Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

Travis McCoy · (07-20-2017)

Travis sits alone in a nondescript car. A rental most likely. It's night and the car is dark, he's lit only by the display on the radio and dash. He's wearing a hat pulled low over his eyes. Not to hide from adoring fans but purely to hide. He stares out the front window as a summer rain pounds down on the windshield. If he rolled down his windows the earthy smell only a summer rain hitting earth can produce would waft in, bringing back childhood memories. That smell that we never exactly knew what it was, an old man once told him it was ozone. He's still not sure, and I imagine you aren't either but you know the smell. You know it like the smell of your childhood home, or your first girlfriends bed room. Or that odd mix of cigarettes and old skin that surrounded one of your grandparents. You know these smells that go without a real word to describe them.

Sorry, I digress.

Travis' chin drops to his chest and a voice comes from him that is not his own. It's the gruff crushed glass voice,

“You're gonna roll your eyes when you see what's about to happen. See, Travis just got released from the hospital. He went to his childhood house searching for something. He found an overgrown lawn and busted windows. Not what he was looking for. Here in a minute, Travis is going to reach down and turn on the headlights and he's going to stare into the cone they illuminate. He's going to stare in disbelief and heart break. Because what he see's isn't what he remembers. His brain has been scrambled and what he see's is going to be brand new to him. It's going to break him. He's going grab that door handle and push the door all the way open. He's going to get out and the camera is gonna pull back and you'll see a fucking cemetery. If you've been around this industry long enough you've seen this setting before a thousand times from a thousand hacks. Because as cliché as it is a man walking through a rainy cemetery is, it hits you right in the soft parts. He's going to walk through the mud getting soaked by the night rain. His hair is going to hang in his eyes as he reaches what he spotted from the car. He'll look with down cast eyes, face wet from the rain and tears and he's going to scream. He's going to kneel at his mom's grave and he's going to scream like a mother losing a child. He's going to scream like a man losing his mind.

Because, pardon my inappropriate pun, this hurt like a motherfucker before but a hurt this big doesn't hurt any less the second time around. He's gonna tell you what that coma was like the best he can but it fractured him in a way that's hard to comprehend. Like a broken bone stabbing through the skin but in his brain. Or some shit fuck I don't know this talking shit isn't exactly my bag. That coma created me...

Kind of...

This boy has been pushed clear over the edge and this is the final straw.

This boy was dangerous before

Now he's unhinged.”

Travis falls silent. He takes a deep breath and raises his head. He reaches down and turns on the headlights...
.
..
…
….
…..
…...
…....
…...
…..
….
…
..
.

The room is dingy and small like all good settings are. The floor is covered from wall to wall with wrestling mats. Anyone who's ever been in a room similar to this, a boxing or jiu jitsu gym knows the smell. Just looking at it fires up the olfactory glands. It's the basement to Travis' child hood home. This is where he learned the ropes. He sits with his back against one wall and his feet on the floor, his knees are up and his forearms rest on the them. He's sweating still showing old bruises from his return match. Showing new ones from what he's been doing since, and before. Training. Hurting and being hurt. When he speaks the voice is his own. His speech is not quite clear, muddied with the slightest hint of a slur from his half paralyzed mouth.

“The last thing I remember from before my head injury was putting on my wrist tape. I don't remember walking to the ring, I sure as hell don't remember Kristen swinging the chair. I've seen it and I remember the footage but I don't remember much else.

“Don't put that whore on a pedestal. She hit you no harder than you'd been hit a thousand times before boy. Problem was that you'd been hit a thousand times before.

“I wish I could say the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital but I don't. I remember quite a bit before that day would come.

They had to breathe for me. I could hear it the entire time. The constant rhythmic hiss of that god forsaken machine keeping me alive. It was the high hat to the bass the heart monitor was laying down. Slow and steady. My ticker kept on going. My coma wasn't like sleep. It was like a bad mushroom trip paralyzed in solitary confinement. That fucking hospital smell. That desperation that oozes in places like that. All of it sinking into my pores. I still smell that stink. I can scrub my body till I bleed and I still smell that 'my kid was just diagnosed with cancer' desperation. I can still feel the nurse's pity. I can still hear the hissing and and the beeping of those machines that kept this unwilling living man alive.

six
long
months

In my career I've been in every hold imaginable. I've had every sorry sack threaten me in every way and in every language. I've been pushed to the edge and every moment changed me and made me the man I am.. There was a point many years ago when I wasn't all that bad. I did this for competition. I did this for money and believe it or not I did it for fans. But after years of little moments of torture, of massive moments of despair. I've felt pain in every way. I've had muscles torn from bone while I watched it snap and roll up. I've been haunted and chased by men who play mind games this place would fold to. I've felt pain that would absolutely break a man and it did. It fucking broke me. It hardened me It made me who you met last year"

“An angry death machine spitting venom and hate.”

