Post by megtorlas on Nov 20, 2006 2:36:47 GMT -5
It was 1986. A man wrapped his long winter coat around his shivering body as he locked up the store at which he worked. It was a late close; problems with the alarm had been arising constantly. It took ten minutes to get through on the hotline before a representative could help him identify the problem. A store walkthrough was necessary, since movement could’ve been the cause of the alarm not setting. Even when the store was already closed, there was a creepy vibe in the air, like at any minute someone was going to jump out from behind one of the shelves. Silly paranoia, the man assured himself, as he finally twisted the keys in the metal door and turned towards the parking lot.
It was almost midnight when his face finally caught the cool, brisk wind. The parking lot before him was empty, but something in his peripheral caught his attention. A parked car, maybe two hundred feet down the road, sitting in front of a closed restaurant. The man had already experienced enough paranoia with the alarm problems and was not about to let a mere car in the lot rattle him any more.
The keys jingled in the driver’s side of his Mustang, and he grew increasingly frustrated. With a final turn with some added elbow grease, the key finally turned and the door opened. The small fracture of stress prevented the man from realizing the car had now turned on its headlights and was inching closer. While the man crashed in his leather car seat, the car in front of him made a swift turn to the exit of the parking lot just before it was in the man’s range of vision.
The man pushed the plastic lever and felt the seat recline slightly. Ten hours on his feet didn’t exactly do much for his back. Feeling the presence against his hip, he pulled a small box from his jacket pocket and stared at the glimmer of a diamond one more time. He’d been showing it to everyone all day, since his natural high had him in an unusually good mood. His girlfriend and he had made love for the first time after a three-year-relationship, and he had decided he would ask the girl to marry him.
He was clenching the box in his hand when the bullet from the passing car penetrated his skull.
*
“1986 murder still unsolved,” I read the headline aloud despite a clearly empty room. I’d heard rumors of the parking lot murder. It became sort of a legend in our small town. Not a whole lot happened around those parts, so it didn’t surprise me much that twenty years later, people still told stories about where they were when they found out about it. It was a shock to the little community. It was a town of block parties and barbecues where everyone knew each other, although my mother claims to this day she had no idea who he was.
The legend said that he was clutching an engagement ring when someone shot him through his car window. No witnesses, no clues, not a single trace to justice for someone who would commit such a cowardly act. The very foundation of such an act is what drives the powers that be inside my head to think about such things like justice and revenge. No one should escape such an act, and something told me that person was still out there somewhere, laughing at his undeserved anonymous fame. Probably married with children, living a life with that burning, panging secret in the back of his skull, dismantling whatever conscience remained there after taking a human life. For the sake of the slain, I wished the worst on his soul. A guilty, self-destructive conscience that would overtake him like the cowardly stain to the planet he was.
My disdain for people isn’t completely unmerited. I generally don’t like them as a whole, although some have their exceptions to my rule. The more I observe my surroundings, the more I can’t bear to quietly participate in the everyday chores of normal life. Something dwells inside of me, just begging me to lash out at those who deserve it, and so many of them do anymore.
Leaving that community in which I grew up was a culture shock. I’d grown up to believe that all people were kind, generous, and considerate. I’d been raised by people who look out for one another and pretty much seemed to actually give a shit about their neighbors. Little did I know that town was all but the land that time had forgotten.
The people I’ve come to know now are those who only look out for themselves and their own interests. Those who don’t care on whom they trample as long as they get the next new and improved gadget before anyone else plague the growing population of malls and shopping centers everywhere you look. This, of course, is near Christmastime, the season where people are supposed to feel good about giving to each other. It turns into nothing more than a competition over who can get the things first, and they’ll fight to the death anyone else who might want the same thing. Just watch a tape of stores opening on Black Friday to get a clear view on what this world has come to. Greed is the number one cause of corruption to the human soul, and it was becoming more outbroken than the bubonic plague.
I looked in the mirror while I covered my head with the usual black hooded sweatshirt. The sunglasses were an added touch, only to prevent me from being acknowledged by as many people as possible. The fewer who know my name, the fewer of them I have to hate on an even deeper level. Some might say that all I need is a little hope, but when you’ve seen what I have, you realize that it’s long dead, right there with the good Samaritan, selfless people, and people who live what they preach.
I tried to shake the nightmare I’d had earlier in the night from my head. This was no time to be worrying about child-like fears. Ever since I was five, I was scared to death of cars. Something inside of me told me that I owed it to my father, Juston Megtorlas, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. It’s not like my father was abusive or anything; quite the contrary, he’d always been loving and supporting. Since I’d left the town, I’d grown increasingly grateful for the fact that I was not abused, and for the fact that I didn’t need to pretend that I was. Both of those cases seemed to spread like herpes in this current world.
