The storm clouds still rumble in the dark night sky from the hellacious thunderheads that have been wreaking havoc on the beach. Lassiter Elementary school is abandoned for the summer, and even the summer janitors have gone home for the night. Ichabod and Steve Parke are alone on the playground.
Steve leads his trainee down to the monkey bars and tells him to grab one.
Steve, you're kidding me, right?
Ichabod grabs one of the bars with his right hand, and it is so low that he barely has to extend his elbow. He looks at Steve as if to say, "See?"
I said to grab it with both hands. Do it.
Ichabod grabs the bar with both hands and grins as he lifts his legs for show. Steve seizes the opportunity and grabs Ichabod's heels. He uses a cord to lash his feet flat against his ass. Now Ichabod actually hangs by the strength of his arms.
I see... good idea Steve... uh, why didn't you just use the parallel bars at the facility?
I didn't want to mess them up.
Steve takes out a grease gun and spreads grease all over the bars and Ichy's hands. Ichabod grimaces at the slimy feel of the grease. Steve spreads more of the oily stuff on the sand and gravel below the monkey bars. He steps out of the square around the monkey bars made of cedar timbers and looks at Ichabod.
The one spot I didn't touch was the ground at the other end of the monkey bars. Get it?
Ichabod smirks and begins to stretch to the next bar, but hesitates knowing the grease will not allow him to get a good grip. He begins to think and then remembers something about grease. He spreads the fingers of his left hand out and then squeezes them together to make thick grease ooze into the crevices between his palm and fingers. He reaches out and smacks the bar with his hand cupped, creating a suction effect. Ichy is able to hold on tightly. He contines the method for three more bars, grinning from ear to ear knowing he has Steve beat this time, too easily.
Indeed, Steve reaches into his pocket and pulls out a book of matches. He lights one and sticks it to the book, setting the whole pack ablaze. This he drops onto some grease, and it spreads rapidly, making a noxious boiling mixture wherever it goes.
Ichabod looks at the flame with mild surprise, then continues onward. He reaches the first turn and maneauvers himself around it with ease. Now the path of the monkey bars begins up a gentle incline. Ichabod has to work a little harder against the acceleration of gravity, but he manages ok.
Soon, however, the flames have found their way to the posts that support the monkey bars. The fire quickly rises up the metal posts, melting the paint away from them in thin one inch square sheets. Ichabod begins to move a little quicker, but its causing his hands to slip. The heat from the flames is making the grease slicker too, not so thick anymore. It is losing its grip, and so is Ichy.
The fumes from the burning grease begin to find their way into Ichabod's nose, mouth, and lungs. He continues pulling himself, but his chest cavity feels like it is filled with bubbling tar. He hacks and coughs as he just keeps pulling. His eyes water with the smoke and pain, and he can't see. Ichy reaches out with his right hand to feel that he cannot find the next bar. He knows he is not finished, because he counted twenty seven bars total before he started, and now he has only reached the fourteenth one. Ichabod closes his eyes and concentrates--as much as he can through the wheezing and hacking that is beginning to overtake him.
In his head, Ichabod maps out the jungle gym. He remembers about how far apart the bars are and how many are in a straight line before one of the turns. He knows he has gone through one turn so far, the turn having a central bar before the next goes out at some crazy angle. Before the turn, he had touched six bars. Then there was the central bar, making seven. Six more bars would bring him up to thirteen and the bar he is on is fourteen. Logically, this bar is a central and the next is out at some crazy angle. The entire gym looks like a diamond, so the next bar would be slightly turned further to one side, and that will leave him with only one more turn before the end, and thirteen more bars. He is over halfway there!
Knowing that reaching out with his right hand had brought him only a few inches from the far side of the next bar's slant, Ichy reaches out with his left, turning his hand slightly to compensate for the new degree. He feels the bar, but notices it is already hot. He grabs it anyway and continues... to stop now means to fall to the ground where puddles of grease boil and burn forever.
