Post by Tax on Jan 9, 2013 19:12:57 GMT -5
"Dream Yourself Along Another Day"
[XWF] makes prodigious mistakes, [XWF] has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: [XWF] is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
11:54 PM
“I’m done.”
His words echoed along the empty hallways of the XWF headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The Tristan Slater had just barged through the doors leading into Shane Carver’s office, shaking his head with anger from the screw job he just received. Shane’s face was painted with more than cheap clown coloring paint- his face was painted with fear at what had just happened. Standing right beside him, with his hands behind his back and slick smile slapped across his face was the man who had accelerated a petty argument into…
This.
Slater brushed past both Tax and Joseph Page, who were leaned against either side of the hallway, flung his arms in the air, and turned the corner.
“What do you mean, you’re done?” Joseph hollered out after him as he disappeared from our sight, kicking himself off the wall before I grabbed him by his sleeveless Nike shirt.
“What do you think he means?” I asked him with a spit of sarcasm dripping with my words. “He’s done. It’s over.”
“Fuck that!”
Just as that reaction left Page’s lips, the thunderous roars of crazed reporters with lightning flashes zapping from their cameras flooded the hallway. Behind us, security had already assembled at the office door of the XWF judge, jury, and apparently, executioner. I caught a glimpse of Cyren scurrying away like the little rodent he is, donning a pair of shades to hide his evil eyes. Joseph must’ve caught the same glimpse, for I could see his fists tightening up into tight, little hammers ready to pound into the cowardly...
“King?” Joseph thought. As much as it tasted like sewage gritting between our teeth, Joseph may have been right. There was no doubt that Cyren would surely slide into the throne that the rightful king vacated, plain and simply, because he doesn’t give a shit.
I lowered my head, forgetting about the jungle of reporters currently en route as failing screams from security became trampled with hard-hitting questions to anybody that could hear them. Joseph alertly snatched me by my shirt, a black-and-grey- how appropriate- button-down covering a black wifebeater, into an empty conference room, but not before the paparazzi sniffed our trail. I immediately grabbed a steel folding chair and wedged it underneath the cold, metal doorknob. The force of reporters banging against the door followed soon after, but the wedge held strong.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” I said, pacing back and forth in a small panic, mixed with anger. Anger at how this whole thing spiraled out of control so quickly with people chiming in from every direction, fueling the rapidly-growing fire. We should’ve been on our way to the gym hours ago, got us a quick session in, dressed to fucking impress (because that’s what Egomaniacs do), hit the hottest nightclub in town, shut that bitch down, and be grabbing a late-night snack with our dates right about...
“Now,” Joseph thought as he eyed the watchful clock, the minute hand aligning with the hour hand at the stroke of midnight. He took a heavy breath before looking back at Tax and asking him, “What does this mean?”
No doubt, that was sure to be one of the reporter’s hottest questions, and neither of us had an answer for it.
“What’s next?” I laughed weakly.
“You know where Tristan’s going,” Joseph said.
It was obvious. The WGWF is where Tristan Slater really truly needed to be, battling weekly with some of the greatest talents in professional wrestling history. Slater had reached a ceiling in the XWF- worn out his welcome, so to speak. Not because he was a master manipulator, a cunning artist in and out of the ring, and THE headline every Friday morning guaranteed- it was because he was simply the best.
Jealousy can be quite the bitch.
1:13 AM
I sat on the carpeted floor, my back slumped against the same wall that I kept softly banging my head against. Page sat on the edge of a swivel chair, palming his face as a thousand thoughts littered his restless conscience.
“We have to make a decision,” I said, my voice caked from the silence we had settled in for the last half hour at least. “And we have to make it tonight.”
“XWF is my home,” Page said truthfully. “I came here to build a legacy.”
“What legacy?” I chuckled. “Your name- our names- have been shitted on so much that we look like Pampers.”
“Maybe your name,” he replied with a sharp tongue. "I’m still Joseph Page and my accomplishments won’t be taken for granted.”
“You sure about that?”
Page finally pulled his head from his open hands, his stare cutting into my deep blue eyes. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, if you think that your good name can’t be run through the mud after what just happened to Slater, then you’re an idiot.”
It was the truth. Nobody in XWF worked harder than the Champ, yet none of that mattered in this instance. Slater broke a rule. Now, he’s paying the price, but if you think he’s going to pay that price all by himself, then you’re as deluded as a third-party candidate for presidency.
“My name’s not going to be degraded, you little sack of shit,” Page responded, both frustrated and angered by the turn of events witnessed this evening. “I’ve done far too much for the XWF to just step away because people suddenly want to get their panties wadded up. And you know something else?”
Page suddenly hopped to his feet, his youthful enthusiasm suddenly swaying him forward, his fists clenched tighter than ever with determination soiling his eyes.
“Fuck Cyren!”
Page’s words fueled his forward march across the room, and as soon as I realized his true intentions, I jerked to my feet, and grabbed his arm.
“You’re not going to be able to come back if you do that,” I said suddenly, surprising myself. For the last hour and a half we had settled into our arguments, with mine being that we should jump ship before the old one sank while Page wanted to hold on to his planted roots, timid about making the switch. Now, it was me who stood in the way of the very thing I wanted.
