Post by Josh Kennedy on Oct 15, 2017 23:34:41 GMT -5
29th August 2017
Long Beach, California
A potent silence hangs in the air for a moment, broken only by the gentle thud of a small piece glass being gingerly dropped into a small plastic container. Josh Kennedy breathes in sharply, sat down on the side of his bed. Wrestling's resident reporter Cass Baumer perches beside him with one knee bent and the other on the carpet floor. Josh’s left arm was littered with cuts and shards of glass, small pieces embedded into his skin with red skin surrounding the tender wounds. The other arm wasn't faring much better, the shredded skin of his severely damaged right arm still coloured the bandages wrapped around it crimson with blood. It had been bleeding incessantly all week. The price of his work laid bare.
“Josh… When the doctors told you to be careful, what did you hear?” With a snarky smile and a latex gloved hand on her hip, Cass Baumer shot her makeshift patient a glance.
“I heard sound advice that I knew I wasn’t going to listen to.” Josh replies, chuckling slightly. His voice was a low mumble, trying to conceal a pained grimace as he spoke.
“You realize you’re gonna get killed out there, right? Johnny said—”
Kennedy quickly interrupted Cass before she could finish.
“This again, huh? Yeah, they’re called deathmatches for a reason. It’s a risk.”
“Figured it was hyperbolic,” she forced herself to say, spinning it to make it sound a little more positive as she sat on the mattress with her eyes exploring the west wall, littered with posters from notable events from his time in wrestling so far. The ones from the two UWF Shockwave Pay Per View events that had marked two of the biggest turning points of his career sat in the center of it all, representing his Hardcore Championship victory and his Universal Championship victory. Each in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden. Still the pinnacle of his success. Cass couldn't collate all of the dates with their respective meanings from what she knew of Josh's past work yet. A few of them were printed in Japanese, she noted.
“It’s like the ‘world’s best coffee’ scene from Elf. Like the more EXTREME name for a hardcore match to sound hip with the kids these days.”
“Ha. I mean, we’re out there with all kinds of weapons, it’s not exactly the safest job. The better your opponent is, the bigger the risk.”
“Maybe you should have taken my advice and took your own set of riot gear to the ring?”
“Hell, with the way I’m feeling right now, I wish I had. Shit…”
With a small smile, Cassandra fought the need to tell him that she told him so.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as gently as she could as she fingered a small piece of glass in his forearm, ready to pull it out when he was ready. “Just try to relax and this won’t hurt so badly.”
“Guess I’ve earned it. This week’s been hell. Not often this job feels like actual work to me. Usually, I love every second of it. But after this? Yeah, kinda started to feel tough to push through. I needed some time off.”
“How much time do you have away from the demolition derby, anyway?”
“After all the chaos, Slaughterhouse has the week off, so I ain’t back in action until—”
Cass quickly plucked the glass out of Josh’s forearm while he was distracted.
“Ow, fuck! A little warning next time? Damn…” A small trickle of blood exits his arm as the small shard is removed.
“If you’re anticipating it, you’ll tense up and it would hurt even more! So shh. I know what I’m doing.”
Josh knew this was true from his own experiences, but it didn’t make the pain better either way.
“Still...”
“You literally wrapped your arm in barbed wire and this is what you complain about?”
“I mean, I was pumped full of adrenaline then. Now I’m just fuckin’ tired.”
Cass jabbed him in the shoulder, making sure where she was jabbing didn’t have any glass shards. Despite the intent, it still sent a wave of pain through Josh’s arm.
“How’s your adrenaline now?”
“Ouch.” He intones flatly.
“Now you’ll have no problem with me removing the next few shards, right?” Before Josh could respond, she plucked out a second piece. Josh lets out a low grunt, but ultimately, he was getting used to it a little more.
“I mean…” He stops to wince and wipe away the small amount of blood, “...It’s getting better. S’pose that means you’re right.” He says, begrudgingly.
“Listen. If it’s too much for you and you want to stop for a little while, we could,” Cass offered politely.