As if greed wasn’t enough of a plague, it was combined with a population who felt the need to be told that they were depressed and to have people pity them. If they didn’t have a reason to be, they would make one up. After all, the commercial on the television had nice music and the doctor seemed like a really nice guy, so what could a few of those happy little pills hurt, right? All I had to do was log on to a local message board and read people’s online journals to see how much of a pity party the generation had become. Seemed like every woman in the entire world had been raped as a child or teenager, molested by a family member, had some kind of psychiatric disorder, and wanted nothing more than to disappear and die because the blue eyeliner was out at Wal-Mart that day. At the same time, every man in the world was absolutely nothing like every other man collectively. According to these blogs, every man with access to the internet was sensitive, caring, wrote poetry, and monogamous, while spelling worse than a Tourettes kid high on crystal meth. Interesting comparison, seeing as one additional trait to every woman in the world was that they’d been cheated on. Every man on the planet is monogamous, and every girl’s been cheated on? Someone’s losing fucking ground here.
At one time, I tried to speak reason to the people. Collectively, I really suppose that ignorance is preferred. God forbid the people find out what true ignoramuses they really are. That would distract them from reaching for their platinum credit cards and paying eighteen percent interest on whatever overpriced piece of shit accessory they didn’t need that particular day. The second option was to kick some sense into their brains, but that would’ve landed me in jail, so I started taking martial arts classes. With every kick to every head, it gave me such an intense rush that I knew it couldn’t be healthy to want to hurt people so much. The black belt I’d earned led me to pursue another place where I could hurt people and be distracted from the growing cesspool of the mainstream population. Wrestling.
Finally, it would be legal to kick the lights out of likely members of all these particular descriptions. Nothing would satisfy me more than turning off all the distractions and nightmares and just laying into someone with a lethal set of kicks until they could no longer stand. Given that I was entering a land where people were generally judged on their size and muscle-mass, it would give me great pleasure to deflate their egos slightly by having a 5’9 guy in a hoodie obliterate their bodies beyond recognition. To stomp on their chests so they could barely breathe for a little while put a smile on my face.
While I thought of all this, and while I had finally brought out my black-ink pen and signed the dotted line with Pure Class Wrestling, that newspaper headline still penetrated my thoughts. The image of a dead man clutching his engagement ring added lighter fluid to the fire that burned inside me. Nothing gave me any indication to why I might’ve been feeling that way, but while I would break jaws and ribs in my spare time, my primary objective would be bringing justice to the bastard who got away with murder so long ago.
He was out there, I knew it. Until he was brought to justice, those of Pure Class Wrestling would receive the retribution. It’d be Lights Out before they knew it.
It was almost midnight when his face finally caught the cool, brisk wind. The parking lot before him was empty, but something in his peripheral caught his attention. A parked car, maybe two hundred feet down the road, sitting in front of a closed restaurant. The man had already experienced enough paranoia with the alarm problems and was not about to let a mere car in the lot rattle him any more.
The keys jingled in the driver’s side of his Mustang, and he grew increasingly frustrated. With a final turn with some added elbow grease, the key finally turned and the door opened. The small fracture of stress prevented the man from realizing the car had now turned on its headlights and was inching closer. While the man crashed in his leather car seat, the car in front of him made a swift turn to the exit of the parking lot just before it was in the man’s range of vision.
The man pushed the plastic lever and felt the seat recline slightly. Ten hours on his feet didn’t exactly do much for his back. Feeling the presence against his hip, he pulled a small box from his jacket pocket and stared at the glimmer of a diamond one more time. He’d been showing it to everyone all day, since his natural high had him in an unusually good mood. His girlfriend and he had made love for the first time after a three-year-relationship, and he had decided he would ask the girl to marry him.
He was clenching the box in his hand when the bullet from the passing car penetrated his skull.
*
“1986 murder still unsolved,” I read the headline aloud despite a clearly empty room. I’d heard rumors of the parking lot murder. It became sort of a legend in our small town. Not a whole lot happened around those parts, so it didn’t surprise me much that twenty years later, people still told stories about where they were when they found out about it. It was a shock to the little community. It was a town of block parties and barbecues where everyone knew each other, although my mother claims to this day she had no idea who he was.
The legend said that he was clutching an engagement ring when someone shot him through his car window. No witnesses, no clues, not a single trace to justice for someone who would commit such a cowardly act. The very foundation of such an act is what drives the powers that be inside my head to think about such things like justice and revenge. No one should escape such an act, and something told me that person was still out there somewhere, laughing at his undeserved anonymous fame. Probably married with children, living a life with that burning, panging secret in the back of his skull, dismantling whatever conscience remained there after taking a human life. For the sake of the slain, I wished the worst on his soul. A guilty, self-destructive conscience that would overtake him like the cowardly stain to the planet he was.
