All Along the Watchtower.
Feb 19, 2023 17:04:34 GMT
Casanova English, Max f'n Daemon, and 2 more like this
Post by Jonathan Bacchus on Feb 19, 2023 17:04:34 GMT
I emerged from the fog out front of the Savoy Hotel, down by the River Thames. My compatriots had been kind enough to provide me with the room number of my destination, as well as a keycard plucked from a cleaning cart. His name was Leonard Douglas – 37-years-old, real estate heir, slumlord, multiple time defendant, potential Mob ties. He was a man who’d been given the world on a string, squeezed the blood and money from it with bare hands, and laughed in the face of any consequences.
Some may call him a jackass. I know he’s just a horse of a different color.
I entered the elevator backwards and kept my face toward the door so the security cameras wouldn’t have a definitive image. When I reached the floor of my destination, I made my way to the hotel room door with just enough expedience to not arouse suspicion, though the hallways were luckily silent.
And once the door closed behind me, I prepared to strike.
Have you been watching me as I watched you, Emily? Or did I slip in under the guise of night, leaving you wringing your hands in annoyance at an interloper to your moment?
We’ll learn a lot of things very soon, Emily, but those questions are the most important of your career thus far. Because you fancy yourself as a potential student of this business – you hope to have taken your knowhow and intellect from medical school and can apply it to cerebral efficiency between the ropes – you want to follow the footsteps of your friends and family. I won’t dismiss a one-winner making a dark horse run for the gold; afterall, I did the same thing last year when I took Jonny C’s hand and snatched the Double Homicide Championships in my second match.
But if you haven’t done your homework? If your studiousness is exposed and your intellect proves unimaginative? Where are you going to go?
I love a good dark horse story; the three of us in this match are all united in similar histories, short or long. Our adversary has this same business in his blood as you, and that motivation to transcend shadows and move beyond your constricting upbringings and emotional baggage has a certain harmony to it, no? I’m as unsurprised that you approached Slayer after Ladder Day Saints as I am Casanova English booked it – if the Board wants a dramatic story, they certainly have it in spades. After all, you both have nothing to lose and everything to gain – too immovable forces who could be on the dangerous precipice of ego death should a head-on collision expose them.
But this isn’t my first tango with the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in this company, so allow me to reiterate the same harsh truth I told Adrienne Beaufort: fate is cruel, or rather, Casanova English is cruel. Because Casanova English understood, when he inked this match onto his sheet, that only one of us was going to walk out with a win. And the motivation is no different then from what it is now:
This is a test.
You see, wrestling isn’t mere science – it isn’t simply anatomy, physics, or biology – there’s art. It takes more than expressing the desire to be on the level of JD, Alice, and Serenity, you have to be it. It’s in the mentality and the swagger, the ambition and the dedication – it’s in the panache and the feint, the game and the sleight. It’s a rookie’s mentality to match anyone – and if you thought your first match was the deep end, wait for the music to play in London.
You seem well-intentioned. It’s a shame Casanova English is so intent on making me wear the black hat, but I hope you’ll learn for your next attempt. I hope you’ve done your homework, and I hope you’ve not discounted me as an outsider.
Because the usurper’s calls are coming from inside the house.
There’s so many useful life lessons we learn as children and forget as adults. In the case of Leonard Douglas, had he remembered to check for monsters under the bed, my job would’ve become far more irksome. Yet, if the crumbs, dust, and forgotten sock were to be any indication, even the hotel maids hadn’t bothered checking in quite some time – and they call this a five-star hotel.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his footsteps as he came in. I could hear him pick up his Vessel vape pen from the bedside table where he’d left it, and I heard him take long drags off of it as he turned the TV on. I heard him turn on a pornography, watch it for half an hour while drinking Scotch, and then I heard him give a nauseous groan.
He, on the other hand, didn’t hear me slip from under the bed as he staggered towards the bathroom. And when he closed the door behind him, he didn’t hear me slide a chair beneath the handle and a wedge into the side frame.
Not that it would have mattered – the trap was already sprung, and he was already dead.
Focus is the barometer of a champion, Jacob. Great champions are not made by their accomplishments – they make their accomplishments. All the accolades and endorsements mean very little when you, yourself, are not the endorsement. A laundry list of back pats and shiny trinkets is worth less than a cup of coffee in the end, even if that cup of coffee is in a mug that says “World’s Best Dad”.
The CU:LT Classic Championship languished before you strode onto the scene four months ago. It bounced between men who’d capture the prize, hold it aloft for a sole defense at most, then plummet back to the depths. In a regard, Jacob, I have to commend your record-breaking two successful defenses of the championship – you’ve already done what a handful of bygones could not. In fact, three may as well be the charm for you, a moment to solidify yourself as the next best prospect in the company, quietly offering stability and tenacity Alice Gemini dreams to embody.
But I hope you pardon my French when I tell you it’s exactly those reasons why I’m so fucking insulted by your priorities.
I can only imagine what a crushing weight your father’s shadow must be, and I can somewhat sympathize with the biting desire to transcend it. To you, exposure is the light in darkness, developing an original man from an old photograph. We may have crossed paths in the hallways of the TFCE – you entering as I took my brief exit from the business – and you may see a brave new world before you, with a shadow of an assailant in your way. After all, you have a match with ol’ SEBy, don’t you? And the Killdozer Cup is just around the riverbend, so close you can feel the current’s pull.
But your eyes are so far to the future, you’ve overlooked the present. Your optimistic horizon is so blinding, you can’t see that pull comes from the waterfall before you. That you’d prattle into a camera about what an honor it’s going to be facing SEB somewhere else and your big dreams for next season, while barely batting a breath towards myself or Emily isn’t just insulting – it’s utterly. fucking. stupid.
