Regret
It’s funny how regret can follow you. Like other memories and emotions, regret is something that can follow you throughout your entire life and morph and change. Regret turns to sadness, sadness to anger, and anger to hate, and before you know it, your entire existence becomes all about that one moment you wish you could change. A moment you wish you could go back in time and alter so that the future could be what you wanted it to be.
For Alex, regret had become something as natural as breathing. For the last 20 years, one regret had ruled his life above all others—his younger brother’s death. It was a moment in his life that touched him so deeply that his firstborn son was named after his younger brother. Dylan was born a year after his uncle had died. Alex had tried to be a good father. He was involved in Dylan’s life, even as the relationship with Dylan’s mother disintegrated to the point of breaking.
Alex never let his feelings about Dylan’s mother stop him from wanting to be there as a father.
But as the boy got older, the inevitable happened. He became a teenager and pulled away from both of his parents. Struggling to find common ground with his son, Alex pushed back and became more of a disciplinarian. And as Dylan’s mother pulled away to the point of not even contacting him, Alex instead made sure that he was the one to help forge Dylan into a man. But he wasn’t alone. His wife Sonya had been there for the boy too, becoming a real mother to him as his birth mother faded into memory. But now she was gone too, and the boy was struggling with it—and Alex had no idea how to help him.
”That’s enough for today. Come on.” Alex stood outside the main ring inside the gym. Dylan was inside it, drenched in sweat as a few of the other trainees leaned against the ropes and looked on. Dylan raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he should do. ”Come on kid…”
”But we aren’t done. I still have a few other drills to run and I have some submission classes.”
Alex put his hand up and shook his head. It silenced his son for a moment, the other trainees backing away as they understood the seriousness of the situation. Dylan took a deep breath and exhaled before nodding in acceptance, sliding from the ring and following his father. The two made their way out of the gym and down the street to a small burger place. They walked in, and Alex ordered before sitting down at a table. Dylan looked down and simply waited.
”Mushroom Swiss with caramelised onions and barbecue sauce, right? And a chocolate fudge milkshake?”
Dylan nodded, and a small smile escaped his lips before he forced himself back to his solemn expression. ”Yeah… you remembered….”
Alex sat back and clasped his hands together, tilting his head as he studied his son’s expression. ”Of course. I’m not going to forget something like that…” The two of them sat in silence for a moment. Their drinks arrived and Alex grabbed his milkshake, taking a sip before Dylan followed.
”So… what are we doing here? I’ve got a lot of training to do. You know that more than anyone.”
”I just thought you could use a break.”
”Why? Do you think that I’m falling behind? Am I not keeping up with the other guys physically? A lot of them have been training a lot longer than me, and I think I’ve done really well at being able to keep up with them. But if I need to work harder, then why have we come out here for a burger and a milkshake when I should be back at the gym?”
”D, would you stop?” Alex shook his head. His son took a deep breath and blinked a few times. Alex sighed heavily and sat forward. ”I just… I know you’ve been going through a lot. I mean everything. Over the last couple of years, not even just what happened between myself and Sonya. I just thought you could use a break. To decompress. Maybe just to let us both know that everything is gonna be okay.”
The burgers arrived. Dylan stayed silent for a moment and seemed to be deep in thought. Alex let his son continue thinking, not wanting to interrupt him. If there’s anything Alex had learned over the years, it was that letting someone work through their emotions was usually the best way of getting through to them. After a little bit more time, Dylan finally spoke. ”I know why she left… I know why you and her couldn’t be together….”
”And you know it didn’t have anything to do with you, right? Like, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
He nodded and shrugged before taking a bite of his burger. ”I know. It sucks, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no matter who else comes and goes from my life, I know that you’re gonna be there, Dad.”
