Post by Regan Voorhees on Nov 14, 2021 11:40:28 GMT -5
I beat Lissie Hope.
Again.
Then vomited backstage.
Again.
The Regan Voorhees versus Lissie Hope saga is now 2-0. Regan’s Stomach didn’t fare quite so well. Under different circumstances this would be a victory to savor alongside some truffle brie, proof positive that my Action Wrestling career does not revolve around her. But while I may be Lissie’s kryptonite, the show and the Turmoil Tournament must go on. A stumble in round two washes my glory off and sends it streaking down my cheeks like so much cheap mascara.
I splashed water on my face, a post-puke refresher, and managed to will my nausea into retreat, despite the state of the State Farm Arena bathroom. Even after the sweating, the vomiting, the water - my mascara didn’t run. My lashes fluttered, but the eyes underneath were grim as always. Part abyss, part the one staring.
And then I waited. Eager as I was to catch a flight back to Birmingham, I stayed long enough to see Corey Black defeat Dune. My round two opponent was confirmed and with only a week to get ready, my brain would need every precious second of mental preparation.
Corey Black was the Action Wrestling World Champion when I debuted last December, my first example of a figurehead prior to his unchampioning. A man who made the professional decision to fight the wrestling world, with less disastrous results than a webcomic might lead one to believe.
A mess of bodily and psychological trauma, pieced back into working order with a little help from medical science and held together through a spiteful refusal to fall apart, just to deny anyone the glory of finally slaying the King of Wrestlers. A Darwinian meat engine, bent on annihilation as a general principal, and currently my specific annihilation for professional purposes. A man who wouldn’t take lightly the possibility of losing Wrestler of the Year, particularly to a pampered heiress.
If you were Corey Black, could you imagine Regan Voorhees being the one to eliminate you? CruiserClash's own erstwhile figurehead, who up until Execution was all too happy to achieve most of her wins through Bunga-ference? What a black eye(how do people think I’m not funny?) that would be to your career, your Iliad of accomplishments, your very identity. Would that be enough to unravel the mystical stitches holding your patchwork body together and make you collapse to the stage, like a puppet with its strings cut?
The prospect delighted me, but I’m a practical woman. If life, the wrestle-verse and everything couldn’t destroy Corey Black, then I didn’t expect to. A one-two-three, a count out, even a disqualification would suffice. He could keep on existing, maybe find another planet to pugilize with(I hear Uranus is both lovely and ornery this time of year), and I could battle on through semis and finals and take a crown of my own.
Regan Voorhees - Wrestler of the Year
Someone paint me a picture already.
I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything. With all the psychopathic, unchecked avarice of a brat on Christmas morning, vowing to make her parents’ lives hell if Santa didn’t deliver exactly what she asked for, good girl all year or not.
But as an opponent, Corey Black would prove… uniquely challenging. My year on CruiserClash was notably lacking in similar opponents. I had yet to face anyone quite like the Last King. My own toolkit would require adjustments, perhaps additions. Only a better, stronger, even more ruthless Regan could hope to win.
My redefining continued.
Gustav Voorhees was hardly anyone’s idea of the charming European, but even a dapper Dutchman would’ve been hard pressed to talk his way out of exile from Münchenstätten after collapsing a Spinnenkopmolen on three generations worth of Osterhoudts. Hidden within a crate of gouda, he was loaded onto a ship bound for the Americas. The cheese kept him alive for the two-week journey, and soon he arrived, the first Voorhees to set foot on American soil.
No one seems to know why exactly he was chased out of Brooklyn twelve hours after his arrival, but historians agree that he never returned and did his best to pass a disdain for New York City onto his descendants. For several years he traveled New England, working odd jobs and finding some camaraderie among his fellow eccentrics, in particular Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who frequented an ice cream parlor in Providence, Rhode Island, which Gustav managed. The two bonded over their mutual hatred of Brooklyn, and while Lovecraft was a staunch racist and hater of immigrants, Gustav earned his favor by supplying even more reasons why the Dutch were vile, though he alone was the exception. Uncharacteristically, Lovecraft agreed. A popular theory suggests it was because of free ice cream. Some months later, Gustav requested that Lovecraft monitor the parlor while he ran back to his boarding house to retrieve a lithograph mocking the Irish. Lovecraft was happy to, helping himself to no small amount of the parlor’s stock in the process. Only when Gustav failed to return hours later did Lovecraft realize that the register had been emptied and that he had been framed. While the local police were remarkable understanding, it is commonly thought that this incident was the inspiration for Lovecraft’s lesser known story “The Loathsome Dutchman.”
