Post by Downfall on Aug 7, 2022 13:15:45 GMT -5
He turns the television off in disgust just as the bell rings and Cashe sits up, panting heavily...
And his partner is staring in dumbfounded disbelief...
He closes his eyes and curses a little, whispering, "I'm sorry, Dion...", but sorry for what? That he wasn't out there, to help give him moral support?
That he didn't assist in some way?
Flash-thought of unconscious instinct saying this isn't working, because once, you would have made sure that Cashe stayed down... the old way... the iron way...
He didn't listen to it, and he clicked off the light.
When he closed his eyes, though, he dreamed of eyes in the dark; Slitted, reptilian, assessing coldly.
He dreamed of a vast desert, and as his nictating membrane closed sideways around his eye in a blink, he crawled close to the heat-blasted sand, claws scrabbling as he scurried... He dreamed...
No attachment. No warmth. See what you want. Take. Be strong.
Be lizard.
He dreamed on.
We so love to pretend that we have a higher cerebral function that dictates what we do.
Especially in this arena of unchecked aggrandizement, there is and always have been those that think they're the top of the food chain, because they're wittier, quicker, speak to higher aspirations and give great promises of what they can accomplish.
To revolutionize this company, to bring all eyes on them as they stand at their pulpit.
To them, they're above the baser instincts.
Beyond ego.
It's a lie.
It may be a theme I've talked about before... when I think about myself, and Jonathan Backus, and where we're at, it's the most honest place for me to start from.
For Johnny it's a revolution nearly a year in the making, a dream denied with every setback that he can handwave off.
He sees me as nothing more than a steppingstone, a platform to spring off of so that he can go on to his first-ever All-In Ladder Match.
And who's to say? Maybe he would've been right...
Maybe this entire time we've watched the little shit come up from the Pure Division, whiff hard in Havoc (twice), throw his hat in for a few bids that he didn't come out a deciding factor in, he still keeps that song in his heart that it's only a matter of time that he's finally sitting on that Rascal King's throne.
After all, didn't the old-timey railroad hoboes have their delusional hymn about the Big Rock Candy Mountain to sell each other on a dream that wouldn't ever come to pass?
The central crux, the entire peg which holds together this shabbily constructed throne of Jenga in his mind, is that he's absolutely deluded himself into believing... well, multiple small little deviations from reality...
The more Bacchus puts himself out there every single week, the more we get to peer beneath that disguise so thin it may's well be drawn by a boardwalk caricature artist.
The R-complex that rules him, seething, petty, pedantic little shallowness that defines Johnny are traits that any idiot can see, if they look.
What's more, the lie he tells himself, not others, that this is his first chance and his first real shot at stepping up.
This coulda been his first All-In, the same way it was gonna be his first finals of Turmoil...
He didn't plan for me.
He thought then and he thinks right now, that he's got the key to getting inside my head, under my skin and that if he just Tweets out one my insult, puts my name in his bio mocking me one more time, if he just puts out there how badly he's owned me that I'll turn into a frothing cartoon character and he'll be able to Yosemite Sam his way through me.
But he hasn't actually got a gameplan for what to do if I show up cold-blooded, focused, and in the same mindset that had me run through him and the others in Turmoil... that had me eliminate over half the field at Meltdown.
He doesn't, never has... had a plan for me.
And I am... so god damn tired of Johnny Bacchus.
Tired of his constant little gotcha traps, where if you don't rise to his bait he giggles and capers away like a fucking ten year old that's kicked your shins. But that's been the whole problem. Everything Johnny does is clever and new and fresh!
Of his claiming any sort of credit for the success that I brought about myself; The little insinuations, a bit here, a bit there to quote the man verbatim "Them chihuahuas on Dan’s tail got him all the way to the towering heights of the Tag Title division before I lit a hellfire under his ass to move him along."
Go fuck yourself, you arrogant little prick. You had no part to play in my trials or my triumphs. As always, everything you say discounts the will it took me to get where I am in my career.
My resilience outpaces yours by miles. Even when I've fallen, my pick-myself-back-up-and-start-again game far eclipses yours, when you're beaten... you go silent.
And I've fallen into the trap of being friendly, dispensing kind Dutch uncle advice I wish they'd given me somewhere along the way, telling him to walk away.
Of course he wouldn't walk away from this.
AW's been the only forum in his entire life where people pay tickets to see the show and they're held as a captive audience to his bullshit.
What I've always found tone-deaf about Johnny is how he flip-flops from calling for the guillotines to strike the heads from the powerful to proclaiming his brow the new seat of the crown.
And there we finally come to the nasty, reptilian hunger that lies beneath that gibbering monkey facade.
