Post by stratford on Jan 11, 2021 22:10:39 GMT -5
The date was December 30th, the place is New Orleans, Louisiana. The thing in the palm of a hand stretched out in front of me is a tab of acid, and in a moment it will obliterate all these facts.
Paul Montuori, my oldest acquaintance in the business, has done acid before. Brandon Moore, the psycho, has done it. I haven’t. I let it sit in my mouth until it annoys me, then swallow it, as I look back at them expectantly, wondering why nothing happens.
I’m not a substance kinda guy, I don’t drink, haven’t smoked in years. But today, something’s different. Life’s different, and I’m feeling somewhat more open to going to another dimension and letting go of some of that tension. I’ve been feeling like I don’t got a handle on it lately. It has been getting the better of me and I think letting off some steam might help.
I rubbed absently at the welt on my head, still sore from the stitches that the medical professional had sewn into me the night before in the unsterile locker room in Houston, backstage after the main event of Monday Night Showcase #25. I’d never really intermingled with the other members of FoCuS, for no other reason than I had very little in common with them. I mean, my wife hated them all, thought they were anchors weighing me down, losers, but that’s another issue entirely. After ripping several OPW roster members to ribbons during the course of the show, trying to blow off said steam, I’d elicited some new feelings from them. Joe and Cam, they were super concerned about me, trying to calm me down, all of a sudden the killer instinct they’d been begging me for was out of hand, all of a sudden I should save it for Riggs or Wolf, all of a sudden I gotta stop before I put Bruce McLeod in a body bag.
Pair of idiots.
And speaking of a pair of idiots, it surprised me more that Moore and Paul were so up on me all of a sudden, I’d have been suspicious, usually, but in reflection of the recent developments in my life, and in respect of the great city that I’d adopted myself to, I was in a very laissez-faire state of mind.
Minutes pass, and nothing happens. I rest my heavy head against the rough brick wall behind me, and focus on figuring out whether the acid is working, whether my body feels different. If my perception has changed, if my thoughts are warping.
“Do you feel it, yet?” comes a voice, breathing close and sickly on my ear. I open my eyes to see Brandon grinning at me psychopathically, having inched his way around Paul’s slender frame and into my personal space.
“No, I don’t.” I say briskly, trying to get rid of him.
“Psst.. We need to talk..” He insists.
“Fine.”
“Ya know, the last few weeks, hanging out with GOAT, I’ve really been doing some soul searching. Some serious soul searching. Having some personal growth. Working on myself. And I’m starting to realize a few things. About us, about what we’re doing here. About what any of us are really doing here? Ya know what I mean? Why are any of us really here? And.. I mean, Joe’s my brother, and, don’t get me wrong, Brandon’s my tag partner.. And we’ve known each other since before I was Paul. When I was still a kid in this fucked up world. And we’ve never been tight, far from best friends. But, if you really REALLY think about it, we’re kinda like brothers.”
I chuckle a bit, looking around at my surroundings. People are weaving in and out of the garden area that I find myself in. Paul is crouched over next to me, whereas Brandon and Michelle are standing nearby, watching the steady conveyor belt of smokers move through the farm-like pen that we are corralled into whilst we slowly and deliberately snuff the life out of our bodies through nicotine and tar.
“Since day one we’ve been pushing the proverbial envelope. Pushing the limits of our minds. And our bodies. Pushing our existence passed the norms which have been set for us by society, by man, by everyone. This image of who we’re really supposed to be man, who we’re really supposed to be. And I’ve had it. I’ve had being told who I am. Who I’m supposed to be. How I’m supposed to act. That I have to pay attention to what the top guys are doing if I want to be a top guy. Fuck that. Top guy like who? Like Xavier fuckin’ Wolf? Like Vhodka Marie? Fuck her and fuck them. We’re big stars, not them man. We’ve always been big stars. Forget everything else, its irrelevant, just look at what would happen if we were the big star of --”
As soon as he says star that last time, his face appears lit up against the wall, alongside mine, like a billboard advertising a big show at Madison Square Garden. The word ‘star’ seems to hang suspended in the air for a moment, masking the rest of the image. It’s all very subtle. But I realise then that I’m going on a trip, and there’s no way back.
“Did you feel that, the difference?” I ask, confused.
“Yes, of course, man, of course.” He responds eagerly, as if we’re on the same wavelength. I do need somebody on my wavelength because I think I’m about to freak out. But I don’t want it to be him. Oh, God, I don’t want it to be him.
I stand up, pushing past Paul, Brandon and Michelle, looking for anybody else friendly. I move back into the small house that we’d found ourselves partying at, walking through it slightly disoriented. Everyone is huddled in corners, talking in small groups. Each cluster of people smiling at me and beckoning me to join them. I keep walking. The house seems endless. I explore about a hundred rooms, not sure whether they’re all the same one or not, before giving up, confident that there are no friendly faces left in the world. I reemerge in the back yard of the house, where I’d come from, but it's not the same back yard. It’s dark, it’s empty and something feels wrong. I’m not sure how long I’ve been inside.
I step outside and wander around, the lines of reality blurring against isometric shapes that jolt out at me from the constructs of hard lines that the environment offers. They’re colourful, like sketchy drawings in oil paint, but more clean looking, like a computer made them. There is no character of humanity, no flaw or fallibility of a human’s touch. The shapes appear, and then disappear moments later. They fuck with my head for a while before I realise that its raining. It doesn’t really matter. I feel so light and incorporeal that the rain feels like it's falling through me, penetrating layers of light that my body emanates. Paul catches up to me, and tries to touch me and understand. Now I’m definitely freaking out.
“No, no.” I step back, almost losing my footing, certain that I didn’t want him to touch me and reveal that I was no longer a physical entity capable of being touched. In that moment, I wanted nothing else than to guard the secret of my new state of being.
I reach down to the grassy floor and steady myself, trying to collect myself, to stop the freakout. Tell myself that this is just a drug thinking for me, that the real Stephen Stratford will be back in just a moment. Or is this, right now, the real Stephen Stratford? And the other is just a shallow representation? Was that the Protagonist, or is it me?
