Post by theravenmattknox on Jan 10, 2021 7:50:25 GMT -5
Inner Harbor Loft Apartments,
Baltimore, MD
01/09/21
23:31
Hope Adrianna Knox sat cross legged on her twin bed in her spartan Baltimore apartment. Her platinum blonde hair fell freely over her dainty shoulders, her head bowed and staring at the iPhone in her hands. Scrolling through twitter, reading the tweets and mentions for her father. She had been ignorant to a lot of her father’s dealings since he left Baltimore, but with her Saturday being slow she decided to watch him fight in Reno via her We Are Splat! App.
She saw the man she knew all too well, despite his best efforts to hide him from her. The angry, lost man who tried so hard to find reason and meaning through and in the violence and chaos he surrounded himself in. The man whose name was drug through mud constantly. The man who was as professional an agitator as he was a fighter. She listened to his venom, coming from a place of love as he challenged a man to a brutal sort of match.
She heard the response, her skin crawling at the implications made by Scott Dunn before yet another egotistical athlete took up more precious cameratime. Her father’s opponent for the night. She chuckled, knowing that her father no doubt was bubbling with resentment for the arrogant airhead. He was exactly the sort of people Matthew always curled a lip at, after all.
Then, the match itself. She had leaned forward, intently watching her father fight. Observing all the little things only those who knew what to look for saw. The slight favoring of his left knee, the facial twitches when something didn’t go as he had planned. She saw her father fight like the goddamn devil, as someone had once put. Then she saw his luck prevail.
Ref knocked out, Interference, and a pinfall loss.
She shook her head, his words echoing in her head. From some place far off, sounding about a thousand packs of Camel non filter lighter in her head.
“Be glad you’re not my blood, kid. Knox’s...we got unlucky blood. Anything can go wrong, will. If it can kill you, it’ll try. Only thing saving us, is we’re made as tough as we are unlucky.”
Obviously, he was drunk while he said it. It was one of the last things he said to her, before he had left for so long..
She was snapped from her reverie as her phone screen filled with a candid image of her father she had snapped in their most recent day together out by the Inner Harbor. She smiled faintly, before answering the facetime call. The screen filled then with the face of her father, cigarette hanging loosely from between his lips. His face was scuffed up, which she found odd as he hadn’t taken too many shots there against Stone.
How many fronts was his war on?
“Hey Kid, the hell you doin’ up?” He asked in a friendly tone that did little to disguise how exhausted he was, she paid him a soft laugh before answering.
“You called me, how does that question make any sense?”
“Doesn’t have to, i’m your dad”
This earned a broader smile as she rolled her eyes at him. Matthew pinched the cigarette from between his lips, exhaling the noxious fumes to the side so they wouldn’t fill the camera lens. He reached up, thumbing at a scabbed over wound above his eyebrow. Something covered up by the face paint during his match with Stone.
“I saw your match.” She remarked
“Gotta be more specific, kid,” he quipped “I’ve had a lot of those.”
“The one in Reno”
The silence weighed heavy, his eyes narrowed in inquisition as he soaked in the knowledge.
“Did you s--”
“Yes, I saw Dunn’s segment.”
He grimaced, shaking his head and staring off to the side. The silence hung for a moment as he took another drag off his cigarette, before flicking it off the hotel balcony. He adjusted the gray beanie on his head, holding back the mess of raven black hair. He went to speak, but she cut him off this time.
“You don’t have to talk about it, dad. It’s common. Not the first time someone has dug at that nerve, and it won’t be the last.” She paused, and after a split second of consideration decided to play at his ego “And i’m confident you’ll handle it as effectively as you did the last time. He’s just another muscle with a mouth.”
“Yeah and no brains,” He finished, still not facing the phone “I still don’t like dealing with it. Wish you’d keep your eyes off the whole ordeal, kid.” He turned to face the screen then, letting the sincerity and weight of his words hang in the air a moment before speaking, “You see the other show? Project Honor?”
“I did. It was good seeing you on there without being in a hellscape with polar bears and ladders taller than the roof of my apartment.”
“Yeah, I suppose it is. Get the impression though, that kind of craziness is what I’m going to be dealing with on that Fallout brand.”
“I just wish I knew where they keep finding these photos of you so well groomed and dressed.” It was her turn to quip, her smile taking a mischievous gleam to it. Her father pays her a scoff, shaking his head.
“I think they got it from We Are Splat’s department. They found one of me at that wedding your mom dragged me to,” he brought a thoughtful hand up, stroking his chin before grabbing his pack and knocking a fresh cigarette out of them, “Don’t matter though. Worst case, I fool people into thinking i’m some pretty boy who they can roll without a fight.” He plucked the smoke between his lips, sparking up and blowing off another cloud of smoke.
