Post by John Rabid on Mar 27, 2016 1:39:23 GMT -5
A child falls in slow motion. A small, young boy caught frame by frame by hungry paparazzi, a frail body desperate to gain purchase on something, anything other than the thin air that surrounds him. Flash bulbs ignite as his arms are windmilling wildly. His mouth, a rectus scream of mortified horror. A young boy is about to die inside a church, this is St Patrick's Cathedral. It's October: twenty fifteen.
That boy has just been thrown off from a balcony at the wedding of his parents, Joseph and Alessandra. Their son's name is Christian Malignaggi. In a few moments his head will smash onto the marble floor below, his skull will crack apart and his ribs will be like sand. All this will transpire at the feet of a stone messiah as a Christian is sent to his saviour. Nothing can prevent this event from transpiring now. New York, in the weeks to come, will weep like children. His killer on the other hand.
He will gloat.
Those weeks that followed saw Dune with a joyful gait, he was a demon wearing Christian's death like the skinned pelt stripped from the back of a slain monster. He was Beowulf, singing his praises over Grendel's rotting corpse. But this wasn't merely one man alone, for Dune had “a guest” with him: a diseased, bitter creature; a harvester of pain and misery that inhabits the bodies of those he considers worthy of his games.
The Jackal.
But still, those hands, that strength, that wrath, it all belonged to one man alone. A man who believed he'd lost the only woman he loved. A man who had indeed lost his unborn child. A man who turned away from reason, who allowed the monster out at the crucial moment, all in the name of revenge.
All in the name of revenge, those words echo now as they refuse to bow down to history. Dune is a broken man. He hides it well, as he has hidden his ravaged face. But there is no apparatus that can mend what he has done. Dune turned away, he turned his back at the crucial moment and allowed the monster within full autonomy. So that “the guest” could accomplish what Dune could not. What Dune did not have the bravery to execute. To become the monster he was born to be.
His guest on the other hand had no reservations in that regard. This new Dune, he liked to play games. He liked to scheme and taunt. This Dune: he broke jaws and shattered shoulders. This Dune, he wrote obituaries and sent them to his intended targets. Such as the members of #beachkrew. Such as one Jonathan Rabid.
And Family...
Signed, Dune.
St Patrick's Cathedral. October: Twenty fifteen. It had guests from across the five points; it had dignitaries from commerce and the church; it had politicians and fat cats in attendance. It also had ordinary folk. It had a Nun stationed there. A Sicilian born woman, whose soul screamed for justice as she bent down and placed her warm, shaking hand on the brow of a cold, dead child. Closing his coffin lid with a silent prayer, while removing her cross for the very last time.
MOJAVE DESERT. NOW.
Saturday, March 26th; the day before the ripper's fateful clash with Dune, an event scheduled to commence at “Explosion”. A sold out WCF PPV that promises to tear the roof off a twenty three thousand seater stadium, where larynx's shall bleed and lungs shall burst. A white hot United Centre crowd surrounding a white hot battleground; an arena transformed into a pit of fire and anguish for a special C4 exploding death match. A burning inferno of chaos born in the heart of Chicago, where survival is a long shot: cradled under the custodian of anxious angels.
But no angel lives out here in the desert, nor watches over a lone figure as she walks out of a bubbling Mojave horizon; an innocuous and humble woman, just a perspiring backpacker dressed down in her red plaid shirt and black Lycra tights. A traveller, thumbing for a ride into town. Her credentials are perhaps a little vague upon inspection, but they're robust enough to get by in a dust bowl tundra that asks few questions and shuns most answers.
While her environment is dry and hostile, her mid twenties, olive skinned smile is sweet and full. Yet not too perfect, just a hint of ordinariness to calm suspicions as her long, slender legs swagger into view, a body burdened with a heavy, large backpack; a cocoon for a mechanism that awaits a signal to announce itself. Diligently ticking over, desperate to full-fill it's intended, destructive purpose.
A rumble of a truck peels off the melting landscape as it catches the backpacker's attention, she turns, her clear eyes, minus mascara, narrows as she waves for salvation at the roadside; swiping away a wisp of neatly bobbed shoulder length black hair from her clear, slightly chapped lips. The approaching truck is a rusting 1949 F-1 Ford: the post war workhorse of a nation, as plain, honest and old it's driver, a retired mechanic with a dehydrated road map for a face. This ancient relic of a bygone era can't help but wrestle with what's left of his breaks as he spies the backpacker.
The driver wears an oil stained blue baseball cap, perched at the peak of sixty plus years of hard labour along these merciless highways as a coveralled savour to stranded, lost souls The only thing that would make him stop in reality though wouldn't be the kindness of her heart, but cold hard cash. It would take a phone call and an arranged fee for mercy to surface. That's the law of the desert out here. As icy as the night wind.
This backpacker though, she's different, she looks like his beloved grand daughter. She won't cause this old man any harm, he was certain. And that sun, it's baking hot, she'll fry in this mid morning heat otherwise.
The Mechanic's dead wife always told him to look away and drive on when it came to hitch-hikers; but sometimes, you just have to do the right thing. He was retired now anyways, it's okay to break the rules once in awhile.
Mechanic: Climb aboard, Miss. Let's get you into the shade.
Her only response was a nod. Nothing more. Gently placing her backpack onto the back seat behind her as she rode shotgun. The gear stick moaned and groaned as it's driver willed the F-1 back into motion. It shunted forward as the young woman glared at the backpack, it's weight thankfully keeping it secured in place.
Mechanic: You got a heading?
A moment passed before--
Backpacker: The Hourglass Tavern. I hear it's the one that--
Mechanic: Oh! You're one of those...on the Dune trail?
Backpacker: Yes. I suppose so. Do you know him?
Mechanic: Met him. Spoke to him once. The Firestarter. Even drank a 'sud with him. But know? That's a rarity, Ma'am. That's an honour as precious as gold. “To know Dune, is to walk through fire unscathed.” That's what I hear those Indians say. They got a rye sense of humour that lot.
Backpacker: What does it mean?
Mechanic: Well Miss, I guess it means that if you can survive long enough in his company, if you can get ta know him an' suchlike, well then...I guess you must be immortal.
The Backpacker glances over her shoulder at the rear seat.
Backpacker: Nobody's that. Nobody except our lord.
Mechanic: You don't have to tell these old bones, Miss. Nothin' I do stops the clock from tickin'
Backpacker: You and me both.
The Mechanic laughs
Mechanic: I don't think that's something you need to worry about too soon. You've got plenty of days ahead of you. How old are you, twenty five?
Backpacker: Good guess. I'm twenty six.
Mechanic: You've got your whole life ahead of you, ma'am. All those birthdays to look forward to. So, why the Dune trail? One last adventure before settling down?
Backpacker: Yeah, something like that.
Mechanic: Well then, you shouldn't be making this trip alone if you don't mind me sayin' This isn't hospitable country all year 'round. We got snakes under the sun out here. If you know your Dune mythology, you'll know what I'm talkin' about. Daniel? He didn't get that mangled face of his by slippin' on a puddle of bad genetics. That's the desert leavin' it's mark, that's the sand and the rock and the sun tellin' mankind to know it's place. “If we can do this to Dune? We can do this to anyone.”
Backpacker: It wasn't the desert that stole his face, it was men. His brother's killers.
Mechanic: True, but those men cooked under this same sun. Those men breathed in the same damn sand we do. And they were buried under the same rocks I will be one day. Once it's in your skin ma'am, it don't go away. It infects, it germinates. Even when you think you're rid of it back in the big city, the desert will always be there. In that sun, in that heat. Your bones will know it; miss it. Eventually if you stay out here long enough. The madness will always find a way back in.
Backpacker: It can be stopped. I believe that.
She reached for her cross, but then remembered. It wasn't there any more.
SOUNDBYTES: DUNE 451
[By Jonathan Rabid @rabid1]
WCF blog entry: 03/23/16
What is Dune? Let me tell you since no one else has the guts to. He's a former Internet title holder. A former World Champion. A Trios champion. He's a man who, with a full year of top flight competition under his belt, has accomplished more in twelve months than Yung Adam has in twelve years. He is to be respected. And for me, that means he is to be beaten. To broken and humbled. A trophy to be hung upon my wall as I sit back and quaff some well aged cognac and think fondly back to how Dune put up a decent struggle, before I snapped his fucking head clean off.
Even though he'll make a good prize, I am under no illusions and nether should you be. Dune has been set up in this company as the measuring stick. The ultimate hurdle to overcome. Dune never, ever loses. He is a master at triumph over adversity. As long as that adversity is a quantity that he understands. Take that one simple building block away from him however, and he might as well be a blind mute.
This Sunday, someone will have to lead Dune by the nose to the ring, offer him a guide dog if one is available and hand over a white cane. They'll have to shout instructions at him though a megaphone as his mongoloid body struggles to comprehend the infinite complexity that faces him. The years of technical expertise I will unleash. The hours upon hours of preparation that has gone into this match. Studying form, watching and observing each tick and inclination in his technique; honed now to a point of absolute fluency. Dune has no tricks left to teach me, the only surprise he can possible hold this Sunday is the amount to blood loss it's going to take to kill him.
The average male has ten pints to bleed, and I want to see every last fucking drop on that mat.
