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Supercard Archives / Re: MALACHI v BULLDOG v PETER VAUGHN v GODLY KEN - VACANT ROULETTE TITLE
« on: May 05, 2023, 06:17:22 AM »
April 27
Greenwich Village, New York
The morning sun shone directly into his face and he groaned as he rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. His brain felt like a construction zone, and a jackhammer was pounding away behind his eyes. He groaned again as he squinted his eyes open, waiting a few moments for the blurriness to dissipate. As his eyes focused, confusion washed over him as he stared at the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Th’hell?” he mumbled, sitting up slowly in the bed. He winced as another sharp pain dashed across his head, pressing his fingers to his temples. He looked around the room again, trying to piece together what had happened to him last night. He remembered traveling from his home in Manhattan up to Greenwich Village, finding some hole in the wall dive where he was sure he wouldn’t be recognized, and posting up at the very end of the bar to drink the last month of his life out of his mind.
The rest of the night was mostly a blur, but one face came to his mind clear as day - Claire. His childhood schoolmate and more recently, the new assistant to his friend Mattie Cormier. They had run into each other on a few occasions, mostly to do with Mattie designing some new gear for him. That night, however, he remembered being surprised to see her in a non-work setting, and he recalled them sitting and talking for a good while, though the topics of conversation escaped him in his hungover state.
Now, as he sat up in the unfamiliar bed, he looked around the room to try and figure out just where he was. Judging by the decor and the slightly messy state of the room, he quickly determined that it was not a hotel room. 'Airbnb?' he thought to himself as he pushed the blanket off himself and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 'Seems kind of random.'
A glance down at himself showed that he was just in his underwear, and he scrambled to find his clothes. He managed to find his pants and socks, but after searching all over he couldn’t locate his shirt. As he was kneeling on the floor to look under the bed, he heard the door to the bedroom open and a voice call out that made his blood go ice-cold in his veins.
'No. No fuckin’ way.'
“Mal, what are you doing?” he heard Claire say.
In his haste to stand up, he banged his head on the nightstand next to the bed, and he rubbed the back of it as he quickly shot to his feet and whirled around. The sight of Claire standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee - and wearing his shirt - sent his heart plummeting to his feet and the bile rise up in his throat.
“Claire…” he stammered. “Are we…is this…”
She gave him a little smile and nodded. “My apartment. You insisted on coming here after the bar shut down last night.”
He felt his knees turn to rubber and he sat down on the bed again, pressing his hands against his face and groaning loudly. “No…fuck no. No no no no…”
He felt the bed shift beside him and a hand rest gently on his thigh, and immediately he was up like a shot and darted to the other side of the room. “Don’t. Don’t do that. We didn’t. We couldn’t.”
She frowned a little, her big brown eyes staring at him. “When I found you at the bar, you were pretty upset. Saying that you were so tired of everyone feeling sorry for you. How you couldn’t stand to see Bella looking at you with pity in her eyes…”
“But I’d never…no. Not in a million years,” he growled, pushing his hands through his hair and tugging at the mid-length strands. “No way would I ever cheat on Bella. Not after we’re finally having our baby. I’ve loved her for four years now. Ever since the first time I saw her, I knew she was the one.” He knew he was babbling at this point, but he just didn’t want the reality of the situation to set into his brain.
Claire just looked down into the mug of coffee, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Her act of indifference was what set him off. He saw red as he finally spotted his hoodie, and snatched it up and pulled it on over his head. He stalked to the bedroom door and ripped it open so hard that it banged on the wall, but he paid no mind as he entered the main apartment and made a beeline for the front door. He heard her scrambling after him and calling his name desperately, but he flat out ignored her as he jammed his feet into his shoes and patted down his pockets to make sure he had his phone, car keys and wallet. When he was satisfied that he had all his belongings (minus the shirt), he turned one more time to glare at her. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you back in school - I’m not interested, and never will be. Leave me and Bella the hell alone.”
