Post by Justin Paige on Apr 9, 2024 21:54:51 GMT -6
*Jackson Mississippi*
“Hey Justin, do you remember before mom disappeared when she would stick us in the back of her Cadillac convertible? What was that?” The wooden boards on a wrap-around porch of a recently built 2 story baby blue house creak as Jarrod rocks back and forth in his chair, looking down at Justin on the white steps that match the picket fence, leading up while he pulls a piece of straw apart, bit by bit.
“A 1959 Eldorado. One of the ugliest cars I’ve ever seen,” He silently chuckles and turns his head toward his brother, “with its weird salmon pink paint and those giant fins at the end.”
His brother shows a faint smile, “Giant boat of a car. I’m almost 100% sure that thing would have navigated on top of the ocean if we just stuck the exhaust out the hood.”
“Ugly ass car but some great memories in it. Ice Cream on Sunday, Back road cruises, and loud music. Not a worry in the world,” Justin tosses what’s left of his piece of straw to the ground and wipes his hands on his jeans as he stands up, using the railing for help. “Now look at me, I do nothing but worry.”
He lets out an exasperated sigh and Jarrod rolls his eyes in his chair. “I am pretty sure that you don’t have to worry about everything, you just don’t know how to not, big brother.”
“I don’t have the energy to keep hiding this…Talking about mom, that’s almost verbatim what she said to me the day she left.” Justin walks up the 3 white steps and sits down near his brother in another rocking chair. “She said “Justin, I’m probably going to leave for a while. While I’m gone, I need you to not worry and take care of your brother. Everything will be alright.”
Jarrod stops rocking and looks at Justin. “You mean, she told you she was leaving? Why am I just now hearing this? What the fuck, dude?”
As Jarrod stands up and paces around, his brother fidgets with his hands as he stares at the ground. “That’s what I thought I needed to do, protect you. And what better to protect you from? The fact that she dipped out on us because of how dad used to treat her and left us to take the brunt of it instead? How do you think you would have responded when I told you mom said bye to me and told me to take care of my 7 year old brother when I was only 2 years older?” Justin looks at his little brother with dejection, “After a while, once dad started really hitting the sauce and me, it became less and less of a priority for me to protect you from that and it fell to the back of my mind, I honestly had weeks when I wouldn’t think about it because I was being a human shield.”
The dejection slowly starts to turn to bitterness in his eyes as Jarrod slows his pace down and stares to the yard. “I could have handled it. Dad wasn’t nearly as bad as you try to say he was.”
Bitterness to indignation. “I’m sorry? Do you remember those summers where I forced you out of the house and to the neighbors so that I could make sure the house was spotless? When you came home from baseball practice, I always sent you to go get a soda for us down at the gas station or anytime he started yelling downstairs and hitting the walls I would always cover your ears and make sure the door was locked. You don’t remember any of those, do you? They weren’t beaten into your memories, you had the ability to be Teflon, while I was the lid that protected you from getting scratched.” Justin white knuckles the arms of the chair.
“You exaggerate these stories to fit your sad boy narrative, Justin! He may have hit you a few times but really, that was mom’s fault! He didn’t start drinking that bad until she left. She broke him and left us to pick up the pieces! I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one who convinced her to leave, with all your crying and whining.” Jarrod stops pacing and begins to turn around, only to be met by his brother nose to nose with him.
“Do you think I fucking liked wearing long sleeved turtle necks in the middle of summer? He wouldn’t let me go outside without covering up the trauma he left on my body. Almost every time he drank and I was around, I was his punching bag. For what? Let’s see, the grout in the bathroom wasn’t sparkling white after you left a crushed crayon in it. Or there was a spaghetti noodle stuck on the floor under the oven, that you left there. One time, I got punched in my neck, because he got woken up by a call from the school telling him you weren’t at school. He was used to me missing school, he wouldn’t let me go if I had visible markings. You know where you were? With aunt Kathy at the fucking doctors appointment that I walked you to!”
Jarrod backs away but Justin stays on him like a fly on shit. “Do you think I would let you know any of that? No, you had the weight of growing up still. My childhood was already taken, I needed to make sure you still had one, I had to make sure you had a fighting chance!”
The screen door opens and Jarrod’s wife Brooke steps out and sees this battle of will going on in front of the steps. Her husband’s heels hang off the top step and he is keeping his balance via a death grip on the bannister. “Hey! Knock it off you guys! Fuckin..” Brooke shoves her arms between the brothers and gets in between them, Jarrod steps down to the next step instead of falling off them. “..Stop it! I don’t know what the shit you were talking about but drop it! Come inside, get a drink and have some lunch.”
