Post by Grace Leary on Mar 31, 2024 3:21:45 GMT
2/29/24
Grace Leary heaved and trembled as she forced her shaking, unsteady legs to move.
She grimaced, face beet-red and blood-stained, as the harsh Yellowknife wind cut through her like a thousand tiny razor blades. The whirring rotors of the helicopter overloaded her good ear, causing her knees to buckle and bile to build in the back of her throat.
The gold and leather strap slung over her shoulder felt almost weightless among the flood of sensations that washed over her, but as she caught sight of two silhouettes behind the flashing glow of headlights at the designated rendezvous point, all that weight came crashing down as her heavy, tired legs gave out from under her.
And the blinding, dizzying aliveness of the world around her cut to black.
Hello, Barney.
It's such a pleasure to meet you.
I think this is the part where I'm supposed to immediately contradict myself, tell you that I'm lying, that you don't inspire much in me in any particular direction — positively or negatively. But no, I'm being genuine. As aching in my sincerity as my ribs. I look at you, Barney, and I see something that I just don't think I've seen in the contenders who've taken their best shot at removing the highest honor this sanctified side-show could bear to produce from my cold, clutching hands: an ethos beyond conquest. Beyond any baptism that could be attained in the sea of gore and viscera churned out on a monthly basis. Beyond anything at all.
I should spare both of us the bloviating though, shouldn't I? You don't strike me as one for the pageantry of philosophizing. I look at you, and I hear the same discordant line that echoes in my head when I wake up in the morning with deeper bruising than I went to bed with, when the margin between a resounding victory and crushing defeat bends and distorts under the ache and fatigue.
"Life's a game, life's a joke. Fuck it, why not go for broke?"
The man I first heard it from would be so tickled to hear me say it now. But that's you, isn't it, Barney? In a nutshell, distilled into your essence. It's your raison d'être, your reason for pushing yourself off the canvas as many times as you have in your career. Why, as you stare down your 40th year on this planet, you continue to throw yourself into circumstances such as these. Why I'm certain you're going to march down that aisle to face with your head held high, ready to go down swinging if it comes to it.
And maybe that's admirable. Maybe that's the exact mindset you need to send a message; to put this whole godforsaken roster on notice in a way you couldn't muster in the great redux of the Killdozer Tournament. Maybe it gives you enough of a fire in your gut to knock my head clean off my shoulders and punt it into the crowd.
I certainly hope so.
Because if you do anything less than that, the guy who first infected my brain with such a slogan will only be the second dumbest person I've ever met.
10/13/–
Theodore Goodson's eyes narrowed. His gaze followed the awkward, stumbling gait of one Ashley Blakesley as she approached him, her face flushed and eyes glazed over. Her arms shot out, gripping him tight around the shoulders as her knees buckled and she dropped to the floor. Reflexively, his grip tightened around her, holding her aloft in a tight embrace as a stifled, embarrassed giggle escaped her lips.
"Thanks, Teddy Bear," she murmured as she regained her balance, pushing away from him. The name, no doubt a term of endearment on her end, never failed to elicit a cringe. Her breath reeked of cheap vodka and wintergreen chewing gum. While his grip loosened, his hands lingered on Ash's back for a moment before he sheepishly returned them to his side.
"No problem," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the top-40 pablum blaring over the bar's speakers. His gaze shot from her towards the floor as he felt her aimless gaze settle upon him. Something about this felt off. Wrong, somehow, in some way he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"Are you okay?" he finally asked after an awkward beat, reluctantly meeting her eyes. She shrugged, her head rolling lazily towards her shoulder as she screwed up her face and clenched her left eye shut.
"I'm fine, seein' as now that there's only one of you," she said, her voice far twangier than usual, the same cloying, self-conscious giggle playing at the end of her sentence as the corner of her lips flicked upwards.
"It's just, I don't think I've ever seen you like this."
Teddy cursed the words the second they left his mouth, though they weren't wrong. He'd never seen his
"I'm celebrating!" she proclaimed. "Jeez, can't a girl have any fun?"
"Hey!" he shot back, holding his hands up in a show of mock surrender. "Not my fault, I didn't know there was anything worth celebrating today."
"Right, yeah…" Ash trailed off, stretching the final syllable well past its breaking point before continuing. "Oh, yeah. No, I didn't mention it, did I?"
Teddy shrugged.
"It's funny," she began, her eyes darting from him towards the ceiling. "I swear, I'm not normally like this—"
"Yeah, I know that—"
"But there's something about this time of year that makes the dumbest things pop back up in my head." In the corners of her eyes, Teddy could see tears forming. "All fucking day — pardon my language — I've heard this one thing in my head. 'Life's a game, life's a joke. Fuck it, why not go for broke?'"
