One Last Stand

Dad grunts when he sits down beside me on the bottom stair. Just climbing the stairs to the door has him huffing like a freight train, and I can see the pulse jumping in his neck. He likes his food too much, and when his only exercise is golfing and getting beaten by the other old boys at poker, it’s catching up. His hair is going grey rapidly now, and I can’t help but wonder at it. He’s only fifty. Is that normal, or is it a sign?

I didn’t let him in. All I did was open the door to the knock and stand by as he pushed past me into the hall, standing and looking at me with none of the faux-righteous fury of our last interaction. He doesn’t look as though he’s preparing to punch me today.

I consider this a good thing.

I don’t remember closing the front door or sitting down on the stairs, but I must have done both, because here we are, light through coloured glass playing over his face, and mine, too, I suppose. He’s wearing that Dunhill cologne: the only one that I can tolerate at close quarters, his bulk keeping me scooted towards the banister. I wrap one hand around the carving, thumb tracing the scalloped ridges of a pineapple, and lean forward, not wanting to look at him. I have a headache, and I wish Angelica were here. She’s… is it the hairdresser? The salon? Somewhere with Mother? I can’t recall.

“-called Doctor Gibson. He couldn’t tell me how you were going, of course, and I didn’t ask. I did ask him to talk to you about the uh… calls you’ve been… well, I know you’re getting the texts, at least.”

I can draw enough from context. He’s been calling, texting, emailing… hell, he even posted a letter, since January. Since the fight, or whatever you’d call that. He punched me. I punched him back. We repeated that chorus and verse a couple of times, and then he ended the fistfight by dropping a bomb on my head. It was cheating, and I suppose I can’t blame him for attempting to create a level playing field, but well.


I’m still not over it, not really. Maybe this is why Angelica has been so gentle about making a decision on finding a new organisation to join. Why, after scouting in Vegas, we took a side trip to Orlando for nostalgia’s sake, where of course Madeline made things a thousand times worse with her own ridiculous attempt to insinuate herself into my life.

And so we sit, the silence broken only by the sound of his breathing.

And finally…

“You should see a doctor about your fitness.” “Don’t compete in this cage match.”

One sentence over the top of the other, like those card mosaic collages from the hospital. We mean the same thing, though, oddly enough, and I dare to face him, flinching away from the unexpected: a declaration not of hatred this time, but something else.

“Why?” Again in unison, and he gestures for me to go first.

“You’ve put on too much weight. Just walking has you sounding like the Little Engine that Could. Except your ‘think I can’ is going to have you keeling over from a heart attack if you’re not careful.”

He punctuates his nod with a grunt of agreement. “Your mother says the same thing.”

“You said you hated me. That you wished I was dead. I’d have thought you’d have been shoving me in the cage with a cattle prod and a metric ton of enthusiasm.”

He winces, flinching a little around the eyes, and nods. “I didn’t mean it, Freddie. I was angry at you. This thing with Madeline… you’re right, it makes me feel guilty all over again for cheating on your mother. It was only the one time, you know. I was young, and stupid, and selfish, and I suppose it forced me to make a decision.”

“And you picked her, right? You chose Mother.”

“Of course I did. She’s the love of my life, Freddie, and so I made the choice, and-”

“But you chose the wrong kid out of it, huh? Wouldn’t it have been great if you could pick her and trade me for the other one? Get the good wife, and avoid the mental case kid.”

“No.” It’s vehement, it’s loud, and I dare a glance at him again, before he reaches out and pulls me in against the wool of his coat, pressing a sudden, almost urgent kiss to the top of my head. It’s the first time my father has ever kissed me that I recall, and it leaves me feeling faintly uncomfortable, and entirely confused. “No, Freddie. I said I hated you. I said I wished you’d succeeded, but I didn’t mean it. I meant something else, and I forget… I forgot that you can’t translate that. That you see things on the surface only.”

“I’m not stupid.” I pull away, cold on the stairs, and hug my arms around myself. “I- Please don’t kiss me.” A heavy pulse starts up in my head, static roars in heartbeat thumps, there and gone and back again.

“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand you. It terrifies me. Please, Freddie, I-”

Of course he can’t understand. I don’t see how that scares him, but there you have it.

“Fine. Imagine that you’re a runner. Or you will be. You’re from a family of runners and that’s what you’ll do. Not an expectation, a reality.”

“I dont-”

“Bear with me. You’re a runner. And when you’re small, before you’ve really started running, somebody comes along and smashes your leg. And you know that if your family of runners find out that your leg is injured, they might not want you, because you’ve lost your value to the family. So you just stay off that leg, and after a while it heals. It’s a little bit crooked, but not so anybody notices, and there’s poison in that healed fractured part, but it’s safe. It’s all encapsulated. And one day you’ll be a runner, and you may not be as good as you would have been before, but you’ll still be able to get away with it. But then, when you’re older, that same asshole comes along and smashes your leg again. Only this time worse, and made even worse by that poison coming out. So you pretend that everything is okay, that it’s just a sprain, and you keep powering through it, but that poison is getting out, little by little, and you lie to yourself, that it’s just that sprain, just a twinge, just a bruise, that kind of thing. Only one day that poison hits your bloodstream and suddenly you’re dying. Or you think you’re dying, at least.”

I look up from my knees for a second, and he’s silent but for that whistle in his lungs, and he motions for me to go on.

