Post by Roberto Verona on Mar 23, 2014 18:16:49 GMT
A cool breeze flows through the trees, signalling the final vestiges of a bitter winter as our scene opens in the courtyard of a grand house, its former glories a distance memories under a layer of overgrown vines and filth. Crows fly from a crack in the roof cackling as what is left of the evening sun begins to submit to the choking presence of the grey clouds overhead. In the distance the sound of tires slowly rolling over gravel grows louder as the beams of a set of headlights begin to roll across the side of the building as a car gradually comes to a halt. Inside we can see Roberto Verona and Hannah Reed, the former’s face almost colourless as he stares up at building that houses the ghosts of a buried past.
Hannah Reed: Are you sure about this?
Roberto sighs.
Roberto Verona: No.
Hannah smiles awkwardly, reaching down and stroking Roberto’s hand tenderly.
Hannah Reed: We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.
Roberto shakes his head, a little reluctantly though equally resigned.
Roberto Verona: No… Angel opened up some old wounds that can’t just be stitched up again. I've avoided this for too long and somebody has finally exploited it…
Hannah Reed: I wouldn’t base your assessment of humanity on the actions of a borderline sociopath, Roberto.
Roberto Verona: It was only a matter of time, Hannah, you can only run away from your past for so long before it catches up with you. Convenience never comes into it... No…
Roberto reaches for the door handle, his hand trembling slightly before he tightens his grip.
Roberto Verona: I have to do this…
Slowly Verona pushes the car door open, stepping one foot onto the concrete followed by the other. Lifting himself up from his seat, he places a hand on the roof of the vehicle to balance himself momentarily as his head begins to spin. Pausing for a moment to gain his bearings he hears the sound of the other door closing gently.
Hannah Reed: Are you ok?
Roberto nods his head, trying best to hide his sudden spell of vertigo.
Roberto Verona: Yeah… just, give me a moment.
Pushing himself up Roberto forces his senses to realign as he staggers slightly before regaining his composure. Breathing out he takes a step forward, followed by another as he gradually approaches the marble staircase. His heart beats louder, and louder, with each step, the sound consuming him.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Grabbing the railing he steadies himself as Hannah looks at him, concern written in her features, though she assume that silence remains the wisest option.
Roberto Verona: It’s been so long…
Hannah Reed: It’s certainly seen better days…
Hannah brushes a few over grown vines away from the ornate features on the pillars at the top of the stairs, staring down as it crumbles over her new pair of gloves. Roberto lifts himself up, joining her at the entrance way, his heart still racing as his eyes dart back and forth anxiously.
Hannah Reed: You do have a key, right?
Roberto Verona: I’m nervous, Hannah, not an idiot.
Verona laughs, doing his best to hide his panic as he rifles erratically through his pockets, finally finding some sort of relief when he clutches the metal that is rapidly replaced with a new wave of fear as he absorbs the implications.
Hannah Reed: The woodwork is so sublime…
Hannah reaches out a hand, stroking the large doors with a fingers, working her way around the opulent caricatures that adorn them.
Hannah Reed: Are you sure you want to do this?
Roberto Verona: Yes!
Roberto turns and shouts at Hannah, quickly withdrawing back into himself as he realises his outburst was inappropriate.
Roberto Verona: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…
Hannah Reed: I know, I just don’t want you to do something you’re not ready for.
Roberto Verona: I’ve spent what feels like my whole life avoiding this moment, if I can stand inside a cage with a rabid beast like Angel this weekend; I need to find the strength to do this too.
Retrieving the key from his pocket Verona slowly extends his arm, shaking as though a chill is constantly rushing over him. Hannah reaches down and wraps her fingers around his hand, steadying him as he slowly inserts the key into the door. Taking a deep breath he turns the key as the sound of rust and metal grinding against one another crackles before the sound of a bolt unlocking and bellowing out into the empty void behind the door echoes.
