Post by kaster on Aug 21, 2023 3:19:45 GMT
After Sacrifice, everyone begins to stand from their seats and usher out of the building, until…
The intro to “Epic” by Faith No More erupts on the loudspeakers as the fans in Cleveland boo wildly. Caleb Cannin comes out, no pomp or pageantry, just a straight beeline for the ring. He holds a microphone in one hand and the Joker in the Pack briefcase with the other. As his music dies down, the fans only grow louder.
“Cleveland, I know you’re foaming at the mouth because the main attraction has arrived, but I need you to keep your white trash traps shut while I’m talking! We are about halfway through this tournament and I haven’t got a goddamn thing to show for it. I’m done keeping quiet and having to sit like a dog in a kennel. I’m tired of being made to look like a fool every week! I have two matches left in the block… and I intend to squeeze the maximum amount of points out of both Ace Sky and Angel Blake. Ace Sky, you’re new around here so maybe you haven’t gotten the memo. This is supposed to be my ring. You’re just another old man who thinks he’s got something to prove. When I leave you on the ground, your shoulder throbbing in pain, don’t forget the name of Caleb Cannin.”
“NO POINTS! NO POINTS! NO POINTS!”
“You can take your chants and stick it up your pimply asses, Cleveland! I’m gonna be the only one laughing when I tap out Ace Sky and I tap out Angel Blake! Do you want to call yourself God, yeah? Do you think that you’re God? Then allow me to play the Devil and send you straight TO HELL! I don’t care if you’ve been a World Champion once, twice, four times or a hundred times. Those are just numbers to me. A few statistics, but I’m going to make you my statistic, Angel, when I make you another geezer put into the Hall of Future!”
“But I didn’t come out in front of you sad sacks of shit just to talk about Heir to the Throne. Oh no no… I’m here to address the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean your mothers.”
That gets a hearty boo from the crowd.
“I brought my case out here with me because it needed some fresh air. But I wanted to make a direct message to a certain someone and let them know what I want… DEAN HARPER!”
The crowd finally begins to cheer and chants for the world champion.
“I know you, along with thousands of people around the globe, are watching me. I’ve been watching you too. The second I unhooked this briefcase and held it above my head, I knew what it felt like. It was a taste of raw, unmitigated power. It was a taste of things to come, sooner or later. It was a taste of… of change. I finally understand what it must’ve felt like to tear that championship out of your own father’s hands. I finally understand how you must feel to carry that albatross around your neck, knowing that people envy you and they would kill to be you. I understand. But I also understood that, when I became the Joker in the Pack, your championship reign wouldn’t end simply by my hands, but by the clock. I wake up every morning and I look at the clock, wondering when it will all change. I’ve looked at that clock for my entire life and held a responsibility on myself that I didn’t know if I would be able to uphold. Now… now, I will uphold that responsibility. My job is not to entertain the people, my job is not to wrestle every week, my job is not to be complacent with where I’m at! My job… is to make this place better than how it’s been. My job is to be a revolutionary. The only way I can do my job is if I take that title from you, Dean Harper. My generation, the FUTURE generation of professional wrestling, deserves far better than what it’s been given.”
He raises the case above his head, looking dead into the camera as the crowd disapproves of his tirade.
“So the question you’re left with now is not “why?” but “when?”. It could be any time. It could be now, it could be later, it could be on Sacrifice, Odyssey or hell, at Night of the Immortals! It could be before a match, after a match or if you don’t even have a match! Anywhere, anytime, that’s the deal! You won’t be able to know, so you’ll have to keep guessing. Every time you go to bed at night, you’ll have nightmares of black and purple while I dream of gold! So, Dean, THIS is your only warning! This company deserves a man who can carry the weight of that championship. Someone who knows what is best for the people that come after him, not before him. I commend you on ending Angel Blake’s reign, but that does not change the fact that you still act as a part of the old regime around here. Something has to change. So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to leave you with something to think about.”
“Ask yourself: if there is no future… what are you left with?”
He places the microphone down in the middle of the ring before leaving. He does not leave via the entrance stage, but rather over the barricade and through the crowd. The audience is left to simmer on his diatribe while he keeps his head down, briefcase in hand.
Candles. Candles everywhere around the room. They give a glowing orange hue to the vast space. Pockets of flame turn the darkness into something more recognizable. Rows of pews in front of a giant stained glass window, with one pulpit in the center. The glass shines through and offers a tad more light into the room.
