Post by Benjamin Atreyu on Feb 16, 2014 17:41:09 GMT -5
This was his exodus. The punching bag careened against his knuckles as he imagined Jayson Price’s ribs breaking on impact. The room was quiet, cold, and empty save for him and the equipment. The dense thuds coming from the bag could barely fill the room, but they filled Benjamin’s ears, each one dying to just be replaced with another. This was his Exodus. He escaped from the world this way, he escaped from his obligations this way, he escaped from his team this way, he escaped from his distractions this way. There was only him and the bag. The universe shrunk for this moment; all of existence a simple exercise room. His head filled with images of the ring; the bright lights, the screaming crowd, the intense exhaustion, but at the same time none of these; it all focused itself down to a simple image of him driving his jabs deep into the body of Jayson Price. Though, it wasn’t really Jayson in his imagination, was it? He was simply the surrogate, the vague image, in place of all the other people he could put in that same spot. In his mind, Jayson’s face lacked enough features that it could be anyone. This was his exodus. He was absorbed by the moment. His complete attention was driven into this one act, and he felt like he could do it – punching the bag with reckless abandon – for the rest of his living days. For others, meditation came in the form of deep breathing and solemn chanting, but for him, mediation came in the form of concentrated violence.
Through a regular day, there wouldn’t a single moment where he wasn’t splitting his mind into several different priorities. While in a team meeting, his mind would be on his match; while at a press conference, he would be thinking about his training; while he was sitting at home, catching up on bills, he would be thinking about his travel schedule. However, here, in this room, he thought of nothing. At times he found he wasn’t thinking at all, his body taking over the act of training as he head was empty of thought; it was nirvana. He could just stand there, driving his fist deep into the bag, imagining it was his opponent. A line from a song he once heard popped into his head, ”Heaven is a special place in hell where you watch the people you hate get hurt.” He couldn’t agree more. He smirked, his arms reeling back into position after every strike, this was his heaven.
This is everything. There is nothing else. My existence boils down to this. Keep punching. Keep jabbing. His thoughts rang out without an echo in his head, they were clear, pristine, they were powerful. One, two, one, two. Keep it up. They have nothing on you. They can’t stop you. No one can stop you. You are God Given Greatness. You don’t just call yourself that. You make it mean something. You make it something to be feared. They see your name, and they have second thoughts. This is where he found his inspiration, in the dead of night, when nothing could possibly interrupt him. You don’t have any second thoughts, do you? Of course not. You’re Benjamin fucking Atreyu! You win championships. You end careers. You are a future hall-of-famer. They just can’t compete. He found his rhythm, he was immersed in it, he could almost hear an orchestra playing as the soundtrack, a raging-bull-ish montage of slow motion punches, just short of being a ballet of sorts. You are the complete package. You have strength. You have intelligence. You have Strategy. You have the contacts. Fuck them all. Beat the best, eat the rest. Am I right? If there was perfection, this was it.
RING! RING! Fuck! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! Benjamin had forgotten to turn off his phone. It was gone, his concentration, his bliss, his focus, his rhythm; it was all gone. He lowered his arms in defeat. There was no way to get it back, not now anyways. He walked over to the phone. For a moment more he let it ring. Then, without checking who was calling, he picked up his phone, letting it ring in his hands a few more times, then he chucked it against the wall as hard as he could. The phone shattered. Pieces flew through the air, like an explosion of computer chips, plastic, and batteries; the pieces scattered themselves across the room in small shards.
Despite getting his revenge on the little machine, he did not feel relief. There was no satisfaction in this act. He would end up having to get a new one. That was the curse of the technological age; those living without went without, while those living with were granted access to the world. You had to be connected in every sense of the word. You had to have your youtube account connected to your googleplus account which was connected to your tumblr account which was on your phone. The world of technology was a spider web that everyone was trapped in, and inspired a mix of annoyance and fear in Benjamin. He felt as if he was running a losing race in the world of online accessibility. He didn’t get it, he didn’t understand it. You needed the newest smart phone, a credit card, an account on every website, or else you were losing. In the end it was just a giant business of distraction of saturated convenience. You were never unreachable. There used to be a time when people had to wait for you to get home so they could call you. Hell, there used to be a time where people had to wait to see you face to face, or months to get a letter to you, before they could converse with you, but now everything is instant. It’s all there, always, it never stops. We all mainline the world around us, a live streaming of information right from the screen into our minds. People become infuriated if anything takes so much as a second longer than it has to. People scream at their computers when it takes a HALF-A-MINUTE to connect to something. This was the world he was living in, and he hated it. He didn’t care who was calling him. In fact, he hoped they were pissed that he didn’t answer, he was tired of this, he was tired of it being a mortal sin to not have your phone on at all times.