Know your enemy. Of all the cornerstones of combat, surly that's the one that has stood the test of time. It's proven. You can't refute the logic of the statement. To know your enemy is to understand their motives and goals. To know your enemy is to unravel their strengths and discover their weaknesses. That's how the game has been played for thousands of years. Sun Tzu's favourite catchphrase. From the colosseums of Rome, to the D-Day landings, to the drone strikes on Iraq; knowing your enemy is the driving percussion at the very heartbeat of war. The metronome for victory.
But occasionally, they're exceptions to the rule. A little knowledge can be a fire all it's own. A fire that can burn you. Because it can seduce you into believing a lie that's become greater than the truth it distorts. That's what Dune has become, a lie, that's become twisted fact. But one I vow to unravel, and reveal. Because for all that Dune has accomplished, for all he has achieved in his approaching two year anniversary with the company, he is, at the heart of it all...just a lie. Believed and nurtured for reasons that will soon become clear.
The cult of personality can be a dangerous thing; it's like a living organism, a monster that smothers the truth; extinguishing brevity and honesty as it wraps it's lies around times, places, facts and people. The cult of personality squeezes the life out of history. That cult, that monster, it likes nothing more than to take away our history, the oxygen reality needs to survive, eating away at objectivity until all that's left is what we're programmed to believe. Stamped and indexed and filed away under Z for Zealot.
Dune doesn't have fans, what he has is an army of Zealots; uploaded with a revisionist version of history that paints the man as a God. A lone, wondering messiah that has never been bested in combat. A man that towers over humanity like a ziggurat of perfection. Basically, an unstoppable force that has been strangely stopped many times before, but hey, we don't talk about his loses to The Pack or tapping out to Natural ICE Beckman on a Sunday Night Slam because the P.R. team in the back don't think that will sell many tickets.
The fact of the matter is, through a cocktail of tragic circumstance and lucky genetics, Dune is the right monster, at the right place, at the right time. When Oblivion's career imploded and Jakob Lister dropped the baton, someone needed to be there to catch it. Someone needed to be the dragon to slay the unworthy. A living Phenom that looms over the company, and it's cocky inhabitants, like a reaper's shadow. A doomsday device carrying a payload of company backed annihilation at it's bloody fingertips.
But for all of that to work, for all of that hubris to be believable, you have to believe IN IT. And that takes work. Because even though Dune is good, he is not perfection. He has flaws, he has weaknesses. The newer talent can barely remember what happened last Sunday. But for those of us not named Shadowlove, we know how to prepare and annihilate our competition. It starts with know your enemy, it ends with REALLY knowing your enemy; it takes seeing though the smoke and smashing down the mirrors. It takes the will to disperse the lies and expose the truth. It takes hard work and dedication.
But once achieved? That truth begins to sing.
This Sunday, the truth will sing that Dune can be beaten. It will sing that Dune is not some unstoppable foe. It will sing a chorus about how the man that slays dragons shall become slain himself. I have the power to make this happen, because my eyes are now open. They see what many of you cannot. They look past the portentous crap he spews and removes his body from the desert vista he uses to frame himself. That white hot landscape he shields himself with as he mumbles about being some kind of mythical embodiment of hardship.
What a load of fucking shit.
If you believe in Blue Velvet and Star Diamonds and all the rest of his crap then you need your fucking head examined. Riddle me this “Dune bugs” If Dune is “the living embodiment of the desert”, his words, not mine. Then how come when he's there, his life instantly turns to shit? How come his precious desert setting has been the stage for him losing his face, his brother, his family, and those he has loved? Time and time again Dune has failed in his own backyard. That desert visa he says he's one with hates his pretentious guts. For a man who apparently is some kind of survivalist God he has this uncanny knack of allowing those he supposedly loves and cherishes to suffer because of him. It's almost as if he needs that tragic narrative to drive him on. He needs to constantly feel loss to spurn on his career. Like a twisted sadomasochistic addiction to other people's pain.
Or maybe, he's just an absent minded tool. After all, this is a man who can't even look after a dog without it kissing the dirt. So much for the mighty Dune. This idiot can't even put on a pair of bowling shoes without the ordeal turning it into a minor crisis.
Dune is no Bear Grylls. He'd barely make it to a Katherine Phoenix tea party on ZMAC's lawn. Dune is a man that surrounds himself with tropes and misdirections because without them he is nothing more than a mid-card Ryback with a custard leotard and a mouth full of metal. Dune spins yarns about clones and mind altering drugs and mischievous aliens all to misdirect you from the truth. That Dune is no more than a towering bag of piss and spin designed to get inside your head and win matches before the first bell sounds. Simply put, Dune is Oblivion without the curtain pulled back.
But once you do, once you realise that he's just Mad Max with a lisp, then the world starts to make sense again. And once that occurs, you begin to realise why Dune's career has been constantly air lifted to safety on a familiar set of puppet strings. Sounds like bunkum? Well then, let me finally enlighten you.
Let's start at the beginning, let's take a trip back to an April fools day. To the very day that Dune debuted on Slam. Back then he was waxing lyrical about being a mysterious force from the desert. And it got him a bang average reception. It sounded like crap to a non nonplussed audience because...
1. It is crap.
And..
2. No one gave a shit about, Dune.
Dune back then wasn't the mighty force you've been brainwashed into believing he is, Dune was just a newbie starting out who had a different look. It was cute, it made heads turn. But one half of a custard demolition is hardly main event material. It's a mid-card run at best. And this wasn't just my opinion either, it was a view shared by Dune's opponent too that night; a man who had no fear for the man monolith that stood opposite. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I be the first to reintroduce to you at this time, the man that beat the mighty Dune. A man named...Warpath.
I know. I know...
Who the fuck is Warpath?
Nope, he's not Danny Anderson. Put the meme away.
Warpath, to the uneducated among you (i.e. all of you) is the gent that won for his team. The gent that bested Dune. He was this superheroic Ultimate Warrior type that just oozed positivity. A bit like a roided' up Teo Del Sol.
A quick rundown of the match now so you don't have to search through a WCF back catalogue of mediocre Slams to discover this gem (Hey, let's face it, they were all mediocre without me).
Dune turned up. No one tagged Dune in. He did nothing. Dune lost.
No one talks about Dune's first match in the Federation. Few can remember it. It was one of those dreaded three on three trios cup type scenarios that shudder the bones of competitors as the Tuesday call sheet is released. This particular Slam, Dune was partnered by a team that featured future underachieving tragedy, Jackson White and some total zero named Demetrius Jones; battling the combined might of Caleb Collins, Wolverina and the aforementioned MVP of the night, Warpath.
Yes, it was a total curtain jerk.
As matches go? This one was truly atrocious. It can be hard to read Dune's face for emotion, after all; it's a face like a spastic chrysanthemum, a face like a haggard vagina. It carries no emotion. You only know that Dune is happy when a dribble of saliva runs down his cheek. But that night you can tell he's frustrated. He's disappointed and he wants out of that ring in the worst way. It isn't just because his team consists of a Portuguese racist and a no showing non-entity; it's because he has absolutely no idea what to do out there. He's lost. Swamped by the moment. The best Dune can do is make a few well timed saves as Warpath does the heavy lifting, destroying Dune and his entire team in one fluid moment of okay wrestling.
The end result is Warpath pinning Caleb Jones. We never hear from those two again by the way. Jackson White became a mainstay for while, but ultimately achieved nothing. Did he ever discover his father's killer? I like to think it was Fenix all along and he had a psychological break. But that's just the cynic in me.
The bottom line is that Dune lost because for all of his six foot four, two sixty plus pound frame no one knew him, and no one expected anything from him. He was a blank canvass. All the spin was yet to be born; but without it? Guess what happened.
Dune lost.
You take away the mythology and what are you left with? The facts. That April fool's night was ironically a night of facts, not fiction. Because on that night we got to see the true Dune in action. Not the one that he's built over time into this godhead of unsurpassed excellence, but just a jobber who couldn't string two suplex's together. A jobber who managed to avoid being pinned by simply not being tagged in throughout the entire match, because he was too fucking green for the task.
That's your Dune, by the way. That's your Sandstorm.
The thing is about Dune is though, he's a fast learner; he knew something had to change, he needed to paint that canvass; make himself more than just an incomprehensible theologian sitting in a barrel of dust talking nonsense. So the Dune you know and tolerate was born. First that Rottweiler, then the Dune buggy; next came Pinky (well, at least a few times I'm sure) Freeman, the bar. The ticks and inclinations that we all associate with the Sandman. The one thing Dune didn't have though, was that big scalp, that springboard that would make him a star on the rise. Sure, he had taken down Kaz and Jackson White at Payback for the internet title, but what was needed was a real push. One from an unlikely source.
Let's fast forward now, to the next massive cornerstone in Dune's career, and its one that truly defines him. His win over Jayson Price. It's another forgotten slam. But when you need to know your target, this is the well you drink from. You scout, you pay attention. You learn.
What I've learned is that, for the Dune engine to run, sacrifices need to be made. Careers ousted from the path of the Sandman. Through fair means and fowl, Dune must succeed. And not without a little help along the way from the very highest of echelons to boot. Boot being the operative word here. A career that began on April Fools day and has continued to fool us ever since. But not any more. I will bring enlightenment with me on March the 27th; a shining bright manifesto of truth that will drown the desert with a tide of blood and kill it's supposed saviour.
