"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and
count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad
dreams." --- Hamlet
People have
bad dreams all the time. Some of them
are more nightmarish than others. Some
bad dreams are more figurative; just a reference to a bad memory, a memory that
we’d like to forget. And let’s be
honest, everyone has something they’d like to forget.
Personally I’d
love to forget Puerto Rico. I’d love to
forget the day that I lost the United States Championship to Jinn. It had been several months after that until I
managed to get my legs back under me and compete at the level I knew I could
compete. The Future Is Now was a true
Godsend for me, because not only was I on a major roll, but I managed to regain
that championship composure, I regained that championship fighting spirit, I
only lack one thing…
…a
championship belt.
I have the
opportunity to put my bad dreams of Puerto Rico to an end and walk away with
championship gold once again.
==========
Flashback
July of 2006
==========
Our scene
opens in Glasgow, Scotland. The long
black limousine of one Meagan Collins is speeding down the road. In the backseat we see Meagan Collins and her
adopted brother Kevin Richards. Meagan
is attired in a sparkly black dress with a split on the side that goes up to
her hip, black open-toed high-heeled shoes, and red devil horns sitting atop
her lovely head. Her long black hair is
left to flow freely and unrestrained down to below her shoulders. Kevin is attired in black dress pants,
matching black sports jacket, and a white button down silk shirt. His black hair is slicked back. An impatient glare is written across her
lovely face as she begins to shout out at loyal Schultz, who is driving.
“Damnit, Schultz, how much longer until we
arrive?!”
“It shouldn’t be too much longer, Mrs.
Collins.” Schultz responds.
Schultz is
glad that he is up front driving, because otherwise Meagan would see the look
of disdain and disgust written across his face.
He hates this job Meagan is having him do. He knows how wrong it is, how evil it is,
yet, just like Kayla about a month ago, he needs this job and knows that
turning on Meagan would be like committing suicide. Just look at what Meagan is doing to Kayla
Jones and her family. Schultz shudders
to think of what Meagan might do to him if he were to betray her.
“Good.” Meagan says as she stretches her
arms out above her head. “Because this drive is making me tired.”
“Well, Meg, it isn’t Schultz’s fault. You told Oliver to find a hidden, out of the
way hideout.” Kevin says.
“I know.” Meagan responds with a note of
frustration in her voice. “But did he
have to pick a hideout THIS far out of the way?!”
“We have arrived, Mrs. Collins.” Comes
Schultz’s voice from up front.
Meagan looks
out the window excitedly and, sure enough, the limousine slowly comes to a
stop. Schultz then gets out of the
limousine, walks over to the back, and opens the door, allowing Kevin and
Meagan to step out.
“So, where is this place he has picked out?”
“He told me where to find it.” Kevin
responds. “Just follow me.”
Kevin takes
Meagan by her right arm and leads her into a dark, dingy, and dank
alleyway. Meagan immediately uses her
left hand to pinch her nose, not wanting to smell any of this horrid stench of
the alleyway any longer. Kevin then
turns to his left and finds a dirty, almost broken down door. Kevin opens the door and leads himself and
Meagan inside. The place is pitch black
and Meagan immediately takes a big whiff of this place and wishes that Oliver
Hardy had chosen a bakery or a flower store as a hideout instead of this
rat-infested place.
“So……where is he, Kevin?”
“I’m not sure.” Kevin responds with a thoroughly confused
look on his face. “This is the place he told me about.”
“HALT!
WHO GOES THERE?!” Comes a booming voice in the darkness.
Meagan
narrows her eyes in anger. “Quit the
goofing around, Oliver. Show yourself!”
With that
said, the lights pop on and Meagan can finally get a good look at this
place. There is a tiny catwalk at the
top and a flight of stairs leading up to it.
On the ground level, where Meagan and Kevin happen to be, there is
absolutely nothing but rats, a few garbage cans, and one extremely frightened
Marie Annabelle Jones chained up to the wall.
Meagan turns her head to the stairs leading up to the catwalk and she
spies Oliver Hardy standing there on the steps with a megaphone in his hand.
