Post by Sicko on May 20, 2019 20:48:43 GMT -5
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
And you're on your hands and knees, amid a bombed out, exploded ground zero, your skin bubbling from the tongues of flame, your voice coughing thick with choking black smoke. You're crawling across the scorched hardwood floors that were once Southern California hacienda-suburb chic. The words reverberate in your head, over and over on this cold December night, you remember Lourdes telling you that you needed to check the furnace. The furnace. The furnace...
You grimace, gritting your teeth, screwing your eyes shut, trying to will that old ghost of memory away. Trying to scour the images you recall in ASMR, you barely gasping, choking on smoke, crawling on hands and knees up from the basement and your skin sizzling as it touched the now blackened hardwood floors, cooking you alive, and as you entered back up into the kitchen and saw the devastation that had ripped up, the - The black... charred - twisted bodies in the kitc-
NO! You snarl. You twist. You grimace, turning your scarred, pitted skin away, it's not real, you are NOT that younger man, that other life... That is naught but a dream, that fleeting wisp of tangental subconscious dreamtime is
(My fault)
It's not real, you are an entirely new man, a man who for the longest time only had the identity of a character given to him, an ice cream truck riding clown named Sicko, you are at least 45 now and you -
You screw your eyes shut, tightly against the reality. You will open them, you will not be in this repeating nightmare, and you will be home. Home.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. Your breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame, and you couldn't be further from that... strange image in your mindseye of being a middle aged clown if you tried. It was so odd, that dream you were having, right? Of being someone call... Sicko... And yet, there's something tickling at the back of your mind. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
You freeze. That... tickle in the back of your head, it's crying out with alarm, but Lourdes doesn't notice that. And something even darker, some winding fear demon is whispering in your ear, yes Ephrain, go down to the basement. You’re paralyzed. You don’t go in the basement. Something scary-big lives there. You just mumble for her to go back to sleep.
And you drag yourself to the bathroom, knees cracking, but something stops you. You double take as you look at the closet, towards some hidden item hung up in a far corner. There’s a simple white sheen that, even in the dim gloom of this tiny quarter, catches your eye. Even though the closet is filled with nothing but washed-out dress shirts and ugly ties. It’s almost as if it’s something you’re seeing for the first time. You pull the garment out, feeling it between your fingers as you haltingly step into the bathroom. Run your fingers over the stitching on the back. It's the... uniform of an ice cream vendor??
You can't take this anymore. The dream, it's beating in your head. It's tearing you apart. Telling you to go to the basement and go -
"Go look at the furnace, Ephrain, please babe, I'm really cold, just - "
(GO TO THE BASEMENT, EPHRAIN)
And you set your strange garment you've never seen before in your life in the hamper carefully. You step out of the bathroom with the family pater's careful, deliberate man of the house step, and sighing a bit with inexorable duty, you go to check out the furnace. As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart, an encountering something so far lost, and you turn to investigate and theres a little imp, a girl dwarfed by your size, shin high, smiling mischievously as she celebrates being out-of-bed. And you stop the sojourn to fix the furnace even though your wife (The Voice in your Head) is telling you to go to the basement, and you lean down to her.
"Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying, Ephrain Ortiz, 29 years old. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. You feel... happiness, uncommon to someone you can't fathom, and pride and fatherly protectiveness because Stephanie is such a pure and innocent soul, a pretty little girl that looks like her mama, wears baseball hats and jelly shoes and likes ice cream for dinner and - "Papa?"
Stephanie interrupts.
"Papa, are you going down there? I don't like it down there." He sets her down from swinging the little girl in the crook of his arm. "I gotta, I gotta go check the..." and you scrunch up your brow, because you aren't feeling like her dad, and - "check the furnace - "
You place her down, and moving slowly, like swimming through a river of mud in a dream, moving forward while the sensation of being being pushed back, something, some part was pushing back, it was
(Stop fighting)
(Accept it, and live with it, you always end up going down to check the furnace)
NO, YOU WON'T. You're struggling, pushing against it. Teeth gritted. It feels like you're bifurcated, in the hallway, a young, athletic, unsuspecting father is stepping towards a door at the very end of a hallway and yet separate yet still struggling, pushing an older man's body, decayed, grotesque and badly, badly scarred is fighting, and thrashing with all of it's might and trying to pull the father back. The father looks back, over his shoulder, seeing the little girl looking sad, and he puts his hand on the knob towards the basement and he -
NO!!
Everything stops. Blackens. Blinks out of existence. The spirit is hurled out of the scenario and is sent hurtling breakneck, thrown out of the house in Southern California and into a dark, ink black void, and he closes his eyes against it but he's in limbo, insensate. He is trapped.
(And the loop starts again. Sigh. This is getting tedious, Ephrain. How many times do you want to run through the scenario. You will always end up going down there.)