Now, you may not think of Seth Lerch as a “Dune Guy”, but trust me, he sees the Sandman as a lynchpin in his plans. Seth Lerch needs that living doomsday device, that piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and Dune is the perfect component. That vital machine part that keeps the engine running. The gangmaster that ensures the ship sails on a steady course. You get all of that with Dune if he's pushed right. Protect him, and he's the upgrade; the superior Oblivion. Smarter, stronger. More adapt at tackling a wider variety of prey. Dune is one part bulldozer, one part brooding samurai. But the glue that holds all of this together is circumspect. It's a fallacy. And at Explosion? That glue will dissolve. And the engine will stop.
The juggernaut will jackknife because no Seth super kick is going to conclude this match as it did against Jayson Price on a February, 2014 edition of Slam. Shocked? You probably should be. But if you knew this business the way I do, then you'd know that just because a man chooses to be a hero, it doesn't mean he can't be used still as a weapon for injustice. That night, Seth Lerch made sure Dune played the role of the better, more adept Oblivion. Seth added his own full stop to a blossoming Jay Price mini push by making sure Dune pinned Price.
Jayson had that match won, he was all over it; flying across the ring with an air of confidence that's a given when you're on the cusp of regaining former glories. While Dune? Was he on the path to glory? Not so much. Still awkward, still a second and half off his game. Still the stumbling lamb trying to bark like a wolf. Jay Price, for all his faults still knows how to get it done. He was one Price Buster away from success. But what Jay didn't know was that his role that night was to be the fall guy. To eat a pin and put Dune over.
So Seth Lerch made sure Price knew. When he wants to be, Seth can surprise. And that's what he did that night on Slam. Surprise. But, did dune walk away? Did he do the honourable thing and just allow the count out to occur? No. he gets a hand full of tights and rolls Jay Price up for the one, two, three.
But Jayson, he kicks out.
So Seth retaliates, he superkick's Price! Dune has a choice now, a very real choice. Does he stand by his supposed principles and walk away? Or does he take the scalp and be damned? His choice here is important because it defines everything that Dune is, everything that will become. This is the night that the Dune you now know is born, one built on a cushion of hypocrisy and lies. It's here, on an innocuous Slam that Dune waits, and waits...until Seth hits Jayson Price with a superkick, and Dune goes for the roll up...AGAIN.
He makes a choice. Dune needs that scalp. He'll do whatever it takes to win. He'll make a deal with the devil to win. Case closed and proven. A forgotten Slam, lost in the mists of time. But still out there, captured and stored on tape. A tome containing all the knowledge we need to see Dune's true face. Past the lies of the sentinels. Past the supposed integrity of a man who can so swifty switch on a sixpence.
Dune plays the cards as they fall. He proves to be a survivor, not because he is one with a harsh terrain. No. Dune's a survivor because he plays all sides. He's a duplicitous snake that slithers where he may. And he does so because you just can't read him. Because that face of his denies such an advantage. Just because Dune suffered as a child, it doesn't make him a saint. What Dune is, is a cold blooded killer. He is a monster with an IQ above fifty. Just, I might add..but credit where it's due. He is a man who has lived with a horror show for a reflection. But that reflection needn't stay that way. He could have had his face reconstructed, he could have re-entered main stream society unabated. But that's not the Dune way, he'd rather remain the man with the scary face. The man that shocked Natty ICE out of his title.
To me, Dune's face does not incite terror...but laughter. The kind that comes with a knowledge of history. Oh, I know. It's unfair to poke fun at the less fortunate among us. But you have to understand things from my perspective. That twisted face of Dune's, it robbed ICE Beckman of his precious World Title at Asesinato de Mayo! It cost him the belt! ICE's entire reason to exist evaporated in an instant because ICE Beckman proved to be so utterly shallow, so completely weak at the stomach, as to be revolted into a pin fall by a face that resembles nothing more sinister than a rotting meatball marinara foot long.
I'm sure, If he could, ICE would try and pull a Logan by having Dune's title reign proclaimed as just another non cannon event. But he can't, Natty ICE is lumbered forever more with the burden of being the man that lost to a bullet headed fool with a twisted lip. A man who wiles away his hours suckling on a car ornament and frothing at the mouth while pretending to carry intelligence. And THAT makes me smile. Because ICE Beckman's loss to Dune for that world title was a total farce. It was one man at the end of his tether; a man burnt out and betrayed by Joey Flash. A man that had nothing more to give. Shoved into a corner by a foe Natty had already made tap out weeks previous.
Yes. That cocktailed crossface. I've studied it. I know why Dune tapped out to it. Why Beckman could get the Sandman to relent so easily. It's the reason why I chose this match, this setting for our showdown. That face of his, that move...then it all clicked. The inherent weakness Dune has. How I can exploit it.
You're probably going to say that there's more to Dune than a funny facial disfigurement; and of course you'd be right...in any other match. But in this one? That ugly twist of fate he calls a face has one last trump card to play. Because in this match, what myself and Dune will both lack..is oxygen.
Answer me this, Dune. How are you with holding your breath? I'd wager pretty poor. I'd put money on it in fact. Your mask does all the heavy lifting in that regard, but damaged, broken? And you will flounder in the heat. You're going to welt and pass out and nothing you can do can stop that. That's unfortunate for you, Dune. Because when you're faced by a eighteen by eighteen burning furness where the average temperature could be anything up to three hundred plus degrees, localised oxygen around that ring is going to be thin on the ground. You can try and walk it off, but you'll be dragging nearly three hundred pounds of dead weight behind you as your body sinks to the floor like melting lead.
You might think that all those years spent in the desert has prepared you for this, that you've spent most of your life learning to cope with such conditions; that's arrogance Dune. Blind, stupid arrogance, because these are conditions you can't acclimatise to. You can only survive, barely. It will hit you like a wall at first, that first ear piercing wave of heat, followed by that heart crippling moment when time stands still as you check to see if you're on fire. Nothing can complete with that exhilaration; that sudden rush of fear. You'll try to fight it, to shrug it off; because with it comes a gallery of painful memories attached.
All that pain, watching your brother murdered. Your parents demise. Christian Malignaggi . It all has that same sudden rush of fear, doesn't it? The same rush you administered upon Jared Holmes when you broke his jaw and crushed his shoulder. Don't pretend Dune you don't remember it. You do. You remember it because you where there. On #beachslam; tearing the jumbotron down. Cornering me and Jared in that ring. Taunting us. But I think you remember something else as well, don't you? You remember that moment when we clashed for the very first time. And you couldn't break my grip.
Your face is hard to read, Dune. There's not much to go on, but when you're eye to eye with an opponent, locked in combat, you know, you sense it when you have them at a disadvantage. And that night three months ago at #beachslam I had you on the back foot. It just took a second for me to realise, to compute your distress. I knew then I could hunt you down. You where not the endless vista, the sea of sand. The hourglass that never runs dry. You where still that jobber that flunked out to Warpath. In that moment my eyes began to open. I was free of you. Free of the aura around you.
The name Dune meant nothing more after that night than a target for me to execute.
Watching you fall into that stack of electrical equipment was an eye opener, Dune. For several reasons. One, you allowed Bonnie Blue, a woman half your size to get the best of you. Why? Was it because she's an accomplished wrestler that is used to using what leverage she has against foes twice her size? Maybe. Howard Black and his backward, Midwestern male chauvinism might say otherwise but I'll give poor stupid Bonnie benefit of the doubt...or I would if it wasn't for the fact that there's a better reason.
You froze. You froze because there's a falling child that screams inside your mind on infinite repeat and it won't go away. For all of your cold choices and ruthless ambition you still have a conscience and it's eating you inside like a bubbling acid bath. You're not fighting with the Sentinels, you're leaning upon them. You're using them like a crutch because you know that on your own, you're going to be exposed as a shell of the man you once where. Joey Flash isn't going to be able to catch you, Dune. He'll fail you as he did his son.
And as for Howard Black? The man that just couldn't stay out of my business? I wonder, why do you honestly think he left the Sentinels? Because of Occulo's bad teeth? Because of your boring desert soliloquies? Or maybe he was so repulsed by what you had done as a family man. (A role you have absolutely no knowledge of by the way) that Howard just couldn't stomach the sight of you any longer. He couldn't take being in your presence. So he left and punished you with the only weapon he had left at his disposal. He passed the torch of membership over to one...Joseph Flash.
Howard wanted you to suffer, Dune. He wanted you to never escape the past, to have the father of your victim staring into your face week in and out. And Seth, he wants that too, because in his heart he wants that better Oblivion and thinks that if he can push you over the edge? He'll get it.
That's why he sanctioned this match. That's why he has said nothing up until this point. He wants this to be your rebirth, into the monster. Into that better Oblivion. Seth Lerch ALWAYS has a plan and this is it. And there's nothing you can do about it because I will deliver you unto him, Dune. I will make you his new Oblivion. You gave me two hundred and eighty four reasons for me to kill you when you posted to me my own obituary. All the fuel I ever needed were in those words.
