Post by Zane on Jan 18, 2023 23:03:50 GMT -5
Zane stands in front of a floor-length mirror, staring into it with a vacant look in his eyes. It’s not vacant for long.
“This isn’t going to be some ‘25th Hour’ shit, is it”?
Zane blinks at the mirror. People call him crazy, but this?
“Yeah, this.”
“I didn’t say anything” Zane retorts, his confusion mounting.
The face on the opposite side rolls its eyes...loudly.
“It’s not my fault that you’re predictable.”
Zane shakes his head as he runs his hand over his head. The reflection mimics it, but somehow the gesture appears...mocking.
“This is a trope,” Zane says as his hand drops to his side. “A cliche...”
“Yup”. It replies snidely, “Yet here we are”.
There’s an abrupt silence between them before the mirror image smirks at him.
“It’s fitting if you think about it,” his reflection says with a crooked smile, “Because you’ve been a cliche and a trope ever since ‘The Cool Kids’ turned you from a killer to a loser”
Zane visibly flinches at the remark, then glares at it.
“Face it, man, your legacy is dead. No one cares about you anymore” it continues, its face contorted into an expression that doesn’t match Zane’s. “You used to be the ‘Personification of Pain’, feared and respected”.
The reflection pauses as Zane chews on its words. The reflection continues to lambast him.
“Now you’re a conspiracy-spewing weirdo who loses to curtain jerkers and displays all of the emotional maturity and control of a five-year-old whose Ritalin prescription has expired”.
Zane sneers, not that the reflection cares. It continues as if he’s not there.
“You used to be a killer” it spits, “now you’re reduced to a chump with no confidence whose best years have passed him by as he stands in a mirror and has a delusional conversation with a reflection”.
Zane stands in silence, frozen in place as the mirror continues to heap abuse on him.
“This isn’t going to be a ‘25th Hour’ scene where you go off on everyone who’s ever pissed you off or disrespected you, because you lack the balls to do that now”.
Zane stands in baffled and pained silence.
“And since you’re wondering it; no” the reflection snaps “I can’t suddenly change my appearance. I’m a fucking reflection. Besides, if I did that, this mess would become even lamer and cliche than it is now.”
The reflection shrugs disgustedly.
“This isn’t a ‘Disney’ film” it snaps. “Hell, this isn’t even ‘Raging Bull’. You can’t hype yourself into being equal to Jet Somers, Alan Wallace, Eden Morgan, and our former ‘friend’ Donovan Hastings. They’re the ‘Mount Rushmore’ of UGWC for a reason.”
“You’re not even worthy of being the ‘gravel pit”.
Zane paces back and forth in front of the mirror, shaking his head and muttering to himself wildly. The reflection continues the torrent of abuse.
“You won’t beat Rogan or Lucy, or Dave” it spits, “Or Montague, Sebastian, and or ol buddy Phrix. You’re the drizzling shits”.
The mockery in the voice is cutting and acidic. “You don’t have a prayer against Ragdoll, and everyone should laugh in your face at the thought of you facing JC”.
“You can’t even beat the curtain jerkers anymore”, it continues. “At least not on your own”.
It rolls its eyes at him.
“You used to be something”, it says with a smirk. “You used to be a contender”.
The reflection looks at him with undisguised hate in its face.
“Now,” his reflection smiles. “Even Raab is more of a killer than you”.
“You should retire” it snarls.
“You were away for TWO YEARS” it practically screams, as its nostrils flare.
Zane stands in awkward silence again as the wild-faced reflection glares at him through the glass.
“You should have stayed away”.
It smiles viciously at him.
“Because now you’re redundant[/b]”.
It glares hatefully at him.
“Go back to the rails.” The reflection sneers. “They’re the worthless trash of society.”
He stares at it and its hateful glare twists into a poisonous smile.
“Maybe you’ll do the world a favor and die under the wheels of a train...”
It smiles cruelly at him.
“You don’t have a chance in hell of beating me,” it mocks, smiling at him. “Getting run over by a train would hurt less and woud spare you the embarrassment of looking stupid again.”
Zane stands in silence for a second. Then he laughs. It’s a low, quiet laugh at first, but before long it’s a deep, loud, and violently maniacal laugh. He stands gut laughing at the reflection in the mirror as if he’s completely lost his mind. He does this, completely oblivious to everything as the image slowly rotates until it settles on the mirror.
It’s JC.
Sometime later
“Was that scene a little cheesy,” Zane asks with a crooked smile, “Maybe. But it was still true. I’ve been a moping and paranoid loser for the last few years, and while I still think this company has done and is doing everything it can to destroy my legacy, I’ve finally figured out how to beat them at their own game.”
