Post by Regan Voorhees on Nov 21, 2021 14:29:08 GMT -5
Quite a two weeks.
Career-defining, some might call it.
Lissie Hope. Corey Black. Icons, legends. Pick whatever cliché to simplify their accolades to a single reductive word. The important takeaway is that they’re two of the best - here, there, everywhere. In two consecutive weeks, I beat both of them. Not that I’m bragging. It wasn’t particularly easy and the matches left my body battered in ways that won't have time to properly heal until this tournament is over. But to look on the bright side, my competition suffered through similar ordeals. Not a perfectly even playing field, but at least it's a disadvantage I don't suffer alone. But still. In two weeks, I beat Corey Black and Lissie Hope. Delightful.
But however tempting it may be to indulge in overconfidence now, I’m still merely a semi-finalist for Wrestler of the Year. To look past that could prove disastrous. Turmoil is as much a gauntlet as it is a tournament. I have no intention of celebrating until that trophy is in my cold, manicured hands. All I want for Christmas is these next two rounds, these next two rounds.
I might have previously had an advantage in being underestimated. The three-time champion of the B-show, by crook more than hook, utterly outmatched against the roster of Clash-proper. If that misconception played any part in my success thus far, its edge has been dulled. Regardless of how round three plays out, a representative of CruiserClash will compete in the finals, against an opponent who has had a month to observe just how well the 201 and Fun Division fares on the A-show's greatest. Teo Blaze, perhaps more than anyone in this tournament, knows just how big of a threat I am. He’ll be prepared. On guard and at his best. Suppose it’s only courteous to return the favor.
Teo Blaze and Regan Voorhees - one the last hope of our show, the other doomed to failure at the hands of one of their own. How fucking poetic.
The revelation of Gustav Voorhees as a catfish-fucker left me with no small amount of disgust at my forebears. While I was well aware that generations of wealth and security did much to diminish any inherent acumen and perseverance throughout the endless web of my extended kin, for all Gustav’s debasement, he was still a man of boldness and cunning. Since then, with few exceptions, the Alabama Voorheeses grew complacent - fat and happy off the blood of livestock - unable or unwilling to see the irony. You are, after all, what you eat.
My own grandfather Roland, a ghoulish but competent man, saw the myriad failings of his own generation and knew those shortcomings would only snowball in time with their offspring, so on and so forth, until the Voorheeses Idiocracy’d their way to destitution. The man felt a certain Game of Thrones-ian obligation to maintain his family’s powerbase. Thus, a plan was put into effect.
Pop-Pop was the first Voorhees to have a true appreciation for pigs. He learned a valuable lesson from them. Each piglet is born with a set of milking teeth, sharp as needles so that they can fight off their own siblings for prime teat access(they don’t have wrestle-Twitter). Should they win the day, the victors earn a greater abundance of mother’s milk so that they can grow up bigger, stronger, faster. A hierarchy is established, and their littermates fall in line, the social order cemented in their porcine brains. People are slower to accept such a thing. Even the weakest, slowest, stupidest among us consider themselves top-tier sapiens under the right circumstances. The word is luck. I despise luck.
My cousins and I didn’t fight for milk. Domination was our goal, destitution our participation trophy. Only one of us would serve as heir, but despite their best efforts, I proved myself unmatchable, be it in academics, administration or athletics. By eight-years-old I distinguished myself as the best of them, already carrying myself with the bearing of a future world leader while they stumbled through recurrent bedwetting and speech impediments that had long since ceased to be cute. Constance wept when she could not best me at spelling(I still laugh when I think of her stammering out incorrect letters to pharaoh). Mikey stormed away from the table and our Risk game after my legions corralled his ragtag remnants in Australia and prepared to raze the entire four-space continent in the name of the Regan Empire. When Piers remarked about me golfing from the girls tee, I took out my sand wedge and chipped a ball into his temple, knocking the newly learned multiplication tables from his head. Their parents’ complaints went unheard, while my own mother and father took a perverse joy, as if they finally saw an upside to my unsocial nature.
Then Pop-Pop devised a new challenge. While I never learned the full details, he was prone to grumblings in regards to how the practice of hunting people had become a logistical nightmare. It was a subject that went unpressed by the rest of the family, a topic he only addressed after consuming a sizable amount of liquor, when a dark mood seized him. But still, he sought to further harden the hearts of his grandchildren. Obviously, the idea of us Battle-Royaling ourselves on the family farm was impractical, but then he had a revelation. Paintballs.
