Narrator: Well hello people of SCW, one hopes you're keeping well, listening to the right people, and staying safe. It has been a while since you've heard my dulcet tones, back in September 2019 to be precise, but once more, it's time to see where Tony Thorn has been. The feeling is an explanation should be heard of his absence and well, people like Lachlan Kane will no longer have to ask where Mr. Thorn has been social media. Word to the wise Mr. Kane, should you question this again as a way to show off to the world that you're still employed by Sin City Wrestling, please not that you too are randomly employed by them cause of your lack of commitment, and I would like to point your attention to your record when you do appear. People in glass houses should not throw stones, but as you were warranting an explanation to boost your ego, it's time to show you.
The scene starts in St. Barts, a beautiful Island where SCW had decided to host a wrestling show, the last wrestling show Tony Thorn had been a part of. Tony limps through the curtain holding his right knee, an uncomfortable look on his face as he looked for the nearest seat.
Narrator: Tony had just pinned fair and clean the SCW Roulette Champion, Teddy Warren, at the time, before Teddy had lost the belt to Griffin Hawkins. Tony should have been elated at this achievement, not only taking his record to five matches, five wins, zero defeats but to pin a champion, he should have been delighted, but the look on his face told a different tale.
Tony's face flushed white with pain as he closed his eyes, breathing deeply for a few seconds, holding his breath in deeply before exhaling sharply. His mother Victoria approached her son.
Victoria: Now that is how you fucking do it!
Narrator: She's always had an eloquent way with words.
Victoria: Now what they need to do is replace that bum Griffin Hawkins as number one contender for that championship and do it all over again and get that gold.
Tony gritted his teeth as he looked up towards his mother, his eyes cold as a trickle of sweat ran down the right side of his face.
Tony: I don't believe that's possible mother. Something didn't feel right when I left that ring, something with my left knee.
Tony tries to put the slightest of pressure on his left leg but the pain runs through his body, just causing Tony to grit his teeth, no additional emotion on his face.
Tony: I believe I've done some damage to my Anterior Cruciate Ligament, mother. It is an injury that will set me back at least six months.
Narrator: Tony had spent is life with his nose in books, researching everything possible, wanting to solve the mysteries of the world, yet a lot of his time, he did study medicine, past and modern, and had seen enough things to take an educated guess at the injury he believed he had.
Victoria: Then we need to get you to the doctors room now. The longer you sit there, it ain't gonna cure itself.
Tony: It wouldn't cure itself anyway without surgery anyway.
Victoria looks around at some of the people standing around backstage, a busy scene.
Victoria: Would someone move their ass and find a doctor for my baby boy!?
Her tone was loud and harsh, causing people to turn and look in her direction, a few people stepping forward to find out what the commotion was.
Narrator: It wasn't too long before SCW staff had arrived and helped Tony towards the set up medical room, and SCW bosses Christian Underwood and Mark Ward had heard of the injury to one of their wrestlers and had hurried to the medical room to find out the full extent.
Inside the medical room, Tony lies on the medical bed as a doctor prods at his knee, his mother Victoria standing next to Tony, with both bosses, Hot Stuff Mark Ward and Christian Underwood staying at the back of the room, just observing.
Tony: You're wasting your time pulling and prodding Doctor, it's a damaged Anterior Cruciate Ligament, I can feel it, I know the signs and guessing at any other possible outcome will be futile. It would waste everyone's time.
The doctor scratches his head with a frown on his fifty year old face.
Doctor: Mr. Thorn, with the greatest of respect, if it was a Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury, you would be in much more pain. You wouldn't be able to keep still let alone sit there talking calm and casual.
Tony smiles at the doctor, the smile that a vampire might give his latest victim. It was confident, arrogant, yet a slight tinge of sadistic behind it.
Tony: Pain is very much mental Doctor. If you can work out how to be calm and block out the right areas of the brain, you can handle pretty much anything, a plus side to being a wrestler, don't you think?
Christian: If he can teach that to the rest of the roster...
Narrator: His comment was aimed at his fellow boss, but Tony shook his head.
Tony: Unfortunately Mr. Underwood, most of your roster doesn't retain the mental capacity to do so. They're more than happy filling their body with toxins like alcohol to shut down their cranial receptors and dull pain that way.
Tony looks back towards the doctor, his eyes narrowed.
Tony: It is a Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury Doctor, I can say that with one hundred percent accuracy.
Doctor: It seems that you're very casual about this Mr. Thorn. If you are right, do you know what that means?
Narrator: That was a bad thing to say to a man as educated as Tony Thorn, and the anger in his tone confirmed that.
Tony: Of course I fucking know what that means, it means later life issues, it means my fucking career could be over if some underqualified butcher ruins my knee! I am not taking this fucking lightly doctor, in fact I know these thing probably at a much larger scare then you do. I know that could have been my last wrestling match, so how about shutting the fuck up and coming up with a plan to stop this being my final bow?
