Owen 3:16 Says
I didn't mean to do it. I meant for it to hurt, oh yeah I meant for that, but I didn't mean for it to break. Steven had ongoing problems with his neck and sometimes after a match he'd come to the back rubbing at it, cursing up a storm and complaining about it. It seemed like he just had hiccup wrong and then his neck acted up. If it was that bad, then he just shouldn't have been wrestling anyway. But we go out there all the time with injuries, and Austin was one of the biggest draws, I give him that because I think I'm a pretty fair guy. You know, I think hurting Austin's neck was even fair. Breaking it, maybe not, but I didn't lie when I said I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm not the lying man, I never have been and I'm not going to start now over him.
I did it for Debra. Debra and Jeff—that would be Double J-E-Double F…and well, you know the rest I think—they were two of my closest friends. I guess I was pretty much friends with everyone, almost everyone, I have a lot of patience and I'm pretty laid back, it takes a lot to get under my skin enough for me to mark you off my friends list. I don't like having enemies either, I don't like the drama, so I don't go looking for it like a lot of guys back here do. But anyway, DJ and Debra and I were pretty much thick as thieves, especially since the rest of my family had went to the Bischoff side of things. I loved both of them just like they were my family. DJ was the little brother I never had, being the twelfth and final Hart kid, and Debra was like one of my older sisters. I always admired Debra, she was a strong woman with a lot going for her and how she ended up in the hands of Austin, well, I don't know. She deserved someone much better, that I did know, because he treated her like complete shit and in a world of fake women, Debra was no fool's gold, she was the real deal. He should have treasured her for the rare kind of woman she was, but I guess he didn't have enough sense to. A rock probably had more sense.
Steve liked to beat on Debra, knock her around, it wasn't a secret. Debra often came to work with marks on her face, trying to hide them behind big round sunglasses until she got back to make-up and they worked their magic to hide those purple and black smudges away. It does take a lot to get me really mad, but every time I saw Debra with those dark patches on, sometimes so bad that her face looked like the skin of a rotting banana, I wanted to hurt Steve. My dad wasn't a gentle kind of a guy, he knocked around his kids from time to time, but he never laid a hand on my mother. Any man who hits a woman is a spineless worm and I wanted Steve to be manhandled for a change instead of Debra. I'm sure he wouldn't like it should his opponent be a little too stiff in the ring, I'm sure he'd stomp back into the locker room after it was over, with those knee braces of his flapping like hinges, and bitch about it until hell froze over.
Earlier that day, Dub J and I accidentally came upon Steve and Debra, tucked away in the back behind one of the trucks where Steve thought they'd probably be alone enough for him to lay his hands on her again. He might not even have thought much of that though, because like I said, everyone knew anyway, and no one said anything. That included me…I didn't say anything for a lot of reasons but I don't know if any of them were right. It really got to me, seeing Debra like that, knowing, you know and not doing anything. After what had happened with Bret in Montreal and the rest of the Hart crew jumping ship (I wanted to go to but Vince wouldn't let me out yet) my job seemed pretty vulnerable too. If Vince said jump I pretty much had to say 'how high' and try not to rock the boat too much because the boat was unsteady enough without me blundering around trying to help it sink. So lots of times, I couldn't sleep and I'd think about Debra and those big glasses she wore, and the way her make-up was too heavy sometimes, and the way she was different around me and DJ.
We were always able to make her smile, and there always seemed to be this sense of relief, or something. I don't know if she noticed the change in herself, but we did. When she was around us she was always comfortable in her own skin, but she got tense around Steve, rigid. She told us she loved him, and that was the saddest part of it. I know she did love him, and that's what hurt her the most I'm sure. But there I would lay and I wanted so badly to do something about it. Even if I would have rocked the boat with Vince, he probably would have laughed at me. Violent husbands were not exactly a rarity in our world, and Vince kept out of such things so I'm sure he wouldn't have done anything about Austin anyway, even if someone like me caused a big stink about it. There were probably other things I could have done but I would have shot my career in the foot. There were other things a lot more important to me than my career, so hobbling it or killing it altogether wasn't exactly the problem, I'd thought about leaving to do something else anyway. The problem was, even if I didn't care much for job sometimes, my family still depended on it, and that's what kept me quiet.
