In the Shadow of the Stone

[occulo]

For you, son of Joseph Malignaggi. A life taken too soon, a life impossible to fully avenge.

===

An ocean of mist and thick, almost suffocating air softly meandered around the curvature of Occulo’s broad shoulders. He stood looking down at the grave of Clare Mullins. The white marble took on an ever so slight pale green colour as it reflected the damp grass around it. When Occulo heard the news of Christian’s demise, he felt pushed and pulled by two unseen forces. Part of him wanted to rush to Joey’s side and embrace him in the mutual understanding of inconceivable loss, but he was also pulled away, knowing that Joey at this time was like a cornered, rabid animal, who would sooner rip a man’s throat out before accepting the helping hand of another. He left him to mourn. It simply does not help to have someone tell you how to feel and that they understand, when you are a million miles away from knowing yourself.

Occulo kneels down and softly caresses the gravestone. He reaches into his inside pocket of his black and ever saturating suit jacket and takes out two small white lily’s. He places one softly on the grass in the shadow of the stone and places the other back in his pocket.

Occulo: Mother, please watch over Christian. The boy was taken from this world by a demon, and now needs an angel. I love you.

He rose back to his feet and walked away from the grave through the mist.

CUT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Pestilence

A sickness hung in the air as Occulo looked ahead to his match with Dune. It was a sickness that left him light headed and nauseous to the stomach. He did not fear Dune, no, one just does not simply respond with great health to being ripped apart inside. Dune, the man he once called his friend and brother, now a man, no a beast, a monster, a child killing lizard only riles up hatred and total anger within his soul. Dune was a disease, a painful abscess that grew ever more painful in the minds of everyone in the company. He had to be slaughtered. He had to be attacked by the forces that want only to keep the WCF alive and fighting fit. It was time to sharpen the excalibur needle that would pierce the thick reptilian and vaccinate the world against the mortal and terminal illness of further devastation.

Occulo looked around the arena that would soon host Fifteen. Preparations were almost complete and he could already feel the incredible tension in the air. It was electrifying. It was intoxicating.

Occulo: Here we are Dune. Here’s the place where it all ends.

He stops and stares up at the Fifteen logo

You’ve become an animal Dune. An animal that preyed on the very definition of innocence and stripped it from an Italian you had no business interfering with. Malignaggi was a dick to me, no he was a walking nightmare to me. But would he hold a child over a concrete abyss and let him go?

You’re going to pay a heavy price. You’re not my friend, nor are you my brother and what really gets to me Dune is that all that time we stood together and your flesh touched mine as we shook hands, and embraced in victory, it was all within you. That cell that caused this carnage was starting to slowly multiply and soon, soon it would take over every cell in your body and you would change from a noble, brave warrior who fought for justice and righteousness against the overwhelming adversity at the time into what you are today.

Myself and Howard are doing this to stop you Dune. We’re doing this to stop you from hurting anyone else in this company and we’re doing this so you don’t hurt yourself. This is going to be a truly brutal fight. It’s not going to be a match, it’s not going to be a bout or anything official at all. It’s a straight up fight and it’s a straight up penance for what you have done.

I would give anything to have the Dune we once knew back, fighting shoulder to shoulder with us again. But you’re past that now. You’re a point of no return. You’ve ignited a spark for a fire that burns hotter than the Mojave sun in me and Howard, and you’re going to be engulfed in it. We see a behemoth in a mask that would catch the everyday man in his web and crush him, sucking the very essence out of him, just like you did to Joey. But a spider is only dangerous when it has its prey entangled in its web, and your web was only strengthened because everybody underestimated you and what you were truly capable of.

But there are flames coming Dune. There are flames coming that will evaporate this web of yours and send the dangerous predator tumbling down in to the hell that it belongs in. What is your venom when it has no blood to contaminate? What does your hourglass measure when time stands still and you see the desperation in the eyes of Christian and Joseph and it shoots through your blackened heart of ash and you realise that within its very core is a tiny, fetal seed that can still sprout something good in you?

Growing up in a place constantly scorched by the sunshine has turned you in to a shadow that lurks and searches for someone to follow. You have searched for someone to be the darker side of, the colder side of…but you then discovered that the only person you can be the darker side of is yourself. You have become two sides of a coin. Noble and heinous. A knight and a dragon. A hero and a villain…a friend and a sworn enemy. Why did you tell yourself, and believe that something was missing Dune? You had everything. Allies who would have fought to the death with you, and who were capable of winning everything with you by our side. You had tremendous ability and enormous physical strength. But it wasn’t enough, and it’s a damn shame. A damn, crying shame.

