Post by Matt Knox "The Raven" on Oct 28, 2020 8:40:17 GMT -5
People were just complex chemistry, wrapped in meat. Volatile chemistry, but chemistry all the same. Raise the temperature, add some foreign substances and the whole make up and complexion changes in an instant. She had seen it a lot in her life, all of her lives.
Hope Adriana Knox spun around in her desk chair, away from the laptop and the paper she was typing, due in the next few days but she held no worries as to failure, or missing a deadline. Truth be told, she enjoyed the thrill however trivial, of getting something done right before it’s supposed to be. The doubt, the arched eyebrows. They amused her. As did the lectures, from those who thought that punctuality was layered and not stagnant.
She shook her head free of the random thoughts, standing and striding to the kitchen of her studio apartment, paid for by her mother and uncle as she pursued an education in the charm city and reconnected with her step father. Her step father, the ex junkie professional wrestler who had the mind to be anything else, but could never defeat his own anger. She felt a small smile creep upon her lips.
Poor man never had a chance, the way she was told by Hugh. “His mommy and daddy never fed that brilliant mind of his. All life ever fed was how mad he was.” Heavy notions to lay at the feet of a child, but cognac made her grandfather very open about his opinions.
The common thread between Matthew and herself was always present in her mind, even during all those years where he was gone. Sending only notes, niceties and the occasional intoxicated text message. Even when she did her best to resent him and his actions, hate him for everything he had become and what he had done to her, leaving her with people she barely knew outside of Astryd.
But she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Her own parents she learned, after some digging, were not much different from Matthew’s. Addicts who last their light at the end of the tunnel. They didn’t end up in bloodshed though, no, the system actually worked and removed her from that environment. Where arithmetic was learned by counting the roaches crawling up the wall. Timing them. Memorizing the routine, until her father would crush them under his thumb.
It didn’t take long to forget their faces.
Even now as the memories permeated her brain, it was a faceless figure. In a dirty shirt, and jeans. Barefoot. He smelled like lumber, most of the time. Lumber and whiskey. Her mother, all she remembered was her being up and looking scatterbrained at bed time, and at breakfast. Cereal by buzzing fluorescent bulb. She could always tell if dad was working, by whether it was Fruit Loops or Clover Valley Froot Rings.
She opened her fridge, pulling out a bottle of rosé that she had smuggled in from Vegas and was nursing. She swished the liquid at the bottom of the bottle, staring at it blankly before pouring it rather unceremoniously in a tumbler. A smile begat her pale lips again, recalling the fine glassware her mother enjoyed back in Vegas. She did not want then, hadn’t since Matthew took her in. These spartan settings were comforting, in an odd way.
Even if it was awful, feeling some connection to a life before wrestling was nice to her.
She pulls a stool up to the counter, reaching up and messing with the bun her platinum blonde hair was pulled into. She reaches to her right, grabbing a notepad and a pen. She flips open to a blank page, and begins writing her thoughts. As she was apt to.
She tapped her pen slowly on the last part. Was it though? Was a Wrestler’s brain inherently wrong? Her father was a prime example of self destruction, but wrong? Wrong was such a nefarious word. And Matthew Knox, despite his bluster, was not a nefarious being. No, he was just someone who got thrown in the gutter and built a skif to sail the waters, instead of letting himself get washed away.
Adrienne Levi, who she had initially thought was a carnal replacement for her step mother, was obviously scarred, as well. It didn’t take much to find videos of Danny Levi matches, with his dainty pretty wife, getting smacked around to the hoops and hollers of those in attendance. Yet here she was, a champion. When she should have ran from the industry at first opportunity, she reinvented herself and rose above what was known.
Mitch Heart, if you could call him a wrestler she mused, was so much like the Matthew Knox that Hugh Allen told her stories of. Angry, tenacious, motivated. The world had hit him in the face, and come hell or high water he was going to hit it back. She noticed the shine her father had taken to him, especially after 100. She wanted to be offended at the idea of him being late to discuss everything that happened...but seeing him with that child, and going off to help patch up someone who was that bloody?
Then there were the Alex Winter types. Those who reveled only in the violence, and the negative machinations. She wasn’t a fool, she had seen him make the brazen threats against her well being on twitter. She had seen how it twisted her father up. And she knew from her time among people like Alex, that this was exactly the desired effect. As much as he might best Winter in a fight, Winter was just as much in her father’s head as he was in his.
And of course, there were the rare ones you never could get a beat on. The Dragon Lady, seemed to teeter on her own ledge. Chemistry perhaps more complex than even her father’s. She seemed to fight against those generally seen as corrupt, but in the ring she was just as, if not more vicious, than the ones she fought against.
She found the whole thing a mess, but she couldn’t help but feel intrigued. No doubt, she knew that Grandpa Nate’s IYW was a mistake wrapped in an abomination sprinkled with misguided good intentions, but she went along anyway. Thinking maybe that she’d be able to find some reason in it all, or at least learn a trade. She did little of either, despite her father’s praise. No, at least now, she would not join the family business.
“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac snaps her from her reverie, and she sets the glass of wine down as she picks up her phone, smiling briefly at the contact before answering.