Page tried to snatch his arms away, but my grip grew stronger around the smaller part of his forearm, just below the wrists. His eyes flamed.
Mine blackened nearly instantly as Page’s fist found its mark, sending me stumbling backwards with nothing but a beverage cart to stop my flat out fall. The pitcher slid off the shiny metal surface and shattered against a nearby podium, water sneaking around the shards of glass sprinkling onto the floor. It hurt, for sure. He packed quite a punch, after all, and I knew all too well through our past encounters what to expect.
Like Joseph’s ego compelling him to stand in cocky fashion, inviting the fight instead of preparing for it, and I took advantage as I charged ahead, spearing him against the door which ripped like cheap fabric. We spilled into the hallways, taking out an unfortunate reporter who was crumpled beneath the wooden wreckage. A storm of reporters began to stampede towards us as we slowly reached our feet, yet they quickly put on the brakes as Page swung a hard haymaker towards my face. I ducked my head just low enough, feeling his arm slice over my hair. I stuck him in the side sharply, hearing his muffled cry just before he dropped a hard elbow right into my temple. I crashed against the heavy brick wall, Joseph Page in my peripherals with his arms outstretched. He barely got his rough hands around my neck before I could feel the strong tug of a large security guard. Some members of Carver’s team had broken away to contain the situation before it spiraled out of controlled. Wide-eyed members of the media backed away as Page’s claws dug into my cheek, drawing blood as it scraped across the flare of my nose.
Two guards grabbed him by each of his arms and tussled with Page while I spun around on my heels from the shove of the NFL-sized monster accompanying me, the cheap frenzy around us urging us on until...
The doors opened and the God of XWF himself stepped through the doors, slowly finding his footing as he drifted down the hallway. Page stopped his resistance as members of security finally let go of the calmer man.
Shane Carver’s eyes floated to meet with Page’s before they met mine, but when they finally did, I felt a chill come across my spine. His eyes were cold. Distant. Different.
I stood up straight, feeling helpless as I watched Page linger off towards the proverbial sunset with his silent resignation. He bumped the shoulder of Carver, knocking him off balance, and the owner grabbed Page by the arm instinctively. Page spat in his face.
And there it was.
If there was ever any hope of salvaging things, it had been extinguished in the ball of saliva dripping down Carver’s face. Carver grew livid immediately, but Page no longer gave a shit, shaking his head in disappointment as he trailed down the halls...
I found it curious that he didn’t follow the same escape route as Tristan Slater, instead opting to take a different course towards his exit from the building and the XWF in one march. Joseph Page wasn’t going to follow in Slater’s footsteps- he refused to- no matter how bad the public perception would become.
My curiosity came to a screeching halt as Shane tilted his head towards me, his eyes locked onto mine.
3:08 AM
The Exit sign was sprinkled with shattered bulbs, a jab from the hand of God himself, celebrating an unceremonious exit from the company that WE had rebuilt.
After all the Originals burned the place to the ground...
After all the Legends jumped ship...
We were the ones who had reconstructed the remains of the once-storied company. The Tristan Slater. Joseph Page. Tax. Those were the names who sold out the stadiums and brought the XWF back to the platform that it deserved.
Yet, we were the poison of the XWF. Pfft. Fuck that.
The wintery air overwhelmed me with a violent chill, forcing my face to scrunch up in discomfort as I pressed through the glass doors with the famous, and now stained, logo. I quickly scurried along the icy concrete, looking to find a taxi and a trip to the Southside to score a new allotment of painkillers.
I was going to need quite a few to absorb this one.
I turned the corner of the building where I slid slightly across the slippery sidewalk trying to avoid a collision with Page, who was too hot-headed to give a damn about the bitter temperatures. His eyes were sharp and fierce with a drastic fire, his fists still clenched tightly even after over an hour of solitude. His voice sounded nearly demonic, a tone I had never received from Joseph before, and yet it had cracked into fragile fragments by the end of the sentence.
“What are you going to do?”
“The fuck you care?” I said with a sneer before attempting to step around Page like he was just some cardboard cut-out.
“For real,” he assured me, his eyes emitting just a hint of guilt for his earlier swing at me.
“What do you think?”
The XWF had just lost its three biggest names, and more would soon follow- I was sure of that. Joseph relieved his tension slightly as he spun around, placing his forearm across a steel bar wedged among the building’s frame. His head lowered slightly, a subtlety that I almost missed as I fished the bottle of pills from the pockets of my Rock Revival jeans, spinning the top off and dumping a trio of white tablets down my throat.
“It’s not fair,” Page muttered, his breath sending clouds gravitating through the atmosphere. “The XWF was my dream.”
“The XWF is in the past.”
True enough, that place can lose ninety-percent of its roster and still chug along. New faces would come eventually to mesh with the already skilled roster, and the XWF would charge into a new era. Another era. One that didn’t include us.
“You know what this means,” Page said, his teeth gritted against each other as it was painful for him to admit. “It means Cyren wins.”
The peasants have their uprising, the coup d’etat is staged, and the kingdom has been overrun.
But there was one thing they couldn’t take from us.
“No,” I replied, a smile finding its way onto my lips as I nudged my buddy with a rigid elbow.
“Not where we’re going.”
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities. - Bruce Lee