The Cowboy Rides Away At The End. (2,995 words)
Nov 7, 2021 13:18:27 GMT -5
CJ Phoenix, Max f'n Daemon, and 1 more like this
Post by Downfall on Nov 7, 2021 13:18:27 GMT -5
He peeked between the slats of the chic vertical blinds, "I thought we were done with this?" He called back into the house.
Michelle was busy gathering the paperwork into her portfolio. Her flaxen hair glinted like gold under the hanging lamp on the island. She looked up from her legions of contracts, having to tune back in to his world to answer, as if from far away, "Danny, they're children, playing. Who cares?" There was a touch of amusement at seeing him play fish-out-of-water here, prowling back and forth at the blinds and looking from window to window, standing in the foyer of a pricey Colonial in an upcoming suburb of Boca Grande. He looked more like the type that would burgle these specific houses in his ratty leather jacket/camo pants combo. Michelle stifled a giggle as he looked out the window again.
"He's going up to doors and asking for candy, though, Michelle... how can you not be weirded out by this? It's a week later..."
She sighed, hiding her smile with her chin downturned, then she gathered up the paperwork smartly, and began packing it back into her briefcase. "I'm all ready for the walkthrough here tomorrow."
"Alright, good, I parked down the street... let's get out of here, kid."
Her eyes looked him over, carefully; "Thanks for the assist, I know that you've been busy these last few weeks." This was her small prod for him to open up, while still also staying within boundaries in case there was anything dark enough he wanted to keep her out of the loop of. Like his search for Jason that had taken him into dives they'd used to frequent, into sanitariums to visit clowns, into the ruins where once a band of brothers had been. Like his nightmares.
He grunted, and as he opened the door for them to exit the model house, he took a moment before answering. "It's been an anxious few weeks, yeah. Had to contend with two dudes exactly like myself in two different eras coming for our belts. Had to deal with being double-booked on Spookyclash against Devil's Gate, and also Johnny Bacchus got it into his head that I was his Jesus. There was a lot going on for a little while... and gotta go right in from that to business mode in the Wrestler of the Year thing all while finding a way to respectfully and completely cut the Dangerous Gents down. It's not - "
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the child, couldn't have been nine or ten, crossed the empty street without heeding for any traffic, giggling as he ran through the grass. He was wearing a yellow checkered shirt and vest, marking a bizarrely off-brand cosplay of a cartoon cowboy that could not, legally be named. "There's that damn kid again," he growled, as something about it really bothered him.
She gently took his hand with her free one. "And the dreams? Are you still having those?"
He started, looking at her with a tinge of guilt. As if she wouldn't have sensed him sitting bolt upright at 3 am on multiple nights drenched in sweat.
He finally answers, chewing his lip. "All of this - it's made me think hard about the life that late I'd led. I just... I keep thinking... who have I been that my life has been tied to all of these so closely, you know?"
She just gives a soft, murmuring "mhmm," and he continues on.
"S'just... it has me thinking about the ever-present preponderance of evil in my life, you know. Made me ask the hard questions into the dark night of my soul, to get melodramatic. Is there a way this can end? Can the darkness in our hearts ever really be dispelled? Or does it matter that I was part of the team that put Philidor down, because they will still find a way to win out? Does evil always find a way to live on?"
Suddenly, a large row of manicured bushes vomited out a figure wearing a blue jumpsuit. He stood there, this Shape, ominously blocking the sidewalk, and in one hand the silver-painted plastic toy dangled with menace.
"Okay, that's just on the nose," Danny said.
The Shape just stood there, and Danny and Michelle regarded him, Danny with his mouth hanging open and his head tilted in a what the fuck motion, Michelle with a slowly-breaking grin and gauging Danny's reaction. The Shape breathed in and out through his ill-fitting white Shatner mask.
Then the Shape rumbled, "Candy," and that was all.
The Shape was four feet tall.
Michelle couldn't stop giggling as Danny stepped closer to it, squinting and cocking his head in perturbance. He looked back at Michelle, who just shrugged and motioned him forward.
