Haunting I: Matthew, the Failure.
Sept 18, 2021 10:03:51 GMT -5
Marcus Welsh, petervaughn, and 2 more like this
Post by mattknox on Sept 18, 2021 10:03:51 GMT -5
Drip..
Drip…
DriP…
The old faucet dripped into the small puddle in the ancient basin of the sink. It’s porcelain chipped and stained, the tile floor beneath it just as chipped, broken and dirty. The door hung from one hinge, equally dingy. In the room adjoining, sitting on a bare wooden floor was the svelte form of Matt Knox, seated with his knees brought to his chest. His eyes stare dead ahead into the darkness.
Drip..
DriP…
DRIP..
“You’re not good enough to win this..”
The voice echoed from the droplets of water. His face twitched, eyes snapping shut as he lets out a slow exhale. His hands curl into firsts. His head shakes once, trying to ignore it.
“How many hall of fames are you in, Matthew?”
He opened his eyes, suddenly faced with the one person he never wanted to be locked in a room alone with, reflecting on his career and the wreckage of a life he had built for himself. The glasz eyes stare into his own, if anyone else could see they would be hard pressed to tell which of the two was the dead one. The figment of the other’s imagination.
Matthew Knox, meet Matthew Knox.
The stare down lasted for seconds, hours, days, years, a millenia. It didn’t matter here. Time was relative. The sun hadn’t warmed his face in a lifetime, it felt like. The apparition paid him a smirk.
“That’s right, zero..” a chuckle “Of course, retiring to be a heroin junky burnin through daddy’s money and your own isn’t exactly on a lot of qualifying ballots, is it?”
He stood from his seated position then deftly, legs powering his whole six and a half foot frame vertical. The apparition stayed seated, staring ahead. Not even bothering to track his movements as he headed for the door.
“To be fair though, I'm sure plenty of the others abandoned kids...came back to them, too.”
Matthew stepped out into the hall, lit only by a flickering fluorescent bulb that buzzed menacingly, fizzing and popping intermittently. Threatening to short circuit and bring the entirety of the relic of a home down in a blazing display of anything but glory. The walls were adorned in wallpaper hung when presidents had sideburns, peeled with age and peppered with hopes ranging from bullets to fists.
The apparition stood down the hallway, waiting for him with the same blank stare locked on his form.
“It’s a great torture, but you know this. Endorphins rush when you’re reunited. A couple months of reconnection, ‘making new memories’..” Matthew walked past him, going to bump the shoulder but finding only the same icy, stale air that filled the rest of the house. He looked over his shoulder, to the apparition that suddenly turned to face him.
“Then when you’re alone, you realize...they’re just strangers with your genetic code.”
“No different than those you swore you’d never be, eh?”
A cry of rage as he swung for his own head with a roundhouse that would ground most any opponent, but all it found was air. The cold, stale, dead air was all that remained with him. That, and the weight of truth around his neck. He let out a hiss of air between his teeth, before turning and continuing down the hall. Checking every half-rotted door as he went.
Locked.
Locked….
“And what about the ones you tried to save? Is it really a betrayal, if they pushed you away to evade the wreckage you bring everyone?”
He didn’t dare look for it. One of these doors had to lead to a way out. His throat tightened, the weight dragging him down and sucking the air from his lungs. He leaned desperately to the decrepit wall, pushing forward with an equal desperation to the next door. To salvation, he was sure of it.
“Adrienne, your first ‘student’ to ever do something useful with themselves..and yet when you left, what did she do? Left you, because she knew that any obstacle laid before you would lead to another decade of attempted suicide…”
He felt a leg give way, down to one knee. The knee that had sent him into that spiral, the one that seemed to define him. The one that popped up to be rubbed in his face just when he thought it buried and left to rot with the rest of his past.
“What hurts more? You don’t have to tell me, but I'd like you to. Was it the cold shoulder, and her moving on with life after retirement without so much as a phone call on your birthday...or was it failing to defend her, to avenge her…
From him?”
Suddenly, the walls exploded as a set of nearly cartoonishly muscle-bound arms sprung forth and wrapped around Matthew’s neck and chest, yanking him through the wall as he let out a choked scream.
On the other side, he landed on a mat. He was in a ring, in his ring gear. The pain in his muscles told him it was in the middle of the fight. He looked up to his attacker, blood running cold. Before him, the only monster he had failed to slay.
Zane King, or more affectionately “The Lab Rat King.”
“You came in so confident. Believing that what you were doing was right. The father figure, stepping up to defend and avenge the actions of a monster on a rookie who was thrown to the hungry beast. God, fate, the universe could NOT deny you this, could it?”
