TRC - Part 1.5: You Can Call Me Al [Gold Rush Rumble]

[Kevin Hardaway]

OOC: Just a fair warning to all, there is some strong violence in this piece, soooo...if you're squeamish, I apologize.

Have you ever been in a bad situation with no means to take care of? Fuck it, Kevin Hardaway was there. Sitting in the guest room of Ruby Tyler’s home, armed with a baseball bat, trying to think about what the fuck he was going to do right now. Clearly WHY he was in the guest room of Ruby’s house is another story altogether (not really, Ruby went on a store run and Kevin was watching the ball game on her TV waiting for her to come back so they could continue training) but here he was.

And on the other end, was a power-hungry demon looking for the damned book that caused all this madness in the first place for Kevin. All Kevin thought was that this guy was a friend of Ruby’s looking for her, but when Kevin saw the signs, he immediately questioned him and that’s when shit hit the fan. The guy’s eyes turned white, a more demonic voice came out from him...clearly, this dude was either on some really impressive shrooms, or this motherfucker was not him.

And he wasn’t. Cue Kevin throwing the sofa near him and running up to the nearest room of the house. Thank goodness it wasn’t Ruby’s room or else she would have killed him on the spot right then and there. But he found his way into the guest room and noticed that she had a wide array of melee weapons in there. “Wonderful. All of this yet no fucking guns? You mad, sug?” he yells out as he grabs the thing that could do the most damage. An aluminum baseball bat.

“Welp…’tis the season, I guess.”

For a second, he gets ready to kick the door open and deal with this head-on. All of the training that she has done so far...all for something. And that time is now. But he needs to gain the confidence ready for it. He claps his hands a few times and says to himself...

“I’m ready for this. I’m ready. I can do this. Take care of this guy, show Ruby what I did, finally I get some god damn recognition around here. Yeah...I have this....FUCK, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy…”

He kicks open the door and yells out to the demon, “HEY ASSHOLE?!” to which he immediately turns around to see Kevin, holding the bat in one hand and his phone in the other. A keen eye and determined look upon his face as the demon snarls and walks up to him, “What the fuck do you think you’re going to do with that?” He tells Kevin.

“THIS!”

He pushes a button on his phone, and…



“You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon starts playing on the wireless speaker in the house. No...seriously. A weird and confused look comes upon Kevin’s face as he tries to turn it off, but to no avail...the demon still walking up to him and as Simon’s voice starts singing in a spoken-word like fashion, Kevin tries swinging the bat as the demon immediately removes it from his grasp, and smiles viciously at him. “Your name isn’t Al, isn’t it?” He tells him, lifting up a finger but gets cut off right away by the swing of a right fist directly towards his face. Why the demon didn’t use the bat is beyond me, but maybe he’s just toying with him at this rate.

And what a right fist it is as Kevin goes down like a sack of hammers. The demon drops the bat and picks him up as Kevin’s face is already swelled up and busted open and he replies back by spitting back blood in the demon’s face and winking at him.

*WHAM*

Another punch directly towards the face as Kevin once again goes down. The demon is clearly just playing with Kevin like a dog going after a tennis ball or a rope as he grabs the bat this time and twirls it in his hand, just waiting for him to get back up and fight so he can bash his brains in, but as Kevin gets a knee up and looks up, his face is beyond destroyed...only two punches in. But there’s an upper hand to all of this as before he can fully get on his feet, he runs full charge at the demon and body tackles him through the wood railing guarding the stairs as both men crash into the stairs, bouncing the demon’s head off the wall that’s near it and falling to the first floor of the house.

All while the song is still playing. Yeah, can’t imagine this song with anything else again, can you?

Both men stay down for a few minutes, the wood crackling and splintering off the guard rails as blood drips down both men’s heads. A pool of blood around the demon’s however as the imprint and the hole in the wall can tell you the exact same story. Surprisingly, the first person to make a move or even a twitch is Kevin. A crawl though it is, as Kevin starts dragging himself towards the baseball bat that has fallen near them in the kitchen. With every drag he makes, he can hear the demon starting to stir. He knows that without this, he has nothing left. He knows that the demon will make mincemeat out of him and then he’ll fail on Ruby’s promise.

