Post by Red Bull Icon on Dec 8, 2012 23:20:27 GMT -5
(Remi stands against a green screen a few days before Horizons. He gyrates, throws his hands up, hops, and generally moves unfettered by convention.)
Remi; “…An’ den I done did wha’ no one done did in oh so long’a time… “
Fool.
(It’s BoolZ that this bit is about. Sitting in a director’s chair, his head propped up on his right hand, a cigarette in his left, and the sudden alertness overwhelming his senses. He startles back to life. A micro nap, one of many that sees the Red Bull Icon through his day, ends just as his nightmares become too real.)
He looks so tired. So much worse than before. Compared to Mexico he looked like hell in the GIW. He’s so much worse now.
Remi; “… See now I do, I oh so truly do, hope an’ pray dat all dem peoples out dare don’ be t’inkin’ dat Ol’Remi be givin’ more dan two shiz ‘bout dat Cross ‘Emy-phere title bell…”
(RBI looks over at his employer. His slave. It’s an impatient look of annoyance.)
“I’m feeling green today.” Asshole.
(Grace plunges her hand into a 60 gallon trash can filled with water and ice. Down to her elbow. Past. Down to her shoulder. Past. Her right nipple submerges, her face grimaces, and then she pulls up and out of the water. In her hand is a Red Bull. On the bottom of the can is a red dot.)
Eighth time is the charm.
(Back into the frigid water. Pulls out a Sugar-Free Red Bull.)
*Sigh* There’s probably not even a green dot in here.
Remi; “… Oh but dat bell it care ‘bout dis ‘ear Creole Curse I tell you dat much fo fact. It nee’ me. ‘Cause wit’ou me it nothin’. It a aft’ah taught. Wit’ou dis ‘ear Swamplan’ Sup’a’man wha’ kinda match-up coul’ all you folks be in store fo’, uh? ‘Ohh dat big boy Zane gone face? Mista’ Fe’ear? ‘Ohh gone care ‘bout dat bon rien wit’ou me?...”
(She can feel his glare. His disappointment. Her failings. She looks up at BoolZ. Shivering she looks back down, a blue dotted can in her hand, and kicks over the trash can spilling its contents.)
Bet I can find it now.
Remi; “… An dat really be da poin’ don’ ya see? Don’ you all real’a’lize dat Remedy Mon-Roe, ‘e done grow pass dis ol’lil bell. At a whim Remi make champy-ons an’ insta’tutions buckle unda my weight…”
(BoolZ hops out of his chair, walks over to the mess, stands beside Grace who is now on her hands and knees checking a hundred cans of Red Bull. He bends over, snatches up 8.3 ounces of sweet ambrosia, and starts off.)
BoolZ; “About time. Too bad you didn’t quit when you could, huh?”
Asshole.
Remi; “Remi Mon-Roe. All t’ing ta all people. Da New Talk a da Town. Don’ not one soul wanna watch a Cross-Emy’phere match-up. Don’ no one wanna see Fe’ear or Zane win. But ev’ry lass one a y’all gone tune in ta see if eith’ah a dem can beat me…”
I don’t know why I didn’t quit. He’s done nothing but push me away. Both now. Marshall and Randy. I have nothing left. I’m so lonely. It’s so cold on this roof. Horizons is tomorrow. I know what they both want me to do. What they both expect me to do. I don’t think I can make either of them happy. It’s so cold. I should have just quit. He was right. It would have been so much easier to just quit. Even if that old pirate wouldn’t let me in the UGWC whatever this world had for me it had to have been better than this. Alone on a sky scraper hotel roof in the middle of the night. I should have just quit. Why didn’t I just quit. I don’t know why I couldn’t just quit.