Gustav Voorhees resurfaced outside of Birmingham, Alabama. There he offered assistance in ridding the community of a carnival troupe who had overstayed their welcome. One night, he collapsed the tent on the unwary carnies. When the collapse did not prove as successfully fatal as it was against the Osterhoudts, Gustav turned to fire and solved the community’s problem once and for all. The locals rewarded him with an abandoned plantation house, several acres of land and a dozen pigs. It was here that Gustav finally settled down, establishing Voorhees Farms and going on to build an empire that would define his family for generations.
A true tale of an immigrant who, through hard work and determination, realized the American Dream.
Given my particular disposition, I’ve always wondered if there might be some predisposition in my DNA to explain how the Regan apple fell so far from the Voorhees tree. Gustav Voorhees’ early years in America were a jumble of odd jobs and misanthropic behavior, but following the establishment of Voorhees Farms he settled into a business model that afforded him comfort and wealth for the rest of his life, allowing him to pursue his eccentricities while his growing family gradually assumed the responsibilities of expanding his empire. But Gustav remained a secretive man. His interest in the occult was treated as a delightful quirk by his wife, who was quick to distance herself after producing enough heirs to secure the family business for herself. He maintained a collection of ominous tomes, but was unable to complete any of the rituals detailed therein, as they typically required multiple participants and even among his most ill-reputed neighbors, Gustav was considered intolerable.
Not entirely unrelatable. My mother has long since stopped asking me to answer the unanswerable question of why I am the way I am. A fair question, but still hurtful.
But as the only current Voorhees with a fully functional brain, I elected to return to the Voorhees plantation and uncover the secrets of our progenitor. And so with a curious mind and a crowbar I purchased off Amazon, I returned to Alabama to discover...
“Spotify, I’m in the mood for something upbeat and nautical.”
“Egad, Spotify.”
Crickets chirped outside and a cool evening breeze followed me through the creaking double doors. Both groaned in disrepair, and one collapsed off the hinges entirely, kicking up a preposterous amount of dust. The plantation house welcomed me, like a mouse dangling above its maw, it was eager to release my wriggling tail so that it might swallow me up. Every room seemed like a dark pit, offering the illusion of something beyond when I shined my flashlight, but again revealing its abyssal nature when not under the beam’s examination. Crowbar in one hand, flashlight in the other, my phone blared Nintendocore from the pocket of my periwinkle track jacket. Tonight I would discover if there was something more to my inhuman tendencies. A generations old betrayal written in my own blood that I never had any hope of overcoming.
There to investigate, I investigated, journeying through the parlor, the dining room, the kitchen. I peaked out the window over the sink, at the remnants of the magnolia tree where Gustav Voorhees self-immolated. Initially everyone thought it was part of some ritual to make his body a vessel for the Mesopotamian god Nergal. But upon further investigation, it was due to a faulty tobacco pipe he was attempting to light. Quite wisely, his wife invested the pipe company’s settlement back into the family business; more pigs, more bacon, more money.
Naturally, there was still a pentagram under the bed in the guest room. Gustav had no qualms about trying to sacrifice company to whatever dark deity he was obsessed with that week, but his lack of charm and general oddness made sleepovers a rarity. The catacombs were similarly unsuspicious, though I was able to locate the oak coffin Gustav slept in for several days, before throwing his back out. A quirk to be sure, but nothing that would account for any sense of the truly demonic.
The search continued, my mind hungry for revelation. Could there be some explanation for why I threw away any sense of normalcy in my life? Was there some sort of demon taint in my blood, was my soul promised to some hungry god, am I just the ideal sociopathic heiress after decades of generational wealth? Is there any rhyme or reason, an explanation to my disposition, or my affliction, depending on your point of view? Is Regan Voorhees actually human, and if so, how human is she? Why would someone with every advantage minimize interpersonal ties to focus on befriending the fauna while literally battling their own species? As my mother so often asked, why am I like this? Would I change, if I could? And if I could unlock even more monstrous aspects of myself, would I chose that instead?
