The Ash Tree, Hollowed.

[Kyle Shane]

29.5

He watched as the handtruck rolled by, bitterly. It carried the totes up the threshold into the lake house.

His companion, ruddy face now shiny with sweat, bent over and blew out a few out-of-shape breaths, before fixing his deep-set eyes on Kyle, still standing there, still watching. He had noted the itch in Kyle's finger, the clench around his coffee cup and the instinctual tense of his leg muscles that foretold wanting to get in on the action but the frozen posture and the disgusted curled lip that said he couldn't. "Don't even think about it," Chad Jacoby said, a slight mocking relish to his voice, "The doctor said you can't lift more than ten pounds."

Hand quaking he brought the coffee to his lips, eyes slitted.

Pushing his luck, Chad ribbed at his captive charge, "In fact, is that coffee mug ten pounds? Better put it down," and Kyle pantomimed laughing as he rolled his eyes, Chad (and others) had been sticking to the no lifting, no bending restriction the doctor had put Kyle under before he had started PT; for some like Array, before the tension of having her there helping had gotten too much it was a caring reminder of finding his limits but for Chad it was just an excuse to be a dick and tease Kyle over something while he was laid low. Payback for all the years of abuse at last. Kyle felt his sneer overtake him, wanting to ask Chad snidely if he needed to get back to his shift at Dominoes or if he could maybe help him unpack, but he bitterly thought better of it and he looked down into his mug. His face was distorted by ripples, he didn't even recognize himself. He wouldn't recognize himself anyway. Five weeks post accident, his side-shave was growing out into an ugly shag, and his stubble was becoming an unkempt beard.

And here, standing on the cabin porch with him with a handtruck was the only person left in his life who he could ask to help him move.

Sensing that Kyle's mood was turning dark, Chad patted him on the arm unwelcomely. "Hey, buddy, this is a big step, you sure you're ready for it? Will you be okay... out here... alone?" Chad's henpecking voice made it clear he was trying to suss out if Kyle had backed out of his lease at the penthouse back in Beacon Hill to come here and asphyxiate himself in the garage using a tailpipe. Kyle just fixed him with a stare, because if he was ever going to get personal, it wasn't going to be with Chad. And yet, again, Chad was here, when everyone else who could have cared enough was being kept distant. That was the impetus behind the move to the woods. If he did end up sucking on a tailpipe later, then that was just the cherry, a disappointing end to a wasting life.

Oh here comes the self pity again. He turned off the porch and into the house. The high V top with glass sunroof ceiling let the sunshine cascade over the wood finishes. He felt something looking at it, even empty and unfurnished as it was now. And again, Chad, wanting to fill the silence, trying to make this interaction meaningful, spoke up: "Listen, buddy, I get that you're going through it... but Array texted me when you stopped PT... and now you're out here and living on your own, don't you - don't you want to heal? Don't you want to get better?" And Kyle's eyes fixed on him like the crack of a bullwhip. Chad cringed, but summoned his courage. He nodded, "Like don't you want to get back to wrestling for PCW?"

A million emotions flitted through his mind on that crisp fall morning, five weeks removed from a life jarring accident. He considered and discarded an infinite number of responses, but most of what he was considering in that moment was if he had left a bridge in Pure Class Wrestling to go back to. He'd thought of losing matches against Gerard Angelo and turning on the crowd, cussing them out. He thought of losing the 2019 Icemann in the semi-final round and excorciating Pure Class Wrestling officials for looking at a promo Justin Michaels did about some irrelevant interaction with Luis Malave and thinking it was the best work he'd ever done. He thought about his growing reputation for being a flake, a burnout, a diva, and a gamer brat who only wanted people to tell him he was performing at a high level and getting incensed when people just shrugged their shoulders and expected him to take loss lightly because it was so close.

He thought, with an eyeroll, of the highest, most "respected" people in the company using every single opportunity just to bitch about how much Kyle Shane talked.