Teddy forced a chuckle. "Shitty advice."
Ash reciprocated, her lips curling into an ironic smile. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?"
"So, what are you celebrating?"
She kept the smile bolted to the corners of her mouth as a tear slid down her cheek.
"The worst day of my life."
You goddamned reprobate.
Tell me you want this; show me you need this. Not for a feather in your cap, or because it'd just be nice to have my head in any context mounted on your mantle, but because your heart will explode without it. Because the grit it takes to be wrestler looking at 40 and choosing to keep throwing themselves into the meat grinder feels less and less impressive with every single moment I hold the lifeblood of this company hostage. To the point where the difference matches where this mass of leather and gold isn't on the line and where it does fails to register.
Tell me, Barney: does defiantly holding your head above the tide in this industry make you feel young? Does your ability to force yourself out of bed each and every morning despite every nagging ache and pain, every joint inflammation and muscle tightness, make you feel fit and ready to take on anything the world throws at you?
Because I'll tell you the truth: every scratch, scrape, and scar this rotten business has given me makes me feel old. The black and purple bruising that consumes most of my torso, that makes breathing a struggle, feels as though it takes a decade off my lifespan every time I inhale. The tableau of scars that line my body, from my hairline to my calves, is not a roadmap of honor. No esteemed deeds are commemorated in the constellations and spiderwebs of blunt force trauma and a thousand cuts.
And whatever must line yours tell the same sorry story.
But therein lies the difference between us. I don't revel in the worst excesses of this industry that's made us cross paths. I don't relish the good fights, the valiant efforts, the bitter refusals to concede that make up the mythology of this business. I came here from the corporate world, after all. A bitter little bloodsucker through and through, there's only one thing I've ever valued.
The production.
The numbers.
The true outcomes.
I've said it once, twice, a million times, with every breath I exhale. This is a zero sum game. Every punch, kick, vicious maiming, utter atrocity, is all in service of one outcome.
So please, for the love of God, if you're going to stand before me, you'd better swing for the fences.
Show me how much you need this.
Make me eat my words.
Make me regret ever waking you up.
Hit me with your best shot.
Because you won't want to see what happens if you don't.
3/1/24
No matter how many times I listen to its soundtrack, the sub-freezing temperatures of Yellowknife haven't allowed for much of a Spring Awakening.
My eyes instinctively narrowed as I glanced at the man seated across the table from me. Teddy Goodson — the artist formerly known as Neo — in the flesh. The sight of him hadn't gotten any more comforting, not as his grip on the newspaper he'd been using to conveniently ignore me tightened momentarily. What's wrong, playboy? my brain asked, but my lips didn't. As the morning light peeked through the blinds of this godforsaken cabin Grace insisted we make our home away from home during our excursion into the tundra, I saw the scars on his face.
"'Scuse me a sec," I muttered under my breath as I rose to my feet and retreated outside, the same unwelcoming wind cutting through the sweater I'd worn. I pulled my phone from my pocket, punching in a number I'd forced myself to memorize.
"Mama, who bore me," I murmured, impatiently, under my breath into the receiver of my cell phone as the internal ring hummed in my ear.
"Yeah?" Johnny said as the line finally clicked to life. His voice was hushed, his jaw clenched tight; I presumed it was still wired shut. Even only saying one word, he spoke with the same urgency he always did when someone called his second phone.
"Is this not a good time?" I asked, cackling.
"Never is," he said wryly before I heard a sigh escape his clenched lips. "'Sup?"
"We're fine, by the way."
"Olive." His voice lowered with exasperation. Truth be told, we hadn't spoken much since Nevada; Grace's insistence. She thought Johnny needed his space after the, everything. He seemed to agree; any correspondence was brief. Strictly above board.
"Well, I'm fine. Grace hasn't gotten out of bed all day because she got her ribs pulverized by a fucking dragon—"
"Olive."
"You know, you're being real fuckin' short with me for someone with a lot of explaining to do."
I could almost hear him rolling his eyes through the phone. "I have literally no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh yeah, just cut me out of any moves and act surprised when I bitch about it. Not cool, Johnny."
"Christ, Olive, did you not just hear me?"
"You know who showed up on our doorstep a couple nights ago? Teddy fucking Goodson. And our mutual friend didn't seem all too surprised to see him."
The line went quiet for a second.
Then two.
And finally, Johnny spoke, with an impishness in his voice I hadn't heard in a hot second.
"Interesting."
