Post by Downfall on Apr 17, 2022 18:39:57 GMT -5
I wasn't sure how long I'd sat there, feeling empty.
It was, for sure, after I'd come back home at six in morning after Havoc.
Had hopped a plane, took a red-eye home to sleep in my own bed.
And, you know, as I entered that little beach house on the Key, my grin had split wide, I'd opened the door... I'm never home frequently enough since Christmas, I chide myself, and there's a sense of deflation as I realize Michelle isn't there; Don't know why I'd expected she would be? Other than the nagging, niggling sense in my mind, that Michelle and I had just missed each other... somehow.
"You are alone," said one voice. The voice of the venom in my ear, the worm in my mind.
"You're never alone," contradicted another, no less horrible, no less insidious and no less nattering.
I had just sat down on the couch then, and hadn't risen for a while.
Now I was just kicking around this beach house that was habitated chiefly by me and the ghosts.
"You are alone, and do you know why that is? Because you don't care about anyone but yourself," said the ghost with black, delicious relish. "You did it with Michelle, and you did it with Serenity too; you found a way to get them out because there is nothing that terrifies the mighty Daniel Fehl like human emotion and interaction. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong."
I turn my shoulder from the specter of Jason, coldly. "Okay, you're wrong. Simple."
"It isn't that simple, Danny..." says the voice of the old man, calling after me. Frustrated, grimacing. I cursed lightly, telling myself I needed to get out, go find some engagement. That when a tiger is pacing around in its cage I needs some kind of change of scenery. After-all, nobody would ever want to look at a promo about a wrestler that sat in an apartment and talked to their ghosts. And despite the heavy amount of voices, some from my peers, some from management, telling me in mincing, fawning, words, all nice cute little sentiments, all utter bullshit; "Oh, there's no shame in being eliminated by Carter Shaw, he won the Havoc match!", "Oh, Danny, you're still our main event level guy, EVERYone is afraaaid of facing you!" and on, and on, and on.
But at the very bottom of it I felt no interest, no pull in engaging with the outside world and really, nothing interested me. Not even my usual activities.
I considered where I was at in life, encroaching middle age, constantly at a career crossroads of "Do I seriously want to keep doing this stupid shit I signed up for when I thought wrestling was all I'd ever see myself doing at the age of fifteen" and always on the fence of calling every company higher up, telling them I was thinking of mailing the Tag title belt in to them via carrier pigeon, and I didn't much care about sitting on the rest of my contract.
"That's it, that's exactly it, isn't it," now she showed up, exactly as I had left her. Staring coldly into my heart, cutting through me with her words. "The brittle ego of Daniel Fehl. The stunted narcissism of someone who learned early on 'I had to perform to try and win daddy's approval'. And so the only way he ever believes he can win approval is by performing. But it's never enough, is it?" I cut my eyes over to her. "If it isn't being the best, you aren't winning his approval. After all these years. You're transparent."
"So what if I am?" I asked testily, to the air, and turned around.
"So, Danny, you fucking fought through an entire tournament last year of the most elite superstars, including half the final ten in stupid Havoc, AND you beat Dandy Divito at his own game, and you still - still are searching for approval? For their approval? Vicariously, for your dad?"
"No. I'm doing this for me. Because over the last year, I've pushed and fought harder than anyone there is to - "
"So," Jason interrupts, amused, "Why won't the ghosts go away?"
Fuming, I don't answer. Aimlessly I stood again, but there was a new fire in my legs and my hand spun out unbidden, divorced from my conscious thinking process. It smashed into the wall, and a framed picture - one of our only framed pictures, shaken, falls off the wall.
"You're too mad to think straight, son," Donald told him, compassionate and present in a way I never was growing up. "You thought you were at your most focused, but your head isn't in the game... it ain't been for months."
"Bullshit."
But I knew it wasn't.
Michelle was kinder, now, as she reached out to touch my face, tenderly. "Sweetheart, you weren't... you learned the wrong lesson and took it to heart. Ever since Turmoil, you thought the answer was you needed to get meaner. Nastier. The only way you could ascend to the rank of World Champion again was to be the angry, egotistical son of a bitch you were to everyone. But you and Dion aren't the Inner Circle, and nobody here is swayed by you saying that you're the king of hell. That isn't the growth you experienced on the way to becoming the Tag champs, and you know it."
