Post by stratford on Jun 21, 2021 19:34:59 GMT -5
The Art of War was a book written by a Chinese philosopher and war strategist named Sun Tzu, and it outlines the skills required to be successful in warfare. It is a treatise on the methodology of how to successfully disarm your opponent and leverage what you have and minimise what you don’t.
Modern war is not the war of the battlefield, but the war of information. The war of knowledge. The war of what you know that your adversary does not. What you can do to guide the hand of your adversary and lead them into traps and pitfalls to bring about their downfall.
That is not to say that a good punch-up doesn’t help settle some differences, but alas.
This is a war that was being fought on multiple fronts, over many years and it was starting to come to its conclusion, or so we think. There are layers to this that many don’t see or understand or will ever come to comprehend. But what we know for sure is that the champion is on the back foot, his back is against the wall, and he knows it.
We find him, white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel of his 1960 Pearl Cadillac Coupe deVille, hair pressed back by the wind from the open window, cigarette pursed between his lips, driving erratically down a single carriageway non descript road. His eyes dart erratically from one mirror to the other and then back down at the small girl, strapped perilously to the chair next to him. Her right hand is gripped just as tight to the door’s inner handle, and her face paints a picture of stress. She has cherub-like features, a full round face with rosy cheeks and a small nose, and at this moment it feels like all the colour is draining from those cheeks. She has never felt apprehension like this before.
She doesn’t like the smell of the smoke even though most of it is flooding out through the window, and she doesn’t like the way her father is behaving. At almost thirteen years old, she is the one that is trying to take responsibility for disarming the tension.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
Dad, is Mom going to be okay?
Her voice is soft, and cracks a little as she speaks.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
Yes. She will be safe. There are many things X is capable of, but that isn't one of them.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
Dad? [ she starts, trepidation in her voice again ] Why did Xavier take Mom?
The OPW Immortal Heavyweight Champion let off a heavy sigh, the weight of emotion building behind his eyes. How does one explain 13 years of history to someone of the self-same age? How does he explain to her how this all came to be, how this whole story unfolded in such a way that it all hinges on her very existence?
2006
WfnW. Probably. It gets blurry, but that one stands out as significant. Picture the scene. Yet another mainstream promotion with a big TV deal, the same roster that always recycled itself and found its footing, but this time with a different staff that had the same sideways idea that it would be able to handle the chaos that comes when you have men like Brandon Moore, Josh Manhunt, Ichabod Bitchwax etc etc all in a locker room.
Fools.
There was never any taming of that crowd. It always went the same. A booking decision went awry, a brawl would break out in the locker room, and you’d get a better show than the one they broadcast.
This time around, we’d gotten a ways in. This time around things were really starting to heat up and the way it was going was that this dark, raven-crown monarch on a throne was terrorising a group led by one Damon Riggs. Sound familiar? Yeah, that cunt.
Or maybe he wasn’t leading it. I have strong recollections of Kal Wolf being there and he wouldn’t have played second fiddle to Damon Riggs. But they were called UnCivilizeD, and they were playing the cheeky bad-asses that respected no authority but played up to every cheer and what-have-you that the crowd could muster. Telling people to suck their dick, spitting on authority. Cliche bullshit. The Queen didn’t like their shit. The Queen made their lives miserable. Week after week she’d bathe them in black rose petals, drop the lights, make them question each other, Cameron Vincent especially.
This week in particular, she had begun a penchant for setting things on fire and I don’t know if it was that snake Dyamond, or how, but someone gave up The Queen to Damon. He couldn’t believe it. He was incensed. You know, that way that only Damon can get. If steam could physically dissipate from his eardrums, then it would have. Probably would have caused the fire himself. He was throwing furniture around, kicking over tables that were meant to be for food.
DAMON RIGGS
“ Are there no boundaries? What the FUCK? ”
He kicked over a steel chair and it landed near her feet. I was taken aback. She stood firm, smirking.
DAMON RIGGS
“ My children’s photos are in there. My important keepsakes, stuff that a rat like you wouldn’t even comprehend. How dare you? HOW DARE YOU?? What gives you the right to MESS WITH ME? DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM??? ”
Now he threw a water bottle into the ground, and it bounced up, barely missing his own face. Jolting back, his growling face hocked forth a little spittle, which Demi made a show of wiping from her cheek.
