Post by distortedamber on Nov 5, 2022 13:23:27 GMT -5
“Trouble is, most times, when you go looking to sell your soul, nobody's buying.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance
Oblivion Garage V.2
Las Vegas, ND
02.11.2022
10:31am
“So Bryce called again---”
Audible from beneath the chassis and connected to a pair of grimy overall clad legs, the exasperated sigh hung loosely in the air as Mac Bane leaned a hand against the partially dismantled front end.
“I swear if that stingy motherfucker is asking when his piece of shit---”
Tinny beneath the cacophony of metal, the familiar voice of a certain redhead rang out tinged with the kind of frustration that built up like sediment on the soul. Mac chuckled knowingly, bemused perhaps before cutting off his wife’s inevitable tirade that would have surely followed.
“--- he’s asking when his piece of shit will be running again”
“Running again?”
Rolling out from beneath the car, a streak of grease trailed down the edge of Amber Bane-Ryan’s jawline as she crooked an eyebrow in disbelief. The top of the overalls crumpled into a pile at her waist as she sat up, exposing the thick trails of angry scarring that traced across the joint of her left shoulder- matched by the one that seemed to peek out the base of her throat from beneath the shadows of her chin, her arms rested loosely against the top of her knees.
“He’s lucky it hasn’t been donated to scrap- and that's only cause there isn’t a damn thing on it worth salvaging. That thing hasn’t ‘run’ since 1970….”
Matter-of-factly and with an equally toned eye-roll, an oily hand wiped the same mark against her jaw leaving it deepened in colour.
“Darling, it’s a 1972 model…”
“My point exactly.”
A heavy pause fell between them, Amber’s determination to remain ‘busy’ in pseudo-retirement had been the subject of multiple heated discussions in the prior weeks. What had started as a coping mechanism and passion project/side hustle had become somewhat of an obsession. 5 hour tinkers had become 10 hour reconfigurations which in turn had become 14 hour rebuilds. Amber’s desperate need to ‘fill the void’ on a daily basis had gone from endearing and encouraged to actively damaging and frenetic.
“Besides, with the amount of money he throws at it- you’d think he’d at least start paying his bills. We aren’t a charity for clunkers owning clunkers.”
“I did tell him you’d be taking his next call.”
A small chuckle emanated from the redhead as she messily tightened the loose ponytail trailing down her back.
“... and?”
“He said he’d be by tomorrow to pay what he owes...”
Something intending to be a scoff emerged from Amber, shifting uneasily on the trundle as the murmur of semi-disagreement fell flatly between them. She couldn’t help but feel like she was being studied, put under a microscope to be poked and prodded till she did the little song and dance that was supposed to be anticipated.
‘Getting injured changed everything’
Only it didn’t. Just the way she found herself being perceived had- like a victim, helpless and mewling as though begging to be either put from her misery or coddled from the worst the world had left to offer.
No, pseudo-retirement was not treating Amber all that well, the hours passed way too slowly and she found there were too many in a day- each minute stretching a little longer than the last.
Physical therapy had helped at times when she’d forced herself to attend- mostly at Mac’s insistence, and hell if she could avoid the looks of pity long enough then she could even have been able to swallow her stupid pride long enough to actually listen and properly rehab the shredded musculature of her left shoulder.
It turned out that crobars were entirely more efficient than simply wrenching a joint 90 degrees.
That was June. It was November now and she’d still not stepped between a set of ropes. Bookings had been available, every other day practically was another email requesting an autograph signing or special appearance… as though she were truly gone. A relic to be put on display behind a sheet of glass, left to be admired from afar as she rotted away behind a trestle table getting writer's cramp and wondering if her name was really spelled like that…Emails never stopped, incessant phone calls with their own sob story or well-rehearsed spiel to run through like she wasn’t just the next name in a list of washed-up has-beens looking for a shot of relevance.
No, she was ‘retired’. Not dead.
Yet.
She’d turned them all down though- most of the time politely. Amber had claimed she was ‘too busy’ with other projects, that she ‘didn’t have the time’ when time was all she really had to offer. God, it would have been so fucking easy to fill her days with frivolity and memorium, conversation driven by the ghosts of wrestling past about why the future felt a little more bleak than it did in their prime, however it felt more like a slap in the face as though who she had been was irrelevant now.
No, she’d built a name… a career… a reputation, and to shoot it to hell for a quick nostalgia overdose behind a rundown auditorium?
“You’re allowed to admit that you miss it, you know.”
Mac quipped thoughtfully, examining the flaking paint work with a faint curl of disdain in his lip.