My mind starts racing like a series of polaroids flashing through my consciousness. Some images I recognise - the corridor of trees that lead to Elise’s Garden out the back of our house, Demi dressed from head to foot in leather, wearing a blacked out veil and a crown, flashbulbs going off as I watched the OPW Immortal Heavyweight Championship slip through my fingers and into the clutch of Xavier Wolf. Others I don’t - a female angel, head cocked back to heaven, with needles poked through her eyes, a young girl with cherub cheeks and curled auburn hair, a younger but familiar looking guy in a biker cut with a skull on it, smoking whilst leaning against a Mercury Marauder, a horde of angry kids tearing through Louisiana trying to get a better look at something, commotion everywhere. Suddenly, the wheel stops on one image. It bobbles up and down blurrily in my mind several times before I can make it out. It's a face, large and expressionless. Its skin is tanned and glowing in a golden hue, a crown of thorns around his forehead, jarred to one side, a bead of blood rolling over his cheekbone. A big block of text floats below the face, and reads “THE CHAMP IS HERE”, and small writing crescenting his head which read “The Fifth OPW Immortal Champion”. Slowly, it starts to dawn on me that the face is mine.
My face is stuck to a wall. I reach out to touch it, and realise that it has been printed into a light stock poster paper, plastered against the wall, an advertisement for a big, important magazine. As my index finger, crowned with pristine black shiny polish, runs along my paper face, I note that the magazine looks familiar. The name of the publication? “FIGHT”. As I look away from the posted on the wall, I realise that I am nowhere that I recognise
My surroundings shifted again, and I’m stood on the balcony at a party, which seems to be in my honour. I withdraw my hand from the poster on the wall, and bring it close to my body, realising that the OPW Immortal World Heavyweight Championship is the weight that I can feel on my chest.
“I know I’m slippin’, I know I’m slippin’, I know I’m slippin’ away…”
On the stage is Marilyn Manson. I can hear him before I see him, but when I do, I see a man that is tall, slender, pale with cropped black hair and platform boots, he has an upside down Christian cross painted on his face, and bright red paint around his neck. His fingers interlaced through a knuckleduster microphone stand, and his head is moving in fast thrashes along with the harsh tone of the lead guitar and synth. He is singing, “don’t pick the scabs, or you will never heeealll”, rising up into a high falsetto at the end, then he turns his head up to the balcony, stretches out his hand theatrically towards me and the spotlights race to illuminate me against the backdrop, “the world shudders as the worm gets its wings”. All of a sudden, flashbulbs start firing off as people turn to stare at me on the balcony, and a roar from the crowd. I feel myself raising the Championship up with my left arm, high into the air, and the crowd goes wild again.
In the light afforded to me by the sudden surge of camera shutters, I can see faces that are familiar milling around in the concert hall beneath me interspersed with the public at large and members of the wrestling media, members of the OPW roster, fraternising and enjoying the music, talking in groups slightly back from the main moshpit. Paul is with me again, but dressed differently now, in a white button down shirt, with only the middle button fastened, and tucked into tight black jeans. For some reason, I notice that he’s barefoot, but I don’t seem concerned by it, or question it. He’s smiling, excitedly waiting to introduce me to somebody. It's a girl, a fat girl with metal rods and hoops stuck through half of her face and lipstick smeared over the rest.
I turn the other way, grimacing a bit, and then hoist the heavy championship from my shoulder, into my hand, and present it to the person flanking me on the other side. It's Joe Montuori, only he seems more swollen than I remembered him. He has a Yankees hat on, backwards, and he reminds me of when Fred Durst got fat, only there’s butterfly stitches in his forehead. So maybe if Durst got into a scuffle with Jon Davis or something. He takes the championship from me, and pats me on the shoulder, smiling and beckoning me closer to talk to me, but I’m not interested in that either. I smile, pretending I don’t understand what he wants, and reach for the balcony where Manson is still performing.
I listen a little more closely, he’s starting a cover of Prince’s “1999”. But it's slower, darker, meaner. It feels strange, and I need to get away from this surreal situation where everybody is treating me like the champion. Treating me like I am a deity to be worshipped. Revelling in the glory of something that I haven’t achieved. I didn’t want to be adored. I don’t deserve to be adored. I am not a role model, I am not a good person. My wife told me I had a kid and I told her to fuck off. Granted I was hurt by that fact and the fact that I missed out on so much of her life, but what about the kid? I’m still too angry for guilt, but I know I’m not the kind of person I want other people to aspire to. Who reacts like that? Who is that vindictive and cold? Who gets information that has the potential to tear apart two other families and uses it to fuck with their heads to try to gain some leverage going into a wrestling match? Especially if that person has just had his own personal life turned on its head by secrets in his own family? Yeah, I’m not a good person. I don’t do good deeds for charity, I don’t make donations, I don’t give my time freely to help the local community. I am not a role model. I’m nothing like Xavier Wolf, this is not why I want to be the champion. The reason I want to be champion has nothing to do with what other people think of me. I want to be left alone, not celebrated. Call me an anti-hero if you want. Or better yet, don’t call me anything at all. It’s not what I’m looking for.
The music grinds slowly, a much slower tempo than the version released by Prince himself. The singer utters the words low and growly into the microphone, the crowd moving in transfixed unison back and forth. I have to get out of here.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin'
Could've sworn it was judgment day
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
“You do have a child, you FUCKING asshole!”
Words flew from her mouth that she never thought she'd even think, let alone say out loud. She knew instantly from the look in my eyes that they'd hit their mark. In that instant our relationship shattered into glassy shards. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Not twenty four hours before the most important match in my career to date, the final stand against the man that I lost everything for. Damon fucking Riggs.
Life changing news that threatened to repaint the fabric of my very existence. A lifetime of experience ripped out from under my feet, shorn from my soul, in anger. It took a brief moment for the reality to sink in, like when a blade is plunged deep through the layers of fatty protective tissue into your vital organs and there is this momentary suspension of reality where you’re not quite sure you believe what has happened... has happened. And then it hits.
