Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
The Epic of Deacon Summers; Book 11: Odi Et Amo
Topic Started: Jun 7 2016, 03:10 AM (22 Views)
Deacon Summers

If you have patience and listen, children, the cats will whisper Bastet’s secrets to you. Visions of what was and what is yet to come.

They speak of the Olympian, Deacon Summers, and those by his side; Aston Shepherds, son of Thoth, and Brietta Corrado, daughter of Huitzilopochtli. They speak of obsession, both within and without. They tell dark whispers of what lurks in the night, waiting for a chance to strike. But most of all, they tell of loss, of an old friend and the sacrifice that must be made for victory.

Listen close, and I will tell what the cats whisper.





“C’mon, Deacon, one more rep. One more! Don’t be a bitch!”

Brietta Corrado stood over the former EWA Atlantic Coast champion as he pushed a bar back up from his chest, struggling with every millimeter. It was 250 lbs, and if he could put it back up for another rep, it would be the first time he’d made 3 sets of 8 at that weight. Personal bests had been kind of a thing to him, ever since his short, but extremely enlightening meeting with Hercules. And if he couldn’t keep the Atlantic Coast title, then dammit, he was going to put in whatever work he had to.

“This… isn’t as easy as… I’m making it look, Brietta…” he said through gritted teeth, his arms and elbows shaking.

“Please, Deek, I could put this up in my sleep. You got this. Quit whining and get that weight up!”

Deacon bellowed, howling, but the bar wasn’t going any higher. Brietta put two fingers underneath it. “Stop being a faggot, Deacon, and put this bar up before I put you to shame.” He let out several more breaths, and finally got the bar to the top of his range of motion.

“Finally. I was thinking you were gonna be a pussy and let it go.” Brietta wrapped her hand around the bar, moving it onto the rack with ease as she put a hand down to pull Deacon up.

“Easy for you to say, Lenny Dyke-stra, your dad’s a war god. Of course you get the strength out of the deal.” Given the sexualities of the pair, neither one really had a problem throwing the slurs around each other. (Other people, though, would pay dearly for that transgression.)

“Yeah, well, not my fault your dad’s a drunk bitch.” Deacon gave him her hand, and she yanked him up to his feet, and then some.

“Y’know, Meadhbh is definitely more about positive reinforcement.”

“Well, her dad’s a bitch, too. You guys can go have tea parties together like little princesses. But I’m trying to get you into fighting shape. Meadhbh just wants you to look prettier naked.”

“Well, sor-ry, some of us didn’t get superhuman strength and agility. I got what, the ability to instinctively tell when someone’s lying, an animated tattoo, and a lighter that helps me think. Forgive me if that doesn’t exactly add up to ‘great at wrestling.’ Or weightlifting, for that matter.”

Brietta got quiet, a scowl running across her face. She crossed her arms, her biceps flexing. Her whole body was tensing up. In this moment, Deacon knew he said the wrong thing, but he also knew that it was too late to apologize and backtrack.

Finally, she spoke, barely above a whisper. “You really think that superhuman strength and agility are a help in a wrestling ring? Against regular people?”

Deacon didn’t answer.

“Let me ask you something, Deacon. Do you know what my current one-rep max is?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, because usually the bar starts to bend from the weight before I can lift it. I benched a motorcycle last week, 3 sets, fifteen reps, without breaking a sweat. I can jump, literally, 30 feet into the air from standing. I can do box jumps on small houses.

“Do you know many wrestlers who can handle a blow that could punch through an inch of solid iron? Or who could keep wrestling for 24 hours without stopping? I sure don’t. I’m pretty sure if I got in the ring with Kenji Yamada today, and he tried the break my back again, he’d probably tear a muscle or break his own bones before I even felt any pain. And every time I get in the ring, I worry about what’s gonna happen. Am I gonna fail to pull my punches enough to not kill somebody? Am I gonna do something that could get me an entire arena’s worth of obsessed stalkers?”

Deacon bowed his head sheepishly. “When you put it that way, it sounds more like a curse.”

“That’s why I was so happy to fight that Chinese prick. Soon as he hit me, I knew we were matched well enough that I could unload on him and not worry about making OPW look like fuckin’ Sesame Street.” She loosened up, smiling. “It was exhilarating, honestly.”

“Sorry you had to deal with that, though. And the whole…” Deacon lifted his head, his voice trailing off as he looked out the door. “Speaking of obsessed stalkers, look who’s here.”

