Post by Grimm on Mar 27, 2013 15:44:54 GMT -5
Enoch had been in rare form. He’d cast out devils, and had been among those speaking with diverse kinds of tongues, none of which Phinehas could translate. They’d taken up serpents, copperheads and timber rattlers as big around as your forearm, and held them overhead as they shouted hallelujahs.
“…and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.” And so they did, and it did not, just as he’d said. And after the preaching he laid hands on the sick and they recovered with great fanfare. Wheelchairs and crutches were piled up behind the church and consigned to the flames. Oranges and reds shimmering on his face, eyes watering from the heat, Phinehas slipped out just before the altar call. The service had been going for nigh on two hours and he knew that it would drag on into the night. The full eight verses of Just As I Am were only the beginning. Phinehas didn’t want to be disrespectful, but, as you could imagine, he had things to do. And his soul was prepared.
He drove at dusk, down a two-lane country road running along the river floodplain, all of it walled in by hills. No radio, only the hum of wheels on the pavement and the flood of thoughts to keep him company. Phinehas passed an abandoned farm, one he’d passed hundreds of times before. It had been forsaken even when he was young. Billy told ghastly stories about who’d lived there (Billy being Billy, he’d insisted on a witch that sounded very similar to their sister), what had happened there (the usual capturing, cooking, and devouring of children and beloved pets), and what had put an end to the terror (involving mobs, torches, pitchforks, a makeshift scaffold and hangman’s noose, and a bonfire). A light flickered in a window, and Phinehas slowed down. The light flickered again in the doorway. Phinehas pulled his jeep into a hidden drive and stopped.
The view before him looked something like a gingerbread house diorama after an acid rain assault. Before approaching he thought it wise to reach in the backseat for a crowbar, because you never know. Great-grandma Knickerbocker had referred to it as her ‘whoopin’ stick’ and it held a place of honor in Phinehas’ arsenal. He walked across a yard overgrown with weeds and embellished with bits of corroded farm implements and fallen trees. From the porch he noticed the shredded storm door and window screens and smelled the moldering insides of a structure lingering on the verge of collapse. It was most likely consumed by mold and mildew and whatnot, and from what he could tell from out here the innards were a little too dark for the time of day. Phinehas used the crowbar to pull the door open and he stepped inside with the slow, leisurely movement specific to a person utterly confident in his physical superiority. The heft of the iron in his hand did not hurt his assurance.
Nests abounded. Bird nests disintegrating in the eaves. Piles of dust that were once mud dauber nests. A smattering of dried-out-desiccated paper wasp nests. Phinehas moved around the remnants of a fire in the middle of the room, the ashes and scraps of charred wood left behind by transients. Their collections of rags and greasy bones. It all had its own strangeness and charm about it, but he acknowledged perhaps minor head trauma was affecting his judgment and senses. That shot from Sean Rhodes, with a chair courtesy of Michael Wryght, had been a doozy. And one he admittedly deserved. The air inside the house was heavy but growing colder the further in he walked. Phinehas saw shadows in constant movement and caught even now a whiff of smoke. Over the years plaster had cracked everywhere, and the slats were visible in the walls. A broken mirror served as the only décor.
Phinehas strode across the sagging floor, stepped up to the mirror, and crooked his head. He squinted into the glass and saw the shadows with more distinct edges but still uncertain. As he leaned in, the faces appeared. He found himself looking at his own reflection at the beginning, at a Portrait of an Abomination as a Young Man. Mandrake and Arkham with varying levels of facial hair and degrees of scowling. From there the mirror moved on to others: Billy Sadistic, Distortion, “The Greek God” Pat Gordon, Archangel, James Nightbane, Bryant Dean, Super Bastardo Brothers, Haze, Lantlas – the faces shifted continually and whispered in layers of voices as water over rocks. Phinehas caught snatches of accusations and thinly veiled insults masked as praise.
