Post by indi on Apr 25, 2021 17:55:19 GMT -5
On the very edge of town, where the city limits meet the rolling fog; there is a small, unassuming gas station. Out front there are three pumps, one with a yellow tag denoting it as out of order, the pump has been out of order for as long as anyone in town can remember. Just how long that is, depends on who you ask. Just beyond the pumps is the station itself, a small local store of sorts. Inside boasts a squishee machine, red & green slush turning over in the transparent plastic tops of the machine, no flavours denoted. The flavours change too often for the labels to be updated correctly. That kind of, take a risk mystery, is just as true for the rest of the store. Selling things that any little kiosk at the end of a block in a blogger town, would sell. Off-brand chips made to look like the ones you buy at walmart. Past dated candy bars and 99c candy bags on cheaply made plastic displays. The fridges line the wall that meets the door for the staff room. A menagerie of sodas and other drinks the brands as indiscernible as you would expect.
And then, by the door where a sharp sound rings out each time someone steps in, is the cashiers station. A basic counter with slim jims and breath mints always on clearance. The wall behind it, cigarettes and matches. The register itself looks like it should have been traded out at the turn of the century, but the young man sitting behind it barely looks clear of his teens. Feet kicked up on the counter and book open, laid against his chest sat Jack.
Jack Coura, or just Jack, as he preferred.
Jack was watching an oddly shaped trench coat and boots make their way up and down the chips aisle. It swayed and moved in a way that felt inhuman, but Jack seemed perfectly content to sit and watch, his eyes flickering between the lumpy being and the door it had passed through moments ago. Eventually he draws his attention away from the questionable patron to address the camera he had been ignoring since he set up a few moments before. Admittedly, Jack hadn’t been on this side of the action often and this was his first time addressing an opponent directly.
So, it only felt right that the first time he addressed someone as an opponent? That it would be the woman who had found herself in the jaws of a man he had loved and lost. Miles Lucky had taken something from them both, but where Karen slipped back and licked her wounds. Where she fretted and fussed over another in his claws. Jack had taken time to prepare, he had watched as the young man who had once curled up in his bed, had spiralled out to near combustion at the hands of that same red headed deviant she had worried for hours earlier.
"Almost no one watching this will have any idea who I am. You could say that's an advantage for me and you’d be right from a talking standpoint. Even if my opponent does her due diligence and digs up my previous employment as a wrestler? There isn’t much for her to go on. Now, the flip side of that? CLEARLY she has more experience in the ring than I do.
But, if this all came down to experience alone she’d have beaten Miles for the Championship and wouldn’t have taken a backseat to his and Danny’s obsession with mutual destruction.
I don’t care to be crass about it, to rub salt in the wounds that one tussle in the ring with Miles was worth more than everything you have ever given to or for him. I’m sure you don’t need reminding that no one, not Danny, not NVR, not even You, deep down believed that you could do it. After all, what good would it do in terms of our match to point out that not only were you a loser before the bell even rang, but that you have dedicated your time to a company who has spat in the face of someone you love. Who has spent more time hard promoting some interviewer with a masked wrestling career over actual Champions.
But I don't need to tell you any of that, do I Karen? Because you know all of that, you’ve heard all of that over and over again."
His eyes moved for just a moment, the hulking mass still inside the store was moving towards the counter where Jack sat. As he arched his left brow, his head inclined to that same side, his curiosity was caught up in whatever it was that carefully selected two bags of chips.
"What I do need to tell you Karen? Is that I get it.
You’re angry and hungry, no doubt people would say a caged animal backed into a corner. You have everything in the world to prove but, by the same hand, you have nothing to lose. I know, most would claim you have more to lose than to gain here but… You’re already a loser, what can you possibly add to that?
That being said, what really do I have to lose either? My debut is against a decorated Champion, a woman who Miles Lucky himself admitted has a hell of a lot of fight in her. A woman who has stared down bigger and badder than I and walked away victorious. If I lose to you? At least I tried, right? I’m just the new guy here… Right?
Wrong."
His feet kicked from that counter and dropped to the floor, adjusting his position to a standing one. Jack leaned into the counter, elbows propping him up like a school boy paying extra close attention in class.
"Miles lost his first match in Union, then went on to barrel through everyone, He knocked down his mentor and regained the singular loss that plagued his Union career when he beat Indi Rhyder for the Championships your boyfriend now carries about like a prized pig with tw blue ribbons to show for it.
I didn’t come here because that talent is vast, or because I want to try myself against the best or any of the other shit people spout paying lip service to the boys in the back. I came here for one reason, to Prove that I'm better than he is, to show that HE is the one who made the mistake. That I was never the one holding him back that in fact, my love for him was holding me back.