“I don’t, I accepted the hand I was given and I’m making a life beyond it- just like you always told me I was supposed to.”
Politely, Mac shook his head sensing the directionality that Amber was taking.
“What you’re doing isn’t a life Red, you’re waiting to die and trying to stay as busy as possible in hopes of accelerating the process.”
“Is it working?”
Another small laugh faded as quickly as it emerged, everything that might have been behind it simply dissipating the moment the syllables touched her tongue.
Of course she missed it- she missed the unending tedium of travel, the rude airline hostesses that deliberately undercut what a standard drink was supposed to look like, the sludgy coffee that made her smile tiredly as a red-eye seat with her name on it trundled down a runway.
Amber missed living out of a duffel bag that should have been replaced before the handles were duct taped around the bottom to stop the tears getting worse, the falsely pretentious politeness of any multi-star hotel chain booked by the company cause World Champions shouldn’t be seen in a Motel 6 and she missed the daily choice of whether a steady diet of caffeine and painkillers was an acceptable substitution for a balanced breakfast.
Truthfully, she just missed feeling alive.
Instead of spending every waking moment trying to find a reason to keep existing in spite of it.
“No, not really.”
“Look…”
Clasping her hands together, Amber drew a ragged half-breath in hopes that the pause might allow sufficient moment to gather her thoughts before trying to justify a 13 hour day spent filing invoices and trying to balance wrenches end on end.
“Wrestling was my life for a long time- as it has been yours… For, let's face it, too long probably…”
Trailing off with a click of her tongue, Amber scratched her head idly.
“That hasn’t changed Red.”
Without a second's hesitation, Amber’s tone shifted into something stained with indignance and irritability.
“No, it hasn’t changed for you… I feel like I’ve spent every waking moment since June thinking about this, just waiting for the universe to give me one good reason why I should waltz back in and take the fuck over again- and instead all it's given me is 47 in my left shoulder and 13 in my neck telling me why I shouldn’t.
It's November now, this is the most time I’ve spent on the shelf since I died, only this time I have the fucking gall to admit that maybe it's not worth pretending like I can just training montage my way back.”
Rubbing the back of her neck reflexively, trying to soothe an ache that wasn’t there, Amber’s expression softened into something more pensive.
“Why can’t we just accept that maybe this is what life is now…”
With a knowing shrug, Mac squatted gingerly down beside her- placing a hand on her left shoulder, trying to quietly convince himself not to make a face at the faint lopsidedness and trailing bands of scarring that traced like a child's treasure map drawn in crayon across faintly freckled skin.
“Cause you just can’t just hide under the next piece of scrap that rolls through the door convincing yourself that this is what you want every day for the rest of your life. This… is wonderful, sure, but it's not living. A day in your life shouldn’t just be the underside of a 1972 Chevy Vega.”
“Or any Dodge Viper model for that matter…”
“Red, I’m being serious.”
“So am I, what else do you want me to say- am I supposed to have this epiphany ‘light bulb’ moment where everything suddenly makes sense and my life now has a multitude of purpose?”
“I want you to at least try, Amber.”
“I have. Plenty”
“You cancelled four out of six physical therapy appointments in the last 3 weeks cause you were ‘busy’ here, and one of the two you actually attended got hijacked by an overzealous teacher on a class field trip.”
“Alright, how is that last one my fault…”
With a false incredulousness, Amber recoiled sarcastically however Mac didn’t give her the benefit of a reaction.
“When have you ever ‘volunteered’ to take a photo with anyone, without quietly despising every moment. I swear those kids got more photos with you than we got on our wedding day and during our last title reigns combined.”
“Harsh but okay. So, I got a little distracted…”
Now it was Mac’s turn to crook an eyebrow, the forehead furrows deepening as his lip twitched in restraint of her overt ridiculousness.
“Distracted? You’re a good liar Red, but that was pretty fucking average. You’re finding every reason in the world to just accept that this is it- and I get that but simply living for the next oil change on a Plymouth isn’t worth throwing everything else you’ve done away for.”
Squeezing her shoulder softly, his thumb traced faintly along one of the puckered ravines in her skin as though looking for it to lead somewhere meaningful.
He wasn’t wrong, and Amber silently cursed the fact that he rarely ever was. Perhaps it was the public nature in which she’d had to declare her retirement, circumstances beyond her control yet falling from her own lips in some strange physical-mental contradiction.
God, she missed wrestling.
It didn’t miss her back though, and both of them knew it never would.
“Fact is Red, whatever you think your everyday life is supposed to be now… it sure as fuck isn’t this.”