Flinty-eyed, I met her gaze, then looked away. "That's where you're wrong. Because I've looked. I've searched everywhere inside of me over the past year, and deep down I... just have to think that that's who I am."
"And that's why she leaves," put in Jason's voice.
The ghost just stood there, head hanging, looking like I was wasted away, disappeared, already half gone. "No." I'd said softly, then, but knowing, yes.
"You have a rage behind your eyes that won't go away. And maybe it comes with your vocation. I don't know. But it's always been there with you."
"Shut up."
"This is what I didn't want for you," Donald's voice. Rising in accusation, in reprobation. "I didn't want you to follow in my footsteps."
"Stop..."
"Your mother left me just like Michelle did you. Because I never learned that lesson. Because I played too fast and loose with the devil. And then you went, and you did the same thing!"
Donald comes around, the spirit howling at him, right in my ear. "Would you for once be honest with yourself! You're the reason!"
Nodding, taking in this shoot on me with a wry smile, "Of course, it's my fault, dad. You always found a way to make it my fault."
"Because you're ugly inside. Because as much as you wanna tell yourself that it's to prove you're the best in the world, all you are is a petulant child. Who just wants an excuse to hurt people. You are the most self-deluded, arrogant man who has ever lived. You tell yourself that it's for something noble, something important. But it's not. You were a fool to tell yourself that teaming with Dionysus ever made you better. If anything, a small, fleeting taste of success has made you backslide. You're more full of yourself, of your own message, of your own-"
"ENOUGH!"
"E-...NOUGH!!!
I roared so hard that it felt like my surroundings shook. Before I knew what was happening I had lashed out with a foot and kicked the 50 inch flat screen so hard that the LCD smashed into a spiderweb and I kicked it off it's stand. It lay there on it's back like an expensive obsidian turtle. And I continued my rampage amongst the ghosts.
I flipped over the IKEA entertainment center, glass shelves and metal frame that the TV had been sitting on, upending them and adding more broken glass.
With a savage grip I lifted one of the barstools up from the kitchen island and brought it crashing down through the coffee table.
I picked the Ottoman up, lifting it overhead and, with all my might, hurling it through the French doors, smashing glass.
"There's the rage! There's the fire! There's the star-making performance of someone who was chucked out of Havoc like a fucking afterthought and didn't even get his fucking moment! Because Havoc is ALLLLLL ABOUT PEOPLE HAVING MOMENTS!!"
"A magnificent, fitting tribute..."
"For a hero." grins Jason Twisted's ghost.
"Shut up!"
"So, prove me wrong... hero."
"STOP. CALLING. ME. HERO!!"
"Just say it... just say Jason has always been right about me..."
"YOU'RE NOT REAL!"
"Am I not? Well here's the multiple choice that's going to kick you right in the seat of your pants, hero. Either 1) let's say it: you're cursed. You have actual black magic infesting your heart, poisoning your soul and a spiteful, evil whammy that landed square on your shoulders when you were twenty-six that says you will NEVER. Ever. Have achievable, sustainable success.
Or, 2) the curse is just a manifestation of your own ego, and you were never good enough to begin with. The reason you failed, isn't because Jason Twisted put a hex on ya, it's because you aren't physically capable of performing at a level good enough to even warrant a decent showing in Havoc; You overestimate your abilities time and time again, and this time around you clearly deluded yourself into thinking you were firing on all cylinders and there were people a hundred times more ready for what Havoc entails. You just fucking suck. You aren't actually that good at all.
What's the answer, hero, 1 or 2?"
I sat on my knees, out of fragile things to smash, chest heaving.
"I'll do you one better: multiple choice, Danny... was Jason Twisted ever real at all... or all in your mind? This story of an age-old demon who's been at you since day one is amusing, but maybe it's just a metaphor, for you. Maybe I'm just you. The you you don't want to admit."
Theatrically, he takes a bow at the waist. "Entropy. The center of the circle that cannot hold. The ends that disentigrate. The simple truth of someone who's just good enough to fight through a tournament and turn people's heads for three months... but not... fucking... good enough, to hold on to that success. Was the story of the devil you shook hands with real, a scapegoat, or... it just a story you tell yourself so you can give yourself an out?"
