Hellhound On My Trail. (3,999 words)
Nov 21, 2021 13:40:52 GMT -5
Max f'n Daemon, Johnny Bacchus, and 2 more like this
Post by Downfall on Nov 21, 2021 13:40:52 GMT -5
How she'd laughed as she fiddled with the tape-deck, he recalled.
Several months had passed since Daniel had returned from Japan, a changeling with something different behind his eyes; Michelle had noticed it in the distance, the stiffness he held her with sometimes.
But there were times, when they were riding together (he had picked her up from the airport in her 92' Ford Escort two-seater) when they were on the backroad, on their winding way to the next town, trying to make St.Louis by morning, and they were two kids, and she was laughing uproariously and playing songs she knew he hated, and they were in love, and so everything was alright.
She fast-forwarded to the next song on the carefully crafted mixtape, grinning cheekily. After hearing a few notes, he groaned. "Crash Test Dummies?"
Affecting an appropriately deep pantomime of a 90's alternative singer, Michelle had answered him by singing along with the cheesy sincerity of Brad Roberts, "Ooooncee, there was this kiiiiid, who got into an accident and couldn't come to schooool..."
Laughing on the surface, but with petulant annoyance that was new for him, he'd ejected the tape, "We're not listening to that baby alternative post-Cobain shit, kid... here, inject the gospel of Lars Frederiksen inta your veins"... and he selected a tape from the console, pushed in And Out Come The Wolves. She crinkled her nose.
"Danny, what's wrong?" She said, trying to peer behind the veil. Snarling punk was pounding a rhythm between his temples, and he was gunning the engine.
He had a poker-face, but said too quickly, "Nothing, just wanna get to our hotel and check in before the show tomorrow."
Still unsure if she liked the idea of taking six months off from shooting for catalogues to walk out in front of indy show crowds wearing next-to-nothing, Michelle's brow furrowed. "Oh-kay... but not sure if I've ever heard of this League of Fury, y'know."
Too impatient, too angry too quick, he cut his eyes to her. "They're paying our fee, that should be enough."
She sighed, "I know but - " her eyes moved to something darting across the old country road, knowing he was going too fast, " - DANNY LOOK OUT!!"
He swerved, and his headlights splayed over the creature. In one frozen moment of time, he looked at the side of the road. Red eyeshine effect was in the center of what outlined to be a large black dog.
That was all he had time to discern before his eyes snapped back to the road, off the road, and directed into a tree, before the car hit with a screeching thump.
Both of them jolted violently, for a second.
He didn't black out, he knew that.
But he had a foggy recollection, until both of them had climbed out, and beheld the crumpled fender of the Escort, now with steam hissing from somewhere in the engine. A loss.
He assessed the ruined Escort's hood for a second, and, dry-mouthed, he had looked over his shoulder to see if he saw the dog. Not seeing it, he had snapped "God-DAMMIT!!" Michelle groaned, wiping her nose and afraid she'd see blood.
Once he had made sure she was alright, there was some debate what to do next.
It was, after all, 3 am and they were on a shitty backroad in rural Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and it was a long way to the next town.
He huffed, "Guess we're walking," without much consulting her, and set off.
"Danny, slow down," Michelle complained from back there. He walked along ahead.
Shivering, she wrapped his leather jacket around her. He was just... moving forward, not guessing direction, and before she knew it they were walking on dirt road. The night sang with critters.
"Danny!"
"Shut up, Michelle, I see a crossroads ahead. That'll probably lead us to town if we follow it." And so saying, he stepped towards the dirty old lane, marked only by a single crooked metal sign with a letter.
"Danny, stop being a dick and talk to me! Why are you so different tonight?" Her voice dropped an octave, "It's scaring me..."
His reaction was scornful, bitter and annoyed for someone so young to all of this. "Because, I'm already tired of this shit, Michelle. This go-nowhere indy league shit wrestling in front of 30 people for a dude named Adam Impact. I got into this to main event shows, to sell out Korakuen Hall, and I -"
She stepped closer, tenderly touching his arm. "And you - ?"
He looked away, but she knew it was eating him that this isn't what he'd expected. "Does any of that matter, as long as I got you and you got me, babe?"
His dissatisfaction deepened into a scowl. "No. I want to be able to buy you any car, not for us to be driving your mom's old beat-up Escort around. I want - I deserve, to be there, Michelle. Fuck."
He turned on his heel, and he then whirled back, voice rising. "You have... no idea, what I'd give. For us to just make it. For me to be a star."
"Baby....."
His irritated moment passed, and he sullenly kept trudging forward. "Les'just go."
Michelle looked around her, shivering into the jacket as she stood at that old, dirt-road crossing. She felt like she saw the red eyeshine a couple more times, as she ran to catch up to him.