Josh shrugs the offer off, somewhat dismissively.
“Nah, it’s ok, let’s just get this over with.”
Cass glances at the next small shard embedded in Josh’s arm.
“Hey, Josh? I know you hate it when I worry about ‘cha. I know you’re gonna say you’re fine and everything is alright but… I know everything’s NOT alright. And if you ever need to talk… You know I’m around or whatever, yeah?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m fucked-up right now. I’m tired, my head’s a mess. But it’ll straighten out. I’m not ok, but I will be soon enough. I just need this. I need rest, I need a break.” Josh says, slightly irritated. The last thing he wanted to delve into was how he was feeling.
“Maybe I should order pizza. We could celebrate this time off in style.”
Josh nods.
“Sure, I guess it wouldn’t do any harm. Pizza’s always good.”
“So you’re thinking the Manny Special or what?”
Josh frowns.
“Heretic.”
“Don’t make me pull out another shard, Josh! Pineapple pizza is the best kind of pizza.”
“No fuckin’ way!”
“So what? You want to stoop to the level of a five year old and get pepperoni?!”
“Literally anything other than pineapple is fine.”
“Fine… Your half of the pizza will have extra anchovies. Enjoy.”
“Oh, hell no. I’m the one gettin’ glass pulled outta my body. I think I got a right to not have to suffer anchovies on pizza as well.”
Cass thought for a short moment, scratching her chin.
“You make a compelling argument,” she nodded. “How much do you love meat?”
“That’s a loaded question…”
“Would you consider yourself… a meat lover?”
“No comment.”
Cass just blurted out laughing at the innuendo undertones.
“So pepperoni then?”
“Sure, let’s be five-year-olds for a day. Hell, at least it’s simple.”
“Five-year-olds don’t usually have glass shards sticking out of their arms but let’s do it!”
“I mean, if they had bad enough parents, maybe…”
Cass thought for a moment, index finger and thumb surrounding another shard. Slowly, she gently pulled it out as best she could while she thought. Josh only slightly flinching as he acclimatised somewhat to the discomforting sensation.
“... What about your parents? Would they have let you do this to yourself?”
“Once upon a time, they wouldn’t have.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, honestly curious. Cass didn’t even realize she was overstepping her boundaries a little too much.
“That’s… Maybe now ain’t the time to be getting into that. Let’s just say they haven’t been involved for a long time.”
Cass paused for a moment, eyeing another glass shard inserted into his arm.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good, let’s get this one over with. That thing’s cut pretty deep, huh?” Josh replies, looking at the deeply-embedded, jagged piece. He knew that wasn’t what she was asking about.
“Right. Yeah,” Cass responds a little dismissively, her voice an octave lower than normal. “When I take this one out… It’s going to hurt, alright? I won’t lie to you.”
“Sure looks it. This ain’t my first time being a glass pincushion, y’know. That’s one you never really get used to...”
“Maybe I oughta get you something to bite into. A towel or something. Might help with the pain, I think.”
Josh nods.
“Sure, it’s better than nothing. They're in the top of the closet." Josh says, motioning to the small furnishing on the other side of the room.
The room itself was incredibly minimal, aside from Josh's small touches of personalisation on the walls. Simply the bed on which they were both sat, the desk for his computer, an ergonomic gaming chair pulled up in front of it on one side of the bed, and the closet on the other. Cass stands, walks to the closet and opens it, seeing the towels stacked and folded neatly in the upper compartment, the precision of which took her somewhat by surprise. Josh didn't exactly seem like the tidy sort. She couldn't help but smirk to herself as she saw his collection of clothing hanging in there. Little more than a series of t-shirts in either black, white, gray or some dark, washed-out variant of green or blue. Not much in the way of variety, aside from a handful of collared shirts all kept to one side, but neatly ironed and a single black suit kept on a hanger. Cass' eyes are drawn back to the towels and the task at hand as she retrieves the first one she grasps, a small, purple hand towel and retakes her previous position.