“Are you okay, though? You’ve been all over the place on Twitter. Picking fights, being inflammatory. I get that that’s the nature of things, you know I understand that. But You gotta know that this isn’t gonna take you anywhere that anyone would want to be,” a pause “I’m not worried that you can’t handle it, dad. I know you can fight. I just don’t want to lose you in it again, or for you to lose yourself.”
“I’m not okay.” He said plainly, wiping a hand over his face. He cups his chin, hovering a smoke around his lips before he takes a drag, speaking as he exhales the smoke “I haven’t been since I saw Charlotte throw herself out a window. Everything after that was just a slide to that inevitable dark place I tried to die in. You were the only bright spot in my life before I found the will to fight again.”
He blinked back familiar tears, the spillover of a dam near cracking and way over capacity. Feelings and insecurities buried deep under a skin thickened by the business. He’d never admit how the barbs actually dug into those wounds, like a hot knife cutting through butter. No, he’d never admit it. All he could do was take the frustrations out on them, even those who had done little to nothing to offend him.
“I’m dealing though, kid. The only way I know how. Hide in a couple days, and Dex Griffin on the 28th”
“The one you choked out in St Elmo?” Her usually placid features flinched, betraying her worry.
“Yeah, the very same.”
“Then you know he’s wanting to avenge that. I mean, not to stoke the flames or give you ideas on how, but you humiliated the man. All the work he put in to get to the final three, and you ended it in an instant”
“And then I got ended in one myself.”
“Nature of the business. But you and Hunter had gone in with high expectations, even calling yourselves as the final two along with The Edge. Everyone wanted to do what they could to prevent that from coming true. The closest one, failed miserably the second he got in the same room as you two. That has to sting the ego, and fighters are at least half ego.”
Matthew chuckled through a toothy grin at that assessment, he removed his beanie and mussed up his hair as he let out a slow exhale.
“Might be low on the estimation there, kid..” He took another puff, exhaling the smoke once more, “Yeah. He’s pissed. Made a few comments on Twitter. Been far and away from my mind though. He was a flash in the match. And now, he’s between me and the chance at a title. Last place anyone wants to be. Between a junkie and their fix..” He paused, eyes flicking to hers. The slight twitch of her face betrayed her disapproval.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine…” She mussed her own blonde locks then, letting out a sigh, “Before then though, after you’re done in Chicago you’ll be back in Baltimore?”
“For a couple days, yeah.”
“Ivy and Mom are going to be here to visit me. I’m sure I can convince mom to let you and I take her for a day and let her relax.”
Matthew visibly tensed up at the mention of his youngest. The child might as well have been a stranger to him. She may have looked like a shrunken doppelganger, but still. Their time apart was stacked higher than any mountain, and the time he had spent around her amounted to but a handful of earth. A phone call, in passing at an arena. Trotted out to shame him by his ex step father..
He wet his lips, before nodding through the icy, awkward feelings. The fear of looking at his greatest shame and failure in her sweet, innocent face.
“That’d be wonderful. Just let me know, kid.” He shifted in his seat, clearing his throat “For now though, I’m gonna hit the hay before it hits me. I love you, Hope.”
“Love you too, Dad.” She replied, a small smile playing on her face like it always did during their goodbyes. Thankful that he would be back before long, the ugly times far behind them, “Be good” She added.
“I will. If not, i’ll do my best to give you a brother.” She cringed at the joke as he grinned like the cleverest son-of-a-bitch alive. “Goodnight, kid.”
And with that, he disappeared off her screen. Replaced with his still photo and the “Call Ended” text. She set her phone down finally, opting to lay back upon the bed and stretch her legs out. She wondered over his quote again, as she often did when it found its way to the forefront of her crowded mind.
Knox’s...she had never been privy to any outside of her father. He had mentioned some half siblings, she even remembered vaguely the mention of his older half brother’s name. Diogenes. Unique as the man himself was terrible, according to Matthew. Raised by the paternal grandparents who wanted nothing to do with Matthew. Apparently due to their failures with his father and difficulties with his brother.
How cold some people must be, to willingly turn away their blood.
She felt as though her father’s whole life had been about fighting through that coldness. Rising above the poison in his veins. Somedays, she felt he had it beaten. Others, the ghosts broke free of their prison behind his eyes to wreak havoc upon the rest of him, and the world around him.
A broken man in the business of breaking men.
She chuckled idly at the thought, as she felt sleep begin to creep forth in the corners of her mind. Her eyes began to feel heavy as she curled up on her side, a smile remaining on her face.
