The Friends Lost Along The Way (Part 1)
Dec 26, 2022 9:40:24 GMT -5
via mobile
Marcus Welsh likes this
Post by Matt on Dec 26, 2022 9:40:24 GMT -5
It’s time, OCW. I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for this to take place, and now Hardwired to Self-Destruct is here, and it’s going to happen.
A rich person’s New Year’s celebration is about to get ruined.
It’s an exciting time for sure, seeing a rich, bougie, obnoxious piece of trash get theirs. Especially at a time of year where so many are cold, hungry, and miserable.
How about we go ahead and make that happen to someone who deserves it?
At the very least, I can make Sahara Duke miserable. Unless her now absentee husband decides to drop her like he did OCW she’s going to get to go home to somewhere warm and have a roasted duck or some other such nonsense waiting for her.
But she’ll be going back empty-handed.
And somehow, I don’t think a warm fire to curl up in front of while eating caviar and drinking champagne is going to make up for having the championship she worked so very hard for ripped from her hands.
Not that I think Sahara is going to make it easy for me. She’s been known to pull that silver spoon from her mouth from time to time to whack people over the head with before she steps all over them.
No, not in *that* way, although I’m sure there’s plenty of people both in the audience and in the back who would pay good money for that kind of treatment from her.
That’s beside the point though, which is I expect her to throw everything she’s got at me. No one wants to have their year spoiled right at the absolute last possible moment. She won’t go down without a fight.
Too bad for her that I am an absolute master at raining on other people’s parades. She should ask Lurrr, or Scott Syren, or Dylan Thomas just how that can go.
Hell, she can ask her friends SEB and Sloane Taylor how trying to take my gold elsewhere went for them.
There’s a whole lot of people in this business who will tell you that misery is the only thing I leave in my wake.
Speaking of that, after my discussion with Dame Fortune and being given the new direction I was supposed to head, I had to make quite the effort to find the only person who could truly be considered my “rival”: Nikita.
She was in Sin Wrestling when I broke into the business in earnest, and was a constant thorn in my side as I tried to climb up the ladder in the business. At every turn, she stymied me. She was a rung up on me, and had no qualms about driving her boot downward into my face.
These days? These days she’s been a ghost. Hasn’t wrestled in years. Tried to put herself off of the grid as much as she could. Luckily for me, there’s no such thing as truly off the grid, and after a whole hell of a lot of phone calls I managed to track down where she was.
Which brought me to the last place I thought I’d be, standing outside of a fucking chicken farm in the middle of Bumfuck Canada.
You’d think the cold would help the stench, but no. The smell of chickenshit (I’ve spent enough time in the OCW locker room to be quite familiar with that particular scent) permeated everything as I pulled up to the front gate.
Once I arrived, I was greeted at the gate by one of the workers, and after explaining that I was there to see an old friend I got flagged in.
So far, so good.
The nauseating aroma continued to hit hard as I got led to the area where I would find my elusive target, a “processing” area that I had a coppery hint mingling into the atmosphere.
“Hey Kita, there’s someone here to see you.”
At the end of the large room Nikita looked up from the group of chickens that were gathered around her boots. Her hair was pulled back into a bun to keep it out of her face, which made it real easy to spot the death glare I received once she recognized me.
“Oh hell no. Stu, I quit.”
She tugged free the apron that was around her neck, storming towards us and tossing it at the now slack-jawed farmer who was standing next to me as she went past.
This was already going as well as I had expected.
I suppose some explanation is in order. You see, despite the clashes we had in the ring back in my younger days, we kept that energy between the ropes and didn’t carry it to the back. In Sin Wrestling, you kind of had to be “cool” with the people who you could be, as it was a den of vipers the likes of which you hope to never find elsewhere in this business.
We certainly weren’t friends, but there wasn’t much animosity. You know, other than the time I maced her. She probably deserved to be angry about that.
That changed back in 2016. I had fucked up my knee pretty bad after I finished up in GCWA, and it took several surgeries and a metric fuck ton of physical therapy to get it back to the point where I could really wrestle again. Despite knowing that it wasn’t ready, I attempted a comeback at a small regional company called Championship Wrestling in Texas.
Nikita was also there, and the owner saw dollar signs putting us back together again.
I was low. Perhaps my lowest. Sobriety and I weren’t seeing eye to eye at all, and as a result things got a little… intense both inside and outside of the ring.
It all came to a head my last night with the company. She and I had a brutal bout, and we were both left bloody and bruised. She had won, because she *always* won, and I didn’t even bother cleaning up before I left.
I had an old friend whispering in my ear, telling me I needed to put some distance between my ego and the last feather in Nikita’s cap. His voice got louder with each swig of booze to help numb the pain in my knee.
