Albatross. (3,992 words)

You're usually quick with a low-hanging fruit reference, Dandy, off everything from an old Hotel California b-side to shitty Soundcloud rap rhyming "baloney pony"... maybe you can answer this one:

How's your Coleridge?

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was presented to me when I wasn't knee-high, ignorant little prick in public school; Didn't think much of it, then... but since, I had to reflect on the central parable the tale represents.

And do you know what is the one question that keeps coming back to my mind, after all these years...

Why kill an animal sailors considered to be a portent of good fortune, that'd lead their boat back to shore... his punishment, forever after, was to bear the carcass of the doomed bird around his neck in shame for his loss.

Why?

Wanna know what I think, Dandy?

I think the story of the mariner is cyclical.

I think it loops with every telling, it begins the crew were already stuck, were already damned for eternity.

By shooting the bird, the mariner frees himself, by shooting down the white bird they're chasing, for a time, their fortune changes, and the sailors are happier.

But the mariner, he didn't shoot the albatross to save his crew from being trapped. I think he did it to absolve himself. Of fear.

Obviously, a sea-goin' man was going to know the consequences of angering Poseidon, of upsetting the superstitions by killing the one thing that would lead his crew to freedom.

And yet he did it anyway, proclaiming proudly, "with my crossbow t'was I who shot the ALBATROSS!"... He wasn't ignorant, he wasn't cruel or dismissive, he knew that there was a chance this could damn him, and he did it anyway.

His story ends with him cursed to walk the earth, bearing the evidence of his mistake, and telling his story to everyone he meets. And every time he gets to the part in the story where he shoots the bird, he's attempting to free himself of his predestined fate.

I've been giving a lot of thought to such cycles lately, Dandy.

About a story that started decades ago; about a curse that I brought on myself.

And I think, if you put down the terribly-affected blaccent and engage me on an equal intellectual approach, you'll see where I'm coming from... we both started this story already lost, a long, long time ago.

And how I've had it in me to break free of the ice, but I've still been trapped, cursed to wander the country for a long time bound by my own choices.

The difference between us and our sins is that the mariner never breaks free.

And maybe you can disagree with my analysis and call it a failed exercise in Composition 101, critique my take on classical literature, and think you know better.

But maybe you've felt the seas change.

Felt the winds shift.

Looked on the horizon and saw me breaking through every obstacle put in front of me and realized ain't a damn thing stopping me, from getting free of where I was trapped.

And I'm prepared to level my crossbow and put one right between the eyes... Lash you to the mast and leave you with the symbol of your own prideful fate.

We've both been bound to this game by familial legacy and generational curses, bringing us to where we are today.

This Clash, the cycle is going to be broken. This Clash, you are going to be broken.

And I'm going to be free.

---

The first time his career had ended, he'd been sitting in the shower for a long time after.

Shell-shocked, he had sat nearly fetal, shivering against the icy rivulets pelting his skin; watching with a thousand-mile stare as the blood, diluted by the streams, had swirled down the drain.

There was a caustic, brutal finality to it.

The blood, running so thin with the water, swirling in a vortex down the metal holes. He watched it, transfixed, leaden.

So that's where he was, at twenty-seven years of age, the former IEW World champion, former leader of the Inner Circle, Purveyor of Anarchy; how he found himself after Frosts of Fury 2007's main-eventing House of Pain match, in utter shock hours after everyone had filed out of the stands.

He was in that shower so long, icy water running over his battered body, that Michelle had eventually called in to the locker room.

"Babe?"

Her head had darted this way or that, creeping slowly, feeling a subtle taste of dread.

She heard the shower, and when she pulled back the curtain, the rungs had scraped on the bar.

She found him, bleeding from a nasty series of cuts, shivering and blued.

Michelle rushed into the shower with him, clothed, and had cradled him against her chest, "Danny? Danny??"

Shivering from cold and some blood loss, he had turned his hollowed eyes to her, uncomprehending.

"Babe, the show's over, we gotta go - " and her voice hitched before she said 'home' as in back to the hotel, but the part he focused on was 'over'.

Gingerly, she helped him from the puddled water, cradling him. He felt so weak as she lifted him out, so... defeated.

When she looked up, there was a figure looming in the doorway. Jauntily tilted sideways against the frame, arms crossed and clucking his tongue, was Jason, looking down at Danny. His grin seemed to widen so much that it wrapped around the top of his head...

Baring teeth.

"The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs,

Upon the slimy sea..."

Michelle bravely put her body front of Danny's. "Shut up, Jason, I'm taking him home."

