Post by darkdisciple on Oct 24, 2012 22:18:13 GMT -5
Here it is, on time too, so sorry Johnny, you can't bitch about it anymore. 
I was mad… hell, I was worse than mad, my face was red with rage, and I don’t mean the glorified jobber. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen of my computer, still showing the damn fool Clash with a dumb-ass smirk on his face. Had this “brilliant scheme” been his idea? I hoped so. I hoped to God it was so, it would save me the trouble of having to beat the crap out of every member of creative to figure out whose idea that was. I don’t know how many people would believe it, wrestling fans aren’t necessarily the least gullible people out there, but I knew things had been taken too far. I looked up from my perch on the turnbuckle. Annie was over by the Telly watching some kind of cartoon with ponies. I had been working out in the ring, working on my agility, I had taken a break to check the MPW website, little did I know the audacious garbage I was about to see.
Already my Twitter account was lighting up. All kinds of questions, insults, inappropriate comments littered the page. I had my answer. They had eaten it up. All of it. My wiki page was already edited to show the lies as truth. Clash had effectively succeeded in making me a laughing stock, with nothing more than a cheap set and an actress who looked like she might have been German.
I would be undoing the damage from this for a while. Clash had been a master politician, convincing everyone the entire wet dream of his had been reality. That my sister had…
…
I grabbed my phone. It had been over a month since I had talked to either of them. Now I needed to talk to Kami, or at least try. She had been ignoring me. I had called regularly, sent e-mails, heck, I had even tried to complement Kami on twitter. Her fed had posted a nice little segment from her match, and I had told her she was doing well. Now that Johnny had been doing nothing but attacking her, and myself indirectly, I was so upset my hands were shaking as I punched her name on my contacts list. The phone rang three times, then I was sent to voice mail. I flung my phone out of the ring. Everytime I seemed to build a bit of confidence, a bit of momentum, something like this managed to get under my skin, and I ended up in another slump.
My phone landed beside me again. I looked up at the eternally smug smirk of Sir Cunningham.
“I take it then you’ve seen Mr. Clash’s latest endeavor?”
He nonchalantly climbed the single step into the practice ring, and climbed through the ropes. I stayed on my perch, avoiding eye contact with the man who had taken me in.
“Yeah, and now he’s gotten under my skin. With one stupid video.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? You saw the video! Isn’t it obvious? How would you feel if he spat on your parent’s grave? How would you feel if he drunk raped your sister?”
“Did he?”
“What? We’re talking about the same video aren’t we?”
“Was that your parents’ grave? Was that your sister?”
“… well no, no… they weren’t.”
“Then why are you upset? It was a promo, albeit a weak one, filled with clichés and gratuitous garbage filler, you’re young, you’ve been in the business what? Three years? This will hardly be only time someone tries to attack your family, and there will be people far better at it than Johnny Clash.”
He was calming me down, which was a good thing. Before I had been ready to explode, launch into an expletive laced tirade; ill advised with Annie sitting feet away. Now I had calmed down a bit, though I was still certainly far from being calm.
“That was low though, even for Clash, how is someone trying to set a good example supposed to combat someone who can turn how people see your family by doing whatever they want? I mean, now everyone thinks my sister is a drunk sorority girl just because-”
As Sir Cunningham’s fist smashed into my cheek, it wasn’t so much the force that made me fall off the turnbuckle as it was the surprise. I hit the floor outside and bounced back up to my feet quickly.
“What was that for?!?”
“I hoped it might knock a bit of sense into you. For a couple of reasons. First off, you’re being a terrible elder brother. How old is Kami? Eighteen?”
“Nineteen, a few months ago.”
“Either way, do you trust her to take care of herself?”
“Of course.”
“Then stop worrying about what other people think of her. Nobody is going to care outside of MPW, so nobody is going to think any different about her. Leastways nobody she cares about. The only reason this is bothering you is that you’re worried how other people will see you. That makes you a selfish bastard.”
He paused and glanced over at Annie, but she was completely focused on her program. So he continued.
“Second off, the fact you aren’t already thinking about your retort is astounding. This was not a very good promo, you should be all over him right now. Find some fire! Get on the microphone and find the words to strike back! Show some damn pride, and show this bastard why you’re a…”
“DAD!”