That’s a lie. I couldn’t quit. It makes too much sense in a strictly Boolzian way. Made. Made to much sense. Looking back I think I always knew. Or knew since coming back. It was the picture that really cemented it. In a shoe box in Randy’s truck is a picture. It’s from his wedding day. I was the maid of honor. The Crimson Ghost was the best man. The photographer got a shot, he must have hid it before Maddy and I put together the album. In this picture. It’s in a shoe box deep in the truck. The picture is under some shot gun shells, a pair of women’s underwear, a syringe, and a deflated neck pillow I bought for him the first day we really met. That was some flight.He was so much I was so much happier then.
That’s a lie too. I think I used the quips and snide remarks as a way to deflect. Not face who I was. What a worthless woman I had made myself. Nothing but second fiddle, I was a tag a long, I was Gummo Marx. Nobody remembers Gummo. Someone might. I don’t know. I couldn’t go back. I don’t want to. He wouldn’t take me. I’m damaged. Tainted now.
In this picture. I’m the maid of honor. Ghost is the best man. We and the bride Maddy we’re all looking at the priest. Randy’s looking at me though. And I know it had to be just the perfect time. A fluke maybe. Maybe I coughed. I was sick when they got married but there was just so much hope and confusion and love in his eyes. So much doubt. Timing is everything. There was so much love. Misplaced and unfounded and not meant for me. But it was so pure and the picture showed it so clearly and I didn’t ever see it. He didn’t ever let me see it.
Maddy saw it I think. They used to argue. A LOT. It was so perfect in a Boolzian sense. Long lost loves of their lives finally together finally conquering their demons hand in hand facing eternity and all they do is squabble. About me I think. She didn’t understand. Thought we were sleeping together. Thought even then she told me she thought she trapped him. I think she was probably right. I never told her that. Maybe she wasn’t. He didn’t used to sleep but he slept in their bed. Snored so loud. Or he’d sleep in his chair. Or hammock. Or just on the grass out front under his orange tree. The nightmares that haunted him held at bay. Who transplants an orange tree from Japan? Who whisks me away with their wife?
I didn’t give him much choice. He said he was leaving and I already had a bag packed. I was going too. Even that just made sense. It’s a whirlwind of happenstance and bullshit with that boy but it just makes sense. It’s endearing. It’s sweet in a Boolzian way. I said I’m coming too and he said “pack warm”. It was such a level of acceptance. So free. So strong. I think that’s so confusing.
How could he push me away so hard? Like a piece of trash. Day old bread or expired milk. After letting me tag along on his honeymoon? Then when he needs me the most, when I need him the most, he pushes away. Pulls back and flips out. How could he attempt to punish Marshall through me so ruthlessly after being so supportive of who I was for his crimes of not losing his title? But then stand up, threaten his friendship with that bag of dicks Remi when BoD Remi was ready to send me away forever. Or try to make me quit so hard but not be willing to fire me? Why am I asking you unnamed reader, for whom it may concern, rhetorical questions when knowing full well you probably don’t even know us.
Truth is even that. Asking you about us makes sense. Why wouldn’t that work in a Boolzian sense? Why am I trying to apply Boolzian logic now? But here’s one for you. If he thinks he’s so cursed or damned or broken or poisonous or whatever warped view of reality he has why wouldn’t he push me away before Maddy died? He was willing to let me suffer before, but not now? Why didn’t he push Maddy away? He married her. While looking at me, but he married her. Pledged his life to her. Put away his skeletons and healed, honestly healed, with her at his side… or maybe with me away from all this. Maddy helped him put away Ashton’s death. I helped him accept what he did to her. Now he’s fully aware that it’s my turn.