You wear your cleverness, your vitriol, your bellicosity as a symbol of your intentions to be the change in this company.
Every inch of you eats, sleeps and breathes for revolution. But I know, that it's a mask that you shed when it comes to getting what you really want.
The mask is shedding you now.
So confident, so arrogant, so firm in your belief that you have absolutely nothing to fear.
I want you to remember these words, the first thing I ever told Ash Blake was that "We all build our prisons. Most often what imprisons us is where we live in the most comfort;"
The blueprint you've begun to construct follows Howie Black, in your journey from chimp-joke-spouting comedy act to Serious Revolutionary.
The higher someone climbs, the harder it hits them when they fall. Reminiscing over what happened last time I knocked you out... the fall's going to shatter you, bitch.
You want to start climbing over me, step right up.
It's such a long way down.
Couldn't sleep well, too much ratting around upstairs... So the first order of the day was coffee.
Unfortunately, my setup in my new paid-for setting varies between Spartan and "I'm living out of a duffle bag," so I have to stop at a street vendor as I make my way to the new dojo; Soon, triple-shot Americano strong enough to breathe life into these old bones in hand, I grit my teeth as I see Rumiko on the stoop.
Something about her triggers a response deep in a small nub of my brain that sends flares through my senses; bright, pulsing-red lightning flashes behind my eyes. I can't tell if it's a fight response because she remains so standoffish or if the scent of her pervades my nose; Rosewater on her wrists, vanilla on her feet.
I shut it all out, because I notice she's standing with people outside of the door.
They're of the neighborhood, speaking to her in terse, quick Japanese from a regional dialect I don't recognize. The patriarch is clutching a small, moon-faced child with curled ringlets of hair that can't be more than five to his chest, and speaking quickly. The mother is weeping.
I can't keep the rudeness out of my mouth, "Rumiko, what are these people doing in my doorstep?"
Rumiko's rebuking look hits like a whipcrack as she puts her arm around the weeping mother. "Daniel, the Hasegawa family's corner store was hit by a firebomb last night... I'm not sure if you've paid attention, but the situation with the gangs is getting worse on this block."
Unpitying, I bring the cup to my lips, and grimace through the lava-burn of overheated street coffee. "So why don't they go to the police."
Mister and Miss Hasegawa clearly pick up my meaning, because they exchange looks and the mother immediately begins crying harder. Mister Hasegawa, eyes filled with angry tears, curses at me, says "Don't you look them in the eye, the Death Riders drive up and down the block," and he nodded his head towards the street.
There is, indeed, a custom-built Dodge Charger, trying hard to be inauspicious while the roar of the engine says gaudy, and it's cruising at low speed past the dojo. It doesn't slow, and the windows don't roll down. I don't like the look of it.
Rumiko looks at me, sternly, "Sidebar."
"We need to get these people off the street. We're going to put them up in one of the side-rooms in the dojo for the night..."
"What - No, this isn't my damn problem, Rumiko..."
"They have. A child, Daniel, what is wrong with you?"
"I'm not their protector... and, fuck, maybe I'm tired of protecting people, and reaching out to help people. It always blows up in my face."
Her eyes narrow in disgust. "Why is this about you?"
"If they have some street punks harassing them, I know how to deal with that filth." And I have, between the Inner Circle and the Lost Breed, I've had my fill of dealing with shady, underground types, speaking their language. But I don't see a reason to.
And yet, there's that little nub in the back of my mind that reminds me, I do know ways to protect what's mine... my territory. My people. It's just not very savory. How comfortable am I donning that mantle? Of picking up a weapon for the right reason?
No, I refuse it. I see no reason to care.
Rumiko sees this play over my face, her patience running out. "We need to band together when times get brutal. The only thing that helps us present a united front when people try to take things away from us is love and togetherness... it's what makes us human, Daniel."
I disagree, that isn't the only way... but I look off, at the dojo, as they see the shift behind my eyes.
"I don't think I'm human, then."
Rumiko throws her hands up, exasperated. "They're staying."
I grimace, and throw the cup in the trash. "Fine, whatever..."
I go past them to the door, and unlock it, waving them in.
So, how does it feel now, to be "the tumor, festering in the brain and deep in the guts of this company?"
Don't worry, I'm not here to rake you over the coals for the hypocrisy inherent in your trying to redeem Ash Blake or the ghosts of Philidor... I just find your words apropos because you continue to plumb the depths of being the baseline shittiest human being in this company.
I've freely admitted I'm blackhearted. I never pretended otherwise.
You continue to find new lows to sink to personally as well as professionally while pretending that it's for a greater good.