She smirked, still in all of the makeup that made up the character of the Queen. Jarring lines across her cheeks that accentuated a jagged, sinister mirage. She dragged her tongue lasciviously across her lip, and then snapped her teeth together.
THE QUEEN
“ You were never more than a moving part to be coerced, dahhling. ”
Her tone was dripping with condescension and she stepped closer to him, grabbing hold of the blackened baseball bat that he held in his free left hand. She ran her finger down the shaft and then wrapped a gloved hand around it.
THE QUEEN
“ It’d be a shame if someone made you do something you regret. ”
He snatched the bat away from her grasp, then snarled. I stood behind her, as always, and let her do her thing. She was way better at manipulating peoples’ emotions than I could have ever been, and I revelled in seeing people squirm.
It wasn’t thirty minutes later, when I was in the ring against Cameron Vincent that things started to unfold. The big screen lit up like a firework, the cackle of Damon Riggs as he channeled the inner demon in his soul. HavoK was in full swing.
DAMON RIGGS
“ STRAAAATFORD!!!! AHAHAHAHA! LOOK AT YOUR PATHETIC QUEEN NOW! ”
And at this point, she’s dangling from his grasp over a dumpster, strapped to a toilet, and my heart drops through my chest and into the pit of my stomach. Cameron Vincent was cooked and ready to serve in the centre of the ring but that was meaningless to me. I screamed out.
At this point, he doesn’t know who the Queen is. The makeup is severe enough that it would be hard to tell unless you knew. I am not convinced that it would have made a difference, however, I’m screaming into the void, trying to get him to put her down. He looks down at the camera, still laughing, and drops her.
PRESENT DAY
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ Now, baby. You will know that we are trained professional wrestlers, so we understand how to fall safely. And I mean, of course it still hurts, but for the most part we are able to shake it off and go again the next week even after the most gruelling of battle. ”
The mood was more relaxed now, Stratford seemed less erratic as he recounted the history to his daughter.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ But this time the fall was a bit too long, something went wrong. She took the fall on the top of her spine and the EMTs were worried about her. So she was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital, and that's.. Well, that’s evidently where she found out about you. ”
Charlotte looked up at her father, who was starting to get watery in the eye.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ It was scary as fuck for all of us, though. Because I was also in the hospital. Those gaudy fucks beat the piss out of me and then felt necessary to drop me from the same height to the same dumpster, right next to her. Queen and Servant. By the time I was released, she was nowhere. ”
Charlotte gasped.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ What do you mean, Dad? ”
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ She checked herself out of the hospital, Sometimes. ”
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ That’s her nickname for me. Charlotte Sometimes. ”
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ She left, she ran. I don’t know if she faltered, or freaked. But she was with Auntie Elise. She was pregnant and we both wanted to keep the pregnancy, it was an easy choice to walk away from wrestling, I just needed to get your Mom to know that I understood. I mean, at least, it felt like an easy choice. He didn’t shut up for even five minutes about how he ended my career, and sent me running with my tail between my legs. He was so proud of himself. ”
Charlotte reaches into her backpack and grabs a bottle of water, which she opens. Stratford is fidgeting with a pack of Marlboros, trying to fish one out one-handed. He presses the button in on the cigarette lighter, and then pushes it up to the cigarette that he now had trapped between his teeth.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ But dad? That doesn’t make sense. Why would Xavier take Mommy away just because Damon threw her in a dumpster? ”
Early 2019
New Edge Wrestling.
After Charlotte was born, we moved to Colorado and had a pretty suburban life. We invested our money well, and lived from the profits of that, and enjoyed a relaxed life in our quaint neighbourhood suburb outside of Aurora, Colorado. We would go on adventures with Charlotte, and explore the world and nature and listen to music together and generally live a life that seemed idyllic in all of the right story books and films. The happy-ever-after story.
But there’s a reason that movies end when the guy gets the girl, right?
Happy ever after is an itching feeling and it wears on you, over time, it bores a hole into your soul, day after day. Because there is no throttle, there is no gas, there is just cruise control. No overtaking, no dangerous turns, no risk.