Strange circumstances we're meeting under this time, isn't it?
It feels like we should have seen this coming; when you, me, Dion, Corey all stood in the ring, taking our bows, soaking up the goodwill for bringing it to the finish-line, we all eyed each other.
Turmoil was coming... and four of us had embarrassed and put to the sword the representatives of the most soul-devouring, nihilistic entity to blight AW in some time.
If that didn't put us in consideration all for winning an "-Of The Year" award of some kind, I don't know what would.
So we knew, at least, in part, if Philidor was out of the picture, then we'd have to face the reality that the next logical step was to stake our claim for Wrestler Of The Year... and that we'd have to fight each other to get there.
But before I get down to that, and to you-n'-me, Johnny... I want you to walk with me down this gravel road I've been down.
My past two bouts in this shebang have been personal, capping off long-standing, niggling little upsets, and finally putting ghosts to rest.
I silenced Sam Kidsgrove and finally ended his opprobrious assumption into his effect on my career.
And then, in an even higher stake, I finally removed all doubt, all assistance, and all nay-saying to claim a victory a year in the making.
I could wax poetic 5000 words about how that motivated me, how the reinvigorated, rising momentum of Downfall is gonna carry me forward -
How I'm gonna hit those exact same notes against you; To take you to task on your attitude, strip you of your entitlement, show you how fucked you are until the moment before I break your jaw.
But my desire to shut down Sam Kidsgrove - my will, to finish what I started with Ash Blake, is not present with you.
Yeah, you're a corny kid, and yeah, there were times in your Pure Division run when I was openly begging Pasternak to put me in so I could shut you the hell up.
Our main-event match isn't about me closing a loop with you.
Or coming to punch through you like a brick wall.
Right hand to god, Johnny... in my mind, it isn't even about you at all... until it has to be. If that makes sense.
I didn't want it to be. But it looks like there's no option.
I've been chasing an undefinable wisp of something for so long, and there's a hunger in me that honestly keeps me up at night.
If you thought you'd interpreted my dreams correctly because it spoke to you, you've only seen the outlines of what I've been seeing.
I've been always moving this year because I felt like if I slowed down and confronted it, it would catch up and I'd just stop being able to perform at this level.
It's a hell-hound, and it's on my heels.
This isn't about our projected egos or the personas we wear.
This is Daniel Fehl, talking to Johnathan Backus with the same ardent candor with which I spoke to you in that morgue before signing your manifesto.
There's a beast in me that was named twenty-two years ago; a trainer had looked me in the eye and saw something that made him flinch. Worse than Philidor could ever be.
There's this little Cthonic inkspot where a heart should be that whispers that I need more.
That voice, it whispers, you've fought harder than anyone.
That voice, it hisses, you bested Ash Blake, you continued to rise when others lazed about... take what you're owed.
You ARE the Wrestler of the Year.
Some people think that's just routine arrogance, but... it's not.
And I wonder, did you know this about me when you approached me and Dion? Did you know you were getting into bed with someone who had the potential to sully your name by association?
Much the same way as Blake still holds Corey reaching out to team the MMG with Walter, you and I standing side-by-side diminishes the white knight persona you want to portray.
I was never comfortable being your "Jesus", Johnny.
I was always going to be your Devil, in the end.
He still thought of that night often.
It occurred to him in little moments, in small pieces, that feeling of needing- of desperately wanting, to be something great.
It was occurring to him now, as he had worked his gloved fingers through his scalp, massaging the black dye into the blonde roots. As he leaned into the sink, the black dye dripped wetly, mixing with the water to go swirling down the drain.
He watched it, fascinated, as the black dye ran in rivulets down the ceramic. And when he looked up, staring at his changed appearance, he almost didn't recognize it without the blonde hair.
As he looked into the mirror, he thought back to that night. The swerve away from the black dog. The screech and the crunch.
The most surreal part of it, occurred the next day, when they had walked into the venue.
The promoter, Impact, had searched him and Michelle out as they walked, sleepless, disheveled in carrying their bags. "Just wanted to tell you that we're going to put the Hardcore title on ya tonight. Thanks for all you do, champ."
Michelle's expression went slack, and she looked at Danny. He was just as confused. The two of them stood there in stunned silence. They didn't even notice the hulk sitting in the corner of the locker room, until he slapped his thighs and stood up.
"Don't worry about it, kid... I just put in a good word with you with Impact. Got him to... see the value in your name." The man stood tall and kept rising, until he towered over Danny and Michelle, a tall, intimidating looking man with a deliberately occult appearance and a predator's smile.
For a moment, Michelle thought she saw his eyeshine. She clenched Danny's arm.