Handing Josh the towel, he dutifully rolls it up and places it between his teeth, tensing up considerably.
“3… 2... —”
Before she said the number one, she pulled the largest shard quickly out of his forearm like she would tear a band-aid. As the piece of glass tore its way back out of the muscle tissue in Josh’s bicep, he screamed loudly and agonisingly, muted by the cloth of the towel that his teeth clenched tightly to. All manner of profanity spewing forth from his voice left just an incoherent jumble of noise.
As quickly as she saw the blood come to the surface, she grabbed the towel from Josh’s mouth once his jaw complied and unfolded the rolled up cloth. Wiping the blood with the side of the towel that hadn’t touched his mouth, she watched the purple material slowly absorb the red.
“...Fuck.”
“Are you lightheaded? Are you dizzy?”
“Nah, I’m good, that just hurt like a bitch. Well, maybe a little lightheaded...” Josh hissed through clenched teeth, the stabbing pain still remained in his arm.
“We gotta get you to the hospital. We gotta—”
“Chill, it’s alright, just a little pain. Nothing I can’t handle.”
Cass sighed.
“If you say so. But the moment you think you need to see a doctor…”
“Of course. As stupid as the shit I do in the ring is, I’ll go to a hospital if I need it.”
“So you admit it’s stupid,” she snarked quietly, unable to keep herself in check anymore.
“Nah, wrapping barbed wire around my own arm’s the most intelligent life-choice I’ve made.” Josh responds, sarcastically.
“Don’t make me punch you again,” Cass responded, deadpan.
“Seriously, I’ve never pretended the risks I take are safe. I choose to do this because I love it. Even when it means having to call somebody to come over and help pull glass outta your body.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let you suffer on your own?” Cass smiled softly at the thought, almost looking down so Josh couldn’t see.
“Plenty of people would. I’ve been at this for years, y’know, how do you think I’ve had to deal with this most times?”
“I kinda just figured you brought Silas over or something, to be honest.”
“Not really, Silas is hand-down one of my best friends in the business, I love the guy like a brother, but he’s a drinker. Tried it once, it didn’t go well. You’re the only other person I’ve trusted enough to ask.”
“Yeah? You’re not just busting my chops?” Cass couldn’t hide a subtle smirk.
“Nope. 100% truth right here. Just ask your anonymous sources.”
“I’ll make sure they get on that,” she cracked up, laughing harder than she probably should have. “Thanks, though… Not to get all sentimental on you, but…”
“But what?”
“But… Yeah. Thanks…” Cassandra thought for a moment, her emotions shifting suddenly. “Fuck! What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you were gonna say, I dunno, I can’t read minds.”
“That’s not what I heard,” she smirked as she deflected the conversation in its entirety, poking Josh in the forehead with a playful grin. “I have it on good authority that the whole reason you’re so successful in wrestling is your ability to read the minds of your opponents in the ring. Least, that’s what everyone who’s seen you fight believes.”
Josh laughs it off.
“I wish, that’d make all this so much easier. The things I could have prevented with that…” Josh trails off, Johnny’s betrayal, the reason he ended up full of glass remaining firmly in the forefront of his mind.
“Don’t beat yourself over it so much,” Cass responded, her voice serious as she set a palm on his back. “There’s no way you could have known what was going to happen in advance. Johnny’s… Johnny’s a fucking tool who took advantage of all of you.”
“What, like there weren’t cracks in the armor I shoulda seen coming? I failed to protect my friends, hell, my family, basically. All because I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was right under my nose. I gotta carry that guilt now, because truth be told, I made a mistake, no matter which way you cut it.”
“You know you can trust me, right?” She started, her voice quiet as she looked down slightly, blonde hair in her eyes. “I know I’m full of shit a lot of the time. I know I try to act like something I’m not in public but… You gotta understand. When I saw my brother John not get signed… When I saw how great he was in the ring at practically everything he did… I came to realize that talent wasn’t everything in wrestling according to the scouts. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m full of shit here, but to me… If I didn’t become this larger than life version of myself…”
“Of course I do. Look, when I’ve needed somebody there for me more than anything in the fuckin’ world, you’ve been there. There aren’t many I’d trust anymore, given what happened with Johnny and all… but you? I’ve never had a doubt.” Josh assures her, his voice softening.
