Post by Kyle Shane on Feb 27, 2017 14:50:02 GMT -5
It hits you like a slap of cold water to the face.
It does, when someone comes along and makes you question how you see yourself. When you leave an untenable living situation that you thought was just a dispute between roommates, for instance, only to hear from a third party that they were living in fear of you. And you are pulled outside of yourself to observe your behavior, get that sinking feeling in your gut as you examine all of the pieces objectively like some kind of CSI. Where you have to observe from the outside the evidence, the way their dog turned skittish after they met you, the holes punched in the wall. And when you're forced to confront yourself objectively, sometimes you don't like the person you see, the ugliness, the rage. I've had many uncomfortable moments like these in my life, since day one of the after trailer park years. And I'd like to think maybe the man who showed me how to put holes in walls, and bruises on skin, sometimes had moments of introspection where he saw himself as just as much a monster, but I'm not sure. It's been a week since the Xavier girl, though, and in that week I've had more than one occasion for hard reflection.
(Oh, don't get it twisted, that part was a shock, but a controversial mutual finish wasn't the shock of forced perspective that I was referring to. I'm not emasculated enough by the thought of being tapped out by a girl that it brings my entire world into question. Because I don't see it as a loss, and because loss does not undercut my confidence; but it's our interactions as a whole that have led me to second guessing myself... She called me "creepy" when I could swear I've been doing everything by the book, and said she saw right through what I thought were honest intentions. I've had some encounters that weren't what I intended end me up on the wrong side of the law. So in that, I had to look.)
And I have to look harder now.
There's a tender red welt under my eye that's bulging every time I touch it, I just know it's going to bruise hard. Came from being slammed into the bars by the intake officer, who I guess I didn't make friends with. Just brushing it against the rough cotton threads of my cot are like brushing with a grater. I sit up, against the stone wall, and look around me. I'm in a cubed cell, with bars separating me from the next container holding another inmate. There's room for a cot chained to the wall, a toilet that's about the size of a bed pan, and nothing else. Groaning, I pushed myself up on my elbows. Swing a leg over onto the marble floor, the settings coalesce around me. My face hurts, and my bones creak, and my breath tastes like vomit held back by a sore throat, chased down with whiskey. Must have been some party, I thought to myself, flipping through a mental security cam to piece together what happened. As I do, the occupant of the next cell over calls through the bars.
"You sure made an impression on my father, Shane."
He sighed. Hiro was sitting with his knees pulled up on the cot in his cell. He was still wearing all of his expensive suit, but his eye was puffing and his nose still had caked on blood.
"So hey!" His voice was cheerful as he slapped his thighs sitting up, "Remember when a Game Boyz promo consisted of us in an Olive Garden stealing bread sticks while we made video game puns for ten minutes? Those days were fun. Love reminiscing about that."
"Hiro, I -"
"Instead of my crazy white boy friend getting hammered at a meeting with top Shinron executives and spouting Occupy Movement propaganda at our chief financial officer, and having to be taken down by guards with tasers. I mean, on the whole, I think that the time we went to Comic Con and ogled cosplayers that looked like us was so much more pleasant. So memorable, you know? Game Boyz never used to be about that life. Right?" Hiro was looking up to the ceiling of the cell block now, his voice still pleasant blue-skying. He wasn't talking to me at all, and yet he was. "Heh, remember the Game Boyz motto, 'we would rather talk about beating people up as CAW in WWF No Mercy for N64 than do any actual work', nowadays it's sooo different, to have JOBS, with MORTGAGES and a FIANCEE who is going to FLIP HER SHIT when she learns that her husband to be has been PUT IN JAIL after fighting his fucked up friend at Tavern on the Green in the middle of the lunch rush." He lets out a little, goosfraba sigh.
"So fun."
I'm at a loss for words, I stumble for something to say. And again, I'm forced to confront myself, because Hiro is here as a reminder of where I started from, and how we've grown into different paths. Hiro is in the successful world of finance and white collar industry, and me? Well, I'm picking fights.
"And tell me you didn't believe all of that shit about Shinron being a mega-corporation that's bleeding the lower-class people dry." Hiro says, over his shoulder, spitting it like something unsavory in his gums.