The monster snatched him, lifting him for his finisher. The Empty. Hollow. Thud. A jackknife powerbomb that damn near left everything below the neck numb and vibrating. Couldn’t let him nail it. You scouted this, Matthew. He leaned in, over the monster's head. It was enough. A flip. Canadian Destroyer, the monster was spiked on his head…
“But your body failed you, didn’t it? How often has it done that, since you came back hm? Certainly made your time at Project Honor a humiliating thorn in the side, eh?”
He crawled to the ropes, pulling himself up and measuring the monster. He leaned in a corner, trying to catch his breath the plans for a superkick abandoned as the pain racked him. It wasn’t long before the freak was up, charging in. Get your leg up, you idiot.
BAM.
The muzzle flew off. The audience gasped.
“You thought you had him here, didn’t you? Remove the muzzle, the leash, the control. Now he was a stupid animal and you were the master technician. A scalpel against a sharpened rock, that’s what you said wasn’t it?”
The monster was back on him, before he could do a damn thing to move out of the corner. The match, the punishment taking its toll. Those teeth, sharpened and rotting, dug into his scalp. Tore a chunk of flesh from him, spitting it to the canvas as he could do nothing to prevent it.
“It was already over, but you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Your hubris, your ego. It was never about avenging Adrienne Levi, was it? No...it was about being the first one to beat the monster. Being the first one to have that bragging right. A path to gold, because that was the salve wasn’t it? Another belt, fix everything that you. Fucked. Up.”
He fought like hell the rest of the match. Nearly winning at one point, having the monster choked out in the middle of the ring before that arm stayed up for a third time. Because no one’s arm ever really falls a third time, does it? But no, inevitably. He relived it. The loss. The attack that followed. Slammed into the unforgiving steel of the stage over, and over..nearly thrown off before Silvio dashed out to make the save.
“Friends in league with monsters...waiting until the end to save you, right before your career was ended. I wonder, how many of them move in the shadows against you now?”
He rolled onto his stomach, pushing himself up from...the dirty wooden floor of the hallway. Eyes go to the wall where those arms burst, finding no evidence of it. He took a few steadying breaths, coughing as the pain that racked his body from the night slowly subsided. He get to his feet, unsteady. His stomach turned, his head spun.
“Maybe Mari is fucking Sykes at every Paradign you don’t attend...Tirri? He doesn’t respect you. JC, Amber, Mac? They sure have been quiet since you all left Uprising. Since they got over the end of all of your times in Baltimore, haven’t they? Victoria...the one with the eyes so familiar. She’ll leave too, when your stories and your lessons get old. But, you know this..”
He continued down the hall. Or was the hall continuing? He swore the end was closer just a few steps beforehand. A breeze whistled through the cracks then, strong enough to creak the beams in the roof and shower him with dust. Where did it even come from? God, nothing made sense..
“But who needs them, hm? You’re a World Champion now. Let your wife fuck around, you can replace her. Your friends? Jealous of your achievements. You’re a LEGEND, Matthew. The front office of OCW said so, with your cock firmly lodged in their throats. Stricken with lust at the gate they could draw televising your latest in a long line of failures..”
He began moving faster toward the wall, chasing it now as it began to slide away. His eyes everted downward, the floor moved like a treadmill’s track beneath his feet. He let out a frustrated scream as he pushed his legs harder, in a full dead run now, arms and legs pumping, chest puffed out.
Still, he couldn’t get where he wanted to go.
“You’re going to drop that title of yours. You know it, all of twitter knows it. It’s who you are, Matt Knox. Good, but not great. A brilliant night, but never a brilliant streak. You’re going to lose, and then your last match will be in that cage. Four walls, no roof..trapped in the steel with a man who is everything you’re not.”
“Can you feel it strangling you yet?”
His legs became heavy again, he looked down. The floor had turned to some liquid version of itself, sloshing around. He tried to push forward, but only sank further. Terror gripped his chest, the breath caught in his lungs as panic took hold of him. A hand shot to the wall, grasping at an exposed stud. He pulled, trying to rise but it snapped off in his hands.
He was going to drown in this.
“Spade is decorated. A champion. An actual legend. The closest thing to a victory you’ll have from this is the suckerpunch attack that set it all into motion. And you know this, why else choose a cage? A match type you’re..what is it now..2-5 in? It’s for the excuse, right? No shame in losing at something you’re expected to lose in..”
The chuckle came from nowhere, and bounced off everything. Deafening.
“Pathetic…”
He couldn’t feel his legs, he reached for something. Anything. It was up to his chest now. The lightbulb flickered more violently at the end of the hall.Soon, the liquid was up to his neck. He took a desperate breath as he went under. The darkness seemed eternal, his eyed clenched shit. Nothing seemed to fill his nose or mouth. No liquid. No drowning.
Just an infinite darkness.
“But that's what is expected of us by everyone, right Matthew? Even ourselves. Failure.You keep challenging them to stop us...when we’ve been doing it to ourselves..”
