Post by Kyle Shane on Nov 19, 2018 4:41:53 GMT -5
We drove in silence for a while, taking the turn off the interstate as Beacon Hill stretched around us. Silence, except for Patrick's raspy breath, and the hiss of him taking a hit from his inhaler. Finally, I said it; "I don't agree with your thesis."
Patrick, wan and pale as he always was, looked over at me from the passenger seat. There was so much Shane in that smile, I can see why he yearned so hard to be a connected member of the family. The wasted afflictions of his disease made bony sticks of his limbs, and his hair was a plastered mop swept over a balding peak, but his smile was a mirror of mine. And the way it didn't reach his eyes, know kindness or compassion, was dad's. He coughed a little, but smiled.
"You don't agree that you're having trouble? Because you feel such a disconnect, a bifurcation in who you are and how you present yourself?" Patrick taunted. He mused, crook of his elbow propped against the window so his thin body could turn at an angle.
"I don't agree with your thesis that it's natural." I was following his instructions, still. He had told me, after the mid-term elections that he had engineered a surprise for the borough. Tonight, still clinging to mystery, he told me to drive. Drive into Beacon Hill and we would talk.
"I came to you because I figured, similar life experiences, Pat. Although, you didn't live with dad, so maybe you aren't fully in the loop of how it feels to have this... itch in the pit of your heart you can never define -"
"Oh, can't I? A yearning? Hiraeth, a calling, a homesickness for a place that's never been? Hmmm, nope, this poor little castout illegitimate child has never felt that..."
"It's not that," I start, but that does hit close to the mark, actually. It's a niggling feeling, on the back of my tongue... "It's the question of who I am, underneath it all? Cause it feels like... sometimes, I swear... it's like this big, uber-confident Game God who's good at everything and is super cocky about his skills, that's a lie and I'm just an angry, fucked up, broken kid."
He raised a finger in the understood "One moment" gesture. "Your mistake is thinking that that isn't part of the human condition. Everyone wears a mask, till you strip it away. Everyone."
I roll my eyes at his pomposity and pop-psych supervillain spiel. "Thanks, Voice In The Grey."
"No, no," Patrick waves a hand, "I mean this, the underlying root of your problem isn't anger, it isn't rage. It's fear. Kyle Shane, God of Game is the wallpaper over your fear. In fact, all base human emotion is connected in some way to fears. And that is why I can help you, because I have a unique insight into the nature of fear. Stop the car. We're at our first stop."
"Stop the - Patrick, we're in the middle of the street, and it's..." I do pull to a stop in the middle of the lane, and I see the fires flickering in broken windows and I see tangled mobs of people roaming the street, engaging in pack mentality, mob rule. "...Patrick... what is this?"
"Purge." He smiles broadly. He opens the passenger door, stepping out into the crisp night air, holding his arms akimbo like a maestro rising to the chorus. "It was a simple, confusingly worded write in to the ballot on the polls in this district... a mass Reddit thread that grew to thousands of posts... a digital whisper on wind, a Millenial word of mouth... and they roam the streets tonight. To vent their anger. To take off their masks. During the day they present themselves as you do, adjusted, centered, confident at their jobs. But it's fear that's sending them out onto the streets," he says, jabbing a finger at a gaggle taking bats and axe handles to a car.
"It's fear that holds them back from being who they are. Fear of being looked down upon, fear of being thought of as lowlife scum. Even baser fears like the subliminal threat posed by that brown couple that owns the bodega... Hahaha..."
"Patrick, this is - this is fucked up..." I say, as I scan in the damage they're doing. Three men gather around an elderly woman in a hijab. A boy that could have been one of Johnny's classmate's cocking an arm back and letting fly with a brick. A group rocking a VW Beetle until it tips over. Chaos. Anarchy.
And then I see two men on either side of a car stopped trying to pull a screaming, kicking girl out of the window. My head swum. Intoxicated. Bewildered. And still the melee went on around me.
"Take it in, Kyle... this is what's lurking underneath that mask. And what you want to deny. What tears you apart is that you won't just let go."
I'm not even listening, I'm sprinting across the asphalt, kicking over litter and rubble to get to the Kia and stop the two men attacking the girl. She bites and claws one, ripping his face, and she pulls a knife from a sheath on her thigh. She slashed at one guy, cutting deep into his grasping hand. I threw them aside, and tried to help her to her feet, only to flinch and look down at the icefire thorn in my side; she withdrew the knife, and snarled "Stay away from me." I only choked a little bit, as the inside of my peacoat filled with blood.
I fell against the car. And I heard Patrick, roaring over the sound of the Purge rioters he had teased out of hiding, telling me from faraway to get up. I looked around for the girl. And as my spinning head darkened a little bit, I smelled acrid smoke. I thought I was in hell.
If I was, when I looked up, I saw the grinning face of the devil smiling down at me. "It's only when we're enticed to come out of hiding, without the punishment or repercussion for our fear to hold us back, that we can be who we are."
He lifted up my shirt, "Nasty little puncture wound, brother. But you'll live."