No one threatens my family Dune. Those might be meaningless jibs to others. But to me? You have a sword at my throat. That makes this all bets off. You shot first Dune. Everything now is simply self defence. Tomorrow night is self defence. Your death will be self defence. I am absolved from any and all consequence because all consequence hangs upon your shoulders already. You've crossed so many lines now Dune that the only path for you to take is to become Oblivion.
You're a murderer, Dune. A multiple time killer. Tell me, what the difference is there between you and Lister? Better grammar? A more sensible use of caps lock? Slights, Dune. Small increments. You're Oblivion. All you need is that burnt face.
They say Dune that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature that paper will combust. I won't need those heady heights to destroy your career. I just need enough time to watch your skin begin to burn. Just enough time to let you know that you're finished as I rake barbed wire across your back. Just enough time for me to scream into your broken and battered face that you'll never be my equal. Just enough space for me to hit the kingdom destroyer and snap your neck on a bed of thumb-tacks.
A split second is all that it will take. For me, that's plenty. But for you, Dune?
It will seem like forever.
I know you think of yourself, Dune as a “military grade weapon”, but compared to me? In this environment? What you are is a falling child, thrown from a balcony, by a monster that never knew when to stop.
By now you've all watched the promos on the WCF network for my upcoming match; they're slick and well produced, the main underlying theme is that I am the underdog here. That Johnny Rabid has bitten off more than he can handle. I'm in over my head and it's going to take a miracle to worm my way out of this one. That's the narrative corner I'm being painted into. Johnny Rabid, the man that's never been pinned, facing a Picasso of unbeatable odds. A perfect sunrise for the sandstorm. All Dune has to do is show up and all the dominoes will fall neatly into line as expected. That's the general consensus on the podcasts and in the dirt sheets. The zealots speak in unison.
But here's the truth, just between you and I. I'm not going to face Dune on the 27th at Explosion, I'm going to surpass him. Bludgeon him and embarrass him. On the 27th at the United Centre the world will burn; to be replaced by a new one. A new dawn for this business will rise, and I will rise along with it. The ashes of the old, the days of Dune...I'll kick them to the curb and watch as they scatter upon the wind. The remains of the Sandman, the embers of infamy. Gone, and forgotten, as the hands of time tick on, and herald my new, glorious era.
THE HOURGLASS INN.
“Mister Sandman, give me a treat..”
Johnny Rabid sat at the bar and stared blankly at a tall glass of warm, light amber beer on the blistered oak counter. He had ordered the beverage about an hour ago, then began the studious task of contemplating it's hops and barely ratio. After a few minutes, the obvious became clear. Consumption was completely out of the question. This was warm piss and spit, served with a grunt from a man animal pretending to be a barkeep.
Johnny was dressed in his black running gear; tee shirt, shades, shorts, and a baseball cap. His vehicle outside was not his usual Jaguar; instead he drove a small, modest rental so as to not announce himself. Rabid wondered as his lungs were coated by a layer of cigar smoke and stale air why he was here at all. This small, cramped Tavern held no secrets to him and nether did the desert. Dune was a lie. He knew that. What could be accomplished by coming here?
Then Rabid saw it as he finally peered over his shades: a mosaic upon the wall: photographs, fragments of Dune's life he probably never knew existed. This Tavern; it was a church of sorts. It contained memorabilia that painted a unique portrait of the man Rabid had vowed to hunt down. Dune was captured here like a butterfly pressed against the page, these weren't stock photo's at WCF shows but quite moments. Stalker faire that stripped away the mystique and revealed something more. A man. Awkward, not built for this world.
The irony of it, seeing Dune drinking with friends. Dune weight lifting. Dune trying to drive away from a venue. It made him seem smaller. Less imposing. And somewhat lost. As if plucked from another planet and dropped into the lap of the desert.
And then Rabid heard it.
It was approaching. The cocooned mechanism; it's mechanics ticked over and pierced through a veil of background electrical hum that Rabid had spent years avoiding. Something was different about this noise though, important. Dangerous.
A DING as the door to the premises opened and in stepped the backpacker minus her ride. She spied an empty booth and immediately made a beeline for it. Not stopping to make eye contact. Head bowed. Duly ashamed of her actions. A conflicted threat that Rabid wasted little time debating.
That noise, it was all too familiar now to Rabid. Near misses had dogged him before. IRA bombings back when there was no accord, just murder. Just cruel retaliation and indiscriminate slaughter. Now, trapped in a Tavern in the Mojave, Rabid sensed Belfast and the troubles. Nostrils flaring to the sound of the Orange men as their drums and whistles sang with nationalist pride. Should he run? Just get out? But then he'd never know why. And he needed to know. This was the mosaic. The final piece of the puzzle.
Johnny Rabid: I'm catching a flight tonight.
Backpacker: Excuse me?
Johnny Rabid: I'm catching a nine PM flight tonight from LAX to Chicago. I'm going to be on that flight. I'm going to be unscathed when I climb aboard. The flight is a long one, so I'm going to get a few hours sleep. Dream of my wife and son who will be waiting for me at the terminal. The food will be rotten. But you can't have it all your own way.
Backpacker: Sorry, I don't understand. What do you want?
Johnny Rabid: These dreams, they won't feature me, or you, they won't feature anyone here...burning to death in this fucking shithole of a church to a false idol. Understand now? Do you understand me?
She nodded.
Johnny Rabid: Good girl. Now, don't reach for the backpack. I doesn't matter how fast you think you are, you'll never be as fast as me. That's an impossibility. You're an ape. A monkey down from the tree. That's your evolutionary trail. It's like a slug. You all move like slugs.
Backpacker: Who told you?
Rabid leans in, hushed whispers.
Johnny Rabid: Jason. My name is Jason. Now, take a look around you. What do you see? I see an oaf behind the bar, desperately trying to stay awake. I see an ancient, toothless Rottweiler, doing a stand up job of impersonating the real Dune mutt, by being curled up in the corner and not moving today. There's that old man idly pushing pieces around on a checkers board, clearly his last stop was the wrong planet. Now, you tell me. Which one of these poor bastards angered you so much that you'd want to fucking blow them up?
The Backpacker says nothing, she just looks down, motioning with her thumb and finger over a button on her plaid shirt. A pitiful replacement for her cross.
Rabid smiles.
Johnny Rabid: Oh, now I'm beginning to see. I can smell it on you. The faith. It's cracked. But it still doesn't make any sense why you'd be here. I can give the number of a Dag Riddick though. I'm sure you and him would have lots to talk about.
She finally answers. A short, fragmented response.
Backpacker: Christian.
Rabid smirks.
Johnny Rabid: Not just the faith I presume.
Backpacker: I was there when he fell. His scream, it was like a knife, twisting in my heart. It took so long for him to fall, as if time had stopped. As if the world wanted to stop spinning and just allow the boy to fly away, like Peter Pan. And then...he. Just this fragile, broken thing. That's what he was. And now even his father sits with his killer. What kind of world has a father being friends with their son's murder?
Johnny Rabid: The kind that has WCF world heavyweight titles. Trust me, its not the worst thing someone in my line of work has done. If you stack it up? It's barely a misnomer. Greed. Always the best kind of sin. So many possibilities.
Backpacker: You people make me sick.
Johnny Rabid: High praise from someone sitting in your position. What time?
Backpacker: For what?
Rabid nods at the backpack.
Johnny Rabid: For that.
Backpacker: One fifteen. The time of his death. He took my church away. Made it sacrilegious. Now I'm here to do the same to his. You have an hour to walk out that door. Or to call the police. I don't care which. Seeing that boy fall, it robbed me of my God. I have nothing.
Rabid sighs.
Johnny Rabid: And soon, nether will these people. Don't you get it? These fools that worship their Dune. I'm going to take him away from them. You want to destroy a false church? You want to burn down a false religion? You don't do it by setting alight to their church, or even their faith. Instead you walk up to that false idol they worship and you challenge him. You take him to task and expose the lie that he is. That's my job.
Backpacker: You're...him? The one he'll face?
Johnny Rabid: Yes. I'm the one. I'm the executioner. That's my job.
Rabid throws his car keys on the table top of the booth. Looks straight into her brittle, tearful eyes. Then relays the instructions.
Johnny Rabid: Yours now is to take those keys and drive, drive straight into the desert so that at one fifteen today you meet up with God. You say hello to Christian. You stop your world from spinning while me and the rest of your...humanity carry on. While all this?
Rabid gestures to the stink of Dune around him.
Johnny Rabid: All this becomes meaningless, because I am the one that tears down false Gods by showing them their own blood. I make them bleed. I make them mortal. That's my job. Now...time is ticking. Time for you to do yours.
Her hand reaches out. Wraps around the keys. Squeezes them until her knuckles turn white. She nods. Rising from her seat and taking the backpack with her as the low rumble of a rental car is soon heard driving away. While Johnny Rabid smiles. And calls for a cab. Never even contemplating her name.
FADE.
That boy has just been thrown off from a balcony at the wedding of his parents, Joseph and Alessandra. Their son's name is Christian Malignaggi. In a few moments his head will smash onto the marble floor below, his skull will crack apart and his ribs will be like sand. All this will transpire at the feet of a stone messiah as a Christian is sent to his saviour. Nothing can prevent this event from transpiring now. New York, in the weeks to come, will weep like children. His killer on the other hand.
He will gloat.
