A DARK HOTEL ROOM

BEEP BEEP – The common text message alert on iPhone. Amazingly, the tiny screen illuminates the otherwise dark room.

EL PATRON

felicitaciones, bien hecho

The shutter sound, as the iPhone is silenced.

He winches as he sits up in bed, still nursing the wounds from the war he just fought, limping his way to the desk, he sits, turning on table lamp.

A wise man once said Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. At Turbo Violence, we had won before we even went to war, our opositores fractured, unorganized never stood a chance, War Machine had won before we even arrived at The Temple, we had won weeks before.

But alas, this week at Slam, with our opositores retreating, I can finally focus my attention somewhere else, on something and someone else.

A single cigarette to his lips.

A man who couldn’t be a further opuesto of me, a man who has spent his life attempting to acquire knowledge and teach ‘lessons’ to others. While you were venturing the world in search of higher learning. I was clawing tooth and nail to keep a roof above my head, food on my plate, breath in my lungs.

He lights the cigarette.

Me? I never went to school. My education was on the streets of Culican. I learned the science of the human body by breaking the bones of those who owed money. My physical education was running from the policia and the federales. My math class? Cutting dope in the stash houses. I learned Geography by running the smuggling routes through the mountains.  My history classes were the OG’s telling stories about Noriega and Escobar.

My maestros were Chapo, Mencho and Patron.

He pauses, watching the smoke from the cigarette dance around in the small amount of light visible in the room.

My first physics lesson came at the age of the eleven, the first time I watched a bala fire from my own gun.

A drag from the cigarette.

I assure you, I am educated in survival, have a master’s degree in the life of the streets and a PhD in violence.

Exhale. The cloud of smoke slowly vanishing into the darkness.

You claim to be a maestro, ready to teach lessons in the form of victories against those who oppose you, but I ask you this… Whom in OSW has attended that class, whom have you taught a lesson? Because I believe that ‘classroom’ to be empty. Perhaps your next your next lessons, should be a look into your very own failures, failure to garner the attention of the audiencia, failure to strike fear into the hearts of your opponents. But perhaps most important? Failure to capture Gold.

A long deep drag, exhaling a larger cloud of smoke.

So, tell me Academius what is the probability of failure again for you? Because in my eyes, there is 100% certainty that this week, at Slam, you will meet God.

The cigarette extinguished.

The light put out.