Post by Kyle on Jan 15, 2017 15:00:58 GMT -5
The private dining room of Vetri on Spruce Street in downtown Philadelphia was a well-kept secret that was only over open to the men and women of the city who deserved it. This townhouse-style Italian restaurant was over one-hundred and fifty a person, and even they one was forced to eat within sight of the other patrons. This back room offered privacy that was hard to come by in this establishment, and privacy was what these three men desired. So they did what was within there means to acquire it: they paid extra.
So there they dined on Canadian Goose with Castelgmagno and Maccheroni as well Pimenton Chitarra with Octopus and Marcona Almond: Efron Knight, his son Sebastian, and Fred Shabel. It was okay if you didn’t know Fred. He was only the Vice Chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the current owners of the Wells Fargo Center here in Philadelphia. A bottle of Opus One Napa Valley 2011, a red wine priced at four thousand dollars, was sitting half-empty at the edge of the table, with a second waiting in the back in case it was necessary. The three men’s cheek was as flushed as the wine they drank.
Efron Knight laughed a hearty laugh. “I appreciate the dinner, Freddy boy. You went above and beyond what was necessary."
Fred Shabel clapped Efron on the shoulder with a meaty hand. “It’s the least I could do for you after the move you were able to pull. Three weeks in a row these wrestlers will be working in our arena. This bill just don’t compare to the money we’re making off the WCF.”
“It was nothing,” Efron replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That kid, Lerch, he just needed a little nudge to see the light. And the green, too.”
The men share a laugh as Sebastian sipped the wine. Rich, that was the word. Rich flavor. Rich men. A rich way of life. He had spent his whole life in it, in one way or another, but it was still a shock sometimes. The wheeling machinations of men with a common goal and an individualistic view of life itself. A multi-faced monster, complete with private dining and behind-the-door conversations between men who could’ve ghostwritten the biographies of the Mafioso.
And Sebastian Knight appreciated it all. It beat what his life would’ve been like otherwise.
“A toast, then,” Fred Shabel said with a flourish and a wine glass held high. “To Seth Lerch and his murderous band of gladiators.”
Efron held his glass high as well. “And to their newest champion, who sits with us at this very table.”
The two men stare at Sebastian across the table. Fred Shabel saw only money, Efron Knight a younger version of himself that he just loved to poke and tease at every turn. A mockery, he was, in their eyes of the life they choose to live. But hey, he made that choice too, and for that he had a role to play as well.
Sebastian Knight lifted his glass. “To me,” he said, and the three men drank.
The dessert was Pistachio Flan with Milk Chocolate Gelato. He barely even tasted it.
The scene fades to darkness.
“There was a woman who just adored my father.”
The scene opens to a simple scene of Sebastian Knight standing in front of a black WCF backdrop. He wore a suit, brown with olive green pinstripes, and his hair hung loose, free. His newly won WCF Television Championship belt rested diagonally across his left shoulder, one hand pressed lightly against the bottom strap to hold it there. He was pacing, eyes away from the camera.
“A former secretary of my father’s when he was still working primarily in Canada. We never known if she had had sexual relations with him while under his employment; he’d never own up to it, of course, given his aspirations for politics at the time. Needless to say, this woman was obsessed. She saw herself as important enough to have a place in my father’s life regardless of his expressed opinion of her. So one evening while my father and I were staying in our summer home in Quebec, she stopped by for a visit. Well, more like she broke in. She found my father and, in a fit of lust . . . well she urinated on him.”
Sebastian shook his head, chuckling to himself.
“Marking her territory, I guess. I thought it was hilarious. My father, not so much. He filed a lawsuit, right after he cleansed himself of the woman’s bodily fluids. Six months in prison, and a restraining order for her when she was released.”
Sebastian Knight looks at the camera.
“A deserving fate, I think, for a stalker.”
He resumes his pacing
“And I couldn’t help but think of this pitiful woman this week as I prepared for my first defense of my newly acquired Television title against a man who so blatantly claimed to be cut from the same cloth. Stalker. A proponent of a sickening and disappointing habit. Someone whose drive, whose obsession, revolves around someone else, someone who is always walking a step ahead of them. Stalkers are, simply put, followers, incapable of creating their own path, their own direction in the world, so they resort to riding the coattails of another person. It is one thing when one is dragged into this life because they are incapable of making a cognitive decision by their own power. That woman, Stalker, was not in her right mind. But you seem to be.