As if she hadn't spoken, Jason continued. "You exceeded expectations, Danny."

"In five short years, you went all the way to the top, making it when nobody thought a scrappy little six-foot nothing was going to make it in the main event. Good for you."

He gave a solidarity thumbs-up.

"Of course, you couldn't leave it alone when Warpath questioned your authority, and he cost you your fancy World title, and that led us, well... here... but..."

Michelle squinted, "You're talking in riddles... so Danny loses his IEW career as a result of the stipulation, so what? He's going to be fine... he can just... win his job back here. Or go to another one of our sister feds and start new there."

"No, baby-girl, I think you misunderstand...The deal was, that for five years, Daniel would find one company at the top of the world, and he would make himself famous there."

He points a fiery finger Danny's way.

"Wherever after he goes won't accept him. He will not find the fame he craves. He will not be restored to the status that drove him. He wanted, so bad, to eclipse his father, just a simple dream to play a venue in Japan and he wagered everything for it."

"Did he - " Michelle started, then her head turned towards his , "Did you -??" Danny looks side-eye at her, ashamed. "Danny, what - you agreed to this? This can't be real."

Jason watched the lovers' tableau, smiling.

Still weak from blood loss, he clings to her, looking her earnestly in her eyes, wanting to say he's sorry. Michelle's eyes search his face desperately, not sure if she wants to believe any of this. "Why?"

"For you, baby-girl," Jason's tongue dances, savoring the sweetness. "He did all of this because he just wanted to make it big. For you." Jason bows.

"And when it's all said and done, he's lost. His soul... is forfeit. And I... get everything he has. The Inner Circle's... mine now." His grin split, wickedly.

Danny's brow furrowed, and he had grimaced. For the moment, none of that mattered to him. He had straightened up, despite the devastating loss. Despite the weakness in his limbs.

And he stood before Jason with the fire and defiance which had heretofore defined him. "Then I won't stop."

"You can run from port to harbor for all I care," Jason laughed, "When you're dead, when you've given up, you're going to fall. And you will, in time."

Danny's eyes turned to Michelle, and a new firmness grew in his mouth.

"Are you sure this is the way you want it, Danny? D'you really want to be a pauper out there, than stay by my side and be an observer in my new world?"

Jason looked over at Michelle, begging her to talk sense into him, but Michelle looked from one to the other, unsure of what to say.

Danny walked up close enough that he touched Jason, and stared defiantly into his eyes. "'A thousand thousand slimy things lived on.'

"And so did I.'"

With a jerk, he had picked up his denim jacket off the hanger, and slid it around his shoulders.

---

When I speak about generational curses I'm speaking from a place of experience, Dandy. You and I were both born in the shadow of our fathers, but where mine never showed much interest in me, I inherited every bit of his genetic predisposition and double that of his irascible hatred.

I was born with an itching, aching need to break someone's arm rooted deep in my source code. And you...

When it comes down to it, you're suffering the same malaise as Regan Voorhees, family money afforded you every single opportunity to succeed and gave you every bit of privilege but it didn't kindle any kind of heart or desire.

You saw where that got Regan, at Turmoil.

You were given everything I never was and you claimed not to want it. And it didn't want any part of you, either.

When I look at you and your daddy talk, can tell by every interaction until now, that until you started truly embarrassing the family, you were given the same long stretch of indifference.

That says more about you than any motivational speech about Edward Divito about the "Empire Business" his family builds... that he saw fit for so long to leave you out of it entirely until your desperation began to hit new lows.

Your father may've provided you with all the accouterments you try so hard to eschew.

He may've even sighed a little under his breath as he reached for his wallet and handed you out enough cash to pay for the bling for your ill-fated rap career.

But he never cared enough about you to take an interest in your life until now.

You came crying back to him, brokenhearted because the family life you thought you were gaining, the new start as a father didn't pan out; Pride wounded because you got sonned in the opening legs of a tournament by the same man who I went on to put down.

Because people were laughing at you.

Daddy Warbucks finally took enough pity on you to take you in his arms and admit that he cared enough about you besmirching the family name that he was going to assist you before you dented it even further.

See, Dandy, over this past year you've been called time-and-again on the fact that you ain't ever known real struggle.

That you're little more than a kid who grew up unimaginatively aping what he saw on the BET Awards, and that you've never held an "Original" thought in your misbegotten life.

You and daddy needed to turn that on it's head.

By having daddy and baby bwudder already out there, putting it forth that you're their black sheep, you lessen the impact of anyone else's disdain for you as a person.