“This is great, isn’t it?” Oliver asks,
motioning to the megaphone. “It makes me
sound just like that guy from the Wizard of Oz.”
“Well I’m glad you’re having a good time,
Ollie, because I’m not!” Meagan storms up to Hardy, walks part of the way
up the steps to meet up, takes hold of the megaphone, and tosses it on the
ground.
Oliver looks
down at his now broken toy and then looks back up at Meagan with a slightly
arrogant smirk on his face. “What’s
gotten into you, sweet-cheeks? Is it
that time of the month already?”
Meagan rears
back and slaps the taste out of Oliver’s mouth.
“Real funny, asshole. I freed you from the gay hillbillies and even
paid you good money to do a simple job for me, but what do I get in
return? I get a deviation from the
plan!” Meagan angrily points over towards the cowering Annabelle Jones. “That little bitch isn’t supposed to be
alive right now! You were supposed to
have raped her, immediately killed her, and left her corpse on Sean McBride and
Angelica Jones’s doorstep.” Meagan
takes Oliver by his collar and pulls him in closer so that he can see the rage
in her eyes. “So tell me, Ollie, why is it that I do not see a corpse over there right
now?” Meagan releases Oliver so that
he can begin his explanation.
“I know that’s what you told me to do, but
an even better idea came to me while I was bringing her here. You want to torture Kayla too, right?”
“Duh.” Meagan responds, rolling her
eyes.
“Well, the way I figure it, why don’t I
leave Annabelle here alive, and then I kidnap Kayla? That way Kayla can be here and be forced to
watch her precious niece get murdered.”
A sadistic
grin wraps across Meagan’s face. “I like
it. I like it a lot.” Meagan steps
down off of the stairs and walks over to where young Marie Annabelle Jones is
chained up. Meagan notices a small chair
nearby, so she reaches over, grabs it, and pulls it over so that she can sit
down while she chats with Marie. “Good
afternoon, Annabelle. Are you surprised
to see me?”
“You?
How could you help this man, aunt Meagan? I thought you loved me and……….” Marie
starts, but is immediately cut off by Meagan screaming at her at the top of her
lungs. “GET THIS STRAIGHT, YOU LITTLE SLUT, I AM NOT YOUR AUNT!” Meagan
takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down. “And if I was, I’d commit suicide out of the shame of being related to
someone as worthless as you! Don’t you
realize that no one gives a damn about you?
No one will even miss you when you die you little slut!”
“That’s not true!” Marie says. That statement barely makes it out through the
twenty year old’s crying. “My mom and aunt Kayla love me and………”
“Your mommy and aunt Kayla are mentally
unstable, Annabelle. In a day or two,
Oliver Hardy over there is going to kidnap your aunt Kayla and he’s going to do
rape her just like he raped you, only he isn’t going to kill her, oh no. He’s going to go ahead and free her, because
he and I both know that it’ll drive Kayla over the edge and she’ll kill
herself. And as for your mom, well, with
you dead and her sister dead, well, that will drive her over the edge as well
and she’ll probably end up spending the rest of her years in a padded room.”
“How………..how could you do such a thing?!?!”
Meagan
laughs sadistically. “Oh how naïve you
are, little Annabelle. But it isn’t your
fault. Your mother let you get
naïve. Your mother allowed you to grow
up thinking that humanity was pure and good.
Well, allow me to educate you about humanity, Annabelle. Everyone, deep down inside, is evil. Whether they’ll admit it or not, everybody is
an evil bastard. The only difference
between them and me is that I don’t run from the evil nature that I know is my
true self. I embrace it.”
==========
Present Day
Off Camera
==========
“NO!”
Marie shoots
up in bed, startled and breathing heavily.
She scans the room, first looking straight ahead, then looking to the
right, and finally to the left. She
feels the warm rays of the sun beating down upon her and she slowly regains her
bearings. She realizes that she just had
a bad dream. No, more than just a bad
dream. She had a nightmare. She relived a nightmare from eleven years
ago. The nightmare of when she was
kidnapped and raped by Oliver Hardy. She
isn’t chained up in that rat infested hell hole. She’s underneath a plain chocolate brown colored comforter
with her husband, Arthur Pond, in a king sized bed. She is very much grateful that all of this
was just a dream.
