Post by silence on Nov 12, 2006 13:46:33 GMT -5
His greatest adversary had always been, and seemed forever destined to be, the conjuring of his own twisted mentality. The haunting thoughts that approached him during slumber, reliving the moment in which he witnessed his mother being taken from the world, along with his father and brother. The dark figures that stalked him, shapes of monsters or men, he was not sure. Yet they were terrifying nonetheless. They all wanted to claim the same thing.
His life.
Even though nearly every bit of it was broken into shards, each shard broken into smaller pieces, and scattered along the path of his just-as-broken life, breadcrumbs leading backward to happier times. Breadcrumbs that he could not follow, because bread simply cannot turn back time.
There were some nights he almost made it through the entirety of without a dream, which was a direct result of him laying with his eyes open for uncountable hours, gazing upward at the ceiling, praying to anyone who would listen that he would not recount the more rigid portions of his past. Though as soon as his eyelids came crashing down to meet one another, he found himself lost in the abyss that exists beyond his waking hours.
Silence knew that Ralph was aware of the dreams, but he also knew that Ralph would not approach him in concern. The only sounds to leave the vocal chords of Silence during the time he had been with Ralph were impossible to avoid, the screams Silence knew he let out, screams that would make a banshee blush in a fit of jealousy. The only vibrations to escape the voice box of an otherwise silent shell.
He worried about the possibility of depriving Ralph of sleep, but he could not help it. He did feel a hint of guilt, but that was overtaken by the horrors he had to face on his own. All alone. Each time, he had nowhere to turn. The figures lurked at every corner, each turn he took they were one step ahead of him. It was always different, yet the outcome was always the same. The darkness would fall upon him, threatening to take his life, and he felt he would die each time. He could almost taste the death creeping down his throat, coating his windpipe with a thin sheet of ice, constricting his lungs with the same bone crushing power as a fully grown boa. Sometimes, he wished for it to end. For it to take his life away from him, so he would not have to see or hear or feel the darkness anymore.
But just as sure as it was to come to him, it would leave him. Right on the edge of his sanity, on what he thought was the edge of his life, on the stoop of the Grim Reaper himself. It was as simple as the Reaper pushing the door open even a crack, to let that dark light Silence so desperately wanted to follow shine through, to accept him.
A chilled sweat always greeted him as he shot upward. A chilled sweat to accompany the burning inside of his flesh. On the inside, he was on fire, yet on the outside, he was freezing. An uncomfortable oxymoron, which was what he had come to call ‘the afterward.’
Why did he come so close, only to be ripped away from it? How did he make it through his tainted life, without contemplating ending it on his own? If the darkness would not take him, he could have brought the darkness to him, forced it to overwhelm and consume him. Plunge into it, into the pool of death from the highest diving board he could find. A belly flop, ripping his skin right off of the bone. A thud as he hit the liquid, liquid on the verge of freezing, and then darkness. Forever. The reason why was simple.
Ralph. Ralph had saved him once, and Silence felt that he would save him again. The dreams would end, and Ralph would be the one to end them. The only certainty in his battered and beaten life was a man who he had known for so long, yet knew so little about. A man that had been as much of a father to him as the one he had before he was torn away from his existence, who had so much faith in a boy turned man with nearly nothing to give. Nothing but dedication, determination, and a mean streak a mile wide. And that was all that Ralph needed. All he and Silence needed for them to make a bigger splash than the aforementioned belly-flop, into the world of professional wrestling. And just as the dreams came on their own without fail, the world of professional wrestling finally came knocking upon the door of the man known for the past ten years as Silence, and his unlikely mentor, a former low-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit, soon to be known to the masses to gather in an arena in Greenville, South Carolina, as The Voice.
A sound of thunder. Only, it isn’t thunder at all. A rumble, yes, however it is something else. A bag of marbles falling one by one down a flight of wooden stairs. The sound punctures the silence as the marbles reach the bottom, and roll across an also wooden floor. As the thunderous thud of rolling marbles drowns out and silence dominates the sound waves once more, a bolt of lightning takes a cut through the darkness. A thin, forked bolt of vocal power, chill-sending in its own right.
