salvation.
━━━ ♠ ━━━
“Damian, you must learn how the prey acts before you hunt them down.”
Dr. Walter Malcom closed up his office with a small huff. Some work had to be done tomorrow that he wished was finished that night. Nonetheless, it’s the woes of working mostly alone. The research and developments he was making were his alone. His peers were never interested in what he had to say, installing what he knew to be small bouts of insecurity. He fought those thoughts with the progressions he made. The patients that came to him hardly went against his instructions, which made the testing easy.
Ever since finding out what he had done to Tara, I investigated what Dr. Malcom was about. Hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut, he was born to Thomas Malcom and Farrah Fletcher-Malcom. Thomas was a professor of Art at the Sacred Heart University while Farrah was an assistant coach for the University of Connecticut’s Volleyball team. He made okay grades in primary school before he began to blossom in middle and high school. Despite stellar grades, Walter was never anywhere close to the top of the line. He joined the Honors Society but wasn’t successful in any of his student government endeavors. He decided to leave home, getting away from the pressures of both of his parents. He ventured to a whole other country to do so, moving to Canada. From there, he attended Concordia University of Edmonton where he began his voyage into psychology.
Walter kept under the radar. At this point in his life, he decided that the extracurricular aspects of life were not worth the trouble. He had a small group of colleagues that he would study with. Devoid of social needs, he was an exceptional student. He received awards for his hard work, made the Dean’s List every year, and quietly accumulated the respect of his professors and peers. As he prepared for the next part of his career, he returned home. He got his Masters’ in Organizational Psychology at Sacred Heart University and his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut, paying homage to his parents before moving back to Canada.
He opened up his office, giving help to different organizations over time. To him, the world itself was an outpatient. Though, some cases required a more personal touch. It was through these efforts that he attracted new patients. He was benevolent, not making his prices steep and unaffordable. He was professional, if not with a quiet charm that people enjoyed. As he aged, his experience became his main weapon. Even his office was quaint enough not to appear haughty. He drove a silver Porsche Macan, a car that showed fine taste, but wasn’t pricey enough to be arrogant. Walter wore clean suits that one could afford easily over time. Yet, to the sharp eye, these were falsehoods. Dr. Walter Malcom overcame his insecurity by languishing in the ordinary. He didn’t need to act better to be better in his mind.
He commanded the respect of his fellow peers, who would use him as the final option. If they encountered a patient that needed some stronger help, it was Dr. Walter Malcom that would provide it. Dr. Emily Brown didn’t need to send Tara his way. Due to her large, bleeding heart, she sent Tara to him to distance herself from the situation. She had become a friend, an older figure that Tara never had before. Holiday cards were now sent to the doctor, a sign of the blossoming friendship. Sadly, it created a conflict of interest. Through that, Dr. Brown sent Tara into the maw of a predator, one who hid themselves with the most dangerous camouflage.
Normalcy.
The pills that he gave her weren’t meant to help her condition. Instead, he was running another set of experiments on her. It wasn’t the first time that he had done it. According to the sources that Dr. Brown organized, there were upward to five to ten patients that were subject to the treatments. Many of them cited that Dr. Malcom made up a trial for the pills. They waived their rights away in order to find peace in their minds. Instead of that, Dr. Malcom gave his patients an experimental hallucinogenic. The victims of this drug were all left in a stupor where they believed either the pill was working or that they were untreatable.
Tara was one of those people.
Dr. Malcom headed home that night, pondering on what he was going to eat that night. He had taken some chicken out along with some asparagus. His doctor said that he could use some more vegetables in his diet. The late nights at the office were beginning to catch up with him, unfortunately. His commute home took twenty-three minutes, thanks to the lack of red lights. He had become exceptional at leaving at the right time, when all the lights were synced together. It was a minor joy that he grew more fond of everyday.
His house was relatively secluded, away from the normal roads of the neighborhood. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was enough to draw the eyes of people in the backseat of cars passing by. As he exited his car, he pulled the car cover. The doctor noticed it was going to rain later that night, a passing fact from the newscast. Letting him have some pride over his car, Dr. Malcom made his way to the front door.