"Oh come on, pal, do you not?" I stand, and walk over to meet him, at the bars separating our two cells. "It may be easy to overlook when you're nepotism'ed into a corner office, but down there on the streets, the people you've passed every day, they are dying. Your company has it's fingers in a lot of dark shit. The Grey are trying to fight back, and expose the corruption that the billionaires that run these places are perpetrating on our governments, on our world. Privatizing prisons, schools, entertainment, the military and making them all for profit," I'm listing things off on my fingers now, "bleeding the ecosystem dry and spoiling native lands with fracking and oil, buying up -"
"This... is insane. You. Are. Fucking. Insane," Hiro shoots out, and he turns his back to me, as if not wanting to listen.
"And you're a piece of shit for not even caring."
His eyes are like two blazing hot coals as he turns back to me. "I'm the piece of shit. Because I'm trying to provide for Haruki and the two little girls I've got on the way, who, yes, are going to be brought into that world and who I have a vested interest in making safe and secure in a world that is rapidly spinning off it's axis. Thanks in no small part to reactionary, sociopathic "liberals" like you who cast anybody unwilling to compromise them as some kind of alt-right Muslim burning monster. Fuck you, Kyle. You don't get to call me a piece of shit because I'm doing okay. You are not. You've been tail spinning since you left school, and man, I feel for you but I can not drown with you, Kyle. I mean look at yourself. Really, truly look. You've kept going with the wrestling thing, which I mean, you do you homey. I grew out of it, but you just kept going. But all those promos we used to have fun doing, you made them your little low-budget art-house independent movie film project."
"Things aren't ever as simple as you hear them, Hiro."
"Things were never simple, even when we were just talking shit about video games, but they never used to be so... dark.
"Is it even you under there?"
I'm not happy as I run his words over in my mouth. "It's me. This is more me than it was with you. It's who I am."
"Then my god, man, you need to get some therapy."
I have to laugh at that cause a therapist's office and her handing me a drugged card are what started this.
We both have gone back to our cots and don't speak for a little while.
"Do you remember all those backstage segments with Jessica Matheson?" Hiro ventured after a little while. I had to chuckle, ruefully. "Heh, yeah, those were so bad in hindsight..."
"Remember the panty raid? You and me narrating a crocodile hunter-like expedition into their locker room to rummage through Jess and Amiko's underwear." It was embarrassing, one of those things you laugh to keep from cringing at. "Or like that match where I did the spot that involved pulling Jess' pants down to expose her thong and allow us to get the rollup, and how mad Jessica was that that wasn't run by her, man... Jessica full stop complained to the president about us." Hiro was grinning broadly, like the cheeky Asian game prodigy he used to be on tv. Laid back against the wall of the cell, eyes staring up, looking at the past.
"Yeah, I mean, those were memorable Gbz moments, true believer." I wish I could get my voice to stop conveying sorrow that they had to end. I'm over at the little, cheap basin for water next to the toilet, trying to scrub some of the crusted blood out of my beard stubble.
"But they were in good fun, though," Hiro put in.
"It was sexist," I put in mildly, but Hiro overrides me. He waves it off like it didn't even matter. "No. I mean, Jess and Amiko were in on the joke, and even if they weren't; they had a sense of humor about it. It's not like you with this Olivia Xavier chick, Jess knew that we were a couple of skinny, wimpy nerds leaning hard into the American Pie Jim Levenstein fucking a pie aesthetic, it was cute to her. I mean, I just don't understand how things could be so different now. I mean, used to be that having a girl standing across from us was such a rare occurrence that we treated it like a game. We didn't fight Jessica... we didn't beat her to a pulp, and we didn't, you know... We didn't drug her..."
The slap of cold water from the basin hits my face; looking at my reflection in the pool of questionable piped water, I have one of those moments of looking inside myself. When it's all laid out like that, forcing me to examine from the outside the dichotomy of how things used to be versus how I've carried myself since those halcyon days of the IEW.
Like how I'm going to carry myself this time around.