Daniel dug into the pockets of his leather, producing a tin. He regarded it for half a second before he flipped it nonchalantly in the air towards the Shape. "Got half a tin of Altoids, it's yours, guy."
Michelle was dying laughing as he squared his shoulders and stepped away. The kid in the costume seemed to regard the can of Altoids in his free hand for a moment, then he spit forth another gravelly syllable of thanks and escaped back into the bushes. Danny looked over at Michelle, who was wiping tears in her eyes, his jaw jutting out unamusedly. "Not another word, Taylor..."
Her tinkling laughter lit up the cul-de-sac for another minute, but they continued walking, while he bore it in frustrated silence. He did keep a watch for any other kids, particularly tracking for the yellow-shirted cowboy.
Michelle held his arm, but her voice grew sober. "I see your line of thinking, but I think you're just focusing on the negative side of all of this... probably because you're obsessing about Jason being out there, or because you're thinking of yourself as him. You're not."
"No? Then what am I, if not someone that Jason imprinted on so heavily that he became my shadow?"
"You're... an opposite," she said, slowly. "Everything needs it's mirror. Evil and darkness can't exist without the light, and all that. It may not be something that... ends... but that doesn't mean that it wins, either. It just is, baby."
He grimaces a little, but she's not wrong.
"So you're telling me that you did all of that because you wanted to destroy the evil of Philidor once and for all?" She says, as they reach where he'd parked the Corvette. "Well, no... it just. Felt like the right thing to do. Fuck, I don't know, Michelle."
Her smile is warm over the top of the roof as she goes to the passenger side. "Daniel Conner Fehl, we're making an optimist out of you, yet." She laughs.
His sardonic eyebrow raise to her was all his response, but he didn't slide behind the wheel of the chariot just yet. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked up the street. He beheld the yellow-shirted cowboy, standing on the sidewalk, his pockets full of all the leftover carry he could finagle out of anyone who was home; Now he scanned the rows of houses, not seeing any avenues for future endeavors. Not seeing any more places to go, the kid seemed lost, and he could see uncertainty creeping onto the face of the little late trick-or-treater.
"HEY, KID," he shouted, and causing the yellow-shirted cowboy to look up, startled, "GET FOUND, KID."
The boy took his meaning, and, instinctively knowing the way, pointed his body down the street, jetting off and dropping pieces of candy and heading down the street, into the setting Florida sun.
As Danny sat behind the wheel, he watched the little cowboy run away, with something niggling in the back of his mind.
There's a lesson to be learned out of all of this, you know.
Always, always pay attention to those in your life who come in to assist you, claim they'll give ya the shirt off their backs.
In my life, I've been bound to so many of those who prey on ego, feigning Samaritanism (always in exchange FOR -) fangs dripping milk and honey, and promising succor to those who needed it, only to sink into the back of their neck when they turned their head gratefully.
Philidor did just that, on a macro level for AW and Torture, holding out their hand in a recreation of the "You are safe now my sweet child" meme, cutting ribbons for heavily equipped gyms and compensating the roster for travel.
And they did it on a more personal level: recruiters like Ash Blake sought out emotionally fragile, stunted, needy people like Lissie Hope and made them promise after promise, that they'd make them into better people.
What I find most ironic's that the roster piles so much scorn on Ash for her thinly-veiled, manipulative language about giving someone a new life...
And yet Sam Kidsgrove is seen as the most virtuous White Hat in the biz for doing much the same; whether it's through name recognition breeding familiarity or sexism, I'm not one to say.
God knows I've spoken my mind often enough how empty I find his whole shtick, but what really fucks my head up to think about is asking what would Kidsgrove have done if he had been in the scenario at SpookyClash.
If his team was the ones who went on to clean-sweep Philidor Holdings and give them their most crushing, final defeat?
For sure he'd never let anyone forget it, which is fair... 'cause I ain't gonna stop reminding people that I've been quietly taking scalps this entire year, either.
