Re: Water cooler talk
(FADE-IN)
The hour is dusk at Treelawn Cemetery, a modestly-sized burial site on the far end of Long Island. As one might guess from its name, the cemetery is filled with trees, casting shades upon the neat rows of tombstones that stretch on for as far as the eye cares to see.
Standing before one plot in particular, the tombstone topped with several small, roundish stones, is Orphan. In spite of the heat and humidity on Long Island, he wears a hoodie, ivory white with the words “CHOOSE HATE” blared across the front in bright, red letters. The hood is up, obscuring his long, platinum hair. Seemingly the fal’Cie’s only concession to the weather is a pair of jean shorts.
Casting a gaze over his shoulder fondly at the tombstone there, he turns back, and shakes his head wryly. In spite of making this journey on a weekly basis, it is no mistake that he is still here an hour after his usual departure time.
ORPHAN: So, this is it, huh? After just over thirty years on this Earth, it’s already come to this. Hell, some people said I’d be in a wheelchair by the time I was thirty. They were wrong, but I guess it’s even worse than just being wheelchair bound for the rest of my life. I have Death after me, instead.
There is something teasing or amused in his expression. It doesn’t last long.
ORPHAN: The Grim Reaper comes soon for my mortal soul. And to him, to this Spooky Doom, I ask merely this.
The hint of a bemused smile on Orphan’s face vanishes utterly, replaced by a mask of rage, the Spirit of ACW’s unpainted face as red as it is when he does battle wearing his facepaint.
ORPHAN: Where the **** were you when I was begging, no, when I was PRAYING for you to come take me off of this miserable rock? Where were you when I went to bed every night for a month wishing that I had the courage to blow my ****ing brains out and end it all, so that I didn’t have to see another day?
The words are clipped, anger in every syllable. The fal’Cie’s muscles tremble with the simple effort of standing, fists clenched as he forces himself to relive memories that are never far from the surface of who he is; memories that rip open wounds that can never truly heal.
Still, he shakes his head once more, almost in apology.
ORPHAN: I’m sorry, that might be a little much to take in all at once. So let’s start from the beginning, shall we, Spooky?
How many men ever get the chance to tell Death their grievances directly? It is not a chance Orphan intends to waste.
ORPHAN: The year is 2005, I’m a bright, bouncing hero intent on saving the world from all manners of evil. I’ve been divorced from my wife for six months because, to be honest, she broke up with me because she couldn’t stand being stalked by wrestling dirt sheet writers who wanted the inside scoop on my career. Because she couldn’t take fans stopping us every five seconds for an autograph or a picture. Because she had the audacity to want to live a private life. I could give her trips to anywhere in the world, my pint-sized Grim Reaper. I could give her lovely meals. The one thing I could not give her, though, was that one thing she and so many others value most: privacy.
He could see them all clearly, to this very day. On occasion, he was still bothered by the wrestling paparazzi, but he’d worked out a way to deal with most of them. He’d give them time of his own accord, willingly. Outside of that? Don’t **** with him.
There were many who had tried to cross that simple edict. Most of them weren’t physically assaulted for their insolence.
Most, anyhow.
As far as Orphan is concerned, though? They deserved to die for what happened next.
ORPHAN: She came up to me in the middle of Primetime Central’s Golden Turnbuckle Tournament 5 and asked –no, she begged for me back. Only the woman who embodied every desire I’d ever had, everything I could ever want in a life partner. The only catch? I had to give this up. Give up this strange mix of vaudeville theater and mortal combat, and spend the rest of my life deliriously happy with her. Considering the fact that I’m standing here talking to you, Spooky, I’m pretty sure you know I made the wrong choice.
Dropping to his knees at the gravesite, Orphan brushes his fingers across the face of it, over the word “WINTERS” etched into the stone. His fingers dip in and out of the shallow etchings as he does so, fresh tears in the Orphan’s eyes.
ORPHAN: And so, she pulled out a pistol from the folds of her dress. Pointed it at herself. Pulled the trigger. Collapsed in my arms, leaking blood from the wound that would ultimately kill her.