Dr. Malcom lived alone. He was away enough from his family, and his parents had both passed within the decade. He wasn’t interested in marriage or relationships. The occasional flirtation aside, he was devoted to his work. As he entered, he noticed the lamp was still on his study. Tireless nights of work often tempted him, leaving room for miniscule errors. He chuckled to himself, pondering on how much more steep the electric bill would be. As he entered the space, he reached over to pull the string and drench the room in the darkness. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw an unfamiliar note on top of his desk calendar.
The plastic bag with a pill stapled to it drew his attention even more. The unnerved expression that developed upon his stoic features was my indicator. As I stepped out from the darkness of his home, Dr. Malcom failed to notice my presence. He was captivated by what Dr. Emily Brown had found out about him, unraveling what his tormented patients hid behind their crazed murmurs. I struck my cane against the ground, the sharp noise causing Dr. Malcom to flinch. He twisted around to see me, his eyes widened. He couldn’t make out the words to try to confront what was in front of him.
There wasn’t a conversation to be had, at least not with words. He moved towards a drawer in his desk. My grip on my cane intensified. He could tell by my physique and how I watched his eyes assess me that I was faster than he was. He had a single chance to make his move, and when he did, I had already planned accordingly. He was a man who had everything set into place. Those kinds of people are the ones who cannot fathom any deviation. When Dr. Malcom opened the drawer and saw nothing within, he gasped. Prey never fights for too long anyways.
I found that I felt nothing the whole time because of how I was trained.
━━━ ♠ ━━━
I parked my car off the road and stared out into the darkness. I began to make out the shape of something white. A part of my brain danced with the idea of it being some monolithic entity, but I dismissed the thoughts upon seeing the cross hung above the doors. I got out of the car and opened the backseat. Ian, the Ayla Family Cinematographer, left his equipment in our home, saying that it was difficult to move it around sometimes. In addition to that, I had tasked him with keeping an eye on Tara. That mission would come to an end as I dealt with the root of the problem.
As I held the camera in my hands, a sudden thought beamed into my head. I still had to give a retort to my opponent for Magnificence. I propped the camera up onto the passenger’s seat as I got back into the car. When I pulled my hands back, I noticed the blood left on the camera’s handle. “Shit,” I mumbled as I settled back down into the seat. A reminder was set into my mind: clean the camera before Ian returns. Regardless of the fact that I sullied my assistant’s hardware, I needed to return home. The manor wasn’t far from the location, maybe five minutes or so.
“I used to go to church.”
It was a bit of a cold open.
“My family was non-denominational at their roots. My father wanted to stay away from the Catholic upbringing that he was tormented by. Therefore, we would go to churches and avoid adhering to the little details that made them different from one another. As I sat in the pew, my eyes gravitated towards Jesus on the cross, and I wondered about the blasphemy people spewed about him,” memories of my father sternly glaring at me made one of my eyes twitch. Perhaps I was more exhausted than I had originally thought. “He was the child of God, coaxed into giving up his life for people who didn’t deserve it. That incident became the idea of unconditional love that people repeated time and time again. I always found that upsetting.”
“It’s funny that you spoke of me worshiping violence. You mocked it. It’s a personal part of me that you decided to make fun of because you don’t understand it. It reminded me of all the people infesting these supposed holy grounds, cursing everyone who isn’t like them. If people don’t live life the way that they do, then they’re garbage. It’s great that you showed me where you come from. Because you’re just as much of a charlatan as the rest of the bible thumpers.”
“There’s truth to my creed. Violence has been the only thing that has made any progress in our world. If you don’t believe me, then you need to look no further than here. The crusades, the burning of civilizations, the prosecution of innocent people—those acts are the reason why these churches stand today. But they all came through violence.”
“Even the most sanctimonious event in the whole damn Bible came from nailing a man to a cross, and you want to speak down to what I believe in?” I scoffed. “While I worship violence, I never have to ask for forgiveness. I can do what naturally comes to me and not have to worry about a thing. My conscience has always been clear. I wonder if you wonder about that yourself when you step in the house of God.”
“What you said, though? That’s a personal offense, but it’s not the first one that you have made about me. In fact, interwoven between everything I pointed out are these little, personal barbs. It makes me think that you have a problem with who I am deep down. A lot of things have happened in these past few weeks that have stolen me away from my work. But since we’re here at the end, I guess I should be blatantly honest with you.”
I came to a pause at a stop sign. Even in the dead of night with no one around, I obeyed traffic laws. I remembered hearing a story from my best friend, Aiden, about how a police car came out of the bushes on one of his cohorts. It almost made the police sound eldritch.