She still
has these dreams from time to time. But
they have, at least, lessened in frequency.
Immediately after the incident she had the nightmares almost every day. But after therapy the nightmares have damn
near stopped. Unfortunately they have
not stopped completely. They do return
from time to time. She’ll never completely
lose the nightmares until the day she dies, for she has a constant reminder of
that night living in the same house with her.
Her son,
Sean Connor Jones, was the result of that incident. Most women probably would have aborted, and
Marie at times wonders what if she had done that, but as a practicing Catholic
with her strong religious devotion she felt she couldn’t do it. She loves her son, she just hates the memory
that he constantly brings back to her.
Nevertheless,
it is time to at least try to forget about that and move on with another
day. Marie swings her legs over the
sides of the bed and places her feet upon the floor, pausing just for a moment
to gain her bearings before pushing herself up onto her feet, standing up to
full length. The leader of the ginger nation begins
to slowly, as if in a daze, walk towards the bathroom door. She stops right at the bathroom door, turning
towards a closet, which she opens to reveal a full length mirror on the
inside. She gazes at her reflection in
the mirror and what she sees pleases her; a beautiful figure of sexy femininity
attired in sexy black lace panties and bra.
“MOM!”
Marie’s
head immediately turns toward the door.
It’s coming from down the hall; that’s the voice of her son, Sean. Marie reaches into the closet and produces a
pink robe and puts it on. The redheaded
Boston native then exits her bedroom and walks down the hall to the very next
door and opens it, stepping inside. She
finds her son sitting up in his single bed.
A pitiful frown is on his face as his mother watches on curiously.
“What’s wrong, Sean?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“That makes two of us, dear.” Marie
chuckles as she walks further into the room.
She steps up to the bed and sits down on the edge of the bed, joining
her eleven year old son. She looks
lovingly into his eyes, a warm smile forms on her face. Moments like this make her forget about her
own personal nightmare.
“It’ll be fine now.” She ruffles his brown hair. “It’s over.
It was just a dream.”
“But it was scary.”
“Maybe it was, but it was just a dream.”
“You don’t get it.” Sean says, shaking his head.
“I don’t get it, eh?” Marie smirks knowingly. “Try me.”
“Huh?”
“Sometimes telling others about your dreams helps. At least that’s what my mom always told
me. I would always tell her about my bad
dreams and it would usually make things better.”
“Oh,” Sean nods his head as he seemingly understands what Marie
wants “so you want me to tell you about
my dream?”
“That’s right.”
Sean
sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t
remember it anymore.”
“You forgot your dream already?” Marie
asks somewhat incredulously, stifling a laugh as she does not want to make her
son feel bad.
“Sorry. I can’t help
it, I just forgot.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been TOO bad of a dream if you
forgot about it already.” Marie says with a wink.
She starts to get up but her son pulls her back down onto the bed. She looks at him curiously. “What?
What is it?”
“It’s your turn.” He points a finger at Marie.
“My turn to what?”
“Tell me about your dream.” He says.
“Didn’t you just say you had a bad dream
too, mom?”
The kid
is smart, smart beyond his age. Marie
did in fact suggest to him that she had a bad dream as well. He picked up on it when she said ‘that makes
two of us’. The thing is, as much as
Marie doesn’t want to lie to him, she also does not want to tell him about her
dream. He’s too young for that.
“Uh, I’d rather not talk about it.”
“But you just said it was good to talk about dreams.”
“Yeah, I did.” Marie nods her head in agreement. “But you never told me your dream, did you?”
“No, but I forgot.”
“Then I forgot mine too, how does that sound?”
“Alright…I guess…” Sean says, sounding somewhat
disappointed.
“It’ll be ok, kiddo.” Marie kisses him on his cheek. “You’ll understand one day. Trust me.”
