Dream A Little Dream
Sept 29, 2016 19:59:43 GMT -5
Post by The Mason on Sept 29, 2016 19:59:43 GMT -5
September 21, 2016
HENDERSON, NV
“She thinks this is gonna be different than how it was before. She thinks that she can just call this a comeback and she’s gonna ride this nonexistent wave of momentum to a defeat over me. Y’know? You know that, right? Nero, she’s… she’s out of her mind. She believes things like this just happen everyday.
Miracles, Sadie. Nero believes in miracles.”
Behind the darkness of the capped camera lens, Evan spoke to me. He was playing music in the background, faintly, and every time he paused I would try to focus and listen to it, but I found it hard to get the chance.
”She was always good. I would never deny she was good. But would you say she was as good as me? I mean, looking at our careers side-by-side, I would say it’s nearly impossible! Like-- ugh. The way she talks to me on social media is unacceptable but imagine if she actually managed to pull one over on me? Imagine if she pinned me or even more sickening to think about, Sadie, if she made me tap. How would that make me look? Gah. No. Don’t even fix your lips to answer. It’s rhetorical.”
He sighed. For a few seconds, he was just silent there. I strained to listen to the familiar melody in the back. An older song… a haunting one…
”...stars fading… linger on…”
Evan spoke again over the tune.
”She could do it. Everyone would be talking about it. First night back and she starts off on a roll at my friggin’ expense. And worse, Sadie-- worse, after everything everyone’s said, after beating those two faceless jamokes, and then losing to Mark Storm, letting Molly beat me, THEN Nero Freaking Darling waltzes in and does it? I can’t do it. I will not.
…
I’m not prepped to address her or the audience. I need to figure out more. I need to feel more concrete about this. Sadie, we need to learn about the Nero. Pack up. We’re going on a trip.”
Though I’d watched Evan hop up and walk away, up the stairs of his nearly-bare Henderson home to his bedroom, those watching behind the capped lens would only hear his footsteps fade. But like me, they could finally hear that vintage, haunting melody I’d been straining to hear between every pause and breath. I made my way to the stereo. I turned the dial, pushing the volume upward.
September 26, 2016
MOUNT AIRY, MD
Evan did what he told me he would. He did research on Nero Darling… not the type of research I’d suggested, but research in its most technical of definitions.
He’d dedicated himself to it whenever he had a free moment. While I didn’t agree with the company Evan had decided to keep in his free time once again (company that included Neon, a fucking virus that I was sure he’d already rid himself of) his mind seemed clear for the first time in ages. Conversations didn’t devolve into rants. Rational thoughts weren’t being overcome by ill-conceived ones. At the risk of, myself, sounding unwell, Evan didn’t strike me as peculiar or out-of-touch. For once, he seemed “okay.” For once, Evan didn’t seem like he was out of his m--
“Is it too much if I like, direct the whole thing at her kids, and end it with y’all are gonna call me Dad--”
“You could’ve stopped… halfway through that sentence… and it would’ve already been too much.”
For reasons beyond my comprehension, we were in a library in bumfuck-allegedly-somewhere in Maryland. In Evan’s defense, this is where his children lived. One of them-- the one he likes less, I believe-- asked to go to the library and Evan mumbled a response, absently walking toward the car as he typed away on his phone. The kid ran off on his own, hardly phased by his father’s refusal to give one single, liquid shit. Evan, on the other hand, had pulled himself up to one of the dated Mac computers, body hunched forward, obscuring whatever it was he was looking at on that screen.
“She’s had family in this business for a while,” he said, quietly.
I nodded. “Yeah. Lani and I used to see Jaxie when we were flipping thr--”
“No, no,” he interrupted, glancing back at me out of the corner of his eye. “I mean, sure, but even her granddad was deep in this, back in the South, y’know? She’s in it, man. Blood.” He turned back to the screen, sighing a bit. “I’ve never even heard of the guy.” He said it as if he was disappointed. Bitter that he simply didn’t know something.
I shrugged, kicking at his chair, forcing him a few inches away from his self-designation position. “Does it matter all that much? You can’t assume just because Jaxie borrowed the name ‘Wyatt’, he has this overwhelming influence on what Nero’s ever done.”
“I know. I just…” He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “You ever feel like you’re just missing stuff?”
I angled my head, smirking at him as his eyes drifted to meet mine. “Don’t get too lost in history. Good way to lose your grip on the future. Right?”
