Post by strat on Aug 14, 2022 19:04:06 GMT -5
I believe I can see the future
Because I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
And then again that might have been a dream
—
Our backyard is a miniature woodland of trees and gardenia shrubs, each of them trimmed as if they were green flames. To move about them is a sort of music, a poetry that cannot be spoken in words, yet is heard and calms everything that I am.
Delicately moving with the sway is the tail of a satin dress that I know is attached to something infinitely more beautiful and poetic. I hear her giggle softly as she skips out of sight and beckons me to give chase. My bare feet crunch across the crisp and luscious grass, and I barely catch sight of her before another playful yelp escapes from her pillarbox red lips.
Trellis forms the wireframe of the living tunnel that she moves through, but we both know that she will run out of places to hide sooner rather than later and the anticipation is elevating my heart rate.
“ Found you. ” I gasp, almost breathless, as my hand clasps onto her shoulder. She stops in her tracks, feigning disappointment, before falling helplessly to the cushioned turf beneath us.
“ Help me! ” she exclaims, dramatically.
I don’t respond with my words, only with my eyes. And as I start to undress her with my eyes, and the desire starts to take over all of the rational thought centres in my brain, she starts to shift beneath me in a way that acknowledges what is going to happen and how. Her lips purse, bottom lip catching briefly on a tooth.
Leaning into her, I nuzzle the edges of my teeth against her collarbone, gently nicking the taut skin. My hands slide under her shoulderblades and bring her closer to me as my body presses into hers. Closing my eyes, I envelop myself in her and allow her aroma and aura to consume me.
What is about sex fantasies that feels so much like a vacation from reality? A flood of endorphins I guess is all part of it. A few moments in my imagination and I'm released from the troubles of the upper brain, happy with my darling, in a space where pleasure is king.
I’m startled from my daydream by the stuttering vibration of my cellphone as an incoming call causes it to jutter aggressively across the mahogany coffee table by my knees. My eyes divert from the wild green apparitions swaying through the full length glass doors and down to the electronic device as it rhythmically oscillates toward me. I stretch out my long fingers and grasp it between my thumb and forefingers, rotating it within my palm until I’m able to see the screen and the number, although not saved to my contacts, is immediately recognisable.
“ Hello? ” I say, my voice rough as though it hasn’t been used in some hours. I clear my throat, and compose myself, before repeating myself more assertively. “ Hello. ”
“ Mr. Stratford, ” the voice comes.
It’s a deep, Southern voice. Raspy, and quiet. As though he does not want to be heard. It is a voice that I recognise without him having to introduce himself.
“ I have what you asked me for. ” he continues, deliberate and concise, as always.
He didn’t dance around with information. Information was, after all, his currency. The means to his end. There was no window dressing, no fanfare or build up, just cold facts.
“ That was… fast. ” I reply, unable to conceal the satisfaction as it spread across my face.
“ When can you be here? ” He asks.
I pause, and through the phoneline I hear an audible and impatient exhale, followed by the unmistakeable sound of a Zippo flint igniting its coil. It was so quiet that I could hear the gasoline crackle as it sparked into ignition, and then the sound of a hand-rolled cigarette’s paper catching fire, a breath of oxygen sucked through the tobacco sizzled.
“ I will have to re-arrange a few things at this end, I’m supposed to catch a flight to Detroit in a few hours. ” I finally offer.
Despite the fee that this man commands for his services, and the fact that he is in the business of providing a services to a certain clientele group, he is not the type of man that takes kindly to delay of any kind. And given his ability to provide such a service, and the quality of said service, he is not the kind of person that you wish to disappoint. What he can do is not readily available to most people. When he calls, you move heaven and earth.
He doesn’t respond.
Much like his distaste for embellishment or storytelling, he does not engage with those that process their thoughts out loud as I am doing in this moment. His question was not related to what my current obligations were or how those obligations would interact with what he was asking of me. His question was simple, and I had not answered it.
“ Give me two hours. ” I offer, hopeful it would appease him.
Another long exhale of smoke followed by a short pause, before he eventually said just three words.
“ The usual place. ”
My hand slowly descended with the phone and I laid it down on the coffee table once more. Shit.
I mean, it is what I wanted. What I asked for, and certainly within the timeframe that it was necessary. But making this happen was going to be a headache, a logistical clusterfuck. I press my thumb and middle finger against my temples, gently moving them in a circular motion and gradually increasing the pressure.
Okay, I reasoned with myself. It isn’t that big of a deal. I have friends in.. places. And no sooner had my phone been placed back on the coffee table was it back in my clutches, two thumbs wildly swiping and tapping away as I sent a quick text message which read only,
HEY - IS THE JET NEARBY? I NEED TO HOP OVER TO DETROIT AND I HAVE A FLIGHT I CAN’T CATCH. S.
Every day is exactly the same
Every day is exactly the same
I smirked, knowing that arrangements had been made and that I would be able to get to Detroit on time after all even though I’d be leaving two whole days later than expected. Demi wouldn’t be there, she had some important errands to run whilst I was working, and I would be cutting it fine to make it for the show.