I'm not listening to him, but I'm crawling over broken glass, and finally, eyes melting in sorrow, picking my way over to the broken picture frame. And Michelle smiles at me, on a long-ago day... from a Polaroid selfie two teenagers had taken sitting among dandelions in Jackson Park. Michelle had smiled, blushed, and covered her face with her hands, bashful and yet beaming broadly.
Suddenly, all of the heartache and misery poured into my hands as I cradled the broken frame, the jags of glass falling out past the small Polaroid and tink'ing to the floor.
"Stop," I say, sotto voce to the ghosts.
And, incredibly, I'm answered by one.
"-So you were eliminated from the battle royale, big-deal gaijin," Hinata called. Over my shoulder, I looked to find two after-images, sitting at each other's sides. Almost ghosts, wisps of see-through memory.
Two young boys, fresh into the cusp of manhood and growing into their range. The after-image of the blonde, with his shaggy, mop-cut hair, hanging in his eyes, looked dejected, hands wrapped around his knees. He wasn't used to loss, for someone who projected such a palpable chip on his shoulder, who blustered to the world that he was genetically gifted... such loss took him to heart, because he had no way to process being perfectly, acceptably skilled and good enough to take on anyone, and yet still getting the shit beaten out of him.
"It isn't easy for me, Hina," Danny complained, "My dad... my dad got in my mind, he really hurt me... and now, my soul... everything feels broken inside."
The after-image of Hinata nodded, sagely, whereas others might look at someone venting about getting thrown out of something like this and call it emo bitching.
"You say it's broken..." The after-image reached out of sight, and had taken a mug in it's hand. Without missing a beat, the mug slipped through the ghost-memory of Hinata's fingers and shattered into bits on the floor.
"This mug was a prized possession... and now, it's in pieces," he bragged, completely at ease. "Later, I will sweep it up, and dispose of it in the trash. Everything is transient, Daniel... Everything has it's moment in the sun, and everything broken fulfills it's cycle. This is call mono-no-aware, roughly translate means the sense of letting go of impermanent things. Or, I guess... sense of ahhhhness."
Danny's afterimage snorted. "Very zen... but what does that have to do with losing."
Hinata shrugged, and looked at the sky. "In this instance, it means, very stupid gaijin... that nothing is permanent, not even loss. And the broken feeling is impermanent... and in time, you will replace the broken mug with a new mug. And fill it. Or don't. Sit there, moping and whining over broken mug. You do you, baby white boy gaijin."
Danny's afterimage picked up a fragile shard of the mug. "Mono-no-aware..."
"Sense of letting go of impermanent things. It doesn't mean you aren't sad when something breaks."
So I stood.
My boots crunched over broken glass. I stared, calmly but a little sadly at the shattered glass of the French doors. The ghosts, all of them now, where following me into all of the rooms of the house; pointing out the chuffed marks where Serenity's enchanting table and crystals had been but were now gone, because of me. The empty bed where I and Michelle had last made love, now spare and simple wood, because of me. And I, alone again, empty again, a hollow man, who in the very final analysis was always going to end up here, lonely, embittered and full of rage, dying alone. This is you, says Ash Blake. You believe in nothing.
Because you're me. My anger. My rough hands. My temper, Donald Fehl says.
Tell me I was right, in the end, Jason Twisted says.
"Shut the fuck up," I told my mind and the ghosts wearily, having had enough dialogue for one night. I went to fetch the broom, thinking that if I started by cleaning up the after-effects of the rampage and the destroyed TV and entertainment center I'd have a good handle on getting started fixing my life. If only in a micro sense. But it was a start.
"Say it now, or later... doesn't matter, Danny... because even if you sweep out the broken shards... the hellhounds are coming for you. They're biting at your heels."
"You are the one who's broken... because that's just who you are. Mono-no-aware," smirked that voice, and I didn't have the energy to tell it to shut up again.
I just swept up broken glass, letting it's words ruminate in the back of my mind, and I kept sweeping despite feeling it's smile at the nape of my neck.
Despite that, I felt curiously zen in the act of sweeping.