Babel crumbles. Icarus plummets. Men always get too brazen for their own good. Humility is a lesson we all must learn in this business, and frankly, Jacob, I can’t wait to teach it to you. We’ll see how well you can hold the Chariot’s reigns in the face of failure.
Go ahead, Jacob: draw your cards, play your hand, and look down from your Tower at me. But as you do so, I’d be careful not to ignore the omen of that inverted card staring back up at you – from that height, you’ll be able to see just how unstable the foundations are at the locations I’m planting the powder kegs of revolution.
And when they erupt? You’ll see how far the fall of a seemingly untouchable man can be.
When Leonard Douglas tried the door, he let out an audible, “What the fuck,” at the discovery of its immobility. This preceded a second, third, and fourth attempt before the handle began thrashing wildly and the door wiggling impotently. Soon, his fists began to beat on the wood, as he screamed for assistance.
“You’ll remember,” I noted aloud as I pressed the side of my face to the door, “That you booked the adjacent rooms for privacy, probably so you could play the pornography on the TV as loud as you have it. I don’t think anyone’s going to hear.”
He went quiet. Then the door rattled with the stiff pounding of a fist.
“Who the fuck are you?” Douglas roared in both anger and fear, “Besides a fucking dead man?!”
“You know,” I continued, “There’s a reason I’ve never cared for the reusable vaporizers: easy to contaminate, easy to sabotage.”
Another slam. The wood stung my cheek.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?!” he shrieked. I made note to turn up the volume on the television, just to be sure.
“Do you know J. Howard DeWitt?” I asked, ignoring his cry. His fist slammed again.
“DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM?! DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKED YOU ARE?!”
This was going nowhere. I fished my Elfbar from my coat and took a drag.
“I spiked your Vessel with a drug called Blue Velvet. It’s a synthetic cathinone – or in layman's terms, similar to bath salts. The dose is fatal – vomit or hydrate all you want, it’s already in your lungs and blood. If you answer my question, I can at least give you a way out that doesn’t involve hours of psychosis.”
His voice dropped to an indistinguishable mutter.
“Who?”
Then it rose to a soft laugh.
The laugh became a cackle, and the cackle became hysterics. This was soon joined by the percussive beating of fists and the unmistakable cracking of glass. With his mind so gone from the talons of Blue Velvet, I wondered if he was protecting himself from whatever ghoulish reflection he saw or break on through to the other side of Wonderland.
He screamed inept profanities and incomprehensible threats at me as his attention returned to the door, his voice now shrill and babbling. I could have pitied him – a mind is a terrible thing to waste, after all – but it felt too magnanimous to offer him something he’d denied an untold number of people. Still, I’m a man of my word.
“Ever ridden the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland?” I asked, “When there’s no windows or no doors … there’s always my way.”
There’s an old boxing strategy called “the Rope-A-Dope”, founded on simple principles and legal environmental manipulation. All it takes is a little cunning and an utter lack of it from your adversary; you let their courage and conviction convince them – all while you use their arrogance to turn their Strength around into weakness.
Or rather, I love watching someone hang themselves with their own rope.
There’s a dichotomy between the hardcore and the technical triple threat – the former is a war while the latter is a game. There’s no more test of a champion than the ability to meticulously control the field, make their moves, and assure their victory while balancing multiple factors. One-on-one match-ups have few moving pieces – the introduction of a third wheel adds chaos.
A swinging pendulum is calculated with a simple equation – it’s predictable. A double pendulum is chaotic – the sensitivity to every variable is magnified exponentially. At Bangers & Mash, we’ll see who best can contain the chaos and decipher the designs – and who finds themselves swinging like a pendulum from their own ropes.
It’s a shame we’re meeting like this; neither of you can afford this loss. Yet, momentum stoppage has been my ordained role in this company: Adrienne Beaufort, Team Buddy Back Cop… and now the two of you. As the old saying goes: don’t do what you love, do what you’re good at. I take no pleasure in career assassinations, but this is what Casanova English asked of me.
A job’s a job – and this one couldn’t be more vital.
I moved the chair and doorstop before the blood seeping out from under the door and into the carpet could reach them. The wet gurgling from the other side of the door had gone silent fifteen seconds ago, and I didn’t feel the need to double check – even if it was a ruse, the dosage was already fatal, and I could only imagine what sort of Big Lurch homage he’d have mutilated into himself as he ran screaming for help into the night. Before leaving, I arranged the furniture in the room to pristine condition, reversed the coat, and helped myself to a baseball cap sitting atop the contents of his suitcase.
The job was complete, and all that was to deliver the results. I’d slipped in unseen, struck with intelligence and precision, and I’d walked out victorious before my enemy could comprehend they’d lost – a Joker and a Thief in the Night.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you up to this point. While I joined CU:LT to protect Lissie, have a little fun, and earn a couple bucks, it wasn’t my primary motivator.”
Though DeWitt continued to elude me, my short term objectives crept closer to my grasp. You see, I still hadn’t been entirely honest with Casanova English – nor had I forgotten the edict I’d made to my dear Ruby back in Boston, as I first stepped foot in this company.
“I only wonder how he’ll take to a revolution not of his own.”
My compatriot would deliver the mask, I’d walk out with the belt, and he’d continue in his power struggle. The retaliation from the Board could soften him enough to keep Lissie safe, I could continue to provide my use and move closer, and as the old song goes – “while the King was looking down, the Jester stole his thorny crown.”
For now, the CU:LT Classic Championship would be quite a useful prize. And under its guise I’d be able to do anywhere what I did that night: slip into the fog, leaving only a Cheshire Grin visible.
“Two riders were approaching – the wind began to howl.”
