Post by Grimm on Oct 21, 2019 8:25:05 GMT -5
Once upon a time, long before Pure Class Wrestling existed, long before the concept of such an enterprise was even a twinkle in some flimflam man’s eye, a more-than-a-village, not-yet-a-town sat in the bend of a muddy river. Once a year, when the veil between worlds was thinnest, a lottery determined which of the residents would make the journey deep into the surrounding hills. Up a dark hollow touched by the sun’s rare influence on only the brightest of days. These unfortunate souls guised themselves as inhuman critters and creatures in hopes of fooling the haints and tokens lurking along the way. They smudged hands and faces with ashes and burnt cork. Dressed in rags and burlap sacks. Some would make the walk beneath a bleached horse skull and white sheet. “Old Hob,” they called it. Waving juniper branches, with pockets full of iron and salt. They all carried soul cakes marked with a cross, tasting of allspice, ginger, nutmeg, and raisins. Carried as an offering to the spirit of the land -- some…thing that would wait on them each year atop a ravaged peak. They sang songs to the dead as they walked. Up the path into the gloomy confluence of the hills, in hopes of gaining favor. Escaping pestilence and famine. Guaranteeing strong broods of children and bountiful harvests. Basically, the makings of what most would consider a decent life.
Now, the more-than-a-village, not-yet-a-town, had indeed grown into a town. And those tales were told on a certain night that marked the beginning of the dark half of the year. With some embellishments, of course. Like, for instance, the offerings had not been little cakes, but instead the losers of the lottery themselves. They had walked into those woods and never returned. It was only the rare trick-or-treater who was either daring, ignorant, or outright stupid who made that walk these days. Times change. Tales change. Myths shift. The threat of tricks at the hands of Phinehas Dillinger outweighed any hope of treats. And his appearance on this night did not work to ease anyone’s mind.
He stepped across old blood sprinkled on the threshold, all dried to rust and powder. He stood on the porch, looking down the yard to the gravel road that wound its way toward Hangtown. A little this side of the snow and that side of the haze. He stood wearing a harlequin coat of many colors…if said harlequin had passed through the earth, emerging from passage tombs and burial mounds. Belted by a ram-horned serpent. The coat was all thread and patches and billowing winds breaking as a tide.
A wave of orange and yellow and red pinwheeled down the slopes.
Phinehas donned the skull of a stag. White, its jaw curved into a leer, somehow. Concentrated auroras whirled around the tips of the antlers like fairie fire. He leaned on a crooked staff of black locust wood. Stared with eyes untouched by love or joy or sorrow. His breath plumed out behind the mask, hot with the taste of fallen foes.
Candles glinted in the windows. Lights flickered further back in the deepest reaches of the house. The wavering of different colored flames, determined by in just what the beeswax and tallow had been soaked. Green for cunning, blue for fate. Indigo for disregard, black with rage.
Back on the porch. Despite Phinehas’s fearsome countenance…despite the reverence of the night…he did not think of grinding bones to make his bread. Or the scorched circle below marking the bonfire of nights past. No, at the moment his concentration lit on…
Pure Class Wrestling. And all those points in-between.
The ongoing tensions between the Black Hand and the Chronological Order. The break-in at the Hangtown Savings and Loan, which anyone with any sense could deduce had been perpetrated by Mr. Justin Michaels. Justin, on his own quest to uncover certain truths about those Black Hand outliers tormenting him so. The most recent loss against Michaels, against Stormm, and how Grimm should have known better. He could not afford to be sloppy like that, in any match. He must be sharper. More calculating. Less merciful. He must anticipate more. Must be…grimmer.
The fact was that Jason Willard and Grimm would both be fresh off losses as they faced each other at All Hallows Eve. Willard’s match against Rick Majors had been a back-and-forth affair, but at the end of the night it came down to Majors having had enough. And so that deranged Mickey Mouse didn’t stand a chance. Now they would be facing one another in a Match on Haunted Hill. And Willard probably still held a grudge over that shovel-to-the-skull incident at Mass Destruction the Ninth.
Pining over those other concerns would do Grimm no good in this match, especially given Willard’s mental state right now. Any one claiming to have him figured out was a liar. And were they to step into a ring with him thinking as much, they would find themselves a loser.
A wind rushed up the hollow. Phinehas listened to the bare ruined choir of dead trees in October.
Willard was not all that different from The Force of Nature when it came to their work in the ring. Not really. Grimm would take that into account, and those lessons learned from their previous meetings.