It washes over you in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's a physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph, maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are insurmountable and crash over you without mercy. They don’t let up and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still Empire State, but they come further apart. And when they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger it. It might be a song, a picture, a window, the smell of a cup of coffee brewing in a room down the hall. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
After years of it, I thought I’d learned the rhythm, the cadence of the waves, and I was able to ride them out.
And then this.
My whole understanding of everything that came before is put into question, it shifts beneath my still unsteady feet, it takes less than a second to shatter months and years of rebuilding the foundation of my very existence.
I am a father, and I have been a father for all of this time that has passed us by. She had made the decision to exclude me from this, and all I could feel was the unmistakable desire to leave and be as far from the destruction as possible. To be no part of it, to bury my head in the sand and scream to the gods, because I couldn’t quite believe that this wasn’t a sick joke. To hide away from it, to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t real.
But that’s what I’d done when she left, I’d buried myself, became somebody else, hidden away.
Become a coward.
I directed my anger inwards. I folded, collapsed. Shrunk into myself and felt sorry for myself.
Blamed it on the highs and the lows. Nowadays, I’d switched it up a little, now I blamed it on the lies and the hoes. Nevertheless.
Montuori, Joe that is, found a way of focusing The Protagonist. Found a way of channelling that self pity into a focused laser beam of destruction. Put a mirror between the pity and myself, and then we tore a hole through the existence of OPW.
This time I wasn’t going to let it take a decade, that’s why I channelled that grief, that sorrow, that sadness into something new.
That’s why I walked into that arena in Houston, Texas with Bryan Dyamond’s bat slung over my shoulder, with a swagger, dressed in black leather and I swung that son of a bitch for the bleachers at the first goofy looking idiot that I laid eyes on, and set the mood for the fucking night.
I warned you all that I was done.
I was done jumping hoops.
I was done being nice.
I was done being respectful and playing by the rules set by the champion.
I am done being made a fool of by anyone.
Riggs. Wolf. And especially Demi.
And now you’re all fucking done, because you have no idea what you’ve done.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
the sky was all purple
there were people runnin' everywhere
tryin' to run from the destruction
you know i didn't even care
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
My wife, standing before me, began to levitate away from the scenery, growing larger and larger until she was behemoth, and the kitchenette of the hotel suite we were staying in started to grow with weeds and greenery, weaving up around her after splintering through the shining oak floor. More and more wild grass and flowers burst through, sending cooking utensils up into the air, until eventually things stop moving and I can focus.
This is Elise’s Garden, and I’m laid on my back, staring up through the live oaks and into the serenade of the black. The stars, a choir of lights that sing in infinite patterns. The night was black tranquility, married to the poetry of the stars. It was the softness that called my body and brain to calm, to return to its natural order. As I fought my natural inclination to spiral and freak out, I forced myself to inhale, and then exhale, focus on the stars above and their familiar pattern. The constellations, who’d witnessed centuries and millennia just the same, watched over this tiny moment.
We’re silent, she is laid next to me now, sharing this experience. Like two ghosts, I can still feel the raindrops falling through my body, pooling beneath me, ethereal, but the sensation of her pointed pomegranate fingernail drawing circles on the palm of my hand is the only thing that I’m paying attention to. I’m trying to stop the world from spinning for a moment, trying to digest what has been happening to me. But it all starts to blur again and I grip into the soil, and into Demi’s hand, trying to hold on, to stay a little longer in this moment of calm. I can feel my mind starting to race again, starting to fast-forward, or rewind, I’m not sure. Will I ever be off this trip?
The silence is pierced by the buzzing sound of fireflies, as they dance through the night around me. They’ve got to be close, I think, because I’ve never heard one make a noise before. Warmth washes over me like I’m on something analgesic, all of a sudden.
“What did you do, when I left?” she whispers, but I’m too concentrated on the fireflies to really acknowledge her. They were swarming above us now, but only I seemed to notice, and they moved like they were carried in unfelt currents. Just to look at them gave the feeling of awakening, of hope, excitement, as if these tiny glimmers of light had electrified the winter night.
“Stephen, darling?” she probed again, jolting me out of my fixation.
“I fell apart.” I admitted in a whisper, almost a whimper. “I went to a dark place, an angry place.”
Her index finger stopped circling my palm, and slid up into the space between my thumb and forefinger, tightening her grip.
“I feel like you’re going there again, darling.” She was matter-of-fact, almost stern, “Why? Why are you going there again?”
“When I was broken, in that little house, alone,” I unlink my hand from her, and let it rest softly in the grass, staring as the swarm of fireflies disperse around us into the night, “I was hurt, and every day I asked myself the question about my actions and how they lead me to this predicament, but it was a predictable pain. A dull pain. I still hurt, but I understood the pain, I learned the pain and how to sidestep it when I could. It was my abyss, it was comfortable. I tuned into the monkey part of my brain, the one Dr Steve Peters always wrote about in “The Chimp Paradox”, I let my impulses control me without deep introspective thought. I found my pleasures between the creases of reality, in the subcutanea of society.”
My pleasures were mostly confined to what I could cook up in terms of social anarchy from behind a 13 inch Macbook in a small house a few blocks back from the waterfront in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Trolling conspiracy theorists, Republicans, and terrible wrestlers. Signing petitions, pressuring bent politicians, that kind of thing. Tryin’ to get people to put down the shit covered lense through which they consumed their news and encourage them to do their own research before regurgitating the same nonsense to all their friends, slightly adjusted for each of their own tastes of course.
“But mostly, I built myself a safety net. My mind was bulletproof. Impenetrable.” She was silent, and it felt like there was nothing around me anymore. Nothing near to us. I reached my finger to its apex, and pulled her hand into mine, her warmth reassuring me that she was still there, still with me. “Then when you came back, Demi darling, I didn’t even think twice. I tore down the barriers, of course I did. Too quick, too carelessly. Reckless. And then you tore me asunder. You didn’t just put a knife into me and cut me. You flayed me to pieces. Devastated me.”
“I guess I don’t have a handle on my darkness, anymore. I question everything, even you. Especially you.” My voice is starting to grow louder, now, more intense. “I would have done anything for you, everything. I don’t understand why you didn’t trust me, why you thought I’d pick him - Damon Fucking Riggs - over my own unborn child, I can’t comprehend it. And all of a sudden, Demi, I’m in freefall. My safety net is gone, my parachute was deployed fucking weeks ago and the motherfucker just won’t unfold and buoy me. At this point, Demi, I’m bracing myself for impact and praying to any god that’ll listen that I take as many of you with me as I can.”