...I won't...
(Who's Hell is this? You will. Let's start again.)
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. And you've done this, been at this, like a turn on the torturers wheel, like Sisyphus recognizing at the apex of the hill every single time that his stone is about to change direction, you know this moment. You sit there on the bed, breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
"Lourdes," he says, with his eyebrows knit together in worry, "Lourdes, can I ask you something?"
"Mmm baby, your freezing cold wife is always here for you," she mumbles, smiling, half sleeping. "You tell Miss Frosty the Snowchica all about it...."
"I... do you believe..." he searched, in his secret heart, for words that would give him insight into why he felt so split, so torn, "Lourdes, if you lost everything in one night, do you think it would drive you crazy?"
"Mmm, babe..." Lourdes rolled over, looking at him playfully through slitted sleepy eyelids, "I think that the only thing that says you're crazy is you not making sure your wifey gets nice and snuggly warm. Can you go check out the furnace? Please?"
You sigh, and you get to your feet. You tilt your head towards the closet, knowing there's... something in there, but there's a beat in your head, low and insistent, telling you to go to the basement. You bristle at it's sinister agency, and then... . As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. "Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. Feelings of... paternal worry. You point a stern finger back into her bedroom. "Stephie, go back to bed, sweetheart, daddy's got to check something out downstairs."
"Are you going down there? I don't like it down there."
"Go, now, please," he said, a little more forcefully, and his thoughts were already turning back to Lourdes. Trying to explain to her why he felt so ill at ease, why he felt like a stranger in a life that late he lived. But you, you're stepping down the steps, taking them at an easy enough clip that your knees aren't a bother, and why would they be, you have the body of a firefighter that's only beginning to get acclimated to a desk job. It's not like you're a giant, obese, clown that drives a - Everything hitches, pulses as you fight to reconcile what is and what should not be. You clench your eyes shut, grit your teeth, and then you feel everything splitting apart. Something denies you. Something won't let you black out, be extracted. Something is trying hard to force you, keep you in this setting.
(GO FURTHER, EPHRAIN.)
NO.
No, you won't, you're telling yourself, and you're grunting, sweat roiling off of you. You feel like your head is about to explode, and you let out a choked cry. You want to go back upstairs, to go back to Lourdes, to bring Stephie in the room, to hug them and kiss them so tight. But the insistent beat in your head, like a drum pounding out strokes, is forcing you to move, and you step stiffly. You smell the kerosene. And your head, everything fighting, warring discordantly, is screaming. Everything feels like it's on fire. You haven't even reached the bottom step, haven't lit the match, but the fire is begun. It's spreading.
You eject yourself, forcefully, hurling yourself and shattering the reality like a mirror, breaking through to the other side like Jim Morrison's other hit. And as you fall, the shards falling with you, you feel like you'll fall forever, falling eternally into the inky, black wet, enveloping you like a mother's embrace. Or like the grave. This black house. This is your home. This is your Hell.
(Shouldn't be surprised, should I. Ephrain's grown an annoying amount of backbone. I suppose... in a way... I'm proud. I molded him from the very start.)
(I don't want the avatar of Moloch to be toyed with, I want him dead in eternal agony.)
(Don't worry. He will be.)
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. Come on baby light my fire. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. She mumbles something about being cold, and you pull her in to you, kissing her on the lips full. She opens her sleepy eyes, looking over her shoulder at you with a dawning appreciation of marital happiness. You can stay here. You can stay in bed with your wife, and you won't get out of bed.
(GO TO THE BASEMENT, CHECK THE FURNACE)
But you will, won't you? Lourdes, snuggling up to you, murmurs that it's cold this morning, even as she kisses under your jaw. And something in you knows this is from another life and that Lourdes is a stranger, a dead stranger, all emotional attachment gone when your mind breaks, when you see two figures like twisted black dolls in the ruins of a bombed out house - You want to scream. So you scream. And scream. And scream.
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old, and you will not go into the basement. You will not. You get up out of your bed, leaving Lou to mumble sleepily. You ignore the pull of the closed basement door, shut it out. You enter the kitchen, as early morning 6:04 light is filtering through the window over the sink, and you turn on the coffee maker. You will not go into the basement to look at the furnace, in fact you're going to call a plumbing & heating repairman to do the work. Today is going to be good. You hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. Stephie has joined you in the kitchen, running up furtively and hugging onto your leg, and you smile and pick up the coffee pot, looking down at her upturned face and saying "Little girls should be in bed early this morning," And then your wife comes into the kitchen as well. And there's a blissful moment, a peaceful, sun-drenched moment where you're all in the kitchen together, and you're pouring coffee, and everything will always be fine.
Scalding hot coffee sloshes from Lourdes' cup as you're handing it to her, landing in a splotch on her hand and she recoils, yelping "Ow, you burned me!" and everything
Breaks
(You burned her)
(You burned her)
(You burned her)
NO!!