Sure enough, Scott Free was on his way toward the building. Brietta mouthed fuck, before turning around to find an exit.

There was no exit to be found. As Scott walked through the door, he suddenly beamed. “Brietta! Didn’t expect to see you here… oh, you’re with that guy? Psh.”

Brietta’s muscles tensed again. “‘That guy’ happens to be a friend of mine, so I’d appreciate it if you learned his fucking name.”

“Yo, what’s he got that I don’t got, anyway?” Scott was well-tanned, and although he was shorter than Deacon by a couple of inches, he definitely had a much more chiseled body. You could see every curve in his chest and abs through the tight, plain blue V-neck T-shirt he was wearing. He shrugged off the Adidas duffel bag, his perfectly styled hair glistening in the flourescent lights.

If he wasn’t being such a douche, Deacon might even have been attracted to him.

“Uh, a friendship that goes back seven years? An EWA Atlantic Coast Championship reign? A tag team championship reign with me back in Purgatory? Take your pick, guy.” Brietta moved to get around him, but he stepped in her way. She stopped, closing her eyes and clenching her jaw.

“Hey, chill out, sugar. I just feel like your time would be better spent with someone who… gets you a little better than thi-- Deacon over here.” He backed away, looking her up and down. “Like, I just want to get to know you. You’re the only other openly gay wrestler I’ve ever met. I wanna share experiences and stuff. I feel like I know you already.”

Brietta opened her eyes, clearly angry. “Listen, Scotty. You don’t know shit about me. You don’t know my wife’s name, you don’t know the places I used to work, you don’t know how long I spent in physical therapy so I could compete again. You don’t know my wife’s fucking devil-spawned son. You. Don’t. Know. Me. And the way you’re acting, I don’t much want to know you. Now get the fuck out of here before I get really upset.” Her hands were balled into fists, the veins in her flexed forearms (the bandages were gone) causing her scars and scabs to move and shimmy. One of them broke, and blood started leaking down her wrist and hand.

Either Scott was terrible at reading signals, or Fate had really done some work on him. “It’s OK, B. I guess you been having a rough day. I’ll leave you alone for now. Maybe we can catch up later, get to know each other a little better.” He looked over at Deacon, his eyes going from awe to envy. He let out a little scoff, before turning and walking away.

“Fuck that guy,” Brietta said, under her breath.

Deacon smiled at her. “You brought this on yourself, you know.”

“I know. I’m just really hoping it isn’t permanent.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how this shit works. At least you haven’t had to sacrifice in a bit.”

“It’s been slow. Other than Scotty the Stalker over there, we haven’t really had any supernatural nonsense happen in a bit.” She tilted her head to the side. “I wonder why that is?”

“Oh, knowing our luck, it’s probably the calm before the storm.”





Blacktooth looked around the empty house. He was back in Vegas, it seemed, but the entire place was dark, like a shadow cast on every surface simultaneously. He looked down at his hands, standing out in perfect color and contrast to the surroundings. Everything but him seemed to be colored in a monochromatic midnight blue.

Every movement seemed to leave trails, afterimages that dissipated quickly, but not quickly enough to negate the effect.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked nobody in particular.

“Well, yeah, I had figured that was obvious,” came a voice from his left. He turned, the room slowly spinning around him until he was focused on the voice’s source.

The man had long black hair, held out of his eyes by a bright red cloth headband. His hair fell to midway down his back, his torso covered in a blue cotton tunic over a white shirt, with a rifle strapped to his back as well. He was leaned over, reaching into Blacktooth’s refrigerator, with mostly his buckskin pants, breechcloth, and calf-length moccasins visible.

“You have any real beer in here, or just this PBR?” the visitor asked.

Blacktooth shrugged. “Sorry… for whatever reason, it’s all my subconscious produces when I’m dreaming. I don’t get it either, I hate the stuff.”

“Eh, it’ll do. You want one?”

“Sure, I guess.” A can immediately appeared in his hand. He cracked it open, the normal hiss of the can replaced by the sound of a rattlesnake. He took a sip; it tasted like blood and ashes.

The man closed the fridge, and finally Blacktooth could see his face. Based on his clothing, along with the white stripe painted across his face, from one ear to the other and across the bridge of his nose, he guessed the man to have been a Mescalero Apache, sometime in the early 1800s.

He guessed he had been a warrior by the blood that covered his hands and stained his shirt all the way to the elbow.