Alice had appeared at the bottom of the staircase, arms crossed. She was glaring at her father with a less than pleased look on her face. She gave him a hard stare before looking over at where Annie was sitting.
“Annie, go do your schoolwork.”
Annie flung her head around and pouted over the couch at her cousin.
“I’ll do it later…”
Alice shook her head, her eyes closing slightly as if she were sighing from exhaustion on the inside.
“It’s later right now. Go get it done. Dad, go help her.”
Both Annie and Sir Cunningham submitted like timid mice, sneaking upstairs without further argument. Alice met my eyes, her tight lips parted slightly as she looked almost ready to say something, then her mouth snapped shut and she tossed the gentle curls of her fox coloured hair over her shoulder as she turned away. She stopped again, turned back, and spoke curtly.
“Dad is letting you stay here because you have talent. All you need to do is let that talent come out. I might not know a thing about wrestling, but if you want to defend your family, just be natural, and be honest. People appreciate honesty. Prove the other guy is a bumbling, lying, idiot, and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting people to believe you.”
Alice started to walk away, leaving me to ponder her words, but I didn’t have long to wonder over them, as Sir Cunningham came rushing back down, still wearing the coy curl upon his weathered lips.
“Ahh, Willy I nearly forgot, you have a warm up match at the house show tonight, good luck, show starts in an hour. Take the Ford, don’t scratch the paint.”
“WHAT!” I could literally feel my eyelids curl wide open as I began to panic. It was fifty minutes to the arena at the best of times, and I wasn’t even ready to go, after being late last Thursday, the last thing I needed was to be told last minute about a match. I went flying out of the room, up the stairs, nodding acknowledgment as Alice shouted “Don’t get the seats all sweaty” as I rushed past her. I grabbed my ring gear bag off of the countertop as I leaped into the blue Ford Thunderbird and sped out into the Nevada evening.
45 Minutes Later: Minot, Nevada - Municipal Auditorium
Getting changed into ring tights while driving is not something I recommend unless desperately trying not to lose your job. I managed to get to the arena with ten minutes to spare, but I still needed to check in with the road agent. As I rushed past the security guard, who was waving me on like an air traffic control guard, a creative staff member showed up, trying to keep up as I ran on.
“Kried! Kried! Great just who we need, we’ve got this all figured out.”
I glared at him without slowing down.
“This had better involve the words ‘Johnny Clash will pay an’ and ‘excessively unreasonable fine.’ Or I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ha! Funny! Funny! Good, you’re a funny guy, but no, no, we’re going to make this work, we’ve got this all figured out. Okay, so we’ll keep you the boy scout, we’ll get this over, just listen, so you go out there, and win or lose, you get the mic and talk about how you’re ashamed of your sister, and how you never want to see her slutty ass…”
He didn’t manage another word before my foot landed in his gut, bending him over doubled, I hooked his arms and sent his head to the concrete floor with the Ride of the Valkyries. I crouched next to his face and spoke slow and low.
“Oh? Is that so? Well there’s just one problem, I’m winning tonight, and I’m going to get that mic, but I’ll be saying whatever the hell I want. And if that screws up ‘Creatives’ plans? I don’t really give a damn.”
“That sounds like I should be concerned.”
I glanced up at the road agent, the grizzly old hoss Tex. He wasn’t known for being the nicest guy, but he was fair enough to us. He looked down at me with disappointed eyes.
“I really shouldn’t need to give you the ‘Don’t Fuck With The Backstage Staff’ speech Kried.”
I pointed down at the rotund, motionless carcass.
“He’s creative, that shouldn’t count.”
Tex sighed. He clearly wanted to agree with me, but he didn’t. Instead he scratched something on his clipboard and tossed it back into his office.
“Your match is third. Be ready for it. It’s a local, so I expect you to win. You have 40 minutes to get ready, and the music guys wanted to talk to you about your new theme. Now get lost.”
He brushed past me, as tall as I was he stood about 20 centimetres above me.