The desert. Sunlight licks into every corner and crevice of the flat, dry land. A stake appears to be the only outlier in an otherwise conventional setting. Piked atop of the stake is a pig’s head, with flies circling around the rotting flesh.
An empty ring. The abandoned gymnasium looks dingy and musty, with flecks of dust hovering in the stale air. Yellowing lights flicker as they strain to keep the gym visible. Spots of natural light flood inside, yet it offers no revelations.
Footsteps are heard, with a pair of black boots marching past the pews. The back of a black suit and a hood, shrouding the head in obscurity.
A hand reaches out from the sleeve, as the flies flock towards a new place of gathering. The hand grips the wooden stake, just underneath the foul head.
The suited figure steps into the ring, standing directly in the center. Around the perimeter, ghostly hands creep under the bottom rope, threatening to reach out to the mysterious figure. A hand from the black sleeve inches towards the hood.
The candles blow out.
The stake snaps and splinters.
The hands disappear.
The hood is taken off.
Caleb Cannin stands at the pulpit, leaning out towards the empty rows as the colored light shines behind him.
The pig's head falls to the ground with a sickening squelch. By the dozens, flies escape from the head's interior and swarm around the corpse.
He looks around the gymnasium, anticipating a response that is not there.
"Hello, Angel."
One by one, the candles begin to relight.
"We will meet. You and I. One on one. A first time ever scenario.”
He bats the flies away from the head, gazing longingly at it.
“I know that, to you, this match is simply another Heir to the Throne contest. A tournament bout. Not to me.”
His hand slides across the top rope. He wipes the dusty residue between his fingers.
“This is my journey. My Odyssey. It leads me right to you, Angel. For a man who has so many accomplishments and accolades in the industry, you’re still naive enough to not take me seriously.”
Over by the church organ, he sits down and begins to play with the keys.
“Just like everyone else, you fail to see the bigger picture.”
The remainder of the stake is slowly removed from the base of the head. It’s covered in dried bile and blood.
“You see me as lesser than you. It’s what you see everyone as. You claim to be God. Gods are supposed to inspire hope in people. They are beings to look up to. A figure to believe in.”
“I don’t believe in gods, Angel.”
Sitting down in the corner, eyes closed, Caleb feels the few drops of rain on his face.
“I believe in people. You are nothing more than a man in face paint. I used to be terrified of the boogeyman when I was younger, but I grew to learn that the boogeyman is not real. Just like the legend of Angel Blake isn’t real. It’s all a myth, a construction by your own design.”
“It has gotten you this far. I can admit that.”
In the front row, he watches himself up on the sermon’s mount.
“But the one opponent you can never defeat, the one enemy that will always stand triumphant… is time.”
“You can tear apart my limbs and break my body down to nothing, but time is in my corner. I can heal with time. Do you have enough time to save yourself?”
The head is held up towards the sun, with all the pests following its path.
“If you could only understand how much your defeat means to me, then you would take it more seriously.”
“They say you are one of the best. The mighty fall eventually. It’s inevitable. Let me be your fall.”
In the middle of the ring, the apron is soaked in rainwater. Cannin sits cross-legged, arms spread out towards nothing.
“My destiny is being the World Champion of the IWF. It was your destiny, too. Was.”
“The truth is your biggest fear. The undeniable truth. You know that I will be etched into history. You’re afraid of being surpassed. That is why you have held Sabin on his leash. That is why you tried to strike down your own blood, Dean Harper. That is why you coddle your children and grandchildren so much.”
“You’re afraid of being gone. The empty throne of a king.”
He’s kneeling down, praying into the light of various colors.
“You refuse to admit it. But I’ve known men like you all too well. Violent, controlling, unable to look at the way things are. The way things must be.”
“Does it bother you that you know I am right? Good. Sit there and judge me for what I am. You see yourself in me, I know it. It makes you scared. Scared of what’s to come.”
All around him is a circle of pig heads, all staked into the ground. Some are more ripe with rot than others.
“When we meet in the ring, it will not be a wrestling match. It will be a message. From me to you.”
“You can paint your face. You can surround yourself with mindless drones you call family. You can win the championship more times than anyone in the history of this company. You do that.”
“And you’ll still feel that it isn’t enough.”
