That's An Uncomfortable Mask You're Wearing. (2,992 words)
Nov 14, 2021 14:18:25 GMT -5
CJ Phoenix, Johnny Bacchus, and 2 more like this
Post by Downfall on Nov 14, 2021 14:18:25 GMT -5
"Go ahead," her father said, and he gently steadied the muzzle of the rifle so that it was aiming true.
The little girl's mouth quivered in a chubby-cheeked, miserable tableau. "Wh-why, daddy? Whuh-why we gotta - "
"Well baby," Warner told his daughter, "The rabbit is caught in the jaws, it's in pain. We gotta put it out of its misery..." He had steadied the little kit bolt-action in Michelle's hands again so that it was pointing right to the temple of the shivering animal. Warner's mustached lip had crinkled in a disdainful sneer, silently judging the weakness of his daughter.
"There... there'sn't any way for it to get out?" Michelle's lip pooched out, sniffling.
"Unless it chews through its own leg...," Warner said, and impatiently steadied the gun again.
The eight-year-old's face wavered on delicate, brittle innocence as it looked at the little brown animal. Its eyes were empty black dots that showed no emotion, but its front paws were beating out a frantic rhythm as it tried to escape.
It made the most unearthly squeal she had ever heard.
Years later, she'd still hear that squeal in her dreams.
The eight-year-old's face hardens into something darker, and much older. "Good," is all she says. Something changed in Michelle Taylor that day, and she would never forgive Warner for that, as long as she lived.
Just the same, she pulled the bolt-action's trigger.
This is me.
She blinked her eyes open as she sits at her desk, over a mountain of paperwork. Paperwork for her rental properties, for the office-park memos, paperwork from Dionysus' new foundation... it seemed like her capacity as a business manager never ended. And yet, the fact that she had fallen asleep sitting up troubled her, as did the fragment of a half-remembered dream.
Michelle had had her bouts with waking dreams. With day-tripping through realities that were once, or could not be. She'd done her time detoxing and talking to things that were not there.
She trudged through the house on leaden legs, wrapping her terrycloth around her. Feeling so lost...
She peeked in on Danny. Mercifully, he slept. Michelle looked over at him, and she wondered as she pressed her fingers to his brow if he was dreaming, too.
But her jaw firmed, the way it had for the eight-year-old.
I am not kind. I am not endlessly loving. If I am... hard. And sharp, and raw sometimes... if I can never express who I am to you...
And then, someone spoke into her mind, in response.
"You are who you are. That's the entire point I've been driving home to him."
She turned, and she wasn't in her darkened bedroom... she was sitting on the balcony of a brightly lit, gaudy hotel... neon-lit up the street and big, glitzy signs portraying this as a version of Vegas. The room behind her was bright and well-lit, and there were signs of the hedonistic party in there, a hot tub of girls playing. But out here, on the balcony, the wind was howling.
He was there, and while his voice sounded tinny as if through a radio, she felt the wind cutting across the banister, tugging at the sleeves of her terrycloth. She hugged the robe around herself.
"Having any dreams lately?" Jason taunted, and Michelle just frowned at him. With a little sigh, Jason came over to the rail, bending over and resting his forearms on it, smiling his shark's smile out over the city. Michelle just watched him, coldly.
Naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist, but she can see after-images, faintly glowing over badly-healed scars on his chest.
"You're trying to tell me that you're the reason behind all of the nightmares," Michelle said, trying to parse this. "Danny's interpretive dreams about Philidor... my memories of hunting with my father."
He holds his hands up, innocently. "One could say I'm not doing anything... I'm just telling you what you already know."
Michelle grits her teeth, tired of Jason's inherent theatricality and propensity for games. "Come off it... and send me back from... wherever this is."
"You've been here before, actually... to the casino," Jason says, musing up at the stars blotted out by the lights of Vegas. But then, he turns his head down to Michelle. "But even if you've seen... even if you know now... are you going to tell Danny where we are?"