Justin steps to the side and steps down the steps without looking at his Jarrod, who turns and yells, “It would have been nice to make my own path in MY LIFE!”
Justin doesn’t stop, he just turns and walks backwards while replying, “But look where you ended up, Jarrod. Look at how it all worked out for you.” He turns around and heads toward his rental car while making a phone call. “Bryan, I once again require your cameraman services. Meet me in Birmingham Alabama, where #526 is….Yes, I mean Rampage. Sorry, forgot you were an idiot. I’ll be there in three and a half hours.” He starts the car while shutting the door and pulls out of his brother's driveway looking back to see them turn their backs and walk inside, making sure to shut the door behind them.
*Birmingham Alabama*
The cracked rock sign says “Birmingham Botanical Garden”, surrounded by an assortment of random flowers. Justin stands on the curb, waiting for Bryan the cameraman to hurry up with the camera. He arrived a few minutes after Justin. “Will you please hurry the fuck up? I talked to the manager or whatever, could have just been a groundskeeper and they agreed to let us film here. Not at first, but nothing a Hamilton couldn’t fix. They said this is their slow time of the day, so we should have the place to ourselves.”
He turns and starts walking towards the entrance as Bryan catches up. “You know this is a free site? You just fill out a form and you can film here all you want.”
Justin frowns and looks back “So you’re saying I got bamboozled? I’m going to find that damn guy and get my $10 back! But in the meantime, you can roll whenever you want. I could have picked one of the dozens of places around here to film at, the Motorshop Museum, Vulcan park, or the Civil Rights Institute but I have always liked walking through the garden when I come here. It helps me clear my mind.”
Bryan points the camera back and zooms in, “And the zoo is literally across the street.”
“Correct. You have siblings, Bryan? No, don't answer that, this is about me, not you and your dumb family.” Justin points at a hummingbird hovering next to a ‘Scarlett Blaze’, “I got into it with my brother right before I called you and I thought about it the entire way here. It helped me make sense of it all. But it also got me thinking about Rampage this Friday here at Bartow Arena.” He stops and reads the label for some of the plant life along the ‘Rose Garden’. “Would you look at that, these are all roses. Who would have thought?”
He snorts and looks back at Bryan.
“No? Well of course. You don’t have a sense of humor. Anyways, back to what I was talking about. I thought about how badly I wanted to show my brother all the pain I had growing up in order to make sure that he didn’t have any. I pictured popping his jaw out of its socket. I imagined giving him a snap suplex off that perfect porch of his. I had so many images of myself hurting him, as siblings do, but as they moved on…The face changed into my opponents this Friday.”
They find a bench in front of the Lawn Aviary across from the Rose Garden.
“Mercenary and Jason. Obviously I need to make sure I pay equal amounts of attention to both of them, but honestly, Mercenary is just an accessory to a crime. I wonder if this nomad knows what he is getting thrown into? He’s got the passion, he’s got the grit, he’s got the drive to eventually be champion again, but not this season it seems.”
Justin stands up and walks to the Lawn Aviary, met by the sweet smell of an assortment of flowers and grass.
“Mercenary seems like a pretty cool guy. Maybe when I stop burning this place down, we could be friends but for now, I’ll make sure I’m not as easy of a victory as Lavender was. Funny enough…” He looks next to him as he continues to walk around and sees that he is standing right next to a lavender bush. “You like the fight, Merc. You’re old, broken, and you're addicted to the chase. I understand that, I feel the exact same way.”
He walks around and watches as some bees zoom around him as he gets closer to the flowers.
“I have worked my way into fighting champions since my first day here. I took on Amber, I’ve taken on Cosmo, and apparently from what she ran her mouth about, Sally is going to be next. I’ve also faced off against former champions, so that makes this match up no different to me. Of all the formers that I’ve fought, I feel like you will be the easiest simply because you’re already beat up. How are those ribs? How’s that Knee? You’re coming in here as a wounded duck, Merc, coming into a hardcore match at what, 80%? 70%? I don’t think I’ve been so happy about being in a hardcore match because buddy, it’s going to be a cake walk after I wrap a chair around that knee and break a kendo stick over your ribs…Do you understand that I can legally break your soul on Friday, simply because you were there. Not because I want to, but because I need to. You are going to be a mere sacrifice to continue my journey to the top. Not the top of the company, heavens no, that sounds like a terrible idea, but the top of the Hellevator match.”
