I stand under the lights looking out at the field. The grass is perfect and fast. It’s my savanna, my wild. And then I look across the field, and that’s when I see them. They look big, they look really big. They look fast and mean, and good, like they hit hard, like they don’t care at all and live for the fight.
That’s what I always think. It drives me crazy. It bothers me, a lot, and I hate it. Always takes me a few to get my mind right. But sooner or later I do. I do because I have to. Because the alternative is to admit defeat, tell them all that I’m afraid, and win or lose, that is just unacceptable. Nobody says you can’t be scared, but you never, you NEVER show it. That’s your secret, and you take it to the grave. It’s my secret too, and when channeled, when I get my mind right, it lets me turn loose, lets me unleash that terror that owns the night, that terror that comes only as a whisper, a sudden chill, that tells others, “You have just crossed a line, just stepped into a new world, someone else’s kingdom, and you are now alone … and very far from home.”
So! Sooner or later I get my mind right, I remember, and I tell myself …
That reputation, that record they have, that look, all that … is something everyone else has given them, has allowed them to have, something I am allowing them to have right now. They only “earned” it by playing against the weak, the intimidated, the beaten. But tonight that changes, because I am none of those. All that’s over. Tonight they play against me. Tonight it is they who are the weak, they who will be beaten.
Now it may sound a little odd, but there is actually a small part of me that feels sorry for them … because right now they are still clueless and innocent, like babies. Yes, as of this moment they are still happy, still have no idea what’s coming. No idea of their mistake. No idea how fast I am, how hard I will hit, how much I am just hoping, daring, literally begging them to step across that sideline and into my kingdom. No idea how instantly their plan is going to fall apart. And when it does I will be there face to face, and I will see it in their eyes, and I will love it … because I am untouchable, uncatchable, unmatchable. Their fastest, their best, their “beasts” have nothing for me, no answer, NOTHING. Because there is no answer. I am the fastest, I am the strongest, I am the beast, I am the terror who owns the night, and there is no force in this life or the next that can match me. Tonight I will put them in their place. And their place is off of and far away from my field … because my field is my kingdom, my savanna, my wild. And babies have no place in the wild.