Post by Zane on May 15, 2022 22:04:38 GMT -5
“I’m getting really goddamned tired of ‘Zane, stand up for yourself. Stop being such a bitch’ about stating my grievances with this company. It’s one of the only two things I hear. It’s either ‘Shut the fuck up and deal with it, or it’s someone blowing smoke up my ass with ‘I’m sorry Zane. I’m here for you, but everyone else is against you.”
Zane scoffs derisively and runs his hand over the crown of his head.
“Well, you know what I have to say to both groups.”
He places particular stress on ‘both’, then looks straight into the camera.
“Fuck...you.”
There’s clear avarice in his tone and malice in his eyes.
“It’s ironic,” he continues, pacing back and forth. “For my entire career it’s been the same old bullshit. When I’m angry, I’m overreacting. When I’m violent, I’m psychotic. When I’m calm, I’m a bitch who needs to man up. When I’m a team player, I get stabbed in the back and tossed aside like a pile of shit. When I take pride in my career, I’m told to stop living in the past. People only pay me respect for as long as they can use me. That includes this fucking company.”
His right-hand balls into a fist. His grip is so tight that it turns white from the lack of blood flow.
“Lucy brought something up in her ‘Outlast’ promo as a means of throwing my being a ‘bitch’ in my face,” he explains. “She brought up that I held every singles title at once at one point during my career, and that somehow that’s evidence of how I’ve lost my way over the years because I somehow don’t have them now.”
He laughs to himself caustically.
“Because it’s that fucking easy to win and hold three championships at once.” He explains disdainfully. “Lest we forget, the company made sure that I lost all three of them almost as quickly as I won them.”
“She conveniently forgets that one of those losses was to her at ‘Day of Reckoning’.” he sneers. “And lest we forget, Almighty Lucy, one I’ve shown nothing but respect to, that Somers and Deimos were also involved in that match. Let’s not pretend this was a one-on-one situation where you got the better of me. I had the odds stacked against me, just like I always do when I’m World Champion, and because of that you walked away with MY World Championship.”
He looks down angrily.
“I wasn’t even pinned to lose my championship,” he mutters. “You pinned Deimos.”
He sits silently for a second, then suddenly looks up, his face twisted with fury.
“I HANDED YOU THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!! I RAISED YOUR HAND AFTER THE MATCH!!!” he screams. “I SHOWED YOU RESPECT!!”
His hands fly downward, slamming into something out of view with a loud “thud”. His eyes and face are red with ire as his chest heaves up and down. His face is twisted in a mask of wild rage.
“I...showed...you...respect.”
He rolls his eyes and chuckles dryly, taking a breath to calm himself.
“It strikes me as being particularly ironic that your boyfriend gets it,” his mouth pulls into a twisted smile. “Rogan understands why I’m as angry as I am. He loves this company just as much as I do, but you scoff at me like I’m trash.”
He closes his eyes but the smile remains on his face.
“Everyone wonders aloud where the ‘killer’ in me has gone,” he asks, chuckling again. “They deride me for being a coward who won’t look at myself in the mirror and admit who and what I am. I’m already a stone-cold killer in everyone’s mind, and I can’t be allowed to move past that image.”
“Why is that, I wonder?”
He looks down at the table, which now has a long and ragged crack running down the center. He shakes his head but smiles in spite of it.
“If that crack isn’t representative of me...” He remarks to himself.
“Lucy isn’t the only one who’s talking out of her ass about me right now,” he continues. “Good ol’ Tony Savage had a nice little punchy soundbite about me to blather out. How’d you put it, Ant...”
He clears his throat in an exaggerated and loud manner, then speaks in a very poor English accent.
“It blinds him from his true purpose; simply being the best commander possible. He’s forgotten this life’s about plunder and glory, naysayers be damned.”
He scoffs, loudly.
“Get the fuck outta here.” he sneers.
“I know you’re new in this neighborhood,” he says in a patronizing tone. “I know it’s tough being the new kid, and that between your time winning the Chaos Championship, judging others, being pissy about losing that championship and, you know, burying your head up your ass so far that you can spit shine your lower intestine because you think you’re something special…”
“You don’t have a minute to actually understand the history of this company.”
He looks down at the table and shakes his head.
“I guess I’m going to have to replace this table.” he sighs. “Again.”
He walks away from the table.
“I know you don’t honestly give a goddamn about what I’ve actually done here over my twelve years,” he growls. “But I did try to be the guy you so arrogantly told me that I should be. I tried to be the locker room leader, the experienced veteran who would guide the young talent about the business, help the new people get acquainted and comfortable, and keep the locker room cohesive. Do you know what happened?”