And that is the only good thing I can say about you.
Because it is not a compliment when I say you are of sound mind. Quite the opposite, actually. You purposefully chose to be known by this tasteless identity. I’d even go further and say you settled for this name. There are countless other one-worded titles you could’ve chosen to try and sum yourself up with.
Superior.
Finisher.
Winner.
But you decided on Stalker instead, because you were aware of your own shortcomings, your own limitations. Best not aspire to be more than the very thing you knew you could ever be.
A deplorable creature who will only ever thrive in the shadows of another.”
Sebastian stops again, and taps the title belt resting on his shoulder.
“I saw your little display last week with Rocco. Break into his room while he was sleeping, put your hands on him when he was unaware. It was an attempt to assert dominance over him, to suggest to those watching that there are no boundaries with you. You’ll find the smallest crevices of your opponent’s life and take shelter, waiting for the proper moment for them to let their guard down and then you'd, what, strike?
Pathetic
That’s what you should’ve called yourself.
There was the reason that I walked out of the match last week with this title, Stalker, and not your new host Rocco. I won because I’m not the kind of person to allow parasites like to distract me from the ultimate goal. Rocco was flustered, Stalker, after your display earlier that night. But me? I was collected and motivated, and would not allow anything to affect me, directly or otherwise. And then I overcame. I won, and I was handed my Television title. I saw you, Stalker, as you rushed the ring to continue your attack on Rocco. And you want to know what I did?
I turned my back and walked through the curtain.
Because I didn’t give a fuck about you had to say.”
Sebastian nods.
“You won a match against Udy and Skywalker. You beat a werewolf and a guy so insignificant that he very well could’ve had a lightsaber on hand for all that I cared to see. And here I thought I lived in the real world, not some sci-fi fucking fantasy.
Apparently not.
Because reality would not allow someone like you, Stalker, to stand there and waste our precious time regaling us about the domination that you’ve wrought in this company. Yeah, right. All you did last week was whine. Why did Rocco get a title opportunity after two weeks, and I’ve been here a month? Why, oh why, oh depressing, unfair why?
Its because you spend so much time focusing on the backs of other men that you’re unaware of the same opportunities that you can have for yourself.
Take your eyes, Stalker, off the accomplishments and happenings of others and you’ll see the very chances available to you. If you did not fixate yourself on nobodies—and let me tell, Ryan fucking Callaghan was nothing but—you’d find yourself doing more in this company than fighting other nobodies. This match you have with me, Stalker, is but a taste of what could be yours should you choose to divert your attention away from men who are walking ahead of you.
But that is all it will be Stalker: A taste.”
Sebastian looks down at the title on his shoulder.
“Because, at the end of the night, I will beat you. There’s a reason that you focused so much of your efforts on Rocco last week, and not me. Why, people asked, would you attack the man who just lost the match when the champion is there, standing right beside him? Why not make a statement on Sebastian Knight?
Well, Stalker, it seems you possess a little sense.
Had you attacked me, Stalker, I would’ve broken you. Simple as that. There’s a reason that very little was known about me before I joined this company. Oh sure, my father didn’t like me in the public eye very much, but I didn’t either. I had seen what happens when you open yourself up to the world.
The crazies come a knocking.
You get pissed on and pissed off, Stalker, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now. I’m not about to allow someone like you to attach yourself to me like a tick, to try and survive on my efforts. Nope, not going to happen. I have not come to the WCF looking for followers of any kind, and I’m not looking to carry another person’s name alongside my own in the capacity you’re looking for.
They go in the loss column, and no where else.”
Sebastian shrugs.
“And while its not the most impressive or awe-inspiring name, I’m going to put yours there as well, Stalker. Another man would play along with you, build this up into something that people will talk about in the weeks and months to come. But this is about the Television Title, bud, and there is only one name that ever really matters in this conversation.
The man holding the belt.
