Old Habits, Old Haunts
Sept 17, 2014 21:18:15 GMT -5
Post by Vinny on Sept 17, 2014 21:18:15 GMT -5
Dorchester, Massachusetts.
We've been here before, but it feels different the second time around.
There's a mint-green double-decker on Deer Street with a dark green awning over the front door and plywood boards over the first floor windows. The vinyl siding is cracked in places and has been fully peeled off in others. What's there is sun-faded and dirt-caked. The second floor windows are shattered from rocks thrown through them. The small yard that surrounds the house is overgrown with weeds, that are barely contained by the collapsing chain-link fence. The house remains standing as if only by force of will; to serve as a memorial to failures to numerous to count and too ugly to name.
The front doorway is blockaded by two large board of plywood and a weather-beaten notice that reads “NO TRESSPASSING. POLICE TAKE NOTICE.” The makeshift barricade has been recently pried loose. The late summer wind carries stray leaves through the opening and onto the gnarled wooden floor. There is a staircase in the front hallway that leads to second floor. Each step groans under the strain, as if the house has forgotten how to accept its visitors. The first room to the right at the top of the stairs was once painted a pale blue, but what remains is chipped and worn. There are holes in the walls and shards of window on the floor.
There is also a small AM/FM radio seated onto the floor, next to a half-finished six pack of High Life and the slumped body of a man. The soft chords of Hole's “Doll Parts” float through static and over the speakers of small. As Courtney Love intones “Someday you will ache like I ache,” the man reaches up his free hand, the one not holding a beer, and delicately lowers the volume. It slowly drifts down to silence.
The man's dirty-blond hangs in tendrils that stretch down his face; his legs are splayed out in front of him and the beer bottle between them. As he lifts the bottle to his lips, the hair falls back from his face and Malcolm Drake tilts the bottle back, draining the last few drops.
“There's not a helluva lot I'm good at,” he says with a dismissive twist of his wrist, “I've got what you'd call a 'limited skillset.' What I'm really good at his hammering flesh with my FISTS. There's not a lot of honest work you can get with that skill. Sure, I could hammer a nail. I tried that. The problem is you usually only get to hit the nail once before it... gives up. Where's the satisfaction? I can't get no...”
“See, when you're taking your hands, balling them up, and WAILING into someone's face, it's gonna take more than one shot before their skull... gives up. You have to keep hammering, and hammering, and hammering, and hammering, and HAMMERING... and hammering. By the end you can't even make fists no more; your hands are throbbing, your knuckles shredded. And that face, man, it's no more than twisted red goo and jagged fragments of bone.”
“There's not a lot of honest work you can get with that... but there's plenty of dishonest work. There's A LOT of dishonest work you can get with that.”
Drake lifts his hands up, palms inward, to display the scar tissue that lines his knuckles; misaligned from healed breaks that didn't set properly.
“I ran away last time I was here. I tucked my tail between my legs and bolted for whatever part of the horizon seemed furthest away. I ran until the soles wore out of my boots, and I ran until the bottoms of my feet were bloodied and raw, and then I ran until my lungs breathed fire and my body gave up on me. Then I crawled. I crawled until I found a suitable gutter, rolled onto my back, looked up at the heavens to a god that doesn't exist, and decided this was as good a place as any... to just die.”
“Then it started raining,” Drake chuckles, but it sounds more like a sob, “It fucking started raining. I wasn't even going to be allowed to DIE in peace. I rolled over and did the only smart thing I've ever done. I opened my eyes, and stared down into the puddle forming from the runoff of my head and hair. I stared down and the man staring back at me, the one with the sunken eyes, the shallow cheeks, the tattered skin... he wasn't Malcolm Drake.”
“He was my father.”
Drake tosses the beer bottle forcefully against the wall; it explodes likes a firecracker on impact, cascading shards through the air.