Fair point for myself, I may not have been treating Olivia a hundred percent respectfully. Maybe I did get into those old Game Boys habits of walking up with a show of feigned bravado and a lack of personal boundaries. But when it came down to it, I had to go into fight or flight response for the sake of my Underground championship, a match I still maintain was just thrown together as a test to see how we both would react. It was more telling Olivia coming into the match, the whole situation spoiling to break a bone or punch me in my face; something about that gave me hope that maybe, just maybe I was getting better. But I hear the sneering voice of Eric Shane, the specter that taught me where to leave a bruise so it don't get seen, the one who instilled this itch in my hand to lash out like a cobra when provoked. That birthed my monsters. My father's voice, my fifth nightmare given form. My father, telling me that that kind of thinking is soft, and inaccurate, and wrong. I'm not getting better. And me holding back on Olivia Xavier was not a mercy to her. So what, then, am I to think of being put in the same situation two weeks in a row? Straight off jump street, I have to put my Underground title up against Eira, a woman who I had no beef with going into this, even, that I might have respected? On its face, it's another test, to see what I'll do. But that monster starts raising the hackles at the back of my neck more than it did - even when Olivia was taking her first swing at me. It eats at me, fresh in my mind, like a splinter of glass reminding me that hesitance cost me nearly a broken arm. But more than that, I'm sick of being fucking tested. I'm sick of tempering my patience, of holding out good will, because that's not who I am. I'm a messy, complicated degenerate wrapped in the skin of an arrogant pretty boy. That is who I am on the outside, as the cold basin water washes the swirls of dried blood down the drain. Meet Eira with the open hand or the closed fist. If it's with the open hand, I'm falling into the trap I did against Olivia, but I am also not being real with myself, because that doofy, besotted shit isn't Kyle Shane. If I close the hand, if I give vent to the reactionary, hair-trigger temper that's defining me now since my falling in with the Grey, then people will be shocked. Appalled, at the level of violence I'm willing to call down. Because being real, most everyone hasn't seen what Kyle Shane is capable of, I'm still in stat-building mode, and I haven't even approached a match in this fed yet with the do or die, going out on my shield, I'll either kill you or go down in flames mentality that I have the toughest boss fights. So look hard at yourself, Shane, I counsel. Angel or devil. Open hand, or closed fist.
That barking beast at the base of my skull hisses at me, says that Eira does not deserve the open hand. Maybe it's twisted, arrogant pride that says this. Or maybe she's going to think me weak either way, so fuck it. I grit my teeth every time someone tries to use my weakness as an insult. Especially when they're weaker than I am. Eira, total counterpoint to Olivia Xavier. Where I made the mistake last week and before was looking at Liv like an attractive show room model and admiring the curves, there are no curves with Eira. Just sharp edges and broken glass. She's more violent. And me, I'm forced to come back from tapping out. So, me, weak? As I sit there, washing my hands in the basin and seeing what I'm really capable of... I'm more certain than anything that Eira's the weak one. Big fanfare when she came back. Lots of untold history that went over the head of a newb like me. And yet every single week since her comeback she has disappointed. She's failed her way into a championship match by losing to High Tide, and Andy D, and then Nathan Saniti. So as much as Eira would want to play up the strong connections, she and Olivia couldn't be more dissimilar. I bristle at that, and I see the old Shane elitism rising to the fore. Nathan Saniti - I don't care how built up he is in PCW - is a fucking joke. Anyone that can't see through his trippy realms and flowery Carroll bullshit to brain him into a stupor every time they face him isn't trying. Losing to Saniti is absolutely the metric by which this contest should be judged. As before with Crazy Boy I do not care if someone has made their bones on the Underground division before me, I do not care if they affect an aura of ultraviolence, I don't even care if they're in this federation's crappy hall of Fame. If they can't rise to my standard, then they get owned.
All of this and more comes into my mind as I'm washing my hands. I look up into the flat, polished metal slab of the mirror above the basin, and I really look at myself as these thoughts run through my mind. But it feels like it's the monsters that are whispering these now, telling me that Olivia, Eira, all of em are going to be taught the price of testing me. I'm just observing detachedly, weighing the consequences of their line of thinking. Maybe it's my father's face staring back at me from the metal slab, but no, it's the glowing, red eyed Purge mask of the Voice in the Grey.
When you're forced to confront yourself objectively, sometimes you don't like the person you see, the ugliness, the rage, is my point.
But if that person was right?
There's a clattering of the electronically sealed jail door buzzing open, and Hiro's cell opens itself up. There are three men entering the cell block. Hiro blinks, neatly stands, and fixes his suit, trying to look as presentable as he can with his bruises. One of the three men is a deputy with a keg belly stretching his brown shirt. The second is a man I recognize from my ill-timed rant about social justice at the meeting with Shinron execs, and he is a spitting image of where Hiro could be after decades of service to the company bottom line. A severe, balding, no-nonsense looking man, who squints his eyes at me as he has his hands folded behind his back. He calls out to his son, in Japanese, "Hiro, come."