(Scream denials all you want, it happened. It always happens.)
And the world is tearing and distorting, as Lourdes looks up at you, voice dropped down a pitch, and asks in slow motion, "Can you go look at the furnace?" And Stephie, down by your leg, looks up at you, saying, "No, wait, daddy, don't go down there, I don't like it down there!"
But you do, haunted by visions of futures, of other lives, of a person who is you but isn't the you in this kitchen, a husband, father and former firefighter, you are drawn back towards the hallway. The handle is calling your name. Something dark in your head is smiling as it pushes you. And you can feel another part of you - some tortured, broken soul who's been at the wheel for decades - fighting it. Your steps are leaden, every foot forward feels like it's pushing back, but you walk towards the doorknob. Tears are forming in your eyes, and you don't. Even. Know why. You're...
You touch the knob. And it burns like hellfire. And you open the door to the basement, and look down into the gloom, and then the other part of you stops it all again. You're expelled before you can get down the stairs, light the match, and smell the kerosene. You're back in limbo. You're floating in the void.
And what has a hold on you curses, sighs, and tries again.
You know who I am, at this point.
I don't need to fish for recognition, or ask what I have to do anymore. Truth be told I never really wondered what I needed to be doing in the first place. Ever since my return on the 8th Anniversary Trauma, I've been building a new Sicko, one totally divorced from the prejudices and expectations of anything you've ever known. And in the season of Hell I visited upon the Underground division, I fought endlessly against the lame title defenses, the meaningless triple threats and fourways where half the field of competition were just filler. I destroyed Muscles Malone, Razor Blade and Crazy Boy just for the reason that they were actually serving to weaken the meaning of what being in the Underground division meant. And when I came up against David Hunter at Mass Destruction and lost, I didn't see it as soul shattering. No, I found myself back at the bottom of the wheel. But I gritted it out, and continued to push the wheel back up the hill to try again. It was easier once I figured out the pressure points to hit to fracture his brittle ego.
But this isn't about David Hunter, in fact, I'm trying very hard not to become that little pissant by virtue of not turning this into a diatribe about why I'm a king. And I'm trying, very hard to learn from the lessons he failed at learning. Lessons like Muscles Malone. Looking at this fatal fourway, it's very easy to see the parallels there, because there are two men in it that stand objectively no chance in Hell of winning. Let's be honest, even if a champion no-showed their promos, came to the ring with an arm tied behind their back and slipped on a banana peel getting into the ring you still would never see Razor Blade jumping on the pinfall, and raising the Underground title over his head. Our dear Crazy Boy, as many times as I've had to hit him until he breaks, is only marginally better, if slightly more consistent. Crazy Boy, the supposed hardcore specialist, who is salivating about the possibility of another Undergrund title shot... the hardcore specialist who has not won an actual hardcore match in years. So I'm sorry if my words make no sense to him, or to Razor Blade. But the Malone principle here doesn't apply to them, it's the new kid. Darren Hughes.
Another turn of the wheel. Darren Hughes finds himself kicked back down, at the bottom of the hill following his loss to Kyle Shane. And yet, in his determination, I saw Darren get something out of facing the Game Boy that, honestly not many do. And I'm not content to repeat the digs at Darren's character and personality that Shane pulled out last Trauma. Instead, I'm going to say, I understand. I've been where Darren is coming from. I was looked at as a joke previous to coming here, and even if I never cared about my career or legacy to that extent, I cared about shutting people's mouths. And Darren is still asking himself, what he needs to do to buy himself a win here. Unfortunately... he finds himself climbing another hill in which he will find no purchase, pushing a stone wheel that is only going to be shoved right back down to the bottom. Because it doesn't matter if he's doubled down on his determination. It does not matter if he studies me, researches what he can find about me. He is always going to be ill prepared.
His match against Kyle proved in fact, that as much as he talked about how deeply he prepared to face Kyle, in his innate need to prove himself, all of the research he did only went skin deep. In fact, I'd wager all he knows about Sicko is the bare bones facts that I put on my website profile. He knows absolutely nothing of the torment, the backbreak, the effort I had to painstakingly take to build myself, out of whole cloth from nothing into the monster that stands in that ring. How I rose from being a fourth string lackey in a stable nobody remembers into being the damn Numbered Beast of the Underground. He'll tell you facts about me, he'll name my finishers off and say he can counter them, he'll tell you more than ever that he's so hungry for a win he'll do anything. But he knows nothing - read: NOTHING, about who I really am. Even if I helpfully provided a roadmap for it.