“So who can stop that?”
The question hung in dead air, his eyes remained clenched shut...then he heard it.
Drip..
Drip…
DriP….
Drip…
DriP…
The old faucet dripped into the small puddle in the ancient basin of the sink. It’s porcelain chipped and stained, the tile floor beneath it just as chipped, broken and dirty. The door hung from one hinge, equally dingy. In the room adjoining, sitting on a bare wooden floor was the svelte form of Matt Knox, seated with his knees brought to his chest. His eyes stare dead ahead into the darkness.
Drip..
DriP…
DRIP..
“You’re not good enough to win this..”
The voice echoed from the droplets of water. His face twitched, eyes snapping shut as he lets out a slow exhale. His hands curl into firsts. His head shakes once, trying to ignore it.
“How many hall of fames are you in, Matthew?”
He opened his eyes, suddenly faced with the one person he never wanted to be locked in a room alone with, reflecting on his career and the wreckage of a life he had built for himself. The glasz eyes stare into his own, if anyone else could see they would be hard pressed to tell which of the two was the dead one. The figment of the other’s imagination.
Matthew Knox, meet Matthew Knox.
The stare down lasted for seconds, hours, days, years, a millenia. It didn’t matter here. Time was relative. The sun hadn’t warmed his face in a lifetime, it felt like. The apparition paid him a smirk.
“That’s right, zero..” a chuckle “Of course, retiring to be a heroin junky burnin through daddy’s money and your own isn’t exactly on a lot of qualifying ballots, is it?”
He stood from his seated position then deftly, legs powering his whole six and a half foot frame vertical. The apparition stayed seated, staring ahead. Not even bothering to track his movements as he headed for the door.
“To be fair though, I'm sure plenty of the others abandoned kids...came back to them, too.”
Matthew stepped out into the hall, lit only by a flickering fluorescent bulb that buzzed menacingly, fizzing and popping intermittently. Threatening to short circuit and bring the entirety of the relic of a home down in a blazing display of anything but glory. The walls were adorned in wallpaper hung when presidents had sideburns, peeled with age and peppered with hopes ranging from bullets to fists.
The apparition stood down the hallway, waiting for him with the same blank stare locked on his form.
“It’s a great torture, but you know this. Endorphins rush when you’re reunited. A couple months of reconnection, ‘making new memories’..” Matthew walked past him, going to bump the shoulder but finding only the same icy, stale air that filled the rest of the house. He looked over his shoulder, to the apparition that suddenly turned to face him.
“Then when you’re alone, you realize...they’re just strangers with your genetic code.”
“No different than those you swore you’d never be, eh?”
A cry of rage as he swung for his own head with a roundhouse that would ground most any opponent, but all it found was air. The cold, stale, dead air was all that remained with him. That, and the weight of truth around his neck. He let out a hiss of air between his teeth, before turning and continuing down the hall. Checking every half-rotted door as he went.
Locked.
Locked….
“And what about the ones you tried to save? Is it really a betrayal, if they pushed you away to evade the wreckage you bring everyone?”
He didn’t dare look for it. One of these doors had to lead to a way out. His throat tightened, the weight dragging him down and sucking the air from his lungs. He leaned desperately to the decrepit wall, pushing forward with an equal desperation to the next door. To salvation, he was sure of it.
“Adrienne, your first ‘student’ to ever do something useful with themselves..and yet when you left, what did she do? Left you, because she knew that any obstacle laid before you would lead to another decade of attempted suicide…”
He felt a leg give way, down to one knee. The knee that had sent him into that spiral, the one that seemed to define him. The one that popped up to be rubbed in his face just when he thought it buried and left to rot with the rest of his past.
“What hurts more? You don’t have to tell me, but I'd like you to. Was it the cold shoulder, and her moving on with life after retirement without so much as a phone call on your birthday...or was it failing to defend her, to avenge her…
From him?”
Suddenly, the walls exploded as a set of nearly cartoonishly muscle-bound arms sprung forth and wrapped around Matthew’s neck and chest, yanking him through the wall as he let out a choked scream.
On the other side, he landed on a mat. He was in a ring, in his ring gear. The pain in his muscles told him it was in the middle of the fight. He looked up to his attacker, blood running cold. Before him, the only monster he had failed to slay.
Zane King, or more affectionately “The Lab Rat King.”
“You came in so confident. Believing that what you were doing was right. The father figure, stepping up to defend and avenge the actions of a monster on a rookie who was thrown to the hungry beast. God, fate, the universe could NOT deny you this, could it?”
The monster snatched him, lifting him for his finisher. The Empty. Hollow. Thud. A jackknife powerbomb that damn near left everything below the neck numb and vibrating. Couldn’t let him nail it. You scouted this, Matthew. He leaned in, over the monster's head. It was enough. A flip. Canadian Destroyer, the monster was spiked on his head…
“But your body failed you, didn’t it? How often has it done that, since you came back hm? Certainly made your time at Project Honor a humiliating thorn in the side, eh?”