Dropped. Rolling, until friction stops you in a pile, a pile of failure. That is how you must feel at this moment.
The Voice appears at the top of the stairs, holding a finger to his lips. He lets out a whisper, almost too faint to hear.
Listen... what is it that you hear? Nothing... which is what you are destined to become.
The Voice removes his finger from his lips, and begins to step down the stairs. With each footfall, a creak rings out, giving the whole setting an uneasy feel.
James Keenan, you have been left in the dust by your former partner. You may wonder why. The answer is simple. You have nothing to offer him. Nothing but a burden, an anchor to his ship that so wishes to sail into the ranks of great men. He needed to escalate himself, to feel what it is like at the top. So what he had to do, was cut loose his anchor. And he did. Now you shall sink. All the way down, to the ocean floor. Where you belong.
The Voice reaches the bottom of the stairs, and begins to walk along the floor, to where the marbles have gathered in an uneven section of floor.
Now you must face a fate so unbearable, that many rue to even speak of it. You must step into the ring with he who does not speak, he who does not feel. He who only inflicts. A messenger. However, he does not deliver good news. He does not necessarily deliver bad news. What he delivers, is an inclination of what you shall feel when your time comes, your inevitable end. Silence will show you suffering, and you will be wishing you were being rejected by Kaden Keene once more. Wishing that you were in the ring, staring across into his eyes, a place where you stand a fighting chance.
The Voice adjusts the marbles with his foot, and the rolling sounds much louder than anticipated. The marbles continue to roll around, until the sound is accompanied by The Voice’s acidic tone.
You will know the feeling of silence, the feeling of darkness, after my monster is finished with you. And you will have nothing left but a wish, a hope, a dream. A dream for the excruciating pain to end.
As The Voice finishes speaking, the rolling of the marbles stop. Everything is quiet. Until familiar rhythmic breathing tolls. Out of the shadows steps Silence, his long dreadlocks draping down around his chest as they so often are, and then, the breathing stops. Darkness sets in. And, nothing...
It is said there is a first time for everything. The first time that Silence woke from his nightmares without the accompaniment of a scream welled up from the bottom of his very innards, it was instead to the static ringing of Ralph’s telephone. Surprised, shaken, and relieved as Silence was that the dream had ended early, he found himself listening attentively for Ralph’s voice.
‘Yes, this is him.’
Who could be calling Ralph at such a time? Silence glanced across the dark room to the digital numbers on the alarm clock that had never served to wake Silence from sleep. It was not yet mid-day.
‘I believe he’s ready, yes. He has been working very hard, for a very long time.’
So Silence was the topic of discussion. Yet still the question persisted. Who?
‘That’s great news. When? Oh, really? A month? That’s, uh, that’s perfect. But, uh, there is a problem. He doesn’t talk.’
Silence sat up, his back completely straight, listening more attentive than ever to the telephone conversation going on in the adjacent room.
‘He has a manager. Yes, uh, myself. Oh, I’m ready as well. I’ve been working on it for a while. Yes, we can discuss it whenever you fee– yes, okay. That’s perfect. Thank you so much.’
Silence’s heart began to pound in his chest. Could it really be his time? Would he be able to finally fulfill Ralph’s wish of appearing in front of a live audience, to wrestle... the one part of him aside from Ralph that had not faltered over the years.
‘Alright, I’ll let him know right away. Once again, thank you very much. Good-bye now.’
Silence heard the receiver come down upon the base of Ralph’s phone. He heard the scrape of Ralph’s chair across the floor. Footsteps approaching his room. When Ralph opened the door, he was surprised to see Silence sitting straight up in his bed. The smile on Ralph’s face was unforgettable.
‘We did it, Silence. That was Pure Perfection Incorporated...we’re going to the big show!’
Silence smiled at Ralph, unable to hide his excitement. However, the real reason Silence was so excited was because he knew Ralph was truly happy. All of the hard work and sacrifice both of them had made was culminating in a chance to prove themselves on a national level. It was much bigger than Silence thought, better than he had hoped. He expected something small, but no. The show was where he was headed, and the show was where he would make his mark. He was ready, and Ralph was ready, but was the world ready for Silence?