His eyes drifted toward the screen again. He scrolled down the page. I still couldn’t quite tell what he was reading. I had no desire to lean past him and try to find out. With a sigh, I continued.
“Ev.”
“Yeah.”
“Why does she stress you out this much?”
“What?” Evan shot another glance at me out of the corner of his eye. “She doesn’t. She’s like, nobody.”
“She makes you so fucking uncomfortable,” I whispered, leaning closer. “You’re not laughing. You’re not smiling. You’re not joking.” I shook my head a little. “Mark Storm, I can understand, but this is not that. Evan, you cannot fuck this up.”
“I’m good,” he said back, sternly. “I’m--”
“Dad.”
Without hesitation, Evan’s head turned in the direction of the voice. “Yeah.”
JC Harrison walked up to his dad, eyes wide, broad grin on his face. He held a black, hardcover book out toward his father and Evan swung around in his chair to accept it in his hands. He glanced at the spine of the book and frowned. “What is It?”
“It’s a book,” JC said, calmly.
“I…” Evan lowered the book and glared at his son. “I can see that. What is It?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve heard of It.”
Impatiently, Evan slammed the book down on his knee and glared at me. “I ALREADY TOLD YOU I DON’T UNDERSTAND WRESTLING MEMES, SADIE.”
“It’s about a clown,” JC replied. “He--”
Evan chucked the book back at his least-favorite-son’s chest. Exhaling deeply, JC was taken off of his feet, thrown to his back as the large book toppled his diminutive body.
“Jordan. We are not a clown family,” Evan said, calmly. “That’s why you and your brother don’t have posters of Zero McHannon in your room.” He frowned. “Get off the floor, son.”
With a groan, JC pushed himself off of the floor, pulling the book up with him, while I stared in shock. Shock that this situation probably didn’t deserve.
“If you have to read King, go pick out The Shining. Get started on that.”
“Is it good?” JC asked, wide-eyed. And out of breath.
“Yeah.” Evan nodded. “It’ll put hair on your chest.” Excited at the prospect, the eccentric JC pivoted and scrambled into the aisles, making a mad dash for his father’s recommended book. Evan turned toward me and frowned slightly. “Sadie, your mouth is all open. Close it.”
“My bad,” I muttered.
He said it with a condescending snark that I’d grown accustomed to but his actions didn’t match it. There wasn’t the usual self-appreciation. There was a lingering gaze that just sort of drifted toward the ground before he slowly turned his attention back toward the screen. I waited, but I didn’t say anything. I decided it was simply best not to for the time being. If nothing else, Evan was invested. And even if it wasn’t healthy… Evan was focused.
September 28, 2016
FREDERICK, MD
”A lot of times throughout my career I’ve told people ‘it didn’t have to be this way’ and I was just saying it to make a point. A lot of those times, it did have to be that way.
It had to be that way because someone had a championship that I thought would’ve looked better on me. It had to be that way… because somebody said something about me or my friends or my family that I couldn’t ignore. It had to be that way because my career depended on it. And no matter what I said, it was always gonna end up like that. I was just trying to make light of a situation that was already way too heavy, y’know?
‘It didn’t have to be this way.’
I guess it’s like, a phrase that’s supposed to inspire regret because it’s what you say when you’ve reached the end of your rope and you have to take action. And I think people say it and they look back and they realize they fought over something stupid or something meaningless, and like… I look at our match listed for Vertigo this upcoming Saturday in Michigan and that stupid cliché keeps popping up in my head, dude, over and over:
’It didn’t have to be this way.’
And this is one of those rare instances where it really didn’t, Nero. We should’ve been able to relate to each other pretty quickly, what with us both being vegans, and both of us having kids while being prominent stars on the wrestling scene, and both of us loving Pokémon for Tom’s sake. We should’ve been best friends. But then you decided to run your mouth on the internet like a child, spreading false accusations about A NATIONAL TREASURE ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA, MY GOD.
You were runnin’ your foul, barely-rehabilitated skeeze mouth about how Evan Envi was getting a sex change, which would be harmless schoolyard banter in 2015 but in the year TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN, comments like that hold WEIGHT. You make comments like that and my highly diverse fanbase, SOME OF WHICH ARE LEADERS IN THE LGBTQ-et cetera COMMUNITY BECOME REALLY, REALLY EXPECTANT. And persistent.
