This was beginning to get tedious.
He’d wrapped his wrist-tape and undone it so many times, he had the routine down to muscle memory, capable of infinite rehearsals as his mind ran blanks in an endless cycle. Yet, each repetition seemed to have the same flaws as the previous, and as such never quite fit the standard as far as his expectations. It would be unwound and rewound yet again. Tighter each time with growing frustration, threatening to cut off the circulation in his fingers before a single punch had been thrown. Frustrations that he had no means of working out until the bell sounded.
After all, he was champion; supposedly a consummate professional, the face of the company. It was something that he was being reminded of on a daily basis. With each passing day, it seemed Vince McMahon was becoming aware of just how much breathing room he now had, relishing the end of Kendall’s rebellion more with each passing breath. Every press release that he was sent to do interviews for; every racking up radio show, magazine article, ‘blogger’ that he had to inanely chat to – there was an underlying cynicism someone only as jaded as him could have picked up. This was McMahon’s ultimate punishment. Not to shun or to destroy Kendall. To integrate him. To make him a product.
Yet, he’d done nothing to stop it. Every equine based symbol he had been shown to put on a poster or a shirt, he had nodded. Every time he had stood in front of a green screen, dressed for combat and no opponent lying before him for a ‘routine’ photo shoot, he had done as the director – an irritable little man, no doubt bitter over having not landed a more lucrative photography job elsewhere for a more prestigious company – had asked. Alex had almost found himself sympathising with him. Each time he’d been shown a symbol that was supposed to represent his new identity, he simply smiled and nodded.
Action figures. Posters. Lunchboxes. Cups. He was going to be a rich hypocrite.
He’d tried to justify it to himself that this was because the people had a genuine interest in him and a genuine interest in supporting him. Perhaps some did. Perhaps some liked him solely because he won lots, and people sympathise with winners. Perhaps there was simply no one else left to support, and he had filled the all too convenient niche that the company needed. It wasn’t as if he was an unattractive man. Still, wrestling was an ever changing animal, and media was a beast that grew ever more ravenous. When he was a child, the grizzled men in their early forties, stomachs equally solid from their strength and rotund from their drinking, were commonplace. This was the day of the cut-abs, the model culture. Even at twenty nine, he couldn’t help but already feeling over the hill – and simultaneously, infantile.
Had McMahon really robbed his drive so much? To make him feel like a child in need of their hand being held to cross the street?
No. No, that wasn’t it at all.
While he couldn’t in good conscience say that McMahon wasn’t that cruel, he could certainly say that he wasn’t that clever, either. This was a remarkable amount of effort to ‘sabotage’ someone by making him a household name. To make it so that ‘Alex Kendall’ would be a name spoken with as much superstar presence and genuine acumen as an athlete as George St. Pierre or Manny Pacquiao. Wasn’t that it? Wasn’t that his dream in the first place?
There was a difference. St. Pierre wasn’t fighting every week or every fortnight. Pacquiao’s fight purse wasn’t comparable to the average salary unless business itself picked up. They weren’t used as extensions of the industry itself. They weren’t held individually responsible for the state of their sport. It wasn’t their duty. It was their role to turn up. Fight. Win.
That was his role. But Alex Kendall was learning very quickly that Vince McMahon planned to make him the next big thing of all of professional wrestling. The thing in which the entire sport relied upon.
It was killing both of them.
It grated him deeply. To know that he could only go as far as the sport allowed him to. To know that even as he stood, king of the mountain, he was still viewed by these journalists, photographers, even the fans as having a self-importance that he had never once in his life possessed. As if he viewed himself a superstar who wasn’t, and who was so low on the rung that they had to waste their time building his profile when they could be building up
real celebrities, or contributing to the downfalls of those who were on their way out.
Press conferences with the same questions. Fans with the same ironic, backhanded compliments. The same signature on the same polaroids, pulling that same smug grin the director told him he wanted. All of it seemed to turn into a blur except for that one moment.
“What’s the status of you and Ms. Callahan?”Even now as he recalled it, he could feel the same dryness in the back of his throat that stalled his answer; at first, instinctively surprised by a showing of what seemed to be human compassion, but simultaneously those feelings of guilt. Their entire plan had hinged upon him, and he had promised to protect her. Knowing that one man’s wrath went beyond the scheme they had and simultaneously ran parallel with it. That one moment that Senn’s ambition had pushed him too far.
His fists had gripped the sheet of the table. Publicists and P.R. managers had noticed the sudden tension in the air.