"Patrick... why... why did you - All of these people - "
"Be-CAUSE, dammit, I want you to see what human beings are capable of and I want you to stop being such a little bitch about having a dark side!! Am I a God, am I a good man, did I let my son down, wah, wah wahh..." His slap against my face is like a shock of cold water throwing me back into full conscious, a burst for air after the seeping blood from my creased side had me starting to sink.
"Because Purge is just the first part of my lesson tonight, Kyle... the first part of my teaching you how to live with the monster you have inside, that was imparted by the man who raised you."
He puts a finger right between my eyes like a gun barrel, and my eyes cross up to meet it, I gasp. "Because everything that holds you back from taking what you want, the shallow pretense that you're better than everyone else because you say it's so, that's getting boring. You got another one just like you at that shitty wrestling gig you got going... Gerard Angelo? Tangelo? Whatever... piss full of arrogance and thinking his shit doesn't stink, but it's just the same old boring, mud puddle shallow bullshit about how pretty he is and how your wrestling company needs someone of his nebulous skill level to take them to new heights. BO-RING. As if you hadn't spent all of 2017 performing that exact same act?"
I groaned, and rolled to a sitting position, holding my shirt in a wad up to the stab wound in my side. "Weird place for a tangent on that, but I'm with you... let's get back to the truck..."
"But that was a lie, Kyle, and you at least in the past three months have had the self-awareness to realize what this Gerard Tangelo person has not. That that lack of depth, that arrogance over being the best thing since sliced bread, every time he breathes he shoots Pure Class Wrestling 3 points higher in the Nielsen ratings, the company has never had any measure of success until he got there and he is to deliver; that there is a hollow, meaningless, empty way of life. I mean, you proved it. You gave every single thing you've had to Pure Class Wrestling. You sacrificed time, effort, mental exhaustion and every capacity of work you put into carrying the World title on your back and what did it get you? Push your girlfriend away, and your kid gets taken to a foster by the state."
"Thanks for reminding me of all that, brother." I get in the passenger seat, this time, groaning and pressing napkins from the glove compartment to staunch the wound.
"His life, Tangelo Angelo's life, by comparison - not important. Utterly meaningless. Because he is living the mask. He is living that playboy, pampered, happy life, but he doesn't ever take one second to examine the fear that holds him back. Because he is being held back, if he was as great as he thinks he is, we'd probably have heard about him in more than shitty direct to Redbox movies, right?"
I sigh, say nothing, wave my hand with a frustrated pantomime of "I guess." Patrick starts the ignition now, and smoothly puts it in drive. His breath only rasps a little, but it's giddy, and there's a funny little smile on his face. We roll through the packs of mob, and although a few people beat on the windows, Patrick keeps a steady enough pace that we drive on through the burning city block.
"But someone who's denying, who's living that pampered, all that matters is surface egotistical life, they're holding back because they're scared to examine what they have. You did. And you didn't like what you saw. So tell me, viewing it now, what do you see, brother?" Patrick waves at the people clawing at each other on the streets.
"I see... people." I say quietly. Leaving unspoken that every one of these aggressive, violent rabid animals out here were fucked up people. They were internet addicted sheep manipulated by vague promises and mob mentality into violence. Unless... maybe that was Patrick's point.
Patrick points a finger at me, cocked like a gun. Bingo. "All humans are monsters. That's lesson one."
"Hide it, refuse to deny it, everyone each in our own way. Think that I'm wrong? Think that you know people who are beacons of normalcy for you? That the people you know are glimpses of a good life that you'll have some day if you just walk away from the wrestling game you channel all your aggression through?"
"Patrick, I am bleeding on the God damn floor mats..."
"Nuh uh, buddy... I've hacked their records, their texts and emails. Voice In The Grey, remember? I hack everything you love." His wolfish smile beats over the console, and I just looked out the window, disgruntled at his intrusiveness. "Think the people you know aren't monsters, let me tell you how much money Hiro is taking out of his son's own college fund, his God damn baby's trust fund to put towards a free cam site for sex workers. Without his wife's knowledge, no less. Or Array, you wouldn't believe the call she placed to her mother, there was one night when Alastair had had too much wine after a show of hers and he gave her - "
"ENOUGH, PATRICK. GOD DAMMIT."
"Humans are monsters, brother. I know I am." He lets out a little, happy sigh. "I'm horrible. I'm evil."
"But I'm human, too. I have understandable motivations, don't I? All I've ever wanted was what you had. You can bitch about Eric Shane all you want, brother but, at least you had a pot to piss in, at least you and he had a home together."
His teeth grit and his gnarled hands grip the steering wheel. "I bounced around from foster home to foster home... while you lived with the man who birthed me... you left him like an ingrate, you let him die alone in that trailer... the place you called your one home... the place where you were WANTED."
"Patrick, I - I was never... wanted, there, dad and I -"
"Save it." Patrick snaps, bitterly. And then, he returns to his, more upbeat pitch. "But that is the second part of the lesson that you need to understand. All your monsters are human, too."
"Patrick," I look out, as we're exiting the main part of the riot in this neighborhood, turning into a crowded street of row houses, low income and run down old urban communities. "Patrick, where is this... lesson taking us?"
"All monsters are human," he repeats, in riddles. His upper lip has a sheen of fanatical sweat, his eyes an intensely burning focus on the road. He doesn't even stop, gunning the engine and bumping into a rioter at enough speed to send the man careening off. "Sickeningly, weakly human. That's the lesson, Kyle. The things that haunt you. The fears that birthed you, that created your demons... they were born of weak, bifurcated men just like you are."
