VOW Presents
A Casanova English Original
Faded Prima Donas
“I'm glad you have a really good view of the mountains.”
My mother was looking much better, better than she ever did in my opinion. Her blonde hair was growing long again. I smiled at her, and she returned one that was weak, a complete and utter lie. Right now she hated me, but she has only been here a week.
“Yeah. It is beautiful out here.”
Vancouver was the best place I could think to send her. It was still inside Canada, but far away enough from Ontario that she wouldn't be tempted to try and escape and hook up with a dealer. This is a side of myself that I keep very low key, not even the members of my stable know that I placed my mom in rehabilitation last week after a frantic and anxious phone call I received from my aunt. Things were going well in my career. I forced VOW into giving me the first shot at the World Visionaries Championship after a year of complete domination. Former champions from all walks of the wrestling world fell at my fresh boots. In one year in this industry I have become a force to be reckoned with. With that comes a pay raise. When my aunt told me my mother was willing to seek help it was nothing for me to sign the paper work, and write a cheque. My mother may have put me through hell, but she was still my mom.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah. I am doing alright. I'm just worried about you.”
I stopped walking alongside her for a second. I was stunned. I don't think I have ever heard my mother say those words to me. Once I took my brother out of a preheated oven when she took too many dilaudids.
“Me? Why?”
“Well this whole wrestling thing. I saw some of your stuff and the things you say. You talk about revolution, about violence. You talk about taking down the “corporate elite”, about finding your “inner savage”. You sound like a terrorist half the time.”
“I thought they didn't let you have TV's in here.”
“No, I saw this before I came here. Before you sent me here I saw it a few times on TV. I have just been thinking about it a lot lately. It's hard to see my son speak so much. . . hate.”
She looked at me for a few moments, and I looked at her not knowing how to respond. She begins to walk ahead of me letting out a sigh as her Nike hiking shoes pushed her up the slight elevation lined with stones.
“Wrestling. . .”
I say before jogging to catch up to her.
“My job is the reason you are here getting better.”
She lets out a laugh as she continues walking along.
“The reason I am here. Then maybe you should quit. I'm not getting better here Cass. I am going insane. Look at this one kilometer trek I am allowed to take supervised. I can only really go hiking with a stupid counselor.”
“Then why in the hell did you say you wanted to come here then mom?”
“I don't know. Turning 40 messes with you.”
“You had a reverse mid-life crisis?”
I let out a slight snicker.
“As soon as my month is up I am out of here.”
I stop, and grab her arm forcing her to stop.
“What do you mean?”
She pulls her arm out of my grasp and snaps at me
“Don't you put your hands on me! As soon as my month is up I am getting out of here and I am going to get better on my own.”
“We tried that a million times already mom we know that is no longer an option. I am working now an I can't be there to watch you like a hawk. I need to be on the road.”
“Oh right! With your weird old wrestling brainwashing crap. The stuff that landed me in this damn prison. Where they medicate me far more then I ever medicated myself. I feel like a god damn zombie. Like the drones you preach about Cass.”
I look away from her begging eyes. Her eyes that beg me to take her home. To let her leave the fences all by herself. She wants her free will back, the decision to make the call if she needs the pill or not. She's not that type of person though. She never was and never will be. She is weak, she gives in. She is locked into the programming, mistaking the numbness for feeling. She can't do it on her own, and most of you can't. You sad little sheep all need some kind of crutch, some kind of excuse to indulge in your vices.
“You are not leaving here in a month. I signed you up for three.”
She steps back, but the look on her face was like a pulled a .45 from my pocket while she was in tight and fired it into her stomach at close range.
“That's not what the doctor says. He says after I am here for a month he will do an evaluation and I am free to go.”
“Well the doctor is mistaken.”
“No. . . No.”
She slams her feet into the ground like a stubborn todler drawing to attention of a counselor passing along on the small short trail.
“Calm down mom. It's fine we have to do this to get better.”
“You hate me! You want me to turn into some FREAK! YOU WANT ME TO DIE HERE!”
I grab her by both arms pulling her near me. Trying to speak softly, and to avoid the counselor intervening.
“Calm down mom everything is fine, You need to be here so we can get you sober. We need to get you off the drugs and back into life. You can help deal with your brothers passing. It's only been two years and the family still needs you.”
“SHUT UP!”
She pulls free of my grasp again, like a repeat of when we were in the kitchen of our two bedroom trailer. I was 10 and it was the first time my mother asked me to help her get better. I was 10 and I fully understood. I never had a child hood.
“I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!”
She pushes me hard and I take a step back as the counselor shouts and runs over. He warns my mother that he is going to have to sedate me, but she breaks free of his grasp too foaming at the mouth, tears rolling down her cheeks, she lets out a primal shriek that bounces off the mountains far off in the distance.
“YOU WANT ME TO DIE HERE!”
She pushes me one last time before the counselor shoves a needle into her side and she falls back slowly, him catching her in his defined arms. I grab the other side of my mothers limp body and the counselor and I drag her along the path back the the redhead center while she drools and mumbles complete nonsense.
The doctor is startled as I push through the door without knocking. I stand in front of him with my leather jacket loosely hung on my shoulders.
“So what is this about my mother only being here for a month?”
He straightens his glasses and ruffles through a few papers.
“Ah. Yes. Miss Jones. You signed her up for three months yet you only paid for month. If you don't pay for the rest in full by the first week of April then she is free to go on her own free will.”
“I'll pay it now.”
“Well here is the balance. You will have to take it down to the finance department to settle up.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
I grab the document from his hand and leave the room quickly. I hate doctors offices. They are always filled with shit that attempts to make you feel comfortable. Like tissues within arms reach. . . it just suggests bad news. I get into the lobby and look at the document. My eyes widen as my heart sinks looking at the balance owing. When I paid the first time I figured that was for the entire duration. It would take three months of my salary at VOW to pay this bill off.