The silence from Demi is deafening. I’ve just admitted to her face that she’s the focal point of my self-destruct plan. I can still feel her warm hand linked into mine, and I look over to her for any sign of reaction. Next to me is an outline of flattened grass where a person was, and I can hear the distant thud of boots crunching through the wooded floor.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
because they say
two thousand zero zero
party over, oops, out of time
so tonight i'm gonna party
like it's nineteen ninety-nine
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
In a panic, I try to slow down a little, to literally let the dust settle and for me to get a grip on my surroundings, to see where I am and what I am doing. In my current state, I don’t feel like I’m in any position to be driving at all, but yet here we are, and it feels familiar. I’ve driven these roads before. Just up ahead is the mile marker that he’d made me note down when I finally got in touch with Jimmy Flanagan.
He was the private investigator that I had hired back in August to look into what the Wolf brothers were doing. Something crawled under my skin when I saw the way they moved each and every week, at each other’s throats, with all that venom and animosity. It felt fabricated, forced, like a pro-wrestling writer on the indie circuit had told two best friends that they were working each other and they better make it look good for all the smart marks. I knew it. I remember writing about it, and as I packed up what little factual knowledge I had in anticipation of this meeting with Jimmy Flanagan - hopefully the last meeting, the one with the payoff - I remember unfolding the printed piece of paper, and reading it again.
They are all complicit together. Swan, Wolf (X and V), Wright, Stylez, Riggs, Preston, Buchannan. One and the same. A game they play, at the expense of everyone else. We are supposed to remain suppressed, docile, medicated by the machine, monkeys to the organ grinder. Say nothing, do nothing except stand and cheer as the establishment continues to grow ever more powerful in perpetuity. Stop questioning, start cheering, do as you’re told. Work all your pathetic life for your three minutes of fame as they stand on your chest and bury you back where you came from. No longer shall I sleep like a gloved hand covers my eyes. It's time to wake up. I’ve been lost, I am lost, we are all lost.
But I have ambitions of my own, not to be lost in the shadow of the behemoth, so I will make my own moves, against the establishment, to end it all, to have something of my own to cherish, instead of watching longingly as the same people, over and over again, live the dreams that I deserve. So they must be taken out, no prisoners or passengers in my hunt for the biggest buck, no trace of remorse in the land where nobody gives a fuck…
About me.
It's funny, how close to the truth your instincts can lead you, isn’t it?
And piece by piece, I really did make my moves to end it all for the Syndicate, for the Wolf brothers. Came within a fingertip of fucking it up for them entirely, and now nobody can say they don’t give a fuck about Stephen Stratford anymore, right? I know my instincts. I just never had the means to prove it, empirically.
That’s where Flanagan came in. The best of the best, despite first impressions. He lived like the homeless and looked like one, too. Smelt like one. And on this occasion he was meeting me at a disused gas station in the middle of nowhere, with an inconspicuous landmark as a means to find him. He really worked beneath the surface layer of society, he was paranoid as fuck. Maybe this is how he continued his existence in this line of work so successfully.
I can feel the fear in my chest waiting to take over. Perhaps it only wants to protect me but there really isn't any danger. It sits there like an angry ball propelling me towards an anxiety I just don't need. I switch the radio off and get out of the pearl cadillac. The air is sweet, the weather is fine, there are birds in the sky and I can hear water not far away despite the dry and dusty landscape that seems to surround me for as far as the eye can see. There's something about being outside that evaporates my fear, maybe the fresh air scent just hits a pheromone that relaxes me. I’m not sure.
“Stephen, sit down.” He muttered through a cigarette, punctuating his sentence with a deep exhalation of smoke that shot out from between his dry cracked lips and nicotine stained teeth toward me, along with the stale smell of old coffee and rotten food.
Even as I relived this moment in time from wherever the fuck I was in this mindbending acid trip, the smell overwhelmed me enough that I was taken aback, physically. I waved a hand in front of my face, as if to disperse the foul aroma, and as I advanced yet closer to him, I recall wondering to myself how far away I’d be able to go whilst not appearing to be impolite.
The answer isn’t far. Jimmy Flanagan has a pair of lawn chairs stacked up against a rusted, flaking copper-coloured barrel of gasoline. The barrel had a stack of papers, bound neatly in manila envelopes, one marked “X Wolf”, another “Vincent, Francesca, Ripley”.
There’s a third, but I don’t quite make out what’s written on it.
“So listen, eh?” His voice was raspy, and for the first time I caught a hint of the singsong Irish accent that people had told me about when the urban legend of this man came up in conversation. “Right here, its records from the FAA, see?”
In the manila envelope were sheets and sheets of monospaced, typewriter-esque readouts of flights chartered between various locations.
“See, look here.” The private investigator ran a rough, blackened finger down the column of entries, “This is all the tail numbers, right? And they’re not in a Wolf name. No no. But look,” he flips the page, “June third, July second, August fourth. Now look.”
Flanagan ruffled hurriedly through several more pages of records until he got to another section of the papers, a series of OPW bill posters.
“Fleet Center, T-Mobile Arena, Talking Stick in Phoenix, Coliseum, Toyota Center…” his eyes were wild, putting the puzzle pieces together like a mad chemist. He laid out all of the bill posters, all in order, “the dates don’t match up!”
“So what? They charter helicopters to take them around the country? A couple of billionaires?” I’m exasperated, and I don’t even attempt to hide it. “This is the big bucks? This is what I paid for? That will change the face of the industry?”
He scowls at me, for condescending him, for not believing in him, for something. Perhaps I’m too stupid to see what he’s trying to tell me.
“What is conspicuous by its absence, Stephen?” He jabs his finger at the records again. “Or more specifically, who?”
I’m staring at it, but I’m drawing a blank. Maybe that’s why he makes the big bucks, then.
