Post by Kyle on Dec 27, 2016 22:51:04 GMT -5
The roar of eighty thousand fans was deafening even within the walls of the concrete complex. Sebastian Knight, alone in the locker room that had been set aside for the talent, felt the men, women, and children sitting above his head as their bodies and emotions moved throughout the arena like a high tide that was drawing ever closer to ringside. A collective mass that surrounded the two competitors who, like two moons in the same space, pulled the bodies this way and that. A dance, both within and outside the ring. Thomas Bates. Joey Flash. Tonight, this universe was theirs, and One their throne.
Sebastian Knight was but a star, one of many, hidden away in the shadow of their showdown, unable escape from beneath it.
Literally. Knight had the pants leg rolled up to the knee on his right side up to his knee, which had already swollen up to the size of a cantaloupe around the joint. He thought he had broken it, thought it the moment Lester Parish had come crashing down on it from the second turnbuckle.
Turns out the only thing that had been broken was the hope that The Forgotten One could go out on top. A statement had been made, one that almost made the pain worth it.
But goodness did his knee hurt. He had made it back to the locker rooms on adrenaline alone before collapsing on this short wooden bench, where he had sat for the last two hours of the show. He could’ve called for the doctor, but between Zombie McMorris’ neck injury and Lilith’s maiming, there wasn’t much attention to be spared for a swollen knee. Nor did Knight want it. After the night he had had, after proving to the fans that he could persevere through the most hard-hitting of fights, he wasn’t going to end it with a doctor’s appointment. These walls did more than speak the will the people. They also had ears, listening intently for any sign of weakness of those who walked within them.
Sebastian Knight did not wish to show any, so quietly he waited, letting the crowd speak and he, in silence, listened.
The din only built with each match that followed his, a collective reaction stemming from a multitude of matches that, alone, were ordinary but together spoke to the monumentality of One. A momentum washed away by blood-red waters that only beasts and monsters could feed off of, and everyone else could not stomach. Resumption, then hushed silence again, the Internet abuzz over the fate of their fallen king, and for the future of its usurped. A catching of breath with Archer and Kaine. A quicker beating of the heart with ZT and BK. And then, the finale.
With a gentle touch, Sebastian Knight gingerly rolled his pants leg down, wincing at the jolt of pain that ran through his body. He pushed himself to his feet, shifting his weight onto his left leg as he hobbled to the door, sports bag in hand. The crowd and the heavens above had reached its apex, but Knight chose not to linger. This sound, at least, would echo across the lands in the weeks to come. He wasn’t truly missing it, even if he was not present at its origin. He stepped through the door into the hallway.
Hank Brown, cameraman in tow, waited on the other side. He had been tasked in reaching out to the wrestlers as they left the arena for any final remarks as WCF pushed forward into the new year. Sebastian Knight did not escape his probing, even despite his limping gait and unenthused expression. “Sebastian Knight, how are you feeling after your impressive debut against the retiring Lester Parish tonight?”
“Stupendous,” Sebastian replies with biting sarcasm, pushing past the interviewer as he headed in the direction of the parking garage.
Hank Brown was not a man to be deterred as he follows alongside Knight, who wasn’t moving fast enough to escape him. “You played on this whole ‘the fans don’t know me’ theme building up to your debut. Don’t you think this would be a good opportunity to address them, now that you’ve given them the first glimpse of who Sebastian Knight actually is?”
Sebastian Knight stops short, and despite the strain, put his weight on his bad leg long enough to turn his whole body to face Hank Brown. To look down at him. “You think I can’t read between the lines, Hank?” he finally says, his pain adding venom to his words. “You’re offering me an opportunity to apologize for my behavior tonight, and to talk Lester Parish up as he prepares to leave the WCF. Talk about how thankful I am for the opportunity, and how I couldn’t have asked for a greater opportunity here at One?” Sebastian Knight points to the ceiling. “Just stop and listen, Hank.”
Knight cuts off, allowing the singular sound from above to sink through the concrete.
”Flash. Flash. Flash.”
“Until its my name they’re chanting, I won’t have anything good to say, Hank,” Sebastian continues. “Lester Parish did not pose a challenge to me in the slightest. Never once did I think I would lose to him last night. I’m glad he’s gone, and hope he never comes back.” A pause. “How’s that for a fucking sound bite?”
Sebastian Knight doesn’t even look back as he walks away, pushing through the doors that led to the parking garage. A black limousine awaited him, courtesy of his father, the chauffeur already awaiting him with door open and a bottle of Dom Perignon in the ice chest. Knight handed his bag off to the driver, who moved around to the trunk to stow it away while the wrestler looked around the parking lot.
Across the way stood Kowalski, WCF’s Head Architect who had been Knight’s main opponent prior to tonight; he stood with one of the truck drivers employed by the company. The two men lock eyes, tension hanging in the air. It was apparent that the architect was not a fan of Sebastian Knight, not after the way he had circumvented him to get what he wanted.
But to Sebastian Knight, there weren’t any hard feelings. With a smile, he waved at the architect with palm facing him, before twisting his hand so only one finger was extended. Again, no hard feelings; Sebastian Knight only did it because he could.
Stepping into the car, Sebastian Knight waited for the driver. He shut the door and, with a sigh of relief, settled back into the leather and relished the sweet silence the car offered. The scene faded out a moment later to a black screen.
An audio clip is played over the black screen, opening with a soft, melodic composition on an unseen grand piano.
“Mediocrity is commonplace in our present day society, in betwixt excellence and perpetual failure. It is hard to pin down with any one stereotype, physical or otherwise, because we live in a world where the people are so numerous and so varied. Race, religion, status . . . they are but subsets to this greater blanket that is an average existence. Unimaginable, uncreative commonality. It can be found everywhere, even here in the Wrestling Championship Federation.
The catch in an organization like this one, though, is that its small enough for lines to be drawn, distinctions to be made. Excellence and Failure are embodied by individuals, not concepts or beliefs. Everything is just a little bit easier to define. Success. Failure. These can be judged through a myriad of ways—does he have a title or not, do the fans cheer for him or not, was his the shoulders the ones pinned to the mat or not . . . judgement that, in turn, makes way for these stereotypes, they predisposed assumptions to one’s character before they’re allowed to do otherwise. Face-painted trolls and Wrestling Gods in the flesh of mortal men. We all embody something here.
You, Damian Kaine, embody this very concept of mediocrity I speak of. A name, though recognizable, that lacks the drive or the ability to push beyond this middle ground it rests upon, as we move on from One into the new year. It was not coincidence that your match found itself placed between two wars on that card; it was a representation of your entire career here in the WCF. A lulling, catch-my-breath kind of man. The fans are drained by the intensity of this company; they need respite. They turn to you, Damian, and your farce of a conflict with Adrian Archer because they needed a break. Your match, your conflict, was just there, the commercial break in the ground-breaking special known as history. Teddy Blaze and Zombie McMorris, Zero Tolerance and #BeachKrew . . . people will talk about these matches in the months and years to come. If they even bother to mention you, Damian, it would sound something like this:
I’m glad it ended there.
Because it hit too close to home with the fans, your match with Adrian Archer. It represented the very thing, the very reason, why eighty thousand people were there in the first place: an escape. People leave their homes, their jobs, their lives to come and sit in the stands and watch our story being told. The story of gods and monsters, new life and untimely death. Its otherworldly, what we do, supernatural. We suspend belief in reality when that bell rings; anything is possible when we’re at our best. Like criminals in interrogation, and the fans are on the other side of the one way window. Many will look into the reflection and craft their story without ever thinking that they had, once, been on the other side themselves. A fan. A normal person.
But not you, Damian. You looked into the mirror and saw it differently. It was just another wall meant to be broken. Gone was the barrier between them and us, and all you could provide was a lackluster story drawing from this same theme of escape. A meta monstrosity that thankfully been patched up by the greater efforts of others.
People want to believe that this is a sport that isn’t for everyone. They want these characters that are larger than life who can instill in them belief. Belief that what these men and women are doing and change their normal lives. That’s why we have masks, and face paint, and killers, and lovers, and champions, and fighters. We do everything we can to separate ourselves. Then there you fucking go, Damian, standing tall at a measly five foot six, letting your normalness and your happenstance kill the mirage. The only reason you stand out from the people in the crowd is you get to enter through the back curtain and they don’t. An upstart nobody from who-fucking-cares-where who has to pick fights with a discarded veteran to try and boost a career that never should have happened in the first place.
