(IG70) Akaiame ("Red Rain")

[renner]

circa April 7th, 2009

"Ow! Watch it!"

There were those days where I wondered if it would've been better if I had just stayed in the mansion and lived a boring life with my boring family in upper class New Orleans society. Usually, those days coincided with the days I end up bleeding from a slightly self-inflicted wound in my forehead from a big match. A day much like this day.

"Mr. Avalon, I can't stitch you up if you're not going to hold still." the doctor told me.

I've been doing this for damn near a decade, now. I still can't get used to getting stitches. It's not like I have a fear of needles, it's just that I'm a bit bothered when some guy sticks a needle in the gaping wound in my forehead. It stings a little bit. In the back of my mind, I start to wonder why I hadn't fallen into a painkiller addiction like so many other wrestlers, like myself, tended to do. I brushed that thought from my mind.

"Sixteen stitches." the doctor said to himself, "Hell of a blade job."

Oh, sure, I can maybe account for two of those stitches. Leave it to that prick, Steve Knox, to hit me in the head with the chair again and catch me with the "wrong" side of the chair at that. Sometimes, I think that guy's just out to get me.

I feel I need to explain, mostly because I think most people're like me and they don't believe in beating people with furniture. Typically, there are two sides to a metal folding chair. There's the flat side you sit on, and then the back side. You may notice that nearly every singlechair shot you see on television is done with the flat side. Typically, when you swing the chair at somebody, you want to hit them with the flat side. This side always had the least amount of jagged edges and the wideness of the chair ensured that an equal amount of impact is absorbed through the chair.

Many guys will say that a chair shot hurt like hell. And I won't lie, they do. However, the true art of the chair shot laid with the sound one makes with it, rather than the damage you do the other guy. The louder the smack, the more impressive the noise and the more the crowd reacted to it.

On this particular spring night, I wrestled Steve Knox. Steve was a good wrestler, but he was a guy I couldn't stand. He was egotistical and self-absorbed, and his success in New Frontier Wrestling only served to make him even more maddening to be around. The worst part was that a large reason why he became a good wrestler was because I was around when he was just breaking out to help nurture and improve upon his natural talent. Now that he's successful, he no longer cared who helped get him there.

Anyway, to make a long story short, after the first chair shot, I went to the mat and got a nice bit of color on my face. I turned over to my back and saw the wrong side of that metal chair come careening down on my face again. The edge caught me right on my freshly-opened wound and opened it even wider.

I'm lucky he didn't concuss me, the prick.

The doctor finished his work and placed a bandage on it, warning me not to remove the bandage. Oh, no, I totally need to bleed again, it improves my complexion.

My girlfriend, who's now my fiancee after I proposed to her a few months after this wonderful little incident, came up to me after the doctor walked away from me. Annabelle had this disapproving frown on her face, as she always did when I'd come out of a match clearly injured. It was an expression I'd come to get used to. There was a match at the end of 2005 that I ended up getting thrown into, called Gimmick Hell. It was so terrifyingly dangerous that it was only done once in wrestling history, and if I had my way, it would STAY that way.

During that match, I was knocked off a ring apron, left hanging unwillingly off of a barbed wire cage for a few seconds, and then fell into a casket filled with glass light tubes. I was told that one of the shards of glass that got stuck to me was naught but inches from puncturing something really vital. That match was also the very last time I'd ever had to stay overnight in a hospital. Annie had that same expression on her face during that hospital stay as she did right now. As much as she supported me through this profession of mine, she clearly hated what it did to me. She even made me promise to never get involved in a match that dangerous again.

I've been Gimmick Hell-free for four years, now.

She got close to my face, moreso to examine the bandage on my head than to look at my face, "Geez, you said it was only going to be a minor scratch."

"Oh, it was. Apparently, Steve was unimpressed by my 'minor scratch' and decided to improve upon it." I said. Seriously, Steve, were you *trying* to put me in a hospital?

