Post by phrq on Jan 13, 2021 1:53:08 GMT
“It’s high time you got brought low.”
- [*]Me. To you.
The darkness breaks as we watch a cup of near overflowing black coffee pulled from a large brown vending machine. Following the cup out of the room the machine is stationed in, we see that the others inhabiting in this building all have one thing in common. They are dressed sharply and cheaply, and are packing handguns in holsters and badges on chains. Obsessed with their phones to their ears or their noses buried in folders, they move about before the ambulating cup of coffee unaware that it even exists.
The cup of coffee comes to a stop and a pudgy finger extends toward a keypad right outside of a door marked ‘4-c’. A quick input of seven digits and the electronic lock disengages and the door pops open. The pudgy hand pushes the door open, and we switch to an interior view of the room. The man holding the cup of coffee is a chubby man in a mustard brown shirt with shit brown pants that are hemmed into highwaters. His tie loose around his neck and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he smiles at his guest.
“You’re not gonna pull an epstein are you?” He says, chuckling.
The man he’s speaking to, a crimson red doc marten in front of him on the table, smiles as he pulls the remainder of the shoelace from it’s entrapment in the shoe. Sitting back in his chair, he pulls his foot up to the knee of his other foot, and scratches the middle of his foot, and chuckles. It is not the hardest question Vincent Black was going to be asked, but qualified as one of the stupidest he’d ever heard.
“If I was going to use these on anyone in this room, I promise it wouldn’t be me.”
“You’re not threatening a federal agent, are you?”
“Never.”
“Good. Hate to have three of you Wolf siblings in jail by the end of the year.” Smiling, Agent Smith took a sip from the terrible, cold, and weak vended coffee, and tried his best to hide the bitterness as it slid down his throat, chilling his mouth rather than warming it. Vincent Black AKA Vincent Wolf AKA PHRQ was not fond of much in the world. His family being paramount, and his sister being as close to the top as possible.
“You want to know a secret?” Vincent began unaware as to what the secret was. He wanted the man to lean forward so he could grab him by his chins and slam his face into the table. He wanted to place his boot into his mouth and jam the palm of his hand into his jowls and snap his jaw in two. Instead, he just leaned forward and waited for inspiration, other than violence, to come.
“Sure.”
“You won’t have any of us by June. You might not even have a job.” or teeth. Or the ability to walk. Of course he was right, attacking a federal agent wasn’t smart. But smart isn’t fun.
“Let me ask you, You’re sister gets picked up for murder, she’s refused bail, and you decide to go to the judges house to what...Threaten him? Convince him?”
“I don’t make threats, sir. I make moves.” Vincent Black throws his shoelace which has been tied into a lasso at the agent’s free hand, and pulls him into the table. Coffee flies and his hand tries to reach over for his gun but its pressed against the table Vincent slams his forearm down onto the agents neck, and looks into his eyes as the oxygen starts to run out and his mouth begins to gasp like a fish out of water. “I hope your family likes folded flags.”
Three agents burst into the room with their weapons drawn and open fire. Blood explodes from Vincent Black’s head and chest, as he falls to the ground in a thud. Agent Smith leaps up from the table and gasps for air, coughing and even vomiting a bit of the shitty coffee. He looks to the other agents and there face is a mask of fear. Turning his attention to that which has their attention, he shakes with fear as Vincent Black rises to his feet. Blood drips from the wound in his head, and he releases a demonic growl before lunging at the agents, and stopping just as he reaches them.
“AND CUT!” Alarms sound and the walls of the room separate to reveal cameras and lights stationed behind them. We then back away from what appears to be a tv monitor to find that in the areas that Vincent Black was missing his head, there are bright green patches and motion capture dots stuck to his face. “Alright, that’s a wrap.”
“Good. Thank you.” Vincent pulls the green piece from his face, and chucks it to the wall and watches it stick. Someone hands him a towel as he passes and he smiles widley as he wipes his face of the adhesive left behind. His eyes filled with delight as he stands before a monitor and watches the footage.
“So this was kind of expensive for a lead in, Mr. Black.”
“I forgot I asked you what you thought.”
“I just meant that it’s a one off.”
“I know what you meant and you know I don’t care what you mean, and yet here we are, still talking while I’m watching.” Vincent smiled as the tech slowed down the footage and showed him just how well timed the small explosive blood packs had popped beneath the cheesecloth shirt he was wearing. Vincent gives a thumbs up and tears the shirt off, revealing the packs taped to his chest.
“Mr. Black. Please explain this mess. It’s not everyday a man like you strolls into town and spends this kinda money.”
