Intruder Alert
* * *
I haven't slept since the accident. For those of you who flunked math, that's well over a year of rings around my eyes and mere naps to get me through the day. Usually, I work on my own little projects; writing raps, reading, typing up some of my many political and religious theories in text documents. Other times, when I was too lazy/busy to do it in the morning, I work out. Occasionally, I'll do parkour at 3 in the morning, but I usually get stopped by the cops when I do. And, honestly, when I'm not back in the neighborhood and can go with my boys, parkour ain't that fun. But at least half of the time, I don't even remember what I did in the night.
I ran into that Sophia broad in the arena on two occasions at the last show, when I beat Bobby Hanson. Fortunately, I'm faster than her and managed to dip into a crowd of people and avoid her. Normally, I don't make a habit out of avoiding people, but I'm legally bound to this bitch. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do about her.
But in the meantime, my brain is shot. I tried calling Whitey a few times since Sophia told her to leave, but she hasn't taken a single one of my calls. And the weirdest part, neither will anyone else. Not Miss Sarah, The Tang, Napalm, not even my best friends or my own mother. It's like I'm in a dead zone surrounded by the cannibals from The Hills Have Eyes.
Most people don't understand how lonely you can get on the road all the time, which is why I always had an entourage of people with me. Miss Sarah, The White Mage, The Tang, Napalm, Bucky Skyler, Dwight Mare, Karla Love, Valeah, Andy V., Hayden Clarke, Izabel, the cheerleaders whose names I can't recall, all of 'em. When you're constantly thousands of miles from home, you depend on who you can go on the road with and whatever bellas you can bag for the night to keep you company.
Being 20 and a superstar traveling the world is something most people can't empathize with. People my age are in college, surrounded by people they see everyday. Me? The only people I get surrounded by are looking to break my spine and hold me down on the ground for 3 seconds. But with my cell phone, I'd always have a piece of home with me. I could keep tabs on everything going on with the family, watch as Pia Toscono also left the ol' neighborhood for superstardom (and American Idol can suck it for voting her off), chat with the class mates of yesterday, all that good stuff. And when no one is taking your calls, it's like you don't even have a past anymore. Like you were just a ring rat your whole life. Your past becomes what your past is in the business.
When I'm this isolated, I even begin to miss the people I burnt bridges with. My outlet for human interaction has been hitting the local clubs every day and forming a local harem. But at this rate, I can blow my eight times a day and still not be satisfied. It's hollow; I feel like the nigga from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Only more conscious of the world I'm currently living in.
Most wrestlers give up their family and friends and all that jazz when they hit the big leagues. Where am I? In the Octane division, pepped to duke it out with some nobody named Milo Bedwetter (sorry, I had to do it.) Since my return, I've been undefeated; effortlessly so. Xtremity thought he almost had me, but I've been thrashed, bashed and smashed far worse than that and still won. At least he wasn't stubborn enough to attribute his defeat to luck though.
Bobby Hanson, on the other hand? He wasn't taking the top rope You're-A-Niggy I gave him with as much grace. All of a sudden, he had "an injury" and he was "cheated", even though in the same breath, he said that he was the one who chose to wrestle the match? And the audacity to claim my career to be a "poor excuse" is adorable, when his career consists of a win in the Octane division and a loss against yours truly. Surely, no one briefed him on some of my career highlights.
It's okay though. For the last few years, I've become a giant oak and all the bottom feeders can do to try to curb my stride is coil around me like an green vine. But therein lies the difference between myself and the bottom feeders. Where my green resides towers over the tops of every green in the forest; it is effectively non-existent. I need to climb no one to get there; I simply strive to go higher on my own. Those around me wish to climb the bark that I laid out to reach the plateau that I set for myself. Their green -- their envy -- goes right into their roots.
Haha. See what I mean? Wrestling used to just be my career. It's now, effectively, my life. And I'm not even anything to crow at, name-wise.
THUMP. THUMP.
The fuck was that?
Slumping up from the pinecone arm of the Movie Trailer's immaculate, pearl-surfaced love seat, I could feel a bead of sweat trill down the ivory coast of my jawline. By the ruckus and the dulcet sounds of the doorway that I have grown to memorize the sonority of, my conclusion was deduced. My reaction, poised. Someone was in the Movie Trailer. In my home. Umbrella-ing my periwinkle bath robe like a one-winged angel in flight, my breathing diminished to a hush in spite of my sympathetic nerve system grinding and gearing throughout my body. Convulsions and adrenaline swam through my veins like an ocean predator on the hunt, completely unobstructed by a being in the massive body of water.