Six bars later Ichy almost falls--his hands are on fire. Old scars bubble and burst, running puss and blood down his arms to mix with the burning grease in a putrescent mix of stench so horrible that Ichabod has begun to wonder if the smoke, heat, or smell will kill him first. The screams he is letting out ring into the night, conveniently echoing in the deserted neighborhood a mile away--their rich owners were all on vacation. But Ichabod continues... better to feel this pain and accept it than to boil alive like the martyred disciple of Christ.
When he reaches the final bar, a bar that has gone red hot and has no paint left on it at all, Ichabod lets go and lands hard on his knees before falling face first onto the only calm spot on the gravel. Even the gravel in this spot is like coal, but it is nowhere near as hot as the grease-stained pebbles all around. As Ichabod lies coughing, white foam snows in around him, killing the flame like the host of God descending to reckon with Hell's minions. Ichabod lifts himself on his elbows and promptly retches up a massive black bile onto the perfect whiteness. He collapses once more as Steve puts down a fire extinguisher comes over to check on him.
Come on, lets get you back to the facility... I'll drive.
Get someone on the phone. Make this match this weekend to Grunge's specifications. Hardcore rules, number one contendership on the line. If I am still conscious after this, then he should be no trouble at all for me. He says I'm lucky that he didn't show up... well he's right. Because now instead of feeling cheap that I beat his ass with the help of two other guys, I get his little ass alone in the ring with just me.
This blood and dried gore on my hands covers scars long since healed, broken, and healed again only to be brokend over and over by legions of enemies who feel that they are man enough to stand up to me, to take more than I give, to give more than I can take. Like a vampire, the blood feeds me, but in a more symbolic sense. Looking at my blood reminds me of the obstacles and pain I had to face to get where I am today. It strengthens me, because there is no success without pain, Grunge. Oh, you may have thought you felt pain before, but there is no pain like what I am going to show you. This... this hell that Steve here put me through for the sake of training and preparing for you, it is only physical pain, you see. I am past all that as I am past this obstacle.
Where are your scars Grunge? Can you hold out your hands and show me white blisters that have set into the skin's natural design? Can you run your hand across your forehead and feel knots and depressions where you have been bludgeoned repeatedly by this thing and that thing? Can you remove your shirt and display lines cutting your flesh off into different areas, so irregular it looks like the palm of a war hero's hand?
You say you are hardcore, and if this is true, then of course you can show me these things. But I am not really that interested in what you can show me by simply putting it out in front of my face. I want to see if that pain burns inside you like it does in me. I'm not talking about the pain of love lost or tattered childhood or tortured past. I'm not talking about the pain of memories you may carry with you of career downfalls and coulda woulda shoulda's that still haunt you. I'm talking about a pain that never goes away when you are as hardcore as I am. That is the pain that will win you this match, boy.
Will I explain what this pain is? No. You will know it if you have it. If I explain it, I will only cheapen it, and you will of course claim you have it so that your little fans will all rally behind you expecting you to match wits with me. Its not about wits, its not about talk, and its not about battle scars, Misfit. Its about the fire that won't stop. Just like this fire that would have continued burning had Steve not pulled out that fire extinguisher. It is a fire that will consume you, just as the flames almost consumed me back on those bars. Are you consumed? Is your fire forever?
Hell, your fire couldn't even get under your ass long enough to get you to your show last week. You can cry about problems and stuff. Stuff, its always stuff. Who cares? I don't care what was going on outside of your job, it doesn't concern me. What concerns me is the fact that you didn't show up and I won, yet you are trying to use that against me. Give respect where respect is due, boy, because if not you are going to have one hell of a hard lesson come Saturday.
Oh, and since we are tossing out stipulations, I think it only fair that you accept mine. Here it is, if you lose, you must make up for the time you missed last week by fighting Orleans and Sensation in a TLC Match. Take it or leave it, boy.
Steve cuts the cord on Ichy's legs and helps him up. The circulation has not yet come into his feet, and Steve has to half carry, half drag Ichabod back to the truck. He sets him in and buckles his seatbelt, then climbs up into the driver side. Just before he starts up the truck, Ichabod looks over at him.
I swear you are going to kill me one day.
Steve only grins, and Ichabod joins him as they laugh hysterically. Steve fires up the huge engine and backs into the shadows, flips on the lights, and turns out toward the main road.
|