In between the friends and foes of his past he watched his first violent acts, those which served as sacraments consecrating major milestones. He watched himself hit by a car before slamming Archangel in a burning casket, clearing a ring with the wide arcs of a shovel swing, hoisting his first title in Totally Ridiculous Championship Wrestling, then his first PCW title. Phinehas watched the final fight with his brother, and he couldn’t help but grin at the sight of Mandrake shoving poor Prince of Darkness face-first into an explosive turnbuckle. Phinehas saw once again the aftermath of the infamous Pain of Glass match with Mr. Showtime before a montage of Snap-Crackle-Pops came into view. And last but not least the mirror showed the clobbering of Sean Rhodes two weeks ago. It was as if it had all happened at once, and as a man on the gallows Phinehas swung from amusement to anger to sorrow and back.
The images slowed and morphed into what Phinehas could only describe as the visage of future Grimm. The crow’s feet around his eyes were more pronounced and he noticed grey sprinkled throughout the red hair, with a beard still as substantial as ever. There had emerged an image of a white snake encircling his left iris, and the slight glint of a genuine, if somewhat controlled, madness in those glacier-ice-blue eyes. He was not surprised to see additional scars scattered here and there. The mouth of the older Phinehas was moving, but he couldn’t hear anything over the rush. Then the rest faded away and he joined in mid-conversation and heard a voice that sounded like a wearier version of the one he heard in his head every day.
“…people only fear and respect champions and there is an element of the roster that doesn’t know what it’s missed. I know we’re not usually the one to listen or worry about what anyone may say about us, but sometimes they can be right.”
Phinehas- that is, Phinehas 2013-couldn’t help but reply to the splintered reflection.
“I’ve mauled enough men. What’s left to claim but their peace of mind? We, that is,I[/b], don’t have to engineer anything. It is what it is. Regardless of whether it’s the physical or mental realms, or even spiritual, for all I know, if they only fear the idea of Grimm, then I’ve succeeded. It only makes sense that…”
“Sense? Rational men do not enter this business, and irrational men do not respond to logic. They respond only to fear. So it would serve you well to remember that as far as this current roster is concerned, even those you are scheduled to face, Grimm has existed from the beginning. A primordial presence surrounded by his own formless disorder. Self-sufficient, elemental, and exalted. All things begin in order so that they shall end, and what better to begin anew than a world title reign? Sean Rhodes is a troubled man. Powerful, yes, but troubled. He could only keep it together for so long, and it’s unraveling before our eyes. Everyone knows he was there to serve as a placeholder. It was only a matter of time before someone came and took that belt away from him.”
“Are you saying he’s definitely going to lose?”
The face faded in and out. “No, I’m not necessarily your future. I’m just a possibility. But keep in mind Grimm has become part of the PCW’s collective unconscious, the idea of whom exists with such force it cannot be extinguished. There has always been some form of Grimm, and there always will be. As far as they know you stepped out of the storehouses of snow and straight into the ring. And we all have our parts to play, Phinehas. Try as he might to sow doubt and demonstrate his own confidence, Michael Wryght of all people knows better. He has over a decade of memories and experiences weighing him down. No one is so Zen as to be able to push the thought of you bearing down on them out of their mind. Not after his behavior recently. Not after what you’ve already done to him. Not with all this on the line.”
Something rumbled beneath the surface and a wave passed through the fragments of the looking glass. The Phinehas of Now said, “I’ve accepted that the time of my reckoning is here. But seeing as how I have only so many options – stay, go, stagnate, rise – it’s an easy decision, really. And I choose to live in this moment, right now. I don’t need my past or want your future. If I end up leaving my opponents as nothing more than a couple of broken shells in the middle of the ring, it’s because I wanted to, right then and there.”
The face in the glass blurred, and continued as if it had not heard. “But then again, we are all very, very depraved. There’s no telling how this night will play out. So just in case, take up your spade and break ground, Grimm.”
Phinehas followed the eyes as they shifted to look behind him and, lo and behold, a literal spade leaning by the door. He ran his finger over the rusted shovel head, but when he picked it up he was surprised by the feel of its unyielding hickory handle. He twirled it at his side before returning it to the door frame. If Phinehas could not win this match under his own power, without fracturing a skull or two with a shovel, it was not meant to be. And so he exited to the clatter of the storm door. Behind him the mirror turned dark and reflected a ruin more tomb than home.