It didn't even take a month for you and Ash to go from being the hungry competitors who were laughed and dismissed out of hand by the arrogant champs and refused a title shot, to doing the exact same thing and refusing a confrontation with CJ and Spencer.
That proud-champions-to-overbearing-shitheads pipeline sure does flow fast, doesn't it?
It exposes you. It shows in spades, you don't want the smoke when a real team comes calling... Fuck, Johnny, Insurgentsia has only had success in one match.
You staked your claim off of no credibilty. You couldn't even beat Affluenza, the vultures of the damn division.
You can only win when you have an emotional, dramatic attachment to someone that you can assault our senses with twenty minutes worth of tear-filled "I love you Lissie" angst.
You only have an edge, when someone lets you into their head and heart.
You drab yourself in black, you wear masks openly exhorting the crowd "HATE ME" and you've altered your presentation into something so ugly, so emo that it can only mean you're masticating yourself for all the world to see.
You've made such a show of your own private pains that you think if you turn it outward, put it on a billboard, make yourself a martyr to it, people will respect it.
The "Baffled King", it always struck me in that old saw, was surprised because no matter how much of a shit he was... God still shone down on him and looked at him with love. And that's what you want.
You're a pathetic little boy who just, so openly, wants these people to love him and cheer for him, even when he's being naughty, even when he told his little girlfriend to hit the bricks and how much he hated her...
He wants so bad to put it all out there for the crowd that they should reject him, too, but still hopes they'll take him back, every single week.
God, it's no wonder I'm losing my patience with you.
You'd be the type to pick up a baseball bat and think that, at the end of the day, even with the wrongs you're willing to commit, that the people should love you.
I spent my twenties painting the canvas with blood, Johnny, buckets of it. But I never deluded myself.
Never asked the crowd if they could still respect me. I committed to the harm I was willing to do.
It wasn't a feelgood story. It never has been.
It'd be a queasy, horrorshow feeling, a feeling of tragedy, for the audience to yell for me to turn back, to not pick up that crowbar; And yet, my hand would close around it every time.
No, you want that ruthlessness, that edge to do whatever you want... you WANT to claim that crown, but you also want them to love you for doing it.
In the final analysis you're quickly closing in on a speedrun of all my sins, but you're naive enough to think you can be loved and cheered for while doing it, and believe you're brilliant and doing things nobody ever thought of.
You chose it. You chose this path... I beat you soundly and I told you to walk away... but you would rather have walked away from the people who loved you so you could be an egotistical, sneering jackass.
So which was the real truth? Was it always this way?
Was all the heroic talk about getting into wrestling because you wanted money so your friends could eat only ever a coverup so that you could vent your pithy, snarky little rages out on the world? Did it satiate your baser, petty need to talk shit to a human being?
Are we now seeing the real Johnny Bacchus?
Or did it come to you, gradually? When Ash when Regan when I, one-by-one cut you the fuck down.
When you found yourself on the receiving end of one too many failures?
When you watched little girls a fraction of your supposed wit/talent get by you by cheating...
So that when push came to shove, and you saw you couldn't outwrestle me, you had to accept their cheating too just to get you a win?
I'll say it again, you hit me with as much anger and venom as you could pour from your wrists, but you weren't beating me in our last encounter, and you weren't on the path to winning.
You were surviving.
For someone who accused me, hilariously, of going snakemode to win, I believe it stuck with you at some point that that was what you had to do to get by.
As with everything else, in that, you aren't on my level, you obnoxious little turd.
Here's another deep cut for you, 'cause I cannot stress it enough that you are little more than a slug in the afterbirth to me; I laugh my ass off every single time at you walking out here naming your damn finisher after the man who shot McKinley.
Johnny... when I was twenty-five I was wearing Fawkes masks and cloaks to the ring; quoting the god damn "Land Of Do As You Please" monologue, thought I was too cool for school; named myself allll these fanciful phrases such as the Ghost In the Machine and the Purveyor of Anarchy...
Erroneously believing in infinite hubris that I, solely was a tidal wave changing the culture of professional wrestling...
...and I was just spouting words.
You really, truly, have bought into this ideology that you're changing the world, haven't you.
Cribbing names and lines from every anarchocommiefuck that lines a wall poster or the syllabus to an intro college class.
Namedropping revolutionaries, thinkers and theories based on their agenda, not yours.
So when you really break it down, you have no revolution of your own.
All you can do is parrot everyone else's god damn words and ideas... but it's just bullshit that doesn't mean anything because when you're chasing a crown, you don't BEAT the System, you ARE the System.
You aren't insurgents leading us to a new era at all. You're just every other idea that's been sung about all put into a blender.
