Author Topic: The Secret of My Success  (Read 600 times)

Offline JC

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The Secret of My Success
« on: March 04, 2022, 11:10:38 PM »
Blackened pride still burns inside
This shell of bloody treason
Here's my gun for a barrel of fun
For the love of living death



August 19, 2021

The way we succeed, or don't succeed, depends on a variety of factors in our lives. That's not something people like to be told, but it's true. Society would have a person believe that if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, whatever those are, they can do anything they set their minds to.

That's not the way the world works.

In fact, it depends on a variety of factors. Hard work is one thing, but there are plenty of people who work hard and get nowhere. There are others who don't put any work in and thanks to a combination of factors like what opportunities they get, where they were born, etc, they basically fall into success. It's the way of the world.

These are the thoughts that Joe had been pondering late in the summer of 2021. Because he had been working very hard to get himself to the top once again. Just one more time before he finally pulled the trigger on retirement. And that landed him in a coma.

He had since been released from the hospital and announced a semi-retirement. He sat in the Black Horse Tavern & Pub. He seemed to recall coming here once with his father for some reason or another when he was very little. His father used to travel for work, and there was the odd week or two during the summers when he'd take Joe with him.

For the life of him, Joe couldn't recall any other reason he'd have stepped foot in Mendham. Sure, it wasn't that far from his hometown, but just because it's there, doesn't mean one has to go.

Joe felt the same way about a number of offers he was getting to return. OCW. Some place in Seattle that seemed tucked away in its own world. They wanted to make their names off his and he wasn't in much of a fighting mood to let them. Falling through the ring and leaving pints of his blood in Reno took a lot of the fight out of him.

So he found himself in Mendham, trying to stir up old memories as he haphazardly stirred his lukewarm coffee.

At 2 PM in the afternoon, there was no one really to bother him. It was him, some retiree couple in the back and at the other end of the bar, a Japanese man in his fifties or so, who clearly didn't want to be bothered.

Maybe a place like this was where people like that went. Because Joe didn't particularly want to be bothered either, no matter who was constantly dragging his name through the mud. Let them. He'd made his mark.

His cell phone sat open and with the power of the internet, he was watching one of his more recent matches on replay. A match that he, by all rights, would have won had his own body not collapsed on him.

"JC can't walk, and he can't defend himself!" a voice shouted from the screen. Clearly the levelheaded one of whoever was calling it.

Another, older, grumpier voice then replied, "Well it's his own dumbass fault for putting himself in there!"

Joe chuckled. A waitress came up and eased into his line of sight, leaning down to take a gander. Joe didn't mind. It's not like he had anything to hide.

"Oh wow, that's you!" She said. "You're a professional wrestler?"

"Was," Joe corrected her. "Or maybe still am. Not too sure these days."

On the screen, JC throws the champion backward with a half-assed German, only made so by the fact that his legs were half-numb. He was lucky that the pinched nerve had long since been repaired.

"Looks like you were doing well enough," she said, not really interested. She poured some more coffee that he wouldn't drink and walked off to take care of something else.

The Japanese man at the end of the bar huffed. "Terrible performance," the man said. "I was at show. Flawed execution."

Joe raised his head for a moment and cocked an eyebrow.

"Can I help you, sir?"

The man, using this as an invitation, walked up and pointed out what the JC on the screen was doing wrong. That JC was preparing to knock out a man with his boot, before his legs gave out and he got himself pinned.

"This. This wrong," he said, pointing a bony finger at the screen. "No fire. You know better than try to run, with how you feel."

"Yeah," JC agreed. "I know. I knew better than to even take the match, to be honest. But I wanted..."

"To relive glory days? You can't do that as Answer. Answer in past. Past is gone. Only present."

The man, who spoke well enough English for someone that was clearly not born in America, amused Joe more than anything. How did this random person, who just so happened to attend a show he was at, know what to do in wrestling. Or for that matter, think he knew so much of JC that he could tell him how to wrestle?

Whether that match was where everything went wrong was beside the point. JC tried his best, he failed. He tried to win another title. He failed there too. He was making peace with that. Or at least that's what he told himself.

"Yeah, well, every fan has their own opinion," he said, pushing himself out of his seat. He snatched the phone away from the table and stuffed it into his pocket. "Now if you'll excuse me, sir, I'm not in the mood for..."

What happened next is something only a handful of people witnessed and none of them would ever speak of it. Joe wouldn't even know how to describe something like that to anyone that asked. This old, wild-eyed man slapped Joe in the face, as hard as he could. As if he wanted to fight right here in this quaint little restaurant.

