Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

TBS · (11-01-2019)

Everyone can appreciate a little mischief once in a while, especially on Halloween night. It’s been years since I’ve felt mischievous, but tonight, for some reason that will go unspoken, I’m feeling especially mischievous. But it’s okay, it’s Halloween, you have to expect this kind of nonsense.

The phone rings inside the home of James Raven and his long-time girlfriend, Betsy. Which is strange in and of itself, because what person under the age of seventy has a house phone anymore? What is this, 1996?

“Hello.” Betsy is annoyed. This is the third straight time the phone rang, and she’s answered every time. She wants the voice on the other end of the line to be different – but it’s not. It’s mine, again.

“Why don’t you want to talk to me Betsy?”

“Stop it.”

“You tell me your name, I’ll tell you mine.”

“This is getting old.”

“What’s that noise? You’re making popcorn? I only eat popcorn at the movies.”

I can hear her moving through the house quicker and quicker as her breath gets heavier and her words get angrier. She’s getting upset, and I know it.

“What’s your favorite scary movie?”

She doesn’t answer, this is the exact moment I’ve been waiting for. I have her, and I know it.

“You must have a favorite…” The phone clicks. At least I think it does. It’s funny, if you grew up in the nineties or before, like me, you always associate being hung up on with a dial tone. Even though it’s been so long since I’ve heard that sound that it might be some myth I’ve cooked up in my own mind based on scary movies or bad pornos. Either way, she has definitely hung up on me. I take the phone down from my ear and dial again.

“Hey asshole!”

That’s strange, I wasn’t even done dialing.

“Dustin that’s enough bullshit, get out of the goddamned tree.”

Shit.

I look down from my perch and see Betsy holding the cordless phone in her hand shaking her other fist at me.

“How did you know it was me?” I ask as I stumble down the tree. I’ve been drinking a bit; did I mention that?

“You’re the only jackass who ever calls the house phone. What is this, 1996 – text us like an adult for Christ sake.”

“Drats. Foiled again.” I reach for the flask inside my jacket pocket only to find it’s now empty. Did I say I’ve been drinking a bit? I meant I’ve been drinking a lot. My bad.

“Come inside, I’ll get you a refill.”

I follow her inside to the kitchen as she opens the liquor cabinet and searches for an appropriate bottle of scotch.

“James isn’t here, he’s trick-or-treating with his kid tonight in Arizona, I thought you knew that?”

“Betsy, I need you to understand something. Do you think there’s any chance I’d be here with you if I knew there was even a one percent chance I could be in Tucson fucking with Mia fucking Sanchez? I like you, but don’t flatter yourself.”

“Speaking of being inappropriate and borderline creepy, care to explain why you were in that tree?”

“Yes. That’s an easy answer.”

Betsy closes the liquor cabinet door and goes around the corner into a different hallway, she returns holding a new unopened bottle of Jameson, my personal favorite. They usually keep a few bottles here for me for when I stop by. They’re better friends than I deserve.

“I came here to kill James.”

“Stop it.”

“I'm sorry, I know you love him. But he has to die. You know that scene in Scream where the boyfriend is tied up on the porch and gets gutted? That was gonna be him. I was just waiting for him to come outside and I was going to jump on him and kill him. Because he fucked me and now I’m sad about it.”

“Dustin.” She pours me a drink and hands it to me. Her calmness and almost understanding of my mental state are always appreciated. She pours herself one too, but not from my bottle. I’m not sharing.

“I'll miss him too. Seriously, what kind of a friend does that shit to someone? He waited until I was vulnerable, slipped me a mickey, bent me over and he fucked me with a rotting coconut. Just brutal.”

“And after you killed James, what was the next part of your plan?”

“Oh that was easy, I was going to wear his face like a Halloween mask, go into XWF Corporate and change the match on Saturday so I had a competent partner.”

“You’re drinking alone and plotting on murdering your best friend because of a match? Is this because of that Lottery thing?”

“It’s called the Lethal Lottery, Betsy, duh! Someone HAS to die, otherwise it isn’t very lethal is it?” I think I was trying to be sarcastic, but in retrospect it’s pretty hard to argue with that sort of bullet proof logic.

“Sorry, you’re drinking alone and plotting on murdering your best friend because of the Lethal Lottery?”