2019 was frustrating, until it was not anymore. Sitting in a hospital bed, there were times he'd give anything to even have the mobility to compete in a ring again. But now that he was standing, painfully, and faced with a question of if he wanted to get back on the comeback trail and get there again, right now? Go back to what? Wouldn't it be the same exact thing? Wouldn't he just continue getting angry because he felt like he just wasn't being appreciated? Or wouldn't it be even worse, because he now could see it coming, men like Gerard would snigger that Kyle had been handed so many favors and prime spots that when he didn't grab every single brass ring he wasn't good enough to be given them. Put in that light, going back seemed even more frustrating, because Kyle's increasingly annoyed demeanor and search for exactly what the fuck the PCW crowds wanted from him anymore gave him a dreaded Reputation. He could sense it deep in his core. Knowing that he'd more or less immediately be pitted against someone like Grimm who would take every opportunity to indulge in what amounts to a smug indictment of how much he means to PCW; that utter bullshit honestly had no appeal for him.

I mean, would anybody even listen to what he was saying anymore? If he came back, right then, damn the injury or not, would they hear what he was trying to say?

Or would some doofus immediately talk over him and sneer that he took his ball and went home because he couldn't handle the workload?

Finally, he answered Chad's question. "No. I do not want that."

And he walked inside the house, leaving his last helper standing on the stoop holding a handtruck.

10x4

"And do you still feel like that? About your time in Pure Class Wrestling, I mean," James asked. The two, in their immaculate, shining white cloaks, trudged around the periphery of the property, out into the edge of the wood. Away from most of the followers bowing and chanting for the White Event on the lawn. Leaves crunched under their feet. And now and then, they heard the call of two of the children as they played among the leaves. James cocked a scholarly brow at him.

At ease, breathing in the biting air, Kyle smiled. He blew a breath through his nose, recalling the complicated glut of emotion in the wake of the year that was his entry to his thirtieth year.

Not knowing that he was on the cusp then of change. That arriving into the lake house put him into chrysalis for the metamorphosis to occur over that tenure. Reminiscing, he looked over his shoulder at James. "No, I do not feel that," he said, his words rippling echo through time, softer now. And he didn't.

Explaining to James as they walked deeper into the woods. The tangles of branches and brambles getting thicker, and the air darkening. Because, as he recalled those first nights in the lake house, he remembered stewing in those feelings and the negative reflections for quite some time. It seemed like he spent weeks just reliving every bit of bad in 2019 that happened to him until it finally came to a head when he hit a literal wall, and he couldn't do it anymore.

James smiled, "You were just coming out of that when you found me."

"You helped me," Kyle said, earnestly. "You gave me perspective that no therapist ever did."

James' eyes searched the tree canopy, "Because I am not a therapist anymore, Kyle. But I do see myself a healer. And when I met you, all those years ago... you needed healing."

"I remember," he said, and he thought of fitfully, feverishly stumbling through the bramble in the middle of the night, panting and heaving as something called to him.

"So do I think about my tenure in Pure Class Wrestling in those terms anymore?" He gestured, "Angry all the time, sniping and snarking at people over whether they appreciate me? Not at all. They thought what they wanted, at the end of the day. Grimm had immediately, and predictably, came along and cast what he probably thought was shade. Said that my injury was fortutious and that I was just making excuses because I couldn't do the work. And all I was ever in it for was the adulation of the crowd and wanting people to love me. Because I was never the centerpiece of it that I thought I was, but by extension he was because he had longevity." Kyle did smirk at that. Some of the old, bratty, fuck you tendencies remained constant, and when he talked about it it came to the surface. He had to wonder if that's why James was probing at it.

And yet, for all of Grimm's lecturing about "Kyle couldn't handle the weekly grind so he came up with an injury, because he wasn't getting attention, and he's never as good as he thinks, and PCW doesn't exist to stoke someone's ego", he had always managed to miss the point of Kyle Shane. (Quite obviously, I mean, he had to ask what WAS the deal with stray dogs because that sort of life symbolism was just a bit too advanced and not obvious at all.) He missed the entire point. More to the point, Grimm was indicative of a problem, because he thinks he speaks for PCW. Maybe it was his long lived, PCW Wrestler of the Decade credential he thinks gives him such locker room leader authority. Maybe it was the fact that the entire locker room of Pure Class Wrestling seems to hold facing Grimm with such fearful dread that David Hunter showed facing Kyle Shane, which felt unearned looking back with the fullness of time. Maybe Grimm had coasted for far too fucking long, cutting what amounts to essentially the exact same promo and ruling through tone. Letting spooky tone and gritty, spartan imagery substitute for actual change. Stuck in his own ways, but over that Wrestler of the Decade tenure how much had ever changed?

