Post by Tax on Jan 5, 2013 17:03:08 GMT -5
OOC: Yes, I did have this piece done before the deadline, with the intentions of editing and refining it before posting it. I didn't just want to scrap it, so I figured I'd post it, as is (pre-editing), for anybody interested... Feedback welcomed and wanted.
The motor nestled underneath the jet black hood of my ’69 Pontiac GTO quietly whispered as I came to a stop at an empty intersection at the discretion of the red light wavering in the wild winter winds. Christmas wreaths hung from the closed restaurant to the left of me while a continuous stream of festive music spewed over its PA system speakers. I shuddered from the frosty chill of freezing temperatures, huddling up inside the new brown leather jacket that had been a gift of yuletide joy from my agent/girlfriend, Erin Fondren.
Of course, that gift had been given just before a big fight.
It was the reason I was here on Christmas Eve, the gloomy backdrop of Brooklyn posted behind me. I pressed in the cold metal of the car’s cigarette lighter before collecting a Newport from the crumpled pack lying next to the gear shift. After only a few seconds, I pulled the small knob and burned the tip of my cigarette with the scalding ember. Smoke drifted violently into the air as I lied back into the leather seat, drawing the small envelope from the center console. In it was a check, a nice, happy Christmas bonus featuring the John Hancock of none other than the most standup guy I know, THE Tristan Slater. You know it has a few zeroes on it when it comes from the champ.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered softly, the clouds of breath excelling from my lips, purple from the frosty temperature. The light ahead of me turned green, and I slowly made a left, leaning up to fight the iced windshield as I searched for a specific street.
73rd Street. According to the hot tip I received from a local, this was the place to find whatever guilty pleasure you wanted from top-of-the-line hookers, some underage, to the finest products available on the narcotic market- including my highly valued Vicodin pills. I took a sharp right once I found the recognizable street, a collection of shattered homes built decades ago with poor craftsmanship. I slowed to a crawl, my white wall tires inching across the cracked pavement.
It was Christmas Eve. Even drug dealers had families. The neighborhood was silent as I crept forward house by house until I finally came upon a desperate man, fighting the bitter cold with a pair of sagging sweatpants and a wife beater with a heavy leather coat. I spun the car across the short curb, spinning the lever to roll the window down.
“I’ll be God-damned!” the voice clamored into my ear drums as I turned my attention sharply to the face of the black man.
“I’ll be God-damned,” I whispered softly. “Jay?”
“Joey God damn Phoenix,” he said back to me as I shut the ignition off my car and stepped out, taking his cold hands into my own. “It’s good to see you and all, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue this someplace a little warmer, huh?”
“You’re inviting me into your home when we haven’t seen each other in over five years?”
“Yeah, man,” he said with a heavy exhalation. “Come on, man, you’re still the same ol’ Joey you’ve always been.”
He couldn’t have been further from the truth, I thought, as I followed his lead through the narrow brick walkway onto the stoop and through the torn screen door of the unlevel house. The rush of childhood joy blistered my ears as I graced a family of five, Jay, his presumed wife, and three children, the oldest of which seemed to be about eight years old if I had to guess. They were gathered around the Christmas tree, paying no mind to the complete stranger who had graced their living rooms, save for a small sneer from the jealous wife.
“Do you want a beer?” Jay asked, finally loosening up under the warmth of three tower heaters draining all of the energy out of the small house. He flipped open the refrigerator door and I heard the clang of two bottles as he whisked them away from their wintery world. I took an Old English from between his knuckles and twisted open the cap, drowning my loneliness with the alcoholic poison.
Jay leaned against the counter and crossed one arm underneath his opposite elbow as he chuckled. “Joseph “Big Money” Phoenix.”
“Not anymore,” I admitted.
“Please,” he scoffed. “I’ve seen you doing that X-Dub shit, getting your ass kicked on a daily basis. Oh, and by the way, Joseph Page is better than you.”
My shoulders immediately slumped as my gaze sharpened and pierced his vibrant brown eyes that sparkled in combination with his slick grin. He knew that jab would get under my skin.
For the record, Joseph Page is not better than me. We’re neck and neck, at best, even if I do see myself a little ahead in the race. Page just knocked off WGWF’s “Wrestler of the Year” so you know that we’re just too good for this federation.
“Just for that, you better cut me a good deal,” I warned him. “What do you got in pharmaceuticals?”
“What you talking about, homeboy,” he said, his grinning widening. “We got the whole CVS up in here.”
