Post by Marcus Welsh on Jan 9, 2020 14:21:08 GMT -5
Scott Syren stood before a spooky tower atop a snow-encrusted hill. Dead trees dotted the hilltop, but all were dwarfed by the building that dominated the sunset-painted landscape. It must have been a dozen stories high.
Syren looked once more to the scroll clutched in his fist.
It said 1466 Pisswine Road, matching the dusty wrought-iron numbers above the tower’s door.
Still, he did not knock.
All these years of seeking had brought him here. All those different paths, those different means of looking. Searching by way of wrestling. Searching by way of drugs. Searching by way of time travel, and sorcery, and congress with dark powers he had only recently begun to understand.
All of that had brought him here.
The Journey.
Still he did not knock. His tattooed hands hovered before a black iron knocker in the shape of a long-tongued devil, dreading to reach out and touch it for reasons he could not explain.
The wind howled around him, blowing snow into his hair, his eyes, up the sleeves of a too short, too thin coat.
He stood there before the tower and stared at his own hand, hanging there frozen between himself and the door. The knuckle tattoos read “HEY! YOUR” on one hand, and “FUCK SELF” on the other.
He did not remember getting the tattoos. He did not remember most of what he had done.
Syren was not a creature of memory, nor personality, nor habit. Not like a man at all, anymore. The Journey was what defined him now.
The Journey consumed him, and he it. He could not be defined by a job, or a family, or a car, or a home, or a pet, or a significant other, or a shiny belt, or a series of numbers describing his record inside a wrestling ring. He could no longer be defined in any terms understood by other men. Lesser men.
He never did knock. The door opened of its own accord, surprising him, as he stood there stupidly with his defaced hand hung there before the knocker.
At first, Syren assumed an enchantment or haunting had opened the door. He has seen too much spooky shit to think otherwise.
It was almost more shocking when he saw a nondescript old man stood there holding the door open.
“Yes?” the man greeted him, as suspicious as any other old man with a stranger at the door. The remnants of his gray hair are wild. His sweater is a bright, Christmas red. He is otherwise not remarkable.
Syren put his hand down awkwardly. Looked once more to the scroll in his other hand. Looked up at the tower. Looked around the hilltop. Looked at the man last of all. It is hard for him to look earnestly into a human face now, knowing what he knows.
“LilJungleMan?” Syren said the name, not knowing what else to say, although the old man in front of him was obviously not his old friend, the witch doctor and vintage OCW superstar LilJungleMan.
The old man’s face lit up and he said a word that Syren could neither pronounce nor spell. LilJungleMan’s True Name, hidden these many thousands of years for good reason.
“Yes!” Syren exclaimed, and he was so desparate for someone to understand something, anything, he said that he felt he wanted to hug the man in that moment. But he didn’t. He held up the scroll instead, and spoke very slowly. “This was the last thing… he gave me… before he…”
Syren was not sure how to explain. He had not heard from LilJungleMan for years. He does not know if the evil little wizard has died in some catastrophe of his own making, if he has been bound in some cosmic prison for meddling with things beyond his capabilities, or if he simply choked to death on a shard of the skulls he so loved to eat and is rotting even now on the jungle floor.
But the old man nodded like he understood everything, though Syren had hardly said a word. The man looked down the hill, where Syren’s car sat, parked outside the gate, at the foot of the long, icy, winding sidewalk up to the tower. He said, “Might want to take anything you’ll need. We could be a while.”
Syren quickly inventoried the contents of the shitty Toyota he had stolen three towns back. There is nothing in there, really, except for the Christmas card tucked into the dash. It was sent to him from Curt Canon. It is the only physical object he has any attachment to now, and even that he is willing to give up if The Journey wills it.
“I’m ready,” Syren told the man. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I need to learn whatever it is I need to learn before the final OCW showdown… big wrestling match and shit. But it’s soon. The clock is ticking, friend. Always ticking. Even now, ticking.” He realized he was rambling, and shut up.