“And you’d be right. I’d be lying through my teeth if I ever expected I’d get to this level on the back of what I’ve done. You know what my big dream was, my big aspiration when I started wrestling? To make enough money to actually afford to eat every day and be able to keep a roof over my sister, my niece and I. That’s it. There’s no winning formula to success here. You just get lucky or you don’t. There’s a thousand people out there infinitely more talented than either of us that are never gonna make it. That’s just the way it is.”
“It’s a good dream to have,” Cass smirked. “And after all this time, even when you’re a damn champion… You STILL hardly eat every day. At least it’s by choice this time.”
Josh nods.
“Choice and habit are kinda different. I coulda easily ended up one of those names that never made it, I have to remember what I sacrificed for this every single day. I can’t lose sight of where I started.”
“For the record, I’m glad you made it. There’s hundreds of thousands who don’t and the few who do take it for granted,” she thought out loud, glaring at the last shard embedded in his arm. “Now enough of this touchy feely crap for now. We’ve got one more shard and then we’re done.”
“I am too, I’m grateful for all of this I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Glass and all.” He chuckles.
“Alright, let’s get this over with, huh?”
Cass glances at the last piece of glass inserted into his skin and slowly reaches for it carefully. Placing it between her index finger and her thumb, she wastes no time harshly tugging out of his skin. The piece was deceptively modest, considering how much pain it caused as it was ripped out of Josh’s arm. He groans noticeably, gnashing his teeth together in an attempt to hold back any further sound.
“God… damn.” He says, gasping for breath in the hopes it would somewhat relieve the pain. It didn’t. Josh claps his hand tightly over his aching arm, letting silence hang for a long while as the sharp pain from all of the glass pieces gradually subsided into a gentle throb. He’d taken worse, but not by much.
“Hey, Josh?” Cass softly spoke in a voice unlike her normal cheery tone once the silence ended.
“Yeah?”
“Never change, okay? I mean that.”
Josh hesitated.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know I can’t make that promise,” Josh answered in reference to his bipolar personality disorder. “As much as I want to.”
The manic phase Josh had found himself in had lasted pretty much the entire time he’d known Cass, and even then she didn’t understand a fraction of what that truly entailed. It hadn’t really been a proper discussion between them yet, the unseen hand that impacted everything. As such, there was a side to Josh he’d left obscured to her. Absolutely nobody in Josh’s life was allowed anything beyond a surface-level glimpse of it at the best of times. His bipolar disorder was a burden he did all he could to bear silently, a perhaps noble, but certainly misguided attempt to shield those closest to him from it. Even he barely understood the reality of it yet. Given the delusions that gnawed at the back of his mind in most of the few peaceful moments he found, the hallucinations, the impulsive behaviors - it was only a matter of time before all this stacked up to hurt somebody he cared about, he’d reasoned.
The dread of the inevitable shift from the crackling energy of his mania and into the gloomy depths of a depressive phase hung over his head like an executioner’s axe. He’d slipped into momentary depression throughout the recent events surrounding him over the past few months, his mania didn’t make him immune from small, minor bouts of it. But the suffocatingly oppressive darkness of a full-blown depressive phase was just waiting to wrap its wispy tendrils around him, and he knew it. In truth, he was terrified of that, the anticipation alone was crushing, and Josh didn’t feel ready to fight his way through the other side of it alone. Part of him wanted to spew all of these anxieties outwardly, as they sat on the tip of his tongue. It was everything he could do to hold it back. Cass wasn’t his therapist, nor did she deserve to have to resolve all of these things inside him, and Josh had no doubt she would attempt to do just that if he did express these things.
Cass sat in silence, hands clasped on her lap. Her words grew weak and pathetic, almost quiet and unsure compared to her usual boisterous attitude.