Those weeks that followed saw Dune with a joyful gait, he was a demon wearing Christian's death like the skinned pelt stripped from the back of a slain monster. He was Beowulf, singing his praises over Grendel's rotting corpse. But this wasn't merely one man alone, for Dune had “a guest” with him: a diseased, bitter creature; a harvester of pain and misery that inhabits the bodies of those he considers worthy of his games.
The Jackal.
But still, those hands, that strength, that wrath, it all belonged to one man alone. A man who believed he'd lost the only woman he loved. A man who had indeed lost his unborn child. A man who turned away from reason, who allowed the monster out at the crucial moment, all in the name of revenge.
All in the name of revenge, those words echo now as they refuse to bow down to history. Dune is a broken man. He hides it well, as he has hidden his ravaged face. But there is no apparatus that can mend what he has done. Dune turned away, he turned his back at the crucial moment and allowed the monster within full autonomy. So that “the guest” could accomplish what Dune could not. What Dune did not have the bravery to execute. To become the monster he was born to be.
His guest on the other hand had no reservations in that regard. This new Dune, he liked to play games. He liked to scheme and taunt. This Dune: he broke jaws and shattered shoulders. This Dune, he wrote obituaries and sent them to his intended targets. Such as the members of #beachkrew. Such as one Jonathan Rabid.
And Family...
Jason Rush, also known as Professional Wrestler and serial meddler, Jonathan Rabid; was found dead today at his ostentatious red brick manor house named, “Fortune”, situated on the outskirts of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Police at the scene described the victim's body as “broken in two”, with multiple fractures to his spine and neck. The #beachkrew stalwart was said to have “suffered for hours” before eventual blood loss brought about heart failure and brain death. While a pathology report is pending, preliminary findings would indicate that the victim was tortured extensively for hours, “like a plaything”.
The bodies of Rabid's wife, Emily (29) and son, Dorian (7) where found mutilated by his side. Their injuries were in concurrence with Rabid's. It would also appear from a twin set of blood trails that towards the end of their ordeal, Jason and Emma attempted to crawl along their luxury, oak floor panelling for one, final embrace. Yet their final gesture of love was smashed tantalizingly close to competition by their attacker, who wrenched their fingers off at the knuckles and slit their throats in slow, savoured retaliation. Penance, for such a distasteful act of insolence on their part.
As a world will no doubt rejoice to hear, Rabid will thankfully now be survived by no-one. No one will grieve. No one will mourn. He has been reduced to being simply a non-entity; a fucking bug that I've crushed under foot. Obliterated. And cast aside as a discarded joke.
Yes. I am the instigator of this fumigation of our reality. Do you know who I am yet? Let me give you a clue.
I am the personification of wraith. I am death, incarnate. And this, this is your obituary.
St Patrick's Cathedral. October: Twenty fifteen. It had guests from across the five points; it had dignitaries from commerce and the church; it had politicians and fat cats in attendance. It also had ordinary folk. It had a Nun stationed there. A Sicilian born woman, whose soul screamed for justice as she bent down and placed her warm, shaking hand on the brow of a cold, dead child. Closing his coffin lid with a silent prayer, while removing her cross for the very last time.
MOJAVE DESERT. NOW.
Saturday, March 26th; the day before the ripper's fateful clash with Dune, an event scheduled to commence at “Explosion”. A sold out WCF PPV that promises to tear the roof off a twenty three thousand seater stadium, where larynx's shall bleed and lungs shall burst. A white hot United Centre crowd surrounding a white hot battleground; an arena transformed into a pit of fire and anguish for a special C4 exploding death match. A burning inferno of chaos born in the heart of Chicago, where survival is a long shot: cradled under the custodian of anxious angels.
But no angel lives out here in the desert, nor watches over a lone figure as she walks out of a bubbling Mojave horizon; an innocuous and humble woman, just a perspiring backpacker dressed down in her red plaid shirt and black Lycra tights. A traveller, thumbing for a ride into town. Her credentials are perhaps a little vague upon inspection, but they're robust enough to get by in a dust bowl tundra that asks few questions and shuns most answers.
While her environment is dry and hostile, her mid twenties, olive skinned smile is sweet and full. Yet not too perfect, just a hint of ordinariness to calm suspicions as her long, slender legs swagger into view, a body burdened with a heavy, large backpack; a cocoon for a mechanism that awaits a signal to announce itself. Diligently ticking over, desperate to full-fill it's intended, destructive purpose.
A rumble of a truck peels off the melting landscape as it catches the backpacker's attention, she turns, her clear eyes, minus mascara, narrows as she waves for salvation at the roadside; swiping away a wisp of neatly bobbed shoulder length black hair from her clear, slightly chapped lips. The approaching truck is a rusting 1949 F-1 Ford: the post war workhorse of a nation, as plain, honest and old it's driver, a retired mechanic with a dehydrated road map for a face. This ancient relic of a bygone era can't help but wrestle with what's left of his breaks as he spies the backpacker.
The driver wears an oil stained blue baseball cap, perched at the peak of sixty plus years of hard labour along these merciless highways as a coveralled savour to stranded, lost souls The only thing that would make him stop in reality though wouldn't be the kindness of her heart, but cold hard cash. It would take a phone call and an arranged fee for mercy to surface. That's the law of the desert out here. As icy as the night wind.
This backpacker though, she's different, she looks like his beloved grand daughter. She won't cause this old man any harm, he was certain. And that sun, it's baking hot, she'll fry in this mid morning heat otherwise.
The Mechanic's dead wife always told him to look away and drive on when it came to hitch-hikers; but sometimes, you just have to do the right thing. He was retired now anyways, it's okay to break the rules once in awhile.
Mechanic: Climb aboard, Miss. Let's get you into the shade.
Her only response was a nod. Nothing more. Gently placing her backpack onto the back seat behind her as she rode shotgun. The gear stick moaned and groaned as it's driver willed the F-1 back into motion. It shunted forward as the young woman glared at the backpack, it's weight thankfully keeping it secured in place.
Mechanic: You got a heading?
A moment passed before--
Backpacker: The Hourglass Tavern. I hear it's the one that--
Mechanic: Oh! You're one of those...on the Dune trail?
Backpacker: Yes. I suppose so. Do you know him?
Mechanic: Met him. Spoke to him once. The Firestarter. Even drank a 'sud with him. But know? That's a rarity, Ma'am. That's an honour as precious as gold. “To know Dune, is to walk through fire unscathed.” That's what I hear those Indians say. They got a rye sense of humour that lot.
Backpacker: What does it mean?
Mechanic: Well Miss, I guess it means that if you can survive long enough in his company, if you can get ta know him an' suchlike, well then...I guess you must be immortal.
The Backpacker glances over her shoulder at the rear seat.
Backpacker: Nobody's that. Nobody except our lord.
Mechanic: You don't have to tell these old bones, Miss. Nothin' I do stops the clock from tickin'
Backpacker: You and me both.
The Mechanic laughs
Mechanic: I don't think that's something you need to worry about too soon. You've got plenty of days ahead of you. How old are you, twenty five?
Backpacker: Good guess. I'm twenty six.
Mechanic: You've got your whole life ahead of you, ma'am. All those birthdays to look forward to. So, why the Dune trail? One last adventure before settling down?
Backpacker: Yeah, something like that.
Mechanic: Well then, you shouldn't be making this trip alone if you don't mind me sayin' This isn't hospitable country all year 'round. We got snakes under the sun out here. If you know your Dune mythology, you'll know what I'm talkin' about. Daniel? He didn't get that mangled face of his by slippin' on a puddle of bad genetics. That's the desert leavin' it's mark, that's the sand and the rock and the sun tellin' mankind to know it's place. “If we can do this to Dune? We can do this to anyone.”
Backpacker: It wasn't the desert that stole his face, it was men. His brother's killers.
Mechanic: True, but those men cooked under this same sun. Those men breathed in the same damn sand we do. And they were buried under the same rocks I will be one day. Once it's in your skin ma'am, it don't go away. It infects, it germinates. Even when you think you're rid of it back in the big city, the desert will always be there. In that sun, in that heat. Your bones will know it; miss it. Eventually if you stay out here long enough. The madness will always find a way back in.
Backpacker: It can be stopped. I believe that.
She reached for her cross, but then remembered. It wasn't there any more.
SOUNDBYTES: DUNE 451
[By Jonathan Rabid @rabid1]
WCF blog entry: 03/23/16
What is Dune? Let me tell you since no one else has the guts to. He's a former Internet title holder. A former World Champion. A Trios champion. He's a man who, with a full year of top flight competition under his belt, has accomplished more in twelve months than Yung Adam has in twelve years. He is to be respected. And for me, that means he is to be beaten. To broken and humbled. A trophy to be hung upon my wall as I sit back and quaff some well aged cognac and think fondly back to how Dune put up a decent struggle, before I snapped his fucking head clean off.
Even though he'll make a good prize, I am under no illusions and nether should you be. Dune has been set up in this company as the measuring stick. The ultimate hurdle to overcome. Dune never, ever loses. He is a master at triumph over adversity. As long as that adversity is a quantity that he understands. Take that one simple building block away from him however, and he might as well be a blind mute.