So the itch gets more persistent, and at some point you’re flicking through the channels and you start seeing New Edge Wrestling or Action Wrestling, you start seeing names that look familiar to you. VooDoo and her girls in FemDom dominating the tag team division, Dane Preston who was the protege of the aforementioned Damon Riggs, a whippersnapper in the game by the time the fated powerbomb happened. Thick as thieves with Xavier Wolf. The brother of VooDoo’s husband, Vincent Wolf. Who I knew as Vincent Black. They were running things even though they didn’t look like they were. Things revolved around ‘em, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
I could see the way they were moving, the way Anicka was playing Johnny and Roger against each other, the quiet encouragement from VooDoo. The matriarch who pushed all the pieces silently into place. She will deny it and play innocent, but it was as clear as Colorado sky in the summer.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ You know, if we decided to, we could ruin their whole existence. They wouldn’t know what hit them. ”
DEMI STRATFORD
“ We can do anything. My question is only why? ”
It wasn’t a hard sell to show what they were doing, they had a myriad of the championship belts. The Transatlantic, the Battleborn, chasing the X-Core they were worming their way into the framework of the place, and it irked me. We bullshitted about how it’d be funny to take them apart one by one, send a message to the whole Wolf Pack. Because UnCivilizeD was the embryo, with Damon and Kal, that became the Wolf Pack that we saw much later.
I was side-eyeing them, thinking that it might be apropos if I gave them a dose, I knew I could. We would come in under the radar, because there was no way that they would recognise the Stephen Stratford that had grown up as a suburban girl dad.
But then Demi would come along with another plan or scheme to renovate our house, or travel to East Asia, or sign Charlotte up for a summer class, and we’d shelf it. Forget about it.
PRESENT DAY
The Cadillac Coupe de Ville is parked at a rest stop, and Stephen and Charlotte are sitting on the hood. He has a coffee, steam spiraling up, and she has an iced lollipop. Pushing the dusty gravel with his Doc Marten, he presses a dusty boot against the tyre.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ But Dad. ”
She starts pacing back and forth.
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ This is all stuff that I know. You went off to Louisiana and then you were on TV. ”
He cackles aloud, pushing off the side of the car and sitting Charlotte down. He sets the coffee down, and grips one of her hands in each of his.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ See, that’s where you miss a big bit of the story, Sometimes. Because it wasn’t as simple as that. Daddy’s best friend through all his career was Uncle P, and he got this whiff that his big brother was about to get a big job in HBO to help this company down in Louisiana. Joe Montuori had been out of the game for years, selling cars to people with shitty credit in the Carolinas last I’d heard from P, and so we figured he’s going to jump at the chance. So we’re sorta laughing about it, right? Then, whilst I’m on the phone with Paul, we turn on the show and who’s there in all his splendor? None other than Damon Riggs, of course. ”
She audibly sighs. Stratford can’t contain the smile. Every time she thinks the story is getting to the bit she’s looking for, another detail surfaces.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ So I go to your Mom, but she’s been watching over my shoulder from the kitchen and she already knows what I am going to say. And before I even get chance.. ”
LATE 2019
DEMI STRATFORD
“ You get Montuori on board, he is your way in, he is the way you can get in under the radar but with enough clout that you can do the damage you need to do. ”
And it was like that, we made a plan. We did our research. We knew who was going to be where, and when, because we had our inside man.
DEMI STRATFORD
“ But it has to be his idea. He’s an ego guy, it has to be like he is thinking all of this up. We have to play it so that he does what we want him to do, but it feels like it is his idea. ”
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ We’ll have to make him think he’s doing us the favour, like he is giving us the chance. It’s fine, we just play to his ego. “
Because here is the thing about the guiding hand. The guided hand that thinks it is making its own choices goes more readily into the ring of fire. Could I convince Joe Montuori that he wanted to take on the Syndicate if I had to sell him the idea? Could I ask him to go toe to toe with not one but two of the most powerful entities in the history of wrestling? Surely he’d tuck his tail and bolt.
So I’d lay pieces of the puzzle out.
That I was a solitary loner who had no interest in others and my wife left me because I had become obsessed with the Wolf Pack and their downfall. A lie, used to break down barriers and disarm people who may have been suspicious of my motives. It had worked on Montuori, it worked on Johnny Stylez, who was one of the first people who realised who I was. He let me keep up the pretense because he didn’t think I was a threat. It wasn’t until too late and then he kept his trap shut because it wasn’t a good look for the “Don of Disrespect”.
I’d never been a world champion before. A lie, I was the champion of iXw, but a lie that had led him to confirm that I should be the one that goes deep in the match at Stairway To Heaven.. Sorry Paul, you had to take one for us that time, but it was for the greater good.
