Post by chaos lite on May 5, 2013 0:59:20 GMT -4
not bitter or mad
...just provin i'm bad
...just provin i'm bad
unspecified.unspecified
”That was cute.
I’ve labeled you as a lot of things, TJ... a hard worker, a champion, a friend, at a point... but I never took you for the pretentious type.
I mean- a lot of what you said really, really made me look back at the past nine months in APW and it made me realize how much of that was right. When you and I were, in our adorable little what-the-hell-are-they? phase, I felt like APW was my home... I felt that I was a part of this exclusive group of wrestlers that would look out for one another, and count on one another, and support each other, and...
Well, as we all know, that’s not what ended up happening.
The list of people I could rely on grew dramatically smaller and your name was nowhere to be found on it. You aren’t the reason that I got fed up with the way things are ran around here, and you aren’t the sole person that helped me realize how fake everybody in these APW halls really are... you’re just one of them. And what I felt, or what you felt in the past doesn’t really make any difference now.
What matters now is knocking you out, by any means necessary.
What that means is.... as far as I’m concerned, there are no rules and there are no apologies for what happens in Sao Paulo on Sunday. When the bell rings, I’m not looking across the ring and seeing somebody that I respect... I’m looking across the ring at you, and seeing somebody that doesn’t give two shits about me, so in turn, I’ll fight you like I don’t give one shit about you.
Or your wellbeing.
Or your career.
Or your legacy.
And I don’t use the term “legacy” lightly, baby. You’ve started something with that Tap-Out Championship, and you’ve completely changed the way an entire fanbase has looked at it and how an entire division has competed for it. People even call it the “Knock-Out” Championship! You changed the rules... and I’m going to play by your rules. And win.
I like the idea of your Tap-Out Title, so whenever that opportunity arises, remember that I’ve got my eye on it, and I’ll go through whatever pain and punishment you dish out in order to knock you out cold- but are you really willing to do the same? When I get back up and keep fighting, how far are you gonna go, TJ?
I know you’ve thought about it, I know you’ve already made your decision.
You’re a monster.
...but baby, you’re a monster worth slaying. If Terry Marvin hasn’t done it already, by breaking your spirit, then I want to do it by breaking your body. Because I know that you’ve thought about breaking mine.
I’ve sat up at night and I’ve- I’ve felt that you- ...I see you just-
…
If it came down to win or lose, I know your pride wouldn’t let you stop. After all, it’s all about the business. It’s all about making a statement and... if it came down to win or lose, and that one tally in the record books was decided on how cruel I could be to a man I called my friend, how far I could go then, there’s nothing in the world that would stop me. And you would never see any of it coming.
You said I suffered because of you?
Baby, no. I never suffered. Aubrey J. Parker has never suffered because of a man.
You said you’ll be looking for the old Aubrey, and I don’t think there’s much of a difference between Aubrey J. Parker 2012 and Aubrey J. Parker today, so whatever it IS that you’re looking for is lost on me. I’m still here. I’m still me, except I’m no longer sitting back while the people that I thought I could RESPECT and TRUST step all over me, and while the world is passing me by. Instead, I’m taking every opportunity that comes my way, and all the people that I watched turn into monsters are going to be dealt with.
You’re the pretentious type, TJ, so I know you’ll get an odd sense of satisfaction in your defeat. Maybe you’ll look at it as some sort of great sacrifice and you’ll tell people months, or years from now, that it was the night that you discovered that the naive twenty-four year old girl that skipped in through the doors of APW in August was dead and gone...
...or...
Maybe you’ll annihilate me out there and you’ll tell the world months... or... years from now that it was the night that you looked across the ring, and you saw the cold, calculated, uncaring eyes of a woman that had nothing to lose, and thought maybe she had the world to gain by destroying the man in front of her. You saw a monster, so you killed it.
Regardless, at the end, we’ll have wrestled or fought and we’ll have told the world a story about two people that tried so hard to be friends, but whether it was their egos, bad timing, or simply the poor treatment from a certain 6’11”, 275-pound friend, everybody will be able to take something from this.
The audience will get the match of a lifetime.
You’ll be able to walk away with your Tap Out Championship and a humbling look into your future on Sunday Night Asylum.
And I’ll walk away knowing that I slayed one of my monsters.
I’ll see you on Asylum, baby boy... and I will knock you out. Cold.”
may.4.thirteen12:21pm
My name is Cassandra McPherson.
But for the life of me, I’m trying to imagine that I’m the quiet young lady that’s lying in front of me on the soft grass beyond the forest-like woods of Sao Paulo, Brazil with her sunglasses on, dressed in Daisy-Duke-inspired denim and a bikini top.
Then there was that black box. It was leathery, and old-looking, and weird and I hated it. I got this bad feeling every time I came too close to it, and she never let it out of her sight. I didn’t know what the hell was living inside that thing but I didn’t really feel that I wanted to, either. It was just another one of her antics. I’d seen enough out of Aubrey over the past couple of weeks that could keep me... um... “entertained” for a lifetime.
Her outbursts weren’t just uncharacteristic. They were abnormal.
And then there were moments like now where she seemed so relaxed, and so serene, but those moments were few and far between so I-
”Did you know that Sao Paulo’s the biggest city in the Americas?”
”Nope.”
”Tenth biggest in the world.”
”I didn’t know that.”
”About twenty million people live in this city, Cass.”
”I thought you were taking a nap.”
”I was...”
She sat up and I could see her smirking at me, her eyebrows perking up behind those slightly oversized, pink-framed sunglasses that I found absolutely obnoxious.
”But then I felt you staring at me.”
I reached into my bag and rooted through it for my sunglasses, forced to squint as the bright sun tore through what was left of the morning’s clouds.