Alex smiled, slowly taking a bite of his own burger before drinking the rest of his shake. They sat there for a moment just enjoying each other’s company. Dylan was right—Alex would never abandon any of his children. But Dylan, being the oldest, was the only one who understood. He was the only one who understood the gravity of the situation. The only one who understood that there would be regret. Anger. The raw emotions that come from losing someone and having a family broken up. Dylan understood. The others wouldn’t. And that was something Alex would definitely regret.
King of the Internet
”Maybe I’ve been looking at this the wrong way. See, the last few weeks I’ve been feeling like I’ve been demoted. Kicked out from the main event scene. Stopped from getting a rematch for the world championship that I so surely earned. You see, people tend to forget that I was the one who ended Finn Whelan’s reign. I was the one who took the championship from him and stopped the mediocrity that it had become.”
Alex paced back and forth, breathing deep as he refocused and tried to push down all the anger he was currently feeling.
”Then in one moment of weakness Carter was able to take that championship from me. And instead of getting a rematch I had to sit back and watch as he defended it against J2H. Everyone applauded, everyone loved it, he was viewed as a hero because he had vanquished someone whose ego was writing checks his actual ability could not cash. And now J2H is gone. Something we should all celebrate. There are only so many egos that can fit in this company and his ego was rivalling the size of mine—and I just couldn’t have that. So if Carter wasn’t going to get rid of him, it was going to fall to me.”
“But I didn’t have to. What I did do was beat Carter while he was the champion. I want you all to think about that. Think about the fact that in this business, if you beat the champion, you should become the number one contender. But that didn’t happen with me, did it? I beat the champion and then promptly got forgotten about. Forced to stand to the side while someone who is one of my trainees gets a shot ahead of me, and I am put in a match with three idiots fighting over a championship that is beneath me.”
“And it is beneath me.”
“That might seem arrogant to so many of you, but it’s true. Hell, it’s even beneath Eddie Lyons. Eddie should be going for that world championship. I should be going for that world championship. Bill Barnhart is the type of person who should be going for the Internet championship. Along with Miles, because he has had infinite chances to become world champion and just keeps falling on his ass. And as personally entertaining as it is for me to watch Miles fail constantly, again and again, it is getting a little bit tiring when I haven’t even had my rematch for that world championship after beating his fucking husband.”
Alex growled and threw his hands in the air.
”But I am going to take all of this chicken shit and turn it into chicken salad. I am going to go into this Tables, Ladders and Chairs match and walk out with the Internet championship. Because I can. And because I need to prove a point. Eddie Lyons thinks he’s better than me. He thinks he is the next big thing, that he deserves to be a champion and I don’t. The other three men in this match all deserve to have me beating the crap out of them for various reasons. Eddie is standing in front of me due to his own hubris. A man who believes he is worthy of standing as an equal to someone like me when in reality he is nowhere close. As much as he wishes he was one of the best of the best, the truth is that Eddie Lyons is a bridesmaid who will never be a bride.”
“But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Eddie? You stood there and told me that legends don’t have to remind people of their legend. Listen to yourself. Do you know the kind of people we deal with? You may think I’m an arrogant, smug piece of shit, and you might think that I treat you like an afterthought, but I want you to look at everyone else in this company. See, while you are smart enough to acknowledge everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been through, the majority of people we face on a weekly basis don’t. Do you think Bill Barnhart has the same level of respect for my career as you do?”
“He doesn’t… many don’t.”
“You want to look down on me because I’m willing to take shortcuts? Really, you should be looking up to me because I’m the only one honest enough to admit it. How many have lied to your face? Really Eddie, how many have lied to your face and made you look like a fool because you believed them out of the goodness of your heart, only for them to betray you? You are a patsy to people who eat you up and destroy you because they are willing to pull the trigger when you aren’t. You don’t have a killer instinct. You don’t have what it takes to become a real champion, so you constantly come back to the Roulette or the Internet championship, knowing that they are attainable. World championships will always elude you until you can pull your head out of your ass and become unbreakable…”
He couldn’t help but laugh at himself, using Eddie’s own nickname against him.
