Post by TactilizingOne on Jul 31, 2022 22:58:54 GMT -5
The worst part may have not been the argument itself. The worst part was probably when she threw the vase against the wall. It was handblown glass from Spain, and I had given it to her as part of our 15 year anniversary gifts in 2020. She enjoyed handcrafted things.
“They’re each a little imperfect, and I’m okay with that,” Cindy had said one day, and it stuck out amidst the many days that made up our marriage.
There aren’t many ‘special’ gifts you can give your wife when she can buy pretty much whatever she’d like. Instead, I tried to gift her items with a unique significance to them, whether the meaningful sentiment was derived from a moment between us, or something she had developed a fondness for. If it was also slightly out of her reach to obtain, all the better. That’s why I had flown to Spain to pick it up.
As I looked to the floor, where the clear glass shards laid about the hardwood, she had continued on with her tirade. “You really think that’s what I’m in this for? You think I’m concerned with material possessions, Larry? I would give them all up,” she paused, her breaths came rapidly, her eyes leveled at me with earnest conviction, “I would, if I knew you wouldn’t come back looking like… that, anymore,” she pointed at my face.
I knew this was coming, and it hadn’t made things any easier to prepare for. My arrival back from EXP 28 had ignited a fire in Cindy, given I had violated her top condition for my return to the ring.
Multiple times.
After each defense of the Power title, I had been more worse for wear than I intended. I was hospitalized after facing Lord Raab, and Cindy decided to take a route I hadn’t anticipated at the time. “You got yourself into this, hon. You can find your way back from Philly to New York. If you need me to come find you in that hospital bed and bring you back?” she paused on the phone at the time, and I wasn’t sure if she had been deciding to proceed, or if it was a dramatic pause. “Just don’t make me go there, mmkay?” she finished with on a lighthearted tone, but the message cut through clearly. I was discharged and went home with a mild concussion, but nothing broken or seriously scathed, as it turned out. Bumps and bruises.
After facing Ziggy Morgan, I walked away with my neck less than optimal and showing a band of broken flesh in places. Although I had cleared concussion protocol and come away with a back contusion and some healing flesh wounds, Cindy hadn’t been pleased with what she had seen on Twitch.
“You think it’s alright for our son to watch you be choked with a BULLROPE?!” she had fumed after Logan went to bed. “I’m not here for it. I won’t let you peddle in your mind that we’re all okay seeing that, Larry! What were you even thinking by agreeing to be placed in such a violent division?”
She sat on one of the stools at our island counter, arms and legs crossed. She was obviously pissed, but her robe was parted enough for me to see up one of her long legs to her thigh, and I couldn’t help feeling a different tension than hers. I shook it off as I looked back at her eyes, a little miffed at her accusation. “I wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to wrestle in the Power division, babe,” I explained as calmly as I could, which she had made a little more challenging. “It’s a new company, not one I’ve been familiar with. I’m not currently in a position to make demands, understand? I have to play by their rules until I’ve made a mark. As a champion now, that’s a step towards it. I don’t have a lot of other avenues yet, so give it some time. I’ll get there, really,” I took her hands away from her face, which she had covered as it become clear to her that things wouldn’t be changing, as far as the type of matches I would be in. I scanned her face, looking for a hint that she would relent, and allow me this, but she looked like she was holding back. “It’s a part of wrestling I hadn’t gone to much before— ”
“Why do you need to go there now, then? You aren’t new, you’ve been around wrestling for as long as I’ve known you. There isn’t a reason for you to be endangering yourself like this,” she looked away, then back up at me, almost pleading. “I’ve got to think about our family, and that includes you. I want you to have your wrestling career, and I want you to succeed. You know I’m your biggest supporter, and that isn’t changing. At the same time, I don’t need you to come home in pieces. I can’t allow that to happen, hon… and I won’t let you think you can do it without affecting this family.”
