Post by The Ace on Jun 20, 2014 16:54:41 GMT
”Fail and I promise Kathy will be made to FEEL my glory.”
The promise rang first and foremost through my ears, as clear and as sombre as a church bell on a foggy Sunday afternoon.
Then it scurried along like a rat, looking to nest in my head, to skirt along some border of my psyche and find the smallest hole to enter my mind. Some deep dark hole, I had overlooked or ignored perhaps. It sniffed and brushed its fine whiskers along my senses, teasing them with its presence. It had come here to find a new home, a new hole to dwell in, having left Angel's.
The fog slowly turned to a mist, red and raw, it glazed over my eyes as I looked at my own reflection in the mirror. The dusky brown edged just a little darker as I gripped the edge of the white porcelain wash basin with both hands.
The rat scratched at the small mound of regret in some deep dark, almost forgotten recess of my delicately balanced mind. The intrusion was most unwelcome. It sat on the fulcrum, poised at any moment to upset the balance, then it shifted its weight ever so slightly and my blood was forced to react.
A match had been struck, pulled and ignited from the Devil's very own little matchbox of tricks.
The river of blood which ran through my veins keeping me alive was now coalescing with the gathering storm in my head, the rumbles rolled over and over in the pit of my unsettled stomach.
She called to me - Louise.
She called out to me, seeking shelter from the storm. Her arms folded, no crossed, along her bare chest. The howling wind whipped at her hair, and her emerald eyes were barely still afloat in the twin streams of the tears that ran slowly down her face.
"Jake!" she said.
She sounded so far away, so very far away. Further still. I would never reach her in time, I feared. I would never reach her before the storm hit, I was afraid, so very afraid.
Now Angel, I'm sure it gives you great pleasure to hear me concede the fact that you are right, and to do so before millions watching this right now in their homes across the world. I have no doubt, absolutely none, that you love, absolutely love the fact that not only am I admitting you are right, but I am doing so before our match even begins. Days before in fact.
But before you grin in absolute victory and before you command in absolute condescension and before you tell the world how you have already beaten me, let me remind you sunshine of one small but oh so crucial detail, one that you overlook only at your own peril.
I may well have just conceded that you were right, but don't for a moment think I have just conceded defeat. I haven't, even though it would probably be the smartest thing I could do right now, it would certainly be the safest and the easiest, but it just wouldn't be the right thing.
You and I know each other so well Angel. We've never seen eye to eye, we've never been close, and we've never been brothers, and why? Is it a simple case of arrogance between us like it is between myself and Alex Jones? Is it a stubborn sense of pride like it is between myself and Xavier Cross? Or is it just a case of inflated ego like it is between myself and Spike Kane?
What exactly is it that keeps The Ace and Angel Blake so far apart?
Legacies? Maybe. Titles? Perhaps. Talent? Some think so. Ability? Certainly not.
What separates us Angel is far more fundamental than any of that, far more key. We have never been close my friend, because we have never needed to be. Whilst you and those who continue to worship you out of some misplaced sense of loyalty and respect may indeed measure the distance between us by the four feet of gold plating and fancy red leather that sits so uncomfortably on your shoulder right now, I measure it simply by the difference in our ideologies. The difference in how we choose to live our lives.
You live your life driven by need. A need that is only insatiable because it is the only thing you've ever managed to hold on to. Everything you are, everything you do, and everything you will ever be is underpinned by a need. The need to be the best. The need to be feared. The need to be respected...and perhaps the most potent of all these needs is the one you so desperately deny, the need you and so many like you have spent the last six years ridiculing me for.
The need to be loved.
A need so basic, so simple and so human that we often think we can live without it. Oh no, there's plenty of time for that later we say, right now all that matters is my career and how many titles I can win, how many professional wrestling history books I can enter and how many Hall Of Fame rings I can wear. This goes on for days, then months, then years, sometimes even entire decades pass by and before you've even realised the true cost of all those sacrifices you've made to become the best wrestler in the world today, you've forgotten about tomorrow.