“Yes sir” I muttered as he went about his duties of running the show. I did my best to stay on the good sides with the Road Agents, but I wasn’t friends by any means with any of them. I headed over to the production area, I had asked for a new theme after last week, they had quickly agreed. I was kind of excited to see what they had put together. I also had a few plans for my mic time later that night…
45 minutes later
The kid had talked a decent game, seemed quite sure of himself, probably would be a fine wrestler someday, almost made me feel bad as his face bounced off the mat… almost. I rolled him over onto his back and smirked up at the crowd as the refs hand hit the mat three times.
DING DING DING!!!
“The Winner of this match… APOSTLE KRIED!!!”
My new theme hit, and the crowd gave me another okay pop, but certainly less than I was used to. There had been some choice words from the crowd throughout the match… about me… about my sister, it was time to show them who they were talking to, and you they had been listening to.
I grabbed the microphone from the ring announcer, who handed it over without any protest. As the ref rolled ‘Harry Buttkis” out of the ring, I took a position perched in the corner, I could already hear the wise asses in the crowd starting to warm up their cat calls. I was ready to go. So I began.
“So by this time, you probably have all seen Johnny Clash’s little trip to “Germany” right?”
A nice mix of jeers and boos, good, I wouldn’t have to show it to jog their memories.
“Well now see, that doesn’t bother me one bit. It means every one of you has seen just what kind of scum Johnny Clash really is.
You see, as wrestlers, there are things we say, things we do, we try our best to entertain all of you, to evoke some kind of emotion out of you, it’s our job, it’s what we love to do, but then there are people like Johnny Clash… people who have forgotten that all of this is entertainment. They become things of lust, and greed… people who are willing to do anything to try and get themselves at a position of power. Things like, hire an actress to potray my sister, or hire a setmaker to make a fake graveyard, or even just make crap up about other people to put them down. Well… if that’s the game he wants to play… I can’t stop him, but I can do this. I’d like to tell you all a little about my real family.”
I reach into the pocket in my ring trunk and pull out a photo. I hold it up to the crowd.
“I don’t know how many of you can see this…”
I glance around and see the titantron cameraman, I hold the photo up to the camera.
“There we go. This… this is my father. And no, he did not commit suicide. He was an electrical worker. Every day, he worked his ass off for one reason, because he wanted to see his kids better off than he was. Every day I watched him go to work, and every day I watched him come back home. He worked for me, he worked for mother, he worked for my sisters… but the one person he didn’t work for, was himself. He was that unselfish… what’s more… at work, he breathed in insulation, he breathed in lead, he breathed in asbestos… before long, he found himself with terminal lung cancer. So in a way… I guess you were right Johnny, my father did kill himself, but he didn’t do it to escape, and he didn’t do it because he couldn’t bear to live anymore… he did it because he loved us, he cared more about us than he did himself. And dad, if you’re looking down on me which I know you are… thank you.
Now, I’m just really quickly going to say this, that girl in the video didn’t even remotely look like my sister. And yes, I think I’m more qualified to say that than anyone. It wasn’t her, if you fell for it, you’re an idiot.”
That last line got a couple of boos, but those people realize they were just admitting to it, and I actually got some applause. It was the breath of relief I needed. I wasn’t totally bombing, it was time to press on.
“What that was, was Johnny Clash doing what he always does, paying a girl to have sex with him, heck, whether she even agreed to the sex is doubtful, what that video was, was a cheap porno. And it wasn’t even a good one, if I had to be honest, it reminded me of a certain sockface. Cliché after cliché after cliché. You want to prove you’re a bad person? Head to the grave of your opponents parents? Why the hell has nobody ever thought of that? You know, aside from the some hundred odd people, then you sleep with my sister… wow… that’s real deep Clash. If your talent runs as deep as your promo ideas, I’m totally screwed.
That last bit was sarcasm Johnny, clearly you aren’t familiar enough with linguistics to be aware of that. Your little promo hasn’t done a thing Johnny, other than show everyone here you’re desperate for ideas, and a really bad liar. See you Thursday.”
I dropped the mic. The crowd reacted. That was what I wanted. Good, bad, I didn’t care, but they did, and that’s what I wanted. People would be watching. They would watch me and Johnny fight, a street fight, brutal, violent, American wrestling, everything I stood against in the sport, but that didn’t matter anymore. Johnny wanted to play rough, things were going to get abrasive. It was time to get nasty.
