C.T.
PWE Roster Member
Posts: 11
Registered: Feb 2009 |
 Posted February 3rd, 2010 10:05 AM IP   
The time was creeping up on 3am. The place, some 24-hour diner called the Dunk Tank out in the middle of one of New Orleans’s seedier neighborhoods. With few bodies scattered across the diner, all was quiet around Dead Time. What the Dunk Tank could not offer in flashy gimmicks or witty commercials like Denny’s and IHOP, it desperately tried to make up for with what employees
described as "nostalgia." Various works of famous artists -- more appropriately, badly-created knock-offs -- littered the walls, notably one of the corners rocking one of the best Norman Rockwells ever imitated created.
In a corner to himself, Erik Josten was quickly learning that the price of fame was a costly one as moments like this where one could declare "Time out!!" were becoming rarities. Paperwork, public appearances, TV shows, and steel chair shots were beginning to take their toll on his brain, so when the opportunity presented itself to be free of Shawn Christopher’s never-ending business regimen, if
just for a moment, the respite was cherished.
Beyond being a world-class competitor contending on one of professional wrestling’s grandest stages, Erik considered himself a connoisseur of all things java. He loved him some fresh brew in the morning. Not any of those overpriced all-style-no-substance Starbucks drinks, but a nice little cup of Joe from some little Mom-and-Pop shop or some Folgers from the grocery store; the GOOD stuff. So when the elderly waitress presented the Dunk Tank’s finest offering in its signature "Coffee Black Attack" Erik was ready to declare what many internet nerds and WOW fans referred to as an epic fail.
"Compliments of the house, stranger," the raspy voice muttered as she fought back an attack of Smoker’s Cough.
The shit-colored concoction sloshing around within the unwashed mug nearly made his stomach turn. A second glance revealed the Dunk Tank’s most famous drink barely qualified as something even remotely comparable to fecal matter.
Erik offered up a weak smile, but the reciprocation wasn’t much more appealing than the contents of his mug. The hue of her curled grin matched that of a five-pound tub of margarine. Thankfully, she turned away and went about her business, leaving Erik to his own devices in a particularly dim section of the diner.
Fighting back the urge to toss the contents of his mug over his shoulder, Josten lamented his choice of locale as he inspected his surroundings more closely. The dying fluorescent light above his head taunted him with cries of "FIX ME!" during each blink. He took a whiff of air and quietly surmised that this place had seen as many cans of air freshener as it had patrons – very little in number. Ducking in here wasn’t the wisest move Erik had ever made, but it was almost the perfect haven from all things
PWE-related. The key word in the aforementioned sentence being "almost" as another non-regular to
the Dunk Tank wasn’t fooled by Josten’s civilian attire or choice of unnatural atmosphere.
"What’s the matter?" A voice taunted in his ear. "The big PWE superstar finally letting the world of glitz and glamour get to him?"
Erik shifted his neck to the source of the ridicule. His eyes bulged from the sockets as one of the last people he was expecting to see was here in the flesh, staring back at him underneath a tattered denim jacket and Mariners ball cap.
"Teegan?" Josten cried in shock as the disgraced former student of Shawn Christopher positioned himself in the booth opposite him, brandishing his own cup of Joe.
"What the hell are you doing HERE?"
"Hey, keep it down," Tim raised a hand, inspecting the diner to make sure no other eyes were fixated on them. "If I wanted to really come here and ruffle some feathers, I’d have gone all postal worker on you."
"I don’t know," Erik jabbed. "Following me across the country and stalking me in a diner pretty much qualifies as," Overused air quotes. "’Going all postal worker on me.’ You want another shiner coming your way or you gonna tell me what the fuck you’re doing here, following me around like this was Misery?"
"Listen, Rockhead," Teegan snapped back. "You can’t afford getting into trouble so soon into your tenure and I bet the last thing that PWE wants to hear about is how some muscle-bound idiot went crazy and punched out a fellow patron. Us folk are already in a lot of hot water as is and I don’t even OWN any copies of the Bible."
"You mean my kind. I don’t go around like a little lapdog looking for scraps at the master’s table, then go shoot up drugs when nobody’s looking because I’m too much of a selfish prick to bust their ASS off for an opportuni-"
"Stop!" Teegan’s voice became an unkind whisper to hint that people were staring. "Look, I didn’t come here to play Dirty Dozens with you. I have a reason for being here."
"Fine," Erik conceded before repeating his previous inquiry. "Now, how did you find me and why the fuck did you follow me here?"
Tim said nothing, merely pulling a scrap of paper from his jeans pocket. It was a flyer he printed off the internet for the upcoming Solitary 39 in New Orleans where PWE’s very own Citizen Truth would be apart of the show against one of a number of fellow PWE gladiators.
"Wasn’t that hard, but I spent the last of my fucking money just to get a ticket out here," Tim explained. "Trailed you around town. You and that idiot, Christopher, were very hard to keep up with, but let it be said I am tenacious, if nothing else."
"You’re a stalker, now?"
"No," Tim bluntly stated. "I’m here to warn you about what’s gonna happen if you allow Shawn Christopher to keep latching onto you like a leech."
"First off, you confuse tenacity for insanity," Erik spat venom at him, landing perfectly on Tim’s cheek.