While it wouldn’t fully sort the cream from the crap quite like live ammunition would, he did suspect that it would instill and hone a certain killer instinct in each of us. As much as I enjoyed traipsing through the grounds, lecturing my animal friends on Nancy Drew, Nietzsche, and other such childish things, the prospect of wearing camo was less appealing. The only selling point was the doom I could bring to my cousins. My competitive pride prickling, I acquiesced.
Six of us scattered into the woods, a platoon of paint-wielding executioners ready to quench the bottomless bloodthirst inherent in all children. Or perhaps that was only me. My capacity for strategy went to work long before the game even started, and I broke away from the group immediately. The prospect of hunting them all down myself was tempting, like a pear green-tinted Predator, ruthless and invisible, mandibles clacking with malice. It was, however, impractical. Invisibility would serve me well, of course, though I hoped my lilac hairbow(I insisted on a splash of color to combat my outfit’s overabundance of green) would not reveal me nor my sinister intent. A tall magnolia tree sat at the center of the property, and like always, I was the only Voorhees with any skill in climbing it. The tree would afford me high ground, visibility, and a hiding place. My cousins would weed each other out and I would pick off the survivors at my convenience. Again, my superiority was a certainty.
Climbing the tree proved no challenge for me, though I bristled as I pulled myself onto the first branch and saw my lilac nails chipping. A price to be paid for victory, I assured myself. Twenty feet up, I positioned my back to the trunk and waited, ears eager for the sound of an encroaching target that I might permeate with paint. The facemask was cumbersome, but only slightly impeded my vision. I listened, watched and waited, though truthfully I did regret leaving my complete works of Kafka back at the farmhouse(second grade saw the dawn of my fascination with surrealism). Eventually I heard clomping, the sound footsteps would make if feet themselves could be stupid. Mikey approached, utterly unaware of my sniper nest and the paint-by-numbers death shroud his ill-fitting camouflage would soon become.
He seemed to realize stealth would be an impossibility for his lummoxian frame and made no effort to conceal the crack of fall leaves beneath his every footstep. Surely the ineptitude of the other players was the only reason he had yet to be eliminated. An oversight I would soon rectify. I raised my gun, fixed the sight on my target, braced myself against the tree trunk to offset the impending kickback. My trigger finger itched in anticipation, eager for the barrel to spit forth purple-tinted death(the shade was as close as I could find to matching the lilac on my nails and bow).
Then the first shot struck me, biting into my shoulder. Instinctively I lowered my gun, bracing it against the branch I sat on, so that I could examine the wound. Orange paint trickled down my arm from where the paintball hit, the same spot radiating numbness. Before my eyes could trace the shot’s point of origin, another hit my thigh, then another in my stomach. My hiding spot revealed, there was no further cover to scramble to, but I scrambled anyway. Scrambled so much so that I tumbled from the tree, my face mercifully missing any disfiguring branches on the way down, though my arms, legs and torso were not so fortunate. The branches slowed any fatal aspect of my descent, and my foot caught on the lowest one, sending me face-first onto the ground. A quintet of lesser Voorheeses waited there, guns ready, but the barrels drooped after my landing. They worried their game had gone too far, that the fall might’ve left me dead or dying. The aches of my body were difficult to pinpoint, as the branches’ blunt assault seemed to strike me all over. My paintball wounds stung less, but were still a distinct pain all their own, hurting my pride as much as my body. Three shots found their mark already, two more than required to eliminate me. Now that they knew for sure I survived, my cousins were grandstanding, savoring their five-against-one victory.
The shots that hit me exploded into orange, cyan and yellow. So I was surprised to see dots of red on the leaves in front of me. When I finally looked up, a chorus of gasps followed, and it was then that I noticed the trickle of blood from my mouth. My fingers probed, my tongue followed, and they found a sizable, fresh gap in my gums where my front teeth once were. The bottomless, childish malice of my cousins quickly gave way to panic over the consequences they might suffer from my condition. Unladylike as it was, I spat blood on the ground, then fumbled through the leaves for my dislodged incisors.
“We’re really sorry,” said Piers.
“Please don’t tell on us,” said Constance.
Luckily, impossibly, my fingers found a single tooth among the foliage. “Tell what?” I asked, holding it up like a grim trophy. “That between the five of you and one tree, you only knocked out two baby teeth? I was going to lose these anyway. But I swear, what I lose I will take back from you tenfold.” With great dismay, I noticed that I was doomed to whistle my S’s for the foreseeable future.
Mikey blinked at me, eyes devoid of any human understanding. “We still won.”