The rain continues to pour as Cannin smiles and dances with an unnerving grace and elegance.
“They love God for telling them what they should be. They hate the Devil for telling them what they truly are.”
“I pull back the curtain on the injustice my generation suffers, yet no one wants to listen. I will make them listen. You are not the first man that I have used to make a statement and you will certainly not be the last.”
The rows are now full of only Caleb Cannins, as the one preacher stands above them all.
“You relish in the pain that I desperately try to get away from. You wear torment like a badge of honor. I find it foolish.”
“For a time, IWF truly was your company. But along the way, you lost sight of what it means to carry that weight on your shoulders. Holding that flag high above your head. I know what it means. That is why I have to be the one to lead the Imperial Wrestling Federation. I’m willing to sacrifice everything in order to create a better future. A future that will not be marred by your presence.”
A pile of skulls sit on the desert ground. He stares at the pile as flies buzz around him.
“When I won the Joker in the Pack, I fully believed that I would face you for the championship. But you could not even give me that. It speaks to how much of a God you really are. You did not answer my prayer. You ignored it. So now… my prayer becomes a sin.”
“I do not shy away from the idea that this will be the most difficult bout of my career. Even an Iron Man match cannot measure up to the horror stories I have heard about you. I don’t fear it, I embrace it. You will soon learn that I will not be the only one fighting for everything. Look down on me. I am looking down, too. Not at you, but at the Devil for his guidance.”
Kneeling in the center of the ring, with lightning and thunder crackling against the clouds, he smiles.
“I was a young boy when I discovered there was no God. It did not make me fear. It gave me the courage to find the truth in the darkest places. I will step into your darkness, Angel, and I will tear away the truth that you keep in locks.”
“I will defy God. There is nothing you can do to stop me.”
Everything in the dark church seems to stand still, almost lifeless. Caleb Cannin stands at the pulpit, head down. After a moment of silence, the crowd of other Cannins begin to stand up and applaud.
The flies all scatter into the dusty winds of the desert. Only one skull remains on the ground. He stomps it into fragments underneath his feet.
Soaked in water, he wipes some of the wetness away from his face. All the lights in the gymnasium go dark, with only a single ray of sunlight shining through. He rises into the light, feeling reinvigorated.
The intro to “Epic” by Faith No More erupts on the loudspeakers as the fans in Cleveland boo wildly. Caleb Cannin comes out, no pomp or pageantry, just a straight beeline for the ring. He holds a microphone in one hand and the Joker in the Pack briefcase with the other. As his music dies down, the fans only grow louder.
“Cleveland, I know you’re foaming at the mouth because the main attraction has arrived, but I need you to keep your white trash traps shut while I’m talking! We are about halfway through this tournament and I haven’t got a goddamn thing to show for it. I’m done keeping quiet and having to sit like a dog in a kennel. I’m tired of being made to look like a fool every week! I have two matches left in the block… and I intend to squeeze the maximum amount of points out of both Ace Sky and Angel Blake. Ace Sky, you’re new around here so maybe you haven’t gotten the memo. This is supposed to be my ring. You’re just another old man who thinks he’s got something to prove. When I leave you on the ground, your shoulder throbbing in pain, don’t forget the name of Caleb Cannin.”
“NO POINTS! NO POINTS! NO POINTS!”
“You can take your chants and stick it up your pimply asses, Cleveland! I’m gonna be the only one laughing when I tap out Ace Sky and I tap out Angel Blake! Do you want to call yourself God, yeah? Do you think that you’re God? Then allow me to play the Devil and send you straight TO HELL! I don’t care if you’ve been a World Champion once, twice, four times or a hundred times. Those are just numbers to me. A few statistics, but I’m going to make you my statistic, Angel, when I make you another geezer put into the Hall of Future!”
“But I didn’t come out in front of you sad sacks of shit just to talk about Heir to the Throne. Oh no no… I’m here to address the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean your mothers.”
That gets a hearty boo from the crowd.
“I brought my case out here with me because it needed some fresh air. But I wanted to make a direct message to a certain someone and let them know what I want… DEAN HARPER!”
The crowd finally begins to cheer and chants for the world champion.