No sooner than he’d chimed in with his own hopes and prayers to her well being, he elaborated.
”No, I mean like, are you an item?”Not since Jacob Senn had he found himself locked in such hatred of an individual.
There, in that moment, he was brought back to memories of what he had seen that night. ‘I caused this’, he would repeat to himself time and again, rushing to the hospital he was told where she was being treated. Vince had told him that they needed to talk as soon as his head was in the right place, having made the necessary deals to get him released from the security bay of the arena. Getting your head in the right place must have seemed like such a pipe dream. It still did.
He hadn’t believed the doctor at first when he was told who it was in the bed.
Not that he had reason to disbelieve him. After all, he didn’t have a reason to doubt him, it was ridiculous. She’d fought so hard, so long to be that invisible force; the masked one, capable of escaping into the audience without a moment’s hesitation; that transparency that had allowed her to both observe closely and manage even closer back when SCW was still a brand that people cared about. There she lay, powerless to do anything about it. Mask discarded. Face, visible to the world.
But that wasn’t the Caitlyn Callahan he knew. That wasn’t the porcelain face he had grown to admire. The one he confided in. Could that same plain looking brunette be the woman who had inspired him to change the industry?
That was his first thought. The second and those that followed it were far less pleasant. How could someone do this? How could a face, guarded by a mask, still be so bruised, so swollen? Ultimately – will she be the same when she wakes up?
Will she wake up?
That heart wrenching question echoes. Will she wake up? Four worlds that stopped the World he was Champion of.
”No, he’d said,
”We’re not. No further questions.”They’d done everything they could to get him to return to that chair. He wasn’t going to.
The next day, Vince had been furious. He must have known he was wasting his breath. None of the figures or statistics, none of the supposed damage he had done to the company was ever going to make him regret leaving that press conference. None of the rumours the mill inevitably spun about romantic engagements between him and Caitlyn – among others – was going to make him sacrifice the content of his character.
All he could think of was that sight. The sudden flushing feeling that went through his entire form, that empty void that he was certain would fill up again as soon as Jacob Senn’s hand slapped the mat – and didn’t.
A memory within a memory. And still, he couldn’t get the wrist tape to fit properly. His lungs still burned from fresh tar lingering within them. This wasn’t a problem that he could pretend a cigarette fixed.
Nothing he could do would make up for it. Nothing he could say would excuse him. Whether he beat Sheamus. Whether he owned the company. Whether he was a millionaire, or--
“Alex.”_________________________________________________
Where have you been?
It’s alright. We know where you’ve been.
_________________________________________________
“Sheamus.”
“No matter the question, the answer always seems to be you.”
“Who can stop the undefeated Alex Kendall? Who is a proven enough commodity to represent this company as champion, instead of Alex Kendall? Who is left to deal with Alex Kendall?”
“How long ago was it that we danced this dance of ours the first time? After so much anticipation, so much hype, so much...inevitability. Four months, hm? Has my reign as champion really been that long? That uneventful?”
“Then, as now, the answer is you, Sheamus. Four months, and they were unable to come up with anything better.”
“What was the thing I concluded my last tirade against you with? ‘If you fail, no one is going to stop me?’ Well, that was prophetic, wasn’t it?”
“And you know, I shouldn’t really be surprised. The very point I’ve been making, ever since I started championing this cause...Christ, close to six years ago now, was that this entire industry relies too much on packaging and shipping its’ prospects. Like the music industry, like the entertainment industry, like all industry in general, innovation is shunned unless it is a sub-category of efficiency and marketability. And if someone does come up with something revolutionary, it’s just a matter of time before those who make the wheels turn simply package that and give it to one of their favoured sons, like an accessory on a Barbie doll; the livelihoods of the independent worker. The livelihoods of the professional wrestler .”
“And you know, Sheamus...for a while, I hoped that you were truly gone. Not because I was afraid of giving you this rematch. Not because I particularly disliked you. The fact is both of those aren’t genuine statements. I respect you as a competitor, and would have gladly given you this match just for the asking, any time, place or stipulation you preferred. And who knows, maybe if we’d gone out drinking a few times, we would have gotten to like each other personally as well. I wished you’d left because I wanted you to find something...better.”
“You could have left on a high note. You leaving would have been the high note. You could have marched out as the kingdom crumbled and been the last great champion professional wrestling had. You could have taken the money you made and lived comfortably, comfortable away from the knowledge of the betrayal that ridded us of Drew McIntyre, and the delusions that caused Jim Cornette’s vision for this company, and my own, dissipate into nothing almost overnight. You’d won, Sheamus.”
