Everybody experiences loss.
I know that, I recognise that. And I also will never discount the feelings of others when it comes to their own personal losses in their lives.
But…
Do you know what it’s like to lose everything?. I do. I understand the feeling. I have lost more than any man I know. I have lost the thing that matters most.
My humanity.
3 Months Ago
Austin sat in the room quietly. Staring down at the table, the light above shining on the metal. The walls were painted a dark blue. It was simple. Affective. Four walls, a table and two chairs sitting across the table at one another, one of which occupied by the six off six Austin James Mercer. But, it wasn’t the same Austin we all knew. His hair was cut short, his beard gone. He stayed on the chair, looking up slowly from the metal table, to the empty chair and to the far wall, his eyes trailing to the right side, a large mirror, framed in a white border to draw the attention. Austin shook his head and let out a sigh, his shoulders dropping as he heard the door click open behind him.
Two men stepped through the doors. The larger of the two standing to the right of the door as he closed it, a smaller man, dressed in a suit and tie, a file in hand moved around the table, sitting across from Austin, he undid his jacket, moved his tie and put the file down in front of him, opening it and then looking up at Austin and clasping his hands together.
”Mister Mercer….” Austin stayed looking ahead, his eyes void of color or emotion. He looked broken, empty, almost defeated. He didn’t even give a real answer or recognition of the man saying his name. ”I’m senior detective Solomon, that is my partner detective Paloma, I’m sorry for keeping you waiting.”
Austin growled and shook his head. ”You’re sorry?” Austin leaned forward, pulling his hands above the table, the metal from the handcuffs clinking on the shiny, almost matching surface. ”You come to my home, where I was with my children, the only real family I have left, and you took me out in handcuffs.” His eyes move up meeting the detective, his foot moved out as Austin stood up kicking the chair back. ”IN HANDCUFFS” His voice boomed, the detective put in his best pokerface as Paloma stepped forward, Solomon put his hand up signalling it was alright.
He leaned forward and shook his head. ”I apologize, but it was necessary. This is all standard procedure for someone in your position. Please, sit down.” Austin sneered and shook his head looking back over at Paloma with a laugh, he was about six foot seven, maybe two forty. Not as muscular as Austin, but head had the reach. Austin sat back down and put his hands in his lap. ”I need you to answer some questions.”
Austin shrugged and shook his head again, still agitated. ”Questions? My wife, the mother of my children, is gone, and for two weeks you have all done nothing. And the first thing you do…is drag me in here?...”
Detective Solomon looked down, pulling photos from the file, sliding them in front of Austin, Austin looked down and his face changed instantly. From cold, agitated and broken, so crushed, emotional and heartbroken, his eyes welling up with tears as he looked away. ”I need you to tell me everything about that day Mister Mercer…Everything.”
Austin closed his eyes, looking up from the photo and taking a deep breath. ”I’d been gone for a few days…at work…The kids were with Lisas mother….”
2 Weeks before
Austin held his bag over his shoulder, filled with a few clothes and his wrestling gear, his long hair tied back as the sun beat down on a hot summers day in New York. Austin sighed heavily, the yellow cab pulling away as Austin ran up the stairs, he smiled, thinking that in a few moments he would be holding his wife in his arms, he reached out, going to open the door, his hand stopped as his eyes trailed down to the slightly open door. He let out a sigh and pushed the door open, sliding the bag into the inside of the door.
”Lisa?...baby?”
Austins voice rang out through the large house, Austins heavy boots hit the hardwood floor as he moved down the entrance hallway toward the back, he looked to his right, into the main family room, it was clean, neat and tidy. A small pile of toys sat in a large plastic container in the corner and everything was turned off. He raised an eyebrow, moving instead to the kitchen, a single plate sat on the side, rinsed off and clean, but there was nothing else. Everything was still clean, untouched.
His heart dropped, something felt wrong, off. Strange. A dark cloud came over his head as he moved faster through the bottom floor. ”Lisa?...where are you?”
He grabbed the bannister, moving up the stairs to the top landing, moving to the right and toward the kids bedrooms, he opened the door, looking into his daughters room. Nothing, everything was clean in their too, nothing out of place, nothing different. He turned and moved across the hall, his sons room, the crib, the floor, the draws. Everything was made, fresh, clean, organized. But empty.
He started toi panic. His heartbeat being so loud he could hear it inside his own head, feel it in his ears. Austin moved down to the main bedroom, the bedroom he shared with Lisa, he pushed through the door and stopped. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, everything was silent for a moment, he feel himself drop to his knees before hearing an ear piercing scream, yelling, and pain. He didn’t even realise…it was him who was screaming.
”So you found her, and then called us correct?”
Austin snapped out of it, looking up at Solomon with a small nod. ”Hmm, That is what we recorded Mister Mercer, but the problem is you called 911 at 6:03 pm, your flight got in and arrived at 3pm that day, and even with traffic through midtown it should have only taken you an hour to get home, and the taxi company gave us the timestamp on when you paid….” He slipped the receipt toward Austin, his fingers drawing attention to the time.
4:07pm
”So as you can see Mister Mercer, there is a two hour discrepancy in your story….” Austin stayed silent, taking a deep breath as he felt his heart move faster. ”This is going to be one very…very…long night…Mister Mercer.”
My own private Armageddon.