I had previously looked into Gustav’s brief acquaintanceship with H.P. Lovecraft and how the two bonded over ice cream and being pieces of absolute shit. If it weren’t for my gender, I’d tick all the boxes of a Lovecraftian protagonist. Educated, white, frightfully bad with people. But I have as of yet been able to confirm any monster-fucking further up the family tree, with the accompanying mental breakdown that comes from such a revelation. Frankly, I find it silly that anyone should get so much credit for arriving at the stunning conclusion that the unfamiliar is more frightening than the familiar. Dizzying insight from the fragile racist who famously didn’t have the constitution for the sciences. Don’t even get me started on his misuse of the term non-Euclidean.
I pressed on, through the crypt, the underground library, the makeshift autopsy room and the crude laboratory. Finally I arrived at the alchemy lab. There was a table laden with beakers and vials, a mortar and pestle, even an unopened Bear Bryant collectible Coke bottle. The bottle bearing the likeness of the iconic coach sat at the corner of a stack of ragged pages on yellowed paper, with rows of manic scribbling. The top read:
My quivering hands seized them on instinct. Worried I might shake the fragile, brittle pages to pieces before they betrayed their secrets, I took a breath and willed my body to calm itself. Then I read.
“Hm. Siluriformes sound familiar, but I can’t quite place the term.”
Deep within the catacombs, my phone was useless for reference. I flipped to the next page, where I found a diagram that answered my question. Crude thought it was, it was unmistakably a human man inserting his penis into the mouth of a fish, in the vile act of fish-latio. Hardly the Deep One crossbreeding that Lovecraft so famously wrote about.
"Well, this is certainly disappointing."
After flipping to a third page, I discovered more diagrams. Similar to the first, each one illustrated a different point in the thrusting process, to clarify to the reader that Gustav’s recipe for a supreme being was to face-fuck a catfish. The fourth page finally revealed his nefarious aim.
“Mammals, you simpleton. Even children know that."
Apparently Gustav also lacked the constitution for science.
The scene opened under a dead magnolia tree, firelight flickering offscreen to illuminate my ghostly pallor and set my shadow against the wooden corpse. My mascara was perfect, my track jacket less formal than usual. For someone who’d been ghost hunting, I looked immaculate.
“Do you ever regret it, Corey? The decisions you’ve made and the price you’ve paid to get where you are? Burned bridges, broken body parts that can never quite mend, years taken off your life to prove you were the King of All Wrestlers?”
“Sometimes, sure. Who wouldn’t? But then you think about the times where it all worked out, when you got what you wanted, when Corey Black was victorious. It’s not just the winning that’s so scrumptious, it’s that when the bell rings and your hand is raised, you prove that everything you did to get there was right.”
“There are always people who don’t agree, but I prefer to see them as lacking conviction. If I wanted to, I could pretend to be the non-broken child of privilege. Feign some semblance of happiness by the normie definition. Brunches with gal pals, shopping dates with mom, blow a small nation’s GNP on a ridiculous wedding, and a honeymoon fuck-fest in Tuscany. Tell myself everyday that’s it’s exactly what I want and that I have no desire to saw my own head off. But no, no, no. That’s not how I find satisfaction. Certainly I still have my doubts and regrets. Maybe I’m not the monster I aspire to be. Maybe I really am just a rich girl cosplaying. That’s why I need you, Corey. You’re my proof.”
“I always thought there was an explanation for my… harmful tendencies. A trauma my brain willed itself to forget, something taken from me, a curse in my blood itself. But that’s not true. There’s no deep, dark hole in my center. No tragic origin story. My parents are alive and well, if entirely unpleasant. They even love me, as much as they can, in spite of who and what I am. But there’s no greater reason for why I’m this way. I just am. This is me.”
“Generational wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ll be keeping mine, of course, but I still feel icky about it. Because ill-gotten or undeserved as it may be. It got me here. The best training money can buy, without having to pay dues or work a deadend job to fund my career. The unfairest of advantages, but something I want you to note, Corey. I had options. I could’ve done anything or nothing with my life, yet here I am standing between you and Wrestler of the Year. You had to be here. I chose to be here. Which one of us do really think wants this more?”