But anyway, I grabbed Dub and stopped him. I saw them first, and when I grabbed DJ he took a step back and then stood there with my hand wrapped around his wrist. His eyes narrowed and his hands balled up into tight fists. He looked like he could spit fire at Steve as the bald man shoved Debra against the trailer of one of the trucks.
"That stupid motherffffff-" I clenched tighter to Jeff's wrist, keeping him from rocketing off onto Steve's shoulders where he'd probably take to pounding at that bald head of his. Jeff's 'F' on the end of his 'mother' trailed off in a hiss like the air leaking out of a stuck tire. Steve's palm came down hard against Debra's face, knocking her head to the side. She cringed back against the trailer but there was nowhere to go, Steve was right on top of her, shouting horrible things to her that made me shake with rage. Jeff was too. We just stood there, shaking and fuming, wanting to rip Steve's head clean off his shoulders and play a hellacious game of hockey with it, using his skull for the puck. Steve hit her again, and this time she cried out in a sob and almost fell to her knees. I had let go of Jeff's wrist without realizing it, and there I was standing behind Steve, grabbing his shoulder, turning him around.
I didn't say anything, we just stood there, his head bent a little so he could push his nose into mine like we do in the ring sometimes, that battle of intimidation. Only this was a real battle and no bell was going to ring. Debra's hand touched my shoulder.
"Owen, don't." She sniffled. "Don't, Steve." She added, and Steve yelled at her to shut her fucking mouth. I took that opportunity to back away from him. I stood next to Jeff, who squeezed my shoulder. His face was twisted in rage, his other arm around Debra protectively. I looked over at her, and there was blood on her shirt from her nose, but she wasn't babying it. She was holding her head up as high as she could, trying nobly to keep anymore tears from falling. Steve hated that moment, because all three of us were showing him up. He hated that moment because Debra wasn't on the ground crying for him. He hated it because Jeff had his arm around his woman, in no romantic way whatsoever, but Steve was fiercely jealous. No doubt red was flashing before his eyes as the three of us stood there, silently vowing to defend each other, like three kids making a pact to stand strong against the playground bully.
"Why don't ya leave her alone!" Jeff practically spat.
"Last time I checked, ya cock suckin' faggot—she's mine and ain't yours, so you oughta just shut your damn mouth if you know what's good for ya at all." This was to Jeff, and Steve knew exactly what buttons to push with him, as if hitting Debra wasn't enough. There was no word Jeff hated more than 'faggot' and he was ready to kick Steve to the moon.
"Just take a walk, Steve. It's over and there's no need for being childish and calling names." I said, wanting him to get out of there.
"Oh, Owen. You just gotta stick up for your little fairy friend don'tcha? I bet you like suckin' his cock off just as much as your brother loved suckin' of Michaels'. But me? I don't roll that way so I don't give a flying blue fuck what you or Jeff think about any of this. As for you Debra-" Here he seemed to puff up again, and get a new wave of rage to spew at her. "You just fucking wait, you BITCH!" He shouted. "Ya god-damn whore! I am gonna whoop your ass so hard you'll have to part your hair to take a shit! YA HEAR ME YA STUPID DOG!"
As if half the world couldn't hear his big mouth, yelling out all those terrible things.
"Your little knights in their shinin' armor, Tweedle Dumb and Tweelde Dipshit, they ain't always gonna be here to save your sorry hide, cunt." Steve growled, glowering daggers first at Jeff, then at me. But he left, and Jeff and I both wrapped Debra up in a hug. She let us hold her for a few moments, she sniffled a little, then she patted my shoulder.
