Post by Zack Fantana on Nov 1, 2019 7:38:56 GMT -5
“Why the fuck didn't you call me sooner?"
For once, Zack didn’t have an immediate rebuttal at the ready. Instead, he found himself peering through the window on the hospital room door as if it’d provide him an answer. However, the only thing he’d see behind that glass pane was an emaciated old man with bed sores awaiting a fresh set of sheets.
“What do you expect me to say to that?”
In the past, Zack would have convinced himself that Benny wasn’t ready to see Bobby in this condition, but the fact of the matter was that he’d eschewed the issue for far too long.
“Look at him, man. He’s a mess!”
Maybe Benny's outrage was just, but it set Zack off all the same.
“I know, Ben. Because I’m the one who’s been here looking after him, not somewhere in Yokohama brushing up on my Japanese.”
“Fuck off, Zack.” Benny replied right away as Zack folded his arms, his eyes widening. “Don’t give me this bullshit again. You know damn well that the very moment you called me, I’d find a way to help no matter what. I’d be here. You fucking know it.”
Benny unbuttoned the collar of his dress shirt and loosened his lie.
“He can’t even take a piss by himself, fuckin’ look at that. You wanted to punish me or something? I mean-”
Stevens paused once he realized that he had raised his voice unnecessarily. He neither wanted Bobby or the people out in the corridor to overhear his rant. Seeing Bobby in that state clearly shook things up for him, and that’s the way he found to let the frustrations out.
“You should’ve called me, man.” The harsh tone was suddenly replaced by a rather depressed mutter.
“No one ever called me, Ben. You act like I’ve kept in touch with Bobby because I own a summer cottage in Saskatoon or something. No, I’m in the loop because I went out of my way to be there, not because I’m the sixth number on some fucking prayer chain.”
Those were words that seemed to slap Benny across the face, but as much as Stevens tried to come up with a cheeky reply, he simply couldn’t. Zack had a point.
“We’re all set,” the nurse said as she maneuvered a laundry cart through the doorway.
“Fantastic,” Zack said unconvincingly, holding the door for Benny. Stevens plodded into the room silently with Fantana in tow.
Inside they found Bobby back on his bed in a fresh gown, enjoying a red Jello cup.
“Looking good, old man.”
Everyone in the room knew that to be a lie, although it seemed like Bobby was the only one willing to admit it aloud.
“Please, I’ve been out-dressed by a damn build-a-bear.”
Self-awareness was an odd look on Bobby Franchise, a man who’d overextended his career for years by sheer force of delusion. Strangely enough, it appeared as though he was coping with the present circumstances better than either of the Dead End Friends could’ve hoped.
“Okay, honestly, your head kind of look like a poorly shaved ball sack, B-O double-B.”
Benny snickered, apparently having lightened up a little. Aside from choking down his Jello, the old man appeared to take the comment in stride. Bobby had gotten used to the flippant comments from his pupil by now, even though it had been two years and change since they’d last spoken, and he and Zack both knew not to question Benny’s point of reference, lest he actually show them.
“Seriously, though, I’ve been meaning to ask you... Did you see our latest match? You even watching us?”
Bobby chuckled as he set his empty Jello cup aside.
“The Battleground Network isn’t exactly included in the basic cable package that they carry here in geriatrics nephrology.”
“You kidding me, right?”
Benny looked for the remote.
“Man, what is this shit?”
He browsed the channels and found nothing but three of those jewelry shopping network shows, soap-operas, some Indian news and more static than actual content.
“Bobby, you need to get yourself a smart T.V.” Stevens shook his head. “Not even some porno on here, damn," he muttered to himself, then turned off the T.V. to address Bobby.
“Bobby, we are the Champions… Zack and I. Tag Team Champions.” The words were said with pride judging by his body language - a slightly puffed chest and clenched hands on the waist.