Jay pulled out a drawer conveniently to his left of which pill bottles rattled violently as the wooden cradle came to an abrupt stop showing me his stash.
“Vicodin?”
Jay slid the drawer closed, his face turning to stone before a small smile cracked through its barrier. “In the back,” he said, his entire body language changed in that instance as if I had just stripped him of all his hope and belief in me.
It was a familiar sight, an expression I’ve seen a thousand times before on the faces of everyone who ever loved me. Erin had the same look earlier in the evening.
I felt a tug at my leather jacket and looked behind me to find one of the smaller kids looking up at me with small beady globes. He held out his hand, showing me his pair of Matchbox cars, a stylish old-school Mustang and a small souped-up Hot Rod.
“Look what Santa brought me,” he pleaded, proud of his brand new toys.
I snickered, kicking myself from the kitchen counter where I bent down to his level and collected the toy cars from his hands. “What ‘ya got there, little tiger,” I exclaimed, conjuring up a smile from the young boy. “Ninety-nine cent cars? Jeez, your parents suck.”
“Excuse me?” Jay’s wife snarled at me from the corner of the room where she bounced an infant up and down on her knees. I barely paid her any attention as I went on lecturing the misguided boy.
“My momma didn’t buy that,” the little boy protested, interrupting me from my lesson. “Santa Claus did.”
“Santa Claus is dead, kid,” I said outright, his expression shocked with disbelief as he held steadfast to the holiday legend. His mother was appalled, immediately turning to tuck her infant into her bouncy chair, I suppose so she could rise up and smack me in the back of the head. Until then, I felt it best to educate the boy a little further. “Want to know something else, kid?” I rose up, my 6’2 frame instantly intimidating the little tyke. His older brother, the stout eight-year-old, stepped up to guard his smaller sibling. “The thing about Christmas is that we reflect how little we care about the other person with how cheap our gifts are.”
“That’s not true,” Ms. Jay said, stepping up to me with her arms folded. “The boys understand that we’re struggling.”
“For God’s sake, you’re selling crack out of your house,” I yelled. “Or is that money just going to feed your own habits?”
She started to speak, but I interrupted her rudely. Her argument fell flat against mine, just as the Insanimaniacs were going to fall flat at our feet. “Two Matchbox cars? That’s what you call a Christmas? You’ve got a brand new ring on your finger,” I said, pointing at the central diamond that hung onto a loop of gold. “And the kids get five dollars worth of gratitude?”
I stared back down at the kid with a devilish grin escalating across my face. “Those two little cars you got just proves that your parents don’t give a rat’s ass about y-“
“Joey!”
I stopped short of my sentence as Jay’s voice thundered across the ring. Slowly, I rose to my feet, half expecting to turn around into a stern right cross. “This is my family, man,” he pleaded with me, extending his hand with two bottles of pills. “Family’s all a man’s got.”
I took the pills from his hand and slammed down a stack of hundred dollar bills, an overpayment for the sixty-pill prescription. Afterwards, I left without a word, peeking back only once through the open window where Jay took his loving wife into his arms.
I slumped into the front seat of my Pontiac and thought about that for quite some time before cranking up the vehicle.
The only family I had left were the two brothers that were going to be standing by my side this Monday night in the face of cartoonish evil. We were more than a well-oiled machine and the most dominant force in professional wrestling today- we were a close-knit family, dysfunctional in our own ways, but perfect in every other aspect. I was willing to die for these men.
After all, family’s all a man’s got.
EGO TRIP 103:
The face of Grimoire Xmyles.
I sit, sometimes, and stare at his poster as the WGWF has distinguished him as the face of Winter Wars. Yet, he’s so much more than that. He’s ugly. That’s not a second-grade insult, it’s simply the cold, hard truth. GX is an ugly man, a personification of my own inner grief and struggle. He had the face that made you hate him- the face that made me hate myself, even more so that I blew my opportunity to relieve him of his station as TV Champion, a wrong that must be corrected come Winter Wars.
The stakes are high.
In fact, they’ve never been higher.
A loss entails that my buddies and I will never be able to compete in a WGWF ring again while a win garners yet another strap of gold for the Egomaniacs’ camp. Which result is more likely?
What the fuck do you think?
When you’re an Egomaniac, all you do is win, and Monday night will be no different as Tristan Slater, Joseph Page, and I step into the hallowed halls of the Center in Brooklyn, New York and smash the pumpkins of Grimoire Xmyles, Lunatic, and the Good Doctor.