With that, I finally got the sign I needed: A single tear, squeaking out from the corner of her eye. Cindy wasn’t the type to cry often, not at all. She was someone who was well versed in expressing herself verbally to get her point across. But when she did shed tears around me, I knew that however she was feeling in opposition to my idea or aspiration, she wasn’t going to let it stop me. Even if the atmosphere was still tense, I had her on board.
I wrapped my arms around her, and she allowed herself to cry against my chest. I felt her sobs pass from her straight into my heart. I understood she didn’t want to give up her opposition, and I would take it on. I even took on the burden of resentment from her, for my matches and what they could do to me, in order for us to move ahead. It made me stronger to know I could handle that. In the ring, it gave me further purpose to prove I could overcome the adversary in the ring while still hold at bay this feeling from her that it was all too much for me. It wasn’t true, and I would show as much to everyone.
The tears weren’t coming from Cindy, after I got back from Super Adventure Island. There was a lot of anger, and no break to the storm in sight. Logan had gone to a friend’s to sleepover, and Morgan had been put down upstairs, far from where she would be disturbed. The HelloBaby monitor sat on the glass table amidst several plush cushioned sofas we had as an entertainment area. Ironic, as there was nothing entertaining about these situations. Somehow, I felt like I could still salvage things, and make Cindy understand why her anger was misplaced. I looked at her accusatory finger, which targeted the top of my skull that was bandaged after Kat Jones had made it into her personal cutting board for one of her food boards. The thought made me frown more than my wife’s request.
“Looking like this has raised me to the top of the ranks, Cindy! Don’t try and make like I’m taking a beatdown every couple weeks, nor that I don’t fight back, NOR that I have nothing to show for it!” I ripped off the metaphorical bandage that covered the reasons my ego had been wounded over the past several months. “Since the start of this year when I claimed that title for myself, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had anything like this happen. Meanwhile, I’ve been near the top of the rankings and I’ve established a whole hell of a lot of credibility. Did you forget that takes work to do? And yes, the threat of some opponents taking things to a dangerous level.”
The way my wife looked at me, it was as if I spoke to her in an alien language. After a couple moments, she looked at me with my legs extended across one of the sofas, and she placed hands on her hips as her mouth fell a bit agape, not in a dumbfounded way. It was more in the way of something far worse.
Pity.
“You really don’t get it, do you? It doesn’t mean a damn thing whether you beat up someone worse— "
“OH, believe me, babe. I did,” I interjected. Somehow it only seemed to deepen the look on her face.
“Do you not hear what I’m saying?! I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN. You have to stand by your actions and I support your doing that. What I don’t support is for you to do something that ends up getting you raked across the face and opened up like a tuna can! I’m not saying you’re a punching bag. I’m saying that you aren’t supposed to be fileted, and the reason WHY you aren’t supposed to,” she choked up a bit, which prompted me to sit up on the couch in a more standard position. “The reason why is because… you promised me. You said you wouldn’t put yourself in that kind of harmful situation.”
I stood up, and walked over to her. I took her hands in mine, and Cindy looked up at me with that pleading look, more familiar to me now than it had been before I returned. I opened my mouth, but the words didn’t come out immediately, and I shut it again. I wanted to make sure this woman, whom I loved, understood the reality of my situation. I wanted her to see where she may have lost sight of what I was doing, and where I intended on going.
I wanted to give her the whole, humble truth. With that in mind, I looked at her and mustered my resolve, keeping my emotions in check and plainly stated it to her.