He took pity on me, because I made him do so. He realised all by himself, wink wink, that if he could dangle a carrot in front of me for something that I clearly craved so dearly, that he could offer me something that I had never obtained in my life before, that I’d be a good soldier. I’d be willing to go to bat for him.
He formed an army on this basis.
And then he put me in the right places to do what I set out to do.
I struggle greatly with my gender-identity. A lie. I was always comfortable in my skin, but this was a lie that I used to endear myself to people who saw a rugged man who had stolen a precious, sentimental baseball bat from a legend and used it to tear him to pieces.
He didn’t suspect me, nobody did. In fact, they didn’t see me coming at all. Even when I had my hands around his throat, he was still completely bewildered. It wasn’t until I made him stare into my cold icy grey eyes that he truthfully absorbed the reality that this was cold served revenge. I would go on to use that mental leverage to defeat him two times in the ring, including the final match of his career.
I left my wife because she lied to me about having a child. A lie. Myself and Demi barely spent a moment apart, even during the time that we were openly at war with each other in the OPW. A lie used to disarm people, to think that I was preoccupied. This was the lie that underpinned the championship match with Xavier Wolf, the one that earned me this Immortal Heavyweight Championship. Because whilst I was openly struggling with marital problems, my eye could be off the ball. And if my eye was off the ball, Xavier would think I didn’t have the mentality to see it through.
The week before the match with Xavier, I was forced to fight Damon. We saw her in my hotel room, and we planted her there. Stealing Damon’s bat, the one I had carried with me since this began. Look closely, and you’ll see she was slipping her underwear back on. Indeed, quite the domestic dispute we were having.
The reality, though, is that throughout all of this time, Demi and myself were working on the moving pieces that eventually led to Xavier’s own life falling to pieces. We figured out that the brothers were up to something awful, and that if we played our cards right and found just the right trigger point, we could truly ruin him, and the belt wouldn’t matter anymore. The career wouldn’t matter. It turned out that the person we found to give the information to, Thomas Marke, knew just the right place to hit him. It worked perfectly.
The only true part is that, for her own safety, we kept Charlotte with her grandparents back in Colorado.
Xavier came into our championship match angry, ready to punch my head off, swing wildly and take me out with a single punch, ready to destroy me, and I used that to my advantage. Because what did I say?
If you coerce a reaction that you are expecting, you can respond to it.
I am a drug addict, I can’t cope with being the champion, and I am spiralling out of control. A lie. And this one might be one of my favourites. Because taking drugs is fun, especially when you’re of sound mind and know how to handle your business. Drink plenty of water, never too many nights in a row, and a strong mind. That’s all you need. Fuck rehab, fuck addiction. You’re all just weak, and I wanted every single one of you to think that I was circling the drain. Why? Because it elicits a reaction. Brandon, bless his heart, thought he had found a friend and someone that really understood him. But here’s the thing, you can’t get hooked on heroin if you take naltrexone. You don’t benefit much from snorting caffeine pills if you suffer with ADHD, but if you act the part and let the people with loose lips see you acting the part then the word moves.
People start getting ideas above their station. People start to see an opportunity and get greedy. You think it was an accident? Or do you think that it was all part of the plan that just about a month before somebody’s rematch token was starting to expire, the OPW Immortal Champion started showing severe signs of cognitive decline? This was Demi’s greatest plan yet, throwing a cat amongst the pigeons.
DEMI STRATFORD
“ I’d absolutely love it, darling, if you take his belt, and then get his best friend to step on his toes and stop him from getting a chance at redemption. Don’t you think that would really be the icing on the cake? ”
Truly. It was a masterstroke.
And we all knew that Anicka Swan was their paper champion, she was the least qualified but the one that kept everyone else free to place other pieces of the puzzle into play. So she would be no threat at all.
I am trying to kidnap my own daughter because my so-called estranged wife won’t let me see her. A lie. One designed to further put the integrity of Xavier Wolf in question, one designed to test the boundaries of his resolve.
We know that he is not animalistic, we know that there is no real fear of danger for our Charlotte Sometimes, we know that he wants to have children one day, because when we were invited to Parts Unknown, Le’Andra let it slip. We befriended them early, in the guise of fair competition, because knowledge is everything. We knew he had a soft spot for children and once again he might take his eyes off the ball and leave himself open for the blindside.