“Honestly...” Vincent considers telling them the truth, and all of it. How he had fallen in love with a woman all those years ago, but due to not knowing how to process emotions he failed to realize until things had gotten too late. He had gotten together with someone else. Worse off, they had kids together. And then months turned to years and time passed like liquid through a strainer. By the time Vincent had realized what he had before he had what he had was what he had wanted. It was too late to have it. So he stayed loyal. He stayed with his kids. And then one day, she came back. And suddenly things made sense. Parts of him that he thought were dead, had returned to life. But he had a decision to make. He could continue to use her as he had regretted doing, or he could risk it all to show her how much he cared. How much he loved her.
So he did. He left his wife and 3 children, 2 of which are still not talking to him, and moved into a one bedroom shit box that stood atop a shitty chinese restaurant because that’s where she was and that’s where he wanted to be. It’s part of the reason why Chatman infuriated him. His bullshit way of showing how he cares. Buying things. Posting a god damn photo on social media. They both claimed to love their women. But Chapman purchased the proof and Vincen Black lived it. He didn’t need the public to swoon over his life by publishing photos on some website. He woke up with the goal of making her feel loved, and went to bed hoping he could continue to do so the next. That was love. If Sam thought what he was doing and feeling was love, what was Vin feeling? They both could not be right. One of them had to be wrong. And Vincent Black was not wrong. The things he thought were wrong, the things he was going to do was wrong, but Vincent Black was right about his feelings for Vhodka. He might confuse many things, but Love is not one of them. So he prepared himself with a break and told the inquisitive PA as much as he could stand to.
Vincent was going to tell him that the footage was to show Sam what Sam had shown Vincent. Sam was not a warrior. He was a mirage. An illusion. A pretty boy who liked attention and bought a gym membership to get him more of it. He didn’t get into this business to fight, to war, to battle. He came because he craved attention. He wanted to spend the rest of his life getting drunk off seeing his name in the paper and his face in the photos. He was all form, and no function. Sam had gotten into this business to be everything to everyone. The nice guy, the big dog, the baby face, the hoodrat. He didn’t have a personality, he had all of them. Vincent had seen many of his kind come and go. And now time had come for this one to go.
His efforts to avoid Vincent’s call were noted. He had made a point to express that as a champion, he didn’t have to fight anyone that didn’t earn it. It’s a sentiment held by most cowards in this industry. But as they tend to do, things had changed. Sam wasn’t a champion anymore. Atara had seen to it that someone with more skill and less ego had obtained what he hid behind. The business was full of those, too. People who obtained a championship and used it as a shield to anyone who they felt could take and would take, should they not be a pussy and deny them. Sam had done a damn good job of being the best example of that. Thankfully, Atara made an example out of him, and now here they were.
Vincent, a man who has barely fought in F2B, but whose name rings true to those who know it. And Sam Chapman. A man who only buys a ring for a woman if he can boast about it on fucking twitter. Sam who doesn’t care what people think of him, only that they think of him. It’s why he responded so well to me. And by well I mean not at all.
Calling him like I did was a tactic taught to me early and used often. People like him tend to convince themselves that they’re mostly untouchable. Only reachable by those who they deem to be. ‘You can fight me when you’ve earned it’ is their motto and it’s used almost as much as the overprice cologne he definitely sprays onto his dick before leaving the house. It’s a security blanket. Many things might protect Sam from him, but blankets are low on the list, and ‘Nothing short of a loaded gun’ was at the top.
Vincent wanted to explain about the Dunning-Kruger effect. A joint study by two social psychologists that theorized that certain people have an internal biased that convinces them that they are the best at what they do, when in reality they are the exact opposite. And that the less training a person has in a particular field, they better they believe their grasp of the material to be. Oppositely, people who are highly skilled in areas often believe themselves to be lower skilled than they are. Vincent didn’t believe most of what he had read in this regard save for this; It is very difficult to truly evaluate oneself. Which if anyone has listened to Samuel, they’d know this for a fact.
VIncent also wanted to explain that while Sam believed he was doing his job extremely well, and his name carried weight, it was not beyond reasoning that he could have made a mistake in agreeing to this fight. Of course, His biggest mistake was underestimating Atara the week before, so this mistake pales. But it is a mistake nonetheless. It reminded Vincent of a story he had heard. There was a man, Donald Currey. He was as people knew him, to be a highly respected and intelligent man. In 1964 he was out looking for the oldest tree he could find when his tree corer, the drill bit he used to sample from the trees without killing them, got stuck. The bit is not something you can just pick up at a store. It’s specially made, and very expensive. In 1964 dollars it was about $500. Cars were less expensive. A friendly park ranger came by and told Donald that he could cut the tree down for him, and help him get it out. Donald, having no other choice, agreed.