“But then, as we already know, you’re the Celtic Warrior. And there’s nothing for a warrior anywhere but the battleground.”
“The truth is, I never took you to be a leader of men, Sheamus. I always saw you as nothing but a vanity figure, a man gifted with a superior physical acumen and a brutality as unnatural as his natural strength. Sometimes, there would be moments of a glimmer of hope, that I would see the heart that allowed you to cling onto that championship so relentlessly, but the same thought kept coming back to me. You would never stand at the forefront like you wanted. You would always be the man chasing the horizon, and telling those who followed him the same pointless dream.”
“Little did I realise you were leading by example. You left the horizon chasing to yourself, to see how far you could go. And it was not the horizon that the men were trying to chase, but you. You were their guiding force. And I suppose that’s what made me try so hard – harder than I ever have in my career to date. For a match that I have never had more riding on.”
“Luckily, we got rid of those irritating little distractions.”
“It sold well. That must have had everyone thrilled. I was the villain that the company needed to desperately inspire hope into the poor everyman, who bought tickets every week solely to see another challenger fall to the unstoppable Sheamus and his slimy associates. Another week, another month of the hero stepping up just to be crushed. Exactly what was needed was someone who surpassed you on the other side of the spectrum, someone who fought for something that much worse, someone who even you would find yourself on the side of righteousness in opposing, because you were the only one who could. I, the Dark Horse, Harbinger to Thy WWE from the deadlands of SCW, finds himself face to face with the champion; the company figurehead.”
“They rallied to you, Sheamus. They took to you immediately as the one that would save them. And the thoughts that must have gone through your head must have been incredible ones. The thought that if you are the only man that can save Thy WWE from me, then who was going to save it from you? The demands you could have made. You could have risen above champion. You could have moulded the entire company into your image. Perhaps it was thoughts like that, that dulled your perceptions. That distracted you just enough for me to get another hit in, another hold. Just as I was weighed down by the gravity of what I was to accomplish, the burden of your task weighed too heavy on you. We lost sight of what we were. I lost sight of what my own cause was.”
“We’re professional wrestlers, Sheamus. We’re the pinnacle of the industry as it stands right now.”
“Who knows what I was thinking? Maybe the entire thing was just what I needed. One last push to try and cleanse the industry, or otherwise cleanse myself out of it. To become a villain so loathed, with such an uncompromising stance that there was no choice for everyone to rally against me, no hubris management wouldn’t sink to, to make sure that I would get the best possible competition. And if I failed, then I would be done. The business would have proven itself to me that I wasn’t good enough to change it. That I wasn’t good enough to be champion. I’m starting to realise that the two are mutually exclusive.”
“That I, no matter how good a champion I am, am but one man. This industry has grown too large to be bent by one man’s whims at this point. Even McMahon’s.”
“My vision did not fail. My vision was relinquished in favour of my principles as a human being. The crowd did not begin chanting my name, bringing signs because I ‘sold out’ and became a corporate product, but simply because they had accepted me as champion, accepted me as a professional wrestler, and had begun to acknowledge and accept that what I said was not hyperbole, not exaggeration, but that I am the greatest professional wrestler in the industry today, and I deserve to be carrying this championship.”
“Even when all I wanted was to be beaten up and thrown out of the industry, here I stand – at the top.”
“And how pleased I am that it’s you that’s come to greet me at the mountain’s peak, Sheamus.”
“Thy WWE has become a desolate place. As I said, in four months, none has come remotely close to offering the same kind of challenge to me that you had throughout your entire run. When you claimed the championship, Jonny Freeman was right there with a head of steam. When he failed, then there was The Undertaker. Then there was Triple H. Drew McIntyre, Jacob Senn, an endless and ever present list of challengers nipping at your heels that, should your ambition falter for just a moment, were ready, willing and able to take that heavy weight off your shoulders.”
“When you and I met, it was the greatest match this company had ever seen. And it’s possible that this one doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of equalling it. And you know, that’s probably my fault.”
“I could never do what you did, Sheamus. For all my talents, for as much as I excelled as a professional wrestler, it was impossible to lead when all of those who followed me, all of those who challenged me could barely keep my pace. For every victory I claimed, for every defense I picked up and every time I held my championship high, whether it be the Thy WWE Championship or the SCW World Heavyweight Championship, I was met with the same derision. Like polite applause at an amateur golf match. People who knew fine well that I was the best wrestler in active competition.”