Criss-crossing my feet as I stalked down the dark corridor of the trailer like Sam Fisher, I gazed up with a sneer in the brief lighting of the television I was half-heartedly watching before, reflected off of the nearby crystalline window above me. My cornflower hair was elegantly coiled in a band that matched my lavender robe, pulled back in such a way that made it difficult to define it as either a top knot or a ponytail. Gleefully, there wasn't a haphazard mold to it right now as I had been out earlier and tied back my glistening, golden locks when I had returned. Helps avoiding those nasty little blemishes if you can keep the hurr out your face. Wait, where was I?
Oh, right. My lavendar bath robe and red checkered pajamas were probably not the ideal attire of choice for a covert operation, but I made the transition from Sam Fisher to John Rambo as I marketed my hand over the mantle of a solid ebony scabbard propped up over a mantle. This was my baby. I clenched the hilt of the daunting weapon; a sculpted branch carved in the distinct, vitriolic mold of a smoking skull. There were several cracks in the woodwork finish of the hilt from where I had swung it and the cast-iron blade had been too top heavy for the showy handle. Taking it to my side, I lowered the scabbard from the blade to unveil the glistening relic of the ancient Samurai.
Whoever is in my house can thank gun control lobbyists for making the defining moment of his final minutes on this Earth at the edge of my katana, having limbs rended from torso and flesh skewered into open seams. You know, instead of just taking a gat to the skull.
I tip-toed gracefully with my katana before me in a sloppy, but efficient Kempo stance. I didn't transition from John Rambo to The Terminator in the off chance that he was packing heat, but for this inconvenience, there was savage bloodlust in my eyes. For those of you who have followed my career, you'll note how rare such a thing is for me.
There.
I see him. Hawking over my kitchen counter, I could see the black silhouette of the figure gawking out my window. Perhaps he had accomplices? The broad figure looming in my kitchen had such resolve. From his stoic frame, I could tell he'd make every movement count. But so would I.
As I watched him nest over the counter I once made out with Hayden Clarke on while frying a batch of sunny side up eggs up (I wound up getting a really bad burn on a particular part of my body; I don't want to talk about it), I could literally feel my pupils dilate and the blood rush behind my lower eyelids. In one fell swoop, I launched from the doorway like a crossbow bolt and springboarded from the adjacent wall from the window to give myself some leverage into the thick frame of the man, who had only a second to twitch and wobble before the arrow-head end of my blade was thrust into his spinal column.
I didn't even see anything until after I had swiftly pulled my blade out of his rattled frame and took his head clean off with a spinning hack of my blade. But now that I recollect it, I can vividly see his entire body convulse and rattle as though there was nothing holding it. I had never dreamed that the sound of ending someone's life would be so empty; so cold. My visualizations were always so graphic and intense. This was--
Suddenly, the lights sprang forth in the high hats throughout the entire trailer and my immediate reaction was to shift from that "oh no, what have I done" pose people get into after killing someone to battle ready stance as I raised my katana to spot another figure in my home.
My eyes advanced forward as though they were a thousand miles away, but I made out the figure -- albeit after a few moments of trying to match name + face. And there she was: Sophia Sheffield. With the keys to my trailer held gracefully between the svelte fingers of her braced fingers. At the end of her other hand was the light switch to the trailer, agonizingly oppressed by her crimson finger nails.
Sophia Sheffield:
"...I see you've already acquainted yourself with the boxing dummy I picked up for your training. The sword was maybe a tad much and I didn't add water to the base of it yet, but you're a shoo-in for the next Samurai Showdown the Full Throttle Wrestling organization promotes."
Wincing and trying to slow down the universe around me, so that I can comprehend it, I steadied my gaze over the figure that I just floored. It was a solid black training dummy with a diamond-edge pierce wound in its torso and its head removed from the center of the jawline. Damn, I'm good.
Ripplemagne:
"I'm guessing they kicked you out of Paris Opera House's sewage system?"
Sophia Sheffield:
"Cute. But if there's anyone who should wear a mask and stay out of the public eye, it would be you. Given that I'm stuck applying my talents to someone as luny as yourself, I more fancy the role of Christine Daaé."
Ripplemagne:
"With the voice of Jillian Hall."
Sophia Sheffield:
"What was that?"