After all, I'm the one who went on an unprecedented run of TV title defenses, bodying folx left-right-center including Kidsgrove. That put this work in to uplift these belts that he held for 42 days, and didn't even defend once on a Clash.
And my hands are the ones that put Ash Blake to the sword.
But knowing Kidsgrove it would have been more than just a moral imperative, right-thing-for-the-right-reasons final stand.
It'd be that finger-wagging, holier-than-thou, "I helped you because I know better than you" attitude he takes towards doing the right thing that makes me want to have him bite the ring steps and stomp.
Objectively, there is not one thing Kidsgrove has affected that he's noticeably made better, 'cause he imposes how he would improve himself in wholly inappropriate fashion on everyone else.
I'll never forget around Trios last year, I found myself floundering for direction after my initial efforts trying to be something I wasn't anymore didn't bring me success in title matches. So what did Kidsgrove do?
He recruited Corey Bull and I, asked us to join him on a movie set and tried to shoot a quickie B-movie in a genre that couldn't fit the tone any less than if it had really been a porno, he dressed the three of us in Old Western garb and then was just absolutely flabbergasted that neither of us could nail a take.
This is the assistance to my career that Kidsgrove continues to hold over my head, one year later. To the point where, 'cause I pissed him off by calling him out for winning via distraction, he turned sullen and wrathful. "Why else would you take my help and flush it down the toilet to join a sadistic cult that just used you and discarded you?"
Kidsgrove. Deep breath.
This is not about you. It never has been.
I don't know where you got it lodged in your head that you were doing lil' ol' me a favor by partnering with me in Trios, but if that poison pill you held out meant that you wouldn't fucking shut up about it every single time I did something that pissed you off I woulda never have taken it. It's bold of you to presume that anything you've ever done has affected me, ever, but let's look at this.
You wouldn't know that the Lost Breed never discarded me, because you never pay attention to the shows.
You even profess to be mystified why I have "some problem with you", that "[...]After all, we have a big history together. We fought for a long time, he betrayed me in that ill-judged misadventure, then we fought some more[...]" while vague and factually colored by your droll wit, you never actually once paid attention to find out why I've held some disdain for you as a person, and I've counted reasons on at least three occasions.
Hell, last time that you even bothered to compete in a match, you expressed outrage, indignant pique that the Vanguard would DARE to ask for another shot at the Tag titles; that over 60000 people in SoFi never got the chance to go absolutely crazy over their hometown boy [...] on top of one of those ladders holding the All-In briefcase.
Your puerile dissatisfaction at being asked to defend your fucking belt in a match speaks volumes, considering you cried foul at Der Metzger not handing out US Title shots you felt like you deserved; so much so that you created your own Golden Globe to defend. I forgot, how did that end?
And now after you've spent months on vacation, you come back just because there's another accolade on the line.
You won't have known or paid any attention to any character development or happenings in any division, you won't have looked into any of my personal struggles or seen what I've been working on overcoming;
Fuck, I wouldn't put it past you to be so out-of-touch that you'll think Philidor just went away on their own.
But you'll ride back in here on your white horse. Believing you know what's best for me, for all of us is to give you an easy pass into being named Wrestler of the Year, based on absolutely none of the hard work that nomenclature encompasses because you've barely even wrestled. You'll want to be the new sheriff.
Just like the cowboys you wanted me to evoke and emulate, because the pristine, sanitized version of Gary Cooper, Lee Van Cleef, of Sam Peckinpah's Old West were conservative wet-dream black-and-white, simplified moralities.
The robbers and Injuns were stripped of all their agency, identity, and turned simply into foils for the square-jawed, blonde-haired Rifleman.
That isn't a patch on the reality of vaqueros and ranchers, and you riding in just when it comes time for more year-end awards and prizes to start getting handed out smacks of your arrogant attitude that this is something AW owes you for services rendered.
And just like the Western narrative, every one of your co-stars are just canvas for you to express your own journey, not anyone you've ever been interested in genuinely bettering.
Thing is, that you and I have never had the relationship and long history you've tried so hard to portray.