Hannah Reed: Ready?
Verona nods.
Roberto Verona: As ready as I am ever going to be.
Reaching out a hand each they push on the doors, gradually forcing them open, despite their initial resistance. As they slowly swing open a breeze, tinted with dust, brushes past the pair who cough and squint, trying to keep the debris from their eyes. After gradually collecting themselves they step into the breach, Hannah’s eyes opening wide as her jaw drops. Before them stands a grand hall way, a flight of stairs rising up to a second floor whose balcony wraps around the room, a chorus of birds eyeing up the intruders. Adorning the wall lay a series of portraits, their subject's eyes piercing through the dust and the gloom, almost judgementally as Verona stares straight at the floor. Hannah loosens her grip, patting Verona on the arm in astonishment.
Hannah Reed: Roberto… this… this is amazing.
Hannah steps away, leaving Verona to stand against the tide of memories which come flooding back, washing over him and almost knocking him off his feet. Every horror that drove him from this place, every memory he has sought so desperately to bury as deeply as he could rising from the ashes with spectral horror. Verona clutches at his chest, desperately trying to free a few of the buttons which seemingly tighten around his neck as his shoulders go rigid and his diaphragm seems incapable of expansion.
Hannah Reed: I can’t believe I never know about this place, Roberto…
Hannah pauses, waiting for a response.
Hannah Reed: Roberto?
Turning she sees Roberto leaning over, heaving as he clutches to a leather couch, slowly dropping to one knee. Rushing over to him Hannah kneels beside him, doing her best to support his weight as he grabs at his chest.
Hannah Reed: Shit, I knew this was a bad idea.
Roberto shakes his head, trying to restore a little colour to his face and wash away the dizziness.
Roberto Verona: No… I need-… needed to do… this.
Roberto grips onto Hannah’s coat firmly before looking up, turning his head to face a large portrat at the peak of the stairwell, featuring a man, a woman and a young boy. Smiling, he struggles to find his breath.
Roberto Verona: Mum… Dad…
He pauses, gulping briefly.
Roberto Verona: I’m home.
So, here we are.
The conclusion of this macabre opera.
A definitive end point to the violence that has consumed this federation since the beginning of the year.
I won’t pretend I haven’t craved this moment, savoured the very taste of your demise on my lips in an eternal dream of your destruction. This is everything I have wanted since the day you put your hands on Jess and marks the culmination of a war in which you are the aggressor seeking a victim.
There is a theory, if we’re in the business of discussing evolution that is eerily apt when applied to you, Angel. It is called pursuit predation, or basically, for the laymen out there, the process through which humanity was able to assume its place at the head of the natural banquet. Instead of expelling bursts of energy to fell a prey, we wait, following it across miles and miles of terrain, watching as it tires itself out, biding our time before it can flee no more and we can dispatch it.
Effectively, we ran them down until they died.
Just like you do.
You stalk your prey, working on their psyche to destroy them, watching as every vestige of their being is worn away until they are a feeble, fragile, shell of what they once were, devoid of fight or spirit and then, you strike. Butchering the ghosts of what used to be men.
The only problem, Angel, is your methods rely on a prey that is willing to be just that, prey. To run in terror and cower from your mind games until they break. You operate on fear, but I’m done being a victim.
I’m here to make a stand against you, not wither away and become a vague memory whispered in the annals of time, ultimately forgotten in the shadow of a vast new empire.
IWF is my vision and I will not allow you put out its eyes in favour of a veneer of egotism.
You have done everything possible to break my spirit, Angel, but I am still here, standing defiantly, screaming at the top of my lungs that you will not take my company... my child, away from me. You have shattered a career to place your whore on the Diamond throne, you have victimised an innocent woman to destroy a relationship and you have pissed all over the memory of two people who have done nothing…
Verona bows his head for a moment, before suddenly lunging forward, screaming at the top of his lungs, his nostrils flared.
Nothing!