Everyone else is just meant to be a part of an ever-growing list. Consider yourself lucky, Stalker; you get to be the first on my own.
For once, everyone else will be following you for a change.”
Sebastian smiles.
“I’ll see you Sunday.”
Fade to darkness
So there they dined on Canadian Goose with Castelgmagno and Maccheroni as well Pimenton Chitarra with Octopus and Marcona Almond: Efron Knight, his son Sebastian, and Fred Shabel. It was okay if you didn’t know Fred. He was only the Vice Chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the current owners of the Wells Fargo Center here in Philadelphia. A bottle of Opus One Napa Valley 2011, a red wine priced at four thousand dollars, was sitting half-empty at the edge of the table, with a second waiting in the back in case it was necessary. The three men’s cheek was as flushed as the wine they drank.
Efron Knight laughed a hearty laugh. “I appreciate the dinner, Freddy boy. You went above and beyond what was necessary."
Fred Shabel clapped Efron on the shoulder with a meaty hand. “It’s the least I could do for you after the move you were able to pull. Three weeks in a row these wrestlers will be working in our arena. This bill just don’t compare to the money we’re making off the WCF.”
“It was nothing,” Efron replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That kid, Lerch, he just needed a little nudge to see the light. And the green, too.”
The men share a laugh as Sebastian sipped the wine. Rich, that was the word. Rich flavor. Rich men. A rich way of life. He had spent his whole life in it, in one way or another, but it was still a shock sometimes. The wheeling machinations of men with a common goal and an individualistic view of life itself. A multi-faced monster, complete with private dining and behind-the-door conversations between men who could’ve ghostwritten the biographies of the Mafioso.
And Sebastian Knight appreciated it all. It beat what his life would’ve been like otherwise.
“A toast, then,” Fred Shabel said with a flourish and a wine glass held high. “To Seth Lerch and his murderous band of gladiators.”
Efron held his glass high as well. “And to their newest champion, who sits with us at this very table.”
The two men stare at Sebastian across the table. Fred Shabel saw only money, Efron Knight a younger version of himself that he just loved to poke and tease at every turn. A mockery, he was, in their eyes of the life they choose to live. But hey, he made that choice too, and for that he had a role to play as well.
Sebastian Knight lifted his glass. “To me,” he said, and the three men drank.
The dessert was Pistachio Flan with Milk Chocolate Gelato. He barely even tasted it.
The scene fades to darkness.
*****
“There was a woman who just adored my father.”
The scene opens to a simple scene of Sebastian Knight standing in front of a black WCF backdrop. He wore a suit, brown with olive green pinstripes, and his hair hung loose, free. His newly won WCF Television Championship belt rested diagonally across his left shoulder, one hand pressed lightly against the bottom strap to hold it there. He was pacing, eyes away from the camera.
“A former secretary of my father’s when he was still working primarily in Canada. We never known if she had had sexual relations with him while under his employment; he’d never own up to it, of course, given his aspirations for politics at the time. Needless to say, this woman was obsessed. She saw herself as important enough to have a place in my father’s life regardless of his expressed opinion of her. So one evening while my father and I were staying in our summer home in Quebec, she stopped by for a visit. Well, more like she broke in. She found my father and, in a fit of lust . . . well she urinated on him.”
Sebastian shook his head, chuckling to himself.
“Marking her territory, I guess. I thought it was hilarious. My father, not so much. He filed a lawsuit, right after he cleansed himself of the woman’s bodily fluids. Six months in prison, and a restraining order for her when she was released.”
Sebastian Knight looks at the camera.
“A deserving fate, I think, for a stalker.”
He resumes his pacing
“And I couldn’t help but think of this pitiful woman this week as I prepared for my first defense of my newly acquired Television title against a man who so blatantly claimed to be cut from the same cloth. Stalker. A proponent of a sickening and disappointing habit. Someone whose drive, whose obsession, revolves around someone else, someone who is always walking a step ahead of them. Stalkers are, simply put, followers, incapable of creating their own path, their own direction in the world, so they resort to riding the coattails of another person. It is one thing when one is dragged into this life because they are incapable of making a cognitive decision by their own power. That woman, Stalker, was not in her right mind. But you seem to be.