“…and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.” And so they did, and it did not, just as he’d said. And after the preaching he laid hands on the sick and they recovered with great fanfare. Wheelchairs and crutches were piled up behind the church and consigned to the flames. Oranges and reds shimmering on his face, eyes watering from the heat, Phinehas slipped out just before the altar call. The service had been going for nigh on two hours and he knew that it would drag on into the night. The full eight verses of Just As I Am were only the beginning. Phinehas didn’t want to be disrespectful, but, as you could imagine, he had things to do. And his soul was prepared.
He drove at dusk, down a two-lane country road running along the river floodplain, all of it walled in by hills. No radio, only the hum of wheels on the pavement and the flood of thoughts to keep him company. Phinehas passed an abandoned farm, one he’d passed hundreds of times before. It had been forsaken even when he was young. Billy told ghastly stories about who’d lived there (Billy being Billy, he’d insisted on a witch that sounded very similar to their sister), what had happened there (the usual capturing, cooking, and devouring of children and beloved pets), and what had put an end to the terror (involving mobs, torches, pitchforks, a makeshift scaffold and hangman’s noose, and a bonfire). A light flickered in a window, and Phinehas slowed down. The light flickered again in the doorway. Phinehas pulled his jeep into a hidden drive and stopped.
The view before him looked something like a gingerbread house diorama after an acid rain assault. Before approaching he thought it wise to reach in the backseat for a crowbar, because you never know. Great-grandma Knickerbocker had referred to it as her ‘whoopin’ stick’ and it held a place of honor in Phinehas’ arsenal. He walked across a yard overgrown with weeds and embellished with bits of corroded farm implements and fallen trees. From the porch he noticed the shredded storm door and window screens and smelled the moldering insides of a structure lingering on the verge of collapse. It was most likely consumed by mold and mildew and whatnot, and from what he could tell from out here the innards were a little too dark for the time of day. Phinehas used the crowbar to pull the door open and he stepped inside with the slow, leisurely movement specific to a person utterly confident in his physical superiority. The heft of the iron in his hand did not hurt his assurance.
Nests abounded. Bird nests disintegrating in the eaves. Piles of dust that were once mud dauber nests. A smattering of dried-out-desiccated paper wasp nests. Phinehas moved around the remnants of a fire in the middle of the room, the ashes and scraps of charred wood left behind by transients. Their collections of rags and greasy bones. It all had its own strangeness and charm about it, but he acknowledged perhaps minor head trauma was affecting his judgment and senses. That shot from Sean Rhodes, with a chair courtesy of Michael Wryght, had been a doozy. And one he admittedly deserved. The air inside the house was heavy but growing colder the further in he walked. Phinehas saw shadows in constant movement and caught even now a whiff of smoke. Over the years plaster had cracked everywhere, and the slats were visible in the walls. A broken mirror served as the only décor.
Phinehas strode across the sagging floor, stepped up to the mirror, and crooked his head. He squinted into the glass and saw the shadows with more distinct edges but still uncertain. As he leaned in, the faces appeared. He found himself looking at his own reflection at the beginning, at a Portrait of an Abomination as a Young Man. Mandrake and Arkham with varying levels of facial hair and degrees of scowling. From there the mirror moved on to others: Billy Sadistic, Distortion, “The Greek God” Pat Gordon, Archangel, James Nightbane, Bryant Dean, Super Bastardo Brothers, Haze, Lantlas – the faces shifted continually and whispered in layers of voices as water over rocks. Phinehas caught snatches of accusations and thinly veiled insults masked as praise.
