Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2012 0:10:03 GMT -5
The Budget Inn was far from being a five-star motel. The carpet was threadbare and heavily stained, the dingy wallpaper was peeling loose in long, ragged strips, and the entire room smelled like stale urine and cigarette smoke. All of the furniture – a bedside table, a dresser, a desk, and a pair of straight-back chairs – was second-hand, the wooden finishes sporting gouges and deep scratches. Management’s only attempt at brightening the décor were a pair of framed watercolor prints that flanked the bed, the pictures so poorly done that it was impossible to tell what the artist had intended them to be. As bad as the Inn was, however, it was still the Ritz compared to some of the places that James Harlow had been forced to stay when he had first broken into professional wrestling. At least the door locked and there weren’t any cockroaches.
The room was dark except for the flickering glow cast by the aging Magnavox on top of the desk, a tangle of multicolored cables connecting the television and a VCR that sat in one of the chairs. VHS tapes littered the floor, their cardboard sleeves faded and nearly illegible.
“The Hammer” was stretched out on the sagging full-size bed, back pressed against the cheap, wobbly headboard, arms folded across his stomach. Physically, he was there in Reno, but in truth, he was a thousand miles and twenty years away.
The Magnavox’s picture would sometimes jump and twitch spastically, but that was because the tape he was watching was old. Back in 2001, after announcing his retirement, Harlow had been given a tape of some of his better matches throughout his career by a dedicated fan. He hadn’t watched it since that day, but nostalgia and the reality that he would once more be stepping into the squared circle had prompted him to dig the tape out of mothballs.
One of his matches against The Grim Reaper in the Southern Championship Wrestling promotion back in the spring of 1991 was playing, the overly enthusiastic color commentator doing his best to hype the match.
“How much more can Harlow take? He should just do the smart thing: lay down and die.”
Harlow smirked and shook his head. He remembered the match vividly. Most of the beatings that he had taken over the years had faded into one massive ass-whooping, but there was something that stood out about getting your head cracked open by a 7 foot tall, three-hundred pound maniac in a skull mask.
“Let’s face it, Tom,” SCW play-by-play man, Frank Boone, chimed in over the in-ring sound of Harlow getting stomped into the already-bloody canvas. “The Hammer just isn’t the type to give up. He is going to fight until his last breath.” He gasped. “And another vicious right hand by the Reaper! That one almost took Harlow’s head clean off!”
“It’d improve his looks,” Tom Wiley quipped.
“You’re one to talk,” Harlow muttered to himself with a smirk. Wiley had tipped the scales at four-hundred with a face like a mentally handicapped ape. Some of the boys backstage had often joked that Wiley had been forced to put a paper bag over his own head before sex. Even when he was alone.
Harlow’s smirk faded. Tom Wiley had passed away from cancer back in ’05. He had been an obnoxious womanizer with the repulsive habit of chewing with his mouth open like a pig at a feeding trough, but he had still been a big part of Harlow’s past.
“There’s the Scythe! That lariat turned Harlow absolutely inside-out!”
“Frank, there’s not a single SCW wrestler that has ever kicked out of the Reaper’s Scythe. It’s all over for—“
“And Harlow kicks out!”
As the commentators continued to discuss Harlow’s intestinal fortitude, “The Hammer” shifted on the bed, grimacing at the dull, throbbing ache in his lower back. He stuffed one of the motel’s paper-thin pillows behind him for padding. It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.
The television screen filled with the ominous image of the Reaper’s stylized mask, his dark stringy hair falling across his forehead. His eyes were narrowed into slits behind the death’s head.
“Pure, one-hundred percent evil, Tom,” Boone said. “That’s what the Reaper is.”
“With a name like that did you expect him to be cute and cuddly?”
“The Reaper stalking Harlow. I hate to say it, but I don’t see how The Hammer has a chance in hell of beating this massive beast.”
A knock on the door interrupted Wiley’s next sarcastic remark. Harlow fished the VCR remote out from underneath the wrinkled sheets and jabbed the pause button. The knock came again, sharp and impatient. He hadn’t ordered take-out, so there wasn’t any reason that he could think of for someone to come calling at almost midnight. He briefly considered ignoring it, before he swung his legs off the bed and walked to the door. After taking a peek through the peephole, he suddenly found himself wishing that he had listened to his gut instinct.