“I know you, along with thousands of people around the globe, are watching me. I’ve been watching you too. The second I unhooked this briefcase and held it above my head, I knew what it felt like. It was a taste of raw, unmitigated power. It was a taste of things to come, sooner or later. It was a taste of… of change. I finally understand what it must’ve felt like to tear that championship out of your own father’s hands. I finally understand how you must feel to carry that albatross around your neck, knowing that people envy you and they would kill to be you. I understand. But I also understood that, when I became the Joker in the Pack, your championship reign wouldn’t end simply by my hands, but by the clock. I wake up every morning and I look at the clock, wondering when it will all change. I’ve looked at that clock for my entire life and held a responsibility on myself that I didn’t know if I would be able to uphold. Now… now, I will uphold that responsibility. My job is not to entertain the people, my job is not to wrestle every week, my job is not to be complacent with where I’m at! My job… is to make this place better than how it’s been. My job is to be a revolutionary. The only way I can do my job is if I take that title from you, Dean Harper. My generation, the FUTURE generation of professional wrestling, deserves far better than what it’s been given.”
He raises the case above his head, looking dead into the camera as the crowd disapproves of his tirade.
“So the question you’re left with now is not “why?” but “when?”. It could be any time. It could be now, it could be later, it could be on Sacrifice, Odyssey or hell, at Night of the Immortals! It could be before a match, after a match or if you don’t even have a match! Anywhere, anytime, that’s the deal! You won’t be able to know, so you’ll have to keep guessing. Every time you go to bed at night, you’ll have nightmares of black and purple while I dream of gold! So, Dean, THIS is your only warning! This company deserves a man who can carry the weight of that championship. Someone who knows what is best for the people that come after him, not before him. I commend you on ending Angel Blake’s reign, but that does not change the fact that you still act as a part of the old regime around here. Something has to change. So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to leave you with something to think about.”
“Ask yourself: if there is no future… what are you left with?”
He places the microphone down in the middle of the ring before leaving. He does not leave via the entrance stage, but rather over the barricade and through the crowd. The audience is left to simmer on his diatribe while he keeps his head down, briefcase in hand.
Candles. Candles everywhere around the room. They give a glowing orange hue to the vast space. Pockets of flame turn the darkness into something more recognizable. Rows of pews in front of a giant stained glass window, with one pulpit in the center. The glass shines through and offers a tad more light into the room.
The desert. Sunlight licks into every corner and crevice of the flat, dry land. A stake appears to be the only outlier in an otherwise conventional setting. Piked atop of the stake is a pig’s head, with flies circling around the rotting flesh.
An empty ring. The abandoned gymnasium looks dingy and musty, with flecks of dust hovering in the stale air. Yellowing lights flicker as they strain to keep the gym visible. Spots of natural light flood inside, yet it offers no revelations.
Footsteps are heard, with a pair of black boots marching past the pews. The back of a black suit and a hood, shrouding the head in obscurity.
A hand reaches out from the sleeve, as the flies flock towards a new place of gathering. The hand grips the wooden stake, just underneath the foul head.
The suited figure steps into the ring, standing directly in the center. Around the perimeter, ghostly hands creep under the bottom rope, threatening to reach out to the mysterious figure. A hand from the black sleeve inches towards the hood.
The candles blow out.
The stake snaps and splinters.
The hands disappear.
The hood is taken off.
Caleb Cannin stands at the pulpit, leaning out towards the empty rows as the colored light shines behind him.
The pig's head falls to the ground with a sickening squelch. By the dozens, flies escape from the head's interior and swarm around the corpse.
He looks around the gymnasium, anticipating a response that is not there.
"Hello, Angel."
One by one, the candles begin to relight.
"We will meet. You and I. One on one. A first time ever scenario.”
He bats the flies away from the head, gazing longingly at it.
“I know that, to you, this match is simply another Heir to the Throne contest. A tournament bout. Not to me.”
His hand slides across the top rope. He wipes the dusty residue between his fingers.
“This is my journey. My Odyssey. It leads me right to you, Angel. For a man who has so many accomplishments and accolades in the industry, you’re still naive enough to not take me seriously.”
Over by the church organ, he sits down and begins to play with the keys.
“Just like everyone else, you fail to see the bigger picture.”
The remainder of the stake is slowly removed from the base of the head. It’s covered in dried bile and blood.
“You see me as lesser than you. It’s what you see everyone as. You claim to be God. Gods are supposed to inspire hope in people. They are beings to look up to. A figure to believe in.”
“I don’t believe in gods, Angel.”
