Post by Ollie Maverick on Jun 23, 2024 6:11:55 GMT
Fire Kick With Me
AKA
A Self-Excoriation of a Faceless Murderer, a Glimpse Into The Empty, and Oh God I Really Hope You’ve Seen Twin Peaks
Recommended Listening:
‘Pressure’ by Billy Joel
‘BlackBoxWarrior-OKUKLTRA’ by Will Wood
‘Air ‘Em Out’ by clipping.
While the man in the suit speaking into a tape recorder bangs on we cut to a table on the other side of the diner. A man seated alone and seemingly staring very deeply into his coffee whose voice we hear in voiceover.
“People are looking for me.”
“Hell, there’s a person or two who may even be worried about me.”
“Sorry about that.”
He stands up from his seat and tears off his clothes to reveal his full ring gear and ring jacket underneath. He peels off his N95 mask and takes off his sunglasses to reveal his completely blank face. No features at all. He steps out of the diner and sees for the most part complete inky darkness, save for broken mirrors and glass covering the ground and a few remnants of trash sticking out of the ground. The man in this suit with the tape recorder is T-posing like a video game character who has glitched out. Ollie looks back at himself staring into his coffee still at the table.
“He’ll be fine there for a bit. So have I told you guys about The Empty, yet? It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it so you probably don’t know about it. Fuck, that was like three dead companies ago now.” Ollie says, kicking at some of the broken glass at his feet.
“There is an Ollie sitting motionless in a booth at a diner. When he…when I…when we? I? When Weehims is are like this it means I’m probably in The Empty. I am as I am supposed to be here at the very least.” Ollie says before he runs a hand along his completely smooth absence of face.
“There’s another Ollie but we uh… we’re pretty sure he isn’t real.” Ollie says, kinda blowing right past that.
“There are bits and pieces in here of things I wanted to hang on to. Also the opposite. There’s some stuff in here I wish would go away.” Ollie says. A bell rings, Ollie looks down and his right kickpad is on fire… He knows all he has to do is land this kick on Spencer Adams and everything would be okay again. He rears back and let’s lose with a kick that hits….nothing. He’s thrown so off-balance he lands flat on his absence of a face… but he sees something under the broken glass as he is on the ground. He pushes glass aside to find The Bedlam title and he lays his hands on it…..and it was bleeding… and now the blood is on his hands.
“I didn’t kill any wrestling companies. I didn’t.”
Silence.
“I’m just cursed to never have a home. The Empty always swallows it eventually….”
More Silence.
“But the Empty follows wherever I go so…Oh no I am… doing this aren’t I?”
The most silence. Ollie fixates on the blood on his hands. He looks to see the belt is gone and when he looks back at his hands they are squeaky clean again. No more fire, either. Ollie stands up and brushes himself clear of all the dust and blatant metaphor his jacket picked up from the ground.
“I told them all with my whole chest that the Face of that place…was Faceless. And like so many other places that place is probably gone. So some sense of logic would dictate that….is my fault. Beware Of Ollie. BOO.” Ollie says. That’s when he notices the broken light tubes in his hands and remembers the important thing he needed to talk about.
“But in my current state it is pointless to look too far behind me so let’s just look a little behind me. The rumble. I laid out a mission statement and an objective and I went through with it. Now I find myself in a spotlight with a target painted on my bottom asking the question ‘Okay, so what am I supposed to do now?’. The truth of the matter is that I welcome the target. I welcome all the aggression and jealousy it will bring because Descartes was only half right. I think therefore I am… but that’s just the baseline. The continuation of that is…I elicit emotion therefore I have value. Value is something that I want. I can wax philosophical in front of a greenscreen set all damn day…”
We cut to the actual ‘Empty’ briefly which is Ollie in a very green room with a green mask covering his face before we go back to the darkness and broken glass.
“...But this video representation of my reality costs money. I have payments to make on a very nice RV I live in and those only happen if I obtain Value Papers and I only obtain those by having Value. Do you know who understands this? Lewis Chad Pinkston understands this. Lewis Chad Pinkston is likely going to make more money getting beaten up in this match than I am for beating him up and it’s because people will pay to see him get beat up even if they like him. There is so much value in that and I intend to assist my friend in demonstrating his value in any way possible because I know he can take it. He’s the Rumble Iron Man! I could break a hardware store's worth of lumber on him, set him on fire, throw him into a woodchipper, and the only thing that’ll be different is some of his tattoos might look better. I’m JEALOUS, Pinkston. You were the talk of the rumble and you didn’t even win it. I suppose I can live with those circumstances again.” Ollie says with a shrug.