He slaps his hands together and rubs them enthusiastically.
“This is the point where the person in my place would melodramatically tell you that they have to destroy their legacy in order to survive it,” he explains, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t need to destroy my legacy,” he explains, stressing “destroy.” “That would be absurd. Just because the simple don’t see how important I’ve been to this company doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t…”
“Or don’t.”
He pauses, smirking ever so slightly.
“My legacy doesn’t need to die,” he continues, smiling mockingly when he says “die.” “And I don’t need to kill it.”
“I need to liberate myself from it.”
He chuckles sardonically to himself.
“Much like someone else I’m aware of.”
He rolls his head backward, smiling like the Joker on acid as a coarse laugh rumbles up from inside of him.
“Joe…Joe…Joe,” he crows. “Although we’ve never met, and weirdly enough never been in the ring with or against each other, I feel like I know you.”
He suddenly throws his arms out to his sides and upwards and the lights flash on to reveal him sitting in a worn-looking armchair that looks extremely out of place in its environment. A quick look shows a wall covered in championships and photographs of wrestlers, some of who we don’t even recognize. Some might even be dead now.
“This, my friend, is the holy site of UGWC,” he explains. “I’d use the normal cliche that most do when talking about ‘the’ place in a given sport, but someone will get bent out of shape at me for disrespecting their religion and I’ll get suspended again. It’ll be a whole thing.”
His tone is airy and a bit off, a bit too relaxed and casual for the scenario he’s explaining. His head suddenly lolls forward, as if his neck has suddenly lost the strength to hold his head up. It’s a weirdly disjointed act for the controlled environment he’s in and creates an unbalanced juxtaposition.
“Nobody wants that,” he giggles.
“But you,” he continues, wiggling his finger as his grin widens. “You Mr. Cool and I have something very much in common.”
“Not that you’d admit it,” he states with a shrug.
He reaches down to his side and pulls up an apple, taking a large, loud bite from it. He continues his narrative as spittle and errant chunks of apple randomly fly from his mouth.
“You see, Mr. Cool,” he pauses as a curious expression comes across his face. “Can I call you ‘Mr. Cool’, or is that disrespectful?”
“Meh,” he says to himself, taking another bite from the apple. “Whatever.”
“Anywhoo...” he continues. “You and I both have a problem. An addiction.”
He laughs again, slowly. “An obsession.”
“Legacy.”
He turns the apple around in his hand, examining its now uneven and distorted surface.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” he cackles to himself.
“And much like people thought that the apple was the way to perfect health,” he continues, spinning it on the end of his finger. “We think that our legacies in this business will declare our health…our perfection…in the judgment of history.”
He tosses it over his shoulder dismissively, pretending to wince when it loudly crashes into something.
“Oops.” he giggles. “That might come out of my next check.”
“Now,” his expression suddenly grows a bit more serious. “As I was explaining, we both have a problem with legacy. When I look at you, I see myself. Granted, you’re better-looking than I am. Of course, that’s a low bar to clear, but I digress. You, Mr. Cool, are as obsessed with your legacy across the entire sport as I’ve always been with my legacy here, and as I told young Mr. Ezra last week…”
He leans forward in the chair and his countenance changes. There’s no more humor in his tone or his body language.
“Legacies are poison.”
He leans back, lacing his arms behind his head, and smiles again, noticeably relaxing.
“Here’s the thing Joe,” Zane looks around and pauses.
“Where’d my apple go?” he asks no one in particular, seemingly genuinely confused.
He ponders it for a few seconds and shrugs.
“Oh well.” he rolls his eyes and throws his hands outward as his face twists into a truly odd expression. “Easy come, easy go, right?”
“I guess it wasn’t the apple of my eye after all.”
“Get it,” he asks, “‘Apple’ of my eye?”
He thinks about it, shakes his head, and waves dismissively.
“Nevermind.”
He looks around, although we have no idea for who.
“What was I talking about,” he asks into the silence. When no one answers he shakes his head again, seemingly genuinely annoyed by the lack of a response in a building that appears to be empty other than him. “No one? How impolite.”
He taps two of his fingers against his chin in thought, then suddenly smiles as his eyes light up.
“Oh yeah,” he exclaims. “I remember!”
“Mr. Cool, and legacies!”
He pats himself on the back proudly, seemingly oblivious to how odd the gesture looks.