“You’re a wrestler? That’s nice. My grandson, Chad, loves to watch the wrestling,” the old man said, as though he were no different from any other old man. But Syren smelled the destiny all over him.
“I was,” he answered. “A long time ago.”
He had given up wrestling for the dozenth time, but this impending OCW reunion had a strong sense of… destiny about it. It drew him in. Its part in The Journey was unmistakable. The Journey had given him the ability to smell destiny, and it was more burden than gift, just another thing that made it impossible to relate to other human beings.
The man led him deeper into the tower, up countless flights of steps.
“Did I mention the ticking clock and all that?” Syren muttered, but the climb continued.
At last, the man came to a set of huge double-doors. He took a deep breath before he began pushing them, laboriously, open.
Syren reached to help, then thought better of it. He had seen brave men turned to ash by warded doors. He did not know what sort of magic lurked in this place. Only that it reeked of destiny.
“This is it,” the old man said, breathless with pride. “This is all of them.”
“All of what?” Syren asked, as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim chamber.
But the old man did not answer, only ventured deeper into the center of his huge, cylindrical room.
When Syren could see, he found the chamber had shelves on all sides, stretching all the way to a very high domed ceiling.
“What is...” he began to ask, but the man was not even paying attention to him. He was staring, glassy-eyed, up at the shelves.
Each and every shelf was packed with jars of some pale liquid, ranging from colorless to orange-red, and from transparent to translucent.
“Each and every one,” said the old man proudly. “One drink, and then on the shelf it goes. One drink only, even the sweetest, tastiest ones. It’s that restraint that makes them so special. I still remember exactly where my favorites are on the shelf. I still crave them. But I never open them a second time. One drink only. Then on the shelf it goes.”
Syren had seen many things, but he did not know what he was looking at now.
Was it some potion? Had The Journey brought him here only to burden him with some new and terrible magic? He shuddered at the thought.
Or was it something more practical… some drug?
At that thought, several old demons in Syren’s head thrashed and rattled their flimsy cages.
He swallowed hard. “What is it?” he demanded. “What is all of this?”
The old man frowned like he was an idiot. Maybe he was. It had been said, and more than once.
“Don’t you understand?”
“I don’t,” Syren admitted.
“It’s piss!” the man shouted, then cackled madly. “It’s all the piss I drank!”
Syren blinked at him. “The… piss?”
“The piss!” He giggled and repeated it. “The piss!”
Syren blinked more. “The piss… you drank?”
“Well not all of it!” the old man said defensively. “Just one drink from each piss, then in a jar on the shelf it goes.”
“Okay...”
“Just think of it,” said the man, and for the first time Syren noticed he had yellow eyes. “Decades and decades of pisses. Just think of it.”
Syren thought of it, and thought some more, but he did not know what he was supposed to think. He could make no sense of it.
He had thought he smelled destiny. Had not The Journey brought him here? The decades of abusing his own body, and LilJungleMan’s sacrifice, and the rest of it, didn’t it all have to mean something?
Maybe it had been piss Syren smelled on the fellow, rather than destiny. In fact, he was pretty sure now…
“How is all this piss stuff supposed to help me win a wrestling match?” Syren asked.
The old man looked at him and cocked his head to the side.
“You’re a wrestler?” said the piss-drunk old weirdo. “That’s nice. My grandson, Chad, loves to watch the wrestling.”
Syren hung his head. Swallowed the old rage that threatened to burst forth. The rage and violence had impeded The Journey just as often as it had helped drive him down the path. He knew better now.
The old man laughed and laughed, drooling over his jars of piss, and would answer no more questions.
His laughter echoed down the many stairs, mocking Syren as he retreated, utterly defeated, from the tower.
It had snowed while he was inside, and grown darker as well.
As he walked down the hill, he despaired at the meaninglessness of it all.
And then rejoiced.
The meaningless WAS the meaning.
He had thought The Journey was leading him to some grand, fulfilling conclusion. Some glorious climax to his story, a comedy, melodrama, and tragedy by turns. But that was not so.