He crawled to the ropes, pulling himself up and measuring the monster. He leaned in a corner, trying to catch his breath the plans for a superkick abandoned as the pain racked him. It wasn’t long before the freak was up, charging in. Get your leg up, you idiot.
BAM.
The muzzle flew off. The audience gasped.
“You thought you had him here, didn’t you? Remove the muzzle, the leash, the control. Now he was a stupid animal and you were the master technician. A scalpel against a sharpened rock, that’s what you said wasn’t it?”
The monster was back on him, before he could do a damn thing to move out of the corner. The match, the punishment taking its toll. Those teeth, sharpened and rotting, dug into his scalp. Tore a chunk of flesh from him, spitting it to the canvas as he could do nothing to prevent it.
“It was already over, but you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Your hubris, your ego. It was never about avenging Adrienne Levi, was it? No...it was about being the first one to beat the monster. Being the first one to have that bragging right. A path to gold, because that was the salve wasn’t it? Another belt, fix everything that you. Fucked. Up.”
He fought like hell the rest of the match. Nearly winning at one point, having the monster choked out in the middle of the ring before that arm stayed up for a third time. Because no one’s arm ever really falls a third time, does it? But no, inevitably. He relived it. The loss. The attack that followed. Slammed into the unforgiving steel of the stage over, and over..nearly thrown off before Silvio dashed out to make the save.
“Friends in league with monsters...waiting until the end to save you, right before your career was ended. I wonder, how many of them move in the shadows against you now?”
He rolled onto his stomach, pushing himself up from...the dirty wooden floor of the hallway. Eyes go to the wall where those arms burst, finding no evidence of it. He took a few steadying breaths, coughing as the pain that racked his body from the night slowly subsided. He get to his feet, unsteady. His stomach turned, his head spun.
“Maybe Mari is fucking Sykes at every Paradign you don’t attend...Tirri? He doesn’t respect you. JC, Amber, Mac? They sure have been quiet since you all left Uprising. Since they got over the end of all of your times in Baltimore, haven’t they? Victoria...the one with the eyes so familiar. She’ll leave too, when your stories and your lessons get old. But, you know this..”
He continued down the hall. Or was the hall continuing? He swore the end was closer just a few steps beforehand. A breeze whistled through the cracks then, strong enough to creak the beams in the roof and shower him with dust. Where did it even come from? God, nothing made sense..
“But who needs them, hm? You’re a World Champion now. Let your wife fuck around, you can replace her. Your friends? Jealous of your achievements. You’re a LEGEND, Matthew. The front office of OCW said so, with your cock firmly lodged in their throats. Stricken with lust at the gate they could draw televising your latest in a long line of failures..”
He began moving faster toward the wall, chasing it now as it began to slide away. His eyes everted downward, the floor moved like a treadmill’s track beneath his feet. He let out a frustrated scream as he pushed his legs harder, in a full dead run now, arms and legs pumping, chest puffed out.
Still, he couldn’t get where he wanted to go.
“You’re going to drop that title of yours. You know it, all of twitter knows it. It’s who you are, Matt Knox. Good, but not great. A brilliant night, but never a brilliant streak. You’re going to lose, and then your last match will be in that cage. Four walls, no roof..trapped in the steel with a man who is everything you’re not.”
“Can you feel it strangling you yet?”
His legs became heavy again, he looked down. The floor had turned to some liquid version of itself, sloshing around. He tried to push forward, but only sank further. Terror gripped his chest, the breath caught in his lungs as panic took hold of him. A hand shot to the wall, grasping at an exposed stud. He pulled, trying to rise but it snapped off in his hands.
He was going to drown in this.
“Spade is decorated. A champion. An actual legend. The closest thing to a victory you’ll have from this is the suckerpunch attack that set it all into motion. And you know this, why else choose a cage? A match type you’re..what is it now..2-5 in? It’s for the excuse, right? No shame in losing at something you’re expected to lose in..”
The chuckle came from nowhere, and bounced off everything. Deafening.
“Pathetic…”
He couldn’t feel his legs, he reached for something. Anything. It was up to his chest now. The lightbulb flickered more violently at the end of the hall.Soon, the liquid was up to his neck. He took a desperate breath as he went under. The darkness seemed eternal, his eyed clenched shit. Nothing seemed to fill his nose or mouth. No liquid. No drowning.
Just an infinite darkness.
“But that's what is expected of us by everyone, right Matthew? Even ourselves. Failure.You keep challenging them to stop us...when we’ve been doing it to ourselves..”
“So who can stop that?”
The question hung in dead air, his eyes remained clenched shut...then he heard it.
Drip..
Drip…
DriP….