Upon doing so, he saw the rings of the tree and realized that he had cut down the oldest tree anyone had ever seen. At least 5,000 years old. And Donald, the man responsible for finding and protecting it, had cut it down for a $500 drill bit. Donald left the profession he loved and vanished. He spent the rest of his life living with the fact that he had done the very thing he had set out to stop. He had destroyed what was here well before the humans alive that day, and could’ve been here well after. In 2016, another tree was found that was older. Donald had been dead for 12 years. Some mistakes seem like they are small and barely worth sweating, and can change everything. And some mistakes are so huge that while they may go away, it might not be in a timeline that allows you to know about it.
Vincent Black looked the man in the eyes, and considered explaining that this is what Samual was in danger of dealing with. That the mistake he made in even thinking about speaking to him in such a way, or any way at all, could change things forever, or just long enough for him to die before it changed. But this was too much to explain to some young man who usually just filmed yoddeling trios. So he broke it down into terms the boy could understand, while not wasting too much time. “...It’s none of your fucking business.”
Vincent pushed past the kid and exited the small room that took place in the back of what seemed to be a wholesale club. People walked about with their tubs of cole slaw and buckets of cheese (powdered). Stepping out into the light with his sunglasses in hand, Vincent made his way to the broken down chevy pickup he’d bought for his time in Bent Fork, and was about to climb in, when a very similar truck pulled up to him and honked aggressively, and annoyingly. Vincent went to snarl but saw just in time that it was actually Vhodka’s father, Buck Bickett. His face was old and wrinkled, but almost sculpted. Him and his wife, for all their shortcomings, were practically king and queen of the area. Buck was a ‘hot shot hot shit’ and his wife, Bea was as close to royalty as most of these people would ever see. If Royalty lived in some weird trailer park high rise thing made out of double wides.
“Boy I been lookin’ ‘verywhere f’r you. Get in. I got somethin’ needs doin’. And needs doin’ by you.”
“...is it murder?”
“No, It’s not murder’. Might be suicide, tho. If you can’t handle yah booze.”
Vincent had heard many ridiculous statements in his life, but never had he had to bury the urge to say, out loud, just how fucking stupid one of them was. A moment passes and he realizes that the man before him has read his face like the bible he keeps on his night stand and is pointing to the shotgun attached to the back window.
“Get in. Ain’t gonna ask again.”
“Barely asking now.”
Buck barely waits for Vincent’s ass to hit the seat before he flies off into the dirt road that leads out of the BIG BUYS parking lot and into a forest. An hour later and the bumpiest god damn ride ever had, Vincent sees what they’ve gone to. A very large, very intense party in the middle of the woods. Vincent doubted there was an official invite, but had there been, it would have been BYOO (Bring Your Own Overalls). Men with shoulder hair and back pimples stood next to trucks with cattle horns and pregnant women in the payload and they drank from old jars and spat chew at one another for the fuck of it.
“Buck. What is this?”
“This is a good old fashion Shine Awf. Every man, woman, and child who makes their own ‘shine brings out a good big ol’ batch and then compete. Who makes the best, who makes the worst, and who can drink the most of any.”
“...That’s where I come in?”
“That is exactly where you come in. You’re my dinger.”
“...Buck. Do you mean Ringer?”
“I most certainly do not. I mean Dinger. Like my friend Dinger who used to win this all the time. You remind me of him.”
“No I don’t.”
“You don’t, no, but you can drink so it works.”
“Alright. Bring it on.”
Over the next several hours, Vin drank clear fruit and twig flavored draino and watched as his father in law collected bet after bet and winning after winning. None of it monetary and all of it strange. A door from one man, half a ratchet set from another, a box of old phone parts here, and a toaster oven there. With each win, Vincent would hear a word or a sentence here or there. And after about 4 hours, he had caught on. He was not drinking to win bets. He was drinking to win payments. Buck had told his friends about his daughter's boyfriend and how much he could drink, and when they said they didn’t believe it, he told them if they wanted to see it, they were going to have to pay. It was sneaky and underhanded, and quite honestly the best joke anyone had played on him in a very long time. He still wanted to kill him, but that might put a crimp in his relationship.
Riding back to the trailer park, Vincent with his head out the window and a cigarette blowing ash and amber into his face from the wind. And Buck looked in the rear view at all of the prizes Vincent had helped him obtain, simply by drinking enough to kill a normal person.
“You know half of that is mine, right?”