“These aren’t flights in helicopters registered to the Wolf family, these aren’t flights that are flying in and out of their compound with the whole cohort and security detail. No, son, these are flights that they don’t want nobody knowin’ about. One passenger, one pilot, dead of the night. To this place here, once a month. Like clockwork.”
Okay. I blink. I feel myself leaning forward, as though it’ll help me comprehend it better.
“A smoking gun. They’re scheming, they’ve been scheming, and the best part is that not even their bleedin’ wives know.” He smirks. “And well, eh, that’s another thing, the wife. I’ll get onto that...”
I grinned as I placed my hand on the manila envelope, pulling it across the table and bundling it into my backpack. I’d known all along that the younger Wolf twins were up to no good. I could smell it a mile off. Perhaps because I’ve been around them for as long as they’ve been around the business, I felt like I could read them, I could foresee what their move was going to be. Perhaps it was simply because it wasn’t exactly 4D chess, the bait and switch. The fact that they hid it from their family though? That interested me. Seemed pretty fucked up, at the time. Why would you weave this web of distrust amongst those that you were closest to?
It fascinated me on some levels, the depths to which they went to in order to maintain their facade, this false image that they wanted to present to the world. This deep and rich heritage of family, so bitterly divided into the two forces vying for control of the prestigious Outlaw Nation. And you know why they do this? Because no matter the outcome, the aura of power never shifts far from the family tree. They stand atop it, brothers at war, monopolising the battlefield.
Sure, they let Anicka wear the crown, for what it is worth.
But between me, my junkie friends Wrecked & Worthless, and Joe and Cam, we were starting to make the moves that I promised them about. Wrecked & Worthless bested Vincent at Tag Wars, I was still undefeated in OPW, my shoulders still haven’t been pinned to the mat. We’ve engineered it in such a way, thanks to The Producer, that we will leave the Syndicate sponsored pay-per-view event with almost every championship available.
But better than all of that?
This smoking gun.
Why was the smoking gun so important?
We can break up a dynasty by beating them over and over, but they’re a hardy breed, even if we’re good enough to beat them once, twice, three times, they’ll keep fighting. It’ll become a war of attrition.
But when I turn that mirror of vulnerability back on them, and show them how they look, the smell of desperation clinging to every fibre of their existence? I know what it feels like to fall and not know if I’ll catch myself in time, do they? Their whole truth whipped out from under them, their whole understanding of what life is, flipped on a dime? They always talk about the adversity that they overcame in life, how it built them into champions. I’m sure they feel like they did overcome adversity. They had a shitty life, in some respects, but when you manage to fall into the bosom of Thomas Marke and the zeroes on the end of his bank account, it kinda softens the blow and makes that bitter pill just that easier to swallow, doesn’t it? They don’t understand the privilege that they enjoy. Hopefully, shining the light into their dark closets and throwing a few skeletons out for their family to see might allow them to see life as the rest of us see it, experience the same kind of ego death that the rest of us have to deal with when our life gets dumped on its head and we’re left thrashing around in panic, looking for a way to survive.
Will Xavier be able to focus on Stephen Stratford when his wife - newly remarried, by the way - are questioning whether everything he stands for is a lie? He’s always been a wild child, this we know, but we were to believe that he had a handle on that shit now, he had straightened out. Straightened out enough to stay out of trouble and start taking this sport seriously, straightened out enough to stay on the grid, in the compound, marry his love, settle down… thinking about kids, if you ask me. When we were in Parts Unknown, I heard the way Le’Andra spoke about her nieces and nephews.
Will Xavier be able to focus on Stephen Stratford when his sister, his rock, the one that always had his back and stood by his side, is questioning whether she really knows her brother at all?
How is it going to feel, for Xavier? To have the walls of illusion torn down to the ground. To have the gloss of optimism for the life he now leads slowly eroded away, to debase him right back down to the vulnerable little kid who always lied to the kids at school about why his dad was never around.
I’m smirking to myself as I throw the backpack full of manila envelopes onto the passenger seat, and turn the key in the ignition, feeling the low rumbling of the vehicle start to vibrate beneath me. The best that money could buy? Who knew. But this was just what I wanted. Validation.
I take a moment, a breath, to savour the anticipation.
And then I turn the radio on, and push my head against the headrest, exhaling, allowing myself to relax into the vehicle.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
i was dreamin' when i wrote this,
so sue me if i go too fast
but life is just a party
and parties weren't meant to last
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
As I open my eyes, I realise I’m no longer sitting in the driver’s seat of my Pearl Cadillac Coupe DeVille. I’m standing, and the dust surrounding me is actually dispersed sweat, which was moving in slow motion through the air. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or his, but it didn’t matter. My left hand is interlinked with his - palm to palm, right hand on the small of his back, his reaches up to my shoulder.
We are moving slowly to the rhythm of the music, blurring our movement with the penetrating purple strobe lights as they carefully trace the floor, as the slow haunting rendition of 1999 by Prince grinds through the room. I’m really tripping fucking balls now. He’s looking into my eyes in a way I’d never noticed him look at me before, and he’s consumed. I don’t know what he sees when he stares into me, but I don’t feel uncomfortable.
We’re in the club where the party was being thrown for me, but this time it feels different. I’m not on the balcony, I don’t have an entourage with me, and whilst the moshpit has parted into something of a serene, stationary circle pit, the audience are still enjoying the music. But for me, it is dulled down completely. I can barely make it out, the only thing I can focus on is how the light reflects in his hazel green eyes, how his focus never falters, how his full pale lips pull into an almost inviting pout as he moves.
Everything is in slow motion, and I’m distracted by the slow moving liquid molecules hanging in the air. Everything feels heightened, like that analgesic feeling from before had suddenly been switched and I’m sensitive to everything. When one can live an eternity in the moment, the doors of eternity open wide to the soul, and I feel like I can communicate with him.
“What are we doing here?” I ask him.
He keeps moving, he can’t hear me.
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask him.
He’s still moving, frame by frame, micrometer by micrometer, his firm body close to mine.
“What if your wife finds out?” I say, wondering aloud.
I don’t know why I wondered, though. One of the common threads of an Outlaw locker room is the banter the other guys give him about his extramarital conquests.