Maybe, from a certain point of view he's on to something. I think about Grimm, what I considered MY bugaboo in PCW up until March of this year. Grimm's laconic style and economy of words lends him a brutal inscrutability, like nothing you say phases him. I tried so hard my first two times facing him to build a case of myself being better than him only for him to barely say a word on me compared to the ten paragraphs I said about him. Taking losses to him broke my ego. But when I moved on in my career, claiming the World title despite those setbacks, Grimm was put back in my path... and I was forced to confront how I saw him. And now, in clearer perspective, I see the fear that held me back. It's a bit like Patrick was talking about, I spoke in empty platitudes that meant nothing, talk about ego and how much better I was for the company than Grimm... but I was stepping lightly around him, afraid of facing him because I bought in to the fear he instilled. But now, in the clear light of day, I see Grimm for what he is, ultimately. I see the man who wrote off facing me again because he didn't care, he'd beaten me three times. Arrogance. I see the man who has not succeeded at a single one of his goals in this calendar year, not winning the World Title, not winning the North American Title. And I see that if I put everything on the line and don't give in to the fear I faced when I was trying to bamboozle my way past Grimm with flash and empty words and just... speak... that I can prove just as effective.
"Where'd you go, brother?" Patrick snarls, looking over at me. "Thinking about wrestling again?"
He reaches across the console divide and clouts me on the ear, still keeping a steady hand on the wheel. His hit was surprisingly strong. "Pay attention."
He pulls a file out from under the seat with one hand, without looking, plops it in my lap. He still has that pulled, stretched look of manic, intense, burning drive. I rub my stab wound absently, glance over at him, then pop open the manila folder. It's police reports. I know better now than to ask how Patrick obtained them. He's good at what he does. I know the subject on the file.
"He worked with dad... at the plant."
"Brian Lindenfeld, dad's old drinking buddy," Patrick turns the syllables over with his tongue, dodging the car around a burning car. As we've gotten deeper into the grid of this little community of row houses, the riot has quieted down to a few stragglers, a few people breaking and entering houses for a score of televisions or breaking into a stranger's car.
"I know dad is your demon, still inside of your head, and I never got to know the man as you did, but even if you rationally know better you still have an exaggerated view of your monster. He's grown the size of the Beast in Dante's Inferno in myth and stature in your dreams." I squint, and I see in the police report a string of priors that looks very familiar to me. Police called to the home multiple times for noise complaints, domestic disturbance calls...
"Lindenfeld has a record of domestic abuse a mile wide, he -"
"But he was just a good old boy raised in a generation that valued toughness and rubbed noses in emotional honesty. The chain goes back past his father, and his father, Eric Shane was made just the same way you were made... tuned up by a drunk's rough hands, a father figure who told him to stop being a little pussy, boys don't cry. He drank to dull the pain of emotions he was never taught to process and hit for exploring."
Part of me wanted to break off, tell Patrick oh, cry me a river with those old excuses, that old he was born in a different time with outdated attitudes excuse. Eric Shane was who he was because he was rotten to the core. And the string of priors that mirrored Lindenfeld's was -
The string of priors that -
"Patrick, are you taking me to -"
"Lindenfeld was much the same, you know... in fact the reason Eric and Brian went on so well was this bond. This unspoken bond, this is how men should be. It was something they could celebrate over a pint at the Red Eye after their shift ended..."
My eyes frantically scanned over the police reports. Eyewitness testimony. Other people interviewed. "Brian had a little girl... she's... my age, and she -"
"And she suffered a cycle of violence and continuing abuse from a drunken old asshole, a roughneck factory worker who grew up in a broken home and passed on his damage to his only child. Sound familiar, brother?"
"Patrick, you didn't -" We had pulled up to a row house, a broken, destitute thing that looked like it was made after one of the World Wars. Cars lined the streets.
"I corresponded with Cassie Lindenfeld for some time over email in the run up to Purge," he says, calmly, coldly. His breath is a hot rasp deep in his diaphragm. He takes a hit of his inhaler. "I planted the seed, talking to Cassie about her failed relationships... the intangible, always present anger she couldn't define... how she felt like she was missing something..."
He tapped his forefinger against his chin, reminiscing... "It's quite curious, since Mister Brian Lindenfeld is still alive, and him and Cassie have never had a therapeutic tete-a-tete or talk about what transpired between them well until adulthood... Cassie felt like what was missing between them was a reckoning... an act of final vengeance."
"PATRICK!"
"No, no, this is good, see... Cassie has finally pulled off the mask and let loose the monster that Brian Lindenfeld created... and maybe, he'll unmask too, show her his monster, that was imparted into his heart by his father, and his father, and so far back down the chain. They'll face each other, without masks, and finally see each other for who they are."
The agitation made the stab wound in my side sear, but I kicked open the door. "God damn it, Patrick. This is worse than the Purge. This is murder."
"This is who she really is. Don't you want to see how this experiment plays out?" He said, staring at me with clinical curiousity.