I was mad… hell, I was worse than mad, my face was red with rage, and I don’t mean the glorified jobber. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen of my computer, still showing the damn fool Clash with a dumb-ass smirk on his face. Had this “brilliant scheme” been his idea? I hoped so. I hoped to God it was so, it would save me the trouble of having to beat the crap out of every member of creative to figure out whose idea that was. I don’t know how many people would believe it, wrestling fans aren’t necessarily the least gullible people out there, but I knew things had been taken too far. I looked up from my perch on the turnbuckle. Annie was over by the Telly watching some kind of cartoon with ponies. I had been working out in the ring, working on my agility, I had taken a break to check the MPW website, little did I know the audacious garbage I was about to see.
Already my Twitter account was lighting up. All kinds of questions, insults, inappropriate comments littered the page. I had my answer. They had eaten it up. All of it. My wiki page was already edited to show the lies as truth. Clash had effectively succeeded in making me a laughing stock, with nothing more than a cheap set and an actress who looked like she might have been German.
I would be undoing the damage from this for a while. Clash had been a master politician, convincing everyone the entire wet dream of his had been reality. That my sister had…
…
I grabbed my phone. It had been over a month since I had talked to either of them. Now I needed to talk to Kami, or at least try. She had been ignoring me. I had called regularly, sent e-mails, heck, I had even tried to complement Kami on twitter. Her fed had posted a nice little segment from her match, and I had told her she was doing well. Now that Johnny had been doing nothing but attacking her, and myself indirectly, I was so upset my hands were shaking as I punched her name on my contacts list. The phone rang three times, then I was sent to voice mail. I flung my phone out of the ring. Everytime I seemed to build a bit of confidence, a bit of momentum, something like this managed to get under my skin, and I ended up in another slump.
My phone landed beside me again. I looked up at the eternally smug smirk of Sir Cunningham.
“I take it then you’ve seen Mr. Clash’s latest endeavor?”
He nonchalantly climbed the single step into the practice ring, and climbed through the ropes. I stayed on my perch, avoiding eye contact with the man who had taken me in.
“Yeah, and now he’s gotten under my skin. With one stupid video.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? You saw the video! Isn’t it obvious? How would you feel if he spat on your parent’s grave? How would you feel if he drunk raped your sister?”
“Did he?”
“What? We’re talking about the same video aren’t we?”
“Was that your parents’ grave? Was that your sister?”
“… well no, no… they weren’t.”
“Then why are you upset? It was a promo, albeit a weak one, filled with clichés and gratuitous garbage filler, you’re young, you’ve been in the business what? Three years? This will hardly be only time someone tries to attack your family, and there will be people far better at it than Johnny Clash.”
He was calming me down, which was a good thing. Before I had been ready to explode, launch into an expletive laced tirade; ill advised with Annie sitting feet away. Now I had calmed down a bit, though I was still certainly far from being calm.
“That was low though, even for Clash, how is someone trying to set a good example supposed to combat someone who can turn how people see your family by doing whatever they want? I mean, now everyone thinks my sister is a drunk sorority girl just because-”
As Sir Cunningham’s fist smashed into my cheek, it wasn’t so much the force that made me fall off the turnbuckle as it was the surprise. I hit the floor outside and bounced back up to my feet quickly.
“What was that for?!?”
“I hoped it might knock a bit of sense into you. For a couple of reasons. First off, you’re being a terrible elder brother. How old is Kami? Eighteen?”
“Nineteen, a few months ago.”
“Either way, do you trust her to take care of herself?”
“Of course.”
“Then stop worrying about what other people think of her. Nobody is going to care outside of MPW, so nobody is going to think any different about her. Leastways nobody she cares about. The only reason this is bothering you is that you’re worried how other people will see you. That makes you a selfish bastard.”
He paused and glanced over at Annie, but she was completely focused on her program. So he continued.
“Second off, the fact you aren’t already thinking about your retort is astounding. This was not a very good promo, you should be all over him right now. Find some fire! Get on the microphone and find the words to strike back! Show some damn pride, and show this bastard why you’re a…”
“DAD!”
