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X-treme Wrestling Federation »   » Archives » "C*nt Fest" RP Board
La commedia è finita! Part 8: Stranger Than Kindness
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Corey Smith Offline
Active in XWF



XWF FanBase:
Some of everyone

(cheered; very rarely plays dirty but isn't lame either; many likable qualities)


#1
01-25-2020, 06:03 PM



NOW. Australia.


Day has descended into night in the ravaged Australian brush. The halogen glow of a single lantern illuminates three figures as they make their way through the arid thicket, finally reaching a clearing of burnt yellowed grass. Malcolm and The Engineer clear the brush first, but Malcolm's father, trailing from behind, appears to get his dirt smeared robe stuck on some brambles. When The Engineer recognizes the imbecile's predicament, he back tracks, growling some invectives, and helps free him. But, upon being freed, the now unmasked acolyte promptly stumbles down onto his hands and knees.

Get up. The Engineer orders.

The man simply remains on his knees for a moment, body swaying, until he finally keels forward and retches violently. The light from the lantern catches a reflection of the sick, revealing that it's a nasty sheen of half bile and half blood.

Malcolm approaches his father and wrenches him up to a standing position with his free arm, pulling him away before he's even finished puking and causing him to soil the front of his robe with the final strings of his vomit.

Over there should do. He indicates a clear patch of land and Malcolm deposits his father there unceremoniously. The elder man drops onto his side, chest hitching with inconsistent breaths, a wet rattle catching in his throat.

The Engineer looks skyward at the pale sliver of the moon hanging above them. With a feral half smile he bellows out a howl. Awwwrrrrooooooooooo! Then, withdrawing the gas canister he was still holding, he sets it down in the clearing near the invalid. The honor is yours, if you want it.

Malcolm looks down at the broken shell of his tormentor, his own expression hovering between contempt and something more mysterious. He hoists the lantern to better encompass the sickly huddling mass in it's light. He's so small now.

Approaching Malcolm to take up a side by side position, he removes some leather gloves he was wearing. Does it feel good?

Malcolm doesn't respond right away, but when he does his tone is even and circumspect. It feels strange. For so long I feared this man. Obeyed this man without question. Tried my best to live up to an ideal that he himself could never reach. He stops speaking, and when he resumes some acrid bitterness is there now too. He always seemed so big when he beat me.

But does it feel GOOD?

It feels.... He stops to collect his thoughts, and when he finally finds the right word, you can almost see the weight carried off his shoulders as it passes through his lips. Free. It feels free.

The Engineer turns towards Malcolm. Do you regret it? Those terrible things we did? The things we are about to do?

I regret that they had to happen. I regret that they were necessary. Malcolm goes stony. But I don't regret doing them. I don't regret taking my life back at his expense. He was broken. Beyond repair.

Reaching up to pat his shoulder, he speaks in a hushed tone. Take all the time you need. Savor it. Make it feel right for you. I got a last bit of business to take care of.

He turns away from Malcolm, peeling off from him like a shadow as he picks up the lantern and steps away from the clearing with it. He replaces it closer to the copse of dead trees behind him, and in the dead of light with nothing but the scant illumination of the moon and the lantern, the devastation looks all the more eerie. The trees appear as the blackened bones of some great beast half buried in the scorched land, a hellish monstrosity felled long ago in a more barbarous mythic age.

Don't mind me, wanna make sure I get those evil angles just right. You know what I queen I am for that drama. He chuckles. But you know, I'm actually quite upset by your latest verbal sphincter unclench. He works his jaw, grinding his molars together and shaking his head. Yeah, you really did piss me off with that last one! I mean, I know I'm not supposed to get pissed because “Oh My God, WEAKNESS!” but I just can't help it!

He stands with his hands on his hips, looking like he's fixing to spit fire. Robbie, you have the GALL to compare my monologues to Ozymandias or some Bond villain? (Side bar, if I was one though, I'm definitely May Day. Whole “caucasian persuasion” incongruence aside, I definitely got them sexy cheek bones).

I am absolutely nothing short of Christoph Waltz's opening monologue from Inglorious Basterds. I will broach no argument.