“Hey, dad.”
Hope Adriana Knox spun around in her desk chair, away from the laptop and the paper she was typing, due in the next few days but she held no worries as to failure, or missing a deadline. Truth be told, she enjoyed the thrill however trivial, of getting something done right before it’s supposed to be. The doubt, the arched eyebrows. They amused her. As did the lectures, from those who thought that punctuality was layered and not stagnant.
She shook her head free of the random thoughts, standing and striding to the kitchen of her studio apartment, paid for by her mother and uncle as she pursued an education in the charm city and reconnected with her step father. Her step father, the ex junkie professional wrestler who had the mind to be anything else, but could never defeat his own anger. She felt a small smile creep upon her lips.
Poor man never had a chance, the way she was told by Hugh. “His mommy and daddy never fed that brilliant mind of his. All life ever fed was how mad he was.” Heavy notions to lay at the feet of a child, but cognac made her grandfather very open about his opinions.
The common thread between Matthew and herself was always present in her mind, even during all those years where he was gone. Sending only notes, niceties and the occasional intoxicated text message. Even when she did her best to resent him and his actions, hate him for everything he had become and what he had done to her, leaving her with people she barely knew outside of Astryd.
But she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Her own parents she learned, after some digging, were not much different from Matthew’s. Addicts who last their light at the end of the tunnel. They didn’t end up in bloodshed though, no, the system actually worked and removed her from that environment. Where arithmetic was learned by counting the roaches crawling up the wall. Timing them. Memorizing the routine, until her father would crush them under his thumb.
It didn’t take long to forget their faces.
Even now as the memories permeated her brain, it was a faceless figure. In a dirty shirt, and jeans. Barefoot. He smelled like lumber, most of the time. Lumber and whiskey. Her mother, all she remembered was her being up and looking scatterbrained at bed time, and at breakfast. Cereal by buzzing fluorescent bulb. She could always tell if dad was working, by whether it was Fruit Loops or Clover Valley Froot Rings.
She opened her fridge, pulling out a bottle of rosé that she had smuggled in from Vegas and was nursing. She swished the liquid at the bottom of the bottle, staring at it blankly before pouring it rather unceremoniously in a tumbler. A smile begat her pale lips again, recalling the fine glassware her mother enjoyed back in Vegas. She did not want then, hadn’t since Matthew took her in. These spartan settings were comforting, in an odd way.
Even if it was awful, feeling some connection to a life before wrestling was nice to her.
She pulls a stool up to the counter, reaching up and messing with the bun her platinum blonde hair was pulled into. She reaches to her right, grabbing a notepad and a pen. She flips open to a blank page, and begins writing her thoughts. As she was apt to.
Nostalgia/Childhood = Good, even when it was bad?
Psychiatry next semester.
Wrestler’s Brains = Wrong.
Psychiatry next semester.
Wrestler’s Brains = Wrong.
She tapped her pen slowly on the last part. Was it though? Was a Wrestler’s brain inherently wrong? Her father was a prime example of self destruction, but wrong? Wrong was such a nefarious word. And Matthew Knox, despite his bluster, was not a nefarious being. No, he was just someone who got thrown in the gutter and built a skif to sail the waters, instead of letting himself get washed away.
Adrienne Levi, who she had initially thought was a carnal replacement for her step mother, was obviously scarred, as well. It didn’t take much to find videos of Danny Levi matches, with his dainty pretty wife, getting smacked around to the hoops and hollers of those in attendance. Yet here she was, a champion. When she should have ran from the industry at first opportunity, she reinvented herself and rose above what was known.
Mitch Heart, if you could call him a wrestler she mused, was so much like the Matthew Knox that Hugh Allen told her stories of. Angry, tenacious, motivated. The world had hit him in the face, and come hell or high water he was going to hit it back. She noticed the shine her father had taken to him, especially after 100. She wanted to be offended at the idea of him being late to discuss everything that happened...but seeing him with that child, and going off to help patch up someone who was that bloody?
Then there were the Alex Winter types. Those who reveled only in the violence, and the negative machinations. She wasn’t a fool, she had seen him make the brazen threats against her well being on twitter. She had seen how it twisted her father up. And she knew from her time among people like Alex, that this was exactly the desired effect. As much as he might best Winter in a fight, Winter was just as much in her father’s head as he was in his.
And of course, there were the rare ones you never could get a beat on. The Dragon Lady, seemed to teeter on her own ledge. Chemistry perhaps more complex than even her father’s. She seemed to fight against those generally seen as corrupt, but in the ring she was just as, if not more vicious, than the ones she fought against.
She found the whole thing a mess, but she couldn’t help but feel intrigued. No doubt, she knew that Grandpa Nate’s IYW was a mistake wrapped in an abomination sprinkled with misguided good intentions, but she went along anyway. Thinking maybe that she’d be able to find some reason in it all, or at least learn a trade. She did little of either, despite her father’s praise. No, at least now, she would not join the family business.
“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac snaps her from her reverie, and she sets the glass of wine down as she picks up her phone, smiling briefly at the contact before answering.
“Hey, dad.”