”A great man once said, the funny thing about chaos is that it is fair..”
A small laugh is heard, in the darkness we see an outline of a face, a jaw that twists into a small smirk. Then the face leans forward and we see the piercing eyes of Austin James Mercer. But this isn’t the Austin we all remember, this isn’t the man who loved wrestling and wanted to keep his family legacy alive.
”Fair. What is fair in the eyes of men hmm? One persons idea of fair is completely different to others. You know, when I was a kid, a young kid, I would sit in my mothers tiny one bedroom apartment, and I would hold my knees to my chest, and stay perfectly still. All so my mother didn’t notice me. See, she blamed me, blamed me for my father walking away, blamed me for her not being good enough. So tell me, was it fair I lived that way? Was it fair that I had that kind of fear instilled in me?”
“Was it fair, years later that I would reconnect with my mother, that she would apologise, from the heart and tell me she was proud of me and she loved me only to be taken away by her own choices earlier in life? Was that fair?”
“I suppose, maybe it was some form of karma for her choices but where did that leave me? Was it fair that I used to dream about my father coming and taking me away from all of that and then, one day he did and filled my heart with hope and a future I thought I deserved? Only to find out that he honestly had no real plan for me in his life? Was it fair for me to find my sister, and for her to leave when life got to hard? For her to come back and drop her problems on my doorstep? Was it fair for my father to finally, FINALLY act like one only to be taken away from me?”
“But, the real test of what is fair, is faith and love. You put your faith in someone, give them your heart and you love them. You give everything of yourself to them. Only to have them taken away. That is what happened to my wife. And now, I am left with broken pieces. Young children who will never know their mother, a sister who has her own problems who refuses to speak to me even as I support her, and an entire gym filled with friends who say they understand but have no real idea what loss is. And to top it off….”
“The question of faith…and god.”
Austin growls the word, the name as if poisoned and in pain. His lip turns into a sneer. This Austin didn’t care about his family name, didn’t care about his love for wrestling. No, there was something about this Austin that was gone, buried under a layer of despair, anger, pain.
”Mother is the name for god on the lips and hearts of all children. So my childrens god is gone, si what of mine hmmm? I was asked, after my wife was wheeled away under a sheet, if I believed in god, that my faith shouldn’t falter, that he was there. My answer filled them with less heart than they wanted. Do I believe in god?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And I absolutely hate the fucker.”
“You see, I can handle alot of things in life, things taken away, things stolen and left to rot. But when something like that is lost. It dies. And when something inside you dies, something else will come and take its place. And what do you all think has come to take the love in my hearts place? Hatred. Hatred has taken hold of me and made me realise what all of this is and why I was put on this earth. I was never meant to be happy, a family man full of love and happiness. No. I was meant…for violence.”
He takes a long drawn out breath, the anger and emotion that bubbled so quickly to the surface is pushed down deep as quickly as it appeared. His hand reaching up through his short brown hair before resting back down on the table in front of him.
”It is something I’m very, very good at. But all that was put away, put away because of an ideology of being bigger than myself. Bigger than my instincts. An idea that I fought for family, for a family that included my family's name, a gym that was filled with people who were like brothers and sisters to me. And I achieved a certain level of success doing that. But what is a measurement of success? Is it championships? Big wins? Or the amount of bodies you leave in your wake? Interesting question isn’t it? How to measure the success you find yourself having. But, what about now?”
“How should I measure success now? Do I even want success? I sit here and see an endless string of fools holding a title I once had with such pride. Mac, Matt Knox, Ken Davison, even Alex’s reign. What a group of missed opportunities. But, why should I want that championship anymore? It won’t bring me happiness, I have no family to bring it home too, my children will not understand. But, I had this hole…I guess you could say, this hole in my insides. And the thing that replaced it, well, it needs something. So where do I go now? Well, this company seems to think I need to be stopped.”
“And because four men couldn’t do it. See, the last time any of you saw me, I laid waste to four men, four professional wrestlers and not one of them could stop me.”
“So instead SCW has thrown one man at me. A monster. Or someone they assume is a monster. Because he happens to be almost seven feet tall, wears a mask and calls himself Armageddon. It’s, cute. Adorable in fact and, well I don’t mean to laugh.”
As Austin is saying the last few words he chuckles and shakes his head before the smile quickly fades.
”You’d think after all this time in the wrestling business I’d have seen it all and done it all, and I have faced men bigger than me before but none so unbelievably childish as this. Take a good long look at yourself. Whose end of days are you? Not mine. You don’t know what real terror and Armageddon is. Real terror, real end of the world shit is losing everything you hold dear and realising you will slowly destroy the few shreds of happiness you have left in this world because you have no fucking choice. That is fear, that is end of the world shit.”
“Not some clown in a five dollar bondage mask he got from Amazons last black friday sale.”
“I have a track record of being the monster with the smiling face. The kind of guy who, while a destructive voice was still charming and kind. A man who would have friends and family and have a loyal group behind him. But, a year ago that dark side of me reared it’s head and I got pulled back from the abyss by those friends and family. But this time, this time I had no one there to catch me, no one there to pull me back and make me smile again. I lost that smile, I lost that happiness and all I have left is this. And I am free to admit that I am desperate. And desperate times call for desperate measures and a desperate man who has nothing left to lose is truly…”
“Dangerous….”