"NO!" I roared back, turning and denying him and searching for the numbered house I saw in the police reports. 1134A... I scanned the worn numbers on mailboxes and door frames for a moment, before... there!
I couldn't say how Patrick kept up with me, with his palsied leg and walking crutch, but I didn't wait for him. I bounded up the steps, feeling the hot flush in my side. I was breathing as heavily as my brother. 1134A. It stood unlocked, and as I opened it, I heard her piercing voice like a breaking dish. 1134A.
1134A was a hostage situation, as I went from the foyer and the landing to the second floor steps and turned into the living room... there was broken glass, but no rioters or mobs tearing the place apart. There was carnage, but no fire or looting or stealing TVS. There was a lone figure, holding a gun, wild eyed, frenzied by the promise of Purging all of the pain from decades. And there was a cowering man.
He couldn't have reminded me more of Dad. Same lush red nose with burst capillaries underneath, same greasy hair, same bloated face. He had a pot belly, a strappy shirt and he was in boxers. He stammered, and his rheumy eyes looked ringed with tears. In the frenzy, it was easy to lose sight, this was an old man. Not the corded, muscled worker that Eric had been over 12 years ago, Brian Lindenfeld was just an old man in his bedtime tee and boxers, trembling in front of an intruder with a gun, his sour beer smell mingling with pee, his pores brimming with tears, and his face a twisted mask of grief.
"Cassie! No!"
She swept the gun towards the sound. I felt Patrick at my back now, his breath wheezing like an engine, his eyes cutting into the back of my head. I put my hands up.
"Cassie, I know -"
"Who are you?!" She said. She was crying too.
"Cassie," Patrick said, and he had trouble getting it out because the exertion was taking breath from his weak body, "I came for you. I'm your friend, P. Remember, we talked about tonight?"
"Tonight?" the gun dipped down, as behind it, I finally looked at the face of a girl who, if she hadn't been so put upon, in another life, could have been beautiful. Now, her face was a pale, chubby egg, her eyes magnified behind coke bottle glasses, her overbite harsh. But she had a mad, desperate look. The gun raised. "Tonight - TONIGHT HE DIES! FOR EVERYTHING HE DID TO ME!"
"Yes, Cassie, for everything he did to you," Patrick said, trying to slow his breathing.
"No, shut up, Patrick. Listen, Cassie... you don't have to do this." I try to get her to turn the gun back towards me. "I know how it feels, Cassie. You live your life every day afraid. Afraid it's never going to get better. Afraid that you're going to turn into him, if you haven't already. Afraid that you're going to pass on everything you learned from him. But it doesn't have to be that way."
"It - it - it -"
"No, Cassie, you don't have to be like him if you don't want to."
"He's right, Cassie. Look into the face of your tormentor. Tell me what you see."
I looked down at Brian Lindenfeld, a man who, on paper, was just as bad, if not worse, than Eric Shane, cut from the same cloth, and who imparted the same damage on someone he was supposed to nurture and protect. What I saw broke my heart. I saw an old man, living alone in a house that used to contain a family. A lonely, and frail man. He was clutching a dead cat, trembling with fear and dread and what must have been a lifetime of regret-chickens come home to roost. He was crying, audibly, visibly weeping, blubbering out sorries. He was an old man, alone. This was Cassie's monster.
Cassie's upper lip trembled, and she looked completely crumbled. "You don't know what he did to me... the times he t-touched me... what he - "
"I believe you," I say, stepping forward, touching her shoulder. She flinched away. Brian Lindenfeld continued to sit Injun style on the floor, rocking his dead cat.
"She shot mister Pablo... he was all I had left... I'm all alone in this world now... shot my cat... He gone..."
I looked over at Patrick, my eyes questioning his. He smiled, raised his arms, his stance asking me how I wanted to treat this. I looked back at Cassie. I could try and disarm her, but the leaking molten core that dripped from my gut hurt and slowed me down, and in this enclosed space... I looked at Brian Lindenfeld, giving no resistance, looking at his daughter with a shell shocked, humbled and utterly defeated shell of a face.
I knew I had to leave it up to her to do the right thing.
So I put my hand on the barrel of the gun. And I said, "Listen Cass... I can't make this decision for you, because I never did confront my monster the way you are yours. I'd have to think if Eric lived this long, this would be how he turned out."
"But you don't have to be what he made you."
Cassie's eyes turned behind her thick glasses, and she looked at me. She swallowed, and she nodded.
"Brother, I think, we should retreat and let the Lindenfelds have their Come to Jesus meeting," Patrick said, not without some caution.
"I don't want -"
"Let's go," he said, with one firm hand steady himself, grabbing my arm. And we turned out the door.
As we stepped onto the porch, and I heard, in the distance, the sound of fire engines honking as they rushed to the scenes of the Purge, and Beacon Hill glowed with hellish fire in the distance, my brother and I stood on the porch, side by side. Just watching it all. We listened intently, trying to parse over the sound of sirens if we could hear talking inside the house. I also, having to admit this to myself, waited for several moments to see if we'd hear a gunshot from inside 1134A.
"Patrick... all of this... why... what was the lesson here? That human beings are all as rotten as you want us to be, as you're trying to push us to be down at the core?"