That love you sacrificed today, you hope will still be there tomorrow, only one horrible morning you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and plant a fist straight through a reflection that is just as shallow as you have allowed yourself to become. It hurts, it bleeds, but it remains.
The Superstars of today are made from the souls they traded yesterday and the hearts they trade tomorrow.
You either live today as a spoilt God or you live tomorrow as a rich man. It's a choice, not a natural progression, it's one or the other, and it's a choice we've all had to make. You and I, Angel, we've made ours. Your bank account is full, but your heart is empty. Everything has a price in this life and you've traded away the one thing I almost did myself, you've traded your soul for ten pounds of gold, five pounds of leather and a lifetime of regret, sorrow and loneliness.
You've sold your heart for the power and respect of a God, and now you realise that it is not worth it you expect me to give you mine. Only I won't. I won't join you down on your level, I won't join you down on your knees as you look up at me with bankrupt eyes, sharp tongue and with an eternal hunger.
You played your hand, rolled the dice and won everything you ever thought you needed at the expense of the one irreplaceable thing you actually did - your humanity. Now you want me to put mine on the table, in some vain hope that you can either substitute your own or more likely just to prove to yourself that we all make the same choices in the end, when the chips are down.
You need the validation of the choices you have made. You need to know that they were right, and you need to know that when pushed, I would make the same choices you have. You need me to give you that hope and to show you that for all my virtues as a husband and a father, at my core, I really am no better than Angel Blake.
Only I am.
My life and my career are not perfect, and they don't need to be. I don't expect them to be. The moments you yearn for, the days with your daughter, the echoes of a life you could have had, are the very moments that never end, the very days that never die and the very life I lead.
I want your title.
You need my life.
That is the real difference between us Angel. As a God, you need something from me to feel as powerful as you believe you are. As a man, I want something to reward my wife and daughter with, to show them my thanks for sticking with me through all the trials and the tribulations of this business. You need the people closest to thank you. I want to thank the people closest.
You are a dominant force, but a feeble man.
I am a weak force, but a strong man.
Strength or dominance? Force or man?
Once again, we've made our choices Angel and once again I do not want to trade one for the other, no matter how much you need me to. I will not join you down in the filth, foraging for idle threats and empty promises just so somebody will pay you some attention for a moment longer.
You may rob me of so many things at Bloody Assizes this Sunday Angel, but I promise you won't rob me of a life you yourself have already squandered.
The promise sank lower and lower into my heart. The dirty little rat had navigated the tides of boiling blood as they sought without success to drown the vermin.
"Jake!"
Her voice was no closer, but now distorted as she called out to me. I raced towards her, sledgehammer in hand.
I raced forever, I raised the hammer high in the air with both my hands as the Heavens cracked open above me. A surge of lightning from the storm raging around me drove me on through the sheets of rain. Something grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back, held me back.
Stopped me from dying all over again.
I still hear her call, only softer now.
"Jake..."
"Honey, are you alright?"
I blinked twice. An angel looked down upon me, concerned. Her beautiful opal blue eyes met the chocolate brown of mine.
I said nothing. I couldn't.
Instead I did the only thing that was still within my power, the only thing that seemed to make any sense. I held her close. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and I pulled her close. So close that she gasped, then she smiled and then she giggled.
She kissed me and the fog started to lift, the walls of flame fell back, and a new heat, a gentle constant heat took hold in the aftermath of the raging storm. It grew humid, so humid that the rat sought shelter. The darkness lifted and now the light offered none.
The promise needed to find a place in my heart, and so the rat listened to the beating of my heart and waited for it to stop beating so it could settle, but it never did. The jaws of a wild cat clamped around its tail, lifted it away tossed it up in the air and caught it in her mouth.
It was then I realised that the promise which haunted me was no threat to her, or to us.
I drew my strength from her kiss.
A kiss that held me long enough to remind me that she could take care of herself. It was easy to forget sometimes in moments like these just how strong she was. She had faced demons in her former life in law enforcement that I had only heard about, men that made her skin crawl.
