MILES LUCKY: ALIVE FROM THE CITY

God’s Sick Joke. The Comedian. The Divine Comedy. I am God.

He’s sitting at a clear, crystalline desk with a matching chair. There’s a pencil in his hand. Nervously, his eyes inch around the room, trying to kick something into gear.

The room is completely white. No doors, no windows, no corners. It felt endless. If he wasn’t upon it, you wouldn’t even think there was a floor, just an endless fall beneath his feet. He taps his pencil against a piece of paper. His voice, seemingly an intruder, echoes crisply and emptily throughout the space.

“I’ve been occupying my days with my head. Some days, it feels like I’m not there at all, or I’m not me, or I’m somewhere else completely. It scares me, like most things. I’m throwing myself for a loop, on purpose. Maybe I just like the feeling I get from being absolutely terrified.”

“At what?”

“Myself.”

The pencil snaps from the pressure of his fingers, but it's the only harsh sound to give reference to his current emotions. His exterior is uncharacteristically calm, his clothes strangely clean. His hair is neat. The room, it’s bright.

Miles stands. The chair doesn’t even scrape against the floor. When he stands, someone we can’t see begins to scream and beg. It’s loud, as if they’re right there, close and static. Like the phantom of a spirit in a television for a child to listen to. Begging, instead of beckoning “OH GOD PLEASE! PLEASE LET ME GO! IM SORRY!”

Miles ignores their pleas. He looks over his shoulder and locks eyes with the invisible man. “The things I’m capable of, the things I’ve done. I know it and they haunt me, just as much as the memories excite me.”

Miles leans against the desk as he studies nothingness screeching. “You know?” He talks over it, we can still hear him so clearly as the screams begin to muffle.

“This was meant to be a Championship Showcase. A circled replay of what went wrong, corrected. Once again, one more time, NVR vs. Union.” Miles digs in his pocket and we can hear the panic, distant now. It was difficult more than ever, to place someone that we can’t see. Miles leans off of the desk, approaching something, someone, as he pulls out a small box with a button. The screaming, despite being muffled, turns into sobs you can make out without issue.

“Yet, when you look at the card, there’s no mention of NVR. No mention of your title, just another shining moment for me. It’s official, I didn’t even have to lift my hand for everyone to get the point.”

Miles begins to circle around the invisible person, practically glaring at them. You can feel him seething, the small square box being gripped, the button still untouched.

“You’re a protected champion. Your belt holds no weight, no matter where you take it. Both of my titles, outshine yours. My company is superior, not a single comment of this match from NVR proves it. They don’t care whether you lose or win. They decided it. You mean nothing, you represent no one. When you bring your title to the match, wrapped around your waist, everyone will still be looking at me. Stalking, pacing, ready to kill. You were practically destined to lose. You were fed to me. You’re a walking sacrifice, by me and for me.”

He leans down, looking into the eyes of no one softly. He reaches out to gingerly touch their face and we can hear it, the faint sobbing once again,

“I’ll spill the blood. One lucky scramble and you’re not built for this. I’m a different breed. When you look at me as a champion, what does that make you?”

He asks the question slowly. Leaning forward, almost as if he were going to deliver a kiss. His breathing meets the invisible. They are silenced, retreating from his closeness.

“It makes you nothing. It makes everything you own, makes you, made out of paper.”

He grips the arm and pulls them up. His heart begins to beat out of his chest. The begging gets louder, so loud that it bounces off the walls of this room that doesn’t exist. So loud, he has to yell over it. His hands shake with anticipation as he raises the device with a ridiculous smile,

“I’ll slice you open and expose the truth to everyone: you’re a joke! You have no guts!”

He presses the button. The person we couldn’t see explodes astonishingly and colors the room in red. Colors him in red. His hair, his clothes, splattered with the brilliance of someone’s essence, pieces of them that we couldn’t see before drenched and finally visible. Upon the floor. Upon his face. He lets out a shaky laugh, but he can’t hear it.

There’s a sharp and steady ring from the inner explosion, shock coursing through him. He still laughs, insanely. Tears ran down his face. He’s still shaking. The ringing doesn’t stop. Not as he runs his fingers through his hair, not as he abandons the desk and paper. He wraps his fingers around nothing and pulls a door open.

