PARADIGM SHIFT XXXII // FAKE IT
YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THE LIES WON’T HIDE YOUR FLAWS / NO SENSE IN HIDING ALL OF YOURS / YOU GAVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS ALONG THE WAY / GOOD GOD YOU’RE COMING UP WITH REASONS / GOOD GOD YOU’RE DRAGGING IT OUT
SEETHER .
••••••
Perhaps the writing had been on the wall for some time now, and he hadn’t really recognized it. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to, or maybe simply refused to see it. For months now, he and Aaron hadn’t been on the same page – they’d fought over and over again, and all of it had centered around the choices he had made. Choices she’d been a part of, and once upon a time supported wholeheartedly.
First the fights came about the fact that he was travelling so much. To New York to see his sister? How dare. Travelling to Japan for training sessions with the man that she had set him up to work with just a few years prior? One of the worse moves he could have ever done. Beratement, after beratement, the topics started with viable arguments such as the companies he’d chosen to work for all the way down to the fact that he didn’t put a glass in the dishwasher. It ended up never being anything really particular, he discovered – it was just a new flavor every week she decided to go bonkers over nothing.
He kept his mouth shut.
Finn loved to argue, loved to fight. In his career. Even when he was the most angry with Aaron, he’d never treat her the same way she treated him. She was his heart and soul, even when she obliterated the both of them on a daily basis.
She’d been part of the reason he stopped speaking to his sister for a while. She foamed at the mouth any time that Elena was mentioned, and despite his insistence that it was only ever and would ever be a sibling relationship, she made it known that she hated it and that if anything happened, it was his fault. The one day that he got sick of it and went anyway was the day that broke the camel’s back.
Aaron had complained of a bug in her stomach, nausea, headaches – all the regular symptoms of a six month pregnancy that had been otherwise reported healthy. On the same day, Elena discovered her husband had passed and was inconsolable – or so he presumed. Looking back, he probably would have been able to tell fake tears from real ones. But nevertheless, they argued again. Aaron said she needed comforting, Finn felt like he had to help his sister, and she accused him of loving her more than he loved his wife.
The amount of manipulation hovering around his brain at the time probably was what made him snap. He left to help his sister through this trying time. Aaron cried and cried and cried and cried, but Finn held firm, steadfast.
When he returned from New York just two days later, Aaron had been admitted into the hospital. He never knew the reason why, but she told him that their fetus had no heartbeat, that it wasn’t even quite two pounds. She said they convinced her the best thing had been to deliver the baby via cesarean. She delivered. She didn’t let him know.
In the event of stillbirths, the midwives or doctors delivering often give the couple a chance to hold their cold, lifeless child. To name it. To cherish it. To imagine what could have been. A birth certificate, labeled deceased, would be given to the family so they could grieve, but there would be a name and face to remember. It would be the hardest thing that any couple could go through. But she never gave him the choice. She didn’t call him, she didn’t tell him what was going on. Aaron took matters into her own hands and didn’t provide him with the respect deserving of a husband, let alone the father of the child.
He kept his mouth shut.
Perhaps that was when they began to fully separate themselves from one another, hiding behind the guise of married happiness. Finn began working more, Aaron went back to training wrestlers. And perhaps he should have seen it. Maybe he wasn’t attentive enough, maybe he didn’t love her enough. Maybe it was simply the fault of both of them, unable to attend to their own success because there was no success to be had.
When he threw her things out into the rain and left her screaming on their front doorstep after he’d discovered her with another man – a trainee, of all things – in their shared bed, that adoration he’d felt for her succumbed to hate. He’d hate her forever. She took away everything that made him what he was, and she benefitted. And now? It was no longer an option.
They divorced shortly after that. She’d gotten some representation, but so had he. Their divorce was bitter, angry, and resentful all in one, and he purposefully went after everything that he could. Finn argued that infidelity meant that she should lose it all. She argued that he basically left her a widow. His argument was stronger, and he indeed received everything. A settlement came in a sum of some millions of dollars that she had sitting in a bank, and while it didn’t leave her destitute, he came out stronger.
The Colorado mountain house, the apartment in Seattle, the cars, the money – all his.
