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Let Go; vs. Serenity Willingham, IKT Night 2
Topic Started: Dec 30 2016, 03:54 PM (58 Views)
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...so.

It's been, I don't know...weeks since Winter Warfare and, ah...

...

Things aren't getting better. I think that's a fair assessment.


~V~

The Office.

"Mother fucker!"

Another vase breaks into splinters against the wall - and the cat, the new one, yelps as it bolts out the open door to Melanie's unoccupied desk. She's not here today; nobody is, because Christmas and New Year's, though trust me when I say it was sorely tempting to hand out double-shifts to all staff this year. But I need the extra space to scream and I'd likely just wind up throwing someone through a window and that would cause me no end of trouble.

Not that I don't have troubles already. For example:

"Every time - EVERY TIME! I just want to be a little bit happy - is that too much? Is that too much to FUCKING ASK?! Rrrgh!"

My foot hurts now. Desk too sturdy to break easily - did I ask for that? Pretty sure I would've asked for a collapsible desk. Fucking contractors.

"Everything was set up just fine, it was...uh, god..."

I gag on the lump in my throat, and wind up leaning heavily on the desk - okay, fine, maybe collapsible would be bad - pushing the heel of one palm against the sudden hot spikes burning in my eyes. Why am I crying? That's so...so...

...I'm crying because I suck and everything is awful. It's warranted.

"I juh-just wanted to feel good about myself. Just...once. But they won't luh...they can't just let me have that, can they? It's not FAIR!"

Pens against the wall this time. I'm running out of expensive things to break and I still have more shouting to do, so I'm reduced to checking my pockets, hoping for - ah, the phone. That's expensive. Away you go - !

Wait.

I can barely see the illuminated screen through my puffy eyes, but I don't need to; this particular number I'm calling is still wired to my muscle memory even after ignoring it - ignoring him - for a year. It used to mean a lot. In fact, it used to be my go-to number for all forms of misery that needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Tonight, though, as I sit here in this unlit, cold, ruined office, smelling the alcohol on my own hot breaths while the dial tone rings out, I'm hoping, praying he doesn't pick up. That's not what I want. Not this time.

Please don't be there please don't be there this is embarrassing and I don't really want to talk to you you stupid stupid - !


"Hi, you've reached Jun Takada. Unfortunately I'm not at home right now, so please leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."

That overly polite, prissy tone of his has me choking out a laugh. I swear, he never relaxes, it's one of those things that made me...

Nevermind. There's the tone. Now I just have to find the words. Harder than expected.

"...S-so I, uh, I lost again. Bet that made you real happy, huh? I mean, considering all this is...it's all your fault. You know that. How many years, how many good years did we have together, Jun? And for all of those, you had no issue sharing me with the wrestling business. You knew what you were getting into when we started dating! But then...but then I retire for a little while and you got all possessive. Like - like you put a ring on my finger an' suddenly you fucking own me. You never owned jack-shit!"

Pacing around the desk, I find I'm panting, and sweating, and grinning from ear to ear. I...don't even know what the hell I'm trying to say here, but it feels like I just had a boil lanced.

"But of course you can't be told, so when I go back - and I was always going to go back, you bastard! - when I go back suddenly you throw a fucking huff and start complaining over and over, and eventually you go full drama queen because things aren't going how you wanted them to, and there's shouting and-and breaking stuff and we break up and now look at me. Look at what you've done to me! Well I hope you're fucking happy with it, because I'm still never coming back to you and I HOPE YOU DIE ALONE!"

That's enough, so I hang up, and slump against the desk again, pressing the phone to my forehead. Whatever catharsis I got from that little outburst is already starting to fade, leaving behind a fresh surge of self-pity and shame. Jun, he...look, it's just like I said, we had a good thing going but as soon as it got hard he started acting like a complete pussy, and -

It's not the same, alright? It's not like this. What I'm going through now is way different and I'm...I can handle it. I can handle it.

...god, but I do miss him sometimes.


~V~

I wake with a jump, mainly 'cause I hadn't noticed drifting off. I'm curled up on the floor like a cat, and can barely feel my feet anymore from the cold. It's still dark in here, though, so I guess I couldn't have been out more than a few hours.