He grabbed his water bottle and drank the life liquid. His mind was still burning with frustration, but he tried not to dwell on it. He could get his focus backing, maybe not now, but at some point. He looked at the clock, 1:23 AM, he had been training for about a half-an hour. Pathetic. He rolled his eyes, it was going to be a long night. He walked over to the television set and turned it on; Sochi Olympics coverage. They were replaying the interview with the woman who got bronze in the moguls. Rough, it was her last Olympics appearance and fell just short of a gold medal due to a small mistake and you could tell by the way that she was holding in tears that it broke her heart. She wasn’t only heartbroken because she got bronze after having got gold, she was heartbroken because her best years were behind her. She had reached her peak at such a young age and now it was all going downhill. For years, that sport was her life, that was her fire, that was her existence, but as she was handed that bronze medal, she had to accept that she was going to have to leave it all behind. Benjamin turned the television off, he couldn’t watch it anymore. He often wondered what it would be like to be on the decline and the thought of it did not please him. As he had known for quite some time, wrestling was his life, and he had tried several times to leave it, but was pulled back every time, forced to continue. If there was ever a day where he was forced to stop competing, or continued to compete to the point where he was a pathetic shadow of himself just trying to hold onto glory, like so many other wrestlers around him, he hoped someone would put a bullet in his head and end his suffering.
It brought him back to his session with his therapist a week ago. He could even smell the cheap candles his therapist often left burning because he believed the scent gave a ‘relaxing aroma’ that allowed Benjamin to feel ‘at peace’ so he could ‘be open’ or whatever stupid bullshit he spewed, most of the time Benjamin didn’t even pay attention. In fact, he wasn’t sure why he continued to go. It was a contact given to him by Blake Updegraff IV from when they were still friends, but now Blake was long gone, off in some distant fed partnering with some wrestler that he didn’t know, nor cared to know. So, why did he keep going? He should have stopped right after he attacked Blake on that fateful night so many months ago. It was supposed to distance himself with everything that tied him to his past, but he kept going. Benjamin rationalized it that he needed a neutral figure to vent to every once in a while, and transferring to a different one would just be a waste of time anyways, but not even he was completely convinced by this reasoning. No matter the reason, he had been there that previous week and now he was reliving it after rewatching that interview at the Olympics.
“You ever think about the plight of a superhero?” Benjamin had asked, laying back in the cliché chair/couch thing that Benjamin didn’t really know the name for.
“How do you mean, Mr. Atreyu?” The therapist responded, an eyebrow cocked as if the question had sparked some sort of deep down curiosity, as if he was about to stumble onto some part of Benjamin’s mind he had been shut out of for quite some time, and it very well might have been the case. Benjamin didn’t like opening up to his therapist about his deep thoughts. He came in, vented about work, complained about constantly being short changed by the company he worked for, and then left. However, this time, there was something on his mind he felt he had to share.
“Superman will never win, Batman will never win, its all fruitless in the end,” Benjamin sighed.
“Is this something that I should be worried about? I mean, would you care to explain?”
“Its not like I’m going to shoot myself or anything, but if you think about the superhero, what is his purpose?”
“To save people, I would presume.”
“Right, but what is the end result? Sure, they can save millions of people while they are alive, but they aren’t looking for numbers; they are looking for a solution to the problem, but with the way they handle it all, they’ll be able to handle a good majority of it, but there will always be that small few that manage to get around them. That small percentage represents the failure of the superhero, and even if they get all the bad guys, more will still spring up eventually.”
“Well, then I guess it is the prerogative of the superhero to keep fighting.”
“That would be the only solution the hero could have; either keep fighting or give up, but what about when they die? Superman isn’t going to be on his death bed thinking ‘oh, well, at least I saved a shitload of people,’ no, of course not, he is going to be thinking about all the people he won’t be able to save when he dies. In the end, he loses, no matter how much work he puts into it. His only REAL solution, aside from giving up and turn away from the world, is to destroy it so no one will be able to hurt it anymore. He would have to kill EVERYONE in order to save them.”
“May I ask what has sparked this line of thought?”
“I had this dream. I was flying around as this superhero.”
“Do you fancy yourself as a superhero, Mr. Atreyu?”
“I used to. I used to think that I had the potential to change this world. I was crazy enough to believe that it was going to be me, a professional wrestler whom no one likes.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, the dream was the start to the tearing down of that idea. See, like I was saying, I as flying around as this superhero. I don’t know how I knew was a superhero, I just felt it. I was the typical flying position; arms stretched forward, straight as a broom, swerving around buildings in sort of metropolis-esc city. I remember thinking that everyone looked pretty small from up there, like I was a god hovering over the head of ants, tiny insignificant ants. They all seemed so hopeless, so helpless, so without meaning as they wandered aimless through the streets to their respective jobs. I remember feeling sorry for them. That was their whole existence, and here I was, flying overhead, my magnificence radiating from me. I remember also thinking that my awe-inspiring abilities must have made them feel weak, like they resented me because I was something beyond them.”