Relenting in my search for the second tooth, I stood up, bracing myself against the tree that served as my Waterloo. As the blood continued to flow, I unclipped my hairbow, pressing the lilac fabric into the hole as a makeshift bandage. I talked over the impediment as best I could. “It’th only becauthe of your thupidity that you’re able to be tho thure of yourthelves,” I said, paraphrasing the Bohemian novelist, my muffled soprano echoing through the trees.
“What?” asked Constance, again leveling her weapon at me.
Obligingly, I removed the hairbow from my mouth so that I could better belittle them. “Enjoy your Pyrrhic victory.”
“What?” Piers asked, following Constance’s example and pointing the barrel of his paintball gun at me. The other three followed, angry at their inability to follow my intellectual discourse, but desperate for some sort of dumb, violent retribution - the last mental refuge for their Paleolithic sensibilities.
“Read a bo-,” I began to say, but they had already opened fire.
And there in that forest, front teeth gone, riddled with paintballs - I vowed that I would never again underestimate anyone - be they family, friend, or enemy.
My pride stung, but I refused to admit defeat to any of the adults. Though my camo was now rainbowed in paint, I refused to divulge the details of the attack. My teeth were a different matter, but I made no secret of my fall. Mom was displeased over the abundance of purpling bruises from my tussle down the tree trunk, but I was even more displeased over being the game’s lone loser. My cousins savored their victory, numerical advantage be damned. They had finally bested me. An offense that demanded swift, cruel retribution.
That same night I put a second clandestine plan into effect. I added a dramatic flare, of course. Something that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies for years to come. In the interest of poetic justice, the mission required the best tooth fairy costume I could approximate given the resources available in the farmhouse. Those resources were my own ballet tutu, a pair of pixie wings from one of Constance’s banal Halloween costumes, and a red Oni mask from Pop-Pop’s study. The most important item for any aspiring tooth fairy was, of course, a pair of needle nose pliers.
Tragically, my evening was cut short. My eagerness for revenge led to no small measure of poor planning. Though I sneaked through the darkness stealthily enough, ready to do my toothy business, gross miscalculations were made. I did not account for Mikey’s size advantage, his ability to thrash about(thus escaping the pliers) and his willingness to scream for help. Under ideal circumstances, it would take care and precision to extract a tooth. I was only able to grab one in the metal pincers and yank it free from his gums before my nighttime quest for vengeance was thwarted. Mom was quick to escort me away for what I was sure would be another one of our why-are-you-like-this talks. But when she removed my Oni mask and saw the sour expression on my face, she was left confused and curious. “Are you mad?” she asked. True anger was a rarity for me, even then, but as a child I was less skilled in hiding it.
“Of course I’m mad,” I said, uncrossing my arms to hold up the pliers. The metal still pinched the incisor, yellow with neglect, but still fresh with pink blood. “I only got one.”
My lighting was perfect, as usual. A single bulb dangling straight from the ceiling, industrial chic. I sat in a highback vegan leather chair, black to better make my white and lilac accented suit stand out. A short rocks glass stood post on the white marble table beside me, the pomegranate seeds at the bottom sat in the red tinted whiskey like so many bloody teeth. I gave the straw a swirl, the metal of it clicking against the glass. Only then did I notice that the red of the liquor was a shade lighter than the rose polish of my nails. Perfect white teeth bit into my rose-tinted bottom lip. The red light of the camera didn’t match either. Furious, I channeled the sensation into my art and opened the promo with a melodramatic wave at the all-consuming darkness surrounding me.
“Minimalist, to show my sincerity.”
I took a breath and sipped the cocktail, teeth scraping on metal.
“I’m actually glad it’s you, Teo.”
I placed a hand over my heart, to emphasize my alleged sincerity.
“Our successes up to this round dispel any misconceptions or condescension regarding Action’s B-show. If any of our respective opponents took us lightly up to this point, they certainly regret it now. They’re out, and for at least one more round, we’re both still in. Would’ve loved to have done this in the finals, but the brackets conspired against us. Que sera.”
The mournfulness in my voice was genuine. Beating out the Clash roster to have an all CruiserClash final would’ve been monumental, a triumph for every wrestler on our show. But alas.
“Considering our CruiserClash connection, I’m going to be uncharacteristically less snide with you. Congratulations, you’re welcome, whatever.”
“We both made it to the semi-finals for the end all, be all of CruiserClash showdowns. Validation for everything that is 201 and Fun, proof that our best can not only compete, we can overcome. One of us earning Cruiserweight Superstar of the Year, certainly nothing to sneeze at. And that same one moving on to possibly win Wrestler of the Year, the whole Turmoil shebang as it were. I have to wonder… Are we both dark horses? Just me? Just you? Would one of us winning be like God herself casting a divine monkey wrench into the cogs of fate? Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but really, that only makes me want it more. Do you feel the same way, Teo? I bet you do.”
