008
regret.
“There are so many attention whores out there, prostituting for people's acknowledgment.”
━━━ ♠ ━━━
One little pill was all that it took to unravel the sanctity of their marriage. Damian Lutece vowed to protect Tara, reinforce the strengths he saw in her, and make it so that she would never face adversity again. For some time, that was the case. He was stalwart in engaging in his mission. There was nothing in the world more important than her and the family they created. With the pill pinched between his fingertips, he mapped together the experiences that he and Ian Hershel had noticed throughout the months. Damian had locked himself inside of his study for the better part of a week. His match against Vhodka Black kept propping up, but he couldn’t stay focused on that for longer than a moment. Tara was in danger, and the fact had become painfully present. He sighed tiredly as he put it back into the bag that Dr. Emily Brown had given him.
The pill was marketed to Tara as something to alleviate her depressive symptoms. Additionally, they were meant to help with her blackouts in their early stages. It was meant to be a miracle in a small white capsule. Dr. Walter Malcom deceived Tara, dangling a cure-all for the problems that terrified her. Unbeknownst to her, her new doctor was giving her a hallucinogenic that would sooner intensify her problems. It targeted her blackouts, causing her to disassociate entirely. Damian shared a similar affliction, where he would suffer vivid yet terrible visions. Many times, he would come to his senses inside of his office or somewhere in the house, unsure of how he got there to begin with. There were a few times when he was yanked out of the hallucination by falling down an unseen step. Tara’s blackouts must have been worse, seeing as she didn’t notice herself freezing outside the first night he caught her.
The dangers were exceedingly prevalent. The revelation meant Tara could wind up wandering into life-threatening conditions. On the other end, Damian didn’t know what Dr. Malcom was up to. At any point, Dr. Malcom could hurt Tara during her blackout, forcing her to do something against her will. Damian felt his tooth crack from biting down too hard. He stood up from his seat, walking out. As he did, he caught a glimpse of his championship. He had taken it with him for promotional footage, yet seeing it made him want to vomit. It was what he said to Dr. Brown.
Damian was beginning to feel as though he didn’t deserve Tara.
Exiting the room, he made his way into their master bathroom. Tara was nowhere to be seen. He opened the medicine cabinet and accessed the different bottles inside. Besides the medicine for Orson’s ear infection, he found one for Tara. It was prescribed to her by Dr. Walter Malcom. He opened them and noticed how little of the pills were left. He grimaced and flushed them away. He put the bottle in his pocket and moved back into their room. Letting out the stress through an exhale, Damian sat down on the edge of their bed. Bowser, one of their older dogs, came by the door. Damian gave him a smile and patted his leg. Bowser came trotting over, his tail wagging fiercely.
“Good boy,” Damian said as he scratched underneath Bowser’s chin. “You’ve done your part. Now it’s time to do mine.”
While Bowser went to try to lick his master’s face, Damian heard the vibration of his phone. When he took it out of his pocket, the number was unknown to him. Answering it, he contorted with confusion. “Hello?”
“Mr. Lutece?” A feminine voice answered back.
Damian stood up, heading out to scour the house. He heard the kids outside, running around, but he still saw no sign of his wife. “Yes?”
“Hi, this is Sabrina from Whitehorse General Hospital. You’re Tara Lutece’s primary contact. We have her here.”
“Thank you. I’ll be there shortly,” Damian said, before hanging up. He contacted Elijah Rudolf, their neighbor, and informed her of what had happened. He was more than happy to come over and watch the kids. He wanted to teach them about archery, which Damian and Tara both found amusing. Nonetheless, Damian’s journey to the hospital went faster than he thought. Each mile driven faded into the recesses of his mind as he pulled into the parking lot.
People looked at him as he entered. Professional wrestling was home to many physical monsters. His stature and weight wasn’t anything to scoff at, but there were plenty of giants around him. In normal life, he was imposing. At first sight, people knew better than to stand in his way. He marched through the hospital, but there wasn’t an expression of anger crossing his features.