The blindside would be a tug of war where he would be the intermediary, where we coached you, Charlotte, on just the right things to say in order to get him to do exactly as he needed to do. As soon as Demi played the damsel in distress, it would be over to you my little Charlotte Sometimes, the most unsuspecting of trojan horse, to play the part of a lifetime and in the moment of truth, the Queen would rain down the death knell and finally the book could be closed for good.
PRESENT DAY
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ But Dad, it didn’t work out like that. ”
His hands were tight around the wheel again, and he was going at breakneck speed. But he didn’t seem erratic, he didn’t seem stressed, no. No, the emotion that seemed to be emanating from Stephen Stratford in this moment was serenity, calm, and an all-knowing smile.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ No, it didn’t. He figured it out. ”
CHARLOTTE STRATFORD
“ It’s all my fault. I accidentally told him that you made us pancakes, and then all of a sudden he ran off. ”
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ But it is a risk we knew, and we accounted for. In fact, we didn’t just account for it. We counted on it. Because it is all about coercion, it is all about guiding the hand, sending them one way and then switching them another way. He’s got your mom right now, and he thinks that I am as afraid as I was the day that Damon Riggs threw her off a platform into a dumpster tied to a toilet, but he would be wrong. ”
“ Your mother, Charlotte Elise Stratford, is the trojan horse. Not you. He thinks it is you, he thinks he has this all figured out. He thinks he has the upper hand and that this is going to be the coup de grace that ends this once and for all. ”
“And in some ways, it will. ”
“ He thinks that he is going to catch me the same way I caught him at Drugs, Sex & Rock n Roll. But what he is not accounting for is that my wife is every bit as strong as me, mentally and physically, she can withstand what he is going to subject her to. The reality is, she is probably in a luxury suite in one of his towers eating fruit and watching the sun go down. Because at this point, to him, she is inconsequential. It is all about what he thinks this is doing to me. ”
“ What he thinks this is doing to us. ”
“ Much like when his head was in another place, worrying about his sister. Much like Anicka thought my head was elsewhere, worrying about my next fix or a myriad other pressure related problems, much like Joe Montuori thought he could get me hyped up to take on the world if only he promised me something that I already knew I could take, on a whim, at my own behest. It’s all about controlling the narrative. ”
“ So why? Why go to all the trouble? If you can beat them anyway, what is the worth in taking the long road, sacrificing a year of your life away from your family, filling your body with poison and really committing to all of this? What is the point? ”
“ The point is simple. This is a family that have spent their whole careers manipulating people, sleeping with people, screwing people over just to keep themselves relevant, just to make sure that they are the family that exerts influence and control over everyone else. To flex that arm of power and make sure if you step out of line, you’re either insignificant or you simply wish you were. ”
“ They thought they had ended my career. They took joy in that. And I was not alone, I was not a solitary victim of this ruthless approach that they took to dominance in the industry. But I was sure that I was the only one who could do anything about it, and if I were to beat them in wrestling matches, one by one, then I could say that I’d put an end to them but it’d just be words. ”
“ If I took the heads of the family - the champion, the former (and longest reigning) champion and the man who put me on the shelf to begin with - then I’d be able to stake a claim. I could call myself a success. I beat Riggs until he couldn’t answer a ten count and then beat him title versus career. I was the one that ended Anicka’s long reign as the champion, even if I didn’t walk out champion that night, it was by hand that she was eliminated. I had Xavier beat in the Stairway match but a twist of fate changed the future, and for the best, because then the rest of the story unraveled perfectly. But that is just winning wrestling matches, so what if I did so whilst also systematically destroying their lives? Whilst also making their every interaction with me so hostile and negative that they regret ever laying eyes on me? Would that make it worth it? ”
“ So, he has Mom right now. And what he doesn’t know is that I have him right where I want him. It might seem scary to you, Charlotte Sometimes, but I promise, everything will work out just the way it should. ”
He smirked as he looked down at his young daughter. It was a knowing look that a father gives his child when she seems to be questioning him and he knows better. She knows better than to ask more questions, and as the Cadillac pulls up in the parking lot, he pulls his phone out from his black denim pants pocket. The camera watches over his shoulder, as he slides open his iPhone and reads the text message that is assigned to a contact named X.
The message reads: “Hearst Tower, Manhattan. 6pm. Bring Charlotte.”
He kills the engine, grabs Charlotte’s hand and lifts her out of the car. He hops out, too, and follows her, before looking up at the daunting large building that blocks out the sun.
STEPHEN STRATFORD
“ We’re here. ”