There was a county fair going on the same evening, and despite my hair being matted with blood no one bothered to tell me I couldn’t enjoy myself and needed to leave.
Hell, that probably kept them from doing exactly that.
That friend of mine kept telling me that I needed to just get some fresh air. Clear my thoughts with some carnival games and perhaps a silly ride or two. Maybe have some cotton candy and a hot dog.
Bloody brawls can make a person a little hangry, after all. I’m sure Sahara knows the feeling, she seems to live in a constant state of it.
Someone go get that lady a Snickers.
After wandering around the fair for either far too long or not long enough depending on the day I happen to think back upon it, I heard a voice call out from behind me.
“Shane.”
I turned to find myself face to face with Nikita. Unlike me, she had taken the time to clean up after the match, and as a result fit right in with the crowds of people who had been having an enjoyable evening.
Outside of the deadly serious look she was giving me, of course.
The hell does she want?
My friend’s words ran loudly in my ears (and no one else’s) as I took a sip of the beer I had in my hand. A sip turned into a gulp, which soon became downing the whole thing before I offered up my two cents.
“What? Haven’t ruined my evening enough? Need to crash my post-match centering as well?”
She folded her arms as she stepped in closer, the same expression unmoving on her face.
“You mean your pity party? I’m here because you’re drunk off of your ass and scaring the locals.”
My friend’s voice screamed in my head once more. She didn’t give a shit about the locals. She only cared about one thing: rubbing it in.
“Please, you’re here to lord your success over me. Congrats, you beat me again, Nikita. Maybe for your next trick you’ll actually do something new for a change.”
A scoff escaped her as the woman reached out and slapped the empty cup out of my hand. Or maybe I fumbled it. It’s a little hazy.
“Damnit Shane, I’m here because I’m worried about you. You need help.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a knife, lunging forward.
“Help? You mean help from someone like you? Newsflash Nikita, you’ve never been a pillar of stability yourself.”
Before she could offer any resistance I twisted the blade.
“Hell, you couldn’t even help Tony.”
At the time I thought nothing of the look of sheer betrayal on Nikita’s face as she stormed off in anger. My friend was celebrating how I had “shown that dumb bitch what for” and I was too busy clinging onto that to recognize the damage I had done invoking the name of one of our fallen comrades in the ring. The great love of Nikita’s life.
This is the misery I leave in my wake.
This is what Sahara needs to understand that she’s gotten herself into. I’m not like the others she’s gotten into the ring with. I’m not some overconfident goofball who’s going to pound his chest and talk about how a woman can’t stand up to him. I’m not some muscle-headed dipshit who isn’t going to look where he leaps and will fall flat on his face.
I’m the living embodiment of catastrophe.
She’s never faced anyone like me before, because there hasn’t been anyone like me in OCW. They’re all posers and pretenders, assholes who talk a big game and make fools of themselves to try to get under people’s skin because they peaked before prom and need that validation.
I’m the genuine article. I’m the guy everyone in this business with any sense tells you to stay away from because of the risk involved. I’m the wrecking ball who doesn’t give a damn about who or what gets hurt so long as I get what I want at the end of the day. I’m the guy who ruins everything around me simply because I can.
I haven’t left my mark on this business. I’ve left *scars*.
Those scars are why I’m in Canada. Both to punish OCW management for their hubris in calling me up and in the process make Sahara wish she had simply laid down for the Nickelman, and to try to make at least one thing right.
Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I went about that in a way that wasn’t at least a little wrong, would it?
Poor Stu, he felt slighted enough by Nikita quitting in a huff that he gave me her home address so I could go talk to her face to face once again, and do her the solid of letting her know that she shouldn’t be working for folks shady enough to do something like that.
Not that I get the sense that she had much choice out in the middle of nowhere, Canada, but still.
By the time I pulled up to Nikita’s place out in the woods night had taken hold, and let me tell you, there’s few things darker than an evening in the Canadian wilderness. I used the flashlight on my phone as I got out of my car, bundled up for the cold as best as I could.
This was probably a mistake.
I trudged through the snow to circle around the property, and as I did so a familiar voice chimes in her two cents.
“Don’t you think it would be wise to call out or something?”
Not now, Destiny.
“Yes, let’s advertise to the wildlife that—”
My retort was cut off by a guttural yelp of pain as I felt a boot get driven into my knee.
Leave it to Destiny to distract me from my surroundings.
The phone landed in a pile of snow off to the side as instinct took over, and I reached out and grabbed a chunk of wood before rolling onto my back and swinging for the fences. I heard a loud “thunk” as the wood connected with my attacker, which caused a momentarily sense of relief.