The Book of Damian? A misleading phrase, if I ever heard one. No one would bother putting what you had to say to print, not if they possessed any sense. That book wouldn’t even be used by the homeless of New York as tinder in their barrels to keep warm at night. Wouldn’t even take a spark, catch fire; nothing about Damian Kaine ever could.”
A pause in the audio.
“Its people like you that make it difficult for men like me to make headway in the wrestling world. You oversaturate the WCF with your underwhelming presence until the fans don’t bother to distinguish new blood from the old names who can’t even make their blood boil anymore. Sebastian Knight? There’s nothing special about him; he doesn’t offer anything more to the table than the other half dozen, little white guys looking to make a name in this company. Fuck that and fuck you for making me have to stoop this low.
I have to compete against the man who thought cracks at a man’s wife is what the people wanted to hear? Bros tell that to each other while sitting around the television watching Sunday football. Want to bang Archer’s hot daughter? Didn’t realize I was standing around the fucking water cooler in the office. Didn’t realize I was still in grade school, where that school-yard, ‘yo mama,’ childish bullshit still made for entertainment.
You lack substance, Damian, something that would make you stand out from the masses in which you so luckily escaped from being an anonymous part of. You’re petty. You’re pitiful. You thought you had accomplished something by making it this far, by overcoming your bitter enemy on the biggest stage of them all. An inspiration for everyone who has been told they were strong enough or big enough to follow their dreams. You ever think, Damian, that maybe you were over your head? That maybe you weren’t ready to encourage people to jump off the deep end just yet?
That you weren’t ready, either?
If this hasn’t crossed your mind . . . well, give it time. Twenty Seventeen isn’t going to start has high for you as Sixteen ended. You’re about to step into the ring with three men who have only just gotten there start in the new WCF. Dagvald and Ethan are returning, and do you know what they’re going to do when they see you standing there, the only representation of company in this match?
They’re going to laugh.
Laugh, and then bury you beneath the weight of your own inferiority. And they won’t have to resort to such petty jabs that you’re so fond of either. Forget Ally. Forget your mama. Forget your fucking dog, even. They, and I, are going to hit you in the place that matters the most and place that you can offer no defense in: your wrestling ability.
You beat Adrian Archer.
Fucking Whoop.
You are the weakest link in our match, Damian, and we are going to exploit that to our advantage. We came to this match with the intention of making it our own, and we can’t have a wannabe upstart fan standing in our way. When the fight begins, and it will be a fight, we’re going to knock you silly. Because we can. And because you can’t stop us. And we won’t even be trying to hit you in the heart where it hurts the most.
It will have given out long before one of us lands the final, defining blow.”
The audio fades out.
Doctor Jeremy Rainer, summa cum laude from Harvard Medical, made his office and clinic in the Flatiron District of New York City in a Penthouse suite away from the prying eyes. An orthopedic specialist, he was one of two dozen men and women who had found employment within select community who took their ailments to high-rise suites instead of hospitals. One hundred thousand square feet of space that had been equipped with the cutting edge of medical technology, as well as a fully-stocked bar (bartender included) and a longue for entertaining those who had come in attendance with the infirm. He couldn’t even describe this as a dream he had; he had lacked the imagination to think that he’d ever work in an environment quite like this one.
Today, Dr. Rainer was poring over x-rays as his esteemed client of the hour, one Sebastian Knight, sat on the examination table with his right leg propped up for comfort. The swelling had subsided some, and blackened as the bruising sunk in into the deeper muscle tissue. Knight’s eyes were closed as he leaned back on his outstretched arms, but opened them when Rainer finally spoke up.
“Nothing’s broken, Mister Knight,” he said, looking up from the pictures in his hand. “And the ligaments, while heavily bruised, are still intact and functional. Quite fascinating, actually,” he continued as he set his folder aside, leaning forward on his elbows to look at Knight’s leg more closely from his stool. “It all came down to weight displacement, I think. Your—opponent, is that the word?—opponent’s weight was spread out across the entirety of his body when he landed across your knee. Fortunate, I’d say, that you prefer that technique over, say, dropping the opponent head-first across your leg.” Rainer whistles. “Now that would’ve been catastrophic.”
Sebastian Knight looks down at the doctor from his elevated perch as he rubbed his leg right above the knee. “Any advice?”
“Maybe not drop four hundred pound men on top of you anymore.”
“Not that kind of advice,” Knight replies, shaking his head. “For my match on New Years? I’ll be competing with three other men then, and I’m not sure I’ll have my full mobility back by then. I’d like to know how to prepare a defense against opponent’s on three sides while on a bad leg.”
Doctor Rainer bites his lip as he looks at Knight; he was ten years his senior, but there was still some hesitation in telling a man with that much wealth and connection something he wasn’t going to want to hear. “My recommendation, Mister Knight, is to not compete at all.” He pushes onward despite the flare of ire behind his client’s brown eyes. “Your knee has been agitated, but a lengthy rest is all it should take to heal fully. Maybe your body would be ready by next Sunday, but then again, your body has never been put under such pressure quite before like your colleagues have. I think it to be wiser to take that extra week off, and ease your body into these intense fights.”
“You’re saying that I should just quit?” Sebastian Knight asks, venom lacing his words. “Just not show up on New Years for my scheduled fight?”
“Well, no . . .” Rainer replied, stammering. “I was thinking you could ask your father to pull some strings again.”
Oh boy. Bad choice of words.
Sebastian Knight flew off the examination table, kicking the stool out from under Rainer with his good leg, sending the Doctor sprawling to the mat. His bad leg, which he had used for a brace, buckled a bit and he stumbled a bit. Rainer rolled onto his back, cowering beneath Knight who stepped back a moment, shaking his head. Rainer knew what was proper and what was not; clients did not attack doctors, even if they were clients like Sebastian Knight. That was the thing, though: he was Sebastian Knight. He wasn’t just another elite who lived in the skyline of Manhattan; they were too well known. Knight was a mystery who, prior to his step into the wrestling ring, had only been whispered and rumored about.
Rainer had read the tabloids, had partaken in the gossip brought through his doors by the aristocrats he catered to. He had known for a while at least who, what, Sebastian Knight was.
Uncontrollable.
Unstable.
Mad.
Rainer found his feet, but took no step towards his client. “That is my recommendation as your doctor, Mister Knight.”
The fog over Knight’s eyes seem to dissipate as he looks up at the scene before him. He stares at the upturned stool. Then at the pale Doctor only just recomposing himself. Then at his reflection across the way. Disheveled hair. The slightest hint of spittle running down the side of his mouth. Wide, brown eyes, that didn’t appear to be his own sometimes.
“My father,” Sebastian Knight says, between heavy breaths, “chooses not to step in the ring, Doctor, to fight his battles, so he does not have a say on whether or not I do.” A long pause. “No one does.”
The two men hold a stare for a moment, before Rainer looks down, nodding his head. “I meant no offense, sir.”
Knight exhales loudly as he stands straight up, shifting his weight to his good side. “I’ll be competing on New Years,” he said as he walked past Doctor Rainer towards the elevator. He steps inside and turns to face Rainer as the doors close.
“Best hope my knee holds out. I think we’d both to not see one another again.”
The door shuts, and the scene fades.
A second audio clips begins to play with a similar piece of piano music playing softly in the background.
“My father took me to a Maples Leaf game when I was twelve, one of the few times he and I were seen together in public. At this game, they were playing the National Anthems, same as usual. Started with the American anthem—we were playing the Hurricanes, I think—and then they followed it up with the Canadian anthem. The song fades away and people think its game time, but then, out of no where, the Bulgarian National Anthem begins to play. The people didn’t really know what to expect. Then one of the Maples Leaf players skates onto the rink and moves over to a section of the crowd; all of them were wearing his number on their jerseys and were singing along to the song. It was the rookie’s debut game and he had flown his whole family over from Europe to see him play. He requested his country’s national anthem to be played, so his family had a little piece of home with them while they watched their son play.
Of course, none of us knew this at the time; the fans hadn’t been informed of this touching gesture by the Montreal box office. But I think we all responded in the proper way. The song faded away and the whole stadium gave a round of applause for the young rookie and his family. We cheered not because we appreciated or even understood the gesture, but because it seemed right. We reacted because sometimes, whether we actually care or not, a little noise is necessary to make others feel better about themselves.