Grimm is a character that can get slotted pretty much anywhere, get put in any feud and it'll work because he's an implacable reaper, a mean spirited monster who places a high ceiling against anyone (and honestly, probably turning more people away from PCW as a result) and yet... There has been never been any personal growth, no character arc to follow besides "Oh, now Grimm is allied with Dominator! Oh, now he is friends with Brenna Gordon!", but Grimm-the-actual figure remains static. No personality. No definable goals. And thus ultimately zero reason to invest in or care about anything he ever did. It was almost blackly funny. Back in the day, Grimm gave him nothing but shit for pretty much everything he did in the ring and out of it, not making much welcome wagon. But in the final analysis Grimm calling him a coward who "couldn't handle a workload" held no weight.

It would come off, all about as laughable, if not hypocritical as someone smirking that Pure Class Wrestling didn't exist to prop up someone's ego while in the exact same breath pointing to a literal award for being Wrestler of the Decade.

Here, in the light of day, ruminating on it a decade past it, he just laughed it off as meaningless as it always was.

What was Grimm's workload even? Was his workload just basically repeating himself over and over while he gained empty victories and floated around the card doing Grimm things? Was his workload never actually experiencing any character progression, life change or growth?

Looking back at the lake house, and the congregation there, Kyle smiled at it. He himself had had so many twists and turns in an unexpected life, no matter what change was his constant companion.

Let the people who never grew or went anywhere think themselves the masters of their domain or celebrate the small victories they managed to win, but time ultimately proved that they went nowhere.

Dude's been living in a fucking cornfield in Kentucky for twenty years.

Who cares.

But, in answering James' question, he had to get past the Grimm of it. What he got from his tenure in PCW once he came back. If he still NEEDED them to validate him, if he was only there for love me, hug me, shower me with kisses. "Well, first, James, let me ask you this, isn't the search for validation intrinsic in pretty much all meaningful human interaction? I know in my "old life" people had to pretend to be either complete narcissists or closed off emotionally dead sociopaths, but every single one of us back then literally got on camera to entertain a crowd so like... wasn't chasing validation the Point."

If you're pretending otherwise, and acting too cool for school, you might spout such empty phrases as "this doesnt exist to give anyone a platform" and try to sound edgy.

"I have considered that, yes. But something kept you coming back."

"It did. And I could not put my finger on why... in that fall, when I was nursing my back in this cabin... why my mind kept returning to it... I had every reason to not think about it. I had, quite literally, hit the wall."

"So why?"

And they had stopped, their robes bunched up with leaves as they were in a deep, dark vale in the forest. The trees were overgrown, jagged nightmare, oak twisted limbs, reaching a thousand directions like a discordant scene from hell.

There, in the center of the twisted trees, was one taller than the rest. Whose branches, gnarled and grasping, swayed in the breeze. The bark was white ash, and the spare leaves hanging from it looked black.

The tree was split deep from some long ago lightning. The tree was hollow, it's maw now covered in moss.

The tree's roots snaked far from the tree, erupting around their feet. And they stood in front of it, the hollow opening like a mouth.

Kyle had walked them here. They regarded the tree for a long time.

He smiled, thinking in the fullness of time of That midnight walk.

29.5

He spent his days wallowing, and stewing, the expansive lake house a prison for someone who had trouble even sitting in a chair, he just paced it like a lifer in the yard most nights. Holding an ever-present mug. Growing more ragged. Lines appearing on his youthful face, so when he looked out the bay windows onto the lake, light cast his reflection as distorted and something he didn't recognize. And he thought, bitterly, about his dreams being taken from him. Despite his assertion to Chad that he had no intentions of coming back to wrestling, he couldn't stop thinking about it. And the bitterness over the whole situation took root. Because it wasn't fair, was it?