Patrick pursed his lips thoughtfully, tilted his head to the side. "It all comes down to choice, brother." We didn't move to the car, just stood there, side by side, tensed and ears trained to the interior of the house.
He was listening for the sound of the gunshot, too.
Patrick, wan and pale as he always was, looked over at me from the passenger seat. There was so much Shane in that smile, I can see why he yearned so hard to be a connected member of the family. The wasted afflictions of his disease made bony sticks of his limbs, and his hair was a plastered mop swept over a balding peak, but his smile was a mirror of mine. And the way it didn't reach his eyes, know kindness or compassion, was dad's. He coughed a little, but smiled.
"You don't agree that you're having trouble? Because you feel such a disconnect, a bifurcation in who you are and how you present yourself?" Patrick taunted. He mused, crook of his elbow propped against the window so his thin body could turn at an angle.
"I don't agree with your thesis that it's natural." I was following his instructions, still. He had told me, after the mid-term elections that he had engineered a surprise for the borough. Tonight, still clinging to mystery, he told me to drive. Drive into Beacon Hill and we would talk.
"I came to you because I figured, similar life experiences, Pat. Although, you didn't live with dad, so maybe you aren't fully in the loop of how it feels to have this... itch in the pit of your heart you can never define -"
"Oh, can't I? A yearning? Hiraeth, a calling, a homesickness for a place that's never been? Hmmm, nope, this poor little castout illegitimate child has never felt that..."
"It's not that," I start, but that does hit close to the mark, actually. It's a niggling feeling, on the back of my tongue... "It's the question of who I am, underneath it all? Cause it feels like... sometimes, I swear... it's like this big, uber-confident Game God who's good at everything and is super cocky about his skills, that's a lie and I'm just an angry, fucked up, broken kid."
He raised a finger in the understood "One moment" gesture. "Your mistake is thinking that that isn't part of the human condition. Everyone wears a mask, till you strip it away. Everyone."
I roll my eyes at his pomposity and pop-psych supervillain spiel. "Thanks, Voice In The Grey."
"No, no," Patrick waves a hand, "I mean this, the underlying root of your problem isn't anger, it isn't rage. It's fear. Kyle Shane, God of Game is the wallpaper over your fear. In fact, all base human emotion is connected in some way to fears. And that is why I can help you, because I have a unique insight into the nature of fear. Stop the car. We're at our first stop."
"Stop the - Patrick, we're in the middle of the street, and it's..." I do pull to a stop in the middle of the lane, and I see the fires flickering in broken windows and I see tangled mobs of people roaming the street, engaging in pack mentality, mob rule. "...Patrick... what is this?"
"Purge." He smiles broadly. He opens the passenger door, stepping out into the crisp night air, holding his arms akimbo like a maestro rising to the chorus. "It was a simple, confusingly worded write in to the ballot on the polls in this district... a mass Reddit thread that grew to thousands of posts... a digital whisper on wind, a Millenial word of mouth... and they roam the streets tonight. To vent their anger. To take off their masks. During the day they present themselves as you do, adjusted, centered, confident at their jobs. But it's fear that's sending them out onto the streets," he says, jabbing a finger at a gaggle taking bats and axe handles to a car.
"It's fear that holds them back from being who they are. Fear of being looked down upon, fear of being thought of as lowlife scum. Even baser fears like the subliminal threat posed by that brown couple that owns the bodega... Hahaha..."
"Patrick, this is - this is fucked up..." I say, as I scan in the damage they're doing. Three men gather around an elderly woman in a hijab. A boy that could have been one of Johnny's classmate's cocking an arm back and letting fly with a brick. A group rocking a VW Beetle until it tips over. Chaos. Anarchy.
And then I see two men on either side of a car stopped trying to pull a screaming, kicking girl out of the window. My head swum. Intoxicated. Bewildered. And still the melee went on around me.
"Take it in, Kyle... this is what's lurking underneath that mask. And what you want to deny. What tears you apart is that you won't just let go."
I'm not even listening, I'm sprinting across the asphalt, kicking over litter and rubble to get to the Kia and stop the two men attacking the girl. She bites and claws one, ripping his face, and she pulls a knife from a sheath on her thigh. She slashed at one guy, cutting deep into his grasping hand. I threw them aside, and tried to help her to her feet, only to flinch and look down at the icefire thorn in my side; she withdrew the knife, and snarled "Stay away from me." I only choked a little bit, as the inside of my peacoat filled with blood.
I fell against the car. And I heard Patrick, roaring over the sound of the Purge rioters he had teased out of hiding, telling me from faraway to get up. I looked around for the girl. And as my spinning head darkened a little bit, I smelled acrid smoke. I thought I was in hell.
If I was, when I looked up, I saw the grinning face of the devil smiling down at me. "It's only when we're enticed to come out of hiding, without the punishment or repercussion for our fear to hold us back, that we can be who we are."
He lifted up my shirt, "Nasty little puncture wound, brother. But you'll live."
"Patrick... why... why did you - All of these people - "
"Be-CAUSE, dammit, I want you to see what human beings are capable of and I want you to stop being such a little bitch about having a dark side!! Am I a God, am I a good man, did I let my son down, wah, wah wahh..." His slap against my face is like a shock of cold water throwing me back into full conscious, a burst for air after the seeping blood from my creased side had me starting to sink.