And to say nothing for the fact that you bitched about my monologuing WHILE YOU MONOLOGUED! Jesus foot washing CHRIST Robbie, are you capable of even a shred of insight? Nah, that's a tall order for one Robbie Bourbon. And hey, you know what else I got a good chuckle out of? You taking me to task for walking through some gloom and doomy set piece. Admittedly, that was a tough one though. Do you know how hard it is finding a spot that captures the true, unfettered essence of existential angst?

He pauses looking contemplative.

Actually, not that hard, considering it was a thematic focus of EVERYTHING YOU'VE BEEN DOING THE LAST TWO WEEKS. Maybe you would have seen how bad it was in the Australian bush if you ever left the comfy confines of your circus big top. But just like everything else about you that reeks of hypocrisy, color me SHOCKED that you mischaracterized all that real world devastation as some contrived super villain stage prop.

But you know what? All that equivocating about how trite I am, how cliché I am? It's all just a facile attempt to move the goal posts back and flood the zone with shit. Because after I called out your hollow excuses for why you dumped the Universal Championship...

“Oh, oh, it was ennui and cynicism but I got better.”
The Engineer makes a buzzer sound.

“Oh, but then it was I got mad because I wasn't being booked against strong competition even though it never once occurred to me I could ASK to fight someone because I enjoy tucking my penis between my thighs.” He makes an even louder buzzing sound.

Nope! After I kicked both those excuses to the curb you clapped back with nary a real response to be found. And whyyyyyyyy? Because you have nothing to refute it with. You BAILED on your people, you BAILED on the XWF, and then you tried to pass the BourbCo buck off on everybody but yourself for your abject cowardice.

And when I showed time and time again that your pretensions of being some paragon of life and virtue were HORSE SHIT, you came at me with verbal diarrhea like “hurr durr Engy listens to opera how trite”, ignoring the fact that in my earlier promo I explained the significance of Pagliacci but your response amounted to pulling a chunk of salisbury steak out of your navel and going “Nobody cares! Alexa, put on OW, MY BALLS ”. Whoa, MASTERSTROKE! It's like casting pearls before swine wearing little luchador masks, I swear! Not to mention saying my whole “goes and gets stabbed, brazenly seduce attacker, fuck each other, kill his dad to emphasize I'm awful to promote a wrestling match” romancing style was cliché....? Well then I would LOVE to know what kink clubs you're going to that that is on the regular, sunshine! Sign me up all day!
He flashes a thumbs up.

Lets stay on this topic a bit longer shall we? Because after that last synaptic death rattle of a promo you actually did a TON of work for me on that front. You keep INSISTING that you're the yin to my yang, life to my death, good cholesterol to my bad cholesterol (wait, which one ARE you, again? Eugh, scratch that last one).

Time after time I have accused you of being a pretender, a fake, a fraud! And you've been for want of a bit of water to quell those flames. Well, thanks to this most recent “effort”, we see why. YOU DRANK THE WATER. Hell, you probably even pushed a little dehydrated Ethiopian kid out of the way to do it too. Yeah, lets talk about Mike Whatshisfuck. You know Robbie, I was really, really hoping that the end of that tale of weal and woe was going to end with the dramatic reveal that...
He slaps his cheeks playfully ….it was you all along! Holy fuck, maybe Robbie actually has some depth after all.

But nah, maybe that would have been too “cliche”. Turned out it was just some weird close talker. But Robbie, being the man of the people he is...being the paragon of HOPE that he is, I'm sure he turned that poor man's life around and really, REALLY showed how much he car-OH SHIT I CAN'T EVEN FINISH!
The Engineer collapses into peals of laughter and has to take a moment to recover.

Nah, Robbie didn't help a goddamn soul. By his own admission he tried to bail straight back out of the conversation (smart money's on Mike getting in the way of Robbie sweatin' some BBW at the end of the bar), and when he couldn't extricate himself he offered up some fortune cookie platitudes about how he's stronger now, and can pick his own path, and his lucky numbers are 12,4,86, and 2.