The Journey was only The Journey. He tore up the scroll still clutched in his sweating fist. The pieces floated away on the icy wind, as meaningless as anything else.
The smell of destiny had been piss all along. There was no such thing as destiny. Only The Journey mattered. Plummeting through dark until you met some horrific end. And whatever you managed to accomplish, panicked and flailing, during the freefall.
By the time he reached the car at the bottom of the hill, he was laughing madly to himself, echoing the piss man he could still hear up in the tower.
He was startled silent to find his car was no longer empty.
A large, black man was in the passenger seat, reading Curt Canon’s Christmas card. He had longish dreadlocks, an itchy-looking moustache, and wore what looked like a cheap, plastic mask over his eyes.
“Hello,” Syren said, getting into the driver’s seat and closing the door.
The interior light shut off, and now all Syren could see of his old friend was the glint of moonlight off the edge of the mask, and those white teeth grinning madly in the dark.
“What’s crackin’, old man?” said Not President Dean.
“The Journey,” Syren answered.
“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” said Not President Dean happily.
Syren said nothing to that.
For years now, everyone had taken Not President Dean to be President Dean in a cheap disguise. OCW fans, wrestlers, employees, even the most pathetic and clingy of insiders… none of them had ever imagined he could be anything other than Dean acting like a cunt.
The truth, as usual, was darker.
Syren had known all along. He admitted that to himself now. He accepted it as part of The Journey. When he first stole those hairs from President Dean’s dressing room (at LilJungleMan’s bidding, as usual) he knew exactly what they were to be used for, even though he hadn’t been told.
He could not even fake surprise when he first met the clone.
What everyone took for a cheap, plastic bandit’s mask was actually a plate of exoskeletal flesh, which had grown on Not President Dean’s brow due to LilJungleMan’s DNA hacking experiments. It often itched, and caused the clone great pain. He rubbed at it there, in the dark car.
The fake moustache was actually fake. But that was itchy, too.
“You ready for this shit?” Not President Dean asked him.
Syren shook his head, smiling. “It doesn’t matter, man. None of it matters.”
The soulless clone smiled back at him. “You’re finally making some sense, sucka.”
Syren put the car into gear and drove into the black fog of unknowing.
Syren looked once more to the scroll clutched in his fist.
It said 1466 Pisswine Road, matching the dusty wrought-iron numbers above the tower’s door.
Still, he did not knock.
All these years of seeking had brought him here. All those different paths, those different means of looking. Searching by way of wrestling. Searching by way of drugs. Searching by way of time travel, and sorcery, and congress with dark powers he had only recently begun to understand.
All of that had brought him here.
The Journey.
Still he did not knock. His tattooed hands hovered before a black iron knocker in the shape of a long-tongued devil, dreading to reach out and touch it for reasons he could not explain.
The wind howled around him, blowing snow into his hair, his eyes, up the sleeves of a too short, too thin coat.
He stood there before the tower and stared at his own hand, hanging there frozen between himself and the door. The knuckle tattoos read “HEY! YOUR” on one hand, and “FUCK SELF” on the other.
He did not remember getting the tattoos. He did not remember most of what he had done.
Syren was not a creature of memory, nor personality, nor habit. Not like a man at all, anymore. The Journey was what defined him now.
The Journey consumed him, and he it. He could not be defined by a job, or a family, or a car, or a home, or a pet, or a significant other, or a shiny belt, or a series of numbers describing his record inside a wrestling ring. He could no longer be defined in any terms understood by other men. Lesser men.
He never did knock. The door opened of its own accord, surprising him, as he stood there stupidly with his defaced hand hung there before the knocker.
At first, Syren assumed an enchantment or haunting had opened the door. He has seen too much spooky shit to think otherwise.
It was almost more shocking when he saw a nondescript old man stood there holding the door open.
“Yes?” the man greeted him, as suspicious as any other old man with a stranger at the door. The remnants of his gray hair are wild. His sweater is a bright, Christmas red. He is otherwise not remarkable.
