Excuses for Nothing
Scene One | Off-Camera
(tw; visions of gore, celestial horror)“Failures, both of you. Sean and yourself.” The voice of Vita Mors bounced around in Alex’s skull. Sitting once more in the office that belonged to the illusive figure. Alex had the mask on his face, having become more acclimated to it. Having come to accept it. A useless endeavour.
“Take the mask off. I no longer have need of you.” Mors demanded, his voice rolling around inside his head. Despite the resistance his arms moved up and gripped the edges of the mask. A battle within himself against his very body. Holding the edges of it.
“I can fix this. I’ll do anything to fix this.” Alex muttered to himself, holding still at the edges of the mask. His arms stiffening as he sat locked in battle with himself. Then his arms lowered, back to his side. A long exhale of relief. Of calm.
“Let me show you something, Alexander.” Mors said, his mind telling him to move towards the giant window behind the desk. The window that looked out into nothingness. The window that looked into the heart of The Void itself.
“Trust me, for a moment.” Mors said. Alex stood slowly, walking around the large ornate desk and toward the window. Suddenly it felt like he was sitting as a passenger in his own body. His psyche pulled into a holding cell in his own mind. He could see the world beyond, but he could do nothing to affect it. Mors had taken hold of him.
“Failure leads to decay. Decay leads to nothingness. In nothingness, I reign supreme.” Mors said firmly. Alex’s arms stretched out, his fingers flexing and stiffening. The markings upon the mask begin to glow, bursts of colour and light exploding in the space beyond the window. Then the world went dark. Moments passed, he wasn’t sure how long. It felt like mere seconds, but hours, weeks and years all at the same time. Existing in not just a world of darkness, but a world of nothing.
Then there was light.
He was standing in the same office, but it was… different. Beyond the window didn’t exist a The Void but what could only be described as a Flesh Pit. It was alive, almost like it was watching him. They gorey, pink and red flesh, oozing with a plethora of fluids. It was like it was breathing, the ‘flesh’ expanding and contracting at different intervals. No matter where he looked, there was just more and more of the flesh creature, and there right in the centre? A giant eye. Bloodshot, and without the ability to blink. A familiar eye.
His own eye?
Nausea washed over Alex as he stumbled back a little. His feet felt stuck to the floor. Looking down he noticed that the floor was covered with a similar fleshy substance. Gooey tendrils of what he could only assume was blood sticking to his shoes refusing to give away. His stomach wanted to come up, but his body wouldn’t actually give up. Managing to move backwards he placed his hands on the desk. It seemed normal. His eyes cast upwards towards the ceiling.
It was like a scene from a meat freezer. Countless bodies hanging from the ceiling, eyes removed, hearts torn from their chests. All of their faces cut and stretched into smiles. Then a hand fell upon Alex’s shoulder. Vita Mors hand.
“This? This is where I exist. This is the world as I see it, Alexander. This is the place at which I can pull anything. In this place? I am God.” Mors said softly. He stepped up toward the window, the flesh beyond seemingly quivering in… fear? The eye rapidly flitted about seeking an escape. Wanting to stop looking at the ‘creature’ that stood at the glass.
“I am not benevolent. I am not forgiving. I am a being of restricted power. I needed the Triad to be free of the chains that bind me here. I needed your body to be free of the captivity of this tower. I need people to be my eyes, my hands, my feet. I am infinitely powerful, but I am infinitely controlled. Trapped by the invisible elite that exists beyond the veil.” Mors sounded visibly frustrated. His voice wasn’t just coming from him anymore. It was from everywhere, all at once.
It was then Alex noticed it. Chains that stretched from the ceiling and somehow through the floor. Chains that ended in shackles wrapped around Mors hands and feet. A thread connected a shackle from his throat to the centre of the eye in the flesh pit. It was as he said, he did seem to be a prisoner here.
“Why are you showing me this?” Mors turned to look over his shoulder, and waved his hand forward. Waved Alex towards him. Alex’s body obliged, forcing him to walk forward. To step through the muck that was trying to hold him in place.
“If you show me the world, Alexander. I can be free of this, for only a moment. I need you… to find me a permanent host. Someone who is happy to be sealed away. To be trapped in this place in my stead. To allow me to be… free. You said you would do anything. This is what I need from you.” Mors spoke slowly, commandingly.
“I think I know someone.” Alex said. His mind instantly went to Sullivan. There was the problem of him being currently locked up, but that was… something he could fix. If this was the place that Sullivan would be forced to live. To be stuck in forever. Then that was almost as good as having James back. To know that Sullivan Pleasant would be stuck in this hell, forever. That was the least he could do.
“Oh, Alexander? If you fail me. I will leave you here to watch as I take everything you’ve ever loved, and destroy it. In this world, and every other one that exists beyond it. You are mine until I say otherwise.” Mors said, the threat of violence in his voice was very real. Then with a click of his fingers, Alex snapped his head back waking up. He was no longer in either version of the office. He was sitting on a bench, on a road he didn’t recognise, in a city he wasn’t sure of. All he could see was those bodies, hanging from the ceiling. Eyeless, heartless and eternally smiling. Alex swallowed down the fear, kicking himself. What the fuck had he got himself into?