“And six months in that hospital made every single moment I have been through feel like nothing. I begged and pleaded to be transported in time back to the worst moments of my life just to escape that fucking bed. I spent six months replaying every vile moment in my 15 year career, and hoping I'd wake up in any one of them. I spent SIX FUCKING MONTHS in a god damn hospital bed listening to nurses wish I'd just die so they could stop cleaning me, and for a bit I started to agree. Why waste my time? Why on earth should I continue doing this when it's never loved me back. What saved me?

A voice

Ringing out in the darkness. A throat full of rusted steel and just as angry as the one I'd been listening to for 192 days.”

“Wake up boy.”

“Thanks Dad.

So I woke up. My eyes snapped open into that stale cold light and I spent the next month learning how to do things you take for granted. How to talk and eat with a half paralyzed face. And when they told me I was well enough to leave I went to find the man behind the voice I knew so well, but the house was empty. I sat in my rental out front looking at the over grown grass and house in disrepair. This isn't fucking possible! He's in a fucking wheelchair, the bills are paid he wouldn't fucking leave me! He was at the hospital! So what the fuck was I supposed to do?! I'm not a spiritual man but I didn't know what to do. I drove to the cemetery where my mom was buried and I saw the fresh dirt...I saw the grave stone with his name and I felt something that was barely holding on let go completely! He built me from the ground up and I cursed him. He tried to help along the way and I disowned and ignored him! And when I was ready to die he saved me with that gruff voice that never read me bed time stories. He saved me with the same tone he'd use during our training sessions He woke me up! He SAVED ME. My DAD SAVED ME”

Travis dips his head seemingly unable to continue. His breathing is rapid and loud. He runs his hands through his greasy hair and slowly he settles. His body comes to a rest and he speaks without looking up. His voice that same gravel filled anger but soft now.

“Travis. I need you to listen now boy. You've been through it now. We're here and this is what we have. You're a fucking nutter now boy. You hear voices and that's OK. We understand it. We understand what you've been through. They don't though boyo. They don't get it and they need to. The HAVE to understand it.”

Travis slowly looks up and continues his voice returning to normal.

“It's important that you understand who I am Chris. It's important that you know, that if I was a handful last year, I'm a semi full of dynamite now. Those six months broke me in a way you will never be broken. I've risen from something you will never truly understand Chris. As many times as I tell you details of my confinement. You can't comprehend it by just listening to me. I'll fucking try, I'll fucking try to get the point across with my voice but you won't get it until I get my hands on you. You'll feel every second of those six months of hell. Every time my gnarled knuckles land on your jaw. Every time my elbow crashes into the side of your head you'll know what it did to me. You'll know what it's made me.

You'll beg me to stop

You'll wish you'd considered another line of work

You don't offend me in any special way. You're not an embarrassment to our business. You're a real challenger. You're a real wrestler. You're...almost good. I don't respect you...we won't be friends after this. We won't be grabbing beers later. This isn't going to be a love fest, but I'm not going to threaten to rape you, I'm not going to question your sexuality or talk about your girlfriends ass. I'm not what you're used to here.

You're going to wish I was.

You're going to wish I spent the week throwing school yard insults for you to easily bat away. You're going to wish I was Barney Green or Peter Gilmour or any one of the other fucking jokes this place keeps on the payroll. Because if it was any one of them you'd walk into the second round of this tournament. Phone it in for a week and you'd be one step closer to winning this thing. It's not going to be any of them standing across from you though boyo. It's Travis fucking McCoy. Hearing voices and speaking in tongues. Frothing at the mouth and beating your fucking ass so you and the rest of XWF get it. So this entire place finally understands

who
thefuck
I
am.”

.
..
…
….
…..
…...
…....
…...
…..
….
…
..
.

Travis falls to his knees in a dark cemetery on a rainy night. He kneels on his mothers grave but his eyes are locked on the one next to it.

His father's.

FADE

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode How We Got Here
Author	Message