And that is the only good thing I can say about you.
Because it is not a compliment when I say you are of sound mind. Quite the opposite, actually. You purposefully chose to be known by this tasteless identity. I’d even go further and say you settled for this name. There are countless other one-worded titles you could’ve chosen to try and sum yourself up with.
Superior.
Finisher.
Winner.
But you decided on Stalker instead, because you were aware of your own shortcomings, your own limitations. Best not aspire to be more than the very thing you knew you could ever be.
A deplorable creature who will only ever thrive in the shadows of another.”
Sebastian stops again, and taps the title belt resting on his shoulder.
“I saw your little display last week with Rocco. Break into his room while he was sleeping, put your hands on him when he was unaware. It was an attempt to assert dominance over him, to suggest to those watching that there are no boundaries with you. You’ll find the smallest crevices of your opponent’s life and take shelter, waiting for the proper moment for them to let their guard down and then you'd, what, strike?
Pathetic
That’s what you should’ve called yourself.
There was the reason that I walked out of the match last week with this title, Stalker, and not your new host Rocco. I won because I’m not the kind of person to allow parasites like to distract me from the ultimate goal. Rocco was flustered, Stalker, after your display earlier that night. But me? I was collected and motivated, and would not allow anything to affect me, directly or otherwise. And then I overcame. I won, and I was handed my Television title. I saw you, Stalker, as you rushed the ring to continue your attack on Rocco. And you want to know what I did?
I turned my back and walked through the curtain.
Because I didn’t give a fuck about you had to say.”
Sebastian nods.
“You won a match against Udy and Skywalker. You beat a werewolf and a guy so insignificant that he very well could’ve had a lightsaber on hand for all that I cared to see. And here I thought I lived in the real world, not some sci-fi fucking fantasy.
Apparently not.
Because reality would not allow someone like you, Stalker, to stand there and waste our precious time regaling us about the domination that you’ve wrought in this company. Yeah, right. All you did last week was whine. Why did Rocco get a title opportunity after two weeks, and I’ve been here a month? Why, oh why, oh depressing, unfair why?
Its because you spend so much time focusing on the backs of other men that you’re unaware of the same opportunities that you can have for yourself.
Take your eyes, Stalker, off the accomplishments and happenings of others and you’ll see the very chances available to you. If you did not fixate yourself on nobodies—and let me tell, Ryan fucking Callaghan was nothing but—you’d find yourself doing more in this company than fighting other nobodies. This match you have with me, Stalker, is but a taste of what could be yours should you choose to divert your attention away from men who are walking ahead of you.
But that is all it will be Stalker: A taste.”
Sebastian looks down at the title on his shoulder.
“Because, at the end of the night, I will beat you. There’s a reason that you focused so much of your efforts on Rocco last week, and not me. Why, people asked, would you attack the man who just lost the match when the champion is there, standing right beside him? Why not make a statement on Sebastian Knight?
Well, Stalker, it seems you possess a little sense.
Had you attacked me, Stalker, I would’ve broken you. Simple as that. There’s a reason that very little was known about me before I joined this company. Oh sure, my father didn’t like me in the public eye very much, but I didn’t either. I had seen what happens when you open yourself up to the world.
The crazies come a knocking.
You get pissed on and pissed off, Stalker, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now. I’m not about to allow someone like you to attach yourself to me like a tick, to try and survive on my efforts. Nope, not going to happen. I have not come to the WCF looking for followers of any kind, and I’m not looking to carry another person’s name alongside my own in the capacity you’re looking for.
They go in the loss column, and no where else.”
Sebastian shrugs.
“And while its not the most impressive or awe-inspiring name, I’m going to put yours there as well, Stalker. Another man would play along with you, build this up into something that people will talk about in the weeks and months to come. But this is about the Television Title, bud, and there is only one name that ever really matters in this conversation.
The man holding the belt.
Everyone else is just meant to be a part of an ever-growing list. Consider yourself lucky, Stalker; you get to be the first on my own.
For once, everyone else will be following you for a change.”
Sebastian smiles.
“I’ll see you Sunday.”
Fade to darkness
