Friday July 30, 2010
The Nest- Formal Dining Room
Indianapolis, Indiana
2:32 PM Local Time
Wendy Briese shook her head in dismay as she looked out the window at her flower garden. Between her illness the previous week, and her frequent trips to Chicago (not to mention the surprise journey to Spokane), she had little time for housework anymore. Cassie DeSlair, her travel-along nanny, had managed to help out just a bit, but it had been at least three weeks since she had been able to weed.
Ah, well, there was no time like the present. Besides, maybe a bit of gardening would help her take her mind off of her upcoming match. Four days of thinking still hadn’t given Wendy an idea how she was going to win the match if John Pariah refused to count (and she was almost certain he would). Hopefully, focusing on another problem for a couple hours would enable her to view her situation with fresh eyes.
Humming quietly to herself, Wendy briskly walked over to the garage door, and swung it open. She wrinkled her nose as she walked into the garage. Despite whatever her husband claimed, whatever stunk in here was definitely getting worse, and it was almost to the point where the stench was becoming unbearable.
Looking around the cluttered garage, Wendy shrugged, and headed to where her gardening tools were. The stench became worse- to the point where Wendy almost found herself gagging on it. Pulling the collar of her shirt over her nose, Wendy reached for her gardening supplies, but stopped in mid reach. Retracting her hand, she started to look for the source of the unpleasant aroma, pulling out boxes, and looking inside of them, and behind them.
A stack of four plastic Rubbermaid storage tubs sat just to her left, and Wendy, grunting with the effort, grabbed the bottom tub, and carefully dragged the whole column out. Keeping her shirt collar over her mouth, Wendy peered around the stack of tubs.
And immediately recoiled, choking down the urge to vomit.
Then she did what any world-reknown female wrestler would do after finding a dead possum in their garage.
“TERRRRRRR-REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENCE!”
===============================================================
Friday July 30, 2010
The Nest- Garage
Indianapolis, Indiana
3:02 PM Local Time
“I’m not touching that,” Terrence Thompson declared, his voice slightly muffled by the old t-shirt he had tied around his face, over his nose and mouth.
“Well, someone’s going to have to.” Daniel Pollaski, Terrence’s friend and manager, declared. Like Terrence, Pollaski had his nose and mouth covered, although with a bandanna. “And Wendy made it VERY clear that someone wasn’t going to be her.”
Sure enough, after Wendy had discovered the possum, she had suddenly found a need to run to the grocery store, and after quickly grabbing her daughter, had leapt into Terrence’s Charger and disappeared, leaving Pollaski and Terrence to deal with the problem.
“Yeah, well, for someone who is so adamant about gender equality in the wrestling ring...” Terrence grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, and staring at the animal’s carcass.
The possum was a truly horrific sight, as pretty much every single insect infesting the Thompson household had gathered to feast on the copious bounty. So many flies covered it, the actual animal itself was barely visible.
“I’m NOT touching that,” Terrence declared again, muttering imprecations against his wife under his breath.
“I don’t think we have to,” Pollaski said brightly, quickly walking across the garage, stepping around loose boxes and such that cluttered the garage. Grabbing a snow-shovel from the opposite Wall, Pollaski trudged back across the two-car garage, thrusting the tool into Terrence’s hands.
“Good thinking,” Terrence said, making a mental note to buy a new snow shovel before winter set in.
Walking forward, Terrence put the shovel down on the garage floor, sliding it under the animal carcass, wiggling the shovel back and forth to get under the parts of the corpse that had stuck to the floor. Finally, with a grunt, he lifted the possum up, a thousand flies buzzing around in protest at the disruption of their meal. “So now what do I do with it?”
“Uh...” Pollaski stared blankly at his wrestler. “We shoulda probably thought of that before we lifted it up...”
“Oh, fuck me, this thing is LEAKING!” Terrence protested in horror. Sure enough, blood, visceral fluids, and god knows what else, were slowly oozing down the blade of the shovel, and puddling on the ground beneath.
“Uh oh...” Pollaski said, staring at the grotesque mini-waterfall. Now that dead possum goo was puddling on the floor, it would be weeks before the stench went fully away.
“There’s a wheelbarrow on the side of the house,” Terrence grunted, turning his face away from the leaking animal. “Run and go get it.”
Pollaski complied, running faster than Terrence could have thought possible. Terrence turned his attention back to the end of his shovel, suppressing the urge to gag “I bet Dorling doesn’t have to put up with this,” he muttered, referring to his opponent for the week.