“The abyss stares, we stare back. You’re not dead behind the eyes, though. There’s an undying, malicious spark, a crackle of endless spite. That, I can appreciate. You want to beat me, because it will help make sense of all the horrible things that have happened to you. All the suffering you’ve been through, surely there was a reason. My life has been a cakewalk in comparison. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t deserve to destroy you.”
“But there is no sense, Corey. The universe doesn’t care which one of us deserves this. One of us is the abyss, the other’s just staring. Deserving has nothing to do with it.”
“And I was born to destroy you.”
I gave the camera my best attempt at a final, abyssal stare; the last gasp of the Reganverse, should it collapse in on itself. The flames flickered and I stopped recording.
The house burned brightfully, blissfully. The hungry flames stirred my stomach and it cried out for the taste of a toasted Dandies marshmallows that I stupidly forgot to order. I never planned to burn down the old ruin. But really, wasn’t the world a little better with one less plantation house?
The crackle of the flames entered my ears like the song of a siren, hypnotizing my arsonist heart. My ringtone, a series of happy snorts from Atticus, broke the trance. It was to my ear in a second, and I felt some relief at being reconnected with the outside world, even if it was an incompetent DoorDasher.
“Yes, it’s by the burning house. If you want five stars, be here in sixty seconds. I just discovered my great-great-grandfather fucked fish and I'm intent on getting utterly wasted.”
The driver arrived ninety-six seconds later and lost himself a star. He was irritatingly apologetic, and slow to understand when I shooed him away, but otherwise my order was impeccable. The one-gallon fishbowl stirred images of Gustav’s secret research, but hopefully the rum and vodka would take care of that. I uncorked both bottles and poured generously, flames lighting my work. I vowed to press forward - human, monster or otherwise.
Again.
Then vomited backstage.
Again.
The Regan Voorhees versus Lissie Hope saga is now 2-0. Regan’s Stomach didn’t fare quite so well. Under different circumstances this would be a victory to savor alongside some truffle brie, proof positive that my Action Wrestling career does not revolve around her. But while I may be Lissie’s kryptonite, the show and the Turmoil Tournament must go on. A stumble in round two washes my glory off and sends it streaking down my cheeks like so much cheap mascara.
I splashed water on my face, a post-puke refresher, and managed to will my nausea into retreat, despite the state of the State Farm Arena bathroom. Even after the sweating, the vomiting, the water - my mascara didn’t run. My lashes fluttered, but the eyes underneath were grim as always. Part abyss, part the one staring.
And then I waited. Eager as I was to catch a flight back to Birmingham, I stayed long enough to see Corey Black defeat Dune. My round two opponent was confirmed and with only a week to get ready, my brain would need every precious second of mental preparation.
Corey Black was the Action Wrestling World Champion when I debuted last December, my first example of a figurehead prior to his unchampioning. A man who made the professional decision to fight the wrestling world, with less disastrous results than a webcomic might lead one to believe.
A mess of bodily and psychological trauma, pieced back into working order with a little help from medical science and held together through a spiteful refusal to fall apart, just to deny anyone the glory of finally slaying the King of Wrestlers. A Darwinian meat engine, bent on annihilation as a general principal, and currently my specific annihilation for professional purposes. A man who wouldn’t take lightly the possibility of losing Wrestler of the Year, particularly to a pampered heiress.
If you were Corey Black, could you imagine Regan Voorhees being the one to eliminate you? CruiserClash's own erstwhile figurehead, who up until Execution was all too happy to achieve most of her wins through Bunga-ference? What a black eye(how do people think I’m not funny?) that would be to your career, your Iliad of accomplishments, your very identity. Would that be enough to unravel the mystical stitches holding your patchwork body together and make you collapse to the stage, like a puppet with its strings cut?
The prospect delighted me, but I’m a practical woman. If life, the wrestle-verse and everything couldn’t destroy Corey Black, then I didn’t expect to. A one-two-three, a count out, even a disqualification would suffice. He could keep on existing, maybe find another planet to pugilize with(I hear Uranus is both lovely and ornery this time of year), and I could battle on through semis and finals and take a crown of my own.
