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JimCaedus · (08-19-2017)

(continued from Jim's return to Phelan in "Sleeve-roll OR How Caedus Got His Groove Back")

The fuck? The guy behind the counter......

Were my mind a literal pane of glass it'd be cracking right about now. Like standing before my own warped reflection in some carnival Hall of Mirrors I see......_me_.

-Monday August 14 2017 Late Afternoon-

-Hesperia, CA-

"Welcome to Dominos..."

Christ, he _sounds_ like me.

His face washes over in frowning recognition.

"Would you, uh...would you like to try our new...... Do I know you," he asks?

Yes? No? I......I don't _know_.

All I can sincerely muster is a bewildered raising of the eyebrows and a shrug.

The guy looks exactly like me minus, oh, I'd wager around 50 pounds of the solid brickhouse muscle I carry. Don't get me wrong, though he may not be as built as I am, he's got the musculature of a man hammered out from poor-boy floor workouts. He also has the same eyes (including the involuntarily narrowed right eye); irises icy blue behind which burns an intensity stoked from the fires of tragedy and pain. I sense the thousand yard stare dwelling in the depths of darkness within his pupils.

My eyes travel down to his name badge.

Jimmy

The fuck's goin' on?

I open my mouth to speak-

"Yo, can I get some fuckin' service!?"

Jimmy's eyes glaze over as his gaze slides from me to the man standing behind. I turn to regard the owner of the voice and attitude: a heavyset Hispanic man about my height dressed in a designless brown T shirt, even longer khaki Dickies shorts, knee high socks disappearing upwards and a pair of white Adidas.

"This some bullshit! Take this motherfucker's order, I ain't got all day!" He looks from Jimmy to me. "Fuck you lookin' at, homes?"

"Not much."

My heart leaps as it always does once a confrontation begins and adrenaline pulses forth. The Hispanic utters a derisive hiss.

"Psssh. Vete a mierda, guero."

Wedo? That shit means white boy doesn't it?

My eyes widen as he pushes past me to focus on Jimmy.

"Fuck it, take MY order if he ain't gonna put his in! I need _three_-"

"I'm sorry sir, he was here first. You hafta wait your turn," Jimmy lays out, fearlessly calm.

"Nah fuck that," the Hispanic persists, "you gonna take my order."

"No, I'm really not. You can get back in line or you can leave."

My steely gaze hasn't left the Hispanic. He notices and turns to address me a second time.

"Yo, back the fuck up and quit maddoggin' me motherfucker." He turns back to Jimmy. "And YOU, you can take my order or I can hop the counter and fuck you up!"

Jimmy doesn't respond, flashing an unimpressed smirk at the man. The man's reaction involves planting his palms on the counter and moving to leap up-

I swing a haymaker as hard as I can, catching him in the right temple. He drops sideways to his left and hits the solid floor headfirst with a SMACK, unconscious.

Jimmy extends his right arm over the counter offering his fist and smiling.

"Thanks bro."

I return the bump...and experience an unexpected split second "shock" (for lack of a better term) in my chest and head. Jimmy doesn't seem to have felt it as he calls over his shoulder to two other team members looking on from their prep stations in the back-

"One o' you call the cops. Tell 'em a customer got violent and another customer protected me by knocking him out." He looks to me. "You should probably take off unless you wanna get questioned."

Yeah, not interested. I'm out.

"Take care o' yourself, bro," I offer, opening the front doors.

"You too man! Hey what's your name?"

Why lie?

"Jimmy."

And with that, disregarding whatever reaction with which my smaller clone responds, I exit, holding the door open for a young couple entering. They start at the sight of the unconscious Hispanic but I keep walking straight to the '86 Benz.

This's been far too bizarre. That guy Jimmy, that weird sensation upon making a physical connection...I never shoulda come back to the High Desert, fuck Graves and his "homeless Jim" jackassery. I don't even know what I'm doing _here_ in the _first_ place; I can't eat pizza anymore and I've always hated Dominos...