“Then there’s Nate Bonhagen. Hi. Nice to meet ya. I understand you were also in that rumble I won.”
A pause.
“How’d ya do?”
We can’t see Ollie’s face but we can just imagine the shit-eating grin.
“I know how upset that comment likely just made you… that is my goal. Show me some anger. Show me some attitude. Show me….something. Demonstrate value. I understand that likely sounds pretty condescending but I promise it is genuine advice. You’re pretty new to this, yeah? Well I’ve been at this for a decade or so and I only recently got good at it so if you want to take anything away from my experience it should probably be that you need to make a statement and a statement very often does not mean a literal statement in the form of words. From day one of the rumble you had that ‘I’m probably not going to win’ tone and I’ve been there before…recently even. I watched you tiptoe around being a ‘tough guy’ but being afraid of that making you sound too full of yourself. You can either tell someone what your boot leather tastes like or you can make them taste it and all I’ve gathered about you so far from the Rumble is you don’t know how to do either. So… If you aren’t about to show me something? Then all you amount to is fumbling Mick Gordon’s amazing music worse than id Software did when they treated him like crap and lost him. I welcome you proving me wrong.” Ollie says. Tough love.
“Heather, I think we can get along despite the fact that most people I meet who wear a labcoat and talk about science are trying to stick stuff in me.” Ollie says, stopping a moment as the image of the Ollie that isn’t real pops up in his head. He shakes it off.
“I can’t claim to be especially intelligent and I think math is a tool of the Devil but I do understand the Scientific Method since I, not to brag, have completed Middle School.” Ollie says, brushing a little dirt off his shoulder at this brag.
“So our hypothesis is that we can co-exist as a tag team and beat these dudes. The experiment is the actual match itself, and the conclusion is when we win. That’s how it works, yeah? Wait, there’s like five steps. I’m missing a bunch. What would Data Collection be? That’s between Experiment and Conclusion. Look, not all of the metaphors are going to land. Look, the point is that I think we’ll do fine, just don’t try to take any of my blood or put anything in my butt.” Ollie says with a bit of a shrug.
“When I won the rumble I created expectations for myself. In victory I have created pressure. I will handle it the way I always do. I will fight. See I had to teach myself something when I lost the Bedlam title and it took me a bit to wrap my mind around it. The Value is nice and what I need to keep going in the space outside the Empty because I have been forced to play the game of Capitalism as you all have. Title belts are nice but in the end no one remembers the accessory. No one buys a ticket to watch dudes hand belts back and forth to each other. They remember the violence. The violence is the point. The FIGHT is the point. I remember who I am again. I almost let Protagonist syndrome get its claws into me. I’m not going to make Pinkston and Bonhagen bleed because it’ll help my conference or get me more shots at belts or put bigger numbers in my numbers account. Those are just bonuses. I’m going to do it because beating people up is fun. Wearing someone else's blood is fun. I don’t want to kill another wrestling company but if my success is what does it? Sorry NPWA. Pre-emptive RIP. Nothing will stop me from doing the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.” Ollie says, hoping that doesn’t come off too self-deprecating.
He simply nods to the camera and walks away….the darkness of The Empty moves and swallows all until… complete blackness.
I look down at the green medical scrubs I’m wearing, then past that right down to the slippers they make me wear because you can hurt yourself with shoelaces. Last week I tore up my bedsheets to make a makeshift mask to cover my face. The last orderly that tried to take it off me needed stitches after how hard I bit down on his finger. No. No no no no no not here again. This one isn’t real. It can’t be real.
I scream as such very loudly and soon the door is open.
‘He’s doing it again.’ I hear.
And as I repeatedly scream ‘Just promise it isn’t real’ through tears they slide the syringe into my arm and push the plunger down.
“Everything alright?” she asks as she refills my coffee and with a jump I am looking at my arm for any kind of mark a syringe would make. Nothing. She looks concerned. I take off the sunglasses and briefly wipe my eyes and find myself looking into hers briefly and she sees me.
And
I
Don’t…
…Mind.
“Yeah… Yes. Thank you.” I say.
She smiles.
I smile back.
She walks away. I’m not the only person in the diner, after all.
I fumble to take my pill divider out of my bag.
Down them with coffee.
Glasses back on.
Weird day.