I cannot think of a more apt parallel to the great return of Dagvald Riddik to the WCF on the biggest stage of them all. The uninspired, inorganic response from a crowd to a man who is, well, uninspiring and inorganic.
I don’t want to deceive the fans, of course, into thinking that there are little men just out of sight of the cameras who were holding up cue cards to the fans, urging them to cheer or jeer at the proper times. This isn’t Hollywood. But to sit here and claim that the response that you thought you saw at One for the Neo-Nordicist was genuine . . . well, that I will not do.
Dagvald is not deserving enough of this illusion that we actually gave a shit about his return.
A lackluster crowd response, fans, with a few well-placed camera angles; that was the mark of the illustrious return of a king, a conqueror. Eighty-thousand fans were not pouring out the hate on this man. I doubt Eighty were. It was just theatrics, dear, naïve fans. Pull the curtains just right, flash the camera and the lights at just the right moment, and suddenly you’ve made something bigger than it actually is.
Why do you think Dag came in on a fucking throne?
I mean, who would dare to do something like that?”
A chuckle over the audio.
“Did that irk you at all, Dag, to see me do the same exact thing you did right before my match with Lester Parish? You even notice me on my throne as I was carried to the ring to fight The Forgotten One? Its coincidental, ironic really, that you and I boarded the same train of thought to New York. Not that I had actually looked to you for any sort of inspiration for my entrance at One.
I don’t fucking care about you enough to bother.
Still, its ironic is all. Myself, who rode a throne to make a point: that I can do whatever the hell I want in this company. I know I didn’t deserve that throne, at least not by the standards held be other people in this company. It was my debut match. I was low on the card. It was against Lester Parish of all people. That was not the sort of match kings fought in. But I did it anyway. I was bore to the ring to mock my opponents, to mock these fans, and to mock anyone else who thinks themselves a king.
I wanted to show everyone how easy it is to pretend that you’re a king.
And holy hell, you proved my point before I could even fucking make it, Dag. You pulled the whole thing before I could even make a statement. They, the fans, probably thought I was just mimicking you. ‘Oh fuck, first that Viking bitch and now this no-body?’ The Mimic just doing what he does best: riding the coattails of the men and women around him. But it was just happenstance, though, so don’t flatter yourself by assuming otherwise.
Even I know not to try and latch onto Dag, not if I want my career to go anywhere.
It would be like a chameleon camouflaging himself on a block of ice: he’d freeze to death before the real predators ever found him. Because that’s what you are, Dag. Cold-blooded, unable to fire yourself up or those around you. Ice in the veins, both yours and the fans who have to sit through your fucking national anthem and then your unstirring speech. A bore in a different sense, Dag.
Don’t believe me, bud? Check the twitter boards, Dag. Check to see the responses these fans and competitors have offered in the aftermath of your return."
Silence on the audio for a few long moments.
“I’m scrolling bud, I really am; you can’t see it, but I’m desperately trying to find any fuck given about your return. Alas.”
The piano music returns
“Seth Lerch didn’t even see the need to respond to your plea for an Internet title match against Teddy Blaze because even he, through his drunken-glazed eyes, does not see the worth in Dagvald Riddik. Seth fucking Lerch, the man who lets the lowest drivel of the wrestling community walk into his company every. Single. Week. Lets them walk in, lose the opening match in spectacular fashion, and then never book them again. Every week, Dag. You’d think an owner like that would turn and see something in you, the man who truly believes he’s deserving of a royal entrance at One. I mean, isn’t that deserving, at least, of some consideration for a match with Teddy Blaze.
I guess not.
You think you’re something more than you are, Dag, and that just isn’t going to cut it this week. The biggest night of the year has come and gone, where even the lowliest competitors are allowed to flaunt their regal arrogance in the midcard. New Year, Dag, and a New Years Bash match that is going to require you to actually step down from those turnbuckles you flaunted yourself from and actually back your words.
And I just don’t think you’re capable of that.
I could talk about how you’re rusty after not competing in six months. I could talk about how, even with a bad knee, I can still move circles around you in that ring. I could talk about how the chaotic nature of a four-way match just doesn’t bode well for any of us, least of all you. Damian is small and hard to grab, Ethan is quick and athletic, and I’ll knock your jaw off its hinges if you even try to grab onto me. You don’t have a single friend in that ring. Blah blah, generic comment, blah blah.
The fans went through the motions with you at One because that’s what you deserve. Boo, jeer, and watch you walk out.
I won’t be jumping through any fucking hoops come New Years, though.
Because unlike you, I stepped off my throne on that grand stage and I wrestled. I asked to treated like a King only to really show the people there where exactly I wore my crown. You, though, you didn’t ask to be on that card. You weren’t asked to be on the card. No, you did the bare minimum necessary to fulfill the return that no one even cared to see in the first place.
Don’t expect the same adherence to your perceived illusion of regality come Sunday.
I’d usurp you if I thought your throne was worth anything.
As it stands, I’ll simply expel you from the ring that no one wanted to see you back in in the first place.”
The audio fades.
New York City was alight in the night, alive and thriving as yet another Christmas night drew to a close. But not an end, though; at least, not for a select few in this city of millions.
Like a chessboard The Grand Ballroom in Manhattan was, black suits and white dresses, as the premiere men and women danced with feet and words across the ten thousand square foot space. The spirit of giving was in the air. The giving of their attention, their presence, in the largest gathering of wealth and power this city sees every single year. And Sebastian was there, an aptly named Knight circumnavigating it all as best he could. Two steps forward, one to the right or left. A piece in the game of life.
And his father, Efron Knight, was right there beside him, though a knight no longer. He was a King, and he belonged here. Only five foot nine and barely a hundred and seventy pounds. A giant among the biggest names in New York Skyline.
Sebastian hovered beside his father as he conversed with Mister and Missus Abernathy, listening quietly to their conversation on advertising fees in Times Square as he sipped at the glass of Champagne in his hand. Dom Perignon White Gold Jeroboam; a single bottle ran for forty-thousand dollars. His father had purchased two dozen for tonight. The taste was celestial.
“So what is it that you’re doing now, Sebastian?” Miss Abernathy asked over her second glass of the night. She had smooth cheeks despite nearing sixty years, flushed from the alcohol. She spoke to him like she knew him, like this wasn’t the first time she had met him. That anyone here known him before tonight.
Efron heard Abernathy’s question and grinned widely as he turned to her. His voice seemed to boom across the Ballroom, even though it barely escaped beyond the circle the four of them had formed. Sebastian never knew he was he was so capable like that. “Oh you should just see my boy, Dolores. He’s a wrestler, you see, a real life gladiator. David, even!” It was so smooth, so real, the way his father spoke. His ability to sound so genuine, yet still slip his mocking tone in so that Sebastian alone could here it. “Watched him slay a Goliath myself in Jersey last Sunday.”
Efron laughs as he claps Sebastian on the shoulder and, like parrots, the Abernathys started to sing a similar tune. Whatever was necessary to help them draw closer to the King. Check and mate.
His father expected him to say something, to speak out against him; that’s just how he was. He taunted his son, looking to toy with him over the choices he had made recently. He just loved to play his little tune and watch the people around him dance right along. But Sebastian wasn’t interested, not right now. He had only just stepped out of the shadows his father had raised him in. He wasn’t going to let petty comments trap him back beneath it.
So Sebastian sidestepped—two steps, then one—said the very thing he knew would turn the conversation away from him: gossip. “I saw that the President Elect just partook in a video with a wrestler himself.”
Mister Abernathy scoffed as he sipped at the Brandy in his hand, “Donald? A masochist, that one. Just loves having big, sweaty men grope him and—“
Sebastian looked away into the sea of black and white, tuning out the laughter and conversation that followed. Five hundred bodies moved to and fro across the ballroom floor, reflections of the circle he himself stood in. Stock Brokers, Real Estate gurus, politicians, all trapped in this web of empty conversation and emptier purpose. It was a droning sound, this party. All the same.
And then Sebastian saw a man, alone. His black hair was wild and sticking out in wild directions. His skin was pale and, though most of his body was shrouded in black, white scars were visible across his face and neck. And his eyes. Brown, cold eyes. Eyes like Sebastian stared at, late at night, in his own reflection. Him.