Regan Voorhees - Wrestler of the Year
Someone paint me a picture already.
I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything. With all the psychopathic, unchecked avarice of a brat on Christmas morning, vowing to make her parents’ lives hell if Santa didn’t deliver exactly what she asked for, good girl all year or not.
But as an opponent, Corey Black would prove… uniquely challenging. My year on CruiserClash was notably lacking in similar opponents. I had yet to face anyone quite like the Last King. My own toolkit would require adjustments, perhaps additions. Only a better, stronger, even more ruthless Regan could hope to win.
My redefining continued.
(´・(00)・`)
Gustav Voorhees was hardly anyone’s idea of the charming European, but even a dapper Dutchman would’ve been hard pressed to talk his way out of exile from Münchenstätten after collapsing a Spinnenkopmolen on three generations worth of Osterhoudts. Hidden within a crate of gouda, he was loaded onto a ship bound for the Americas. The cheese kept him alive for the two-week journey, and soon he arrived, the first Voorhees to set foot on American soil.
No one seems to know why exactly he was chased out of Brooklyn twelve hours after his arrival, but historians agree that he never returned and did his best to pass a disdain for New York City onto his descendants. For several years he traveled New England, working odd jobs and finding some camaraderie among his fellow eccentrics, in particular Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who frequented an ice cream parlor in Providence, Rhode Island, which Gustav managed. The two bonded over their mutual hatred of Brooklyn, and while Lovecraft was a staunch racist and hater of immigrants, Gustav earned his favor by supplying even more reasons why the Dutch were vile, though he alone was the exception. Uncharacteristically, Lovecraft agreed. A popular theory suggests it was because of free ice cream. Some months later, Gustav requested that Lovecraft monitor the parlor while he ran back to his boarding house to retrieve a lithograph mocking the Irish. Lovecraft was happy to, helping himself to no small amount of the parlor’s stock in the process. Only when Gustav failed to return hours later did Lovecraft realize that the register had been emptied and that he had been framed. While the local police were remarkable understanding, it is commonly thought that this incident was the inspiration for Lovecraft’s lesser known story “The Loathsome Dutchman.”
Gustav Voorhees resurfaced outside of Birmingham, Alabama. There he offered assistance in ridding the community of a carnival troupe who had overstayed their welcome. One night, he collapsed the tent on the unwary carnies. When the collapse did not prove as successfully fatal as it was against the Osterhoudts, Gustav turned to fire and solved the community’s problem once and for all. The locals rewarded him with an abandoned plantation house, several acres of land and a dozen pigs. It was here that Gustav finally settled down, establishing Voorhees Farms and going on to build an empire that would define his family for generations.
A true tale of an immigrant who, through hard work and determination, realized the American Dream.
(´・(00)・`)
Given my particular disposition, I’ve always wondered if there might be some predisposition in my DNA to explain how the Regan apple fell so far from the Voorhees tree. Gustav Voorhees’ early years in America were a jumble of odd jobs and misanthropic behavior, but following the establishment of Voorhees Farms he settled into a business model that afforded him comfort and wealth for the rest of his life, allowing him to pursue his eccentricities while his growing family gradually assumed the responsibilities of expanding his empire. But Gustav remained a secretive man. His interest in the occult was treated as a delightful quirk by his wife, who was quick to distance herself after producing enough heirs to secure the family business for herself. He maintained a collection of ominous tomes, but was unable to complete any of the rituals detailed therein, as they typically required multiple participants and even among his most ill-reputed neighbors, Gustav was considered intolerable.
Not entirely unrelatable. My mother has long since stopped asking me to answer the unanswerable question of why I am the way I am. A fair question, but still hurtful.
But as the only current Voorhees with a fully functional brain, I elected to return to the Voorhees plantation and uncover the secrets of our progenitor. And so with a curious mind and a crowbar I purchased off Amazon, I returned to Alabama to discover...
The Shadow Over Regan
“Spotify, I’m in the mood for something upbeat and nautical.”
(Best paired with Random Encounter’s “Ocean King”)
“Egad, Spotify.”