He approached the desk. “Hello, I’m here to see Tara Lutece.”
“You must be Damian, right?” the young woman said, her face brimming with tiredness. Damian nodded. “She’s in that room, sir.”
Damian felt the sag in his face, brought on by despair. He peered at her nametag. “Thank you, Ms. Abigail.” He gave a brief smile before heading to Tara’s room. When he entered, Tara was gazing out of the window. Watching her be fascinated by the outside sky, Damian wanted to leave her be. Yet, a careful step forward inspired her to turn to face him. There wasn’t a warm smile greeting him. Instead, there was a bandage plastered on her forehead. Her body looked pale, as if it was dancing on the precipice of death. Her eyes brimmed with new tears, created in reaction to her husband’s appearance. Damian’s gut twisted from the raw disgust.
How could he have let this happen to her?
━━━ ♠ ━━━
"It's hard to face the reality that someone won't give you the attention you think you deserve. At least, that's what this whole lead-up to this match seems to fixate upon.”
The words of the Pro Wrestling Excellence Champion rained down, coupled with the dull roar of an active oven. When the black fade-in left, the back of the champion was the main focus. The sleeves of his dark dress shirt were rolled up and his suit jacket was laid across the edge of the countertop. A flame danced around in front of him, the edges of it seeping out past his body. The camera didn't move around him, letting his back become the focus. The viewer was allowed back into the mysterious manor on top of the hill.
"Hello to my challenger," he began as he reached out towards his knife block. He carefully selected which of them he would use for the next part of the preparation.
"You must be curious as to why I'm not on Twitter right now, responding to whatever nonsense you put on there," Damian said, checking the sharpness of the knife. Dissatisfied, he pulled a drawer open and took out a whetstone. "I see it sometimes. I check my Twitter because sometimes there's worthy content to look into. When I get on there, sometimes I see this little blue notification. Maybe it's my wife giving me support. Maybe it's a Denzel Porter tweet. The devil works hard but Denzel Porter works harder. It's good to stay connected to our community, but you can imagine the disappointment I see each time I open it and see…you."
After setting out the knife and the whetstone, Damian put on some oddly adorable oven mitts. Little monsters covered them. Kennebec potatoes came out of the oven. After setting them down, Damian pulled the mitts off and marveled at how well they came out. Though, time was of the essence. The whetstone was set in place and Damian ran his knife along with it.
"I sift through the erratic noise. It's not that I don't have a good sense of humor. Or bland, as LCP would put it. It's just that you're not funny to me. Your much more serious messages are what I took note of. Interwoven between the calls for attention is the real meat of what this match is about. So, don't you worry, I see you. I hear you. But at the end of the day, there's a reality that you have to face, and it's a tough one for you to face."
He lifted the knife, checking to see if he was content with its edge. He lowered the blade back down and went back to work. It only took three more times before Damian was happy with the result. He walked off-screen. The camera never caught a glimpse of his face as he passed by. Instead, it decided to hone in on the Pro Wrestling Excellence Championship, propped up purposefully to accentuate the message being delivered. One had entered the home of the champion, where he was busy making dinner.
"In a perfect world, you're not important enough for me to waste seconds or bandwidth on, at least in the ways you would want me to. It's only mandatory that I look through what you say because it gives me an insight into your motivations. Fortunately, I just have to scan through what you say. I don't have to do anything else," Damian diced the potatoes and settled them inside of a baking dish. "So I'm not going to get into any internet war with you. I'm not going to play the straight man to your batshit comedy. I'm not going to do anything but nod my head and move on with my life because I know what I have to do."
"Oh," he paused, scooping out a glob of sour cream from a retrieved container. "I humored you once or twice. It's a champion's courtesy."