A proud smile appears on his mother Victoria's face.
Victoria: That's my boy!
Mark Ward steps forward, his eyes moving between the Doctor and Tony, looking to break the tension between the two.
Mark: And say it is an ACL issue, what are we looking at here?
Tony looks at the doctor with a nod of his head.
Tony: You're the doctor here, I feel you should explain this one.
Doctor: Well, it's surgery without a doubt to repair the injury, two months rest, a further three months of physiotherapy, then a reassessment. We're looking at a recovery time of six to nine months, but looking more likely to be a year.
Tony holds up his hand to the doctor, before looking towards the staff.
Tony: Far be it from me to dismiss the Doctor's judgement completely, as he is correct with his knowledge, but what the doctor can not predict is the recovery time of ones body, nor can he suggest by law, alternative routes to recovery without them being agreed upon by other medical personnel a million miles above him in terms of career path. I, on the other hand, know the rate of which my body can recover and will source alternative routes to recover faster. My prediction will be I will be set to return to a Sin City Wrestling ring in roughly eight months.
Christian: But surgery is a must?
Tony: Absolutely essential. Without it, it would lead to many future problems, including my ability to walk. With surgery, I will make myself free to return to a Sin City Wrestling ring by the end of April 2020.
Hot Stuff and Christian share a look between each other, before looking back towards Tony.
Christian: Alright, we'll get you to the local hospital for tests to confirm the injury. If it needs surgery, we will fly you back to America first chance we get to have it repaired.
Narrator: And true to their word, a hospital trip happened before the main event of the show was even completed and results came back, as Tony suspected, to be a damaged Anterior Cruciate Ligament. A flight was arranged and Tony was back in Lima, Ohio within twenty four hours, and surgery on the damaged knee completed and Tony was left to recover in the hospital, and that's where we pick up this story.
Victoria: Are you sure you're alright?
Tony looks at his mother from a private room in a hospital in Lima, Ohio, not long out of surgery to repair his injured knee. Tony nods his head.
Tony: I'm more disappointed they wouldn't let me stay awake to watch the surgery take place. Many would find that a strange request, because many are too squeamish to watch their body being dissected, but I would have found that much more educational than reading about it in books.
Narrator: For all of Victoria's sharp edges, this was her son who had undergone knee surgery. There were many horror stories from hospitals for even the most routine surgeries had ran through her mind for every minute of the two and a half hour surgery.
Tony: But I shall be fine, they will be letting me out of this establishment shortly.
Victoria looks disgusted at the thought of an early release for Tony.
Victoria: They can't let you out so soon! You just had major surgery!
Tony shakes his head as he looks at his mother, a slight smile on his face.
Tony: It wasn't that major. There were and are far more important surgeries happening at this precise moment in time. Compared to those, this was absolutely nothing. If I read up on this slightly more, I could have probably performed the surgery myself. It wouldn't have taken too much to pick up the basics of how to perform this minor surgery.
Victoria: I don't care what they say, you need to not rush anything! I swear to God if they try to send you home before you're ready, I'll rip their throats out.
Tony: It's just standard procedure. This types of surgeries are usually finished and the patient is sent home within a few hours.
Victoria: Well that isn't fucking happening! If something goes wrong, you need to be here. I'm gonna go and tell them that!
Narrator: And that is unsurprisingly what Victoria did. The poor medical staff didn't see her coming and no amount of medical training could have ever prepared them for the hurricane that hit them. She demanded, and threatened until they agreed that Tony's best course of care was to stay in the hospital till the morning as long as Victoria had agreed to leave the hospital for the night to give her son some time to recover. Of course the hospital staff were delighted when she agreed to do so, but this allowed some thoughts to run through Tony's head, and this wasn't as good as one would think.
Two in the morning, and Tony laid wide away, looking around the dim room, his mind running the scenario earlier in his mind.
Tony: How could I have been so stupid to allow myself to get injured?
He gritted his teeth as his mind wandered through the match.
Tony: I can't even see how it happened. I did everything right, I went through things like I always do, I was ready for everything, I knew how to land, I knew how to do all I had to do and I screwed up.
Narrator: He wasn't a believer in luck as such, he believed most things could be manufactured or avoided. He was angry with himself, even if it was, in most eyes, just one of those unexplained things that just happened.
Tony: The damn timing! I just beat the Roulette champion! I just propelled myself in to the thoughts of people who started to see me as a surprise package, although I had trained for these moments! I could have been in their minds. I could have leaped ahead of Griffin Hawkins, or at least been considered as a worthy opponent for him next.
Narrator: As much as Tony could predict, I doubt even he could have predicted the course of history that followed, although he did predict Griffin Hawkins would become champion, he didn't know that it would be a record breaking run, to which Griffin Hawkins would become the longest Roulette champion of all time. Fate had intervened and taken away something that could have altered the course of Sin City Wrestling history. What if Tony had taken that shot away from Griffin Hawkins? What if Tony had been Griffin's first opponent and stopped the historic run. Does Mr. Hawkins himself even know how lucky he was to be revered as a champion for so long?