“But I was no Sheamus O’Shaughnessy.”
“And indeed, how could I compare? How could I possibly measure up as champion, after four months – four long months as champion, already making me the third longest reigning champion in the company’s history, and a quarter of your monumental reign – when I had none of your competition? Like a swordsman fighting against children with sticks. It became impossible for me to gain a foothold, as I was still the insurmountable obstacle. The unstoppable invader Alex Kendall, with a different allegiance, a different agenda. And how beautifully ironic that this far simpler modus operandi of simply being the best wrestler in the world became impossible to prove.”
“Who was I going to convince? Did anyone truly believe that Bob Cena was going to beat me for the championship? Did anyone truly believe that Jacob Senn was given a title shot at the pay per view for any reason other than controversy? A futile attempt to draw up sales in an unproven commodity, with no way of fixing this problem. An inescapable circle, with but one redeeming factor.”
“He’s still the man who defeated Sheamus O’Shaughnessy when no one else could.”
“Even when your reign has ended, Thy WWE still exists as but a fraction of your overarching legacy, Sheamus. A legacy I have to live in the shadow of, even when trying to forge one of my own. My prestige exists solely because of the scraps I’ve been able to bite and claw off of yours, like a parasite.”
“No wonder this place is dying. No wonder it takes so long for transmission eras to be corrected, why the influx of talent has all but dried up. It’s simply because no one cares anymore, Sheamus.”
“Maybe that’s why they brought you back. They know. They know there’s going to be no more great matches. No more moments that will get people talking, get people interested. The greatest wrestler in the world, against the greatest champion the company has ever had. One more time. Just one last swansong to draw attention to the place.”
“Look at us. Advertised as the future, the torchbearers and we’re being used like a ritual sacrifice. We’re not the standard to follow, we’re the opening act – in hopes our light will shine bright enough for the audience to catch a glimpse of the faces in the background and recognise them when they unceremoniously fill the void we leave.”
“No one will.”
“The simple reason is because we’re about to show them the very reason we hold this championship. The reason we are what they aspire to be even considered in the same sentence as. Their delusions that this championship I hold could ever be held by them, so long as the two of us remain able to walk, able to breathe, will never be more apparent than at Ascension. Hah...a fitting name, for their desperate attempt to find someone to call ‘the new Sheamus’. ‘The new Alex Kendall.’ As if this one match is all it takes for the glass ceiling to break.”
“Let’s not fool ourselves. Whoever meets us at WrestleMania – either one of us – is going to have the fight of their lives. And while they think of the limelight, think of the press releases, pay per view figures, ticket prices, publicity events, the fact remains that they won’t be able to do what we’re going to do tonight.”
“We exist in an empty void. Hollow vessels born to fight. A squared circle, where there is only you and I.”
“Exactly what we needed.”
“This is it, Sheamus. There’s nothing to distract us anymore. No politics plays from Starr, or McMahon, or Cornette or even me. There’s no grand plan I’m trying to accomplish that you just happen to be the obstacle for. There’s no conspiracy for you to topple, no opportunity for you to seal, no brass ring for you to grab. This is simply a case of two fighters going up against one another. One trying to escape your shadow and hold his own as champion, and the other trying to defeat the man who ruined that appearance of being all but invulnerable.”
_________________________________________________
What did you dream?
It’s alright. We told you what to dream.
_________________________________________________
The silence between the two of them was agonising.
He sat there on the bench, statue-like, simply staring blankly at her. For the first time, Alex Kendall looked completely lost in front of her. There was no backup plan. There was no reserve course of action. A mental blockade had occurred, and there was nothing he could do to bypass it. The most obvious answer never seemed to happen.
‘I’m sorry’, he tries to say, but it doesn’t come. He tries again. ‘I’m sorry.’ Again, nothing is vocalised.
”Listen, she interrupts his non-response with a sigh, taking a half step towards him, to which he almost seems to want to recoil from in shame. The reaction spurs her to take a second, more purposeful stride towards him.
”I can only hope you’re not apologising because you realise how pointless it is.” ‘I’m sorry.’ He makes one last try, and still no words escape. Guilty eyes move away from her, unable to even meet the empty black space of the mask and instead taking refuge in the floor.