So it’s come down to this. The fight. We say goodbye to everything that exists beyond the walls of the ring and we fight. We have fought together and saw our lives take drastic turns together, so it is only right that on Sunday, we die together. We die but rise again as Sentinels. We rise again as Sentinels with or without you Dune. You left Christian a fleshy bag of broken bones, and it is only right and only fair that you are left in a similar state. Fragments. Shards. Grains of sand. The end of Dune.

CUT

Occulo wraps his scarf around his exposed neck as he sits on the very top of The Hill. What the hell is he doing back there? The clear sky above shines a mesh of stars that twinkle in varying levels of brightness. We hear footsteps approach, and then Bonnie sit down next to him. They are sat on a blanket each with a flask in each hand which releases occasional wisps of steam in to the cold, still air. He wraps his arm around her and holds her close. This was a time that made Occulo aware of his loved ones in life, of such, he had only her. He was fighting a man on Sunday who would strip her from his grasp with no hesitation. If he could kill a child, a woman would be fair game. Her name is Bonnie and she was as beautiful as the stars are on a night such as this. She was the clarity in the sky, where one just has to step out of the murk and saturation of everyday life and in to a place of tranquillity that you could always depend on being there for you. Bonnie was this place, and Bonnie was beauty and tranquillity. She was a starry night sky, that needed just one more star to shine and glisten. Occulo reached in to his pocket and took out a small, red velvet case. We do not hear them speak, we hear only the music. She gasps and puts her hands on her face as she becomes overwhelmed with emotion. He opens the case and reveals a uniform silver ring with the most brilliant blue diamond embedded with such expert craftsmanship. She nods and throws her arms around him and they laugh as the camera pans up to the starry sky. In a time saturated with revenge, hate and animosity, Occulo had made the ultimate declaration of love, partnership, friendship and unity. For it is these things, that ultimately trumps everything Dune stood for in his eyes.

Famine

There was something that Dune was starved of. Occulo knew not what it was, but the partnership with two superb athletes had left the sandman wanting something entirely different, and it was perhaps, complete independence. It was perhaps autonomy, the very thing that Occulo had yearned for. Occulo had done it by banishing the man that set out to destroy him to a place, if it could metaphysically be called that, he could never return from. Dune had done it by bringing a warrior of the streets to his knees and the very edge of inhumanity. Dune had done all this, but still crawled along the hot, frying desert floor under the shadow of buzzards clawing at anything that would result in him transforming even further from what we know. Within that colossal, muscular hulk of a man was a mere existence of skin where every bone pushed at it, trying to burst through the prison of starvation.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

We open up as Occulo’s boot steps down on the solid, packed snow. He was well wrapped up in black, white and blue and wore a pair of goggles over his eyes. The helicopter pilot gave him a thumbs up which Occulo reciprocated. With a spray of surface snow and ice, the chopper took off and floated across the tundra. Occulo stood still and looked around the arctic landscape. He had decided to do what he had never done before, plunge himself in to a place of extreme, where perhaps, and hopefully, he would begin apply extremes to his ideals, and learn just what it would take to defeat the man called Dune. There was nothing as far as his eyes could see except for the flat tundra. His blue rucksack sat like a turtle’s shell on his back, with a flare gun sat in a holster at its base. He reached into his pocket and took out a voice recorder. He pressed record and spoke in to it.

Occulo: Come at me ice, sharpen your teeth and let the wind bellow its loudest roar in my ears. God speed.

He pressed stop and placed the recorder back in to his pocket. He began his trek, his feet creating a slight crunch as his boots impacted the concrete like ice below. The wind was gentle, and he felt a slight burning on the exposed areas of his cheeks.

Devoid.



Desolation.



Nothing.



Pure white and brilliant blue.



Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch


He reached the edge of a great chasm, where the white of the blue darkened into a deep blue and eventually a deathly black. He picked up a nearby, dislodged block of ice and dropped into the chasm.
One…two…three…four…crash

He looked around and found that the chasm stretched on as far as he could see. The width of the gap was about four feet. He could do it with a run up, but it was a leap of faith like no other. He took out his voice recorder and spoke in to it again.

Occulo: So did you have this moment Dune? Did you reach a point in your career where you stumbled across the land where everything looked the same and the background looked all too repetitive? Did you then reach a chasm between who you are and who you are going to force yourself to become? The risk was immense and there would be no going back as the ground crumbles as you jump. But perhaps it was that moment of adrenalin, the second of thrill as you flew over the abyss that laughed as it absorbed your soul.

He pressed stop and took a few steps back from the edge of the chasm. Before taking a run up and jumping across the chasm. He lands with a skid, causing his flare gun to fall out of his bag and disappear down the void.