He opened the front door and let it slam shut behind him before storming down the hallway to the elevators. As he pushed the call button, the rage left his body and he ran his hands over his face as the anxiety set in. “What the hell am I going to tell Bella?”
———
An hour later
He trudged up the steps to his townhouse, dreading the moment he would walk in the door. He knew Bella would immediately know something was up, and he knew that there was no way in hell he could lie to her. He would just have to be honest with her, and let the chips fall where they may. Considering he still had a tenuous grasp on what had transpired last night, it was going to be easier said than done. Even still, their relationship had gone through quite a lot in the last four years, and they managed to weather each and every storm that had come their way. He was sure that she would be reasonable and listen to what he had to say.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to explain anything to her. As soon as he opened the door to the townhome, she was waiting for him in the front entryway. Her arms were folded across her chest and her blue eyes were narrowed at him in a way he’d never seen her look at him before. She held her phone in one hand, and as soon as the door closed behind him she thrust it up in his face.
The Twitter app was open on the screen, and it was on a particular tweet from a well-known wrestling news site. He saw that he and Bella had been tagged in a photo that showed him leaving Claire’s apartment building. The text went on to say that he had been seen with a mysterious brunette at a bar the previous night, and the two had left together. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear the bullshit you come up with to explain this,” she said, her voice dangerously low.
“Bella, I can explain,” he started, putting his hands up defensively. “After I left last night, I ended up in Greenwich Village, and I was at this bar. Claire ended up finding me -”
“I’m sorry, CLAIRE?!” Bella’s voice went from low to a roar in a split second. “As in, Mattie’s assistant Claire? The girl from your old school?”
He nodded. “We got talking at the bar…and somehow I ended up at her apartment.”
She gave a sharp sarcastic laugh. “And let me guess, you just sat around drinking tea all night? I’m not fucking stupid, Malachi. She’s had eyes for you ever since she came waltzing back into your life last summer.”
“I don’t know what happened! I drank a lot, OK!” he yelled exasperatedly. “The whole night’s a total blur. But Bella, you know I would never…” He started walking towards her with his arms outstretched, but she quickly backed away from him.
“Honestly, after the way you stormed out of here last night, I don’t know what I know anymore.” She gave him another cold glare as she picked up one of his duffel bags and threw it at him. “Get out.”
His eyes widened as he stared at her. “Bells, come on. You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious.” She pointed to the door. “Get the fuck out of here. I can’t even look at you right now.”
He gaped at her for a minute, clearly taken aback by her demand. “Bells…please…”
She stamped her foot and pointed to the door again. “Out!”
He jumped at her yell, but finally backed up and turned to head out the door. When he was on the front porch, he turned around to try and plead his case one more time, but the door was slammed shut in his face. He dropped the bag to the ground and sank down to sit on the top step, resting his arms across his knees and burying his face in them.
“Fucking hell…”
—------
As the scene opened up, it was hard to tell at first that there was anything to be seen. But soon, the faintest shaft of light could be seen beaming in from a window high up the wall. A window that, for some peculiar reason, seemed to have bars across it, much like a prison. The walls were constructed of nothing more than random pieces of stone, jutting out at sharp angles and the floor was nothing more than packed dirt. The air hung so heavy with dust that it added an almost hazy filter to the scene, and the camera panned around the desolate scene until it finally came across a shadowy figure slumped into the corner. As the camera drew closer, the light grew slightly brighter until the face of Malachi was revealed…though this was a far cry from the Irish fighter that the SCW faithful knew.
His dark brunette hair hung in tangled knots around his head, and his clothes were tattered and covered in dirt. The soles of his bare feet were nearly black with caked-on mud and grime, and his face was set in a thousand-yard stare at the wall across from him. His blue eyes, normally alive with a glimmer of vicious determination, just seemed glassy and lifeless as they continued to stare unblinking at the wall. A few moments passed of silence, before his cracked lips parted to speak, his Irish brogue nearly unrecognizable as his voice was dry and raspy.
