Friends In Dark Places - Part Two: ...Of Being Earnest
Feb 15, 2016 18:00:58 GMT -5
Nathan Saniti and Alexa Black like this
Post by Non Compos Mentis on Feb 15, 2016 18:00:58 GMT -5
A melancholy dejection falls on the arena after every Trauma. When the sated crowd leaves to their family hearth, the victorious abandon the battlefield with the spoils of war and all that is left is detritus. Crates of nonsense, the morose minimum-wage monkeys disassembling apparatus and the broken remnants of competitors scattered into every corner of the forsaken coliseum.
In the annals of PCW history the stories of the winners are written; monuments raised to the champions. They are the ideals that every hero of the ring are held to, the caricatures they are expected to become, and when they are winning it's easy to stand by those hackneyed images.
But what happens when we lose? What do we, the brave and idolised characters of tall tales, tell the world when we have no victory to our name?
When I walked through the curtain and shed myself of the black and white stripes, I sensed that sombre chill in the air. Of course it's natural when you watch a man's arm be surgically dissected by two of the greatest competitors in PCW history that you feel a certain sickness deep in your stomach. It wasn't Stormm's horribly contorted extremity that stirred my revulsion, though.
The melancholia surrounding the arena that night was no ordinary malaise, it was the aftermath of a great unrest. It was the moment when an entire cohort recognised in earnest that an evil had become too unruly to ignore. Then again, I should have known. Wasn't that what Altman had tried to tell me weeks earlier?
Alexa Black was a monster and a part of whatever unholy unrest was occurring at the pinnacle of The Order, this everybody knew. Yet hours earlier she had showed herself in an newer, more disgusting light. Hiroshi Yukio destroyed, and then Dollface...
The grey walls of the Pure Class Arena somehow felt a little more monochrome after seeing the life drain out of Kelli Starr. Death and suffering seemed to stalk from corridor to corridor, room to room, hunting for another victim. Alexa herself, I was sure, was gone but her presence lingered in the air like a particularly unpleasant stench.
“I really have to insist we take you to the hospital, Ms Starr!” The faint words echoed down a long and haunting passage, devoid of life and chillingly still. Against my better judgement I followed the voice, aware all too suddenly that the greying of the world around me was not simply a trick of the mind.
The door to the trainer's room had been left ajar and through it I probed a beady eye. Doctor Suresh hunched over the body of a woman, scarcely recognisable simply in her manner as Kelli Starr. Usually such a ball of kinetic energy, her slight form lay lethargic on the trainer's table. Her eternally vibrant style lay dormant, her skin sullen and ashen. Yet as she lay on the table, above her a shape shifted in and out of the ether. A darkness, a spectre of evil, draining the colour from the room and only I could sense it.
“Where did Nathan go? Nathan!” Her too quiet voice was suddenly interrupted but a hacking cough and I noticed her brutalised bruised neck. The figermarks of Alexa Black were still indented into Kelli's fine skin. “Where is Nathan?”
“Ms Starr, do you know what happened? You could have died if it wasn't for...” For me? Alexa and her kin had Saniti pinned, Dollface was fast being turned into a corpse. After she'd destroyed Yukio, who else would have dared, or cared, to defy Black?
“I'm just fine! I need to find Nathan, that's all...” Her feet slid off the table and immediately buckled underneath her body. I could only watch on as the good doctor rushed to grab his patient and the foreboding darkness pulsed as if in happiness at the sight.
“Ok, I'm getting you to the hospital!” Harold went to grab his phone and call for assistance Kelli's eyes drifted toward the door. I met them with my own clandestine stare and saw only a bloodshot haze in return, a glassy blankness. She was lucky to have that.
The darkness moved then. A smoky tendril descended from the ceiling, stretching out of the door past me and down the corridor. I was compelled to follow it, driven to find out what forsaken influence haunted Dollface and where it was going next.
It wasn't hard to feel like the spectre of death hung over the entire arena that night, in fact it had been spreading since Collision Course. Alexa took a step up from mild debauchery to become a full-time murderous psychopath and the daunting presence of next opponent, Phinehas Grimm, returned to his throne as World champion.