Tony: I should be walking down that ramp next week and telling the world that I should be allowed the right for that championship to be on the line for me. I beat the champion! I took away his momentum! I should have been. This fucking injury!
Narrator: And that's when it hit him, at two in the morning, that his career trajectory could have changed dramatically. He knew he could have been heading towards championship thoughts, instead, it was heading to the path of being forgotten. It was heading to a path when an inferior Lachlan Kane could mock him on social media.
Tony sighs sadly as the anger runs from his body, but it was replaced with another emotion.
Narrator: Grief... It was replaced with grief.
<img src=https://french-kiss.webs.com/tonythorndivide.png>
Narrator: Three months had past since then and a downward spiral had begun, even though we were day away from Christmas, Tony's mood was more akin to The Grinch than to festivities. He had doubted the whole story of Christmas for a long time but enjoyed seeing how normal people reacted to it but this year, at the tail end of 2019, he had no joy, he felt lost. His promising start to his career had become, in his mind, pointless. The years of training himself to become something different had faded in to nothing due to injury. His mood had been sliding for months, down in to the pit of sadness he was at now. It was not depression, he had his moment of pure clarity but whenever his mind drifted back to his career, the grief was there like a black shadow hanging over him. He was grieving for something lost.
The room is completely black as Tony laid on his bed in the small house he shared with his mother in Lima, Ohio. His looks had dramatically changed, his hair longer and tangled, further down his back than ever seen before, and a scruffy beard on his face has replaced his usual clean shaven, boyish looks, the hair taking on a life of their own, little hairs resting in whatever direction they had naturally grown. There was one light source from the room and that was from a small television to the front side of the bed, flickering the scene of Tony's last match, against Teddy Warren. Tony lays on his side as he looks at the screen.
Tony: This should have been the start of something good. This should have been where the career kicked off. I had already beaten the lower level people like Lachlan Kane and Casey Williams, this was a match against a champion, a match I won.
He sighs deeply as he looked at the screen with nothing but disappointment running as deep as his bones.
Narrator: Tony had spent the last three months of his life in this stage of his life. He rarely left the house, just spent hours upon hours stuck to his bed and rewatching his matches from start to finish. It was almost like he was punishing himself for something that he never had control over. Months of rewatching those tapes of that match with Teddy Warren, he couldn't seen a single instance of where he could have injured his knee and put himself on the shelf. He only felt it when he was walking up the ramp and even watching his exit, he never saw any way he could have injured his knee. Every time he saw the ending to the match, he had one thought.
Tony: What could have been if something didn't go wrong right there in that match. Why that match? What was it that did that to me? WHAT THE FUCK WAS IT!?
Narrator: This was a standard reaction for Tony, it had been three months, three long months analysing every single thing. It had been three long months since his plan had been destroyed.
Tony: My career would have been so much different right now. My career would have been people talking about me, allowing me to stand in front of them constantly and telling them the truth and how to push their lives further and be the best they possibly can be. If that injury wasn't befallen upon me, I know how it would have gone. I would have been thrust in to the spotlight and Teddy Warren wouldn't have had a choice but to defend against me, which would have led me to a match with Griffin Hawkins and I would have stopped his already impressive championship run. But even if that was not to be the case, and Griffin would have taken the first shot, I would have been in a much bigger match with Griffin Hawkins, they couldn't have denied me that and I would have stopped a legend in his tracks.
Tony clenches his fists as he lays on the bed, his eyes on the screen.
Tony: Griffin Hawkins is entitled in his mind to everything, he lives for the championships. He lives for the fans, he lives for the adulation. He expects to point at a championship belt and it to be handed to him on a silver platter. I could have stopped that. I could have helped him by humbling him but no, this fucking injury. He's now months in to a rather impressive championship journey, but I could have done what was needed and removed him from his pedestal. His fans would have had their eyes on me, their attention towards me, I could have helped every single person by educating them all on false idols, but it wasn't to be, my career wasn't to be.
Narrator: This was a conversation Tony had with himself constantly for the last three months, his career had taken a backseat and he knew that the wrestling business tended to be fickle when it came to younger wrestlers, out of sight and out of mind. He knew deep down that the next three months were vital, his career could indeed been finished. For all the confidence in what he knew scientifically, he knew if he could find himself injured for such a length of time, the thought in the back of his mind was that something out there could draw the conclusion that his career was over without valid explanation.
Tony: I should be the one people are talking about instead of how well these people are doing. I haven't been a passing thought in anyone's mind in that business since this injury found its way to infest my body.