“For the last month, I’ve been a prisoner in my own mind. All my failures, playing on repeat every hour of every day. Every time I close my eyes, there they are.”
He closed his eyes now, and as he did a projection overlaid itself overtop of him, highlighting the recent losses he’d endured over the past month - the Roulette title match against Goth, the World title match against Michael Harris, even his recent loss against Peter Vaughn only a couple weeks prior. As the images played over and over again, it was clear that Malachi was becoming more and more agitated. His hands curled into fists in his lap, he started banging his head back against the rough stone wall behind him. His lips curled back over his teeth in a snarl, and his fingers dug so deeply into his palms that rivulets of blood began to trickle between his fingers and down his wrists.
“I’m going into this thing now with absolutely nothing to lose. And if that doesn’t concern you…” His eyes snapped open to the camera lens at this point, eyebrows drawn tight across the icy blue orbs shining through the tangles of hair hanging in front of his face. “...it absolutely fuckin’ should.”
He rose up slowly to his feet, opening his hands and staring down at the puddles of blood staining his palms. He smirked almost in a deranged fashion as he reached up to wipe his hands across his face, the blood mixing with the dirt caked on his face to create a grotesque imitation of war paint across his eyes and down his cheeks. “‘When people have nothing left to lose, and they’ve lost everything, they lose it.’ Certainly looks that way right now, doesn’t it? But see, that just means that I’ve had all the time in the world to focus on this match. All this hate, this anger, this excruciating need to make my way to London and absolutely burn everything to the fucking ground. Because if I’m going down…I’m taking both of you motherfuckers with me along the way.”
He moved a little further into the room, crouching down to retrieve something from the floor before straightening back up. He stared down at the hourglass in his hands, an exquisitely crafted antique of dark lacquered wood and delicate glass encasing fine white sand in its bulbs. He turned it up so that the sand began to trickle down, watching it with a wide-eyed stare. “Time, time…nothing but time. Time to sit here and think about everything that’s happened to me in the last month. How time, after time, after time, I’ve been fucked over. How I’ve been so close, so many times…”
A pained expression came across his face, and his eyes squeezed shut as if blocking out a bad memory. “Back then, at least I had loved ones in my corner. I knew that no matter how many times I failed, they would always be there for me no matter what. But now…I have no one. I have nothing. And that makes me the most dangerous man in this match. Because there is no level I will not sink to. No act so heinous I will not commit. To finally…finally…get what I want. What I deserve. Because it’s about damn time.”
He turned the hourglass over one more time, watching for a moment as the sand trickled slowly from one end to the other. Without warning, he raised it over his head and smashed it onto the floor below, sending wood shards and glass splinters flying through the air. He crouched down in front of the pile of sand that lay at his feet, running a blood-soaked hand through the soft white granules before picking up a handful. He watched as it sifted through his fingers, falling through the air back down to the pile on the floor.
“But of course, that means that time’s up for you now, gentlemen. Two years I have been with this company. Pouring my blood, sweat and tears out in that ring countless times. Just to watch all these opportunities continually pass me by. But not this time. I will move heaven and hell to finally claim my gold.”
He held a pile of the now red-tinted sand in his palm, and his fingers curled around to squeeze tightly as he bared his teeth with the effort. After a moment, his hand relaxed and he uncurled his fingers to show that the sand had turned a shimmering gold colour. The smirk on his face almost seemed like the old Malachi, if it weren’t for the deranged look shining in his blue eyes as he slowly poured the golden sand out of his hand and looked up to the camera as he straightened back up. The camera slowly backed up as he began walking towards it, until it revealed that the room was closed off with thick steel bars running from floor to ceiling. A locked door sat in the centre of the bars, and without warning it suddenly flew open and crashed against the bars, allowing Malachi to stroll out. He stopped just outside of the cell, the deranged look still in his eyes and his face still caked in dried blood and dirt as he flipped his tangled curls out of his face.