And I dunno about you, Darling, but I don’t like the pressure of having eighteen angry individuals in uniform breathing down my neck asking me when, exactly, I’m going to make my transition. Those kind of questions make me uncomfortable and I have only one person to blame.
And that’s Molly Reid.
Because without that idiot treating me like a piece of common Michigan trash, people like you wouldn’t have the freakin’ GALL to talk to me like your sister talks to your deadbeat-baby-daddy. Without Molly Reid tossing me aside and throwing friendship right back in my face, you wouldn’t be feelin’ yourself fresh out of rehab, gettin’ in the face of the Chief, throwin’ down the gauntlet like you’ve done!
She talked down to me and now-- now she’s going up against my least favorite wrestler of all time for the Pride Championship and I look like an idiot, Nero. I was right there in the same match with her, with the same opportunity and I let it slip through my sweaty palms, ahhhh nah! She kicked Noelle in the side of the face and three seconds later everything I’d bragged about belonged to…
...to Molly.
And suddenly, I’m being treated less like a national treasure and I’m being treated more like a Nero, ewwww. And I don’t deserve that. Like, no! I deserve better, man. I don’t do ties like you do. I don’t do second-place like you do. I don’t wanna relate to you like that. I don’t want us to have this everlasting bond about how neither one of us were good enough to cut it in FGA and I especially don’t want to relate about how neither one of us were even good enough to beat MOLLY FREAKIN’ REID.
I AM NOT THAT PERSON. I AM NOT YOU.
I’m not a letdown. And… your granddad might’ve settled for being a nobody and your sister, Jaxie, might be fine with being completely mediocre, and like-- it’s fine if you don’t wanna shoot higher. I’m not gonna try and push you there. But you’re not gonna take me down with you.
Your first match back ends on the same disappointing note that you left on. Because the only way that story ends different, Nero, is at my expense and it’s not gonna be that way.
You’re gonna come back. We’re gonna get in the ring. And I’m gonna hurt you. And years down the road, we might talk about how it didn’t have to be this way. How I could’ve gotten to the Pride Championship and the main event without sending you back to the same shelf you came from.
But for right now, in this moment, it has to be that way. And I will hurt you. And there was never anything you could’ve done about it.”
HENDERSON, NV
“She thinks this is gonna be different than how it was before. She thinks that she can just call this a comeback and she’s gonna ride this nonexistent wave of momentum to a defeat over me. Y’know? You know that, right? Nero, she’s… she’s out of her mind. She believes things like this just happen everyday.
Miracles, Sadie. Nero believes in miracles.”
Behind the darkness of the capped camera lens, Evan spoke to me. He was playing music in the background, faintly, and every time he paused I would try to focus and listen to it, but I found it hard to get the chance.
”She was always good. I would never deny she was good. But would you say she was as good as me? I mean, looking at our careers side-by-side, I would say it’s nearly impossible! Like-- ugh. The way she talks to me on social media is unacceptable but imagine if she actually managed to pull one over on me? Imagine if she pinned me or even more sickening to think about, Sadie, if she made me tap. How would that make me look? Gah. No. Don’t even fix your lips to answer. It’s rhetorical.”
He sighed. For a few seconds, he was just silent there. I strained to listen to the familiar melody in the back. An older song… a haunting one…
”...stars fading… linger on…”
Evan spoke again over the tune.
”She could do it. Everyone would be talking about it. First night back and she starts off on a roll at my friggin’ expense. And worse, Sadie-- worse, after everything everyone’s said, after beating those two faceless jamokes, and then losing to Mark Storm, letting Molly beat me, THEN Nero Freaking Darling waltzes in and does it? I can’t do it. I will not.
…
I’m not prepped to address her or the audience. I need to figure out more. I need to feel more concrete about this. Sadie, we need to learn about the Nero. Pack up. We’re going on a trip.”
Though I’d watched Evan hop up and walk away, up the stairs of his nearly-bare Henderson home to his bedroom, those watching behind the capped lens would only hear his footsteps fade. But like me, they could finally hear that vintage, haunting melody I’d been straining to hear between every pause and breath. I made my way to the stereo. I turned the dial, pushing the volume upward.
stars fading but I linger on, dear
still craving your kiss
i'm longing to linger till dawn, dear
just saying this...
September 26, 2016
MOUNT AIRY, MD
Evan did what he told me he would. He did research on Nero Darling… not the type of research I’d suggested, but research in its most technical of definitions.
