Post by John Rabid on Jan 1, 2017 13:06:07 GMT -5
1. AND THE SEVEN SHALL HONOR
What makes a man a king? I often wonder, can it ever be compartmentalized? Stripped down to one essential ingredient? As Jared and Thursday Holmes danced across the ball room floor before me, I couldn't help but glance upon the eyes that followed them.
Seven great houses encamped this innocent moment, the Holmes wedding waltz was a flame that illuminated the majesty assembled in their honor. House Black: the Lord of Dethfort. House Sanchez: the Mayor of Chicago. House Price: the man made God. House Holmes: of the 6ix God. House Moor: of the Leviathan. House Flash: of the Champion. And then there was me. House Rabid: of the Ripper.
The House of silence and dust was absent. Dune had no interest in our pageantry; his debt was to Flash; not us.
Corey Black held court, as was his want, he stroked his dark mane and smiled as he looped arms with Niki Venus and shared a delicate word at his table. Niki responded with a smile, the kind that melts death away and reveals the normal man beneath. Venus was the touchstone then, the key to unlocking the heart of the King.
Interesting.
The Cloud Room rested at the crest of the Chrysler Building, it's citadel the beating heart of an opulent reception of Quayle eggs, sparkling champagne, tailored elegance and decadent desires. Flowing white satin sheets were draped across the ugly corners of the space; giving the environment a timeless sheen it did not deserve. A blind spot where are collective guilt could not spy us pretending to emote, our lives hidden away from the glare of our own twisted hypocrisy.
“He plays beautifully. I was expecting chopsticks and primeval whaling.”, Emily was by my side; we stood with our fingers locked together behind our backs, observing from a corner. I could feel are wedding rings connect and spark as the waltz continued. My wife's love echoed through the slender embrace. Nocturne was Wade's wedding gift, Chopin in the hands of a monster; and yet Wade found the heart of the piece and made it sing. His grief over Nikita and William drifted away from the ivory keys and enveloped the room with a melancholy rhapsody. I did my best to understand the emotion, but it eluded me. As it often does. So I allowed Ludwig van to sooth my spirit, his Allegretto played in my mind and drowned out the quandary of the moment. Beethoven, thank you once again.
Too bad the tranquility didn't last.
“He knows”, Emily began, her words snapped and cracked as she whispered “He knows and yet he still plays. I would never have believed a man such as Wade could demonstrate such composure. All that hate contained. Hidden. Is this what it feels like, Jason? To know so much?”
She placed her hand upon my face, I could feel the iciness of her wedding ring pressed now against my cheek. She seemed proud to stand before me and announce her metamorphosis as the bile lined my throat. This was never meant to be her burden.
“It reached out for me, Jason”, she began, “ It reached out from the dark, just as you said it would. The cry. I heard it. And my eyes opened. New Orleans changed me. Changed everything.”
A single nail from her manicured hand dragged itself daintily across my face and hung upon my lip.
“I can hear every word now. Every cry and scream. Every death. Every murder. When you pulled me from the water, it was like a baptism. Reborn for a second time. This time isn't like Paris, though. It's different. I can feel...”
“Rage”, I interrupted. “That's why you wanted to accompany me to Bishop's compound. To watch the chaos. That's why you're flirting with Roman. You want to get close to him, so you can...”
“God help me, yes.” Her legs began to shake as I steadied her. “All those lives he's taken. Dumped and forgotten. Roman should pay for that, it should cost him EVERYTHING. And Kevin Bishop, what he's done to those poor people? To that fool, Frank Venable? The lives Kevin destroyed in that warehouse all those years ago? That stench stays with him, Jason. It scars him. He knows it too, it festers deep inside. Germinating. Becoming.”
I placed a finger to my lips. Hush! But she didn't listen.
“We'll have to kill, Bishop! Christ! That name won't stop haunting me”, she added. “Inside the ring. Outside of it. There has to be justice, Jason! Just as there needs to be justice for Wade!” Emily's eyes glared at Jared and Thursday as they continued to dance. “No man should be a puppet to a master.”
I instinctively held her shoulders tight within my grip.
“What have you done, Emily?” I began, “What did you tell, Wade?”
She pulled away, eyes aflame. She had strength now. That cry in the dark. It's different for everyone. For me, it was a brother, murdered. For Emily?
It was our son. And his love for his mother. She felt Wade's loss, but also vengeful for the brainwashing he had received. I could shield my involvement, but Jared's?
“I told Wade the truth. And now, he's free.”
Her eyes welled as I drew her tight into my chest and shielded her tears from view; while across the room, the music stopped. Wade calmly lowered the lid of the Steinway, it's creek was met by a rapturous wave of applause.
My eyes locked with Wade's as he stood and bowed.
The great game had begun.