Marie
again tries to rise up off of the bed but Sean still wants her to stay, so he
pulls on her arm to keep her there. She
turns to face him with a curious gaze on her face.
“What’s wrong now, Sean?”
“Why are you leaving?”
“I have things to do.” Marie says with a sigh. “It’s going to be a busy day for me.”
“Can’t you just stay here today?”
“Sorry, Sean, but I can’t.” She says,
shaking her head. “You know what I do for
a living, right? You know about my
career.”
“Yeah, unfortunately.” Sean remarks, nodding his head sadly.
“What’s this whole ‘unfortunately’ stuff about?” Marie
asks curiously. “I thought you loved
wrestling.”
“I do but…” He shakes his head “…nevermind.”
“No, we’re not ‘neverminding’ this one.” Marie
sits down on the bed again. “What is it,
Sean? Tell me.”
“It’s just that you are never here. I’m only with you when you take me with you
on the road; which you hardly ever do.
All the other kids in the neighborhood have their parents to do things
with them. I have no one.”
“You have Arthur.”
“He’s not my dad.”
With that
Marie is immediately stunned. She isn’t
sure how exactly she should respond to this.
After a moment’s pause, she does come up with what she hopes will be a
suitable response.
“But Arthur is…”
“He’s a step-father.
Yeah, I know. That’s what the
other kids say. But he’s not my real
dad.” Sean
frowns inquisitively at his mom. “Who is
my real dad?”
“Your father is dead, honey.
We’ve been over this before.”
“I know but that’s not what I asked.” The
intelligent Sean remarks. “Who is my dad?”
Marie
stands up and shakes her head. “Not now,
Sean…”
“But mom…”
“NOT NOW!”
She turns
and storms out of his bedroom. She walks
back down the hall and right back into her bedroom. She slams the door shut behind her. This wakes up Arthur who slowly stirs
awake. He sits up in bed and rubs his
eyes to gain his bearings as he looks on at his lovely wife Marie.
“Marie…are you…” he blinks his eyes a few more times “…are you ok?”
“No! I’m not!” Marie
shakes her head. “He asked the question,
Arthur!”
“What question?” Arthur says right before yawning.
“His father…” Marie’s voice trails off. “Sean asked about his father.”
“Oh, I see.” Arthur remarks, nodding his head with
a certain realization of what just happened this morning. Arthur swings his legs over the side of the
bed and stands up. Clad in just his
boxers, he walks over to his wife. “Sean
is a very smart kid. You knew it was
going to happen sooner or later.”
“I know but I was dreading it. I really was.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.” Marie admits slowly and quietly,
almost in a whispered tone.
“You told him nothing?!” Arthur repeats incredulously, not
quite believing his wife. “Marie, he
deserves to know.”
“I know but I’m not ready.” Marie
shakes her head. “To be honest, I’m not
sure if I’ll ever be ready.”
“Well you need to get ready.
The genie is out of the bottle now and you’ll have to face this soon,
whether you like it or not.”
“I’m scared…” Marie admits as her voice trails off “…hold me.”
Arthur
and Marie embrace tightly.
==========
On Camera
==========
Why do I
do this? Why do I constantly put my body
on the line inside of the squared circle?
Is it for the entertainment of the fans who buy tickets to these events? Or maybe it’s for fame and glory and the
championship accolades? I wish I could
say that it’s purely for the love of the game.
I wish I could say it’s just because I enjoy what I do, that it’s
because I want to give back to this sport, but the truth is that it’s only one
part of the reason why I do this job.
Granted it is a big reason and a very important reason why I do this job
but it is not the only reason I continue to climb into that ring each and every
week.
I am a
competitor first and foremost. I climb
into this ring each and every week against the best talent pool professional
wrestling has ever seen and to test myself, to challenge myself, to see if I
really am The Crown Jewel of Professional Wrestling. Competition against some of the best athletes
in the world today is a big reason why I do what I do and when you beat the
best, when you climb atop the mountain, eventually you are rewarded with a
symbol of what you’ve accomplished…
…championship
gold.
The fact
is that it’s been since June of last year when I last held championship gold
here in Supreme Championship Wrestling.