He’d dedicated himself to it whenever he had a free moment. While I didn’t agree with the company Evan had decided to keep in his free time once again (company that included Neon, a fucking virus that I was sure he’d already rid himself of) his mind seemed clear for the first time in ages. Conversations didn’t devolve into rants. Rational thoughts weren’t being overcome by ill-conceived ones. At the risk of, myself, sounding unwell, Evan didn’t strike me as peculiar or out-of-touch. For once, he seemed “okay.” For once, Evan didn’t seem like he was out of his m--
“Is it too much if I like, direct the whole thing at her kids, and end it with y’all are gonna call me Dad--”
“You could’ve stopped… halfway through that sentence… and it would’ve already been too much.”
For reasons beyond my comprehension, we were in a library in bumfuck-allegedly-somewhere in Maryland. In Evan’s defense, this is where his children lived. One of them-- the one he likes less, I believe-- asked to go to the library and Evan mumbled a response, absently walking toward the car as he typed away on his phone. The kid ran off on his own, hardly phased by his father’s refusal to give one single, liquid shit. Evan, on the other hand, had pulled himself up to one of the dated Mac computers, body hunched forward, obscuring whatever it was he was looking at on that screen.
“She’s had family in this business for a while,” he said, quietly.
I nodded. “Yeah. Lani and I used to see Jaxie when we were flipping thr--”
“No, no,” he interrupted, glancing back at me out of the corner of his eye. “I mean, sure, but even her granddad was deep in this, back in the South, y’know? She’s in it, man. Blood.” He turned back to the screen, sighing a bit. “I’ve never even heard of the guy.” He said it as if he was disappointed. Bitter that he simply didn’t know something.
I shrugged, kicking at his chair, forcing him a few inches away from his self-designation position. “Does it matter all that much? You can’t assume just because Jaxie borrowed the name ‘Wyatt’, he has this overwhelming influence on what Nero’s ever done.”
“I know. I just…” He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “You ever feel like you’re just missing stuff?”
I angled my head, smirking at him as his eyes drifted to meet mine. “Don’t get too lost in history. Good way to lose your grip on the future. Right?”
His eyes drifted toward the screen again. He scrolled down the page. I still couldn’t quite tell what he was reading. I had no desire to lean past him and try to find out. With a sigh, I continued.
“Ev.”
“Yeah.”
“Why does she stress you out this much?”
“What?” Evan shot another glance at me out of the corner of his eye. “She doesn’t. She’s like, nobody.”
“She makes you so fucking uncomfortable,” I whispered, leaning closer. “You’re not laughing. You’re not smiling. You’re not joking.” I shook my head a little. “Mark Storm, I can understand, but this is not that. Evan, you cannot fuck this up.”
“I’m good,” he said back, sternly. “I’m--”
“Dad.”
Without hesitation, Evan’s head turned in the direction of the voice. “Yeah.”
JC Harrison walked up to his dad, eyes wide, broad grin on his face. He held a black, hardcover book out toward his father and Evan swung around in his chair to accept it in his hands. He glanced at the spine of the book and frowned. “What is It?”
“It’s a book,” JC said, calmly.
“I…” Evan lowered the book and glared at his son. “I can see that. What is It?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve heard of It.”
Impatiently, Evan slammed the book down on his knee and glared at me. “I ALREADY TOLD YOU I DON’T UNDERSTAND WRESTLING MEMES, SADIE.”
“It’s about a clown,” JC replied. “He--”
Evan chucked the book back at his least-favorite-son’s chest. Exhaling deeply, JC was taken off of his feet, thrown to his back as the large book toppled his diminutive body.
“Jordan. We are not a clown family,” Evan said, calmly. “That’s why you and your brother don’t have posters of Zero McHannon in your room.” He frowned. “Get off the floor, son.”
With a groan, JC pushed himself off of the floor, pulling the book up with him, while I stared in shock. Shock that this situation probably didn’t deserve.
“If you have to read King, go pick out The Shining. Get started on that.”
“Is it good?” JC asked, wide-eyed. And out of breath.
“Yeah.” Evan nodded. “It’ll put hair on your chest.” Excited at the prospect, the eccentric JC pivoted and scrambled into the aisles, making a mad dash for his father’s recommended book. Evan turned toward me and frowned slightly. “Sadie, your mouth is all open. Close it.”
“My bad,” I muttered.