Michelle hesitates. "I - "
His smile widens so much it's almost as if the top of his head will come off. "Of course not. And why is that? Why keep so much secrets from each other, you and he?"
Her face bitters, and somewhere faraway, she's thinking, somehow of a little bunny. Jason, savoring this, grins at her.
"Because this is the point. This is where I'm going to give you the 64,000 dollar answer. I've only ever shown people... who they really are inside. How much Serenity loves being kept safe, and having a home. How dark, and nasty and black inside Danny is."
He chuckles. "And, in a different manner, the same for you."
"That isn't me," Michelle denies, shaking her head. The wind buffets her, rising like an accusation. This IS me.
"No? Think of how much he hasn't changed. Think of how Danny, deep down, is the same piece of shit he always was. His arrogance is resurfacing, just look at how he talked about Sam Kidsgrove. Or the Dangerous Gentlemen."
She breathes through clenched teeth.
"You can't defend him. You don't want to," his voice is a soothing, hypnotic buzz. "Because he will never hold you. His only love... is his gold."
He glides around her, touching her shoulder, whispering in her ear. "And you... hate that."
Now, more than ever, she thought about that little rabbit in the woods outside of Deerfield, on a snowy day in December thirty years ago. She thought of the jaws closed around its leg.
"You... hate."
Its black, shiny eyes, rolling in madness and pain as its front paws scratch the snow for purchase.
She exhales, long and hard, and her breath comes out in an exhalation of fog as if she's blowing out breath on the chilly December morning of a first hunting season. She looks over at Jason.
"Send me home, please."
"You'll awaken from this... but you're going to remember what we talked about." His face was shadowed, but he was smiling.
He turned back, to go into the brightly-lit hotel room, girls waiting with bubbly. "Remember."
She did.
I almost began this by remarking, "My, that's an uncomfortable mask you're wearing," Ashley.
Oh, you maintain an unruffled facade at all times... even in defeat, you still squared your shoulders and reverted to deadpan, sneering indifference and spin.
But with every passing week, the mask fits you less; It's like an N95 not made for long-term wear, the loops begin to stretch, the nose-piece no longer fits tight after taking it under your chin to get a sip of water every so often.
It no longer suits you.
Hand to god, I woulda actually given you grudging respect for fighting me as you did at Spookyclash: like the band still playing cinematically as the Titanic went down in an over-bloated Cameron piece.
Except that, even in loss, you revert to your public image. You have to cling to this callous, polished plastic routine.
Even trying to get ahead of it... "this is the part where I'm supposed to spiral, right? Where my carefully practiced routine slips and you catch a glimpse of what's underneath... sorry huns you don't get that"
That's the spirit. Don't let 'em see you sweat, don't let them see you bleed... except for that they did, and they do.
There's something to be said for picking yourself up after getting put down, but there's also the fact that being emotionally honest where you've fallen short isn't a weakness.
We saw you bounce back, venom dripping from your fangs and tearing through Jill Park... That's old news, it's not revolutionary to see Ash Blake cutting a young talent that could use a boost off at the knees by shitting on their performance record vis-a-vis hers...
...But we also saw the Janus to Blake's composure - Ash Blake scared enough of the future to spend the night after Spookyclash puking her guts up because she was worried about the Sword of Damocles yet to fall.
If the one was a public presentation instead of something you tried to hide, then it would become your power, motivation to do better.
Instead, your mean-spirited dissection of Jill's big-match anxiety just hits all the notes we've been expecting from you.
Now, the mask is taking you off, instead.
Please, I invite you to try it on me again. That you think I latched on to Bacchus and Corey because I craved their acknowledgment (and yours)... That no matter what I do, I'll never be more than "an ankle-biter leeching onto the end of your feet"...
And I'll keep digging deeper, and finding more motivation to tear through you.
Because I can see what you're hoping - that I punched myself out laying out exactly how I felt about you and now I've got nothing left.
And how easy it is to turn my stated mission statement of being the best into the type of morality-play to make yourself look righteous... after all only last week, I laid into the Dangerous Gents for questioning me with that sharp-edged ego I've become famous for.
