January 21, 2018
JC heard the cracking before Crucifix even dropped him on his head. He supposed he was lucky in that way, because had the roof given in on the moment of impact it probably would have killed him. As it was, it split open fractions of a second after he landed, while his body was inert and he didn't have to worry about landing on his head from twenty feet.
The fact that he could remember all of this even now suggested he didn't have a concussion, which he was also thankful for. It was miraculous, really. Of course that didn't much matter, as he was completely exhausted and well aware that his face was caked in congealing blood. His last action before his body gave out on him was kicking someone in the face. He thought it might have been Crucifix. It could have been Trent for all he knew. He was absolutely spent.
Then there was Sebastian Steel showing up and blasting Trent with a fireball. That he remembered too. He tried to give chase but was too winded to pursue a tricycle, let alone an actual motor vehicle. Paragon had decided to depart in light of the attack. As the Carnage Wrestling cameras shut off, he was left completely sapped of energy and his partner was frantically wiping at his eyes to remove fire that was no longer there.
Of course that was then. Now they were both inside JC's hotel room. Trent was sprawled on the bed, pouring water from a bottle into his eyes. JC was sitting in a chair while his wife continued to take the hotel towels and wipe away the blood that was caked in his hair. He had several smaller cuts on his face but a medium-sized gash on the top of his head that he was sure would need stitches. Stacy had a particularly angry look on her face.
"You know, I'm 37 years old. I shouldn't be cleaning blood off my husband's face in a Las Vegas hotel room."
"I'm sorry. This was closer than a hospital and the natives are getting restless."
"You'd think he fuckin' paid them off or something."
Trent chimed in from where he was seated, now sitting up and blinking with his vision restored. To say they experienced some hostility as they tried to move through the teeming masses in Las Vegas was an understatement. It seemed Jack Michaels in particular really was beloved in this city, and the people had felt he was screwed over. After all, he wasn't involved in the decision. Joe understood that inherently, but it seemed a few fans had let their passion (and a healthy dose of alcohol) take over. The Rogues had to be very careful getting back to the hotel.
"Trust me Stacy. Falling through a roof..,"
"YOU FELL THROUGH A ROOF!?!"
An awkward hush fell over the entire room, and JC just groaned internally realizing he left that detail out. Stacy hadn't watched the match, specifically because a street fight and because she had the baby with her, taking in some stage show elsewhere. Trent broke up the quiet with his perfect sense of timing.
"Damn, Joe. You should have told her."
Stacy turned around and glared at Trent for a moment, and he was suddenly silenced. Joe wondered if it was fear or if he wanted to watch JC get browbeaten by his wife. He guessed it was a little of both. She turned back to face him.
"Yes. You should have told me that you fucking collapsed a roof. Why would you even go up there?"
"It's not like I planned it!"
"Yeah Stace, we don't really plan anything in our fights."
She grumbled a bit and dabbed at Joe's wound again, pressing firmly and causing him to wince.
"Well this definitely needs stitches, so you've got take a cab to the hospital."
"Fine. Trent, you coming?"
"Fuck that. Old man Jack probably paid the cab driver off. I'll see you back in Baltimore."
With his eyes flushed out, Trent grabs his tag team title belt and leaves, giving Stacy a friendly wave goodbye as he does. JC chuckles a bit to himself and a fresh drizzle of blood comes down his face. His wife wipes it away, equal parts concerned and frustrated.
"What the hell is so funny?"
"Trent's going to look for his nephew. He doesn't give a damn about disgruntled Paragon fans."
"Should we?"
"They're people, not animals. We're just a couple with a baby going to the hospital.
He gently moves his wife's hand away, noticing that the blood has mostly congealed again in his open head wound. He grabs a random shirt from his bag and throws it on.
"Unless you'd rather stay here."
"No way. I'm going with you. Lizzie too. You're right. They're probably not animals."
Joe grinned back at his wife, although he was a little unsure. It got pretty bad after they were announced as the winners.
"Yeah, probably."
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February 2, 2018
But that was then, and this was now.
As it turned out the Uber driver never watched a day of wrestling in his life and he got JC and his family to the hospital and airport without incident. He didn't know what happened to Trent, but since he called him up not long after, it seems he wasn't in jail or dead. All that needless worry for nothing. Especially when other people had much more severe problems.
People like Lucy Wylde, who could be considered his best friend, or at least one of them. He went back and forth between her and Trent, and his relationship with Trent was still healing.