“I know that. I still have the Internet, you tit. I guess I missed the match but I saw the clips of the attempted murder-suicide. I even know about your upcoming match. Speaking of, I want to show you something,” Bobby said, leaning as far out as the tubing in his arm would allow to reach a David’s Distinctive Men’s Apparel bag. Benny’s eyes suddenly lit up and Zack squirmed upon seeing the label, but all of that was mitigated when Bobby removed a pair of old and battered wrestling knee pads from the bag, so worn that the symbol on them was nearly indecipherable.
“You know, they may not look like much today but these were a part of the first set of customized gear that I had.”
He scraped his finger nail against the gold symbol, reminiscing.
“This is what’s known as the Saskatchewan wheat sheaf. They were a gift from the local promoter before I booked my first American tour. He had me earmarked as the next big thing so when New York came calling after an injury in the eleventh hour, the promoter sent me in and pinned the reputation of his territory on my back. I fought my first championship match at Madison Square Garden in these knee pads.”
Bobby snorted.
“Of course, I lost. I was far too green at the time, but maybe you boys can finally do them some justice.”
He tossed one knee pad each to the Dead End Friends and they shared a knowing glance.
“Why would he make something like that up?”
Zack patted Stevens on the shoulder dismissively as they stepped into the public library.
“You'll learn those leadership tactics in time.”
It was Zack’s theory that Bobby had overheard their argument in the hallway and his MSG anecdote was a fabrication. Bobby was always a good storyteller but he had a tendency to embellish the finer details.
Benny had been a little less pessimistic.
“I don’t know, man. That seemed like an earnest story.”
“You probably said the same thing after the story about the wrestling orangutan.”
Zack motioned for Benny to take a seat at a nearby computer.
“Don’t you get it? He’s trying to distract us from the argument and give us something to unite around.”
Benny’s interest had clearly begun to wane from Zack’s theory, instead enraptured by something on the computer screen. Therefore, Zack redirected his attention to the red dot.
“You know, it’s so easy to write us off as too green of a team. Every team we’ve faced in Valor has agreed until we stepped into the ring with them.
NSFW were the first to write us off as your average trolls, and maybe they had cause to do so. Realistically, we had no business taking the Chimera Championships off of a battle-tested team like NSFW, but we did it anyway, and you know what? It was largely on the merit of being two bored assholes. Basically, we had nothing going on this fall so we decided to fuck around and become the best tag team in VPW.”
Zack sat down backwards in his chair in an attempt to look like the coolest man at the microfiche reader in the Saskatoon Public Library. He’d accomplished just that.
“That’s a joke, of course. I thought it’d take us well into winter. Even still, when I said that we’d deliver on NSFW’s mission statement and elevate the Chimera division higher than they ever could, I didn’t exactly figure on doing it by stepping over their still-warm corpses. How am I supposed to build on that? Doesn’t quite carry the same cachet as ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, does it? It wasn’t supposed to go down that way. Call me naive but even after we’d won, there was still an ounce of hope in me that they’d be up for another round. Instead, they trotted on home to their safe space for wrestling, leaving us to pick up the pieces of titles more damaged than Mike McGuire’s vertebrae.”
Fantana glanced over his shoulder at Benny and then back to the camera.
“How did we get here? This all started because I wanted to lend Brad Stokes a helping hand. I never set out on this comeback under the guise of propping up tag team wrestling. And yet ever since we got our first taste of it at Honor Bound, it’s given me a renewed purpose.
Maybe this is where I need to be right now, because even though NSFW predicted that DEF would sink this division almost immediately, we’ve somehow drawn in possibly the biggest names in tag team wrestling today in the Hellcat Spangled Death Squad, reminding us that not only are they the reigning Union Battalion Champions but that they’ve been champions for so long that everyone kind of forgot, including the promoter. Hopefully we can accrue as many vacation days as champs, because it'd really jazz up our resumes too.
Alas, none of that’s exactly relevant here. This isn’t about UB or Valor. We’re not fighting on the basis of some perverted sense of brand loyalty. These aren’t territorial pissings, because even if they were, Lisa Seldon probably wouldn’t respect those boundaries anyway.”
