007
jester's privilege.
“An abstract becomes a masterpiece only when opinionated by influencers.”
━━ ♠ ━━
Ian Hershel had become engraved into the lives of the Luteces. He served as their primary videographer, handling the affairs of the promotional materials. Over time, the intimidating veil of the two had somewhat drawn back. Hearing them laugh and play with their children and pets had done wonders for Ian’s psyche. He no longer felt like he was in too much danger, such as the first time he met the duo back before PWE’s first show.
He approached the door leading into Damian’s office. He knocked on it as politely as he could.
“You can come in, the door’s unlocked.”
As Ian entered, he noticed Damian looking out of the window with his hands wrapped around his cane. Ian noticed him using it even after he had recovered. His match against ALiCE was the living proof that he was 100% or near so. So why did he need the cane still? Ian dismissed the thoughts with a wag of his head before entering closer. Damian turned from the window, walking over towards his camera operator with a thin smile. “Anything that I can help you with?” Damian asked.
Ian nervously scratched at his cheek, entirely thrown off by the politeness offered to him. It was still much too early for Ian to be used to the pleasantries that the Luteces could offer. He was half expecting to be fed to their dogs someday. Regardless, he had to take it as there was something else dwelling in his mind. As he made his way over towards Damian, he reached into his pocket and fished out a portable USB drive. They were a dime-a-dozen, which were incredible in their own right. “Sir, I think that I need to bring this to your attention.”
As Damian took the USB, Ian went to retrieve his laptop from his bag. As he rested it on Damian’s desk, the older man seemed perplexed. “I think I need to preface everything by saying that I’m totally not stalking your wife.”
Damian’s face hardened, but his eyebrow shot up. Ian knew to tread lightly now. He went into a folder on the USB, which was labeled “Tara.”
Settling in his seat, Damian eyed Ian going through the folder, studying the way they were named. Ian had gone through and renamed all of them away from their default export terms. Instead, they were given time stamps and dates. He selected a video from December 21st, 2021. When it opened, it started with Ian fumbling around with his camera, somehow managing to train it onto Tara. She was walking through the streets, alone. Ian began to follow after her. “Mrs. Lutece?”
There was no response. Ian picked up the pace, trailing after her. They were heading towards the forest. It was a tranquil walk, but Ian’s pace ruined every piece of that. While Tara was lost within the serenity, he noticed that she was getting closer to a gorge. He put down the camera and sprinted after her. “Mrs. Lutece!” Ian screamed.
The camera was resting close enough to witness Ian taking Tara back towards the more sturdy land. But it wasn’t long before he caught a back elbow to the mouth. “Ow!”
Tara’s head whipped around, catching herself. She looked down to see Ian holding his now bleeding lip. Her eyes fluttered before she approached him cautiously. Ian pulled himself off the ground, wincing quietly. Tara gave him an odd look; it was one made from an uncertainty about her situation.
“You need to watch where you're going!" Ian yelled, spitting out a small bead of blood. “Did you even see where you’re going?”
Tara didn’t answer, glossing over her environment before realization changed her face. She still couldn't muster up the words to speak. Instead, she stopped and began back towards her home. Ian walked over and picked up the camera, turning it off before giving chase.
Ian closed his laptop and gave his employer a hard look. Damian’s attention hadn’t left the computer yet, the images played out before him were etched into his mind. “Thank you, Ian,” he managed to say.
“You’re welcome, sir, I didn’t—“
“Please leave for the day,” Damian promptly stated, getting up from his seat. Ian didn’t confront the matter, seeing as he only had some video footage to give him any insight into what was going on. WIth a nod, he packed his things and left the USB on the table.
“That USB has a lot of footage on there. I would give that a watch,” Ian said while he headed for the door.
“Ian?” Damian asked, stopping the young videographer in his tracks.
“Yes, sir?”
Damian turned to face him. “I’ll pay you extra if you can keep getting me videos of this situation.”