Joe could feel his teeth rattle and his ears rang a little. Once the world came back into focus, all he saw was red. A certain dark passenger was echoing inside his head, demanding that Joe take this man's head off for having the audacity to even touch him. Unleash a little of the old ultraviolence, just like he would have in the company that man was clearly a fan of.

"Listen here, you decrepit old FUCK," JC said, putting Joe to the side for the time being. "If you really watched my matches, you'd know what you just did is going to land me in a prison."

JC's eyes narrowed and he felt his skin growing hot. The man, whoever he was, stood resolute. In fact, he hauled back and hit JC even harder. He actually felt his jaw pop, then tasted bitterness as he realized he bit his own tongue. Whoever this was, they wanted a fight. And JC had every intention of killing him right then.

JC would kill.

He would kill indeed.

"You show respect. I am The Killer. Tetsuo Miike. I train Akira Kanemura. I train Hide Yamazaki. They don't admit it, but I did."

Whether or not that was true, JC didn't much care. But...he felt himself calming. Because truth be told, there was part of him that wanted to see what the man's deal was. And if he was dead, he couldn't tell his story.

Stories were apparently all the rage, and something told him this man had a very interesting one.

The waitress returned and cautiously held her cell phone. "I'm so sorry, he never acts like this. I can call the police right now if you..."

Joe returned to his sense and held up a hand. "It's okay," he said. "Just a disagreement between two veterans. Right, Tetsuo?"

The mood was palpable, and it felt like violence could break out at any moment. JC wanted it to, but Joe wanted to get to the bottom of this bizarre series of events. And right now, the wise mind won out. He saw something change in his newfound acquaintances eyes and he turned back to look at the lady, revealing a grin that showed at least one and a half teeth missing.

"So sorry!" he replied. "Bad habit of wrestlers. We go outside."

"Yeah, we'll continue our discussion out there." Joe replied. "I think we've got a lot of catching up to do."

Joe placed a 20 on the counter and then, thinking the situation called for it, another for the waitress having to deal with everything she dealt with.

"Yes," Tetsuo agreed. "We will talk. I will tell you why you kill past, then kill opponents in present."




The killer's breed or the Demon's seed
The glamour, the fortune, the pain
Go to war again, blood is freedom's stain
Don't you pray for my soul anymore?



February 27, 2022

The restaurant incident was months ago and yet still fresh in JC's mind. It was Tetsuo Miike, of course, who JC had been keeping in his back pocket. He had been relying on the man for his apparent expertise. Even now, he wasn't sure if he could trust him or if the story he had been telling him was true. But there was a fascination in their talks and it awakened something in him that led him onto a run no one at his age should have.

Kill the past, so you can kill your opponents in the present.

They were words that JC had been living by in the past six months. Ignoring everything and everyone that had brought him, professionally, to that point. As a result, he hadn't been pinned in over a year. He gave OCW the only noteworthy main event it ever had without ever signing a contract. He ran roughshod over PWV and was doing the same in SCW.

And now, he crept into the deluxe apartment he shared with family, holding the PWV World title.

He would go say hi to Stacy and then go to bed. Hers or his depended on her mood, as they were still figuring things out. But first, he had someone else he wanted to see.

Joe moved down the hallway and peeked into his four-year-old daughter's bedroom, who as he guessed, wasn't asleep at all.

"Why did I know you'd be awake?" He asked, propping the belt up on his shoulder and leaning against the door frame.

"Mommy said you'd be home soon. I wanted to stay awake!" She said, loudly at first, then reducing her volume quickly. There was a quick giggle as she realized she was playing fast and loose with the rules. Not that Joe would have done anything to discipline her. For as battle-scared and monstrous as he was, his offspring had him wrapped around her finger.

"Well Mommy probably told you to go to sleep too," he said. He moved to her beside and kneeled down, and she threw her arms around him. He had only been gone a day or two, as Philadelphia wasn't that far removed from New Jersey. But she always acted like he was gone for longer. He appreciated that about Lizzie. The world could turn its back on him and at least for now, she never would.

She leaned back when she realized he was holding something.

"What's that, Daddy?" she asked.

"Oh, Daddy won this."

He lifted the belt up so she could get a better view. It glimmered in glow of the nightlight.

"Doing the wrestling?" She asked.

"Uh-huh. Want to look at it?"

She yawned. "Not really."

Joe laughed. He had a feeling she wouldn't give a shit. He was right.

"But I'm proud of you for winning it, Daddy. Mommy said you really wanted it."

He smiled warmly. "Thank you, Lizzie. Why don't you go to sleep now?"

