War Makes Strange Bedfellows

[Nick Knight]

{Nick Knight sits on his private strip of beach behind his Malibu home and watches as the surf breaks onto the sand. The sun is nearing the western horizon and gulls dance on the edge of the high tide line filling the air with their squawks. ‘The Hollywood Butcher’ doesn’t notice any of this as he just sits and watches the water deep in thought.

Several seconds go by before he turns and looks towards the camera. The look on his face isn’t one of the man that has been portraying the plague doctor trying to cure professional wrestling, or the death match wrestling legend. It’s the face of a man that has the entire weight of the world on his shoulders.}

War makes strange bedfellows.

{Knight runs his hands over his closely shaved scalp.}

I’m not sure where I read that, but I don’t think it’s ever been more true than my life the last few weeks. I’ve never been very good with teams, no matter how hard I try to get along with people I fail. Sometimes it’s because they think I’m an asshole for being a little too blunt, or a self serving prick because I like things to be done my way. Most of the time it’s simply because I’m not the biggest fan of being around people constantly, which makes me a really shitty friend. Trust me I’ve had years of therapy and I’ve just come to accept it about myself.

The Revolution is no different than any other group I’ve been a part of through the years. I still consider them my friends, but we’ve all just kinds drifted apart. I mean, we used to text each other a dozen times a day, and now I’m lucky if I hear from them once a week. I know we’ve all got our own shit going on; I could be the one to reach out, but they’ve got to meet me in the middle. Pick up the phone once in a while and check on me, because I’ve been pretty fucking far from good lately.

Please for one second pull your heads out of your collective asses James, Nick, Fi, and Caroline. Yeah you are all dealing with some heavy shit right now, but do you think I’d have got my ass kicked by Angel Blake and Pax Stormcrow if I was one hundred percent? It’s exactly the same way that you would have scored more than zero points if you weren’t hung up on this shit with your old lady, James. The only difference is that I’ve tried to call you, but you keep hitting the ol’ fuck you button.

{Knight grins and shakes his head, before throwing up both middle fingers.}

So you know what, fuck you.

{The first ever Decimus Champion laughs at his own joke.}

Seriously though, if you don’t have time for me then I don’t have time for you. I get that you’re heart broken, and Yulia is being an absolutely ruthless bitch. I get that you’re busy with the kids, and you’ve got all of this legal bullshit going on right now; but it doesn’t hurt to answer the phone once in a while. Especially when the guy on the other end has spent some time walking down the exact same road that you’re walking right now.

Nick, don’t think for one second that you’re any better than Gilmore because you’re not. When you won the World Television Championship, the championship that I put on the fucking map, I sent you a text congratulating on the win, and telling you just how proud I was because you’ve grown so much over the past year. I didn’t even get a thank you from you, which quite frankly really hurt me. I thought we were closer than that, but obviously I was wrong.

{Nick pauses, obviously trying to keep the hurt he was feeling out of his voice.}

Now instead of fighting beside the men that’ve shed blood, sweat, and tears beside for over a year I’m stuck with the biggest piece of shit in all of IWF. Angel Blake, the so-called ‘God of Wrestling,” who is really nothing more than a leech on this fucking business. He takes and takes lining his fat pockets without giving a goddamn thing back, just like his entire family. They hoard gold like they’re fucking dragons instead of letting the rest of the world have a little taste of the riches. I mean, there is absolutely no reason why anyone should be allowed to hold two titles at the same time for fucks sake.

{He lets out a long sigh to calm himself down.}

I’m sorry if I’m getting off topic, but it just pisses me off. How can one family that claims to love this business think that it’s perfectly fine to eat at it like a fucking cancer. They’ve gone from being the kind of people that scratch and claw for every single thing that they have to being a bunch of elitist pricks that don’t give a shit about the next generation. Do you even care whether or not there is going to be a business left when little Lillith is old enough to climb inside of the ring?

Well I do care! I want to see this business thrive for everyone that ever wants to lace up a pair of boots and step inside of that ring. I’m not just talking about the best of the best like here in IWF, but even the guys and girls breaking into the business and working in front of ten people in some church basement. If you keep on down the path you are walking all of that is going to go up in smoke, Angel.

That’s why it’s so fucking ironic that I have to cooperate with the man killing wrestling if I am going to have a snowballs chance in Hell of saving it. I need to win that mystery prize, whatever it might be, if I’m going to have enough pull around here to actually make a difference. I might even become the only kind of person that anyone seems to give a shit about around here, a champion.

That means that for one night I am going to willing stand in the corner of the man that I hate more than anyone else on this fucking planet. I am going to play nice and do everything in my power to win this goddamn match, even if that means fucking over two men that are like brothers to me. This one night I am going to have to push whatever I feel for JJ and Nick deep down inside, so I can what is right for the entire professional business.

The love or hate that I feel for the other men in this match doesn’t matter one fucking bit. Hell I don’t know what’s going to come of The Revolution after this match, it might already be too broken to ever fix, but I can’t be thinking about that right now. No, the only thing that needs to be on my mind is winning that mystery prize and truly becoming ‘The Savior of Professional Wrestling.’

{Nick stands and walk so his face is right up next to the camera.}

Angel Blake, for one match you and I have to put all of the bitterness and hatred aside. We need ot forget all about the months of bloodshed and work as a team. The best of five series, the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Cage, HTTT, all of it needs to have not happened from bell to bell. You and I must go to war as a unit and fight like Hell to win that mystery prize, whatever it may be. Tuesday night war is going to make us strange bedfellows, but come Wednesday we can hate each other all over again.

{The scene fades to black.}