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CHAPTER ONE: Almost Heaven

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Baron Von Jihad
UWE Upper Midcarder
*****

Karma: 8
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Gender: Male
Win/Loss: Too many wins, not enough losses.
Posts: 1086


FALCON PUNCH!


« on: August 15, 2009, 11:30:40 pm »

CHAPTER ONE
Almost Heaven

   Old clichés always tell you about how you can never go home again. Maybe they’re right. Maybe you can never go back to that time and place where you felt safe from all the world’s ills. Hell, a time and place where you didn’t know the real reason behind Duck and Cover. A time and place where you disappeared for ten hours a day and only saw your mother and father come supper time. I didn’t have a childhood like that, but I what constituted as one was definitely better than what I got now.

   As it stands, I’m sitting in an empty apartment and I’m wondering where it all went wrong. Clothes are strewn about and the coffee table in front of me is covered with magazines of all sorts. Dirty dishes lined the kitchen counter, and the hardwood floors had definitely lost their high sheen and polish… but the question that kept running through my mind was quite simple: where the hell was Star?

   And maybe that was my own ignorance—maybe she had left this city and its ills behind. Maybe she had grown sick and tired of Shara and Angelique and the billion other semen receptacles that her mother had managed to barf out between her legs. If there was one thing that would confuse even me, it was probably the Deveraux family tree. Interconnected and a spider’s web of intrigue and deceit, it probably held more mystery than a Ludlum novel, but that wasn’t the point of this nostalgia trip, was it?

   Letting out a heavy sigh, I reached into my coat pocket for a cigarette, fumbled with the Marlboro packaging and finally got the sucker lit. She hated it when I smoked in here, where the kids would play on their expensive “activity mats”, and where their giant heads would wobble about, barely supported by their pencil-thin necks. I could picture it now, and even did so as I closed my eyes and inhaled deep of the paper an tobacco that proved to be the one habit I couldn’t quite kick. Feeling the toxins enter my lungs felt like a thing of beauty, massaging every morsel of nicotine from the plumes of grey haze, I let out an exhilarating exhale, all the while wondering just where my lady had ventured to.

   Opening my eyes, I looked down at the coffee table. I saw the remote, a long, slender black piece that resembled the Monolith more than anything else. Like any other man of a household, I hit the POWER button and watched in a faux-delight as the screen lit up, a message prompting that the satellite programme was being downloaded. Please be patient while we load this important data.

   It occurred to me then and there that most of the modern day’s life incurred the wrath of patience. Waiting for this. Waiting for that. Waiting for a movie to be released, waiting for the newest, best model of an iPhone. Waiting for that promotion, waiting for your next paycheque. Everything in this society, it seemed, was hinged on the idea that the longer you waited, the higher the value of product you wished to purchase. Things that were fast and cheap to produce were looked down upon. Like crack ****, or McDonald’s Big Macs.

   Taking another drag of my cigarette, I unwittingly ashed on the hardwood floor. She hated that. She hated the smell of smoke getting into her furniture, her clothes. She’d make me stand on the balcony in freezing cold weather in nothing but a house coat after sex, just because she hated the smell of Marlboros in her home. Fair enough, I suppose.

   “And if you order now, I’ll throw in a second beating absolutely FREE!” The man on the television declared, holding some kind of mechanism designed to make a homemaker’s life simpler. I looked into his eyes through the High Definition display, seeing how tense he was, how his smile seemed distressed. I shook my head and quickly turned the television back off.

   Leaning into her expensive sofa, I remembered the second time we had made love. I had known her for years at that point. We had filtered in and out of each other’s lives on a month-to-month basis, whenever seeing each other, we’d stop for awhile and catch up, no matter how busy we seemed. She had always seemed busy, always buried into her CrackBerry, always signing this guy or that, booking buildings for shows and trying to build a wrestling empire when the market was in a downturn. I almost mistook her for a crotchety suit, until I realized that the “Glittering Goddess” was barely a hair over mid-twenties, and yet walked around like a woman past her prime, still climbing that corporate ladder.

   It was kinda sad, to be honest.

   I always called her kiddo—and still do, for the most part. Tracing a thumb and forefinger along the silky lining of her sofa, it brought memories of that second encounter, where both of us felt like high school kids still trying to figure out how to ‘do it’, unsure of how they managed the first time. I had danced for her then, something that seemed so completely out of character at the time, but for some reason, I had loved to see her smile.