The Developer, Trent Steel, Big T Daddy, whatever he wanted people to refer to himself as… (I made the last one up, I think. I don’t think I’ve just outed his kink profile, I mean, probably..)... Anyway, he didn’t like it when we were not prompt. Rumour has it that he starts to get antsy, and agitated, when plans are not meticulously followed. I mean, Michelle was the one who told me that, so take it with all the bag of salt you want. But I anticipated something approaching confrontational with him when I got there, but sometimes things take precedence. They have to. He would have to learn to live with it. Up until this point I had given him no reason to doubt me, or to be concerned that I would not fulfil my obligations.
And with that in mind, my thoughts turned to Chelsea Skye. The yang to the yin that I dispatched at EXP29. The counterpart to Amber Payne in so much as they are so different but yet still indiscernable from one another. Anonymous faces, whose talent is dwarved catastrophically by their misguided optimism that where they have fallen so many times before, this time will be different. Chelsea might be somewhat more outwardly damaged and in tune with the negative aspects of her emotional spectrum, she might choose to express herself in a more anger-oriented manner and may wear her disappointment a little more publicly and self-deprecatingly than Amber, but she looks at herself in the mirror each morning and truthfully believes that she has the acumen to beat any man or woman on any given day. So far removed from reality that it is a shock to her each time she bites off more than she can chew and ends up choking.
Such is the desperate and damning disappointment each time she makes the dreaded skulk back to the locker room after another inevitable and destined defeat, it sends her into a downward spiral.
Day after day of introspective, yet outright unfair self-criticism after such unobtainable expectations left her far short of her goals and dreams. It is psychological torture, and some might say it is self-inflicted, but I actually disagree.
Nevertheless, part of it is admirable, is it not? To have this unwavering belief that each and every time she has stepped up to the plate, it has been a twist of fate, or a tear in the space-time-continuum and that normal order would be restored if only she could muster the courage to try again.
Failure is part of learning, and I know this better than most. I was a perennial failure until I chose to rewrite the ending of my story. Damon Riggs strapped my wife to a toilet and threw her in a dumpster, and took my limp and beaten body and powerbombed me down into the same container and that was my parting shot to the world of wrestling. That was how I would be remembered.
“Hey, you remember that guy? The weird looking one with ridiculous makeup who followed some creepy Maleficent looking cult queen around? Fought in so many main events and looked like he was gonna be the next big thing, but ended up getting taken out with the trash, literally?”
My legacy would have been as a niche trivia answer that only the weirdos with cheeto dust smeared into the thighs of their grey sweatpants would’ve been able to answer.
The thing is, though. I disappeared. I grew, I learned, I overcame the shortcomings that led me to that dumpster. What has Chelsea Skye done about her flaws? Week after week and show after show, it is the same bipolar rhetoric distributed in one hundred and forty characters or less. You could almost set a clock by it.
First comes the outpouring of negativity, how she is disappointed in herself and in her feelings and probably doesn’t know if she can do this anymore.
Then it goes silent for a few hours, where she hangs on each and every notification that comes to her phone, praying for the ever-enduring ‘like’ or quote tweet telling her that she can’t quit because another nameless nobody that she herself barely knows or recognises would be mad or sad.
A few days pass, and then the attention-seeking part of her brain engages. She’s not over the disappointment, but she is ready to be built back up again. So she starts to post, and typically her posts are full of inappropriate oversharing because that is how she feels like she will get the most engagement, the most interaction. After all, that is what the lonely girl desires. A reason. A reason to exist.
If she was yet another average midwest girl with inane average midwest girl thoughts then the likely scenario is that people would rightly realise that she has no substance or personality, and scroll past. But she puts on her Jeffree Star lipstick and Dollar General Clown Stencil eye makeup, cuts her jean shorts a little deeper and talks about cunnilingus so brazenly and aggressively to make sure you KNOW that she is edgy. She isn’t bland. She promises. Scout’s honour.
Predictably, she gets her smorgasbord of feminist positivity telling her to live her truth mixed in with the incel trolls calling her a slut for not only daring to explore her femininity but also for excluding them specifically from it, because we all know that a slutty hooker whore is only a bad thing if it isn’t you she’s fucking. But for Chelsea? Engagements and interactions all count, even if they’re not positive.
As the week rolls on, her demeanour shifts and once again this monolithic self-belief begins to emerge. If only she can make all the stars align, if only x, y or z would transpire, she could do what she said she would do. As if none of these factors are in her control.
It is easy to say that you are introspective and you reflect on the things you did wrong, or the mistakes that you made. It is easy to vow to do better in the future, but the evidence is there in plain sight. This is not a person with the self-awareness to understand that she is in over her head, or that she is broadcasting outwardly to a set of unidentified social personalities that are likewise crawling for interactions and are all doing so through the filter of “I want to portray myself in this way”, behind the OLED facade that allows them to rehearse and rehearse until they are sure that their manicured response nicely lines up with the public image that they too are selling to the world.