And it makes sense in a BoolZ world. He doesn’t want to see me hurt, he told me months ago, a week after Outlast that his friends don’t last. I tried to be there and he fought. He lied. He avoided. He did everything he could to distance himself from me. Then I did what he couldn’t. I split us apart. I fractured, fully, what was. And we were alone. Until a stupid stipulation, and yes the creative department that I led was consulted, forced us back together. It made sense that that’s how it would happen. Play the hand you’re dealt he used to say. I didn’t think he’d play so rough. So he’s spent these last weeks trying to make me hate him. Trying to make me walk away because he knows he can’t just get rid of me. And it makes sense when you figure he’s who he is. He loves me…
But that really only answers why he couldn’t bring himself to fire me, and it doesn’t begin to answer why I’ve put up with all of his bullshit so far. Why I haven’t quit. Why am I sitting alone in the freezing air on the top of our hotel scribbling in a notepad. Why I’m so fearful for what tomorrow is going to bring. His whirlwind of happenstance and bullshit.Why I
(Grace swings her feet back over the edge and plants them securely on the graveled roof. She rips out the last few pages she’s written, throws them over the edge to flutter, float, and ultimately fall to the street below. Then she reenters the stairwell and walks away.)
(Horizons is in full swing. The crowd is hot. The atmosphere is electric. The energy palpable. That’s in the arena. Inside Grace Hardings’ rare luxury of a private dressing room the air is calm. Still. Tense. She tucks her stripped shirt in.)
Very professional.
(Then untucks it and ties it up behind her.)
I should wait. The Asshole might have his own uniform for me.
(She unties it, and rolls it up to her underboob.)
Probably body paint.
(Finally she unrolls it and lets if fall untucked. The tension in the room grows as the Red Bull Icon enters.)
No painter. No wardrobe. Naked?
BoolZ; “I got your instructions for tonight.”
Cheat, or lie, or cheat and lie, kick the crotch, or gauge the eyes?
BoolZ; “You’re job is to count the fall or acknowledge the submission. Let us fight, lets us go, but keep it down the middle and then raise the hand of the winner. And questions?”
That’s it? Damn Boolzian logic.
(She stands there silent. Looking down at the floor. Fiddling with the trim of her shirt.)
BoolZ; “I’ll take that as a no. And I’ll remind you that if you fuck this up you’re fired.”
(She looks away. Again BoolZ, like he’s done so often, goes to leave her all alone.)
Grace; “You were right, Randy.”
(He stops in the doorway.)
BoolZ; “She can talk?”
Grace; “You did kill Maddy.”
BoolZ; “I liked you better as a mute.”
(Looking through her sad eyes she sees him. For maybe the first time she sees Randy ‘BoolZ’ Boolzian. All of him. The lines on his face. The bags under his eyes. The chipped tooth. His constant shallow exhausted breathing. His pain. His guilt. Every last bit of him, every last nuance of the man behind the Icon, the shame that’s been hidden so well.)
Grace; “You didn’t do it by wrestling at Outlast. By leaving her for one more match. You did it the first time you left. The first time you took away everything she hadn’t lost in this world when you killed Ashton. When you left her alone in the cold harsh dark of night. When you weren’t there when she needed you the most. When you were too much of a coward to face what you had done. You set her on a path, all those years ago, that only had one destination. It couldn’t end any other way than in pain and suffering and blood and wreckage and twisted horrible death. It ended, you killed her, it ended exactly the only way it could have. The years that it took? Those were just some cruel cosmic joke at her expense. It ended exactly the way it should given what you had done to her.”
(There is a silence in this world. It’s not the lack of sound or blocking out the screams or the inability to hear. It’s the moment when truly nothing is left to be said. It’s hell.)
BoolZ; “Well. I would thank you for your opinion, but I have to go cripple your cousin now.”
(BoolZ turns, his knees shake, a hitch in his step, he crosses into the hallway.)
Grace; “And you’re doing the same thing to me now.”
(He can’t face her. He doesn’t see her tears.)
BoolZ; “No your cousin is…”
(He can’t believe himself anymore. He needs the doorway to hold himself up. He turns around.)
Randy; “… I know.”
(She’s stepped forward. After him until he turned. They embrace. They kiss. They rest their heads on each other’s shoulders.)
Grace; “I’m going to complete my assignment, and then I’m going to tender my resignation. Don’t leave me in the cold. Keep me warm.”
