Post by outcast on Nov 16, 2020 12:50:08 GMT -6
How do I get myself into these situations?
That is the question I ask myself as I sit handcuffed in the back of a Chicago PD cruiser. Here I am less than a week away from the first title defense of my big return, and I’m sitting with my hands cuffed behind my back. Some things never seem to change, I guess some people are just natural-born f**k ups.
I guess I should have asked more questions. I guess I should have given a damn about the pictures hanging on the wall. I guess I shouldn’t be such a piece of sh*t. But I’m getting ahead of myself here a little, so let’s go back to where it all started.
Just a few hours ago I was sitting in the back of Rossi’s. Rossi’s used to be my favorite place to drink, now it’s just my favorite place to be myself, get some good food, and people watch. It’s a hole in the wall where someone who doesn’t want to be noticed or bothered can go, and that is exactly why I was there. I headed outside for a smoke and I should have been watching where I was going, but I had my head down lighting my Newport and I bumped right into her.
“Excuse me,” I said before even looking up, but when I did look up, I was impressed. A stunning brunette, who you could tell she had some miles on her, but was still a bombshell. For some reason, she noticed me, not as a wrestler or someone on TV, but as a no-bullshit kind of guy. I didn’t initiate the conversation, but I was more chatty than normal when she began talking to me.
Admittedly, she was a bit taken aback when I told her I didn’t drink, but she could tell I had quite a few miles on me too. My first warning sign should have been the way she threw back shooters of Don Julio, but I had been there before. If that didn’t throw up red flags when jammed her tongue down my throat after I refused to dance with her certainly should have. Though, it did throw me off my game and allowed her to pull me to the dance floor that she and her friends had carved out in the middle of the bar.
Before I knew it, I was dancing, well if you want to call my Elaine Benes like movements dancing. If the boos and blow did anything for me in the past, they at least made me think I could dance. My moves on the dance floor were abysmal at best, but hers were exotic and tempting and allowed her to lead me outside after the song stopped. We went outside to smoke, me a Newport, her a joint. At first, I was hesitant when she handed me the joint, I had smoked countless j’s in my life, but hadn’t touched anything outside of my cancer sticks since rehab.
“You really scared of a little weed?” she asked me.
The weed, no, it didn’t scare me at all. The thought of backsliding and relapsing, or going back into the bar and ordering a drink, and then another, and then another… yeah, that scared the shit out of me.
“It’s legal now ya know, in case you’ve been living under a rock and hadn’t heard”, she says with a laugh and a smile.
Yeah, it is legal in Illinois, but so is alcohol and that has done more damage to me than anyone I’ve ever stepped into the ring with. I said nothing, and she sighed before taking the joint from my hand, followed by a massive inhale. Then, she grabbed me, pulled me in, and pressed her lips against mine. It wasn’t a kiss though; she blew her full breath of smoke into my lungs.
I thought I was going to cough my guts up as I hacked, all to her amusement. As I fought to regain my breath, I took a drag from the Newport. “How can you smoke those things, but get choked up by a little herb?” she asked me.
Good question and she followed it up with another good question.
“You wanna go back to my place?”
Yes, hell yes.
We hopped in my truck, a 2017 F-150, not brand new, but new to me. Thanks to the Fright or Flight payday. I followed her directions and her lead. We were all over each other from the time I put the truck in park outside of her house in a neighborhood I’d never be able to afford to, or allowed to live in. This should have been another red flag.
We moved through the front door and into her living room, as she released her lips from mine and began pulling her shirt off, that is when I noticed the photos. Family photos. This stunning brunette, her two kids, and what I can only assume is her husband. Was he dead, or was he upstairs asleep? My moment of pause and distraction dissipated quickly as she removed her bra and grabbed at my belt buckle.
Was I proud of this moment? No, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, and after all, she initiated it, right? That is how I justified it in my mind, and this self-justification kept me from asking questions. Besides, what is that old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “ask me no questions and I’ll tell no lies”?
I pushed the thought out of my mind as we entered the bedroom. No husband here, maybe he is dead, well at least he is dead in my mind. Things got hotter and heavier and we had moved into the late-night Cinemax movie aspect of the night. Then, something stopped me, not a red light but a red alert.
“WHAT THE F**K KRISTAN!?!”
Guess the husband wasn’t dead after all.