He signed those papers on the spot. And he didn’t leave until her signature was on them too, as she sobbed into the papers and left droplets everywhere.
Even then, in all his hatred, the tears made him want to comfort her, to tell her it was all right.
No.
He kept his mouth shut.
••••••
The home office that Finn had set up not two months ago was in complete disarray. Papers and files laid scattered upon the floor, haphazardly thrown and forgotten in the windstorm that was named Finn. He had gone through regular files, things that he’d kept – tearing through drawers and looking at everything that wasn’t labelled…which was virtually everything because he never labelled anything. What he was looking for wasn’t in the regular drawers because those were current records.
He hadn’t said a word since he’d gotten home. Not that there was anybody to talk to. Kayla decidedly wasn’t speaking to him, and Dickie hadn’t arrived until that morning from wherever the fuck he’d been. Nevertheless, as his little brother entered the room and looked at the shitstorm that was the Seattle Saint right now, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
Dickie hopped up onto the desk, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at Finn, who sat on the floor, tearing through a box labelled Bullshit from 2017. “So, when do we have a family dinner. You know, you, me…”
Finn looked up and stared at the wall in front of him.
“...Aaron?”
“Not family,” Finn snarled, going back to the files and thumbing through them. He pulled one out, glanced at it, groaned, and then chucked it at the ground just the same as everything else.
“You sure?” He quipped, chuckling back at his brother. “She was pretty emphatic about the whole you two still being married. How is Kayla taking it?”
Finn looked up again and then turned his head with the most calm, yet fuming, expression that he could muster. “Gee, I don’t know. She’s not speaking to me, and she probably won’t until I figure this shit out. I sat across from that little blue haired bitch and watched her sign the same pages I signed. She had a black ink pen, and I promise that this isn’t bullshit. Unless she just printed out a page without her signature on it. You know. Photoshop.”
“Either way, she made you look like an I-D-I-O-T out there. I know you’re quiet as fuck man, but she put all of your shit on blast for everyone to see.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Was entertaining as fuck.”
Finn rolled his eyes and pulled out another file. He slipped the cover off and then his eyes lit up. “Buried, of course. Found it.” Dickie hopped off the desk and looked over Finn’s shoulder.
“Summit County District Court Separation Agreement, divorce.” Dickie titled his head. “How is it that they all look similar, no matter what state or county it’s in? My shit with Hannah looks the same.”
Finn hopped to his feet and immediately headed out the door of the office, not bothering to check if his brother was following him or cleaning up after himself before he skedaddled. Nevertheless, he walked the open hallways of their home and down the steps, taking them almost at a rabbit pace, turning the corner and heading into the vaulted ceiling kitchen that they had. Kayla stood there, dressed in a pair of grey sweatpants and a crop top, with her slippers on and her hair pulled up into a ponytail. She dipped her tea bag into the mug while she stood at the kitchen counter, and glanced upwards only when Finn slammed the manila file right in front of her.
“Oh goodie, papers.” She quipped snarkily.
Finn stared at her, and then gestured to it. “Look at them.” He insisted.
Kayla stared at him and raised an eyebrow. He planted both hands on the marble counter and leaned into her. Dickie came into the kitchen behind him and headed to stand next to him, fully invested on being a part of this no matter if he was wanted or not. Dickie leaned on the counter with his elbows, staring at the papers.
“Look at them.” Finn repeated when Kayla didn’t move.
“Ugh,” she sighed, and then reached for the manila file, opening it up with a complete look of distaste. She sneered. “This thing is thick.”
“That’s what she sai–” Dickie quipped, but got smacked in the stomach by Finn and couldn’t finish it.
Kayla looked up at him with just her eyes and then rolled them, flipping through the papers. “Assets, shared properties, etc…oh look, it’s a signature page. I know I’ll see one. Oh, yep!” She snickered and set the papers down, pointing at his name. “Callien O’Hanlon. There’s the one. And of course, I don’t see hers.”
“Turn the page.”
“No.”
“Turn the page!” He insisted again, slamming his hand down on the counter. Kayla startled, but just simply because it was so loud. She leaned forward and slammed her own hand down.