Oh yes Robbie, how REAL that example is. How GRITTY. Except for the fact that, in the end, you did absolutely fucking nothing. Poor Mike Whosawits is just gonna wake up the next morning with a hangover and maybe a vague recollection of some fat guy in a mask playing at “Confucius Sez”. But his life is going to be the exact same dung pile it was before he met you. Once again, you prove that when push comes to shove, you really don't care that much, do you? Yeah, maybe the only person you really carry all that hope around for is yourself.

Oh, oh, but because Robbie has as yet unrevealed precognitive abilities in addition to a photographic memory of the cheap Chinese knock off to the cheap Chinese knock off of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robbie is able to conclusively predict that Malcolm will end up just like that sad sack Mike. Malcolm, you wanna field this one?


Malcolm rouses from his revelry at the mention of his name. He approaches the camera tentatively, having never actually spoken directly to The Engineer's competition before. He stands before the camera, at first casting his gaze abashedly away from the all seeing eye.

Robbie, I heard what you had to see about me. In fact, you had a lot to say about me this whole time. You sure wanna sound like you know me. But you don't know me, man. He looks up at the camera, a flash of defiance in his eyes. But I'm one a your people, right? You GOT me. You GOT me! Right here. He pats his chest, above his heart. Or is that just where your wallet is? His lip curls up in a sneer that drops down into a sardonic smile.

I WAS like Mike, Robbie. A fucked up kid who just wanted to tell somebody. Who just wanted somebody to care. All my life, a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a neighbor. I waited for somebody to care. But it didn't happen. Yeah, somebody DID call Child Protection once, but it never went nowhere and I got tore up after real good. This time though my daddy made sure it wasn't nowhere visible. He got smarter about it after that. And I learned that so long as I stayed his quiet little simpering pride and joy we could go along to get along. So I stopped fightin'.

I poured myself into football and basketball. Worked out. Good genes helped. Physically, I mean. Got bigger than the old man but still, STILL, always felt smaller. Stayed in New York and worked a couple summers after high school to save some money for school. Got accepted into University of Mississippi, full ride athletic scholarship too. All in all, I was my daddy's prodigal. Too bad I had a secret. I was gay.

I was back home this past summer on break. He found a letter I had written to a boy I spotted at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. I thought he was cute, but I didn't have the balls to give the letter to him. I tossed the letter in the trash. He found it and....
His gaze breaks from the camera once again. I went back to feelin' so small again. All over again. I tried to go back to school but...I couldn't....I just.... He trails off. The Engineer watches him but says nothing. I fucked up and washed out. I didn't know where else to go so I came home. I couch surfed when I could. Spent a little time in a shelter. I couldn't get my shit together....I couldn't.... His voice breaks, but he glowers at the camera. I was little again, man! I was so little! Just that let mother fucker beat me like I was five all over again! His tone rises, his affect becoming more animated. That shit came in my dreams, man! It came in my dreams! And yeah, just like when I was little, I woulda killed for somebody to listen to me. To care. But everybody was like you, Robbie. Fake and just not willin' to put themselves out too much.

But I did find somebody who listened. HIM.
He gestures at The Engineer. And I know what you're thinkin'. That I'm just some dumb kid gettin' used. And the only thing I gotta say to that? NO SHIT. You think I don't know he's a bastard? Why do you think I stabbed him in the first place? But for as much of a bastard as he is, he actually took the time. He didn't just lie to my face like the fake do-gooders did....like you STILL do. He showed me that yeah, when you cut right down to the bone, everybody's just usin' everybody else. He's gonna use me to further his cause and I used him to help me come out from under that vile fucker over there. The sex was pretty good too.

Oh, I'm sorry, am I BORING you with my SOB story? Turns out I'm not the doe eyed innocent you thought I was, huh? Poor dumb Malcolm being led astray. Not knowing what he's getting into. Bitch, like you know me! Like you knew my daddy, talkin' all this shit about how one day he mighta seen the light. You are one naïve motherfucker, aren't you Robbie? You don't think real evil exists in this world? Then who were all those child traffickers and insurance scumbags you beat up? Oh shit, maybe you shoulda given them more of a chance to change too before you broke their jaws and put them in traction.