Only time would tell.
His life.
Even though nearly every bit of it was broken into shards, each shard broken into smaller pieces, and scattered along the path of his just-as-broken life, breadcrumbs leading backward to happier times. Breadcrumbs that he could not follow, because bread simply cannot turn back time.
There were some nights he almost made it through the entirety of without a dream, which was a direct result of him laying with his eyes open for uncountable hours, gazing upward at the ceiling, praying to anyone who would listen that he would not recount the more rigid portions of his past. Though as soon as his eyelids came crashing down to meet one another, he found himself lost in the abyss that exists beyond his waking hours.
Silence knew that Ralph was aware of the dreams, but he also knew that Ralph would not approach him in concern. The only sounds to leave the vocal chords of Silence during the time he had been with Ralph were impossible to avoid, the screams Silence knew he let out, screams that would make a banshee blush in a fit of jealousy. The only vibrations to escape the voice box of an otherwise silent shell.
He worried about the possibility of depriving Ralph of sleep, but he could not help it. He did feel a hint of guilt, but that was overtaken by the horrors he had to face on his own. All alone. Each time, he had nowhere to turn. The figures lurked at every corner, each turn he took they were one step ahead of him. It was always different, yet the outcome was always the same. The darkness would fall upon him, threatening to take his life, and he felt he would die each time. He could almost taste the death creeping down his throat, coating his windpipe with a thin sheet of ice, constricting his lungs with the same bone crushing power as a fully grown boa. Sometimes, he wished for it to end. For it to take his life away from him, so he would not have to see or hear or feel the darkness anymore.
But just as sure as it was to come to him, it would leave him. Right on the edge of his sanity, on what he thought was the edge of his life, on the stoop of the Grim Reaper himself. It was as simple as the Reaper pushing the door open even a crack, to let that dark light Silence so desperately wanted to follow shine through, to accept him.
A chilled sweat always greeted him as he shot upward. A chilled sweat to accompany the burning inside of his flesh. On the inside, he was on fire, yet on the outside, he was freezing. An uncomfortable oxymoron, which was what he had come to call ‘the afterward.’
Why did he come so close, only to be ripped away from it? How did he make it through his tainted life, without contemplating ending it on his own? If the darkness would not take him, he could have brought the darkness to him, forced it to overwhelm and consume him. Plunge into it, into the pool of death from the highest diving board he could find. A belly flop, ripping his skin right off of the bone. A thud as he hit the liquid, liquid on the verge of freezing, and then darkness. Forever. The reason why was simple.
Ralph. Ralph had saved him once, and Silence felt that he would save him again. The dreams would end, and Ralph would be the one to end them. The only certainty in his battered and beaten life was a man who he had known for so long, yet knew so little about. A man that had been as much of a father to him as the one he had before he was torn away from his existence, who had so much faith in a boy turned man with nearly nothing to give. Nothing but dedication, determination, and a mean streak a mile wide. And that was all that Ralph needed. All he and Silence needed for them to make a bigger splash than the aforementioned belly-flop, into the world of professional wrestling. And just as the dreams came on their own without fail, the world of professional wrestling finally came knocking upon the door of the man known for the past ten years as Silence, and his unlikely mentor, a former low-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit, soon to be known to the masses to gather in an arena in Greenville, South Carolina, as The Voice.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A sound of thunder. Only, it isn’t thunder at all. A rumble, yes, however it is something else. A bag of marbles falling one by one down a flight of wooden stairs. The sound punctures the silence as the marbles reach the bottom, and roll across an also wooden floor. As the thunderous thud of rolling marbles drowns out and silence dominates the sound waves once more, a bolt of lightning takes a cut through the darkness. A thin, forked bolt of vocal power, chill-sending in its own right.
Dropped. Rolling, until friction stops you in a pile, a pile of failure. That is how you must feel at this moment.