"Hiro, listen -" I tried to start.
Hideki Sasuke's mouth firms, and he waves his son back with an outstretched hand. "We will not be associating ourselves with this rabble trash," he says, frowning and peering at me in my cell like a zoo animal.
Hiro, despite his misgivings about my behavior and the row it caused when I let my monsters skitter over the table and scrap with the exec's bodyguards, looks pensive, and tries to talk to his dad privately, to maybe reason with him. "Father, look, Kyle has been - "
"This boy has been falling from grace for a time, and I will not let him fall with you." Hiro winces, to hear his earlier sentiments reflected so bluntly, but his father remains stoic. "He is a beast clad in the skin of a boy. Let the police talk to him, and you'll see that being around him only increases your chance of being damaged. Or worse." and with that, Hideki nods at the third gentleman, this one looking more like a cop than the slovenly deputy. This guy's in a bad looking suit and tie, and he's carrying a notebook.
Questions? I don't -
Hideki is leading his son away as the cop in the suit comes toward my cell, smiling beneath an ugly pushbroom mustache. "Hi there, I'm Investigator Clark. While we have you here, I wanted to take some time to ask you some questions if you don't mind pertaining to some allegations made against you by one Jennifer Baldwin? Just gonna take a moment of your time here."
My voice catches in my throat, as Hiro is watching. His eyes take in the whole scene and his face cycles from confusion, to disgust, to disbelief. "I can't believe you, Shane. You know how other wrestlers have to put on this front, act like they're the most fucked up person the world has ever seen... it's not an act with you. You're dangerous. And maybe you belong in there..."
Hiro and his father exit, and I sit back down on the cot as the investigator enters the room. He's asking questions, and I can hear my voice answering stonily. But I've been shocked by the cold current, and I see an image of myself outside my body drowning, sinking into the sea. Jennifer Baldwin... another girl who I had only the best intentions with, who now thinks I'm the world's biggest creep. Just like Olivia. So it's while I listen, and nod in the right places here, feeling myself sinking the entire time, that I ask myself if I should rethink my approach with the ones that think I'm really creepy.
Angel, or devil, Kyle, what's it going to be?
It does, when someone comes along and makes you question how you see yourself. When you leave an untenable living situation that you thought was just a dispute between roommates, for instance, only to hear from a third party that they were living in fear of you. And you are pulled outside of yourself to observe your behavior, get that sinking feeling in your gut as you examine all of the pieces objectively like some kind of CSI. Where you have to observe from the outside the evidence, the way their dog turned skittish after they met you, the holes punched in the wall. And when you're forced to confront yourself objectively, sometimes you don't like the person you see, the ugliness, the rage. I've had many uncomfortable moments like these in my life, since day one of the after trailer park years. And I'd like to think maybe the man who showed me how to put holes in walls, and bruises on skin, sometimes had moments of introspection where he saw himself as just as much a monster, but I'm not sure. It's been a week since the Xavier girl, though, and in that week I've had more than one occasion for hard reflection.
(Oh, don't get it twisted, that part was a shock, but a controversial mutual finish wasn't the shock of forced perspective that I was referring to. I'm not emasculated enough by the thought of being tapped out by a girl that it brings my entire world into question. Because I don't see it as a loss, and because loss does not undercut my confidence; but it's our interactions as a whole that have led me to second guessing myself... She called me "creepy" when I could swear I've been doing everything by the book, and said she saw right through what I thought were honest intentions. I've had some encounters that weren't what I intended end me up on the wrong side of the law. So in that, I had to look.)
And I have to look harder now.
There's a tender red welt under my eye that's bulging every time I touch it, I just know it's going to bruise hard. Came from being slammed into the bars by the intake officer, who I guess I didn't make friends with. Just brushing it against the rough cotton threads of my cot are like brushing with a grater. I sit up, against the stone wall, and look around me. I'm in a cubed cell, with bars separating me from the next container holding another inmate. There's room for a cot chained to the wall, a toilet that's about the size of a bed pan, and nothing else. Groaning, I pushed myself up on my elbows. Swing a leg over onto the marble floor, the settings coalesce around me. My face hurts, and my bones creak, and my breath tastes like vomit held back by a sore throat, chased down with whiskey. Must have been some party, I thought to myself, flipping through a mental security cam to piece together what happened. As I do, the occupant of the next cell over calls through the bars.
