Our Happy Nest

[mattknox]

You fucking clown.

See, Allen, I really want to like you. I like to laugh, I like humor. Keeps me young. And as much as I hate to admit it, you’re pretty fucking funny. I guess, with a face like that, you’d have to be though wouldn’t you?

Damn, ten seconds in and i’m resorting to ‘you’re ugly.’ this might not be that strong a promo. I can hear the smarks calling me boring now, rising up in one voice to support the clown. Cheer on the funny man to beat the broody man.

It’s amazing how often the wants of the few or many are all so fucking stupid, don’t you think Allen?

…Don’t you? At all?

It’s a fair question. Tracking your career, it feels like you just….do things to do them, if that makes sense? No clear goal in your path which I suppose is a blessing ,considering how little you have to show for all those stops you’ve made on your way to here.

Right here. About to stand across from the greatest fighter you’ve ever stepped into a ring with.

Mayhaps I’m being a little cruel, because there is plenty to be proud of with your career path. More than most i’ve faced here.Won the World Series of Wrestling, Very impressive. And you were PWE’s…Excellence Champion, was it? Never lost it, did you? Always an odd spot, holding the title until the company closes. Sure you can brag for a few weeks about never having lost it…

But eventually, it’s just something in a trophy case that doesn’t matter anymore. In the snap of a finger it goes from being Everything to Something. From all that matters to something that doesn’t, and in your most private moments? Maybe it never did.

Which I’m sure brings you to the justifications you’ve laid in your small mind, the part that isn’t dedicated to deflecting harsh truths and words you’d rather ignore into jokes only you really find funny. The part that, when given room to breathe, does things like drive you toward being the Excellence Champion….the part that’s telling you now that your next great accomplishment is going to come when you become the Invictus Champion.

Tragic, that it’s beginning to melt into the rest of the mess between your ears.

Have you paid any attention since you got here, Allen? I can understand if you haven’t, most of the air time is someone named Blake, or someone that’s riding the coattails of someone named Blake, pontificating about their own superiority while politicking to only be booked against one another, and JC Keeton. It’s a boring show to have forced upon you.

But if you stuck around for the good parts, you’d see what I have endured and what I have accomplished on my way to getting the Invictus Title around my waist. You know, I didn’t even set out to get the damn thing? It only became an opportunity when it’s previous owner decided to try and use me to improve their station in the company.

Rewind. Listen to that again, Allen. Do it a third time. Hell, do it as many times as you need to to understand.

Knight answered a challenge, and then monologued like a Disney Villain while accomplishing nothing. Terrella, though? Terrella tried to be the one to finally do it. The one to finally shut my mouth. The one to finally take that cocky lean out of the way I walk. The one to make me stare at my feet instead of directly into the eyes of everyone who stands across from me.

And what did those efforts get him?

---

What can only be described as stock saxophone music plays softly underneath a voiceover as the camera comes on, slowly zooming in upon what can only be described as every family home in suburbia.

“Our Happy Nest is filmed in front of nobody, because it’s a wrestling promo. The studio audience is an .mp3 file. This is a jab at bad comedy, like Allen Chaney trying to make his bones off of Matt Knox.”

The ‘studio audience’ applauds loudly as the camera fades in to find Matthew Knox dressed in the ugliest sweater left alive from the 1980s and sat upon the ugliest couch of the 70s slouched over and feverishly writing in a notebook.

“This is going to be the easiest promo, ever!” he declared with all the cheer and excitement the script called for, leaning back and reading his notes aloud “Hunting jokes, Jabs at big oil, Something about that big weird republican cult in the woods…” he shakes his head, lips spreading into an appropriately oversized cheesy smile “Fat Christian Bale isn’t gonna know what hit him!”



The laugh track fades into the audience cheering the entrance of the costar and suave lady’s man roommate, JC (we think the J stands for Jake but we’re too afraid to ask at this point) Keeton! “Foxy Knoxy! What’s the scoop?” he asks, pointing fingerguns at his roommate and wearing that 90s smirk that lets the audience know he’s the cool one of the duo.

“Not a thing, chicken wing. Just gettin my act together to cut my next promo for work..” he shakes his head, smiling “Man, I know he can’t be a spring chicken but still. What an honor to be facing off with a former vice president!”

“A wh–” Keeton looked up from the fridge he’d wandered to in the adjacent apartment kitchen. It’s an apartment now. “Matt, who do you think you’re fighting?”

“<BLEEP>in’ Dick Cheney, man! BP Oil! Vice President! Wild, isn’t it? But I get it, takin’ a title off me is just as important as running the country for some coked out trust fu–”

“It’s not <BLEEP>in’ Dick <BLEEP> Cheney you actual <BLEEP>head..” Keeton declared with a measured exaserpation “It’s Allen CHANEY. Jesus, Matt the last name isn’t even spelled the same way!”