"Alright boys, that's enough. Ah'm…ah'm alright." She said, and we let go of her.
"That no good, son-of-a-bitch!" Jeff sputtered, bouncing around and ready to take off anyones head, I think. "I'm gonna rip him up one side and down the other!"
Jeff was always a ball of fire, and he felt just as strongly about respecting a woman as I did. Jeff came from an old fashioned Southern way of thinking about it. He once told me that a woman belongs in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. I'm sure the woman he imagined in the kitchen, her sandals kicked off under the table, her belly looking big and ready under a pretty summer dress, didn't have a face full of bruises or broken lips. Debra touched Jeff's arm gently.
"Ya'll let Steve be now." She said, her voice a little shaky. "Ya'll don't need to go gettin' yourselves in a mess over me. Ah'm jus' fine." She bit her lip for a moment, then forced a smile. "Thank you."
That was when I had enough. It was like that one promo I did, yelling from the Titantron 'Enough is enough, and it's time for a change!' Well by God, enough was enough, for real. I had made up my mind that if Steve wanted to play sick games, if he wanted to dish it out, then Steve could take it too. Fuck him and his poor sick neck. He didn't care how much it hurt when his palm sang out against Debra's face, he didn't care how much it broke her heart, so why should I care if he tweaked his damn neck a little? It was no skin off my big nose.
Before the match he was talking to me about the pile-driver, as if the scene with Debra near the truck hadn't just happened earlier. In his mind, I guess, it was all hunky dory because Jeff and I could only guard Debra for so long. At the end of the day, she still belonged to him and under the cover of night he could do whatever he wanted with her, and there would be no Owen and Jeff to stop it. He pointed to the back of his neck, telling me about it as if I would really care.
"You're gonna go to your knees for the driver, right?"
"Oooh that's not how I roll, Steve." I said, making my words sarcastically sweet, mocking him. I don't know if he even realized that I was mocking him.
"Stop your damn ribbing, Hart." He snarled. "You never fucking know when to quit."
Neither do you. I thought to myself, and hey, this time…I wasn't ribbing anyway.
He kept on bugging me and bugging me about it, all while I was changing, all before our match, and as we waited. You're not gonna do it, right? My neck, oh boo-hoo my neck, Owen. You're not gonna sit down, you're gonna go to your knees? Not how I roll, Steve. I never do my driver like that, I never go to my knees, and why should I change it for you? We went on and on about it. I told him his head was going to pop like a water balloon someone forgot to catch. He still thought I was ribbing. He didn't think I'd dare do it, not with the condition of his neck.
I did it. I didn't mean to break it, but he went down just right. I just wanted it to hurt, I just wanted it to scare him. I wanted him to feel something like maybe what Debra felt when she pleaded with him not to hurt her, and he did anyway, coldly and not caring as if she was nothing to him. I walked back stage numbly, not believing that Steve was being helped out of the ring by a number of refs. He seemed dazed, and out of it, and I knew this was serious. I honestly felt bad about that it had gone that badly, I was afraid I'd paralyzed the asshole and that was way too much. I shouldn't have done it, the ring is no place to act out justice, no place to play with a man's life. It was just so hard to do nothing, and I had snapped, and let my judgment take a hike. I was tired of closing my eyes, and seeing Debra on the ground, the skin scraped off of her knees, her long hair and her chest dappled with the blood dripping from her nose. What I did that day was over then, and I couldn't take it back. To be honest, there was a big part of me that didn't want to take it back, even though I knew I shouldn't have done it. Whatever became of Steve then would be fate, or karma, or God's will, or whatever you want to call it. I decided if Steve was paralyzed, it wasn't my fault. His sins were just coming back to bite him in the ass, that's all…or in the neck, rather.
Vince of course seized on what had happened. That guy never misses an opportunity. He had Creative make a shirt for me and I wore it and I did my heel thing in the ring.
It said: "Owen 3:16: I just broke your neck"
You know what? I liked that shirt.