“This wasn’t my first choice, I’ll tell you that off the bat. It would have been much more convenient to have won right off the bat. Believe me, from the word ‘Go’ I hadn’t been looking to hold a secondary title, which is why I joined in time for a chance at the Final Boss Championship. After The Last Of Us, I had to come to grips with the opportunity lost that that title. Not long after that, I fell short of a chance to advance to a Wisdom Championship match. Then the Multiplayer gloves,” I felt some added disgust at that as I remembered being forced to team with Don Tirri, a man who deserved none of my respect, and was indecent enough to belittle me in return. He didn’t understand how little he had done, and how much I had achieved over our respective careers. But that wasn’t here nor there. “It’s all been a build to a certain point I needed to reach, Cindy. Not to mention, it’s on account of that brain malfunctioning Trent Steel. As the Developer, he had the gall to call the shots from behind the scenes, including putting me in the Power division…”
My agitation rose back up, and I had to let go of her hands so I could pace around the table, running my hands through my hair. “I bet he thought that I would be eaten up by the Power division. Trent probably planned on my taking a loss in the Skeleton Key match, then letting me be languishing in pain and suffering until I gave up and left. Yeah, I bet he did,” I turned to face Cindy. “Except it didn’t work. By the time I had entered the Skeleton Key match, I had realized I was capable of more, so much more. I had a viciousness unlocked within me, and seeing the way Trent’s favorite, Duncan Shepard, had been treating his Power Championship reign, barely scraping the potential for that division, it was a perfect opportunity. Don’t you see?”
I strode up to her, my olive green eyes alit with the scenarios I’ve replayed over and over in my mind as I grabbed hold of her hands again. “With my win at Final Fantasy, and that Power title in hand, I’ve got Level Up playing into my hands! I’ve shown that there’s only the imagination holding back Duncan, and many others who I surpassed to claim that belt. I’ve forced Trent into making Power Rules style matches for the Final Boss Championship, after he’s seen what that division should be. It’s the hottest thing going, Cin, and there isn’t a damn one of them that can take this title from me. Every time I’ve experienced any setback, be it a loss, a draw, or otherwise? I look to that title, and channel the possibilities. Every time I’ve put that title up after a setback, I’ve walked away with it. I’ve been unstoppable.”
For her part, Cindy looked at me with a steady hold on her pity. “You may have been unstoppable in the ring, Larry, and retained that title. I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I don’t give a damn. You aren’t doing anything to hold up your end of our agreement. You aren’t showing me that you even CARE about what I asked for. You’ve lost yourself in your career. You’ve put it in front of your wife and children,” and with a pull of her hands, she removed them from mine, walking to the end of the glass table in the middle of the sofas.
“That’s ridiculous,” I still frowned, but now it was from what she had said. “You think that I’m doing this for myself, but it’s not. I bring a certain message to the people watching, and the locker room. I’ve found others who support that message, and we’ve brought ourselves up above the many hopeful wrestlers who are looking to make their careers off our backs. They think they have what it takes, until we show them otherwise. I would also hope you’d see how Logan can learn a lot from the matches I’ve had. It hasn’t been a smooth ride the whole time, there were a lot of misfires before I found my groove. You think that’s anything but inspirational to him? He wasn’t even a huge supporter of my return, maybe it’s something you said to him, but regardless. He’s come around and seen that I’m making the most of this opportunity. When he sees me as the Final Boss Champion someday, you can tell me the look on his face won’t show you everything was worth fighting through.”
She had been crouched over the table, looking like she may have been dizzy, or nauseated even. After I spoke, her head snapped up, and the pity had dissipated. It was replaced by more of the dragon inside her as she spoke with a measured fury. “You have to be, bar none, one of the most thick-headed men I’ve ever met. To think that your thought process would lead you to say you think Logan could BENEFIT from all this?! That he would be better for seeing you win another title belt, oh, but it’s NOT about your wants and needs? Really, Larry?! What the hell do you think makes it worthwhile to have you missing pieces of YOUR GODDAMN HEAD! Not only that, but what’s next? A broken limb? A torn ligament? A dislocation? But wait, that one’s alright if you can POP IT BACK IN, RIGHT?!? For Christ’s sake, Larry. You were having nightmares of beheading yourself!” she unloaded in a bluster.
“That was Laz, or one of the things he was doing… and I’m not okay with it! I told him as much, in a… well, I spoke with him about it,” I hesitated, not wanting to tell her that I had been subjected to another dream, courtesy of Laz and his technological advancements. “Anyway, if we aren’t going to meet eye to eye on this, then fine. To be honest, I’m not begging your understanding for my goals. After all this time, you need to put some trust in that I know what I’m doing.”