“Seems fairly typical; you’ve come in here a few times talking about how the world envies you and then shows that envy by lashing out.”
“Well, that’s not the thing that got me. I felt mere apathy to their anger, because I knew that no matter how much they hated me, I was the only one who could save them, even if they didn’t see that. Now this is the part where is starts changing up a bit. I heard a scream off in the distance so I raced to its source and found a woman in peril.”
“How was she in peril? Was she falling out of high up window? Was she being attacked by some monster?”
“No, it was this sort of mad scientist. It was all super cheesy, like something out of a B-movie. It seemed easy enough, so I struck a stupid pose, did some sort of long-winded superhero speech, or some garbage like that. The next thing I know is that he pulls out what looks like a laser gun, I shit you not. He is pointing a goddamn laser at me, and before I can do anything to stop it, he fires the thing at me. I’m sent flying backwards, through the wall, and down in the city street. I was sitting in a crater made by my body and I went to get up, but I couldn’t move. I tried as hard as I could, but my limbs wouldn’t budge. I fucking hate that feeling, I wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t let me. My whole body was stiff, besides my neck for some reason. So I look down and see that my body is decaying. Its falling the fuck apart! I’m freaking out and I look to see if anyone would help me, but they all just walk over me, they don’t give two shits that the only superhero in the city is slowly crumbling away beneath their feet.”
“I imagine that can be very distressing.”
“That’s not even the half of it. I look up into the sky and I see this little blue streak running across it. I’m not sure what it is at first, but I try and find the source of the streak and I find out it’s another super hero. He is bigger than me, he looks stronger than me, and he is flying faster than I ever could. He swoops into the building I was just shot out of, the thing explodes and the next thing I see is a blue streak darting out of one of the windows with the damsel in distress in his arms, embracing him like he was the lover of her life. Then I look down at my body and the decaying mess that it is and people are still just walking over it, some even spitting on it as its passing by. It all starts fading to black, my time as a superhero is over, they don’t need me…”
“…then?...”
“Then I wake up, at least this sort of space between awake and not awake, a sort of extreme daze, but my body still won’t move.”
“Sleep paralysis?”
“Yeah…Fucking shitty sleep ending with a shitty way to wake up. After that, though, that’s when I started realizing there is no glory in working against the people, and I wasn’t about to give into them. That’s when I realized that if they will not work with me, I am going to start using their weakness to destroy them.”
“That sort of ‘superman final solution’ that you mentioned beforehand? Destroy the world before it can destroy itself?”
“Something of the sort, I guess. I realized that there is no winning as a superhero.”
“Mr. Atreyu, I think this has less to do with being a superhero and more to do with your fears of having to let go at some point.”
“What?”
“Hear me out. I’m not an expert in dreams, but to me, your superhero status has less to do with you saving people and more to do with your view of your own abilities. Its very obvious you have a very high opinion of yourself, I’m not judging you, and this dream, with the people’s envy and such, might start out reflecting this. You see the people as lesser beings, but when you come to save someone, you are suddenly left helpless as you watch yourself decay. I think you are worried about the day you might find yourself on the downward slope, and being forced to witness as a younger talent not only beats you, but becomes better than you ever were. You are scared that you will leave having changed nothing, that you might be a record that’s easy to top, and that the people will love this new talent while they had always hated you.”
“…”
“Hey, I don’t blame you if you are reluctant to believe that. When you put your heart and soul into something, its hard to believe that there will be a day where you won’t be able to be a part of it anymore. If you acknowledge the fear, that means you have to acknowledge the possibility of that, so I can see why you might look at me and not want to accept that what I’m saying might be the truth. Akira Kurosawa had a quote about how is life was film and if you subtracted film from him, there would be nothing. I imagine that’s the same thing with you and wrestling. You tried to leave, twice, but you couldn’t stand being away from it, because you feel that wrestling is your purpose, without wrestling there is nothing to your depth.”
“…I think we are done here.”
Benjamin didn’t want to accept that as the truth. It was far easier for him to believe that the dream was showing him something different, because it was easier for him to just turn away from the rest of the world and generalize that none of it was worth saving. He wanted to believe his time was better spent using the world’s weakness, instead of worrying about whether or not he was falling to pieces. He refused to believe that he was ever going to subpar, but lately the idea has been harder and harder to shake. How long did he have before he started to deteriorate? Did he have time to go after the world title? What if he was already declining? What if, forever more, he was a little less than he was, every day chipping away at him until he was finally old, gray, and decrepit? No, now was not the time for that. He needed to keep his head straight. If he had even an inkling of doubt, Jayson Price could exploit it and gain the advantage in the match and that would result in ultimate defeat.