She - we - would not bow to Angel Blake.
That promise was sealed with our kiss.
Then it scurried along like a rat, looking to nest in my head, to skirt along some border of my psyche and find the smallest hole to enter my mind. Some deep dark hole, I had overlooked or ignored perhaps. It sniffed and brushed its fine whiskers along my senses, teasing them with its presence. It had come here to find a new home, a new hole to dwell in, having left Angel's.
The fog slowly turned to a mist, red and raw, it glazed over my eyes as I looked at my own reflection in the mirror. The dusky brown edged just a little darker as I gripped the edge of the white porcelain wash basin with both hands.
The rat scratched at the small mound of regret in some deep dark, almost forgotten recess of my delicately balanced mind. The intrusion was most unwelcome. It sat on the fulcrum, poised at any moment to upset the balance, then it shifted its weight ever so slightly and my blood was forced to react.
A match had been struck, pulled and ignited from the Devil's very own little matchbox of tricks.
The river of blood which ran through my veins keeping me alive was now coalescing with the gathering storm in my head, the rumbles rolled over and over in the pit of my unsettled stomach.
She called to me - Louise.
She called out to me, seeking shelter from the storm. Her arms folded, no crossed, along her bare chest. The howling wind whipped at her hair, and her emerald eyes were barely still afloat in the twin streams of the tears that ran slowly down her face.
"Jake!" she said.
She sounded so far away, so very far away. Further still. I would never reach her in time, I feared. I would never reach her before the storm hit, I was afraid, so very afraid.
Now Angel, I'm sure it gives you great pleasure to hear me concede the fact that you are right, and to do so before millions watching this right now in their homes across the world. I have no doubt, absolutely none, that you love, absolutely love the fact that not only am I admitting you are right, but I am doing so before our match even begins. Days before in fact.
But before you grin in absolute victory and before you command in absolute condescension and before you tell the world how you have already beaten me, let me remind you sunshine of one small but oh so crucial detail, one that you overlook only at your own peril.
I may well have just conceded that you were right, but don't for a moment think I have just conceded defeat. I haven't, even though it would probably be the smartest thing I could do right now, it would certainly be the safest and the easiest, but it just wouldn't be the right thing.
You and I know each other so well Angel. We've never seen eye to eye, we've never been close, and we've never been brothers, and why? Is it a simple case of arrogance between us like it is between myself and Alex Jones? Is it a stubborn sense of pride like it is between myself and Xavier Cross? Or is it just a case of inflated ego like it is between myself and Spike Kane?
What exactly is it that keeps The Ace and Angel Blake so far apart?
Legacies? Maybe. Titles? Perhaps. Talent? Some think so. Ability? Certainly not.
What separates us Angel is far more fundamental than any of that, far more key. We have never been close my friend, because we have never needed to be. Whilst you and those who continue to worship you out of some misplaced sense of loyalty and respect may indeed measure the distance between us by the four feet of gold plating and fancy red leather that sits so uncomfortably on your shoulder right now, I measure it simply by the difference in our ideologies. The difference in how we choose to live our lives.
You live your life driven by need. A need that is only insatiable because it is the only thing you've ever managed to hold on to. Everything you are, everything you do, and everything you will ever be is underpinned by a need. The need to be the best. The need to be feared. The need to be respected...and perhaps the most potent of all these needs is the one you so desperately deny, the need you and so many like you have spent the last six years ridiculing me for.
The need to be loved.
A need so basic, so simple and so human that we often think we can live without it. Oh no, there's plenty of time for that later we say, right now all that matters is my career and how many titles I can win, how many professional wrestling history books I can enter and how many Hall Of Fame rings I can wear. This goes on for days, then months, then years, sometimes even entire decades pass by and before you've even realised the true cost of all those sacrifices you've made to become the best wrestler in the world today, you've forgotten about tomorrow.
That love you sacrificed today, you hope will still be there tomorrow, only one horrible morning you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and plant a fist straight through a reflection that is just as shallow as you have allowed yourself to become. It hurts, it bleeds, but it remains.