Crickets chirped outside and a cool evening breeze followed me through the creaking double doors. Both groaned in disrepair, and one collapsed off the hinges entirely, kicking up a preposterous amount of dust. The plantation house welcomed me, like a mouse dangling above its maw, it was eager to release my wriggling tail so that it might swallow me up. Every room seemed like a dark pit, offering the illusion of something beyond when I shined my flashlight, but again revealing its abyssal nature when not under the beam’s examination. Crowbar in one hand, flashlight in the other, my phone blared Nintendocore from the pocket of my periwinkle track jacket. Tonight I would discover if there was something more to my inhuman tendencies. A generations old betrayal written in my own blood that I never had any hope of overcoming.
There to investigate, I investigated, journeying through the parlor, the dining room, the kitchen. I peaked out the window over the sink, at the remnants of the magnolia tree where Gustav Voorhees self-immolated. Initially everyone thought it was part of some ritual to make his body a vessel for the Mesopotamian god Nergal. But upon further investigation, it was due to a faulty tobacco pipe he was attempting to light. Quite wisely, his wife invested the pipe company’s settlement back into the family business; more pigs, more bacon, more money.
Naturally, there was still a pentagram under the bed in the guest room. Gustav had no qualms about trying to sacrifice company to whatever dark deity he was obsessed with that week, but his lack of charm and general oddness made sleepovers a rarity. The catacombs were similarly unsuspicious, though I was able to locate the oak coffin Gustav slept in for several days, before throwing his back out. A quirk to be sure, but nothing that would account for any sense of the truly demonic.
The search continued, my mind hungry for revelation. Could there be some explanation for why I threw away any sense of normalcy in my life? Was there some sort of demon taint in my blood, was my soul promised to some hungry god, am I just the ideal sociopathic heiress after decades of generational wealth? Is there any rhyme or reason, an explanation to my disposition, or my affliction, depending on your point of view? Is Regan Voorhees actually human, and if so, how human is she? Why would someone with every advantage minimize interpersonal ties to focus on befriending the fauna while literally battling their own species? As my mother so often asked, why am I like this? Would I change, if I could? And if I could unlock even more monstrous aspects of myself, would I chose that instead?
I had previously looked into Gustav’s brief acquaintanceship with H.P. Lovecraft and how the two bonded over ice cream and being pieces of absolute shit. If it weren’t for my gender, I’d tick all the boxes of a Lovecraftian protagonist. Educated, white, frightfully bad with people. But I have as of yet been able to confirm any monster-fucking further up the family tree, with the accompanying mental breakdown that comes from such a revelation. Frankly, I find it silly that anyone should get so much credit for arriving at the stunning conclusion that the unfamiliar is more frightening than the familiar. Dizzying insight from the fragile racist who famously didn’t have the constitution for the sciences. Don’t even get me started on his misuse of the term non-Euclidean.
I pressed on, through the crypt, the underground library, the makeshift autopsy room and the crude laboratory. Finally I arrived at the alchemy lab. There was a table laden with beakers and vials, a mortar and pestle, even an unopened Bear Bryant collectible Coke bottle. The bottle bearing the likeness of the iconic coach sat at the corner of a stack of ragged pages on yellowed paper, with rows of manic scribbling. The top read:
On the Creation of a Supreme Being
by Gustav Voorhees
My quivering hands seized them on instinct. Worried I might shake the fragile, brittle pages to pieces before they betrayed their secrets, I took a breath and willed my body to calm itself. Then I read.
-Experiments have begun with the local Siluriformes
-Coitus remains a dubious and difficult process, but I remain certain that hybridization will--(eligible squiggling, as if the writer grew too excited to keep his hand steady)
“Hm. Siluriformes sound familiar, but I can’t quite place the term.”
Deep within the catacombs, my phone was useless for reference. I flipped to the next page, where I found a diagram that answered my question. Crude thought it was, it was unmistakably a human man inserting his penis into the mouth of a fish, in the vile act of fish-latio. Hardly the Deep One crossbreeding that Lovecraft so famously wrote about.
"Well, this is certainly disappointing."
After flipping to a third page, I discovered more diagrams. Similar to the first, each one illustrated a different point in the thrusting process, to clarify to the reader that Gustav’s recipe for a supreme being was to face-fuck a catfish. The fourth page finally revealed his nefarious aim.