“Nah, he’s Australian. Down there, they have to pry dead koalas and wallabies out of their garage,” Pollaski huffed behind him. Terrence smiled in appreciation of his manager’s speedy return, although the cloth covering his face made the gesture invisible.
With a grunt, Terrence dumped the carcass into the wheel barrow, and Pollaski quickly pulled it out of the garage. Terrence followed behind, glumly noting that Home Depot was going to have a field day with his wallet sometime in the near future.
Pollaski set the wheelbarrow down on the driveway, and gingerly wiped the sweat from his brow. “So now what?” he asked, looking down at the animal.
Terrence shrugged, as vexed by the situation as his manager. “Well, we can’t put it in the garbage can. I learned that after Wendy’s last cat died. God, was she pissed.”
“Speaking of cats, we could give it to Chant,” Pollaski said hopefully, referring to Chaunticleer, Wendy’s current cat.
“Nah, the damned thing would probably end up in our bedroom.” Terrence said. “Besides, this thing’s been dead for at least a week. That can’t be good eating.”
Pollaski’s shoulders slumped. Both men stood in silence on the driveway for a while, each one trying to figure out the best way to deal with this problem.
“Dude! I got it!” Pollaski suddenly exclaimed, pointing excitedly towards the garage.
Terrence followed his manager’s finger, over to the wall of the garage where the lawnmower sat. “You want to run it over?”
Pollaski almost facepalmed. “No, dude. Next to it.”
Terrence shifted his gaze just a bit, to the moderately-sized red container sitting next to the mower.
Gasoline.
Even with his face covered by the old t-shirt, it was obvious that Terrence had broken into an ear-to-ear grin. “That might be the best idea you ever came up with.” he chuckle, as he walked into the garage, grabbing the can of gasoline, and twisting the cap open as he walked back to the wheelbarrow.
This was gonna be great.
=================================================
Saturday July 31, 2010
The RV- Cockpit
Interstate 65 Near Lebanon, Indiana
9:32 AM Local Time
[So, did anyone else know that it’s illegal to immolate a gasoline soaked possum that’s lying in a wheelbarrow on your driveway?]
[Terrence does.]
[Now.]
[One can picture the scene poor Wendy and Theresa arrived home to, with a massive column of smoke billowing from her front yard, along with the flashing lights of a fire truck and two police cars. Not to mention the two score rubberneckers that had gathered around to watch the spectacle.]
[Wendy had of course been relieved to discover that the house hadn’t burned down. Until the fire marshal explained to her what Terrence had been trying to do. That’s pretty much when the screaming began.]
[Needless to say, it wasn’t the most pleasant (or romantic) night in Thompson family history. Wendy, fuming all the while, packed the family up for their weekly trip to Valparaiso, while Terrence and Dan did what they could about airing out the garage, and cleaning up the remnants of the possum. Luckily, one of the police officers had taken the extra-crispy possum away as evidence, so at least it has been disposed of.]
[Unfortunately, it was replaced with a rather sizable fine. It’s a good thing the Birdz are fairly well-off, because they’re going to be essentially working for free the month of August.]
[And so we open our scene, from the dashboard mounted camera in the RV’s cockpit. Terrence is, as always, driving, wearing a plain blue t-shirt as he navigates the forty-five foot Newman King Aire up I-65 towards the Chicagoland area. Next to him, sitting shotgun, is his wife Wendy, who is dressed in a dark green blouse and matching skirt, still shooting dirty glances at her reckless husband. Obviously, the remaining members of the crew, daughter Theresa, babysitter Cassie, and manager Pollaski, are riding in the back somewhere, not visible from this camera angle.]
[Okay, now that the scene is set... PROMO TIME!]
Twister: “Chris Dorling”
[Despite the fact that his wife has been pretty much shooting laser eye beams at him all morning, the Mechanical Mayhem is obviously in a pretty good mood. Probably because he’s got a good match against a respectable opponent. Then again, after Scott Styles, pretty much anyone has to look good.]
Twister: “Stop number three of your World Tour brings you into northern Indiana, where you make your visit to Pro-Wrestling X.”
[Small smile]
Twister: “And a match against me.”
[Terrence chuckles quietly, and resumes talking.]
Twister: “I can honestly say that I’m excited that I’ve been the one selected to face you on your World Tour. I can also thank God that this match got booked while JPO was still in power. Brain would have probably done something stupid, like put himself up against you, gotten his ass kicked, and embarrassed the whole company in the process.”
[Disdainful snort]
Twister: “And trust me when I say that Brian’s doing enough to embarrass this company as it is.”