“Week after week, promo after promo you do the same thing that I’ve done, Mr. Cool,” he continues. “You drone on and on about your accomplishments. Ostensibly, one would assume that you’re doing so to instill some kind of fear or intimidation in your opponent. You’re a big lad and you’ve been around for a while. Although I think maybe it’s not in your best interest to remind people of how old and sore you are. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a bad strategy.”
“I dunno,” he drums his fingers on the arms of the chair. “I’ve never been accused of being the smartest guy around. Maybe I’m reading the room wrong on this one.”
“Regardless,” he says, a bit too energetically. “When I look at you, I see a lot of myself.”
“You’re a veteran who’s been cutting a path through this sport for a really long time. You’ve run up quite a list of accomplishments, championships and some such, and you never grow tired of reminding everyone of that. I do have to wonder who you’re trying to convince of your greatness by incessantly doing that. Others…”
His eyes widen for some reason.
“Or yourself.”
He throws his arms outward again, gesturing towards the championship-filled display cases.
“Listen, man, I totally get it,” he says sympathetically. “We’ve been conditioned from our baby steps in this sport that championships are the only true measure of greatness. If we don’t have championships to brag about, then we don’t have shit.”
“But is that really true,” he asks. “Or is that the sport’s way of perpetuating itself? An act of mind control to get us to obsess over how others perceive us so that we keep striving for this ‘greatness’ that we’re constantly being told that we have to obsess over, or we’re just tourists in this sport?”
He rolls his head, laughing again to a chorus of bone pops.
“Are you a tourist, Joe,” he quips. “Or are you a puppet who really thinks that he’s the marionette?”
“I know which I am,” he states as he abruptly leaps up from the chair and disjointedly dances back and forth before he just as abruptly collapses back into the chair.
“I know what you want to be,” he breathes. “I know what you think you are.”
He pulls another apple from his pocket and tosses it over his head before catching it.
“You think you’re the eater,” he states.
He takes a loud bite from it, chewing for a few seconds before he swallows loudly.
“You’re not.”
He takes another bite and holds the apple out in front of him as his saliva runs from it and drips onto the floor with a splat and the juice runs down his chin.
“Your obsession with legacy is the eater,” he says, his mouth full of apple chunks.
“We’re both the apple.”
He shoves the half-eaten apple back into his pocket.
“On Monday it’s my responsibility to show you how unhealthy you’ve become.”
“Be the eater, Joe.” he stands up and dances around like the puppet again.
“The eater.”
“Not the apple.”
“This isn’t going to be some ‘25th Hour’ shit, is it”?
Zane blinks at the mirror. People call him crazy, but this?
“Yeah, this.”
“I didn’t say anything” Zane retorts, his confusion mounting.
The face on the opposite side rolls its eyes...loudly.
“It’s not my fault that you’re predictable.”
Zane shakes his head as he runs his hand over his head. The reflection mimics it, but somehow the gesture appears...mocking.
“This is a trope,” Zane says as his hand drops to his side. “A cliche...”
“Yup”. It replies snidely, “Yet here we are”.
There’s an abrupt silence between them before the mirror image smirks at him.
“It’s fitting if you think about it,” his reflection says with a crooked smile, “Because you’ve been a cliche and a trope ever since ‘The Cool Kids’ turned you from a killer to a loser”
Zane visibly flinches at the remark, then glares at it.
“Face it, man, your legacy is dead. No one cares about you anymore” it continues, its face contorted into an expression that doesn’t match Zane’s. “You used to be the ‘Personification of Pain’, feared and respected”.
The reflection pauses as Zane chews on its words. The reflection continues to lambast him.
“Now you’re a conspiracy-spewing weirdo who loses to curtain jerkers and displays all of the emotional maturity and control of a five-year-old whose Ritalin prescription has expired”.
Zane sneers, not that the reflection cares. It continues as if he’s not there.
“You used to be a killer” it spits, “now you’re reduced to a chump with no confidence whose best years have passed him by as he stands in a mirror and has a delusional conversation with a reflection”.
Zane stands in silence, frozen in place as the mirror continues to heap abuse on him.
“This isn’t going to be a ‘25th Hour’ scene where you go off on everyone who’s ever pissed you off or disrespected you, because you lack the balls to do that now”.
Zane stands in baffled and pained silence.
“And since you’re wondering it; no” the reflection snaps “I can’t suddenly change my appearance. I’m a fucking reflection. Besides, if I did that, this mess would become even lamer and cliche than it is now.”
The reflection shrugs disgustedly.