I've only ever brushed up against you on a weekly basis. And every single time I've come away from dealing with you more ready to take a shower, wash off your cheese.
When you're happy, when you're on an even keel, you'll fluff the air with purpled prose about how you and I are like lightning before throwing out misses about what my relationships are like, but in the end, you'll never let me forget that one week you thought you were doing me a solid by putting me in your shitty cowboy movie; You'll be so full of spite and snark and disdain for the idea that I would come at you again and you'll enumerate that you've put me on my back countless times - once again, you only speak in banalities and overplay your importance.
You're the worst kind of Samaritan, Sam... you're the type of chud that's so bought in to their own arrogance that they think we should kiss the ground that they walk on, just because they walked by us, that you light up our lives.
You, even more than Philidor, are the most dangerous and insidious narcissist in this company and you deserve the same end.
A come-to-Jesus meeting between your cheek and my boots, turning that smug pearly smile into splinters.
I look forward to once again depriving you of that moment you think that everyone wanted to see, Sam. I look forward to drubbing you out of the WOTY so early that you decide to go back on vacation before Turmoil altogether, and we won't have to endure a repeat of last year's Trios with you "aiding" someone else's career. I look forward to the cowboy riding off at the end of this picture, because this one's hide is going to be full of bullet-wounds and arrows... the townsfolk aren't gonna look after him with beatific gratitude for his sacrifice, they're gonna shake their heads and be glad to see the back of him.
And, most of all, I live for this moment when I finally and irrevocably shut your fucking mouth for good.
And end to the phony narrative that you've been anything to me except a slight irritant and someone who's gotten by for too long without their just comeuppance, you elitist popinjay.
You're coming in to sniff disdainfully at the air, wondering how you can twist this into a story about us "rekindling our old rivalry" or some incredibly pat, nonsensical, not-expounded-on glib one-liner.
While I'm coming into this like the Sundance Kid, ready to put a bullet through your forehead, put you down for good.
So look me in the eyes one last time, Kidsgrove.
Before I pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, before I strip you of all of your undeserved entitlement... before I put you the fuck down and send you riding off into the sunset on the back of a cart.
Don't blink.
Michelle was busy gathering the paperwork into her portfolio. Her flaxen hair glinted like gold under the hanging lamp on the island. She looked up from her legions of contracts, having to tune back in to his world to answer, as if from far away, "Danny, they're children, playing. Who cares?" There was a touch of amusement at seeing him play fish-out-of-water here, prowling back and forth at the blinds and looking from window to window, standing in the foyer of a pricey Colonial in an upcoming suburb of Boca Grande. He looked more like the type that would burgle these specific houses in his ratty leather jacket/camo pants combo. Michelle stifled a giggle as he looked out the window again.
"He's going up to doors and asking for candy, though, Michelle... how can you not be weirded out by this? It's a week later..."
She sighed, hiding her smile with her chin downturned, then she gathered up the paperwork smartly, and began packing it back into her briefcase. "I'm all ready for the walkthrough here tomorrow."
"Alright, good, I parked down the street... let's get out of here, kid."
Her eyes looked him over, carefully; "Thanks for the assist, I know that you've been busy these last few weeks." This was her small prod for him to open up, while still also staying within boundaries in case there was anything dark enough he wanted to keep her out of the loop of. Like his search for Jason that had taken him into dives they'd used to frequent, into sanitariums to visit clowns, into the ruins where once a band of brothers had been. Like his nightmares.
He grunted, and as he opened the door for them to exit the model house, he took a moment before answering. "It's been an anxious few weeks, yeah. Had to contend with two dudes exactly like myself in two different eras coming for our belts. Had to deal with being double-booked on Spookyclash against Devil's Gate, and also Johnny Bacchus got it into his head that I was his Jesus. There was a lot going on for a little while... and gotta go right in from that to business mode in the Wrestler of the Year thing all while finding a way to respectfully and completely cut the Dangerous Gents down. It's not - "
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the child, couldn't have been nine or ten, crossed the empty street without heeding for any traffic, giggling as he ran through the grass. He was wearing a yellow checkered shirt and vest, marking a bizarrely off-brand cosplay of a cartoon cowboy that could not, legally be named. "There's that damn kid again," he growled, as something about it really bothered him.