“My name was La-choy Ko-kun-noste, but the US Army called me Red Sleeves.”

“Nice to meet you. You’re one of my ancestors?”

“Eh, kinda. We’re like half-brothers. My mother was also the White Painted Lady, and it’s one of the reasons I was able to lead the Mimbrenos to victory against the Mexicans.” Blacktooth cursed himself. He had never gotten the hang of all the Apache tribes. “But our lot is never to live long, healthy lives, brother. To be Apache is to know death.”

“Great,” Blacktooth said half-heartedly. “I’m guessing you’re telling me this because it’s going to happen soon.”

“Soon? I don’t know. I don’t get to see the plans Fate has for any of us. But I can tell you that your death is not going to be a pleasant one. That much is foretold.” The can of PBR slipped out of Red Sleeves’ hand, falling to the floor, blood smearing the sides of the aluminum. He sighed as the can fell on its side, and fire ants poured out. “I never can get more than a couple of sips in. It’s aggravating.”

“Well, thanks for the warning.” Blacktooth was slightly surprised with how OK he actually was with all of this. He took another sip of the beer, and no liquid came out at all, only the sound of an owl’s call.

“Nope, I take it back. Definitely soon.” He pointed at Blacktooth’s can. “It’s the owl thing. They’re not exactly good luck.”

“Shit. I should call Grandpa. Maybe he can give me a heads-up.” He turned to Red Sleeves, who was now on the other side of the room, grabbing the TV remote. “Hey, now that I’ve kinda met you, am I going to be able to call on you if I need help? You look like the kind of guy who knows how to handle yourself in a fight.”

He wasn’t wrong. Red Sleeves was six and a half feet tall, and built solidly. “I mean, I guess. Worked that way when I was your age.”

He turned on the TV. The screen didn’t display an image, it merely opened a yawning mouth, with yellowed teeth all around the display, leading to a bright red tongue, throat, and uvula.

“I hate this show,” Red Sleeves said, tossing the bloody remote to his side.

“So, uh, not to put too fine a point on it, but… how do you speak English?”

Red Sleeves turned his head to face Blacktooth, but it immediately fell off of his neck, a gory stump where it had once been placed. The head continued to talk to him, as the flesh slowly dissolved away. “You’re talking to your dead ancestor in a dream where the TV is a mouth, and this is the detail you get hung up on?” The head was nothing more than a skull with eyeballs now. “You should probably wake up now.”

And just like that, Blacktooth sat bolt upright in the small apartment in Boston, drenched in sweat. He looked around. Everything was shaded in midnight blue. He looked down to his hands.

They were also shaded in midnight blue. It was midnight; the only light in the room was coming from the open window.

Next to him, a soft hand caressed his arm. Elsa was clearly still asleep, her eyes closed, her hair splayed all around her head. She whispered to him. “Sleep now.”

“What?”

She didn’t respond, merely rolling over, and pushing her back and butt into him. He chuckled, laying back down, and wrapping an arm around her body. She pulled it tighter to her, curling herself into him.

“Einherjar,” she mumbled in her sleep, and soon Blacktooth slept with her.





Deacon steps through the door at the townhome, and almost immediately is greeted with a package, wrapped in brown paper. Aston Shepherds pushes it into his hand, smiling, his metal-rimmed glasses sliding down his beak.

“Uh, what’s this?” Deacon took the parcel from him, holding it in his hand. It wasn’t insanely heavy, but it was clearly pretty dense for its size.

“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it’s a book from how it feels, but it came for you today and you weren’t here, so I accepted it, but I can’t possibly open something like this for you because it would be rude, so I waited here until you got back which I honestly thought was going to be much earlier tonight, but I’ve been very patient so please open it.”

Deacon looked at Brietta, who barely kept herself from cracking up in hysterics. She swallowed a smile. “You’re like a kid on Christmas morning, nerd.”

“Please just open it, Deacon, you’re killing me!” He really was like a child, albeit a child with a combover and forehead wrinkles.

Deacon tore the paper off the top, revealing a leather book. “Paradise Lost? Someone got me a book? They must not know me very well.”

“Oh, but what a book,” Aston replied, already lost in his own mind. “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe…”

“We get it, Aston, you know it front to back,” Brietta said, rolling her eyes and walking to her room, “just like everything else you’ve ever read in your life.”

