Post by Grimm on Mar 7, 2018 16:28:44 GMT -5
The three Dillingers stepped out of the house onto the porch, and off the porch into the yard. The fireplaces in the house had done a fine job but could only do so much. The stones had absorbed winter’s chill and slowly seeped it out over the weeks and months. There’d been no escaping it. But now this sun. The three blinked under the light. They welcomed the thaw. The ground sponging underfoot. The poplars blooming on the hills. Wildflowers working their way up through the dead things there among the leaf litter. The rushing meltwater.
The three Dillingers walked in a line.
No matter what Mass Destruction promised, Kyle Shane must surely admit it was a nice change of pace from dealing with the Notorious Duo as he had over the last few weeks. No more taunts night in and night out. No more looking over your shoulder. No having to piece together a hard-earned title belt after seeing it defiled in a tantrum. No, sir, all he had to worry about now was fighting the good fight.
”Shane rolling through the impact, Grimm claws his way to his feet and is met with a flying knee to the face. Emblem Heartless! He’s getting on a roll now and Grimm is on the defensive! Signaling that it’s time to take his place amongst the best of the best that PCW has to offer, he stalks behind Grimm and hooks the neck! Pieces of Eden?! Grimm thinks not and lifts Shane off of the mat ... summoning all the strength available to him and hurling him away. Shane landing on his feet, he turns only to find Grimm with the Foddershock! Wheelbarrow facebuster!
The surprise attack out of nowhere, Grimm is quick to capitalize on the fallen champion with a pinfall attempt!
1!
2!
3!!!”
But this was not the same Kyle Shane.
Phinehas, Ruth, and Granny turned to the creek.
”Grimm grabs Shane and swings his body into a spinning backbreaker. Kyle assaults the mat from the pain coursing through his body. Grimm smirks and brings Kyle upright. He hoists him like a potato sack and seats him on the top rope facing the crowd. Grimm steps out and up top the best he can. He’s standing on the middle rope from the outside. Kyle’s head and neck are cinched in a DDT formation. Grimm balances his foot on the top rope and weaves his way around, bringing both bodies flying away from the corner for a devastating tornado DDT, otherwise known as THE HARVEST! The impact is disgusting. Grimm rolls a lifeless Kyle Shane over and grabs a pinfall.
1!
2!
3!”
No, this was not the same Kyle Shane. That was the past. The game had changed. And the sooner Phinehas scrubbed those images from his mind, the better.
So he dropped down into the creek. He peeled off his green Hangtown Hardware t-shirt and handed it to Ruth. Sinews and tendons twitched in response to the rush of cold. Scars showed in stark relief against the farmer tan. And in one smooth motion Phinehas dropped and dunked himself below the water. His hair and beard a crimson anemone stirring in the eddies. Water bugs skating along the surface fled before this great red menace.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed…
Phinehas squatted there beneath the water, feet planted among the bedrock, hands locked into fists, eyes squeezed shut. A frigid baptism, but not one meant to wash away his sins and transgressions. His blood debts still waited to be counted against him on his day of reckoning. This was a cleansing of another kind. A sacrifice of himself, unto himself. Purifying both failures and successes. A rinsing away of everything Phinehas thought he knew about the self-proclaimed God of Game. That was then, this is now. And for this now, Phinehas could not hold his breath any longer. He shot to the surface with a gulp of air.
Death, burial, and resurrection.
He climbed up the bank and took back his shirt. Shivering, he walked with Ruth and Granny, trailing rivulets of water behind him. They followed the creek towards the bottoms.
The shock of cold had brought about a clarity Phinehas had not experienced in some time. Grimm he may be, but at Mass Destruction there would be no creaking stairs or shadows flitting in the hallway. No rapping at chamber doors or skeletal fingers tapping at the window. Any whispers, any breath at your back, would be that of your own design. No myth. No folk tale. Just Grimm-in-the-flesh standing across from Kyle Shane, poised to unleash hell-on-earth at the ring of the bell.
Poised to suppress his own shortcomings as best he could.
Make no mistake, Phinehas was the Hangtown Horror. He would do everything in his power to smother you with the Winding Stair or drop you with the medieval pain-helmet of pig-iron that was the Harvest. Anything beyond that, though, was your own sense-memory barrage. Your ever-so-slightly increasing increments of fear. And if that sort of thing played to his benefit, so much the better.
But Phinehas knew he had to be careful. To be self-aware enough as to not become so mindless as to buy into his own mythology. It could be dangerous to make a concerted effort to perpetuate the idea that Grimm had been exacted upon the federation, upon the professional wrestling world as a whole, like a landslide. A random act of nature. Or, perhaps, not so random.