A titter, unexpected and unwanted, escaped my throat. I worried my eyes might alight with a hint of madness, but I banished the possibility with a flutter of eyelashes and a resolute return to my steely glare.
“Look at us, we’re relating. A pair of B-Show underdogs, heroes to the flippy-folk, fighting our little hearts out for the home team. Pardon me, I’m trying not to vomit. Oh, I know what will fix that.”
I drank deeply from the cocktail, pomegranate seeds on the bottom clinking against my own teeth. I spit a stray one out in a manner my mother would’ve found distasteful.
“Stress, Teo. You’re the only one who can even begin to understand what I’m going through right now. But do I expect sympathy, understanding, even admiration? Of course not. I’m well aware that if CruiserClash has a hometown hero in this kerfuffle, it’s you. And why wouldn’t you be? An ever-expanding list of accolades, and unlike myself, you’ve mastered the skill of - oh, what’s the word - amicability? You seem to be able to get along with other people. Ugh, I’d rather dive into a woodchipper. Frankly, Teo, I don’t know how you do it.”
“You’ve got tag gold, you’ve held singles gold, before long you’ll run out of fingers to count those reigns on. And now, you might even be on the run of your career. Naturally, I’d hate to speak for you. But as I may very well be on the run of me career, it would appear that we kindred spirits are at an impasse. An odd coincidence, us two ships passing in the night, ready to crash into one another. Cruiser-crash, even.”
With agency all their own, my fingers wrapped around the metal straw and stabbed at the pomegranate seeds, an unconscious respite from the mounting pressure. I felt my composure abandon me, a trace of manic glee and fear creeping into my tone, a cocktail of mental madness. I began to speak more with my arms, gesturing to myself, to hypotheticals, to the endless universe, to Teo Blaze.
“And now one of us has to dash our hopes on the cold, hard rocks of reality and watch them sink. The other floats on to Turmoil, to determine if the Cruiserweight of the Year is good enough to be the Wrestler of the Year. Oh, the drama! Really, Teo, you don’t know how much I’ve wanted this. The Two Gents are the team on CruiserClash. But only one Gent has held the Cruiserweight Championship, the title my talons were dug into a few short months ago. You’re good, Teo. Good enough to get all the way here, just like me. Each of us, so singularly good that a match between us determines the best wrestler for an entire division.”
The use of the G-word did little to alleviate my mania, but on I pressed, putting the small cracks in my armor on display like some insane peacock.
“Anyone who would take me lightly, or you for that matter, is a fucking imbecile. Not being an imbecile myself, I won’t make that mistake. You have the entirety of my focus. Not out of any sense of respect or camaraderie, but because I know that’s the only way I can beat you. With the totality of my skills, smarts and spite. Tragic, really. The one person in this whole tournament who can somewhat understand me, also happens to be my greatest threat. Shakespeare, lend me thy quill.”
“All that effort distinguishing ourselves, the accomplishments and accolades between us, fighting to improve our positions and cement ourselves as CruiserClash stalwarts. And now I feel like we’re little more than a couple of animals, each so certain we’re the baddest piglet in the pen, until we run into another little piggy whose tusks are just as sharp, who's just as hungry. One starves, so the other can grow fat, meanwhile the Clash side of the bracket salivates at the notion of bacon for dinner. I’m sure a display of 201 pound chumminess would endear the masses, a solemn vow between the two of us that whoever wins this match, goes on to win the whole thing. Not just for us, but for CruiserClash, for the B-show and all its unappreciated denizens. How… warm and fuzzy. The sort of thing that makes it difficult to keep your lunch down.”
“But I must confess, I have a frightfully difficult time relying on other people and entrusting vital tasks to them. However competent they may be. Not my most practical quirk, but I don’t have your ability to rely upon the power of friendship. Under different circumstances I might wish you luck as a professional courtesy. But in this case, Teo, I have no choice but to bare my fangs. Expect a gift basket post-Turmoil. After all, I couldn’t have gotten there without you.”
I drained the glass, letting a sizable portion of the pomegranates hit my teeth for the sake of theater. I smiled at the camera, showing my red-stained teeth, my predatory nature. And I awaited my prey.
Career-defining, some might call it.
