Post by america on Sept 27, 2020 17:10:51 GMT -5
2016
Elias burned with a white-hot rage. He’d been drinking, though that wasn’t unusual anymore. Ever since the lawsuits started and the memory of Harrison James’ death was seared into his mind, he’d been drinking more and more frequently with the bottle opening earlier and earlier in the day. In the absence of his hands, the fields grew fallow. At first it was part of the plan. Lay new crops and rebuild it from the ground up. Yet America had left for college in a fucking blue State and Elias was left without hands suitable to tend it. They worked with what they had and it was enough for less and less as each year passed.
It was barely afternoon when he cracked the bottle.
The whiskey burned through him, one glass at a time. Elias looked out the window and saw Nora tending the field in his place. He knew he was a failure. A failure of a man, a failure of a husband, a failure of a father. He’d let it all fall apart because he told himself a child of god could carry any weight and yet he did not mind when his shoulders began to falter. He felt an anger in him. At his wife for being stronger than him. At his son for leaving them behind for a brighter future. At Harrison James for forcing him to spill blood on his doorstep. Elias Jackson had enough anger for all the world except for himself.
The sound of glass shattering was the only thing which alerted Elias that he’d dropped it at all. He cussed and stumbled toward the kitchen, his footfalls loud and discordant with uneven space between them. As he grabbed ice from the freezer, he looked to the counter. He’d walked past dozens if not hundreds of times without checking before. He always let Nora handle the mail. This time though, he saw a watermark which caught his attention.
When she came in, all the rage he’d been bottling had a target. He lost himself to it. Hurt her because she was a perfect place for everything to go. When America tore him off he felt as though something had lifted. When he was beaten into darkness, it was almost a relief. Elias awoke in handcuffs, immediately aware that everything he had fought for was over now. As he saw the house he grew up in disappear in the rear view mirror for the last time, Elias Jackson felt peace.
We all have decisions we regret.
Sometimes you’re walking toward one, sometimes walking away from one.
Gotta wonder which case this is for you Lex.
You had the perfect goodbye. Top of the world with the Architects holding the top singles titles, retiring unbeaten as a champ. You took your moment and walked off into the sunset. That’s how a lot of folks would take that. You committed to a life where you’d be there for your family and that’s something I can actually respect.
Then you turned around.
Was it a mistake?
Now you’re coming back hoping to recapture that glory one more time. Right the wrongs of the past, fight a man who represents the things you hate in the hopes that you can reach the pinnacle one last time after your one last time. You think that this is a fairy tale that’ll end with you as the hero coming in and saving the day from the bad man with nothing but your ideals behind you.
This isn’t a fairy tale Lex.
There are no heroes.
There’s only me.
So after everything you sacrificed to reach your happy ending, here you are ready to sacrifice it all again for another. Aren’t you tired of it? Of giving up everything that matters to you and losing another piece of yourself just to keep up as everything moves past you? I see how worn out you are, scraping just to get to the plate and I wonder if this match’ll be the one that ends it for you. When I raise that flag over your broken body, will you have anything left to keep going?
How many more mistakes do you have in you?
2020
“Hello son. It’s good to see you.”
Elias takes his seat in the visitor’s room of the prison. He’s thrilled. He had come to terms with the fact that he would never see his son in person again. It had become some comfort that he could watch him perform on the television. Enough inmates loved APW and enough guards did too that they’d watch together and everyone would posture that the peace provided was a gesture to the other. He was so proud of his son winning both the American and later the World Heavyweight Championships. The relief he felt in seeing that he’d raised him right…it was overwhelming. Still, he’d accepted that he would never be able to speak to him again. This is a gift.
“I came here today to show you what I’ve become without you.” America says.
“We watch APW here. I’ve seen it.” Elias says. “I’m very proud of you, son.”
America scowls at that. Where once the words would have been welcome, they now sit bitter in the air.
“You don’t get to do that. You lost the right to call me your son when you beat mom half to…” America pauses. The anger sits heavy on his chest. An anger held over years. “I’ve had to do everything since you went away. Take care of mom, keep the farm running, keep the house paid, pay off the debts that you created. I had to fight every inch of the way to do it, but I’m finally at a point where I have it all and WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?