"Because Purge is just the first part of my lesson tonight, Kyle... the first part of my teaching you how to live with the monster you have inside, that was imparted by the man who raised you."
He puts a finger right between my eyes like a gun barrel, and my eyes cross up to meet it, I gasp. "Because everything that holds you back from taking what you want, the shallow pretense that you're better than everyone else because you say it's so, that's getting boring. You got another one just like you at that shitty wrestling gig you got going... Gerard Angelo? Tangelo? Whatever... piss full of arrogance and thinking his shit doesn't stink, but it's just the same old boring, mud puddle shallow bullshit about how pretty he is and how your wrestling company needs someone of his nebulous skill level to take them to new heights. BO-RING. As if you hadn't spent all of 2017 performing that exact same act?"
I groaned, and rolled to a sitting position, holding my shirt in a wad up to the stab wound in my side. "Weird place for a tangent on that, but I'm with you... let's get back to the truck..."
"But that was a lie, Kyle, and you at least in the past three months have had the self-awareness to realize what this Gerard Tangelo person has not. That that lack of depth, that arrogance over being the best thing since sliced bread, every time he breathes he shoots Pure Class Wrestling 3 points higher in the Nielsen ratings, the company has never had any measure of success until he got there and he is to deliver; that there is a hollow, meaningless, empty way of life. I mean, you proved it. You gave every single thing you've had to Pure Class Wrestling. You sacrificed time, effort, mental exhaustion and every capacity of work you put into carrying the World title on your back and what did it get you? Push your girlfriend away, and your kid gets taken to a foster by the state."
"Thanks for reminding me of all that, brother." I get in the passenger seat, this time, groaning and pressing napkins from the glove compartment to staunch the wound.
"His life, Tangelo Angelo's life, by comparison - not important. Utterly meaningless. Because he is living the mask. He is living that playboy, pampered, happy life, but he doesn't ever take one second to examine the fear that holds him back. Because he is being held back, if he was as great as he thinks he is, we'd probably have heard about him in more than shitty direct to Redbox movies, right?"
I sigh, say nothing, wave my hand with a frustrated pantomime of "I guess." Patrick starts the ignition now, and smoothly puts it in drive. His breath only rasps a little, but it's giddy, and there's a funny little smile on his face. We roll through the packs of mob, and although a few people beat on the windows, Patrick keeps a steady enough pace that we drive on through the burning city block.
"But someone who's denying, who's living that pampered, all that matters is surface egotistical life, they're holding back because they're scared to examine what they have. You did. And you didn't like what you saw. So tell me, viewing it now, what do you see, brother?" Patrick waves at the people clawing at each other on the streets.
"I see... people." I say quietly. Leaving unspoken that every one of these aggressive, violent rabid animals out here were fucked up people. They were internet addicted sheep manipulated by vague promises and mob mentality into violence. Unless... maybe that was Patrick's point.
Patrick points a finger at me, cocked like a gun. Bingo. "All humans are monsters. That's lesson one."
"Hide it, refuse to deny it, everyone each in our own way. Think that I'm wrong? Think that you know people who are beacons of normalcy for you? That the people you know are glimpses of a good life that you'll have some day if you just walk away from the wrestling game you channel all your aggression through?"
"Patrick, I am bleeding on the God damn floor mats..."
"Nuh uh, buddy... I've hacked their records, their texts and emails. Voice In The Grey, remember? I hack everything you love." His wolfish smile beats over the console, and I just looked out the window, disgruntled at his intrusiveness. "Think the people you know aren't monsters, let me tell you how much money Hiro is taking out of his son's own college fund, his God damn baby's trust fund to put towards a free cam site for sex workers. Without his wife's knowledge, no less. Or Array, you wouldn't believe the call she placed to her mother, there was one night when Alastair had had too much wine after a show of hers and he gave her - "
"ENOUGH, PATRICK. GOD DAMMIT."
"Humans are monsters, brother. I know I am." He lets out a little, happy sigh. "I'm horrible. I'm evil."
"But I'm human, too. I have understandable motivations, don't I? All I've ever wanted was what you had. You can bitch about Eric Shane all you want, brother but, at least you had a pot to piss in, at least you and he had a home together."
His teeth grit and his gnarled hands grip the steering wheel. "I bounced around from foster home to foster home... while you lived with the man who birthed me... you left him like an ingrate, you let him die alone in that trailer... the place you called your one home... the place where you were WANTED."
"Patrick, I - I was never... wanted, there, dad and I -"
"Save it." Patrick snaps, bitterly. And then, he returns to his, more upbeat pitch. "But that is the second part of the lesson that you need to understand. All your monsters are human, too."
"Patrick," I look out, as we're exiting the main part of the riot in this neighborhood, turning into a crowded street of row houses, low income and run down old urban communities. "Patrick, where is this... lesson taking us?"
"All monsters are human," he repeats, in riddles. His upper lip has a sheen of fanatical sweat, his eyes an intensely burning focus on the road. He doesn't even stop, gunning the engine and bumping into a rioter at enough speed to send the man careening off. "Sickeningly, weakly human. That's the lesson, Kyle. The things that haunt you. The fears that birthed you, that created your demons... they were born of weak, bifurcated men just like you are."