His gaze next goes to the smaller plate in the ground, the one with her full name. “LAURA MARIE WINTERS” stares back up at him from the cold, lifeless marble.
ORPHAN: And then, six days later, Spooky…you came for her. So I’m going to ask you again. Why not me?
The question is less angry than a plea from the depths of the soul of the Seymour Almasy of seven years ago, a man who still to this day could not come to grips with the horrors of July of 2005.
ORPHAN: WHY NOT ME, YOU SELFISH SON OF A *****?! WHY COULDN’T YOU TAKE ME, TOO?! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE TO DEAL WITH ALL OF THIS, TO LIVE EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE WITH THAT GUILT! THAT HEARTBREAK! THAT TORMENT?!
His forehead falls to the marble, fresh tears staining the stone as he sobs away bitterly. When his head rises next, the tears still flow, but the Spirit of ACW grits his teeth and forces his way on, even as his long hair slips free from the hood and clings to his tear-streaked face.
ORPHAN: Everyone hates you, Grim Reaper, but it’s not for the simple fact that you bring death. No, Spooky, I know well that this is where we all end. From the dirt we rise, and to it we return. We are born, we live, and we die; that is a fact of humanity, a fact of life itself. But what I hate, Spooky? You’re a mercurial son of a *****. Some of us make it ninety-five years. Others? You barely even let them out of the womb. You do what you want. When you want. And that’s just plain not fair.
A chuckle escapes from the Spirit of ACW’s throat, a low, uneasy sort of laughter as he rubs his hands together, very, very slowly.
ORPHAN: I’m looking forward to asking you why you’re such an asshole. Why you took her from me. Why you took my GRANDFATHER, the man who raised me who’s buried five plots down that way from me ONE WEEK EARLIER, YOU CALLOUS ASSHOLE?! And if you don’t answer, if you give me some bull**** about Fate, Doom? I will hurt you. I will make what happened to Space God and Leyenda de Ocho look like summer vacation. I will make you wish that your uncle was there with one of his coffins to carry away what remains of you.
Spooky Doom might well be the Grim Reaper, but to the Orphan’s mind, both men were and are very capable of passing judgments. Orphan’s brand of Merciless Judgment has earned him countless victories in the past year.
And perhaps no head punt that he could deliver, not even the umpteenth to Khristain Keller, the man who made him this way, would be as utterly satisfying as taking the head off of the being which spirited away his beloved Laura to the afterlife.
ORPHAN: The funny part of all of this? You could have stopped this from happening. You could have taken me back when I was ready, and it’d have been a routine stop for you. I’d have gone quietly, and I’d probably be buried in this cemetery as we speak.
It is a ludicrous thought for the Orphan of today, but he knows it to be utterly, one hundred percent true. If only he’d had the courage to pull a trigger, or step off of a chair, he’d be gone, and it would have all ended before it truly began.
ORPHAN: I know I’m going eventually, and when I do, it’s not going to be here where I want it to be, buried alongside the love of my life. Perhaps fate will be kind enough that I can be buried with my Party, together in death with the three women who have given me my reasons to live, but regardless. Because of you, Spooky, my wife’s last conscious memory of me is me refusing to marry her once more. That’s my fault, and it will haunt me until the day I join her here – but it’s also your fault. Your fault for taking her away when she’d stabilized at the hospital. YOUR FAULT FOR TAKING HER AFTER I’D GOTTEN MY *******ED HOPES UP THAT SHE’D LIVE AND I COULD RETIRE AND GIVE HER EVERYTHING SHE’D EVER WANTED!
The look in the fal’Cie’s eyes isn’t anger. Not anymore. No, what stares into the soul of Spooky Doom and ESEN viewers worldwide is a despairing concoction of conviction and desperation that penetrates to the marrow.
