Post by John Rabid on Oct 9, 2016 16:50:40 GMT -5
1. Around and Around
The pen met the surface with an iron grip, the swirling patterns it made left deep black incisions into the lined paper. Over and over again went the procedure as Rabid sat in a white and silver environment. Johnny was lost in thought. The conference room felt oddly confined, even though it was a vast space situated at the zenith of Price towers.
Organised. Air conditioned. And focused. Price himself was a neat spectacle of Tom Ford design as he stood by a whiteboard at the end of a heavy oak table. Jayson's suit was grey and black, it made Rabid jealous, but that wasn't why Johnny was locked in this strange holding pattern today. Something about the speech was pushing buttons he once thought too submerged to reach.
Pantheon was a term Johnny had heard before, not just within the WCF...no, he was thinking back now, back to a different time and place. London and the sound of a nation gripped by a post war baby boom. The smell of Mary Jane and the sounds of jazz illuminated Rabid's mind with memories of former friends. Marc Bolen, John Lennon, Peter Sellers, Joplin, Hendrix...and the glue that kept them together behind the scenes, the man that covered up their dirty little secrets was a well groomed soul with a neat beard and dapper taste in suits. Rush they called him. Mister Rush.
Around and around the pen traveled, around and around. A perfect circle, cracking, splintering.
“Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try.”
Jared noticed the behavior but kept his observations to himself as the 6ixgod shuffled in his leather chair and winked at a smiling Wade who sat gingerly opposite. All three men listened to Price's spiel unravel and present itself to the #beachkrew alumni; while above them, a blistering the sun rose over a smog laden Manhattan skyline.
“No hell below us. Above us only sky”
Jayson Price: Gentlemen, It's down to us. We either keep looking away and continue to ignore the screams of a sinking ship, or we intervene and take back what's ours. Leaving, returning. They'll say we're traitors for sure, that we're cowards for running away. But we didn't leave the WCF. It left us. It forgot it's standards, it's importance. It became a nobody right before our eyes and plummeted into an abyss of obscurity.
“But such an event is nothing new in truth. Time and again the exodus has happened. What was once, shall be again. And again. And again.”
From a corner of the room, a voice echoed. Assured and confident. A man with a long black mane and black casual wear spoke. His stature wasn't remarkable, but his voice was commanding. The kind of fellow you only ever pay attention to when he decides the time is right, and for Corey Black? That time was now.
Corey Black: Pantheon has been the epitome of stability within the WCF for years. Through all it's incarnations, it has stood as a personification of power and authority within the Federation. Many challenged that claim, fought against it's birthright. But none survived. Even Seth had to relent and give in; even after all the horrors we'd committed upon him. We still earned his respect. As begrudging as it was.
Johnny Rabid: Horrors. His incarceration you mean?
Corey Black: History has a way of repeating itself. Jonny Fly framed Seth back in the day for a crime he did not commit. It was an event that assured Pantheon's first rise to power; and manifested Seth's first fall from grace.
Jared Holmes: So, is that how far we're willing to go this time? Because now I'm officially curious.
Corey Black: Whatever it takes. They'll be no moral quandary to navigate this time; hence your invitation to our table.
Wade Moor: Pantheon, reborn in our image. Tell me, Corey, can you stomach us being it's face? We are, after all, the enfant terrible of Professional wrestling. The instigators of #fuccboi genocide. A pack of crazed alphas in a sea of beta grade talent; we are sharks, and vampires and killers. We come from the depths. We are Gods of terror. We are--
Jayson Price: The best. Simply put, you three are the best we've seen. And your invitation here does not shock. In fact, it's part of our tradition to enhance already organised teams and combine their abilities with our own.
Corey Black: The Pack for instance.
Johnny Rabid: Let's not discuss Jay Omega. I have a delightful dinner arranged for three. I intend to enjoy it without a bout of indigestion.
Corey Black: Omega is the past. Richards is the past. They have their path, we have ours. Price?
Price took a pen and drew a circle on the whiteboard.
Jayson Price: We live in a low point of history. The Bates era. The lowest ebb in Professional Wrestling in over a decade. Numbers are down. Merchandise sales are down. The company is out of touch. Seth was forced to pan-handle scrapes to keep the network afloat in our absence. The dregs at the bottom of the silt. Fools gold like Captain WCF for Christsakes. The one-man Native American stereotype named, Tom-O(-Hawk. The quivering mental breakdown that is Teddy Blaze. A lifeless parade of worthless odderties like Zero Tolerance.