“You can have it,” Deacon said, handing it to Aston. “Who’d it come from, anyway?”

“No idea.” He scratched his chin, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. “It was a private courier.”

Deacon shrugged. “I’m heading to bed. Feel free to, I dunno, put this on a shelf or something.”





(Deacon stands backstage at the Combat Zone, leaning up against a wall near an EWA logo flag. He’s wearing a “Victory or Valhalla” t-shirt in silent solidarity. He brings no attention to it, but goes about his business.)

Deacon Summers: It’s interesting to me, the extremes of personality that are drawn to our business.

On the one hand, we have the hard-edged, tough-as-nails, do-anything-to-win folks who stop at nothing to get their victory.

On the other hand, we have the extremely honorable, driven, and competitive athletes, who will stop at nothing less to get the victory than to prove to the world how good they are.

On the other other hand, we have men, if you can call them that, who just want to, as the overused quote says, “watch the world burn.”

In this match, I’d say two out of three are present, at least. The Heart Attack Kid, former EWA Network Champion, a guy who clearly has not just a love for the business, but a love for the sport of wrestling. Someone who clearly enjoys being in the ring not only for the competitiveness of it, but because it makes him feel alive. The thrill of the fight. Rising up to the challenge of his rival.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

And I want that, HAK, I really do. I want to know what it’s like to fight someone who is just so… pure. And I don’t mean that like, innocent or naive or what have you, but someone who just wants to wrestle. Who wants to be in the ring and leave everything on the canvas and just go for an hour or more because all that matters is the fight.

I’m not that guy, HAK. I wish I was, but I’m not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m competitive. I’m a gambler, after all. But it isn’t all about the fight for me. The risk? Sure. There’s nothing I like more than taking chances. But that’s the thing about chances… they don’t always go your way. And I’m definitely the guy who goes for the high-risk, high-reward scenario rather than the more strategically sound option. It’s why my neck still hurts when rain is near.

But, and here’s the question I have for you, are you still that guy? Since your loss to Sinclair, you’ve been quiet, like maybe you weren’t expecting to leave the tournament so soon. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But it makes me wonder if perhaps even you think that you might’ve lost a step.

If so, then I need to take those risks if I want to come out of this one with a victory.

Of course, standing in my way… well, our way, I guess… is none other than the Harbinger of HATE himself, NOTHING.

And here, we have the opposite end of the spectrum. NOTHING is a man who doesn’t care about winning or losing. He doesn’t care about the fight… the fight is just the means to an end. All he cares about is spreading his gospel. Making everyone feel his HATE. Leading those black of heart and dark of mind to ever greater acts of violence and cruelty.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know of you. Clearly, in SHOOT Project, and in working for Boden for a good portion of my career, I’d heard the name, usually in whispers and hushed tones. Stories of HATE, stories of the pain and suffering you’d sown through the NYSWF.

I had always wondered, personally, where you had gone to, all these years. Surely, someone who was that strong, that charismatic wouldn’t just disappear without a trace. And yet, through all that time, I never once heard of you popping up anywhere. Like everything that had happened was just a nightmare.

I guess the nightmare has come true once more.

I get what you want to do, NOTHING. Maybe you don’t think I do, but I get it. Better to rule through fear and all that.

But here’s the thing about you, about Calder, and Crippler or West or whatever he wants us to call him these days. That fear is what drives you. That fear is what makes you stronger, what… binds the three of you into a force to be reckoned with.

But, as I found out when I beat Calder for the Atlantic Coast title, you aren’t monsters. You’re just men. Strong, unified men, but men nonetheless. I’ve fought worse than men and come through just fine.

And I’m not afraid.

So whether it’s you on your own, or you bring the whole fam damily with you, my head will not bow, my knees will not knock, and my boots will not contain any shaking. And all the raven feathers, bloody kisses, or referee ventriloquy in the world will make you more than human.

In the end, what it comes down to, is balance. Nobody, not HAK, not NOTHING, is black or white. Can I do what is necessary to conquer both love and HATE?

I don’t know. But I’m willing to play the odds.

(He smiles, flipping a coin in his hand. The metal rings out against the concrete, but the camera never sees what it lands on. Fade to black.)





The kittens return to her side, their secrets revealed. Only time can tell what the future holds, but Bastet has seen. If you listen close, perhaps the cats will enlighten you once more.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums. Reliable service with over 8 years of experience.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · The Warrior's Den · Next Topic »
Add Reply