Post by Owen Gonsalves on Mar 27, 2016 22:21:58 GMT -6
There isn't an image in the world that terrifies a human being more than the sight of their own blood dripping onto a grimy canvas. Some will say that they crave for that sight or that they love the sight...but that's just bullshit.
Don't get me wrong, I was a twisted child who smiled at the feeling of blood squeezing out of your forehead. But there's that fear, through all the smiles and enjoyment there's always fear...fear that the blood dripping out of you might be the last ounce of blood that does drip out of you.
There's always that fear that maybe this cut is going to be the cut that fucking kills you. Anyone who says that there isnt a drop of fear in them when they realise that their face has become a crimson mask is a liar, plain and simple.
That's the image I've forced myself to live with for the past 3 years. Every night, nights just like this, I'll startle up in bed at about the same time because that image terrifies me today. More than it ever did before.
Some nights Ash would startle awake with me and some nights she wouldn't even realise at all...There's only so much you can support someone who keeps going back to the sword that stabbed him in the first place. She tried to tell me that those images are just images...She's tried for months, but that doesn't stop them from coming back and I know that...
I know that...
Fuck, I know that...
There's been times where I wondered if anything would ever stop them from coming back, maybe I'd be forced to live with the dreams of drowning in a pool of my own blood for the rest of my life.
I'd be forced to live with a crimson mask I've tried to pry off my face for years now. They say the masks come off easily and it's dealing with what you did with the mask that haunts you, but this mask...this mask is one of the most dangerous masks to wear, it's a stigma. A stigma that people like Byron Belasko, or Cera or Hazard or even people like Seifer Black have lived or are going to have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Cera lived with it. She lived by the sword and died by it, didn't she? There would've been fear in her, but she was far too blinded by her own ego to realize the fear inside of herself.
Maybe that's a dick thing to say...She rests in darkness now, the way she would've always wanted.
I refuse to continue living with it, I can't. So there isn't a day I don't try to pry it off my face. I'll stagger out of my bed and into my bathroom...look myself in that mirror like I did the night before and the night before that, and then like I have done so many times, I rinse my face in water, rinse it of dirt and try to wash off the mask that can't even be washed...
But that's never stopped me from trying...maybe one day I'll look up back into that mirror, water dripping down my face and that mask won't be there. Maybe one day I'll be like Ace in that retrospect.
There's envy in seeing someone like him find his way back to success after going through a dark time, what a lucky bastard. It makes you wonder how many times he stared in that mirror before his mask came off his face...
That's the thought that runs through my head, time is 4:02 AM and here I am, once again. The setting is slightly different, I'm not at home, dare I say I never have truly been at home but tonight more so than any other...I'm not at home. This hotel room ensuite is my current place of reflection.
My face is dripping with water as it has been for many, many nights but tonight I sit on the bathroom floor, staring directly back into the camera that sits on a tripod in the corner of the bathroom, before pushing myself to my knees, reaching over and pressing the button.
- RECORDING
With a heavy sigh, my eyes drift down to the floor in thought, thinking of what I might say first because so much runs through my mind. In slow motion, my legs give way and my body crumbles back down in a heap, falling back onto my tailbone and into the position I sat before recording.
"What a difference 6 months makes, huh?"
I can't help but let out a light hearted chuckle, thinking back on the month of Armed and Dangerous, that show I faced a different Ace Watson than I do now. I faced a man who was lost, a man who didn't know what he wanted to do with himself.
"6 months ago almost to the day, I stepped in the ring with Ace Watson for the first time in years, intentions of beating him back to his old self, beating him back to the Ace Watson I knew. Not malice intentions by any means but intentions of doing the guy a favor."
There's a sense of reassurance, not to the viewer but for myself, reassuring myself that I didnt have those intentions.
"Here we are now, I don't have much to say really, do I? This Ace Watson is the guy I shouldve faced at Armed and Dangerous and months later I'm getting it."
"Another week, another chance, another step closer to change..."
There isn't any energy left in me tonight, come March 31st I'll be ready to take it to Ace like I have before. No catchphrase to finish. No smug smirk. Just Owen, stripped down mentally and emotionally.
~Fade~