“God hates me,” he whispered to himself. “So he sent the Devil instead.”
With a deep sigh, he unchained the door and cracked it open just enough to look outside. “Hello, Carrie-Anne.”
His ex-wife’s thin, red lips turned downward into an even more impressive scowl. She arched a single, perfectly-plucked and shaped eyebrow and said, “James.” Her tone of voice was probably the same one that she would use if she discovered that she had stepped in fresh dogshit.
“What do you want?”
“To be invited in,” she answered. “I would rather not get mugged, raped, and murdered.”
“Yeah, neither of us is that lucky,” Harlow muttered.
“I heard that.”
“I would hope so. I hate repeating myself.”
They stood there for a moment, glaring at each other, before Harlow stepped aside, letting the door swing open. Carrie-Anne stalked past him and into the room, obviously stuck in her Queen Bitch persona. He shook his head and pushed the door shut with a slam, before locking it again. He walked past her and plopped down on the bed without wincing. Much.
“What are you doing here? You obviously didn’t just fly to Reno to play catch-up.”
“Hardly.” She looked around the room, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I see your taste in accommodations haven’t changed. Do you actually try to find the most disgusting motels or is it a gift?”
“It’s a gift. Kind of like you being a bitch.”
“Honestly, James? Name calling? That’s a bit childish.”
Harlow snorted and leaned back against the headboard. “It’s been one of those lives. I repeat, what do you want?”
Carrie-Anne sighed. At fifty, she was only four years younger than Harlow, but looked at least a decade younger. Of course, Botox and a little cosmetic surgery had probably helped with that, but she had always been a looker. Her slender frame had filled out a little since he had seen her last, but she wore the new curves in all the right places. Her dark blond hair was cut in a shorter, more mature style that complimented her features. He remembered how she used to turn into a giggling flirt after a couple glasses of wine. She caught him staring and frowned. “What?”
He cleared his throat, reminding himself that some things do change. “I’m waiting for you to tell me why you ventured out of your perfect little world in Beverly Hills to grace me with your presence.”
She sighed again. “You always could be a total asshole when you wanted to.” She studied the unoccupied chair for a few seconds, probably trying to gauge whether or not it was dirty, before she sat down. She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair like one of the royals settling into a throne. Harlow didn’t exactly mind the smug posture, because it left a lot of smooth, bare thigh exposed. She smirked haughtily. “And it seemed like you always wanted to.”
He had to grin at that. One thing he had always loved about Carrie-Anne was that she rarely backed down from anyone or anything. That included him. “Well?” he prompted. “I don’t have all night.”
She glanced at the TV. “Reliving the old days?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Bobby told me you were thinking of wrestling again.” She gave him a pointed look, defying him to deny it.
“Yeah, I am. Millennium Pro Wrestling.”
She smirked. “Are you sure that’s wise? You’re not as young as you used to be.”
“No, I’m not,” he replied, trying to ignore the anger that was starting to build inside him. “Neither of us are.”
“Very true, but some of us mature as we get older.”
“What the hell do you want, Carrie-Anne?” he hissed through clenched teeth. He opened and closed his hands rhythmically, the knuckles popping. It was one of his nervous ticks, something he did whenever he was starting to lose control. He knew it and so did she. “Unless I missed something I’ve already paid alimony this month.”
Carrie-Anne’s ice queen façade slipped for a second, her lower lip trembling slightly. She looked away, blinking her eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. It never failed. He and Carrie-Anne couldn’t be in the same room for more than a few minutes before they both started trying to hurt the other, one way or another.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments of listening to the rattling hum of the air conditioning unit.
“I’m . . . I’m worried about you,” she finally said, her voice cracking. “Despite everything . . . I mean, James . . . you know that I still . . ..” She wiped a tear away before it could fall. “I still care about you.”
Harlow nodded, unable to find the words. The failure of their marriage had been a mutual thing, but he had to admit that it had been probably more his fault than hers. In her own way, Carrie-Anne had tried to patch things up as best she could, but it had been like trying to save a sinking ship.
“Remember that steel cage match against Red Watson?”