”How many people do you think are going to be there?”
I pushed the glasses onto my face and gave my friend a small shrug of the shoulders, finding it hard to abruptly produce this enthusiasm as she just had.
”Well... I looked up the Anhembi Convention Center and their arena holds up to 35,000. The entire center itself can hold over 50,000 so there could be a lot of-”
”A lot of people watching me knock TJ unconscious.”
I had been waiting since Thursday to hear something about that. And there- there it was.
”I’ve been meaning to ask you about that...”
”Yeah?”
She reached into my bag and, apparently with more knowledge of where things were located in it than I’d ever be, retrieved my sunblock in about 0.3 seconds.
”You don’t really hate Teej, do you?”
She began to apply the sunscreen on her arms and she looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking behind her glasses.
”Well, what difference does it make?”
”I don’t know... I guess it doesn’t. I just thought he was always one of the nice ones. I figured he was one of the few people on Asylum that you’d be able to depend on.”
I still did.
”And I don’t think a match is any good reason to throw that all away. Why give it up?”
”There isn’t anything to give up, Cass. TJ decided a long time ago that I wasn’t worth the effort of friendship, and I’m okay with that because this is wrestling... friends are a luxury in this business, not a necessity.”
”Well, you had the luxury of his friendship, and you could still have that if-”
”Did we say we were going to visit the Sao Paulo Cathedral?”
”...what? I- I don’t know?”
”I think we should check it out today.”
”Haha okay. What inspired this? Feel the need to repent?”
For a while there I thought going into any type of religious monument would cause her skin to burn or something.
”It’s not like we’re going to have a million chances to come here, and you’re ditching me for Peter or whatever his name is tonight... so let’s just go out and sightsee.”
I looked around us. We were a few feet from a small section of the beach, which name I couldn’t remember for the life of me. We had been hiking all day, just to look for a spot to catch fish and throw them back, and tan, and I was getting the sneaking suspicion that I was a lot more tired out from the escapades than Aubrey was.
”Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all morning?”
”No, we’ve been bums!”
”I think we got a lot accomplished... we walked like, ten miles away from our hotel. My legs are sore. Why do you hate me?”
Aubrey laughed and pushed herself up to her knees to brush sand and grass off of her skin.
”We don’t have to walk all the way back.”
”How likely am I to be able to talk you out of this?”
”Hmmmmm, not very likely.”
”Figured.”
I went to stand up- but I lost my balance.
I slipped, and my foot stretched out from under me. I felt my heel strike the base of the box that Aubrey had become so attached to, but at that moment, I thought nothing of the repercussions. I remember feeling how hot it was against my flesh, and my only concern was getting away from it. I scooted away and looked at the bottom of my foot, expecting to see charred flesh, or broken skin... but there was nothing.
”Fucking Hell, Cass! Watch it!”
I should’ve expected the reaction. She swept the box up off of the ground and held it to herself, looking at me like I was some stranger that had just tried to swipe her baby.
I stayed on the ground, looking up at her, and looking at that box, and wondering if she realized what people like TJ were talking about when they told her she changed. I wondered if she realized how different she was sometimes. I wondered if it was an act...
may.4.thirteen2:37pm
”It’s beautiful.”
It was.
We were looking at over ninety years of work, in the form of the white-painted Sao Paulo Cathedral. The towers seemed to rocket into the sky as we moved patiently through Cathedral Square. It seemed like we were just moving sluggishly through time... Aubrey looked enthralled at the sight of the Cathedral, and I remember looking down at her hands and seeing this white-knuckled, red-fingered grip she had on that black box. Her hand was shaking... but I didn’t dare say anything. Not after what happened about two hours earlier.
We stopped at the steps of the Cathedral. That’s when my heart started pounding. My palms immediately started sweating.
Why did she stop? Why can’t we go in?
”In Brazil, Maximilian Emil Hehl is widely respected... revered. He was a famous architect and he designed this Cathedral. He thought of this, and... and it took nearly a century to perfect it, but his genius materialized, but he died before he ever got to see it. In 1916, he died and he never got to see its conclusion. He never witnessed his own greatness.”
My heart was still beating. Damn it.
”But look at what he built.”
I looked up at it again. I guess, in the moment, I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the Cathedral for what it was. If I were to describe it to you right now, I wouldn’t do it justice. My gaze was on a gorgeous work of architecture, but my mind was on Aubrey.
”Can we go in?”
”And I don’t want to end up like that. Get what I mean? Dead before I ever get to see what I accomplished... before I get to see if I ended up making a difference, or being recognized for everything I fucking do.”
”Let’s go inside-”
”I want people to remember me and I want to be alive to see it... I mean, it’s not evil to want to start with TJ, is it?”
My eyes dropped down to the box in her hand... and she caught my glance. She shifted the box a little bit and gave me a curious look- an invasive one, at that.
”What were you saying?”
I took another look up at the towers of the Sao Paulo Cathedral and turned to Aubrey, speaking a little quieter than I had before. All I remember, was the coldest and hollowest feeling I could ever recall...
”Let’s go in.”
She smiled at me for a while and then shifted slightly, to lower the box into her handbag.
”Okay.”
And she walked ahead of me, into the doors of the Cathedral, simple as that. And that’s when I caught myself laughing at the steps... I got some funny looks, but I didn’t care. I felt like an idiot, but I was able to see how hilarious it was.
For a moment, I literally thought my friend was walking around attached to some sort of evil or darkness. For a moment, I questioned her ability to walk inside of a church. I scolded myself and I moved on, still chuckling as I pushed open the doors of the Cathedral, stepping inside behind her.
...but no matter how much I laughed, or what I told myself... that feeling never went away.
unspecified.unspecified
"I want to hurt you."
fin.