Ripplemagne:
"Nothing."
Cough Cough. Female Ben Foster. Cough cough.
Sophia Sheffield:
"Well, I took the liberty of going to a keysmith and making a copy of the key to the caravan."
I hate British people. Who the fuck says "caravan"? It's a trailer, God damn it!
Ripplemagne:
"Er... you did what now? Ain't that illegal? A keysmith can't just go making keys for anyone. That defeats the purpose of having a lock on something!"
Sophia Sheffield:
"Oh, it was actually bleedin' simple. And being that I'm now your official supervisor, my residency is predicated on your own. Being that you've been avoiding me for a fortnight now, we have much to catch up on."
Ripplemagne:
"Convenient excuse. The lube's in the top drawer of the bathroom, the bedroom's the last door down that hallway. I'll be in in five; if you'll excuse me, I didn't get to finish watching the new episode of Big Time Rush. It astounds me that, believe it or not, that James nigga is almost as pretty as de Magne. Anyway, the lotion is scented; start warming up. I'll be there shortly."
Seriously though, that James Maslow nigga is almost as pretty as the Patriarch of Pretty? Inconceivable. I will straight claw that nigga. Anyway, I already missed like ten minutes of it; let me go finis--
Sophia Sheffield:
"Excuse me? I've seen sixes and sevens before, but you, my friend, take the cake. No, I do not want to bed you, you maladjusted, sycophantic imbecile."
Ripplemagne:
"Look, I appreciate the raunchiness and your eagerness is commendable. Really, it is. I will be sure to let you jetski your tongue down the abs. But really, I want to catch the end of B--"
Sophia Sheffield:
"No, I don't think you quite understand. I. Am. Your. New. Ba-by-si-tter."
Ripplemagne:
"Kinky, but not enough to dissuade me from finishing my television program."
Sophia Sheffield:
"Oh, bloody Hell. What I mean is that, professionally speaking, your relationship with me is as it would be with a babysitter."
Ripplemagne:
"Well, that's fine 'cause I shagged my babysitter back in the day too. No, go pep up. That nigga James brings out the animal in me."
With a coy smirk, I wafted my hand across the ass crack of the little lady and scurried off to the living room.
Mm. Believe it.
* * *
I haven't slept since the accident. For those of you who flunked math, that's well over a year of rings around my eyes and mere naps to get me through the day. Usually, I work on my own little projects; writing raps, reading, typing up some of my many political and religious theories in text documents. Other times, when I was too lazy/busy to do it in the morning, I work out. Occasionally, I'll do parkour at 3 in the morning, but I usually get stopped by the cops when I do. And, honestly, when I'm not back in the neighborhood and can go with my boys, parkour ain't that fun. But at least half of the time, I don't even remember what I did in the night.
I ran into that Sophia broad in the arena on two occasions at the last show, when I beat Bobby Hanson. Fortunately, I'm faster than her and managed to dip into a crowd of people and avoid her. Normally, I don't make a habit out of avoiding people, but I'm legally bound to this bitch. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do about her.
But in the meantime, my brain is shot. I tried calling Whitey a few times since Sophia told her to leave, but she hasn't taken a single one of my calls. And the weirdest part, neither will anyone else. Not Miss Sarah, The Tang, Napalm, not even my best friends or my own mother. It's like I'm in a dead zone surrounded by the cannibals from The Hills Have Eyes.
Most people don't understand how lonely you can get on the road all the time, which is why I always had an entourage of people with me. Miss Sarah, The White Mage, The Tang, Napalm, Bucky Skyler, Dwight Mare, Karla Love, Valeah, Andy V., Hayden Clarke, Izabel, the cheerleaders whose names I can't recall, all of 'em. When you're constantly thousands of miles from home, you depend on who you can go on the road with and whatever bellas you can bag for the night to keep you company.
Being 20 and a superstar traveling the world is something most people can't empathize with. People my age are in college, surrounded by people they see everyday. Me? The only people I get surrounded by are looking to break my spine and hold me down on the ground for 3 seconds. But with my cell phone, I'd always have a piece of home with me. I could keep tabs on everything going on with the family, watch as Pia Toscono also left the ol' neighborhood for superstardom (and American Idol can suck it for voting her off), chat with the class mates of yesterday, all that good stuff. And when no one is taking your calls, it's like you don't even have a past anymore. Like you were just a ring rat your whole life. Your past becomes what your past is in the business.