…
The blood on my hand was starting to drip onto my pants.
“So let me tell you that I told you a lie.”
I don’t even remember where the cut on my hand came from.
“You see, my last promo was Damian Ayla, the professional side of me speaking out towards Vhodka Black, the professional side of you. I broke down why exactly I wasn’t excited to fight you. I credited most of it to the potshots you would take at my legacy. To which, I have to say is still true. I don’t want Pro Wrestling Excellence to wind up in your dirty hands. You, like all your compatriots, want to stand on a soapbox and lie to the people who have been loyal to the product since day one. You don’t want better for Pro Wrestling Excellence. You just want to win something shiny, boast about it, and then kill PWE with the same STD that killed every other place you were in.”
"But beyond that, there was this memory playing in my head. Each time I saw your name, the Magnificence poster, or when I had to think about fighting you, it would just pop right into my head,” a headache was beginning to take root right as I said that. Fate has a horrible sense of ironic humor coupled with the perfect, annoying comedic timing. “With the accumulation of everything that has been going on around me this past month, I realized that you don’t know anything about me aside from some basic, first glance. The memory that played was of one of the first things you ever said about me. In the promotional material you had against Delia Black, there was this one tidbit that caught me.”
“Damian wants Tara subservient because he’s too goddamn weak to allow the real talent in that family to shine. And poor Tara, well, she loves him, so she allows it.”
“When that single phrase was put out, Vhodka Black ceased to exist. It was on that day that I stopped looking to fight her. I stopped looking into OPW, F2B, FIGHT, and AWS. Instead, Francesca Jolene Black, Bickett, Dyamond, or whatever it’s going to be in a few years, became my sole target. And with that came a dissection of the kind of person you are. You dare speak ill of what Tara and I have without any knowledge of who we are.”
Arriving at the manor, I reached over and paused the video footage. I had to move inside of the manor, make sure the kids were not there. Tara had already left to head to Mexico. Thankfully, my family had friends down there, so she wasn’t entirely alone. I walked inside an empty house and let out a long exhale. Blood was dripping from my hands still, and I held them against my chest to keep stains from developing onto the carpet. When I returned to get the camera and turn it back on, the audience was allowed inside of my bathroom. It was one of the hallway ones, which I shoved myself inside to properly wash my hands. The sting from the cuts didn’t register on my features thankfully.
“If you would have done any research beyond just things I have said on Twitter, you may have found out that everything that I have ever done in this company has been for Tara and my family. I joined PWE because of her. I am her teacher. I am her manager. I am her confidant. Her potential and talent exceed everything that I possibly am, and I’m not ashamed to EVER say that,” I gritted my teeth, a degree of anger lumping in with the shot of pain as I examined the wound.
A first-aid kit was in every bathroom. When children play, they tend to get hurt, and that could happen anywhere. The one inside of the hallway bathroom was more suitable to every kind of wound that didn’t require a hospital visit. What I needed inside of the kit were forceps. When I was moving my left hand around, I felt the intrusion of a foreign object. “Winning the Excellence Championship came with the caveat that one day, Tara would be standing across the ring, ready to take it away from me. I made myself into an obstacle for her to overcome because that has always been the promise that I made to her. I have been by her side since the very first day! You do not know anything about the nightmares that we have faced together, and the ways that she pushed me to be better than what I used to be! And for you—you, the woman who broke up a marriage for your own selfishness—to speak about what we have?”
It was deep inside of my hand, which I regretted showing on camera. Nonetheless, it would heal alright enough to still cave Francesca’s head in. “It’s hypocritical of you. But I guess the way you may see it; every relationship must be some tragic story waiting to happen,” I produced a needle from underneath the first section of the kit. Taking out a syringe and a vial of lidocaine, I injected myself with the proper dosage.
“You’re the one who decided to breach the professionalism of this match even before you got here. I can ignore the white noise behind everything else, but the very moment that you decided to disregard Tara, myself, and our relationship, is the very moment that I decided to end this charade you had going for yourself. It was to the point that I was going to get you into a match with me regardless of the outcome of the Invitational. That’s right. Even this golden opportunity I PROVIDED FOR YOU wouldn’t matter in the end.”