You’re a joke! You’re a joke! You’re a joke!

We hear.



He walks through the door and onto a stage, where he is greeted by a cheering crowd. They are not deterred by him being covered in gore as he smiles brilliantly at them, approaching a microphone in the middle of the stage and wasting no time to hurriedly fix it. As he’s adjusting, he begins his comedy set.

“Good to be here, good to be back in my City.” He says and everyone cheers and whistles once again in response. It’s nearly overwhelming, but Miles Lucky takes hold of the microphone, giving up with the adjustment while he waits for everyone to relax into silence.

“I’ve been busy traveling all around the world. In Japan, getting hit by their endless supply of fucking light tubes,” and that earns him a few laughs, which he talks over regardless. “In SCUM City, eating at a diner, eating waffles. I hate waffles, so why am I doing this, you know?”

He smiles once more at the crowd. “Why am I spreading myself out?”

“What if I spread myself thin?”

There’s a hush as he frowns at the crowd. “What if I tire myself out? What do I gain from this? What is the point?”

Miles sits upon a stool, or really clambers upon it, tangling his limbs to fit on a crouch on the small piece of furniture meant to hold the water bottle that falls miserably to the stage. No one says a word. No one makes a noise. They all watch.

“The point is prestige. The point is so nobody forgets who I am and what I represent. I don’t step into other companies, other countries, for myself. I do these things for what I hold. I am undeniably the greatest champion of the best company in the industry today.”

“I’m better than you. It’s not up for debate.”

And he hops from the stool as if he were never tangled at all. He smiles. “And I bet you’re all wondering who I’m talking about, huh?”

Everyone responds curiously, and Miles nods with interest at their ignorance of who he is speaking to directly. He begins to pace the stage slowly.

“I’m talking about Karen Willow.”

Everyone laughs boisterously at the name of the NVR Champion. They sound like they’re crying, losing their breaths with tears in their eyes. Slapping their knees.

“I know. I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? How do I go from Ana Hayden to Danny’s second pump and slump?”

Miles looks into the camera, looks at Karen Willow directly.

“I’m sure you have your vague ideas about why Miles Lucky gave you the best match you’re ever going to be a part of, gave you the main event that will forever be marked on your record as the only worthwhile thing you’ve ever done, which is lose to me.”

He makes it to the front of the stage, where he leans down in the same way that he did moments before.

“But the question is, what do I get when I beat you?”

He puts a single finger on his chin in feigned wonder, getting a couple of more chuckles from the crowd. He feels like he’s absolutely killing this stand-up special, which is very much what it is. Miles Lucky, delivering the biggest joke to Union: Karen Willow. He begins to count everything, one finger at a time as he lists them out.

“I give Tapp another thing to laugh at when it comes to you. I knock the champion of a company that I think is a fucking joke. I mend the mistake made by my mentor and acquire another thing he will never get his hands on. I absolutely set a fire under the man who beat him.

And I show you what it means to be a fucking champion.”

He jumps down from the stage and the camera backs from him, following him, as he walks through the crowd of the theater. It is here that we see, everyone in attendance is a skeleton. He knocks on a few heads and shakes their bony hands as he continues.

"I’m sought out, regularly, to be destroyed. I have a target on my back while you cry online over likes. People imagine my failure, like a sweet daydream, while everyone stands in your corner and tells me, be careful.”

He whispers it into the ear of one of the skeletons, so quietly that you almost didn’t hear him.

“Be careful. That’s what he told me. Be careful. Do you know what he meant?”

He perks up, looking back at the camera before turning around, and heading back to the stage slowly.

“He doesn’t want me to hurt you. He doesn’t want me to break your neck, open your throat, bash your head in. He thinks you’re made of glass and put that fragility on me, in the same way, that he put it on himself to tell you my intentions before I even called you out.”

Miles shrugs. That had been annoying. Danny, the sick dog, yelping to his master a warning that could’ve been saved for any moment after the matches he already had lined up. But Danny gave that to her, gave her a head start. He gave that to her because he knows she needed it.

“You choke on his dick and he still doesn’t think you have it in you to survive a match with Miles Lucky. Can you blame him? All this success, a title around your waist, and you still have to scream so people can trust that you can hold your own. You have a complex over your gold, and because of that, it’s obvious and you know it. You’re a placeholder, more than you are a champion.”