In the end Darren's in more danger than he knows. Not just because it isn't up to him whether he wins or loses, there are two other wasted sacks of meat in this match that are more than likely there to eat a painful defeat and all I have to do is pin one and his opening losing streak extends by another show. Darren's need to validate, to prove that he can make it in Pure Class Wrestling is informed by a need to matter. You have to wonder why a man who lost so many matches that he left here under a cloud, then journeyed out into the world wanted so badly to come back. Then you look at it, and see that this is what haunts him. This is the hellish torture that he thinks of every time he reflects on what he didn't get done in his career. And he lives it over and over. That doesn't sit right with our Darren. Which is all fine.
I see the passion. I see the hunger, the frenzy to break free of a repeating cycle of a nightmare, a nightmare which following the loss to Kyle seems like it's starting over again. Unfortunately he is stepping into the ring in one corner away from a monster who has finally stepped foot into his black house and made this division his home. Who FINALLY has begun to tap into the potential that Jason Twisted saw in 2004. Even more than that, a world breaking avatar of pain. I am someone with a stronger will than Darren Hughes could ever fathom, because I've taken defeats, like I did at Mass Destruction, and come roaring back stronger and more focused than ever.
And maybe Darren will free himself from the wheel at some point, maybe he will extricate himself from the constant grind and find his time in the sun. But it is not going to happen in this fatal fourway. I am going to assume the position as his chief tormentor, I am going to cruelly, judiciously and with great relish add even more weight to his back and bring him down, push him back to the bottom of the hill and stomp him into the ground. When he's entering the ring he is stepping into the gates of Hell, and I'm the damn Devil.
And I'm going to see him burn.
(I see you floating there, Ephrain.)
(You think you're fighting this, but you're really just delaying the inevitable. You will be tortured for eternity.)
"I don't care," he says, as he squeezes his eyes shut against the void, "You can make me see it a million times, it won't break me, Jason."
(This is who you are. It always is. You know this. When they find you here, your mind gone, this is where the Ephrain I know was born. In fire and pain, emerging from a charred cocoon.)
"I won't."
(Let's try this again. With feeling.)
The void brightens, becomes light, and everything washes away from you. And then... you open your eyes anew.
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. "Come on baby, light my fire, try to set the night on... FIRE!" Jim Morrison wails. And you know in your heart, in the pit of your soul that everything is wrong. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. And you've done this, been at this, like a turn on the torturers wheel, like Sisyphus recognizing at the apex of the hill every single time that his stone is about to change direction, you know this moment. You sit there on the bed, breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
"Lourdes," you say with his eyebrows knit together in worry, "Why don't you go to your mother's for a few days?"
She turns on her shoulder, not piecing together what you mean. "I - babe? What you talking about? Why would I?"
Your upper lip is sweaty. Your eyes feel like they're pulsing, a strong insistent beat just behind your eyeballs that's making you want to push your thumbs into them. You lick your lips.
"I... don't... believe you should... Be around me. I'm dangerous... to you. I don't want to hurt you or Stephie."
"Ephrain" Lourdes rolled over, coming awake, a look of genuine concern as she places a hand on her husband's muscular shoulder. "You're scaring me... please just talk to me, what's - "
You throw her arm off, snarling "DON'T TOUCH ME!"
She looks at you like she's seeing a black, foul demon from hell, terrified and worried.
"M' gonna go... check the furnace," you hear yourself say.
As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. "Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. Feelings of... paternal worry. You point a stern finger back into her bedroom. "Stephie, go back to bed, sweetheart, daddy's got to check something out downstairs."
"Are you going down there? I don't like it down there."
"STEPHIE, GO IN YOUR ROOM," you roar. The little girl has a moment of shocked, borning fright, and you step towards her. You are the Michael Myers, the giant, the shape of anger and pain. Stephie retreats to your bedroom, screaming for mommy.
And you know there is an eye in the dark waching you. Maybe it was always watching you. Maybe it was here all along. And maybe it was always pushing you, edging you towards this basement.
You take the steps down with ease, without any fight this time. And you look around the basement. The furnace is out. But as you look around you, you see the gas canister knocked over, that you hadn't seen that first, terrible time. Who spread the kerosene on the ground? Who doused the floor around the furnace? Was it an ancient god? Was it an avatar of death? Or was it you? Always you, that brought you here, to this tormentous portion of your own hell?
You light the match, smiling in the flickering flame as it burns between your fingertips.
And the match falls to the floor, igniting the kerosene in a jump. Magazines, scraps of paper records and books piled up, they begin to burn.
Everything begins to burn.
And you're on your hands and knees, amid a bombed out, exploded ground zero, your skin bubbling from the tongues of flame, your voice coughing thick with choking black smoke. You're crawling across the scorched hardwood floors that were once Southern California hacienda-suburb chic. The words reverberate in your head, over and over on this cold December night, you remember Lourdes telling you that you needed to check the furnace. The furnace. The furnace...