You dragged my parents from their graves, you took every relationship I have built in their absence, everything that I hold dear and keeps me from falling apart, all to facilitate the feckless desires of a bitter old man who refuses to share power and to fill the black hole in your soul that only a new father figure could occupy.
You are heartless.
You are baseless.
You are the monster all the other's dream of being.
Lesser men may have broken, but the truth is, all you've done is pissed me off. Which I am aware is exactly what you wanted, I'm not stupid. I know you wanted to draw out my emotions so that I run on them and come out swinging, inevitably falling into your trap so you can dispatch me and assume my place at the head of this company.
There's only one problem.
Everything that you promise is hollow, the empty words of a man whose only means of assuming power is to rule through fear. You’re not inevitable, you’re forced. There is no divisive situation that has borne you, there is no crisis from which you have emerged, everything about you is artificial, you’re simply the weapon of a man hell bent on creating discord where there was none.
Just another reaper sent to collect my head.
Roberto runs a finger across his neck.
Your false sense of grandeur, Angel, has deceived you into genuinely believing that this is all part of a grand plan, some form of intelligent design that see’s you at the head of the army leading the spineless masses into a new Kingdom of Heaven, or Hell, depending on which way you look at your irresistible ascent to the top of the food chain. You have committed the biggest cardinal sin in the book.
You’ve bought into your own hype.
Roberto shakes his head, snorting with resigned amusement.
You have prophesised your self-imposed belief of superiority over your colleagues for so long that you’ve twisted your mind into genuinely believing it. You’ve stood on that podium pontificating week after week, promising a revolution, evolution, devolution, anything where the ends will justify the means and you've convinced yourself that I am just another sheep wandering aimlessly to the slaughter, unaware of what is to come.
The symbol upon which you will construct a new philosophy.
One where the strong are defined by who they know, not on their ability, one where name value supersedes passion, one where if you’re not with us, you’re against us…
A world where you rule with an iron fist, lost in the illusion that you will be able to vanquish the man who has enabled your rise to power.
I see you exactly for what you are, Angel. A weapon. A dangerous one, prone to volatility and petulance, but one which is ultimately controlled by the finger on the trigger, the supreme irony is that you believe you can animate yourself and break the grip of a man who has built his empire on weapons.
On blood.
On suffering.
So take your best shot, throw everything you have at me, but make sure your aim is true. You will need to pierce my chest because within it beats a heart which still yearns for an ideal worth aspiring to.
Justice.
Equality.
Defiance in the face of tyranny.
These may be alien to you, perhaps you even detest them, but they are what I have lived by since the day that I had my parents torn from me by a man too weak to resist the lustful temptation of the liquor bottle. No matter what you have done to me, they will remain the ideals I follow until the day I die, even if you would accelerate that parley through your actions this weekend.
Agree, disagree, it is an irrelevance.
This Sunday I am going to march down to that ring, lock myself inside a cage with a monster and face my destiny. There will be no honour to the vanquished, no eulogy to glorify their legacy, only the memory of the violence which rendered a mighty icon impotent.
You have signed your own death warrant with the blood of innocents. Men who you assume are an irrelevance to me because I do not hold their hand and lead them through the traumas of life. Men who you believe I have failed because I have not washed away their failures and protected them from monsters.
Just more baseless assumptions from a man who is devoid of human compassion, desperately trying to find a lack of it in others.
Verona raises a hand, pointing a finger directly into the camera.
I’m coming for your head, Angel, and the paper crown set upon it.
I won’t settle for anything less.
You will pay for those you have slighted. You will pay for those you have stepped upon to assume your lofty perch. You will pay for stepping into my kingdom with hostility in your heart at head of an army of mercenaries.
It's time to face the consequences of the wheels you have set in motion and suffer for the blood of my family on your hands.
This weekend you will meet the monster you so desperately wanted to come out.
Be careful for what you wish for.
Well howdy there pardner.