“I looked up to you. I idolized you. I thought that no matter who I had to fight in this world, I could do it because my dad had my back. Then you go and you fall apart. You take it all out on mom and leave me to pick up the pieces and then when I show up to hold you to account, you tell me you’re proud of me? FUCK YOU, you don’t get to be proud of me. You don’t get to lay claim to my achievements because you weren’t a part of them. You stopped being my father the moment you laid hands on Ma.”
The room falls silent like the air after a gunshot. Elias smiles, sadness behind his eyes but joy also.
“You’re right.” Elias says calmly. “I should never have hurt Nora. I was a failure as a husband and a father. I was a mean and angry drunk and you were right to beat me senseless and throw me away. I made a lot of bad decisions over the years and then I saw the mail from the lawyer about her planning to divorce me and…well, I did wrong. I’m sorry son.”
America pauses, frozen for a moment with something he never expected.
“Ma wouldn’t…she was a god-fearing woman, she wouldn’t have…” he sputters.
“She was planning to and she was right.” Elias says. “America, being in here…it’s given me perspective. Give a man lots of time with nothing to do but think about his mistakes, maybe that’s bound to happen. I was not a good man, in my time. I used my faith and my country to justify all sorts of selfish, awful things. Each and every night I pray to the lord for forgiveness, knowing in my heart that I don’t really deserve it. Yet I keep some hope seeing that in spite of every mistake I made, you’ve grown into a hell of a man.”
America doesn’t say anything. He sits with that for a moment and then, as though something else had happened, he stands up and walks to the guard. Elias hears him say “We’re done here” and listens as the door closes behind him knowing it may well be the last words he ever hears from his son in person. Then he stands up and turns to the door himself, ready to resume his penance.
I think you’re a coward, Lex Collins.
Each and every promotion in your past, you have a run and look good and then you run away. APW, you show up and group up, finding your moment. You get the American Title and you run away. Retirement, you sit at home with your wife and your kids and finally it’s time for you to just be a husband and a father…and you run away.
You’ll find your reasons and make your justifications, but it all amounts to the same.
If you really wanted to go down fighting, you never should have left. As someone who wants to be respected as a fighter, you should have done what all great fighters do and fought the last. When you had left it all in the ring and had your last gasp…that’s when it should have been over. That’s when the sunset moment happens and John Wayne rides off to live his life. But not you. You are so desperate for the air of greatness to fall on you that you’ll do everything it takes to attach it to yourself without doing the work.
You couldn’t beat Damon Warrens, so you joined him.
You couldn’t be World Champion, so you settled for American.
You couldn’t keep up with the competition, so you walked away.
You couldn’t risk your legacy, so you returned.
Hell, even this match…this big defense of your record?
You only got it because you were second best. You weren’t good enough to face me for the biggest title I hold. What a story, your triumphant return starting on your shoulders. And you were fine with that, celebrating even. You could have walked out on Mayhem and challenged me for my title like a man, but instead you skulked around in the back checking to see if I’d vacate it so you could break my record chance and be crowned all without lifting a finger.
Disgusting.
Then what?
You sat out the month before showing up at the end to get your licks in and stand tall?
I defended my World Title and competed in a lumberjack match. Champion or not, I don’t take breaks. Each and every week I showed up and if there was an opponent booked against me, I beat them in that ring. Because I have the fight you never have which makes me the champion you could never be.
Go home Lex.
Be a husband.
Be a father.
You will never be what I am.
You’ll never be a champion again.
You’ll never be the greatest in this business.
So before I have to break you to prove it.
Go home.
Walk away one more time.
Be a coward.
One.
More.
Time.
Because if you don’t, when we get in that ring?
I’ll tear you apart.
I’ll leave no doubt as to who the better champion is.
Because while you’re a coward?
I’m a champion.
I’m *the* champion.
And if you insist on challenging me?
I’ll make you do what you should have done the first time.
Show me if you’ve got the guts, Lex.