She nodded, said something that was half a yawn and half words of affection, then laid her head back down. He brushed her hair away from her eyes and kissed her forehead, then slipped out as quickly as he crept in.

The realization that he had finally achieved something he had been wanting for half a decade had been slowly dawning on him on the way back. Part of him was relieved. Part of him was ecstatic. Another part of him was beginning to wonder what was left.

But he knew what was left. So he went back outside the apartment. Once out on the balcony, he set the phone on the rail and hit record. He didn't have much to say, because what he had to say was going to be short and sweet.

"Austin James Mercer," he said, letting every single syllable of the man's name fall with the appropriate amount of venom he felt it deserved. "I have a question for you. What do deadlines mean to you?"

He was kneeling, cradling his newly won World title. He thought to bring the mask with him but decided against it. There was no need at the moment. The Bogeyman need not come out to play just yet.

"Deadlines can be pretty stressful for a lot of people. Miss a deadline at school, you fail the assignment. Miss a deadline at work, you could lose your job. There's a lot of pressure to succeed within a certain amount of time. Some people wait around until that deadline, then realize they shouldn't have. Some people get their task completed early so they don't have to deal with the pressure."

He stood up now, towering over the vantage point provided by the phone's placement.

"The worst deadlines are those we impose on ourselves. Because as I'm sure you're aware, no one will ever be a harsher critic on us than we are. And by "we", I mean wrestlers. If you show me a wrestler that is completely confident in every single thing they do, I'll show you a goddamn liar. We're a neurotic bunch, but that is the secret to our success. It's what pushes us to do what we do, to strive to be better. It's the reason we're here for competition anyway."

JC was opening up a little more than he would have liked, going back to old speaking styles and perhaps even old personas as he delivered this speech. Killing the past wasn't necessarily easy when it shaped everything you were, which is why it was always a work in progress. Just like JC.

"I put a deadline on myself. I gave myself a certain amount of time to win myself another World title or get myself out of the game. And here I am, the Pro Wrestling Valor World Champion."

He lifted the belt up as he said this, before letting it unfurl from his grasp and slink down to the ground.

"I know, right? 'What's the point?' It's not the SCW belt. It's not the cowboy's belt. And trust me, when the time comes that I'm against that cowboy, I'll turn that old stallion into glue. But I'm making a point here. That point is, what deadlines do I have now that I've achieved my overall goal? Shouldn't the Bogeyman just slip back into the shadows, ending his reign of terror before it really began? Become an urban legend of an entity that might have swallowed SCW whole if not for his own decision to leave?"

JC shook his head.

"No, because see, the deadline is now yours. It's now that of SCW's. You now have a deadline to stop me. There's now a clock ticking away to Doomsday and Austin, believe me when I tell you that we're about two minutes to midnight. You all now have a deadline to prevent yourself from becoming part of the continuing body count. From preventing this devil running roughshod over your roster. Do you get it? The clock is ticking down on you now, Mercer."

His lips curled upward and he showed some teeth in his malicious grin.

"How do you deal with that pressure, Mercer? Because it's now on you to stop me to save SCW. It's on Fenrir. It's on Knox. It's on Davison. Which one of you poor brave heroes will step up to save this godforsaken company from the devil's work? Me, I thrive under pressure. I impose deadlines on myself regularly because I do my best work when I'm facing the firing squad."

Another shake of the head, with a chuckle.

"Don't get it twisted, Austin. You're no stepping stone to Fenrir. No, you're in the best possible position here. You can play spoiler. You can look into the face of the monster and kill its destruction in the womb. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Austin James Mercer, the man who once dethroned the White Wolf...and stopped the Bogeyman's unheard of streak. Everyone's got to lose eventually, even me. You could be that man, Austin. Every single motherfucker on this roster wants to know what have you done lately, and you could be the one that looks, them in the eyes and says, 'You know what I did? I PINNED JC.'"

His speech began to reach a fever pitch. Even he was getting caught up in it.

"Will you? Won't you? Will you? Won't you? Won't you join this dance? Fenrir wants to make me wait. But you won't will you? Will you finally give me the competition I crave? Will you finally be the one in SCW to really unleash the beast? I don't need a stepping stone, Austin. I don't want you to be. What I need, what I crave, is someone who can push my limits. Who can make me better. Who can make me excel under that pressure."

He lowered his head and the grin slipped away. But as he kept talking, it creeped back onto its face in spite of himself.

"So why not you? Why don't you take THAT from the White Wolf too? He wants that trophy so bad he's practically flirting with me on Twitter. Take it from him Austin. Come at me and TAKE my head for your wall. Because if you don't, if you don't come at me with everything you've got, there's only one way this story ends.

JC Kills."