Locked Doors, Mirrors and Fathers
Apr 30, 2022 22:20:08 GMT -5
Marcus Welsh, Crash Rodriguez, and 2 more like this
Post by Sadie Ko on Apr 30, 2022 22:20:08 GMT -5
It was well after OCW had landed down and made base in Djibouti, when a local janitor froze in his tracks, transfixed by what he was seeing.
The men who hired him and who would be signing his checks made it very clear that as the custodian of this building he would not be going near the lockers, either the private rooms or the communal lockers afforded to all rookies, jobbers and young lions trying to prove themselves. And at the time he'd agreed readily. After all, what would he need to touch a wrestler's belongings for? Hassan, named after his country's first president, was here only to clean the floors and the window. He could let these athletes take care of themselves.
And so here he was late at night, absent mindedly walking along narrow corridors mopping narrow hallways, when he saw it. One of the locker doors hanging open, swinging on squeaking hinges even as what little he could see sat black, engulfed in shadow. The second he saw it he felt something that he could not describe. The feeling you got when you realized you weren’t as alone as you thought you were. The hair on Hassan’s arms, and on the back of his neck shot straight up as instinctively he stood up a little straighter and looked around expecting to see a pair of eyes studying him at any moment. Moments later, when the grim reaper did not appear, when the machete didn’t plunge into the back of his neck, he felt a bit of feeling in his limbs and actually had the fortitude to take a shaky step closer to the ominous swinging door. He could see that, unlike all the other doors which had various names(Easton, CYPHER, M. Mason etc), this one’s had a nameplate that was barely legible beneath the deep scratches and the black dark stain across the metal. ‘S’...something. He couldn’t quite make it out.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he found his hand reaching out, grasping the edge of that metal door, and starting to pull it back. And the more he pulled back, the more he saw only…darkness. Was it shadow? He couldn’t tell, and it was that ambiguity, that uncertainty, that caused him to take a step backward and as he did so, the back of his shoe stepped on something that he could instantly tell was a foot. A hand grasped his shoulder, a pale and monstrous hand squeezing his shoulder so hard that pain lanced through his body like fractures along a pane of glass and Hassan opened his mouth in shock although no sound could exit his throat. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the dark blue jumpsuit, and the dull white mask with shadows for sockets.
“Hey kid, don’t touch that”, said the man and relief washed through Hassan’s body as he recognized the frame and voice of his employer, the so-called ‘Knife Man’. The janitor started to turn toward the larger man, to try and apologize, but TKM merely shook his head in understanding. “Hey I think you’ve cleaned this area well enough, let’s find another area.”
The Knife Man put a hand around the shoulder of the smaller man, quickly and quietly ushering him out of the dark hallway and trying to keep his one as safe as he could. The OCW had lost far too many personnel during their island excursion, and there was no reason to risk more. Not that he thought the all the wrestlers were potential murderers, but why take that chance by having them provoked? He was leading the man toward one of the side offices when a metallic bang echoed through the concrete hallways, causing the old mechanic to quickly look over his shoulder out of pure instinct. He couldn't see anything, but that locker door was now swinging more violently, as if it had been slammed 'shut' and was now moving purely through the sudden momentum and inertia. And TKM couldn't be sure, but it looked like there was a dent in the door where there wasn't before. And just inside the locker, the darkness...was it moving? Was that just his eyes playing tricks on him? The Knife Man turned back around, feeling his ass clench involuntarily as adrenaline flooded his body and his brain chose 'flight' instead of 'fight'.
"Yeah, we're definitely getting you home", the older masked man muttered. He hurried his pace, and guiding Hassan to do the same. Sometimes he really hated this place.
This special on Mike Mason has been playing over the weekend, and it's easy to see why. The subject matter is riveting, the subject of this documentary infuriating yet charismatic, the kind of ego that makes everyone grateful this man chose sports instead of politics or business.
But at 4 in the morning, when the rest of the civilized world is in bed or just scrolling through their phone sitting on the toilet, you are watching this Mike Mason special. And there's something wrong with this one. Footage jumps every so often, images and figures vanish and reappear wrong. Audio plays and it sounds distant or strained, even as lines appear at the bottom of the screen and slowly travel upward.