“It doesn’t hurt to try, does it?”
Long Beach, California
A potent silence hangs in the air for a moment, broken only by the gentle thud of a small piece glass being gingerly dropped into a small plastic container. Josh Kennedy breathes in sharply, sat down on the side of his bed. Wrestling's resident reporter Cass Baumer perches beside him with one knee bent and the other on the carpet floor. Josh’s left arm was littered with cuts and shards of glass, small pieces embedded into his skin with red skin surrounding the tender wounds. The other arm wasn't faring much better, the shredded skin of his severely damaged right arm still coloured the bandages wrapped around it crimson with blood. It had been bleeding incessantly all week. The price of his work laid bare.
“Josh… When the doctors told you to be careful, what did you hear?” With a snarky smile and a latex gloved hand on her hip, Cass Baumer shot her makeshift patient a glance.
“I heard sound advice that I knew I wasn’t going to listen to.” Josh replies, chuckling slightly. His voice was a low mumble, trying to conceal a pained grimace as he spoke.
“You realize you’re gonna get killed out there, right? Johnny said—”
Kennedy quickly interrupted Cass before she could finish.
“This again, huh? Yeah, they’re called deathmatches for a reason. It’s a risk.”
“Figured it was hyperbolic,” she forced herself to say, spinning it to make it sound a little more positive as she sat on the mattress with her eyes exploring the west wall, littered with posters from notable events from his time in wrestling so far. The ones from the two UWF Shockwave Pay Per View events that had marked two of the biggest turning points of his career sat in the center of it all, representing his Hardcore Championship victory and his Universal Championship victory. Each in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden. Still the pinnacle of his success. Cass couldn't collate all of the dates with their respective meanings from what she knew of Josh's past work yet. A few of them were printed in Japanese, she noted.
“It’s like the ‘world’s best coffee’ scene from Elf. Like the more EXTREME name for a hardcore match to sound hip with the kids these days.”
“Ha. I mean, we’re out there with all kinds of weapons, it’s not exactly the safest job. The better your opponent is, the bigger the risk.”
“Maybe you should have taken my advice and took your own set of riot gear to the ring?”
“Hell, with the way I’m feeling right now, I wish I had. Shit…”
With a small smile, Cassandra fought the need to tell him that she told him so.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as gently as she could as she fingered a small piece of glass in his forearm, ready to pull it out when he was ready. “Just try to relax and this won’t hurt so badly.”
“Guess I’ve earned it. This week’s been hell. Not often this job feels like actual work to me. Usually, I love every second of it. But after this? Yeah, kinda started to feel tough to push through. I needed some time off.”
“How much time do you have away from the demolition derby, anyway?”
“After all the chaos, Slaughterhouse has the week off, so I ain’t back in action until—”
Cass quickly plucked the glass out of Josh’s forearm while he was distracted.
“Ow, fuck! A little warning next time? Damn…” A small trickle of blood exits his arm as the small shard is removed.
“If you’re anticipating it, you’ll tense up and it would hurt even more! So shh. I know what I’m doing.”
Josh knew this was true from his own experiences, but it didn’t make the pain better either way.
“Still...”
“You literally wrapped your arm in barbed wire and this is what you complain about?”
“I mean, I was pumped full of adrenaline then. Now I’m just fuckin’ tired.”
Cass jabbed him in the shoulder, making sure where she was jabbing didn’t have any glass shards. Despite the intent, it still sent a wave of pain through Josh’s arm.
“How’s your adrenaline now?”
“Ouch.” He intones flatly.
“Now you’ll have no problem with me removing the next few shards, right?” Before Josh could respond, she plucked out a second piece. Josh lets out a low grunt, but ultimately, he was getting used to it a little more.
“I mean…” He stops to wince and wipe away the small amount of blood, “...It’s getting better. S’pose that means you’re right.” He says, begrudgingly.
“Listen. If it’s too much for you and you want to stop for a little while, we could,” Cass offered politely.
Josh shrugs the offer off, somewhat dismissively.