2. LET'S PLAY A GAME.
Do you like game shows, Kevin? I love them. Contestants trapped under hot lights; their perspiration and nervousness beamed out across a nation of millions of mindless slobs, fools who observe and judge the lives of trapped rats in a maze; scrutinizing willing participants in an interrogation; these prisoners of avarice, so desperate to taste what I, and my #beachkrew brethren, take for granted. I find it an affirmation of my power to watch the little people jump and scurry. Comfort TV they call it, and how right they are.
Thinking about it, you have to respect the genius of it all. To take the desperation of man and shape it into such a twisted spectacle. It's so...human. So unique. And yet, when I observe the Brotherhood? This is all I see. The desperation. I see their nails cracking, ripped from their roots as they struggle to find purchase on a cliff edge. Waiting for that next question that will set them free. But it never arrives. Because there's no winning this game for the Brotherhood; there's just degrees of losing. And this week? It's going to cost you two plenty, because you both lack that one vital ingredient that every great team needs.
Symbiosis. The term means the shared fate of two beings that require the other to survive. Kevin Bishop and Frank Patrick Venable. do you understand that feeling? Can you comprehend it? I don't think you can. It's beyond you two I think; you're both so wrapped up in your own delusions that you're blind to the truth. Listen to the sound of my voice, Brotherhood. Let me lead you out of the maze.
Let's start with you, Frank. I knew your brother. It's a rarity in the business to bury siblings; so I take this gracious opportunity very seriously. I'm fastidious with my targets, Frank. Every detail studied and considered. I see haunted eyes when I look at you, Frank. Haunted over your crimes. Against your parents, against your brother. I know for a fact how much Vic hated you for abandoning him, for never telling him that his parents died while he rotted in prison. All those years, you can't get them back. So you go to Japan to become a hardcore whipping boy. But the stain remains. It doesn't go away. Then the Brotherhood arrives. And you have a shot a redemption served up to you on a platter. You throw the match. But the pain, Frank. It sticks. Bishop can't be your messiah. So it goes on, and on.
I'm going to help you, Frank. I'm going to break you to the bone as the TV title changes hands for the 100th time. You're going to be my unsullied. You're going to feel your mortality slip as your eyes flutter finally awake inside that Wells Fargo arena. A wretch lost and shamed in a world it doesn't recognize. A world where Frank Patrick Venable stares mortified into a mirror and sees finally the man he now is, rather than the champion he once was. The last brittle fragments of a used up psyche, left blind and desperate as it wanders helplessly into the inevitable embrace of a Kingdom destroyer. Expunged from the conversation. Buried and forgotten. Just a broken man mumbling that he can't think straight as I call you an uber and send you home. Home to your dead parents, rotting in their abandoned living room, their last thoughts echoing into the decaying walls; that eternal, never answered question: what time will their sons call, and say hi.
Character is destiny, your character Bishop is to control and shape; you can't help it because it's encoded into your DNA. There's no way you can't pull that trigger. And you know that. So you invent a Brotherhood rather than a cult, because it's easier to allow the sheep to imprint their own naive, romantic ideology of a Utopian world onto of your own Orwellian reality, and have them lead themselves to the slaughterhouse, rather than drag them by the nose and rub their faces in it. And right at the head of the line is Frank Patrick Venable. A former world champion reduced to serving up slop on a dish to a bunch of no teeth bum-fighters. Oh how the mighty have fallen...I would say if FPV was an actual legend, rather than an over hyped cliché.
You need to understand, Bishop that you're no Brotherhood to Frank. You're just another penance served. Another humiliation that burns to the touch. Another crack of the whip so that his catholic soul can feel righteous in it's agony as it screams in a Brotherhood farmhouse limbo. Rotting under the weight of useless flesh like Joe Smarts and Psychopomp, who embarrass and humiliate Frank at every turn, just with their presence. And that's what Frank wants. To be humiliated. To be embarrassed. Because all that self loathing for how he treated poor brother, Vic. All that guilt for abandoning his parents when they needed him the most. That needs to be avenged. There has to be justice in the eyes of the almighty. But newsflash, Kevin. That almighty being? It isn't you.
You're no God to him, Bishop. You're not a healer or a prophet. You're a guard. Just another jailer, in charge of just another prison. Work detail; that's the Brotherhood.
You know, I do believe I can still hear the faint whisper of rebellion. Let's put the breaks on that right now, shall we? Don't flatter yourself, Kevin. You're no every man. Nobody cares about UCI. You, are nothing but a Gemini Battle 2.0. A cheap knock-off from the start. You have the same grandiose visions of the future. The same wish fulfillment sidekick between the sheets in Karma/Invidia. The same desire to gather an army and have them procrastinate in your name. All the trappings and the tropes that Gemini had. And where did that get him? A toilet bowl and a quick flush. Look to your left, Bishop. Look at your partner, the man who has your life cradled in his hands this week. Now think back to last week. What did Frank's text say again? Oh yeah, “If you get involved in my matches again, I'll KILL YOU”.
Oh happy days.