"Don't you want this? Don't you want this? you want aGuts or determinationWho Is Mike Mason?"
Footage skips and warps in on itself, and play in the wrong sequence of events. When the narrator stands with Marvelous Mike Mason, there is a dark stain across the screen...except it's behind them, the footage of Mason himself kept pristine and focused even when everything around him becomes static or distorted, or the color drains or bleeds.
"Andrew Mason was a hardZeroBowl rings because he playedAndrew's only son, and to who all of his regretsDon't you want this?"
Footage is intercut with football footage, helmets crashing into pads and men flipping and crashing into the grass and the mud. Mike Mason standing with his interviewer flickers back into focus but immediately that's replaced with grainy, black and white footage of a hand on a cutting board, a knife coming down to softly press against the back of the thumb. The left hand pushes and squeezes tightly until something gives. White screen-tearing spills from the flesh, bleeding into the bottom of the screen and flooding everything as the picture gets unstable, and a high pitched noise deafens you watching at home until the sound won't leave it won't leave it has to stop it won't leave YOU LET ME DIE AND I SCREAMED
Silence. Black screen. Comfort and a brief reprieve. But still voices play in the background. They get louder.
"You lostDoesn't CountYouLostWRONG AGAIN!YouLostI've never lostMy lifeNothing to do."
There are the sounds of bones creaking as there is a presence standing behind the blackness of the screen, the sounds of breathing getting louder even as the black of the screen sways like a curtain ever slightly.
"Your spooky-spooky, creepy-creepy shtick might work onMy lifeYouLostAndrew's only son...You are quite terrifying, and I'm afraid ofAll of his regretsAndrew's only sonDon't youNever lostMy life"
Mike Mason appears on the screen once more, though he looks different. Through the grainy film footage it's hard to see his eyes and his mouth, even with his head and face growing larger and getting closer to the screen all at the same time. The right eye socket expands in exploding darkness, the black of the screen causing the image of The Mecca to rip apart until again, there was only darkness. Though there are less strands of it now, allowing us to see the barest hints of what might be a face, or the crude parody of one. There is movement behind the darkness in a way that shouldn't be possible. It's hard for our minds to reconcile what it is being shown to us.
The Voice: You cannot burn us. You cannot make us in your image. You will fight. You will scream. You will fail.
You're scared of your father. Scared of his corpse, scared you are a corpse in his eyes. He never wanted you to join the freakshow, wrestling us, breaking your neck and ruining your chances for His glory. Scared every time you open your mouth, every time your plan doesn't work. You're scared of being replaceable, that nobody can tell the difference between you and your stunt doubles. You're afraid every time you look in the mirror, and cannot tell the difference, so you scream and you pout and you throw tantrums.
But this is not our problem. On Massacre, we will step into the ring with the Aging Adonis. The Colossus of Rhodes is lost to time, the cities we've forgotten are lost and never spoken of. You, Mike Mason, are no different to the perfect pillars of the Roman Colosseum, crumbled into dust and nothing.
You
Half a world away, Aariz was sat in the passenger seat of a car, watching droplets of water roll down the windows, listening to the sound of rain bouncing off the roof. He was breathing as best he could, eyes closing from the effort before he found the power within himself to open them again. He didn't want to look at Sandra next to him, already feeling the anger emanating from her. He couldn't stop thinking about his first daughter, who used to be so happy doing pullups and burpees alongside her old man. His daughter who forced herself to learn how to stand and walk purely so she could start running with him every day.
The next time he opened his eyes, the car was already pulled into a garage, and the older man was being walked and shuffled toward a couch. He didn't remember when the remote was in his hand, but he barely noticed the glow of the tv screen in front of him. The football footage, the old man yelling at his son was something Aariz would normally find repugnant, if he were focused enough to pay attention to what was in front of him.
That was before he saw the blackness of the screen, before he saw a face he'd seen every day in his dreams, until he saw an eye of pure unfiltered hatred glaring at him, feeling its scathing judgement and feeling that awful feeling in his chest. By the time Sandra was running over, the only thing he could do was scream while crying, trying to scramble over that couch and only managing to fall back while the image showed in his mind over and over, over and over.