Still crouched, she tilted her head, a small laugh escaping her lips. “You want me to understand? I think the problem is, I understand better than you do what’s going on. You’re unwilling to stop putting yourself in harm’s way, and I’m seeing how much you’ve strayed from your original intent in returning to the ring. You went from wrestling your way to titles, to trying to kill someone to prove you deserve to hold a title that enables you to create and suffer nothing less than extreme violence!”
“If your big hangup is the Power title, you’ll be happy to know I can relinquish it once I’ve won a shot at the Final Boss Championship. I don’t know if you think there isn’t an endgame here, but I wasn’t planning on holding it forever.”
She regarded me with a look that told me I’m not exactly dropping new knowledge on her. “Yes, I’ve heard you tell me about that whole plan, Larry. Thing is, I doubt a whole lot of people are on board with you getting to that end. Plus, when does that even become a real possibility?”
I paused, a small smirk involuntarily creeping at the edge of my lips. “Well, it’s in November, but— "
“November, as in months from now? That’s fantastic, a GREAT way to diffuse this issue,” she looked down, then, “November. November. You want to tell me about how this will be over in NOVEMBER.”
Suddenly, she grabbed an oversized book on Trees that was resting on the glass table. She stood and flashed me a look that told me something wasn’t right. “You want to put us through this until NOVEMBER?! NOVEMBER! KNOW WHAT I THINK?!”
I could see what she was doing before she did it. With her two-handed grip, she raised the book over her head. At first, I thought she would take the book and throw it at me, and I dived over the sofa. As I went over, I realized she wouldn’t do something that would potentially hurt me. She never had, and I should have trusted her to hold to it, even now.
She opted to bring the book down on the glass table.
The resulting crash wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The glass shards somehow didn’t explode everywhere, maybe because she held back some. There was an irreparably large spider crack in the table itself, but otherwise only a few shards on the rug surrounding the area over the hardwood floor. I stood there looking at her, and for some reason my mind blanked for a few moments. It didn’t connect that my wife would do such a thing, even if she hadn’t thrown the book at me. Not literally, anyway. But she so rarely got this angry, and while I was responsible for it, she also didn’t listen to what I was saying.
“How dare you,” I started to ready a stern reprimand, but she held a hand up, a trail of blood coming from it, no doubt from some glass that grazed her or got stuck. The sight of my wife with a wound gave me enough pause to stop.
“No, Larry, this won’t do,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “I’m not going to allow this trauma: On me, or Logan and Morgan. Until you realize what you’re doing, and the danger it poses…” she took a second to weigh her next words, and then looked up at me, her hand still outstretched. “The kids and I won’t be apart of this any longer. As soon as Logan gets back tomorrow, we’re leaving.”
With that, she turned away to clean her wound, and I stood there, feeling something in my chest that had nothing to do with a match, and everything to do with feeling her emotions of the moment, even if she was across the room, rather than pressed against me.
Real pain, deeper and more perpetual than a flesh wound.
As Cindy went to sleep in the bedroom, I decided to make my night in the living room, enveloped by thoughts of spider cracked glass and tension that a knife would melt from the heat of. I wanted it around so that I could embrace it: The grief, the pity, the anger. I wanted to absorb all that, and when EXP 29 came around, I would be more than ready to release it upon the likes of Peter Vaughn, Buster Gloves, and Don Tirri’s fool of a son, Donny.
Because the next fight was back in the familiar scene of the ring. It was where I would once again engage from my position of power.
It was the place I needed to be, and would continue being, even during these difficult times.
Level Up had become a source of power, and I would press the advantage accordingly to my goal. This was only the precursor to the next fight, and whether that was in the ring, or at home, it mattered little to me. I was too close to my goal now.
I would not back down. I would not give up my shot.
Since Trent placed me in the Power division, and I won this title, I had earned the power to choose my path. I had made an impact along with the Game Changers more than Buster Gloves and his Wisdom title. I reigned longer as Power Champion than anyone, certainly than Peter Vaughn holding his Game Genie. With each battle, I had further come to terms with the path I walked towards my eventual goal: The Final Boss.