Starting off my career here with a win? Means I already did something he couldn’t do. I’m sorry Karen, truly. You want a win desperately, I know you do. But what preparations can be done against a man who barely has any tape available? How can you ensure that you’re ready to face whatever I throw at you, when chances are you can’t even name the men who have stepped into the ring with me? Ever since this card was announced? I have been studying you."
A loud crash from the aisle where the figure was now scrambling about. Jack sighed audibly, it was almost as though he had done this a hundred times before. Pushing up from his elbows he lifted his voice to a yell in the direction the sound had come from.
"You break it, you bought it." and, he leaned to tap the sign above his register. The indents in the spot where he tapped illustrated this wasn’t the first, tenth or even hundredth time he’d tapped that very same sign.
Then, something odd happened. The trenchcoat wiggled, wobbled and squeaked. The boots trembled as the hulking mass within the coat began to sway. Without warning the flaps of the coat lifted and as fast as any man could blink, two fat fluffy raccoons darted across the store and out the door. The shrill bell that accompanied anyone exiting put an exclamation point on the whole scene as the coat flopped into a pile atop the boots and the worn old hat floated to rest upon the bags of chips the raccoons had abandoned in their hasty exit.
Most any man would be shocked, perturbed at least by the events that had just transpired. But not Jack, instead, he turned the camera out into the store as he moved around the counter and headed towards the pile of discarded costume.
"I’ve been studying you Karen and not just your match tape. Every moment of airtime you ever took up, every tweet. Every momentary disappearance, every pain, every triumph. All of it. I have spent my hours learning just what you hide beneath your coat and hat - we’re all hiding something Karen, but again, I don’t believe you need me to tell you that.
It would be improbable of me to say that I can now counter anything you throw at me. It would be arrogant and beyond bravado to claim that merely watching, studying, learning every movement you make, is enough to guarantee a win. You can call me a lot of things Karen Willow and I don’t doubt you will. But an egotist isn’t one of them.
Knowing that your muscle clenches this way or that before a move can only get me so far. The psychology of it all, the backhanded insincerity of my words, can only get me so far. All of it means nothing if I don’t have at least one of two things;
One, a level of skill and pure grit that will push me through anything you throw at me.
Or Two, a working knowledge of biomechanics that I can put into practice.
A lesser man would claim both of these, without ever having given a single chance to prove it. But as I said Karen, I am not an egotist."
As Jack is speaking he makes his way over to the coat and boots, he picks up the coat first and begins to fold it in his arms and places the coat on the shelf, He then picks up the boots and places them, as a pair beneath the shelf. Lastly, he turns to the hat and begins to turn it over between his fingers.
"I’m just a man, standing in front of a girl, hoping that she understands. This isn’t business, it’s just personal."
And then, by the door where a sharp sound rings out each time someone steps in, is the cashiers station. A basic counter with slim jims and breath mints always on clearance. The wall behind it, cigarettes and matches. The register itself looks like it should have been traded out at the turn of the century, but the young man sitting behind it barely looks clear of his teens. Feet kicked up on the counter and book open, laid against his chest sat Jack.
Jack Coura, or just Jack, as he preferred.
Jack was watching an oddly shaped trench coat and boots make their way up and down the chips aisle. It swayed and moved in a way that felt inhuman, but Jack seemed perfectly content to sit and watch, his eyes flickering between the lumpy being and the door it had passed through moments ago. Eventually he draws his attention away from the questionable patron to address the camera he had been ignoring since he set up a few moments before. Admittedly, Jack hadn’t been on this side of the action often and this was his first time addressing an opponent directly.
So, it only felt right that the first time he addressed someone as an opponent? That it would be the woman who had found herself in the jaws of a man he had loved and lost. Miles Lucky had taken something from them both, but where Karen slipped back and licked her wounds. Where she fretted and fussed over another in his claws. Jack had taken time to prepare, he had watched as the young man who had once curled up in his bed, had spiralled out to near combustion at the hands of that same red headed deviant she had worried for hours earlier.
"Almost no one watching this will have any idea who I am. You could say that's an advantage for me and you’d be right from a talking standpoint. Even if my opponent does her due diligence and digs up my previous employment as a wrestler? There isn’t much for her to go on. Now, the flip side of that? CLEARLY she has more experience in the ring than I do.
But, if this all came down to experience alone she’d have beaten Miles for the Championship and wouldn’t have taken a backseat to his and Danny’s obsession with mutual destruction.