This Sunday, someone will have to lead Dune by the nose to the ring, offer him a guide dog if one is available and hand over a white cane. They'll have to shout instructions at him though a megaphone as his mongoloid body struggles to comprehend the infinite complexity that faces him. The years of technical expertise I will unleash. The hours upon hours of preparation that has gone into this match. Studying form, watching and observing each tick and inclination in his technique; honed now to a point of absolute fluency. Dune has no tricks left to teach me, the only surprise he can possible hold this Sunday is the amount to blood loss it's going to take to kill him.
The average male has ten pints to bleed, and I want to see every last fucking drop on that mat.
Know your enemy. Of all the cornerstones of combat, surly that's the one that has stood the test of time. It's proven. You can't refute the logic of the statement. To know your enemy is to understand their motives and goals. To know your enemy is to unravel their strengths and discover their weaknesses. That's how the game has been played for thousands of years. Sun Tzu's favourite catchphrase. From the colosseums of Rome, to the D-Day landings, to the drone strikes on Iraq; knowing your enemy is the driving percussion at the very heartbeat of war. The metronome for victory.
But occasionally, they're exceptions to the rule. A little knowledge can be a fire all it's own. A fire that can burn you. Because it can seduce you into believing a lie that's become greater than the truth it distorts. That's what Dune has become, a lie, that's become twisted fact. But one I vow to unravel, and reveal. Because for all that Dune has accomplished, for all he has achieved in his approaching two year anniversary with the company, he is, at the heart of it all...just a lie. Believed and nurtured for reasons that will soon become clear.
The cult of personality can be a dangerous thing; it's like a living organism, a monster that smothers the truth; extinguishing brevity and honesty as it wraps it's lies around times, places, facts and people. The cult of personality squeezes the life out of history. That cult, that monster, it likes nothing more than to take away our history, the oxygen reality needs to survive, eating away at objectivity until all that's left is what we're programmed to believe. Stamped and indexed and filed away under Z for Zealot.
Dune doesn't have fans, what he has is an army of Zealots; uploaded with a revisionist version of history that paints the man as a God. A lone, wondering messiah that has never been bested in combat. A man that towers over humanity like a ziggurat of perfection. Basically, an unstoppable force that has been strangely stopped many times before, but hey, we don't talk about his loses to The Pack or tapping out to Natural ICE Beckman on a Sunday Night Slam because the P.R. team in the back don't think that will sell many tickets.
The fact of the matter is, through a cocktail of tragic circumstance and lucky genetics, Dune is the right monster, at the right place, at the right time. When Oblivion's career imploded and Jakob Lister dropped the baton, someone needed to be there to catch it. Someone needed to be the dragon to slay the unworthy. A living Phenom that looms over the company, and it's cocky inhabitants, like a reaper's shadow. A doomsday device carrying a payload of company backed annihilation at it's bloody fingertips.
But for all of that to work, for all of that hubris to be believable, you have to believe IN IT. And that takes work. Because even though Dune is good, he is not perfection. He has flaws, he has weaknesses. The newer talent can barely remember what happened last Sunday. But for those of us not named Shadowlove, we know how to prepare and annihilate our competition. It starts with know your enemy, it ends with REALLY knowing your enemy; it takes seeing though the smoke and smashing down the mirrors. It takes the will to disperse the lies and expose the truth. It takes hard work and dedication.
But once achieved? That truth begins to sing.
This Sunday, the truth will sing that Dune can be beaten. It will sing that Dune is not some unstoppable foe. It will sing a chorus about how the man that slays dragons shall become slain himself. I have the power to make this happen, because my eyes are now open. They see what many of you cannot. They look past the portentous crap he spews and removes his body from the desert vista he uses to frame himself. That white hot landscape he shields himself with as he mumbles about being some kind of mythical embodiment of hardship.
What a load of fucking shit.
If you believe in Blue Velvet and Star Diamonds and all the rest of his crap then you need your fucking head examined. Riddle me this “Dune bugs” If Dune is “the living embodiment of the desert”, his words, not mine. Then how come when he's there, his life instantly turns to shit? How come his precious desert setting has been the stage for him losing his face, his brother, his family, and those he has loved? Time and time again Dune has failed in his own backyard. That desert visa he says he's one with hates his pretentious guts. For a man who apparently is some kind of survivalist God he has this uncanny knack of allowing those he supposedly loves and cherishes to suffer because of him. It's almost as if he needs that tragic narrative to drive him on. He needs to constantly feel loss to spurn on his career. Like a twisted sadomasochistic addiction to other people's pain.
Or maybe, he's just an absent minded tool. After all, this is a man who can't even look after a dog without it kissing the dirt. So much for the mighty Dune. This idiot can't even put on a pair of bowling shoes without the ordeal turning it into a minor crisis.
Dune is no Bear Grylls. He'd barely make it to a Katherine Phoenix tea party on ZMAC's lawn. Dune is a man that surrounds himself with tropes and misdirections because without them he is nothing more than a mid-card Ryback with a custard leotard and a mouth full of metal. Dune spins yarns about clones and mind altering drugs and mischievous aliens all to misdirect you from the truth. That Dune is no more than a towering bag of piss and spin designed to get inside your head and win matches before the first bell sounds. Simply put, Dune is Oblivion without the curtain pulled back.
But once you do, once you realise that he's just Mad Max with a lisp, then the world starts to make sense again. And once that occurs, you begin to realise why Dune's career has been constantly air lifted to safety on a familiar set of puppet strings. Sounds like bunkum? Well then, let me finally enlighten you.
Let's start at the beginning, let's take a trip back to an April fools day. To the very day that Dune debuted on Slam. Back then he was waxing lyrical about being a mysterious force from the desert. And it got him a bang average reception. It sounded like crap to a non nonplussed audience because...
1. It is crap.
And..
2. No one gave a shit about, Dune.
Dune back then wasn't the mighty force you've been brainwashed into believing he is, Dune was just a newbie starting out who had a different look. It was cute, it made heads turn. But one half of a custard demolition is hardly main event material. It's a mid-card run at best. And this wasn't just my opinion either, it was a view shared by Dune's opponent too that night; a man who had no fear for the man monolith that stood opposite. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I be the first to reintroduce to you at this time, the man that beat the mighty Dune. A man named...Warpath.
I know. I know...
Who the fuck is Warpath?
Nope, he's not Danny Anderson. Put the meme away.
Warpath, to the uneducated among you (i.e. all of you) is the gent that won for his team. The gent that bested Dune. He was this superheroic Ultimate Warrior type that just oozed positivity. A bit like a roided' up Teo Del Sol.
A quick rundown of the match now so you don't have to search through a WCF back catalogue of mediocre Slams to discover this gem (Hey, let's face it, they were all mediocre without me).
Dune turned up. No one tagged Dune in. He did nothing. Dune lost.
No one talks about Dune's first match in the Federation. Few can remember it. It was one of those dreaded three on three trios cup type scenarios that shudder the bones of competitors as the Tuesday call sheet is released. This particular Slam, Dune was partnered by a team that featured future underachieving tragedy, Jackson White and some total zero named Demetrius Jones; battling the combined might of Caleb Collins, Wolverina and the aforementioned MVP of the night, Warpath.
Yes, it was a total curtain jerk.
As matches go? This one was truly atrocious. It can be hard to read Dune's face for emotion, after all; it's a face like a spastic chrysanthemum, a face like a haggard vagina. It carries no emotion. You only know that Dune is happy when a dribble of saliva runs down his cheek. But that night you can tell he's frustrated. He's disappointed and he wants out of that ring in the worst way. It isn't just because his team consists of a Portuguese racist and a no showing non-entity; it's because he has absolutely no idea what to do out there. He's lost. Swamped by the moment. The best Dune can do is make a few well timed saves as Warpath does the heavy lifting, destroying Dune and his entire team in one fluid moment of okay wrestling.
The end result is Warpath pinning Caleb Jones. We never hear from those two again by the way. Jackson White became a mainstay for while, but ultimately achieved nothing. Did he ever discover his father's killer? I like to think it was Fenix all along and he had a psychological break. But that's just the cynic in me.
The bottom line is that Dune lost because for all of his six foot four, two sixty plus pound frame no one knew him, and no one expected anything from him. He was a blank canvass. All the spin was yet to be born; but without it? Guess what happened.
Dune lost.
You take away the mythology and what are you left with? The facts. That April fool's night was ironically a night of facts, not fiction. Because on that night we got to see the true Dune in action. Not the one that he's built over time into this godhead of unsurpassed excellence, but just a jobber who couldn't string two suplex's together. A jobber who managed to avoid being pinned by simply not being tagged in throughout the entire match, because he was too fucking green for the task.
That's your Dune, by the way. That's your Sandstorm.
The thing is about Dune is though, he's a fast learner; he knew something had to change, he needed to paint that canvass; make himself more than just an incomprehensible theologian sitting in a barrel of dust talking nonsense. So the Dune you know and tolerate was born. First that Rottweiler, then the Dune buggy; next came Pinky (well, at least a few times I'm sure) Freeman, the bar. The ticks and inclinations that we all associate with the Sandman. The one thing Dune didn't have though, was that big scalp, that springboard that would make him a star on the rise. Sure, he had taken down Kaz and Jackson White at Payback for the internet title, but what was needed was a real push. One from an unlikely source.