When I'm this isolated, I even begin to miss the people I burnt bridges with. My outlet for human interaction has been hitting the local clubs every day and forming a local harem. But at this rate, I can blow my eight times a day and still not be satisfied. It's hollow; I feel like the nigga from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Only more conscious of the world I'm currently living in.
Most wrestlers give up their family and friends and all that jazz when they hit the big leagues. Where am I? In the Octane division, pepped to duke it out with some nobody named Milo Bedwetter (sorry, I had to do it.) Since my return, I've been undefeated; effortlessly so. Xtremity thought he almost had me, but I've been thrashed, bashed and smashed far worse than that and still won. At least he wasn't stubborn enough to attribute his defeat to luck though.
Bobby Hanson, on the other hand? He wasn't taking the top rope You're-A-Niggy I gave him with as much grace. All of a sudden, he had "an injury" and he was "cheated", even though in the same breath, he said that he was the one who chose to wrestle the match? And the audacity to claim my career to be a "poor excuse" is adorable, when his career consists of a win in the Octane division and a loss against yours truly. Surely, no one briefed him on some of my career highlights.
It's okay though. For the last few years, I've become a giant oak and all the bottom feeders can do to try to curb my stride is coil around me like an green vine. But therein lies the difference between myself and the bottom feeders. Where my green resides towers over the tops of every green in the forest; it is effectively non-existent. I need to climb no one to get there; I simply strive to go higher on my own. Those around me wish to climb the bark that I laid out to reach the plateau that I set for myself. Their green -- their envy -- goes right into their roots.
Haha. See what I mean? Wrestling used to just be my career. It's now, effectively, my life. And I'm not even anything to crow at, name-wise.
THUMP. THUMP.
The fuck was that?
Slumping up from the pinecone arm of the Movie Trailer's immaculate, pearl-surfaced love seat, I could feel a bead of sweat trill down the ivory coast of my jawline. By the ruckus and the dulcet sounds of the doorway that I have grown to memorize the sonority of, my conclusion was deduced. My reaction, poised. Someone was in the Movie Trailer. In my home. Umbrella-ing my periwinkle bath robe like a one-winged angel in flight, my breathing diminished to a hush in spite of my sympathetic nerve system grinding and gearing throughout my body. Convulsions and adrenaline swam through my veins like an ocean predator on the hunt, completely unobstructed by a being in the massive body of water.
Criss-crossing my feet as I stalked down the dark corridor of the trailer like Sam Fisher, I gazed up with a sneer in the brief lighting of the television I was half-heartedly watching before, reflected off of the nearby crystalline window above me. My cornflower hair was elegantly coiled in a band that matched my lavender robe, pulled back in such a way that made it difficult to define it as either a top knot or a ponytail. Gleefully, there wasn't a haphazard mold to it right now as I had been out earlier and tied back my glistening, golden locks when I had returned. Helps avoiding those nasty little blemishes if you can keep the hurr out your face. Wait, where was I?
Oh, right. My lavendar bath robe and red checkered pajamas were probably not the ideal attire of choice for a covert operation, but I made the transition from Sam Fisher to John Rambo as I marketed my hand over the mantle of a solid ebony scabbard propped up over a mantle. This was my baby. I clenched the hilt of the daunting weapon; a sculpted branch carved in the distinct, vitriolic mold of a smoking skull. There were several cracks in the woodwork finish of the hilt from where I had swung it and the cast-iron blade had been too top heavy for the showy handle. Taking it to my side, I lowered the scabbard from the blade to unveil the glistening relic of the ancient Samurai.
Whoever is in my house can thank gun control lobbyists for making the defining moment of his final minutes on this Earth at the edge of my katana, having limbs rended from torso and flesh skewered into open seams. You know, instead of just taking a gat to the skull.
I tip-toed gracefully with my katana before me in a sloppy, but efficient Kempo stance. I didn't transition from John Rambo to The Terminator in the off chance that he was packing heat, but for this inconvenience, there was savage bloodlust in my eyes. For those of you who have followed my career, you'll note how rare such a thing is for me.
There.
I see him. Hawking over my kitchen counter, I could see the black silhouette of the figure gawking out my window. Perhaps he had accomplices? The broad figure looming in my kitchen had such resolve. From his stoic frame, I could tell he'd make every movement count. But so would I.
