A "While Walking from Home Depot to Borders" Monologue

Felix and Creed grew up on different ends of the same street. A curious zoning law shuffled and dealt children of that neighborhood between two different schools. Thus, these two boys only met for two weeks in their entire childhoods, when the plumbing at Creed's elementary school exploded and his class was temporarily reassigned to Felix's school building. During those two weeks, they had one memorable meeting: when Creed beat the snot out of Felix, and took his lunch money. Creed was a big, funny-looking boy, often mocked for his size, which was the primary reason he turned into a bully; and being beaten up by a big, funny-looking boy became the primary reason for Felix's pathological fear of large men for a decade afterwards.

Creed was kicked out of his house at thirteen for "causing more trouble than you're worth," as his father put it. Felix's mother, who was the rare sort of guidance councilor who might have helped Creed had they met more than once, died that same year. Felix's father did his best, but Felix still ran away from home three years later. Three years apart, the two youths followed almost identical paths down the Mississippi river. Their nearly identical paths leant them almost identical tastes for spicy foods, appreciations for jazz, and talents for finding somewhere safe to sleep. The trek also introduced Felix to a wide array of very tall men; some of them perverted, one whom hurt him badly, and one lanky paraplegic whose tenderness and endless supply of dirty Bible jokes began to turn Felix around on his phobia. This last gentleman, Mr. Corksworth, got Felix into a halfway house. There, the youth learned of a talent of gymnastics that would come to odd use later. Creed also visited this halfway house. He slept in the alley outside Felix's window one night. He ate breakfast there the next morning. He looked a little too "big, mean and gangly," for these parts, or so he overheard two girls commenting. So he left, coincidentally just as Felix came downstairs.

All Creed was any good at was picking fights. He spared the girls, because he only enjoyed hitting men. It'd started when he fought other boys for leftover beans or squatting privileges. Then it matured, if such tendencies can be said to mature, to amateur boxing and fighting in private clubs, where only underage performers were wanted, and the winner always lost a little more than the loser by the end of the night. By the end of the year, this kind of life drained the desire to hurt people right out of Creed. It was only by luck that he fell out of such circles, and into the circuits of the smallest of small-time pro-wrestling. Hitting people - for fake - but making it look real, for pathetically small crowds. They weren't pathetic to him, though; to him, they were intimate, like a gathering of friends. These crowds, sometimes only ten people, bought into his fake fighting, his absurd performance - something he thought only friends could do, and that made each crowd the closest thing he had to friends in his life. In this queer little art it was all about character, about passion, and about appearance. For a guy on that level, Creed was about the biggest and ugliest bad guy those companies ever saw, even before he turned 18. And when he turned 18, they could actually pay him over the table if he wanted (not that he ever did).

At the same time, an amazingly athletic, wiry young man named Felix Jester came along the professional wrestling independents. He was popular for sympathetically countering bigger opponents' offense with deft acrobatics, like he'd trained in gymnastics or something. He was so nimble that no matter how badly an opponent bent or stretched his limbs, he would look bored instead of in pain. The crowds loved it, and had no idea that Felix, their favorite hero, was living out of a used car as he traveled from show to show. The fans had no idea their most hated villain, Killer Creed, also lived out of a used car. Even the writers of the wrestling shows had no idea that these two cars were parked next to one another outside the arena, the night before the a first-time-ever match: Killer Creed VS Felix Jester. Felix was trying to sleep, while Creed was getting his jazz on with the new CD player attachment for his stereo that he could finally afford now on layaway. Felix rolled up his window, waved to get the guy to shut that crap off, before giving up, since Louis Armstrong was one of his favorites, too. He wound up tapping on Creed's window to ask if he would crank it up. They spent most of the night talking to each other from the front seats of two of the most beat-up automobiles in the state, their doors open, almost touching. It was 3:00 AM before one figured out the other was wrestling, and 4:00 AM before the other figured out this one was wrestling him. The next day they put on a Hell of a match, an especially impressive match for two guys who had never met before. Under the guise of characters they feuded for years, but they were friends and traveling partners on the road long after.