He drags harder, the blood dragging along with him, the pain coursing through his body like a shot of lightning. He grits his teeth through the horror and tries dragging towards it. So close and yet so far. Finally...YES! He has the bat, but his feet get dragged away from the demon as he lifts him up and tries to punch him again, but Kevin swats him away with the bat. To any human, the ting of aluminum hitting fingers would even break them, but the demon just swats it away like a fly. Kevin falls to his knees and looks up, eye swollen shut, blood all the way down his face like a wrestler wearing the crimson mask would feel like.

The demon just looks at him and smiles with blood-stained teeth. Pieces of grey matter can be seen from his head. Clearly the power of demonic possession can cause any person to be stronger than the average human, but he didn’t know it was this strong. He speaks to Kevin...once again, like a dog waiting for a bone. Just toying with him like a piece of raw meat.

“I just want you to know...kiddo. That your wife...she took whatever we gave to her like a champ. She loved every second of it. She was screaming and pleading for us to give her more. And now...I’m going to make sure that we do the same to you.”

“Yeah...well...you...you’re forget...forgetting one thing, shithead?”

“Yeah...what’s that?”

*BLAM*

The loudest noise that one thing could ever possibly make is heard. Kevin closes his ears to silence some of the noise as the demon looks down and sees several bloody holes coming out of his chest.

Behind him...is Ruby holding a shotgun.

Kevin gets up slightly and holds the bat, looking down at the demon and grinning right back at him.

“Plan B.”

*THWACK*

Kevin swings the bat at the demon’s head and it explodes violently in a mist of gore and grey matter as the demon falls down on the floor and Kevin breathes a sigh of relief...for a quick second. Clearly the worst is over, right? Well...the song ends and now there’s silence...well, silence from the speakers. The deep breaths of both Ruby and Kevin can be heard as Kevin starts to slowly get up, dragging his feet and using the baseball bat as a crutch to help himself drag along the room as Ruby just stares at him. He’s awaiting the absolute murder that Ruby is going to give to him, for wrecking the house, for soaking the carpet and floor with blood and gore, everything else.

She only gets one simple question out of her mouth. An angry yet kind of concerned tone from her mouth.

“What in the holy fuck happened?”

As he’s dragging near her, all he can get out is…

“His...his name wasn’t Al.”

And with that, he faints to the floor from the shock.

=========

THREE WEEKS LATER (BUT A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE PART 2)

Have you ever been in a bad situation with no means to take care of? Fuck it, I’m there...okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overreaction but the matter of the fact remains. Here I am. Amidst the reigns of the upcoming Gold Rush Rumble and here I am...just sitting here. By myself. With nothing to think about or even say. I could go on and on and on about every single person that will be in that ring come Saturday vying for their chance to become the next person to try and hit the mountain top. Trust me, I know...I’ve been in this scenario a lot more times than you would like to believe. I’ve even won one of these things before. Not the Gold Rush per say, but it was this kind of match that helped me hit the prime of my life and my career up to that point. And now here I am, just thinking about the past.

Thinking about the past when I have a future in my sights. If I can even make it that far. At this point, I can just feel everything closing in and no matter what, no matter how much training that Ruby has set forth with me, it’s not going to be enough. Not just for me, but for us both. And I know she would believe it was a failure if she didn’t help me succeed in my mission going forward, but at the same time, I don’t want to hurt her in the process too. I know she’s tougher than anybody would like for you to believe, but at the same time, there’s just something I can see in her that has me thinking differently. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but there’s something...something unclean going on. And I don’t even mean her past, because...I know that enough. I mean right now.

But I believe the matter of the fact is...and I haven’t even told her this yet. It’s that I’m afraid. Afraid that this is all going to be for nothing and I’m going to not only fail her, but fail my friends and most importantly, fail my daughter. That she’s not going to grow up properly, that she’s going to be stuck inside this pit of despair that is what has happened in my life and I have no idea if I can even fathom that thought right now. It’s scary to even think about it, to be honest with you all. I don’t know...maybe I’m just overthinking everything. Maybe I’m just being a little paranoid. This is what happens when life changes and you’re getting older and everybody around you is running circles around you.

Then again, that’s the new me talking when I should be the old me talking. Because even though I’m older than probably a chunk of the people that’s going to be in that ring come Saturday, it never means I’m down for the count. I never have been. It’s why I’ve been selling shirts that have been reading “Unbreakable” for the past…*he counts with his fingers*...8 years? Almost 8 years, yes. Because everybody knows I have this “never say die” and “rah rah rah” type attitude in my blood and in my bones. Even if some people don’t really think so and think I’m more of an asshole.