Narrator: He knew he didn't have any friends in the wrestling business, his brief business partnership, or mentorship of Trinity Jones had come to an end when Trinity had inexplicitly just disappeared from the business out of nowhere, and his friendship with Effie Bingham in terms of wrestling took a downward slide when she married St. John Cross as quickly as Trinity had disappeared from the wrestling business. Her incredibly disrespectful comments towards another member of the roster had found her banned from SCW arenas and left a sour taste in Tony's mouth about why he would associate with this woman. He had made sure that so called friendship was dissolved faster than it had started, leaving him with no friends in SCW and it showed during this tough time. Only the staff had been bothered to take the time to remain in contact.
Tony: My career should be sky high right now. I should be at least ten matches down, a champion that people could learn from, I should be out of the lower card and looking up. I would have been all of that, I would have been a leader and people would have taken me seriously.
Tony rolls on to his back, reaching for a nearby remote control, pausing the video playing as the referees hand slams down for the three count. He runs his fingers through his long, unkempt hair, smoothing it back as he looks coldly at the white painted ceiling, his fingers interlocked behind his head.
Tony: If this is it. What do I do next?
Narrator: That had plagued Tony's mind for a long time. As he would admit to himself, his wrestling career had been sporadic by intention. The amount of home training didn't equally translate in to doing it in front of thousands of people per week. He knew he had to learn the outside of the business too if he wanted success in the ring and spent many shows anonymously backstage, watching wrestlers and the way they acted, but he also knew this match, against a champion would be the thing that would kick start himself to the forefront of people's minds should be successful and he was, till fate intervened. He was ready to step in to SCW on a more regular basis, until this injury could have ended those thoughts.
Tony: Where do I go from here?
Narrator: Tony was an educated man, very much above the levels of most when it came to intelligence. He knew he was IQ points in front of every other Sin City Wrestling employee by double figures and knew the world was his oyster. He knew he could excel in anything he chose, and although he had constantly used free time to learn new things, as soon as that match was announced, his mind was set to learn as much about the wrestling business as he possibly could because he knew his time was just around the corner before things shattered in front of his eyes like a dropped glass.
The small sound of knuckles rapping on a door caused his eyes to roll towards the white painted wooden door.
Tony: Yes?
Victoria Thorn, Tony's rough around the edges mother enters the room, looking at her son in the dark, her eyes narrowed to adjust to the dim lit room.
Victoria: Are you ok?
Tony sighed as he rolled his body towards the direction of his mother, just her silhouette covering the doorway.
Tony: I'm as good as I can be with a career that is drifting away from me.
Victoria: Well laying on your ass for all those months sure as shit isn't gonna help you. I thought you knew what you had to do to get that knee stronger than ever before.
Tony: I do, I know exactly what I need to do.
Victoria: I don't think laying in a dark room for three months watching shit like how you destroyed that gender bending son of a bitch is part of your rehab.
Tony tilts his head as he looks towards his mother, his eyes vacant.
Tony: It's helping me say goodbye to a career that I may never have. People can think of this as a bout of depression, yet it's not. It's actual grief. I have gone through the stages of grief, and I know I need to get to acceptance to stand up and move on with my life. I need to accept that my career could be over. I need to accept that this injury has thwarted the start of something incredibly special. People talk in Sin City Wrestling of the great stars that have walked through their doors, the like of Drake Green, the likes of Sean Jackson, Gabriel and of course, J2H. They all started somewhere, they all managed to earn themselves a big win. They all saw their tide turn to be spoken about as truly the greatest wrestlers to ever step in to the ring, to be spoken about years after they stepped away from the ring. That could have been me, that should have been me.
Victoria steps in to the room, closer to her son and stands over him.
Victoria: And I bet all of those people have had career threatening injuries and never had your talent or smarts to return stronger than before. These guys have probably had their bell rung more than once, you have had one injury.
Narrator: Victoria had a point and Tony had seen it loud and clear. He had been so consumed moving through the stages of grief, the grief clouding his judgement on many things, he didn't see that with the right treatments, he could return stronger. He knew these kind of injuries could end careers, even after they return. He knew that wrestlers could lose half a step after a return from a long term lay off, and never be the same again.
Tony: You're actually right mother. These people have returned based on doctors reading from a generic script without the thought of the patient themselves. I on the other hand know my limits, I know my body. I would just need to do some research on strengthening certain parts, target certain areas of my body to be able to focus on those one things.
Narrator: The penny had dropped for Tony. Grief can do funny things to the human mind, it can place clouds over our eyes, lose focus and become a whole different person.
Victoria: Before you find yourself elbow deep in researching these things, maybe you should actually leave the house? You haven't stepped outside these walls in months Tony.
Tony runs his fingers through his scruffy beard as he spins his legs off the bed and pressing his feet to the floor.
Tony: You know, it has been proven in many studies about the effect of fresh air, well, no air is actually fresh, but the smell tricks the brain in to thinking it is, but it does seem to have an effect that promotes learning and the ability to take more in to ones mental capacity.