“Sunday, Into The Void…let’s get fuckin’ nuts, lads.”
Greenwich Village, New York
The morning sun shone directly into his face and he groaned as he rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. His brain felt like a construction zone, and a jackhammer was pounding away behind his eyes. He groaned again as he squinted his eyes open, waiting a few moments for the blurriness to dissipate. As his eyes focused, confusion washed over him as he stared at the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Th’hell?” he mumbled, sitting up slowly in the bed. He winced as another sharp pain dashed across his head, pressing his fingers to his temples. He looked around the room again, trying to piece together what had happened to him last night. He remembered traveling from his home in Manhattan up to Greenwich Village, finding some hole in the wall dive where he was sure he wouldn’t be recognized, and posting up at the very end of the bar to drink the last month of his life out of his mind.
The rest of the night was mostly a blur, but one face came to his mind clear as day - Claire. His childhood schoolmate and more recently, the new assistant to his friend Mattie Cormier. They had run into each other on a few occasions, mostly to do with Mattie designing some new gear for him. That night, however, he remembered being surprised to see her in a non-work setting, and he recalled them sitting and talking for a good while, though the topics of conversation escaped him in his hungover state.
Now, as he sat up in the unfamiliar bed, he looked around the room to try and figure out just where he was. Judging by the decor and the slightly messy state of the room, he quickly determined that it was not a hotel room. 'Airbnb?' he thought to himself as he pushed the blanket off himself and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 'Seems kind of random.'
A glance down at himself showed that he was just in his underwear, and he scrambled to find his clothes. He managed to find his pants and socks, but after searching all over he couldn’t locate his shirt. As he was kneeling on the floor to look under the bed, he heard the door to the bedroom open and a voice call out that made his blood go ice-cold in his veins.
'No. No fuckin’ way.'
“Mal, what are you doing?” he heard Claire say.
In his haste to stand up, he banged his head on the nightstand next to the bed, and he rubbed the back of it as he quickly shot to his feet and whirled around. The sight of Claire standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee - and wearing his shirt - sent his heart plummeting to his feet and the bile rise up in his throat.
“Claire…” he stammered. “Are we…is this…”
She gave him a little smile and nodded. “My apartment. You insisted on coming here after the bar shut down last night.”
He felt his knees turn to rubber and he sat down on the bed again, pressing his hands against his face and groaning loudly. “No…fuck no. No no no no…”
He felt the bed shift beside him and a hand rest gently on his thigh, and immediately he was up like a shot and darted to the other side of the room. “Don’t. Don’t do that. We didn’t. We couldn’t.”
She frowned a little, her big brown eyes staring at him. “When I found you at the bar, you were pretty upset. Saying that you were so tired of everyone feeling sorry for you. How you couldn’t stand to see Bella looking at you with pity in her eyes…”
“But I’d never…no. Not in a million years,” he growled, pushing his hands through his hair and tugging at the mid-length strands. “No way would I ever cheat on Bella. Not after we’re finally having our baby. I’ve loved her for four years now. Ever since the first time I saw her, I knew she was the one.” He knew he was babbling at this point, but he just didn’t want the reality of the situation to set into his brain.
Claire just looked down into the mug of coffee, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Her act of indifference was what set him off. He saw red as he finally spotted his hoodie, and snatched it up and pulled it on over his head. He stalked to the bedroom door and ripped it open so hard that it banged on the wall, but he paid no mind as he entered the main apartment and made a beeline for the front door. He heard her scrambling after him and calling his name desperately, but he flat out ignored her as he jammed his feet into his shoes and patted down his pockets to make sure he had his phone, car keys and wallet. When he was satisfied that he had all his belongings (minus the shirt), he turned one more time to glare at her. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you back in school - I’m not interested, and never will be. Leave me and Bella the hell alone.”
He opened the front door and let it slam shut behind him before storming down the hallway to the elevators. As he pushed the call button, the rage left his body and he ran his hands over his face as the anxiety set in. “What the hell am I going to tell Bella?”