"Otherwise, I put my phone down and act like you don't exist. Just like I did before you got this championship match. The main reason people use Twitter is that they can say anything, and someone will validate them," the champion continued as he spread the sour cream along with the potatoes. "Do you have some sort of self-image issue? You can throw up a picture and someone depraved enough will compliment you. You feel like you're all alone, pander enough to people, and they'll flock to your defense. Do you want to think you're going to win a championship? Scream loud enough about it, and you'll get some biased cheers in response."
After the step was done, he walked over to the refrigerator, taking out a few slabs of bacon. "Since we are here, let's talk about those serious messages, why don't we?"
"You're not getting the chance to face me. I'm getting the chance to face you?" Damian let a derisive chuckle escape. He proceeded to cut the bacon into thin pieces and took them close to a waiting skillet. He poured some oil into it and put the meat inside. "Don't lie to yourself. I know you do it often, but you should be ashamed of yourself. Don't you realize that it's because I waved my hand that you got this opportunity? You should be thankful."
"Because if it wasn't for me opening the door, you would have been stuck behind everybody else. I would be facing someone else at this event. You may try to rationalize it any way you want, but need I remind you that you lost in your debut match? I heard all these fools mumbling about you, but I didn't buy into the hype. Because when I knew that Tara would beat you. The very moment that you lost against my wife proved that PWE's roster is just that better than the outside rabble."
"With the talent that was beginning to blossom, the whole wrestling world was changing. If you wanted to make it to the top, it wasn't going to be easy. The original, homegrown talent here is rivaling all the people that pollute your mentions, thinking they fucking matter. And when you lost? Not because of any interference. Not because of anything but the fact that PWE's Tara Ayla was better? You were off my radar, sent to the back of the line, and never to be heard from again."
Damian mixed a compound of butter and garlic paste together. The combination soon met the pan as he took out the bacon and the fat that was left behind. The sizzle of the butter hitting the heat accompanied the champion's following statement.
"But it's because of me that you got a shortcut."
"It's because of me that you can parade on Twitter, fooling everyone into thinking that you're not about to be another statistic. Because outside of winning this Invitational and some reckless Twitter messages, you haven't done enough to warrant my attention. You haven't done enough for me to turn to look at you right now. The only reason why I came out to look you in the face at the end of the last Victory was that it was just tradition."
"Hell, you haven't even done enough for me in this company for me to call you by name," he stated as he organized an array of potatoes, bacon, sour cream, and then the garlic butter.
"However, you seem to want to discredit my path to where I am now. I hadn't faced anyone credible. In a way, you may be right. When you put anyone against me, they start to look vulnerable. With or without any interference, Betsy Granger would have been taken down. As you see, she hasn't done anything worthwhile here since. She has to go to outside places just to get a microcosm of success. Nathaniel Cartwright's hot streak got snuffed out when I choked him out. You don't hear a word out of him because I humbled him. I stopped any idea of momentum ALiCE could have had. I personally wiped Ross Hanson off the face of this entire industry. I let LCP run around like an idiot, and I had to tell myself not to snap his neck at the end."
The champion placed his hands onto the countertop, taking a moment for himself. His head lifted, staring into the entrance to the hallway. Yet, he still had not turned around.
"It's an easy lie to tell when it comes to me. But what about your path? You bested a clout chaser first. And then in the last match of the Invitational, you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. You snuck up Ernie, who was just happy to be here. So, if we put it together, you lost to one of the most dangerous people in our company. You beat a person who wasn't even supposed to be here. And then you squeaked out a win? And I'm supposed to be impressed?"
"Not only that but the first thing you want to do is to get onto Twitter, crack your knuckles, and say some mess like I should be honored to face you?" Damian placed the side dish into the oven. At 350 degrees, all he had to do was wait for the cheese to melt. "Of course, the legion of people around you will say that you have this in the bag. Funnily enough, they're the same as you. They all came from the same circle of dead places that you did. F2B, OPW, and now FIGHT: NY. You all have been in the same undead circlejerk for years now."