Let's fast forward now, to the next massive cornerstone in Dune's career, and its one that truly defines him. His win over Jayson Price. It's another forgotten slam. But when you need to know your target, this is the well you drink from. You scout, you pay attention. You learn.
What I've learned is that, for the Dune engine to run, sacrifices need to be made. Careers ousted from the path of the Sandman. Through fair means and fowl, Dune must succeed. And not without a little help along the way from the very highest of echelons to boot. Boot being the operative word here. A career that began on April Fools day and has continued to fool us ever since. But not any more. I will bring enlightenment with me on March the 27th; a shining bright manifesto of truth that will drown the desert with a tide of blood and kill it's supposed saviour.
Now, you may not think of Seth Lerch as a “Dune Guy”, but trust me, he sees the Sandman as a lynchpin in his plans. Seth Lerch needs that living doomsday device, that piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and Dune is the perfect component. That vital machine part that keeps the engine running. The gangmaster that ensures the ship sails on a steady course. You get all of that with Dune if he's pushed right. Protect him, and he's the upgrade; the superior Oblivion. Smarter, stronger. More adapt at tackling a wider variety of prey. Dune is one part bulldozer, one part brooding samurai. But the glue that holds all of this together is circumspect. It's a fallacy. And at Explosion? That glue will dissolve. And the engine will stop.
The juggernaut will jackknife because no Seth super kick is going to conclude this match as it did against Jayson Price on a February, 2014 edition of Slam. Shocked? You probably should be. But if you knew this business the way I do, then you'd know that just because a man chooses to be a hero, it doesn't mean he can't be used still as a weapon for injustice. That night, Seth Lerch made sure Dune played the role of the better, more adept Oblivion. Seth added his own full stop to a blossoming Jay Price mini push by making sure Dune pinned Price.
Jayson had that match won, he was all over it; flying across the ring with an air of confidence that's a given when you're on the cusp of regaining former glories. While Dune? Was he on the path to glory? Not so much. Still awkward, still a second and half off his game. Still the stumbling lamb trying to bark like a wolf. Jay Price, for all his faults still knows how to get it done. He was one Price Buster away from success. But what Jay didn't know was that his role that night was to be the fall guy. To eat a pin and put Dune over.
So Seth Lerch made sure Price knew. When he wants to be, Seth can surprise. And that's what he did that night on Slam. Surprise. But, did dune walk away? Did he do the honourable thing and just allow the count out to occur? No. he gets a hand full of tights and rolls Jay Price up for the one, two, three.
But Jayson, he kicks out.
So Seth retaliates, he superkick's Price! Dune has a choice now, a very real choice. Does he stand by his supposed principles and walk away? Or does he take the scalp and be damned? His choice here is important because it defines everything that Dune is, everything that will become. This is the night that the Dune you now know is born, one built on a cushion of hypocrisy and lies. It's here, on an innocuous Slam that Dune waits, and waits...until Seth hits Jayson Price with a superkick, and Dune goes for the roll up...AGAIN.
He makes a choice. Dune needs that scalp. He'll do whatever it takes to win. He'll make a deal with the devil to win. Case closed and proven. A forgotten Slam, lost in the mists of time. But still out there, captured and stored on tape. A tome containing all the knowledge we need to see Dune's true face. Past the lies of the sentinels. Past the supposed integrity of a man who can so swifty switch on a sixpence.
Dune plays the cards as they fall. He proves to be a survivor, not because he is one with a harsh terrain. No. Dune's a survivor because he plays all sides. He's a duplicitous snake that slithers where he may. And he does so because you just can't read him. Because that face of his denies such an advantage. Just because Dune suffered as a child, it doesn't make him a saint. What Dune is, is a cold blooded killer. He is a monster with an IQ above fifty. Just, I might add..but credit where it's due. He is a man who has lived with a horror show for a reflection. But that reflection needn't stay that way. He could have had his face reconstructed, he could have re-entered main stream society unabated. But that's not the Dune way, he'd rather remain the man with the scary face. The man that shocked Natty ICE out of his title.
To me, Dune's face does not incite terror...but laughter. The kind that comes with a knowledge of history. Oh, I know. It's unfair to poke fun at the less fortunate among us. But you have to understand things from my perspective. That twisted face of Dune's, it robbed ICE Beckman of his precious World Title at Asesinato de Mayo! It cost him the belt! ICE's entire reason to exist evaporated in an instant because ICE Beckman proved to be so utterly shallow, so completely weak at the stomach, as to be revolted into a pin fall by a face that resembles nothing more sinister than a rotting meatball marinara foot long.
I'm sure, If he could, ICE would try and pull a Logan by having Dune's title reign proclaimed as just another non cannon event. But he can't, Natty ICE is lumbered forever more with the burden of being the man that lost to a bullet headed fool with a twisted lip. A man who wiles away his hours suckling on a car ornament and frothing at the mouth while pretending to carry intelligence. And THAT makes me smile. Because ICE Beckman's loss to Dune for that world title was a total farce. It was one man at the end of his tether; a man burnt out and betrayed by Joey Flash. A man that had nothing more to give. Shoved into a corner by a foe Natty had already made tap out weeks previous.
Yes. That cocktailed crossface. I've studied it. I know why Dune tapped out to it. Why Beckman could get the Sandman to relent so easily. It's the reason why I chose this match, this setting for our showdown. That face of his, that move...then it all clicked. The inherent weakness Dune has. How I can exploit it.
You're probably going to say that there's more to Dune than a funny facial disfigurement; and of course you'd be right...in any other match. But in this one? That ugly twist of fate he calls a face has one last trump card to play. Because in this match, what myself and Dune will both lack..is oxygen.
Answer me this, Dune. How are you with holding your breath? I'd wager pretty poor. I'd put money on it in fact. Your mask does all the heavy lifting in that regard, but damaged, broken? And you will flounder in the heat. You're going to welt and pass out and nothing you can do can stop that. That's unfortunate for you, Dune. Because when you're faced by a eighteen by eighteen burning furness where the average temperature could be anything up to three hundred plus degrees, localised oxygen around that ring is going to be thin on the ground. You can try and walk it off, but you'll be dragging nearly three hundred pounds of dead weight behind you as your body sinks to the floor like melting lead.
You might think that all those years spent in the desert has prepared you for this, that you've spent most of your life learning to cope with such conditions; that's arrogance Dune. Blind, stupid arrogance, because these are conditions you can't acclimatise to. You can only survive, barely. It will hit you like a wall at first, that first ear piercing wave of heat, followed by that heart crippling moment when time stands still as you check to see if you're on fire. Nothing can complete with that exhilaration; that sudden rush of fear. You'll try to fight it, to shrug it off; because with it comes a gallery of painful memories attached.
All that pain, watching your brother murdered. Your parents demise. Christian Malignaggi . It all has that same sudden rush of fear, doesn't it? The same rush you administered upon Jared Holmes when you broke his jaw and crushed his shoulder. Don't pretend Dune you don't remember it. You do. You remember it because you where there. On #beachslam; tearing the jumbotron down. Cornering me and Jared in that ring. Taunting us. But I think you remember something else as well, don't you? You remember that moment when we clashed for the very first time. And you couldn't break my grip.
Your face is hard to read, Dune. There's not much to go on, but when you're eye to eye with an opponent, locked in combat, you know, you sense it when you have them at a disadvantage. And that night three months ago at #beachslam I had you on the back foot. It just took a second for me to realise, to compute your distress. I knew then I could hunt you down. You where not the endless vista, the sea of sand. The hourglass that never runs dry. You where still that jobber that flunked out to Warpath. In that moment my eyes began to open. I was free of you. Free of the aura around you.
The name Dune meant nothing more after that night than a target for me to execute.
Watching you fall into that stack of electrical equipment was an eye opener, Dune. For several reasons. One, you allowed Bonnie Blue, a woman half your size to get the best of you. Why? Was it because she's an accomplished wrestler that is used to using what leverage she has against foes twice her size? Maybe. Howard Black and his backward, Midwestern male chauvinism might say otherwise but I'll give poor stupid Bonnie benefit of the doubt...or I would if it wasn't for the fact that there's a better reason.
You froze. You froze because there's a falling child that screams inside your mind on infinite repeat and it won't go away. For all of your cold choices and ruthless ambition you still have a conscience and it's eating you inside like a bubbling acid bath. You're not fighting with the Sentinels, you're leaning upon them. You're using them like a crutch because you know that on your own, you're going to be exposed as a shell of the man you once where. Joey Flash isn't going to be able to catch you, Dune. He'll fail you as he did his son.
And as for Howard Black? The man that just couldn't stay out of my business? I wonder, why do you honestly think he left the Sentinels? Because of Occulo's bad teeth? Because of your boring desert soliloquies? Or maybe he was so repulsed by what you had done as a family man. (A role you have absolutely no knowledge of by the way) that Howard just couldn't stomach the sight of you any longer. He couldn't take being in your presence. So he left and punished you with the only weapon he had left at his disposal. He passed the torch of membership over to one...Joseph Flash.
Howard wanted you to suffer, Dune. He wanted you to never escape the past, to have the father of your victim staring into your face week in and out. And Seth, he wants that too, because in his heart he wants that better Oblivion and thinks that if he can push you over the edge? He'll get it.