Whenever he'd held that position he loomed over PCW alike the Grim Reaper himself, choosing which of us should stay or go, which of us were worthy of challenging for the throne. But until Collision Course he had hidden behind his brother, fooling the world that he was no longer PCW's ultimate evil.
Let's be honest with each other, Grimm, we were never meant to be the teammates and support for others' battles. We spent so many months of our careers chasing the objectives of others, deceiving ourselves of some alternative motive to our own ambitions. In the history books our reputations are clearly marked as perhaps the two archetypes of our respective divisions.
Phinehas Grimm, the legendary four time World champion and holder of the mantle 'Lord of Misrule'. And yet you sat back idly to allow your very own brother his petty tyranny over PCW, you stood in the shadows of the Black Hand while he would have had the world believe he was holding the great and powerful 'Hangtown Horror' under his grizzly thumb.
And Non Compos Mentis, the yardstick all North American champions measure themselves against, a Grand Slam Champion no less. And yet what did I lose myself in? The Black Hand, of course. You played your part but I have to hold myself accountable too. I was blinded by hate for you and your kin and I let it consume me so that you could easily scrub my path in another direction. First away from Billy Dillinger and his World Title, then you took away my International Title with brutal blatancy.
I played the victim of your squabbling band of power-hungry megalomaniacs, and you played the obedient dog. So again, let us be honest... those roles never really suited us, did they? It wasn't long before we shed those robes for ones far more comfortable.
We meet again in far greater earnest. You once more with the title of PCW's most feared competitor, no longer licking at the feet of your own sibling but instead bathing in his blood. I, the North American Champion with the intention of fighting all comers until my gold is seen equal in weight to yours.
And yet your presence lingered above us like death, as does that of Alexa Black. For her I feel the undoubted hate I once felt for you. Your reverence, your quota of fear and trepidation has been earned in blood and sweat, in combat against the very greatest in this company. As hateful as I have seen you in the past, I cannot begrudge you my respect as a competitor at least. But Alexa... for her I cannot say the same.
The deathly line of sooty black substance led me across the arena, through corridors and past the wearisome eyes of the stage hands and producers wrapping up their business for the evening. Shocked as they were to see me, the paranoid look in there eyes told me more. Perhaps they felt the same tinge of melancholy in the air, or perhaps they saw me following something they could not see with their own eyes and assumed madness... a thought they wouldn't be aggrieved of having.
“I demand blood payment!” The chilling call broke through the air like glass, cutting at anything it met. The smoke led me up to a door I knew well, the door of the PCW President. The voice was one I had grown used to holding a tainted edge of bitterness and spite recently, a voice that had once been the eloquent and charming tone of an honourable man. Nathan Saniti stood in the doorway, his entire body swarmed by the thick black smog I had followed to him. “I demand that you allow me my retribution!”
The black sludge clawed at him, enveloped him and choked him, yet there he stood as if he couldn't feel a thing. He stood in the cloud and fed from it, taking all the anger and hate he needed and using it his target. Saniti spoke of vengeance for what had been inflicted on Kelli Starr, but there was a sadism to his voice that perhaps even he didn't hear, one that pleaded to administer pain for pains' sake.
At one time I had thought that only The Black Hand could provoke such hate from a person, but no longer. They were self-destructing and PCW was once against safe from their devious machinations, but one person had taken their place.
“SHE IS A MAD DOG! AND MAD DOGS NEED TO BE PUT DOWN!” Nathan screamed. The darkness swelled around him, it drained him of his colour just as it had Dollface and fed off it with ruthless zeal.
There was only one person who they had both come into contact with, only one with that kind of rage, that kind of wrath. The one Altman had told me to target, the one I would need to get close to in spite of the harm already done. I had to get past Grimm, prove that I was no longer a victim to his power, but eventually I would have to be in that ring with somebody far more unstable.