While he screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and
hand wrapped around his throat choking
The men who hired him and who would be signing his checks made it very clear that as the custodian of this building he would not be going near the lockers, either the private rooms or the communal lockers afforded to all rookies, jobbers and young lions trying to prove themselves. And at the time he'd agreed readily. After all, what would he need to touch a wrestler's belongings for? Hassan, named after his country's first president, was here only to clean the floors and the window. He could let these athletes take care of themselves.
And so here he was late at night, absent mindedly walking along narrow corridors mopping narrow hallways, when he saw it. One of the locker doors hanging open, swinging on squeaking hinges even as what little he could see sat black, engulfed in shadow. The second he saw it he felt something that he could not describe. The feeling you got when you realized you weren’t as alone as you thought you were. The hair on Hassan’s arms, and on the back of his neck shot straight up as instinctively he stood up a little straighter and looked around expecting to see a pair of eyes studying him at any moment. Moments later, when the grim reaper did not appear, when the machete didn’t plunge into the back of his neck, he felt a bit of feeling in his limbs and actually had the fortitude to take a shaky step closer to the ominous swinging door. He could see that, unlike all the other doors which had various names(Easton, CYPHER, M. Mason etc), this one’s had a nameplate that was barely legible beneath the deep scratches and the black dark stain across the metal. ‘S’...something. He couldn’t quite make it out.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he found his hand reaching out, grasping the edge of that metal door, and starting to pull it back. And the more he pulled back, the more he saw only…darkness. Was it shadow? He couldn’t tell, and it was that ambiguity, that uncertainty, that caused him to take a step backward and as he did so, the back of his shoe stepped on something that he could instantly tell was a foot. A hand grasped his shoulder, a pale and monstrous hand squeezing his shoulder so hard that pain lanced through his body like fractures along a pane of glass and Hassan opened his mouth in shock although no sound could exit his throat. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the dark blue jumpsuit, and the dull white mask with shadows for sockets.
“Hey kid, don’t touch that”, said the man and relief washed through Hassan’s body as he recognized the frame and voice of his employer, the so-called ‘Knife Man’. The janitor started to turn toward the larger man, to try and apologize, but TKM merely shook his head in understanding. “Hey I think you’ve cleaned this area well enough, let’s find another area.”
The Knife Man put a hand around the shoulder of the smaller man, quickly and quietly ushering him out of the dark hallway and trying to keep his one as safe as he could. The OCW had lost far too many personnel during their island excursion, and there was no reason to risk more. Not that he thought the all the wrestlers were potential murderers, but why take that chance by having them provoked? He was leading the man toward one of the side offices when a metallic bang echoed through the concrete hallways, causing the old mechanic to quickly look over his shoulder out of pure instinct. He couldn't see anything, but that locker door was now swinging more violently, as if it had been slammed 'shut' and was now moving purely through the sudden momentum and inertia. And TKM couldn't be sure, but it looked like there was a dent in the door where there wasn't before. And just inside the locker, the darkness...was it moving? Was that just his eyes playing tricks on him? The Knife Man turned back around, feeling his ass clench involuntarily as adrenaline flooded his body and his brain chose 'flight' instead of 'fight'.
"Yeah, we're definitely getting you home", the older masked man muttered. He hurried his pace, and guiding Hassan to do the same. Sometimes he really hated this place.
This special on Mike Mason has been playing over the weekend, and it's easy to see why. The subject matter is riveting, the subject of this documentary infuriating yet charismatic, the kind of ego that makes everyone grateful this man chose sports instead of politics or business.
But at 4 in the morning, when the rest of the civilized world is in bed or just scrolling through their phone sitting on the toilet, you are watching this Mike Mason special. And there's something wrong with this one. Footage jumps every so often, images and figures vanish and reappear wrong. Audio plays and it sounds distant or strained, even as lines appear at the bottom of the screen and slowly travel upward.
"Don't you want this? Don't you want this? you want aGuts or determinationWho Is Mike Mason?"