Sebastian blinked.
The man was gone.
“Please excuse me,” Sebastian said to his father as he broke away from the circle, moving quickly in the direction of the bar. It took a few moments to weave his way through the tapestry of mindless mingling, but he soon found himself a place near the center of it. “An Irish Coffee,” he said with a sigh, looking back over his shoulder for any sign of pursuit.
“Make that two,” a singsong voice said from his blind spot, beside him. The woman was fire that had been trapped in the figure of a woman. Orange hair fell across her bare shoulders and back, framing her heart-shaped face with a glow. And green eyes, like emeralds, that stared into his own. She was, simply put, beautiful. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, running her fingers across Knight’s hand on the bar top.
“An angel, actually,” Knight replied with a composure he didn’t think he possessed, reaching out to grab the two coffees from the bartender. He hands her one.
“A bold statement from someone who doesn’t even know my name.”
“Valerie Francesca. The fashion model.” Sebastian sips at his coffee, feeling its warmth spread through is body, strengthening him. “My father is fond of having your face on his advertisements.”
“And where would his son, the mysterious Sebastian Knight, like it?” she asked so innocently, running her finger through the whipped cream on top of her coffee and sticking it ever so softly into her mouth to lick off.
Before Sebastian can respond, his father calls from across the ballroom. “Sebastian, come over here. The New York Times wants a photo of us.”
Valerie steps up beside Sebastian, sticking her arm through his own. “Mustn’t keep father waiting.”
Sebastian grins. “No, we mustn’t.”
That photo of Sebastian Knight and his father was the first photo the two had been in together since Sebastian was five years old, and the only one that had ever been seen by the public.
The scene fades out, though viewers are subject to one final sound: that of low grunts and the rhythmic moaning of a feminine, singsong voice.
Abrupt reopening. Sebastian Knight sitting at the Grand Piano in the same apartment had been seen in an earlier video. He was shirtless and wore only a pair of black, silk pants. His back was away from the camera as he leaned over the instrument, running his fingers across the keys. The only other thing visible in the shot was Sebastian Knight’s phone, which sat on top of the piano, screen alight.
The music continues for a few more moments—the more attentive fans would note that it was of a similar composition that had been played in the earlier audio clips—until, finally, it fades away.
“I figured it best, Ethan, that I speak to you in person, instead of through a recorded audio clip.”
Sebastian reaches up, tapping the screen on his phone to turn the recording off he had been making.
“I’d hate for you to feel offended and run away for another six months like the petty child that you are.”
Sebastian withdraws his hands from the keys as he turns to face the camera. He looked tired, yes, but also alive in the way that only the camera seemed to ever pick up. He leans forward, his hand running absently across his leg; it was difficult to tell in the dim lighting the state of his injury.
“Just seemed the proper start, you see, to address this ‘disappearance on the road to revelation.’ This forty days in the desert, this tempted by the White Suit and the Shark, this child become a man become a beacon of truth and honesty and life bullshit that you have presented us. Its powerful, I’ll give you that. Really gets the blood pumping in mind’s hypothetical erection. Ethan King, the boy that never truly got the chance to the next best, the big name, in this business.
I say fuck that.”
Knight throws his hand in the air to emphasize his dismissal.
“Had the WCF folded after Mexico, I would concede my point. But it didn’t fold, though. It pulled through the strife and continued to function, continued to make its mark in the wrestling world, despite everything. Six months since then. Six months and six PPVS later, the WCF is still running strong.
Without you, Ethan.
So tell me just what sort of response I should have for your return, then? Here you stand, fresh off your sabbatical, your soul-seeking absence, expecting to stand in the same place that you stood in May. To be respected by the same men and women you considered yourself a part of before you left high and fucking dry. You expect recognition, adoration even, for things that have longed been forgotten about. You have done nothing since your return, and not even because you haven’t had the chance.
What, no fucking throne for this King?”
Sebastian pauses, leaning back.
“No, you sit back and float on past glories, prior accomplishments, that hold no merit any longer in this company. You won’t be facing Steve Orbit or Jeff Purse of the Polar fucking Phantasm this go round. Of course, you just laugh at that assertion. ‘No Pantheon? Going to be a fucking cakewalk.’ Kaine, Dagvald, and nobody Knight? ‘Bitch, I was the United States Champion. Undefeated, motherfucker.’ Expletive. Hashtag. Monotony.
Ethan, you’re a fucking cookie-cutter product of a group, a force that didn’t want you a part of it.
Where the fuck were you when #BeachKrew and Pantheon made their triumphal return? All hands were on deck at War XV. At least, the ones that mattered it seemed. The call to arms was made, and you didn’t even bother to show. And you think your friends cared?
Nope.
No, they went on with their tidal wave of domination across the WCF for the next three months. Ethan King’s absence was not a deterrent nor was it a priority. Why? Because Ethan King’s presence had never made a tangible difference, despite his belief otherwise. Hellimination rolls around, seven on seven in the big bad cage. Why not eight v. eight? Why not someone call old Ethan King up and have him show us a little bit of magic that made him so an important and vital role in this organzation.
Nope.
They let the child linger in his land of drugs and visions. They, without Ethan King, went onto win the Hellimination and secure championship title opportunities at One. Time for the sweep, to deck #BeachKrew and Pantheon out in the Gold. ‘What about Ethan King?’ someone asks. He’s won championships before. He could knock off Jason O’Neal, or Steven Singh, or somebody.”
Sebastian cuts off.
“You sensing a pattern, Ethan?”
He shakes his head.
“Course you’re not. You’re too busy jumping back on the old twitter train, trying to pretend nothing has changed.”
Sebastian looks left.
“Good Day, am I right, Johnny?”
Right.
“That was seasoned, won’t it, Wade?”
Back at the camera.
“#FuccboiGenecide, Jared.”
A pause.
“Buzzwords for the lowly worker bee who doesn’t have a place in the colony anymore.
You’re a child who has picked up a script to a world he wasn’t supposed to be in. Drop a few catchphrases and body a few fools and suddenly you’re somebody. That is, until the names you’ve so desperately mimicked up and leave. Gone. Ethan King is forced to decide then. Stay, and make a real name for himself outside the confines of the cage he so willingly built for himself? Or go, and forever be labeled as the kid that could’ve been but never was.
And Ethan King fucking went.”
Sebastian shrugs.
“But hey, I wasn’t here for any of this, now was I? Mexico is just a story to me, right? I mean to say, Ethan, that I have no hard feelings against you. When they said that you were returning to the WCF, I didn’t pitch a fit about your arrogance or your attitude. I didn’t whine that you had been let back in after walking out on this company. I simply asked a question.
Who the fuck is Ethan King?
Because, like it or not, you and I have something to prove come New Years night. The landscape has changed here in the WCF, washed away by the rising tide of the #BeachKrew and Pantheon, and you didn’t have a hand in any of it. And I know that you’ll be hungry because of that. Longing for a chance to prove yourself, even against a few nobodies like myself and our fellow opponents.
Oh, the fun we’ll have.”
There’s movement off-screen and the camera pans to the left. Valerie Francesca stood there beside the bamboo divider in nothing but Sebastian’s shirt. She looked like she had just woken up.
“Come back to bed, Sebastian,” she said, a wicked grin across her face. “I have another present to give you.”
“One more moment,” Sebastian replies, off-screen. “I’m almost done here.”
Valerie blows a kiss before disappearing back behind the wall. The camera pans back to Sebastian.
“Because like it or not, Ethan, you are I are the strongest competitors in this match, and we are closer tin ability and chance than you care to admit. Unless, by some fluke chance, it’ll be the two of us in that ring, fighting for the chance to move onto the second match. By that point, you’ll already think the match has been one. I’ll be there to prove you wrong. You’ll find that I’ll be a very difficult man to move at the end of the line.”
Sebastian grins, patting his leg.
“Bad knee, and all, you understand.”[/font
A pause, as Sebastian finds his feet.
“But beyond that, I have no desire to let you just walk back here and start where you left off. You had your chance and you tucked tail and ran. Had I been here then, I would’ve taken the opportunity, but I wasn’t then. Now, though, is a different story, and a story whose ending you’re not going to like. Jared Holmes has tasked you with making a statement with the three of us, but it will be my name that the fans will hear declared the victor that night, not yours. Or Dag’s. Or Damian’s.