“Goodnight, Dad” She whispered as she reached over to turn off the light.
Baltimore, MD
01/09/21
23:31
Hope Adrianna Knox sat cross legged on her twin bed in her spartan Baltimore apartment. Her platinum blonde hair fell freely over her dainty shoulders, her head bowed and staring at the iPhone in her hands. Scrolling through twitter, reading the tweets and mentions for her father. She had been ignorant to a lot of her father’s dealings since he left Baltimore, but with her Saturday being slow she decided to watch him fight in Reno via her We Are Splat! App.
She saw the man she knew all too well, despite his best efforts to hide him from her. The angry, lost man who tried so hard to find reason and meaning through and in the violence and chaos he surrounded himself in. The man whose name was drug through mud constantly. The man who was as professional an agitator as he was a fighter. She listened to his venom, coming from a place of love as he challenged a man to a brutal sort of match.
She heard the response, her skin crawling at the implications made by Scott Dunn before yet another egotistical athlete took up more precious cameratime. Her father’s opponent for the night. She chuckled, knowing that her father no doubt was bubbling with resentment for the arrogant airhead. He was exactly the sort of people Matthew always curled a lip at, after all.
Then, the match itself. She had leaned forward, intently watching her father fight. Observing all the little things only those who knew what to look for saw. The slight favoring of his left knee, the facial twitches when something didn’t go as he had planned. She saw her father fight like the goddamn devil, as someone had once put. Then she saw his luck prevail.
Ref knocked out, Interference, and a pinfall loss.
She shook her head, his words echoing in her head. From some place far off, sounding about a thousand packs of Camel non filter lighter in her head.
“Be glad you’re not my blood, kid. Knox’s...we got unlucky blood. Anything can go wrong, will. If it can kill you, it’ll try. Only thing saving us, is we’re made as tough as we are unlucky.”
Obviously, he was drunk while he said it. It was one of the last things he said to her, before he had left for so long..
She was snapped from her reverie as her phone screen filled with a candid image of her father she had snapped in their most recent day together out by the Inner Harbor. She smiled faintly, before answering the facetime call. The screen filled then with the face of her father, cigarette hanging loosely from between his lips. His face was scuffed up, which she found odd as he hadn’t taken too many shots there against Stone.
How many fronts was his war on?
“Hey Kid, the hell you doin’ up?” He asked in a friendly tone that did little to disguise how exhausted he was, she paid him a soft laugh before answering.
“You called me, how does that question make any sense?”
“Doesn’t have to, i’m your dad”
This earned a broader smile as she rolled her eyes at him. Matthew pinched the cigarette from between his lips, exhaling the noxious fumes to the side so they wouldn’t fill the camera lens. He reached up, thumbing at a scabbed over wound above his eyebrow. Something covered up by the face paint during his match with Stone.
“I saw your match.” She remarked
“Gotta be more specific, kid,” he quipped “I’ve had a lot of those.”
“The one in Reno”
The silence weighed heavy, his eyes narrowed in inquisition as he soaked in the knowledge.
“Did you s--”
“Yes, I saw Dunn’s segment.”
He grimaced, shaking his head and staring off to the side. The silence hung for a moment as he took another drag off his cigarette, before flicking it off the hotel balcony. He adjusted the gray beanie on his head, holding back the mess of raven black hair. He went to speak, but she cut him off this time.
“You don’t have to talk about it, dad. It’s common. Not the first time someone has dug at that nerve, and it won’t be the last.” She paused, and after a split second of consideration decided to play at his ego “And i’m confident you’ll handle it as effectively as you did the last time. He’s just another muscle with a mouth.”
“Yeah and no brains,” He finished, still not facing the phone “I still don’t like dealing with it. Wish you’d keep your eyes off the whole ordeal, kid.” He turned to face the screen then, letting the sincerity and weight of his words hang in the air a moment before speaking, “You see the other show? Project Honor?”
“I did. It was good seeing you on there without being in a hellscape with polar bears and ladders taller than the roof of my apartment.”
“Yeah, I suppose it is. Get the impression though, that kind of craziness is what I’m going to be dealing with on that Fallout brand.”
“I just wish I knew where they keep finding these photos of you so well groomed and dressed.” It was her turn to quip, her smile taking a mischievous gleam to it. Her father pays her a scoff, shaking his head.
“I think they got it from We Are Splat’s department. They found one of me at that wedding your mom dragged me to,” he brought a thoughtful hand up, stroking his chin before grabbing his pack and knocking a fresh cigarette out of them, “Don’t matter though. Worst case, I fool people into thinking i’m some pretty boy who they can roll without a fight.” He plucked the smoke between his lips, sparking up and blowing off another cloud of smoke.