I KNEW I didn't need that man's approval Robbie, I KNEW what he did was wrong. And I knew that, along the way, nobody helped me. Not even myself. I let that bastard victimize me over and over. And I had all this anger but didn't have the courage to do what I needed to do with it.
He looks at the champion. But he focused me. Showed me what to do with that anger. And for the first time in my life, I don't feel so small. I don't need to tell a sob story. And I don't need to wait for the “help” or approval of a fake piece of shit like you, Robbie Bourbon!

The Engineer runs his hand up and down Malcolm's back supportively. He cracks a grin. The kid's a natural!

We practiced a smidge.

Just a smidge. But yeah, anyway Robbie, turns out that whole “making a totally unfounded allegation that's completely devoid of supporting evidence” thing bit you again. Malcolm's doing okay. You however? Not so much! Because you have showed your whole ass to the entire world. The whole thing. Two flatscreens worth. Because Mister Hopey Changey is actually “Mr. Fuck a Sob Story” now. Your last line said it all. “If I'm a leave a story, the story of Robbie Bourbon, at least I have the dignity to leave a happy one.” Because that's what it really boils down to, doesn't it? Robbie Bourbon's story. It always has. You have always been an incredibly selfish, self centered, glory driven man with pretensions of being more. Pretensions you often fell WELL short of. Do we really need ANOTHER example? Because....I have another example!

See Robbie, after you brought it to the table I just HAD to look into this Pest guy. I'm a second rate him? Man, this dude must have been GORGEOUS! Imagine my disappointment when it turned out he was the creepy middle aged guy who always insists on the computer at the pubic library nobody else can see. So then I did some more digging (read, calling Shane) and found out just what that creeper was peepin' on that computer!

So guess what kids? Mr. Fun Time? Mr. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Rightness? The anointed hero of the DRAMA Bot Wars?

(Boy I really wish I had a megaphone right now)

ROBBIE WORKED WITH AN ACTUAL FUCKING PEDOPHILE!

AND HE KNEW PEST WAS A PEDOPHILE!


RUH ROH! Exhibit A!


Was that an ennui thing back then too?! I mean, say what you want about the soft core porn I produce but at least my strange is legal. You're done, man. In fact you're overdone like a Trump Steak and twice as gristly. Any possible ethical or moral high ground you claimed to have over me is ceded. This whole notion that you are the light beating back my darkness is DEAD.

In fact, you are the very personification of my point. There are no heroes. None. And every goddamn thing I said about you, every claim that I made that you are nothing more than a craven opportunist with no moral leg to stand on, a man who will do anything or claim to be anything to get ahead, is conclusively PROVEN.

You. Are. Done.

And the best part? The sweetest part? All you have really accomplished is to edge the world just that much closer to understanding that nothing matters. Because if the guy who claims to be the antithesis of ME is just some uncaring selfish dick who sees other people's pain as a boring irrelevancy as he tries to paper over knowingly associating with kiddy diddlers, then where is the light? Where is the hope?

The Engineer leans in to the camera.

Nowhere.

The world's not easy, Robbie. Fixing what's broken isn't as clean or cliché (heh) as pushing a button on a phone and shutting the whole problem down. It's not as simple as your brain damaged claim that all we need is fun to cure what ails us. It's all so much WORSE than that. The problem is housed in your primate brains. You're programmed to HURT each other, continuously, over and over again. You're programmed to kill your own planet to make a buck. You're programmed to prioritize war and slaughter over caring for your own. And most of all (and this one should ring more than a few bells for you, Robbie) you're programmed to be SELFISH.

Robbie, you and people like you are the real virus. And the only thing that will cure a virus this deeply entrenched is complete and utter annihilation. Catharsis in blood and violence on a mass scale, sending the stultifying status quo of this planet spiraling into its death throes. And unlike with you Robbie these aren't just pretty words or petty monologuing, this is a call to action!

Don't wait for hope or idle distractions to swoop down and save you. Don't turn to to the hollow paeans of hypocrites like Robbie Bourbon for guidance.