“She didn’t sign them! Or did you not see that on Sunday? We all saw that paperwork, she didn’t have a signature on there, she waved it in your face and–”
“For the love of God, Kayla, stop being stubborn as fuck and turn the fucking page!”
“FINE.” She snapped, and then looked back down as she flipped the page. They both stood there silently, then, as the previous page floated softly down to the rest of the stack and their eyes fell upon the space for a signature. Dickie leaned in to see while Kayla pressed a finger to it, feeling the very flourish of the hand stroke in the indentation on the page. “Aaron O’Hanlon.” She murmured.
“I knew she signed it,” Finn replied. “She’s a manipulative bitch, and she’s going to do everything that she can to get under my skin. But not just me, she wants to do this to you. That’s what this is. She’s trying to get under your skin by way of me, and it worked. You know me, Kayla. Do you really think I would have done any of this if I was still tied to her?”
Kayla looked up at him, grabbed her mug and turned away as she then dropped the tea bag from it in the trash. When she turned back, she sipped her tea and looked him directly in the eyes again.
“The fact that you doubted it for that time in the ring, and that she’s still involved in your life means that you let her get to us both.”
Finn inhaled. He let himself breathe as he looked at the ceiling. He could have done the same thing that he did with Aaron so long ago. He could have just kept his mouth shut. But he’d learned that if there was anything worth fighting about, it was the person that he loved. He exhaled slowly out of his mouth, walked around the counter and then stood in Kayla’s personal space as she sipped her tea, staring at him with narrowed eyes.
He didn’t keep his mouth shut.
“I do not have any form of control over Aaron, you, or anyone else.” He started. “If this were anywhere else, she would have been flattened, and you know that. I panicked for a second because even though I watched her sign every single little page, she could have been her usual manipulative self and she could have not signed. I needed proof. You needed proof.”
He set a hand on her elbow.
“I got that proof.”
He could tell she was watching him closely, waiting to say something else. But she only held her mug and stared at him. At least, until Dickie made a motion outside of her peripheral. She snapped her head in his direction and narrowed her eyes. Dickie held up his hands and walked away, leaving them alone. She stared at Finn then, curling her tongue behind her lips over her teeth and then nodding.
“If she tries anything else…” she warned him, shaking his head.
“You have my full blessing to kick her ass, Kayla.” He assured her. “I promise – there’s only you now, and I have no interest in that–”
“Flat-chested cunt?” Kayla supplied.
“Accurate as all hell. Look, whatever happens at the next show happens. But there is no Aaron. Not for me. I’m not in the mood to be manipulated and neither do you. She’s just trying to make it difficult for me to retain and for you to re-obtain. We have this. I promise.”
••••••
Around 1920 to 1940, a man by the name of Robert Tryon conducted an experiment in the name of psychology. The thought process was the opener to the whole nature versus nurture debate that continues to saturate the field even to this day, nearly ninety years later. The idea in that time was that most psychologists believed that it was environmental stimuli that produced different behaviors as opposed to the natural side of things, in that genetics played a huge part with production of behaviors.
Tyron believed and wanted to prove that it was nature that led the path, that genetics was primarily in play for choices made in the behavioral path for humans. And so they played with mice, and they did the whole experiment by having a set-up of smart rats…you know, the ones that made less errors in a maze…and dull rats – the ones that made poor choices all around.
He bred the smart rats, and he bred the dumb rats, and then he cross-fostered…the dumb rats took care of the ickle baby smart rats and vice versa. He did this over and over again, with different generations and different combinations. Ultimately, he felt he discovered that nature outshone nurture, because even the smarter gray skittering blobs that were raised by poor parents were able to excel at a higher rate than the dumb ones.
Nature versus nurture.
In just a few weeks time, I get to see what comes my way after I face and defeat Alex Jones at Blaze of Glory. I’m not tooting my own horn, but at the same time, I am who I am. I’ve been fighting for this company for months, I’ve been holding onto this championship for months and I’m supposed to question who I am when I face someone that was so unable to maintain their own composure in the ring to try and defeat me that he’d rather take the coward’s way out and hit me with a chair. I’ll take my chances and say that I get to look ahead at the future prospects.