“I was always going to fill the grave you dug for yourself; it was just a matter of when,” I said, bracing myself to fish out what was inside. “Maybe that will sway some last minute onlookers into buying a ticket. Come see Damian Ayla crucify Vhodka Black. Now that’s a tagline.”
“The reason why those words have sparked this deep-seeded anger in me is because of what Tara and I have gone through to make it to this point. The love of my life, my guiding moonlight, has made it to the point where she will win her first championship. Through every horrible nightmare that we have survived, we have made this into this happy moment, a peaceful time. And you think that I wanted her to just serve me? And you think she’s so weak-minded that she just follows me? You think that she beat you because you weren’t trying hard enough? Is that the excuse that you’re going to rely on when I beat you to a bloody, fucking pulp in front of the whole damn world?”
It turned out that it was a piece of wood, something that splintered off into my hand. I sighed as I disposed of it and checked my other hand. The wound there wasn’t deep, just gruesome looking. It must have been a bad cut.
“Is this the futile effort you force to make yourself feel better about your life and all the mistakes you’ve made? You have betrayed so many people for the hedonism that drives you. And you cover it with these lies you must tell yourself. These very lies are what made you want to say something so inherently stupid about me. It is for that stupidity that I will have to hurt you beyond repair,” I knew that closing the wound was next. I rummaged around inside of the kit and smiled when I found the next tool. “If you had been paying attention, then you would know that Nathaniel Cartwright crossed the same line that you did. But at least he had some motivation. Tara broke his lover’s arm, and he wanted revenge. It’s childish but I can sympathize with that. But you, Francesca?” I pointed at the camera with the staple gun within the kit.
“You’re just a parasite. This isn’t some sound clip either. This is the very truth of your existence. You leeched off Damon Riggs to get as far as you have in this business. You tore apart an entire family just so you can have the man you do now. Even now you must siphon whatever you can to have the strength to try to beat me. You have fooled enough people around here into a symbiotic relationship when they are helping you stay the same, selfish monster you have always been.”
“That is the whole crux of this match to me. I’m using every bit of my strength to get rid of you. There isn’t any semblance of good nature in me, walking into Magnificence. If you were Allen, I may have humored the idea of losing to you. If you were anybody else, I may have clapped my hands and praised you. I offended you by never giving you the praise and respect you thought you warranted when in actuality, you were never going to get it anyways. A thing like you doesn’t deserve my respect. You’re the worst, possible outcome for this company–a hedonistic, vile virus that lies about what they are.”
One, two, three staples went in.
“It’s because those words and every single one after that makes me detest your very being. It’s why I don’t bother to give you my best material on Twitter. It’s not because of any reason you can dream. It’s only because I loathe the concept of you. Because now I see that you’re going to try to take away from my family. It’s different from Nathaniel. The reason that I let you inside of my home wasn’t to rehash the same material from the last pay-per-view, it was to let you see the family you think you’re going to steal from. I wanted you to see the very thing I’m fighting for.”
“You had no chance when it was just professional. Now that it’s personal, the odds are even worse. There's no room for you here in PWE, and I'm going to make sure of that.”
Two more went in–the feeling of pressure against the gaping wound did send a chill down my spine. As it alleviated, I wrapped my other hand and went to retrieve what was in my car. “The happiness in that household that Tara and I built with our blood, sweat, and tears, isn’t something for you to infect. At Magnificence, I’m coming out there not just to defend this championship. I’m coming out there to keep my family safe from the tyranny of evil men as your God would put it. I will do every unspeakable evil to you if it means that my family’s safe and sound, as my God would like it. I will take everything you stole away from you, just so that the love of my life is happy. I will make a tragedy out of you for your kids to remember, so that mine will see how much I love them. I will make enemies out of the whole fucking world at Magnificence. In the confines of a traditional one-on-one, with these hands of mine that built this house, I will bury you."
When I arrived, I checked the backseat, hoping to gather what else I took from Ian. Amusingly, I found something else resting within.
“Francesca, I’m sure you will have plenty of people watching because you think you will win. I should thank you for providing me with the biggest audience, so they will all know my name. I will make believers out of all of them. After that, those people, your stolen husband, your backwater family, and even your children? They will wait for you to beg them for forgiveness. But before any of that, I need you to do one thing for me."
Covered in barely fresh blood was my cane…broken into pieces.
