Post by Seth on May 12, 2019 2:00:44 GMT -5
Looming, omnipresent..
This task ahead,
this task at hand.
Ominous and daunting,
crippling undertaking.. I'm frozen.
Seth woke up not in his own bed, nor the bed of a lover, nor a bed at all. He woke up in the same place he's been waking up, at this point, for as long as he can remember.
He woke up in a pile of garbage.
Peeling an old WCF magazine advertisement featuring Jay Price from his face, he noticed the cameraman filming him.
Seth Lerch: ...Bob?
Indeed, the first of the self indulgent references has appeared - second, if you count a picture of Jay Price being portrayed as literal garbage.
Bob the Cameraman: It's me, Seth. What color should my font be?
Seth rolled over, his face buried into a monster truck magazine with a plum on the cover, more garbage.
Seth Lerch: It doesn't matter. We're too late.
Seth stumbled up, and turned toward the camera. For a split second, it seemed like he was going to cut a wrestling promo.
Bob the Cameraman: Too late, boss?
Seth Lerch: Look, Zach, I don't even know if you still announce shows. I don't know if anyone knows you by Bob the Cameraman anymore. I feel like maybe you could've shown up here and done a whole HBO style documentary about me, and I'd write it out and make it this whole deep, heartfelt thing, but it didn't happen, right?
Bob the Cameraman: Nah, you got it wrong. It's happening right now.
Seth Lerch: I have to be careful.. I'm using my real name. Will this show up on Google?
Bob the Cameraman: Probably.
Seth collapsed, his back hitting the brick building in the alley Bob had been filming in. His head hits the wall.
Seth Lerch: I thought I had more time...
Seth wakes up again, but this time he's in middle school. He doesn't remember the grade. He's in his creative writing class, and - he dodges a bullet, because this is a shoot - he has to brainstorm about what he can write about, and he's just written out a wrestling match between two characters named Rick Mad and Rage, he dazes off again -
Now, he's in high school, his girlfriend is doing some band related nonsense. It's a Sunday, and all Seth can do is wait to get home, because he's ready for War, the first live show he's done, he remembers it clearly -
Now, he's with Anastasia Petrova, and he's explaining what he does, what being in charge of WCF entails.
And we cut, again in this dream sequence, to a short, black haired girl.
Chloe: So, you've finally included me in this bullshit?
Seth shrugs. They're in.. Well, hey, I'm bad with words. Imagine if you, the reader, could be in some background with someone you'd like to talk to one last time.. That's where we are.
Seth Lerch: Aw, I miss you, I don't think you'd say it like that. You wouldn't say "bullshit," and perhaps the fact I can't write as you should tell me something.
Chloe: You could have written as me, maybe. Forever ago.
They took a walk.
Chloe: You know I'm the reason you've got to end this, right?
Seth looked down, gazing at his shoes.
Seth Lerch: Yeah. I know.
Chloe: For years, WCF was something you did on a Sunday. I watched you drink yourself half to death - how did you go to work every Monday? - just to get results up for something I never really understood. I sat on the couch, feet away, while you sacrificed your time for.. for what?
If Seth had looked up, he'd look down again.. But he hadn't.
Chloe: Maybe if you'd given this up years ago, I'd still be more than a character in a roleplay. Maybe you'd have found the energy in the Sundays we gave up for this to be the person you wanted to be. Instead..
Chloe sits down next in this dreamscape, Seth sitting beside her. She logs onto a nearby laptop, which Seth had purchased with her employee discount from Wells Fargo, a job she hated.
Chloe: Do you remember when you texted me, saying you'd given up WCF, because you wanted the time with the girl you left me for? Can you even imagine how that made me feel?
The images flicker. Chloe morphs into Danita Mad, Seth morphs into Rick Mad. Danita throws a bottle of alcohol towards the wall, barely missing Rick's head.
Rick Mad: Calm the fuck down!
Danita: You wrote about a dysfunctional relationship before you could even understand adulthood, and you somehow turned out worse than what you had been able to imagine!
She looks at him, smiling, a cruel, knowing smile, before cackling. Rick morphs back into Seth, he backs away until he's... back in an alley.
Bob the Cameraman: Hey, boss, hey. Are you awake?
Seth Lerch: Was.. was this.. is this good enough?
Bob the Cameraman: No, boss. No, no it isn't. You're just rambling, you're introducing characters and changing shit up randomly, you're definitely not going to colorize this, the whole thing is just poorly thought out and-
Seth grabbed a random bottle of alcohol and took another drink. He passed out again, and-
Seth Lerch: What?
He's in Biohazardland. Green ooze shoots from everywhere. Prince Jimmy Dean is having ooze sprayed into his face, which he drinks.
Seth Lerch: Is this the first time I've recognized that I wrote as both Biohazard and Prince Jimmy Dean?
Biohazard steps out from a locked door. He's wearing a crown.
Biohazard: Hello, Seth. I've appeared here to tell you -
The scene morphs. Seth is back in his childhood room - the room he discovered pornography on Christmas night when his parents got him a TV, the first room he had his Playstation in, creating Biohazard on WWF Attitude. The scene morphs again.
Seth is at a computer, he's in an AOL chat, he's recruiting people and spamming a link to some shitty website. The scene morphs again. This time, Seth is at a store that sells CDs. He's buying Ride the Lightning by Metallica. He turns the CD over and looks at the tracklisting. He nods to himself, and hears his mom and the clerk talking in the background. Somehow, he knew this moment would mean something. And finally, here it is.
We warp back to the alley. Seth, still drunk, stumbles up once more.
Seth Lerch: I know I'm too late, I know.. I know I've never been good enough. I know I'm going to lose, during the last match of the last WCF show, I'm going to lose. I sacrificed the best years of my life for this, though, you know that? And I'm just letting it go, now. I'm letting one of the few good things I've done go.
Hindsight is twenty twenty, but for seven years, at least once a week, I put this ahead of the girl that only now do I know was the love of my life.
And now, during my last stand, the last hurrah, you expect me to be a loser?
No.
I'm writing the match. For once, I'm going to win. Because if I don't, if the final match of the final show of the thing I gave away my life for ends in me losing, it means I'm a loser, once and for all. That everything was for nothing, and that my life wasn't worth living.
I have to win. Because my life has to be worth living, and I have to know that.
I have to know that.
...just begin.