“Nah, it’s ok, let’s just get this over with.”
Cass glances at the next small shard embedded in Josh’s arm.
“Hey, Josh? I know you hate it when I worry about ‘cha. I know you’re gonna say you’re fine and everything is alright but… I know everything’s NOT alright. And if you ever need to talk… You know I’m around or whatever, yeah?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m fucked-up right now. I’m tired, my head’s a mess. But it’ll straighten out. I’m not ok, but I will be soon enough. I just need this. I need rest, I need a break.” Josh says, slightly irritated. The last thing he wanted to delve into was how he was feeling.
“Maybe I should order pizza. We could celebrate this time off in style.”
Josh nods.
“Sure, I guess it wouldn’t do any harm. Pizza’s always good.”
“So you’re thinking the Manny Special or what?”
Josh frowns.
“Heretic.”
“Don’t make me pull out another shard, Josh! Pineapple pizza is the best kind of pizza.”
“No fuckin’ way!”
“So what? You want to stoop to the level of a five year old and get pepperoni?!”
“Literally anything other than pineapple is fine.”
“Fine… Your half of the pizza will have extra anchovies. Enjoy.”
“Oh, hell no. I’m the one gettin’ glass pulled outta my body. I think I got a right to not have to suffer anchovies on pizza as well.”
Cass thought for a short moment, scratching her chin.
“You make a compelling argument,” she nodded. “How much do you love meat?”
“That’s a loaded question…”
“Would you consider yourself… a meat lover?”
“No comment.”
Cass just blurted out laughing at the innuendo undertones.
“So pepperoni then?”
“Sure, let’s be five-year-olds for a day. Hell, at least it’s simple.”
“Five-year-olds don’t usually have glass shards sticking out of their arms but let’s do it!”
“I mean, if they had bad enough parents, maybe…”
Cass thought for a moment, index finger and thumb surrounding another shard. Slowly, she gently pulled it out as best she could while she thought. Josh only slightly flinching as he acclimatised somewhat to the discomforting sensation.
“... What about your parents? Would they have let you do this to yourself?”
“Once upon a time, they wouldn’t have.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, honestly curious. Cass didn’t even realize she was overstepping her boundaries a little too much.
“That’s… Maybe now ain’t the time to be getting into that. Let’s just say they haven’t been involved for a long time.”
Cass paused for a moment, eyeing another glass shard inserted into his arm.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good, let’s get this one over with. That thing’s cut pretty deep, huh?” Josh replies, looking at the deeply-embedded, jagged piece. He knew that wasn’t what she was asking about.
“Right. Yeah,” Cass responds a little dismissively, her voice an octave lower than normal. “When I take this one out… It’s going to hurt, alright? I won’t lie to you.”
“Sure looks it. This ain’t my first time being a glass pincushion, y’know. That’s one you never really get used to...”
“Maybe I oughta get you something to bite into. A towel or something. Might help with the pain, I think.”
Josh nods.
“Sure, it’s better than nothing. They're in the top of the closet." Josh says, motioning to the small furnishing on the other side of the room.
The room itself was incredibly minimal, aside from Josh's small touches of personalisation on the walls. Simply the bed on which they were both sat, the desk for his computer, an ergonomic gaming chair pulled up in front of it on one side of the bed, and the closet on the other. Cass stands, walks to the closet and opens it, seeing the towels stacked and folded neatly in the upper compartment, the precision of which took her somewhat by surprise. Josh didn't exactly seem like the tidy sort. She couldn't help but smirk to herself as she saw his collection of clothing hanging in there. Little more than a series of t-shirts in either black, white, gray or some dark, washed-out variant of green or blue. Not much in the way of variety, aside from a handful of collared shirts all kept to one side, but neatly ironed and a single black suit kept on a hanger. Cass' eyes are drawn back to the towels and the task at hand as she retrieves the first one she grasps, a small, purple hand towel and retakes her previous position.
Handing Josh the towel, he dutifully rolls it up and places it between his teeth, tensing up considerably.