Syren put his hand down awkwardly. Looked once more to the scroll in his other hand. Looked up at the tower. Looked around the hilltop. Looked at the man last of all. It is hard for him to look earnestly into a human face now, knowing what he knows.
“LilJungleMan?” Syren said the name, not knowing what else to say, although the old man in front of him was obviously not his old friend, the witch doctor and vintage OCW superstar LilJungleMan.
The old man’s face lit up and he said a word that Syren could neither pronounce nor spell. LilJungleMan’s True Name, hidden these many thousands of years for good reason.
“Yes!” Syren exclaimed, and he was so desparate for someone to understand something, anything, he said that he felt he wanted to hug the man in that moment. But he didn’t. He held up the scroll instead, and spoke very slowly. “This was the last thing… he gave me… before he…”
Syren was not sure how to explain. He had not heard from LilJungleMan for years. He does not know if the evil little wizard has died in some catastrophe of his own making, if he has been bound in some cosmic prison for meddling with things beyond his capabilities, or if he simply choked to death on a shard of the skulls he so loved to eat and is rotting even now on the jungle floor.
But the old man nodded like he understood everything, though Syren had hardly said a word. The man looked down the hill, where Syren’s car sat, parked outside the gate, at the foot of the long, icy, winding sidewalk up to the tower. He said, “Might want to take anything you’ll need. We could be a while.”
Syren quickly inventoried the contents of the shitty Toyota he had stolen three towns back. There is nothing in there, really, except for the Christmas card tucked into the dash. It was sent to him from Curt Canon. It is the only physical object he has any attachment to now, and even that he is willing to give up if The Journey wills it.
“I’m ready,” Syren told the man. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I need to learn whatever it is I need to learn before the final OCW showdown… big wrestling match and shit. But it’s soon. The clock is ticking, friend. Always ticking. Even now, ticking.” He realized he was rambling, and shut up.
“You’re a wrestler? That’s nice. My grandson, Chad, loves to watch the wrestling,” the old man said, as though he were no different from any other old man. But Syren smelled the destiny all over him.
“I was,” he answered. “A long time ago.”
He had given up wrestling for the dozenth time, but this impending OCW reunion had a strong sense of… destiny about it. It drew him in. Its part in The Journey was unmistakable. The Journey had given him the ability to smell destiny, and it was more burden than gift, just another thing that made it impossible to relate to other human beings.
The man led him deeper into the tower, up countless flights of steps.
“Did I mention the ticking clock and all that?” Syren muttered, but the climb continued.
At last, the man came to a set of huge double-doors. He took a deep breath before he began pushing them, laboriously, open.
Syren reached to help, then thought better of it. He had seen brave men turned to ash by warded doors. He did not know what sort of magic lurked in this place. Only that it reeked of destiny.
“This is it,” the old man said, breathless with pride. “This is all of them.”
“All of what?” Syren asked, as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim chamber.
But the old man did not answer, only ventured deeper into the center of his huge, cylindrical room.
When Syren could see, he found the chamber had shelves on all sides, stretching all the way to a very high domed ceiling.
“What is...” he began to ask, but the man was not even paying attention to him. He was staring, glassy-eyed, up at the shelves.
Each and every shelf was packed with jars of some pale liquid, ranging from colorless to orange-red, and from transparent to translucent.
“Each and every one,” said the old man proudly. “One drink, and then on the shelf it goes. One drink only, even the sweetest, tastiest ones. It’s that restraint that makes them so special. I still remember exactly where my favorites are on the shelf. I still crave them. But I never open them a second time. One drink only. Then on the shelf it goes.”
Syren had seen many things, but he did not know what he was looking at now.
Was it some potion? Had The Journey brought him here only to burden him with some new and terrible magic? He shuddered at the thought.
Or was it something more practical… some drug?
At that thought, several old demons in Syren’s head thrashed and rattled their flimsy cages.
He swallowed hard. “What is it?” he demanded. “What is all of this?”
The old man frowned like he was an idiot. Maybe he was. It had been said, and more than once.
“Don’t you understand?”
“I don’t,” Syren admitted.