Failure, Nevermore
Scene Two | On-Camera
“A step before the end, and it all comes falling down again. Some might think I’d be upset about it. That I was going to throw a tantrum and threaten to ruin Sean’s life. In any other circumstance, that might be the case. The truth right now? I couldn’t care less. I didn’t want to be part of the Blast from the Past. That’s the truth of it. I didn’t even want to be an active competitor right now. A broken record, sure, but I need to reiterate it. I need to reiterate it because I don’t think people understand it.”
“This was never meant to be my year. This was Luna’s year. This was the year for her to ascend, sit at the top and spit on the mewling vermin below. So the outcome? That’s the dream I always wanted. I wanted to be in her corner watching as she succeeded. As she climbed and clawed her way to the top. We don’t seem to get what we want though. I wasn’t simply just allowed to be her manager. I wasn’t simply allowed to just walk away. No, I was made to keep on competing. At threat of costing Luna her year.”
“At the threat of costing us everything, so I bit the bullet. I stayed here. I entered the Blast from the Past, in hopes that somebody would at least see some sense in putting Luna and I together. So that I could be the one at her side to take her to the peak. Things never go the right way. Across the ring from each other, everyone would think it was inevitable destruction. Mark Cross had to question our marriage. Bobbie Dahl tried to assume that Luna was simply a chess piece for me. Exceptional doubt from a crowd of people who clearly haven’t been listening. Anyone who had actually listened, they would’ve known my intentions.”
“If they had been, they’d know what I wanted all along. I wanted Luna to be the one to win. I wanted Luna to have that chance to bang heads with Kayla Richards. So am I upset about the outcome? Not in the fucking slightest. This is exactly how things were meant to be. This is exactly how I wanted things to go. Finn gets to wipe the fucking floor with Sean Parker, and Luna gets to silence all the cunts who’ve doubted her from day one. That’s picture perfect.”
“At some point, Luna and I? We’re coming for those Mixed Tag Titles. At some point, we take everything. We hold championship upon championship, and when our contracts run out in October? We hold Sin City Wrestling fucking ransom, and walk out the door holding everything. The Mixed Tag Belts, the Bombshell World Championship, and with the opportunity now laid before me? I guess we’re taking the Roulette Title too. See this is a game of fucking chess. The long play to ensure that maximum damage is done to this place when we leave.”
“Which brings me to you, Aiden. Not the first time we’ve come across each other. Not the first time something kooky is being thrown our way. No, this for us? This is an inevitability. See this goes further than just you. A while back, when I was throwing caution to the wind to destroy Ben Jordan and Samantha Marlowe, I told a little lion something. He’s just keeping warm, what belongs to me. That Roulette Championship that Peter Vaughn thought he brought prestige to? Eddie Lyon was just holding it until I wanted it back.”
“And he couldn’t even do that. The long and the short of it? Eddie had one job, and he failed to do that. He failed to keep appearances, and in turn? He lost it to you. To the one guy around here more Australian than me. Dirty poser, some might call me. See I spent a long time in Australia. I spent a long time schmoozing and talking shit with the guys there, and I feel like that is my real home. Where I first got married, where I opened a bar. Where I found my feet in life and found something outside this ring to live for. I might be Texan born, but I am motherfucking Melbourne made.”
“Aiden Reynolds? Now that’s a bloke I can look at and go ‘yeah, he’s true blue’. Adelaide posers like Krystal Wolfe? Not my cup of tea. I know a sweet little redhead who comes from country nowhere, and she’s all the Adelaide I can handle. You though, Aiden? You I can appreciate. I can appreciate a man who knows himself. I can appreciate a man who can see himself as the guy. I can appreciate you, Aiden, because I don’t have to like you. I don’t even have to respect you, and for that? That I can appreciate you. Unfortunately, Aiden. I also have this tremendously elephantine memory, and things you’ve said in the past? They’re unfortunately going to come back to fucking bite you.”
“Failure.”
“That is what you once called me. A failure, Aiden. The man who fell from grace. Relevant and popular, to a failure. To the man who should have been in the main event, and instead, I got stuck pimping out your poor ass for a bit of mindless bloody violence. I wonder, does the tune change now that you get to sit on that mountain? To be the man who held the belt for a whole fourteen days? I wonder if things change just a little bit for you, Aiden. I wonder if things are a little bit clearer now. Now that there is nothing but you and I. Now that there is nothing but you, me and that pretty championship. That championship I am all too familiar with. That championship, that I beat Finn Whelan for.”
“Oh, but that is easily forgotten, right? I’d forget it too, really. Truth is, the man I beat then? A shadow of the man that now stands at the top. The Finn Whelan that lost the Roulette Championship to Alexander Raven? I wouldn’t pay that boy to fill the current Finn’s glass with water. I wonder though, could Aiden Reynolds have beaten that Finn? Could Aiden Reynolds even lace the boots of the Finn Whelan that once held that championship that you do now?”