If there could be said to be a winner in the battle of me versus the ghosts, I wanted to thank the one who had taught me about everything impermanent, so long ago.
It was, for sure, after I'd come back home at six in morning after Havoc.
Had hopped a plane, took a red-eye home to sleep in my own bed.
And, you know, as I entered that little beach house on the Key, my grin had split wide, I'd opened the door... I'm never home frequently enough since Christmas, I chide myself, and there's a sense of deflation as I realize Michelle isn't there; Don't know why I'd expected she would be? Other than the nagging, niggling sense in my mind, that Michelle and I had just missed each other... somehow.
"You are alone," said one voice. The voice of the venom in my ear, the worm in my mind.
"You're never alone," contradicted another, no less horrible, no less insidious and no less nattering.
I had just sat down on the couch then, and hadn't risen for a while.
Now I was just kicking around this beach house that was habitated chiefly by me and the ghosts.
"You are alone, and do you know why that is? Because you don't care about anyone but yourself," said the ghost with black, delicious relish. "You did it with Michelle, and you did it with Serenity too; you found a way to get them out because there is nothing that terrifies the mighty Daniel Fehl like human emotion and interaction. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong."
I turn my shoulder from the specter of Jason, coldly. "Okay, you're wrong. Simple."
"It isn't that simple, Danny..." says the voice of the old man, calling after me. Frustrated, grimacing. I cursed lightly, telling myself I needed to get out, go find some engagement. That when a tiger is pacing around in its cage I needs some kind of change of scenery. After-all, nobody would ever want to look at a promo about a wrestler that sat in an apartment and talked to their ghosts. And despite the heavy amount of voices, some from my peers, some from management, telling me in mincing, fawning, words, all nice cute little sentiments, all utter bullshit; "Oh, there's no shame in being eliminated by Carter Shaw, he won the Havoc match!", "Oh, Danny, you're still our main event level guy, EVERYone is afraaaid of facing you!" and on, and on, and on.
But at the very bottom of it I felt no interest, no pull in engaging with the outside world and really, nothing interested me. Not even my usual activities.
I considered where I was at in life, encroaching middle age, constantly at a career crossroads of "Do I seriously want to keep doing this stupid shit I signed up for when I thought wrestling was all I'd ever see myself doing at the age of fifteen" and always on the fence of calling every company higher up, telling them I was thinking of mailing the Tag title belt in to them via carrier pigeon, and I didn't much care about sitting on the rest of my contract.
"That's it, that's exactly it, isn't it," now she showed up, exactly as I had left her. Staring coldly into my heart, cutting through me with her words. "The brittle ego of Daniel Fehl. The stunted narcissism of someone who learned early on 'I had to perform to try and win daddy's approval'. And so the only way he ever believes he can win approval is by performing. But it's never enough, is it?" I cut my eyes over to her. "If it isn't being the best, you aren't winning his approval. After all these years. You're transparent."
"So what if I am?" I asked testily, to the air, and turned around.
"So, Danny, you fucking fought through an entire tournament last year of the most elite superstars, including half the final ten in stupid Havoc, AND you beat Dandy Divito at his own game, and you still - still are searching for approval? For their approval? Vicariously, for your dad?"
"No. I'm doing this for me. Because over the last year, I've pushed and fought harder than anyone there is to - "
"So," Jason interrupts, amused, "Why won't the ghosts go away?"
Fuming, I don't answer. Aimlessly I stood again, but there was a new fire in my legs and my hand spun out unbidden, divorced from my conscious thinking process. It smashed into the wall, and a framed picture - one of our only framed pictures, shaken, falls off the wall.
"You're too mad to think straight, son," Donald told him, compassionate and present in a way I never was growing up. "You thought you were at your most focused, but your head isn't in the game... it ain't been for months."
"Bullshit."
But I knew it wasn't.
Michelle was kinder, now, as she reached out to touch my face, tenderly. "Sweetheart, you weren't... you learned the wrong lesson and took it to heart. Ever since Turmoil, you thought the answer was you needed to get meaner. Nastier. The only way you could ascend to the rank of World Champion again was to be the angry, egotistical son of a bitch you were to everyone. But you and Dion aren't the Inner Circle, and nobody here is swayed by you saying that you're the king of hell. That isn't the growth you experienced on the way to becoming the Tag champs, and you know it."