Footage skips and warps in on itself, and play in the wrong sequence of events. When the narrator stands with Marvelous Mike Mason, there is a dark stain across the screen...except it's behind them, the footage of Mason himself kept pristine and focused even when everything around him becomes static or distorted, or the color drains or bleeds.
"Andrew Mason was a hardZeroBowl rings because he playedAndrew's only son, and to who all of his regretsDon't you want this?"
Footage is intercut with football footage, helmets crashing into pads and men flipping and crashing into the grass and the mud. Mike Mason standing with his interviewer flickers back into focus but immediately that's replaced with grainy, black and white footage of a hand on a cutting board, a knife coming down to softly press against the back of the thumb. The left hand pushes and squeezes tightly until something gives. White screen-tearing spills from the flesh, bleeding into the bottom of the screen and flooding everything as the picture gets unstable, and a high pitched noise deafens you watching at home until the sound won't leave it won't leave it has to stop it won't leave YOU LET ME DIE AND I SCREAMED
Silence. Black screen. Comfort and a brief reprieve. But still voices play in the background. They get louder.
"You lostDoesn't CountYouLostWRONG AGAIN!YouLostI've never lostMy lifeNothing to do."
There are the sounds of bones creaking as there is a presence standing behind the blackness of the screen, the sounds of breathing getting louder even as the black of the screen sways like a curtain ever slightly.
"Your spooky-spooky, creepy-creepy shtick might work onMy lifeYouLostAndrew's only son...You are quite terrifying, and I'm afraid ofAll of his regretsAndrew's only sonDon't youNever lostMy life"
Mike Mason appears on the screen once more, though he looks different. Through the grainy film footage it's hard to see his eyes and his mouth, even with his head and face growing larger and getting closer to the screen all at the same time. The right eye socket expands in exploding darkness, the black of the screen causing the image of The Mecca to rip apart until again, there was only darkness. Though there are less strands of it now, allowing us to see the barest hints of what might be a face, or the crude parody of one. There is movement behind the darkness in a way that shouldn't be possible. It's hard for our minds to reconcile what it is being shown to us.
The Voice: You cannot burn us. You cannot make us in your image. You will fight. You will scream. You will fail.
You're scared of your father. Scared of his corpse, scared you are a corpse in his eyes. He never wanted you to join the freakshow, wrestling us, breaking your neck and ruining your chances for His glory. Scared every time you open your mouth, every time your plan doesn't work. You're scared of being replaceable, that nobody can tell the difference between you and your stunt doubles. You're afraid every time you look in the mirror, and cannot tell the difference, so you scream and you pout and you throw tantrums.
But this is not our problem. On Massacre, we will step into the ring with the Aging Adonis. The Colossus of Rhodes is lost to time, the cities we've forgotten are lost and never spoken of. You, Mike Mason, are no different to the perfect pillars of the Roman Colosseum, crumbled into dust and nothing.
You
have
one
WEEK
Half a world away, Aariz was sat in the passenger seat of a car, watching droplets of water roll down the windows, listening to the sound of rain bouncing off the roof. He was breathing as best he could, eyes closing from the effort before he found the power within himself to open them again. He didn't want to look at Sandra next to him, already feeling the anger emanating from her. He couldn't stop thinking about his first daughter, who used to be so happy doing pullups and burpees alongside her old man. His daughter who forced herself to learn how to stand and walk purely so she could start running with him every day.
The next time he opened his eyes, the car was already pulled into a garage, and the older man was being walked and shuffled toward a couch. He didn't remember when the remote was in his hand, but he barely noticed the glow of the tv screen in front of him. The football footage, the old man yelling at his son was something Aariz would normally find repugnant, if he were focused enough to pay attention to what was in front of him.
That was before he saw the blackness of the screen, before he saw a face he'd seen every day in his dreams, until he saw an eye of pure unfiltered hatred glaring at him, feeling its scathing judgement and feeling that awful feeling in his chest. By the time Sandra was running over, the only thing he could do was scream while crying, trying to scramble over that couch and only managing to fall back while the image showed in his mind over and over, over and over.
While he screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and
hand wrapped around his throat choking