Maybe, from a certain point of view he's on to something. I think about Grimm, what I considered MY bugaboo in PCW up until March of this year. Grimm's laconic style and economy of words lends him a brutal inscrutability, like nothing you say phases him. I tried so hard my first two times facing him to build a case of myself being better than him only for him to barely say a word on me compared to the ten paragraphs I said about him. Taking losses to him broke my ego. But when I moved on in my career, claiming the World title despite those setbacks, Grimm was put back in my path... and I was forced to confront how I saw him. And now, in clearer perspective, I see the fear that held me back. It's a bit like Patrick was talking about, I spoke in empty platitudes that meant nothing, talk about ego and how much better I was for the company than Grimm... but I was stepping lightly around him, afraid of facing him because I bought in to the fear he instilled. But now, in the clear light of day, I see Grimm for what he is, ultimately. I see the man who wrote off facing me again because he didn't care, he'd beaten me three times. Arrogance. I see the man who has not succeeded at a single one of his goals in this calendar year, not winning the World Title, not winning the North American Title. And I see that if I put everything on the line and don't give in to the fear I faced when I was trying to bamboozle my way past Grimm with flash and empty words and just... speak... that I can prove just as effective.
"Where'd you go, brother?" Patrick snarls, looking over at me. "Thinking about wrestling again?"
He reaches across the console divide and clouts me on the ear, still keeping a steady hand on the wheel. His hit was surprisingly strong. "Pay attention."
He pulls a file out from under the seat with one hand, without looking, plops it in my lap. He still has that pulled, stretched look of manic, intense, burning drive. I rub my stab wound absently, glance over at him, then pop open the manila folder. It's police reports. I know better now than to ask how Patrick obtained them. He's good at what he does. I know the subject on the file.
"He worked with dad... at the plant."
"Brian Lindenfeld, dad's old drinking buddy," Patrick turns the syllables over with his tongue, dodging the car around a burning car. As we've gotten deeper into the grid of this little community of row houses, the riot has quieted down to a few stragglers, a few people breaking and entering houses for a score of televisions or breaking into a stranger's car.
"I know dad is your demon, still inside of your head, and I never got to know the man as you did, but even if you rationally know better you still have an exaggerated view of your monster. He's grown the size of the Beast in Dante's Inferno in myth and stature in your dreams." I squint, and I see in the police report a string of priors that looks very familiar to me. Police called to the home multiple times for noise complaints, domestic disturbance calls...
"Lindenfeld has a record of domestic abuse a mile wide, he -"
"But he was just a good old boy raised in a generation that valued toughness and rubbed noses in emotional honesty. The chain goes back past his father, and his father, Eric Shane was made just the same way you were made... tuned up by a drunk's rough hands, a father figure who told him to stop being a little pussy, boys don't cry. He drank to dull the pain of emotions he was never taught to process and hit for exploring."
Part of me wanted to break off, tell Patrick oh, cry me a river with those old excuses, that old he was born in a different time with outdated attitudes excuse. Eric Shane was who he was because he was rotten to the core. And the string of priors that mirrored Lindenfeld's was -
The string of priors that -
"Patrick, are you taking me to -"
"Lindenfeld was much the same, you know... in fact the reason Eric and Brian went on so well was this bond. This unspoken bond, this is how men should be. It was something they could celebrate over a pint at the Red Eye after their shift ended..."
My eyes frantically scanned over the police reports. Eyewitness testimony. Other people interviewed. "Brian had a little girl... she's... my age, and she -"
"And she suffered a cycle of violence and continuing abuse from a drunken old asshole, a roughneck factory worker who grew up in a broken home and passed on his damage to his only child. Sound familiar, brother?"
"Patrick, you didn't -" We had pulled up to a row house, a broken, destitute thing that looked like it was made after one of the World Wars. Cars lined the streets.
"I corresponded with Cassie Lindenfeld for some time over email in the run up to Purge," he says, calmly, coldly. His breath is a hot rasp deep in his diaphragm. He takes a hit of his inhaler. "I planted the seed, talking to Cassie about her failed relationships... the intangible, always present anger she couldn't define... how she felt like she was missing something..."
He tapped his forefinger against his chin, reminiscing... "It's quite curious, since Mister Brian Lindenfeld is still alive, and him and Cassie have never had a therapeutic tete-a-tete or talk about what transpired between them well until adulthood... Cassie felt like what was missing between them was a reckoning... an act of final vengeance."
"PATRICK!"
"No, no, this is good, see... Cassie has finally pulled off the mask and let loose the monster that Brian Lindenfeld created... and maybe, he'll unmask too, show her his monster, that was imparted into his heart by his father, and his father, and so far back down the chain. They'll face each other, without masks, and finally see each other for who they are."
The agitation made the stab wound in my side sear, but I kicked open the door. "God damn it, Patrick. This is worse than the Purge. This is murder."
"This is who she really is. Don't you want to see how this experiment plays out?" He said, staring at me with clinical curiousity.
"NO!" I roared back, turning and denying him and searching for the numbered house I saw in the police reports. 1134A... I scanned the worn numbers on mailboxes and door frames for a moment, before... there!