Ian paused, looking at the ground for a second. He looked back up, his face stern with a resolute purpose. “I’ll do it for free. I don’t want to see Ms. Tara hurt.”
As Ian left, he noticed a door open. As he looked down it, Tara was walking out of her room. Ian felt dread rest in his stomach until he noticed Bowser, their dog following her out. A relieved sigh escaped Ian as he watched Tara turn her head to him. Her eyes were alive, not the dead way they had appeared earlier.
━━ ♠ ━━
“There’s something wrong with my wife.”
The words finally escaped Damian’s lips after what felt like eons of them being barricaded back. Dr. Emily Brown wanted to chuckle, but it was in poor taste. If anything, it was good that he had finally admitted what she had known for quite some time. She fumbled around with her pen as she often did, twirling in-between her fingers. She clicked the tip of it and began to take down notes. She wrote down Damian’s exact phrase and lifted her eyes up at him. Damian’s eyes weren’t trained on her as they usually were. No more of the predatory gaze that she had somehow grown accustomed to. Instead, there was shame behind his steely eyes, perhaps some embarrassment trickled in for good measure. Yet, she realized that his emotional fixations mostly displayed themselves through his hands wrapped around his cane.
“The last time we spoke, you said that the cane was a formality at best. You don’t seem to rely on it as much today as you did then. Do you still need it?” Emily asked, wanting to touch on another subject before what she considered the bulk of their session. Damian averted his gaze to his hands, awkwardly letting off some of the pressure. It was too late, however, Emily had already analyzed the gesture. “Does it bring you comfort?”
“That’s a weak incision,” Damian murmured. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Emily’s lips twinged from a small bout of irritation. “I don’t have to do better, Damian.”
Damian let out a small sigh. “I’m sorry—that was rude of me. Yes, I do admit that this cane provides some comfort, physically and emotionally. I think relying on it for the past few weeks has made him attached. Though, I don’t serve to humanize it. It is just a tool.”
“A tool that your father used in the past, yes?” Emily asked, which garnered a stern look from her client. “I’m merely recounting things you told me the last time we were here.”
She decided to redirect, knowing that Damian was more astute than some of her other clientele. “I saw the last show. Congratulations on overcoming…uh, Alice?”
“Yes, a test of my adaptability, but I was disappointed in the end,” he took the bait. “I thought she was going to be something more than what she believed herself to be.”
“What does she believe she is?”
“She thinks she’s above those around here.”
“And what do you think this Alice is?” Emily asked, ready to write down his response.
“Vermin that thinks she’s people,” he said with clear disdain seeping out his throat. “She’s nothing more than a pest with lofty ambition. Though, I can see why. Every rat wishes that they could be a lion.”
“Are you the lion in this scenario?” Emily asked, tickled by his analogy.
Damian responded gravely. “No, I’m a hawk. I feast on rats,” he spoke without batting an eye.
“Hm,” Emily scanned over her notepad. A loose idea came into her head, and she dared to try. “Then what is Tara in this vision of yours?”
Damian’s grip on his cane hardened. He became lost in thought. His head turned away, where he spoke more to the wall than he did to the doctor. “An owl. Quiet, serene, but they are swift to remind you that they have talons and are killers too.”
Emily nodded. “That does seem to lead us back to your original statement. I can’t discuss Tara directly; she’s not my patient anymore. However, we can discuss how you feel about what’s going on with her if you want to.”
Damian loosened his grip on his cane. “I was being a fool before,” he started, “when I said that there wasn’t anything wrong. I think I’ve spent so much time glorifying her very name that I forget that she has her own afflictions.”
“You being shortsighted doesn’t make you a fool, Mr. Lutece,” Emily softened up upon the shock of Damian’s glimpse of vulnerability. “It’s not doing anything to help those who need it that would warrant such a reputation.”
“I guess you’re right,” he let out a dull chuckle. “I thought that this new therapist would have made some changes, but I’m worried that something else is the root of the problem.”
“Something else?” Emily could assess what exactly Dr. Malcolm was doing. The prior conversation that Laura brought up. “And what are some of the…afflictions?”