Randy; “We’ll keep each other warm.”
(And for the first time in a long time we don’t end with them apart.)
Remi; “…An’ den I done did wha’ no one done did in oh so long’a time… “
Fool.
(It’s BoolZ that this bit is about. Sitting in a director’s chair, his head propped up on his right hand, a cigarette in his left, and the sudden alertness overwhelming his senses. He startles back to life. A micro nap, one of many that sees the Red Bull Icon through his day, ends just as his nightmares become too real.)
He looks so tired. So much worse than before. Compared to Mexico he looked like hell in the GIW. He’s so much worse now.
Remi; “… See now I do, I oh so truly do, hope an’ pray dat all dem peoples out dare don’ be t’inkin’ dat Ol’Remi be givin’ more dan two shiz ‘bout dat Cross ‘Emy-phere title bell…”
(RBI looks over at his employer. His slave. It’s an impatient look of annoyance.)
“I’m feeling green today.” Asshole.
(Grace plunges her hand into a 60 gallon trash can filled with water and ice. Down to her elbow. Past. Down to her shoulder. Past. Her right nipple submerges, her face grimaces, and then she pulls up and out of the water. In her hand is a Red Bull. On the bottom of the can is a red dot.)
Eighth time is the charm.
(Back into the frigid water. Pulls out a Sugar-Free Red Bull.)
*Sigh* There’s probably not even a green dot in here.
Remi; “… Oh but dat bell it care ‘bout dis ‘ear Creole Curse I tell you dat much fo fact. It nee’ me. ‘Cause wit’ou me it nothin’. It a aft’ah taught. Wit’ou dis ‘ear Swamplan’ Sup’a’man wha’ kinda match-up coul’ all you folks be in store fo’, uh? ‘Ohh dat big boy Zane gone face? Mista’ Fe’ear? ‘Ohh gone care ‘bout dat bon rien wit’ou me?...”
(She can feel his glare. His disappointment. Her failings. She looks up at BoolZ. Shivering she looks back down, a blue dotted can in her hand, and kicks over the trash can spilling its contents.)
Bet I can find it now.
Remi; “… An dat really be da poin’ don’ ya see? Don’ you all real’a’lize dat Remedy Mon-Roe, ‘e done grow pass dis ol’lil bell. At a whim Remi make champy-ons an’ insta’tutions buckle unda my weight…”
(BoolZ hops out of his chair, walks over to the mess, stands beside Grace who is now on her hands and knees checking a hundred cans of Red Bull. He bends over, snatches up 8.3 ounces of sweet ambrosia, and starts off.)
BoolZ; “About time. Too bad you didn’t quit when you could, huh?”
Asshole.
Remi; “Remi Mon-Roe. All t’ing ta all people. Da New Talk a da Town. Don’ not one soul wanna watch a Cross-Emy’phere match-up. Don’ no one wanna see Fe’ear or Zane win. But ev’ry lass one a y’all gone tune in ta see if eith’ah a dem can beat me…”
~*~*~
I don’t know why I didn’t quit. He’s done nothing but push me away. Both now. Marshall and Randy. I have nothing left. I’m so lonely. It’s so cold on this roof. Horizons is tomorrow. I know what they both want me to do. What they both expect me to do. I don’t think I can make either of them happy. It’s so cold. I should have just quit. He was right. It would have been so much easier to just quit. Even if that old pirate wouldn’t let me in the UGWC whatever this world had for me it had to have been better than this. Alone on a sky scraper hotel roof in the middle of the night. I should have just quit. Why didn’t I just quit. I don’t know why I couldn’t just quit.
That’s a lie. I couldn’t quit. It makes too much sense in a strictly Boolzian way. Made. Made to much sense. Looking back I think I always knew. Or knew since coming back. It was the picture that really cemented it. In a shoe box in Randy’s truck is a picture. It’s from his wedding day. I was the maid of honor. The Crimson Ghost was the best man. The photographer got a shot, he must have hid it before Maddy and I put together the album. In this picture. It’s in a shoe box deep in the truck. The picture is under some shot gun shells, a pair of women’s underwear, a syringe, and a deflated neck pillow I bought for him the first day we really met. That was some flight.