“Yeah.” He had been in plenty of steel cage matches against Red, but he knew the one that she was talking about. It had been in St. Louis back in 1994. He had planted Watson with the cradle piledriver, but instead of trying to escape the cage he had climbed to the top to drop the big elbow. Only problem was Watson had rolled out of the way. The impact had knocked him unconscious, cracked two ribs, and ruptured his spleen. He still recalled Carrie-Anne sitting by his side in the hospital, crying and pleading him to give it up. For better or worse, he hadn’t been able to. If he had, there was a distinct possibility that things could have worked out differently.
She met his gaze and he could see that the same thought had crossed her mind. “Don’t do it, James. Please.”
“I have to.”
Her lips pressed together in a thin, almost bloodless line as her brown eyes flashed angrily. “Why?” The single word was almost a yell. “For your fans? For yourself? Why?!”
“Look around you, darling,” he said, gesturing at the room. “I’ve got jack shit left. The only thing that I’ve ever been good at is wrestling.” He stood up, wincing as his knees popped. “Maybe I had a reason to give it up back then, but now . . . all I’ve got left is the business.”
Carrie-Anne stared at him for a few seconds, before heaving a deep sigh. “I told Bobby that you were too stubborn to change your mind.” She stood, smoothing down her skirt over her thighs. “At least try to avoid leaping off the top of cages. Please.”
He surprised himself by laughing. “No promises. But I’ll try.”
“Good.”
They paused at the door, countless unspoken thoughts and feelings between the two of them. Finally, she squeezed his bicep lightly. “Take care, James.”
“Should I bother calling you when I’m booked?”
She smiled, an expression which removed another five years from her face. “I haven’t watched wrestling in years.”
He looked down at her left hand. The security light from outside glinted off the gold-and-diamond band around her right finger. “Charles doesn’t like low-brow entertainment, huh?”
“No, he thinks it’s silly. Grown men running around in tights and groping each other.”
He grinned. “I seem to remember you thinking that was sexy.”
Carrie-Anne smirked. “Call me.” She stepped out into the night and glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll need someone there to scrape you off the mat.”
He shut the door on her good natured laugh and reattached the chain. Pressing his forehead against the door, he closed his eyes with a sigh. First, Bobby. Then, Carrie-Anne. He couldn’t help wondering who else from his past was going to pop up to try to dissuade him from wrestling again. He glanced at the image of himself from so long ago frozen on the TV screen, his face literally a crimson mask.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on him.
The room was dark except for the flickering glow cast by the aging Magnavox on top of the desk, a tangle of multicolored cables connecting the television and a VCR that sat in one of the chairs. VHS tapes littered the floor, their cardboard sleeves faded and nearly illegible.
“The Hammer” was stretched out on the sagging full-size bed, back pressed against the cheap, wobbly headboard, arms folded across his stomach. Physically, he was there in Reno, but in truth, he was a thousand miles and twenty years away.
The Magnavox’s picture would sometimes jump and twitch spastically, but that was because the tape he was watching was old. Back in 2001, after announcing his retirement, Harlow had been given a tape of some of his better matches throughout his career by a dedicated fan. He hadn’t watched it since that day, but nostalgia and the reality that he would once more be stepping into the squared circle had prompted him to dig the tape out of mothballs.
One of his matches against The Grim Reaper in the Southern Championship Wrestling promotion back in the spring of 1991 was playing, the overly enthusiastic color commentator doing his best to hype the match.
“How much more can Harlow take? He should just do the smart thing: lay down and die.”
Harlow smirked and shook his head. He remembered the match vividly. Most of the beatings that he had taken over the years had faded into one massive ass-whooping, but there was something that stood out about getting your head cracked open by a 7 foot tall, three-hundred pound maniac in a skull mask.
“Let’s face it, Tom,” SCW play-by-play man, Frank Boone, chimed in over the in-ring sound of Harlow getting stomped into the already-bloody canvas. “The Hammer just isn’t the type to give up. He is going to fight until his last breath.” He gasped. “And another vicious right hand by the Reaper! That one almost took Harlow’s head clean off!”
“It’d improve his looks,” Tom Wiley quipped.