… and maybe, that was the way she preferred it.
― Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance
Oblivion Garage V.2
Las Vegas, ND
02.11.2022
10:31am
“So Bryce called again---”
Audible from beneath the chassis and connected to a pair of grimy overall clad legs, the exasperated sigh hung loosely in the air as Mac Bane leaned a hand against the partially dismantled front end.
“I swear if that stingy motherfucker is asking when his piece of shit---”
Tinny beneath the cacophony of metal, the familiar voice of a certain redhead rang out tinged with the kind of frustration that built up like sediment on the soul. Mac chuckled knowingly, bemused perhaps before cutting off his wife’s inevitable tirade that would have surely followed.
“--- he’s asking when his piece of shit will be running again”
“Running again?”
Rolling out from beneath the car, a streak of grease trailed down the edge of Amber Bane-Ryan’s jawline as she crooked an eyebrow in disbelief. The top of the overalls crumpled into a pile at her waist as she sat up, exposing the thick trails of angry scarring that traced across the joint of her left shoulder- matched by the one that seemed to peek out the base of her throat from beneath the shadows of her chin, her arms rested loosely against the top of her knees.
“He’s lucky it hasn’t been donated to scrap- and that's only cause there isn’t a damn thing on it worth salvaging. That thing hasn’t ‘run’ since 1970….”
Matter-of-factly and with an equally toned eye-roll, an oily hand wiped the same mark against her jaw leaving it deepened in colour.
“Darling, it’s a 1972 model…”
“My point exactly.”
A heavy pause fell between them, Amber’s determination to remain ‘busy’ in pseudo-retirement had been the subject of multiple heated discussions in the prior weeks. What had started as a coping mechanism and passion project/side hustle had become somewhat of an obsession. 5 hour tinkers had become 10 hour reconfigurations which in turn had become 14 hour rebuilds. Amber’s desperate need to ‘fill the void’ on a daily basis had gone from endearing and encouraged to actively damaging and frenetic.
“Besides, with the amount of money he throws at it- you’d think he’d at least start paying his bills. We aren’t a charity for clunkers owning clunkers.”
“I did tell him you’d be taking his next call.”
A small chuckle emanated from the redhead as she messily tightened the loose ponytail trailing down her back.
“... and?”
“He said he’d be by tomorrow to pay what he owes...”
Something intending to be a scoff emerged from Amber, shifting uneasily on the trundle as the murmur of semi-disagreement fell flatly between them. She couldn’t help but feel like she was being studied, put under a microscope to be poked and prodded till she did the little song and dance that was supposed to be anticipated.
‘Getting injured changed everything’
Only it didn’t. Just the way she found herself being perceived had- like a victim, helpless and mewling as though begging to be either put from her misery or coddled from the worst the world had left to offer.
No, pseudo-retirement was not treating Amber all that well, the hours passed way too slowly and she found there were too many in a day- each minute stretching a little longer than the last.
Physical therapy had helped at times when she’d forced herself to attend- mostly at Mac’s insistence, and hell if she could avoid the looks of pity long enough then she could even have been able to swallow her stupid pride long enough to actually listen and properly rehab the shredded musculature of her left shoulder.
It turned out that crobars were entirely more efficient than simply wrenching a joint 90 degrees.
That was June. It was November now and she’d still not stepped between a set of ropes. Bookings had been available, every other day practically was another email requesting an autograph signing or special appearance… as though she were truly gone. A relic to be put on display behind a sheet of glass, left to be admired from afar as she rotted away behind a trestle table getting writer's cramp and wondering if her name was really spelled like that…Emails never stopped, incessant phone calls with their own sob story or well-rehearsed spiel to run through like she wasn’t just the next name in a list of washed-up has-beens looking for a shot of relevance.
No, she was ‘retired’. Not dead.
Yet.
She’d turned them all down though- most of the time politely. Amber had claimed she was ‘too busy’ with other projects, that she ‘didn’t have the time’ when time was all she really had to offer. God, it would have been so fucking easy to fill her days with frivolity and memorium, conversation driven by the ghosts of wrestling past about why the future felt a little more bleak than it did in their prime, however it felt more like a slap in the face as though who she had been was irrelevant now.
No, she’d built a name… a career… a reputation, and to shoot it to hell for a quick nostalgia overdose behind a rundown auditorium?
“You’re allowed to admit that you miss it, you know.”
Mac quipped thoughtfully, examining the flaking paint work with a faint curl of disdain in his lip.
“I don’t, I accepted the hand I was given and I’m making a life beyond it- just like you always told me I was supposed to.”