“Betsy, it’s been years, YEARS. He has tried to trick me, tried to beg me, tried to bribe me with bottles of Jameson hidden in his home like the greatest Easter Egg Hunt ever. All with one goal – to get me back in the ring. And now I’m here, and I’m booked, and I’m fighting two nimrods with a

eggplant as a tag team partner. That is a killable offense. An eye for an eye, a coconut for a coconut.”

“You know I try to stay out of XWF shit, but it’s my understanding the drawing was completely random. James didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Sureee, that’s what they WANT you to think! Was the 2016 election “random?” Was the powerball winner “random?” Do you think the Cubs actually “won” that World Series?” And yes, before you ask, I’m making air quotes with my fingers. To recap: I’m in a kitchen, I’m bitching to my best friend’s girlfriend, and I’m using air quotes. I’m basically a pair of Uggs and a Pumpkin Spice Latte away from being the most basic bitch in the history of bitches or basic. I hate me right now. I’m never drinking again.

“He had nothing to do with it, Dustin. He told me that, he told me he felt bad about it, and he told me he figured you wouldn’t be happy. But he also told me his hands were tied.”

I realized I might have overreacted about the never drinking again thing as I tip the glass back and finish off my glass, setting it down on the counter and pointing to it asking for a refill. She obliges and goes to pour.

“Actually, hold that thought. Put it in a to-go cup.” She looks at me with a confused look. “I have work to do, speaking of, do you have any toilet paper?”

--

I’m not proud of this, I’m really not. I’m not saying I thought this whole Lethal Lottery thing would be easy, per say. I just thought on the prize wheel of life it might land somewhere closer to ‘a bit of work, but totally doable’ than it would to ‘you’re fucked, don’t show up’. But alas, here we are, a week in and it’s looking like I’m totally fucked.

Why, you ask?

Well, it’s been about a week, and while almost everything in the XWF changes over time, the schedule does not. This is the point in every match schedule where things start to heat up and people start to say some things that they may or may not be able to back up. For what it’s worth, in my history, people mostly say things that they cannot back up. Actually, that’s not totally true, a lot of the time they say shit that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Like Tommy Wish, for example. Tommy has cut two promos getting ready for this match and I’m left with more questions than answers. Does he have any idea who I am? Is he aware that every time he opens his mouth he gets less and less intimidating? Does he know that he has holes in his jeans? Is it legal for me to punch him or in doing so am I breaking some sort of Affirmative Action laws for the mentally challenged? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

So here are a few answers for you, Tommy. Yes, you do have issues. And it sounds like you don’t like the idea of being in a six foot hole in the ground with dirt being dropped on you. Shovel after shovel. Repeatedly. Until you can’t get out, fuck, you can’t even breathe. You can’t move. You can’t think. And all you can feel is the ground literally swallowing you up. The Earth apologizing for the mistake it made in letting you live this long by taking you back. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, my boot to your mouth. You know, very biblical shit.

Because I’m not an old man. I’ve never claimed to cheat death. And I’m not any other cliché or label that you want to bootstrap me with in order to make yourself feel better. I’m the Big fucking Shank, and you’ve never been in a fight with anybody like me before. And when we fight, I want you to know that it ends with you in the ground. Count your breaths, save your energy, and pray that somebody pulls you out of the dirt before it’s too late. I may not get my hand raised, Tommy. I could lose this match, we’ll get to that in a second, but I promise that win or lose you will be buried long before I end up in the mud.

You might have some sort of ‘Inner Darkness’ going for you kid, but on Saturday it’s the darkness all around you that you’re gonna have to worry about. Sleep sweet sweetheart, I’ll see you Saturday. I’ll be the one with the shovel.

Then there’s Luca. To be honest, I’m not sure I would have used that ‘fucked me with a coconut’ metaphor if I knew Luca would enjoy it so goddamned much. #YouAintThatPrettyDontTouchMyNoNoSpot

Speaking of honesty, I’m not sure I would have agreed to this tournament at all if I realized it meant I was going to have to familiarize myself with, interact with, or even acknowledge the existence of people like Luka and Tommy, but it’s too late for that now, I suppose. My life was so much better when I had no idea these knuckle draggers even existed. Fuck. Fuck me with an inflated red balloon.

Shit, there I go again, giving Luca ideas. #NoMeansNo

Congrats, Luka. You’re the second person to make an old joke and the first person to question whether or not I want this badly enough to warrant getting involved. I do want it, Luka, I want it so bad I’m going to take my metal walker and make it your new boyfriend, and then I’m going to take my prosthetic hips and jam them down one of your other holes. That’s how bad I want this.

But how badly do you want it?