You grimace, gritting your teeth, screwing your eyes shut, trying to will that old ghost of memory away. Trying to scour the images you recall in ASMR, you barely gasping, choking on smoke, crawling on hands and knees up from the basement and your skin sizzling as it touched the now blackened hardwood floors, cooking you alive, and as you entered back up into the kitchen and saw the devastation that had ripped up, the - The black... charred - twisted bodies in the kitc-
NO! You snarl. You twist. You grimace, turning your scarred, pitted skin away, it's not real, you are NOT that younger man, that other life... That is naught but a dream, that fleeting wisp of tangental subconscious dreamtime is
(My fault)
It's not real, you are an entirely new man, a man who for the longest time only had the identity of a character given to him, an ice cream truck riding clown named Sicko, you are at least 45 now and you -
You screw your eyes shut, tightly against the reality. You will open them, you will not be in this repeating nightmare, and you will be home. Home.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. Your breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame, and you couldn't be further from that... strange image in your mindseye of being a middle aged clown if you tried. It was so odd, that dream you were having, right? Of being someone call... Sicko... And yet, there's something tickling at the back of your mind. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
You freeze. That... tickle in the back of your head, it's crying out with alarm, but Lourdes doesn't notice that. And something even darker, some winding fear demon is whispering in your ear, yes Ephrain, go down to the basement. You’re paralyzed. You don’t go in the basement. Something scary-big lives there. You just mumble for her to go back to sleep.
And you drag yourself to the bathroom, knees cracking, but something stops you. You double take as you look at the closet, towards some hidden item hung up in a far corner. There’s a simple white sheen that, even in the dim gloom of this tiny quarter, catches your eye. Even though the closet is filled with nothing but washed-out dress shirts and ugly ties. It’s almost as if it’s something you’re seeing for the first time. You pull the garment out, feeling it between your fingers as you haltingly step into the bathroom. Run your fingers over the stitching on the back. It's the... uniform of an ice cream vendor??
You can't take this anymore. The dream, it's beating in your head. It's tearing you apart. Telling you to go to the basement and go -
"Go look at the furnace, Ephrain, please babe, I'm really cold, just - "
(GO TO THE BASEMENT, EPHRAIN)
And you set your strange garment you've never seen before in your life in the hamper carefully. You step out of the bathroom with the family pater's careful, deliberate man of the house step, and sighing a bit with inexorable duty, you go to check out the furnace. As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart, an encountering something so far lost, and you turn to investigate and theres a little imp, a girl dwarfed by your size, shin high, smiling mischievously as she celebrates being out-of-bed. And you stop the sojourn to fix the furnace even though your wife (The Voice in your Head) is telling you to go to the basement, and you lean down to her.
"Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying, Ephrain Ortiz, 29 years old. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. You feel... happiness, uncommon to someone you can't fathom, and pride and fatherly protectiveness because Stephanie is such a pure and innocent soul, a pretty little girl that looks like her mama, wears baseball hats and jelly shoes and likes ice cream for dinner and - "Papa?"
Stephanie interrupts.
"Papa, are you going down there? I don't like it down there." He sets her down from swinging the little girl in the crook of his arm. "I gotta, I gotta go check the..." and you scrunch up your brow, because you aren't feeling like her dad, and - "check the furnace - "
You place her down, and moving slowly, like swimming through a river of mud in a dream, moving forward while the sensation of being being pushed back, something, some part was pushing back, it was
(Stop fighting)
(Accept it, and live with it, you always end up going down to check the furnace)
NO, YOU WON'T. You're struggling, pushing against it. Teeth gritted. It feels like you're bifurcated, in the hallway, a young, athletic, unsuspecting father is stepping towards a door at the very end of a hallway and yet separate yet still struggling, pushing an older man's body, decayed, grotesque and badly, badly scarred is fighting, and thrashing with all of it's might and trying to pull the father back. The father looks back, over his shoulder, seeing the little girl looking sad, and he puts his hand on the knob towards the basement and he -
NO!!
Everything stops. Blackens. Blinks out of existence. The spirit is hurled out of the scenario and is sent hurtling breakneck, thrown out of the house in Southern California and into a dark, ink black void, and he closes his eyes against it but he's in limbo, insensate. He is trapped.
(And the loop starts again. Sigh. This is getting tedious, Ephrain. How many times do you want to run through the scenario. You will always end up going down there.)
...I won't...
(Who's Hell is this? You will. Let's start again.)
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. And you've done this, been at this, like a turn on the torturers wheel, like Sisyphus recognizing at the apex of the hill every single time that his stone is about to change direction, you know this moment. You sit there on the bed, breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
"Lourdes," he says, with his eyebrows knit together in worry, "Lourdes, can I ask you something?"
"Mmm baby, your freezing cold wife is always here for you," she mumbles, smiling, half sleeping. "You tell Miss Frosty the Snowchica all about it...."