Corey Black: Seth was never the most stable of men; he's a drunk. A misogynist. A sex fiend.
Jayson Price: Seth always was a Price fangurl. Never could keep up though.
Corey Black: But most of all, he's stubborn. He'd rather watch it all burn to the ground than allow it to prosper in spite of him. But that's exactly what's going to happen. Because Pantheon is too big to contain. Too strong to falter. Seth has nothing that can stand up to us. What does he have on the books exactly? A field of gormless sheep he calls talent. They'll be crushed early. Then Seth will call in his last remaining favors, the old guard still loyal. By week five, they'll have fallen also. I foresee absolute and total control over the WCF to be complete by ONE.
Johnny Rabid: Again...
Corey Black: Excuse me?
Johnny Rabid: Again. The WCF will belong to us AGAIN. We three once owned the WCF before, I think you remember it. That was the time we dismantled--
Corey Black: I remember. I remember Hellimination. The accomplishments of your cohort, What you achieved with Kyle Kemp.
Johnny Rabid: Kemp was a weak link. He had no fortitude. He lacked backbone.
Corey Black: And still you made it work, as best you could. Remember the night you stood up to Dune? I was there backstage, helping Flash move the wreckage from the jumbotron. The chaos, the confusion. And then there was you, Rabid. The eye of the storm. Still planning, organizing. Formulating a plan to take down the most destructive force our business had ever seen. That was when I knew you had to be here. At the heart of it all.
“Imagine all the people. Living for today...”
Flashes of imagery fluttered into Rabid's eyes, the blinds on the windows allowing slithers of light to open doorways into his subconscious.
Bolan slumped forward, dead at the wheel of his Mini. A mist departing from the scene. A man disappearing from view, the stranger they called him. His hand frozen by his side, all it took was a wave to change history. One moment to grip a friends mind and jackknife him from existence.
Around and around.
Seller's heart was weak, it couldn't take the stranger's warning. The actor tried to submerge his dealings with Rush with drink and women; but Rush was always there. Never too far from a film set or a Premier. The dreams never stopped nether. Not until Seller's heart did in a Middlesex Hospital. A nurse on the scene described an odd mist enveloping the ward. The Stranger's silhouette. But it was all too soon forgotten.
Around and around.
Hendrix was deep into a drugs malaise; but the Stranger would always find him. Eyes open or closed. Jimi Hendrix once joked that, “It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead, you're made for life.” The Stranger made Hendrix. If only Jimi had kept his promise. The Stranger would never have had to keep his.
1980, New York.
A dialing tone. A voice answers.
“Hello?”
“John?”
“Rush?”
“I'm sorry.”
“When?”
“Today, John. It will be today. He'll have a book under his arm. You know the one. Are they home?”
“You know they aren't here. You promised me they wouldn't see.”
“I'm sorry, John.”
“Me too”
The line goes dead.
Around and around the pen circles the trap. Each transgression completing a circumference. Rabid never left that room in Price's tower, but his mind remembered. Those glasses of John's; Teddy Del Sol loves them so, and yet he has no right to wear them. He does not honour the memory of the man that made them famous. Simply stamps on a heroes memory. His own, his inspirations. Teddy Blaze, every bit the personification of what the WCF has become, a pale imitation of better days. A ghost in his own lifetime.
Could Johnny do this again, join another Pantheon? Maybe it would be different this time. If only they would keep their promise.
The pen stopped.
Johnny Rabid: My secrets are my own, got that? We fight as one. But what I am and what I stand for are my own business. Agreed?
Corey nodded. Jared said nothing. While Wade heard the ocean scream...it made him happy to the core.
Imagine all the people, Living life in peace...
2. Dirty little tramp.
Hello WCF. I must say; there's a wonderful honesty in your repulsiveness. This new ugly side you've developed in my absence actually seems to suit you. It's as if all those errs and graces you once displayed so liberally where but a sham. A mask to hide and subdue the white trash beneath, a truth which rises now to the surface. The true you. An underclass of criminals and sexual deviants that clamour for your attention. I remember the Olympus you once inhabited, how you used to look down upon them; the rats below, all snotty and self righteous because you supposedly had the moral fibre of a saint. Sure, there was always Katherine Phoenix and Oblivion lurking. But they where laughed upon, tolerated as the local brainless mascots. The one step up from Ultimate Destroyer, but never the full run of the ladder, never to the top. That would be preposterous.
Cut to NOW.
