WOTW | KIMITSU ZOMBIE vs KAVEN DRELL

Two large, piercing blue eyes loom over a seemingly picturesque, pink dollhouse. At a glance all seems to be well and normal, something that any little girl anywhere in the world might take joy using her imagination to play with. Of course, that was if you took away those two giant blue eyes and the olive skinned forehead that were inescapable as they studied the little house with inquisitive, curious eyes. Anyone familiar with the ongoing struggles within Union Battleground knew exactly who those eyes belonged to and, certainly if they paid any attention, knew there was surely more to the dollhouse that sat before them than on might think upon initial inspection.

Slowly the camera’s pan out and as they do so the full expression of Kaven Drell is exposed, revealing a nasty sneer as he looked down at the house. No longer could the look in his gaze be mistaken for curiosity, but paired with the wicked grin on his face, it’s clear that his emotions are more in line with bloodlust than anything else.

“You know the funny thing about foundations…”

Reaching out with his index finger, Drell poked at the side of the dollhouse and watched curiously as it creaked and shifted slightly.

“You can examine them and think everything’s fine. You can go about your everyday life, completely oblivious to the fact that everything that substantiates who you are, and what you do, is crumbling right beneath your very feet. It’s blissful ignorance until reality becomes so overwhelming that you can’t avoid it any longer. And by that point it is far too late.”

The camera slowly begins to pan around the dollhouse and as it does so it becomes more and more evident that it is not in pristine condition. In fact it looks as though pieces and parts have been chipped and hacked away. If it was a full sized home one might look on in concern, wondering if it was safe to inhabit. All the while, Drell stared at it like the slowly unveiled decrepit state of the little house was something that brought him great joy.

“The signs have been there all along that the foundation of your career was slowly eroding beneath your feet, but you’ve remained unaware. A student of the business might go as far back as that fateful evening at Fright Night in Four Corners Wrestling when the mystique of who Kimitsu Zombie was began to show cracks. That night Elijah Carlson took from you a championship that you swore you would never allow him to take from you. A few weeks later at their Winter Wasteland event you vowed to reclaim what had been taken from you only to have that mystique fully shattered. It was then that you retreated to this place… this Battleground… that has been your home for many moons.”

A slight movement from Drells hand was caught by the camera and as he moved it slowly, a tiny figurine that was a crude representation of his opponent for War of the Worlds was revealed and humming to himself, he began to make the little figure walk up the front porch of the little dollhouse.

“I bet you felt relief, to have shed the weight of expectations that had been bearing down on you. I bet you were glad to finally be able to return home and just be the Trench Warfare champion. To get back into a ring where, even if you aren’t loved, you were respected. This was to be where everything began to get put back into its proper order. This was to be where that stain of embarrassment would be washed clean. This was to be where you were made white as snow. And then I arrived. I arrived without much pomp and circumstance. No fanfare. No one chanting my name. Though you didn’t know it, by that point it was already far too late for you. You didn’t see them, but the storm clouds were already brewing on the horizon.”

As if on cue, a bright flash of lightning streaked in the distance and could be seen through the window that was directly behind Kaven. Seconds later it was followed by a loud crack of thunder shook that shook the building, the little run down dollhouse vibrating momentarily.

“I didn’t beg for the audience to appreciate me. But on night one I walked to the ring and put an end to Elena DeDraca, a woman who had never tasted defeat in this company before. In one fell swoop I tore the War Horse championship from her fingers and silenced that lady of darkness, consuming her as though she were nothing. And then, like rumbles of thunder in the distance, the chants began. Kill. Drell. Kill.”

The thunder continued to rumble, this time more softly than the sudden blast that had come moments earlier.

“When Darkness couldn’t stop me, they threw a white knight in Michael Kelly at me and in the blink of an eye, another hero fell. Kill. Drell. Kill.”

For effect his right hand balled up into a fist and then gently pounded on the table to emphasize each of the final three words.

“Louder and louder they cried, coming to see me fulfill my purpose and bearing witness to it with their own eyes. Week after week. Match after match. They came. They saw. They believed. And the shouted, more and more, for me to KILL. DRELL. KILL!”

Harder he pounded on the table this time, leaning forward in a sort of menacing way. It wasn’t like Kimitsu was someone who was frightened easily. Or, at least, she was someone who put on a front that she wasn’t frightened easily. But fear or not, he knew that over the course of the past few months he had found his way under her skin whether she wanted to believe it, or admit to it, or not.