By hanging a lampshade on the fact that your parents are well-to-do businessmen and you, the outlier cause you wanted to be someone you're not - anything to get away from the wealth and affluence you so disdain yet can't stop benefitting from - ya take the vim-and-vinegar outta every time a Bacchus or a Carter calls you out, for having less street-cred than the Canadian motherfucker who sang "Informer" in the 90's.

Basically, by putting your family out there to handle business for you, you're attempting (fittingly, for someone as tryhard as B-Rabbit), ye old "final battle of 8-Mile" strategy.

And I could almost respect it.

You've effectively silenced everyone who laughed at you for being only able to claim your second World title off a fluke, in a stipulation so easy that a particularly aggressive chimpanzee could succeed at it, and lost it in seconds.

You've erased the stink of failure from yourself of their repeated insistence that you couldn't get it done anymore.

You let a workhorse like Jill Park go to the trouble of eliminating everyone else from the fatal fourway before you swooped in and picked the bones to win it.

And since then, you haven't had a single match or segment of Clash that didn't end with you standing tall, because Richard or Edward's there to run interference.

Ultimately, you're always destined to fall back on the same patterns, Dandy, because the letdown in all of these situations isn't your father, it isn't Richard.

The one who's always fallen short when things get a little bit too real, has always been you.

Go on, turn your mind back to this summer where you boasted to me about how hard it was to take a title off you.

And yet the Vanguard chased you until you thought, you had pulled just far enough away that we couldn't catch up... and both you and Kidsgrove stopped to take a victory lap, gloating in both of your diatribes against us that we didn't deserve a second shot against you.

And here you are, repeating the same mistakes. You cannot resist putting your head in the jaws of the dragon. Because that's just who you are.

And, just like I'm sure your father told you when you got a 600 on your LSAT's... I couldn't be more disappointed in you, Winston.

The bar has been lowered so far for you as World champion that you'd think it couldn't go further; and yet here you are, limbo-dancing under it with the Devil in the ninth circle of hell.

The match you won your title from, that stamped your name as a record-tying three-time champ... was made entirely of people that couldn't even make it to the second round of the WOTY Tournament.

And what dismays me about your sparkling lack of dearth as the figurehead of this company isn't that it's been thrown to you as a softball.

It isn't even that you haven't accomplished shit without daddy present, thus making you, the AW World Champion the third-most important member of your stable.

It's that when I called you out.

When I poured my damn heart out, gave an impassioned speech about how much this match meant to me, and how I wasn't going to be satisfied until brought this to a conclusion...

When I invited you to come down to the ring, face me like a man, you didn't even have the balls to come down there and look me in my eye.

That's the shit that kills me, Dandy.

Not the next week, when your mealy-mouthed brother played dumb long enough for you to tee off on my head.

Not even your entire family's odd insistence to contort my name in every iteration of "Fall" just to get a juvenile little rise out of someone.

It's that when I gave you a chance to confront the fact that your days are numbered, you didn't even choose to front and act like the thug we all know you aren't.

This "new-you" may as well put on a blazer and wear a name-tag because you've finally traded in all of your pretensions of being a baller-shotcaller that rolls with "murderers, drug dealers, your type of people"... you're little more than a nepotistic, spoon-fed corporate dog.

And I don't care if you have daddy flounce out onto the stage every week to mangle my name and attempt to high-hat me, nothing you ever do will erase the fact that when the chips were down... and you couldn't handle being labeled a joke anymore, you ran home and had to have them try and solve the problems you couldn't hack.

You ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penised debutante. Fuck you.

Your family is in the supposed "Empire Business", I'm in the anarchist mindset of "pulling-corpulent-decadent-kings-down-off-their-thrones-and-crushing-empires-into-dust" business.

And you think you've solved your problem.

You think you've cleared your ice, rid yourself of the troublesome bird, and now your confidence with your family by your side is going to be at a high.

You're going to be thinking you're untouchable again, that there is no chance that any of your past mistakes will come back to haunt you.

You've instead doomed yourself, and brought your daddy and bro along with you, to join in your cycle and relive it again.

And you're powerless to stop it.

Not only because you've no idea how to break the patterns. But because you can't even see where you're chained to the wheel.

But even if you could, you would be too late to stop what's set in motion, Dandy.

If I could borrow from another doomed parable, you've flown too close to the sun, and your wings are falling apart. And that is exactly where we stand with this, I'm the fucking sun. You can't stop me from rising.

And you can't stop you, from falling.

And when your family walks away from you in disappointment, only you will be left to tell the tale.

---

Dion looked over from working the weights, but he looked over at his distracted spotter. "Sometimes no message is a message, friend."