Damian glanced up, breaking his sight away from the ground to stare Emily in her eyes. They were searching, but Emily was a master of putting up her own barriers. Once he was satisfied, he let out a low grunt. “I found her…walking around at night.”
“Like a midnight stroll?” Emily said, playing up the idea that she didn’t know anything going on. She would let Damian guide the conversation. Damian didn’t know anything about Tara’s new therapist. It was in the same way that he didn’t know about Emily until he stopped by one day. It wasn’t anything harmful as he simply wanted Tara to have her privacy when it came to her problems.
“No,” he said, the memory playing out before him–or at least that was how it looked. His eyes were darting about. “She didn’t even know that she was out there. She was freezing when I found her.”
“Freezing?” Emily immediately took down the note. “So, she was out there for a while…just wandering?”
Damian didn’t reply, but not from his stoic nature. No, Emily noticed a new noise beginning to dawn from Tara’s husband. “She didn’t know where she was. She just…she just looked at me, and I was unfamiliar. It didn’t last forever, but I thought I lost her for a moment.”
The veil that Damian had put up prior began to fall apart. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes. “I brought her back into this…cesspool. This sport has always been bad. I think it’s just making things worse.”
“Doctor Brown, what have I done to her?” His voice came out low, weak. He wiped at the corners of his eyes. “Am I…am I a bad husband?”
Emily gulped as quietly as she could. “I can’t make a full opinion on that, but as I see it, you want to help her, yes?”
“Always,” Damian replied.
“Then you’re doing the best you can as her partner. I just need you to pay more attention to her, but also…help yourself.”
The words made Damian recoil back. He rested his back against the seat with a tiny scoff chasing. “And how exactly do I do that?”
Emily gave Damian a smile. “You help me help you. Next time, we can talk more about yourself because I think that the best way that you can aid Tara is for you to conquer your own demons. You’ve been hiding them from me, and that’s your choice, but you have to make the decision to let me, or anyone else, inside,” Emily explained, pressing her hands together. “Mr. Lutece, you deserve that.”
“Oh, I deserve quite a lot,” Damian responded with a chuckle behind it. “You’ll learn that soon enough.”
“Learn what exactly?”
“I never deserved Tara, Dr. Brown, and this situation just helped prove it.” Damian gripped his cane to the point of popping a knuckle. “I deserve every bad thing that happens to me.”
━━ ♠ ━━
NARRATOR: Hello, Lewis Chad Pinkston, I’m just another omniscient voice that watches over the strangeness that is your story. I may or may not be the same one that you know and antagonize, but we’ll never know for certain, will we? My language is different here than in your material. No one knows what I sound like since we’re limited to the text that we put forward. On a metaphysical level, I could be a voice in your head. You may be going insane. You may already be, and I’m your mind trying to explain the unexplainable. Who knows? You surely don’t.
NARRATOR: Regardless, I’m here for you to read to understand what’s going on in the neighboring world of Damian Ayla, the Pro Wrestling Excellence Champion. If you want to know why I’m here, you can tell yourself that Damian kidnapped me or something. I’m not sure how exactly that would work, but hey, it’s your thoughts…being beamed into your head. And once again, I may or may not be the same narrator. I may just be some wandering God used for some greater purpose.
NARRATOR: Damian Ayla doesn’t entertain you, Pinkston. Instead, he focuses on the more credible threats in the company. Allen Chaney, your one-time rival, understood what Damian meant when he created the Excellence Invitational. To the champion, there isn’t much competition in the company. Betsy Granger failed to overcome Kayla Richards. Nathaniel Cartwright had already fallen at Annihilation. Xaria Linette couldn’t capitalize on any opportunity provided for her. It was paramount that Damian had to find someone to stand against him. His goal is widespread dominance, so he opened the door and laid a trap.