Die on your sword.
Elias burned with a white-hot rage. He’d been drinking, though that wasn’t unusual anymore. Ever since the lawsuits started and the memory of Harrison James’ death was seared into his mind, he’d been drinking more and more frequently with the bottle opening earlier and earlier in the day. In the absence of his hands, the fields grew fallow. At first it was part of the plan. Lay new crops and rebuild it from the ground up. Yet America had left for college in a fucking blue State and Elias was left without hands suitable to tend it. They worked with what they had and it was enough for less and less as each year passed.
It was barely afternoon when he cracked the bottle.
The whiskey burned through him, one glass at a time. Elias looked out the window and saw Nora tending the field in his place. He knew he was a failure. A failure of a man, a failure of a husband, a failure of a father. He’d let it all fall apart because he told himself a child of god could carry any weight and yet he did not mind when his shoulders began to falter. He felt an anger in him. At his wife for being stronger than him. At his son for leaving them behind for a brighter future. At Harrison James for forcing him to spill blood on his doorstep. Elias Jackson had enough anger for all the world except for himself.
The sound of glass shattering was the only thing which alerted Elias that he’d dropped it at all. He cussed and stumbled toward the kitchen, his footfalls loud and discordant with uneven space between them. As he grabbed ice from the freezer, he looked to the counter. He’d walked past dozens if not hundreds of times without checking before. He always let Nora handle the mail. This time though, he saw a watermark which caught his attention.
When she came in, all the rage he’d been bottling had a target. He lost himself to it. Hurt her because she was a perfect place for everything to go. When America tore him off he felt as though something had lifted. When he was beaten into darkness, it was almost a relief. Elias awoke in handcuffs, immediately aware that everything he had fought for was over now. As he saw the house he grew up in disappear in the rear view mirror for the last time, Elias Jackson felt peace.
We all have decisions we regret.
Sometimes you’re walking toward one, sometimes walking away from one.
Gotta wonder which case this is for you Lex.
You had the perfect goodbye. Top of the world with the Architects holding the top singles titles, retiring unbeaten as a champ. You took your moment and walked off into the sunset. That’s how a lot of folks would take that. You committed to a life where you’d be there for your family and that’s something I can actually respect.
Then you turned around.
Was it a mistake?
Now you’re coming back hoping to recapture that glory one more time. Right the wrongs of the past, fight a man who represents the things you hate in the hopes that you can reach the pinnacle one last time after your one last time. You think that this is a fairy tale that’ll end with you as the hero coming in and saving the day from the bad man with nothing but your ideals behind you.
This isn’t a fairy tale Lex.
There are no heroes.
There’s only me.
So after everything you sacrificed to reach your happy ending, here you are ready to sacrifice it all again for another. Aren’t you tired of it? Of giving up everything that matters to you and losing another piece of yourself just to keep up as everything moves past you? I see how worn out you are, scraping just to get to the plate and I wonder if this match’ll be the one that ends it for you. When I raise that flag over your broken body, will you have anything left to keep going?
How many more mistakes do you have in you?
2020
“Hello son. It’s good to see you.”
Elias takes his seat in the visitor’s room of the prison. He’s thrilled. He had come to terms with the fact that he would never see his son in person again. It had become some comfort that he could watch him perform on the television. Enough inmates loved APW and enough guards did too that they’d watch together and everyone would posture that the peace provided was a gesture to the other. He was so proud of his son winning both the American and later the World Heavyweight Championships. The relief he felt in seeing that he’d raised him right…it was overwhelming. Still, he’d accepted that he would never be able to speak to him again. This is a gift.
“I came here today to show you what I’ve become without you.” America says.
“We watch APW here. I’ve seen it.” Elias says. “I’m very proud of you, son.”
America scowls at that. Where once the words would have been welcome, they now sit bitter in the air.
“You don’t get to do that. You lost the right to call me your son when you beat mom half to…” America pauses. The anger sits heavy on his chest. An anger held over years. “I’ve had to do everything since you went away. Take care of mom, keep the farm running, keep the house paid, pay off the debts that you created. I had to fight every inch of the way to do it, but I’m finally at a point where I have it all and WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?