I walk quickly from the creepily clean, blinding white lobby to outside and I pick up my cellphone to call my assistant Corpse, back at The Orphanage.
“Hey. Is all our cash tied up into projects at The Orphanage?”
“Well yeah. I put in the order on the studio this week to increase our production values for promos like you asked. If we are going to compete with corporate propaganda we have to be as presentable as them.”
“I figured. I really need some cash.”
“Well I did get a call today regarding Battlemania. I hear if you win there is a cash prize. I know the whole inter fed thing isn't for you. . .”
I hang up the phone cutting Corpse off. What other choice did I have? This week I have a match with Ziu Zhong and Stacy Jones. Two VOW Champions, a chance to prove that I have what it takes to be The Vision despite what corrupt management wants. Then I have a chance to defeat Vanessa and be the first World Visionaries Champion. This might just kill me, but I needed to save her some how. I at least need to try. I'm not pure evil.
There was no time to waste. I had to let my the competitors at Battlemania know who they are dealing with. I had to announce that I would be taking an alternate spot in hopes of being named the first Batlemania winner. I normally hate shooting in such haste, but the balcony of the hotel provided a nice backdrop of the Vancouver mountains. I place my camcorder in the corner of the rail by the building careful not to let it fall to it's demise a few stories below. I snap on record and pull a sole cigarette away from it's prepackaged brothers.
“So I hear there is an opening. A spot for me to slither into that Battlemania match. How unfortunate for you bright up and coming glimmers of hope, and you old tired dinosaurs.”
I take a long deep haul off the cigarette and blow a plume of smoke into the camera.
“It's not about winning for me it never has been. I know that seems so fucked up in a game that is fixated on the outcome of a match. No, now before you go thinking that you “know” me, I'm not one of those people who loves the idea of pain. I always thought those people were foolish. I'm not saying that I hate pain, it lets me know I am alive. What I am saying is that it's not me, the sadist need to inflict pain on myself and others. . . that is not what drives me in this business. It's defiantly not what drove me to join this interfed battle royal.”
I take another few short puffs off the cigarette, taking an extra inhale of the fresh Canadian air. I blow a few smoke rings up towards the now fading blue sky. The sun was preparing itself to set.
“I'm a soldier of change, I am bringing forth a revolution. Oh, I know you have heard this story before too. I know you have heard the man spout that he is going to bring forth a revolution in this industry. Sadly, those schmucks rarely know the definition of the word. Originality is hard to find in this world that tells you that you are a unique and beautiful snowflake, that you can grow in any way shape and form you choose. It fills your head with false hope. It tells you that you can be a movie star, you can be an astronaut, but the truth is not all of us can. It was all a lie. . . The American fucking dream.”
“I didn't really come to win, as much as I came to make you loose. Every bit of credibility I can take from the “legends” that have a choke hold on this industry the better. The more I can destroy them, break them, manipulate them. Every weakness I reveal, slowly but surly reveals to these mindless brainwashed drones that these heros in tights, are just sad men making a pay check off their intangible dreams. It's time we wake up, it is time we top sleeping in the dark and seize the day. Too long we have sat in the shadows and allows the same continues group to rape us of the almighty dollar. To rape us of our fame and our time.”
I take another hard long puff off the cigarette letting the dry tobacco crackle. I toss the only half smoked cigarette behind me off the balcony, blowing a cloud in front of me. I lean into the camera.
“I am a dose of enlightenment. I'm here to weed out the sick pill addicted brain dead, juiced up imbeciles that have been ruining the credibility in the industry for too long. I am here to stop them dead in their tracks and attempt to open your eyes and show you that these men you look up to, there woman you worship like some kind of Amazonian goddesses. . . they are human just like you. They are weak.”
“Me I am your inner demons. I take the same of that, my game. . . it's far more mental. You know evolution didn't stop at thumbs like you idiots seem to think. No, the mind kept on going. You just have to learn to open it up. There is more then one way to break a person. It can be a maneuver sure, but it can also be a set of words, a look. I see all your secrets. I see the pills you take for your sad little aches, and poor little pains with those dilated pupils. I see your eyes twitching floating back and forth trying to choke out your schizophrenia. I see those eyes well up when you try and keep the thoughts of you dead parents at bay while in that ring. I see it all. . . I see broken men, and fragile woman.”
I open my eyes wide and shoot my eyes around frantically like I see them around me right now.
“I see people who can't come to grips with reality. At the end of the day I think that is what I represent, and that is what terrifies you.”
I shake my head leaning back, speaking in a more calm tone.
"Some people hide it in their addictions, behind a painted face hiding of who they are. . . ashamed. Me, I'm in your face. I'm brash, My faults, my flaws, my derangement’s are all right here out in the open for you to respect. I don't hid it behind a mask, I don't wear some kind of Elvis suit, I don't pop a needle into my ass to get my biceps building. No matter how you want to dress it up it's all the same to me, I'm in that ring with 29 faded prima dona's. You have all these champions, all these lineages. You have all this respect, and history in that ring. Then you have me. I'm honest. I'm not here for fortune and fame I am here to be heard. I'm here to wake you all up. I am what wrestling fears most. . .”
“I am reality.”
“And when that bell rings, and you all stand up and can't help but respect what I have done in that ring. What I have exposed from your paper champions and your false idols. Win loose or draw, you will remember my name.”
"I am The Modern Day Messiah."
I pull my iPhone out of my pocket and opened the camera to a saved photo of my mother holding my brother when he was a baby. I almost forgot the camera was still on. I snap it off quickly, hiding the human parts of myself.
I guess even the devil has his motives.