I never should have lost the United States Championship to Jinn back at
Supreme Saturday Peurto Rico but that one is on me. I’m not going to gripe and complain about
unfair treatment by SCW management like some.
I’m not going to orchestrate some massive multi-layered conspiracy just
to get a championship back around my waist like some self-centered, egotistical
brats who only bother to show up when a title is on the line. I lost the title and I haven’t been able to
get anywhere near gold because I haven’t been at the top of my game
lately. It’s all on me and it’s all up
to me to get back to the level where I want to be.
I am
itching for more gold, for more opportunities, but I have to make those
opportunities happen. I can’t wait for
them to just fall into my lap. It’s up
to me to work my way back up to the championship status that I want. And it appears that I truly will work my way
up from the bottom.
Derek
Adonis, you may be a former SCW Television Champion but let’s face it, no one
took your reign seriously. To this day
no one takes you seriously, Derek. I
don’t want to sound like I’m burying you or anything, because you do have a
hell of a lot of talent; you don’t win a championship here in SCW for being a
loser…a sham…a fraud…so there is real talent there in that body of yours. I recognize it and am willing to admit it,
even if most of your peers in this industry are not willing to recognize or
admit it.
The fact is,
Derek, even despite your reign as Television Champion, people still recognize
you as a comic relief. You are the guy
that comes out and makes everyone laugh when SCW Breakdown has become just a
little too over-dramatic. That’s been
your role and you’ve been ok with playing that role for a very long time. Hell, you’ve been playing that role ever
since you signed with SCW. There was
only one moment, one brief moment when you were more than just the comic
relief.
You were
the SCW Television Champion.
Now you
find yourself primed in a position where you could get an opportunity to regain
that Television Title. That sounds great
but there’s one problem with that and your problem comes in the form of The
Crown Jewel of Professional Wrestling.
The fact
is that I want this just as bad as you do, Derek. Actually, scratch that, I want this worse
than you do. I just need to win one
match, one match only, and I have a title opportunity. I haven’t had a title opportunity in several
months. I had to bust my ass in a title
contender’s series just to prove that I belong in the upper echelon and then
there’s you, the comic relief, getting another opportunity in a TV Title
Eliminator.
Let me
put it to you this way, Derek.
Championship gold may not be the end all be all in this sport, but it
damn sure goes a long way to showing that you are a force to be reckoned with. And damn it, it’s been way too long since I’ve
had any sort of championship gold around my waist.
I want to
ask you something Derek; how exactly are you going to be spending the remaining
hours leading up to our match on Breakdown?
Will you spend them coming up with strategy on how to stop my speed and
agility? Will you spend those hours
watching tapes of me in the ring, trying to spot weaknesses that you can
exploit?
Or will
you spend those hours leading up to our match on Breakdown coming up with a
sequel to your Kablamasutra?
Therein
lies your problem, Derek. You have never
given any indication that you have or ever will start to take things seriously
as a professional wrestler. And I get
what my reputation is, or at least the one that my sister Kimberly tries to put
on me. She says I’m a prude. Heh, maybe in some ways that’s true, but I
prefer to consider myself a realist and pragmatist. I am considered with the success or failure
of my venture as a competitor inside of an SCW ring; unlike you, who thus far
has been primarily concerned with selling the Kablamasutra.
I’d love
to be proven wrong, Derek, but I believe I’m right when I say that you will
still not take this seriously. You have
yet to take things seriously, why start now?
But hey, maybe you will prove me wrong and you’ll take this
seriously. If you do take this
seriously, I can guarantee you that you and I will have an epic showdown. You have the potential to be something and we
could have a hell of a match.
Or you
could remain in the role of comic relief, and I’ll put your lights out in the
matter of minutes.
Either
way, it’ll be me who comes out as the winner, it’ll be me advancing to the Television
Championship. I still have bad dreams
about Puerto Rico and I am within reach of potentially redeeming myself and
bringing those bad dreams to an end.
I just
have to get past you first and there is no way in hell I’m letting you stand in
my way.