Until it occurred to me who that might have been.
“Fuck!”
I scrambled to get my phone, picking it up and shining it down at where Nikita now laid face-down in the snow.
Catastrophe.
A rich person’s New Year’s celebration is about to get ruined.
It’s an exciting time for sure, seeing a rich, bougie, obnoxious piece of trash get theirs. Especially at a time of year where so many are cold, hungry, and miserable.
How about we go ahead and make that happen to someone who deserves it?
At the very least, I can make Sahara Duke miserable. Unless her now absentee husband decides to drop her like he did OCW she’s going to get to go home to somewhere warm and have a roasted duck or some other such nonsense waiting for her.
But she’ll be going back empty-handed.
And somehow, I don’t think a warm fire to curl up in front of while eating caviar and drinking champagne is going to make up for having the championship she worked so very hard for ripped from her hands.
Not that I think Sahara is going to make it easy for me. She’s been known to pull that silver spoon from her mouth from time to time to whack people over the head with before she steps all over them.
No, not in *that* way, although I’m sure there’s plenty of people both in the audience and in the back who would pay good money for that kind of treatment from her.
That’s beside the point though, which is I expect her to throw everything she’s got at me. No one wants to have their year spoiled right at the absolute last possible moment. She won’t go down without a fight.
Too bad for her that I am an absolute master at raining on other people’s parades. She should ask Lurrr, or Scott Syren, or Dylan Thomas just how that can go.
Hell, she can ask her friends SEB and Sloane Taylor how trying to take my gold elsewhere went for them.
There’s a whole lot of people in this business who will tell you that misery is the only thing I leave in my wake.
Speaking of that, after my discussion with Dame Fortune and being given the new direction I was supposed to head, I had to make quite the effort to find the only person who could truly be considered my “rival”: Nikita.
She was in Sin Wrestling when I broke into the business in earnest, and was a constant thorn in my side as I tried to climb up the ladder in the business. At every turn, she stymied me. She was a rung up on me, and had no qualms about driving her boot downward into my face.
These days? These days she’s been a ghost. Hasn’t wrestled in years. Tried to put herself off of the grid as much as she could. Luckily for me, there’s no such thing as truly off the grid, and after a whole hell of a lot of phone calls I managed to track down where she was.
Which brought me to the last place I thought I’d be, standing outside of a fucking chicken farm in the middle of Bumfuck Canada.
You’d think the cold would help the stench, but no. The smell of chickenshit (I’ve spent enough time in the OCW locker room to be quite familiar with that particular scent) permeated everything as I pulled up to the front gate.
Once I arrived, I was greeted at the gate by one of the workers, and after explaining that I was there to see an old friend I got flagged in.
So far, so good.
The nauseating aroma continued to hit hard as I got led to the area where I would find my elusive target, a “processing” area that I had a coppery hint mingling into the atmosphere.
“Hey Kita, there’s someone here to see you.”
At the end of the large room Nikita looked up from the group of chickens that were gathered around her boots. Her hair was pulled back into a bun to keep it out of her face, which made it real easy to spot the death glare I received once she recognized me.
“Oh hell no. Stu, I quit.”
She tugged free the apron that was around her neck, storming towards us and tossing it at the now slack-jawed farmer who was standing next to me as she went past.
This was already going as well as I had expected.
I suppose some explanation is in order. You see, despite the clashes we had in the ring back in my younger days, we kept that energy between the ropes and didn’t carry it to the back. In Sin Wrestling, you kind of had to be “cool” with the people who you could be, as it was a den of vipers the likes of which you hope to never find elsewhere in this business.
We certainly weren’t friends, but there wasn’t much animosity. You know, other than the time I maced her. She probably deserved to be angry about that.
That changed back in 2016. I had fucked up my knee pretty bad after I finished up in GCWA, and it took several surgeries and a metric fuck ton of physical therapy to get it back to the point where I could really wrestle again. Despite knowing that it wasn’t ready, I attempted a comeback at a small regional company called Championship Wrestling in Texas.
Nikita was also there, and the owner saw dollar signs putting us back together again.
I was low. Perhaps my lowest. Sobriety and I weren’t seeing eye to eye at all, and as a result things got a little… intense both inside and outside of the ring.
It all came to a head my last night with the company. She and I had a brutal bout, and we were both left bloody and bruised. She had won, because she *always* won, and I didn’t even bother cleaning up before I left.
I had an old friend whispering in my ear, telling me I needed to put some distance between my ego and the last feather in Nikita’s cap. His voice got louder with each swig of booze to help numb the pain in my knee.
There was a county fair going on the same evening, and despite my hair being matted with blood no one bothered to tell me I couldn’t enjoy myself and needed to leave.