ORPHAN: Back in 2005, Spooky? I’d have welcomed you with open arms. I’d have closed my eyes and sung your praises as you sent me to go meet Charon. But now, my friend? Now I’ve got things to live for again. I have my Party, my three-woman fanclub. Three people who would weep over my death. Three people I would give ANYTHING to keep from crying.
He pats his shoulder three times, where, on a more normal occasion, his championship belt would be proudly displayed.
ORPHAN: I have twelve pounds of silver, the Spirit of ACW. It’s the embodiment of my goals, my dreams, my mission to make ACW safe for the Leyenda de Ochos of the world, for the next generation of wrestlers who want to fight their heroes and not be maimed by them.
He falls quiet for a moment, as if remembering the heroic luchador’s struggle against him.
ORPHAN: You see, I realized that to lay down and hope for death was the coward’s way out. Only after suffering unimaginable heartbreak and sorrow did I understand that I had been weak, all along. In praying for you to come, Spooky, I was giving up. Conceding. Letting you win. I picked myself up off of the cold ground that day, and I continued my career. I won World Championships. I became a household name in this industry. But I never, NEVER forgot Laura. Even to this day, I wear the band that united us on my finger.
Even through all of the atrocities Orphan has committed, and will likely continue to commit in the name of his vision of justice, fairness, and tolerance, that modest diamond wedding band remains on his right ring finger, glinting just a bit in the dim light of dusk.
ORPHAN: How ironic, that now that I have made peace with living, seven years later, you come for me. You come for my dreams of winning the ULTRATITLE and using that venerated strap to bring about true change in the sport I love – in one of the few things that I have left in this whole, wide world. You may claim to hit harder than any man in the world, Death, but you do not hit harder than the sorrow and agony this world has already inflicted upon me. Perhaps you sense me a vulnerable foe, one weighted down by grief and sadness, but I assure you, Spooky, that you will have to drag me off of this mortal coil kicking and screaming.
Orphan is not, and likely would never again be lacking for conviction. His battle with Leyenda de Ocho was to both cripple the luchador to prevent him from being harmed as Orphan himself had been, but also to surpass Leyenda and continue in the tournament to save future Leyendas from...people like what he was slowly turning into.
Here, there is no such duality. No such split motivation. The goal is simple: annihilate Spooky Doom for all that he had done, and advance onwards in the tournament.
ORPHAN: You beat Carl Bigsby and Mike C, Mr. Doom, but I am a different breed. I will fight you in the center of that ring. I will show you the power of remorse, the power of anger, the power of terror. I will fight you with those weapons that humanity shuns, and I will take pleasure in your pain. I will not go gently into that good night! I will make you experience the helplessness that most of your victims feel as you callously shuffle them off of this mortal coil!
It is, perhaps, poetic, for a man as affected by death as Seymour Almasy/Orphan to come face to face with Death itself. Few men are as well equipped with motivation to stare it in the face, and punt it in the skull.
Orphan is ready for his date with destiny; that much seems absolutely certain.
ORPHAN: In round one, I overcame a God. In round three, I will overcome the Grim Reaper himself. And I will do so in the name of Laura Marie Winters. Spooky, you should have taken me all of those years ago, when I was ready to go. When I wouldn’t have put up one iota of resistance. But now, I am ready for your challenge.
Perhaps it is the fact that he’s faced death, literally and figuratively, so many times that has him so prepared to face its purveyor. Perhaps his convictions are simply that strong.
Or perhaps, as many ACW fans are starting to believe, the once-beloved Seymour Almasy is slowly working his way off of the deep end, and into the depths of madness.
ORPHAN: You will win, Spooky Doom, in the end. Inevitably you must; such are the rules of the game of life. But you will NOT beat me in round three of the ULTRATITLE Tournament. You will NOT take from me what I have spent seven years cobbling together at the cost of absolutely everything! Decades from now, when I am old, and my hair is grey from age and not dye, you will come for me and you will win, my pint-sized Grim Reaper.
Finally, the smile returns to the face of the fal’Cie, a broad, open, honest grin.
ORPHAN: But what a hollow, hollow victory that will be…
(FADE-OUT)