“3… 2... —”
Before she said the number one, she pulled the largest shard quickly out of his forearm like she would tear a band-aid. As the piece of glass tore its way back out of the muscle tissue in Josh’s bicep, he screamed loudly and agonisingly, muted by the cloth of the towel that his teeth clenched tightly to. All manner of profanity spewing forth from his voice left just an incoherent jumble of noise.
As quickly as she saw the blood come to the surface, she grabbed the towel from Josh’s mouth once his jaw complied and unfolded the rolled up cloth. Wiping the blood with the side of the towel that hadn’t touched his mouth, she watched the purple material slowly absorb the red.
“...Fuck.”
“Are you lightheaded? Are you dizzy?”
“Nah, I’m good, that just hurt like a bitch. Well, maybe a little lightheaded...” Josh hissed through clenched teeth, the stabbing pain still remained in his arm.
“We gotta get you to the hospital. We gotta—”
“Chill, it’s alright, just a little pain. Nothing I can’t handle.”
Cass sighed.
“If you say so. But the moment you think you need to see a doctor…”
“Of course. As stupid as the shit I do in the ring is, I’ll go to a hospital if I need it.”
“So you admit it’s stupid,” she snarked quietly, unable to keep herself in check anymore.
“Nah, wrapping barbed wire around my own arm’s the most intelligent life-choice I’ve made.” Josh responds, sarcastically.
“Don’t make me punch you again,” Cass responded, deadpan.
“Seriously, I’ve never pretended the risks I take are safe. I choose to do this because I love it. Even when it means having to call somebody to come over and help pull glass outta your body.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let you suffer on your own?” Cass smiled softly at the thought, almost looking down so Josh couldn’t see.
“Plenty of people would. I’ve been at this for years, y’know, how do you think I’ve had to deal with this most times?”
“I kinda just figured you brought Silas over or something, to be honest.”
“Not really, Silas is hand-down one of my best friends in the business, I love the guy like a brother, but he’s a drinker. Tried it once, it didn’t go well. You’re the only other person I’ve trusted enough to ask.”
“Yeah? You’re not just busting my chops?” Cass couldn’t hide a subtle smirk.
“Nope. 100% truth right here. Just ask your anonymous sources.”
“I’ll make sure they get on that,” she cracked up, laughing harder than she probably should have. “Thanks, though… Not to get all sentimental on you, but…”
“But what?”
“But… Yeah. Thanks…” Cassandra thought for a moment, her emotions shifting suddenly. “Fuck! What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you were gonna say, I dunno, I can’t read minds.”
“That’s not what I heard,” she smirked as she deflected the conversation in its entirety, poking Josh in the forehead with a playful grin. “I have it on good authority that the whole reason you’re so successful in wrestling is your ability to read the minds of your opponents in the ring. Least, that’s what everyone who’s seen you fight believes.”
Josh laughs it off.
“I wish, that’d make all this so much easier. The things I could have prevented with that…” Josh trails off, Johnny’s betrayal, the reason he ended up full of glass remaining firmly in the forefront of his mind.
“Don’t beat yourself over it so much,” Cass responded, her voice serious as she set a palm on his back. “There’s no way you could have known what was going to happen in advance. Johnny’s… Johnny’s a fucking tool who took advantage of all of you.”
“What, like there weren’t cracks in the armor I shoulda seen coming? I failed to protect my friends, hell, my family, basically. All because I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was right under my nose. I gotta carry that guilt now, because truth be told, I made a mistake, no matter which way you cut it.”
“You know you can trust me, right?” She started, her voice quiet as she looked down slightly, blonde hair in her eyes. “I know I’m full of shit a lot of the time. I know I try to act like something I’m not in public but… You gotta understand. When I saw my brother John not get signed… When I saw how great he was in the ring at practically everything he did… I came to realize that talent wasn’t everything in wrestling according to the scouts. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m full of shit here, but to me… If I didn’t become this larger than life version of myself…”
“Of course I do. Look, when I’ve needed somebody there for me more than anything in the fuckin’ world, you’ve been there. There aren’t many I’d trust anymore, given what happened with Johnny and all… but you? I’ve never had a doubt.” Josh assures her, his voice softening.