He knew that his 2019 up to that point was a growing resentful case of burnout. That the night before he hit the wall, he was very much unsure of anything. But he had felt things starting to turn, that if he had just had more time he might have gotten himself fully back in form. But he had been robbed of that time. He had been cheated of a chance to get back there. And who was to blame? David Hunter? The dog in the street? Himself?

He sipped from his mug, tea gone as bitter as the taste in his gullet.

That specific night bled together with many such nights that fifth, that sixth, that so-on week as he stared out into the woods at his periphery through the distorted window pane, staring into the darkness of the woods as night fell. As he reflected on the manifest unfairness of his prime being taken from him and yet his lacking wherewithal just now to rebuild and start again. He was angry, and disillusioned, and ultimately self-destructive. He had lost everything he believed in …he was as utterly, completely alone as he had ever been.

So as that fall month rounded to the next, he began itching to leave the confines of the cabin.

29.6

So he began going on walks.

Every little bit at a time.

On tottering legs, daring not bend down or engage the hot iron band around his midsection.

He started taking late-night walks just around the edge of the lakehouse to where the overgrown clover began to meet the line of the wood. He would start walking early evening...

29.62

...And as day turned to weeks, coming back close to midnight, sometimes later. Walking and thinking and chewing over what had gone wrong with his life. He no longer let himself think of coming back to wrestling just yet. He made his private peace with the universe, content with whatever was going to happen, live or die.

29.7

And he got angry. He got angry because he still had stories to tell.

As two months began to pass and the seasons wintered, the iron band around his midsection began to slacken and even though the piece missing from his L3 reminded him of it's absence at every step, his strides became more assured. And his walks became more determined. And he knew two things, coming out of that time of reflection and his walks towards the tree line. First, that he had no fear of death. None whatsoever.

Second, that there was something beckoning to him, deep out there in the woods.

29.8

Chad, eyeing him curiously as he was unpacking bags of groceries, squinted at him in the morning light, but Kyle was already staring at the window, looking out into the trees. Trying to pierce the dense foliage into the deeper wood. Chad, not understanding the obsession, cautiously probed him, "So... you just... walk?" Not PT, not lifting weights, just walking, is what he was trying to say.

"Yup," Kyle replied stolidly into his mug.

"What are you trying to get to?"

The only answer he could give was, “I’m looking for something.”

29.82

And he got deeper and deeper into that wood. And he felt, as it closed in on midnight those nights, that for all the sense of the trees closing in, he felt the beating heart at it's core. He could close his eyes and see it. It's roots stretching out through the entire forest.

A massive tree.

29.83

He finally found it.

He came there earlier. He trudged through the blackberry vines and underlying thorns, the low branches that served as a prickly wall.

But the oppressive darkness lay sleeping.

He was coming to the same areas he walked through at night and he was struck by the dichotomy between that wood at night, and the very same copse of trees during the day. Two totally different worlds, sharing nothing but longitude and latitude. There was the wood in the day, and the wood at night, existing side by side but each fleeing the other.

It was more than the presence and absence of light as he stood looking at the withered tree.

As he stepped towards it he heard voices long lost. From a decade before. An echo in his head. Hiro's voice saying, "Manuel's hurt, bad, Kyle... a fragment of a memory that had been buried like seeds deep within the earth.

"I can still get up, Hiro... ARRRRGH... just... just tag me in..."

He stopped, and stared into the tree's wide, mossy split, finding it's natural root system in the hollowed out interior leading into a dank cave.

The screams of a decade ago echoed in his head.

10x4

"And what happened that day, did you go down into the tree?" James asked, hiding a smile in his whitened beard.

Kyle looked solemnly at the tree. It's mouth still open, still hungry, it's flaking white ash surface coated in moss, and deep in it's split open surface the roots that led underneath forming steps descending deep into the earth. He remembered thinking of it. And realizing that it spoke to his entire experience, because even if it was thought then that he wasn't healed, wasn't at his best, he was not completed yet. He was not ready then. But he would always, in the end, steel himself, and gear up to try it when he was able.

But did he walk down the steps that afternoon? Traverse down the roots to underneath the tree while it was still burning daylight?

"No, not that day," he recalled, "But it was soon."