On top of all that, this perverse alliance between Gerard Angelo, David Hunter, and Holden Ross could eventually require the Hangtown Horror’s involvement whether he sought it out or not. The good of the federation could depend on it. An alliance seeking to take over, to remake PCW in its own image. Yet again.
There was nothing new under the sun.
But out there, the sound of things stepping in the woods, through the leaves. The sensation of those leaves crunching to dust underfoot. Under paw. Under hoof.
Phinehas inhaled. The inside of the skull smelled ancient. Like old paper stacked on a shelf of fairy tales and alchemy schematics. It tasted like something you might lick off a wound. He exhaled in a sigh.
Nex Addo.
Now, the more-than-a-village, not-yet-a-town, had indeed grown into a town. And those tales were told on a certain night that marked the beginning of the dark half of the year. With some embellishments, of course. Like, for instance, the offerings had not been little cakes, but instead the losers of the lottery themselves. They had walked into those woods and never returned. It was only the rare trick-or-treater who was either daring, ignorant, or outright stupid who made that walk these days. Times change. Tales change. Myths shift. The threat of tricks at the hands of Phinehas Dillinger outweighed any hope of treats. And his appearance on this night did not work to ease anyone’s mind.
He stepped across old blood sprinkled on the threshold, all dried to rust and powder. He stood on the porch, looking down the yard to the gravel road that wound its way toward Hangtown. A little this side of the snow and that side of the haze. He stood wearing a harlequin coat of many colors…if said harlequin had passed through the earth, emerging from passage tombs and burial mounds. Belted by a ram-horned serpent. The coat was all thread and patches and billowing winds breaking as a tide.
A wave of orange and yellow and red pinwheeled down the slopes.
Phinehas donned the skull of a stag. White, its jaw curved into a leer, somehow. Concentrated auroras whirled around the tips of the antlers like fairie fire. He leaned on a crooked staff of black locust wood. Stared with eyes untouched by love or joy or sorrow. His breath plumed out behind the mask, hot with the taste of fallen foes.
Candles glinted in the windows. Lights flickered further back in the deepest reaches of the house. The wavering of different colored flames, determined by in just what the beeswax and tallow had been soaked. Green for cunning, blue for fate. Indigo for disregard, black with rage.
Back on the porch. Despite Phinehas’s fearsome countenance…despite the reverence of the night…he did not think of grinding bones to make his bread. Or the scorched circle below marking the bonfire of nights past. No, at the moment his concentration lit on…
Pure Class Wrestling. And all those points in-between.
The ongoing tensions between the Black Hand and the Chronological Order. The break-in at the Hangtown Savings and Loan, which anyone with any sense could deduce had been perpetrated by Mr. Justin Michaels. Justin, on his own quest to uncover certain truths about those Black Hand outliers tormenting him so. The most recent loss against Michaels, against Stormm, and how Grimm should have known better. He could not afford to be sloppy like that, in any match. He must be sharper. More calculating. Less merciful. He must anticipate more. Must be…grimmer.
The fact was that Jason Willard and Grimm would both be fresh off losses as they faced each other at All Hallows Eve. Willard’s match against Rick Majors had been a back-and-forth affair, but at the end of the night it came down to Majors having had enough. And so that deranged Mickey Mouse didn’t stand a chance. Now they would be facing one another in a Match on Haunted Hill. And Willard probably still held a grudge over that shovel-to-the-skull incident at Mass Destruction the Ninth.
Pining over those other concerns would do Grimm no good in this match, especially given Willard’s mental state right now. Any one claiming to have him figured out was a liar. And were they to step into a ring with him thinking as much, they would find themselves a loser.
A wind rushed up the hollow. Phinehas listened to the bare ruined choir of dead trees in October.
Willard was not all that different from The Force of Nature when it came to their work in the ring. Not really. Grimm would take that into account, and those lessons learned from their previous meetings.
On top of all that, this perverse alliance between Gerard Angelo, David Hunter, and Holden Ross could eventually require the Hangtown Horror’s involvement whether he sought it out or not. The good of the federation could depend on it. An alliance seeking to take over, to remake PCW in its own image. Yet again.
There was nothing new under the sun.
But out there, the sound of things stepping in the woods, through the leaves. The sensation of those leaves crunching to dust underfoot. Under paw. Under hoof.
Phinehas inhaled. The inside of the skull smelled ancient. Like old paper stacked on a shelf of fairy tales and alchemy schematics. It tasted like something you might lick off a wound. He exhaled in a sigh.
Nex Addo.