Politely, Mac shook his head sensing the directionality that Amber was taking.
“What you’re doing isn’t a life Red, you’re waiting to die and trying to stay as busy as possible in hopes of accelerating the process.”
“Is it working?”
Another small laugh faded as quickly as it emerged, everything that might have been behind it simply dissipating the moment the syllables touched her tongue.
Of course she missed it- she missed the unending tedium of travel, the rude airline hostesses that deliberately undercut what a standard drink was supposed to look like, the sludgy coffee that made her smile tiredly as a red-eye seat with her name on it trundled down a runway.
Amber missed living out of a duffel bag that should have been replaced before the handles were duct taped around the bottom to stop the tears getting worse, the falsely pretentious politeness of any multi-star hotel chain booked by the company cause World Champions shouldn’t be seen in a Motel 6 and she missed the daily choice of whether a steady diet of caffeine and painkillers was an acceptable substitution for a balanced breakfast.
Truthfully, she just missed feeling alive.
Instead of spending every waking moment trying to find a reason to keep existing in spite of it.
“No, not really.”
“Look…”
Clasping her hands together, Amber drew a ragged half-breath in hopes that the pause might allow sufficient moment to gather her thoughts before trying to justify a 13 hour day spent filing invoices and trying to balance wrenches end on end.
“Wrestling was my life for a long time- as it has been yours… For, let's face it, too long probably…”
Trailing off with a click of her tongue, Amber scratched her head idly.
“That hasn’t changed Red.”
Without a second's hesitation, Amber’s tone shifted into something stained with indignance and irritability.
“No, it hasn’t changed for you… I feel like I’ve spent every waking moment since June thinking about this, just waiting for the universe to give me one good reason why I should waltz back in and take the fuck over again- and instead all it's given me is 47 in my left shoulder and 13 in my neck telling me why I shouldn’t.
It's November now, this is the most time I’ve spent on the shelf since I died, only this time I have the fucking gall to admit that maybe it's not worth pretending like I can just training montage my way back.”
Rubbing the back of her neck reflexively, trying to soothe an ache that wasn’t there, Amber’s expression softened into something more pensive.
“Why can’t we just accept that maybe this is what life is now…”
With a knowing shrug, Mac squatted gingerly down beside her- placing a hand on her left shoulder, trying to quietly convince himself not to make a face at the faint lopsidedness and trailing bands of scarring that traced like a child's treasure map drawn in crayon across faintly freckled skin.
“Cause you just can’t just hide under the next piece of scrap that rolls through the door convincing yourself that this is what you want every day for the rest of your life. This… is wonderful, sure, but it's not living. A day in your life shouldn’t just be the underside of a 1972 Chevy Vega.”
“Or any Dodge Viper model for that matter…”
“Red, I’m being serious.”
“So am I, what else do you want me to say- am I supposed to have this epiphany ‘light bulb’ moment where everything suddenly makes sense and my life now has a multitude of purpose?”
“I want you to at least try, Amber.”
“I have. Plenty”
“You cancelled four out of six physical therapy appointments in the last 3 weeks cause you were ‘busy’ here, and one of the two you actually attended got hijacked by an overzealous teacher on a class field trip.”
“Alright, how is that last one my fault…”
With a false incredulousness, Amber recoiled sarcastically however Mac didn’t give her the benefit of a reaction.
“When have you ever ‘volunteered’ to take a photo with anyone, without quietly despising every moment. I swear those kids got more photos with you than we got on our wedding day and during our last title reigns combined.”
“Harsh but okay. So, I got a little distracted…”
Now it was Mac’s turn to crook an eyebrow, the forehead furrows deepening as his lip twitched in restraint of her overt ridiculousness.
“Distracted? You’re a good liar Red, but that was pretty fucking average. You’re finding every reason in the world to just accept that this is it- and I get that but simply living for the next oil change on a Plymouth isn’t worth throwing everything else you’ve done away for.”
Squeezing her shoulder softly, his thumb traced faintly along one of the puckered ravines in her skin as though looking for it to lead somewhere meaningful.
He wasn’t wrong, and Amber silently cursed the fact that he rarely ever was. Perhaps it was the public nature in which she’d had to declare her retirement, circumstances beyond her control yet falling from her own lips in some strange physical-mental contradiction.
God, she missed wrestling.
It didn’t miss her back though, and both of them knew it never would.
“Fact is Red, whatever you think your everyday life is supposed to be now… it sure as fuck isn’t this.”
… and maybe, that was the way she preferred it.