The Superstars of today are made from the souls they traded yesterday and the hearts they trade tomorrow.
You either live today as a spoilt God or you live tomorrow as a rich man. It's a choice, not a natural progression, it's one or the other, and it's a choice we've all had to make. You and I, Angel, we've made ours. Your bank account is full, but your heart is empty. Everything has a price in this life and you've traded away the one thing I almost did myself, you've traded your soul for ten pounds of gold, five pounds of leather and a lifetime of regret, sorrow and loneliness.
You've sold your heart for the power and respect of a God, and now you realise that it is not worth it you expect me to give you mine. Only I won't. I won't join you down on your level, I won't join you down on your knees as you look up at me with bankrupt eyes, sharp tongue and with an eternal hunger.
You played your hand, rolled the dice and won everything you ever thought you needed at the expense of the one irreplaceable thing you actually did - your humanity. Now you want me to put mine on the table, in some vain hope that you can either substitute your own or more likely just to prove to yourself that we all make the same choices in the end, when the chips are down.
You need the validation of the choices you have made. You need to know that they were right, and you need to know that when pushed, I would make the same choices you have. You need me to give you that hope and to show you that for all my virtues as a husband and a father, at my core, I really am no better than Angel Blake.
Only I am.
My life and my career are not perfect, and they don't need to be. I don't expect them to be. The moments you yearn for, the days with your daughter, the echoes of a life you could have had, are the very moments that never end, the very days that never die and the very life I lead.
I want your title.
You need my life.
That is the real difference between us Angel. As a God, you need something from me to feel as powerful as you believe you are. As a man, I want something to reward my wife and daughter with, to show them my thanks for sticking with me through all the trials and the tribulations of this business. You need the people closest to thank you. I want to thank the people closest.
You are a dominant force, but a feeble man.
I am a weak force, but a strong man.
Strength or dominance? Force or man?
Once again, we've made our choices Angel and once again I do not want to trade one for the other, no matter how much you need me to. I will not join you down in the filth, foraging for idle threats and empty promises just so somebody will pay you some attention for a moment longer.
You may rob me of so many things at Bloody Assizes this Sunday Angel, but I promise you won't rob me of a life you yourself have already squandered.
The promise sank lower and lower into my heart. The dirty little rat had navigated the tides of boiling blood as they sought without success to drown the vermin.
"Jake!"
Her voice was no closer, but now distorted as she called out to me. I raced towards her, sledgehammer in hand.
I raced forever, I raised the hammer high in the air with both my hands as the Heavens cracked open above me. A surge of lightning from the storm raging around me drove me on through the sheets of rain. Something grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back, held me back.
Stopped me from dying all over again.
I still hear her call, only softer now.
"Jake..."
"Honey, are you alright?"
I blinked twice. An angel looked down upon me, concerned. Her beautiful opal blue eyes met the chocolate brown of mine.
I said nothing. I couldn't.
Instead I did the only thing that was still within my power, the only thing that seemed to make any sense. I held her close. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and I pulled her close. So close that she gasped, then she smiled and then she giggled.
She kissed me and the fog started to lift, the walls of flame fell back, and a new heat, a gentle constant heat took hold in the aftermath of the raging storm. It grew humid, so humid that the rat sought shelter. The darkness lifted and now the light offered none.
The promise needed to find a place in my heart, and so the rat listened to the beating of my heart and waited for it to stop beating so it could settle, but it never did. The jaws of a wild cat clamped around its tail, lifted it away tossed it up in the air and caught it in her mouth.
It was then I realised that the promise which haunted me was no threat to her, or to us.
I drew my strength from her kiss.
A kiss that held me long enough to remind me that she could take care of herself. It was easy to forget sometimes in moments like these just how strong she was. She had faced demons in her former life in law enforcement that I had only heard about, men that made her skin crawl.
She - we - would not bow to Angel Blake.
That promise was sealed with our kiss.
Well howdy there pardner.