My disdain for people isn’t completely unmerited. I generally don’t like them as a whole, although some have their exceptions to my rule. The more I observe my surroundings, the more I can’t bear to quietly participate in the everyday chores of normal life. Something dwells inside of me, just begging me to lash out at those who deserve it, and so many of them do anymore.
Leaving that community in which I grew up was a culture shock. I’d grown up to believe that all people were kind, generous, and considerate. I’d been raised by people who look out for one another and pretty much seemed to actually give a shit about their neighbors. Little did I know that town was all but the land that time had forgotten.
The people I’ve come to know now are those who only look out for themselves and their own interests. Those who don’t care on whom they trample as long as they get the next new and improved gadget before anyone else plague the growing population of malls and shopping centers everywhere you look. This, of course, is near Christmastime, the season where people are supposed to feel good about giving to each other. It turns into nothing more than a competition over who can get the things first, and they’ll fight to the death anyone else who might want the same thing. Just watch a tape of stores opening on Black Friday to get a clear view on what this world has come to. Greed is the number one cause of corruption to the human soul, and it was becoming more outbroken than the bubonic plague.
I looked in the mirror while I covered my head with the usual black hooded sweatshirt. The sunglasses were an added touch, only to prevent me from being acknowledged by as many people as possible. The fewer who know my name, the fewer of them I have to hate on an even deeper level. Some might say that all I need is a little hope, but when you’ve seen what I have, you realize that it’s long dead, right there with the good Samaritan, selfless people, and people who live what they preach.
I tried to shake the nightmare I’d had earlier in the night from my head. This was no time to be worrying about child-like fears. Ever since I was five, I was scared to death of cars. Something inside of me told me that I owed it to my father, Juston Megtorlas, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. It’s not like my father was abusive or anything; quite the contrary, he’d always been loving and supporting. Since I’d left the town, I’d grown increasingly grateful for the fact that I was not abused, and for the fact that I didn’t need to pretend that I was. Both of those cases seemed to spread like herpes in this current world.
As if greed wasn’t enough of a plague, it was combined with a population who felt the need to be told that they were depressed and to have people pity them. If they didn’t have a reason to be, they would make one up. After all, the commercial on the television had nice music and the doctor seemed like a really nice guy, so what could a few of those happy little pills hurt, right? All I had to do was log on to a local message board and read people’s online journals to see how much of a pity party the generation had become. Seemed like every woman in the entire world had been raped as a child or teenager, molested by a family member, had some kind of psychiatric disorder, and wanted nothing more than to disappear and die because the blue eyeliner was out at Wal-Mart that day. At the same time, every man in the world was absolutely nothing like every other man collectively. According to these blogs, every man with access to the internet was sensitive, caring, wrote poetry, and monogamous, while spelling worse than a Tourettes kid high on crystal meth. Interesting comparison, seeing as one additional trait to every woman in the world was that they’d been cheated on. Every man on the planet is monogamous, and every girl’s been cheated on? Someone’s losing fucking ground here.
At one time, I tried to speak reason to the people. Collectively, I really suppose that ignorance is preferred. God forbid the people find out what true ignoramuses they really are. That would distract them from reaching for their platinum credit cards and paying eighteen percent interest on whatever overpriced piece of shit accessory they didn’t need that particular day. The second option was to kick some sense into their brains, but that would’ve landed me in jail, so I started taking martial arts classes. With every kick to every head, it gave me such an intense rush that I knew it couldn’t be healthy to want to hurt people so much. The black belt I’d earned led me to pursue another place where I could hurt people and be distracted from the growing cesspool of the mainstream population. Wrestling.
Finally, it would be legal to kick the lights out of likely members of all these particular descriptions. Nothing would satisfy me more than turning off all the distractions and nightmares and just laying into someone with a lethal set of kicks until they could no longer stand. Given that I was entering a land where people were generally judged on their size and muscle-mass, it would give me great pleasure to deflate their egos slightly by having a 5’9 guy in a hoodie obliterate their bodies beyond recognition. To stomp on their chests so they could barely breathe for a little while put a smile on my face.
While I thought of all this, and while I had finally brought out my black-ink pen and signed the dotted line with Pure Class Wrestling, that newspaper headline still penetrated my thoughts. The image of a dead man clutching his engagement ring added lighter fluid to the fire that burned inside me. Nothing gave me any indication to why I might’ve been feeling that way, but while I would break jaws and ribs in my spare time, my primary objective would be bringing justice to the bastard who got away with murder so long ago.
He was out there, I knew it. Until he was brought to justice, those of Pure Class Wrestling would receive the retribution. It’d be Lights Out before they knew it.