That’s a lie too. I think I used the quips and snide remarks as a way to deflect. Not face who I was. What a worthless woman I had made myself. Nothing but second fiddle, I was a tag a long, I was Gummo Marx. Nobody remembers Gummo. Someone might. I don’t know. I couldn’t go back. I don’t want to. He wouldn’t take me. I’m damaged. Tainted now.
In this picture. I’m the maid of honor. Ghost is the best man. We and the bride Maddy we’re all looking at the priest. Randy’s looking at me though. And I know it had to be just the perfect time. A fluke maybe. Maybe I coughed. I was sick when they got married but there was just so much hope and confusion and love in his eyes. So much doubt. Timing is everything. There was so much love. Misplaced and unfounded and not meant for me. But it was so pure and the picture showed it so clearly and I didn’t ever see it. He didn’t ever let me see it.
Maddy saw it I think. They used to argue. A LOT. It was so perfect in a Boolzian sense. Long lost loves of their lives finally together finally conquering their demons hand in hand facing eternity and all they do is squabble. About me I think. She didn’t understand. Thought we were sleeping together. Thought even then she told me she thought she trapped him. I think she was probably right. I never told her that. Maybe she wasn’t. He didn’t used to sleep but he slept in their bed. Snored so loud. Or he’d sleep in his chair. Or hammock. Or just on the grass out front under his orange tree. The nightmares that haunted him held at bay. Who transplants an orange tree from Japan? Who whisks me away with their wife?
I didn’t give him much choice. He said he was leaving and I already had a bag packed. I was going too. Even that just made sense. It’s a whirlwind of happenstance and bullshit with that boy but it just makes sense. It’s endearing. It’s sweet in a Boolzian way. I said I’m coming too and he said “pack warm”. It was such a level of acceptance. So free. So strong. I think that’s so confusing.
How could he push me away so hard? Like a piece of trash. Day old bread or expired milk. After letting me tag along on his honeymoon? Then when he needs me the most, when I need him the most, he pushes away. Pulls back and flips out. How could he attempt to punish Marshall through me so ruthlessly after being so supportive of who I was for his crimes of not losing his title? But then stand up, threaten his friendship with that bag of dicks Remi when BoD Remi was ready to send me away forever. Or try to make me quit so hard but not be willing to fire me? Why am I asking you unnamed reader, for whom it may concern, rhetorical questions when knowing full well you probably don’t even know us.
Truth is even that. Asking you about us makes sense. Why wouldn’t that work in a Boolzian sense? Why am I trying to apply Boolzian logic now? But here’s one for you. If he thinks he’s so cursed or damned or broken or poisonous or whatever warped view of reality he has why wouldn’t he push me away before Maddy died? He was willing to let me suffer before, but not now? Why didn’t he push Maddy away? He married her. While looking at me, but he married her. Pledged his life to her. Put away his skeletons and healed, honestly healed, with her at his side… or maybe with me away from all this. Maddy helped him put away Ashton’s death. I helped him accept what he did to her. Now he’s fully aware that it’s my turn.
And it makes sense in a BoolZ world. He doesn’t want to see me hurt, he told me months ago, a week after Outlast that his friends don’t last. I tried to be there and he fought. He lied. He avoided. He did everything he could to distance himself from me. Then I did what he couldn’t. I split us apart. I fractured, fully, what was. And we were alone. Until a stupid stipulation, and yes the creative department that I led was consulted, forced us back together. It made sense that that’s how it would happen. Play the hand you’re dealt he used to say. I didn’t think he’d play so rough. So he’s spent these last weeks trying to make me hate him. Trying to make me walk away because he knows he can’t just get rid of me. And it makes sense when you figure he’s who he is. He loves me…
But that really only answers why he couldn’t bring himself to fire me, and it doesn’t begin to answer why I’ve put up with all of his bullshit so far. Why I haven’t quit. Why am I sitting alone in the freezing air on the top of our hotel scribbling in a notepad. Why I’m so fearful for what tomorrow is going to bring. His whirlwind of happenstance and bullshit.