Groaning while my stiff limbs scream in protest, I force myself upright and - oh, look, it's snowing outside. It's even laying in place. Christmas is past but better late than never, I suppose. For...some reason - mind's half full of cotton wool right now - I wander absently to the screen doors and slide them open, then step out onto the balcony, hissing and rubbing my hands together to get some life back in them. Cold's even worse out here.

It's eerie how quiet everything is, as if the snow is blanketing the sound along with the earth. Or perhaps everyone's indoors, silently praying for this shitty year to end. I can't be the only one who thinks like that, not with all those celebrity deaths and resulting mawkish media thinkpieces the idiot masses get so worked up over. My hands reach out, and a single snowflake falls on one...huh. Dad always used to call me something like that. Snowflake. Because no two are the same, right? So there's only one of me in the world, and that was something he wanted me to remember when...I don't know, the snowflake, it just melted on my palm and I lost my train of thought. And there are other snowflakes all around, and-and it doesn't matter what scientists say, they all look the fucking same and when they fall they either melt or get bunched up with others into this...this amorphous sludge that doesn't look like anything and has no real use. The sludge I just dropped down to my knees in.

This...this isn't the end. I refuse to become this. I refuse to be irrelevant or worthless, no matter how much the world wants me to be!

"I...keep letting you down, daddy."

Here come the tears again. At least they keep me warm.


~V~

...if you're the sort of person who follows my career so slavishly you can identify my patterns, you know what's supposed to happen now. Oh, and you're a colossal freakshow, stop sending me your letters, I have them burned without reading. This is the point where I start talking about my next opponent in earnest, heap on some halfhearted praise built on the vague platitudes they assign to themselves - like, "you've got a lot of heart!" What, you measured your heart and found it to have physically larger-than-average dimensions? The balls does that have to do with anything? And then I turn it around and skewer them using those same platitudes as pressure points while hyping myself shamelessly. You know it and you love it, or your tastes are wrong.

That...isn't happening tonight. Still not in the right frame of mind.

So...hhhh. I know I'm supposedly fighting someone called Serenity Willingham. And gods, if I was a little less pissed off I could turn that name into some solid gold material, no doubt. But beyond that? I have no idea who that is and no desire to find out.

Maybe you're a 10-year veteran, Serenity, or a rookie coming off the greatest debut year in this sport's history. Maybe you're from a multi-generational wrestling clan with a history that reads like Romance of the Three Kingdoms in tights. Maybe you're the kind of improvisational genius that once won a cage match by detaching the fence with a can opener. Or maybe you're so goddamn hardcore you made some poor bastard tap out by attempting to drown him in a sink full of blood from your own cheese-grater'd face.

Hell, maybe you're none of that. Maybe you're...just some punk. That's fine. None of it matters anyway.

Because this isn't a match in any real sense. There's no stakes - because everyone who matters is more concerned with putting the spotlight on a bunch of strangers passing through for some MMA bullshit - and there won't be any sense of civility or sportsmanship because, oh...oh, honey, 2016 was not good to me. The company I co-run has spent 6 months flying off the rails, so I stepped away and joined Phoenix in an attempt to regain some sense of control over my life. Now I'm working with a 1-3 record - believe it or not, the worst start I've had in any promotion in the last 9 years - and am reduced to being the stepping stone for others more favoured. This is deeply, deeply humiliating and in any other scenario I'd be loathe to give such an admission of weakness publicly.

Right now, I'm past caring. It'll be 2017 when we square off, Serenity, and I intend to treat this year like a clean slate. But I can't do that without exorcising some demons first. That's where you come in. You're less my opponent and more my...therapist. A therapist I can punch legally. Man, wouldn't that be a revolutionary innovation in the field of psychiatry? And as my therapist, it's on you to bear the weight of every disappointment, every betrayal, every miserable twist of fate and every loss that has plagued me of late. I'm not going to promise a particular outcome - it's still 2016 right now, after all, and it would be perfectly apt for it to kick me one more time - but I can promise you this: right now, I am holding back a tidal wave of rage by my fingertips.

And I'm just about ready to let go.


~V~
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