TAKE UP A WEAPON AND KILL WHAT HURTS YOU. And hell, while you're at it, make a spectacle of it! You know, for “funsies”!
He laughs.

I WISH this battle of ours was as epic as it could have been. I wish this could have been some larger-than-life fuckoff good versus evil throw down for the ages. But it turns out you're not such a good guy and the supposed evil guy is the only one who listens and knows the score. Meh. But hey Robbie, you go ahead and keep calling me a walking cliché if you think that's what works for you. I mean, hell, I've already shot up every other imbecilic argument you've made. But the cold hard fact is that I'm not paid to dance for you Robbie. I don't need to entertain you or conform to what you think I SHOULD be. No, I just need to beat you. And I will. I'm going to run circles around your ego inflated bloated body, kicking and punishing the dragon back down to a serviceable size. I'll keep Sloane's playbook handy just in case.

I'm going to roll you onto your back, and you'll struggle to roll back over. Maybe by that point your legs will be so battered and fractured they can't even hold you aloft. Maybe you'll be blinded by my “Eau de Tom Hardy” by that point too. Oh, but isn't that a delicious thought! A beat down and visionless Robbie Bourbon, scrambling about in the dark with his belly bared to the world.

And then, I'm going to rip your guts out. I'm going to show the entire world how empty YOU are inside. That beneath the bluster and the self aggrandizement you were just another weak challenger propping yourself up on a pedestal of lies and false legend. But hey, look on the bright side. Maybe it'll give you an excuse to come back in six months and pretend all over again that you're not a colassal piece of shit.

The Engineer looks over at Malcolm's father, who has gone still. His chest still rises and falls, but barely. Malcolm, are you ready?

Malcolm's only reply is to pick up the gas canister without hesitation and begin the march to his father's prostrate body.

Last Week....


Malcolm's father breaks through to consciousness floating on a cloud. His eyes flutter open and are instantly hit with a scorching light above him. But his body feels weightless and detached, a comfortably numb sensation prickles his skin. It takes a few moments for his mind to catch up to his circumstances, and when the who, what, and where's finally come calling, his heart starts to hammer in his chest. He remembers being attacked by his son and that other boy. He remembers the needle in his neck and....

[Image: evil-doctor.jpg]

A face he does not recognizes eclipses the light for a moment. Time seems to be at a crawl, giving him ample opportunity to consider those eyes, those soulless, depthless windows. They were penetrating, horrifying somehow. And when the man tried to avert his eyes he found he could not. His body simply wouldn't respond. I'm paralyzed. The panic started to reach a fevered pitch now. What's going on? What's going on?!

The doctor's face drifted out of view then, putting him back under the worrying consideration of that light, that round brilliant light that was starting to look so familiar. A surgical lamp.

Hhhhheeeee iiiiissss aaawwwwaaaake.

The voice came out ponderously, sounding drawn out and far away.

Goooood. Another voice, this one sounding a bit more familiar.

Malcolm's father tried to re-exert control over his body, flexing his muscles, trying to move an arm even if it's just an inch. But nothing. Nothing at all. Panic and rage started to draw together into a morass of ill intent. You fuckers! YOU FUCKERS! I'll kill you!

Another moment passed, and he became dimly aware of some activity near at his side, but he couldn't crane his neck to look. He was at the mercy of the unknown. Just then, that boy who was with his son came into view, standing just above him. He favored one side, and the top most part of a cane in his hand was just visible. But it was his expression that felled the man the most. It was just an absence, a nothing, like this young man was considering a mote of dust drifting through a sun beam. You may begin. The words came faster now as the haze lingering at the edges of his vision abated just a bit.

There was a strange sensation then, a prodding somewhere in his lower abdomen. Not painful, but distinct. Someone's touching me. His heart knocked. Get your fucking hands off me! But the sensation only intensified, a discrete poking followed by a constant pressure somewhere down below. It was the not seeing that was the worst, the sheer powerlessness of it all. STOP TOUCHING ME! STOP! STOP! STOP! The bizarre feelings continued, until he could hear the clatter of metal on metal. All the while, this leering little brat was staring at him. He wanted to spit at him, bite his shitty little white boy face and rip a chunk of it off. You little FA**OT! YOU LITTLE FUCKING FA**OT! This little shit must be buggering my son, he reasoned. Pumping him full of sickness, full of AIDS, or any number of other diseases this perverts were always infected with.