“Aren’t you worried what people will think? Everything you do is to keep appearances.” I try.
He still doesn’t flinch, he’s just looking at me. Holding onto me as we slow dance in the middle of this club, with a thousand sets of eyes watching.
“How will people react if they saw you, like this. With the enemy.” This time it isn’t a question.
“Everything is for legacy, for validation, for a greater purpose that serves my name. All the time, the pressure of expectation, the supposition of dominance, I have to go one step further than anyone else ever could.” His lips didn’t move, but somehow I was interpreting him, or I thought so.
There is a holiness, a wholesomeness, that lives in the slow movements, a realisation that time itself is a great gift. At this moment, I’m unsure whether he’s on the wavelength with me, or whether we’re on parallel highs, floating like driftwood on different bodies of water, but I enjoy the connection. He is mirroring my movements, but it's barely apparent due to everything being in slow motion. His white, orthodontically enhanced teeth break through the pout at long last, and smile lines start to push out from the base of his nose.
“Especially when you’re brother to Kal Wolf and Vincent Black, two of the very best ever...” I say. “It must be nice to have a moment to breathe, to have just a second where the weight of the world isn’t on your shoulders, where you can just...”
I move closer now, I can feel his breath. It's cold, and smells of peppermint. I hang in anticipation. Both of us willing to give a moment of vulnerability, a blink.
“Let go.”
I taste him on me.
It's momentary, fleeting, a brush of our lips pressed against each other, and then I stop. I rest my fingers gently against his cheek, my index finger touching his lip just where my upper lip had been seconds previously. I could feel the residue of the kiss. I could feel the warmth of his body pushed up against mine, and I could sense this intense rush come crashing down on me, on us, all at once.
The circle pit crashed into us with reckless force, throwing another wave of sweat and saliva into the atmosphere, crushing our bodies against each other violently. All of a sudden, we weren’t moving in slow motion anymore, the connection was interrupted, the noise flooded my eardrums, and overwhelmed me again.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
war is all around us,
my mind says prepare to fight
so if i gotta die
i'm gonna listen to my body tonight
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
THIS IS AWESOME! THIS IS AWESOME! THIS IS AWESOME!
I could just make out the chants, over the sound of the security guards screaming at us to take the fight back to the designated ring area for our own safety.
I bite down on my lower jaw, furrow my brow into a scowl and hunch my shoulders up close to reinforce my neck and absorb the haymaker that I know I don’t have enough time to outright avoid. Then I load up another right, feint it, and come under his guard, splitting that same lip that I’d tasted.
I see him look down, touching his hand to his lip, then look back at me and curse.
I feel like I’m getting the better of him, and I think he thinks the same.
We’re moving back towards the large lit up pavilion near the Crowne Plaza, where the ring was, and Xavier reverses the momentum slightly as he drives me through the fluorescent orange crowd control barrier.
My vision is blurred by an elbow that crunches into my forehead and drops me to my knees. I fight through the blur, grabbing at the leather strap on Xavier’s boot. Anything. My chest is heaving as I fight to get oxygen in fast enough to keep my body moving. I disconnect from the moment, my mind racing again.
A series of polaroid photos, one after one. A young girl, with baby fat still in her cheeks, no older than 12 at most, curled auburn hair, a black polka dot dress and red tights. She’s gripping onto Demi, and they’re at Disneyland, the third person in the picture is Alice. The next one, an Angel with her head faced to heaven, needles with discoloured brown liquid plunged into her eyes. A dark silhouette in a doorway watching a full arena with an empty wrestling ring in the centre. A crow, with a golden trinket in its beak, fluttering to life in a series of polaroids that flash past like stop motion animation.
“CHIP ON MY SHOULDER!! CHIP ON MY SHOULDER!!” I can suddenly hear the distant screams of Taj Escobar. It feels like I’m underwater. It feels like I’m disappearing, like I’m losing the connection to reality all over again. The crowd, the excitement, it's all muffled into a quiet din and I just hear the throb, throb, throb of my heart echoing in my head.
I am almost outside of my body, looking down at myself, as I slump lifelessly into a messy pile of unexplained, but blood-soaked, gardenia. My wrist barely on top of Xavier’s still pounding thorax.
ONE!! TWOOOO!!! THREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
The crowd chant along with the authoritative slap of the floor that the referee gives, I can see myself, a broken shell, roll off of Xavier Wolf, staring up again at the night sky. Staring up at me staring down at the other me.
There was something magical about that electric feeling of seeing history being made in front of your very eyes. It's not the same as watching it on television, it's not the same as hearing about it years in the future second or third hand from your grandparent. To see it, the labour of a whole life’s work baring fruit. A man that sacrificed everything that he could possibly sacrifice, finally paid off.
Suddenly, I felt relief, like all the darkness washed away. Like magic marker ink getting unstained from a pristine wall, the pressure cooker in my mind dissipated.
I had done it. I had proven to myself that I was good enough, that I had what it takes.
The Royal Powerhouse was gearing up for a big announcement, it felt like he was turning the gears in his music box, ready to announce me to the world, but I didn’t care.
I looked at the gardenia stuck to my body, slick in sweat, I looked to Xavier who was as beaten as I was, and I looked to the large stone wall of the Crowne Plaza, where I knew Demi would be watching from a window, and I took a moment for it to settle.
I wanted this.
I wanted this more than anything in the world.
I proved it. I wanted it more than I wanted Riggs, I proved it. I gave up the opportunity to fight Riggs in order to test myself against Wolf. I was sick of being a footnote in Riggs story, and when I came back, it didn’t take me long to realise that even in my pursuit of him, I was only feeding the ego yet again. It was a fool’s game. I’d already lost too much.
I needed this.
For all the dark roads I’d travelled, for all of the safety nets I’d put in place to catch me when I fell, and for every misstep I took thereafter that put me once again in a vulnerable place, I needed the self-actualisation to know that I can stand atop this mountain, the tallest mountain ever, to know that no matter the cost, I accomplished it.
I’d already lost everything.
Might as well get what I came for, no?
I was in danger for a moment. In danger of being Xavier’s footnote.
Being the bridesmaid, again.