He said it with a condescending snark that I’d grown accustomed to but his actions didn’t match it. There wasn’t the usual self-appreciation. There was a lingering gaze that just sort of drifted toward the ground before he slowly turned his attention back toward the screen. I waited, but I didn’t say anything. I decided it was simply best not to for the time being. If nothing else, Evan was invested. And even if it wasn’t healthy… Evan was focused.
September 28, 2016
FREDERICK, MD
”A lot of times throughout my career I’ve told people ‘it didn’t have to be this way’ and I was just saying it to make a point. A lot of those times, it did have to be that way.
It had to be that way because someone had a championship that I thought would’ve looked better on me. It had to be that way… because somebody said something about me or my friends or my family that I couldn’t ignore. It had to be that way because my career depended on it. And no matter what I said, it was always gonna end up like that. I was just trying to make light of a situation that was already way too heavy, y’know?
‘It didn’t have to be this way.’
I guess it’s like, a phrase that’s supposed to inspire regret because it’s what you say when you’ve reached the end of your rope and you have to take action. And I think people say it and they look back and they realize they fought over something stupid or something meaningless, and like… I look at our match listed for Vertigo this upcoming Saturday in Michigan and that stupid cliché keeps popping up in my head, dude, over and over:
’It didn’t have to be this way.’
And this is one of those rare instances where it really didn’t, Nero. We should’ve been able to relate to each other pretty quickly, what with us both being vegans, and both of us having kids while being prominent stars on the wrestling scene, and both of us loving Pokémon for Tom’s sake. We should’ve been best friends. But then you decided to run your mouth on the internet like a child, spreading false accusations about A NATIONAL TREASURE ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA, MY GOD.
You were runnin’ your foul, barely-rehabilitated skeeze mouth about how Evan Envi was getting a sex change, which would be harmless schoolyard banter in 2015 but in the year TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN, comments like that hold WEIGHT. You make comments like that and my highly diverse fanbase, SOME OF WHICH ARE LEADERS IN THE LGBTQ-et cetera COMMUNITY BECOME REALLY, REALLY EXPECTANT. And persistent.
And I dunno about you, Darling, but I don’t like the pressure of having eighteen angry individuals in uniform breathing down my neck asking me when, exactly, I’m going to make my transition. Those kind of questions make me uncomfortable and I have only one person to blame.
And that’s Molly Reid.
Because without that idiot treating me like a piece of common Michigan trash, people like you wouldn’t have the freakin’ GALL to talk to me like your sister talks to your deadbeat-baby-daddy. Without Molly Reid tossing me aside and throwing friendship right back in my face, you wouldn’t be feelin’ yourself fresh out of rehab, gettin’ in the face of the Chief, throwin’ down the gauntlet like you’ve done!
She talked down to me and now-- now she’s going up against my least favorite wrestler of all time for the Pride Championship and I look like an idiot, Nero. I was right there in the same match with her, with the same opportunity and I let it slip through my sweaty palms, ahhhh nah! She kicked Noelle in the side of the face and three seconds later everything I’d bragged about belonged to…
...to Molly.
And suddenly, I’m being treated less like a national treasure and I’m being treated more like a Nero, ewwww. And I don’t deserve that. Like, no! I deserve better, man. I don’t do ties like you do. I don’t do second-place like you do. I don’t wanna relate to you like that. I don’t want us to have this everlasting bond about how neither one of us were good enough to cut it in FGA and I especially don’t want to relate about how neither one of us were even good enough to beat MOLLY FREAKIN’ REID.
I AM NOT THAT PERSON. I AM NOT YOU.
I’m not a letdown. And… your granddad might’ve settled for being a nobody and your sister, Jaxie, might be fine with being completely mediocre, and like-- it’s fine if you don’t wanna shoot higher. I’m not gonna try and push you there. But you’re not gonna take me down with you.
Your first match back ends on the same disappointing note that you left on. Because the only way that story ends different, Nero, is at my expense and it’s not gonna be that way.
You’re gonna come back. We’re gonna get in the ring. And I’m gonna hurt you. And years down the road, we might talk about how it didn’t have to be this way. How I could’ve gotten to the Pride Championship and the main event without sending you back to the same shelf you came from.
But for right now, in this moment, it has to be that way. And I will hurt you. And there was never anything you could’ve done about it.”
sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you
but in your dreams, whatever they be
dream a little dream of me…