”But there is still hope for Eddie Lyons. Something I cannot say for Miles Kasey. A kid who had all the talent in the world, talent that I saw and wanted to nourish. Talent that everyone in this company and in this business has been willing and wanting to explode. We have all been waiting, Miles. All of us. We’ve been wanting you to live up to that potential. To lead us into a new era. To become a world champion. In the end, we were wrong about you. Your husband is the world champion and he’s the one who broke through that glass ceiling before you. And if I’m being completely honest, you are the last member of your family that deserves that spot.”
“Shit, at this point LJ should be going for the world championship. LJ should be in this match instead of you. You are boring and uninteresting, and every single time I look at you, I wonder why I wasted so much of my time trying to teach you how to be a real professional wrestler. All of that time, all of that effort, everything I ever did for you, and all you have done is piss it away with stupid decisions. You wanted a world championship match? You should have gone up to Finn and asked for it. And then if he said no, you should’ve punched him in the mouth face-to-face. But you didn’t. And now you wanna come up with some kind of lame excuse as to why you fail, while also telling me that I’m a hypocrite for doing what I did to Finn.”
“But there is a difference between you and me, Miles. You were friends with him. Finn cared about you. He and I? We’ve always hated each other. And yes, his ex-wife fell for me, his ex ex-wife wanted me to make his life a living hell and to take that world championship from him—but he and I were never friends. You were. And you took that friendship and pissed it down the toilet all for a shot at something you could never win, because you simply do not have that level of talent. And you do not have the talent to beat me. And that’s what you’re going to have to do to become the Internet champion.”
“Beat me…”
“And I have to tell you, kid, I don’t see you being able to do it. You’ll try. You’ll make grand statements about how you are going to overcome being an underdog, and how you are going to rise up and break through that glass ceiling—but in the end, you just won’t be good enough. This is the cycle you’ve gotten yourself into and unlike others, you do not have the will or the way to pull yourself out of it. You are spiralling right down the toilet bowl. And you can’t pull yourself away. I hope that I’m wrong about you. I really do. I hope that I fail to become the Internet champion and that I look up to see you holding that title over your head—but I just can’t see it.”
He chuckled and rolled his eyes before folding his arms over his chest, shifting his focus to the final man in this match.
”But at least Eddie and Miles have something about them that can be considered a redeemable quality. Bill, on the other hand, has nothing like that. It’s been said many times that this company would be better off if Bill and his wife just left and took Felix with them—and I stand by that statement. But do you know why I stand by that statement, Bill? Do you know why every single time I have been put into a match with you, all I do is roll my eyes and feel sick to my stomach that I have to deal with you? Because it has nothing to do with the type of man you are. You are a professional wrestler, you are a fat, tough human being who can take a beating. You love your wife, you love your dog. You have your friends. There is nothing inherently wrong with you as a man.”
“You simply live your life, try hard, and want to do what you love as a profession. The reason I despise you so much, Bill, is because you are taking up opportunities for others. Here we are in this four-way match for the Internet championship and you did nothing to earn it. You got placed in this match as a warm body because we needed an extra. You are not going to win this match. You are not going to be the Internet champion. You are not going to get anywhere close to that championship, and every single person in that arena knows it. Miles knows it. Eddie knows it. I know it.”
“Shit… deep down, you know it.”
“But you are still going to fumble-fuck your way through a promo, you are still going to turn up to this match, you are still going to attempt to win it and get in all of our ways. You are still going to be involved in all of this and at the end of the day, all you are doing is making a nuisance of yourself because you cannot be a real challenge. So the four of us are going to do everything we can to win this title. We are going to do everything we can to grab a hold of it and give it a better life than it had around Kevin fucking Carter’s waist. And while part of me thought of it as a demotion, I’m now seeing that the Internet title needs me. It needs my experience. It needs my name. It needs everything that I am so the Internet championship can thrive and become a prize. That is something the three of you simply cannot do. So I’m going to save it, and I’m going to become the King of the Internet.”