With that, Tony stands to his feet, nodding his head in appreciation towards his mother.
Tony: Thank you mother.
Narrator: With that, Tony left the house for the first time since leaving the hospital all those months ago. He knew that if this didn't work, if his training methods to strengthen his knee like never before, then there was a chance he would never be the same again. The grief had not fallen from his mind, but he did have something to focus on, something new to learn, something new to try. It's funny what grief would do to even the most powerful brains on the planet, let alone someone without the capability of handling it. Like the rest of the world, Tony didn't know that he was days away from becoming part of a problem engulfing the entire world. He didn't know a virus was going to be unleashed on the world, that has cause millions of people to be suffering their own kind of grief.
<img src=https://french-kiss.webs.com/tonythorndivide.png>
Narrator: Who would have predicted at the end of two thousand and nineteen, twenty twenty would have such a devastating effect on the world? Tony had theorized that certain people in government in China may have but for the common people, no one could have seen the magnitude of the events that had taken place in the last five months on this planet. Even with the first two months being relatively quiet, Tony had pondered the thought of the possible spread to Ohio, which happened just one month before the date this is set. It was April and in Ohio, unbeknown to people, the state was suffering the peak of it's deaths, thankfully as you're listening to this, we can comfortably say that with low recent hospital admissions or death, Ohio is over the worst, but a month ago, panic had run through the state. Unimpressed with the way the pandemic was being handled, Tony opted for his own approach. Tony's small garage attached to his house had long been converted in to a place where his imagination could run wild, something his mother had encouraged from a young age. Many experiments had taken place in this room, many theories proven and myths dispelled in this small room. It was a place that he could put theory in to practice.
Tony looked at a whiteboard in front of him, through the thick black rims of his glasses, reading what some would see as gibberish on the board. To the side of the board upon a wooden table sat test tubes and a microscope. Tony looks at the writing on the board once more as he slides blue latex gloves on to his hands and moves towards the test tube and drops an eyedropper in to it, extracting just some of the clear solution in to a peatry dish before sliding it under the microscope and observing.
Tony: Hmmm.
Tony looks towards the board to his left, his eyes scanning what was written by his own hand before looking back at whatever is under the scope.
Tony: I believe you are the closest thing I can create to replicate the novel coronavirus plaguing our planet.
Narrator: Yes, you heard that right. Tony had spent months researching, using every scientific mean to study to genetic code of the cause of COVID-19. Many people get confused by coronavirus and COVID-19, so I will help you understand. Coronavirus is the actual virus type often found in birds and mammals, very rarely can be transmitted to human, in the same way you couldn't give your pet dog influenza, due to our deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA to people unaware of what that is not being compatible for the virus to attack. Some coronaviruses mutate, allowing transmission to human, allowing them to attack our cells, predominantly in the respiratory organs, our lungs, causing a disease, in this case, COVID-19. CO indicates it's from the corona family. VI tells you its a virus. D informs you it's a disease and 19 is the year the first case was found, bringing together the name of the disease COVID-19.
Tony zoomed the microscope in a little further and nodded his approval.
Tony: Well, I just manufactured something relatively close to a virus that can dent the world population, minus the aspect that caused spreading at a rapid rate. Now if I am one component away from turning this in to something deadly, I would think it wouldn't have taken a team of scientists in China to weaponize this.
Narrator: Months of work and Tony was staring at a man made coronavirus. Does make you think, doesn't it?
Tony: Now to work out how to kill you, you little son of a bitch.
Narrator: It appealed to Tony no end to be the man who ended this invisible war and bring himself just that amount of fame enough for people to listen to his teachings and revert the world to a more simpler time.
Tony stepped back, looking at a nearby chemical in a bottle and reaching for it with his gloved hand and taking an eyedropper and filling it with the chemical and dropping it in to the peatry dish, his eyes looking through the microscope. A smile crosses the young mans face.
Tony: Indeed you are the closest thing I can get to this modern day black death. How to take something that's extremely toxic and render it for human use? What is it that has close links to this said disease. Ebola is part of that family, but it attacks the lungs, not unlike tuberculosis. What if the key is not to focus on the virus per se, but to focus on the body parts it attacks. What if it's just as simple as this in front of me? A weakened strain of the virus, something that shares the characteristics, with much less potency? Everyone is over thinking it with concoctions of who knows what but what if it is as basic as something like that. It's not impossible to defeat this disease without any medical help, people carry this without them knowing, spreading it, yet forcing their immune systems to fight it. What if the cure is just the disease without the additional numbers of drugs that companies want to push on people?
Tony's mother Victoria enters the room slowly, looking across at him.
Victoria: Hey baby. I know you don't like being disturbed while you're working on something.
Tony waves his hand towards his mother, beckoning her in to the room, her eyes looking at the whiteboard.