Lissie Hope. Corey Black. Icons, legends. Pick whatever cliché to simplify their accolades to a single reductive word. The important takeaway is that they’re two of the best - here, there, everywhere. In two consecutive weeks, I beat both of them. Not that I’m bragging. It wasn’t particularly easy and the matches left my body battered in ways that won't have time to properly heal until this tournament is over. But to look on the bright side, my competition suffered through similar ordeals. Not a perfectly even playing field, but at least it's a disadvantage I don't suffer alone. But still. In two weeks, I beat Corey Black and Lissie Hope. Delightful.
But however tempting it may be to indulge in overconfidence now, I’m still merely a semi-finalist for Wrestler of the Year. To look past that could prove disastrous. Turmoil is as much a gauntlet as it is a tournament. I have no intention of celebrating until that trophy is in my cold, manicured hands. All I want for Christmas is these next two rounds, these next two rounds.
I might have previously had an advantage in being underestimated. The three-time champion of the B-show, by crook more than hook, utterly outmatched against the roster of Clash-proper. If that misconception played any part in my success thus far, its edge has been dulled. Regardless of how round three plays out, a representative of CruiserClash will compete in the finals, against an opponent who has had a month to observe just how well the 201 and Fun Division fares on the A-show's greatest. Teo Blaze, perhaps more than anyone in this tournament, knows just how big of a threat I am. He’ll be prepared. On guard and at his best. Suppose it’s only courteous to return the favor.
Teo Blaze and Regan Voorhees - one the last hope of our show, the other doomed to failure at the hands of one of their own. How fucking poetic.
(´・(00)・`)
Tooth Fairy
(Best paired with the Chipmunks’ “All I Want for Christmas(Is My Two Front Teeth)” and a Bloody Tooth Cocktail)
The revelation of Gustav Voorhees as a catfish-fucker left me with no small amount of disgust at my forebears. While I was well aware that generations of wealth and security did much to diminish any inherent acumen and perseverance throughout the endless web of my extended kin, for all Gustav’s debasement, he was still a man of boldness and cunning. Since then, with few exceptions, the Alabama Voorheeses grew complacent - fat and happy off the blood of livestock - unable or unwilling to see the irony. You are, after all, what you eat.
My own grandfather Roland, a ghoulish but competent man, saw the myriad failings of his own generation and knew those shortcomings would only snowball in time with their offspring, so on and so forth, until the Voorheeses Idiocracy’d their way to destitution. The man felt a certain Game of Thrones-ian obligation to maintain his family’s powerbase. Thus, a plan was put into effect.
Step 1 - Limit the involvement of the existing failures; offer them stations of meager power where they might still be useful, or at the very least, unintrusive.
Step 2 - If their usefulness is an unviable goal, remove them entirely through whatever means might be necessary; ideally, within the bounds of the law. Ideally.
Step 3 - Focus efforts on developing the talents and girding the resolve of the next generation, before their innate talents and competitive spirit can be weakened by the abundance they are born into.
Step 4 - Darwinism.
Pop-Pop was the first Voorhees to have a true appreciation for pigs. He learned a valuable lesson from them. Each piglet is born with a set of milking teeth, sharp as needles so that they can fight off their own siblings for prime teat access(they don’t have wrestle-Twitter). Should they win the day, the victors earn a greater abundance of mother’s milk so that they can grow up bigger, stronger, faster. A hierarchy is established, and their littermates fall in line, the social order cemented in their porcine brains. People are slower to accept such a thing. Even the weakest, slowest, stupidest among us consider themselves top-tier sapiens under the right circumstances. The word is luck. I despise luck.
My cousins and I didn’t fight for milk. Domination was our goal, destitution our participation trophy. Only one of us would serve as heir, but despite their best efforts, I proved myself unmatchable, be it in academics, administration or athletics. By eight-years-old I distinguished myself as the best of them, already carrying myself with the bearing of a future world leader while they stumbled through recurrent bedwetting and speech impediments that had long since ceased to be cute. Constance wept when she could not best me at spelling(I still laugh when I think of her stammering out incorrect letters to pharaoh). Mikey stormed away from the table and our Risk game after my legions corralled his ragtag remnants in Australia and prepared to raze the entire four-space continent in the name of the Regan Empire. When Piers remarked about me golfing from the girls tee, I took out my sand wedge and chipped a ball into his temple, knocking the newly learned multiplication tables from his head. Their parents’ complaints went unheard, while my own mother and father took a perverse joy, as if they finally saw an upside to my unsocial nature.
Then Pop-Pop devised a new challenge. While I never learned the full details, he was prone to grumblings in regards to how the practice of hunting people had become a logistical nightmare. It was a subject that went unpressed by the rest of the family, a topic he only addressed after consuming a sizable amount of liquor, when a dark mood seized him. But still, he sought to further harden the hearts of his grandchildren. Obviously, the idea of us Battle-Royaling ourselves on the family farm was impractical, but then he had a revelation. Paintballs.