Damian Ayla sauntered into the frame, sitting down in front of the camera. Ian Hershel, the camera operator hired by the Ayla’s, was nowhere to be seen. The Pro Wrestling Excellence Championship rested on his lap as he settled. And yet, the appearance of the champion wasn’t the important detail. It was the fact that the image was a part of a longer video. Or rather, the revelation that Damian had uploaded a YouTube video, instead of sending the footage directly to the PWE site.
“RIP LCP” had been taken off its unlisted status. Damian crossed his arms, resting against the grandiose chair that matched his championship. The hostility of his face wasn’t present. Instead, there was a look of passive boredom adorning the champion. He let out a small sigh before forcing a smile. “Lewis Chad Pinkston,” he began, “as the top champion of our company, I thank you for doing my job for me. Thanks to you, Amber Payne will no longer be polluting the PWE airwaves and environment. I assume it’s in line with the embarrassment of losing to our worst wrestler.”
Damian rolled his eyes. “Now before you go on, I’m only calling you that because of your experience. You have admitted that you have only mastered a small number of maneuvers. To which, you have continued to veil your incompetence behind the idea that you are some mastermind. Ergo, you believe that you have managed to either bother me into an opportunity or that you have some genius plan to stop what is currently unstoppable.”
“So, the fact that you overcame Amber Payne is the most credible thing you have done in our company. It goes beyond the farce that was the altercation with Allen Chaney. It’s worth more than anything you have done in OCW. And it’s merely because it has given me context to give you this match,” Damian’s disinterested expression dispersed for the sake of a pitying snicker. “Which I’m giving to you because of what it does on a much grander scale.”
“You consider yourself marketable. I can’t deny that fact. I, unfortunately, am not irksome enough to dedicate myself to social media. Therefore, I haven’t ever been the man that people want to plaster on posters. I share less than a dozen tweets a month and that’s enough for me. When people like Vhodka Black or Remi Fontaine are on there, it can drive a man insane.”
“Yet, it’s because of your esteemed presence–” Damian was forced to take a swig of water before continuing. “–on Twitter, the eW News Network, and in Fight: NYC, that you have garnered a following. For either good or bad, people want to see what Lewis Chad Pinkston is up to. Whether it be your childish antics involving a certain cat or Allen Chaney killing any chance of you and Ophelia having children, people flock to your name. That’s important to me because I am going to use your name to elevate myself. Certainly, people must have rolled their eyes at the idea of you getting a championship shot. However, they will still come to see what happens. In the hearts of many other idiots, they believe that you may very well beat me.”
Damian’s earlier snicker blossomed into a deep, hearty laugh. “I can’t…”
The champion’s laughter ripped free from his body. The sensation of it was intense enough to make him keel over the seat, covering his mouth. “I can’t do this–”
When Damian straightened up, he took the championship off his lap and placed it off-screen. “Okay, LCP, let’s drop the act for a second here. Let me not be, what did you call me back then? Stiff as a board? Yeah, I remember hearing you call me during the lead-up to the first Victory. Seeing as you probably still think that, let me put away the big words. Because I know that you’re not going to get the message if I don’t talk to you in a way that you won’t understand. Since I’m forced to fight you, I’ll stoop down to your level, child.”
Sweeping his hand through his hair, Damian’s demeanor hardened into an agitation much more poignant. It was even more so than when he fought Nathaniel Cartwright. “In no shorter terms, I’m going to mutilate you in front of a packed St. Louis crowd.”
“Since you have debuted here, I’ve been waiting for the moment where something with you would change. Just maybe there was some potential. You have shown flashes of it but you haven’t truly capitalized on it. You have scraped together a few wins against the dregs of our company, people that I haven’t considered at all. You’ll never see anyone like Amber Payne or El Landerson facing me. But you beat them, so congratulations. Improvement is an overstatement when it comes to you, but it bothers me that I can’t…I can’t underestimate you going into this match. I have to take you as seriously as I do my wife, Nathaniel Cartwright, and La Andalucera because if I lose, my career is over.”