“This isn’t a ‘Disney’ film” it snaps. “Hell, this isn’t even ‘Raging Bull’. You can’t hype yourself into being equal to Jet Somers, Alan Wallace, Eden Morgan, and our former ‘friend’ Donovan Hastings. They’re the ‘Mount Rushmore’ of UGWC for a reason.”
“You’re not even worthy of being the ‘gravel pit”.
Zane paces back and forth in front of the mirror, shaking his head and muttering to himself wildly. The reflection continues the torrent of abuse.
“You won’t beat Rogan or Lucy, or Dave” it spits, “Or Montague, Sebastian, and or ol buddy Phrix. You’re the drizzling shits”.
The mockery in the voice is cutting and acidic. “You don’t have a prayer against Ragdoll, and everyone should laugh in your face at the thought of you facing JC”.
“You can’t even beat the curtain jerkers anymore”, it continues. “At least not on your own”.
It rolls its eyes at him.
“You used to be something”, it says with a smirk. “You used to be a contender”.
The reflection looks at him with undisguised hate in its face.
“Now,” his reflection smiles. “Even Raab is more of a killer than you”.
“You should retire” it snarls.
“You were away for TWO YEARS” it practically screams, as its nostrils flare.
Zane stands in awkward silence again as the wild-faced reflection glares at him through the glass.
“You should have stayed away”.
It smiles viciously at him.
“Because now you’re redundant[/b]”.
It glares hatefully at him.
“Go back to the rails.” The reflection sneers. “They’re the worthless trash of society.”
He stares at it and its hateful glare twists into a poisonous smile.
“Maybe you’ll do the world a favor and die under the wheels of a train...”
It smiles cruelly at him.
“You don’t have a chance in hell of beating me,” it mocks, smiling at him. “Getting run over by a train would hurt less and woud spare you the embarrassment of looking stupid again.”
Zane stands in silence for a second. Then he laughs. It’s a low, quiet laugh at first, but before long it’s a deep, loud, and violently maniacal laugh. He stands gut laughing at the reflection in the mirror as if he’s completely lost his mind. He does this, completely oblivious to everything as the image slowly rotates until it settles on the mirror.
It’s JC.
Sometime later
“Was that scene a little cheesy,” Zane asks with a crooked smile, “Maybe. But it was still true. I’ve been a moping and paranoid loser for the last few years, and while I still think this company has done and is doing everything it can to destroy my legacy, I’ve finally figured out how to beat them at their own game.”
He slaps his hands together and rubs them enthusiastically.
“This is the point where the person in my place would melodramatically tell you that they have to destroy their legacy in order to survive it,” he explains, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t need to destroy my legacy,” he explains, stressing “destroy.” “That would be absurd. Just because the simple don’t see how important I’ve been to this company doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t…”
“Or don’t.”
He pauses, smirking ever so slightly.
“My legacy doesn’t need to die,” he continues, smiling mockingly when he says “die.” “And I don’t need to kill it.”
“I need to liberate myself from it.”
He chuckles sardonically to himself.
“Much like someone else I’m aware of.”
He rolls his head backward, smiling like the Joker on acid as a coarse laugh rumbles up from inside of him.
“Joe…Joe…Joe,” he crows. “Although we’ve never met, and weirdly enough never been in the ring with or against each other, I feel like I know you.”
He suddenly throws his arms out to his sides and upwards and the lights flash on to reveal him sitting in a worn-looking armchair that looks extremely out of place in its environment. A quick look shows a wall covered in championships and photographs of wrestlers, some of who we don’t even recognize. Some might even be dead now.
“This, my friend, is the holy site of UGWC,” he explains. “I’d use the normal cliche that most do when talking about ‘the’ place in a given sport, but someone will get bent out of shape at me for disrespecting their religion and I’ll get suspended again. It’ll be a whole thing.”
His tone is airy and a bit off, a bit too relaxed and casual for the scenario he’s explaining. His head suddenly lolls forward, as if his neck has suddenly lost the strength to hold his head up. It’s a weirdly disjointed act for the controlled environment he’s in and creates an unbalanced juxtaposition.
“Nobody wants that,” he giggles.
“But you,” he continues, wiggling his finger as his grin widens. “You Mr. Cool and I have something very much in common.”
“Not that you’d admit it,” he states with a shrug.
He reaches down to his side and pulls up an apple, taking a large, loud bite from it. He continues his narrative as spittle and errant chunks of apple randomly fly from his mouth.
“You see, Mr. Cool,” he pauses as a curious expression comes across his face. “Can I call you ‘Mr. Cool’, or is that disrespectful?”
“Meh,” he says to himself, taking another bite from the apple. “Whatever.”
“Anywhoo...” he continues. “You and I both have a problem. An addiction.”