This is, in effect, a handicap match as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not just discounting the highly irrelevant Good Doctor, who has only now burst on the scene with a ho-hum win over – gulp – Chicken Buu.
Let that sink in.
The Good Doctor is here because he beat a half-ass character in a chicken suit, which merely makes him a half-ass character in a doctor’s coat. Seriously, this is who you bring to the table when you’re trying to rid yourselves of the single greatest faction to have ever been assembled?
Good. It makes my job easier.
Do you get my reference of a handicap match? Not yet you don’t.
This isn’t a 3-on-2 affair.
This is a 3-on-1 beatdown.
You think Lunatic is stepping in the way of this? Hardly, the man has been applauded for his recent spark and hot streak which includes losses to both Slater and myself. How fucking pathetic can you get? Then, the man goes on to make ridiculous challenges that doesn’t hold a drop of water as far as I’m concerned. The man is clearly grasping at straws these days, with this – spoiler alert- possibly being the last match of the man’s career. He couldn’t hang with me or Slater solo. What happens when he meets the entire trio?
What happens is Grimoire Xmyles is left in a cage with three thirsty, hungry pit bulls. What happens is we gain our revenge by carving that sick fuck a new smile. Only a couple of weeks ago, the two of us had our little spinoff, resulting in a disqualification loss that robbed me of my rightful championship – a belt that will find its home snuggly in our camp in twenty-four hours. You’ve escaped my grasp not once, but twice, if you count the TV title battle royal as well.
I’ve thought about that a lot over these holidays. I think about it every time I walk past a Winter Wars promotional poster only to see your scarred, ugly face in your cute little Santa hat pretending to scare all the little kids in Storybrooke. Quietly, I’ve waited and waited, biding my time, focusing in on nobody but you. The match I took with Lunatic a few weeks back did two things for me.
It gave me a taste of things to come while also smacking you right in the forehead with the realization that Tax was about to become your worst fucking nightmare.
And here we are.
You have the chance to fulfill the wish of every single superstar in the WGWF – the wish to rid the driving force of the XWF from your programming period. And thus, once the head is chopped, the body will soon shrivel into the wasteland you people deserted.
That’s a lot of pressure, even on someone as careless as you three.
When you fail, and make no mistake about it, you WILL fail, what becomes of you?
You become exactly what I set out to make you, GX.
You truly become the Ghost of Christmas past. Monday night is just your swan song.
The motor nestled underneath the jet black hood of my ’69 Pontiac GTO quietly whispered as I came to a stop at an empty intersection at the discretion of the red light wavering in the wild winter winds. Christmas wreaths hung from the closed restaurant to the left of me while a continuous stream of festive music spewed over its PA system speakers. I shuddered from the frosty chill of freezing temperatures, huddling up inside the new brown leather jacket that had been a gift of yuletide joy from my agent/girlfriend, Erin Fondren.
Of course, that gift had been given just before a big fight.
It was the reason I was here on Christmas Eve, the gloomy backdrop of Brooklyn posted behind me. I pressed in the cold metal of the car’s cigarette lighter before collecting a Newport from the crumpled pack lying next to the gear shift. After only a few seconds, I pulled the small knob and burned the tip of my cigarette with the scalding ember. Smoke drifted violently into the air as I lied back into the leather seat, drawing the small envelope from the center console. In it was a check, a nice, happy Christmas bonus featuring the John Hancock of none other than the most standup guy I know, THE Tristan Slater. You know it has a few zeroes on it when it comes from the champ.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered softly, the clouds of breath excelling from my lips, purple from the frosty temperature. The light ahead of me turned green, and I slowly made a left, leaning up to fight the iced windshield as I searched for a specific street.
73rd Street. According to the hot tip I received from a local, this was the place to find whatever guilty pleasure you wanted from top-of-the-line hookers, some underage, to the finest products available on the narcotic market- including my highly valued Vicodin pills. I took a sharp right once I found the recognizable street, a collection of shattered homes built decades ago with poor craftsmanship. I slowed to a crawl, my white wall tires inching across the cracked pavement.
It was Christmas Eve. Even drug dealers had families. The neighborhood was silent as I crept forward house by house until I finally came upon a desperate man, fighting the bitter cold with a pair of sagging sweatpants and a wife beater with a heavy leather coat. I spun the car across the short curb, spinning the lever to roll the window down.
“I’ll be God-damned!” the voice clamored into my ear drums as I turned my attention sharply to the face of the black man.