[Next to him, despite her lingering irritation with her husband, Wendy nods her head in agreement.]
Twiser: “I don’t know if you know this, Dorling, but I have seen you in the ring before. You see, back in May, I was in Vegas, and I took Pollaski, Cassie and Theresa to watch a Sin City Wrestling show. You might have seen us. We were the only four people in the arena who actually cheered for the Belmonts.”
[Terrence grins. What he’s neglecting to say is that they stopped cheering the moment they realized everyone was looking at them funny.]
Twister: “But I do remember you. You faced some lady... Bella, was her name? And, well, it was a mess of a match, and you won on disqualification after somebody hit you over the head. I hate it when that happens.”
[Shrug]
Twister: “But I could tell right then that you’re a man who has a serious passion for this business. You went out there looking to put on a good match, and I’d say, save for the nasty incident at the end, you did a pretty good job of it. Ess-Cee-Dubya is certainly lucky to have you, and if you ever feel the need for a change of scenery, I’ll be more than happy to put in a good word for you, and bring Team Dorling to PWX.”
[While his eyes never leave the road, Terrence manages a short nod of respect towards the camera.]
Twister: “And the magnum opus you have set upon, this World Tour. It’s not widely-known now, but eight years ago, my wife and I did a similar thing, although on a less grand scale. We visited all five regions in the WfWA within a span of eight days, and successfully defended our titles in each one.”
[Both Terrence and Wendy smile at the memories of that excursion.]
Twister: “But by the end of that, we were exhausted. That was five stops. How many stops does your tour have? Fifteen? Even more than that? If you manage to finish what you set out to accomplish, I will be the first to tip my hat to you, because, no matter what your record will be over the span of these shows, you will truly have achieved something great. And I’ll be honored to have been part of that journey.”
[Another respectful nod, but this one’s a little stiffer, and Terrence’s jovial expression fades just slightly.]
Twister: “But come Monday, Dorling, when that bell rings, despite all the respect I have for you, and all the greatness you have and will accomplish, you will be just one simple thing to me.”
[Beat]
Twister: “An invader.”
[Smirk]
Twister: “You see, Regardless of the stated intentions of your tour, both my honor and the honor of the PWX are very much at stake here. It’s no secret whatsoever that I want the Grand Prix title, and I’ve been looking for another shot ever since I narrowly lost to Jacob Wright at Full Throttle. I didn’t get it at Do Or Die, and I won’t be getting it at Respect is Earned. But if I want to put my name on the shortlist for the next go-round, what better way than to beat one of Sin City’s Wrestling’s finest in the middle of a PWX wrestling ring?”
[Another chuckle from the Mechanical Mayhem, as he checks his blind spot to make a lane change.]
Twister: “It won’t be an easy task. I can already tell that you have a ton of energy. Shooting ranges, rock climbing, trampoline bouncing. I even heard that you just shot a role in a movie. All within the confines of this massive endeavor you’ve undertook. You just don’t like to hold still very long, do you?”
[A snort of amusement]
Twister: “But at Adrenaline, there’s going to be at least a three second stretch where you’re going to hold perfectly still. “
[Another smirk]
Twister: “See, there’s one mistake you made. You seem to think that my family is a liability, that somehow worrying about them is going to prevent me from getting the job done against you. All I can say is that I hope you one day get to find out just how wrong you are.”
[Over in the passenger seat, Wendy looks over at her husband, smiling at his words. Terrence flushes a little, but pretends not to notice, and merely shrugs.]
Twister: “Do I worry about my wife? Hell yes, especially considering the sick sons of bitches who’s attention she manages to attract. But as Samson had his hair, so I have my family. They are the source of my power, from the joyous expression on my daughters face as she leaps into my arms after a win, to the consoling sympathy of Wendy after I’ve suffered a tough loss. It may not make sense to you now, but one day, it will, and you will be a better man because of it. But I doubt that day will be before Monday, so I suppose you’re just going to have to learn that lesson the hard way.”
[Wendy still has that soft smile on her face, as she turns back to watching the countryside go by. Terrence risks a quick glance at the camera, and lowers his foot slightly on the accelerator.]
Twister: “Dorling, I’d wish you the best of luck in our match Monday, but that strikes me as being a bit counterproductive. Its my intention to make this the most memorable match of your entire tour. although I’m sorry that you losing will probably dampen the nostalgia somewhat. Even so, you better come prepared for a hell of a fight.”
[One final smirk]
Twister: “I know I will.”
[Fade]
No comments:
Post a Comment