Danny had straightened, bristling with arrogant pride. "Then I guess we should be thanking you, mister..."
"Please," the hulk had grinned, "Call me Jason."
We're meeting at a crossroads, here, John.
You know the old stories about Robert Johnson, I'm sure... college boy like you, I'm certain you've got a head for a lot of lore.
Me? In my life, I've had quite a bit happen that made me question just how deeply I held faith, but the story of Robert Johnson going down to the crossroads has always struck me as poignant because it's a metaphor for how much you'd give to be really great; The two-edged sword, that emptiness of never having enough.
When he was twenty-three years old, a traveling bluesman named Robert Johnson, tripping from the Mississippi Delta after years of vagabond busking and living in debt, pitching his craft badly to every disinterested honkey-tonk in the South and on the move.
Til one night, legend goes, he comes to the crossroads with only a whiskey bottle and his guitar case.
Meets a man in black with glowing eyes.
Makes a deal, to become the best guitar player in the world, and the man in black tells him he will, for a time.
And he makes good. For four years, Robert Johnson records songs that are still staples today. Foundationally, technically, world-shaking stuff.
But then, Robert stops in the wrong town... messes 'round with the wrong man's woman... And he was murdered. But the legend went, not that he was killed by poison... but that the hellhound he sung about finally caught up to him.
You may think this applies to you... but it doesn't.
I'm the one who sold my soul a long time ago. I'm the Robert Johnson of this story.
It wasn't until I grew dissatisfied... that I wanted more than I could ever get that I dedicated my life, damn the moral cost. It wasn't until I allowed myself to become a vessel for that hunger that I decided it wasn't enough for me to just be athletic and able to talk shit. I needed to be the best.
All of this is to say, Johnny... that you don't have that in you.
Tell me I'm wrong. Puff your chest out and talk your shit, king; but at the end of the day, ain't a damn bullet in your gun that'll stop this hound of hell.
You can't excoriate my drive or ambition. You can't flame me for my failed relationships or downgrade me as a lesser threat than you.
Point of fact, you can't even take the same tactic as Ash and try to claim I'm the arbiter of my own demise.
By your own admission, this year is your first year in wrestling. This time last year, you were doing nothing. That before you signed a contract sight-unseen, you were a couch-hopping slacker with zero training who spent his days at one of his transient friend's apartments, getting high and masturbating.
And that you impressed our management into signing you because you had street-fighting skills, and you were able to swing on cops and throw Molotovs when things went sideways at the CHOP or other BLM protests.
When it comes to that, you've got the fire, moxie. I admire that.
I was honest when I said, that in your earnest dedication to stick it to the man, you're what punk kids in the '90s aspired to.
But you're also a fucking child.
A naive, social-media-fed little rube who took a few semesters digesting Marx and hanging a Guevara flag with absolutely no idea of the sacrifice or works it took to get here, in this business.
In point of fact, you only got into this business because you needed a paycheck, by your own admission.
And that makes the fact that you're gifted at this little more than an example of precociousness breeding contentment. Nah, kid. We aren't the same.
I was born my father's mirror-image physical specimen, this business in my veins.
By the time I was three years younger than you I was already spooking the man who was berating me in grueling young-boy training... when he looked in my eye and saw a dragon hiding.
By the time I was your age, a year or two into my main roster bow, my reputation wasn't "loudmouth, writing bulldog checks his puppy ass can't cash"... it was that I was a sadistic narcissist who didn't care who's neck he stepped on to climb a ladder.
I committed so fully to this business that it became my entire world.
I fought every day for twenty years growing my reputation. Fought, bled, been impaled on broken shards of glass.
You had no training, no dues, one year of middling success, and you had a ring explode on you before you decided you wanted to really do something about Philidor.
One year in which you took on the dregs of the Pure division and knocked them out.
Oh, I saw where you breezed past men like Corey Bull and Dionysus before he started really applying himself.
But I also saw where even when you won, you were sweating. I saw HaHa Harlowe fluster you. Saw Harvey Marx push you to such a limit that you nervously befriended him rather than do it again.
I saw you so stymied by Ash Blake's dissection of your movement that you began to repeat yourself and lose your focus.
I told you... I've been watching for a long time, waiting to see if you'd get it. If you'd more consistently drop the cutesy Twitter-fingers act and free the beast.
In this WOTY tourney, you've shown a more serious side, but you still act as you'd rather be trading hate-flirts with Cassidy Adler than fighting.
You've come a long way from the Toon World bullshit, but I can't forget the fact that when you were chosen to carry the mantle of both the Hardcore and Pure titles, you went back for a second round against CJ Phoenix just so you could trade anime gif's with him rather than fighting to restore the damaged credibility that led to them having to combine two titles in the first place.