He turned to the punching bag. He threw a punch in an attempt to get back into it, but as soon as it landed, he knew that he didn’t have it in him to get back into the swing of things that night. He sighed heavily and grabbed his towel to wipe the sweat off of his face. Suddenly, he felt dirty, he could sense the grime under his fingernails, he could feel his shirt clinging to him with sweat, he could feel every inch of his body coated in one germ or another and decided he should go take a shower before heading off to bed.
As he showered, his mind wandered off. He let it wander. Untamed by focus, he let it touch everything from pressing matters to purely surreal thoughts. He didn’t hang onto any of it for anything longer than a moment. As soon as the thoughts came, he let them go, to be lost and forgotten until they decided to rear their ugly heads once more. This was his relaxation, his sort of aimless drifting through different trains of thought. Nothing had weight, it didn’t mean anything for that moment, it was an even playing field. When he was done, he dried himself off and went to bed where he slept peacefully until the next day. If he dreamed, he did not remember what it was about the next morning, which he was okay with. When he did wake, he felt rejuvenated, a bit more optimistic, the thoughts of last night gone like a distant memory.
-.-.-
The camera came on and there Benjamin stood with the S-PAC logo hanging behind him like a banner, like a flag representing his country.
“Mr. Price, there is a lot of talk this week about who is going to come out on top this coming slam, and I will definitely say that the debate is pretty close. I could spend my time yelling and screaming like some lunatic about how I will walk into that ring and break-you-six-different-ways-from-Sunday; I could go on and on about how you don’t deserve to step into that ring with me; I could act like a deranged human being, throwing furniture around, attempting to show my passion and how much winning this match up means to me, but I feel that would be wasting your time and my time considering you already know how much I want to win this match up. See, I’ve never been one to underplay the importance of victory in one’s strategy to reach the top, and it’s not like anyone out there is looking to lose their matches, so I’ve decided it would be better to touch upon a different, albeit not completely separate topic; the competition itself.
---“See, I’ve always been under the firm belief that this company is lacking REAL competition. Sure, we have a few good wrestlers, many of which are on S-PAC, but a lot of this company is stuffed with certain jerkers and jobbers to make the numbers look bigger. See, for every one of me, there are a hundred Hardcore McMurderkills and for every Hardcore McMurderkills there is a hundred Oblivions, and I’m sure I could take on a hundred oblivions and have no problem coming out on top. That’s the problem, I’m tired of the easy victories, of the matches thrown together where the odds are already stacked incredibly high in one guy’s favor. Last week, it was two members of S-PAC versus you and…Biohazard. S-PAC is a cohesive unit that has trained to perform at optimum efficiency when working together, while you were thrown last alongside that slobbering mess of a human being, hardly fair isn’t it?
---“We’ve both been presented with a great opportunity here. You’ve been granted a chance for a fairer match up against one of the individuals who kicked your ass last week, and I’ve been given the chance to fight someone who doesn’t smell of dog shit and can tell the different been tying an opponent in the ropes and tying his own shoes. My suggestion is to use this opportunity wisely. How, you may ask? By giving the fight of your life. Fuck titles, who needs them? A little piece of gold really the motivator you need to put up a hell of a fight? See, the thing is, I really need this, not just because I am bored with fighting dumbass after dumbass, but also because fighting those assholes is doing nothing as far as proving that I’m one of the best.
---“So, this is what I want you to do, Mr. Price. I want you to come into that ring with the intent of killing me. I want you to try and FUCKING KILL ME! I want you to tear me apart, I want your head ready to see limbs severed from my body, because I need you in that mindset if you are going to try and go toe to toe with me. This isn’t about putting on a good match, we aren’t doing this for the fans, fuck them. We are going to put on a fucking fight. We are going to make the people in the back watch in awe as they worry about seeing someone die in that ring, that’s what I want. See, I feel like I have yet to reach my peak, I feel like I still have the chance to reach higher than I ever had, no matter what people might be saying about me, but if I can’t get the kind of competition I need to bring that out in me, I will spend day after day just sitting on this plateau, continually lowering the my standards for this company and the wrestlers in it.
---“So, what do you say, Mr. Price? Bring out the best in me, become the wrestler who took me to a whole new level. I want your best, I want you at your toughest, I want you at your most deadly, because I want to tear it all down. I want to break you down at your peak and send you crashing to the floor. I want to see you at your strongest, so I can pick you apart and drive you to your most vulnerable. Do you understand that? Even if I lose, I will drive you to an end of yourself that you didn’t know you had. I will reach down your throat, grab hold of whatever I can, and pull.