I can even see you wanting to give me my own words back to me from last year's Turmoil, about being the wounded wolf that, now cornered, is going to bare her fangs come this week because of the symbolism of those teeth coming out only when you want them to is just so you, Ash.
Except for the fact, as I noted... that it's all a lie.
There has not been one moment in 2021; Not when you cut Corey Black down (everyone always forgets, WITH the assistance of Jim Mud), not even when you played the "chaser" for the Hardcore Title, and ya told Bacchus that you were coming for him with the same single-minded dedication that I once did to break your streak.
Every big win you've had, all the World Title defenses you scraped by ending in a Philidor run-in, even that Hardcore Title you won with the assistance of four men... none of that speaks of predator, it's the work of a scavenger adept at picking their bones.
There's never been a moment in your career where you've shown what it means to be hungry.
Real, undeniable hunger would mean admitting vulnerability. It'd be tantamount to someone seeing you as weak... perish forbid, right?
When we review all of your conquests in the fullness of time, Ash... You can brag to the high heaven about the dominance you've shown, but baby, I can't look at a damn thing you've done and see that you've played it anything but safe.
You hid inside your mystery; You hid your association with Philidor until you were ready to turn that card over, you fluffed your stats up with bottom-feeders like Dandy and then you had the gall to preach down to me about how I wasn't the one to stop you because I wasn't on your level.
How your worth was tied up in the fact that nobody ever saw through you enough to affect you.
Gospel truth is, that you've only ever really taken your shot at vivisecting me once, and you saw that, unlike everyone you'd faced to that point before I had enough backbone not to wilt.
I saw through you then, Ash. I just didn't care.
Every other time since then you've put in minimal effort. Didn't speak a word in your own defense when it came time to your title, in all of the tag matches since then you've only hit the same rote spiel calling me a bottom-feeder for whom I've associated with.
At Spookyclash I gave you every facet of my intentions and my disappointments and you give me only that you think I'm a mercenary because Bacchus recruited me knowing our history.
Every single time you've spoken my name since then, you've played things just that safe. Keeping your argument centered around that dynamic we established off the jump, and never once allowing for the fact that I did see through you and it had you shook.
Except that the more you continue to make not only the same mistake but compounding it by writing me off with the same level of disdain and care you are willingly walking yourself back into the jaws of the snare that spared you.
And understand, the reason you were alone, four-against-one is because you've run out of assistance.
Your entire world disintegrated and Carter openly walked away, rather than help you.
You regrouped, thought that a good showing against Jill would get your bosses back on your side, that with the help of Lissie you could shut Bacchus down and work some damage control, but Lissie tired of being your pawn as well.
Now the remnants of Philidor's all you have left of the life that empowered you, that promoted you for that small window of time as their champion...
...and I can't help but see the whimpering desperation of you trying to keep your bristly demeanor from pushing away Olive, or any of your last lifelines to the only comfort you know.
That's why you reading Jill Park like filth doesn't come off half-surprising, because I see it for the posturing coping mechanism it is.
It only reads as bluster, covering up your own real anxiety, that you were never good enough.
And this week is your last chance to right the ship because if you can just get through me, you'll finally-FINALLY silence the purveyor of your discontent; You'd be able to smugly go in to face Johnny next week and front like his "revolution" failed because his great white hope fell short against you.
And Ash, I cannot tell you enough that I refuse to let the story of Philidor end in an unsatisfying coda.
You don't walk away claiming your pyrrhic moral victory and mask your own emptiness anymore.
Every time we've faced, I've come that much closer to being the one who just ends you. Point-blank, no qualifiers, no disqualifications, no asterisks.
A game of cat-n'-mouse; and I never hunt what I don't intend on killing.
And this last time, you're out of all of the assistance... you'll have to really fight me on even playing field, without the pretension that you're going to be the one that puts me down solo as you insist you did the King of All Wrestlers.