———
An hour later
He trudged up the steps to his townhouse, dreading the moment he would walk in the door. He knew Bella would immediately know something was up, and he knew that there was no way in hell he could lie to her. He would just have to be honest with her, and let the chips fall where they may. Considering he still had a tenuous grasp on what had transpired last night, it was going to be easier said than done. Even still, their relationship had gone through quite a lot in the last four years, and they managed to weather each and every storm that had come their way. He was sure that she would be reasonable and listen to what he had to say.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to explain anything to her. As soon as he opened the door to the townhome, she was waiting for him in the front entryway. Her arms were folded across her chest and her blue eyes were narrowed at him in a way he’d never seen her look at him before. She held her phone in one hand, and as soon as the door closed behind him she thrust it up in his face.
The Twitter app was open on the screen, and it was on a particular tweet from a well-known wrestling news site. He saw that he and Bella had been tagged in a photo that showed him leaving Claire’s apartment building. The text went on to say that he had been seen with a mysterious brunette at a bar the previous night, and the two had left together. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear the bullshit you come up with to explain this,” she said, her voice dangerously low.
“Bella, I can explain,” he started, putting his hands up defensively. “After I left last night, I ended up in Greenwich Village, and I was at this bar. Claire ended up finding me -”
“I’m sorry, CLAIRE?!” Bella’s voice went from low to a roar in a split second. “As in, Mattie’s assistant Claire? The girl from your old school?”
He nodded. “We got talking at the bar…and somehow I ended up at her apartment.”
She gave a sharp sarcastic laugh. “And let me guess, you just sat around drinking tea all night? I’m not fucking stupid, Malachi. She’s had eyes for you ever since she came waltzing back into your life last summer.”
“I don’t know what happened! I drank a lot, OK!” he yelled exasperatedly. “The whole night’s a total blur. But Bella, you know I would never…” He started walking towards her with his arms outstretched, but she quickly backed away from him.
“Honestly, after the way you stormed out of here last night, I don’t know what I know anymore.” She gave him another cold glare as she picked up one of his duffel bags and threw it at him. “Get out.”
His eyes widened as he stared at her. “Bells, come on. You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious.” She pointed to the door. “Get the fuck out of here. I can’t even look at you right now.”
He gaped at her for a minute, clearly taken aback by her demand. “Bells…please…”
She stamped her foot and pointed to the door again. “Out!”
He jumped at her yell, but finally backed up and turned to head out the door. When he was on the front porch, he turned around to try and plead his case one more time, but the door was slammed shut in his face. He dropped the bag to the ground and sank down to sit on the top step, resting his arms across his knees and burying his face in them.
“Fucking hell…”
—------
As the scene opened up, it was hard to tell at first that there was anything to be seen. But soon, the faintest shaft of light could be seen beaming in from a window high up the wall. A window that, for some peculiar reason, seemed to have bars across it, much like a prison. The walls were constructed of nothing more than random pieces of stone, jutting out at sharp angles and the floor was nothing more than packed dirt. The air hung so heavy with dust that it added an almost hazy filter to the scene, and the camera panned around the desolate scene until it finally came across a shadowy figure slumped into the corner. As the camera drew closer, the light grew slightly brighter until the face of Malachi was revealed…though this was a far cry from the Irish fighter that the SCW faithful knew.
His dark brunette hair hung in tangled knots around his head, and his clothes were tattered and covered in dirt. The soles of his bare feet were nearly black with caked-on mud and grime, and his face was set in a thousand-yard stare at the wall across from him. His blue eyes, normally alive with a glimmer of vicious determination, just seemed glassy and lifeless as they continued to stare unblinking at the wall. A few moments passed of silence, before his cracked lips parted to speak, his Irish brogue nearly unrecognizable as his voice was dry and raspy.
