Post by Kaven Drell on Feb 4, 2019 21:54:54 GMT -5
A single, circular light dangles down from above attached to a long rusted chain. Where the chain leads can’t be determined but it can be assumed that it lead upward toward the unseen ceiling and was anchored in there. Slowly the light swung back and forth casting a dim light to illuminate a small area below. As it swung to the left of the camera shot a small, pink dollhouse rested on top of a cheap folding table. At the height of its swing the light seemed to pause as if to give the view just a few extra moments to consider the dollhouse before it swung back to the right. There, sitting in an old wooden rocking chair, was Kaven Drell with the War Horse championship resting comfortably in his lap. Gently his fingers caressed the gold, a smirk forming on his face as the camera shifted to show the nameplate still read the former champions name.
“They ask me why. Why, Kaven, why?”
Barely perceptible to the viewer, Kaven shifted his weight on both feet that were planted firmly to the ground in order to start rocking back and forth ever so slowly. His gaze remained firmly focused on the dollhouse in front of him as the light above continued to swing back and forth, exposing him for brief moments before casting shadows over his being. Having paused after his statement, his soft, unhinged laughter fills the empty expanse of silence that had quickly overtaken the room once his first words had faded.
“Why were you so determined to do what you did to the pale queen? Why won’t you give the championship back and let them inscribe your name upon it? Why are you doing what you’re doing?!”
As he rocks the chair begins to creak eerily as his fingers continued to caress the championship that rested in his lap.
“I wonder when the world will start to listen. I wonder when they will start to understand. Will it be with you, Michael Kelly? Will it be the glittering white knight of the wrestling world who attunes his ears to my message? Will it be you who finally understands? Or will you be like Elena, following the masses and listening to the sounds of their voices as you walk headlong, blindly, to your own destruction? I see you, Michael, and it gives me great joy to know all that you have waiting for me to reach out and defile.”
The laughter that had emanated from him softly just a few moments earlier now turned into a high pitched, boisterous bark as though he was enjoying the thought of what he had just spoken of just a little bit too much. As he leaned forward in the chair and the light shone on his face for a brief moment in time, Kavens tongue slowly jetted out and in a slow, circular motion moistened his lips like a dog who had just sniffed something that smelled quite tasty to them.
“Might it be that old, battered knee of yours that my attention focuses on? I know you have a family waiting for you. Counting on you. Relying on you, daddy to be, to bring home that paycheck filled with hefty sums from the merchandise stand. Tell me, Michael, can you look at yourself in the mirror knowing the way your whore yourself out to the masses? Can you stomach what you see? Because the truth is, you make my stomach turn. You make me sick. The sheep that fill the arenas that the Battleground tours doesn’t need someone who says everything they want to hear. They don’t need someone to blow their minimum wage paycheck on their t-shirts. They need someone different. Someone better. Someone unattached to what society tells them is okay. They need a leader, not someone to scratch their itching ears. They’ve looked to you, time and again. And you have whored yourself out to them for your own personal benefit and glory. Will it be all of that that I’m going to take from you? Your livelihood? Your ego? Shattered all beneath the hooves of the true War Horse of Union Battleground?”
Continuing to run his fingers over the War Horse championship, and specifically the nameplate, Kavens eyes still remain frozen on the dollhouse that sits a matter of feet away from him. Slowly his head cocks to the side as if considering the structure while he continues to press his opponent for answers to his rhetorical questions.
“Or will it be more than that. I see you guiding the unsuspecting down the same path you’ve walked. Passing on all that you’ve learned from your time in the wrestling ring to the next generation. Filling their cups with deadly kool aid. Perhaps that’s what I’ll take from you. The mystique that you’ve built around yourself. Do you even realize you’re poisoning their minds? Allowing them to believe that they, too, can be like you if they just fight the good fight and follow the rules. A bastion of good in a world filled with vile, evil men and women. A light to shine in the darkest of places. You’ve lead them to believe, and hamstrung them all in one swift motion. Because while you’ve prepared them to be that bastion of good, that light in the darkest places, you haven’t shown them what to do when a man like me emerges. When a man like me who soars in like a wrecking ball, bringing those fortifications tumbling to the ground. When a man like me takes that light and snuffs it out before their very eyes, with a smile on my face. You haven’t prepared them. Perhaps that is the lesson that I’ll teach them, while plunging your whole world into…”
Kaven slowly raised his right hand and snapped his fingers as he spoke his next word.
“Darkness.”
In that moment the light above his head burst, much like they had done in the moments before his match against Elena DeDraca in Philadelphia, sending sparks scattering everywhere and leaving the scene to plunge into heavy, smothering darkness. Drell’s voice, just barely audible, echoes through the endless black.
“They’ll cry, they’ll whimper and they’ll plead with you to stop me. Your wife will sit at home with baited breath, hand on her stomach cradling the creature you conceived together, looking on in concern. Her voice soft, gentle and pleading with you to get up. To fight back. But there will be nothing left… nothing but endless, inescapable night. Until…”
Snapping his fingers once more the darkness is chased away as the dollhouse that had been resting on the table in front of him suddenly burst into flames. Leaning forward in the rocking chair, Drell’s face was lit up by the flickering light of the flames with shadows dancing around.
“Until they realize that the real horror wasn’t in me snuffing out the light. It wasn’t in me tearing down those fortifications. But it was in the fact that I did all of that, I took their knight in shining armor and broke him and then… THEN… held him up for the world to see. After Lights Out episode thirty one, every single time people look at you they will think of me. Every time you look at yourself in the mirror, they’ll think of me. Every time you see your child looking into its father’s eyes, you’ll think of what I did to you. How I took everything from you. Everything that you are.”
Finally, Kaven pushed himself up from the rocking chair and stepped toward the burning dollhouse, the camera zooming in and focusing a bit more closely on him as he did so.
“Perhaps for you this is about the War Horse championship. Perhaps for you this is about wrapping gold around your waist once again. I’ll tell you the same thing that I told Elena. I don’t care about the championship. It’s meaningless to me. But it meant something to her and I was determined to take it. She didn’t understand. Not until it was too late. And now… when she looks at me… and she sees this championship in my hands with her name still etched into the nameplate. Now she understands that it wasn’t about becoming a champion. It was about ripping what she held most dear out of her hands. Even though she protested. Even though she fought. Even though she battled valiantly. At the end of the day I did what I told her I was going to do. I brought chaos to her doorstep, and now she will never forget the name of Kaven Drell.”
Smirking, Kaven leaned closer to the fire.
“And neither will you, when I take the happy little fairy tale you’ve built for yourself and I burn it to the ground while you lay there helplessly looking up at me. Failing when those who mean the most to you needed you to succeed. And you… and every single person you love and care about.. Will come to know what the world cries for when it shouts…”
With a guttural growl, Kaven spoke those three words that were becoming ever familiar in the Battleground.