You're going to have to show that voracity. You're going to have to come at me with a need that you've never shown me in your life.
If I've yet to finish the job, if I've left any doubt whatsoever that allows you to subsist off this smug veneer of "affording me credibility" then this week is going to be where I violently shatter that.
Because I know that the loss of everything that's kept you safe, protected is hurting you. Ya can't hide that it's not, smooth it over with an "I don't think so hun..."
It's gonna be me that finishes what I started, that takes everything from you when it all comes down.
If you think you aren't bleeding yet, if you think you aren't spiraling yet, that's because you're caught in the trap of your own making.
You asked for this, you bought it, you get to own every second of this reckoning, every scream I rip from your lips.
Every hit that you're going to feel.
Your mask has abandoned you. No matter how you slander my name I won't be able to see you as the wolf in the wild, Ash.
You're a rabbit that's stepped onto the springs, gotten themselves caught in a crush of steel.
Scrambling, clawing at the ground for purchase, squealing to be set free.
I want you to fight me as hard as you fought the odds when your partners abandoned you, Ash.
I want you to struggle and fight this with every inch of your life.
I want you, for the first time, to really feel something and show me an actual, honest emotion before the dawning fear crosses your face and you realize you've already lost.
You're already in the snare.
I just haven't loaded the shotgun yet.
She'd opened her eyes again. Looking for a long time into the dark, as if to parse whether if she turned around again, she would see that hotel with Jason, happily making his way into the tub with a gaggle of empty-headed bimbos squealing.
Their squeals had sounded like rabbits in her head.
She looked over at Danny. Her face asserted itself into a cold mask, as she looked at him.
She thought of Warner as she had last left him, a long time ago, laying in a CCU bed, intubated with a vent, barely able to breathe on his own, and thinking somehow, that the rabbits were getting their vengeance.
But she had also thought of the day she'd had to pull the trigger.
Danny slept on through this, unaware.
If I can not be the wind beneath your wings.
If Jason is right, and all we are is the monsters we have made of ourselves. Then this is mine.
If I am hard and sharp and raw in ways that I will never let you see. If I am different in my secret, darker heart.
Then I am the only proper fit for this world.
The world our fathers made for us.
This is me.
The little girl's mouth quivered in a chubby-cheeked, miserable tableau. "Wh-why, daddy? Whuh-why we gotta - "
"Well baby," Warner told his daughter, "The rabbit is caught in the jaws, it's in pain. We gotta put it out of its misery..." He had steadied the little kit bolt-action in Michelle's hands again so that it was pointing right to the temple of the shivering animal. Warner's mustached lip had crinkled in a disdainful sneer, silently judging the weakness of his daughter.
"There... there'sn't any way for it to get out?" Michelle's lip pooched out, sniffling.
"Unless it chews through its own leg...," Warner said, and impatiently steadied the gun again.
The eight-year-old's face wavered on delicate, brittle innocence as it looked at the little brown animal. Its eyes were empty black dots that showed no emotion, but its front paws were beating out a frantic rhythm as it tried to escape.
It made the most unearthly squeal she had ever heard.
Years later, she'd still hear that squeal in her dreams.
The eight-year-old's face hardens into something darker, and much older. "Good," is all she says. Something changed in Michelle Taylor that day, and she would never forgive Warner for that, as long as she lived.
Just the same, she pulled the bolt-action's trigger.
This is me.
She blinked her eyes open as she sits at her desk, over a mountain of paperwork. Paperwork for her rental properties, for the office-park memos, paperwork from Dionysus' new foundation... it seemed like her capacity as a business manager never ended. And yet, the fact that she had fallen asleep sitting up troubled her, as did the fragment of a half-remembered dream.
Michelle had had her bouts with waking dreams. With day-tripping through realities that were once, or could not be. She'd done her time detoxing and talking to things that were not there.
She trudged through the house on leaden legs, wrapping her terrycloth around her. Feeling so lost...
She peeked in on Danny. Mercifully, he slept. Michelle looked over at him, and she wondered as she pressed her fingers to his brow if he was dreaming, too.