"You sure made an impression on my father, Shane."
He sighed. Hiro was sitting with his knees pulled up on the cot in his cell. He was still wearing all of his expensive suit, but his eye was puffing and his nose still had caked on blood.
"So hey!" His voice was cheerful as he slapped his thighs sitting up, "Remember when a Game Boyz promo consisted of us in an Olive Garden stealing bread sticks while we made video game puns for ten minutes? Those days were fun. Love reminiscing about that."
"Hiro, I -"
"Instead of my crazy white boy friend getting hammered at a meeting with top Shinron executives and spouting Occupy Movement propaganda at our chief financial officer, and having to be taken down by guards with tasers. I mean, on the whole, I think that the time we went to Comic Con and ogled cosplayers that looked like us was so much more pleasant. So memorable, you know? Game Boyz never used to be about that life. Right?" Hiro was looking up to the ceiling of the cell block now, his voice still pleasant blue-skying. He wasn't talking to me at all, and yet he was. "Heh, remember the Game Boyz motto, 'we would rather talk about beating people up as CAW in WWF No Mercy for N64 than do any actual work', nowadays it's sooo different, to have JOBS, with MORTGAGES and a FIANCEE who is going to FLIP HER SHIT when she learns that her husband to be has been PUT IN JAIL after fighting his fucked up friend at Tavern on the Green in the middle of the lunch rush." He lets out a little, goosfraba sigh.
"So fun."
I'm at a loss for words, I stumble for something to say. And again, I'm forced to confront myself, because Hiro is here as a reminder of where I started from, and how we've grown into different paths. Hiro is in the successful world of finance and white collar industry, and me? Well, I'm picking fights.
"And tell me you didn't believe all of that shit about Shinron being a mega-corporation that's bleeding the lower-class people dry." Hiro says, over his shoulder, spitting it like something unsavory in his gums.
"Oh come on, pal, do you not?" I stand, and walk over to meet him, at the bars separating our two cells. "It may be easy to overlook when you're nepotism'ed into a corner office, but down there on the streets, the people you've passed every day, they are dying. Your company has it's fingers in a lot of dark shit. The Grey are trying to fight back, and expose the corruption that the billionaires that run these places are perpetrating on our governments, on our world. Privatizing prisons, schools, entertainment, the military and making them all for profit," I'm listing things off on my fingers now, "bleeding the ecosystem dry and spoiling native lands with fracking and oil, buying up -"
"This... is insane. You. Are. Fucking. Insane," Hiro shoots out, and he turns his back to me, as if not wanting to listen.
"And you're a piece of shit for not even caring."
His eyes are like two blazing hot coals as he turns back to me. "I'm the piece of shit. Because I'm trying to provide for Haruki and the two little girls I've got on the way, who, yes, are going to be brought into that world and who I have a vested interest in making safe and secure in a world that is rapidly spinning off it's axis. Thanks in no small part to reactionary, sociopathic "liberals" like you who cast anybody unwilling to compromise them as some kind of alt-right Muslim burning monster. Fuck you, Kyle. You don't get to call me a piece of shit because I'm doing okay. You are not. You've been tail spinning since you left school, and man, I feel for you but I can not drown with you, Kyle. I mean look at yourself. Really, truly look. You've kept going with the wrestling thing, which I mean, you do you homey. I grew out of it, but you just kept going. But all those promos we used to have fun doing, you made them your little low-budget art-house independent movie film project."
"Things aren't ever as simple as you hear them, Hiro."
"Things were never simple, even when we were just talking shit about video games, but they never used to be so... dark.
"Is it even you under there?"
I'm not happy as I run his words over in my mouth. "It's me. This is more me than it was with you. It's who I am."
"Then my god, man, you need to get some therapy."
I have to laugh at that cause a therapist's office and her handing me a drugged card are what started this.
We both have gone back to our cots and don't speak for a little while.
"Do you remember all those backstage segments with Jessica Matheson?" Hiro ventured after a little while. I had to chuckle, ruefully. "Heh, yeah, those were so bad in hindsight..."