“You’re one to talk,” Harlow muttered to himself with a smirk. Wiley had tipped the scales at four-hundred with a face like a mentally handicapped ape. Some of the boys backstage had often joked that Wiley had been forced to put a paper bag over his own head before sex. Even when he was alone.
Harlow’s smirk faded. Tom Wiley had passed away from cancer back in ’05. He had been an obnoxious womanizer with the repulsive habit of chewing with his mouth open like a pig at a feeding trough, but he had still been a big part of Harlow’s past.
“There’s the Scythe! That lariat turned Harlow absolutely inside-out!”
“Frank, there’s not a single SCW wrestler that has ever kicked out of the Reaper’s Scythe. It’s all over for—“
“And Harlow kicks out!”
As the commentators continued to discuss Harlow’s intestinal fortitude, “The Hammer” shifted on the bed, grimacing at the dull, throbbing ache in his lower back. He stuffed one of the motel’s paper-thin pillows behind him for padding. It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.
The television screen filled with the ominous image of the Reaper’s stylized mask, his dark stringy hair falling across his forehead. His eyes were narrowed into slits behind the death’s head.
“Pure, one-hundred percent evil, Tom,” Boone said. “That’s what the Reaper is.”
“With a name like that did you expect him to be cute and cuddly?”
“The Reaper stalking Harlow. I hate to say it, but I don’t see how The Hammer has a chance in hell of beating this massive beast.”
A knock on the door interrupted Wiley’s next sarcastic remark. Harlow fished the VCR remote out from underneath the wrinkled sheets and jabbed the pause button. The knock came again, sharp and impatient. He hadn’t ordered take-out, so there wasn’t any reason that he could think of for someone to come calling at almost midnight. He briefly considered ignoring it, before he swung his legs off the bed and walked to the door. After taking a peek through the peephole, he suddenly found himself wishing that he had listened to his gut instinct.
“God hates me,” he whispered to himself. “So he sent the Devil instead.”
With a deep sigh, he unchained the door and cracked it open just enough to look outside. “Hello, Carrie-Anne.”
His ex-wife’s thin, red lips turned downward into an even more impressive scowl. She arched a single, perfectly-plucked and shaped eyebrow and said, “James.” Her tone of voice was probably the same one that she would use if she discovered that she had stepped in fresh dogshit.
“What do you want?”
“To be invited in,” she answered. “I would rather not get mugged, raped, and murdered.”
“Yeah, neither of us is that lucky,” Harlow muttered.
“I heard that.”
“I would hope so. I hate repeating myself.”
They stood there for a moment, glaring at each other, before Harlow stepped aside, letting the door swing open. Carrie-Anne stalked past him and into the room, obviously stuck in her Queen Bitch persona. He shook his head and pushed the door shut with a slam, before locking it again. He walked past her and plopped down on the bed without wincing. Much.
“What are you doing here? You obviously didn’t just fly to Reno to play catch-up.”
“Hardly.” She looked around the room, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I see your taste in accommodations haven’t changed. Do you actually try to find the most disgusting motels or is it a gift?”
“It’s a gift. Kind of like you being a bitch.”
“Honestly, James? Name calling? That’s a bit childish.”
Harlow snorted and leaned back against the headboard. “It’s been one of those lives. I repeat, what do you want?”
Carrie-Anne sighed. At fifty, she was only four years younger than Harlow, but looked at least a decade younger. Of course, Botox and a little cosmetic surgery had probably helped with that, but she had always been a looker. Her slender frame had filled out a little since he had seen her last, but she wore the new curves in all the right places. Her dark blond hair was cut in a shorter, more mature style that complimented her features. He remembered how she used to turn into a giggling flirt after a couple glasses of wine. She caught him staring and frowned. “What?”
He cleared his throat, reminding himself that some things do change. “I’m waiting for you to tell me why you ventured out of your perfect little world in Beverly Hills to grace me with your presence.”
She sighed again. “You always could be a total asshole when you wanted to.” She studied the unoccupied chair for a few seconds, probably trying to gauge whether or not it was dirty, before she sat down. She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair like one of the royals settling into a throne. Harlow didn’t exactly mind the smug posture, because it left a lot of smooth, bare thigh exposed. She smirked haughtily. “And it seemed like you always wanted to.”