Flinty-eyed, I met her gaze, then looked away. "That's where you're wrong. Because I've looked. I've searched everywhere inside of me over the past year, and deep down I... just have to think that that's who I am."
"And that's why she leaves," put in Jason's voice.
The ghost just stood there, head hanging, looking like I was wasted away, disappeared, already half gone. "No." I'd said softly, then, but knowing, yes.
"You have a rage behind your eyes that won't go away. And maybe it comes with your vocation. I don't know. But it's always been there with you."
"Shut up."
"This is what I didn't want for you," Donald's voice. Rising in accusation, in reprobation. "I didn't want you to follow in my footsteps."
"Stop..."
"Your mother left me just like Michelle did you. Because I never learned that lesson. Because I played too fast and loose with the devil. And then you went, and you did the same thing!"
Donald comes around, the spirit howling at him, right in my ear. "Would you for once be honest with yourself! You're the reason!"
Nodding, taking in this shoot on me with a wry smile, "Of course, it's my fault, dad. You always found a way to make it my fault."
"Because you're ugly inside. Because as much as you wanna tell yourself that it's to prove you're the best in the world, all you are is a petulant child. Who just wants an excuse to hurt people. You are the most self-deluded, arrogant man who has ever lived. You tell yourself that it's for something noble, something important. But it's not. You were a fool to tell yourself that teaming with Dionysus ever made you better. If anything, a small, fleeting taste of success has made you backslide. You're more full of yourself, of your own message, of your own-"
"ENOUGH!"
"E-...NOUGH!!!
I roared so hard that it felt like my surroundings shook. Before I knew what was happening I had lashed out with a foot and kicked the 50 inch flat screen so hard that the LCD smashed into a spiderweb and I kicked it off it's stand. It lay there on it's back like an expensive obsidian turtle. And I continued my rampage amongst the ghosts.
I flipped over the IKEA entertainment center, glass shelves and metal frame that the TV had been sitting on, upending them and adding more broken glass.
With a savage grip I lifted one of the barstools up from the kitchen island and brought it crashing down through the coffee table.
I picked the Ottoman up, lifting it overhead and, with all my might, hurling it through the French doors, smashing glass.
"There's the rage! There's the fire! There's the star-making performance of someone who was chucked out of Havoc like a fucking afterthought and didn't even get his fucking moment! Because Havoc is ALLLLLL ABOUT PEOPLE HAVING MOMENTS!!"
"A magnificent, fitting tribute..."
"For a hero." grins Jason Twisted's ghost.
"Shut up!"
"So, prove me wrong... hero."
"STOP. CALLING. ME. HERO!!"
"Just say it... just say Jason has always been right about me..."
"YOU'RE NOT REAL!"
"Am I not? Well here's the multiple choice that's going to kick you right in the seat of your pants, hero. Either 1) let's say it: you're cursed. You have actual black magic infesting your heart, poisoning your soul and a spiteful, evil whammy that landed square on your shoulders when you were twenty-six that says you will NEVER. Ever. Have achievable, sustainable success.
Or, 2) the curse is just a manifestation of your own ego, and you were never good enough to begin with. The reason you failed, isn't because Jason Twisted put a hex on ya, it's because you aren't physically capable of performing at a level good enough to even warrant a decent showing in Havoc; You overestimate your abilities time and time again, and this time around you clearly deluded yourself into thinking you were firing on all cylinders and there were people a hundred times more ready for what Havoc entails. You just fucking suck. You aren't actually that good at all.
What's the answer, hero, 1 or 2?"
I sat on my knees, out of fragile things to smash, chest heaving.
"I'll do you one better: multiple choice, Danny... was Jason Twisted ever real at all... or all in your mind? This story of an age-old demon who's been at you since day one is amusing, but maybe it's just a metaphor, for you. Maybe I'm just you. The you you don't want to admit."
Theatrically, he takes a bow at the waist. "Entropy. The center of the circle that cannot hold. The ends that disentigrate. The simple truth of someone who's just good enough to fight through a tournament and turn people's heads for three months... but not... fucking... good enough, to hold on to that success. Was the story of the devil you shook hands with real, a scapegoat, or... it just a story you tell yourself so you can give yourself an out?"