Narrator: Victoria had always encouraged her son to be the best he could be and rarely interrupted his work, or his process.
Victoria: What does this all mean?
Tony smiled towards his mother, pride in his usual cold eyes as he walks towards the whiteboard.
Tony: This mother, is the generic code for coronavirus. This is actually the virus in word form and how it looks under the hood as it were. It's like the engine of a car, everything that has been masterfully crafted and put together is needed for it to work as one. All of these are needed to make it work, but if you take away just a few different parts of it, then it loses it's momentum.
Victoria: And you're trying to figure out what can kick the shit out of certain parts of it?
Narrator: Victoria has a way with words, doesn't she? When Tony started this project just a couple of short months ago, she knew he had not reached the acceptance stage of grief, she hoped he would never need to reach that stage, so she saw this as a good distraction for him.
Tony: Yes. If you can weaken the virus, people's bodies will naturally defend itself against the threat.
Victoria looks towards the test tubes on the wooden table.
Victoria: And what's in those?
Tony: Coronavirus. Well, a weakened coronavirus.
A surprised look instantly hit Victoria's face, not sure what to make of her son's calmness in the matter.
Victoria: Actual coronavirus? How did you get that?
Tony: A weakened version, something that if anyone should get infected by it, it would feel more like the common cold than a life threatening diseases. It wasn't difficult to just manufacture myself with the help of a few of our avian friends. In fact it was much easier than I thought.
Victoria: Well this needs to go on hold for now because your SCW bosses just called and they'd like you to call them back as soon as you can.
Narrator: It was a call Tony had waited for since those very first moments after the surgery on his knee. He know given the time frame, the call would happened around about this time to see if his recovery progress was enough for the people at Sin City Wrestling or if his career in wrestling was finished. He had gone through four of the five stages of grief during the last seven months. He was in denial from day one, wondering how he got injured. He had thrown out his anger at fate and how his career was lost, for three months, he had spent most of his time alone rewatching his matches feeling sorry for himself. He had just got through the bargaining stage of struggling to find a new meaning. He knew that if the news was good, he would never have to accept his career was finished. It didn't take him long to hurry through the house and in front of a laptop where a now much more popular than it was before the pandemic, video conferencing program called Zoom was on the screen and a three way conference with the bosses of SCW Mark Ward and Christian Underwood was underway.
Tony: Good afternoon gentlemen, I hope you're both well.
Mark: Considering the circumstances, we're both fine. How are you doing?
Tony pushes his glasses closer to his eyes as he shuffled himself to a cross legged position on the sofa he was sitting on.
Tony: I'm doing very well, thank you for asking, although I fear my state might not be feeling the exact same at the moment.
Christian: We have kept an eye on cases in your state and the seem high at the moment.
Tony: Sadly you are correct Mr. Underwood. It feels like cases are very high right now. People tend to do as they please here. Basic sanitation and hygiene would greatly increase the chances of suppressing this virus, even something like mouthwash.
Mark: Mouthwash?
Tony: Yes sir, an alcohol or ethanol based mouthwash. Alcohol is present in all hand sanitizers to kill germs, somewhere between seventy and ninety percent, which is too much for oral use.
Christian: I don't know about that, Mark's probably drunk a lot higher.
Tony smiles as Mark Ward frowns on the camera.
Tony: A small amount of alcohol kills bacteria. Although the coronavirus itself is not bacterial, I don't feel that it can cause any harm to have better oral hygiene.
Mark: True, I mean you ain't smelt Christian's coffee breath in the morning. He could certainly do with better oral hygiene.
It was Christian's turn to frown this time.
Tony: I'm sure you gentlemen have not taken the time out of your busy day to call me to speak about the pandemic.
Christian: Actually no, we haven't. We got sent a copy of your doctors report as requested and approved by you last week. We're shocked that in seven months, you've seemed to have made that knee stronger than it was before the injury.
Mark: Basically, you're free to return to work if you want. We understand with this going on, some people would prefer to sit it out, but we have our roster locked down in a luxury hotel.
Christian: Most of them. Others don't seem to understand the risks they're taking not only to themselves but to others.
Mark: But to combat that, we have very regular testing, after every show or when people who won't listen to our safety instructions return to the hotel. We have a set up with a local lab that gets test results back within twenty four hours and our only positive return was months ago, and cleared. One person gets it, we will lock things down to the point of no leaving the room for anyone until retests are done.
Tony: It sounds like you have everything under control there.
Christian: We do. It was a big joint effort with us, alongside SCU and GRIME, to make this safe to continue running shows. We don't want to rush you back to action, but would like you to be back around the others and in the hotel as soon as you and of course your charming mother, can.
Tony quickly runs his hand over his smooth face as he looks at his mother across the room.
Victoria: Fucking heard that Underwood and I don't like sarcasm, but if you're paying for shit and Tony agrees to it.