---“This isn’t going to be you versus a member of S-PAC. We are going to go old school. This is going to be you versus ‘God Given Greatness’ Benjamin mother fucking Atreyu. King of dominance, a career ender, and an icon. You will be able to look back, years from now, and say you competed with one of the best. So, how will that story end? With you giving a weak ass performance, or with your scrapping for everything you can get, like a real hero. I’m ready to play the villain, I always will be, because in the end, those are the only ones who win.”
The camera fades to black as Benjamin smirks
Through a regular day, there wouldn’t a single moment where he wasn’t splitting his mind into several different priorities. While in a team meeting, his mind would be on his match; while at a press conference, he would be thinking about his training; while he was sitting at home, catching up on bills, he would be thinking about his travel schedule. However, here, in this room, he thought of nothing. At times he found he wasn’t thinking at all, his body taking over the act of training as he head was empty of thought; it was nirvana. He could just stand there, driving his fist deep into the bag, imagining it was his opponent. A line from a song he once heard popped into his head, ”Heaven is a special place in hell where you watch the people you hate get hurt.” He couldn’t agree more. He smirked, his arms reeling back into position after every strike, this was his heaven.
This is everything. There is nothing else. My existence boils down to this. Keep punching. Keep jabbing. His thoughts rang out without an echo in his head, they were clear, pristine, they were powerful. One, two, one, two. Keep it up. They have nothing on you. They can’t stop you. No one can stop you. You are God Given Greatness. You don’t just call yourself that. You make it mean something. You make it something to be feared. They see your name, and they have second thoughts. This is where he found his inspiration, in the dead of night, when nothing could possibly interrupt him. You don’t have any second thoughts, do you? Of course not. You’re Benjamin fucking Atreyu! You win championships. You end careers. You are a future hall-of-famer. They just can’t compete. He found his rhythm, he was immersed in it, he could almost hear an orchestra playing as the soundtrack, a raging-bull-ish montage of slow motion punches, just short of being a ballet of sorts. You are the complete package. You have strength. You have intelligence. You have Strategy. You have the contacts. Fuck them all. Beat the best, eat the rest. Am I right? If there was perfection, this was it.
RING! RING! Fuck! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! Benjamin had forgotten to turn off his phone. It was gone, his concentration, his bliss, his focus, his rhythm; it was all gone. He lowered his arms in defeat. There was no way to get it back, not now anyways. He walked over to the phone. For a moment more he let it ring. Then, without checking who was calling, he picked up his phone, letting it ring in his hands a few more times, then he chucked it against the wall as hard as he could. The phone shattered. Pieces flew through the air, like an explosion of computer chips, plastic, and batteries; the pieces scattered themselves across the room in small shards.
Despite getting his revenge on the little machine, he did not feel relief. There was no satisfaction in this act. He would end up having to get a new one. That was the curse of the technological age; those living without went without, while those living with were granted access to the world. You had to be connected in every sense of the word. You had to have your youtube account connected to your googleplus account which was connected to your tumblr account which was on your phone. The world of technology was a spider web that everyone was trapped in, and inspired a mix of annoyance and fear in Benjamin. He felt as if he was running a losing race in the world of online accessibility. He didn’t get it, he didn’t understand it. You needed the newest smart phone, a credit card, an account on every website, or else you were losing. In the end it was just a giant business of distraction of saturated convenience. You were never unreachable. There used to be a time when people had to wait for you to get home so they could call you. Hell, there used to be a time where people had to wait to see you face to face, or months to get a letter to you, before they could converse with you, but now everything is instant. It’s all there, always, it never stops. We all mainline the world around us, a live streaming of information right from the screen into our minds. People become infuriated if anything takes so much as a second longer than it has to. People scream at their computers when it takes a HALF-A-MINUTE to connect to something. This was the world he was living in, and he hated it. He didn’t care who was calling him. In fact, he hoped they were pissed that he didn’t answer, he was tired of this, he was tired of it being a mortal sin to not have your phone on at all times.