He laughs again, slowly. “An obsession.”
“Legacy.”
He turns the apple around in his hand, examining its now uneven and distorted surface.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” he cackles to himself.
“And much like people thought that the apple was the way to perfect health,” he continues, spinning it on the end of his finger. “We think that our legacies in this business will declare our health…our perfection…in the judgment of history.”
He tosses it over his shoulder dismissively, pretending to wince when it loudly crashes into something.
“Oops.” he giggles. “That might come out of my next check.”
“Now,” his expression suddenly grows a bit more serious. “As I was explaining, we both have a problem with legacy. When I look at you, I see myself. Granted, you’re better-looking than I am. Of course, that’s a low bar to clear, but I digress. You, Mr. Cool, are as obsessed with your legacy across the entire sport as I’ve always been with my legacy here, and as I told young Mr. Ezra last week…”
He leans forward in the chair and his countenance changes. There’s no more humor in his tone or his body language.
“Legacies are poison.”
He leans back, lacing his arms behind his head, and smiles again, noticeably relaxing.
“Here’s the thing Joe,” Zane looks around and pauses.
“Where’d my apple go?” he asks no one in particular, seemingly genuinely confused.
He ponders it for a few seconds and shrugs.
“Oh well.” he rolls his eyes and throws his hands outward as his face twists into a truly odd expression. “Easy come, easy go, right?”
“I guess it wasn’t the apple of my eye after all.”
“Get it,” he asks, “‘Apple’ of my eye?”
He thinks about it, shakes his head, and waves dismissively.
“Nevermind.”
He looks around, although we have no idea for who.
“What was I talking about,” he asks into the silence. When no one answers he shakes his head again, seemingly genuinely annoyed by the lack of a response in a building that appears to be empty other than him. “No one? How impolite.”
He taps two of his fingers against his chin in thought, then suddenly smiles as his eyes light up.
“Oh yeah,” he exclaims. “I remember!”
“Mr. Cool, and legacies!”
He pats himself on the back proudly, seemingly oblivious to how odd the gesture looks.
“Week after week, promo after promo you do the same thing that I’ve done, Mr. Cool,” he continues. “You drone on and on about your accomplishments. Ostensibly, one would assume that you’re doing so to instill some kind of fear or intimidation in your opponent. You’re a big lad and you’ve been around for a while. Although I think maybe it’s not in your best interest to remind people of how old and sore you are. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a bad strategy.”
“I dunno,” he drums his fingers on the arms of the chair. “I’ve never been accused of being the smartest guy around. Maybe I’m reading the room wrong on this one.”
“Regardless,” he says, a bit too energetically. “When I look at you, I see a lot of myself.”
“You’re a veteran who’s been cutting a path through this sport for a really long time. You’ve run up quite a list of accomplishments, championships and some such, and you never grow tired of reminding everyone of that. I do have to wonder who you’re trying to convince of your greatness by incessantly doing that. Others…”
His eyes widen for some reason.
“Or yourself.”
He throws his arms outward again, gesturing towards the championship-filled display cases.
“Listen, man, I totally get it,” he says sympathetically. “We’ve been conditioned from our baby steps in this sport that championships are the only true measure of greatness. If we don’t have championships to brag about, then we don’t have shit.”
“But is that really true,” he asks. “Or is that the sport’s way of perpetuating itself? An act of mind control to get us to obsess over how others perceive us so that we keep striving for this ‘greatness’ that we’re constantly being told that we have to obsess over, or we’re just tourists in this sport?”
He rolls his head, laughing again to a chorus of bone pops.
“Are you a tourist, Joe,” he quips. “Or are you a puppet who really thinks that he’s the marionette?”
“I know which I am,” he states as he abruptly leaps up from the chair and disjointedly dances back and forth before he just as abruptly collapses back into the chair.
“I know what you want to be,” he breathes. “I know what you think you are.”
He pulls another apple from his pocket and tosses it over his head before catching it.
“You think you’re the eater,” he states.
He takes a loud bite from it, chewing for a few seconds before he swallows loudly.
“You’re not.”
He takes another bite and holds the apple out in front of him as his saliva runs from it and drips onto the floor with a splat and the juice runs down his chin.
“Your obsession with legacy is the eater,” he says, his mouth full of apple chunks.
“We’re both the apple.”
He shoves the half-eaten apple back into his pocket.
“On Monday it’s my responsibility to show you how unhealthy you’ve become.”
“Be the eater, Joe.” he stands up and dances around like the puppet again.
“The eater.”
“Not the apple.”