“I had it spat back in my face.” Zane rolls his eyes. “Then the company unceremoniously suspended me because someone faked a video of me doing something I didn’t do. At a Pay-Per-View.”
“So, Tony, you tell me what I’m supposed to do to be a ‘leader’.” he sneers. “To a company and a locker room that are unwilling to be lead.”
He walks past a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and runs his hands over the books. He pauses over one, laying a single finger over it.
King Rat.
“Incel, Montague,” he asks, somewhat amused. “Incel’ is the best you have for me? Dixon, a kid who hasn’t done shit here gets Goethe and you give me Salinger and gutter insults. I’ve treated you with nothing but respect, told everyone how much I’d love the challenge of facing someone with your unique approach to wrestling and you give me insults about how I’m a man child who never completed the journey from puberty to adulthood.”
He shakes his head in disappointment.
“Trafe.”
He taps the book spine a couple of more times.
“Even if you’re not calling me an incel or a man child” he continues with a chuckle. “Saying that I attract those kinds of people isn’t really a compliment to me, is it?”
“But hey,” He comments with a shrug. “This is UGWC, where no one is allowed to have an opinion, be annoyed, think something unfair or absurd, annoy a belligerent Canadian dwarf, or say anything with the slightest bit of vagueness without someone getting their ass bent out of joint. Do any of that and you’re subjected to a torrent of shit so deep, you’d think we were wading through the streets of New Jersey.”
He pauses and taps his finger on another book spine. It reads “Outrage”, by Robert Tannenbaum.
“By the way, little clown...” he intones with a lopsided grin. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten about you. You have something that I want, and I received your invite…”
He walks to the end of the shelf line and his finger settles on one final book.
“War and Peace”.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wakey wakey.” the cruel voice is followed by the stinging pain of a slap. “There’s no sleeping here. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep soon enough.”
A couple of more brisk taps to the face bring the young man in the chair to full consciousness. It's not hard slap, only two fingers rapidly struck against the side of the face to get attention, not cause damage. The young man, who can’t be more than twenty-two, opens his eyes, which immediately go wide at the side of the glowering man who currently towers over him. He’s large and bald-headed with a dark goatee. His eyes are covered by a pair of dark sunglasses.
The view changes to that of the young man in the chair, and the man with the sunglasses pulls a chair from out of his vision, swings it around and sits down.He smiles, although the expression is anything but friendly. It has far more of a “hungry shark circling prey” look.
“Hi.” It’s said more to be polite than as a genuine greeting. “I’d introduce myself, but I’ve been told not to. Suffice it to say, what’s about to happen here isn’t personal, at least not to me, I’m being paid very well for this so I do as I’m told. I’m a bit mercenary that way.”
He pauses, slides his sunglasses off, and slides them onto the collar of his black “Johnny Hitmaker” t-shirt.
“You’ve made someone very unhappy recently.” He overstresses ‘very”. It sounds like something between a hiss and a growl. “And now…well..let’s just say that it’s time to pay your tab.”
He looks down at the floor and chuckles to himself. God knows what a person like this one finds so funny. After a few seconds, his head snaps up and his entire comportment changes. He lunges at the young man, grabbing his windpipe with one of his black-gloved hands and squeezing it. From the expression on his prisoner’s face, it’s just enough pressure to hurt and restrict his speech.
“I didn’t know the person in question.” He explains in a tone that’s near a whisper. “Of course, I know that you did, and that alone is enough to make me dislike you just a little. Normally I wouldn’t care if you did what you did, but this time, the sheer irresponsibility of it really pisses me off. This civilization is rotting from within, and you’re a part of the reason why.”
He abruptly releases the kid’s throat and sits back in his chair while his guest gasps for air. Another man walks in, although his stride is a bit more of a jerky almost skating motion. He stops in front of the kid in the chair and smiles in a way that promises violence.
“You’ve been a very bad boy-oy.” He sings. “Seasons don’t fear the Reaper. Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain. We can be like they are...”
He lunges forward and gets in the boy’s face.
“We are not like they are,” He hisses. “We are far, far worse...and you’ve been an extremely bad boy…”
A loud clap rings through the room. The laughing man straightens up and backs off, gleefully cackling to himself.
“It’s alright,” He chuckles. “You’ve been saved by the bell.”
He slides away and disappears from view. Zane walks in and lowers his sunglasses.
“You don’t know me,” He says with hate in his eyes. “But I know you.”
He pulls the chair forward and sits down on it, leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs.