Danny sighed and locked his screen back, disgruntled and knowing that Dion knew something. Had to've, Michelle worked with him closely in donating the $500,000 bonus to the various charities, was backstage with him when he'd had the check in hand.

But when the time came to talk to her, she was gone.

He'd grunted, then. "I've known Michelle for half of my life, thank you. Sometimes we just... hit the skids, but if we could talk..."

And yet, there was a niggling at the back of his head... a grating little voice that said, Y'know what, no, you weren't in the wrong... you were betrayed. This isn't on you.

Dion sighed, toweled sweat off his forehead, sat up on the weight bench. "Daniel... I think that she needs some time apart. If only due to your... indiscretions."

"Indiscretions?" his voice raised an octave, cracked.

"And maybe in light of the fact that you have a World title match coming, she feels - "

Danny stormed to his feet, eyes narrowing. And there it was, right to the forefront. And that part of him, chattering in his ear, spelled it out for him, there was a time when he was younger that he'd wanted - NEEDED - her in his life for a big title match like this.

Would look to her for succor and assistance, because she was his heart.

And because he was doing it all for her.

Well, maybe that part of him was wrong.

Maybe he only ever needed to do this for himself.

He hurled his towel back in Dion's face. "Fuck you, pal. I don't need her, or want her. I have what I need."

"Daniel - "

"And you. With your little January 25th message, and your promise to come for the title even if you go through me. If that's the way it's going to be then the hell with you. The hell with all of you."

"You don't mean that, and I wasn't saying I was going to -"

But Danny had already stalked out, slamming the door.

You'd expect him to be a raging sea of emotions as he threw a leather jacket over his sweaty-gym shoulders... but he was dropping cold, and gunslinger calm. He breathed, and his breath-vapor fogged in the chill December air.

And then, a voice surprised him, composed and emotionless. A voice he hadn't heard since on the beach before Havoc.

Serenity was standing by the door of the Corvette, staring icily. Her face was a deadpan mask, and the scars of carved runes on her neck glowed faintly. "Hello Danny..."

"Serenity?? What - "

"Jason sent me," and if there was a flicker of disgust on her face at his name, well, "A long way, to come and talk to you. He wants to offer you a new deal."

Danny's face started, and he went through a raft of emotions, including sorrow at Serenity's bound plight, before his eyes hardened into flinty stone. "Tell me," he said.

---

This is the part where I will need to become clear, Dandy.

I've labored under this curse for too long.

I reached my heights in my twenties, claiming a World title run that would go on to become a record-length... and then the bottom dropped out, and I lost the best years of my career.

But, on the way up... I was a lot like you. Hiding behind a stable, getting them to do all of my dirty work...

Your bush league tactics and lackwitted "mind games" fall short of a mark I reached years ago.

You think you've gotten under my skin?

You've pushed me harder.

And you reminded me, of what I did this for.

You've made this even more vital to me, that I cap off the most successful string of victories I've had in years with a strong statement.

This isn't the first time I've been here. I've been nearly this determined before.

When I won my first World title, I went through a fatal fourway just to qualify.

When I won my second World title, I went into a Rumble at number two and chucked every motherfucker in my way out of the ring to get my title shot.

All of that is to say... that I'm feeling like that, that determination, that fire... but you have never seen me this determined, Dandy.

Superkick by superkick, Godkiller by Godkiller, step by blood-soaked step I am coming. And I am not being stopped.

Sam Kidsgrove, the man who you turned to because you wanted to keep your Tag belts safe and secure, got his lights put out by me.

Ash Blake, the woman who embarrassed you so badly that you decided to pretend that you ever even cared about challenging Philidor, couldn't even touch me.

Johnny Bacchus, the man who sent you hurling out of the WOTY, stepped up to me and I cut him down without remorse.

Regan Voorhees, the woman who went on to get every fan-voted award of the year as the odds-on favorite, stepped into the ring with me and went down in flames.

I want you to forget about everything you think's going to be an outside factor. I want you to leave aside Dion's January 25th ultimatum, I want you to leave aside our relationship troubles and family woes...

I've divested myself of all of that to bring me here, now. When the circle will be broken. When the albatross will fall from the sky.

You aren't getting someone who is going to be fighting you for heart, with soul. I've taken both of them out of the equation. I've brought the most purely me I could be, entirely for this match.

I am walking in to this match preparing myself to become Nightmare-Life-In-Death, the purest physical representation of suffering known to man.

You have - and you are - already lost, before the cycle has begun again.

But for me, I'm sailing clear seas, for the first time in a long time.