As I watched him nest over the counter I once made out with Hayden Clarke on while frying a batch of sunny side up eggs up (I wound up getting a really bad burn on a particular part of my body; I don't want to talk about it), I could literally feel my pupils dilate and the blood rush behind my lower eyelids. In one fell swoop, I launched from the doorway like a crossbow bolt and springboarded from the adjacent wall from the window to give myself some leverage into the thick frame of the man, who had only a second to twitch and wobble before the arrow-head end of my blade was thrust into his spinal column.
I didn't even see anything until after I had swiftly pulled my blade out of his rattled frame and took his head clean off with a spinning hack of my blade. But now that I recollect it, I can vividly see his entire body convulse and rattle as though there was nothing holding it. I had never dreamed that the sound of ending someone's life would be so empty; so cold. My visualizations were always so graphic and intense. This was--
Suddenly, the lights sprang forth in the high hats throughout the entire trailer and my immediate reaction was to shift from that "oh no, what have I done" pose people get into after killing someone to battle ready stance as I raised my katana to spot another figure in my home.
My eyes advanced forward as though they were a thousand miles away, but I made out the figure -- albeit after a few moments of trying to match name + face. And there she was: Sophia Sheffield. With the keys to my trailer held gracefully between the svelte fingers of her braced fingers. At the end of her other hand was the light switch to the trailer, agonizingly oppressed by her crimson finger nails.
Sophia Sheffield:
"...I see you've already acquainted yourself with the boxing dummy I picked up for your training. The sword was maybe a tad much and I didn't add water to the base of it yet, but you're a shoo-in for the next Samurai Showdown the Full Throttle Wrestling organization promotes."
Wincing and trying to slow down the universe around me, so that I can comprehend it, I steadied my gaze over the figure that I just floored. It was a solid black training dummy with a diamond-edge pierce wound in its torso and its head removed from the center of the jawline. Damn, I'm good.
Ripplemagne:
"I'm guessing they kicked you out of Paris Opera House's sewage system?"
Sophia Sheffield:
"Cute. But if there's anyone who should wear a mask and stay out of the public eye, it would be you. Given that I'm stuck applying my talents to someone as luny as yourself, I more fancy the role of Christine Daaé."
Ripplemagne:
"With the voice of Jillian Hall."
Sophia Sheffield:
"What was that?"
Ripplemagne:
"Nothing."
Cough Cough. Female Ben Foster. Cough cough.
Sophia Sheffield:
"Well, I took the liberty of going to a keysmith and making a copy of the key to the caravan."
I hate British people. Who the fuck says "caravan"? It's a trailer, God damn it!
Ripplemagne:
"Er... you did what now? Ain't that illegal? A keysmith can't just go making keys for anyone. That defeats the purpose of having a lock on something!"
Sophia Sheffield:
"Oh, it was actually bleedin' simple. And being that I'm now your official supervisor, my residency is predicated on your own. Being that you've been avoiding me for a fortnight now, we have much to catch up on."
Ripplemagne:
"Convenient excuse. The lube's in the top drawer of the bathroom, the bedroom's the last door down that hallway. I'll be in in five; if you'll excuse me, I didn't get to finish watching the new episode of Big Time Rush. It astounds me that, believe it or not, that James nigga is almost as pretty as de Magne. Anyway, the lotion is scented; start warming up. I'll be there shortly."
Seriously though, that James Maslow nigga is almost as pretty as the Patriarch of Pretty? Inconceivable. I will straight claw that nigga. Anyway, I already missed like ten minutes of it; let me go finis--
Sophia Sheffield:
"Excuse me? I've seen sixes and sevens before, but you, my friend, take the cake. No, I do not want to bed you, you maladjusted, sycophantic imbecile."
Ripplemagne:
"Look, I appreciate the raunchiness and your eagerness is commendable. Really, it is. I will be sure to let you jetski your tongue down the abs. But really, I want to catch the end of B--"
Sophia Sheffield:
"No, I don't think you quite understand. I. Am. Your. New. Ba-by-si-tter."
Ripplemagne:
"Kinky, but not enough to dissuade me from finishing my television program."
Sophia Sheffield:
"Oh, bloody Hell. What I mean is that, professionally speaking, your relationship with me is as it would be with a babysitter."
Ripplemagne:
"Well, that's fine 'cause I shagged my babysitter back in the day too. No, go pep up. That nigga James brings out the animal in me."
With a coy smirk, I wafted my hand across the ass crack of the little lady and scurried off to the living room.
Mm. Believe it.
* * *