“This could’ve been avoided.” He states with an exhale that almost sounds sympathetic. “But alas, a series of terrible decisions lead us here.”
He shakes his head, once again in mock sympathy.
“You started this by making one decision,” He explains. “You got drunk. That’s not the problem. I’d be a hypocrite if I held an act against you that I’ve committed myself.”
The kid in the chair tries to speak, but the gag muffles him.
“Sweet Caroline, OH OH OH,” we hear from out of the shot. “Good times never felt so good!”
Zane’s expression darkens.
“Don’t sing that obnoxious fucking song.” He sneers. “I hate that fucking song.”
There’s a slight and unhinged giggle from off-camera. Zane rolls his eyes and looks back at the kid.
“Your problem is that you then got into a car and drove.” He explains. “That was stupid. Extremely stupid.”
He pauses and his expression hardens again.
“Due to that exceptionally stupid decision, you ended up killing someone.” He growls. “Someone near and dear to me.”
“Someone irreplaceable.”
He visibly shudders and grits his teeth. He stands up and slips his sunglasses back on.
“Actions have consequences.” He begins. “So shall this one.”
The kid in the chair lets out a loud but muffled squeal of terror and tries to say something. Zane gestures upward with his chin. A second later one of the other two men pulls the rag from his mouth.
“Am I going to die?” he whimpers.
Zane nods his head “no”.
“What would you learn from that?” He replies a little too calmly. “While there’s a part of me that definitely wants to do that, I’m not going to. You need to learn from this, and dead people don’t learn.”
He taps his finger to his chin, then points at the kid again. At his bidding, the gag is reapplied.
“What to do…” he asks himself. “What to do...”
“Eye for an eye, for an eye, for an eye!” the crazy voice giggles.
Zane’s face takes on a look of confusion, then surprise.
“That’s a great idea,” he exclaims.
“What is?” the other person asks. “The crazy asshole is babbling…”
Zane turns and looks at him.
“Eye for an eye,” Zane replies, then looks down at the kid. “I hope you own a mirror so that every time you look in it in the future you remember what you did.”
He flicks a hand in the direction of his prisoner and walks off.
“Save it.” we hear him say.
The dark-haired man we saw first walks into the shot and leans over the kid, who tries to back up in the chair before the crazy one holds him in place. The view goes black to a disgusting squishing noise and a bloodcurdling scream.
“Eye eye, Captain!” the crazy guy yells before the feed cuts.
Zane scoffs derisively and runs his hand over the crown of his head.
“Well, you know what I have to say to both groups.”
He places particular stress on ‘both’, then looks straight into the camera.
“Fuck...you.”
There’s clear avarice in his tone and malice in his eyes.
“It’s ironic,” he continues, pacing back and forth. “For my entire career it’s been the same old bullshit. When I’m angry, I’m overreacting. When I’m violent, I’m psychotic. When I’m calm, I’m a bitch who needs to man up. When I’m a team player, I get stabbed in the back and tossed aside like a pile of shit. When I take pride in my career, I’m told to stop living in the past. People only pay me respect for as long as they can use me. That includes this fucking company.”
His right-hand balls into a fist. His grip is so tight that it turns white from the lack of blood flow.
“Lucy brought something up in her ‘Outlast’ promo as a means of throwing my being a ‘bitch’ in my face,” he explains. “She brought up that I held every singles title at once at one point during my career, and that somehow that’s evidence of how I’ve lost my way over the years because I somehow don’t have them now.”
He laughs to himself caustically.
“Because it’s that fucking easy to win and hold three championships at once.” He explains disdainfully. “Lest we forget, the company made sure that I lost all three of them almost as quickly as I won them.”
“She conveniently forgets that one of those losses was to her at ‘Day of Reckoning’.” he sneers. “And lest we forget, Almighty Lucy, one I’ve shown nothing but respect to, that Somers and Deimos were also involved in that match. Let’s not pretend this was a one-on-one situation where you got the better of me. I had the odds stacked against me, just like I always do when I’m World Champion, and because of that you walked away with MY World Championship.”
He looks down angrily.
“I wasn’t even pinned to lose my championship,” he mutters. “You pinned Deimos.”
He sits silently for a second, then suddenly looks up, his face twisted with fury.
“I HANDED YOU THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!! I RAISED YOUR HAND AFTER THE MATCH!!!” he screams. “I SHOWED YOU RESPECT!!”
His hands fly downward, slamming into something out of view with a loud “thud”. His eyes and face are red with ire as his chest heaves up and down. His face is twisted in a mask of wild rage.