In between the friends and foes of his past he watched his first violent acts, those which served as sacraments consecrating major milestones. He watched himself hit by a car before slamming Archangel in a burning casket, clearing a ring with the wide arcs of a shovel swing, hoisting his first title in Totally Ridiculous Championship Wrestling, then his first PCW title. Phinehas watched the final fight with his brother, and he couldn’t help but grin at the sight of Mandrake shoving poor Prince of Darkness face-first into an explosive turnbuckle. Phinehas saw once again the aftermath of the infamous Pain of Glass match with Mr. Showtime before a montage of Snap-Crackle-Pops came into view. And last but not least the mirror showed the clobbering of Sean Rhodes two weeks ago. It was as if it had all happened at once, and as a man on the gallows Phinehas swung from amusement to anger to sorrow and back.
The images slowed and morphed into what Phinehas could only describe as the visage of future Grimm. The crow’s feet around his eyes were more pronounced and he noticed grey sprinkled throughout the red hair, with a beard still as substantial as ever. There had emerged an image of a white snake encircling his left iris, and the slight glint of a genuine, if somewhat controlled, madness in those glacier-ice-blue eyes. He was not surprised to see additional scars scattered here and there. The mouth of the older Phinehas was moving, but he couldn’t hear anything over the rush. Then the rest faded away and he joined in mid-conversation and heard a voice that sounded like a wearier version of the one he heard in his head every day.
“…people only fear and respect champions and there is an element of the roster that doesn’t know what it’s missed. I know we’re not usually the one to listen or worry about what anyone may say about us, but sometimes they can be right.”
Phinehas- that is, Phinehas 2013-couldn’t help but reply to the splintered reflection.
“I’ve mauled enough men. What’s left to claim but their peace of mind? We, that is,I[/b], don’t have to engineer anything. It is what it is. Regardless of whether it’s the physical or mental realms, or even spiritual, for all I know, if they only fear the idea of Grimm, then I’ve succeeded. It only makes sense that…”
“Sense? Rational men do not enter this business, and irrational men do not respond to logic. They respond only to fear. So it would serve you well to remember that as far as this current roster is concerned, even those you are scheduled to face, Grimm has existed from the beginning. A primordial presence surrounded by his own formless disorder. Self-sufficient, elemental, and exalted. All things begin in order so that they shall end, and what better to begin anew than a world title reign? Sean Rhodes is a troubled man. Powerful, yes, but troubled. He could only keep it together for so long, and it’s unraveling before our eyes. Everyone knows he was there to serve as a placeholder. It was only a matter of time before someone came and took that belt away from him.”
“Are you saying he’s definitely going to lose?”
The face faded in and out. “No, I’m not necessarily your future. I’m just a possibility. But keep in mind Grimm has become part of the PCW’s collective unconscious, the idea of whom exists with such force it cannot be extinguished. There has always been some form of Grimm, and there always will be. As far as they know you stepped out of the storehouses of snow and straight into the ring. And we all have our parts to play, Phinehas. Try as he might to sow doubt and demonstrate his own confidence, Michael Wryght of all people knows better. He has over a decade of memories and experiences weighing him down. No one is so Zen as to be able to push the thought of you bearing down on them out of their mind. Not after his behavior recently. Not after what you’ve already done to him. Not with all this on the line.”
Something rumbled beneath the surface and a wave passed through the fragments of the looking glass. The Phinehas of Now said, “I’ve accepted that the time of my reckoning is here. But seeing as how I have only so many options – stay, go, stagnate, rise – it’s an easy decision, really. And I choose to live in this moment, right now. I don’t need my past or want your future. If I end up leaving my opponents as nothing more than a couple of broken shells in the middle of the ring, it’s because I wanted to, right then and there.”
The face in the glass blurred, and continued as if it had not heard. “But then again, we are all very, very depraved. There’s no telling how this night will play out. So just in case, take up your spade and break ground, Grimm.”
Phinehas followed the eyes as they shifted to look behind him and, lo and behold, a literal spade leaning by the door. He ran his finger over the rusted shovel head, but when he picked it up he was surprised by the feel of its unyielding hickory handle. He twirled it at his side before returning it to the door frame. If Phinehas could not win this match under his own power, without fracturing a skull or two with a shovel, it was not meant to be. And so he exited to the clatter of the storm door. Behind him the mirror turned dark and reflected a ruin more tomb than home.