If you think this is about content then you’d better start thinking about how ‘content’ you’d be spending Saturday morning feeling confident, Saturday afternoon starting to get a little nervous, Saturday evening getting my foot shoved down your throat, Saturday night underground and Sunday morning in a goddamned hospital bed. But please, honey, send me a selfie from the hospital. #BigShankMakesBigProblems

You may wanna talk about swinging dick or how nobody is quite as qualified to be the center of attention as you think you are. But honestly, that’s not how this game gets played. Princess, I’ve been playing the ego game for a very long time and if you’re not careful, and believe me you have already crossed this line, then all you do is come out looking like a bitch with nothing to say and wasting our time. I love me. I love me more than you love you. And I love me so much that I like to give myself nice things – the opportunity to beat your ass. That is a present I am going to give myself. And I’m not afraid to tell everybody that I’m going to do it. I’m not afraid it’s going to take the spotlight off of me and put it on you, because that’s how this works. I have to allow everybody to think about you for a few days, because if I don’t then I’m not doing my job. I have to let everybody think you can make this interesting, and I have to let everybody think you’re as important as you think and say you are. Ultimately, the greatest trick I’ll pull this Halloween is letting everybody, including you, think you fucking matter.

Because Saturday night, the night ends when I let everybody look at you one last fucking time. One last moment as the center of attention. One last chance to smile for the cameras. And Luka, everybody is going to want to look. Hell, you’ll probably go viral. “Look what Shank did do that poor son of a bitch?” I’ll let you write the hashtag for that one, it’ll be the last time you get to feel important for a long time.

Am I confident that I’m better than Luka or better than Tommy? You’d better fucking believe it. So what was that bit a little while ago about being ‘fucked, stay home?’ Well, that’s because I’m not exactly one hundred percent positive that I’m better than Luka AND Tommy.

And unfortunately, I’ve gotten paired up with a fucking tool. And not all tools turn out to be helpful.

Hammer, so far you have done absolutely fuck shit nada to make me feel like this is going to be anything other than a group project in high school where I do all the work and the kid who spends his mornings shooting hair spray into his nostrils gets to put his name on my paper and get the same grade as me. Would you mind, oh I don’t know, picking your fucking game up a bit? Christ, this isn’t hard.

I know you’re not James Raven. I know you’re not a Suicide King. But for fucks sake, I didn’t expect you to be a goddamned suicide bomber. If you’re going to flame out this hard would you mind, maybe, taking out someone on the other team on your way down? Is that really asking so fucking much?

I promise you this: I will do all of the heavy lifting. But If you’re not capable of even picking up the scraps then we are going to lose. Because at the end of the day, there are still two of them and they are capable of winning this match (see, Luka, everybody is looking at you right now – smile you big dumb fuck #BigShankCares). And they are capable of putting us in the ground (unless the walls close in on you, Tommy. Is it getting hard to breathe?). Kris, I don’t give a fuck about the Misfits or whoever plays your manager or whatever dresses of your friends you put on or whatever other weird beta shit you all do when you decide who fights in which fight. All I care about is you getting your shit together and doing your part to get us through round one. That isn’t asking too much.

Your name came up as my partner, you hit the fucking Lethal Lottery jackpot. It’s like you were born to rich parents or something. You didn’t do anything to deserve it, but you hit the genetic lottery anyway. Do not fuck me here. Or before I check out of the XWF again I will burn down everything you care about as well. Do your job. Or at least show some goddamned gumption or something.

I fucking hate relying on other people, I really do. Yet here I am, and maybe it’s for the last time, or maybe it’s just for the last time this week. Either way, I’ll be there Saturday. And I’ll be the best goddamned man in that match. Tommy, Luka, Hammer, whatever other bizarrely named figure wants to show up – whatever. Bring your best, or in Hammer’s case – please just try not to suck.

This week is Round One, and I intend on moving on to Round Two. And if you plan to try and stop me? Well, that’s what the shovel’s for. See you Saturday.

--

My phone beeps and I look down to find a text from James. It looks like he’s back from Arizona.

“I’m not sure how you got Betsy to go along with this, but she thinks it’s hilarious I’ve been on a goddamned ladder all day taking toilet paper out of my trees, bushes and off my garage. I’m getting a security system, or a sniper. And I swear to God, if a four-legged animal didn’t produce the shit that’s on my porch I’m dumping every bottle of Jameson I own down the drain.”

I really do have better friends than I deserve.

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?
Author	Message