“See, colour me surprised that the man who couldn’t even make it past Bill fucking Barnhart has the audacity to have ever called me a failure. The truth? I have been down on my luck. I’ve never denied it. I’ve never pretended otherwise. All in all, I think I’m back on track. It took some doing, and I definitely had a fugue to pull myself out of, but. I’m doing it. I made it all the way to the end of the Blast from the Past, and you? Don’t think you even got a sniff of it. Forgive me, I’m a failure though.”
“Ignore the fact that I am easily the only person in all of Sin City Wrestling to hold two victories over Finn Whelan. Ignore the fact that in the last month I beat both Peter Vaughn and Mark Cross. Ignore the fact that I have consistently beaten juggernauts of this company, and in the wrestling world as a whole. Ignore the fact that I spent the last twelve months fighting a murderer’s fucking row of talent to prove myself one of the best in the world, and I only came up short to the biggest fucking draws in the entirety of wrestling. Ignore all of that, Aiden. Ignore it, because I’m a failure.”
“Simply put, if I’m a failure, what does that make you? Someone I can appreciate, sure. Someone I can show utter resentment for, and care not a single bit when I throw you back to your den and let them lick at your wounds for you will not be coming home in one piece. No, Aiden. You got a taste at My Bloody Valentine. Ben Jordan got a fucking glimpse when we tore him and Sam apart at Blaze of Glory. The world got to fucking understand the limits I will go to, if I get the opportunity. The Roulette Championship? It was made for people like me. It was made for the ‘failures’ who’ve got everything to fucking lose. It was made for the ‘failures’ who’ve got everything to prove. It was made so that when I stomp your fucking ass, nobody will even bat an eye.”
“I can hear them now, can’t you, Aiden? They’re saying ‘yeah, that Aiden guy is good, but I feel sorry for him. Not even making it past the first defence? That’s rough.’ They’re doubting you, Aiden. They’re doubting you, because as much as I ‘choke’ at the big time, there’s another truth in it. There was only one man who was deemed good enough to stand against J2H. There was only one man who made a blood feud so fucking important it came only second to the world title matches. There is only one man that they refuse to let walk, because of how much they need him. They need me, Aiden. Sin City doesn’t need you. It doesn’t need the retiring Goth. It doesn’t need the walk-in wannabes like Mark Cross, and soon, the man of glass, Peter Vaughn? He’ll learn it doesn’t need him either.”
“They only need me, and that is why they can’t let me go. That is why they have to continue to create these vortexes of deceit. As much as I shake and rattle the foundations, as much as I spit in the face of those who would decide to manipulate. They won’t do anything about it. I nearly ran Jayden Harris over at Into the Void, and what happened as a result? They let Victoria book me against you. They handed the Roulette Championship to me on a silver fucking platter. That’s what those in control did. I nearly kill a man, and I am rewarded for it. Rewarded because there is nobody who is a bigger draw than Alexander Raven. I may not be the World Champion, but everybody knows who I am. Everybody is watching Alexander Raven. Every fucking person wants to see me succeed because that is what matters most.”
“Not even those who live in your own home believe in you. Kayla doesn’t believe in you. Finn’ll try to tear me down, but he’ll never tell you you can beat me. I doubt even Kallie herself would back your ass in this race. Any other person standing across from you in that ring, any other night. I’d put my money on you Aiden. I think you do have something, even if it goes against my better judgement to admit so. Any other time, any other place and any other person. You’d walk in and walk out with at least one win as Roulette Champion. Unfortunately, you have me.”
“I wouldn’t have called for the match, Aiden. It is unfortunate that Victoria chose this, but that is the way fate goes. I appreciate the way that she thinks. Pitting the perpetual PDA couple against each other? I like it. Throwing the new guys, Jack and Felix at each other? I like it. Making the mouthy little brat Harper put up or shut up? I fucking love it. The only thing I don’t love? It is our match. The main event of Climax Control, the maiden defence of the Roulette Championship by The Aussie Wolf Aiden Reynolds, and he’s got no chance in fucking hell.”
“I have plans, I have things I need to be doing. I have people I need to talk to, and I have things in place. I don’t need this match, and I don’t fucking need you. But on principle, Aiden. On principle alone. I have to take what you worked so hard to win. To earn. I’m going to leave you destitute. No championship for you. I’m going to tell the world about what my plans are, and then I’m going to leave you lying in a puddle of your own fluids, and this is all because of one thing.”
“I can appreciate you Aiden, but I cannot forgive you. So when this failure leaves you lying on your back staring at the lights. Or I have to choke you out, or even better. Make you bleed all over that fucking ring. I want you to remember. You made this personal, when you called me a failure all those months ago. Just like the corvid of my namesake, I don’t fucking forget a sleight. So for you, I hope you’re ready to lose it all. To have to go home to the wayward apartment for lost wrestlers, and tell them, you’re just not good enough to stop the failure. To look at Kayla, and tell her. ‘You were right, he beat the stupid out of me.’”
“I can’t wait to extinguish your fucking light.”
“Have you been listening? I need you to listen.”