He grabbed his water bottle and drank the life liquid. His mind was still burning with frustration, but he tried not to dwell on it. He could get his focus backing, maybe not now, but at some point. He looked at the clock, 1:23 AM, he had been training for about a half-an hour. Pathetic. He rolled his eyes, it was going to be a long night. He walked over to the television set and turned it on; Sochi Olympics coverage. They were replaying the interview with the woman who got bronze in the moguls. Rough, it was her last Olympics appearance and fell just short of a gold medal due to a small mistake and you could tell by the way that she was holding in tears that it broke her heart. She wasn’t only heartbroken because she got bronze after having got gold, she was heartbroken because her best years were behind her. She had reached her peak at such a young age and now it was all going downhill. For years, that sport was her life, that was her fire, that was her existence, but as she was handed that bronze medal, she had to accept that she was going to have to leave it all behind. Benjamin turned the television off, he couldn’t watch it anymore. He often wondered what it would be like to be on the decline and the thought of it did not please him. As he had known for quite some time, wrestling was his life, and he had tried several times to leave it, but was pulled back every time, forced to continue. If there was ever a day where he was forced to stop competing, or continued to compete to the point where he was a pathetic shadow of himself just trying to hold onto glory, like so many other wrestlers around him, he hoped someone would put a bullet in his head and end his suffering.
It brought him back to his session with his therapist a week ago. He could even smell the cheap candles his therapist often left burning because he believed the scent gave a ‘relaxing aroma’ that allowed Benjamin to feel ‘at peace’ so he could ‘be open’ or whatever stupid bullshit he spewed, most of the time Benjamin didn’t even pay attention. In fact, he wasn’t sure why he continued to go. It was a contact given to him by Blake Updegraff IV from when they were still friends, but now Blake was long gone, off in some distant fed partnering with some wrestler that he didn’t know, nor cared to know. So, why did he keep going? He should have stopped right after he attacked Blake on that fateful night so many months ago. It was supposed to distance himself with everything that tied him to his past, but he kept going. Benjamin rationalized it that he needed a neutral figure to vent to every once in a while, and transferring to a different one would just be a waste of time anyways, but not even he was completely convinced by this reasoning. No matter the reason, he had been there that previous week and now he was reliving it after rewatching that interview at the Olympics.
“You ever think about the plight of a superhero?” Benjamin had asked, laying back in the cliché chair/couch thing that Benjamin didn’t really know the name for.
“How do you mean, Mr. Atreyu?” The therapist responded, an eyebrow cocked as if the question had sparked some sort of deep down curiosity, as if he was about to stumble onto some part of Benjamin’s mind he had been shut out of for quite some time, and it very well might have been the case. Benjamin didn’t like opening up to his therapist about his deep thoughts. He came in, vented about work, complained about constantly being short changed by the company he worked for, and then left. However, this time, there was something on his mind he felt he had to share.
“Superman will never win, Batman will never win, its all fruitless in the end,” Benjamin sighed.
“Is this something that I should be worried about? I mean, would you care to explain?”
“Its not like I’m going to shoot myself or anything, but if you think about the superhero, what is his purpose?”
“To save people, I would presume.”
“Right, but what is the end result? Sure, they can save millions of people while they are alive, but they aren’t looking for numbers; they are looking for a solution to the problem, but with the way they handle it all, they’ll be able to handle a good majority of it, but there will always be that small few that manage to get around them. That small percentage represents the failure of the superhero, and even if they get all the bad guys, more will still spring up eventually.”
“Well, then I guess it is the prerogative of the superhero to keep fighting.”
“That would be the only solution the hero could have; either keep fighting or give up, but what about when they die? Superman isn’t going to be on his death bed thinking ‘oh, well, at least I saved a shitload of people,’ no, of course not, he is going to be thinking about all the people he won’t be able to save when he dies. In the end, he loses, no matter how much work he puts into it. His only REAL solution, aside from giving up and turn away from the world, is to destroy it so no one will be able to hurt it anymore. He would have to kill EVERYONE in order to save them.”
“May I ask what has sparked this line of thought?”
“I had this dream. I was flying around as this superhero.”
“Do you fancy yourself as a superhero, Mr. Atreyu?”
“I used to. I used to think that I had the potential to change this world. I was crazy enough to believe that it was going to be me, a professional wrestler whom no one likes.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, the dream was the start to the tearing down of that idea. See, like I was saying, I as flying around as this superhero. I don’t know how I knew was a superhero, I just felt it. I was the typical flying position; arms stretched forward, straight as a broom, swerving around buildings in sort of metropolis-esc city. I remember thinking that everyone looked pretty small from up there, like I was a god hovering over the head of ants, tiny insignificant ants. They all seemed so hopeless, so helpless, so without meaning as they wandered aimless through the streets to their respective jobs. I remember feeling sorry for them. That was their whole existence, and here I was, flying overhead, my magnificence radiating from me. I remember also thinking that my awe-inspiring abilities must have made them feel weak, like they resented me because I was something beyond them.”
“Seems fairly typical; you’ve come in here a few times talking about how the world envies you and then shows that envy by lashing out.”
“Well, that’s not the thing that got me. I felt mere apathy to their anger, because I knew that no matter how much they hated me, I was the only one who could save them, even if they didn’t see that. Now this is the part where is starts changing up a bit. I heard a scream off in the distance so I raced to its source and found a woman in peril.”