He stops and sits in the middle of the Aviary, criss-cross applesauce style and motions for Bryan to sit in front of him.
“Now onto the reason everyone will actually be watching this match, this triple threat that I basically showed up and demanded my way into. How did it feel, Jason? To be so close to victory over a champion and have someone come in and steal it away. You may think to yourself, ‘I didn’t pay any attention to you’ but I have rewatched that match multiple times and I can tell you, those eyes were drifting to the outside of the ring. Subconsciously you were keeping an eye on me and what happened?”
Justin laughs as he grabs some petals that have blown off the trees. “If you don’t mind, Bryan, I’m going to have a nice long winded conversation with your camera.” Bryan nods and straightens his back.
“Jason, I keep listening to you, over and over you say things about your girlfriend. About coming after her or stalking her. Trying to scare me into leaving her alone but never once have you taken a step back and noticed that the one constant in all of these situations is you. Could you possibly get it through your thick skull that I couldn’t care less about Amber until I saw how bothered it made you? Sure I started out talking shit about her, blah blah women suck yada yada I hate women and the champions are weak around here but once that first match was over, I very clearly did everything just to get under your skin. Because I noticed how…non-existent… you were when your woman was being taunted, quite excessively if I say so myself. I said some pretty shitty things that made a whole lot of people uncomfortable but yet you stayed in the lane of being an obedient little boy and not getting involved with her problems. What was it that broke that for you?”
“Now, over the last months, you’ve shoved your nose where it doesn’t belong. You could have just let me move on, you could have just left it alone, I’m pretty sure everyone had forgotten about it. Look where it’s brought us. Some backstage run-ins, some banter back and forth, me threatening the old man, and both of us costing a big match.” He shakes his head, continuing. “I told you I wouldn’t stop until I returned the favor and until I got you in the ring, or I would burn your world to the ground. Imagine my surprise when I walked into Rampage and was informed I would be in a match with you! I have a pretty solid idea that they didn’t want this to continue so they gave me what I wanted so that focus can switch to Stranglemania.”
“I digress though, I’m sure you heard me tell Merc that I need to beat him, to help me on my journey but Jason, I promise you that when I beat you on Friday, it will be out of sweet desire. I won’t stop bashing your head in with whatever weapon I find, maybe I’ll use Mercenary’s fancy ax handle or maybe I’ll use the butt end of a fire extinguisher. Either way, I’m not beating you because I need to, I am beating you because I want to. I want to watch you squirm, actually I want to watch the crowd squirm as they watch me take you apart piece by piece. I want to destroy you so bad that JoJo meets me at the top of the ramp to shake my hand. You won’t make it to Stranglemania in one piece, I can promise you that. Before you come down to the ring on Friday, I need you to really think about how much you value your little life and how much shame you will put on them when they can’t even look at your disfigured face.”
A man in a blue polo with the Gardens logo breaks the tension building in the air between Paige and the Camera as he slow claps and breaks the concentration of Justin and Bryan.
“Bravo! What movie is that for? That was a crazy monologue! Is it a movie or a play, because I feel like you weren’t putting any of your body into it. You just sat there and talked about how badly you hate this guy and how you’re going to beat up the other guy. It’s giving..Murder if I’m honest.”
Justin stares at the blonde headed man with his skinny jeans and his smedium sized shirt. “Actually I’m a wrestler, and you just interrupted me. So please, get fucked.”
“Ohh a wrestler! Just kidding, I don’t care. I just need you to get out of the park because we are closing and I would really like to ‘get fucked’. And don’t even think about getting shitty with me again because I’ll just call the piggy patrol and they will trespass you from the whole district, I dont wear tights and bounce off of ropes into big sweaty men, even though that sounds like a perfect date…go on, skedaddle! Get!” The random employee aggressively motions for the two to get up and leave. Even after Justin and Bryan stand up, he persists, using his radio as some kind of cattle prod all the way towards the exit. “Okay toodles! Please leave before I start picturing you in your little tighty whities, mounting me in the middle of the mat or whatever its called. Go get those guys, tiger!”
Justin and Bryan turn and shrug towards each other as they both split away towards their separate vehicles. As Justin reaches his car, his cell phone rings. After pulling it out of his pocket he sees that it’s Jarrod. He winces in an almost painful way as he throws the phone into the passenger seat and lets it ring. No voicemail, but another call. This time Justin hits the deny button and turns it off.
“Sorry little bro, I just have one more bit of protection to do.”
~FIN~