I slide into the Benz, insert the key and start her up. I reverse and depart, pondering on what exactly it was that led me to this location.

I don't like it. Not one fuckin' iota.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

"WTF"

Right here. This is the spot, I can sense it.

I drive the spade of the shovel I hold into the hard ground, shoving it in deeper with my right foot and casting aside a mound of dirt.

-Tuesday August 15 2017, Afternoon-

-Austin, TX-

The owner of the property at 303 E. 9th Street watches as I scoop out another spadeful of dry earth and dump it to the side in his backyard.

"What exactly is it y'all expec'in' to find back here," he inquires?

I answer honestly.

"I'm not sure. I guess we'll both know when I find it."

The owner, Dwight (gangly and clad in locally typical attire for a native white Texan around 60 with weather beaten leathery red skin and a long grey beard), doesn't seem to appreciate my wholly unhelpful response as he snorts derisively but I know he appreciates the $500 cash I'd handed him ten minutes ago in exchange for fulfilling my strange request.

I'd made my way from the High Desert to LAX yesterday following the incident at Dominos, looking to catch a flight out to the UK for the impending XWF 2017 King of the Ring on which I'll be competing against Micheal Graves in the Big Ben Brawl. When I'd arrived however, that same "shock" to the chest and head I'd experienced when I'd bumped fists with Jimmy in Hesperia had hit me and two words had manifested before my mind's-eye:

Austin
Texas

Against my better judgment I'd given in to the impulse and booked the next available flight out Tuesday morning and checked into a local 4 star on arrival. My sleep had proven more restless than normal, plagued by nightmares that had thankfully upon waking dissolved into the ether of the forgotten with each passing second of consciousness.

Dining in the hotel's on-location restaurant for lunch, I soon patronized the nearest car rental service and headed blindly into the city with no further mental prodding. That is...until passing an otherwise ordinary multi-level parking structure and experiencing a feeling of urgency. Turns out that feeling wasn't emanating from the stack of angled concrete, however, it came from the residence across the street where I now currently dig...an activity I felt was..."right".

And so, here I excavate in the sweltering heat of Texas summer, thankfully beneath the shade of a tree looking many decades my elder, searching for something I've no inkling towards the identity of hoping I've not completely lost my marbles and dug _myself_ into some kinda trouble.

I drive the shovel down again, piercing through tough terrain.

"Micheal Graves. How's-"

"Who?"

I shoot Kip the Grip a look of irritation. He gives Dwight the shush signal with a single index finger over his lips before returning his attention to keeping my lighting juuust right.

"Well shit, 'scuse _me_."

I give it a few moments and another shovelful to ensure the old man's finished. Then-

"How's the Bear Grylls level o' forced "reality" in your impossible-to-recreate Caedus & Company High Desert Homeless Experience treatin' ya, Mikey? Gone a month at a time without a shower or a change o' clothes yet? Spent enough days rotatin' usually frequent-from-low-quality-food loose stool shits around itty-bitty "Phelan's" nine business hour restrooms that AmPm, Circle K, B-K, Mickey Ds, Rite Aid, Staters, Taco Bell/KFC and the 'Schnitzel have already tired o' your continuous presence so you've been warned away with the threat of trespass and discovered you either hafta fit all your poopin' into the 6am-2pm Phelan Park restroom hours or take a special trip, fill your pockets with unraveled stolen toilet paper and start takin' dumps in plastic bags or behind patches o' greasewood bushes, Joshua trees and those wonderfully infamous "leapin' cacti" that reach out to prick a liquid source like a blood-coursin' bare ass for instance? Have you discovered the multiple ant species as of yet; the massive, yellow, acidic bastards, the giant black sumbitches, the huge red and black devils and the teeny little all red fucks, all o' which bite and/or sting as well as locate any and all foodstuffs you might be hordin'? Been desperate enough to try eatin' a coyote gourd or two?"

Another shovelful.