Annie just sort of stared at my injury, and I had to reach up and put my hands up against her cheeks in order to make her look down to my eyes, "Hey. Don't get sad on me. It's not as bad as it looks."

"Well, it looks terrible." she said with a pout.

"Well, that's wrestling," I'd tell her, "It always looks worse than it is."

"Hmmmmm." Annabelle said, a finger underneath her chin. That was her way of showing me that she was thinking. Personally, I think she's just watched too much Japanese cartoons and now she's adopted some of those mannerisms, "I don't know. Sometimes I wonder why you do this. All you seem to do is get hurt."

Annie honestly had a right to be concerned about me. She'd seen the agony I'd been in when Inoue Doi decided to kick me so hard, last year, that it tore a muscle in my abdomen. I actually had to take time off from wrestling to let it heal, since the pain was so excruciating that I couldn't even perform my warm-up exercises. She knew the risks I took. She knew that however "fake" people thought my profession to be, there was an undeniable realism in it as well. When a big monkey like Steve struck me with a steel chair, you'd better believed that Annie would turn her head away from the sight.

I looked around. I had visited the doctor's office after the match to deal with the gaping hole in my forehead, and now that his job was finished, he had gone off somewhere to have a smoke. Figures. So, I looked back into Annie's eyes, "Did I ever tell you why I got into this sport?"

"You said something about this being your dream, but it's been a while." Annie said. Not that I don't love her, but thanks for forgetting, Annie.

"When I was a kid... I watched a wrestling match on television. I don't even remember who was wrestling at the time, but it was one of those rare times where they'd give away a quality championship match on free TV. So, the challenger in the match was getting beaten down, and everybody booed the champion for his cheating tactics. So, the champion gets a little too cocky. He stand right over the other guy and leans down to start badmouthing him. Cussing him out, whatever. Then he grabs the challenger by the head and rears back to punch him... then the challenger rolls over into a small package and pins him to win the title." I said. I smiled as I remembered the scene, even if the faces in my head were all a blur to me.

"That crowd reaction was... otherworldly. All the guy did was roll a guy over and hold him down for three seconds, but just from that, people went crazy." I continued. I think I made a hand gesture or two somewhere in there, but I've lost enough blood that I probably wasn't thinking too straight, anyway. Might be why I can't remember too many details of the match I watched as a kid.

"I kept watching and started to imagine myself playing the role of the underdog. I wanted to be the hero. The guy who got cheered all the time. I wanted to be that guy." I told her. I paused, then I continued, "I had to overcome a lot to get this far. I lived a pretty sheltered life, I didn't know how to deal with people... hell, some people think I still don't. But I worked hard. I live my dream. That's all a guy can really ask for."

I looked at Annabelle, who held her mouth with her left hand in order to suppress a giggle. I am not fooled.

"What?" I asked her.

"N-nothing." she stuttered, trying to look away. Finally, she turned back to me, "Just... it's such a simple motivation."

"Come on, Annie, you've known me for this long and you still think I'm as complex and mysterious as my name?" I asked in a joking manner. I have no idea why people thought having a name like "Coral Avalon" makes you complex and mysterious. In fact, people who've never heard of me before sore that I was a girl.

Annie couldn't help but giggle at me, now, "Well, I think you should be complex and mysterious. Maybe you could wear a cape and laugh into the night for your whole wrestling persona."

I scoffed, "Yeah, like that'd be the day. People watch me for the wrestling, not for my witty repartee."

Oh, if I had only known the way this year would have ended, I'd go back in time and hit myself for ever saying that. With the wrong side of a steel chair, no less. I sighed and stood up. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and my muscles ached, but it was a good kind of ache. The kind you got from working hard to achieve something people would enjoy.

I threw on a spare shirt, and smiled at my girlfriend in this silly manner that probably made her think that Steve Knox took a chunk of brain out of me with that chair in addition to my blood. I hope it didn't freak her out.

"Let's go get something to eat." I said.