“I...showed...you...respect.”
He rolls his eyes and chuckles dryly, taking a breath to calm himself.
“It strikes me as being particularly ironic that your boyfriend gets it,” his mouth pulls into a twisted smile. “Rogan understands why I’m as angry as I am. He loves this company just as much as I do, but you scoff at me like I’m trash.”
He closes his eyes but the smile remains on his face.
“Everyone wonders aloud where the ‘killer’ in me has gone,” he asks, chuckling again. “They deride me for being a coward who won’t look at myself in the mirror and admit who and what I am. I’m already a stone-cold killer in everyone’s mind, and I can’t be allowed to move past that image.”
“Why is that, I wonder?”
He looks down at the table, which now has a long and ragged crack running down the center. He shakes his head but smiles in spite of it.
“If that crack isn’t representative of me...” He remarks to himself.
“Lucy isn’t the only one who’s talking out of her ass about me right now,” he continues. “Good ol’ Tony Savage had a nice little punchy soundbite about me to blather out. How’d you put it, Ant...”
He clears his throat in an exaggerated and loud manner, then speaks in a very poor English accent.
“It blinds him from his true purpose; simply being the best commander possible. He’s forgotten this life’s about plunder and glory, naysayers be damned.”
He scoffs, loudly.
“Get the fuck outta here.” he sneers.
“I know you’re new in this neighborhood,” he says in a patronizing tone. “I know it’s tough being the new kid, and that between your time winning the Chaos Championship, judging others, being pissy about losing that championship and, you know, burying your head up your ass so far that you can spit shine your lower intestine because you think you’re something special…”
“You don’t have a minute to actually understand the history of this company.”
He looks down at the table and shakes his head.
“I guess I’m going to have to replace this table.” he sighs. “Again.”
He walks away from the table.
“I know you don’t honestly give a goddamn about what I’ve actually done here over my twelve years,” he growls. “But I did try to be the guy you so arrogantly told me that I should be. I tried to be the locker room leader, the experienced veteran who would guide the young talent about the business, help the new people get acquainted and comfortable, and keep the locker room cohesive. Do you know what happened?”
“I had it spat back in my face.” Zane rolls his eyes. “Then the company unceremoniously suspended me because someone faked a video of me doing something I didn’t do. At a Pay-Per-View.”
“So, Tony, you tell me what I’m supposed to do to be a ‘leader’.” he sneers. “To a company and a locker room that are unwilling to be lead.”
He walks past a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and runs his hands over the books. He pauses over one, laying a single finger over it.
King Rat.
“Incel, Montague,” he asks, somewhat amused. “Incel’ is the best you have for me? Dixon, a kid who hasn’t done shit here gets Goethe and you give me Salinger and gutter insults. I’ve treated you with nothing but respect, told everyone how much I’d love the challenge of facing someone with your unique approach to wrestling and you give me insults about how I’m a man child who never completed the journey from puberty to adulthood.”
He shakes his head in disappointment.
“Trafe.”
He taps the book spine a couple of more times.
“Even if you’re not calling me an incel or a man child” he continues with a chuckle. “Saying that I attract those kinds of people isn’t really a compliment to me, is it?”
“But hey,” He comments with a shrug. “This is UGWC, where no one is allowed to have an opinion, be annoyed, think something unfair or absurd, annoy a belligerent Canadian dwarf, or say anything with the slightest bit of vagueness without someone getting their ass bent out of joint. Do any of that and you’re subjected to a torrent of shit so deep, you’d think we were wading through the streets of New Jersey.”
He pauses and taps his finger on another book spine. It reads “Outrage”, by Robert Tannenbaum.
“By the way, little clown...” he intones with a lopsided grin. “Don’t think that I’ve forgotten about you. You have something that I want, and I received your invite…”
He walks to the end of the shelf line and his finger settles on one final book.
“War and Peace”.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wakey wakey.” the cruel voice is followed by the stinging pain of a slap. “There’s no sleeping here. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep soon enough.”
A couple of more brisk taps to the face bring the young man in the chair to full consciousness. It's not hard slap, only two fingers rapidly struck against the side of the face to get attention, not cause damage. The young man, who can’t be more than twenty-two, opens his eyes, which immediately go wide at the side of the glowering man who currently towers over him. He’s large and bald-headed with a dark goatee. His eyes are covered by a pair of dark sunglasses.
The view changes to that of the young man in the chair, and the man with the sunglasses pulls a chair from out of his vision, swings it around and sits down.He smiles, although the expression is anything but friendly. It has far more of a “hungry shark circling prey” look.