Yeeeeah, I’m talking about Ruby. No offense to her, really. I mean, granted, you’ve seen what we’ve done to each other. I’m surprised we haven’t been asked to appear on Maury Povich or Jerry Springer for fuck’s sake. But I like to think I’m more of a “puckish rogue” to be quite honest with you.

Anywho...I know for a fact that everybody is gunning for me. Everybody’s gunning for everybody. It’s why they call it a Rumble. There’s no friends in this...sure, you can make allies with whomever for as long as need be, but in the end, only one person has to be standing in that ring. And to be quite fair, there’s a lot of people who I wouldn’t mind backing sides with. I see that Pat Gordon Jr. is making a return at the Rumble. I know he wants to be in that same ring with me again? Fair enough. Is it going to happen? Probably not. To be honest with you, I would like nothing more than to kick him in his teeth for getting decimated by The Murder before I could come out there and kick their ass, but hey, I can dream, can I? I know for a single fact though that everybody is going to be sitting, waiting, wishing though for the brief moment that me and Ruby are the only two people in that ring. Because it’s probably going to happen. And I know that she’ll do nothing but to make sure that my head is clean off my body and my body is outside on the floor. It’s pretty much common fucking sense at this point. It’s just the way we are. Not if I have anything to say about it first. FGA is about to get their first real taste of what #RubyWay means to the world. Not this tag match, no...it’s right here and now.

And I know there’s a ton of people looking to make sure my head is clean off my body and my body is outside on the floor. I swear to my daughter and any unborn children I might have right now that Annie Zellor is looking at me with a 1,000 yard death stare as I do this promo because she knows there’s some unfinished business with me. Which to be quite fair...why? Listen, last year...I was going through a phase. I was like a screaming teenager who dressed in black and listened to nothing but Limp Bizkit for an entire year, GET OFF MY BACK, WOMAN! Not my fault you had to enter at numero uno last year. That’s just the bad luck of the draw and for that, I’m sorry. Please don’t kill me. Please, for the love of baby Jesus...please don’t kill me.

Although I will admit...doing the #grrface as you were sulking on the floor...that was pretty great. Not gonna lie. BUT PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!

I...I see a lot of names on that list that I know want their hands on me. A few people who I don’t know I’m sure...hey, a fresh face eliminating a long-time veteran does a lot to their resume...and a couple people on that list from my past who just...who just don’t like me. I think back to last year, when I left for a little bit and then decided to show my face in the west coast and helped incapacitate Chandler Scott, that his special lady friend wanted a piece of me. Now I look at the card and realize that once again, we’ll be in the same place, and hopefully in the same ring. So here’s to you, Savannah...if the luck of the draw prevails, you have me right where you want. Granted, I know of your accomplishments, and hell, you might even become a champion here before the night is over, but you still haven’t even touched me. And luckily for you, I’m not in the graces of a family or drinking the Kool-Aid this time. This is all me.

Everything is all me. I’m going to go the cliched route here, so bear with me here, but it’s been a long time. A VERY long time since I was able to hoist up gold. And when I mean gold, I mean the big one. I’ve won titles in the past few years, sure, but for what? No, this right here...this right here is the chance that very few people in this entire universe DREAM of. And I just so happen to be one of those people. Ever since I was a plucky three-year old from the outskirts of Baltimore, playing around with family, elbow dropping plush versions of my heroes on my bed...this is the only thing that means as much to me as family.

I think I might have said this before, so if I have, my apologies for being a sap once again...trust me, it’s normal. But this...this is life. This is all I have to fall back on. Sure, there’s other jobs I have, especially with Ruby as time goes on, but this...this right here. This is one of the three reasons I wake up in the morning and leave my house. Obviously my daughter is one of the others and as for the third...it’s because if I don’t, Ruby will kick my ass twice as hard so there’s that. But I never wanted to be anything else. Not a teacher or a fireman or an astronaut or a cowboy...or a secret agent cowboy astronaut millionaire. No...I wanted to do this. I wanted to break my bones, get bloody, and beat the holy hell out of people for a living.

Now that I’ve said that aloud, it sounds kind of weird.

But this Saturday...this Saturday is going to be something special. I don’t know how or why, all I know is that at the end of the night, I’m going to be the final person in that ring, and I’m going to be the next person to climb up to the mountain top. And I hope that mountain top has missed me because I sure as hell missed her too.

I really have missed her.