But her jaw firmed, the way it had for the eight-year-old.
I am not kind. I am not endlessly loving. If I am... hard. And sharp, and raw sometimes... if I can never express who I am to you...
And then, someone spoke into her mind, in response.
"You are who you are. That's the entire point I've been driving home to him."
She turned, and she wasn't in her darkened bedroom... she was sitting on the balcony of a brightly lit, gaudy hotel... neon-lit up the street and big, glitzy signs portraying this as a version of Vegas. The room behind her was bright and well-lit, and there were signs of the hedonistic party in there, a hot tub of girls playing. But out here, on the balcony, the wind was howling.
He was there, and while his voice sounded tinny as if through a radio, she felt the wind cutting across the banister, tugging at the sleeves of her terrycloth. She hugged the robe around herself.
"Having any dreams lately?" Jason taunted, and Michelle just frowned at him. With a little sigh, Jason came over to the rail, bending over and resting his forearms on it, smiling his shark's smile out over the city. Michelle just watched him, coldly.
Naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist, but she can see after-images, faintly glowing over badly-healed scars on his chest.
"You're trying to tell me that you're the reason behind all of the nightmares," Michelle said, trying to parse this. "Danny's interpretive dreams about Philidor... my memories of hunting with my father."
He holds his hands up, innocently. "One could say I'm not doing anything... I'm just telling you what you already know."
Michelle grits her teeth, tired of Jason's inherent theatricality and propensity for games. "Come off it... and send me back from... wherever this is."
"You've been here before, actually... to the casino," Jason says, musing up at the stars blotted out by the lights of Vegas. But then, he turns his head down to Michelle. "But even if you've seen... even if you know now... are you going to tell Danny where we are?"
Michelle hesitates. "I - "
His smile widens so much it's almost as if the top of his head will come off. "Of course not. And why is that? Why keep so much secrets from each other, you and he?"
Her face bitters, and somewhere faraway, she's thinking, somehow of a little bunny. Jason, savoring this, grins at her.
"Because this is the point. This is where I'm going to give you the 64,000 dollar answer. I've only ever shown people... who they really are inside. How much Serenity loves being kept safe, and having a home. How dark, and nasty and black inside Danny is."
He chuckles. "And, in a different manner, the same for you."
"That isn't me," Michelle denies, shaking her head. The wind buffets her, rising like an accusation. This IS me.
"No? Think of how much he hasn't changed. Think of how Danny, deep down, is the same piece of shit he always was. His arrogance is resurfacing, just look at how he talked about Sam Kidsgrove. Or the Dangerous Gentlemen."
She breathes through clenched teeth.
"You can't defend him. You don't want to," his voice is a soothing, hypnotic buzz. "Because he will never hold you. His only love... is his gold."
He glides around her, touching her shoulder, whispering in her ear. "And you... hate that."
Now, more than ever, she thought about that little rabbit in the woods outside of Deerfield, on a snowy day in December thirty years ago. She thought of the jaws closed around its leg.
"You... hate."
Its black, shiny eyes, rolling in madness and pain as its front paws scratch the snow for purchase.
She exhales, long and hard, and her breath comes out in an exhalation of fog as if she's blowing out breath on the chilly December morning of a first hunting season. She looks over at Jason.
"Send me home, please."
"You'll awaken from this... but you're going to remember what we talked about." His face was shadowed, but he was smiling.
He turned back, to go into the brightly-lit hotel room, girls waiting with bubbly. "Remember."
She did.
I almost began this by remarking, "My, that's an uncomfortable mask you're wearing," Ashley.
Oh, you maintain an unruffled facade at all times... even in defeat, you still squared your shoulders and reverted to deadpan, sneering indifference and spin.
But with every passing week, the mask fits you less; It's like an N95 not made for long-term wear, the loops begin to stretch, the nose-piece no longer fits tight after taking it under your chin to get a sip of water every so often.
It no longer suits you.