All the time they had spent together. All the conversations they had – no, they could barely be called conversations. They were orders, directives. The hierarchy and divide between them had always been apparent, and each of them had insisted on them being apparent. The trust had always been born out of a business relationship, a mutual agreement to improve the wrestling industry any way they could. Austin Starr hated her for reasons neither of them could truly comprehend. He’d been an enemy general with more cause to fight than everyone else in the war, and had subverted the very same rules they were fighting so hard to change.
She was right. He couldn’t bring himself to say it because, deep down, he knew he wasn’t responsible. There was no way he could have feasibly protected her. He had relied on her to protect herself, and indeed, it’s what she had assured him she could do – even with her fears, her apprehensions, they gave each other their word to continue the plan. ‘I’m sorry’ could not manifest itself because it was a pointless regret of a man who had already collected too many.
But he still wanted to say it.
She wandered over towards him, taking a seat next to him on the bench. The silence continued, as did his thoughts.
It seemed impossible that so much could be said without being vocalised. For how brief their discussions were, he seemed to have truly inspired her, and likewise for all he trusted her capabilities, she was the only person he knew could see through him. For what little they had said to one another, it made no sense that they could possibly know each other as well as they did. And yet, they did. Better than anyone. A ridiculous premise – and yet.
They had come into this company together, promising to have taken it together. She, his muse, would be standing on the sidelines as he raised his hand that one last time and sent the company crumbling to dust. He would stand, both as the apex of the sport and the true genius, the business prodigy who had found the chink in the impenetrable McMahon armour.
That wasn’t what he had expected all those months ago, when they had first met.
That one night, when he was not the World Champion, but the rising prospect. That one night when he had shared a drink with someone who didn’t care for status, didn’t care for names or championships or win streaks. Someone who had found a kindred spirit in someone that fuelled themselves on their own emptiness and fed off the vapidity of the world they lived in like everything was one, big joke. Drinks and thoughts they had shared on only three occasions before drifting apart due to travel plans and other commitments.
That young girl who he had managed to meet and almost charm. The one who hadn’t finished putting her mask on, who hadn’t expected him to be there so early. The one who had humoured him, and for the first time, actually allowed someone to strike up a conversation with
her, not the person that lay on the exterior. She showed him what she had hidden, without him even knowing. She had smiled. She had made jokes. And brief as it was, it seemed that Alex Kendall had passed his own ‘acid test’.
So long as the mask was on, there was no seeing through ‘Wildcard’ Caitlyn Callahan.
But it was Jean Capette he had seen lying in that hospital bed.
”So which one is it?” He chuckled self-deprecatingly, returning to his initial distracting of trying to tie his wristtape. The fact remained he had a championship to defend.
”Caitlyn, or Jean?””You’ll be unsurprised to hear it’s neither,” she replied with...what wasn’t quite her usual tone. Not the cheery quirkiness that he would hear from upturned lip corners over a cocktail, nor the metallic monotony that would ooze through porcelain lips, but what – uniquely – sounds truthful. A modest hybrid of the two from an unlocked portion of this anomaly of a woman’s true self.
”You understand why, don’t you?”He nodded. He was beginning to hate ‘understanding’ things just as much as he hated accepting them.
”So what now?””We have matches to fight.”Indeed they did. They had their own demons to slay. Kendall, his need for legitimacy in the returning giant of Sheamus, no doubt eager to reclaim the gold he had claimed in his since forsaken crusade. Caitlyn, an unjustifiably long grudge to put down. Their issues, now and forever, mutually exclusive. It was as Starr and Senn had wanted. They were divided. No more or less divided than when she had vanished from that hospital bed. No more or less than when she had taken out both Jacob Senn and Triple H in the same forced blackout – just for the chance to wrap her hands around his neck.
It felt for the first time they were in separate worlds.
He wouldn’t allow it. And neither would she.
At long last, she gets bored of his fidgeting, and reaches over. Like a mother’s magic touch, she manages to placate the irritant eroding away at his senses and wraps his wrist tape in a manner he has no complaint with. And in a way he had even less complaint with, she softly begins to grip his hand.
Ah,
now he felt childish.
She reached up, removing the mask from her face. The second invisible mask seemed to fall away with it. A face partially scarred but not quite as swollen. Not as chirpy – any joy seemingly weighed down by a tiredness and pressure that one of her years shouldn’t have to deal with. But she smiles. She does her damndest to smile.
And he smiles back. He grips back.
No one could take this. Not Starr. Not Sheamus. Even if neither of them walked again after this.
”Claire,” she barely whispers,
”My name is Claire.”