"Remember the panty raid? You and me narrating a crocodile hunter-like expedition into their locker room to rummage through Jess and Amiko's underwear." It was embarrassing, one of those things you laugh to keep from cringing at. "Or like that match where I did the spot that involved pulling Jess' pants down to expose her thong and allow us to get the rollup, and how mad Jessica was that that wasn't run by her, man... Jessica full stop complained to the president about us." Hiro was grinning broadly, like the cheeky Asian game prodigy he used to be on tv. Laid back against the wall of the cell, eyes staring up, looking at the past.
"Yeah, I mean, those were memorable Gbz moments, true believer." I wish I could get my voice to stop conveying sorrow that they had to end. I'm over at the little, cheap basin for water next to the toilet, trying to scrub some of the crusted blood out of my beard stubble.
"But they were in good fun, though," Hiro put in.
"It was sexist," I put in mildly, but Hiro overrides me. He waves it off like it didn't even matter. "No. I mean, Jess and Amiko were in on the joke, and even if they weren't; they had a sense of humor about it. It's not like you with this Olivia Xavier chick, Jess knew that we were a couple of skinny, wimpy nerds leaning hard into the American Pie Jim Levenstein fucking a pie aesthetic, it was cute to her. I mean, I just don't understand how things could be so different now. I mean, used to be that having a girl standing across from us was such a rare occurrence that we treated it like a game. We didn't fight Jessica... we didn't beat her to a pulp, and we didn't, you know... We didn't drug her..."
The slap of cold water from the basin hits my face; looking at my reflection in the pool of questionable piped water, I have one of those moments of looking inside myself. When it's all laid out like that, forcing me to examine from the outside the dichotomy of how things used to be versus how I've carried myself since those halcyon days of the IEW.
Like how I'm going to carry myself this time around.
Fair point for myself, I may not have been treating Olivia a hundred percent respectfully. Maybe I did get into those old Game Boys habits of walking up with a show of feigned bravado and a lack of personal boundaries. But when it came down to it, I had to go into fight or flight response for the sake of my Underground championship, a match I still maintain was just thrown together as a test to see how we both would react. It was more telling Olivia coming into the match, the whole situation spoiling to break a bone or punch me in my face; something about that gave me hope that maybe, just maybe I was getting better. But I hear the sneering voice of Eric Shane, the specter that taught me where to leave a bruise so it don't get seen, the one who instilled this itch in my hand to lash out like a cobra when provoked. That birthed my monsters. My father's voice, my fifth nightmare given form. My father, telling me that that kind of thinking is soft, and inaccurate, and wrong. I'm not getting better. And me holding back on Olivia Xavier was not a mercy to her. So what, then, am I to think of being put in the same situation two weeks in a row? Straight off jump street, I have to put my Underground title up against Eira, a woman who I had no beef with going into this, even, that I might have respected? On its face, it's another test, to see what I'll do. But that monster starts raising the hackles at the back of my neck more than it did - even when Olivia was taking her first swing at me. It eats at me, fresh in my mind, like a splinter of glass reminding me that hesitance cost me nearly a broken arm. But more than that, I'm sick of being fucking tested. I'm sick of tempering my patience, of holding out good will, because that's not who I am. I'm a messy, complicated degenerate wrapped in the skin of an arrogant pretty boy. That is who I am on the outside, as the cold basin water washes the swirls of dried blood down the drain. Meet Eira with the open hand or the closed fist. If it's with the open hand, I'm falling into the trap I did against Olivia, but I am also not being real with myself, because that doofy, besotted shit isn't Kyle Shane. If I close the hand, if I give vent to the reactionary, hair-trigger temper that's defining me now since my falling in with the Grey, then people will be shocked. Appalled, at the level of violence I'm willing to call down. Because being real, most everyone hasn't seen what Kyle Shane is capable of, I'm still in stat-building mode, and I haven't even approached a match in this fed yet with the do or die, going out on my shield, I'll either kill you or go down in flames mentality that I have the toughest boss fights. So look hard at yourself, Shane, I counsel. Angel or devil. Open hand, or closed fist.