She gently took his hand with her free one. "And the dreams? Are you still having those?"
He started, looking at her with a tinge of guilt. As if she wouldn't have sensed him sitting bolt upright at 3 am on multiple nights drenched in sweat.
He finally answers, chewing his lip. "All of this - it's made me think hard about the life that late I'd led. I just... I keep thinking... who have I been that my life has been tied to all of these so closely, you know?"
She just gives a soft, murmuring "mhmm," and he continues on.
"S'just... it has me thinking about the ever-present preponderance of evil in my life, you know. Made me ask the hard questions into the dark night of my soul, to get melodramatic. Is there a way this can end? Can the darkness in our hearts ever really be dispelled? Or does it matter that I was part of the team that put Philidor down, because they will still find a way to win out? Does evil always find a way to live on?"
Suddenly, a large row of manicured bushes vomited out a figure wearing a blue jumpsuit. He stood there, this Shape, ominously blocking the sidewalk, and in one hand the silver-painted plastic toy dangled with menace.
"Okay, that's just on the nose," Danny said.
The Shape just stood there, and Danny and Michelle regarded him, Danny with his mouth hanging open and his head tilted in a what the fuck motion, Michelle with a slowly-breaking grin and gauging Danny's reaction. The Shape breathed in and out through his ill-fitting white Shatner mask.
Then the Shape rumbled, "Candy," and that was all.
The Shape was four feet tall.
Michelle couldn't stop giggling as Danny stepped closer to it, squinting and cocking his head in perturbance. He looked back at Michelle, who just shrugged and motioned him forward.
Daniel dug into the pockets of his leather, producing a tin. He regarded it for half a second before he flipped it nonchalantly in the air towards the Shape. "Got half a tin of Altoids, it's yours, guy."
Michelle was dying laughing as he squared his shoulders and stepped away. The kid in the costume seemed to regard the can of Altoids in his free hand for a moment, then he spit forth another gravelly syllable of thanks and escaped back into the bushes. Danny looked over at Michelle, who was wiping tears in her eyes, his jaw jutting out unamusedly. "Not another word, Taylor..."
Her tinkling laughter lit up the cul-de-sac for another minute, but they continued walking, while he bore it in frustrated silence. He did keep a watch for any other kids, particularly tracking for the yellow-shirted cowboy.
Michelle held his arm, but her voice grew sober. "I see your line of thinking, but I think you're just focusing on the negative side of all of this... probably because you're obsessing about Jason being out there, or because you're thinking of yourself as him. You're not."
"No? Then what am I, if not someone that Jason imprinted on so heavily that he became my shadow?"
"You're... an opposite," she said, slowly. "Everything needs it's mirror. Evil and darkness can't exist without the light, and all that. It may not be something that... ends... but that doesn't mean that it wins, either. It just is, baby."
He grimaces a little, but she's not wrong.
"So you're telling me that you did all of that because you wanted to destroy the evil of Philidor once and for all?" She says, as they reach where he'd parked the Corvette. "Well, no... it just. Felt like the right thing to do. Fuck, I don't know, Michelle."
Her smile is warm over the top of the roof as she goes to the passenger side. "Daniel Conner Fehl, we're making an optimist out of you, yet." She laughs.
His sardonic eyebrow raise to her was all his response, but he didn't slide behind the wheel of the chariot just yet. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked up the street. He beheld the yellow-shirted cowboy, standing on the sidewalk, his pockets full of all the leftover carry he could finagle out of anyone who was home; Now he scanned the rows of houses, not seeing any avenues for future endeavors. Not seeing any more places to go, the kid seemed lost, and he could see uncertainty creeping onto the face of the little late trick-or-treater.