The Voice appears at the top of the stairs, holding a finger to his lips. He lets out a whisper, almost too faint to hear.
Listen... what is it that you hear? Nothing... which is what you are destined to become.
The Voice removes his finger from his lips, and begins to step down the stairs. With each footfall, a creak rings out, giving the whole setting an uneasy feel.
James Keenan, you have been left in the dust by your former partner. You may wonder why. The answer is simple. You have nothing to offer him. Nothing but a burden, an anchor to his ship that so wishes to sail into the ranks of great men. He needed to escalate himself, to feel what it is like at the top. So what he had to do, was cut loose his anchor. And he did. Now you shall sink. All the way down, to the ocean floor. Where you belong.
The Voice reaches the bottom of the stairs, and begins to walk along the floor, to where the marbles have gathered in an uneven section of floor.
Now you must face a fate so unbearable, that many rue to even speak of it. You must step into the ring with he who does not speak, he who does not feel. He who only inflicts. A messenger. However, he does not deliver good news. He does not necessarily deliver bad news. What he delivers, is an inclination of what you shall feel when your time comes, your inevitable end. Silence will show you suffering, and you will be wishing you were being rejected by Kaden Keene once more. Wishing that you were in the ring, staring across into his eyes, a place where you stand a fighting chance.
The Voice adjusts the marbles with his foot, and the rolling sounds much louder than anticipated. The marbles continue to roll around, until the sound is accompanied by The Voice’s acidic tone.
You will know the feeling of silence, the feeling of darkness, after my monster is finished with you. And you will have nothing left but a wish, a hope, a dream. A dream for the excruciating pain to end.
As The Voice finishes speaking, the rolling of the marbles stop. Everything is quiet. Until familiar rhythmic breathing tolls. Out of the shadows steps Silence, his long dreadlocks draping down around his chest as they so often are, and then, the breathing stops. Darkness sets in. And, nothing...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It is said there is a first time for everything. The first time that Silence woke from his nightmares without the accompaniment of a scream welled up from the bottom of his very innards, it was instead to the static ringing of Ralph’s telephone. Surprised, shaken, and relieved as Silence was that the dream had ended early, he found himself listening attentively for Ralph’s voice.
‘Yes, this is him.’
Who could be calling Ralph at such a time? Silence glanced across the dark room to the digital numbers on the alarm clock that had never served to wake Silence from sleep. It was not yet mid-day.
‘I believe he’s ready, yes. He has been working very hard, for a very long time.’
So Silence was the topic of discussion. Yet still the question persisted. Who?
‘That’s great news. When? Oh, really? A month? That’s, uh, that’s perfect. But, uh, there is a problem. He doesn’t talk.’
Silence sat up, his back completely straight, listening more attentive than ever to the telephone conversation going on in the adjacent room.
‘He has a manager. Yes, uh, myself. Oh, I’m ready as well. I’ve been working on it for a while. Yes, we can discuss it whenever you fee– yes, okay. That’s perfect. Thank you so much.’
Silence’s heart began to pound in his chest. Could it really be his time? Would he be able to finally fulfill Ralph’s wish of appearing in front of a live audience, to wrestle... the one part of him aside from Ralph that had not faltered over the years.
‘Alright, I’ll let him know right away. Once again, thank you very much. Good-bye now.’
Silence heard the receiver come down upon the base of Ralph’s phone. He heard the scrape of Ralph’s chair across the floor. Footsteps approaching his room. When Ralph opened the door, he was surprised to see Silence sitting straight up in his bed. The smile on Ralph’s face was unforgettable.
‘We did it, Silence. That was Pure Perfection Incorporated...we’re going to the big show!’
Silence smiled at Ralph, unable to hide his excitement. However, the real reason Silence was so excited was because he knew Ralph was truly happy. All of the hard work and sacrifice both of them had made was culminating in a chance to prove themselves on a national level. It was much bigger than Silence thought, better than he had hoped. He expected something small, but no. The show was where he was headed, and the show was where he would make his mark. He was ready, and Ralph was ready, but was the world ready for Silence?
Only time would tell.