Alice had appeared at the bottom of the staircase, arms crossed. She was glaring at her father with a less than pleased look on her face. She gave him a hard stare before looking over at where Annie was sitting.
“Annie, go do your schoolwork.”
Annie flung her head around and pouted over the couch at her cousin.
“I’ll do it later…”
Alice shook her head, her eyes closing slightly as if she were sighing from exhaustion on the inside.
“It’s later right now. Go get it done. Dad, go help her.”
Both Annie and Sir Cunningham submitted like timid mice, sneaking upstairs without further argument. Alice met my eyes, her tight lips parted slightly as she looked almost ready to say something, then her mouth snapped shut and she tossed the gentle curls of her fox coloured hair over her shoulder as she turned away. She stopped again, turned back, and spoke curtly.
“Dad is letting you stay here because you have talent. All you need to do is let that talent come out. I might not know a thing about wrestling, but if you want to defend your family, just be natural, and be honest. People appreciate honesty. Prove the other guy is a bumbling, lying, idiot, and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting people to believe you.”
Alice started to walk away, leaving me to ponder her words, but I didn’t have long to wonder over them, as Sir Cunningham came rushing back down, still wearing the coy curl upon his weathered lips.
“Ahh, Willy I nearly forgot, you have a warm up match at the house show tonight, good luck, show starts in an hour. Take the Ford, don’t scratch the paint.”
“WHAT!” I could literally feel my eyelids curl wide open as I began to panic. It was fifty minutes to the arena at the best of times, and I wasn’t even ready to go, after being late last Thursday, the last thing I needed was to be told last minute about a match. I went flying out of the room, up the stairs, nodding acknowledgment as Alice shouted “Don’t get the seats all sweaty” as I rushed past her. I grabbed my ring gear bag off of the countertop as I leaped into the blue Ford Thunderbird and sped out into the Nevada evening.
45 Minutes Later: Minot, Nevada - Municipal Auditorium
Getting changed into ring tights while driving is not something I recommend unless desperately trying not to lose your job. I managed to get to the arena with ten minutes to spare, but I still needed to check in with the road agent. As I rushed past the security guard, who was waving me on like an air traffic control guard, a creative staff member showed up, trying to keep up as I ran on.
“Kried! Kried! Great just who we need, we’ve got this all figured out.”
I glared at him without slowing down.
“This had better involve the words ‘Johnny Clash will pay an’ and ‘excessively unreasonable fine.’ Or I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ha! Funny! Funny! Good, you’re a funny guy, but no, no, we’re going to make this work, we’ve got this all figured out. Okay, so we’ll keep you the boy scout, we’ll get this over, just listen, so you go out there, and win or lose, you get the mic and talk about how you’re ashamed of your sister, and how you never want to see her slutty ass…”
He didn’t manage another word before my foot landed in his gut, bending him over doubled, I hooked his arms and sent his head to the concrete floor with the Ride of the Valkyries. I crouched next to his face and spoke slow and low.
“Oh? Is that so? Well there’s just one problem, I’m winning tonight, and I’m going to get that mic, but I’ll be saying whatever the hell I want. And if that screws up ‘Creatives’ plans? I don’t really give a damn.”
“That sounds like I should be concerned.”
I glanced up at the road agent, the grizzly old hoss Tex. He wasn’t known for being the nicest guy, but he was fair enough to us. He looked down at me with disappointed eyes.
“I really shouldn’t need to give you the ‘Don’t Fuck With The Backstage Staff’ speech Kried.”
I pointed down at the rotund, motionless carcass.
“He’s creative, that shouldn’t count.”
Tex sighed. He clearly wanted to agree with me, but he didn’t. Instead he scratched something on his clipboard and tossed it back into his office.
“Your match is third. Be ready for it. It’s a local, so I expect you to win. You have 40 minutes to get ready, and the music guys wanted to talk to you about your new theme. Now get lost.”
He brushed past me, as tall as I was he stood about 20 centimetres above me.