Zack paused, confident that people would get the joke because Lisa Seldon has wrestled everywhere. Perhaps too confident.
“This is not a team who anyone needs a refresher course on. Anastasia Hayden and Lisa Seldon are all over your television screens on a regular basis. We don’t need to go over their credentials individually or collectively for you to understand how big of a deal they are. They won a poll against the Celestial Warriors and that kind of renown kind of speaks for itself.
It likely goes without saying but we are not the favorites in the contest, and that’s a comfortable position for us to be in, because even though we may be like the death match wrestlers that frequent your circle, Benny and I have made an odd habit of not dying even when it otherwise would’ve been convenient.”
Zack turned and leaned into the microfiche reader lens, analyzing a photograph in the sports section of an old Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper. Notably it featured a young Bobby Franchise with a caption advertising him as a plucky young upstart. The headline above read “Local Wrestler Falls Short in MSG Debut”. Zack sighed and slid away from the machine, grasping for his wallet.
“Any luck?” Zack asked Benny.
“Oh.” Benny quickly switched the tab over from Alexis Texas's onlyfans page to the Internet archives of the New York Times. “Uh, nothing about Bobby here, but there is a short blurb over here on the side talking about how the champ decimated some 'tenderfoot' named Bod Franchise in under six minutes.”
“Benny, that's just a typo. They clearly meant Bob.”
He shoved Benny’s chair aside, taking a look for himself, only to find that Benny hadn’t exactly been underselling it.
“Old man buried the lede,” Zack said as he reluctantly forked the cash over.
Zack turned back to the camera and gestured to the monitor, praying that it hadn’t reverted back to an Alexis Texas video.
“That kind of stuff doesn’t happen anymore. The truth can't be stowed away along the margins on page 12 of the newspaper. The world is much smaller these days. For instance, we fight on the same network that made the HSDS stars and with one win, we can open the eyes of the entire wrestling world.
Don’t blink.”
For once, Zack didn’t have an immediate rebuttal at the ready. Instead, he found himself peering through the window on the hospital room door as if it’d provide him an answer. However, the only thing he’d see behind that glass pane was an emaciated old man with bed sores awaiting a fresh set of sheets.
“What do you expect me to say to that?”
In the past, Zack would have convinced himself that Benny wasn’t ready to see Bobby in this condition, but the fact of the matter was that he’d eschewed the issue for far too long.
“Look at him, man. He’s a mess!”
Maybe Benny's outrage was just, but it set Zack off all the same.
“I know, Ben. Because I’m the one who’s been here looking after him, not somewhere in Yokohama brushing up on my Japanese.”
“Fuck off, Zack.” Benny replied right away as Zack folded his arms, his eyes widening. “Don’t give me this bullshit again. You know damn well that the very moment you called me, I’d find a way to help no matter what. I’d be here. You fucking know it.”
Benny unbuttoned the collar of his dress shirt and loosened his lie.
“He can’t even take a piss by himself, fuckin’ look at that. You wanted to punish me or something? I mean-”
Stevens paused once he realized that he had raised his voice unnecessarily. He neither wanted Bobby or the people out in the corridor to overhear his rant. Seeing Bobby in that state clearly shook things up for him, and that’s the way he found to let the frustrations out.
“You should’ve called me, man.” The harsh tone was suddenly replaced by a rather depressed mutter.
“No one ever called me, Ben. You act like I’ve kept in touch with Bobby because I own a summer cottage in Saskatoon or something. No, I’m in the loop because I went out of my way to be there, not because I’m the sixth number on some fucking prayer chain.”
Those were words that seemed to slap Benny across the face, but as much as Stevens tried to come up with a cheeky reply, he simply couldn’t. Zack had a point.
“We’re all set,” the nurse said as she maneuvered a laundry cart through the doorway.