-The end goal is to copulate with the mightiest of all fish - the dolphin
“Mammals, you simpleton. Even children know that."
Apparently Gustav also lacked the constitution for science.
(´・(00)・`)
The scene opened under a dead magnolia tree, firelight flickering offscreen to illuminate my ghostly pallor and set my shadow against the wooden corpse. My mascara was perfect, my track jacket less formal than usual. For someone who’d been ghost hunting, I looked immaculate.
“Do you ever regret it, Corey? The decisions you’ve made and the price you’ve paid to get where you are? Burned bridges, broken body parts that can never quite mend, years taken off your life to prove you were the King of All Wrestlers?”
“Sometimes, sure. Who wouldn’t? But then you think about the times where it all worked out, when you got what you wanted, when Corey Black was victorious. It’s not just the winning that’s so scrumptious, it’s that when the bell rings and your hand is raised, you prove that everything you did to get there was right.”
“There are always people who don’t agree, but I prefer to see them as lacking conviction. If I wanted to, I could pretend to be the non-broken child of privilege. Feign some semblance of happiness by the normie definition. Brunches with gal pals, shopping dates with mom, blow a small nation’s GNP on a ridiculous wedding, and a honeymoon fuck-fest in Tuscany. Tell myself everyday that’s it’s exactly what I want and that I have no desire to saw my own head off. But no, no, no. That’s not how I find satisfaction. Certainly I still have my doubts and regrets. Maybe I’m not the monster I aspire to be. Maybe I really am just a rich girl cosplaying. That’s why I need you, Corey. You’re my proof.”
“I always thought there was an explanation for my… harmful tendencies. A trauma my brain willed itself to forget, something taken from me, a curse in my blood itself. But that’s not true. There’s no deep, dark hole in my center. No tragic origin story. My parents are alive and well, if entirely unpleasant. They even love me, as much as they can, in spite of who and what I am. But there’s no greater reason for why I’m this way. I just am. This is me.”
“Generational wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ll be keeping mine, of course, but I still feel icky about it. Because ill-gotten or undeserved as it may be. It got me here. The best training money can buy, without having to pay dues or work a deadend job to fund my career. The unfairest of advantages, but something I want you to note, Corey. I had options. I could’ve done anything or nothing with my life, yet here I am standing between you and Wrestler of the Year. You had to be here. I chose to be here. Which one of us do really think wants this more?”
“The abyss stares, we stare back. You’re not dead behind the eyes, though. There’s an undying, malicious spark, a crackle of endless spite. That, I can appreciate. You want to beat me, because it will help make sense of all the horrible things that have happened to you. All the suffering you’ve been through, surely there was a reason. My life has been a cakewalk in comparison. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t deserve to destroy you.”
“But there is no sense, Corey. The universe doesn’t care which one of us deserves this. One of us is the abyss, the other’s just staring. Deserving has nothing to do with it.”
“And I was born to destroy you.”
I gave the camera my best attempt at a final, abyssal stare; the last gasp of the Reganverse, should it collapse in on itself. The flames flickered and I stopped recording.
(´・(00)・`)
The house burned brightfully, blissfully. The hungry flames stirred my stomach and it cried out for the taste of a toasted Dandies marshmallows that I stupidly forgot to order. I never planned to burn down the old ruin. But really, wasn’t the world a little better with one less plantation house?
The crackle of the flames entered my ears like the song of a siren, hypnotizing my arsonist heart. My ringtone, a series of happy snorts from Atticus, broke the trance. It was to my ear in a second, and I felt some relief at being reconnected with the outside world, even if it was an incompetent DoorDasher.
“Yes, it’s by the burning house. If you want five stars, be here in sixty seconds. I just discovered my great-great-grandfather fucked fish and I'm intent on getting utterly wasted.”
The driver arrived ninety-six seconds later and lost himself a star. He was irritatingly apologetic, and slow to understand when I shooed him away, but otherwise my order was impeccable. The one-gallon fishbowl stirred images of Gustav’s secret research, but hopefully the rum and vodka would take care of that. I uncorked both bottles and poured generously, flames lighting my work. I vowed to press forward - human, monster or otherwise.
(Best paired with a Fish Bowl)