That's why he sanctioned this match. That's why he has said nothing up until this point. He wants this to be your rebirth, into the monster. Into that better Oblivion. Seth Lerch ALWAYS has a plan and this is it. And there's nothing you can do about it because I will deliver you unto him, Dune. I will make you his new Oblivion. You gave me two hundred and eighty four reasons for me to kill you when you posted to me my own obituary. All the fuel I ever needed were in those words.
No one threatens my family Dune. Those might be meaningless jibs to others. But to me? You have a sword at my throat. That makes this all bets off. You shot first Dune. Everything now is simply self defence. Tomorrow night is self defence. Your death will be self defence. I am absolved from any and all consequence because all consequence hangs upon your shoulders already. You've crossed so many lines now Dune that the only path for you to take is to become Oblivion.
You're a murderer, Dune. A multiple time killer. Tell me, what the difference is there between you and Lister? Better grammar? A more sensible use of caps lock? Slights, Dune. Small increments. You're Oblivion. All you need is that burnt face.
They say Dune that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature that paper will combust. I won't need those heady heights to destroy your career. I just need enough time to watch your skin begin to burn. Just enough time to let you know that you're finished as I rake barbed wire across your back. Just enough time for me to scream into your broken and battered face that you'll never be my equal. Just enough space for me to hit the kingdom destroyer and snap your neck on a bed of thumb-tacks.
A split second is all that it will take. For me, that's plenty. But for you, Dune?
It will seem like forever.
I know you think of yourself, Dune as a “military grade weapon”, but compared to me? In this environment? What you are is a falling child, thrown from a balcony, by a monster that never knew when to stop.
By now you've all watched the promos on the WCF network for my upcoming match; they're slick and well produced, the main underlying theme is that I am the underdog here. That Johnny Rabid has bitten off more than he can handle. I'm in over my head and it's going to take a miracle to worm my way out of this one. That's the narrative corner I'm being painted into. Johnny Rabid, the man that's never been pinned, facing a Picasso of unbeatable odds. A perfect sunrise for the sandstorm. All Dune has to do is show up and all the dominoes will fall neatly into line as expected. That's the general consensus on the podcasts and in the dirt sheets. The zealots speak in unison.
But here's the truth, just between you and I. I'm not going to face Dune on the 27th at Explosion, I'm going to surpass him. Bludgeon him and embarrass him. On the 27th at the United Centre the world will burn; to be replaced by a new one. A new dawn for this business will rise, and I will rise along with it. The ashes of the old, the days of Dune...I'll kick them to the curb and watch as they scatter upon the wind. The remains of the Sandman, the embers of infamy. Gone, and forgotten, as the hands of time tick on, and herald my new, glorious era.
THE HOURGLASS INN.
“Mister Sandman, give me a treat..”
Johnny Rabid sat at the bar and stared blankly at a tall glass of warm, light amber beer on the blistered oak counter. He had ordered the beverage about an hour ago, then began the studious task of contemplating it's hops and barely ratio. After a few minutes, the obvious became clear. Consumption was completely out of the question. This was warm piss and spit, served with a grunt from a man animal pretending to be a barkeep.
Johnny was dressed in his black running gear; tee shirt, shades, shorts, and a baseball cap. His vehicle outside was not his usual Jaguar; instead he drove a small, modest rental so as to not announce himself. Rabid wondered as his lungs were coated by a layer of cigar smoke and stale air why he was here at all. This small, cramped Tavern held no secrets to him and nether did the desert. Dune was a lie. He knew that. What could be accomplished by coming here?
Then Rabid saw it as he finally peered over his shades: a mosaic upon the wall: photographs, fragments of Dune's life he probably never knew existed. This Tavern; it was a church of sorts. It contained memorabilia that painted a unique portrait of the man Rabid had vowed to hunt down. Dune was captured here like a butterfly pressed against the page, these weren't stock photo's at WCF shows but quite moments. Stalker faire that stripped away the mystique and revealed something more. A man. Awkward, not built for this world.
The irony of it, seeing Dune drinking with friends. Dune weight lifting. Dune trying to drive away from a venue. It made him seem smaller. Less imposing. And somewhat lost. As if plucked from another planet and dropped into the lap of the desert.
And then Rabid heard it.
It was approaching. The cocooned mechanism; it's mechanics ticked over and pierced through a veil of background electrical hum that Rabid had spent years avoiding. Something was different about this noise though, important. Dangerous.
A DING as the door to the premises opened and in stepped the backpacker minus her ride. She spied an empty booth and immediately made a beeline for it. Not stopping to make eye contact. Head bowed. Duly ashamed of her actions. A conflicted threat that Rabid wasted little time debating.
That noise, it was all too familiar now to Rabid. Near misses had dogged him before. IRA bombings back when there was no accord, just murder. Just cruel retaliation and indiscriminate slaughter. Now, trapped in a Tavern in the Mojave, Rabid sensed Belfast and the troubles. Nostrils flaring to the sound of the Orange men as their drums and whistles sang with nationalist pride. Should he run? Just get out? But then he'd never know why. And he needed to know. This was the mosaic. The final piece of the puzzle.
Johnny Rabid: I'm catching a flight tonight.
Backpacker: Excuse me?
Johnny Rabid: I'm catching a nine PM flight tonight from LAX to Chicago. I'm going to be on that flight. I'm going to be unscathed when I climb aboard. The flight is a long one, so I'm going to get a few hours sleep. Dream of my wife and son who will be waiting for me at the terminal. The food will be rotten. But you can't have it all your own way.
Backpacker: Sorry, I don't understand. What do you want?
Johnny Rabid: These dreams, they won't feature me, or you, they won't feature anyone here...burning to death in this fucking shithole of a church to a false idol. Understand now? Do you understand me?
She nodded.
Johnny Rabid: Good girl. Now, don't reach for the backpack. I doesn't matter how fast you think you are, you'll never be as fast as me. That's an impossibility. You're an ape. A monkey down from the tree. That's your evolutionary trail. It's like a slug. You all move like slugs.
Backpacker: Who told you?
Rabid leans in, hushed whispers.
Johnny Rabid: Jason. My name is Jason. Now, take a look around you. What do you see? I see an oaf behind the bar, desperately trying to stay awake. I see an ancient, toothless Rottweiler, doing a stand up job of impersonating the real Dune mutt, by being curled up in the corner and not moving today. There's that old man idly pushing pieces around on a checkers board, clearly his last stop was the wrong planet. Now, you tell me. Which one of these poor bastards angered you so much that you'd want to fucking blow them up?
The Backpacker says nothing, she just looks down, motioning with her thumb and finger over a button on her plaid shirt. A pitiful replacement for her cross.
Rabid smiles.
Johnny Rabid: Oh, now I'm beginning to see. I can smell it on you. The faith. It's cracked. But it still doesn't make any sense why you'd be here. I can give the number of a Dag Riddick though. I'm sure you and him would have lots to talk about.
She finally answers. A short, fragmented response.
Backpacker: Christian.
Rabid smirks.
Johnny Rabid: Not just the faith I presume.
Backpacker: I was there when he fell. His scream, it was like a knife, twisting in my heart. It took so long for him to fall, as if time had stopped. As if the world wanted to stop spinning and just allow the boy to fly away, like Peter Pan. And then...he. Just this fragile, broken thing. That's what he was. And now even his father sits with his killer. What kind of world has a father being friends with their son's murder?
Johnny Rabid: The kind that has WCF world heavyweight titles. Trust me, its not the worst thing someone in my line of work has done. If you stack it up? It's barely a misnomer. Greed. Always the best kind of sin. So many possibilities.
Backpacker: You people make me sick.
Johnny Rabid: High praise from someone sitting in your position. What time?
Backpacker: For what?
Rabid nods at the backpack.
Johnny Rabid: For that.
Backpacker: One fifteen. The time of his death. He took my church away. Made it sacrilegious. Now I'm here to do the same to his. You have an hour to walk out that door. Or to call the police. I don't care which. Seeing that boy fall, it robbed me of my God. I have nothing.
Rabid sighs.
Johnny Rabid: And soon, nether will these people. Don't you get it? These fools that worship their Dune. I'm going to take him away from them. You want to destroy a false church? You want to burn down a false religion? You don't do it by setting alight to their church, or even their faith. Instead you walk up to that false idol they worship and you challenge him. You take him to task and expose the lie that he is. That's my job.
Backpacker: You're...him? The one he'll face?
Johnny Rabid: Yes. I'm the one. I'm the executioner. That's my job.
Rabid throws his car keys on the table top of the booth. Looks straight into her brittle, tearful eyes. Then relays the instructions.
Johnny Rabid: Yours now is to take those keys and drive, drive straight into the desert so that at one fifteen today you meet up with God. You say hello to Christian. You stop your world from spinning while me and the rest of your...humanity carry on. While all this?
Rabid gestures to the stink of Dune around him.
Johnny Rabid: All this becomes meaningless, because I am the one that tears down false Gods by showing them their own blood. I make them bleed. I make them mortal. That's my job. Now...time is ticking. Time for you to do yours.
Her hand reaches out. Wraps around the keys. Squeezes them until her knuckles turn white. She nods. Rising from her seat and taking the backpack with her as the low rumble of a rental car is soon heard driving away. While Johnny Rabid smiles. And calls for a cab. Never even contemplating her name.
FADE.