While it wouldn’t fully sort the cream from the crap quite like live ammunition would, he did suspect that it would instill and hone a certain killer instinct in each of us. As much as I enjoyed traipsing through the grounds, lecturing my animal friends on Nancy Drew, Nietzsche, and other such childish things, the prospect of wearing camo was less appealing. The only selling point was the doom I could bring to my cousins. My competitive pride prickling, I acquiesced.
Six of us scattered into the woods, a platoon of paint-wielding executioners ready to quench the bottomless bloodthirst inherent in all children. Or perhaps that was only me. My capacity for strategy went to work long before the game even started, and I broke away from the group immediately. The prospect of hunting them all down myself was tempting, like a pear green-tinted Predator, ruthless and invisible, mandibles clacking with malice. It was, however, impractical. Invisibility would serve me well, of course, though I hoped my lilac hairbow(I insisted on a splash of color to combat my outfit’s overabundance of green) would not reveal me nor my sinister intent. A tall magnolia tree sat at the center of the property, and like always, I was the only Voorhees with any skill in climbing it. The tree would afford me high ground, visibility, and a hiding place. My cousins would weed each other out and I would pick off the survivors at my convenience. Again, my superiority was a certainty.
Climbing the tree proved no challenge for me, though I bristled as I pulled myself onto the first branch and saw my lilac nails chipping. A price to be paid for victory, I assured myself. Twenty feet up, I positioned my back to the trunk and waited, ears eager for the sound of an encroaching target that I might permeate with paint. The facemask was cumbersome, but only slightly impeded my vision. I listened, watched and waited, though truthfully I did regret leaving my complete works of Kafka back at the farmhouse(second grade saw the dawn of my fascination with surrealism). Eventually I heard clomping, the sound footsteps would make if feet themselves could be stupid. Mikey approached, utterly unaware of my sniper nest and the paint-by-numbers death shroud his ill-fitting camouflage would soon become.
He seemed to realize stealth would be an impossibility for his lummoxian frame and made no effort to conceal the crack of fall leaves beneath his every footstep. Surely the ineptitude of the other players was the only reason he had yet to be eliminated. An oversight I would soon rectify. I raised my gun, fixed the sight on my target, braced myself against the tree trunk to offset the impending kickback. My trigger finger itched in anticipation, eager for the barrel to spit forth purple-tinted death(the shade was as close as I could find to matching the lilac on my nails and bow).
Then the first shot struck me, biting into my shoulder. Instinctively I lowered my gun, bracing it against the branch I sat on, so that I could examine the wound. Orange paint trickled down my arm from where the paintball hit, the same spot radiating numbness. Before my eyes could trace the shot’s point of origin, another hit my thigh, then another in my stomach. My hiding spot revealed, there was no further cover to scramble to, but I scrambled anyway. Scrambled so much so that I tumbled from the tree, my face mercifully missing any disfiguring branches on the way down, though my arms, legs and torso were not so fortunate. The branches slowed any fatal aspect of my descent, and my foot caught on the lowest one, sending me face-first onto the ground. A quintet of lesser Voorheeses waited there, guns ready, but the barrels drooped after my landing. They worried their game had gone too far, that the fall might’ve left me dead or dying. The aches of my body were difficult to pinpoint, as the branches’ blunt assault seemed to strike me all over. My paintball wounds stung less, but were still a distinct pain all their own, hurting my pride as much as my body. Three shots found their mark already, two more than required to eliminate me. Now that they knew for sure I survived, my cousins were grandstanding, savoring their five-against-one victory.
The shots that hit me exploded into orange, cyan and yellow. So I was surprised to see dots of red on the leaves in front of me. When I finally looked up, a chorus of gasps followed, and it was then that I noticed the trickle of blood from my mouth. My fingers probed, my tongue followed, and they found a sizable, fresh gap in my gums where my front teeth once were. The bottomless, childish malice of my cousins quickly gave way to panic over the consequences they might suffer from my condition. Unladylike as it was, I spat blood on the ground, then fumbled through the leaves for my dislodged incisors.
“We’re really sorry,” said Piers.
“Please don’t tell on us,” said Constance.
Luckily, impossibly, my fingers found a single tooth among the foliage. “Tell what?” I asked, holding it up like a grim trophy. “That between the five of you and one tree, you only knocked out two baby teeth? I was going to lose these anyway. But I swear, what I lose I will take back from you tenfold.” With great dismay, I noticed that I was doomed to whistle my S’s for the foreseeable future.