"You’ve got a lot of nerve following me here after that shit you pulled, throwing out this warning bullshit. Insulting the guy that took you under his wing, making Icon Wrestling and the Gym look like a laughingstock and trying to deny it when you were CAUGHT red-handed. Shawn RAISED us to steer clear of any of this drug-peddling nonsense that’s made guys like us have to work THAT much harder in a world where we’re scrutinized as it is. You were just mad you got caught with the smoking gun and now you’re here to take it out on me and Shawn, peddling some sob stor-"
"The hell I am!" Tim harshly spat back in another hushed tone, countering Erik’s poison with that of his own. "I busted my ass for THREE years in that school! I was one of Shawn’s top students when you were still pushing crap at Puget Sound Pipe. Man, for somebody with all these muscles, it's a shame the only weak one you have is the one between your ears."
"Press be damned. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t reach over this table and beat your scrawny ass right here, right now?"
"Because you’re stupid, that’s why. You were sweet-talked into this little PWE contract and thrown into your first HUGE match against Masaharu Tanabashi, not knowing that Shawn Christopher is poison to whatever he touches. You and I are both more than well-aware of the reputation he has going on when it comes to playing in the big leagues. You’ve heard the stories. How he abused his own family to get the Universal Title. How he was hated by the XWF, how they only keep him around
for ratings and nothing more. How he screwed over EVERYBODY that’s worked with him."
"Gee, Tim," Erik drowned the restaurant in a thundering deluge of sarcasm. "Oh, those God-awful rumors! Surely, that’s only half the story. He’s got the bodies of all those people he hates in his basement and he has a big creature Joss Whedon cooked up severing the heads. He showed me himself." He let out a dry scoff. "Besides, if he’s the King of Shitheads you're painting him out to be,
why’d you spend so much time burying your head up his ass?"
"Naivety."
Josten sat there, not uttering a thing as he choked down some of his brew. He allowed that one word to be sucked into his brain before rising to Tim’s bait.
"You think I’m naive?" Erik asked him as his eyes locked with those of a gruff-looking gentlemen seated on a stool across the room who’d been watching the two chatterboxes go at it. He shook his head in disgust at the pair while Teegan paid him no mind. Erik continued. "You think poor old Erik’s being taken for a ride, that Shawn’s gonna siphon all his money out of his contract from under him, that right? Well, got news for you, Teeg: I DID spend some time in business college before I decided that wasn’t where my heart was at. I DID, however learn enough to know I understand every last little dot of the "I" and cross of the "T" on that contract and there’s nowhere that says he’s taking money from me. In fact, he only asked for five percent. He doesn’t need my money."
"You’re correct. He doesn’t need your money. All he needs is a doey-eyed kid with a little glimmer of potential to mold into his own image. He needs somebody to avenge everything wrong he did with his career. He’s a parent living vicariously through his son and he’s using you to fulfill whatever sick, obsessed fantasy is floating around in that deathtrap he calls his business mind and you don’t know what ends he’ll go to in order to keep his new breadwinner on his side."
Tim nearly jumped out of his skin when Erik’s response to his tirade was met with boisterous laughter. "That was great, Tim. Probably worked that whole spiel up on the plane ride over, huh?"
Erik sat up, relieving his wallet of a couple bills by tossing them on the table. He extended a finger in Teegan’s direction. "Storytime was great and all, but this bitterness act isn’t very becoming. If you want, I’ll fork over some cash so you can get home, but I don’t ever want to see your ass around me, Shawn, PWE, or anything associated with my family. Peace."
"You’re a puppet, Josten!"
Erik stopped in his tracks as he could feel the cold dig blast him smack-dab in the back of the head. His hands wrapped tightly around his wallet, ready to tear the leather in his steel grip. Instantly, his head snapped back to Tim still seated at the booth, curling his lips into a downtrodden frown.
Erik dropped a trio of hundreds on the table in front of his ex-fellow student, emptying such hot breath from his nostrils, it singed Tim just to be near it.
"Take it, you scrub. Buy yourself some decent clothes, take a bus back home, choke on a shitty breakfast, do whatever the hell you want with it. If you come near me, Shawn, of anything having to do with PWE at large, I’ll see to it your ass gets arrested, then you’ll REALLY need to worry about getting bent over."
Without another word, Erik spun on his heel and exited the diner, leaving Tim to hang his head He didn't even bother watching his former friend push open both doors and observe his subsequent departure into the night. All he could do was sit there and contemplate how this one last shot at redemption devolved into him sitting here, alone in some squalid hellhole. No one to rely on anymore, no fake Shawn Christopher playing nice by picking him up off the street like when he was lost at bus
stop, offering him some REAL coff…
Oh, shit.
The coffee.
A fist grinding through the wood of the table ensured that all eyes in the Dunk Tank remained drawn to him, but Tim didn't register a thing beyond his next acidic assertion.
"That FUCKER."
*_*_*_*_*
Excerpt from the Heroic Hoss blog...
So this week it begins for me.
Ladies and gentlemen, I get my chance to rise through the ranks and show the world exactly what Citizen Truth is made of.
Many of you have labeled me as nothing more than Shawn Christopher's lackey. But I'm nowhere near that. See, I've already led an impressive PWE career. I've destroyed legends like Masaharu Tanabashi & Tsukino Meiou. I've brutalized the best of the best like RW Randolph and Chris Jacobs.
And now..
I'm gonna march my way through everyone in my path, en route to solidifying myself as the not just the Future of Sports Entertainment.. but the Present.
So I don't care who it is, whoever gets drawn to face me.. prepare to get hurt & beaten. Cause it's been my cause to rid PWE of all the wrong doing, and reign supreme as the purveyor of all that is right.
And I won't let anyone stand in my way.
... you've been warned.
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