“FUCK. THAT. I was content dying as a scum bag, as a piece of shit, as infectious human waste... but I wasn't going to die being as low as my father. I may not be better than shit, but I'm better than him. So I pulled myself out of the gutter and sought out that honest work, and tried to build myself back up. And when I failed at that, I turned to that dishonest work. The work I'm so equipped for, the work I was born for, the work I do so damn well. Like a junkie back to the needle, like a moth back to the flame. I could feel the vicious cycle starting up again, I could feel myself; hamster back on the wheel.”
“So I jumped off. I didn't find Jesus or Buddha or DB Cooper or any of that hollow, empty bullshit. I found this...”
Drake reaches into the left front pocket of his black denim jacket and pulls out a tattered and bent piece of hard-stock paper. A ticket, faded with time and water-damage, but still visibly bearing the lions-head crest of Frontier Grappling Arts.
“My literal ticket... to redemption. It hit me like I hit so many skulls, an honest line of work where they pay you... they CHEER you... for hurting people. Well, not me, but people. People... that was a little higher than what I was aspiring to, but I figure now... I don't got anything else. I might as well aim for that goddamn brass ring I hear so much about from all the do-gooders around here.”
“I didn't expect a warm reception. I don't deserve one. I expected the boos, the jeers, the garbage... I actually kind of missed it,” Drake smirks, but his smile fades quickly, “I guess I just wasn't expecting Dom Harter.”
“As I stood in the ring facing him, I thought of Dr. Frankenstein staring into the eyes of his monster. I thought of Pandora trying to put the lid back on the box. I thought of Pygmalion and a horribly mutated Galatea. What hath I wrought? I felt... guilt. Do you hear me, Dominic? I felt GUILT staring at you. Not for 'abandoning' you, not for 'running away,' but for allowing you off the leash. I felt guilt because just like my father before me I created some rotten demon-spawn and turned it lose on the world.”
Drake spits onto the floor. He takes a breath before pulling one of remaining beers from the pack and twisting the top off.
“You say I can't change, Dom... Well, maybe you're right. Maybe you're... right. Maybe there's no helping me. Maybe I'll always be twisted and broken and infectious and rotten and callous and low and base and VIOLENT and brutal and nasty and dirty and cruel and MURDERous and savage and vicious and bloodthirsty and wild and goddamn, motherfucking CRAZY...”
His tone lowers.
“...but I hope for YOUR sake, you're wrong. Because if you're right, you just slapped the face of the most psychotically violent sociopath ever to step into a wrestling ring. A truly unbalanced animal. A bloodthirsty Crow. A man who makes you... look like a little boy scout.”
“You remember the catchphrase, don't you, Dom?” Drake takes a sip from his beer, “Memento mori.”
“Ahh, I'm supposed to save that for the end, aren't I? I'm rusty. But that's what Saturday is for. My return, officially or unofficially, a dark match against this new guy, Johnny Raike. Drake versus Raike... as symbolism goes it's a bit heavy-handed for my tastes."
"You're new here, Little Johnny, so you probably don't have the history. See, back about six months ago I was a different man around these parts. I guess you could say I was a bit rough – well, even rougher – around the edges. Back then I'd probably say something to you like: 'They call it a dark match because the cameras aren't rolling yet. That's probably a good thing for you Little Johnny; no one is going to want any sort of visible memento of what I'm going to do to you in that ring. The irony of the dark match is that the house lights are still on when we go at it... but I've got this sneaking suspicion they're going to want to kill all the lights, to hide the MASSACRE that I'm going to leave in that ring. That ring is my canvas and my only medium on Saturday night will be your blood and viscera...'”
Drake snarls, before dismissively wiping the look from his face; replaced with a smirk and a subsequent drag of High Life.
“...but I'm a changed man. Well, a CHANGING man. I'm a work-in-progress, Little Johnny. It won't be my intent to do anything more than soundly defeat you. It won't be my intent to cripple you, to maim you, to leave you a gurgling half-corpse bubbling from so many open wounds. That's not my intent, Johnny... but,” Drake shrugs, “I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. Like I said, I'm rusty. And old habits die hard.”