Mikey blinked at me, eyes devoid of any human understanding. “We still won.”
Relenting in my search for the second tooth, I stood up, bracing myself against the tree that served as my Waterloo. As the blood continued to flow, I unclipped my hairbow, pressing the lilac fabric into the hole as a makeshift bandage. I talked over the impediment as best I could. “It’th only becauthe of your thupidity that you’re able to be tho thure of yourthelves,” I said, paraphrasing the Bohemian novelist, my muffled soprano echoing through the trees.
“What?” asked Constance, again leveling her weapon at me.
Obligingly, I removed the hairbow from my mouth so that I could better belittle them. “Enjoy your Pyrrhic victory.”
“What?” Piers asked, following Constance’s example and pointing the barrel of his paintball gun at me. The other three followed, angry at their inability to follow my intellectual discourse, but desperate for some sort of dumb, violent retribution - the last mental refuge for their Paleolithic sensibilities.
“Read a bo-,” I began to say, but they had already opened fire.
And there in that forest, front teeth gone, riddled with paintballs - I vowed that I would never again underestimate anyone - be they family, friend, or enemy.
(´・(00)・`)
My pride stung, but I refused to admit defeat to any of the adults. Though my camo was now rainbowed in paint, I refused to divulge the details of the attack. My teeth were a different matter, but I made no secret of my fall. Mom was displeased over the abundance of purpling bruises from my tussle down the tree trunk, but I was even more displeased over being the game’s lone loser. My cousins savored their victory, numerical advantage be damned. They had finally bested me. An offense that demanded swift, cruel retribution.
That same night I put a second clandestine plan into effect. I added a dramatic flare, of course. Something that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies for years to come. In the interest of poetic justice, the mission required the best tooth fairy costume I could approximate given the resources available in the farmhouse. Those resources were my own ballet tutu, a pair of pixie wings from one of Constance’s banal Halloween costumes, and a red Oni mask from Pop-Pop’s study. The most important item for any aspiring tooth fairy was, of course, a pair of needle nose pliers.
Tragically, my evening was cut short. My eagerness for revenge led to no small measure of poor planning. Though I sneaked through the darkness stealthily enough, ready to do my toothy business, gross miscalculations were made. I did not account for Mikey’s size advantage, his ability to thrash about(thus escaping the pliers) and his willingness to scream for help. Under ideal circumstances, it would take care and precision to extract a tooth. I was only able to grab one in the metal pincers and yank it free from his gums before my nighttime quest for vengeance was thwarted. Mom was quick to escort me away for what I was sure would be another one of our why-are-you-like-this talks. But when she removed my Oni mask and saw the sour expression on my face, she was left confused and curious. “Are you mad?” she asked. True anger was a rarity for me, even then, but as a child I was less skilled in hiding it.
“Of course I’m mad,” I said, uncrossing my arms to hold up the pliers. The metal still pinched the incisor, yellow with neglect, but still fresh with pink blood. “I only got one.”
(´・(00)・`)
My lighting was perfect, as usual. A single bulb dangling straight from the ceiling, industrial chic. I sat in a highback vegan leather chair, black to better make my white and lilac accented suit stand out. A short rocks glass stood post on the white marble table beside me, the pomegranate seeds at the bottom sat in the red tinted whiskey like so many bloody teeth. I gave the straw a swirl, the metal of it clicking against the glass. Only then did I notice that the red of the liquor was a shade lighter than the rose polish of my nails. Perfect white teeth bit into my rose-tinted bottom lip. The red light of the camera didn’t match either. Furious, I channeled the sensation into my art and opened the promo with a melodramatic wave at the all-consuming darkness surrounding me.
“Minimalist, to show my sincerity.”
I took a breath and sipped the cocktail, teeth scraping on metal.
“I’m actually glad it’s you, Teo.”
I placed a hand over my heart, to emphasize my alleged sincerity.
“Our successes up to this round dispel any misconceptions or condescension regarding Action’s B-show. If any of our respective opponents took us lightly up to this point, they certainly regret it now. They’re out, and for at least one more round, we’re both still in. Would’ve loved to have done this in the finals, but the brackets conspired against us. Que sera.”
The mournfulness in my voice was genuine. Beating out the Clash roster to have an all CruiserClash final would’ve been monumental, a triumph for every wrestler on our show. But alas.
“Considering our CruiserClash connection, I’m going to be uncharacteristically less snide with you. Congratulations, you’re welcome, whatever.”