But either way, whether Grimm-as-man or Grimm-as-myth, he was the thing that appeared on the horizon and changed your life forever.
The three Dillingers walked to the middle of a field. Phinehas knelt and felt the mud seep through his jeans. He took a breath there among the fodder of the previous year’s harvest and smelled freshly turned earth. Fresher than their root cellar, but not quite so much an open grave. He cast about at the first green shoots that would become hay for the scythe. He took another breath, and this time was pummeled by the overwhelming sense of the roots and branches reawakening all around him. Phinehas pushed his fingers into the earth. The sun joined Ruth and Granny as the third witness as Phinehas became one with the hollow. With Hangtown. With that from which he had sprung. Ruth rested her hand on his shoulder and repeated his true name as an invocation. Granny produced a small pouch of burlap and poured out a handful of powder. She sprinkled a circle around them, then tossed what was left into the air above Phinehas’s head before placing a hand on his other shoulder.
Granny’s All-Weather Hex Dust: a proprietary blend of salt, ground mud-dauber nest, native fungus, and ash from the Dillinger family hearth. “Good for what ails ye!”
Phinehas tapped into the geomantic energies left over from their land’s creation. That which traveled here along the paths of quartz and dolomite running far below them. He embraced the here-and-now. And when he had gotten his fill, he pulled his fingers free and flexed the pins and needles out of them. After all, he’d need them good and limber to wrap around Kyle Shane’s throat. The three Dillingers remained where they were, waiting for Phinehas’s faculties to return to him. They listened to the water, and to the wind, and to a crow building its nest of shiny pilfered notions and paper.
Phinehas fingered the folding knife in his pocket. He was happy with a sturdy blade honed on a whetstone and a rousing game of mumblety-peg. Kyle Shane, not so much. But in Kyle Shane’s world of pixel-bits and save points, he had leveled up, as he was wont to tell you. He knew how all this worked now. He understood what Grimm brought to the ring (every stinkin’ night, am I right?). He’d become intimately familiar with his abilities and in-ring psychology. The only glitch with that, was that the same applied to Grimm’s POV. Well-versed with one another, and nearly identical in size, at that.
So Grimm would wait until Kyle Shane threatened him with any number of finishers or favorite moves. Whatever it took to get him through the day, even if it involved a counting off of all his achievements.
Well, all his achievements save one. There remained one of those left to unlock, and he now stood on the threshold of, in Shane’s parlance, the final boss battle. He had to have this victory. Or…what, exactly? It had been nigh on a year and the earlier losses still gnawed at him. Who knew what a defeat of this magnitude, at this level, could do to a person of such seemingly fragile mental constitution.
As it was, Ruth and Granny helped Phinehas to his feet. They walked back up the yard, stepped onto the porch, and went into the house. The two women wandered off into the gloom to make further preparations. Phinehas sat at the kitchen table. He watched a flame flicker on the stove until his eyes grew unfocused. He zoned out.
Granny and Ruth had done their part. It was up to Phinehas now. It was up to Grimm.
The Lord of Misrule wasn’t interested in what had brought Kyle Shane to Pure Class Wrestling. What had been broken in his life over the years. Or what he thought – what he hoped – a title belt or a chain of victories (maybe a very specific victory) would repair. What it could replace. What such an achievement might do towards filling the gaping hole right in the center of the Game Changer.
Hope was a prison, but let’s see how resilient Kyle Shane could be.
Maybe under other circumstances the people could hold him up as a text book example of kintsugi. The crowds would celebrate the fractures and breaks mapped throughout his history. They’d find beauty in his flaws and imperfections.
”There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Maybe in other matches booked in other federations, Kyle Shane would serve as an example. He’d stand as a beacon on a hill, calling all the rest to him as he took them through his own personal Hero’s Journey. He would act as the catalyst for change. Bringing about an age of enlightenment, even.
Maybe.
But this wasn’t another federation. This wasn’t another match. This was Pure Class Wrestling’s Mass Destruction. And Kyle Shane would look into Grimm’s eyes. And he would see beyond Greenville, beyond Boston, to a wasteland of biting frost where the ice hung so thick and so cold it rang with a funereal peal of bells. Where he would be serenaded with a symphony of hammering winds. He would behold a vision of a world of infinite malice and indifference. Of a realm that did not need him or his validation…at which point Kyle Shane may not be so sure of himself, or what he believed. Not anymore.