The next part of the process was to sear the steak. Damian Ayla never spared expense when he cooked. A boneless A5 Wagyu ribeye coupled with two tenderloins were placed in a cast iron pan that had been resting next to the other skillet. "So to me, the noise you're trying to create is ultimately fruitless. Because no matter what you say or do, the tweets, the people who reply to them, and all the self-validation it gives you, won't save you from being put down just like everybody else. You can hurl around every word related to irrelevancy, but it doesn't matter in the end. Actually, if anything, it makes you look worse by comparison. It makes your supporters look vapid as well. Because for everything they say about not knowing who I am, being average, or anything like that? They'll be the ones hanging their heads, knowing that they're wrong."
"You–and Warstein, since you wanted to bring him up–just made it easier for people to pay attention to how I beat you down. You're an upgrade above LCP for me. At the end of the day, you have a much wider reach than he does. You have so many people who love and root for you. I'm happy that you have that. You have FIGHT: NY and all its dead brethren rallying behind you. They'll tune in to watch you win, only to watch you fail."
Cooking the steak did not take long at all. He placed it on a nearby wire rack before retrieving a charcuterie knife and a honing rod. It was merely a precautionary measure, adhering to the edge before continuing his craft. Damian pressed the knife against the steak, counting inches between each future cut.
"And Damian Ayla never had to say a word for it to happen. You should know why too."
The cuts were arranged carefully on several plates. Three of which were colorful plates with animals on them. The oven alerted Damian to its finished task. Putting the monster mitts on again, he reached inside and pulled out the now completed side dish. The provolone cheese on top of the loaded potatoes came out with an appealing golden-brown color. Damian tapped his finger against it, feeling the way it hardened.
"Deep down in your heart of hearts, you know that this business has never been about who is the most egocentric. And if you don't, you came to the wrong place. Because Pro Wrestling Excellence has never been about that. Ophelia Knight told every person watching the first Strategic Assault that she didn't want the same as many other companies. She didn't want to pander for likes. She didn't hire anyone here for what they can do on Twitter. She wanted people that could compete. That is why she was content with my decision to open PWE's doors."
He sectioned out portions of the loaded potatoes on the plate. Soon enough, he rested his hands on his hips, quietly proud of his handiwork.
"It's that one gesture that has made PWE grow larger than it has before. To her, your fans, and the people in attendance, they may think that you are a worthy competitor. The story you have spun has made our encounter much more dramatic. You have been to the top of the mountain before but I bet the hunger from the OPW Southern Championship still calls you. You want to prove to everyone that Damian Ayla's nothing more than a stepping stone for your revolution. And to you, this title match may be one of the most important days in your career.”
Damian, like an esteemed server, carried the plates down the hallway. Past the redwood walls and to another entranceway, Damian found his family waiting at the dinner table. He and Tara shared a look as she got up to assist him with the food. Orson and Odette's eyes gleamed with delight at the potatoes. Sylas quietly began to pick at his small serving of steak. The champion then headed back into the kitchen. Still, his back was to the camera. Not even a passing glance was afforded to the viewers or the material's recipient.
"To me?"
The champion poured himself a glass of red wine before going back to his family.
"It's just my third defense."
━━━ ♠ ━━━
The Excellence Invitational did exactly what Damian Ayla set out to do. The best analogy provided for his action was him opening the doors. When a person does that, they demand the attention of those around him. Pro Wrestling Excellence was a new, upcoming stomping ground with a relatively unknown world champion at its helm. Of course, it would invite people to invade for the purpose of putting their head at the mantle. Damian, at his core, is a logical man. Nothing he does comes from an emotional place, not even in wrestling. He knew why people would come. He expected the Chris Pages, the Shawn Warsteins’, and the other mainstays of the wrestling world. Or rather, he wanted the self-aggrandizing people to come into his home, and act like they could be the one to dethrone him.