"HEY, KID," he shouted, and causing the yellow-shirted cowboy to look up, startled, "GET FOUND, KID."
The boy took his meaning, and, instinctively knowing the way, pointed his body down the street, jetting off and dropping pieces of candy and heading down the street, into the setting Florida sun.
As Danny sat behind the wheel, he watched the little cowboy run away, with something niggling in the back of his mind.
There's a lesson to be learned out of all of this, you know.
Always, always pay attention to those in your life who come in to assist you, claim they'll give ya the shirt off their backs.
In my life, I've been bound to so many of those who prey on ego, feigning Samaritanism (always in exchange FOR -) fangs dripping milk and honey, and promising succor to those who needed it, only to sink into the back of their neck when they turned their head gratefully.
Philidor did just that, on a macro level for AW and Torture, holding out their hand in a recreation of the "You are safe now my sweet child" meme, cutting ribbons for heavily equipped gyms and compensating the roster for travel.
And they did it on a more personal level: recruiters like Ash Blake sought out emotionally fragile, stunted, needy people like Lissie Hope and made them promise after promise, that they'd make them into better people.
What I find most ironic's that the roster piles so much scorn on Ash for her thinly-veiled, manipulative language about giving someone a new life...
And yet Sam Kidsgrove is seen as the most virtuous White Hat in the biz for doing much the same; whether it's through name recognition breeding familiarity or sexism, I'm not one to say.
God knows I've spoken my mind often enough how empty I find his whole shtick, but what really fucks my head up to think about is asking what would Kidsgrove have done if he had been in the scenario at SpookyClash.
If his team was the ones who went on to clean-sweep Philidor Holdings and give them their most crushing, final defeat?
For sure he'd never let anyone forget it, which is fair... 'cause I ain't gonna stop reminding people that I've been quietly taking scalps this entire year, either.
After all, I'm the one who went on an unprecedented run of TV title defenses, bodying folx left-right-center including Kidsgrove. That put this work in to uplift these belts that he held for 42 days, and didn't even defend once on a Clash.
And my hands are the ones that put Ash Blake to the sword.
But knowing Kidsgrove it would have been more than just a moral imperative, right-thing-for-the-right-reasons final stand.
It'd be that finger-wagging, holier-than-thou, "I helped you because I know better than you" attitude he takes towards doing the right thing that makes me want to have him bite the ring steps and stomp.
Objectively, there is not one thing Kidsgrove has affected that he's noticeably made better, 'cause he imposes how he would improve himself in wholly inappropriate fashion on everyone else.
I'll never forget around Trios last year, I found myself floundering for direction after my initial efforts trying to be something I wasn't anymore didn't bring me success in title matches. So what did Kidsgrove do?
He recruited Corey Bull and I, asked us to join him on a movie set and tried to shoot a quickie B-movie in a genre that couldn't fit the tone any less than if it had really been a porno, he dressed the three of us in Old Western garb and then was just absolutely flabbergasted that neither of us could nail a take.
This is the assistance to my career that Kidsgrove continues to hold over my head, one year later. To the point where, 'cause I pissed him off by calling him out for winning via distraction, he turned sullen and wrathful. "Why else would you take my help and flush it down the toilet to join a sadistic cult that just used you and discarded you?"
Kidsgrove. Deep breath.
This is not about you. It never has been.
I don't know where you got it lodged in your head that you were doing lil' ol' me a favor by partnering with me in Trios, but if that poison pill you held out meant that you wouldn't fucking shut up about it every single time I did something that pissed you off I woulda never have taken it. It's bold of you to presume that anything you've ever done has affected me, ever, but let's look at this.
You wouldn't know that the Lost Breed never discarded me, because you never pay attention to the shows.
You even profess to be mystified why I have "some problem with you", that "[...]After all, we have a big history together. We fought for a long time, he betrayed me in that ill-judged misadventure, then we fought some more[...]" while vague and factually colored by your droll wit, you never actually once paid attention to find out why I've held some disdain for you as a person, and I've counted reasons on at least three occasions.