   It may not seem like a big deal, but you have to remember that John Raide hadn’t danced since nineteen seventy-seven.

   Chuckling to myself, I took another drag of my cigarette, allowing the ashes to fall where they may. And that was probably the attitude that had attracted her to me the most. In her life, she was responsible for everything and everyone—and here was this middle aged guy without a wife, kids, with nothing to his name but the clothes he wore and the car he drove. Something must’ve been appealing about that—the free spirit that could never be tamed, meeting in the middle with the wise old soul.

   And still, even then, touching that sofa to my fingertips, it brought other memories coming back. The months-long cruise we both had taken, the collapse of her wrestling empire while we both said ‘**** it’ and did what we wanted for a change. Not giving a damn for the world we created falling apart, only seeking and finding comfort in each other’s arms. Kissing and making love beneath a starry sky, holding hands while her phone rang off the hook incessantly. Accountants going into nuclear overload, jumping out of their office building windows as their life’s dreams came crashing down… and there we were, the two of us without a **** care in the world.

   Those memories brought a smile to my face.

   But the honeymoon had to end, didn’t it?

   Sitting on that boat, waking up with a bone-deep tan and a Mohito in one hand, I remember walking out to the beach with the sand between my toes, and there she was… unsure of herself. For the first time in months, I had seen worry on her face.

   I guess throwing her phone overboard didn’t rule out every mean of communication, now did it?

   “What’s wrong?” I said, taking my seat beside her, leaning over, wondering why she put on a smile when I could see through her sunglasses. I had gotten used to the subtle little tells, the way the corner of her mouth twitched when she wanted to laugh, the way her eyebrows furrowed together in mock annoyance. She was upset about something.

   “What in the world could you possibly mean?” She said, her voice pleasant but cracking.

   “What’s wrong?”

   “Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart.”

   “What’s wrong?”

   “I don’t—“

   “What’s wrong?”

   There was silence between us for a time, nothing but the warm breeze at my back, my lips not moving, her eyes pouring into mine even through the dark shades she wore. Genuine annoyance was probably the most prominent emotion she displayed with me.

   “Raide, I don’t want to get into it.”

   I tilted my head to one side, and sipped on my Mohito.

   “I already know where all the bodies are buried,” I said. It was a cliché term, but in her case, it was most applicable.

   “And why must I share this with you? I mean—why can’t I have something personal, to myself?”

   A chuckle escaped me, sounding hoarse and throaty.

   “There’s no such thing as privacy when something is bothering you. You tell me what’s wrong, and I fix it. That’s how these things work.”

   Star laughed, a pleasant sound, even if it was out of annoyance.

   “That’s a really chauvinistic thing to say.”

   Shrugging my shoulders, “Don’t really care. We can debate chauvinism after you’ve told me what’s wrong, and what I can do to fix it.”

   She settled into silence for what seemed like a long time. I remember how oddly quiet that beach was. How nothing breathed, nothing moved, how even the cool Caribbean breeze had stopped. Palm trees no longer swayed, and it seemed as though we were the only two living things left on Earth.

   Even the seagulls had stopped with their annoying cries for attention.

   “John,” She stammered, “I don’t think you can ‘fix’ this.”

   A knock at the door. Odd, considering nobody was home.

   Another knock, this time more brisk.

   Rising to my feet and taking silent steps across the living area toward the door, I pitched my cigarette off in some direction, not caring if it burned a hole in the floor or not. Approaching the door, I leaned in close to the eye-hole, taking great pains not to give a sound away to whoever it may have been on the other side of that peep hole.

   Through the fish-eyed lens, a lot of things had become abundantly clear.

   I suppose Star would have to wait, after all.

   

    Another gone and another one gone, another one bites the dust.

   Fervor Falls is probably one of those kids that shines with potential, with a gift, with something they can contribute to this sport that’s bigger than they are—but there’s always one flaw, isn’t there? There’s always one… little… thing… that holds them back from achieving the level of importance that so few of us ever have. I guess you could lump me in that category as well, couldn’t you? After all, promotional materials downplay my role in professional wrestling, and apparently nobody in UWE territory ever got cable, and therefore never saw a match of mine in history… so I guess I gotta take my time with this, gotta make sure people don’t get lost and wonder why it is that this old guy is taking on one of the top young talents in this business today.