It was early in the morning, and he had driven to Baltimore in a rage. He had learned that Lucy's parents had abused her, and worse, were trying to ruin her present life by extorting her. She calmed him down the best she could, but she wasn't Stacy. She wasn't his medication. At best he let things boil over until he excused himself, then immediately began the drive after finding an address on Google.
Certain people in life have to be dealt with in certain ways. It's the nature of the beast. Reasonable men will listen. Unreasonable men require more difficult measures. Then there are the men who prey on the weak. Those men only understand violence, so only violent means can be used to teach them anything.
This was a belief that JC held strongly for his 41 years of life, and it was one that had him pacing on the sidewalk of a quiet residential neighborhood. It was a belief that persisted in spite of the very best efforts of one Lucy Wylde to talk him down. He was here and he was willing to do what no one else would, in order to right the wrongs that had befallen his friend.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this, one that would haunt him for many nights afterward, was that there was no inner voice directing him today. This was his own anger and his own sense of justice that had him ready to do this. If he could stop pacing long enough and force himself to the door, he would draw blood tonight.
JC tightly balled his hand up into a fist and felt his fingertips press firmly into his palm. He wearily moved his other hand through his hair, gently rubbing it over the four stitches required to close his head. And oh boy, friends and neighbors, was Stacy ever pleased about that. So much so that she went to stay with her sister, presumably out of anger. Her excuse was that she wanted to visit. Eventually she came back, but she hated Joe putting himself in that much danger three months in a row.
Was this simply another excuse, another outlet for his rage like Redemption was? Was he as sane as he pretended to be or simply better at hiding it? No one knew he was here and he never planned on telling anyone. He wasn't even sure how far he would go. He wanted the anger to go away, and the only way to do that was to hurt someone. That's how it had been since he first heard a voice in his head twenty or so years ago.
Instead, he heard a different voice today. It was his own, barely above a whisper but surprisingly loud in the moments before sunrise.
"Just do it. They deserve it. If anyone ever deserved it...she was a child. They both were."
Was it that? Or was it just that he needed to hurt someone?
He decided not to let his better nature talk him out of it. He stepped in front of the driveway and took a step forward. Then another. Then another. Then he heard a different voice.
"JOE!"
It was, like his own early, barely above a whisper. In fact, it was almost a hiss. At first he thought maybe his voice, his own dark passenger to steal a phrase, was back. But that voice never sounded feminine. Androgynous, if anything. A high pitch but decidedly his. This was someone else, and he couldn't place it.
So he looked to where it was coming from and saw a blur of platinum blonde speeding in his direction. It was Lucy and it looked like she was exhausted.
"Lucy? What are you doing here?"
She stopped just short of the driveway, and motioned for him to come to her. Later, he would think how eerily she seemed like a mother scolding a misbehaving child. Curious as to what she wanted, and not for a second thinking it was related to his own reasons, he decided to do so.
"I could ask you the same fucking question."
Another hiss. She was angry, perhaps even anxious, but she definitely didn't want to be heard. He finally stopped seeing red long enough to realize what this was about.
She came to stop him.
"Go home, Luce. The less you know, the better."
She scowled at him, perhaps angry that she was being dismissed like her input didn't matter. Like she didn't matter. And given Joe's tunnel vision about this particular thing, and his undying loyalty to those he cared about, it was probably both true and false.
"No Joe.. you go home. If Stacy found out what you're doing..."
"Stacy doesn't have to know. The only people that have to know are me, you, and that shitstain you call a father. I told you. There's only one thing people like that understand."
"Joe.. no. I said I was going to handle this so just go before he comes out and sees you here. Jesus Christ."
He glared at her for a moment. He was not in the right frame of mind. She knew this. She of all people knew what he was like. There was no way she could hope to talk him down, was there? He turned his back on her, and took a defiant step forward in the other direction. It would be real easy to just go in there and do what he came here to do. Beat the man senseless. Spill his blood. Threaten his life if he dared go near his friend again.
It would be so easy.
He stepped forward again, and began to stride. He wondered what the look on her face was, seeing him blatantly ignore her. Perhaps he would pay for it later. He took a few more steps and suddenly he felt smaller hands wrap around the crook of his elbow and yank him back to his starting position. Normally he didn't think someone of Lucy's size could do that, but she caught him off-guard. It was almost comical. He whipped his head around and glared at her. In the background, in the very house she just pulled him away from, a light went on upstairs. She dragged him out of eyesight and he pulled his arm away, enraged.