“Are you okay, though? You’ve been all over the place on Twitter. Picking fights, being inflammatory. I get that that’s the nature of things, you know I understand that. But You gotta know that this isn’t gonna take you anywhere that anyone would want to be,” a pause “I’m not worried that you can’t handle it, dad. I know you can fight. I just don’t want to lose you in it again, or for you to lose yourself.”
“I’m not okay.” He said plainly, wiping a hand over his face. He cups his chin, hovering a smoke around his lips before he takes a drag, speaking as he exhales the smoke “I haven’t been since I saw Charlotte throw herself out a window. Everything after that was just a slide to that inevitable dark place I tried to die in. You were the only bright spot in my life before I found the will to fight again.”
He blinked back familiar tears, the spillover of a dam near cracking and way over capacity. Feelings and insecurities buried deep under a skin thickened by the business. He’d never admit how the barbs actually dug into those wounds, like a hot knife cutting through butter. No, he’d never admit it. All he could do was take the frustrations out on them, even those who had done little to nothing to offend him.
“I’m dealing though, kid. The only way I know how. Hide in a couple days, and Dex Griffin on the 28th”
“The one you choked out in St Elmo?” Her usually placid features flinched, betraying her worry.
“Yeah, the very same.”
“Then you know he’s wanting to avenge that. I mean, not to stoke the flames or give you ideas on how, but you humiliated the man. All the work he put in to get to the final three, and you ended it in an instant”
“And then I got ended in one myself.”
“Nature of the business. But you and Hunter had gone in with high expectations, even calling yourselves as the final two along with The Edge. Everyone wanted to do what they could to prevent that from coming true. The closest one, failed miserably the second he got in the same room as you two. That has to sting the ego, and fighters are at least half ego.”
Matthew chuckled through a toothy grin at that assessment, he removed his beanie and mussed up his hair as he let out a slow exhale.
“Might be low on the estimation there, kid..” He took another puff, exhaling the smoke once more, “Yeah. He’s pissed. Made a few comments on Twitter. Been far and away from my mind though. He was a flash in the match. And now, he’s between me and the chance at a title. Last place anyone wants to be. Between a junkie and their fix..” He paused, eyes flicking to hers. The slight twitch of her face betrayed her disapproval.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine…” She mussed her own blonde locks then, letting out a sigh, “Before then though, after you’re done in Chicago you’ll be back in Baltimore?”
“For a couple days, yeah.”
“Ivy and Mom are going to be here to visit me. I’m sure I can convince mom to let you and I take her for a day and let her relax.”
Matthew visibly tensed up at the mention of his youngest. The child might as well have been a stranger to him. She may have looked like a shrunken doppelganger, but still. Their time apart was stacked higher than any mountain, and the time he had spent around her amounted to but a handful of earth. A phone call, in passing at an arena. Trotted out to shame him by his ex step father..
He wet his lips, before nodding through the icy, awkward feelings. The fear of looking at his greatest shame and failure in her sweet, innocent face.
“That’d be wonderful. Just let me know, kid.” He shifted in his seat, clearing his throat “For now though, I’m gonna hit the hay before it hits me. I love you, Hope.”
“Love you too, Dad.” She replied, a small smile playing on her face like it always did during their goodbyes. Thankful that he would be back before long, the ugly times far behind them, “Be good” She added.
“I will. If not, i’ll do my best to give you a brother.” She cringed at the joke as he grinned like the cleverest son-of-a-bitch alive. “Goodnight, kid.”
And with that, he disappeared off her screen. Replaced with his still photo and the “Call Ended” text. She set her phone down finally, opting to lay back upon the bed and stretch her legs out. She wondered over his quote again, as she often did when it found its way to the forefront of her crowded mind.
Knox’s...she had never been privy to any outside of her father. He had mentioned some half siblings, she even remembered vaguely the mention of his older half brother’s name. Diogenes. Unique as the man himself was terrible, according to Matthew. Raised by the paternal grandparents who wanted nothing to do with Matthew. Apparently due to their failures with his father and difficulties with his brother.
How cold some people must be, to willingly turn away their blood.
She felt as though her father’s whole life had been about fighting through that coldness. Rising above the poison in his veins. Somedays, she felt he had it beaten. Others, the ghosts broke free of their prison behind his eyes to wreak havoc upon the rest of him, and the world around him.
A broken man in the business of breaking men.
She chuckled idly at the thought, as she felt sleep begin to creep forth in the corners of her mind. Her eyes began to feel heavy as she curled up on her side, a smile remaining on her face.
“Goodnight, Dad” She whispered as she reached over to turn off the light.