After that, go back to little Jared for your next orders like the little dog that you are. I can already imagine what he’ll have to say to you.
‘Fuck off, boy.’”
The scene fades.
Sebastian Knight was but a star, one of many, hidden away in the shadow of their showdown, unable escape from beneath it.
Literally. Knight had the pants leg rolled up to the knee on his right side up to his knee, which had already swollen up to the size of a cantaloupe around the joint. He thought he had broken it, thought it the moment Lester Parish had come crashing down on it from the second turnbuckle.
Turns out the only thing that had been broken was the hope that The Forgotten One could go out on top. A statement had been made, one that almost made the pain worth it.
But goodness did his knee hurt. He had made it back to the locker rooms on adrenaline alone before collapsing on this short wooden bench, where he had sat for the last two hours of the show. He could’ve called for the doctor, but between Zombie McMorris’ neck injury and Lilith’s maiming, there wasn’t much attention to be spared for a swollen knee. Nor did Knight want it. After the night he had had, after proving to the fans that he could persevere through the most hard-hitting of fights, he wasn’t going to end it with a doctor’s appointment. These walls did more than speak the will the people. They also had ears, listening intently for any sign of weakness of those who walked within them.
Sebastian Knight did not wish to show any, so quietly he waited, letting the crowd speak and he, in silence, listened.
The din only built with each match that followed his, a collective reaction stemming from a multitude of matches that, alone, were ordinary but together spoke to the monumentality of One. A momentum washed away by blood-red waters that only beasts and monsters could feed off of, and everyone else could not stomach. Resumption, then hushed silence again, the Internet abuzz over the fate of their fallen king, and for the future of its usurped. A catching of breath with Archer and Kaine. A quicker beating of the heart with ZT and BK. And then, the finale.
With a gentle touch, Sebastian Knight gingerly rolled his pants leg down, wincing at the jolt of pain that ran through his body. He pushed himself to his feet, shifting his weight onto his left leg as he hobbled to the door, sports bag in hand. The crowd and the heavens above had reached its apex, but Knight chose not to linger. This sound, at least, would echo across the lands in the weeks to come. He wasn’t truly missing it, even if he was not present at its origin. He stepped through the door into the hallway.
Hank Brown, cameraman in tow, waited on the other side. He had been tasked in reaching out to the wrestlers as they left the arena for any final remarks as WCF pushed forward into the new year. Sebastian Knight did not escape his probing, even despite his limping gait and unenthused expression. “Sebastian Knight, how are you feeling after your impressive debut against the retiring Lester Parish tonight?”
“Stupendous,” Sebastian replies with biting sarcasm, pushing past the interviewer as he headed in the direction of the parking garage.
Hank Brown was not a man to be deterred as he follows alongside Knight, who wasn’t moving fast enough to escape him. “You played on this whole ‘the fans don’t know me’ theme building up to your debut. Don’t you think this would be a good opportunity to address them, now that you’ve given them the first glimpse of who Sebastian Knight actually is?”
Sebastian Knight stops short, and despite the strain, put his weight on his bad leg long enough to turn his whole body to face Hank Brown. To look down at him. “You think I can’t read between the lines, Hank?” he finally says, his pain adding venom to his words. “You’re offering me an opportunity to apologize for my behavior tonight, and to talk Lester Parish up as he prepares to leave the WCF. Talk about how thankful I am for the opportunity, and how I couldn’t have asked for a greater opportunity here at One?” Sebastian Knight points to the ceiling. “Just stop and listen, Hank.”
Knight cuts off, allowing the singular sound from above to sink through the concrete.
”Flash. Flash. Flash.”
“Until its my name they’re chanting, I won’t have anything good to say, Hank,” Sebastian continues. “Lester Parish did not pose a challenge to me in the slightest. Never once did I think I would lose to him last night. I’m glad he’s gone, and hope he never comes back.” A pause. “How’s that for a fucking sound bite?”
Sebastian Knight doesn’t even look back as he walks away, pushing through the doors that led to the parking garage. A black limousine awaited him, courtesy of his father, the chauffeur already awaiting him with door open and a bottle of Dom Perignon in the ice chest. Knight handed his bag off to the driver, who moved around to the trunk to stow it away while the wrestler looked around the parking lot.
Across the way stood Kowalski, WCF’s Head Architect who had been Knight’s main opponent prior to tonight; he stood with one of the truck drivers employed by the company. The two men lock eyes, tension hanging in the air. It was apparent that the architect was not a fan of Sebastian Knight, not after the way he had circumvented him to get what he wanted.
But to Sebastian Knight, there weren’t any hard feelings. With a smile, he waved at the architect with palm facing him, before twisting his hand so only one finger was extended. Again, no hard feelings; Sebastian Knight only did it because he could.
Stepping into the car, Sebastian Knight waited for the driver. He shut the door and, with a sigh of relief, settled back into the leather and relished the sweet silence the car offered. The scene faded out a moment later to a black screen.
*****
An audio clip is played over the black screen, opening with a soft, melodic composition on an unseen grand piano.
“Mediocrity is commonplace in our present day society, in betwixt excellence and perpetual failure. It is hard to pin down with any one stereotype, physical or otherwise, because we live in a world where the people are so numerous and so varied. Race, religion, status . . . they are but subsets to this greater blanket that is an average existence. Unimaginable, uncreative commonality. It can be found everywhere, even here in the Wrestling Championship Federation.
The catch in an organization like this one, though, is that its small enough for lines to be drawn, distinctions to be made. Excellence and Failure are embodied by individuals, not concepts or beliefs. Everything is just a little bit easier to define. Success. Failure. These can be judged through a myriad of ways—does he have a title or not, do the fans cheer for him or not, was his the shoulders the ones pinned to the mat or not . . . judgement that, in turn, makes way for these stereotypes, they predisposed assumptions to one’s character before they’re allowed to do otherwise. Face-painted trolls and Wrestling Gods in the flesh of mortal men. We all embody something here.
You, Damian Kaine, embody this very concept of mediocrity I speak of. A name, though recognizable, that lacks the drive or the ability to push beyond this middle ground it rests upon, as we move on from One into the new year. It was not coincidence that your match found itself placed between two wars on that card; it was a representation of your entire career here in the WCF. A lulling, catch-my-breath kind of man. The fans are drained by the intensity of this company; they need respite. They turn to you, Damian, and your farce of a conflict with Adrian Archer because they needed a break. Your match, your conflict, was just there, the commercial break in the ground-breaking special known as history. Teddy Blaze and Zombie McMorris, Zero Tolerance and #BeachKrew . . . people will talk about these matches in the months and years to come. If they even bother to mention you, Damian, it would sound something like this:
I’m glad it ended there.
Because it hit too close to home with the fans, your match with Adrian Archer. It represented the very thing, the very reason, why eighty thousand people were there in the first place: an escape. People leave their homes, their jobs, their lives to come and sit in the stands and watch our story being told. The story of gods and monsters, new life and untimely death. Its otherworldly, what we do, supernatural. We suspend belief in reality when that bell rings; anything is possible when we’re at our best. Like criminals in interrogation, and the fans are on the other side of the one way window. Many will look into the reflection and craft their story without ever thinking that they had, once, been on the other side themselves. A fan. A normal person.
But not you, Damian. You looked into the mirror and saw it differently. It was just another wall meant to be broken. Gone was the barrier between them and us, and all you could provide was a lackluster story drawing from this same theme of escape. A meta monstrosity that thankfully been patched up by the greater efforts of others.
People want to believe that this is a sport that isn’t for everyone. They want these characters that are larger than life who can instill in them belief. Belief that what these men and women are doing and change their normal lives. That’s why we have masks, and face paint, and killers, and lovers, and champions, and fighters. We do everything we can to separate ourselves. Then there you fucking go, Damian, standing tall at a measly five foot six, letting your normalness and your happenstance kill the mirage. The only reason you stand out from the people in the crowd is you get to enter through the back curtain and they don’t. An upstart nobody from who-fucking-cares-where who has to pick fights with a discarded veteran to try and boost a career that never should have happened in the first place.
