London Beckoned Songs About Money Written by Machines

[Eddie "Shiro" Felt]

"Oh he's slightly clever to a certain extent." 

The red overtook him.

It seemed to pull itself from his skin like a maggot burrowing through rotten flesh, smearing itself across his forehead, inching closer to his eyes. Dragging itself along his clammy skin like a snail, leaving a burgundy trail in its wake as it fell into his eyes. It gnawed at his vision slowly but surely; first the only hints of its presence were in the corners of his eyes; the ketchup-stained tint in his peripheral vision but it continued to press on, not content until the whole world was red, and Eddie's body was too numb to the rest of the outside world to feel any connection to it whatsoever.

He knew he was still in the booth of some diner he didn't know the name of. The woman he knew only as KissMeIWasIrish was still seated across from him, wearing that same dirty, crooked smile.

Yet that felt a million miles away as the red gave way to the world under construction before his very eyes. Grimy, black-and-white checkerboard floor tiles under his feet; the same pattern extending across the walls. Large dirty mirrors by an old wooden door. And who could forget the portly man stumbling out of the middle stall?

Eddie gulped and looked down at the knife in his hand. The man saw it too.

Every movement in this world seemed to unfold in slow-motion. The man's steps were heavy and lumbering; a sleeping giant forced from his slumber. Eyes wide, staring at the naked lightbulb's reflection in the blade's cold steel.

Eddie pulled away from the man, but his body didn't get the message. He rushed towards the gawking man who stood, still as a statue. He could feel his lungs scraping against his ribcage with each heavy inhale. His grip on the knife handle tightened as he crashed into the man, watching helplessly as he dragged the poor son of a bitch to the ground down with him.

The fall seemed to last forever.

The pair floated, drifting lazily down to the linoleum. Eddie clenched his eyes shut and tried to imagine himself any other place. Tried to will himself away from this world and back to the real one he'd left.

They hit the floor with a thud.

The man grabbed for the knife, groping wildly, desperately, feebly, as Eddie pushed down and the tip pierced the man's--

Eddie felt a bony hand smack him across the face and when he opened his eyes he found he wasn't in the red world, but back in the diner, pupils big as silver dollars, sweat pouring down his face, breathing heavily, insatiably, like no amount of oxygen would ever be enough.

"Calm down," KMIWI hissed, eyes darting back and forth at the other patrons with their attention focused solely on their booth. "People are watching."

"Wh-wh-what--"

She shushed him and grabbed his hands, laying them out across the table.

"Now tell me what you saw."

"You want to know what I saw?" Eddie asked inbetween short, choppy breaths. He was still winded, sucking air in a vain attempt at stabilizing his racing heart. She cocked her head and glared expectedly at him.

"I can't even begin to tell you what I saw--"

"What did it make you do?"

Her nails dug into his wrists.

"What did what make me do?"

"The candle, what did you see?"

"I just told you I--"

She slapped him once more.

"Think harder; what did it make you do?"

"I don't know I, uh," Eddie sighed. "I was in a bathroom and this guy- this guy, he's comin' outta the stall and for some reason I got this knife in my hand. Not some small little butter knife either nah, some big ass kitchen knife looking shit. And for some reason he looks at me and sees the knife immediately, I mean I ain't surprised about that because it's fuckin huge but he saw it and he saw me and his first reaction was to charge right at me. And I'm trying my damndest but I run right back at him, like something else was controlling me, man, and we run into each other and fall to the ground and--"

"Breathe."

"And… Jesus Christ I just fuckin stabbed the guy."

Her lips curled into a smile. "What, that's it? Heard much worse stories about those things. Some ancient society no one knows much about used to use them to achieve spiritual enlightenment or some other religious bullshit. Something about them triggers hallucinations, greatest fears, darkest desires, and whatnot."

"I kill--"

"First off, no you didn't. Second, that's what you're afraid of? You don't fear dying for your beliefs but you're afraid of fighting for them?"

"There's a difference--"

"No there isn't. This isn't wrestling, Eddie. It doesn't just stop after a three count."

Eddie slammed his fists on the table.

"What the fuck do you want from me?"

"Simple," she smiled. "I want to know if you're the man I think you are."

The pull was too strong. Gravitational forces wrapping around him and sucking him further into the wretched abyss, the bed of crawling chaos that was KissMeIWasIrish. And yet, he didn't feel like he was being dragged into the maw of oblivion that surely awaited him. She challenged him. His manhood, his convictions, everything he stood for and how deeply devoted he was to the cause.

No, he wasn't being suckered in.

He wanted to be here. To prove her wrong. To see the look on her face when she realized that he wasn't just the person she thought he was: that was more than that. Better than that.

His self-awareness nagged in the back of his mind, a shrill chorus of voices, tongues removed, gurgling incomprehensible warnings of vague threats on the horizon.

Everything about KissMeIWasIrish was a nothing more than a massive red flag. Or, in Eddie's world, still stained burgundy, just a massive flag.

"Stop stalling, make a name for yourself." 

Well, I'll be damned. Just look at this situation and digest it for a few seconds. You have The Pride (featuring Tiffany White) up against a trio of bonafide legends in the first round. A team of two champions, the more tenured of the two only having around four months of experience here in the WCF. The fastest rising group of rookies in the WCF today, maybe even of all time. It's poetic, really. The last vestiges of whatever kind of old guard you can imagine, the last minuscule threads of your collective delusions of dominance, descended upon like waves crashing down on a sand castle. In the blink of an eye the legacies you've all tried to build over the years is gone, and when you look up at the lights, trying to will yourself to just kick out but your body's just had enough, I want you to know that it's all your fault.