Today we have Todd Brown's Freaks as the mantra for a company that's given up the ghost. Maybe you developed an inferiority complex in our passing. We broke your heart; didn't we? We dumped you. So you dropped the pretence and went back to your roots. Hanging around bars, picking up scum and giving them the run of the couch. Like that self loathing Native American scumbag named “Tom-O-Hawk”; not his real name of course, just the stereotype he inhabits because he sees himself as the clown of the genetic tree; a loser from the DNA up. Toking that hash pipe on your couch, screaming for serial as you look away; disgusted in yourself for allowing your standards to slip so low. But then you remember; the exodus. It was all your fault. The slip, the incrimination. The reveal. The lie. All on you. And you can't wash that off; that stench, so you make him a bowel of cereal as he requested and buy him his weed. You take a hit off the pipe as he hugs you, that stench of shit on his breath, so fowl you wish to God you could recoil. But you can't. Because this is your level now. This is who you are.
You're SCUM.
You make Zombie McMorris into a pariah because he's at a level you can never reach. You can never drag yourself out of the gutter to reach his dumpster, just too much of an ask, those hands dragging you down; Captain WCF with his mighty shield, the dolt with the happy complex. Always all so gosh darn pleased to see everyone. Just so darn stoked to compete. He thinks a distraction will be enough. This extra from Woody Harrison's Defendor who thinks he can hold on to a title or two while Fox decides if they're going to green light a Kick Ass 3. He believes in miracles because he has gold around his waste when he knows this should be an impossibility. But you're in the gutter, WCF...so even a bum like this can do “extraordinary things”, become more than he was ever intended by nature. And that is your shame, WCF. That's on you, that you can't summon up a team worthy of the gold they've stolen. Instead you have to make do with a joke and a stereotype as a paring, Tom-Oh-Hawk.
Tom, this Sunday the ghosts of your ancestors will finally be laid to rest. Cherokee or Ani-Yunwiya means “Principled People”, so where are yours Tom? Or does your own self disgust mean that you will continue to dishonour your heritage over and over again? Pretending to be a native American version of Bad Santa doesn't scare the bone Tomahawk into me, nor anybody else. Your a capstone, Tom for a by-gone age. You use ancient history to fuel your loathing; and that's fine by me, because there's nothing more funny than seeing a man lose his shit over events that happened hundreds of years ago while the present just passes them by. In England we have a name for such people, they're called Scottish.
And then there's Teddy Blaze. Or when Puberty strikes. Remember the time Teddy when you used to be Mister Del Sol? Climbing mountains in the name of your adopted village? High-fiving under privileged kids in hospitals. The true people's champion. Those where the good old days. Now they say you're the supposed, “king of all media”. Yet all I see is a boy unable to cope with a growth spurt. Firestarter? No, just a teenager who wants to be taken oh so seriously. This teen, this miscreant, he screams at his Mom to call him “Teddy”, he takes off his mask. He slips on the John Lennon shades and out he wanders into the big bad world thinking to himself that this new dawn will somehow grant him the gravitas he has so longed to enjoy.
What. A. Fucking. Joke.
You used to stand for something. Now you're nothing. Just another evil man with minor schemes who lives in the shadow of those that are experts in the field. I own you now Teddy. Your soul is mine now and forever more because no matter how much you think you're a threat, everything about you is trademarked Rabid. You tried to walk in my shoes before I was done with them, and that's a crime that must be punished, Teddy. You don't get to hug the shadows and fire off quizzical threats that carry dubious meanings. You're stepping on my toes. So now I have to squash your tiny, broken heart.
And with it, a dirty old whore named WCF gets clean again. Maybe this time we can fix her up. Give her back some pride. All we have to do, is clear out the vermin and fumigate the premises.
3. The last screams of Captain WCF
The island of DrummMhor was a cold and unsightly place. The northernmost tip of Scotland had been in Rabid's possession for centuries; a former cove for Pirates readying their ships for battle. A staging ground for plunder and rape. The Celts and the Vikings both honored and respected the black slate rock with sacrifice. As centuries passed farming and agriculture took over, but in order for those crops to survive and bloom, man had to turn to the sun for the answer. And to the old ways, that would make the burning star listen.
Few live on DrummMhor now, not all year round, those that do are here to honor their past and the sun that has given them wealth and power across the globe.
Somewhere, on the dark side of the island, an effigy made from wicker is burning. Inside is a man wearing a Captain WCF mask. His identity is unknown. His charred remains where stripped of identity. Someone said he might have been an FBI man. Someone ssaid the name.
Mosely.
FIN.