Christian's face drops as he hears Victoria's voice from across the room, but Mark Ward smiles widely.
Christian: You buy your own drinks at the bar but the mini bar in your room will be on us.
Victoria: You better have people restocking that mini bar a lot Underwood cause I get thirsty when I'm bored.
Tony: I think what my mother means is we will be with you as soon as I look in to travel options so the safest possible way for us to find you.
Mark: We have access to a private plane that we have used to get people in to Las Vegas. Just let us know when it suits you and I will have it sent to a quiet airfield.
Tony: That would be appreciated gentlemen, I will see you in Las Vegas shortly.
Narrator: And with that, the grief had gone, the months of waiting to know how this would effect his promise start to his career had vanished in an instant. Acceptance came with relief and he felt free, free to make his own mind up about things, free to breathe, free to see clearly now that glum cloud had been lifted. It was time to pick up where he left off, it was time to find someone who needed his help with their life, as much as O'Malley needed with his....
<img src=https://french-kiss.webs.com/tonythorndivide.png>
Narrator: And with a move to the hotel, Tony had to be creative, yet that was a forte of his. He'd watched for weeks, watched people record their work from the hotel bar and pool, from random places, yet the one that stood out was Evie Jordan and her use of spiders just weeks ago that shone fresh in Tony's mind. It drew him in for the creativity. He disliked the straight talk down the camera with zero emphasis on the dramatic flair. He believed to sell a match you had to think outside the box, and not be generic. At home, he could be but he had to source material for this and find somewhere to perform, and that he did.
Smoke drifted across a room somewhere in The Saxon Hotel, one of the countless empty storage rooms and white, presumably made of something other than marble, tombstones stood around the room. The camera focuses on Tony Thorn sitting on the floor amongst the props, a small knife in his hand as he spins it around his knee.
Tony: It's incredible the feeling you get when you feel you've lost something, something that felt special, something that felt unstoppable. Relationships.... Lives....
Tony looks up at the camera, his face clean shaven and his eyes are dead as they were every other time you seen him.
Tony: Careers. Everyone links grief to just the loss of a loved one but that is not strictly true, it's never been strictly true. In fact, grief comes in many forms and that is something I have proven I believe over time. I thought I lost my career, I thought I'd lost everything that came with being a wrestler, that I was slow, that I was not who I used to be, that I would no longer take a risk. I grieved for that and the decisions it made me feel were the best for me, the best for what was going on around me, were masked by the grief I had because of this.
Tony looks down again and presses the knife in to his knee just a little, not ripping the material covering his leg.
Tony: Grief makes us do strange things. Judgement gets clouded with it and this is something that we, as smart human beings, or at lest semi functional human beings, can eradicate on their own. When people focus on the loss of something, they lose sight of many other things, they're blinkered to the point they can only look in one direction and the world to either side just passes them by. They don't care about the concern people have for them, they don't see what fools they're making of themselves, because in their mind, they don't care what bad choices they're making that effects others, they look towards themselves and themselves only.
Tony lies the knife on the ground next to him, but his eyes stay firmly planted on it.
Tony: This is your problem, isn't it, O'Malley?
Tony's cold eyes look upwards but his head stays in the same position.
Tony: This is your issue. This is where you come in to this story because you can't seem to look either side because you are blinkered by grief. You might sit there and claim that you're over the grief of losing your wife, in what was a very odd relationship, and you may claim that I am picking on something about you that was long passed it's sell by date, your new lady friend might be set to run to Twitter right now to disperse my claims, because the moment you see the truth, her steak and lobster meal ticket fades to a happy meal. Either way, it's not passed it's sell by date at all O'Malley because it's driven you to everything, everything you've done in the last few years has been motivated by grief.
Tony puts his hands together as he looks down at the ground, his head slightly turned to the left.
Tony: Let's take a look at you O'Malley. From day one, you became a wrestler to honor Misty after her untimely demise. You went to undoubtedly the best training school in the world to put yourself in a position to make a dead woman proud of you. You did that because deep down, you thought it would help her never to be forgotten. You didn't have enough faith in her own legacy to be remembered, so you wanted to wrestle to help her be remembered. Are you telling me that wasn't driven by grief?
Tony's cold eyes dart upwards.
Tony: Of course it was. Speak to anyone in the wrestling world about top women wrestlers and Misty Waters would have been spoken about, she didn't need you to step in the ring, but grief had clouded your judgement. I'm sure if you believe in ghosts and being able to contact them, if you could speak to her, I'm sure she would have asked you for one thing, and one thing only, to look after your son, but in your grief stricken mind, you thought this was your best way forward.
Tony lifts his now pressed together hands to his face, his forefinger on his nose.
Tony: And then you were gone, because the grief consumed every part of your being, every part and you just couldn't face public life, cameras in your face, every interviewer in the world asking about Misty, because grief made it all about you, you selfish prick! Grief made you fucking selfish!
Tony's voice gets louder.