"I... do you believe..." he searched, in his secret heart, for words that would give him insight into why he felt so split, so torn, "Lourdes, if you lost everything in one night, do you think it would drive you crazy?"
"Mmm, babe..." Lourdes rolled over, looking at him playfully through slitted sleepy eyelids, "I think that the only thing that says you're crazy is you not making sure your wifey gets nice and snuggly warm. Can you go check out the furnace? Please?"
You sigh, and you get to your feet. You tilt your head towards the closet, knowing there's... something in there, but there's a beat in your head, low and insistent, telling you to go to the basement. You bristle at it's sinister agency, and then... . As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. "Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. Feelings of... paternal worry. You point a stern finger back into her bedroom. "Stephie, go back to bed, sweetheart, daddy's got to check something out downstairs."
"Are you going down there? I don't like it down there."
"Go, now, please," he said, a little more forcefully, and his thoughts were already turning back to Lourdes. Trying to explain to her why he felt so ill at ease, why he felt like a stranger in a life that late he lived. But you, you're stepping down the steps, taking them at an easy enough clip that your knees aren't a bother, and why would they be, you have the body of a firefighter that's only beginning to get acclimated to a desk job. It's not like you're a giant, obese, clown that drives a - Everything hitches, pulses as you fight to reconcile what is and what should not be. You clench your eyes shut, grit your teeth, and then you feel everything splitting apart. Something denies you. Something won't let you black out, be extracted. Something is trying hard to force you, keep you in this setting.
(GO FURTHER, EPHRAIN.)
NO.
No, you won't, you're telling yourself, and you're grunting, sweat roiling off of you. You feel like your head is about to explode, and you let out a choked cry. You want to go back upstairs, to go back to Lourdes, to bring Stephie in the room, to hug them and kiss them so tight. But the insistent beat in your head, like a drum pounding out strokes, is forcing you to move, and you step stiffly. You smell the kerosene. And your head, everything fighting, warring discordantly, is screaming. Everything feels like it's on fire. You haven't even reached the bottom step, haven't lit the match, but the fire is begun. It's spreading.
You eject yourself, forcefully, hurling yourself and shattering the reality like a mirror, breaking through to the other side like Jim Morrison's other hit. And as you fall, the shards falling with you, you feel like you'll fall forever, falling eternally into the inky, black wet, enveloping you like a mother's embrace. Or like the grave. This black house. This is your home. This is your Hell.
(Shouldn't be surprised, should I. Ephrain's grown an annoying amount of backbone. I suppose... in a way... I'm proud. I molded him from the very start.)
(I don't want the avatar of Moloch to be toyed with, I want him dead in eternal agony.)
(Don't worry. He will be.)
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Your eyes blink open, and early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. Come on baby light my fire. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. She mumbles something about being cold, and you pull her in to you, kissing her on the lips full. She opens her sleepy eyes, looking over her shoulder at you with a dawning appreciation of marital happiness. You can stay here. You can stay in bed with your wife, and you won't get out of bed.
(GO TO THE BASEMENT, CHECK THE FURNACE)
But you will, won't you? Lourdes, snuggling up to you, murmurs that it's cold this morning, even as she kisses under your jaw. And something in you knows this is from another life and that Lourdes is a stranger, a dead stranger, all emotional attachment gone when your mind breaks, when you see two figures like twisted black dolls in the ruins of a bombed out house - You want to scream. So you scream. And scream. And scream.
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old, and you will not go into the basement. You will not. You get up out of your bed, leaving Lou to mumble sleepily. You ignore the pull of the closed basement door, shut it out. You enter the kitchen, as early morning 6:04 light is filtering through the window over the sink, and you turn on the coffee maker. You will not go into the basement to look at the furnace, in fact you're going to call a plumbing & heating repairman to do the work. Today is going to be good. You hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. Stephie has joined you in the kitchen, running up furtively and hugging onto your leg, and you smile and pick up the coffee pot, looking down at her upturned face and saying "Little girls should be in bed early this morning," And then your wife comes into the kitchen as well. And there's a blissful moment, a peaceful, sun-drenched moment where you're all in the kitchen together, and you're pouring coffee, and everything will always be fine.
Scalding hot coffee sloshes from Lourdes' cup as you're handing it to her, landing in a splotch on her hand and she recoils, yelping "Ow, you burned me!" and everything
Breaks
(You burned her)
(You burned her)
(You burned her)
NO!!
(Scream denials all you want, it happened. It always happens.)
And the world is tearing and distorting, as Lourdes looks up at you, voice dropped down a pitch, and asks in slow motion, "Can you go look at the furnace?" And Stephie, down by your leg, looks up at you, saying, "No, wait, daddy, don't go down there, I don't like it down there!"