Or give a shot against someone that actually has a Hardcore pedigree - which that belt has been lacking, sorely, ever since it was handed off to Vayden.
I've been fighting, weekly, striving to make my name and establish my reputation while you're out flirting with anyone who gives you a modicum of attention.
You wanted the big payoff of being on the winning team of Hellimination, but I'm the one who won that match, and was booked to defend the Tag belts three matches earlier. Where were you, catering, making googly eyes with Lissie?
I've been putting in work to get here. You still are in a #chimp-mode, where this's play.
What strikes me most is how Ash called you out for so much that you did little to retort.
I too have watched you strike up friendships all year with every friendly newbie who'd be into some cute backstage antics, and engage in gag-worthy "Mommy??" banter with every female wrestler who's got some cleavage hanging out of her header.
That you spun that into lasting relationships with Mae and Addy is beautiful.
But when they're struggling, when any of your friends are getting jumped, you're off somewhere else celebrating. You loved Trey Bouchet and Deb Monroe so much, but every time they got injured by Devil's Gate, you were never the one to so much as walk them to the ambulance.
What it is, is evidence that this is still a game to you.
This is still just the shit you signed up for kicks, and it affords you the opportunities for fun shenanigans and to practice your protest-rally rhetoric like you're standing in front of an Occupy group in a Guy Fawkes mask.
Your every move contains just that level of ill-thought-out, crowd-pleasing bullshit that your generation is famous for.
Yes, haul the powerful before guillotines. Yes, evil should be fucking punished... but you have absolutely no wherewithal to make that world a reality.
Nor do you care to, it's all just good shit that'll get you retweeted and the video of you lobbing a tear-gas canister back at the wall of SWAT officers will go viral.
When you talked about revolution and wanting to bring Philidor down, I believed you were sincere.
But it became clear by the time you paraded us in front of a cadaver to speak in metaphor, that all your rhetoric about eliminating the cancer was entirely hypothetical.
Is that why you needed me so desperately, Johnny?
Please, don't try to walk that back by claiming it as "our victory" now, when you point-blank looked me in the face and told me that I needed to be the one because I was the only one who really knew how to get to Ash.
'Cause when she calls me on my shit, I don't retreat into defense mode and crumble... which you did, categorically.
When I take my shot at her, I don't miss.
I wonder, were you ever aware of how badly that would go if I turned that on you?
When you get put on the back foot, pushed out of the comfort zone, when you finally drop all the silly cartoon shit ... even start to let the clever references drop away, I've seen who you are.
The sullen little boy who's maybe got the kindlings of some of this fire I've got inside...
...But we are far from a simple generational gap here, Johnathan.
You aren't a variant of me from twenty years ago; you're a soft, indolent little slacker who likes the attention and just wants to be told his Vanilla Ice reference landed.
You aren't someone who's ever shown that you really, truly WANT something. Fuck, when you started, all you wanted was to be able to trade barbs with Z-Mac, how pathetic a motivation is that?
This entire year I've studied you, grinning every time you tweeted my name in one of your high-LAR-ious "two wolves" refs and mentally assessing the holes in your game when someone hits you with shit-talk stiff enough that you start behaving like an adult, instead of a teen who was allowed his first beer.
When it comes down to it, we still aren't walking the same path. You did put down Carter Shaw and Dandy, but you've benefited happily off the interference from everyone in that World Title fatal-four-way getting in their business.
Purely from a skill level, you still haven't shown me that you're ready for this. And when it comes to that drive... that need to run like the devil is on your tail, that need to push yourself to the brink because you might be reaching the end of your road, I know you're not.
That, ultimately is where we stand. I have no illusions this will be a scenario like the two samurai, meeting on the bridge and passing without incident.
We're meeting in the middle of our crossroads. I'm gonna drag you down, and rip you apart.
This's where I'm gonna have to say I'm sorry.
And that I hope this makes you reconsider.
Fuck, get out of this business before it's too late, before it gets its hooks in you.
You have your happy endings all written out for you, you were in this for the lulz anyway, and your out with Mae is a plane ticket to wherever both of you are.
You don't want to be where I am.
But I also know, you're tougher than anyone gives you credit for. And stupid enough that you'll think there's another option.
I'd never want that for you.
For you to get to be my age, and to have to fight, scratch and claw, tooth and nail, to clench victory between my teeth and bear down until I've left nothing but shreds.
But I'd never want anything else, for myself.
I sold my soul to be here. And I'm gonna walk away from these railroad tracks and go on to my success, the gold waiting for me at the end. And I ain't looking back. I can't, not even to check on you.
I can't look back, Johnny.
There's a hellhound on my trail... and that hellhound is me.