“Make sure your God is watching when I tear you apart.”
━━━ ♠ ━━━
"It wasn't a genuine article because Damian himself is not genuine.
In a way, she was right.
As far as I can recall, I have never been fully myself. The day that I decided to compete in professional wrestling, I put on a mask. It wasn't thick, no, but it was there. It was a thin layer between myself and the rest of the world, hiding away secrets that I never wanted anyone to know about. Vhodka's incessant words did breach upon memories that hadn't been visited in ages. Yet, throughout my time here in PWE, I've begun to unravel the facilities of my mind, visualizing days that were well past me. With Nathaniel Cartwright, I let him and others gaze into my past. They saw how my father tormented me to make me stronger. Though, her words reminded me that I never gave people the reason why my father did what he did. And for that reason, I stand here unrivaled.
In MSW, I was undefeated. I orchestrated my family's uprising and subsequent stranglehold on the company. The reason that the name Artemis Kaiser became household was because of my guidance and my benevolence. I crafted the God of Anger in my image, and now she's a living legend.
In PWA, I was the unmatched king, the target that no one could ever take down. I broke a man's psyche to the point of no return, just because I was bored.
In OCW, I only fell short once for contractual obligations. I gave the company what they wanted upon my exit, a gentleman's agreement if you will. In every other breath, I took down everyone put in front of me. Hence why I was recognized. In the excursions to other places, I have proven myself time and time again. I was called upon by my family in order to help ascertain victory.
Now in PWE, I'm undefeated.
Eight years of competition and I have remained nearly untouchable. I would love to credit it to my mind and the way I view the world. The Savage Gospel, my way of living, my devotion to violence, isn't why I'm unrivaled. No, it's sickening to know that it's how my body has been engineered to do terrible things to other living beings. My acts of brutality have always been the key to my success. The blood on my hand nurtures the seeds of my legacy.
Therefore, this mask that I wear upon my face has never been there to hide myself. There's nothing in this world that I am hiding.
It's there to keep other people safe.
Damian Lutece. Damian Ayla. Damian K'. All of these names are there to hide away what haunts my reflections. The gold I carry on my shoulder helps align me to something sensible. I'm no wrestler. When I lull myself into the illusion, the striking of my cane snatches me back into reality. It was my father’s cane, and his father’s before him. These hands were meant to do much worse. This sport has been the only thing keeping me from following what my father, Leon, created for me.
My father's past was never laid out to bare to myself or any of my siblings. Our mother, Maribelle, never did her part in explaining why our father was a living nightmare. He was tall, obscently so. He had to duck to get into most doorways. His frame was always imposing, casting shadows on me, no matter how much I grew. Though, it was his face that always told the tale of the kind of man he was. The raging tide was in his eyes, his nose was crooked from victorious battles, and his mouth was hidden underneath a bushy, peppery mustache. Yet, latent along his sharp features, were scars. With education came familiarity. A person could tell that someone had slashed his face at one point, grazed it with a bullet, or simply tore open flesh. It was a map of sorts, informing onlookers that he was insurmountable in his own right. Against any weapon, he has persevered. The scars on his hands were once gleaming with fresh blood as he pounded in someone's skull.
In shorter terms, myself and my siblings knew that my father had killed someone in the past. It became a game for us to find pieces of the puzzle. When I was fifteen, we finished said puzzle. Asher, my twin sister, pulled us all together one day, having found something in the attic. Our father had hidden a lockbox inside the wall. The seven of us sat around the fireplace as Gage, our middle brother, picked the lock. When it was open, the contents were miniscule but all too important. It was just three pictures and a dog tag. While the others grabbed at them, I accessed one picture.
A younger version of my father stood next to four other individuals, each of them wearing the same, stark black uniform. The mustache on my father's face wasn't there, leaving the full sight of his smile. It wasn't wide, instead he chose to be subtle. There were several treated injuries visible on his body. What my eyes kept gravitating towards was the sniper rifle resting against his shoulder. I handed the image back over to my younger brother, Alex, and stood up.
"Where are you going?" Asher asked, broken away from her reading the dog tag.
I remember looking over my shoulder and telling her that I was done. There wasn't any more I wanted to know. My father wasn’t trying to create wrestlers or fighters. The championships he had on his wall were cover-ups. They were props used to illustrate his lies.
He was making soldiers.
Just like him.