“How was she in peril? Was she falling out of high up window? Was she being attacked by some monster?”
“No, it was this sort of mad scientist. It was all super cheesy, like something out of a B-movie. It seemed easy enough, so I struck a stupid pose, did some sort of long-winded superhero speech, or some garbage like that. The next thing I know is that he pulls out what looks like a laser gun, I shit you not. He is pointing a goddamn laser at me, and before I can do anything to stop it, he fires the thing at me. I’m sent flying backwards, through the wall, and down in the city street. I was sitting in a crater made by my body and I went to get up, but I couldn’t move. I tried as hard as I could, but my limbs wouldn’t budge. I fucking hate that feeling, I wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t let me. My whole body was stiff, besides my neck for some reason. So I look down and see that my body is decaying. Its falling the fuck apart! I’m freaking out and I look to see if anyone would help me, but they all just walk over me, they don’t give two shits that the only superhero in the city is slowly crumbling away beneath their feet.”
“I imagine that can be very distressing.”
“That’s not even the half of it. I look up into the sky and I see this little blue streak running across it. I’m not sure what it is at first, but I try and find the source of the streak and I find out it’s another super hero. He is bigger than me, he looks stronger than me, and he is flying faster than I ever could. He swoops into the building I was just shot out of, the thing explodes and the next thing I see is a blue streak darting out of one of the windows with the damsel in distress in his arms, embracing him like he was the lover of her life. Then I look down at my body and the decaying mess that it is and people are still just walking over it, some even spitting on it as its passing by. It all starts fading to black, my time as a superhero is over, they don’t need me…”
“…then?...”
“Then I wake up, at least this sort of space between awake and not awake, a sort of extreme daze, but my body still won’t move.”
“Sleep paralysis?”
“Yeah…Fucking shitty sleep ending with a shitty way to wake up. After that, though, that’s when I started realizing there is no glory in working against the people, and I wasn’t about to give into them. That’s when I realized that if they will not work with me, I am going to start using their weakness to destroy them.”
“That sort of ‘superman final solution’ that you mentioned beforehand? Destroy the world before it can destroy itself?”
“Something of the sort, I guess. I realized that there is no winning as a superhero.”
“Mr. Atreyu, I think this has less to do with being a superhero and more to do with your fears of having to let go at some point.”
“What?”
“Hear me out. I’m not an expert in dreams, but to me, your superhero status has less to do with you saving people and more to do with your view of your own abilities. Its very obvious you have a very high opinion of yourself, I’m not judging you, and this dream, with the people’s envy and such, might start out reflecting this. You see the people as lesser beings, but when you come to save someone, you are suddenly left helpless as you watch yourself decay. I think you are worried about the day you might find yourself on the downward slope, and being forced to witness as a younger talent not only beats you, but becomes better than you ever were. You are scared that you will leave having changed nothing, that you might be a record that’s easy to top, and that the people will love this new talent while they had always hated you.”
“…”
“Hey, I don’t blame you if you are reluctant to believe that. When you put your heart and soul into something, its hard to believe that there will be a day where you won’t be able to be a part of it anymore. If you acknowledge the fear, that means you have to acknowledge the possibility of that, so I can see why you might look at me and not want to accept that what I’m saying might be the truth. Akira Kurosawa had a quote about how is life was film and if you subtracted film from him, there would be nothing. I imagine that’s the same thing with you and wrestling. You tried to leave, twice, but you couldn’t stand being away from it, because you feel that wrestling is your purpose, without wrestling there is nothing to your depth.”
“…I think we are done here.”
Benjamin didn’t want to accept that as the truth. It was far easier for him to believe that the dream was showing him something different, because it was easier for him to just turn away from the rest of the world and generalize that none of it was worth saving. He wanted to believe his time was better spent using the world’s weakness, instead of worrying about whether or not he was falling to pieces. He refused to believe that he was ever going to subpar, but lately the idea has been harder and harder to shake. How long did he have before he started to deteriorate? Did he have time to go after the world title? What if he was already declining? What if, forever more, he was a little less than he was, every day chipping away at him until he was finally old, gray, and decrepit? No, now was not the time for that. He needed to keep his head straight. If he had even an inkling of doubt, Jayson Price could exploit it and gain the advantage in the match and that would result in ultimate defeat.
He turned to the punching bag. He threw a punch in an attempt to get back into it, but as soon as it landed, he knew that he didn’t have it in him to get back into the swing of things that night. He sighed heavily and grabbed his towel to wipe the sweat off of his face. Suddenly, he felt dirty, he could sense the grime under his fingernails, he could feel his shirt clinging to him with sweat, he could feel every inch of his body coated in one germ or another and decided he should go take a shower before heading off to bed.