It appears there is no comprehension that the world she immerses herself in is a world where there is a barrier between the true self and the projected one. She is as lonely as anyone has ever been despite having thousands of people that she would likely call her friends. Nobody knows her, not the real her. And she knows them not, too.
But yet each week, she goes through the cycle. She interacts with the world, and she is filled with empty and meaningless encouragement from anonymous acquaintances who want people to perceive them as a positive light in a dark world. They think they are doing something great for her, they are building her confidence and self-esteem. But confidence and esteem do not win you matches. What they are really doing is setting her up for the next fall. They’re complicit, even if they don’t realise it. And all the white-knight simping they rush to do in the vague and pitiful hope that she will quit the clit and hop on their unwashed undercarriage is actually contributing to a much greater and more sinister demise.
I’m not sure if there is much I can do about it. It doesn’t serve me in the same way it would’ve served me to drag Amber Payne down to the depths of her despair, because much in the way I began with comparing the two as yin and yang, to all of Amber’s mental toughness and her inability to match it physically, Chelsea is emotionally fragile, she is desperate to be seen and noticed. To break her emotionally would be much less of an undertaking than to defeat her physically. Despite her shortfalls, she is talented. She is perhaps a better fighter than Amber, but she doesn’t have what it takes to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together at the highest level and compete.
Like I said, she allows these people to take her for a ride, and she excuses herself. She doesn’t take ownership of her losses. She doesn’t grow.
So what can I do about it?
Can I help her to finally make it different this time?
I might be able to give her the reality check she needs. But people like her only hear the truth that they want to hear. The one that suits their agenda, their narrative.
So the likely story is that I’ll just kick her teeth in and move along.
My reality check is that I have far more pressing matters at hand than opining on the salvation of an inane average midwest girl who is so afraid of being invisible that she polls her followerbase on how many fingers she should stick in her asshole whilst she’s scissoring another vapid social media debutante.
I'm writing on a little piece of paper
I'm hoping someday you might find
I'll hide it behind something
They don't look behind
I am still inside here
A little bit comes bleeding through
I wish this could have been any other way
I just don't know what else I can do
I’m barely able to see beyond the dust cloud that emanates from the dirt track below me. The summer had taken its toll and the acrid and dry ground meant that even driving at a modest 20 limited my visibility almost to the point of not being able to go further. I try to slow down a little, to literally let the dust settle and for me to get a grip on my surroundings, to see where I am and what I am doing.
The 1975 Cadillac Coupe deVille beneath me rumbles and as visibility starts to return, I can see the mile marker at the side of the road, the one that lets me know where to stop. Another hundred yards and make a left.
A disused gas station in the middle of nowhere, with an inconspicuous landmark as the only means to find it. A small comfort sits in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know why. Last time I was here, it was adrenaline, fear, fight or flight. But this time? This time it didn’t feel like the weight of the world was bearing down on me.
I take a breath, then open the door. My Doc Martens boots press into the soft soil before the rest of my body follows, and through the dust I can make out the man just a few feet away.
“ Jimmy Flanagan. ” I smile.
He was the private investigator that I had hired back in 2020 to look into what Xavier and Vincent Wolf were doing, thinking I’d find an angle of leverage, but what Jimmy unearthed was the motherlode of a smoking gun, the Little Boy that still haunts the Hiroshima-sized crater of destruction it left in the Wolf/Black family.
Flanagan truly was the best of the best, despite first impressions. He lived like the homeless and looked like one, too. Smelt like one. He really worked beneath the surface layer of society, he was paranoid as fuck. Maybe this is how he continued his existence in this line of work so successfully.
He wasn’t one for pleasantries, as I said before.
“ Stephen, sit down. ” He muttered through a cigarette, punctuating his sentence with a deep exhalation of smoke that shot out from between his dry cracked lips and nicotine stained teeth toward me, along with the stale smell of old coffee and rotten food.
It was like deja vu.
Jimmy Flanagan has a pair of lawn chairs stacked up against a rusted, flaking copper-coloured barrel of gasoline. The barrel had a stack of papers held together perilously by a single paperclip.
Over the following moments he would explain the contents of the papers and how the pieces fit together, along with some maps and photographs. Truthfully, this man left nothing unturned. Everything I needed for the plan I had was here, and despite the best intentions of his personal hygiene routine urging me not to, I wanted nothing more than to hug this man.
Thankfully for us both, he maintained his personal distance even as I approached. I knew that deeply buried Irish fire, mixed with the Southern upbringing, wouldn’t tolerate being asked twice so I politely thanked him and made my way back to the car.
I smirk to myself as I carefully place the stack of papers onto the passenger’s seat beside me and turn the key in the ignition, feeling the low rumbling of the vehicle start to vibrate beneath me.
I place my cellphone into the cradle before unlocking it and swiping across to Waze. I entered the address on the first page of the document and took a deep breath, and push my head against the headrest, exhaling, allowing myself to relax into the vehicle.
Destination is five and a half hours, headed due north.
Sometimes I think I'm happy here
Sometimes I still pretend
I can't remember how this all got started
But I can tell you —exactly— How it will end