That doesn’t mean I’m not watching, Alex. You had something to do with the events of the past few weeks…there’s something sitting between my ribs telling me this. I know you just as well as you think you know me, and that’s important to recognize. I suppose that I can let you marinate for a bit longer and then finally lay into you in a way more fitting for the way that you’re deserving of. After all, the chair in the back of the head really was damning for you.
But regardless, I get to watch as little rats follow each other about in a maze called an Elimination Chamber. It’s amusing to me, because what else did I expect to see? New faces? People rising to the challenge? Or am I just watching the same people over and over again that I’ve already defeated for this championship earn places that they don’t fucking deserve.
Miles Kasey has been spit-roasted at this point by the amount of times that I’ve taken him, beaten him, and thrown him to the wayside going up choke artist alley. And to watch his husband sit there and cry for the billionth time about how it was any different that he got attacked in defense of Miles when Austin was still around trying to be all big and bad. I don’t think that you get that no one condoned Austin’s actions, but at the same time…Carter…you’re not part of the fucking same gym and you didn’t attack your teammate, nor did he attack you. So back the fuck off on it before you get wrecked.
I’m supposed to be scared of J2H, but I’m not. Especially not after what I just watched last week with a shit decision that I saw coming a mile away. The lackadaisical effort that I saw was pedantic and pathetic. Neither he nor Jayden Harris actually earned their way into this match – they fought, no one could figure it out, so congrats, both got to join! If I were a leader of a company, I would have said fight it out until death or win, but you know, people like to flip their dick out and make decisions that only really benefit themselves in the long run.
Beyond that, Eddie Lyons has found himself in a situation again that gives him a shot at me. I would put my money on him if I bet, but I don’t, and I’m not interested. But I bet he’s going to show up and show out. And then who’s left? Bill Barnhart?
I don’t know how Bill Barnhart got into this match. I would have expected that we would be at least on par with a Colorado Facility School and not accept people into this business with an intelligence quotient below seventy, but I guess we all have miracles around us and God works in mysterious ways. And this week, I get to face him as well. I get to put to test a ruff-ruff geriatric poodle before he gets into a ring with a bunch of people that are leagues above him. I mean, let’s look at the material that we have.
Beyond the fact that I’m facing someone who looks like a billboard for diabetes, I also see someone that advocates for drinking and animal abuse in his entrance. Why in the fuck are you dragging out Iris to a wrestling ring where she could possible get tangled up and abused? Hm? I’ll call PETA, see if we can raise awareness for animals in this business except for when they actually choose to be here.
Continuing on, the man has the humor of a twelve year old middle school boy. And I reference this by his Toxic Tush “weapon”. Motherfucker, if you fart on me in this ring, I swear to all that is holy and kind that I will end your life. Not only is it the most disgusting thing that you can do, it’s probably also the stupidest thing you can do, because hehe, farts. Really? I guess someone who chose to live in backwards ass Georgia to choose poor decisions for their life. But you know.
Let’s be perfectly honest, shall we? This match is a waste of my time, and it is a waste of the company’s time. I should be getting opportunities to showcase my best against anyone but Bill Barnhart, but here I am – The World Heavyweight Champion facing a man who has no business being in this business at this point. Does that mean I’m not going to go out there and show out? Nah. It’s a match, this is my job, and I love what I do.
Let’s be clear, Billie. I’m going to kick your ass from one side of the ring, to the other side of the ring. Then, when I snap your fucking arm, you’re going to remember what it’s like to face someone that actually has talent. It’ll be a huge change to what you see in the mirror every week, I know, but you’ll live through it just like me. I’m already over this match, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to snip your fortitude in the process. It’ll be a good example to all of you as to why you fuck with me.
I took your Roulette Championship once, Bill. Now, you don’t have a lot of dignity left, but I’ll be sure to appropriately annihilate you in the middle of that ring.
I’m not a happy person as of late. I have reasons. So trust me when I say this: the only one getting destroyed and chewed on in the end by your cute little puppy is you. I don’t have time to play games, and I don’t have time to fuck around with anyone that shouldn’t be on my level to begin with. This your last time in a main event with me.
Good luck, Billy.
You’re gonna need it.