“It’s the same sort of thoughts that went through Allen’s head, I’d bet. He couldn’t possibly lose to someone who degrades our sport each time he steps into the ring. It’s like you said to Amber, it’s embarrassing to lose to you. And for me? The undefeated, unchallenged pinnacle of our company to lose to you? I would have failed everyone that trained me, the people I’ve beaten, and the people I’ve let into the door.”
Damian put his hands together, pressing his fingers together. Redness began to appear at the tips of them. “But it’s because of these thoughts that I have to be so exact with what I do. It’s why that with these two hands of mine, I’m going to tear down this market you’ve built around yourself. It’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s how I defend what I have, what I use to provide for my family. To bring more outstanding people into PWE, I have to let the scourge of this company get a shot at what’s mine. Because of your name, NOT MINE, people will tune into Victory VII.”
“And…and that infuriates me. You can take that away as an accomplishment.” Damian let out a heavy sigh, brought on by the acute stress that festered inside of his chest. “When I threw you out of that first battle royal, that was the last chance you should have ever gotten. If the circumstances of our company were different, you wouldn’t even be here.”
When the champion chuckled, it came out drier. “I’m not to blame for this.”
“You can blame our administration for this. Blame Nathaniel Cartwright. Blame the braggarts like James Raven. You should blame the entire world except for me for the harm I do to you.”
Damian stood up, heading off-screen to retrieve something. The video cut short, somewhat abruptly. On the screen, the user scrolled down to the description, where links to other social media applications lied. A series of TikTok videos were brought up. But not before the obnoxious “don’t forget to like and subscribe for more videos–”
The user closed the tab.
NARRATOR: It’s at this point that you may be wondering, Lewis, why does this man have it out for you so bad? Did your mind games work that well? To tell you the truth, i don’t know. I wasn’t given the script on that. Once more, I’m probably a figment of your imagination. I’m like a friend who gives you tough love. Which in itself is pretty sad. It means you don’t have enough friends to tell you that you’re staring at the light at the end of the tunnel–but it’s a freight train about to mow you down.
The first TikTok was merely 15 seconds. Damian had gone to fish out a can of Partake Dark Stout from a mini-fridge. He jabbed it with a knife and shotgunned it down. Tossing the can off-screen, Damian moved to adjust his tie and suit jacket. “The other reason why I decided to fight you is that it’s going to piss off Allen Chaney. As you should know, he’s who I am rooting for in this Invitational. Giving you a shot should be some sort of motivation for him.”
“As it stands, he’s the only person in my eyes that have tried to make something of himself. When I made the announcement, he was the only one who didn’t just shrug it off. He got angry. He hated the idea that I said that there was no competition. He decided that he was going to be the one that would kick my ass and take my championship. So, giving you the shot? You can consider it a practical joke.”
“It’s just a prank, bro.”
The screen shuffled over to the next part. Damian had returned to pick up his championship and drape it over his shoulder.
“You can fumble your way through a lot in life, but not here. When you fail to hit a move, I’ll take a chunk out of you. Try to put on that figure four and I will spend the next hour breaking every joint in your body. That’s right. I will personally make this match the longest in PWE’s history, all for the sake of making you hurt. All to send a message to every insipid thing out there, thinking that they can rival my greatness. All of this to tell just another influencer that he’s not good enough to even stand next to me.”
“When you’re in the hospital, fighting for your life, you can contact all of those worthless Twitter followers you have to help pay the medical bills. I bet they can help you out with that. It’s all that they’re good for. All of their support in this match? Worthless. Because none of them are going to sprint down that aisle to help you. All they can do is sit in the audience or at home, praying that I will stop. The only person that will be by your side is your wife. That is if she’s not repulsed enough by how you will look after the fact.”
"It’s okay, though, LCP. You can take some solace in knowing that what happens to you will serve you a greater purpose.”
NARRATOR: As your opponent leaves the footage behind for you to ruminate on, I should talk to you about something, Lewis. When the match is over, will you come and see me? We can figure out if I’m just a figment of your imagination or not. Do be mindful of the episode’s name.
The video feed went off.
NARRATOR: Reach Heaven Through Violence.