“But it’s all you have going for you right now.”

Miles steals one of the heads of the skeletons, making his way back up onto the stage. He sits on the edge of it, the microphone still up to his mouth and in his hand as he regards the empty eyes. There’s a genuine pause, he thinks for a moment too long. The crowd, in their death, begins to mumble.

“All you have going for you, and yet my titles are the only ones on the line.”

He tosses the skull back into the crowd, where he is met once again with laughter and cheers. Miles pops back up to a stand, sweating. So, he grabs a neatly placed handkerchief, suddenly present on the stool; and wipes himself down as he continues.

“If you were worth anything at all, you would’ve demanded yours been put up too. I know, though. I know. If I would’ve challenged it, if I would’ve dared it, you would’ve run for the hills. But that’s okay. Come into this as nothing at all, because we all know that’s what you are. Besides. I don’t want that trash attached to me. Not in the same way that you want what’s mine. The NVR title? It’s not worth the materials used to make it, but a Union title? Two? Well, Karen, maybe you’d actually be someone.”

A few skeletons clap and whistle, obvious fans of Miles Lucky and his routine. This is routine. This is as routine as it gets. He doesn’t need to do much. He doesn’t need to say much.

“Do you want that, like everyone else? I haven’t been beaten in Union for over a year. Do you think that you, holding onto the PLC Flag of dead friends, do you think you’ll be able to be the one to do it?

Here’s a spoiler for everyone in attendance tonight: you fucking won’t!”

He roars that last part, flipping the stool and sending it sailing off the stage in a sudden, emotional display of passion and anger.

“Because for all the people you have backing you up and protecting you, I have triple the number of eyes on me! I’m the center of a stage so big that you can’t even wrap your lopsided fucking head around it.”

He’s seething, trying to control his breathing as the crowd begins to mumble.

“I told you before, I’m punching down and it’s fucking pathetic. They’re all looking at this match and they’re thinking, Miles. You set yourself up for an easy one. Miles, it’s the start of season five, what the fuck are you so comfortable for? And what do I tell them? What can I possibly tell them after defeating beats, monoliths, legends? What do I tell them, despite my fucking reasons, when they see me eat easy and takedown Karen Willow?”

Miles continues to work the crowd, they’re following along as he keeps the intensity of his pace going. He’s getting there, and he knows it.

“There’s nothing about you that’s important to me, except for your significance. And in saying that, I’ve made you important. In saying that, I’ve given you something that you’ve never been given before. A chance to fill that chip in your shoulder before I pop your arm out of its fucking socket. And even then, after all this is over, after I have Danny at my throat, Bryan Williams rolling his eyes with envy, NVR ignoring you the same way they ignored the last match as if it didn’t happen, nothing will change for you.”

Miles frowns sadly. That’s the kicker. He likes to give, just as much as he likes to take, but what could he possibly give Karen other than a loss? She’s incapable of change. She’s incapable of success without it being handed to her, without her getting help along. The crowd is sad along with him, but he powers through with the reality of the situation.

“You’ll go, slinking back to your company as a failure, angry because Miles Lucky was mean to you and your friends, angry that Miles Lucky beat you when you swore to everyone that it wouldn’t happen. You’ll feel terrible, mad to have been singled out like this. Hunted like this. Put to a stake as prey to feed me. You’ll feel like everyone else who came before you. You'll never step foot in Union again. You’ll feel like this is personal.”

Miles chuckles, he’s been waiting for this to come. It feels like the audience has too, they’re right there with him. All on the edge of their seats.

“Get ready for the closer Karen, are you ready for it?”

Miles leans in, the audience follows with him.

“I hate to tell you this, Karen. I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you. But it could’ve been anyone. Anyone with that title. You’re the champion, but you’re not any more special than anyone else that resides in your locker room who could've been in your place. Me? I’m feared, revered, and watched. I represent them all, and in this? Well, read the card. You represent nothing.”

He waves to the crowd, a smile on his bloody face as they cheer and stand on brittle bones. He bows.

“Thank you for coming out folks, and Happy Pigeon Day!”

With that, all the lights die down and the skeletons are left chattering.