“So you can’t hide it, and everybody finds out that you’re never going to be a runner, but your family want to see you cross a finish line or two at some point, so you go to get treatment. And they tell you that they can’t save your leg. They can replace it, though. Find a prosthesis that will make it almost as good as before, maybe even better. But the catch is, you have to amputate the leg yourself. Nobody else can do it. And you can only use your own teeth. So you summon up almost all of your reserves, and you take a bite, and it hurts, and now you don’t just have a broken leg, but you’re bleeding, and the poison is everywhere because of that bite, and you take another, and you realise that it’s not going to work. That you can’t do it. You just can’t. So they give you a wheelchair, and your bites heal, but your leg isn’t any better, because some other bastard is stabbing you in the leg: tiny stabs, a few times a week, so you can’t encapsulate that poison any more. And it goes, and it goes, and you’re in pain, and you can’t walk, and all you’ve ever been meant to be is a runner, so you have to hurt somebody, and it might as well be yourself.

“But it just won’t kill you. And they won’t let you kill yourself. And your leg just gets worse and worse. And then they say… that there’s an alternative. You can strap a brace on your leg, and try to just walk. It’s not running, but you’ll be on your feet. So you take that option. And then you find a career that works like crutches, so now you’re at least walking faster. And then you find the right person, and she shows you how to leach the poison away. And that’s where I am now. I can jog. And maybe that’s all I’ll ever be able to do, but when you say you’d rather see me back in that wheelchair?” I shrug, not even sure if he gets the analogy or not.

“You do love her.”

“I haven’t told her. She knows, but I haven’t told her. I don’t want somebody else to be the first person to hear it. It should be her.”

He presses a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “I thought… I guess I was scared that the only options were Madeline, or the other thing people say about you.”

“There are always more options than the obvious, Dad.”

“I can’t talk you out of that cage match? I… I saw the footage of the one in your last place. And that guy who fell. He was stronger than you, I’m not sure… I’m not sure you could survive that fall, and it scares me.”

“Dad…” I huff a breath of laughter, not even sure where it came from. “There are three other monkeys in this circus. I have no intention of climbing past the first tier. They’re going to do it for me. And then I’ll snatch their little moment away, and make it mine.”

“Sounds an awful lot like cheating.”

“Think of it this way. When you lost money against Paul Demeter at cards, it was because you were beaten by a better player. When I won it back, it was because I’m a smarter player. You just need to know how to be smarter. Doubt my sanity all you like, and with reason, but never, never doubt my intelligence.”

“Still sounds a bit like cheating.” He’s smiling, and I’m not sure why.

“It is a bit like cheating. Also known as a lot like winning.”

---

“Your mediocrity is exhausting. No. Don’t look behind you, or start the mental version, casting about for some other ‘you’ for me to refer to. If you can hear me say this, or read some poorly-spelled transcript on somebody’s cobbled-together wikia page, let me assure you that I mean you. Specifically, inclusively, and absolutely you.

“I was told once that to get ahead, I had to play my hands more carefully. Bite back the things that I’d really like to say. Go along to get along, as it were. But you know, I don’t have to do that today, do I? Because this is the last hurrah for Insurgency Wrestling, and all mouth filters are off. And look where that attention to mannerliness has me: on the most pathetic, forgettable match on this card.

“Triple cage? You know, I’d like to know what people were thinking at the moment they created this card. I just left a company that tried this. Blew out their budget on trying to be the most innovative, forgetting that innovation comes from your talent, not the laughable sideshow of situations you put them in. They put out an identical triple cage for their first pay per view, set out boxes of scorpions, and reams of hardcore matches with ridiculous stipulations. When I first saw this card, I wondered if Insurgency had borrowed Willow Swaime as temporary management, because it has that particular flavour of mediocrity dressed up to shock, like dollar store toys wrapped in expensive paper. Or Bianca Davis. At least in that company, the cage meant something: was the headliner of their big event, for their biggest championship. This one? Just utter meaninglessness, designed to toss the four most disposable idiots on your roster at each other and hope to recoup lost ticket sales in video income once one of us dies.

“Heads up. It’s not going to be me. Do you honestly think anybody with even the slightest shred of self-preservation is going to climb three tiers for nothing? For… you? What have you ever done for us? We show up, we’re reliable, we work our collective asses off, we give our time in training and preparation and honour our contract and in return… this? This… I don’t even know what this is.

“I can understand… how did Wolfe put it? Wanting to go out with a bang? And the logic in bookings is obvious the higher you go up the card, but this? Four people without a single iota of commonality, no standing interest in each other outside of this match, and not a hint of history. You’ve saved that for your big names, and that’s fair enough. There’s no wonder that we’re the show openers. Which is a shame, given that three out of the four of us actually know enough about what we’re doing to put on a decent show, which could only improved by pitting us against people we actually give a damn about. I don’t know Wolfe, although from what I’ve seen and heard lately, his head isn’t in this match, let alone his heart. I barely know Lifer, and while he seems decent enough, he doesn’t get me fired up, competitively or otherwise. Not to mention my doubts about him actually showing up, given that he’s publicly talking about his hospitalisation. And Hart? Pfft. What was that, you had a volunteer that you just couldn’t fit anywhere else? If you want your poster boy for mediocrity, you have it right there. You can trade on who your parents are as a leg-up into wrestling, but you have to match that career boost with actual ability, and from what I can gather, that’s far too difficult for him.

“But like Wolfe, I’m here. And as always, I’ll be a good little workhorse. I’ll be there on time, I’ll be prepped, trained and ready, and I’ll work my ass off in the ring. But I will not risk my life for you.

“That… doesn’t mean that I won’t risk theirs.”