Hell, last time that you even bothered to compete in a match, you expressed outrage, indignant pique that the Vanguard would DARE to ask for another shot at the Tag titles; that over 60000 people in SoFi never got the chance to go absolutely crazy over their hometown boy [...] on top of one of those ladders holding the All-In briefcase.
Your puerile dissatisfaction at being asked to defend your fucking belt in a match speaks volumes, considering you cried foul at Der Metzger not handing out US Title shots you felt like you deserved; so much so that you created your own Golden Globe to defend. I forgot, how did that end?
And now after you've spent months on vacation, you come back just because there's another accolade on the line.
You won't have known or paid any attention to any character development or happenings in any division, you won't have looked into any of my personal struggles or seen what I've been working on overcoming;
Fuck, I wouldn't put it past you to be so out-of-touch that you'll think Philidor just went away on their own.
But you'll ride back in here on your white horse. Believing you know what's best for me, for all of us is to give you an easy pass into being named Wrestler of the Year, based on absolutely none of the hard work that nomenclature encompasses because you've barely even wrestled. You'll want to be the new sheriff.
Just like the cowboys you wanted me to evoke and emulate, because the pristine, sanitized version of Gary Cooper, Lee Van Cleef, of Sam Peckinpah's Old West were conservative wet-dream black-and-white, simplified moralities.
The robbers and Injuns were stripped of all their agency, identity, and turned simply into foils for the square-jawed, blonde-haired Rifleman.
That isn't a patch on the reality of vaqueros and ranchers, and you riding in just when it comes time for more year-end awards and prizes to start getting handed out smacks of your arrogant attitude that this is something AW owes you for services rendered.
And just like the Western narrative, every one of your co-stars are just canvas for you to express your own journey, not anyone you've ever been interested in genuinely bettering.
Thing is, that you and I have never had the relationship and long history you've tried so hard to portray.
I've only ever brushed up against you on a weekly basis. And every single time I've come away from dealing with you more ready to take a shower, wash off your cheese.
When you're happy, when you're on an even keel, you'll fluff the air with purpled prose about how you and I are like lightning before throwing out misses about what my relationships are like, but in the end, you'll never let me forget that one week you thought you were doing me a solid by putting me in your shitty cowboy movie; You'll be so full of spite and snark and disdain for the idea that I would come at you again and you'll enumerate that you've put me on my back countless times - once again, you only speak in banalities and overplay your importance.
You're the worst kind of Samaritan, Sam... you're the type of chud that's so bought in to their own arrogance that they think we should kiss the ground that they walk on, just because they walked by us, that you light up our lives.
You, even more than Philidor, are the most dangerous and insidious narcissist in this company and you deserve the same end.
A come-to-Jesus meeting between your cheek and my boots, turning that smug pearly smile into splinters.
I look forward to once again depriving you of that moment you think that everyone wanted to see, Sam. I look forward to drubbing you out of the WOTY so early that you decide to go back on vacation before Turmoil altogether, and we won't have to endure a repeat of last year's Trios with you "aiding" someone else's career. I look forward to the cowboy riding off at the end of this picture, because this one's hide is going to be full of bullet-wounds and arrows... the townsfolk aren't gonna look after him with beatific gratitude for his sacrifice, they're gonna shake their heads and be glad to see the back of him.
And, most of all, I live for this moment when I finally and irrevocably shut your fucking mouth for good.
And end to the phony narrative that you've been anything to me except a slight irritant and someone who's gotten by for too long without their just comeuppance, you elitist popinjay.
You're coming in to sniff disdainfully at the air, wondering how you can twist this into a story about us "rekindling our old rivalry" or some incredibly pat, nonsensical, not-expounded-on glib one-liner.
While I'm coming into this like the Sundance Kid, ready to put a bullet through your forehead, put you down for good.
So look me in the eyes one last time, Kidsgrove.
Before I pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, before I strip you of all of your undeserved entitlement... before I put you the fuck down and send you riding off into the sunset on the back of a cart.
Don't blink.