“I looked up to you. I idolized you. I thought that no matter who I had to fight in this world, I could do it because my dad had my back. Then you go and you fall apart. You take it all out on mom and leave me to pick up the pieces and then when I show up to hold you to account, you tell me you’re proud of me? FUCK YOU, you don’t get to be proud of me. You don’t get to lay claim to my achievements because you weren’t a part of them. You stopped being my father the moment you laid hands on Ma.”
The room falls silent like the air after a gunshot. Elias smiles, sadness behind his eyes but joy also.
“You’re right.” Elias says calmly. “I should never have hurt Nora. I was a failure as a husband and a father. I was a mean and angry drunk and you were right to beat me senseless and throw me away. I made a lot of bad decisions over the years and then I saw the mail from the lawyer about her planning to divorce me and…well, I did wrong. I’m sorry son.”
America pauses, frozen for a moment with something he never expected.
“Ma wouldn’t…she was a god-fearing woman, she wouldn’t have…” he sputters.
“She was planning to and she was right.” Elias says. “America, being in here…it’s given me perspective. Give a man lots of time with nothing to do but think about his mistakes, maybe that’s bound to happen. I was not a good man, in my time. I used my faith and my country to justify all sorts of selfish, awful things. Each and every night I pray to the lord for forgiveness, knowing in my heart that I don’t really deserve it. Yet I keep some hope seeing that in spite of every mistake I made, you’ve grown into a hell of a man.”
America doesn’t say anything. He sits with that for a moment and then, as though something else had happened, he stands up and walks to the guard. Elias hears him say “We’re done here” and listens as the door closes behind him knowing it may well be the last words he ever hears from his son in person. Then he stands up and turns to the door himself, ready to resume his penance.
I think you’re a coward, Lex Collins.
Each and every promotion in your past, you have a run and look good and then you run away. APW, you show up and group up, finding your moment. You get the American Title and you run away. Retirement, you sit at home with your wife and your kids and finally it’s time for you to just be a husband and a father…and you run away.
You’ll find your reasons and make your justifications, but it all amounts to the same.
If you really wanted to go down fighting, you never should have left. As someone who wants to be respected as a fighter, you should have done what all great fighters do and fought the last. When you had left it all in the ring and had your last gasp…that’s when it should have been over. That’s when the sunset moment happens and John Wayne rides off to live his life. But not you. You are so desperate for the air of greatness to fall on you that you’ll do everything it takes to attach it to yourself without doing the work.
You couldn’t beat Damon Warrens, so you joined him.
You couldn’t be World Champion, so you settled for American.
You couldn’t keep up with the competition, so you walked away.
You couldn’t risk your legacy, so you returned.
Hell, even this match…this big defense of your record?
You only got it because you were second best. You weren’t good enough to face me for the biggest title I hold. What a story, your triumphant return starting on your shoulders. And you were fine with that, celebrating even. You could have walked out on Mayhem and challenged me for my title like a man, but instead you skulked around in the back checking to see if I’d vacate it so you could break my record chance and be crowned all without lifting a finger.
Disgusting.
Then what?
You sat out the month before showing up at the end to get your licks in and stand tall?
I defended my World Title and competed in a lumberjack match. Champion or not, I don’t take breaks. Each and every week I showed up and if there was an opponent booked against me, I beat them in that ring. Because I have the fight you never have which makes me the champion you could never be.
Go home Lex.
Be a husband.
Be a father.
You will never be what I am.
You’ll never be a champion again.
You’ll never be the greatest in this business.
So before I have to break you to prove it.
Go home.
Walk away one more time.
Be a coward.
One.
More.
Time.
Because if you don’t, when we get in that ring?
I’ll tear you apart.
I’ll leave no doubt as to who the better champion is.
Because while you’re a coward?
I’m a champion.
I’m *the* champion.
And if you insist on challenging me?
I’ll make you do what you should have done the first time.
Show me if you’ve got the guts, Lex.
Die on your sword.