“And you’d be right. I’d be lying through my teeth if I ever expected I’d get to this level on the back of what I’ve done. You know what my big dream was, my big aspiration when I started wrestling? To make enough money to actually afford to eat every day and be able to keep a roof over my sister, my niece and I. That’s it. There’s no winning formula to success here. You just get lucky or you don’t. There’s a thousand people out there infinitely more talented than either of us that are never gonna make it. That’s just the way it is.”
“It’s a good dream to have,” Cass smirked. “And after all this time, even when you’re a damn champion… You STILL hardly eat every day. At least it’s by choice this time.”
Josh nods.
“Choice and habit are kinda different. I coulda easily ended up one of those names that never made it, I have to remember what I sacrificed for this every single day. I can’t lose sight of where I started.”
“For the record, I’m glad you made it. There’s hundreds of thousands who don’t and the few who do take it for granted,” she thought out loud, glaring at the last shard embedded in his arm. “Now enough of this touchy feely crap for now. We’ve got one more shard and then we’re done.”
“I am too, I’m grateful for all of this I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Glass and all.” He chuckles.
“Alright, let’s get this over with, huh?”
Cass glances at the last piece of glass inserted into his skin and slowly reaches for it carefully. Placing it between her index finger and her thumb, she wastes no time harshly tugging out of his skin. The piece was deceptively modest, considering how much pain it caused as it was ripped out of Josh’s arm. He groans noticeably, gnashing his teeth together in an attempt to hold back any further sound.
“God… damn.” He says, gasping for breath in the hopes it would somewhat relieve the pain. It didn’t. Josh claps his hand tightly over his aching arm, letting silence hang for a long while as the sharp pain from all of the glass pieces gradually subsided into a gentle throb. He’d taken worse, but not by much.
“Hey, Josh?” Cass softly spoke in a voice unlike her normal cheery tone once the silence ended.
“Yeah?”
“Never change, okay? I mean that.”
Josh hesitated.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know I can’t make that promise,” Josh answered in reference to his bipolar personality disorder. “As much as I want to.”
The manic phase Josh had found himself in had lasted pretty much the entire time he’d known Cass, and even then she didn’t understand a fraction of what that truly entailed. It hadn’t really been a proper discussion between them yet, the unseen hand that impacted everything. As such, there was a side to Josh he’d left obscured to her. Absolutely nobody in Josh’s life was allowed anything beyond a surface-level glimpse of it at the best of times. His bipolar disorder was a burden he did all he could to bear silently, a perhaps noble, but certainly misguided attempt to shield those closest to him from it. Even he barely understood the reality of it yet. Given the delusions that gnawed at the back of his mind in most of the few peaceful moments he found, the hallucinations, the impulsive behaviors - it was only a matter of time before all this stacked up to hurt somebody he cared about, he’d reasoned.
The dread of the inevitable shift from the crackling energy of his mania and into the gloomy depths of a depressive phase hung over his head like an executioner’s axe. He’d slipped into momentary depression throughout the recent events surrounding him over the past few months, his mania didn’t make him immune from small, minor bouts of it. But the suffocatingly oppressive darkness of a full-blown depressive phase was just waiting to wrap its wispy tendrils around him, and he knew it. In truth, he was terrified of that, the anticipation alone was crushing, and Josh didn’t feel ready to fight his way through the other side of it alone. Part of him wanted to spew all of these anxieties outwardly, as they sat on the tip of his tongue. It was everything he could do to hold it back. Cass wasn’t his therapist, nor did she deserve to have to resolve all of these things inside him, and Josh had no doubt she would attempt to do just that if he did express these things.
Cass sat in silence, hands clasped on her lap. Her words grew weak and pathetic, almost quiet and unsure compared to her usual boisterous attitude.
“It doesn’t hurt to try, does it?”