He had to grin at that. One thing he had always loved about Carrie-Anne was that she rarely backed down from anyone or anything. That included him. “Well?” he prompted. “I don’t have all night.”
She glanced at the TV. “Reliving the old days?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Bobby told me you were thinking of wrestling again.” She gave him a pointed look, defying him to deny it.
“Yeah, I am. Millennium Pro Wrestling.”
She smirked. “Are you sure that’s wise? You’re not as young as you used to be.”
“No, I’m not,” he replied, trying to ignore the anger that was starting to build inside him. “Neither of us are.”
“Very true, but some of us mature as we get older.”
“What the hell do you want, Carrie-Anne?” he hissed through clenched teeth. He opened and closed his hands rhythmically, the knuckles popping. It was one of his nervous ticks, something he did whenever he was starting to lose control. He knew it and so did she. “Unless I missed something I’ve already paid alimony this month.”
Carrie-Anne’s ice queen façade slipped for a second, her lower lip trembling slightly. She looked away, blinking her eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. It never failed. He and Carrie-Anne couldn’t be in the same room for more than a few minutes before they both started trying to hurt the other, one way or another.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments of listening to the rattling hum of the air conditioning unit.
“I’m . . . I’m worried about you,” she finally said, her voice cracking. “Despite everything . . . I mean, James . . . you know that I still . . ..” She wiped a tear away before it could fall. “I still care about you.”
Harlow nodded, unable to find the words. The failure of their marriage had been a mutual thing, but he had to admit that it had been probably more his fault than hers. In her own way, Carrie-Anne had tried to patch things up as best she could, but it had been like trying to save a sinking ship.
“Remember that steel cage match against Red Watson?”
“Yeah.” He had been in plenty of steel cage matches against Red, but he knew the one that she was talking about. It had been in St. Louis back in 1994. He had planted Watson with the cradle piledriver, but instead of trying to escape the cage he had climbed to the top to drop the big elbow. Only problem was Watson had rolled out of the way. The impact had knocked him unconscious, cracked two ribs, and ruptured his spleen. He still recalled Carrie-Anne sitting by his side in the hospital, crying and pleading him to give it up. For better or worse, he hadn’t been able to. If he had, there was a distinct possibility that things could have worked out differently.
She met his gaze and he could see that the same thought had crossed her mind. “Don’t do it, James. Please.”
“I have to.”
Her lips pressed together in a thin, almost bloodless line as her brown eyes flashed angrily. “Why?” The single word was almost a yell. “For your fans? For yourself? Why?!”
“Look around you, darling,” he said, gesturing at the room. “I’ve got jack shit left. The only thing that I’ve ever been good at is wrestling.” He stood up, wincing as his knees popped. “Maybe I had a reason to give it up back then, but now . . . all I’ve got left is the business.”
Carrie-Anne stared at him for a few seconds, before heaving a deep sigh. “I told Bobby that you were too stubborn to change your mind.” She stood, smoothing down her skirt over her thighs. “At least try to avoid leaping off the top of cages. Please.”
He surprised himself by laughing. “No promises. But I’ll try.”
“Good.”
They paused at the door, countless unspoken thoughts and feelings between the two of them. Finally, she squeezed his bicep lightly. “Take care, James.”
“Should I bother calling you when I’m booked?”
She smiled, an expression which removed another five years from her face. “I haven’t watched wrestling in years.”
He looked down at her left hand. The security light from outside glinted off the gold-and-diamond band around her right finger. “Charles doesn’t like low-brow entertainment, huh?”
“No, he thinks it’s silly. Grown men running around in tights and groping each other.”
He grinned. “I seem to remember you thinking that was sexy.”
Carrie-Anne smirked. “Call me.” She stepped out into the night and glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll need someone there to scrape you off the mat.”
He shut the door on her good natured laugh and reattached the chain. Pressing his forehead against the door, he closed his eyes with a sigh. First, Bobby. Then, Carrie-Anne. He couldn’t help wondering who else from his past was going to pop up to try to dissuade him from wrestling again. He glanced at the image of himself from so long ago frozen on the TV screen, his face literally a crimson mask.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on him.