I don’t care to be crass about it, to rub salt in the wounds that one tussle in the ring with Miles was worth more than everything you have ever given to or for him. I’m sure you don’t need reminding that no one, not Danny, not NVR, not even You, deep down believed that you could do it. After all, what good would it do in terms of our match to point out that not only were you a loser before the bell even rang, but that you have dedicated your time to a company who has spat in the face of someone you love. Who has spent more time hard promoting some interviewer with a masked wrestling career over actual Champions.
But I don't need to tell you any of that, do I Karen? Because you know all of that, you’ve heard all of that over and over again."
His eyes moved for just a moment, the hulking mass still inside the store was moving towards the counter where Jack sat. As he arched his left brow, his head inclined to that same side, his curiosity was caught up in whatever it was that carefully selected two bags of chips.
"What I do need to tell you Karen? Is that I get it.
You’re angry and hungry, no doubt people would say a caged animal backed into a corner. You have everything in the world to prove but, by the same hand, you have nothing to lose. I know, most would claim you have more to lose than to gain here but… You’re already a loser, what can you possibly add to that?
That being said, what really do I have to lose either? My debut is against a decorated Champion, a woman who Miles Lucky himself admitted has a hell of a lot of fight in her. A woman who has stared down bigger and badder than I and walked away victorious. If I lose to you? At least I tried, right? I’m just the new guy here… Right?
Wrong."
His feet kicked from that counter and dropped to the floor, adjusting his position to a standing one. Jack leaned into the counter, elbows propping him up like a school boy paying extra close attention in class.
"Miles lost his first match in Union, then went on to barrel through everyone, He knocked down his mentor and regained the singular loss that plagued his Union career when he beat Indi Rhyder for the Championships your boyfriend now carries about like a prized pig with tw blue ribbons to show for it.
I didn’t come here because that talent is vast, or because I want to try myself against the best or any of the other shit people spout paying lip service to the boys in the back. I came here for one reason, to Prove that I'm better than he is, to show that HE is the one who made the mistake. That I was never the one holding him back that in fact, my love for him was holding me back.
Starting off my career here with a win? Means I already did something he couldn’t do. I’m sorry Karen, truly. You want a win desperately, I know you do. But what preparations can be done against a man who barely has any tape available? How can you ensure that you’re ready to face whatever I throw at you, when chances are you can’t even name the men who have stepped into the ring with me? Ever since this card was announced? I have been studying you."
A loud crash from the aisle where the figure was now scrambling about. Jack sighed audibly, it was almost as though he had done this a hundred times before. Pushing up from his elbows he lifted his voice to a yell in the direction the sound had come from.
"You break it, you bought it." and, he leaned to tap the sign above his register. The indents in the spot where he tapped illustrated this wasn’t the first, tenth or even hundredth time he’d tapped that very same sign.
Then, something odd happened. The trenchcoat wiggled, wobbled and squeaked. The boots trembled as the hulking mass within the coat began to sway. Without warning the flaps of the coat lifted and as fast as any man could blink, two fat fluffy raccoons darted across the store and out the door. The shrill bell that accompanied anyone exiting put an exclamation point on the whole scene as the coat flopped into a pile atop the boots and the worn old hat floated to rest upon the bags of chips the raccoons had abandoned in their hasty exit.
Most any man would be shocked, perturbed at least by the events that had just transpired. But not Jack, instead, he turned the camera out into the store as he moved around the counter and headed towards the pile of discarded costume.
"I’ve been studying you Karen and not just your match tape. Every moment of airtime you ever took up, every tweet. Every momentary disappearance, every pain, every triumph. All of it. I have spent my hours learning just what you hide beneath your coat and hat - we’re all hiding something Karen, but again, I don’t believe you need me to tell you that.
It would be improbable of me to say that I can now counter anything you throw at me. It would be arrogant and beyond bravado to claim that merely watching, studying, learning every movement you make, is enough to guarantee a win. You can call me a lot of things Karen Willow and I don’t doubt you will. But an egotist isn’t one of them.
Knowing that your muscle clenches this way or that before a move can only get me so far. The psychology of it all, the backhanded insincerity of my words, can only get me so far. All of it means nothing if I don’t have at least one of two things;
One, a level of skill and pure grit that will push me through anything you throw at me.
Or Two, a working knowledge of biomechanics that I can put into practice.
A lesser man would claim both of these, without ever having given a single chance to prove it. But as I said Karen, I am not an egotist."
As Jack is speaking he makes his way over to the coat and boots, he picks up the coat first and begins to fold it in his arms and places the coat on the shelf, He then picks up the boots and places them, as a pair beneath the shelf. Lastly, he turns to the hat and begins to turn it over between his fingers.
"I’m just a man, standing in front of a girl, hoping that she understands. This isn’t business, it’s just personal."