"Just what in the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"Keep your voice down!"
Now she was telling him how to speak? After he tried to help her? He was flooded with waves of new anger.
"Don't..."
He looked down at her, and noticed her eyes were tearing up.
"Joe...I don't want you to ruin your life for me. Think of your kid. Think of Stacy....I'm not worth it."
She began to silently cry and suddenly Joe's defenses shut down. His anger subsided, almost as quickly as it arrived. He would come to his senses later and realize how stupid he had been about the whole thing, but for now he simply saw that his friend needed something other than vengeance. Perhaps violence was the last thing she wanted to be a witness to right now. He saw sadness, anger and a glint of fear. He briefly wondered if he had provoked that fear, then shut the thought out, deeming it too horrible to dwell on.
"Please, Joe. Let's just go."
She was now fighting back sobs. He wrapped his massive arms around her, and pulled her in for a hug. She stiffened, perhaps from shock, then allowed herself to cry against his arm.
They stood like that for a while, as the sun began to rise over this sleepy little neighborhood, where an awful human being got to live blissfully unaware of how much danger he was in.
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Jack Michaels seems to think I'm a coward. Amber Ryan seems to think I'm a nostalgia act. Neither could be further from the truth. They're both whining, helpless little bitches who can't handle the fact they lost. Did the Rogues beat them? No. I'll be the first to admit that. We beat C.O.N., and oh boy did we beat them. The Rogues beat C.O.N. so bad the team has ceased to exist.
But no, we didn't beat Paragon. As it turned out, we didn't have to. Paragon beat themselves. Jack hopefully learned the definition of hubris that day. He had everything hand-delivered to him on a silver platter. He had the choice of location, he had the match stipulation and he had hundreds of fans practically begging their choice of God for Jack to win a title.
Here's a bit of friendly advice, Michaels. If you don't want the brawl to spill out to other areas, maybe don't book a street fight. If anything goes, we're not going to adhere to some imaginary boundary just to keep you from crying on social media after you lose.
You know what's hilarious, solely from an ironic standpoint? Paragon claims they want to save wrestling, and yet the match they wanted to do it in had very little wrestling...in a stipulation that they picked. Fucking hell, guys, at least when I was against hardcore wrestling I only competed in it when forced. If you really wanted to save wrestling, perhaps you would have done it in a wrestling ring. You still would have lost, but at least your integrity would be intact.
When I got back into the thick of things here in Carnage, I assumed that Jack Michaels was a like-minded individual. Here was this old, cagey veteran who simply wanted to leave the wrestling business a little better than it was when he broke in. Or so I thought. Because I've learned something in the time that I've been a two-time Carnage Wrestling tag team champion. Jack Michaels likes to pretend he's above the rest of us, but he's just as filthy. He's selfish, conniving and whines when he doesn't get his way.
No, you know what? He's worse. He's a bitter old man who can't stand the fact that the business has passed him by. So he lies about some higher purpose and gets together a group of boot-lickers to try and amass as much power and wealth as he can before he can't do it anymore. That's who "The Blast" is, ladies and gentlemen. He's basically every old veteran you young guys have ever met who tried to keep you from breaking that glass ceiling.
Speaking of Paragon toadies, how's that Michaels dick tasting these days, Amber? A little sour?
She's just as bad. Because she's blatantly riding his coattails now and assuming he's not going to knock her back down the mountain once he's tired of her. Miss Ryan gets dethroned as the Carnage World champion after making everyone think she's Queen of this place, then slinks to the tag division because she knows she can't cut it with the major players up top.
I was retiring Redemption at Ultimate Carnage 3. You were an afterthought elimination in a match where your "partner" took all the glory for the win.
Let it be known that I don't need these tag team titles to validate me. I know I'm the best at what I do and this is just another example in the many I've achieved over the years. This isn't some last gasp at glory, because I know that I could go and challenge Will Prydor any time I wanted, and we'd tear the fucking house down while the Paragon groupies picked up the spare change from the money the fans threw our way. He'd welcome it too, he's been wanting to face me one-on-one since 2016.
So let's not confuse who needs these titles to be relevant. I'm here because I want to be. You're here because it's your last chance to be relevant in a business that couldn't give two shits about you.
If you feel differently, come to Chaos 50 and catch my boot. I'll be waiting to retain the titles that I EARNED and DESERVE.