The Book of Damian? A misleading phrase, if I ever heard one. No one would bother putting what you had to say to print, not if they possessed any sense. That book wouldn’t even be used by the homeless of New York as tinder in their barrels to keep warm at night. Wouldn’t even take a spark, catch fire; nothing about Damian Kaine ever could.”
A pause in the audio.
“Its people like you that make it difficult for men like me to make headway in the wrestling world. You oversaturate the WCF with your underwhelming presence until the fans don’t bother to distinguish new blood from the old names who can’t even make their blood boil anymore. Sebastian Knight? There’s nothing special about him; he doesn’t offer anything more to the table than the other half dozen, little white guys looking to make a name in this company. Fuck that and fuck you for making me have to stoop this low.
I have to compete against the man who thought cracks at a man’s wife is what the people wanted to hear? Bros tell that to each other while sitting around the television watching Sunday football. Want to bang Archer’s hot daughter? Didn’t realize I was standing around the fucking water cooler in the office. Didn’t realize I was still in grade school, where that school-yard, ‘yo mama,’ childish bullshit still made for entertainment.
You lack substance, Damian, something that would make you stand out from the masses in which you so luckily escaped from being an anonymous part of. You’re petty. You’re pitiful. You thought you had accomplished something by making it this far, by overcoming your bitter enemy on the biggest stage of them all. An inspiration for everyone who has been told they were strong enough or big enough to follow their dreams. You ever think, Damian, that maybe you were over your head? That maybe you weren’t ready to encourage people to jump off the deep end just yet?
That you weren’t ready, either?
If this hasn’t crossed your mind . . . well, give it time. Twenty Seventeen isn’t going to start has high for you as Sixteen ended. You’re about to step into the ring with three men who have only just gotten there start in the new WCF. Dagvald and Ethan are returning, and do you know what they’re going to do when they see you standing there, the only representation of company in this match?
They’re going to laugh.
Laugh, and then bury you beneath the weight of your own inferiority. And they won’t have to resort to such petty jabs that you’re so fond of either. Forget Ally. Forget your mama. Forget your fucking dog, even. They, and I, are going to hit you in the place that matters the most and place that you can offer no defense in: your wrestling ability.
You beat Adrian Archer.
Fucking Whoop.
You are the weakest link in our match, Damian, and we are going to exploit that to our advantage. We came to this match with the intention of making it our own, and we can’t have a wannabe upstart fan standing in our way. When the fight begins, and it will be a fight, we’re going to knock you silly. Because we can. And because you can’t stop us. And we won’t even be trying to hit you in the heart where it hurts the most.
It will have given out long before one of us lands the final, defining blow.”
The audio fades out.
*****
Doctor Jeremy Rainer, summa cum laude from Harvard Medical, made his office and clinic in the Flatiron District of New York City in a Penthouse suite away from the prying eyes. An orthopedic specialist, he was one of two dozen men and women who had found employment within select community who took their ailments to high-rise suites instead of hospitals. One hundred thousand square feet of space that had been equipped with the cutting edge of medical technology, as well as a fully-stocked bar (bartender included) and a longue for entertaining those who had come in attendance with the infirm. He couldn’t even describe this as a dream he had; he had lacked the imagination to think that he’d ever work in an environment quite like this one.
Today, Dr. Rainer was poring over x-rays as his esteemed client of the hour, one Sebastian Knight, sat on the examination table with his right leg propped up for comfort. The swelling had subsided some, and blackened as the bruising sunk in into the deeper muscle tissue. Knight’s eyes were closed as he leaned back on his outstretched arms, but opened them when Rainer finally spoke up.
“Nothing’s broken, Mister Knight,” he said, looking up from the pictures in his hand. “And the ligaments, while heavily bruised, are still intact and functional. Quite fascinating, actually,” he continued as he set his folder aside, leaning forward on his elbows to look at Knight’s leg more closely from his stool. “It all came down to weight displacement, I think. Your—opponent, is that the word?—opponent’s weight was spread out across the entirety of his body when he landed across your knee. Fortunate, I’d say, that you prefer that technique over, say, dropping the opponent head-first across your leg.” Rainer whistles. “Now that would’ve been catastrophic.”
Sebastian Knight looks down at the doctor from his elevated perch as he rubbed his leg right above the knee. “Any advice?”
“Maybe not drop four hundred pound men on top of you anymore.”
“Not that kind of advice,” Knight replies, shaking his head. “For my match on New Years? I’ll be competing with three other men then, and I’m not sure I’ll have my full mobility back by then. I’d like to know how to prepare a defense against opponent’s on three sides while on a bad leg.”
Doctor Rainer bites his lip as he looks at Knight; he was ten years his senior, but there was still some hesitation in telling a man with that much wealth and connection something he wasn’t going to want to hear. “My recommendation, Mister Knight, is to not compete at all.” He pushes onward despite the flare of ire behind his client’s brown eyes. “Your knee has been agitated, but a lengthy rest is all it should take to heal fully. Maybe your body would be ready by next Sunday, but then again, your body has never been put under such pressure quite before like your colleagues have. I think it to be wiser to take that extra week off, and ease your body into these intense fights.”
“You’re saying that I should just quit?” Sebastian Knight asks, venom lacing his words. “Just not show up on New Years for my scheduled fight?”
“Well, no . . .” Rainer replied, stammering. “I was thinking you could ask your father to pull some strings again.”
Oh boy. Bad choice of words.
Sebastian Knight flew off the examination table, kicking the stool out from under Rainer with his good leg, sending the Doctor sprawling to the mat. His bad leg, which he had used for a brace, buckled a bit and he stumbled a bit. Rainer rolled onto his back, cowering beneath Knight who stepped back a moment, shaking his head. Rainer knew what was proper and what was not; clients did not attack doctors, even if they were clients like Sebastian Knight. That was the thing, though: he was Sebastian Knight. He wasn’t just another elite who lived in the skyline of Manhattan; they were too well known. Knight was a mystery who, prior to his step into the wrestling ring, had only been whispered and rumored about.
Rainer had read the tabloids, had partaken in the gossip brought through his doors by the aristocrats he catered to. He had known for a while at least who, what, Sebastian Knight was.
Uncontrollable.
Unstable.
Mad.
Rainer found his feet, but took no step towards his client. “That is my recommendation as your doctor, Mister Knight.”
The fog over Knight’s eyes seem to dissipate as he looks up at the scene before him. He stares at the upturned stool. Then at the pale Doctor only just recomposing himself. Then at his reflection across the way. Disheveled hair. The slightest hint of spittle running down the side of his mouth. Wide, brown eyes, that didn’t appear to be his own sometimes.
“My father,” Sebastian Knight says, between heavy breaths, “chooses not to step in the ring, Doctor, to fight his battles, so he does not have a say on whether or not I do.” A long pause. “No one does.”
The two men hold a stare for a moment, before Rainer looks down, nodding his head. “I meant no offense, sir.”
Knight exhales loudly as he stands straight up, shifting his weight to his good side. “I’ll be competing on New Years,” he said as he walked past Doctor Rainer towards the elevator. He steps inside and turns to face Rainer as the doors close.
“Best hope my knee holds out. I think we’d both to not see one another again.”
The door shuts, and the scene fades.
*****
A second audio clips begins to play with a similar piece of piano music playing softly in the background.
“My father took me to a Maples Leaf game when I was twelve, one of the few times he and I were seen together in public. At this game, they were playing the National Anthems, same as usual. Started with the American anthem—we were playing the Hurricanes, I think—and then they followed it up with the Canadian anthem. The song fades away and people think its game time, but then, out of no where, the Bulgarian National Anthem begins to play. The people didn’t really know what to expect. Then one of the Maples Leaf players skates onto the rink and moves over to a section of the crowd; all of them were wearing his number on their jerseys and were singing along to the song. It was the rookie’s debut game and he had flown his whole family over from Europe to see him play. He requested his country’s national anthem to be played, so his family had a little piece of home with them while they watched their son play.
Of course, none of us knew this at the time; the fans hadn’t been informed of this touching gesture by the Montreal box office. But I think we all responded in the proper way. The song faded away and the whole stadium gave a round of applause for the young rookie and his family. We cheered not because we appreciated or even understood the gesture, but because it seemed right. We reacted because sometimes, whether we actually care or not, a little noise is necessary to make others feel better about themselves.
I cannot think of a more apt parallel to the great return of Dagvald Riddik to the WCF on the biggest stage of them all. The uninspired, inorganic response from a crowd to a man who is, well, uninspiring and inorganic.