Hell, that probably kept them from doing exactly that.
That friend of mine kept telling me that I needed to just get some fresh air. Clear my thoughts with some carnival games and perhaps a silly ride or two. Maybe have some cotton candy and a hot dog.
Bloody brawls can make a person a little hangry, after all. I’m sure Sahara knows the feeling, she seems to live in a constant state of it.
Someone go get that lady a Snickers.
After wandering around the fair for either far too long or not long enough depending on the day I happen to think back upon it, I heard a voice call out from behind me.
“Shane.”
I turned to find myself face to face with Nikita. Unlike me, she had taken the time to clean up after the match, and as a result fit right in with the crowds of people who had been having an enjoyable evening.
Outside of the deadly serious look she was giving me, of course.
The hell does she want?
My friend’s words ran loudly in my ears (and no one else’s) as I took a sip of the beer I had in my hand. A sip turned into a gulp, which soon became downing the whole thing before I offered up my two cents.
“What? Haven’t ruined my evening enough? Need to crash my post-match centering as well?”
She folded her arms as she stepped in closer, the same expression unmoving on her face.
“You mean your pity party? I’m here because you’re drunk off of your ass and scaring the locals.”
My friend’s voice screamed in my head once more. She didn’t give a shit about the locals. She only cared about one thing: rubbing it in.
“Please, you’re here to lord your success over me. Congrats, you beat me again, Nikita. Maybe for your next trick you’ll actually do something new for a change.”
A scoff escaped her as the woman reached out and slapped the empty cup out of my hand. Or maybe I fumbled it. It’s a little hazy.
“Damnit Shane, I’m here because I’m worried about you. You need help.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a knife, lunging forward.
“Help? You mean help from someone like you? Newsflash Nikita, you’ve never been a pillar of stability yourself.”
Before she could offer any resistance I twisted the blade.
“Hell, you couldn’t even help Tony.”
At the time I thought nothing of the look of sheer betrayal on Nikita’s face as she stormed off in anger. My friend was celebrating how I had “shown that dumb bitch what for” and I was too busy clinging onto that to recognize the damage I had done invoking the name of one of our fallen comrades in the ring. The great love of Nikita’s life.
This is the misery I leave in my wake.
This is what Sahara needs to understand that she’s gotten herself into. I’m not like the others she’s gotten into the ring with. I’m not some overconfident goofball who’s going to pound his chest and talk about how a woman can’t stand up to him. I’m not some muscle-headed dipshit who isn’t going to look where he leaps and will fall flat on his face.
I’m the living embodiment of catastrophe.
She’s never faced anyone like me before, because there hasn’t been anyone like me in OCW. They’re all posers and pretenders, assholes who talk a big game and make fools of themselves to try to get under people’s skin because they peaked before prom and need that validation.
I’m the genuine article. I’m the guy everyone in this business with any sense tells you to stay away from because of the risk involved. I’m the wrecking ball who doesn’t give a damn about who or what gets hurt so long as I get what I want at the end of the day. I’m the guy who ruins everything around me simply because I can.
I haven’t left my mark on this business. I’ve left *scars*.
Those scars are why I’m in Canada. Both to punish OCW management for their hubris in calling me up and in the process make Sahara wish she had simply laid down for the Nickelman, and to try to make at least one thing right.
Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I went about that in a way that wasn’t at least a little wrong, would it?
Poor Stu, he felt slighted enough by Nikita quitting in a huff that he gave me her home address so I could go talk to her face to face once again, and do her the solid of letting her know that she shouldn’t be working for folks shady enough to do something like that.
Not that I get the sense that she had much choice out in the middle of nowhere, Canada, but still.
By the time I pulled up to Nikita’s place out in the woods night had taken hold, and let me tell you, there’s few things darker than an evening in the Canadian wilderness. I used the flashlight on my phone as I got out of my car, bundled up for the cold as best as I could.
This was probably a mistake.
I trudged through the snow to circle around the property, and as I did so a familiar voice chimes in her two cents.
“Don’t you think it would be wise to call out or something?”
Not now, Destiny.
“Yes, let’s advertise to the wildlife that—”
My retort was cut off by a guttural yelp of pain as I felt a boot get driven into my knee.
Leave it to Destiny to distract me from my surroundings.
The phone landed in a pile of snow off to the side as instinct took over, and I reached out and grabbed a chunk of wood before rolling onto my back and swinging for the fences. I heard a loud “thunk” as the wood connected with my attacker, which caused a momentarily sense of relief.
Until it occurred to me who that might have been.
“Fuck!”
I scrambled to get my phone, picking it up and shining it down at where Nikita now laid face-down in the snow.
Catastrophe.