“And even as they chanted. Even as they cried. And even as I tore through one feeble offering after another, and one more pathetic attempt at pacifying the scourge upon this company that I am, you still kept your blinders on, with your fingers plugged in your ears, begging whatever god you pray to that I might not find my way to you. But the storm was always coming. The winds were always going to be howling, whipping around you as the rains beat down upon your door. But it was never any of those things that were your problem.”

Slowly his fingers unclenched from the fist they had been balled up into, shifting and turning so that he might strum them upon the table that the house was sitting on top of. With his other hand he continued to play casually with the crude little figurine.

“You know there’s a little song parents sing to their children in Bible class about a wise man who built his house upon a rock, and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Both men put the time and effort in to build their homes. I’m sure they were comfortable and did their jobs to the best of their ability. Just as I’m sure both of those men had seen storms in their lives before and survived them just fine. But then, one day, a storm comes along and the rains come down and the floods come up. And the foolish man, who built his house upon the sand, his house comes tumbling down.”

Setting the figurine down, Drell pushed himself away from the table and slowly, even as the storm outside of his home continued to rage, he began to pace without paying the rain, thunder and lightning any attention.

“Everything about you, Kimitsu, is built upon sand. There’s no substance. It’s all lies and fabrications. Even your name, this Zombie nonsense, is little more than a mask you’ve worn to keep people from peering directly into your soul, exposing all of the little flaws and vulnerabilities. You spend your life ashamed of who you are, hiding behind a carefully crafted identity, and to your credit you’ve done so with some modicum of success. In spite of the fact that you built your own house, and your own career, upon a foundation of sand you’ve survived. Until now.”

Nodding his head, Drell finds himself finding a rhythm to his words and licks his lips with excitement.

“Now, in your ignorance, you fail to understand the true meaning behind the words that the fans shout from the depths of their souls. You think when they implore me to KILL that they’re talking about physically taking your life from you. I don’t know which boring little edgelord that has watched too many horror movies that you’re associating me with. But I care little for taking your physical life from you. I live to rip the souls of my opponents straight from their chests. There is nothing better, nothing more arousing, than watching the will to continue on slowly fade from the eyes of the person standing across the ring from you. A person who, likely, has foolishly spent the time immediately prior to the bell sounding swearing that that was exactly what would not happen.”

The sinister smile that had been etched into his expression up until that very moment faded into a glare, anger and disgust simmering in the gaze of his blue eyes.

“For weeks I have laid waste to bodies of men and women, all warnings to you of what is to come. I’ve implored you to prepare. I’ve begged you to ready yourself. When the time comes there can be no mistake that all of the little games that I’ve played to entertain myself up to this moment, those things are in the past. In one fell swoop I eradicated a War Horse. Now? I take my battle to the trenches. Where the dirtiest, the grittiest, the most unseemly fighting occurs. Try and deny it as you might, Kimitsu, you find yourself in a world of chaos and that world belongs, solely, to me. I brought it to the Battleground. And now, I unleash it upon you. Tick by tick time slips by, drawing you closer to that peak velocity where there’s no turning back.”

Raising his hands high into the air, both tightly balled into fists and slammed down into the dollhouse, shattering it into hundreds of tiny little wooden pieces.

“Once you reach that velocity and you realize there’s no turning back, it’s at that point you’ll finally start to feel the ground give way beneath you and that house that you’ve so carefully built will come crashing down around you. And there, in the midst of the wreckage and chaos swirling all around you. As you lie staring up and wondering what in the hell it is that tore your life down to the ground around you, you’ll see these two blue eyes staring back at you..”

Raising his right hand upward, he used his index and middle finger to point directly into his own eyes for added effect.

“And you’ll hear the crowd screaming in ecstasy.”

A pause, for just a heartbeat or two as he took a deep breath.

“KILL!”

Beat.

“DRELL!”

And another.

“KILL!”

Silence fell across the scene, and even the storm that had been raging just moments before dissipated.

“Perhaps then you’ll realize the meaning of the words. Perhaps then you’ll understand that there are fates far worse than death. Perhaps then you’ll recognize what you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. Never was I going to be a man who dealt a fatal blow that brought life to an end quickly. Like poison in your veins, I will eat at you until you breathe your last.”

Smiling, he nodded his head.

“And there, from my house built on the ROCK… I will stand victorious once more.”

A loud snap of thunder chased away all other sound and a bright flash of lightning obscured the audiences view. When the scene came back into clarity, Drell was gone and nothing but the dollhouse remained with the little figurine resting on top of the wreckage.