But you do, haunted by visions of futures, of other lives, of a person who is you but isn't the you in this kitchen, a husband, father and former firefighter, you are drawn back towards the hallway. The handle is calling your name. Something dark in your head is smiling as it pushes you. And you can feel another part of you - some tortured, broken soul who's been at the wheel for decades - fighting it. Your steps are leaden, every foot forward feels like it's pushing back, but you walk towards the doorknob. Tears are forming in your eyes, and you don't. Even. Know why. You're...
You touch the knob. And it burns like hellfire. And you open the door to the basement, and look down into the gloom, and then the other part of you stops it all again. You're expelled before you can get down the stairs, light the match, and smell the kerosene. You're back in limbo. You're floating in the void.
And what has a hold on you curses, sighs, and tries again.
You know who I am, at this point.
I don't need to fish for recognition, or ask what I have to do anymore. Truth be told I never really wondered what I needed to be doing in the first place. Ever since my return on the 8th Anniversary Trauma, I've been building a new Sicko, one totally divorced from the prejudices and expectations of anything you've ever known. And in the season of Hell I visited upon the Underground division, I fought endlessly against the lame title defenses, the meaningless triple threats and fourways where half the field of competition were just filler. I destroyed Muscles Malone, Razor Blade and Crazy Boy just for the reason that they were actually serving to weaken the meaning of what being in the Underground division meant. And when I came up against David Hunter at Mass Destruction and lost, I didn't see it as soul shattering. No, I found myself back at the bottom of the wheel. But I gritted it out, and continued to push the wheel back up the hill to try again. It was easier once I figured out the pressure points to hit to fracture his brittle ego.
But this isn't about David Hunter, in fact, I'm trying very hard not to become that little pissant by virtue of not turning this into a diatribe about why I'm a king. And I'm trying, very hard to learn from the lessons he failed at learning. Lessons like Muscles Malone. Looking at this fatal fourway, it's very easy to see the parallels there, because there are two men in it that stand objectively no chance in Hell of winning. Let's be honest, even if a champion no-showed their promos, came to the ring with an arm tied behind their back and slipped on a banana peel getting into the ring you still would never see Razor Blade jumping on the pinfall, and raising the Underground title over his head. Our dear Crazy Boy, as many times as I've had to hit him until he breaks, is only marginally better, if slightly more consistent. Crazy Boy, the supposed hardcore specialist, who is salivating about the possibility of another Undergrund title shot... the hardcore specialist who has not won an actual hardcore match in years. So I'm sorry if my words make no sense to him, or to Razor Blade. But the Malone principle here doesn't apply to them, it's the new kid. Darren Hughes.
Another turn of the wheel. Darren Hughes finds himself kicked back down, at the bottom of the hill following his loss to Kyle Shane. And yet, in his determination, I saw Darren get something out of facing the Game Boy that, honestly not many do. And I'm not content to repeat the digs at Darren's character and personality that Shane pulled out last Trauma. Instead, I'm going to say, I understand. I've been where Darren is coming from. I was looked at as a joke previous to coming here, and even if I never cared about my career or legacy to that extent, I cared about shutting people's mouths. And Darren is still asking himself, what he needs to do to buy himself a win here. Unfortunately... he finds himself climbing another hill in which he will find no purchase, pushing a stone wheel that is only going to be shoved right back down to the bottom. Because it doesn't matter if he's doubled down on his determination. It does not matter if he studies me, researches what he can find about me. He is always going to be ill prepared.
His match against Kyle proved in fact, that as much as he talked about how deeply he prepared to face Kyle, in his innate need to prove himself, all of the research he did only went skin deep. In fact, I'd wager all he knows about Sicko is the bare bones facts that I put on my website profile. He knows absolutely nothing of the torment, the backbreak, the effort I had to painstakingly take to build myself, out of whole cloth from nothing into the monster that stands in that ring. How I rose from being a fourth string lackey in a stable nobody remembers into being the damn Numbered Beast of the Underground. He'll tell you facts about me, he'll name my finishers off and say he can counter them, he'll tell you more than ever that he's so hungry for a win he'll do anything. But he knows nothing - read: NOTHING, about who I really am. Even if I helpfully provided a roadmap for it.
In the end Darren's in more danger than he knows. Not just because it isn't up to him whether he wins or loses, there are two other wasted sacks of meat in this match that are more than likely there to eat a painful defeat and all I have to do is pin one and his opening losing streak extends by another show. Darren's need to validate, to prove that he can make it in Pure Class Wrestling is informed by a need to matter. You have to wonder why a man who lost so many matches that he left here under a cloud, then journeyed out into the world wanted so badly to come back. Then you look at it, and see that this is what haunts him. This is the hellish torture that he thinks of every time he reflects on what he didn't get done in his career. And he lives it over and over. That doesn't sit right with our Darren. Which is all fine.