Hand to god, I woulda actually given you grudging respect for fighting me as you did at Spookyclash: like the band still playing cinematically as the Titanic went down in an over-bloated Cameron piece.
Except that, even in loss, you revert to your public image. You have to cling to this callous, polished plastic routine.
Even trying to get ahead of it... "this is the part where I'm supposed to spiral, right? Where my carefully practiced routine slips and you catch a glimpse of what's underneath... sorry huns you don't get that"
That's the spirit. Don't let 'em see you sweat, don't let them see you bleed... except for that they did, and they do.
There's something to be said for picking yourself up after getting put down, but there's also the fact that being emotionally honest where you've fallen short isn't a weakness.
We saw you bounce back, venom dripping from your fangs and tearing through Jill Park... That's old news, it's not revolutionary to see Ash Blake cutting a young talent that could use a boost off at the knees by shitting on their performance record vis-a-vis hers...
...But we also saw the Janus to Blake's composure - Ash Blake scared enough of the future to spend the night after Spookyclash puking her guts up because she was worried about the Sword of Damocles yet to fall.
If the one was a public presentation instead of something you tried to hide, then it would become your power, motivation to do better.
Instead, your mean-spirited dissection of Jill's big-match anxiety just hits all the notes we've been expecting from you.
Now, the mask is taking you off, instead.
Please, I invite you to try it on me again. That you think I latched on to Bacchus and Corey because I craved their acknowledgment (and yours)... That no matter what I do, I'll never be more than "an ankle-biter leeching onto the end of your feet"...
And I'll keep digging deeper, and finding more motivation to tear through you.
Because I can see what you're hoping - that I punched myself out laying out exactly how I felt about you and now I've got nothing left.
And how easy it is to turn my stated mission statement of being the best into the type of morality-play to make yourself look righteous... after all only last week, I laid into the Dangerous Gents for questioning me with that sharp-edged ego I've become famous for.
I can even see you wanting to give me my own words back to me from last year's Turmoil, about being the wounded wolf that, now cornered, is going to bare her fangs come this week because of the symbolism of those teeth coming out only when you want them to is just so you, Ash.
Except for the fact, as I noted... that it's all a lie.
There has not been one moment in 2021; Not when you cut Corey Black down (everyone always forgets, WITH the assistance of Jim Mud), not even when you played the "chaser" for the Hardcore Title, and ya told Bacchus that you were coming for him with the same single-minded dedication that I once did to break your streak.
Every big win you've had, all the World Title defenses you scraped by ending in a Philidor run-in, even that Hardcore Title you won with the assistance of four men... none of that speaks of predator, it's the work of a scavenger adept at picking their bones.
There's never been a moment in your career where you've shown what it means to be hungry.
Real, undeniable hunger would mean admitting vulnerability. It'd be tantamount to someone seeing you as weak... perish forbid, right?
When we review all of your conquests in the fullness of time, Ash... You can brag to the high heaven about the dominance you've shown, but baby, I can't look at a damn thing you've done and see that you've played it anything but safe.
You hid inside your mystery; You hid your association with Philidor until you were ready to turn that card over, you fluffed your stats up with bottom-feeders like Dandy and then you had the gall to preach down to me about how I wasn't the one to stop you because I wasn't on your level.
How your worth was tied up in the fact that nobody ever saw through you enough to affect you.
Gospel truth is, that you've only ever really taken your shot at vivisecting me once, and you saw that, unlike everyone you'd faced to that point before I had enough backbone not to wilt.
I saw through you then, Ash. I just didn't care.
Every other time since then you've put in minimal effort. Didn't speak a word in your own defense when it came time to your title, in all of the tag matches since then you've only hit the same rote spiel calling me a bottom-feeder for whom I've associated with.
At Spookyclash I gave you every facet of my intentions and my disappointments and you give me only that you think I'm a mercenary because Bacchus recruited me knowing our history.
Every single time you've spoken my name since then, you've played things just that safe. Keeping your argument centered around that dynamic we established off the jump, and never once allowing for the fact that I did see through you and it had you shook.