“Hi.” It’s said more to be polite than as a genuine greeting. “I’d introduce myself, but I’ve been told not to. Suffice it to say, what’s about to happen here isn’t personal, at least not to me, I’m being paid very well for this so I do as I’m told. I’m a bit mercenary that way.”
He pauses, slides his sunglasses off, and slides them onto the collar of his black “Johnny Hitmaker” t-shirt.
“You’ve made someone very unhappy recently.” He overstresses ‘very”. It sounds like something between a hiss and a growl. “And now…well..let’s just say that it’s time to pay your tab.”
He looks down at the floor and chuckles to himself. God knows what a person like this one finds so funny. After a few seconds, his head snaps up and his entire comportment changes. He lunges at the young man, grabbing his windpipe with one of his black-gloved hands and squeezing it. From the expression on his prisoner’s face, it’s just enough pressure to hurt and restrict his speech.
“I didn’t know the person in question.” He explains in a tone that’s near a whisper. “Of course, I know that you did, and that alone is enough to make me dislike you just a little. Normally I wouldn’t care if you did what you did, but this time, the sheer irresponsibility of it really pisses me off. This civilization is rotting from within, and you’re a part of the reason why.”
He abruptly releases the kid’s throat and sits back in his chair while his guest gasps for air. Another man walks in, although his stride is a bit more of a jerky almost skating motion. He stops in front of the kid in the chair and smiles in a way that promises violence.
“You’ve been a very bad boy-oy.” He sings. “Seasons don’t fear the Reaper. Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain. We can be like they are...”
He lunges forward and gets in the boy’s face.
“We are not like they are,” He hisses. “We are far, far worse...and you’ve been an extremely bad boy…”
A loud clap rings through the room. The laughing man straightens up and backs off, gleefully cackling to himself.
“It’s alright,” He chuckles. “You’ve been saved by the bell.”
He slides away and disappears from view. Zane walks in and lowers his sunglasses.
“You don’t know me,” He says with hate in his eyes. “But I know you.”
He pulls the chair forward and sits down on it, leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs.
“This could’ve been avoided.” He states with an exhale that almost sounds sympathetic. “But alas, a series of terrible decisions lead us here.”
He shakes his head, once again in mock sympathy.
“You started this by making one decision,” He explains. “You got drunk. That’s not the problem. I’d be a hypocrite if I held an act against you that I’ve committed myself.”
The kid in the chair tries to speak, but the gag muffles him.
“Sweet Caroline, OH OH OH,” we hear from out of the shot. “Good times never felt so good!”
Zane’s expression darkens.
“Don’t sing that obnoxious fucking song.” He sneers. “I hate that fucking song.”
There’s a slight and unhinged giggle from off-camera. Zane rolls his eyes and looks back at the kid.
“Your problem is that you then got into a car and drove.” He explains. “That was stupid. Extremely stupid.”
He pauses and his expression hardens again.
“Due to that exceptionally stupid decision, you ended up killing someone.” He growls. “Someone near and dear to me.”
“Someone irreplaceable.”
He visibly shudders and grits his teeth. He stands up and slips his sunglasses back on.
“Actions have consequences.” He begins. “So shall this one.”
The kid in the chair lets out a loud but muffled squeal of terror and tries to say something. Zane gestures upward with his chin. A second later one of the other two men pulls the rag from his mouth.
“Am I going to die?” he whimpers.
Zane nods his head “no”.
“What would you learn from that?” He replies a little too calmly. “While there’s a part of me that definitely wants to do that, I’m not going to. You need to learn from this, and dead people don’t learn.”
He taps his finger to his chin, then points at the kid again. At his bidding, the gag is reapplied.
“What to do…” he asks himself. “What to do...”
“Eye for an eye, for an eye, for an eye!” the crazy voice giggles.
Zane’s face takes on a look of confusion, then surprise.
“That’s a great idea,” he exclaims.
“What is?” the other person asks. “The crazy asshole is babbling…”
Zane turns and looks at him.
“Eye for an eye,” Zane replies, then looks down at the kid. “I hope you own a mirror so that every time you look in it in the future you remember what you did.”
He flicks a hand in the direction of his prisoner and walks off.
“Save it.” we hear him say.
The dark-haired man we saw first walks into the shot and leans over the kid, who tries to back up in the chair before the crazy one holds him in place. The view goes black to a disgusting squishing noise and a bloodcurdling scream.
“Eye eye, Captain!” the crazy guy yells before the feed cuts.
2013, '18, '23 
2013 