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The skies were darker, the rain coming down with the same silky cadence, a tempo that was steady but not urgent. Down on the cobblestone walkway it was about four degrees Celsius, which translated to about forty Fahrenheit. To my right, an Asian man wearing a bright yellow raincoat was out on the corner holding up a big sign that advertised his Chinese buffet was the best in the area, marching back and forth in the rain as Europeans and Africans hustled up and down Tottenham Court Road, umbrellas held high, most dressed in dark colors, casual and cosmopolitan, this metropolitan section of the world that housed Protestants, Catholics, and followers of Islam, looking like a mixture of Seattle, Rittenhouse square in Philly, all of that with blended architecture, the historic and outdated along with the contemporary and chic. I waited. It was cold out there, freezing by LA standards. Too bitter for the thin dress Mrs. Jones had on. All the other women who had on skirts wore black leggings, some with funky patterns, but Mrs. Jones’s legs were bare. No way would she take to the cold dressed the way she was. Without a coat. Expected to hear a tap at the door, any second I would her taps. The phone rang I took my time, answered on the third ring. Expected to hear Mrs. Jones’ jet-lagged and disheartened tone. Wanted it to be her. The voice on the other end was fresh. My words calling. My instructions were curt. “Walk Tottenham Court Road until you see Freddie Mercury.” “Your in London?” Freddie Mercury will be on the left.” “Why can’t I just walk until I see Tupac and Biggie?” Then I was talking to a dial tone. Time to go to work. My attention went to the blue backpack. The one the Dutch woman at Gatwick had traded for mine. I unzipped the bag. Old Navy sweats and underwear were packed on top, white socks there as well. Under the clothing was a computer, a TX-series Sony Vaio that weighed no more than two pounds. The three prong power cable was made for the US. They had been kind enough to throw in a dual-wattage international converter set. What had the most weigh was a white box. I opened it. Inside was a sweet piece of hardware, a nine with its silencer packed off to the side. A SIG-Sauer was in the bag too, as I had requested. After the incident with the Reverend I started using a bigger gun with a bigger bullet. Other tools were in the backpack. Ice pick. Piano wire. Custom gloves. I swear every time I looked at the gloves I felt like OJ I touched the guns and once again I was seven years old. Saw that big, ugly man beating my mother. A big man they called Mr. Reynolds. He was chocking her. Screaming at her and killing her. Had her by the neck, her body raised up sky-high, my mother naked and kicking wildly as she suffocated, her feet banging against the wall as he rag-dolled her around the room, my mother’s feet knocking over lamps as she clawed at his hands. Like Mrs. Jones and her family had fled Jamaica, me and my mother fled Italy. My mother took the cash out of that dead man’s wallet and packed our clothes. He was my first kill. Not for profit, the ones that came later were put in different category, at least they were in my mind While we sat in the back of a old boat, she held me in her arms, that smoking Smith and Wesson in her big purse, and told me who my father was. Before that day, I never knew I had a father My mother told me that my father was an army man. He bragged that he used to jump out of planes, took sniper training, made delta force. While they drank and got high, while he paid my mother to do the kind of things a man paid a woman in her profession to do, he ran his strong hands through her long hair and held her close, treated her like a lady, a cigarette in his hand and liquor on his breath, and told her his secrets, told that young woman that the government still needed mercenaries. He was being sent to Latin America, somewhere in Honduras and Nicaragua, so he could deal with arms traders. He met my mother on his sojourn to South Italy. He needed to relieve some stress, made a stop at a brothel in Montego Bay, where all the tender-legged women lined up for inspection, and picked the prettiest woman in the whorehouse, sweet girl from Italy. Nine months after that I was born. My father was strong, used to fight bulls bare-handed, beat them every time. That was some of what my mother told me; I’ve added to the truth she gave me. Like James Frey, in my own omniscient voice, I have embellished my own history. As far as I know, my entire history, including what my mother said, could be a lie. Never Trust a whore…even if that whore is your own blood. - [ * * * ] - Dom and Isaac. I must admit looking into the history I was baffled about you two teaming up, but now I’m just sick of the love affair. When the fuck are you two going to stop playing it up for the cameras and just kiss each-other. I could bash you two separately, but I think gay-couples should be treated equally. And so, I will dedicate equal time to the both of you. Seriously, I couldn’t tell the difference between the either of you. You both train, as if this concept hasn’t been debunked before? I guarantee you both have trained in the gym much longer than I have. You both rely on your physical strength, and special health drinks, as if that’s going to help shield you from my fist that would