“I know no such thing. You didn’t put up the money for this. Now, should you decide to marry my daughter, perhaps I can gift you some on the big day.” Buck looked at Vincent and saw no reaction save for the inhale of smoke and the exhale of it soon after. “You are planning on making my daughter an honest woman, aren’t you?”
“Sure. Once my divorce is finalized.”
“You’re still married?”
“Only legally. Which i guess is all that matters, really.” Vincent flicked his tongue and sent the cigarette off into the distance, and bringing his head back inside the vehince. “Buck. There’s two things I’m gonna need your help with. I wouldn’t ask, but this effects you..”
“Affects.”
“...Yes. That. So. BET. I need your help with an issue I’m having. Sure you heard my sister got arrested. I want to get her out. On Bail. Should I need to hide her from people... ”
“...I will consider it.”
“All I ask. The other thing is, what do you know about Alexis’ ex? The one that fathered that child?”
“Even less than you.”
“BET.” Anyone who knows Vincent Black can tell you that there are only two times when he bothers with slang. One is when he is drunk, and the other is when he is shitfaced. He is both. He leans his head back and keeps his eyes open the best he can and he makes it back to the trailer court, grateful to be off of dirt roads. Standing in the large driveway, he sees the light is on in the trailer he’s sharing with Vhodka, but is distracted by a small child sitting on a lawn chair in the distance. He looks at his watch and sees that it’s 1:30 am, and the father instinct kicks in, and before he knows it he’s sitting down next to her.
“TAwfully late for you to be up, eh?”
“My mom doesn’t mind. We’re on vacation.” The girls name is Ripley Alamo Austin. She is 11 years old and she’s bigger than most 13 year olds. She has a tough quality about her that a lot of tomboys have, but she’s also got a softness to her. Not in her eyes though. Those are piercing. Even in the pitch black of night. “You smell like medicine.”
“It is not medicine. Not for normal people anyway.”
“...so it’s medicine for you, then?”
“Touche.”
“Sorry. I didn’-”
“Don’t. It’s fine. I’m not that sensitive. At all, really. Except when it comes to my kids.”
“Must be nice. Don’t have no dad.”
“Any dad.”
“Yeah, I’ll take any you got lying around.”
“You’re funny.”
“I’d rather be sleeping.” The girl opens her mouth to explain what has her awake. Vincent wonders if its a boy, or a girl, or a non-binary soulmate, or some issue at school, or a video game thing or just an old fashioned nightmare, but the girl only offers the simple explanation of “Not really any of your business.”
“...Ripley...May I try something? Just to...maybe help? It’s something my adopted mother sung to me when I was little. I sang it to my kids when they couldn’t sleep. If you’d rather be awake, that’s fine.” Vincent looks at her face in the moonlight and her big eyes lock onto the distance and see everything it consists of and nothing at all. She turns to Vincent and nods, and he stands up, and walks behind her. He places a hand on her forehead, and with his free hand, pats her head from his hand to the back of her head, while whisper singing lowly in her ear.
“May your dreams bring you peace in the darkness, May you always rise over the rain.
May the light from above always lead you to love, May you stay in the arms of the angels.
May you always be brave in the shadows, Till the sun shines upon you again.
Hear this prayer in my heart And will ne'er be apart, May you stay in the arms of the angels.
May you hear every song in the forest, And if ever you lose your own way; Hear my voice like a breeze
Whisper soft through the trees. May you stay in the arms of the angels. May you grow up to stand as a...adult, love. With the pride of your family and name. When you lay down your head, For to rest in your bed, May you stay in the arms of the angels.”
Vincent walked to the front of the chair, and looked at the childs face. Peaceful, serene, and fast asleep, she slumped over in her chair, and folded her arms into her chest. Picking up both the girl and the chair, Vincent carried her over to the trailer she was staying in, and softly knocked. Alexis Austin, her mother, opened the door, and slapped her mouth with her hand out of shock. Vincent thought it was to see him, but why would she be shocked to see him. Alexis explains that the girl had not been able to sleep since coming out here. That the quiet was too loud, and the distractions too minimal. She gladly accepted Vincent’s offer to put the child into bed, and watched as he walked into the makeshift bedroom the child was staying in, and laid her down on the bed. As he walked out, he heard a crunch beneath his feet. Looking down Vincent could see that he just stepped on four crayons. Each and every one of them black. His eyes rose to meet Alexis’, who has watched his every move. There is silent communication, and Vincent leaves without saying a word or giving her the chance to utter one. The second he is gone, Alexis grabs her phone and types a message. A few feet away in a trailer much like this one, a phone lights up with the message she sent that reads, very simply, ‘he knows.’ As the light dies and the void returns, we retreat once more into the silence of the darkness from which we came.