Except that the more you continue to make not only the same mistake but compounding it by writing me off with the same level of disdain and care you are willingly walking yourself back into the jaws of the snare that spared you.
And understand, the reason you were alone, four-against-one is because you've run out of assistance.
Your entire world disintegrated and Carter openly walked away, rather than help you.
You regrouped, thought that a good showing against Jill would get your bosses back on your side, that with the help of Lissie you could shut Bacchus down and work some damage control, but Lissie tired of being your pawn as well.
Now the remnants of Philidor's all you have left of the life that empowered you, that promoted you for that small window of time as their champion...
...and I can't help but see the whimpering desperation of you trying to keep your bristly demeanor from pushing away Olive, or any of your last lifelines to the only comfort you know.
That's why you reading Jill Park like filth doesn't come off half-surprising, because I see it for the posturing coping mechanism it is.
It only reads as bluster, covering up your own real anxiety, that you were never good enough.
And this week is your last chance to right the ship because if you can just get through me, you'll finally-FINALLY silence the purveyor of your discontent; You'd be able to smugly go in to face Johnny next week and front like his "revolution" failed because his great white hope fell short against you.
And Ash, I cannot tell you enough that I refuse to let the story of Philidor end in an unsatisfying coda.
You don't walk away claiming your pyrrhic moral victory and mask your own emptiness anymore.
Every time we've faced, I've come that much closer to being the one who just ends you. Point-blank, no qualifiers, no disqualifications, no asterisks.
A game of cat-n'-mouse; and I never hunt what I don't intend on killing.
And this last time, you're out of all of the assistance... you'll have to really fight me on even playing field, without the pretension that you're going to be the one that puts me down solo as you insist you did the King of All Wrestlers.
You're going to have to show that voracity. You're going to have to come at me with a need that you've never shown me in your life.
If I've yet to finish the job, if I've left any doubt whatsoever that allows you to subsist off this smug veneer of "affording me credibility" then this week is going to be where I violently shatter that.
Because I know that the loss of everything that's kept you safe, protected is hurting you. Ya can't hide that it's not, smooth it over with an "I don't think so hun..."
It's gonna be me that finishes what I started, that takes everything from you when it all comes down.
If you think you aren't bleeding yet, if you think you aren't spiraling yet, that's because you're caught in the trap of your own making.
You asked for this, you bought it, you get to own every second of this reckoning, every scream I rip from your lips.
Every hit that you're going to feel.
Your mask has abandoned you. No matter how you slander my name I won't be able to see you as the wolf in the wild, Ash.
You're a rabbit that's stepped onto the springs, gotten themselves caught in a crush of steel.
Scrambling, clawing at the ground for purchase, squealing to be set free.
I want you to fight me as hard as you fought the odds when your partners abandoned you, Ash.
I want you to struggle and fight this with every inch of your life.
I want you, for the first time, to really feel something and show me an actual, honest emotion before the dawning fear crosses your face and you realize you've already lost.
You're already in the snare.
I just haven't loaded the shotgun yet.
She'd opened her eyes again. Looking for a long time into the dark, as if to parse whether if she turned around again, she would see that hotel with Jason, happily making his way into the tub with a gaggle of empty-headed bimbos squealing.
Their squeals had sounded like rabbits in her head.
She looked over at Danny. Her face asserted itself into a cold mask, as she looked at him.
She thought of Warner as she had last left him, a long time ago, laying in a CCU bed, intubated with a vent, barely able to breathe on his own, and thinking somehow, that the rabbits were getting their vengeance.
But she had also thought of the day she'd had to pull the trigger.
Danny slept on through this, unaware.
If I can not be the wind beneath your wings.
If Jason is right, and all we are is the monsters we have made of ourselves. Then this is mine.
If I am hard and sharp and raw in ways that I will never let you see. If I am different in my secret, darker heart.
Then I am the only proper fit for this world.
The world our fathers made for us.
This is me.