The street marches, the fighting riot cops in the streets, that wasn't your movement either, but you damnsure wanted to glom onto it and make it your brand.
I take back every kind word I've ever said about you, the more I see of you, the more I wish you'd been tear-gassed and tazed until you pissed yourself, whimpering with snot dribbling down your nose, you little prick.
That's the ultimate end for every loud, abrasive, petty little wannabe that thinks they're changing the world with their million stolen sentiments.
They get put the fuck down in the street.
Week-to-week, you change which you want to be, Johnny.
You can't be the reactionary in the street and the man in the riot gear kneeling on their neck.
You can't be the Insurgentsia and the Rulers of the division, claiming that there is no fit competition in the ring with you.
You can't be the underdog in a fight and the uncrowned king all at the same time.
I know, finally, which one I'm bringing to this fight.
And I know, when you look me in my eyes and see that fear dawning as it did in the instant before my boot turned your lights out, too, you're gonna call it for what it is, for once.
It's time for me to shed my mask, too.
That night, he's in a restless fit as he turns on his bedroll. He sits up, pacing on bare feet out of his dark hole. In the next room over, sleeping peacefully together, the Hasegawa family are snuggled together under one bedroll for warmth. Only little Tomie's head peeks up, awake as he peers into the room, and she blinks, sleepily, and reaches her arms out for him. Letting out a single syllable in Japanese.
His mouth a firm line, he turns from her, but there is a lot of thinking behind his blue eyes.
He goes to the window, and he sees a glossy-black, unmarked Charger prowl up the street, slicing through at 30 like a shark trolling for prawn.
Breath seething through his nostrils, he walks over to a duffel bag.
He looks from the room with the Hasegawas, back, consideringly, towards the street, and his fingers close around something cold, hard, and iron in the dark, and he extracts it, examining it for a bit. None could guess what thoughts flick behind those blue eyes... but it seems as if a Rubicon is being crossed, and a commitment towards doing some harm is being reached.
So thinking, he goes back into a room that is little more than a cave... wraps himself in a bedroll.
And he dreams of eyes opening on the desert sand, and scaled bellies crawling, dragging along the earth.
It's almost ironic, as I reflect on the times lately I've fallen short, myself and Dion, it has been because I've been in friendly mode. Trusted too much in the power of friendship;
I've let myself rely a bit too much on always having someone in my corner;
Put too much faith in the philosophy that if I push him and he pushes me to be better, we both win, and I celebrate our successes.
And you... I've tried too hard to be kind to you.
Relate to you.
Provide you soft warnings, easy parables about Jack Kirby to ease the transition and not been so unforgiving that there wasn't going to be a turning back point.
I've seen what you can do to me on your best day, and sadly... it isn't going to work this time, 'cause ya can't count on Affluenza fucking me over, providing you with a cold corpse to dive onto for a pin...
You're gonna have to put me down with every bullet in your .45, and ya done misfired one too many times, son.
I'm tired of holding back against you.
I'm tired of holding myself back, when I should be letting go.
You've seen how far I can go on my best day, and it overshadows everything you've managed to do in this company to date.
Ya haven't actually seen what I can do in my worst frame of mind, and when I am fully and completely committed to utterly fucking you up.
If you thought how hard I put you down in November was my worst, you're, once again, deluding yourself.
For every single time you called me out of my name to make some juvenile little point about getting under my skin.
For every single second you believed that I owed you a single thing, when it was even rubbing shoulders with me that gave you credibility;
When it was fighting me your absolute hardest and barely squeaking out a win due to interference that made you exhale as if you'd just avoided a car crash.
I'm going to rip it all out of you from your throat.
As I feel the electric judder that goes all the way to my chest muscles as my fists cave your orbital bones.
As I bend your pencil wrists to their breaking point and I swear to god, Johnny, I will not stop until you are tapping out crying.
Please note this is not... Holden Ross, parading around here proclaiming to be the bringer of Ultraviolence.
Isn't even twenty-five-year-old me, claiming to enroll you into the School of Punishment, bringer of Anarchy, taker of arms...
It's me deciding where I'm going to draw the line and committing myself to it; Going fully mask off, embracing shedding that skin and showing you what snakemode really would be like.
I'm taking my spot in the All-In match, and I'm denying you of one more moment that you believed you had in the bag...
You aren't getting the Vanguard this Clash, Johnny.
Inside that ring, you're going to see a king holding court.
This is the moment where the crowd will turn, sick to their stomach, not wanting to watch... but my hand is on the crowbar... the minute hand is at two until midnight...
And it's too late.
Always was, always will be...
Too late.