I don’t want to deceive the fans, of course, into thinking that there are little men just out of sight of the cameras who were holding up cue cards to the fans, urging them to cheer or jeer at the proper times. This isn’t Hollywood. But to sit here and claim that the response that you thought you saw at One for the Neo-Nordicist was genuine . . . well, that I will not do.
Dagvald is not deserving enough of this illusion that we actually gave a shit about his return.
A lackluster crowd response, fans, with a few well-placed camera angles; that was the mark of the illustrious return of a king, a conqueror. Eighty-thousand fans were not pouring out the hate on this man. I doubt Eighty were. It was just theatrics, dear, naïve fans. Pull the curtains just right, flash the camera and the lights at just the right moment, and suddenly you’ve made something bigger than it actually is.
Why do you think Dag came in on a fucking throne?
I mean, who would dare to do something like that?”
A chuckle over the audio.
“Did that irk you at all, Dag, to see me do the same exact thing you did right before my match with Lester Parish? You even notice me on my throne as I was carried to the ring to fight The Forgotten One? Its coincidental, ironic really, that you and I boarded the same train of thought to New York. Not that I had actually looked to you for any sort of inspiration for my entrance at One.
I don’t fucking care about you enough to bother.
Still, its ironic is all. Myself, who rode a throne to make a point: that I can do whatever the hell I want in this company. I know I didn’t deserve that throne, at least not by the standards held be other people in this company. It was my debut match. I was low on the card. It was against Lester Parish of all people. That was not the sort of match kings fought in. But I did it anyway. I was bore to the ring to mock my opponents, to mock these fans, and to mock anyone else who thinks themselves a king.
I wanted to show everyone how easy it is to pretend that you’re a king.
And holy hell, you proved my point before I could even fucking make it, Dag. You pulled the whole thing before I could even make a statement. They, the fans, probably thought I was just mimicking you. ‘Oh fuck, first that Viking bitch and now this no-body?’ The Mimic just doing what he does best: riding the coattails of the men and women around him. But it was just happenstance, though, so don’t flatter yourself by assuming otherwise.
Even I know not to try and latch onto Dag, not if I want my career to go anywhere.
It would be like a chameleon camouflaging himself on a block of ice: he’d freeze to death before the real predators ever found him. Because that’s what you are, Dag. Cold-blooded, unable to fire yourself up or those around you. Ice in the veins, both yours and the fans who have to sit through your fucking national anthem and then your unstirring speech. A bore in a different sense, Dag.
Don’t believe me, bud? Check the twitter boards, Dag. Check to see the responses these fans and competitors have offered in the aftermath of your return."
Silence on the audio for a few long moments.
“I’m scrolling bud, I really am; you can’t see it, but I’m desperately trying to find any fuck given about your return. Alas.”
The piano music returns
“Seth Lerch didn’t even see the need to respond to your plea for an Internet title match against Teddy Blaze because even he, through his drunken-glazed eyes, does not see the worth in Dagvald Riddik. Seth fucking Lerch, the man who lets the lowest drivel of the wrestling community walk into his company every. Single. Week. Lets them walk in, lose the opening match in spectacular fashion, and then never book them again. Every week, Dag. You’d think an owner like that would turn and see something in you, the man who truly believes he’s deserving of a royal entrance at One. I mean, isn’t that deserving, at least, of some consideration for a match with Teddy Blaze.
I guess not.
You think you’re something more than you are, Dag, and that just isn’t going to cut it this week. The biggest night of the year has come and gone, where even the lowliest competitors are allowed to flaunt their regal arrogance in the midcard. New Year, Dag, and a New Years Bash match that is going to require you to actually step down from those turnbuckles you flaunted yourself from and actually back your words.
And I just don’t think you’re capable of that.
I could talk about how you’re rusty after not competing in six months. I could talk about how, even with a bad knee, I can still move circles around you in that ring. I could talk about how the chaotic nature of a four-way match just doesn’t bode well for any of us, least of all you. Damian is small and hard to grab, Ethan is quick and athletic, and I’ll knock your jaw off its hinges if you even try to grab onto me. You don’t have a single friend in that ring. Blah blah, generic comment, blah blah.
The fans went through the motions with you at One because that’s what you deserve. Boo, jeer, and watch you walk out.
I won’t be jumping through any fucking hoops come New Years, though.
Because unlike you, I stepped off my throne on that grand stage and I wrestled. I asked to treated like a King only to really show the people there where exactly I wore my crown. You, though, you didn’t ask to be on that card. You weren’t asked to be on the card. No, you did the bare minimum necessary to fulfill the return that no one even cared to see in the first place.
Don’t expect the same adherence to your perceived illusion of regality come Sunday.
I’d usurp you if I thought your throne was worth anything.
As it stands, I’ll simply expel you from the ring that no one wanted to see you back in in the first place.”
The audio fades.
*****
New York City was alight in the night, alive and thriving as yet another Christmas night drew to a close. But not an end, though; at least, not for a select few in this city of millions.
Like a chessboard The Grand Ballroom in Manhattan was, black suits and white dresses, as the premiere men and women danced with feet and words across the ten thousand square foot space. The spirit of giving was in the air. The giving of their attention, their presence, in the largest gathering of wealth and power this city sees every single year. And Sebastian was there, an aptly named Knight circumnavigating it all as best he could. Two steps forward, one to the right or left. A piece in the game of life.
And his father, Efron Knight, was right there beside him, though a knight no longer. He was a King, and he belonged here. Only five foot nine and barely a hundred and seventy pounds. A giant among the biggest names in New York Skyline.
Sebastian hovered beside his father as he conversed with Mister and Missus Abernathy, listening quietly to their conversation on advertising fees in Times Square as he sipped at the glass of Champagne in his hand. Dom Perignon White Gold Jeroboam; a single bottle ran for forty-thousand dollars. His father had purchased two dozen for tonight. The taste was celestial.
“So what is it that you’re doing now, Sebastian?” Miss Abernathy asked over her second glass of the night. She had smooth cheeks despite nearing sixty years, flushed from the alcohol. She spoke to him like she knew him, like this wasn’t the first time she had met him. That anyone here known him before tonight.
Efron heard Abernathy’s question and grinned widely as he turned to her. His voice seemed to boom across the Ballroom, even though it barely escaped beyond the circle the four of them had formed. Sebastian never knew he was he was so capable like that. “Oh you should just see my boy, Dolores. He’s a wrestler, you see, a real life gladiator. David, even!” It was so smooth, so real, the way his father spoke. His ability to sound so genuine, yet still slip his mocking tone in so that Sebastian alone could here it. “Watched him slay a Goliath myself in Jersey last Sunday.”
Efron laughs as he claps Sebastian on the shoulder and, like parrots, the Abernathys started to sing a similar tune. Whatever was necessary to help them draw closer to the King. Check and mate.
His father expected him to say something, to speak out against him; that’s just how he was. He taunted his son, looking to toy with him over the choices he had made recently. He just loved to play his little tune and watch the people around him dance right along. But Sebastian wasn’t interested, not right now. He had only just stepped out of the shadows his father had raised him in. He wasn’t going to let petty comments trap him back beneath it.
So Sebastian sidestepped—two steps, then one—said the very thing he knew would turn the conversation away from him: gossip. “I saw that the President Elect just partook in a video with a wrestler himself.”
Mister Abernathy scoffed as he sipped at the Brandy in his hand, “Donald? A masochist, that one. Just loves having big, sweaty men grope him and—“
Sebastian looked away into the sea of black and white, tuning out the laughter and conversation that followed. Five hundred bodies moved to and fro across the ballroom floor, reflections of the circle he himself stood in. Stock Brokers, Real Estate gurus, politicians, all trapped in this web of empty conversation and emptier purpose. It was a droning sound, this party. All the same.
And then Sebastian saw a man, alone. His black hair was wild and sticking out in wild directions. His skin was pale and, though most of his body was shrouded in black, white scars were visible across his face and neck. And his eyes. Brown, cold eyes. Eyes like Sebastian stared at, late at night, in his own reflection. Him.
Sebastian blinked.
The man was gone.