“Fantastic,” Zack said unconvincingly, holding the door for Benny. Stevens plodded into the room silently with Fantana in tow.
Inside they found Bobby back on his bed in a fresh gown, enjoying a red Jello cup.
“Looking good, old man.”
Everyone in the room knew that to be a lie, although it seemed like Bobby was the only one willing to admit it aloud.
“Please, I’ve been out-dressed by a damn build-a-bear.”
Self-awareness was an odd look on Bobby Franchise, a man who’d overextended his career for years by sheer force of delusion. Strangely enough, it appeared as though he was coping with the present circumstances better than either of the Dead End Friends could’ve hoped.
“Okay, honestly, your head kind of look like a poorly shaved ball sack, B-O double-B.”
Benny snickered, apparently having lightened up a little. Aside from choking down his Jello, the old man appeared to take the comment in stride. Bobby had gotten used to the flippant comments from his pupil by now, even though it had been two years and change since they’d last spoken, and he and Zack both knew not to question Benny’s point of reference, lest he actually show them.
“Seriously, though, I’ve been meaning to ask you... Did you see our latest match? You even watching us?”
Bobby chuckled as he set his empty Jello cup aside.
“The Battleground Network isn’t exactly included in the basic cable package that they carry here in geriatrics nephrology.”
“You kidding me, right?”
Benny looked for the remote.
“Man, what is this shit?”
He browsed the channels and found nothing but three of those jewelry shopping network shows, soap-operas, some Indian news and more static than actual content.
“Bobby, you need to get yourself a smart T.V.” Stevens shook his head. “Not even some porno on here, damn," he muttered to himself, then turned off the T.V. to address Bobby.
“Bobby, we are the Champions… Zack and I. Tag Team Champions.” The words were said with pride judging by his body language - a slightly puffed chest and clenched hands on the waist.
“I know that. I still have the Internet, you tit. I guess I missed the match but I saw the clips of the attempted murder-suicide. I even know about your upcoming match. Speaking of, I want to show you something,” Bobby said, leaning as far out as the tubing in his arm would allow to reach a David’s Distinctive Men’s Apparel bag. Benny’s eyes suddenly lit up and Zack squirmed upon seeing the label, but all of that was mitigated when Bobby removed a pair of old and battered wrestling knee pads from the bag, so worn that the symbol on them was nearly indecipherable.
“You know, they may not look like much today but these were a part of the first set of customized gear that I had.”
He scraped his finger nail against the gold symbol, reminiscing.
“This is what’s known as the Saskatchewan wheat sheaf. They were a gift from the local promoter before I booked my first American tour. He had me earmarked as the next big thing so when New York came calling after an injury in the eleventh hour, the promoter sent me in and pinned the reputation of his territory on my back. I fought my first championship match at Madison Square Garden in these knee pads.”
Bobby snorted.
“Of course, I lost. I was far too green at the time, but maybe you boys can finally do them some justice.”
He tossed one knee pad each to the Dead End Friends and they shared a knowing glance.
“Why would he make something like that up?”
Zack patted Stevens on the shoulder dismissively as they stepped into the public library.
“You'll learn those leadership tactics in time.”
It was Zack’s theory that Bobby had overheard their argument in the hallway and his MSG anecdote was a fabrication. Bobby was always a good storyteller but he had a tendency to embellish the finer details.
Benny had been a little less pessimistic.
“I don’t know, man. That seemed like an earnest story.”
“You probably said the same thing after the story about the wrestling orangutan.”
Zack motioned for Benny to take a seat at a nearby computer.
“Don’t you get it? He’s trying to distract us from the argument and give us something to unite around.”
Benny’s interest had clearly begun to wane from Zack’s theory, instead enraptured by something on the computer screen. Therefore, Zack redirected his attention to the red dot.
“You know, it’s so easy to write us off as too green of a team. Every team we’ve faced in Valor has agreed until we stepped into the ring with them.