Sitting down in the corner, eyes closed, Caleb feels the few drops of rain on his face.
“I believe in people. You are nothing more than a man in face paint. I used to be terrified of the boogeyman when I was younger, but I grew to learn that the boogeyman is not real. Just like the legend of Angel Blake isn’t real. It’s all a myth, a construction by your own design.”
“It has gotten you this far. I can admit that.”
In the front row, he watches himself up on the sermon’s mount.
“But the one opponent you can never defeat, the one enemy that will always stand triumphant… is time.”
“You can tear apart my limbs and break my body down to nothing, but time is in my corner. I can heal with time. Do you have enough time to save yourself?”
The head is held up towards the sun, with all the pests following its path.
“If you could only understand how much your defeat means to me, then you would take it more seriously.”
“They say you are one of the best. The mighty fall eventually. It’s inevitable. Let me be your fall.”
In the middle of the ring, the apron is soaked in rainwater. Cannin sits cross-legged, arms spread out towards nothing.
“My destiny is being the World Champion of the IWF. It was your destiny, too. Was.”
“The truth is your biggest fear. The undeniable truth. You know that I will be etched into history. You’re afraid of being surpassed. That is why you have held Sabin on his leash. That is why you tried to strike down your own blood, Dean Harper. That is why you coddle your children and grandchildren so much.”
“You’re afraid of being gone. The empty throne of a king.”
He’s kneeling down, praying into the light of various colors.
“You refuse to admit it. But I’ve known men like you all too well. Violent, controlling, unable to look at the way things are. The way things must be.”
“Does it bother you that you know I am right? Good. Sit there and judge me for what I am. You see yourself in me, I know it. It makes you scared. Scared of what’s to come.”
All around him is a circle of pig heads, all staked into the ground. Some are more ripe with rot than others.
“When we meet in the ring, it will not be a wrestling match. It will be a message. From me to you.”
“You can paint your face. You can surround yourself with mindless drones you call family. You can win the championship more times than anyone in the history of this company. You do that.”
“And you’ll still feel that it isn’t enough.”
The rain continues to pour as Cannin smiles and dances with an unnerving grace and elegance.
“They love God for telling them what they should be. They hate the Devil for telling them what they truly are.”
“I pull back the curtain on the injustice my generation suffers, yet no one wants to listen. I will make them listen. You are not the first man that I have used to make a statement and you will certainly not be the last.”
The rows are now full of only Caleb Cannins, as the one preacher stands above them all.
“You relish in the pain that I desperately try to get away from. You wear torment like a badge of honor. I find it foolish.”
“For a time, IWF truly was your company. But along the way, you lost sight of what it means to carry that weight on your shoulders. Holding that flag high above your head. I know what it means. That is why I have to be the one to lead the Imperial Wrestling Federation. I’m willing to sacrifice everything in order to create a better future. A future that will not be marred by your presence.”
A pile of skulls sit on the desert ground. He stares at the pile as flies buzz around him.
“When I won the Joker in the Pack, I fully believed that I would face you for the championship. But you could not even give me that. It speaks to how much of a God you really are. You did not answer my prayer. You ignored it. So now… my prayer becomes a sin.”
“I do not shy away from the idea that this will be the most difficult bout of my career. Even an Iron Man match cannot measure up to the horror stories I have heard about you. I don’t fear it, I embrace it. You will soon learn that I will not be the only one fighting for everything. Look down on me. I am looking down, too. Not at you, but at the Devil for his guidance.”
Kneeling in the center of the ring, with lightning and thunder crackling against the clouds, he smiles.
“I was a young boy when I discovered there was no God. It did not make me fear. It gave me the courage to find the truth in the darkest places. I will step into your darkness, Angel, and I will tear away the truth that you keep in locks.”
“I will defy God. There is nothing you can do to stop me.”
Everything in the dark church seems to stand still, almost lifeless. Caleb Cannin stands at the pulpit, head down. After a moment of silence, the crowd of other Cannins begin to stand up and applaud.
The flies all scatter into the dusty winds of the desert. Only one skull remains on the ground. He stomps it into fragments underneath his feet.
Soaked in water, he wipes some of the wetness away from his face. All the lights in the gymnasium go dark, with only a single ray of sunlight shining through. He rises into the light, feeling reinvigorated.
“Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game”
Well howdy there pardner.