As he showered, his mind wandered off. He let it wander. Untamed by focus, he let it touch everything from pressing matters to purely surreal thoughts. He didn’t hang onto any of it for anything longer than a moment. As soon as the thoughts came, he let them go, to be lost and forgotten until they decided to rear their ugly heads once more. This was his relaxation, his sort of aimless drifting through different trains of thought. Nothing had weight, it didn’t mean anything for that moment, it was an even playing field. When he was done, he dried himself off and went to bed where he slept peacefully until the next day. If he dreamed, he did not remember what it was about the next morning, which he was okay with. When he did wake, he felt rejuvenated, a bit more optimistic, the thoughts of last night gone like a distant memory.
-.-.-
The camera came on and there Benjamin stood with the S-PAC logo hanging behind him like a banner, like a flag representing his country.
“Mr. Price, there is a lot of talk this week about who is going to come out on top this coming slam, and I will definitely say that the debate is pretty close. I could spend my time yelling and screaming like some lunatic about how I will walk into that ring and break-you-six-different-ways-from-Sunday; I could go on and on about how you don’t deserve to step into that ring with me; I could act like a deranged human being, throwing furniture around, attempting to show my passion and how much winning this match up means to me, but I feel that would be wasting your time and my time considering you already know how much I want to win this match up. See, I’ve never been one to underplay the importance of victory in one’s strategy to reach the top, and it’s not like anyone out there is looking to lose their matches, so I’ve decided it would be better to touch upon a different, albeit not completely separate topic; the competition itself.
---“See, I’ve always been under the firm belief that this company is lacking REAL competition. Sure, we have a few good wrestlers, many of which are on S-PAC, but a lot of this company is stuffed with certain jerkers and jobbers to make the numbers look bigger. See, for every one of me, there are a hundred Hardcore McMurderkills and for every Hardcore McMurderkills there is a hundred Oblivions, and I’m sure I could take on a hundred oblivions and have no problem coming out on top. That’s the problem, I’m tired of the easy victories, of the matches thrown together where the odds are already stacked incredibly high in one guy’s favor. Last week, it was two members of S-PAC versus you and…Biohazard. S-PAC is a cohesive unit that has trained to perform at optimum efficiency when working together, while you were thrown last alongside that slobbering mess of a human being, hardly fair isn’t it?
---“We’ve both been presented with a great opportunity here. You’ve been granted a chance for a fairer match up against one of the individuals who kicked your ass last week, and I’ve been given the chance to fight someone who doesn’t smell of dog shit and can tell the different been tying an opponent in the ropes and tying his own shoes. My suggestion is to use this opportunity wisely. How, you may ask? By giving the fight of your life. Fuck titles, who needs them? A little piece of gold really the motivator you need to put up a hell of a fight? See, the thing is, I really need this, not just because I am bored with fighting dumbass after dumbass, but also because fighting those assholes is doing nothing as far as proving that I’m one of the best.
---“So, this is what I want you to do, Mr. Price. I want you to come into that ring with the intent of killing me. I want you to try and FUCKING KILL ME! I want you to tear me apart, I want your head ready to see limbs severed from my body, because I need you in that mindset if you are going to try and go toe to toe with me. This isn’t about putting on a good match, we aren’t doing this for the fans, fuck them. We are going to put on a fucking fight. We are going to make the people in the back watch in awe as they worry about seeing someone die in that ring, that’s what I want. See, I feel like I have yet to reach my peak, I feel like I still have the chance to reach higher than I ever had, no matter what people might be saying about me, but if I can’t get the kind of competition I need to bring that out in me, I will spend day after day just sitting on this plateau, continually lowering the my standards for this company and the wrestlers in it.
---“So, what do you say, Mr. Price? Bring out the best in me, become the wrestler who took me to a whole new level. I want your best, I want you at your toughest, I want you at your most deadly, because I want to tear it all down. I want to break you down at your peak and send you crashing to the floor. I want to see you at your strongest, so I can pick you apart and drive you to your most vulnerable. Do you understand that? Even if I lose, I will drive you to an end of yourself that you didn’t know you had. I will reach down your throat, grab hold of whatever I can, and pull.
---“This isn’t going to be you versus a member of S-PAC. We are going to go old school. This is going to be you versus ‘God Given Greatness’ Benjamin mother fucking Atreyu. King of dominance, a career ender, and an icon. You will be able to look back, years from now, and say you competed with one of the best. So, how will that story end? With you giving a weak ass performance, or with your scrapping for everything you can get, like a real hero. I’m ready to play the villain, I always will be, because in the end, those are the only ones who win.”
The camera fades to black as Benjamin smirks