“Yes sir” I muttered as he went about his duties of running the show. I did my best to stay on the good sides with the Road Agents, but I wasn’t friends by any means with any of them. I headed over to the production area, I had asked for a new theme after last week, they had quickly agreed. I was kind of excited to see what they had put together. I also had a few plans for my mic time later that night…
45 minutes later
The kid had talked a decent game, seemed quite sure of himself, probably would be a fine wrestler someday, almost made me feel bad as his face bounced off the mat… almost. I rolled him over onto his back and smirked up at the crowd as the refs hand hit the mat three times.
DING DING DING!!!
“The Winner of this match… APOSTLE KRIED!!!”
My new theme hit, and the crowd gave me another okay pop, but certainly less than I was used to. There had been some choice words from the crowd throughout the match… about me… about my sister, it was time to show them who they were talking to, and you they had been listening to.
I grabbed the microphone from the ring announcer, who handed it over without any protest. As the ref rolled ‘Harry Buttkis” out of the ring, I took a position perched in the corner, I could already hear the wise asses in the crowd starting to warm up their cat calls. I was ready to go. So I began.
“So by this time, you probably have all seen Johnny Clash’s little trip to “Germany” right?”
A nice mix of jeers and boos, good, I wouldn’t have to show it to jog their memories.
“Well now see, that doesn’t bother me one bit. It means every one of you has seen just what kind of scum Johnny Clash really is.
You see, as wrestlers, there are things we say, things we do, we try our best to entertain all of you, to evoke some kind of emotion out of you, it’s our job, it’s what we love to do, but then there are people like Johnny Clash… people who have forgotten that all of this is entertainment. They become things of lust, and greed… people who are willing to do anything to try and get themselves at a position of power. Things like, hire an actress to potray my sister, or hire a setmaker to make a fake graveyard, or even just make crap up about other people to put them down. Well… if that’s the game he wants to play… I can’t stop him, but I can do this. I’d like to tell you all a little about my real family.”
I reach into the pocket in my ring trunk and pull out a photo. I hold it up to the crowd.
“I don’t know how many of you can see this…”
I glance around and see the titantron cameraman, I hold the photo up to the camera.
“There we go. This… this is my father. And no, he did not commit suicide. He was an electrical worker. Every day, he worked his ass off for one reason, because he wanted to see his kids better off than he was. Every day I watched him go to work, and every day I watched him come back home. He worked for me, he worked for mother, he worked for my sisters… but the one person he didn’t work for, was himself. He was that unselfish… what’s more… at work, he breathed in insulation, he breathed in lead, he breathed in asbestos… before long, he found himself with terminal lung cancer. So in a way… I guess you were right Johnny, my father did kill himself, but he didn’t do it to escape, and he didn’t do it because he couldn’t bear to live anymore… he did it because he loved us, he cared more about us than he did himself. And dad, if you’re looking down on me which I know you are… thank you.
Now, I’m just really quickly going to say this, that girl in the video didn’t even remotely look like my sister. And yes, I think I’m more qualified to say that than anyone. It wasn’t her, if you fell for it, you’re an idiot.”
That last line got a couple of boos, but those people realize they were just admitting to it, and I actually got some applause. It was the breath of relief I needed. I wasn’t totally bombing, it was time to press on.
“What that was, was Johnny Clash doing what he always does, paying a girl to have sex with him, heck, whether she even agreed to the sex is doubtful, what that video was, was a cheap porno. And it wasn’t even a good one, if I had to be honest, it reminded me of a certain sockface. Cliché after cliché after cliché. You want to prove you’re a bad person? Head to the grave of your opponents parents? Why the hell has nobody ever thought of that? You know, aside from the some hundred odd people, then you sleep with my sister… wow… that’s real deep Clash. If your talent runs as deep as your promo ideas, I’m totally screwed.
That last bit was sarcasm Johnny, clearly you aren’t familiar enough with linguistics to be aware of that. Your little promo hasn’t done a thing Johnny, other than show everyone here you’re desperate for ideas, and a really bad liar. See you Thursday.”
I dropped the mic. The crowd reacted. That was what I wanted. Good, bad, I didn’t care, but they did, and that’s what I wanted. People would be watching. They would watch me and Johnny fight, a street fight, brutal, violent, American wrestling, everything I stood against in the sport, but that didn’t matter anymore. Johnny wanted to play rough, things were going to get abrasive. It was time to get nasty.