“Memento mori.”
We've been here before, but it feels different the second time around.
There's a mint-green double-decker on Deer Street with a dark green awning over the front door and plywood boards over the first floor windows. The vinyl siding is cracked in places and has been fully peeled off in others. What's there is sun-faded and dirt-caked. The second floor windows are shattered from rocks thrown through them. The small yard that surrounds the house is overgrown with weeds, that are barely contained by the collapsing chain-link fence. The house remains standing as if only by force of will; to serve as a memorial to failures to numerous to count and too ugly to name.
The front doorway is blockaded by two large board of plywood and a weather-beaten notice that reads “NO TRESSPASSING. POLICE TAKE NOTICE.” The makeshift barricade has been recently pried loose. The late summer wind carries stray leaves through the opening and onto the gnarled wooden floor. There is a staircase in the front hallway that leads to second floor. Each step groans under the strain, as if the house has forgotten how to accept its visitors. The first room to the right at the top of the stairs was once painted a pale blue, but what remains is chipped and worn. There are holes in the walls and shards of window on the floor.
There is also a small AM/FM radio seated onto the floor, next to a half-finished six pack of High Life and the slumped body of a man. The soft chords of Hole's “Doll Parts” float through static and over the speakers of small. As Courtney Love intones “Someday you will ache like I ache,” the man reaches up his free hand, the one not holding a beer, and delicately lowers the volume. It slowly drifts down to silence.
The man's dirty-blond hangs in tendrils that stretch down his face; his legs are splayed out in front of him and the beer bottle between them. As he lifts the bottle to his lips, the hair falls back from his face and Malcolm Drake tilts the bottle back, draining the last few drops.
“There's not a helluva lot I'm good at,” he says with a dismissive twist of his wrist, “I've got what you'd call a 'limited skillset.' What I'm really good at his hammering flesh with my FISTS. There's not a lot of honest work you can get with that skill. Sure, I could hammer a nail. I tried that. The problem is you usually only get to hit the nail once before it... gives up. Where's the satisfaction? I can't get no...”
“See, when you're taking your hands, balling them up, and WAILING into someone's face, it's gonna take more than one shot before their skull... gives up. You have to keep hammering, and hammering, and hammering, and hammering, and HAMMERING... and hammering. By the end you can't even make fists no more; your hands are throbbing, your knuckles shredded. And that face, man, it's no more than twisted red goo and jagged fragments of bone.”
“There's not a lot of honest work you can get with that... but there's plenty of dishonest work. There's A LOT of dishonest work you can get with that.”
Drake lifts his hands up, palms inward, to display the scar tissue that lines his knuckles; misaligned from healed breaks that didn't set properly.
“I ran away last time I was here. I tucked my tail between my legs and bolted for whatever part of the horizon seemed furthest away. I ran until the soles wore out of my boots, and I ran until the bottoms of my feet were bloodied and raw, and then I ran until my lungs breathed fire and my body gave up on me. Then I crawled. I crawled until I found a suitable gutter, rolled onto my back, looked up at the heavens to a god that doesn't exist, and decided this was as good a place as any... to just die.”
“Then it started raining,” Drake chuckles, but it sounds more like a sob, “It fucking started raining. I wasn't even going to be allowed to DIE in peace. I rolled over and did the only smart thing I've ever done. I opened my eyes, and stared down into the puddle forming from the runoff of my head and hair. I stared down and the man staring back at me, the one with the sunken eyes, the shallow cheeks, the tattered skin... he wasn't Malcolm Drake.”
“He was my father.”
Drake tosses the beer bottle forcefully against the wall; it explodes likes a firecracker on impact, cascading shards through the air.