“I’ll be God-damned,” I whispered softly. “Jay?”
“Joey God damn Phoenix,” he said back to me as I shut the ignition off my car and stepped out, taking his cold hands into my own. “It’s good to see you and all, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue this someplace a little warmer, huh?”
“You’re inviting me into your home when we haven’t seen each other in over five years?”
“Yeah, man,” he said with a heavy exhalation. “Come on, man, you’re still the same ol’ Joey you’ve always been.”
He couldn’t have been further from the truth, I thought, as I followed his lead through the narrow brick walkway onto the stoop and through the torn screen door of the unlevel house. The rush of childhood joy blistered my ears as I graced a family of five, Jay, his presumed wife, and three children, the oldest of which seemed to be about eight years old if I had to guess. They were gathered around the Christmas tree, paying no mind to the complete stranger who had graced their living rooms, save for a small sneer from the jealous wife.
“Do you want a beer?” Jay asked, finally loosening up under the warmth of three tower heaters draining all of the energy out of the small house. He flipped open the refrigerator door and I heard the clang of two bottles as he whisked them away from their wintery world. I took an Old English from between his knuckles and twisted open the cap, drowning my loneliness with the alcoholic poison.
Jay leaned against the counter and crossed one arm underneath his opposite elbow as he chuckled. “Joseph “Big Money” Phoenix.”
“Not anymore,” I admitted.
“Please,” he scoffed. “I’ve seen you doing that X-Dub shit, getting your ass kicked on a daily basis. Oh, and by the way, Joseph Page is better than you.”
My shoulders immediately slumped as my gaze sharpened and pierced his vibrant brown eyes that sparkled in combination with his slick grin. He knew that jab would get under my skin.
For the record, Joseph Page is not better than me. We’re neck and neck, at best, even if I do see myself a little ahead in the race. Page just knocked off WGWF’s “Wrestler of the Year” so you know that we’re just too good for this federation.
“Just for that, you better cut me a good deal,” I warned him. “What do you got in pharmaceuticals?”
“What you talking about, homeboy,” he said, his grinning widening. “We got the whole CVS up in here.”
Jay pulled out a drawer conveniently to his left of which pill bottles rattled violently as the wooden cradle came to an abrupt stop showing me his stash.
“Vicodin?”
Jay slid the drawer closed, his face turning to stone before a small smile cracked through its barrier. “In the back,” he said, his entire body language changed in that instance as if I had just stripped him of all his hope and belief in me.
It was a familiar sight, an expression I’ve seen a thousand times before on the faces of everyone who ever loved me. Erin had the same look earlier in the evening.
I felt a tug at my leather jacket and looked behind me to find one of the smaller kids looking up at me with small beady globes. He held out his hand, showing me his pair of Matchbox cars, a stylish old-school Mustang and a small souped-up Hot Rod.
“Look what Santa brought me,” he pleaded, proud of his brand new toys.
I snickered, kicking myself from the kitchen counter where I bent down to his level and collected the toy cars from his hands. “What ‘ya got there, little tiger,” I exclaimed, conjuring up a smile from the young boy. “Ninety-nine cent cars? Jeez, your parents suck.”
“Excuse me?” Jay’s wife snarled at me from the corner of the room where she bounced an infant up and down on her knees. I barely paid her any attention as I went on lecturing the misguided boy.
“My momma didn’t buy that,” the little boy protested, interrupting me from my lesson. “Santa Claus did.”
“Santa Claus is dead, kid,” I said outright, his expression shocked with disbelief as he held steadfast to the holiday legend. His mother was appalled, immediately turning to tuck her infant into her bouncy chair, I suppose so she could rise up and smack me in the back of the head. Until then, I felt it best to educate the boy a little further. “Want to know something else, kid?” I rose up, my 6’2 frame instantly intimidating the little tyke. His older brother, the stout eight-year-old, stepped up to guard his smaller sibling. “The thing about Christmas is that we reflect how little we care about the other person with how cheap our gifts are.”
“That’s not true,” Ms. Jay said, stepping up to me with her arms folded. “The boys understand that we’re struggling.”
“For God’s sake, you’re selling crack out of your house,” I yelled. “Or is that money just going to feed your own habits?”
She started to speak, but I interrupted her rudely. Her argument fell flat against mine, just as the Insanimaniacs were going to fall flat at our feet. “Two Matchbox cars? That’s what you call a Christmas? You’ve got a brand new ring on your finger,” I said, pointing at the central diamond that hung onto a loop of gold. “And the kids get five dollars worth of gratitude?”