I had chosen violence.
“They’re each a little imperfect, and I’m okay with that,” Cindy had said one day, and it stuck out amidst the many days that made up our marriage.
There aren’t many ‘special’ gifts you can give your wife when she can buy pretty much whatever she’d like. Instead, I tried to gift her items with a unique significance to them, whether the meaningful sentiment was derived from a moment between us, or something she had developed a fondness for. If it was also slightly out of her reach to obtain, all the better. That’s why I had flown to Spain to pick it up.
As I looked to the floor, where the clear glass shards laid about the hardwood, she had continued on with her tirade. “You really think that’s what I’m in this for? You think I’m concerned with material possessions, Larry? I would give them all up,” she paused, her breaths came rapidly, her eyes leveled at me with earnest conviction, “I would, if I knew you wouldn’t come back looking like… that, anymore,” she pointed at my face.
I knew this was coming, and it hadn’t made things any easier to prepare for. My arrival back from EXP 28 had ignited a fire in Cindy, given I had violated her top condition for my return to the ring.
Multiple times.
After each defense of the Power title, I had been more worse for wear than I intended. I was hospitalized after facing Lord Raab, and Cindy decided to take a route I hadn’t anticipated at the time. “You got yourself into this, hon. You can find your way back from Philly to New York. If you need me to come find you in that hospital bed and bring you back?” she paused on the phone at the time, and I wasn’t sure if she had been deciding to proceed, or if it was a dramatic pause. “Just don’t make me go there, mmkay?” she finished with on a lighthearted tone, but the message cut through clearly. I was discharged and went home with a mild concussion, but nothing broken or seriously scathed, as it turned out. Bumps and bruises.
After facing Ziggy Morgan, I walked away with my neck less than optimal and showing a band of broken flesh in places. Although I had cleared concussion protocol and come away with a back contusion and some healing flesh wounds, Cindy hadn’t been pleased with what she had seen on Twitch.
“You think it’s alright for our son to watch you be choked with a BULLROPE?!” she had fumed after Logan went to bed. “I’m not here for it. I won’t let you peddle in your mind that we’re all okay seeing that, Larry! What were you even thinking by agreeing to be placed in such a violent division?”
She sat on one of the stools at our island counter, arms and legs crossed. She was obviously pissed, but her robe was parted enough for me to see up one of her long legs to her thigh, and I couldn’t help feeling a different tension than hers. I shook it off as I looked back at her eyes, a little miffed at her accusation. “I wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to wrestle in the Power division, babe,” I explained as calmly as I could, which she had made a little more challenging. “It’s a new company, not one I’ve been familiar with. I’m not currently in a position to make demands, understand? I have to play by their rules until I’ve made a mark. As a champion now, that’s a step towards it. I don’t have a lot of other avenues yet, so give it some time. I’ll get there, really,” I took her hands away from her face, which she had covered as it become clear to her that things wouldn’t be changing, as far as the type of matches I would be in. I scanned her face, looking for a hint that she would relent, and allow me this, but she looked like she was holding back. “It’s a part of wrestling I hadn’t gone to much before— ”
“Why do you need to go there now, then? You aren’t new, you’ve been around wrestling for as long as I’ve known you. There isn’t a reason for you to be endangering yourself like this,” she looked away, then back up at me, almost pleading. “I’ve got to think about our family, and that includes you. I want you to have your wrestling career, and I want you to succeed. You know I’m your biggest supporter, and that isn’t changing. At the same time, I don’t need you to come home in pieces. I can’t allow that to happen, hon… and I won’t let you think you can do it without affecting this family.”
With that, I finally got the sign I needed: A single tear, squeaking out from the corner of her eye. Cindy wasn’t the type to cry often, not at all. She was someone who was well versed in expressing herself verbally to get her point across. But when she did shed tears around me, I knew that however she was feeling in opposition to my idea or aspiration, she wasn’t going to let it stop me. Even if the atmosphere was still tense, I had her on board.