(Grace swings her feet back over the edge and plants them securely on the graveled roof. She rips out the last few pages she’s written, throws them over the edge to flutter, float, and ultimately fall to the street below. Then she reenters the stairwell and walks away.)
~*~*~
(Horizons is in full swing. The crowd is hot. The atmosphere is electric. The energy palpable. That’s in the arena. Inside Grace Hardings’ rare luxury of a private dressing room the air is calm. Still. Tense. She tucks her stripped shirt in.)
Very professional.
(Then untucks it and ties it up behind her.)
I should wait. The Asshole might have his own uniform for me.
(She unties it, and rolls it up to her underboob.)
Probably body paint.
(Finally she unrolls it and lets if fall untucked. The tension in the room grows as the Red Bull Icon enters.)
No painter. No wardrobe. Naked?
BoolZ; “I got your instructions for tonight.”
Cheat, or lie, or cheat and lie, kick the crotch, or gauge the eyes?
BoolZ; “You’re job is to count the fall or acknowledge the submission. Let us fight, lets us go, but keep it down the middle and then raise the hand of the winner. And questions?”
That’s it? Damn Boolzian logic.
(She stands there silent. Looking down at the floor. Fiddling with the trim of her shirt.)
BoolZ; “I’ll take that as a no. And I’ll remind you that if you fuck this up you’re fired.”
(She looks away. Again BoolZ, like he’s done so often, goes to leave her all alone.)
Grace; “You were right, Randy.”
(He stops in the doorway.)
BoolZ; “She can talk?”
Grace; “You did kill Maddy.”
BoolZ; “I liked you better as a mute.”
(Looking through her sad eyes she sees him. For maybe the first time she sees Randy ‘BoolZ’ Boolzian. All of him. The lines on his face. The bags under his eyes. The chipped tooth. His constant shallow exhausted breathing. His pain. His guilt. Every last bit of him, every last nuance of the man behind the Icon, the shame that’s been hidden so well.)
Grace; “You didn’t do it by wrestling at Outlast. By leaving her for one more match. You did it the first time you left. The first time you took away everything she hadn’t lost in this world when you killed Ashton. When you left her alone in the cold harsh dark of night. When you weren’t there when she needed you the most. When you were too much of a coward to face what you had done. You set her on a path, all those years ago, that only had one destination. It couldn’t end any other way than in pain and suffering and blood and wreckage and twisted horrible death. It ended, you killed her, it ended exactly the only way it could have. The years that it took? Those were just some cruel cosmic joke at her expense. It ended exactly the way it should given what you had done to her.”
(There is a silence in this world. It’s not the lack of sound or blocking out the screams or the inability to hear. It’s the moment when truly nothing is left to be said. It’s hell.)
BoolZ; “Well. I would thank you for your opinion, but I have to go cripple your cousin now.”
(BoolZ turns, his knees shake, a hitch in his step, he crosses into the hallway.)
Grace; “And you’re doing the same thing to me now.”
(He can’t face her. He doesn’t see her tears.)
BoolZ; “No your cousin is…”
(He can’t believe himself anymore. He needs the doorway to hold himself up. He turns around.)
Randy; “… I know.”
(She’s stepped forward. After him until he turned. They embrace. They kiss. They rest their heads on each other’s shoulders.)
Grace; “I’m going to complete my assignment, and then I’m going to tender my resignation. Don’t leave me in the cold. Keep me warm.”
Randy; “We’ll keep each other warm.”
(And for the first time in a long time we don’t end with them apart.)
2013, '18, '23 
2013 