That barking beast at the base of my skull hisses at me, says that Eira does not deserve the open hand. Maybe it's twisted, arrogant pride that says this. Or maybe she's going to think me weak either way, so fuck it. I grit my teeth every time someone tries to use my weakness as an insult. Especially when they're weaker than I am. Eira, total counterpoint to Olivia Xavier. Where I made the mistake last week and before was looking at Liv like an attractive show room model and admiring the curves, there are no curves with Eira. Just sharp edges and broken glass. She's more violent. And me, I'm forced to come back from tapping out. So, me, weak? As I sit there, washing my hands in the basin and seeing what I'm really capable of... I'm more certain than anything that Eira's the weak one. Big fanfare when she came back. Lots of untold history that went over the head of a newb like me. And yet every single week since her comeback she has disappointed. She's failed her way into a championship match by losing to High Tide, and Andy D, and then Nathan Saniti. So as much as Eira would want to play up the strong connections, she and Olivia couldn't be more dissimilar. I bristle at that, and I see the old Shane elitism rising to the fore. Nathan Saniti - I don't care how built up he is in PCW - is a fucking joke. Anyone that can't see through his trippy realms and flowery Carroll bullshit to brain him into a stupor every time they face him isn't trying. Losing to Saniti is absolutely the metric by which this contest should be judged. As before with Crazy Boy I do not care if someone has made their bones on the Underground division before me, I do not care if they affect an aura of ultraviolence, I don't even care if they're in this federation's crappy hall of Fame. If they can't rise to my standard, then they get owned.
All of this and more comes into my mind as I'm washing my hands. I look up into the flat, polished metal slab of the mirror above the basin, and I really look at myself as these thoughts run through my mind. But it feels like it's the monsters that are whispering these now, telling me that Olivia, Eira, all of em are going to be taught the price of testing me. I'm just observing detachedly, weighing the consequences of their line of thinking. Maybe it's my father's face staring back at me from the metal slab, but no, it's the glowing, red eyed Purge mask of the Voice in the Grey.
When you're forced to confront yourself objectively, sometimes you don't like the person you see, the ugliness, the rage, is my point.
But if that person was right?
There's a clattering of the electronically sealed jail door buzzing open, and Hiro's cell opens itself up. There are three men entering the cell block. Hiro blinks, neatly stands, and fixes his suit, trying to look as presentable as he can with his bruises. One of the three men is a deputy with a keg belly stretching his brown shirt. The second is a man I recognize from my ill-timed rant about social justice at the meeting with Shinron execs, and he is a spitting image of where Hiro could be after decades of service to the company bottom line. A severe, balding, no-nonsense looking man, who squints his eyes at me as he has his hands folded behind his back. He calls out to his son, in Japanese, "Hiro, come."
"Hiro, listen -" I tried to start.
Hideki Sasuke's mouth firms, and he waves his son back with an outstretched hand. "We will not be associating ourselves with this rabble trash," he says, frowning and peering at me in my cell like a zoo animal.
Hiro, despite his misgivings about my behavior and the row it caused when I let my monsters skitter over the table and scrap with the exec's bodyguards, looks pensive, and tries to talk to his dad privately, to maybe reason with him. "Father, look, Kyle has been - "
"This boy has been falling from grace for a time, and I will not let him fall with you." Hiro winces, to hear his earlier sentiments reflected so bluntly, but his father remains stoic. "He is a beast clad in the skin of a boy. Let the police talk to him, and you'll see that being around him only increases your chance of being damaged. Or worse." and with that, Hideki nods at the third gentleman, this one looking more like a cop than the slovenly deputy. This guy's in a bad looking suit and tie, and he's carrying a notebook.
Questions? I don't -
Hideki is leading his son away as the cop in the suit comes toward my cell, smiling beneath an ugly pushbroom mustache. "Hi there, I'm Investigator Clark. While we have you here, I wanted to take some time to ask you some questions if you don't mind pertaining to some allegations made against you by one Jennifer Baldwin? Just gonna take a moment of your time here."
My voice catches in my throat, as Hiro is watching. His eyes take in the whole scene and his face cycles from confusion, to disgust, to disbelief. "I can't believe you, Shane. You know how other wrestlers have to put on this front, act like they're the most fucked up person the world has ever seen... it's not an act with you. You're dangerous. And maybe you belong in there..."
Hiro and his father exit, and I sit back down on the cot as the investigator enters the room. He's asking questions, and I can hear my voice answering stonily. But I've been shocked by the cold current, and I see an image of myself outside my body drowning, sinking into the sea. Jennifer Baldwin... another girl who I had only the best intentions with, who now thinks I'm the world's biggest creep. Just like Olivia. So it's while I listen, and nod in the right places here, feeling myself sinking the entire time, that I ask myself if I should rethink my approach with the ones that think I'm really creepy.
Angel, or devil, Kyle, what's it going to be?