I wrapped my arms around her, and she allowed herself to cry against my chest. I felt her sobs pass from her straight into my heart. I understood she didn’t want to give up her opposition, and I would take it on. I even took on the burden of resentment from her, for my matches and what they could do to me, in order for us to move ahead. It made me stronger to know I could handle that. In the ring, it gave me further purpose to prove I could overcome the adversary in the ring while still hold at bay this feeling from her that it was all too much for me. It wasn’t true, and I would show as much to everyone.
The tears weren’t coming from Cindy, after I got back from Super Adventure Island. There was a lot of anger, and no break to the storm in sight. Logan had gone to a friend’s to sleepover, and Morgan had been put down upstairs, far from where she would be disturbed. The HelloBaby monitor sat on the glass table amidst several plush cushioned sofas we had as an entertainment area. Ironic, as there was nothing entertaining about these situations. Somehow, I felt like I could still salvage things, and make Cindy understand why her anger was misplaced. I looked at her accusatory finger, which targeted the top of my skull that was bandaged after Kat Jones had made it into her personal cutting board for one of her food boards. The thought made me frown more than my wife’s request.
“Looking like this has raised me to the top of the ranks, Cindy! Don’t try and make like I’m taking a beatdown every couple weeks, nor that I don’t fight back, NOR that I have nothing to show for it!” I ripped off the metaphorical bandage that covered the reasons my ego had been wounded over the past several months. “Since the start of this year when I claimed that title for myself, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had anything like this happen. Meanwhile, I’ve been near the top of the rankings and I’ve established a whole hell of a lot of credibility. Did you forget that takes work to do? And yes, the threat of some opponents taking things to a dangerous level.”
The way my wife looked at me, it was as if I spoke to her in an alien language. After a couple moments, she looked at me with my legs extended across one of the sofas, and she placed hands on her hips as her mouth fell a bit agape, not in a dumbfounded way. It was more in the way of something far worse.
Pity.
“You really don’t get it, do you? It doesn’t mean a damn thing whether you beat up someone worse— "
“OH, believe me, babe. I did,” I interjected. Somehow it only seemed to deepen the look on her face.
“Do you not hear what I’m saying?! I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN. You have to stand by your actions and I support your doing that. What I don’t support is for you to do something that ends up getting you raked across the face and opened up like a tuna can! I’m not saying you’re a punching bag. I’m saying that you aren’t supposed to be fileted, and the reason WHY you aren’t supposed to,” she choked up a bit, which prompted me to sit up on the couch in a more standard position. “The reason why is because… you promised me. You said you wouldn’t put yourself in that kind of harmful situation.”
I stood up, and walked over to her. I took her hands in mine, and Cindy looked up at me with that pleading look, more familiar to me now than it had been before I returned. I opened my mouth, but the words didn’t come out immediately, and I shut it again. I wanted to make sure this woman, whom I loved, understood the reality of my situation. I wanted her to see where she may have lost sight of what I was doing, and where I intended on going.
I wanted to give her the whole, humble truth. With that in mind, I looked at her and mustered my resolve, keeping my emotions in check and plainly stated it to her.
“This wasn’t my first choice, I’ll tell you that off the bat. It would have been much more convenient to have won right off the bat. Believe me, from the word ‘Go’ I hadn’t been looking to hold a secondary title, which is why I joined in time for a chance at the Final Boss Championship. After The Last Of Us, I had to come to grips with the opportunity lost that that title. Not long after that, I fell short of a chance to advance to a Wisdom Championship match. Then the Multiplayer gloves,” I felt some added disgust at that as I remembered being forced to team with Don Tirri, a man who deserved none of my respect, and was indecent enough to belittle me in return. He didn’t understand how little he had done, and how much I had achieved over our respective careers. But that wasn’t here nor there. “It’s all been a build to a certain point I needed to reach, Cindy. Not to mention, it’s on account of that brain malfunctioning Trent Steel. As the Developer, he had the gall to call the shots from behind the scenes, including putting me in the Power division…”
My agitation rose back up, and I had to let go of her hands so I could pace around the table, running my hands through my hair. “I bet he thought that I would be eaten up by the Power division. Trent probably planned on my taking a loss in the Skeleton Key match, then letting me be languishing in pain and suffering until I gave up and left. Yeah, I bet he did,” I turned to face Cindy. “Except it didn’t work. By the time I had entered the Skeleton Key match, I had realized I was capable of more, so much more. I had a viciousness unlocked within me, and seeing the way Trent’s favorite, Duncan Shepard, had been treating his Power Championship reign, barely scraping the potential for that division, it was a perfect opportunity. Don’t you see?”