aim at your faces with-out prejudice. You believe as if your iron fists can make crack, never mind a dent in my stature that stands so tall? You both have built your strategies around broken philosophies. The truth is, just by me being in this match, you two are going to have to break up. Assuming somewhere down the line Dom becomes champion, Isaac isn’t just gonna take a back seat ride. There going to have to cross paths. And then what? You two are going to ruin a perfectly good relationship, just for the survival of your brawl only to be eliminated by myself? It hardly seems worth it, I digress. I’m not going to pretend as if this is going to be the easiest task in my life, for it would be the quite opposite. While I could beat any of you face to face one on one. Together my odds decrease, and the opportunities in which one could take only grows. That? It gives me the jitters. It gets me excited. I couldn’t have asked for anything more… It seems the entire world is after me. Just waiting to take me out with all guns blazing. There is nothing better than the smell of gun smoke in the night, nor the fact that you have just escaped death yet again. Although on paper the circumstances seem impossible if left up to chance… …It simply isn’t up to chance. Not to mention I know nothing about my partner, other then he already has sewed up a fine looking piece of ass. Let’s put this in the metaphor, it’s the Dom way isn’t it? I’ve got the sniper lined up towards your skull as you walk down that walkway ready to graduate. You’ll be so close to being what I am but with one bullet, your life will be taken. With one bullet, blood will shed and you will be just a shell of your former self. You’ll be lying there, blood seeping through your gown. You will realize that I didn’t come at you with talk of a ‘god complex’, respect, arrogance, or anything else you will try and understand. You will understand that the only thing I came at you with was a bullet. The only thing I brought was a realization that no matter how hard you try and beat me or be like me, I’ll have that little red dot lined up square between your eyes until… Boom… I kill you and your screams echo in pianissimo. Don’t know what that means, Dom? Your whole existence will not make a sound, because in reality, you don’t make a sound. You tip toe through everything, making your record sound loud. You’ve never faced anything as loud as yours truly. You’ve beaten people who were on their last limb or people who swim in that cesspool of jobbers you have plunged yourself in. You won’t make a sound and people won’t remember who the fuck you are. I was still learning the ropes back at the Sultan, now I’m a former champion with a mean killing spree under his belt. You’re not ready. Just imagine, for one second, what the a more experience Kid like myself is going to do to you Dom? Imagine for one moment what a newly born Rookie is going to do to you? This isn’t the saulten, I’m no longer this green horn standing in the back scared shitless. This is a Kid who s ready for whatever, this is a kid who has tasted glory. This is a kid who has everything to gain. You walked away last time. This time Dom? Those two things you call legs won’t be able to move once I get done with you. Face the facts, Dom, you’re old and stale. You used to be this feared man but now you’re nothing. You rehash things from the past to try and prove your point because, in the reality of things, you don’t have a point. In the reality of things, you know everyone else has you beat. So what do you do? You succeed at throwing them off their game, bringing up what you did in the past, and stating how you’re such a success and they’ll never be like you. That plan works to perfection down there in the sea of nobodies. But when you’re facing The Entity, the greatest wrestler to lace up a pair of boots, you’re going to have to rethink your plan. You’re going to have to face reality: you’re nothing. I hurried back to the window, hoping I hadn’t missed Mrs. Jones. She was leaving the hotel, moving into the streets, not looking in the right direction for traffic. She was in the middle of the road when a smart car whipped around the corner; the driver slammed on his brakes and slid fast. Mrs. Jones was almost run down. In America, traffic came from the left. In London, a world tat was reversed, traffic assaulted pedestrians from the right. Mrs. Jones had looked the wrong way, her mind now realizing this world drove on the opposite side of the street. Barely in London for three hours and she was almost killed, almost run down like Natalie Portman in the opening of the movie closer. Mrs. Jones stood in the middle of the street, shaken, the driver blowing his horn as he struggled to maneuver around Mr. Jones. Mrs. Jones looked up at the window. She saw me. Stared. Then without expression, turned her head away. I no longer existed in her world Forty-degree wind made her dark dress sway. Purse on her arm, she lowered her head, took quick steps to beat the traffic and negotiate Tottenham Court Road at the Odeon. Again she stood in the rain, pondered both directions like she was trying to ponder the rest of her life. Then she looked down. At every intersection were markings on the pavement, big and bold, white lettering, telling pedestrians which way to scan for traffic: Look Right. Look Left. I wondered how many Americans and