Matthew looks across the room at Keeton, then down at the notes he’s meticulously written out, then back at Keeton, then back to the notes as the audience’s laugh begins to swell.

“Awe Mo-ther-fu-<BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP>” He launches into a full tantrum, snatching the notebook off the coffee table and launching it across the room right past Keeton’s head with a roundhouse. He flips a table next, before throwing his hands in the air “Man, now I gotta cancel a stunt quail. You know the deposit is gone now, too!”

“Stu–Listen, forget about it. I’m sure you’ll find Cheney in hell and have the greatest douche-off ever but maybe focus on the right Chaney so you don’t get humiliated.”

“I mean, I know a bit about him. I know he’s been mostly good everywhere he’s gone. I know he looks like he manages a video store and knows exactly when your copy of Die Hard was due back in. And I know you’re trying to sleep with his squeeze.”

“Dude, one, no one says ‘Squeeze’ it’s objectifying as fuck. And two, you literally set me up with someone else!”

“Doesn’t make me any less confident in your manwhorish ways, Keeton.”

“Look, not the point…What’s the plan then?”

“Well first, I gotta cancel the stunt quail…then, I dunno. Maybe i’ll just paint my face like a clown and juggle for fifteen minutes.”

“If you got a monkey with a grinder in face paint that’d be identical to an Angel Blake promo.”

“I’ll fight you right <BLEEP>ing now, Keeton.”

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for Chaney. Hey, I gotta go. You gonna be here when I get off work or you goin’ to see that redhead again?”

“I’m gonna be minding my business, you ought to try it sometime.”

The two share a laugh as Keeton walks out, Matthew’s hands resting on his hips. He gives a very exaggerated shrug.

“Welp, back to work!”

As the saxophone returns, the camera pans out and the voiceover once more assaults the senses.

“This has been ‘Our Happy Nest’. I know exactly what you’re thinking. He made a sitcom parody but didn’t get one of this twenty kids to appear? Exactly, expectations subverted mother<BLEEP>er”

---

It cost him the only thing that made him matter around here. It cost him the image he’d cultivated to himself more than anyone else. It cost him his entire Identity.

How much are you willing to lose of yourself Allen, to prove a point to me? How much of yourself are you going to call upon to get the job done? Am I going to be facing the stand up comedian with the charming hometown hero vibe for some shitty midwest city with bad BBQ? Or am I going to face the man who’s too scared to step out from behind that persona?

The man who takes to twitter to worry over their legacy, the man who is still haunted by the failure of a niche sitcom, the very man who wants to desperately to matter after the punchline is delivered.

Because that man actually terrifies me.

But not as much as the world terrifies him.

I want so desperately for you to find your footing and get yourself back on track, Allen. You’re easy to root for. Really, who doesn’t want absurdity to have it’s day every once in a while? Who among us has never rooted for the fat, balding man to overcome his physical setbacks to win the hand of his dream girl! Who on God’s Green Earth doesn’t fucking LOVE Homer Simpson?

Everyone wants to see you have that kind of story, Allen. We want to see you - Boring, plain, ridiculous you - overachieve and rub it in the noses of those who doubt you.

In my nose, for instance.

Because as much as i’d like to have hope for you, i’m old enough to know that hope is only the ally to a fool. And you, Allen, have firmly secured your role as the fool in our encounter.

So no, i’m afraid there will be no song written about the day the jester plucked the Raven’s feathers and took his gold. I’m afraid, too, that I will not be the climax of your story, but rather the tragedy. I’d like it to be the one that strikes so deeply that our hero resolves to learn from it, and conquer an even greater mountain down the road.

But I fear for a man like you, Allen? A Man who runs when he should stand firm, and lopes when he ought to sprint? I fear it will be the other, more grim type of tragedy.

The tragedy that confirms that nagging fear that maybe you’ve peaked. Maybe there is no new home that will let you build off of your previous accomplishments, because those previous accomplishments were your summit.

Maybe all your hard work did pay off, but the prizes weren’t quite as grand as you’d hoped so you didn’t enjoy them even for the brief reality of their existence?

God, wouldn’t that be a sick joke?

So cling to your ally, Cling to the hope of better days coming your way Allen. Cling tight, close your eyes, and weather the storm that is me. Cling to the hope that someday, you will be the Patrick Mahomes of pro wrestling, rising above your status of ‘Jackson’.

Cling to the hope, and know that surviving me was enough.

Because you can’t stop me, Allen.

I am Raze. I am Ruin. I am The Raven

I am Invictus Totalus.

I might even be the Devil himself.

And you? You are just one more sad clown that never knew he was a funnier walking joke than any he could tell.

That never knew the laughs weren’t with him.

And now knows, that no one ever really was.

Come Odyssey, I’ll deliver the punchline on your sad little life, Allen.

But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be able to laugh it off.