   And that’s kind of what it comes down to, isn’t it? Duke Hamilton hired me because he thought I’d be good cannon fodder for his groomed and primed talents. He thought I’d be someone he could throw into the ring week in and week out and feed me to the bigger, more potential-fulfilling stars of tomorrow. It’s kind of funny how that back-fired on him last week, what with Baine being outsmarted and out-wrestled by a smarter and more agile ‘old man’ than him. What was it that Baine said? That John Raide was a piece of **** nobody that barely knew how to lace up a pair of boots?

   Kinda funny, that, considering it was that same ‘nobody’ who pinned his shoulders to the mat and made him look like the world’s biggest ****.

   But he did say so himself; he called himself ‘The Demon ****’ in his one and only promo, the same one where he outted himself as some kind of hot-headed bad-ass with a temper. The same one where he showed the world that the nice, cuddly, smile-time Baine that he tried to pass off for public consumption was nothing more than a façade, a lie to propagate more merchandise sales… a lie that’s probably cost him any momentum he hoped of having going into WrestleMania.

   But that’s not important anymore, is it? I mean, I’ve shown the world that Baine is a lie, that muscles don’t mean the world, and that age and experience beats youth and skill every single day of the week…

   So what’s next for me? Fervor Falls. That’s what’s next for ‘that old, broken down nobody’.

   I can see it now, I can see this kid with all the potential in the world stepping in front of a camera and being fed lines to say. I can see him looking at those witty remark written for him and chuckling to himself at how clever the ‘writers’ make him look. I can almost hear that little tramp he travels with whispering in his ear about how this was a piece of cake, and how he shouldn’t sweat that grey-haired old fart, how this was an off-week courtesy of Duke Hamilton, how when he got back to the locker room after demolishing the UWE equivalent of the Brooklyn Brawler, she was going to have a sweet, sexy surprise for the young boy wonder.

   And then of course, there’s the stereotypical old, crotchety manager. The one who is in Fervor’s other ear, telling him to train hard and not to take this lightly. The one that would probably ride the kid harder, the one that would probably take the whip and tame the wild stallion… that is, if this same manager actually had a pair and would stand up to the ‘hot-head’. Of course he won’t, because he doesn’t really give a damn about Fervor. He only cares that his one student, his one successful story is making more money for him, going in there night after night and beating down the competition, Fervor continually busting his ass so this old geezer can continue to pad his retirement fund.

   I look at a kid like Fervor, and I honestly just feel bad for him. I feel bad because with the right trainer, with the right backing, he can become something—he can become something more than just another **** champion. He can become something more than just another foul-mouthed son of a **** who has the raw skill, but none of the intelligence to go anywhere with it. He can be so much more than what he is, but in the end, he’s chosen to surround himself with a gold digging tramp and an old man who’ll only be around so long as the money is rolling in.

   Really, I’d feel bad for the kid if it wasn’t his stupidity that was holding him back in the first place.

   But I suppose he’ll come after me now, I suppose after calling his girlfriend a tramp and his manager an old money grubbing Jew, he’ll come after me with guns blazing, shouting every obscenity in the book my way, trying to instil fear in my heart because he’s younger, faster, more agile… but what this kid doesn’t realize is that I’ve seen it all before.

   Fervor Falls… can he be a great wrestler? Maybe. Maybe one day I’ll be in a retirement home with drool dribbling down my chin and my cholostomy bag being continuously filled with my own excretion, and I’ll be watching this kid main-event WrestleMania… maybe then, but now? No… not with the crowd he hangs with, and most certainly not if he steps into the ring with a guy like me.

   But what will happen, will happen. Fervor Falls will come at me and he will come at me the only way he knows how. He will come at me headstrong and hungry like the wolf… but that won’t matter. It won’t matter because Fervor Falls, in the end, is going to wind up another tragedy, just like the hundreds of others who come so close to the big time to ultimately fail and go quietly into the night. Fervor Falls may believe he is destined for greatness, but I’ve been around long enough to know that kids like him, lions like him that can’t be tamed, they’re only destined for a short rise, and then a long, long descent into obscurity.

   But I suppose what I feel the worst about, is that I’m going to be the one that starts him on that journey.
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