Parisians were run down before they came up with that idea. Mrs. Jones went left towards the high-tech district, passed by the red phone booths, phone booths that had business cards from every whore in the area posted inside. The night I killed that evil man, my mother remained calm. Unbelievably calm. He’d almost murdered her and she never fell apart. She was calm to the point of being cold. She put a sheet over his body while we ate, packed, wiped out prints away from everything in that rented space, then left before the sun made friends with Mecklenburg County. My mother didn’t shed a single tear. Neither did I. I read my comic books and became the echo of her emotions. I asked my mother, “Where we going?” “California.” “We have friends in California?” “My only friend died a long time ago.” “You have any friends?” “Only one I ever had died. She was killed by one of her Johns.” My mother was smoking, sweating I asked, “How am I supposed to make friends if we keep moving?” “We’ll stop moving on day. But right now we have to leave before the police come.” Once again I’d have to become someone else I asked, “Why we have to go this time?” “Because they will take you away from me. They will lock me up and put you in the system. I grew up in the system. The system is no place for a child to be. There is no love.” I looked down at my hand. I moved my trigger finger back and forth. Felt the weight of that .22 in my hand, even though I wasn’t holding that weapon. Smelled the cordite on my skin. I asked my mother, “Did I do a bad thing?” “Some people deserve to die.” She shook her head. “Your daddy told me. Bad people need to die. It makes the world a better place.” I told myself that by killing that man and saving my mother, I was a superhero, that I had made the world a better place. I was still making the world a better place for someone. Below me, on Bayley Street, over on Tottenham Court, nothing but crowds and strangers. Mrs. Jones had vanished underneath a dark sky that was a doppelganger for her mood. Disappeared like her wicked family did on a terrifying night in Jamaica. I smelled my fingers, the sweetness of her vagina still living on my tongue. - [ * * * ] - Winning; it means a whole lot to me. And I’m sure it would mean a lot to you too. But by the time you receive this message, you would know that you had never stood a chance. This entire thing…it’s all systematic. Call it ego, call me being naïve but Isaac I simply cannot be beat. Not by you, not for a 3rd time. Your string of wins is something I look forward in breaking. But no worries right, because you can always use the ‘Victories in Tag Team world mean shit in the singles’ You see, you may rant and rave, kick up your feet, wave your hands in protest; but none of it matters. I’ll take that title right from under your nose weather you accept my challenge or not. I understand that you want to hold onto the North American title. I understand that you fought and applied yourself to the best of your abilities, but now it’s time to understand that your time has come and gone. The only reason you wanted the championship was to relive those glory moments. The whole reason you’ve been a pain in my ass since you return is because you couldn’t stand someone being known as a better North American Champion then yourself. You did the same thing to Rick way back when. Isaac; I’m not going to put on some kind front. You’ll hurt me. You’ll break a few bones. You’ll draw a few gallons of blood. You will fight me and you will give it your all, but it simply won’t be enough. You’re a beast of a man, a modern day fire breathing dragon but the time where your body draws the last breath of air is soon coming. With the sword above the ring, I’ll slay you. So Isaac you can talk about how you’ll fight so hard to get back to that level. You can talk about how you have the desire to fight, and the desire to win. Because I know, what these people don’t. I’ve seen the Isaac Reynolds, who failed to show up to fight. I’ve seen the Isaac Reynolds align himself with men who at one time would be your enemy. I’ve seen Isaac in the ring two times before, and I can say; I don’t fucking respect you. They said this shit wasn’t personal. They said, our history is just beginning. And I told them, they were wrong. Our history already exists. I know you Isaac, and you know me. The moment you returned to NLCW, you were the one wrestler in it that looked across the other side of the roster, and saw me as a threat. Now you look at your title, and you see me in the plate’s reflection. Damn right, am I a fucking threat. Isaac, I hope you come prepared. I hope you can come to terms with the fact, you will not only be losing this tag-team match to Drew and I, but also come to terms that at the PPV I‘m taking back the North American Championship. Isaac, you spat on my face. You’ve hawked a big one up, and dashed it upon my federation where I was help resurrecting while at the same time making myself a world wide competitor. Now it’s time for me to wipe that spit from my grill, and move on. Because when Drew And I defeat two old dogs in Yourself and Dom? We well take the very image you’ve two built up, created and harnessed for so long. When we take it, we’re going to look down upon you, right into your eyes. And were going to show the world that NLCW isn’t home to the old, but to the new! -- That’s a Wrap! -- |