“Please excuse me,” Sebastian said to his father as he broke away from the circle, moving quickly in the direction of the bar. It took a few moments to weave his way through the tapestry of mindless mingling, but he soon found himself a place near the center of it. “An Irish Coffee,” he said with a sigh, looking back over his shoulder for any sign of pursuit.
“Make that two,” a singsong voice said from his blind spot, beside him. The woman was fire that had been trapped in the figure of a woman. Orange hair fell across her bare shoulders and back, framing her heart-shaped face with a glow. And green eyes, like emeralds, that stared into his own. She was, simply put, beautiful. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, running her fingers across Knight’s hand on the bar top.
“An angel, actually,” Knight replied with a composure he didn’t think he possessed, reaching out to grab the two coffees from the bartender. He hands her one.
“A bold statement from someone who doesn’t even know my name.”
“Valerie Francesca. The fashion model.” Sebastian sips at his coffee, feeling its warmth spread through is body, strengthening him. “My father is fond of having your face on his advertisements.”
“And where would his son, the mysterious Sebastian Knight, like it?” she asked so innocently, running her finger through the whipped cream on top of her coffee and sticking it ever so softly into her mouth to lick off.
Before Sebastian can respond, his father calls from across the ballroom. “Sebastian, come over here. The New York Times wants a photo of us.”
Valerie steps up beside Sebastian, sticking her arm through his own. “Mustn’t keep father waiting.”
Sebastian grins. “No, we mustn’t.”
That photo of Sebastian Knight and his father was the first photo the two had been in together since Sebastian was five years old, and the only one that had ever been seen by the public.
The scene fades out, though viewers are subject to one final sound: that of low grunts and the rhythmic moaning of a feminine, singsong voice.
*****
Abrupt reopening. Sebastian Knight sitting at the Grand Piano in the same apartment had been seen in an earlier video. He was shirtless and wore only a pair of black, silk pants. His back was away from the camera as he leaned over the instrument, running his fingers across the keys. The only other thing visible in the shot was Sebastian Knight’s phone, which sat on top of the piano, screen alight.
The music continues for a few more moments—the more attentive fans would note that it was of a similar composition that had been played in the earlier audio clips—until, finally, it fades away.
“I figured it best, Ethan, that I speak to you in person, instead of through a recorded audio clip.”
Sebastian reaches up, tapping the screen on his phone to turn the recording off he had been making.
“I’d hate for you to feel offended and run away for another six months like the petty child that you are.”
Sebastian withdraws his hands from the keys as he turns to face the camera. He looked tired, yes, but also alive in the way that only the camera seemed to ever pick up. He leans forward, his hand running absently across his leg; it was difficult to tell in the dim lighting the state of his injury.
“Just seemed the proper start, you see, to address this ‘disappearance on the road to revelation.’ This forty days in the desert, this tempted by the White Suit and the Shark, this child become a man become a beacon of truth and honesty and life bullshit that you have presented us. Its powerful, I’ll give you that. Really gets the blood pumping in mind’s hypothetical erection. Ethan King, the boy that never truly got the chance to the next best, the big name, in this business.
I say fuck that.”
Knight throws his hand in the air to emphasize his dismissal.
“Had the WCF folded after Mexico, I would concede my point. But it didn’t fold, though. It pulled through the strife and continued to function, continued to make its mark in the wrestling world, despite everything. Six months since then. Six months and six PPVS later, the WCF is still running strong.
Without you, Ethan.
So tell me just what sort of response I should have for your return, then? Here you stand, fresh off your sabbatical, your soul-seeking absence, expecting to stand in the same place that you stood in May. To be respected by the same men and women you considered yourself a part of before you left high and fucking dry. You expect recognition, adoration even, for things that have longed been forgotten about. You have done nothing since your return, and not even because you haven’t had the chance.
What, no fucking throne for this King?”
Sebastian pauses, leaning back.
“No, you sit back and float on past glories, prior accomplishments, that hold no merit any longer in this company. You won’t be facing Steve Orbit or Jeff Purse of the Polar fucking Phantasm this go round. Of course, you just laugh at that assertion. ‘No Pantheon? Going to be a fucking cakewalk.’ Kaine, Dagvald, and nobody Knight? ‘Bitch, I was the United States Champion. Undefeated, motherfucker.’ Expletive. Hashtag. Monotony.
Ethan, you’re a fucking cookie-cutter product of a group, a force that didn’t want you a part of it.
Where the fuck were you when #BeachKrew and Pantheon made their triumphal return? All hands were on deck at War XV. At least, the ones that mattered it seemed. The call to arms was made, and you didn’t even bother to show. And you think your friends cared?
Nope.
No, they went on with their tidal wave of domination across the WCF for the next three months. Ethan King’s absence was not a deterrent nor was it a priority. Why? Because Ethan King’s presence had never made a tangible difference, despite his belief otherwise. Hellimination rolls around, seven on seven in the big bad cage. Why not eight v. eight? Why not someone call old Ethan King up and have him show us a little bit of magic that made him so an important and vital role in this organzation.
Nope.
They let the child linger in his land of drugs and visions. They, without Ethan King, went onto win the Hellimination and secure championship title opportunities at One. Time for the sweep, to deck #BeachKrew and Pantheon out in the Gold. ‘What about Ethan King?’ someone asks. He’s won championships before. He could knock off Jason O’Neal, or Steven Singh, or somebody.”
Sebastian cuts off.
“You sensing a pattern, Ethan?”
He shakes his head.
“Course you’re not. You’re too busy jumping back on the old twitter train, trying to pretend nothing has changed.”
Sebastian looks left.
“Good Day, am I right, Johnny?”
Right.
“That was seasoned, won’t it, Wade?”
Back at the camera.
“#FuccboiGenecide, Jared.”
A pause.
“Buzzwords for the lowly worker bee who doesn’t have a place in the colony anymore.
You’re a child who has picked up a script to a world he wasn’t supposed to be in. Drop a few catchphrases and body a few fools and suddenly you’re somebody. That is, until the names you’ve so desperately mimicked up and leave. Gone. Ethan King is forced to decide then. Stay, and make a real name for himself outside the confines of the cage he so willingly built for himself? Or go, and forever be labeled as the kid that could’ve been but never was.
And Ethan King fucking went.”
Sebastian shrugs.
“But hey, I wasn’t here for any of this, now was I? Mexico is just a story to me, right? I mean to say, Ethan, that I have no hard feelings against you. When they said that you were returning to the WCF, I didn’t pitch a fit about your arrogance or your attitude. I didn’t whine that you had been let back in after walking out on this company. I simply asked a question.
Who the fuck is Ethan King?
Because, like it or not, you and I have something to prove come New Years night. The landscape has changed here in the WCF, washed away by the rising tide of the #BeachKrew and Pantheon, and you didn’t have a hand in any of it. And I know that you’ll be hungry because of that. Longing for a chance to prove yourself, even against a few nobodies like myself and our fellow opponents.
Oh, the fun we’ll have.”
There’s movement off-screen and the camera pans to the left. Valerie Francesca stood there beside the bamboo divider in nothing but Sebastian’s shirt. She looked like she had just woken up.
“Come back to bed, Sebastian,” she said, a wicked grin across her face. “I have another present to give you.”
“One more moment,” Sebastian replies, off-screen. “I’m almost done here.”
Valerie blows a kiss before disappearing back behind the wall. The camera pans back to Sebastian.
“Because like it or not, Ethan, you are I are the strongest competitors in this match, and we are closer tin ability and chance than you care to admit. Unless, by some fluke chance, it’ll be the two of us in that ring, fighting for the chance to move onto the second match. By that point, you’ll already think the match has been one. I’ll be there to prove you wrong. You’ll find that I’ll be a very difficult man to move at the end of the line.”
Sebastian grins, patting his leg.
“Bad knee, and all, you understand.”[/font
A pause, as Sebastian finds his feet.
“But beyond that, I have no desire to let you just walk back here and start where you left off. You had your chance and you tucked tail and ran. Had I been here then, I would’ve taken the opportunity, but I wasn’t then. Now, though, is a different story, and a story whose ending you’re not going to like. Jared Holmes has tasked you with making a statement with the three of us, but it will be my name that the fans will hear declared the victor that night, not yours. Or Dag’s. Or Damian’s.
After that, go back to little Jared for your next orders like the little dog that you are. I can already imagine what he’ll have to say to you.
‘Fuck off, boy.’”
The scene fades.