I'm not listening to him, but I'm crawling over broken glass, and finally, eyes melting in sorrow, picking my way over to the broken picture frame. And Michelle smiles at me, on a long-ago day... from a Polaroid selfie two teenagers had taken sitting among dandelions in Jackson Park. Michelle had smiled, blushed, and covered her face with her hands, bashful and yet beaming broadly.
Suddenly, all of the heartache and misery poured into my hands as I cradled the broken frame, the jags of glass falling out past the small Polaroid and tink'ing to the floor.
"Stop," I say, sotto voce to the ghosts.
And, incredibly, I'm answered by one.
"-So you were eliminated from the battle royale, big-deal gaijin," Hinata called. Over my shoulder, I looked to find two after-images, sitting at each other's sides. Almost ghosts, wisps of see-through memory.
Two young boys, fresh into the cusp of manhood and growing into their range. The after-image of the blonde, with his shaggy, mop-cut hair, hanging in his eyes, looked dejected, hands wrapped around his knees. He wasn't used to loss, for someone who projected such a palpable chip on his shoulder, who blustered to the world that he was genetically gifted... such loss took him to heart, because he had no way to process being perfectly, acceptably skilled and good enough to take on anyone, and yet still getting the shit beaten out of him.
"It isn't easy for me, Hina," Danny complained, "My dad... my dad got in my mind, he really hurt me... and now, my soul... everything feels broken inside."
The after-image of Hinata nodded, sagely, whereas others might look at someone venting about getting thrown out of something like this and call it emo bitching.
"You say it's broken..." The after-image reached out of sight, and had taken a mug in it's hand. Without missing a beat, the mug slipped through the ghost-memory of Hinata's fingers and shattered into bits on the floor.
"This mug was a prized possession... and now, it's in pieces," he bragged, completely at ease. "Later, I will sweep it up, and dispose of it in the trash. Everything is transient, Daniel... Everything has it's moment in the sun, and everything broken fulfills it's cycle. This is call mono-no-aware, roughly translate means the sense of letting go of impermanent things. Or, I guess... sense of ahhhhness."
Danny's afterimage snorted. "Very zen... but what does that have to do with losing."
Hinata shrugged, and looked at the sky. "In this instance, it means, very stupid gaijin... that nothing is permanent, not even loss. And the broken feeling is impermanent... and in time, you will replace the broken mug with a new mug. And fill it. Or don't. Sit there, moping and whining over broken mug. You do you, baby white boy gaijin."
Danny's afterimage picked up a fragile shard of the mug. "Mono-no-aware..."
"Sense of letting go of impermanent things. It doesn't mean you aren't sad when something breaks."
So I stood.
My boots crunched over broken glass. I stared, calmly but a little sadly at the shattered glass of the French doors. The ghosts, all of them now, where following me into all of the rooms of the house; pointing out the chuffed marks where Serenity's enchanting table and crystals had been but were now gone, because of me. The empty bed where I and Michelle had last made love, now spare and simple wood, because of me. And I, alone again, empty again, a hollow man, who in the very final analysis was always going to end up here, lonely, embittered and full of rage, dying alone. This is you, says Ash Blake. You believe in nothing.
Because you're me. My anger. My rough hands. My temper, Donald Fehl says.
Tell me I was right, in the end, Jason Twisted says.
"Shut the fuck up," I told my mind and the ghosts wearily, having had enough dialogue for one night. I went to fetch the broom, thinking that if I started by cleaning up the after-effects of the rampage and the destroyed TV and entertainment center I'd have a good handle on getting started fixing my life. If only in a micro sense. But it was a start.
"Say it now, or later... doesn't matter, Danny... because even if you sweep out the broken shards... the hellhounds are coming for you. They're biting at your heels."
"You are the one who's broken... because that's just who you are. Mono-no-aware," smirked that voice, and I didn't have the energy to tell it to shut up again.
I just swept up broken glass, letting it's words ruminate in the back of my mind, and I kept sweeping despite feeling it's smile at the nape of my neck.
Despite that, I felt curiously zen in the act of sweeping.
If there could be said to be a winner in the battle of me versus the ghosts, I wanted to thank the one who had taught me about everything impermanent, so long ago.