeting.”
“Where tho?”
“...I got an idea.”
We fade to an exterior shot of Voo and Vincent, sitting on a bench, both looking aggravated, with their eyes looking shifty.
“This...is insanity.”
“My love, it was only a matter of time. All we can do now is plan accordingly.”
“...yes. You’re right. Him being here, if he chooses to come, will allow us privy to certain aspects of his behavior. We can utilize that for the end game.”
“And that is what this is all about, remember? The end game. The finally. Let him have his fun. We may be losing a few here or there. But in the end...we shall see him grovel.”
“If there’s anything left of him to do so…” Vin replies, a smark etching easily across his face.
We fade into a dark room with just a pair of eyes, Vincent Black’s eyes, being illuminated by a small source of transient light. As he stares into said light, his words fill the silence.
“I know the way your mind works, Xavier. I know that you’re having fun with all of this. Acting as if you’ve got some sort of advantage to all of this. You’ve got the numbers, yes. You’ve got the talent, now with Anicka on your side of things. You have the powers that be in your pocket. You’ve got pretty much everything one could need to be successful in an endeavor such as this. Save for one very important thing. You are not hungry.”
You are full.
“You’ve been very fortunate to obtain all that. By fortunate of course, I do not mean any of this was handed to you. You’ve eaten well, but not because someone put it in a bowl. You learned to hunt. To use trickery devices of all sorts to obtain your prey, whatever that shall be. If I wasn’t disgusted by the people you choose to do it with, I’d be proud. After all, you went from being a loud mouth cunt with nothing to offer this business, other than an expensive haircut...To a successful loud mouth cunt with something other than a haircut to offer. As I said, though, dear brother. You have hunted, and you have fed. And now, now you are full. You’ve always been full. Just not full of success.”
Full of shit.
“You came into this business telling everyone and anyone that you were someone not to mess with. And everyone and anyone who wanted to disprove that, did. You were a black mark on the history of Kal’s legacy. The Protege that could not be less Pro. You stumbled and you faltered and you failed each and every time. And in the end, it took me running you out of dodge to motivate you to not be a joke. Well, a less funny one. Thankfully, you’ve found a few amusing individuals to make up for that fact, in the way of Johnny Stylez and Blair Buchannen. Blair and Johnny, The No frills Vin and Voo if there ever was one. The Zoon to our iPod, the Season 8 of Game of Thrones to literally any other media. If the way the music of Dave Matthews Band makes me feel could be given a tiny penis and an overused vagina, it would be your tag team partners. I am sure you disagree. I am sure you would much rather have those two, than my wife and myself. I am sure you are telling yourself that right now. Tell them as well. Maybe one of you will believe it. Believe this, Xavier. You can dress them up, you can teach them to sit and speak, but you can’t make them into us. Doesn’t matter what kind of polish you use, or what kind of rag you put it on, at the end of the day, your efforts will be for nothing...”
Shit don’t shine.
It Crumbles
“Just as they will. Just as you will. Just as we shall force you to. I know that you think you have us on the ledge. I know you think this is some sort of spartan style war that is going to allow you to move forward untl the only way for us to go is backwards, and down. But you forget what true wolves do when cornered. They do not retreat. They do not relent. They die with their teeth around your throat, and by all means, tell yourself that the destruction you have coming is nowhere near possible. Convince you and yours that who we are is insignificant, and meaningless in the world you’ve built. But in your own words, hell is just a moment, and it is always a moment away. And that moment, Xavier…”
Vincent is interrupted by the sound of something hitting glass in the room he’s in. Standing up, he steps to a small door, and opens it. Sunlight pours in, and the sound of the city, as well as the waves, overtakes our audio. We follow Vincent as he walks to a small window of the boats cabin, and dislodges a golf ball from it’s center. Vincent looks out into the distance, and see’s a group of people laughing amongst themselves.
“Dear brother, it’s much closer than you think.”
And as a smile creeps across Vin’s face, the darkness creeps across the screen, and returns us once more to the void, to the silence, to the darkness from which we came.