“For the last month, I’ve been a prisoner in my own mind. All my failures, playing on repeat every hour of every day. Every time I close my eyes, there they are.”
He closed his eyes now, and as he did a projection overlaid itself overtop of him, highlighting the recent losses he’d endured over the past month - the Roulette title match against Goth, the World title match against Michael Harris, even his recent loss against Peter Vaughn only a couple weeks prior. As the images played over and over again, it was clear that Malachi was becoming more and more agitated. His hands curled into fists in his lap, he started banging his head back against the rough stone wall behind him. His lips curled back over his teeth in a snarl, and his fingers dug so deeply into his palms that rivulets of blood began to trickle between his fingers and down his wrists.
“I’m going into this thing now with absolutely nothing to lose. And if that doesn’t concern you…” His eyes snapped open to the camera lens at this point, eyebrows drawn tight across the icy blue orbs shining through the tangles of hair hanging in front of his face. “...it absolutely fuckin’ should.”
He rose up slowly to his feet, opening his hands and staring down at the puddles of blood staining his palms. He smirked almost in a deranged fashion as he reached up to wipe his hands across his face, the blood mixing with the dirt caked on his face to create a grotesque imitation of war paint across his eyes and down his cheeks. “‘When people have nothing left to lose, and they’ve lost everything, they lose it.’ Certainly looks that way right now, doesn’t it? But see, that just means that I’ve had all the time in the world to focus on this match. All this hate, this anger, this excruciating need to make my way to London and absolutely burn everything to the fucking ground. Because if I’m going down…I’m taking both of you motherfuckers with me along the way.”
He moved a little further into the room, crouching down to retrieve something from the floor before straightening back up. He stared down at the hourglass in his hands, an exquisitely crafted antique of dark lacquered wood and delicate glass encasing fine white sand in its bulbs. He turned it up so that the sand began to trickle down, watching it with a wide-eyed stare. “Time, time…nothing but time. Time to sit here and think about everything that’s happened to me in the last month. How time, after time, after time, I’ve been fucked over. How I’ve been so close, so many times…”
A pained expression came across his face, and his eyes squeezed shut as if blocking out a bad memory. “Back then, at least I had loved ones in my corner. I knew that no matter how many times I failed, they would always be there for me no matter what. But now…I have no one. I have nothing. And that makes me the most dangerous man in this match. Because there is no level I will not sink to. No act so heinous I will not commit. To finally…finally…get what I want. What I deserve. Because it’s about damn time.”
He turned the hourglass over one more time, watching for a moment as the sand trickled slowly from one end to the other. Without warning, he raised it over his head and smashed it onto the floor below, sending wood shards and glass splinters flying through the air. He crouched down in front of the pile of sand that lay at his feet, running a blood-soaked hand through the soft white granules before picking up a handful. He watched as it sifted through his fingers, falling through the air back down to the pile on the floor.
“But of course, that means that time’s up for you now, gentlemen. Two years I have been with this company. Pouring my blood, sweat and tears out in that ring countless times. Just to watch all these opportunities continually pass me by. But not this time. I will move heaven and hell to finally claim my gold.”
He held a pile of the now red-tinted sand in his palm, and his fingers curled around to squeeze tightly as he bared his teeth with the effort. After a moment, his hand relaxed and he uncurled his fingers to show that the sand had turned a shimmering gold colour. The smirk on his face almost seemed like the old Malachi, if it weren’t for the deranged look shining in his blue eyes as he slowly poured the golden sand out of his hand and looked up to the camera as he straightened back up. The camera slowly backed up as he began walking towards it, until it revealed that the room was closed off with thick steel bars running from floor to ceiling. A locked door sat in the centre of the bars, and without warning it suddenly flew open and crashed against the bars, allowing Malachi to stroll out. He stopped just outside of the cell, the deranged look still in his eyes and his face still caked in dried blood and dirt as he flipped his tangled curls out of his face.
“Sunday, Into The Void…let’s get fuckin’ nuts, lads.”