“FUCK. THAT. I was content dying as a scum bag, as a piece of shit, as infectious human waste... but I wasn't going to die being as low as my father. I may not be better than shit, but I'm better than him. So I pulled myself out of the gutter and sought out that honest work, and tried to build myself back up. And when I failed at that, I turned to that dishonest work. The work I'm so equipped for, the work I was born for, the work I do so damn well. Like a junkie back to the needle, like a moth back to the flame. I could feel the vicious cycle starting up again, I could feel myself; hamster back on the wheel.”
“So I jumped off. I didn't find Jesus or Buddha or DB Cooper or any of that hollow, empty bullshit. I found this...”
Drake reaches into the left front pocket of his black denim jacket and pulls out a tattered and bent piece of hard-stock paper. A ticket, faded with time and water-damage, but still visibly bearing the lions-head crest of Frontier Grappling Arts.
“My literal ticket... to redemption. It hit me like I hit so many skulls, an honest line of work where they pay you... they CHEER you... for hurting people. Well, not me, but people. People... that was a little higher than what I was aspiring to, but I figure now... I don't got anything else. I might as well aim for that goddamn brass ring I hear so much about from all the do-gooders around here.”
“I didn't expect a warm reception. I don't deserve one. I expected the boos, the jeers, the garbage... I actually kind of missed it,” Drake smirks, but his smile fades quickly, “I guess I just wasn't expecting Dom Harter.”
“As I stood in the ring facing him, I thought of Dr. Frankenstein staring into the eyes of his monster. I thought of Pandora trying to put the lid back on the box. I thought of Pygmalion and a horribly mutated Galatea. What hath I wrought? I felt... guilt. Do you hear me, Dominic? I felt GUILT staring at you. Not for 'abandoning' you, not for 'running away,' but for allowing you off the leash. I felt guilt because just like my father before me I created some rotten demon-spawn and turned it lose on the world.”
Drake spits onto the floor. He takes a breath before pulling one of remaining beers from the pack and twisting the top off.
“You say I can't change, Dom... Well, maybe you're right. Maybe you're... right. Maybe there's no helping me. Maybe I'll always be twisted and broken and infectious and rotten and callous and low and base and VIOLENT and brutal and nasty and dirty and cruel and MURDERous and savage and vicious and bloodthirsty and wild and goddamn, motherfucking CRAZY...”
His tone lowers.
“...but I hope for YOUR sake, you're wrong. Because if you're right, you just slapped the face of the most psychotically violent sociopath ever to step into a wrestling ring. A truly unbalanced animal. A bloodthirsty Crow. A man who makes you... look like a little boy scout.”
“You remember the catchphrase, don't you, Dom?” Drake takes a sip from his beer, “Memento mori.”
“Ahh, I'm supposed to save that for the end, aren't I? I'm rusty. But that's what Saturday is for. My return, officially or unofficially, a dark match against this new guy, Johnny Raike. Drake versus Raike... as symbolism goes it's a bit heavy-handed for my tastes."
"You're new here, Little Johnny, so you probably don't have the history. See, back about six months ago I was a different man around these parts. I guess you could say I was a bit rough – well, even rougher – around the edges. Back then I'd probably say something to you like: 'They call it a dark match because the cameras aren't rolling yet. That's probably a good thing for you Little Johnny; no one is going to want any sort of visible memento of what I'm going to do to you in that ring. The irony of the dark match is that the house lights are still on when we go at it... but I've got this sneaking suspicion they're going to want to kill all the lights, to hide the MASSACRE that I'm going to leave in that ring. That ring is my canvas and my only medium on Saturday night will be your blood and viscera...'”
Drake snarls, before dismissively wiping the look from his face; replaced with a smirk and a subsequent drag of High Life.
“...but I'm a changed man. Well, a CHANGING man. I'm a work-in-progress, Little Johnny. It won't be my intent to do anything more than soundly defeat you. It won't be my intent to cripple you, to maim you, to leave you a gurgling half-corpse bubbling from so many open wounds. That's not my intent, Johnny... but,” Drake shrugs, “I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. Like I said, I'm rusty. And old habits die hard.”
“Memento mori.”