"Honestly Graves, how many hours you REALLY puttin' in fakin' 'fore you drag your 40-somethin' year old fat tired ass back to your Star Wagon trailer suckin' down ice cold bottled water, feastin' on the finest o' studio cuisine and flippin' through the latest copies of American Girl and Highlights magazines, one eye firmly glued to the TV on which you peruse your personally compiled disc o' the Olsen Twins' top titillatin' scenes from Full House with a bottle o' lotion, a box o' tissue and your stiff 3 and a half inches o' kid-crushin' creepily uncut cock in your right hand? Or are you a lefty?"

Yet another mass of dirt clods and loose soil.

"What's with the Depeche Mode "Enjoy the Silence" treatment, twat? You know what I think? I think I hit you so hard with my last promo your dick's box-turtled to inny status and your balls have actually ASCENDED back up into the taint from whence they came. You legit fooled yourself into believin' I was easy, impendin' washout pickins, didn't you? _Didn't_ you, Mike? Don't deny it douche, you know you did. And what've you learned from your colossal clusterfuckup, ya predatin'-on-the-prepubescent Pennsylvanian pissant? One can only hope a tad more than you took away from your high school "education" labeling yourself a "lunitic" on your official XWF99.com application ya big ignorant fuckin' dipshit."

And another.

"The fuck am I supposed to do now? Fall for what could very well be a recycle o' Blingsteen's bitchassery and believe you'd just slime your scumbag snailtrailin' sloppy snatch off into the shadows quietly and await your execution come King o' the Ring?"

And another.

"Should I back off and allow you more of a breather than you've already been given after comin' at me SO gung-ho with what you musta thought was one HELLUVA first salvo?"

Another.

"Want Jimmy to say, "It's not your fault, bro, you're sick in the head and I'm gonna see to it after the match you get the help you need so we can patch up this friendship"?"

Another.

"You burned that bridge, buttfucker. Ain't no friendship to salvage, no brotherhood to sew up, no alliance to piece together. You've turned off, pissed off and pushed away every last friend you ever had in the XWF with the strong hypothetical exception o' jag-off I-have-no-pride-yet-I-think-I'm-the-shit Jester Cadryn. Worse...you've solidified your position as my enemy, Mikey, and as Blingsteen herself WILL find out sooner or later...my enemies eventually fall by my hand." I drive the shovel into the growing hole. I fling the scoop aside. "In your case, sooner RATHER than later...Caedus gonna kill y-"

The CLANK of thin metal on gravelly lawnless ground catches my ear after tossing this latest shovelful. Dwight stirs in his back porch rocking chair.

"Hell's that? Hey now, y'all dig up sum'in worth money y'all gonna hafta divvy it up fifty-fifty. Five hundred just ain't gonna cut it."

I ignore the greedy ol' fuck and drop the shovel as my heart races.

That's it. Whatever it is, that's it.

I scramble over to the partially covered in cast-off object as Dwight does his best to scamper over as well. Carefully brushing the dirt aside with my hand...I uncover......an awl. The rounded hard wood handle has begun to deteriorate and the punch spike itself has rusted over. I pluck it up.

"Shit, son, ain't nothin' but an old rusty awl. Pro'lly left behind by the last owner or the one 'fore that." He laughs dryly. "Sure you ain't wantcher money back?" He laughs again, heading back to his chair.

You're wrong, old man. This is something...well...it's _something_. The something that apparently drew me here.

"You enjoy it, Dwight. Thank you for lettin' me dig."

"Oh I weren't bein' sincere, son, no refunds. I'm jus' happy _y'all_ happy. And, uh, if y'all done diggin' kindly take yer camera crew 'n scat. Got me sum plans."

I offer Dwight a few moments of deadpan STFU expression before returning my gaze to the lens.

"This'll hafta wait for my flabbergastin' finisher, fuckstick. Here's hopin' you've got the guts to get some donnybrookin' doled out to save SOME amount o' face before we meet in London, loser. See you soon..."

I nod to Dwight then the cameraman. The view cuts immediately to-

::STATIC::

TBC

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