I strode up to her, my olive green eyes alit with the scenarios I’ve replayed over and over in my mind as I grabbed hold of her hands again. “With my win at Final Fantasy, and that Power title in hand, I’ve got Level Up playing into my hands! I’ve shown that there’s only the imagination holding back Duncan, and many others who I surpassed to claim that belt. I’ve forced Trent into making Power Rules style matches for the Final Boss Championship, after he’s seen what that division should be. It’s the hottest thing going, Cin, and there isn’t a damn one of them that can take this title from me. Every time I’ve experienced any setback, be it a loss, a draw, or otherwise? I look to that title, and channel the possibilities. Every time I’ve put that title up after a setback, I’ve walked away with it. I’ve been unstoppable.”
For her part, Cindy looked at me with a steady hold on her pity. “You may have been unstoppable in the ring, Larry, and retained that title. I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I don’t give a damn. You aren’t doing anything to hold up your end of our agreement. You aren’t showing me that you even CARE about what I asked for. You’ve lost yourself in your career. You’ve put it in front of your wife and children,” and with a pull of her hands, she removed them from mine, walking to the end of the glass table in the middle of the sofas.
“That’s ridiculous,” I still frowned, but now it was from what she had said. “You think that I’m doing this for myself, but it’s not. I bring a certain message to the people watching, and the locker room. I’ve found others who support that message, and we’ve brought ourselves up above the many hopeful wrestlers who are looking to make their careers off our backs. They think they have what it takes, until we show them otherwise. I would also hope you’d see how Logan can learn a lot from the matches I’ve had. It hasn’t been a smooth ride the whole time, there were a lot of misfires before I found my groove. You think that’s anything but inspirational to him? He wasn’t even a huge supporter of my return, maybe it’s something you said to him, but regardless. He’s come around and seen that I’m making the most of this opportunity. When he sees me as the Final Boss Champion someday, you can tell me the look on his face won’t show you everything was worth fighting through.”
She had been crouched over the table, looking like she may have been dizzy, or nauseated even. After I spoke, her head snapped up, and the pity had dissipated. It was replaced by more of the dragon inside her as she spoke with a measured fury. “You have to be, bar none, one of the most thick-headed men I’ve ever met. To think that your thought process would lead you to say you think Logan could BENEFIT from all this?! That he would be better for seeing you win another title belt, oh, but it’s NOT about your wants and needs? Really, Larry?! What the hell do you think makes it worthwhile to have you missing pieces of YOUR GODDAMN HEAD! Not only that, but what’s next? A broken limb? A torn ligament? A dislocation? But wait, that one’s alright if you can POP IT BACK IN, RIGHT?!? For Christ’s sake, Larry. You were having nightmares of beheading yourself!” she unloaded in a bluster.
“That was Laz, or one of the things he was doing… and I’m not okay with it! I told him as much, in a… well, I spoke with him about it,” I hesitated, not wanting to tell her that I had been subjected to another dream, courtesy of Laz and his technological advancements. “Anyway, if we aren’t going to meet eye to eye on this, then fine. To be honest, I’m not begging your understanding for my goals. After all this time, you need to put some trust in that I know what I’m doing.”