The event was never for Damian. No, he acted up the role of a champion without a challenger. He wanted to stoke the fire of every person on the Pro Wrestling Excellence roster, even his wife. He put himself against a newcomer like ALiCE, so he could see what else was filtering in. She disappointed him, of course. He gave LCP a championship match because he knew that the young man would try to embarrass him. As he admitted, he did it to try to draw out more of Allen Chaney’s ire. It failed because the comedian couldn’t help but try to cover up any reaction just to look strong.
Victory VIII started with a clear act of disrespect to his wife. Zoey Madigan-Star, once again, ignored her challenger, one of the most dangerous individuals in the company, for Xaria Linette. He had to go speak to La Andalucera about her attitude towards his and his wife’s relationship, and the consequences that would come with it.
But the main event was the focus. Ernie Spencer, a man who stumbled his way into the match, had the underdog story of a lifetime. Nathaniel Dixon, an unproven braggart that continually tried to put him higher than those around him. Chris Page, a walking legend to many who wanted to promote his brand, and would use the Excellence Championship to do so. Wraith had turned many heads by taking Allen Chaney to the limit. Yet, in the end, he didn’t deserve to be in this main event. Allen Chaney was the hero of PWE in some eyes, taking on the umbrage of the voiceless roster members. He rallied all the passion in his body, but failed. Not once.
DING! DING!! DING!!!
NINA LAWRENCE: Your winner, and the Excellence Championship Number One Contender…VHOOOODKA BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
But twice.
Damian Ayla was sitting in his locker room, alone. Tara had gone off with La Andalucera, being there with her when the gypsy attacked Acid Beth. The high of a single victory corrupted the young woman’s mind. La Andalucera must have felt like a monarch. But he quietly thanked her for pulling Tara away for a moment. In his solitude, he could watch the match with the same eyes that had cut down anyone that was put in front of him. He spotted weaknesses in every single person. He concocted horrid ways to exploit said weaknesses.
He had rooted for Allen Chaney. If he won, Damian would get the chance to crush the spirit of one of PWE’s other mainstays. The comedian began to think he was worthy, so Damian would tear that away from him. Hell, he could have settled for Chris Page. Page reminded him of one of his old mentors. Neither outcome came to be. As he sat there, in the darkness, his body hunched over a television monitor, he saw the result.
Vhodka Black.
With a sigh, he stood up and retrieved his championship. It was the tradition for the champion to greet a new challenger. Damian draped the title over his shoulder and exited his room, only to nearly barrel into Tara. She flinched, not expecting him to have appeared so suddenly. This wasn’t an incident linked to her condition. He let out a chuckle, which made her puff out her cheeks–she didn’t like being poked fun at. “Shall we?” he commented, and they made their way out.
His theme began, a melody indicative of a funeral procession. The crowd lowered their noise, immediately thrust back into memories of Nathaniel Cartwright’s mutilation, ALiCE’s gallant but expected defeat, and LCP’s near-death experience. The spotlight that remained on the new challenger gave her importance. She was now the next bastion of hope for those in PWE that wanted to see Damian fall. Already, she had droves of fans, praying for her success. Her fellow wrestlers would celebrate her victory here as if she had won the Excellence Championship already.
Damian lifted his championship into the air, holding it high. In the splendor of the spotlight, the championship always looked its best. The sole possessor of the championship bore down upon his challenger, who rivaled his aura with her own. Damian heard the influx of cheers, camera snaps, and random phrases. When he noticed the camera operators making their move away, Damian turned to take his leave with Tara.
He didn’t bother to look over his shoulder. He didn’t stop to make something for the promotional material. Tara peered over her shoulder at Vhodka, but hustled to keep up with her husband, who trudged off behind the curtain. When he made it back to his locker room, he packed everything away in silence. People couldn’t get to him fast enough. By the time that any media personnel arrived, Damian and Tara Ayla were gone from the premises.
The whole plane ride home, Damian couldn’t get the taste of bile out of his mouth.
For this was the worst possible result.