“We both made it to the semi-finals for the end all, be all of CruiserClash showdowns. Validation for everything that is 201 and Fun, proof that our best can not only compete, we can overcome. One of us earning Cruiserweight Superstar of the Year, certainly nothing to sneeze at. And that same one moving on to possibly win Wrestler of the Year, the whole Turmoil shebang as it were. I have to wonder… Are we both dark horses? Just me? Just you? Would one of us winning be like God herself casting a divine monkey wrench into the cogs of fate? Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but really, that only makes me want it more. Do you feel the same way, Teo? I bet you do.”
A titter, unexpected and unwanted, escaped my throat. I worried my eyes might alight with a hint of madness, but I banished the possibility with a flutter of eyelashes and a resolute return to my steely glare.
“Look at us, we’re relating. A pair of B-Show underdogs, heroes to the flippy-folk, fighting our little hearts out for the home team. Pardon me, I’m trying not to vomit. Oh, I know what will fix that.”
I drank deeply from the cocktail, pomegranate seeds on the bottom clinking against my own teeth. I spit a stray one out in a manner my mother would’ve found distasteful.
“Stress, Teo. You’re the only one who can even begin to understand what I’m going through right now. But do I expect sympathy, understanding, even admiration? Of course not. I’m well aware that if CruiserClash has a hometown hero in this kerfuffle, it’s you. And why wouldn’t you be? An ever-expanding list of accolades, and unlike myself, you’ve mastered the skill of - oh, what’s the word - amicability? You seem to be able to get along with other people. Ugh, I’d rather dive into a woodchipper. Frankly, Teo, I don’t know how you do it.”
“You’ve got tag gold, you’ve held singles gold, before long you’ll run out of fingers to count those reigns on. And now, you might even be on the run of your career. Naturally, I’d hate to speak for you. But as I may very well be on the run of me career, it would appear that we kindred spirits are at an impasse. An odd coincidence, us two ships passing in the night, ready to crash into one another. Cruiser-crash, even.”
With agency all their own, my fingers wrapped around the metal straw and stabbed at the pomegranate seeds, an unconscious respite from the mounting pressure. I felt my composure abandon me, a trace of manic glee and fear creeping into my tone, a cocktail of mental madness. I began to speak more with my arms, gesturing to myself, to hypotheticals, to the endless universe, to Teo Blaze.
“And now one of us has to dash our hopes on the cold, hard rocks of reality and watch them sink. The other floats on to Turmoil, to determine if the Cruiserweight of the Year is good enough to be the Wrestler of the Year. Oh, the drama! Really, Teo, you don’t know how much I’ve wanted this. The Two Gents are the team on CruiserClash. But only one Gent has held the Cruiserweight Championship, the title my talons were dug into a few short months ago. You’re good, Teo. Good enough to get all the way here, just like me. Each of us, so singularly good that a match between us determines the best wrestler for an entire division.”
The use of the G-word did little to alleviate my mania, but on I pressed, putting the small cracks in my armor on display like some insane peacock.
“Anyone who would take me lightly, or you for that matter, is a fucking imbecile. Not being an imbecile myself, I won’t make that mistake. You have the entirety of my focus. Not out of any sense of respect or camaraderie, but because I know that’s the only way I can beat you. With the totality of my skills, smarts and spite. Tragic, really. The one person in this whole tournament who can somewhat understand me, also happens to be my greatest threat. Shakespeare, lend me thy quill.”
“All that effort distinguishing ourselves, the accomplishments and accolades between us, fighting to improve our positions and cement ourselves as CruiserClash stalwarts. And now I feel like we’re little more than a couple of animals, each so certain we’re the baddest piglet in the pen, until we run into another little piggy whose tusks are just as sharp, who's just as hungry. One starves, so the other can grow fat, meanwhile the Clash side of the bracket salivates at the notion of bacon for dinner. I’m sure a display of 201 pound chumminess would endear the masses, a solemn vow between the two of us that whoever wins this match, goes on to win the whole thing. Not just for us, but for CruiserClash, for the B-show and all its unappreciated denizens. How… warm and fuzzy. The sort of thing that makes it difficult to keep your lunch down.”
“But I must confess, I have a frightfully difficult time relying on other people and entrusting vital tasks to them. However competent they may be. Not my most practical quirk, but I don’t have your ability to rely upon the power of friendship. Under different circumstances I might wish you luck as a professional courtesy. But in this case, Teo, I have no choice but to bare my fangs. Expect a gift basket post-Turmoil. After all, I couldn’t have gotten there without you.”
I drained the glass, letting a sizable portion of the pomegranates hit my teeth for the sake of theater. I smiled at the camera, showing my red-stained teeth, my predatory nature. And I awaited my prey.