I stared back down at the kid with a devilish grin escalating across my face. “Those two little cars you got just proves that your parents don’t give a rat’s ass about y-“
“Joey!”
I stopped short of my sentence as Jay’s voice thundered across the ring. Slowly, I rose to my feet, half expecting to turn around into a stern right cross. “This is my family, man,” he pleaded with me, extending his hand with two bottles of pills. “Family’s all a man’s got.”
I took the pills from his hand and slammed down a stack of hundred dollar bills, an overpayment for the sixty-pill prescription. Afterwards, I left without a word, peeking back only once through the open window where Jay took his loving wife into his arms.
I slumped into the front seat of my Pontiac and thought about that for quite some time before cranking up the vehicle.
The only family I had left were the two brothers that were going to be standing by my side this Monday night in the face of cartoonish evil. We were more than a well-oiled machine and the most dominant force in professional wrestling today- we were a close-knit family, dysfunctional in our own ways, but perfect in every other aspect. I was willing to die for these men.
After all, family’s all a man’s got.
EGO TRIP 103:
The face of Grimoire Xmyles.
I sit, sometimes, and stare at his poster as the WGWF has distinguished him as the face of Winter Wars. Yet, he’s so much more than that. He’s ugly. That’s not a second-grade insult, it’s simply the cold, hard truth. GX is an ugly man, a personification of my own inner grief and struggle. He had the face that made you hate him- the face that made me hate myself, even more so that I blew my opportunity to relieve him of his station as TV Champion, a wrong that must be corrected come Winter Wars.
The stakes are high.
In fact, they’ve never been higher.
A loss entails that my buddies and I will never be able to compete in a WGWF ring again while a win garners yet another strap of gold for the Egomaniacs’ camp. Which result is more likely?
What the fuck do you think?
When you’re an Egomaniac, all you do is win, and Monday night will be no different as Tristan Slater, Joseph Page, and I step into the hallowed halls of the Center in Brooklyn, New York and smash the pumpkins of Grimoire Xmyles, Lunatic, and the Good Doctor.
This is, in effect, a handicap match as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not just discounting the highly irrelevant Good Doctor, who has only now burst on the scene with a ho-hum win over – gulp – Chicken Buu.
Let that sink in.
The Good Doctor is here because he beat a half-ass character in a chicken suit, which merely makes him a half-ass character in a doctor’s coat. Seriously, this is who you bring to the table when you’re trying to rid yourselves of the single greatest faction to have ever been assembled?
Good. It makes my job easier.
Do you get my reference of a handicap match? Not yet you don’t.
This isn’t a 3-on-2 affair.
This is a 3-on-1 beatdown.
You think Lunatic is stepping in the way of this? Hardly, the man has been applauded for his recent spark and hot streak which includes losses to both Slater and myself. How fucking pathetic can you get? Then, the man goes on to make ridiculous challenges that doesn’t hold a drop of water as far as I’m concerned. The man is clearly grasping at straws these days, with this – spoiler alert- possibly being the last match of the man’s career. He couldn’t hang with me or Slater solo. What happens when he meets the entire trio?
What happens is Grimoire Xmyles is left in a cage with three thirsty, hungry pit bulls. What happens is we gain our revenge by carving that sick fuck a new smile. Only a couple of weeks ago, the two of us had our little spinoff, resulting in a disqualification loss that robbed me of my rightful championship – a belt that will find its home snuggly in our camp in twenty-four hours. You’ve escaped my grasp not once, but twice, if you count the TV title battle royal as well.
I’ve thought about that a lot over these holidays. I think about it every time I walk past a Winter Wars promotional poster only to see your scarred, ugly face in your cute little Santa hat pretending to scare all the little kids in Storybrooke. Quietly, I’ve waited and waited, biding my time, focusing in on nobody but you. The match I took with Lunatic a few weeks back did two things for me.
It gave me a taste of things to come while also smacking you right in the forehead with the realization that Tax was about to become your worst fucking nightmare.
And here we are.
You have the chance to fulfill the wish of every single superstar in the WGWF – the wish to rid the driving force of the XWF from your programming period. And thus, once the head is chopped, the body will soon shrivel into the wasteland you people deserted.
That’s a lot of pressure, even on someone as careless as you three.
When you fail, and make no mistake about it, you WILL fail, what becomes of you?
You become exactly what I set out to make you, GX.
You truly become the Ghost of Christmas past. Monday night is just your swan song.