But what he would become sure of, if he did not know by then, was that on this night, there was no Stormm. No John Matthews. No disappointing tag partner on which to lay the blame. Only you, Kyle Shane. Come to render your account. So learn to live in the moment. Live in this moment. Or there will be no coming back.
The three Dillingers walked in a line.
No matter what Mass Destruction promised, Kyle Shane must surely admit it was a nice change of pace from dealing with the Notorious Duo as he had over the last few weeks. No more taunts night in and night out. No more looking over your shoulder. No having to piece together a hard-earned title belt after seeing it defiled in a tantrum. No, sir, all he had to worry about now was fighting the good fight.
”Shane rolling through the impact, Grimm claws his way to his feet and is met with a flying knee to the face. Emblem Heartless! He’s getting on a roll now and Grimm is on the defensive! Signaling that it’s time to take his place amongst the best of the best that PCW has to offer, he stalks behind Grimm and hooks the neck! Pieces of Eden?! Grimm thinks not and lifts Shane off of the mat ... summoning all the strength available to him and hurling him away. Shane landing on his feet, he turns only to find Grimm with the Foddershock! Wheelbarrow facebuster!
The surprise attack out of nowhere, Grimm is quick to capitalize on the fallen champion with a pinfall attempt!
1!
2!
3!!!”
But this was not the same Kyle Shane.
Phinehas, Ruth, and Granny turned to the creek.
”Grimm grabs Shane and swings his body into a spinning backbreaker. Kyle assaults the mat from the pain coursing through his body. Grimm smirks and brings Kyle upright. He hoists him like a potato sack and seats him on the top rope facing the crowd. Grimm steps out and up top the best he can. He’s standing on the middle rope from the outside. Kyle’s head and neck are cinched in a DDT formation. Grimm balances his foot on the top rope and weaves his way around, bringing both bodies flying away from the corner for a devastating tornado DDT, otherwise known as THE HARVEST! The impact is disgusting. Grimm rolls a lifeless Kyle Shane over and grabs a pinfall.
1!
2!
3!”
No, this was not the same Kyle Shane. That was the past. The game had changed. And the sooner Phinehas scrubbed those images from his mind, the better.
So he dropped down into the creek. He peeled off his green Hangtown Hardware t-shirt and handed it to Ruth. Sinews and tendons twitched in response to the rush of cold. Scars showed in stark relief against the farmer tan. And in one smooth motion Phinehas dropped and dunked himself below the water. His hair and beard a crimson anemone stirring in the eddies. Water bugs skating along the surface fled before this great red menace.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed…
Phinehas squatted there beneath the water, feet planted among the bedrock, hands locked into fists, eyes squeezed shut. A frigid baptism, but not one meant to wash away his sins and transgressions. His blood debts still waited to be counted against him on his day of reckoning. This was a cleansing of another kind. A sacrifice of himself, unto himself. Purifying both failures and successes. A rinsing away of everything Phinehas thought he knew about the self-proclaimed God of Game. That was then, this is now. And for this now, Phinehas could not hold his breath any longer. He shot to the surface with a gulp of air.
Death, burial, and resurrection.
He climbed up the bank and took back his shirt. Shivering, he walked with Ruth and Granny, trailing rivulets of water behind him. They followed the creek towards the bottoms.
The shock of cold had brought about a clarity Phinehas had not experienced in some time. Grimm he may be, but at Mass Destruction there would be no creaking stairs or shadows flitting in the hallway. No rapping at chamber doors or skeletal fingers tapping at the window. Any whispers, any breath at your back, would be that of your own design. No myth. No folk tale. Just Grimm-in-the-flesh standing across from Kyle Shane, poised to unleash hell-on-earth at the ring of the bell.
Poised to suppress his own shortcomings as best he could.
Make no mistake, Phinehas was the Hangtown Horror. He would do everything in his power to smother you with the Winding Stair or drop you with the medieval pain-helmet of pig-iron that was the Harvest. Anything beyond that, though, was your own sense-memory barrage. Your ever-so-slightly increasing increments of fear. And if that sort of thing played to his benefit, so much the better.
But Phinehas knew he had to be careful. To be self-aware enough as to not become so mindless as to buy into his own mythology. It could be dangerous to make a concerted effort to perpetuate the idea that Grimm had been exacted upon the federation, upon the professional wrestling world as a whole, like a landslide. A random act of nature. Or, perhaps, not so random.
But either way, whether Grimm-as-man or Grimm-as-myth, he was the thing that appeared on the horizon and changed your life forever.