“It’s piss!” the man shouted, then cackled madly. “It’s all the piss I drank!”
Syren blinked at him. “The… piss?”
“The piss!” He giggled and repeated it. “The piss!”
Syren blinked more. “The piss… you drank?”
“Well not all of it!” the old man said defensively. “Just one drink from each piss, then in a jar on the shelf it goes.”
“Okay...”
“Just think of it,” said the man, and for the first time Syren noticed he had yellow eyes. “Decades and decades of pisses. Just think of it.”
Syren thought of it, and thought some more, but he did not know what he was supposed to think. He could make no sense of it.
He had thought he smelled destiny. Had not The Journey brought him here? The decades of abusing his own body, and LilJungleMan’s sacrifice, and the rest of it, didn’t it all have to mean something?
Maybe it had been piss Syren smelled on the fellow, rather than destiny. In fact, he was pretty sure now…
“How is all this piss stuff supposed to help me win a wrestling match?” Syren asked.
The old man looked at him and cocked his head to the side.
“You’re a wrestler?” said the piss-drunk old weirdo. “That’s nice. My grandson, Chad, loves to watch the wrestling.”
Syren hung his head. Swallowed the old rage that threatened to burst forth. The rage and violence had impeded The Journey just as often as it had helped drive him down the path. He knew better now.
The old man laughed and laughed, drooling over his jars of piss, and would answer no more questions.
His laughter echoed down the many stairs, mocking Syren as he retreated, utterly defeated, from the tower.
It had snowed while he was inside, and grown darker as well.
As he walked down the hill, he despaired at the meaninglessness of it all.
And then rejoiced.
The meaningless WAS the meaning.
He had thought The Journey was leading him to some grand, fulfilling conclusion. Some glorious climax to his story, a comedy, melodrama, and tragedy by turns. But that was not so.
The Journey was only The Journey. He tore up the scroll still clutched in his sweating fist. The pieces floated away on the icy wind, as meaningless as anything else.
The smell of destiny had been piss all along. There was no such thing as destiny. Only The Journey mattered. Plummeting through dark until you met some horrific end. And whatever you managed to accomplish, panicked and flailing, during the freefall.
By the time he reached the car at the bottom of the hill, he was laughing madly to himself, echoing the piss man he could still hear up in the tower.
He was startled silent to find his car was no longer empty.
A large, black man was in the passenger seat, reading Curt Canon’s Christmas card. He had longish dreadlocks, an itchy-looking moustache, and wore what looked like a cheap, plastic mask over his eyes.
“Hello,” Syren said, getting into the driver’s seat and closing the door.
The interior light shut off, and now all Syren could see of his old friend was the glint of moonlight off the edge of the mask, and those white teeth grinning madly in the dark.
“What’s crackin’, old man?” said Not President Dean.
“The Journey,” Syren answered.
“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” said Not President Dean happily.
Syren said nothing to that.
For years now, everyone had taken Not President Dean to be President Dean in a cheap disguise. OCW fans, wrestlers, employees, even the most pathetic and clingy of insiders… none of them had ever imagined he could be anything other than Dean acting like a cunt.
The truth, as usual, was darker.
Syren had known all along. He admitted that to himself now. He accepted it as part of The Journey. When he first stole those hairs from President Dean’s dressing room (at LilJungleMan’s bidding, as usual) he knew exactly what they were to be used for, even though he hadn’t been told.
He could not even fake surprise when he first met the clone.
What everyone took for a cheap, plastic bandit’s mask was actually a plate of exoskeletal flesh, which had grown on Not President Dean’s brow due to LilJungleMan’s DNA hacking experiments. It often itched, and caused the clone great pain. He rubbed at it there, in the dark car.
The fake moustache was actually fake. But that was itchy, too.
“You ready for this shit?” Not President Dean asked him.
Syren shook his head, smiling. “It doesn’t matter, man. None of it matters.”
The soulless clone smiled back at him. “You’re finally making some sense, sucka.”
Syren put the car into gear and drove into the black fog of unknowing.