Everybody revered Stephen Stratford, because they knew that when the chips were down, he was one of the most resilient, hard-working and talented men that ever stepped foot in the squared circle. Everybody who was anybody validated their legacy by marking my name against their list of conquests.
I was no role model, that much is sure.
But I was done being the foil.
And now my legacy was valid.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
because they say
two thousand zero zero
party over, oops, out of time
so tonight i'm gonna party
like it's nineteen ninety-nine
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
The chill catches me, as I slowly start to crawl to my feet. I search around me, still unable to fully open my eyes, stinging from the mixture of blood and sweat, trying to find the championship belt. It's nowhere. What I feel isn’t the soft, damp, spongy texture of soaked gardenia petals, but the smooth and almost granular texture of an oak table. My kitchen table.
I force my eyes open, and can see that in my hand now, are three manila envelopes. The three envelopes that I prepared into copies, ready to be distributed.
“Are you sure, darling?” she says, from behind me.
She weaves her hands and arms around my waist and tucks them under my now folded arms. Her neck rests against my shoulder blade and I can feel her warmth radiating into me. I reach for the vest that I’d laid across the back of the breakfast stool, and start to pull it over my bare chest.
“What is there to be unsure about?” I asked.
We’re about to travel to Las Vegas where I’m going to team with the other members of FoCuS to take on the Riggs Legacy. I’m not sure of Demi’s question, though I have a feeling that I know where it leads.
“I promise you, I’m not going to go down that hole with that fucking man again, darling.”
“No,” she jerks me in the back with an elbow, “the envelopes.”
“I’m surer than sure.” I don’t even hesitate in my response to her.
“Darling, Stephen.” she starts softly, circling me now and leaning her delicate curved frame against the table, inserting herself between me and the envelopes. Sometimes I think she leans the way she leans to try to elicit a desired outcome from me, and this feels especially so whilst the colours of her eyeshadow are blurring into the wall and her body keeps changing shape cartoonishly like she’s standing in front of differently modified mirrors. All of a sudden her breasts were jumping out at me, and then when I double-take, they were in normal proportion again. “I don’t need to remind you what can happen when people start to blur the lines between the ring and outside of the ring, do I? I know they are your rivals, but do they truly deserve this?”
“I didn’t force them to keep secrets, Demi.” I am matter-of-fact, “I didn’t give them this wonderful idea that they should lie, or more importantly, withhold facts, from the people they hold dearest to them, did I?”
What happens next is something I only notice as I relive this experience.
She averts her eyes. She looks down and away. Just briefly, just for a moment, and then blinks and smiles.
“Nevertheless, darling. It wouldn’t serve you to submerge yourself in another family’s drama, would it? Whatever is going in in their family, ought to stay behind closed doors and be figured out amongst them, shouldn’t it?”
I felt myself nodding in agreement with her. We’d lost ten years to repercussions of this game, who was I to wish that on anyone? Not even my worst enemy.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
if you didn't come to party,
don't bother knockin' on my door
i got a lion in my pocket
and baby he's ready to roar
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
I run my thumb along the envelope’s inside edge, and I can feel the fury coursing through my veins as my steel toecap boots thwack the polished concrete floor of the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. I’m searching frantically for something, anything, to take my aggression out on.
I’d left that poor Starfire kid in a mess when I arrived, left him in a pile of his own bones. And in lieu of finding the locker room I’m looking for, I’ll happily take another lamb to the slaughter. Whichever came first. I wanted blood. A certain blood would have been preferable, but let’s face it, any blood would suffice.
Enough was enough.
I had to watch my step, make sure I was careful of everybody else’s feelings, when in reality I’m being made a fucking fool of to my face and they expect me to just take it. To continue to take it. Repeatedly. With a smile on my face.
Who gives a shit about Stephen Stratford?
Not Demi fucking Stratford.
“Preaching to me about the virtues of keeping out of other people's secrets…” I rap the baseball bat aggressively against a stainless steel food cart, “whilst holding out on the biggest fucking whopper of all fucking time.”
As for The Syndicate... I was right about all of it wasn’t I? The brothers, Blair, they all pull wool over Johnny’s eyes, just look what I’ve exposed so far. Fucking liars, all of them. Stupid blue haired idiot doesn’t see anything coming, its a wonder his organisation is still standing. Everyone’s a fucking liar, I can’t stand it!
“FUCK YOU!” I scream, pushing my boot into the chest of a member of the catering team, using him like the first pin in a seven ten split, sending him hurtling into a colleague and crumpling to the floor, “GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
I eventually get where I’m going and find myself staring at the locker room door of the OPW Immortal Heavyweight Champion, Xavier Wolf.
I reach back into my backpack, and pull out the envelopes that I’ve been carrying with me. I came with a purpose tonight, I came to send a message. It starts with this.
Stephen Stratford isn’t playing anymore. I told you all from the start that I was going to expose you for everything you’ve been doing. You just didn’t realise that I’d do it in this way, you didn’t realise that even after the whole world knew that Vincent and Xavier were on the same side, I could still inflict a coup de grace.
They thought that they were safe once the charade was up. “Guess you didn’t think it through, brother.” I say softly, under my breath, as I place the first envelope down in the locker room. The names on the envelopes are starting to merge into one another and I’m getting a bit confused. I make sure the papers I’m delivering are the ones marked for ‘Sarah Wolf only’, his sister, his closest confidante, and his manager. Inside the envelope, on the very first page, is a note that tells her in no uncertain terms that in addition to her, I had already passed a copy of this directly to Thomas Marke.
Like I said, there was no playing around here. This was about something more than just wrestling. I didn’t know what, I didn’t care what, but you don’t keep secrets like that from people like Sarah Wolf if you’re Xavier Wolf... unless...
Next up and next door is the changing room of Vincent Black and Vhodka Marie. I bang carefully on the door and there’s no response, the door jolts ajar from the force applied. It's empty, I think, but to be sure, I ask.
“Vincent? Vee?” No response.
This one, knowing the contents of the envelope, is one that I struggle with.