Still crouched, she tilted her head, a small laugh escaping her lips. “You want me to understand? I think the problem is, I understand better than you do what’s going on. You’re unwilling to stop putting yourself in harm’s way, and I’m seeing how much you’ve strayed from your original intent in returning to the ring. You went from wrestling your way to titles, to trying to kill someone to prove you deserve to hold a title that enables you to create and suffer nothing less than extreme violence!”
“If your big hangup is the Power title, you’ll be happy to know I can relinquish it once I’ve won a shot at the Final Boss Championship. I don’t know if you think there isn’t an endgame here, but I wasn’t planning on holding it forever.”
She regarded me with a look that told me I’m not exactly dropping new knowledge on her. “Yes, I’ve heard you tell me about that whole plan, Larry. Thing is, I doubt a whole lot of people are on board with you getting to that end. Plus, when does that even become a real possibility?”
I paused, a small smirk involuntarily creeping at the edge of my lips. “Well, it’s in November, but— "
“November, as in months from now? That’s fantastic, a GREAT way to diffuse this issue,” she looked down, then, “November. November. You want to tell me about how this will be over in NOVEMBER.”
Suddenly, she grabbed an oversized book on Trees that was resting on the glass table. She stood and flashed me a look that told me something wasn’t right. “You want to put us through this until NOVEMBER?! NOVEMBER! KNOW WHAT I THINK?!”
I could see what she was doing before she did it. With her two-handed grip, she raised the book over her head. At first, I thought she would take the book and throw it at me, and I dived over the sofa. As I went over, I realized she wouldn’t do something that would potentially hurt me. She never had, and I should have trusted her to hold to it, even now.
She opted to bring the book down on the glass table.
The resulting crash wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The glass shards somehow didn’t explode everywhere, maybe because she held back some. There was an irreparably large spider crack in the table itself, but otherwise only a few shards on the rug surrounding the area over the hardwood floor. I stood there looking at her, and for some reason my mind blanked for a few moments. It didn’t connect that my wife would do such a thing, even if she hadn’t thrown the book at me. Not literally, anyway. But she so rarely got this angry, and while I was responsible for it, she also didn’t listen to what I was saying.
“How dare you,” I started to ready a stern reprimand, but she held a hand up, a trail of blood coming from it, no doubt from some glass that grazed her or got stuck. The sight of my wife with a wound gave me enough pause to stop.
“No, Larry, this won’t do,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “I’m not going to allow this trauma: On me, or Logan and Morgan. Until you realize what you’re doing, and the danger it poses…” she took a second to weigh her next words, and then looked up at me, her hand still outstretched. “The kids and I won’t be apart of this any longer. As soon as Logan gets back tomorrow, we’re leaving.”
With that, she turned away to clean her wound, and I stood there, feeling something in my chest that had nothing to do with a match, and everything to do with feeling her emotions of the moment, even if she was across the room, rather than pressed against me.
Real pain, deeper and more perpetual than a flesh wound.
As Cindy went to sleep in the bedroom, I decided to make my night in the living room, enveloped by thoughts of spider cracked glass and tension that a knife would melt from the heat of. I wanted it around so that I could embrace it: The grief, the pity, the anger. I wanted to absorb all that, and when EXP 29 came around, I would be more than ready to release it upon the likes of Peter Vaughn, Buster Gloves, and Don Tirri’s fool of a son, Donny.
Because the next fight was back in the familiar scene of the ring. It was where I would once again engage from my position of power.
It was the place I needed to be, and would continue being, even during these difficult times.
Level Up had become a source of power, and I would press the advantage accordingly to my goal. This was only the precursor to the next fight, and whether that was in the ring, or at home, it mattered little to me. I was too close to my goal now.
I would not back down. I would not give up my shot.
Since Trent placed me in the Power division, and I won this title, I had earned the power to choose my path. I had made an impact along with the Game Changers more than Buster Gloves and his Wisdom title. I reigned longer as Power Champion than anyone, certainly than Peter Vaughn holding his Game Genie. With each battle, I had further come to terms with the path I walked towards my eventual goal: The Final Boss.
I had chosen violence.