I see the passion. I see the hunger, the frenzy to break free of a repeating cycle of a nightmare, a nightmare which following the loss to Kyle seems like it's starting over again. Unfortunately he is stepping into the ring in one corner away from a monster who has finally stepped foot into his black house and made this division his home. Who FINALLY has begun to tap into the potential that Jason Twisted saw in 2004. Even more than that, a world breaking avatar of pain. I am someone with a stronger will than Darren Hughes could ever fathom, because I've taken defeats, like I did at Mass Destruction, and come roaring back stronger and more focused than ever.
And maybe Darren will free himself from the wheel at some point, maybe he will extricate himself from the constant grind and find his time in the sun. But it is not going to happen in this fatal fourway. I am going to assume the position as his chief tormentor, I am going to cruelly, judiciously and with great relish add even more weight to his back and bring him down, push him back to the bottom of the hill and stomp him into the ground. When he's entering the ring he is stepping into the gates of Hell, and I'm the damn Devil.
And I'm going to see him burn.
(I see you floating there, Ephrain.)
(You think you're fighting this, but you're really just delaying the inevitable. You will be tortured for eternity.)
"I don't care," he says, as he squeezes his eyes shut against the void, "You can make me see it a million times, it won't break me, Jason."
(This is who you are. It always is. You know this. When they find you here, your mind gone, this is where the Ephrain I know was born. In fire and pain, emerging from a charred cocoon.)
"I won't."
(Let's try this again. With feeling.)
The void brightens, becomes light, and everything washes away from you. And then... you open your eyes anew.
Your name is Ephrain Ortiz, and you're 29 years old.
Early morning light peeks in through the blinds, and an alarm starts playing a hit from 96.7 Classic Rock. The Doors. "Come on baby, light my fire, try to set the night on... FIRE!" Jim Morrison wails. And you know in your heart, in the pit of your soul that everything is wrong. You look over at your sleeping wife as you drag your legs out of bed. She’s curled up like a cat, a mighty comforter pulled against her body to guard against the winter cold. And you realize you're cold too, now. And you've done this, been at this, like a turn on the torturers wheel, like Sisyphus recognizing at the apex of the hill every single time that his stone is about to change direction, you know this moment. You sit there on the bed, breath rasping in the chilly bedroom air, your wifebeater stretching over your still muscular frame. You glance at the clock, which reads, tauntingly, 6:04 am.
"Honey," Lourdes says, mumbling in her sleep… "heard’a noise in the basement… can you check out the furnace?"
"Lourdes," you say with his eyebrows knit together in worry, "Why don't you go to your mother's for a few days?"
She turns on her shoulder, not piecing together what you mean. "I - babe? What you talking about? Why would I?"
Your upper lip is sweaty. Your eyes feel like they're pulsing, a strong insistent beat just behind your eyeballs that's making you want to push your thumbs into them. You lick your lips.
"I... don't... believe you should... Be around me. I'm dangerous... to you. I don't want to hurt you or Stephie."
"Ephrain" Lourdes rolled over, coming awake, a look of genuine concern as she places a hand on her husband's muscular shoulder. "You're scaring me... please just talk to me, what's - "
You throw her arm off, snarling "DON'T TOUCH ME!"
She looks at you like she's seeing a black, foul demon from hell, terrified and worried.
"M' gonna go... check the furnace," you hear yourself say.
As you step into the hallway, and walk to the end of the corridor where the portal sits to the left, you hear a stifled little girl giggle, and some distant part of you feels a breaking in your heart. "Little girls should be in bed this early in the morning," you hear yourself saying. Fully in the grips of the dream, caught up like in a tidal wave of feelings you never thought you could explain. Feelings of... paternal worry. You point a stern finger back into her bedroom. "Stephie, go back to bed, sweetheart, daddy's got to check something out downstairs."
"Are you going down there? I don't like it down there."
"STEPHIE, GO IN YOUR ROOM," you roar. The little girl has a moment of shocked, borning fright, and you step towards her. You are the Michael Myers, the giant, the shape of anger and pain. Stephie retreats to your bedroom, screaming for mommy.
And you know there is an eye in the dark waching you. Maybe it was always watching you. Maybe it was here all along. And maybe it was always pushing you, edging you towards this basement.
You take the steps down with ease, without any fight this time. And you look around the basement. The furnace is out. But as you look around you, you see the gas canister knocked over, that you hadn't seen that first, terrible time. Who spread the kerosene on the ground? Who doused the floor around the furnace? Was it an ancient god? Was it an avatar of death? Or was it you? Always you, that brought you here, to this tormentous portion of your own hell?
You light the match, smiling in the flickering flame as it burns between your fingertips.
And the match falls to the floor, igniting the kerosene in a jump. Magazines, scraps of paper records and books piled up, they begin to burn.
Everything begins to burn.