NSFW were the first to write us off as your average trolls, and maybe they had cause to do so. Realistically, we had no business taking the Chimera Championships off of a battle-tested team like NSFW, but we did it anyway, and you know what? It was largely on the merit of being two bored assholes. Basically, we had nothing going on this fall so we decided to fuck around and become the best tag team in VPW.”
Zack sat down backwards in his chair in an attempt to look like the coolest man at the microfiche reader in the Saskatoon Public Library. He’d accomplished just that.
“That’s a joke, of course. I thought it’d take us well into winter. Even still, when I said that we’d deliver on NSFW’s mission statement and elevate the Chimera division higher than they ever could, I didn’t exactly figure on doing it by stepping over their still-warm corpses. How am I supposed to build on that? Doesn’t quite carry the same cachet as ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, does it? It wasn’t supposed to go down that way. Call me naive but even after we’d won, there was still an ounce of hope in me that they’d be up for another round. Instead, they trotted on home to their safe space for wrestling, leaving us to pick up the pieces of titles more damaged than Mike McGuire’s vertebrae.”
Fantana glanced over his shoulder at Benny and then back to the camera.
“How did we get here? This all started because I wanted to lend Brad Stokes a helping hand. I never set out on this comeback under the guise of propping up tag team wrestling. And yet ever since we got our first taste of it at Honor Bound, it’s given me a renewed purpose.
Maybe this is where I need to be right now, because even though NSFW predicted that DEF would sink this division almost immediately, we’ve somehow drawn in possibly the biggest names in tag team wrestling today in the Hellcat Spangled Death Squad, reminding us that not only are they the reigning Union Battalion Champions but that they’ve been champions for so long that everyone kind of forgot, including the promoter. Hopefully we can accrue as many vacation days as champs, because it'd really jazz up our resumes too.
Alas, none of that’s exactly relevant here. This isn’t about UB or Valor. We’re not fighting on the basis of some perverted sense of brand loyalty. These aren’t territorial pissings, because even if they were, Lisa Seldon probably wouldn’t respect those boundaries anyway.”
Zack paused, confident that people would get the joke because Lisa Seldon has wrestled everywhere. Perhaps too confident.
“This is not a team who anyone needs a refresher course on. Anastasia Hayden and Lisa Seldon are all over your television screens on a regular basis. We don’t need to go over their credentials individually or collectively for you to understand how big of a deal they are. They won a poll against the Celestial Warriors and that kind of renown kind of speaks for itself.
It likely goes without saying but we are not the favorites in the contest, and that’s a comfortable position for us to be in, because even though we may be like the death match wrestlers that frequent your circle, Benny and I have made an odd habit of not dying even when it otherwise would’ve been convenient.”
Zack turned and leaned into the microfiche reader lens, analyzing a photograph in the sports section of an old Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper. Notably it featured a young Bobby Franchise with a caption advertising him as a plucky young upstart. The headline above read “Local Wrestler Falls Short in MSG Debut”. Zack sighed and slid away from the machine, grasping for his wallet.
“Any luck?” Zack asked Benny.
“Oh.” Benny quickly switched the tab over from Alexis Texas's onlyfans page to the Internet archives of the New York Times. “Uh, nothing about Bobby here, but there is a short blurb over here on the side talking about how the champ decimated some 'tenderfoot' named Bod Franchise in under six minutes.”
“Benny, that's just a typo. They clearly meant Bob.”
He shoved Benny’s chair aside, taking a look for himself, only to find that Benny hadn’t exactly been underselling it.
“Old man buried the lede,” Zack said as he reluctantly forked the cash over.
Zack turned back to the camera and gestured to the monitor, praying that it hadn’t reverted back to an Alexis Texas video.
“That kind of stuff doesn’t happen anymore. The truth can't be stowed away along the margins on page 12 of the newspaper. The world is much smaller these days. For instance, we fight on the same network that made the HSDS stars and with one win, we can open the eyes of the entire wrestling world.
Don’t blink.”