Could it be her? Could she be the source of such a malevolent entity, such a supernatural hex. Intentionally or not, Alexa Black needed to be stopped and precious few were left that could take up that task. Altman had made it clear to me weeks ago, if I wanted to get Ezra back it would have to be me.
The characters of Kelli Starr and Nathan Saniti are used with permission of their handlers. Many thanks to Kris and Dan.
In the annals of PCW history the stories of the winners are written; monuments raised to the champions. They are the ideals that every hero of the ring are held to, the caricatures they are expected to become, and when they are winning it's easy to stand by those hackneyed images.
But what happens when we lose? What do we, the brave and idolised characters of tall tales, tell the world when we have no victory to our name?
When I walked through the curtain and shed myself of the black and white stripes, I sensed that sombre chill in the air. Of course it's natural when you watch a man's arm be surgically dissected by two of the greatest competitors in PCW history that you feel a certain sickness deep in your stomach. It wasn't Stormm's horribly contorted extremity that stirred my revulsion, though.
The melancholia surrounding the arena that night was no ordinary malaise, it was the aftermath of a great unrest. It was the moment when an entire cohort recognised in earnest that an evil had become too unruly to ignore. Then again, I should have known. Wasn't that what Altman had tried to tell me weeks earlier?
Alexa Black was a monster and a part of whatever unholy unrest was occurring at the pinnacle of The Order, this everybody knew. Yet hours earlier she had showed herself in an newer, more disgusting light. Hiroshi Yukio destroyed, and then Dollface...
The grey walls of the Pure Class Arena somehow felt a little more monochrome after seeing the life drain out of Kelli Starr. Death and suffering seemed to stalk from corridor to corridor, room to room, hunting for another victim. Alexa herself, I was sure, was gone but her presence lingered in the air like a particularly unpleasant stench.
“I really have to insist we take you to the hospital, Ms Starr!” The faint words echoed down a long and haunting passage, devoid of life and chillingly still. Against my better judgement I followed the voice, aware all too suddenly that the greying of the world around me was not simply a trick of the mind.
The door to the trainer's room had been left ajar and through it I probed a beady eye. Doctor Suresh hunched over the body of a woman, scarcely recognisable simply in her manner as Kelli Starr. Usually such a ball of kinetic energy, her slight form lay lethargic on the trainer's table. Her eternally vibrant style lay dormant, her skin sullen and ashen. Yet as she lay on the table, above her a shape shifted in and out of the ether. A darkness, a spectre of evil, draining the colour from the room and only I could sense it.
“Where did Nathan go? Nathan!” Her too quiet voice was suddenly interrupted but a hacking cough and I noticed her brutalised bruised neck. The figermarks of Alexa Black were still indented into Kelli's fine skin. “Where is Nathan?”
“Ms Starr, do you know what happened? You could have died if it wasn't for...” For me? Alexa and her kin had Saniti pinned, Dollface was fast being turned into a corpse. After she'd destroyed Yukio, who else would have dared, or cared, to defy Black?
“I'm just fine! I need to find Nathan, that's all...” Her feet slid off the table and immediately buckled underneath her body. I could only watch on as the good doctor rushed to grab his patient and the foreboding darkness pulsed as if in happiness at the sight.
“Ok, I'm getting you to the hospital!” Harold went to grab his phone and call for assistance Kelli's eyes drifted toward the door. I met them with my own clandestine stare and saw only a bloodshot haze in return, a glassy blankness. She was lucky to have that.
The darkness moved then. A smoky tendril descended from the ceiling, stretching out of the door past me and down the corridor. I was compelled to follow it, driven to find out what forsaken influence haunted Dollface and where it was going next.
It wasn't hard to feel like the spectre of death hung over the entire arena that night, in fact it had been spreading since Collision Course. Alexa took a step up from mild debauchery to become a full-time murderous psychopath and the daunting presence of next opponent, Phinehas Grimm, returned to his throne as World champion.
Whenever he'd held that position he loomed over PCW alike the Grim Reaper himself, choosing which of us should stay or go, which of us were worthy of challenging for the throne. But until Collision Course he had hidden behind his brother, fooling the world that he was no longer PCW's ultimate evil.