I couldn't say how Patrick kept up with me, with his palsied leg and walking crutch, but I didn't wait for him. I bounded up the steps, feeling the hot flush in my side. I was breathing as heavily as my brother. 1134A. It stood unlocked, and as I opened it, I heard her piercing voice like a breaking dish. 1134A.
1134A was a hostage situation, as I went from the foyer and the landing to the second floor steps and turned into the living room... there was broken glass, but no rioters or mobs tearing the place apart. There was carnage, but no fire or looting or stealing TVS. There was a lone figure, holding a gun, wild eyed, frenzied by the promise of Purging all of the pain from decades. And there was a cowering man.
He couldn't have reminded me more of Dad. Same lush red nose with burst capillaries underneath, same greasy hair, same bloated face. He had a pot belly, a strappy shirt and he was in boxers. He stammered, and his rheumy eyes looked ringed with tears. In the frenzy, it was easy to lose sight, this was an old man. Not the corded, muscled worker that Eric had been over 12 years ago, Brian Lindenfeld was just an old man in his bedtime tee and boxers, trembling in front of an intruder with a gun, his sour beer smell mingling with pee, his pores brimming with tears, and his face a twisted mask of grief.
"Cassie! No!"
She swept the gun towards the sound. I felt Patrick at my back now, his breath wheezing like an engine, his eyes cutting into the back of my head. I put my hands up.
"Cassie, I know -"
"Who are you?!" She said. She was crying too.
"Cassie," Patrick said, and he had trouble getting it out because the exertion was taking breath from his weak body, "I came for you. I'm your friend, P. Remember, we talked about tonight?"
"Tonight?" the gun dipped down, as behind it, I finally looked at the face of a girl who, if she hadn't been so put upon, in another life, could have been beautiful. Now, her face was a pale, chubby egg, her eyes magnified behind coke bottle glasses, her overbite harsh. But she had a mad, desperate look. The gun raised. "Tonight - TONIGHT HE DIES! FOR EVERYTHING HE DID TO ME!"
"Yes, Cassie, for everything he did to you," Patrick said, trying to slow his breathing.
"No, shut up, Patrick. Listen, Cassie... you don't have to do this." I try to get her to turn the gun back towards me. "I know how it feels, Cassie. You live your life every day afraid. Afraid it's never going to get better. Afraid that you're going to turn into him, if you haven't already. Afraid that you're going to pass on everything you learned from him. But it doesn't have to be that way."
"It - it - it -"
"No, Cassie, you don't have to be like him if you don't want to."
"He's right, Cassie. Look into the face of your tormentor. Tell me what you see."
I looked down at Brian Lindenfeld, a man who, on paper, was just as bad, if not worse, than Eric Shane, cut from the same cloth, and who imparted the same damage on someone he was supposed to nurture and protect. What I saw broke my heart. I saw an old man, living alone in a house that used to contain a family. A lonely, and frail man. He was clutching a dead cat, trembling with fear and dread and what must have been a lifetime of regret-chickens come home to roost. He was crying, audibly, visibly weeping, blubbering out sorries. He was an old man, alone. This was Cassie's monster.
Cassie's upper lip trembled, and she looked completely crumbled. "You don't know what he did to me... the times he t-touched me... what he - "
"I believe you," I say, stepping forward, touching her shoulder. She flinched away. Brian Lindenfeld continued to sit Injun style on the floor, rocking his dead cat.
"She shot mister Pablo... he was all I had left... I'm all alone in this world now... shot my cat... He gone..."
I looked over at Patrick, my eyes questioning his. He smiled, raised his arms, his stance asking me how I wanted to treat this. I looked back at Cassie. I could try and disarm her, but the leaking molten core that dripped from my gut hurt and slowed me down, and in this enclosed space... I looked at Brian Lindenfeld, giving no resistance, looking at his daughter with a shell shocked, humbled and utterly defeated shell of a face.
I knew I had to leave it up to her to do the right thing.
So I put my hand on the barrel of the gun. And I said, "Listen Cass... I can't make this decision for you, because I never did confront my monster the way you are yours. I'd have to think if Eric lived this long, this would be how he turned out."
"But you don't have to be what he made you."
Cassie's eyes turned behind her thick glasses, and she looked at me. She swallowed, and she nodded.
"Brother, I think, we should retreat and let the Lindenfelds have their Come to Jesus meeting," Patrick said, not without some caution.
"I don't want -"
"Let's go," he said, with one firm hand steady himself, grabbing my arm. And we turned out the door.
As we stepped onto the porch, and I heard, in the distance, the sound of fire engines honking as they rushed to the scenes of the Purge, and Beacon Hill glowed with hellish fire in the distance, my brother and I stood on the porch, side by side. Just watching it all. We listened intently, trying to parse over the sound of sirens if we could hear talking inside the house. I also, having to admit this to myself, waited for several moments to see if we'd hear a gunshot from inside 1134A.
"Patrick... all of this... why... what was the lesson here? That human beings are all as rotten as you want us to be, as you're trying to push us to be down at the core?"
Patrick pursed his lips thoughtfully, tilted his head to the side. "It all comes down to choice, brother." We didn't move to the car, just stood there, side by side, tensed and ears trained to the interior of the house.
He was listening for the sound of the gunshot, too.