Tony: GRIEF TURNED YOU IN TO A FUCKING WASTE OF A HUMAN BODY! YOU RAN BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T FACE IT! GRIEF MADE YOU A COWARD!
Tony takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and continuing talking.
Tony: Only to reemerge when people have forgotten all about you, because of some unrelated woman....
He opens his pale eyes as he continues to talk.
Tony: Now I could have focused on how she is in control and you're akin to a robot at this point, but people will be doing that every time the prospect of facing you comes up, you can trust my word on that. They don't want to look at things as deeply as I do and I know that it's not because you're a beta male, it's not because you want to be second best, it's simply because you wasn't thinking straight when you allowed her to enter this phase of your life. To stop your grief, you are trying to replace your wife, you are trying to allow another woman to make your decisions for you. I had never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, but from what I can adhere, I could tell from anyone I have heard speaking about her and the fact that I have watch each and every Sin City Wrestling show, that she was a strong woman with unlimited leading skills. Your current flame does not possess those qualities but it's not your fault O'Malley, it's not your fault that you have allowed yourself to be put in this position. It all comes down to the grief you still feel. People have tried to tell you about it, tried to help you but you wouldn't listen to them.
Tony reaches for the knife and slowly gets to his feet, letting the smoke form around his lower legs.
Tony: I can help you O'Malley, because right now I know I have your attention, by simply explaining to you, that the grief will remain until you let go of the guilt you feel. It wasn't your fault, it was just her time. You, nor anyone else could have saved her. Forgive yourself, fate conspired that day, everyone made the choice to be where they were, so it's time for you to let go of the guilt and your grief shall fade. If not the grief will drive you here.
Tony takes a few steps towards two tombstones, one with the name Misty O'Malley written on it, a second with "? O'Malley" written on it. Tony slightly smiles.
Tony: My apologies, through out all that I could possibly do and find out, I didn't feel it right to announce your true name to people before you chose to do it yourself. No one likes things being revealed that are out of there control, takes the fun out of so many things.
He slightly shrugs his left shoulder.
Tony: That is where you will end up if you keep holding on to this grief from the past.
Tony quickly turns, throwing the knife in his hand at the tombstone of O'Malley, the knife digging in to the material in the letter O.
Tony: But I should probably talk about your wrestling career since you've returned. I should mentioned your failed attempt at the Sin City Wrestling World Heavyweight championship, but to me, that is not to be focused on, what is to be focused on is that Sin City Underground golden briefcase. It must have indeed be an exceptionally proud moment for you to have won such a prestigious prize but it does pose a slight conundrum for you. That metal box give you the option of a cowards way out, it gives you the chance to wait for someone to be tired from another match and then like a vulture, you can very much swoop in and pick the bones in true scavenger cliche.
Tony starts to walk around the room, not looking at the camera.
Tony: You need to ask yourself at that point do you want to be seen as a cheap shot confidence artist or legitimate. How do you want people to see you? Well, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SEE YOU!?!?!
Tony grits his teeth as he looks to the ground.
Tony: Especially after Sunday night. People will see when you have to stand face to face with someone, someone like me for example, that you just not be able to make the cut. I have spend months away from that hexagon ring, months of my career wasted, months of my life not getting to where I should be and it shouldn't be facing the likes of you, it should be facing champions, headlining shows but here I am O'Malley and I will take incredible satisfaction in the fact that I can make your star fade before it has a chance to burn bright. I will not be failing on my return, I can not, I must not, and I will not O'Malley. Since you reached up and grabbed that briefcase, a heavy pressure fell down with it, a huge amount of pressure that you never had even minutes before. In Sin City Underground, they could have protected you to give you opponents you should breeze through until that time you chose to cash in all those chips and tried to trade it for a championship belt, but in Sin City Wrestling, there's no one to protect you.
Tony finally peers down the camera, not an emotion crossing his face at all.
Tony: This is a jungle, because no one in Sin City Wrestling gives a shit about what you do in Sin City Underground, not one member on the roster sit there and see you as a big deal until you earn that respect from them. I sat and watched them for months between matches, I saw their mannerisms, and the way the look at each other but until you earn your stripes, they will never see your success elsewhere and an immediate threat. I am seeing that is the normal around there, so I too don't see your Sin City Underground achievements as a reason for me to respect you O'Malley. You're just someone who, like many before, have waved their past employment successes in people's faces and expected it to mean something here.
The smoke begins to rise around Tony.
Tony: You are very much in my domain O'Malley, and all owning that briefcase means is that your shortcomings will be exposed, it will educate you on the way you need to approach your chance when you choose to cash that in. I guess come Sunday, it will be I adding more grief, to your already grief ridden existence on this earth. I know you've heard my words, it's now down to you act on them, for you O'Malley, you have been enlightened.
The smoke rises above Tony's head, filling the room, as the scene slowly fades to black.