Don't get it twisted, we're not coming into this match with the intention of ending your careers, nah, leave that shit to the bottom-feeders looking to make a name for themselves by any means necessary (i.e. look out for that Dagvald Cooper boy, 'specially you, Orbit). What we are looking to do is rip whatever hype you three still have around you right out of you on some Dark Souls shit. Y'know, convince the three people eagerly awaiting to watch Jeff Purse obsessively, compulsively, shit the bed again that there's something out there worth watching that isn't ultimately super fuckin' depressing. Show the old-school fans that there's more to the WCF than empty nostalgia.

See, we're looking to pry whatever credibility the three of you still have from your cold, dead hands. To take you long past your limits and expose for what you are: washed-up. Because that part's just inevitable. In wrestling, you either die a star or you live long enough to see yourself become Steve Orbit. Struggling to build any kind of momentum, drifting from meaningless match to meaningless match, groping desperately for every undeserved opportunity that falls in your lap and coming up short in each attempt.

Final Destination? Literally slipped right out of your reach.

Your US Title shot? Ended with you in the same position I described earlier: lying flat on your back, looking up at the lights wondering where it all went wrong and do you want to know where it all went wrong, Steve?

When this downward spiral started?

When you decided to make your grand return. When you were so cocksure that you'd be able to waltz right back in and go right back to the level you were at that you were too fucking blind or too fucking arrogant to see the writing on the wall. The WCF is a young man's game. Hell wrestling as a whole is a young man's game and no matter how badly you want to try to play Chronos, to turn back the hands of time, nothing's going to bring you back to your glory days. Face it, Steve: It's 2016.

Maybe it's better for the bits of your legacy that aren't already ash that you just step back.

Oh, you'll try that I'm sure.

Then you'll be back.

Like Michael Corleone.
Just when you think you're out, the WCF will pull you back in. Like the always depressing story of a battered wife staying with her abuser.

Like Jeff Purse jumping back into the fray after, what? Six months of being retired? Was it even six months? The man who retired because he has a family to take care of, because the game's too fierce, because there's the ever-present chance that his next match would result in more than just a loss? Because of the ever-present possibility that he could wind up with a debilitating injury at any point, then who'd take care of his family?

See, I can respect a guy who knows when to hang it up. I thought you were that guy, Jeff. I hoped you were, to be honest.

But I can't respect a guy who goes back on his word so quickly. This wasn't the end, it was a fucking sabbatical.

You know the game hasn't changed, don't you? Hell, it's just gotten more fierce, if anything. And here you are, another relic of the past, who still lets resident overrated hack Sarah Twilight cloud his thoughts like she gave him PTSD because the thing Jeff Purse needs is more acronyms.

Yet you, the guy who was retiring because of his family, are throwing yourself right back into the thick of it and for what? You've got a laundry list of achievements, of accomplishments, why do you want to throw all that away and leave your fans with the lasting image of you burning all of that to the ground chasing that high of success?

Is it insecurity?

Is that what drives you to throw yourself back into the lion's den?

Or is it arrogance? Like Orbit, you can't see the writing on the wall.

You were the Future, Jeff. Now you're a piece of WCF history. The Past. Old news.

What Pantheon do you represent, Purse?

Roman, Greek, or Has-been?

Ask Freezer Burn what I do to has-beens. Better yet, just come down to the ring and feel my knee strike you in the back of the skull. Feel Ethan drop you to the fuckin' mat. Watch Tiffany soar through the air the way you wish you could, before crashing down atop of you.

Maybe then you'll do what you should've done in December, and hang it up. For good.

It's for your own good.

Then we have Polar Phantasm.

Y'know, it's kind of ironic, really. All the insistence on being the "Future". The Future Elements. Jeff Purse's nickname. Like they're insisting they haven't fallen off. They haven't lost it. They're still the future, the perpetually uncrowned Kings and Emperors. So they puff their chests out and peek their head back in.

And in Polar's case he gets dropped like a bad habit.

By Sarah Twilight.

In 2016.

You can't make this up, it's just astounding. Sarah Twilight who's still trying to downplay getting absolutely fucking destroyed by Jared Holmes managed to beat Polar Phantasm. See, man, this the rabbit hole you're going down. It's sad, it really is. I should feel for these three.

Getting replaced without a thought in the world paid to them.

Like factory workers getting laid off in favor of robots.

The young ones have stepped up. They're steering this ship now while you're trying find a fuckin' seat.

Spoiler alert: you should've gotten off at the last stop.

"We're just a wet dream for the webzine." 

"Pray to the television" is scrawled in blood over and over on the walls of my mind palace; mind-numbing work that scraped my fingers to the bone but as I sit and look and take the message that quite literally surrounds me in, it starts to make sense, if only for a moment. A brief flicker of time where my defiance gives way to crushing fatalism, as if this was always going to happen. 

You either die a rebel or live long enough to watch yourself sell out.

In that second where fatalism grips me in its constricting vise, I feel a thousand pound weight lift from my shoulders and against my better judgment I embrace the idea. Is this what everyone else feels like? Unburdened by a hunt for truth that won't end with them? No, of course it won't. The best I can hope for is that I find something. Validate every sleepless night with something, anything.

Pray to the television.

Our Lord. Our savior. He who shields us from the silence, so that we'll never be forced to confront the soft voices screaming in the back of our minds, reminding us of our insecurities, our failures, how to improve. Instead, look at the flashing lights and blaring sound and forget all about the REAL world. Fuck it. Disregard it entirely. There's nothing out there for you anyway. You will not innovate. You will not create. At best you can hope you're content. Adequately provided for.

Nothing else matters.

I want to believe that, if only because it'd make things easier.

Easier than forcing myself to look at every distressing idea, that's for damn sure.