Got a long line of heartache
I carry it well
The list of lives I've broken
Reach from here to Hell
And a bad luck wind been blowin' on my back
Pray you don't look at me
And I pray I don't look back
I carry it well
The list of lives I've broken
Reach from here to Hell
And a bad luck wind been blowin' on my back
Pray you don't look at me
And I pray I don't look back
(Two old school saloon doors swing open and Outcast walks into an empty old western-style saloon. Outcast looks around the empty looking bar, the amount of dust signifying it hasn’t been occupied in a very long time. A long drag from the Newport in his mouth is followed by a long exhale. Outcast moves from the doorway, his black boots echoing off of the wooden floor and throughout the empty room.
He walks behind the unoccupied bar and looks around the contents of the back. Outcast removes the cigarette from his mouth and blows a large puff of air on the bar top sending a cloud of dust rolling across the room. From under the bar Outcast grabs a bottle of Johnny Walker, and then three highball glasses. Outcast removes a bandana from his back pocket and wipes off the bottle after giving it a blow of air as well. He then turns his attention to the glasses and begins cleaning them with the bandana.)
Squinting into hot sun melting emotions along a wrinkled forehead beneath a wide brim like generations before. Reach into grains of dirt sifting through callused hands searching for a reason. Time refuses to stand corrected. Four walls fall from each direction, without a sound into thin air, it’s getting harder to breathe. Bread burns in the kitchen; children call for their mother who was lost in the night. Tress finally uproot, sway in the wind drunk with envy at the sky falling to its knees over cattle laying down to sleep as the last cowboy walks with an empty holster. Worn wranglers can no longer brace a wide stance on the edge of the range looking back losing perception of the land.
E.W., Earl, we are both some of the last remnants of a dying breed. I know the saying "last of a dying breed" is a bit cliche, but sometimes the classic cliches ring true. We are two men from bye-gone eras. Eras where interviews weren't just parodies of pop culture sitcoms or movies. An era where people weren't afraid to say anything they felt, where questioning someone’s integrity and manhood was an insult, and where extreme violence was acceptable.
Now though, we have devolved as not just a sport, but as men. Soon, it will be 1984 as all the words will be banned because they might hurt someone's feelings, and our thoughts will be censored inside our minds. BUT… we still have a chance to be men before that happens, Earl. We can do what we want to do, and say what we want to say because us two old f**ks will be dead before the fall of man is completed. At Darkness Falls we will engage in grotesque levels of violence, and for now, I will speak freely.
Since I am speaking freely, let me start with something that might be a little controversial to some, and something I’m sure will piss you off. It’s an old saying, but we’ve already established the old clichés still do apply. Mohandas Gandhi famously quoted that “an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind”, well I think Gandhi was a little bitch. In our case Earl, an eye for an eye is going to leave one man blind. You are already at the edge of that cliff of blindness, and if I didn’t knock you into that deep cavern of darkness at Inferno, then I will finish the job at Darkness Falls.
Hmmm… Darkness Falls, what a fitting name, because once I am done with you, darkness will have fallen on your sight and your career. Embrace the dark, because that is all you will see after I detach your optic nerve from your sclera, and I will make sure the old cowboy will be put out to pasture.
(Outcast grabs the bottle of Johnnie Walker and pours the top-shelf whiskey into the first of the three glasses that are now lined up. After pouring the shot Outcast sits the bottle back down. He picks up the second glass and begins to clean it.)
Enforcer, don’t think I’m forgetting about you. Well, then again, it’s hard to forget someone you don’t even know. I’ll be honest with you Enforcer; I haven’t given you one bit of my time or attention until now. In case you have been doing the same for me, I’ll just let you know I’ve been a little preoccupied since coming back to the GCWA, and the war I waged with TLS took my attention away from the other underlings here. But you have my attention now.
I know two things about you, one you are the current and soon to be former television champion, and two, you look like an old school Titan 3. Titan 3, ever heard of him? Multi-time champion in both GCWA and OCW, and a hall of famer in both. I beat him multiple times, but they still haven’t put my brass bust in any halls.
I’m not one to rest on my laurels or talk about how great I was in the past, because frankly, my past is a shit show. I’m looking to the future and looking to get my brass bust in a hall, and becoming the only person to hold two straps of gold in the GCWA is going to help me with that. I don’t want the memory of Outcast to be a drunk and druggie who had to have his rehab paid for by the Barrows. I want it to be a memory of someone who fought like no other person in GCWA could or would. The memory of Outcast will be of a Spartan-like warrior who shed his blood and his opponents’ blood. After Darkness Falls, the memory Enforcer, Earl, and everyone watching on pay per view will have of Outcast is him standing victorious with two championships.
Sunday, darkness falls on your reign as television champion, just as the darkness will fall on Earl’s vision.
(Outcast sits the glass down and grabs the bottle of whiskey and begins pouring the second glass.)
To be continued.