Occulo: Shit

He gets to his feet and brushes himself off before continuing across the icy landscape. It was a grand sense of relief to just be surrounded by absolutely nothing, when on Sunday he would be surrounded tens of thousands of fans, Howard Black…and him.

A couple of hours later, Occulo is sat resting on a group of rocks at the bottom of a large mound of snow. He reaches in to his bag and takes out a flask. He takes a couple of mouthfuls and looks suddenly over his shoulder as he hears a voice which gets louder and more out of breath. Occulo quickly makes his way to the top of the mound and sees a rather unkempt man hobbling across the ice, shouting for help. He awkwardly runs down the hill and approaches the desperate looking man.

Occulo: Hey! Hey, are you okay?

The man stops and looks at him. He has a rather large, brown beard with bushy brown hair. He looks surgically attached to his snow gear as it tightly hugs his skin.

Man: I…I need…I need help

Occulo: What happened to you?

Man: I was riding my sled with the dogs…something spooked one of ‘em and the sled ran on to some rocks and shattered

Occulo: How long have you been out here?

Man: Too long. I’ve run out of resources. Please, help me.

His face was a scarlet red and snow clung on to his beard

Occulo: Well I lost my flare gun in that canyon over there. My only bet is to find a small village not far from here. Do you know where it is?

Man: Yeah…yeah I do but…I have no idea where I am. I’m totally disorientated.

Occulo: Okay, okay don’t panic. Come on, I was given a good summary of the area by the team that dropped me out here. I have a good idea where to go.

The man nodded and they traversed the ice together

My name’s John by the way. John Mullins.

He didn’t respond, at all, let alone introduce himself. The village itself was a good few miles away, and the conversation wasn’t exactly going to make them seem any less.

So, you had dogs right? What happened to them?

Man: Well you know what they’re like, they are a pack you know, one gets spooked and darts off and the rest follow.

He breaks out in to a grotesque coughing fit, holding one hand in his kidney area, he spits a glob of green…and slightly red glob of phlegm on to the snow

Occulo: You alright? Damn we need to get you to a doctor or something. Come on.

He doesn’t respond again, but walks a pace or two behind Occulo. He reaches in to his pocket and takes out a small, black walkie talkie. He speaks in to it in a different language, eastern European. Russian. Occulo turns around and he breaks out in to another coughing fit, before collapsing to the ground.

Shit.

Occulo runs over and goes to help him to his feet. He notices the walkie talkie and goes to grab it, but the man tightly grabs his hand pushes him to the ground.

Man: Hands off. Stay there.

Occulo: Wha- I

The faint sound of approaching engines are heard as three men in snowmobiles approach from their left. They are wearing all white and dismount their snowmobiles as soon as they reach them. They speak in Russian amongst themselves, and one of them takes out a gun, pointing it at the fallen wrestler.

Hey hey, come on, I was trying to help him. He was lost and…well…I thought he was

Man: Take off your backpack

Occulo: What?

Man: Backpack. Take off. We take, we leave you alone.

Occulo: No you can’t, I have everything I need in there.

The man with the gun cocks it with a mechanical click

Alright, alright. At least, at least let me take my radio

Man: No. We take everything. NOW.

Occulo struggles his backpack off and gets to his feet. He holds the backpack out with one outstretched arm.

Occulo: Take it

The man with the gun lowers it and goes to grab the bag. Occulo pulls him towards him and clotheslines him to the ground. He quickly takes out a walking stick from the bag and wraps it around the face of another guy who goes to tackle him. The bearded man goes to tackle him but Occulo catches him and throws him to the ground, before picking up the gun and aiming it at the last man who looks stunned at his very efficient self-defence. The man goes to speak but Occulo fires a bullet straight in to his knee.

What were you gonna say? They made you do it? Right, you, beard, who the fuck are you and why were you trying to rob me?

One of the other men shouts an expletive in Russian, and receives a bullet to his knee for his troubles.

Sssh. Speak.

Beard sits up and holds his hands up

Beard: Fuck you. I hope you die out here. Frozen to death and food for the bears.

Occulo: Tell me who you are

Beard: Burn in hell

Occulo shakes his head and picks up his rucksack. The man without a bullet in his knee grabs Occulo from behind, whilst Beard gets up and drives his knee into his gut. He takes the gun from him and cracks it around his skull, causing him to fall to the ground.

Beard: Tie him. We take him to the village. He wants to know who we are. We show. Then we kill.

The other guy nods and delivers a strong kick to Occulo’s temple as we

CUT

Darkness. Only the faint, indiscernible Russian is heard, whilst the interior of a wooden building blurs in to view. Occulo’s head pounds heavily as he looks around, trying to avoid the bright lightbulb above him. His hands are tied to the chair he sits on.

Occulo: Holy shit, what the…what the fuck happened?