The boy was handed a metal surgical tray then. It was covered in blood and in the center of it a pulpy mass of flesh. The flesh looked alien, foreign at first. Because what he was looking at was impossible, impossible that it would be on this tray and apart from him. Impossible because if what he were seeing were real and not just the byproduct of some booze induced nightmare then his mind would shatter and break into millions of disparate pieces, never to be reassembled.

Even still, he came to recognize the flesh as his own genitals.

The Engineer displayed his manhood on the tray so that he might see them. A scream rose up in the man's chest but had nowhere to go, so it simply stayed in there, ricocheting around and bouncing off his hammering heart. And in that moment his mind started to slip it's tether, the room started to spin and his stomach involuntarily bucked and lurched. Vomit spewed up and over his lips and The Engineer canted his head to the left in response so that it would dribble out and onto the gurney. No, you don't get to go like that.

If Malcolm's father could have sobbed and broken down into insane shrieks he would have. But once again, the insanity had nowhere to go. It stayed within, trapped like a raging fire deep inside, his body serving as a closed Pandora's box holding in all manner of awfulness.

The doctor came round again. This time he grabbed hold of the man's bottom jaw, violently repositioning his head and forcing open his maw, jamming some sadistic looking handled tool between his teeth. So far gone was he that he didn't hear his front teeth break as the metal of the tool ground against them recklessly. He just kept screaming and screaming inside, praying to God for death. But death wouldn't come. All that came was another strange pressure, this time from within his mouth, followed by a abrupt release of that pressure. The tool came free of his face, and within it's jaws was another pulpy mass of flesh. His tongue.

The doctor pushed his face down, and blood ran freely from between his lips. His thoughts were no longer even remotely close to being formed of coherent words or phrases, no, they had descended into nothing more than animal terror and a desire to simply be GONE, to be no longer of this Earth.

After a moment of the blood being allowed to filter from his mouth, his head was jerked upright again. The boy was there once more, bearing that same dead eyed glower. But so far detached was Malcolm's father that the boy barely registered. His entire world was fire and madness. He barely even noticed as the thin metal prong was raised to his eye socket and inserted. Then, a small hammer was produced by the doctor, who proceeded to gently tap, tap, tap the end of the metal prong. Each gentle tap was like a roar of thunder in the man's brain. His eye went black with blood as full blown psychotic mania took hold.

Only one thing broke through the chaos before Malcolm's father finally succumbed to the madness. That boy's voice once more, whispering in his ear.

La commedia e finita.....

NOW


The Engineer watched Malcolm watch his father burn. He had spared the young man the details of his father's transition into being an acolyte. He wasn't quite sure how exactly the nitty gritty would play out. But Malcolm had never asked either. Maybe he didn't care.

At any rate, the boy stood looking damn near majestic before the roaring flame, and The Engineer reflected on all that he had done for Malcolm. The chances he took. And even now, he struggled with what precisely had brought him to this point. Robbie was right about one thing, the boy COULD be a suitable host in the future. But was that what he had wanted from the beginning?

The Engineer knew that what he had done for Malcolm wasn't a kindness. It was stranger than kindness. A trial by fire of sorts that The Engineer had been shocked to find the young man passing at every turn. And yet, he couldn't help but feel that amidst all of this there was something undefinable he wasn't seeing. Hidden behind a veil, just out of reach. An urgent sense of something both intriguing and frightening. Something powerful, threateningly so.

Its love... The voice came like a whisper on the wind. The Engineer spun about, eyes scanning the brush for the source of the voice. But nothing was there.

Nothing at all.


[OOC: HOPE YOU WEREN'T EATING! Seriously though, that's it from me for this series. Hope you all liked it. Big, big props to Robbie Motherfucking Bourbon for hanging in there with me and cutting some killer promos. I appreciate all the work you did. Thanks for being a great opponent. ]

[Image: CoreySig6A.png?width=270&height=406]
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