Let's be honest with each other, Grimm, we were never meant to be the teammates and support for others' battles. We spent so many months of our careers chasing the objectives of others, deceiving ourselves of some alternative motive to our own ambitions. In the history books our reputations are clearly marked as perhaps the two archetypes of our respective divisions.
Phinehas Grimm, the legendary four time World champion and holder of the mantle 'Lord of Misrule'. And yet you sat back idly to allow your very own brother his petty tyranny over PCW, you stood in the shadows of the Black Hand while he would have had the world believe he was holding the great and powerful 'Hangtown Horror' under his grizzly thumb.
And Non Compos Mentis, the yardstick all North American champions measure themselves against, a Grand Slam Champion no less. And yet what did I lose myself in? The Black Hand, of course. You played your part but I have to hold myself accountable too. I was blinded by hate for you and your kin and I let it consume me so that you could easily scrub my path in another direction. First away from Billy Dillinger and his World Title, then you took away my International Title with brutal blatancy.
I played the victim of your squabbling band of power-hungry megalomaniacs, and you played the obedient dog. So again, let us be honest... those roles never really suited us, did they? It wasn't long before we shed those robes for ones far more comfortable.
We meet again in far greater earnest. You once more with the title of PCW's most feared competitor, no longer licking at the feet of your own sibling but instead bathing in his blood. I, the North American Champion with the intention of fighting all comers until my gold is seen equal in weight to yours.
And yet your presence lingered above us like death, as does that of Alexa Black. For her I feel the undoubted hate I once felt for you. Your reverence, your quota of fear and trepidation has been earned in blood and sweat, in combat against the very greatest in this company. As hateful as I have seen you in the past, I cannot begrudge you my respect as a competitor at least. But Alexa... for her I cannot say the same.
The deathly line of sooty black substance led me across the arena, through corridors and past the wearisome eyes of the stage hands and producers wrapping up their business for the evening. Shocked as they were to see me, the paranoid look in there eyes told me more. Perhaps they felt the same tinge of melancholy in the air, or perhaps they saw me following something they could not see with their own eyes and assumed madness... a thought they wouldn't be aggrieved of having.
“I demand blood payment!” The chilling call broke through the air like glass, cutting at anything it met. The smoke led me up to a door I knew well, the door of the PCW President. The voice was one I had grown used to holding a tainted edge of bitterness and spite recently, a voice that had once been the eloquent and charming tone of an honourable man. Nathan Saniti stood in the doorway, his entire body swarmed by the thick black smog I had followed to him. “I demand that you allow me my retribution!”
The black sludge clawed at him, enveloped him and choked him, yet there he stood as if he couldn't feel a thing. He stood in the cloud and fed from it, taking all the anger and hate he needed and using it his target. Saniti spoke of vengeance for what had been inflicted on Kelli Starr, but there was a sadism to his voice that perhaps even he didn't hear, one that pleaded to administer pain for pains' sake.
At one time I had thought that only The Black Hand could provoke such hate from a person, but no longer. They were self-destructing and PCW was once against safe from their devious machinations, but one person had taken their place.
“SHE IS A MAD DOG! AND MAD DOGS NEED TO BE PUT DOWN!” Nathan screamed. The darkness swelled around him, it drained him of his colour just as it had Dollface and fed off it with ruthless zeal.
There was only one person who they had both come into contact with, only one with that kind of rage, that kind of wrath. The one Altman had told me to target, the one I would need to get close to in spite of the harm already done. I had to get past Grimm, prove that I was no longer a victim to his power, but eventually I would have to be in that ring with somebody far more unstable.
Could it be her? Could she be the source of such a malevolent entity, such a supernatural hex. Intentionally or not, Alexa Black needed to be stopped and precious few were left that could take up that task. Altman had made it clear to me weeks ago, if I wanted to get Ezra back it would have to be me.
The characters of Kelli Starr and Nathan Saniti are used with permission of their handlers. Many thanks to Kris and Dan.