Beard walks in armed with a submachine gun. He grabs his beard and rips it off, revealing a smoothly shaven face.

Too itchy for you?

Beard punches him in the face

Beard: We make a lot of money from Westerners like you. You always have this expensive equipment you don’t need. We cross the tundra using nothing but map and dogs. You’re easy money.

Occulo: That’s good to know, and I thought arctic piracy was a dying trade

Beard: One more joke, and I kill you

Occulo: Aren’t you going to kill me anyway?

Beard: Yes. It is matter of how, and not if.

Occulo rests his head back and shakes his head

Occulo: Why me? What the fuck have I ever done to be tortured all the fucking time?

Beard: What?

Occulo: Ignore me

Beard: Stupid American

Beard turns his back to pick up a large, club like piece of wood from the corner of the room. Occulo scowls and stands up with the chair strapped to his back. He charges at Beard, driving his knee into his kidney. He goes down with a loud gasp and splutters on the floor. He manages to smash the chair into the wall and get his hands free.

Occulo: Self defence tip, if you have obviously bad kidneys my bearded friend, don’t turn your back on your assailant. Tied to chair or not.

He lifts him up and ties him to the chair. He is still coughing and spluttering and by now, is coughing up blood.

Occulo: Right, gotta get the fuck out of here

He slowly opens the door and looks down a well-lit hallway. There is an armed guard at one end of the corridor blocking the only way out.

Shit. Whose fucking idea was this?

Beard seems to have regained some form of composure. Occulo darts over and aims the gun at his skull.

Occulo: Call out to the guard.

Beard: No, you-

Occulo: NOW

Beard sighs and scowls at him

Beard: Kristov!

Occulo nods and hides behind the open door. Kristov walks in quickly and Occulo knocks him out with his gun. Before he leaves he plants the flat of his boot in to the face of Beard, causing him to tip over in the chair. He heads down the corridor sees the men all sat in what looks like a living room. A door lies slightly ajar on the other side of the room. One quick dart across would do it. He fires a bullet in to the window next to the door. The men shout out and look through the window.

Occulo: HEY

They look round to find Occulo pointing his gun at them

Right. Listen. I just came out here to experience the extreme conditions of the arctic and had no intention of being held fucking hostage.

The men break out into increasing laughter and go to take out their guns.

Occulo: Damn it, I have no choice. Forgive me Bonnie.

One immediately receives a bullet straight in to his skull. The men immediately stop laughing and too receive a shower of bullets.

Fuck

He quickly heads out of the room, grabbing his rucksack on the way out. He notices a snowmobile and hops on, before driving as quickly as he can from the village. He takes out the voice recorder.

Occulo: No more. I’m not getting fucked with any more. A year or so ago I’d be a shaking, quivering wreck in that chair getting my face pounded in. But I’ve grown so much stronger. I’ve grown stronger because of people like Flash, people like my Father and people….people like you Dune. I’ve grown stronger and feel no fear from those who seek to hurt the innocent. Because they are total cowards who require the sound of pain and fear to cement their own identity. This experience has been exactly what I wanted it to be. I needed to be in danger. I needed to stand up to someone who wanted to strip everything I needed to survive from me and leave me devoid of hope. Because that’s happened too fucking often to me Dune and I dare, DARE you to do the same. Come at me you pathetic, child murdering low life. I’ll show you just how utterly vulnerable you are. I’ll show you that you are not the unstoppable force you think you are. You can talk about your reaper, your hourglass, your exorcisms and your demonization, but the ironic thing is Dune, the reaper is coming for you and your exorcism is about to begin. The power of The Sentinels compels you bitch.

CUT

Conquest

The battle lines were drawn. He knew what he had to do. For the good of everyone he has loved and will ever love, in the name of everyone who has had someone so very dear to them taken by another. He was going to avenge them. Dune, the last grain of sand has fallen and the top of the hourglass is as empty as your soul of hope. Mission accepted. Take down Dune. Conquer him. Obliterate him. End him. Make him pay. Avenge Christian. End his tyranny and make him understand that The Sentinels have risen above the very thing we stand against. Mission accepted. Take down Dune. Conquer him. Obliterate him. End him. Make him pay. End his tyranny and make him understand that The Sentinels have risen.

Death

We see Occulo on the same misty day as the day he visited Clare's grave. He stands with his eyes closed, but they eventually become more of a squint, and a single tear rolls down his cheek. He reaches into his inside pocket and takes out the other white lilly. He kneels down and places it on the ground, in the shadow of the stone.

Occulo: I'll do this for you Christian, and for you Clare....and yes...even you Joseph.

He nods and walks away from the grave, which bears the name of Christian Malignaggi

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

CUT