The three Dillingers walked to the middle of a field. Phinehas knelt and felt the mud seep through his jeans. He took a breath there among the fodder of the previous year’s harvest and smelled freshly turned earth. Fresher than their root cellar, but not quite so much an open grave. He cast about at the first green shoots that would become hay for the scythe. He took another breath, and this time was pummeled by the overwhelming sense of the roots and branches reawakening all around him. Phinehas pushed his fingers into the earth. The sun joined Ruth and Granny as the third witness as Phinehas became one with the hollow. With Hangtown. With that from which he had sprung. Ruth rested her hand on his shoulder and repeated his true name as an invocation. Granny produced a small pouch of burlap and poured out a handful of powder. She sprinkled a circle around them, then tossed what was left into the air above Phinehas’s head before placing a hand on his other shoulder.
Granny’s All-Weather Hex Dust: a proprietary blend of salt, ground mud-dauber nest, native fungus, and ash from the Dillinger family hearth. “Good for what ails ye!”
Phinehas tapped into the geomantic energies left over from their land’s creation. That which traveled here along the paths of quartz and dolomite running far below them. He embraced the here-and-now. And when he had gotten his fill, he pulled his fingers free and flexed the pins and needles out of them. After all, he’d need them good and limber to wrap around Kyle Shane’s throat. The three Dillingers remained where they were, waiting for Phinehas’s faculties to return to him. They listened to the water, and to the wind, and to a crow building its nest of shiny pilfered notions and paper.
Phinehas fingered the folding knife in his pocket. He was happy with a sturdy blade honed on a whetstone and a rousing game of mumblety-peg. Kyle Shane, not so much. But in Kyle Shane’s world of pixel-bits and save points, he had leveled up, as he was wont to tell you. He knew how all this worked now. He understood what Grimm brought to the ring (every stinkin’ night, am I right?). He’d become intimately familiar with his abilities and in-ring psychology. The only glitch with that, was that the same applied to Grimm’s POV. Well-versed with one another, and nearly identical in size, at that.
So Grimm would wait until Kyle Shane threatened him with any number of finishers or favorite moves. Whatever it took to get him through the day, even if it involved a counting off of all his achievements.
Well, all his achievements save one. There remained one of those left to unlock, and he now stood on the threshold of, in Shane’s parlance, the final boss battle. He had to have this victory. Or…what, exactly? It had been nigh on a year and the earlier losses still gnawed at him. Who knew what a defeat of this magnitude, at this level, could do to a person of such seemingly fragile mental constitution.
As it was, Ruth and Granny helped Phinehas to his feet. They walked back up the yard, stepped onto the porch, and went into the house. The two women wandered off into the gloom to make further preparations. Phinehas sat at the kitchen table. He watched a flame flicker on the stove until his eyes grew unfocused. He zoned out.
Granny and Ruth had done their part. It was up to Phinehas now. It was up to Grimm.
The Lord of Misrule wasn’t interested in what had brought Kyle Shane to Pure Class Wrestling. What had been broken in his life over the years. Or what he thought – what he hoped – a title belt or a chain of victories (maybe a very specific victory) would repair. What it could replace. What such an achievement might do towards filling the gaping hole right in the center of the Game Changer.
Hope was a prison, but let’s see how resilient Kyle Shane could be.
Maybe under other circumstances the people could hold him up as a text book example of kintsugi. The crowds would celebrate the fractures and breaks mapped throughout his history. They’d find beauty in his flaws and imperfections.
”There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Maybe in other matches booked in other federations, Kyle Shane would serve as an example. He’d stand as a beacon on a hill, calling all the rest to him as he took them through his own personal Hero’s Journey. He would act as the catalyst for change. Bringing about an age of enlightenment, even.
Maybe.
But this wasn’t another federation. This wasn’t another match. This was Pure Class Wrestling’s Mass Destruction. And Kyle Shane would look into Grimm’s eyes. And he would see beyond Greenville, beyond Boston, to a wasteland of biting frost where the ice hung so thick and so cold it rang with a funereal peal of bells. Where he would be serenaded with a symphony of hammering winds. He would behold a vision of a world of infinite malice and indifference. Of a realm that did not need him or his validation…at which point Kyle Shane may not be so sure of himself, or what he believed. Not anymore.
But what he would become sure of, if he did not know by then, was that on this night, there was no Stormm. No John Matthews. No disappointing tag partner on which to lay the blame. Only you, Kyle Shane. Come to render your account. So learn to live in the moment. Live in this moment. Or there will be no coming back.