Ultimately, this one isn’t out of vengeance, spite, or a desire to upheave his life. Vincent, despite his fate of being related to the person I’m currently at odds with, hasn’t really ever done anything wrong to me. Vhodka, for all her quirkiness, is ultimately harmless. She’s on a path similar to mine, trying to pick up the pieces. It's almost with a heavy heart that I lay down the envelope for them, the one that contains a dark and well-kept secret, one that is sure to pull at the seams of their brittle and new relationship. It's not something that I want to do, but it's something that I think I’d like to be done for me.
I wished somebody had done it for me. I wished I had the chance to turn back the clock and just one of those cowards would have told me that she was preggo, that she had a kid. I wish I’d have found Jimmy Flanagan back then, he’d have dug the dirt.
What a crying shame that I spent all these years missing out on something that I desperately wanted and thought I’d never experience. I knew that I wouldn’t make life with another person after she walked away without explanation.
I knew I would never experience love again. Not after Demi.
She was an enigma, a smouldering ember that burst into my life and consumed every part of me until all that was left was ash.
As I placed the envelope down on the bench, I scrawled in black sharpie on the front “You need to know this - Stephen Stratford”.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
everybody's got a bomb,
we could all die any day
but before i let that happen,
i'll dance my life away
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
As I stood back, momentarily, I could feel her pointed fingertip, circling my palm again. I look over to her, and she’s crouching, naked, next to my bed where I am laid.
“I’m here now, darling. Do you feel better? Satisfied?” her voice was delicate, soft, like she was whispering.
I wasn’t sure why she was naked, but I didn’t question it. I didn’t say anything at all. I couldn’t tell if I was still tripping out, or if this was real. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about delivering the envelopes, or something else. I pulled the dark satin sheets over my body, I’d felt a chill on my hip that roused my sleep.
“Am I wasting my time, trying to prove this to myself? To be the champion?” I ask her, softly, not turning to look at her from my rested position, facing away from the window that bathed us both in moonlight.
“To get to heaven, darling, there is no other way.” Came her response.
“Where did it all go wrong for us, darling? What got in the way?” I can feel myself welling up. I can feel myself wondering if we were destined to fail, predetermined, like there was a story already written in the annals of time and we were merely playing our parts as the protagonists in a sad melodramatic tragedy. That there wasn’t an alternative.
“You have to stick to your convictions. See it through. You know you can do it. You know that they’re afraid of you. He’s afraid of you. Because you’re real, you don’t need the same safety nets that he needs.”
“The damned safety nets again.” I mutter.
“He’s afraid, he doesn’t like that your authenticity is louder than his facade, so you go and you do what you came back to do. You show them who I married, because I didn’t marry someone who threw it all away for nothing, and when you’ve done it, you can set the world on fire. I know you can.”
“But it’s so hard, without you.”
“I’m here, darling.”
I could feel her laid next to me in the bed.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do better.” she whispers to me, “I tried my best. I promise.”
She curls her knees into the void behind mine, I feel her arm reach around me again, but this time her long, slender fingernails feel cold and sharp, like steel, and she is pressing her finger up against my neck.
“I lived in a world of shit long before I ever met you Demi. You didn’t do this.”
I close my eyes.
“Lets go to Heaven, darling.”
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Morning doves chirping and chattering peacefully pierce through the silence as first light starts to crack on the horizon.
Its been a few days since I woke up from that house party and things seem immediately clearer for me.
I shift restlessly. Today is the day. It starts like many other days, with an alarm clock and the promise of coffee if only I can drag my ass out of bed to make it. But it isn’t just any other day, this day is special. This one is one that I don’t get to repeat, hopefully ever. Because this day is the day that I will validate myself. Not for anybody else, but me. I will stand tall in the face of adversity, in the face of the man that bettered me the last time we battled.
And it doesn’t matter, ultimately, whether it's a butterfly’s wingspan or his wife’s crotchspan, the record book will always reflect the result and not the circumstance. It's imperative that I see it through.
I’ve put a lot of thought into what I think it means to be the champion. When I was out of my mind on acid, I visualised winning the championship and it scared me. It felt like I owed people a piece of me, that it was my responsibility to behave in such a manner befitting of a champion. The one that signs autographs and talks to sick kids in cancer wards, and starts a foundation for underprivileged kids, or the forgotten veterans that fought for our freedom, or a thousand other causes.
Or you show your valiance through your determination to be the best, like Xavier Wolf did. He wants to fight everyone, beat everyone, show everybody that he’s not just another Wolf brother, but the best of them all. He won’t rest until he leaves the question without doubt.
None of these made sense to me, for me. I had nothing to prove to any of them. Anyone.
So why, then?
I guess you look for patterns because that's what humans do to try and make sense of things, right? In hope of some divine order. And you look in movies and songs and the things that you read for symbols, points and swirls that match your own. But the only real pattern there is, is the one you make when you hold up a mirror. And reflect.
»»————- ★ ————-««
kids sure like the devil these days
and i'm the devil with the black dress on
do you want to hate me angel
cause i hate you now you're gone
»»————- ★ ————-««
When I reflect, I see an angel that got a little battered and bruised along the way.
An angel with a dirty face that no longer sees the light, no longer feels the pull of the light.
I see an angel with blackened eyes, turned by the horrors it had endured.
I see an angel that found another side, a darker more sinister side, and like a moth to the flame it craves chaos.
I see an angel that looks out into the woods, and it sees the wolf at the perimeter. And like all good wolves it has impressive teeth, and a pack not far behind. But not unlike all wolves, it also has a soft and vulnerable underbelly. It tries to conceal it, but it's constantly second-guessing itself, wondering whether it's making the right move at the right time, wondering whether the big brother alpha is going to come along and gobble up all his dinner.
I see an angel that will take an opportunity whilst the wolf is hesitating.
I walk past the pile of ashes on my porch, barely acknowledging it. Everything that ever contributed to burning me down will help fuel the combustion that is now rampant in my soul. The flame burns with colours I never thought it would.
Let it hurt, let it bleed, let it heal, let it go.
I catch my reflection in the window as I pass it and I see nothing of the angel that I thought myself to be. I wasn’t recognisable at all. The void starts to envelope us all.
But this time… the void fades into you. You absorb it, and it's gone. Nothing left but the face of the painted devil burning into the screen.