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We open our eyes. The camera, hazy at first, begins to focus on two people. Their demeanor is incredibly similar, both huddled on the cold floor, heads resting on arms - eyes tightly shut against the tears that threaten to break through. No one seems to want to come near them as they lie there, stewing in their own guilt, brought on by others tortures. One is dressed in the dark cowl of the Enigma, the other wearing the familiar longshorts and T-shirt attire of The Unorthodox One.
Despite the miasma in the centre of the camera, they appear to be facing each other - curled in their identical foetal positions. Yet this provides no comfort as they lie on different floors, in different locales - each with its bare walls, each with its confinement of solitude, and each man alone with their fears and failures. Talon wears the knowing scowl brought to him through the eternal guilt made fresh by his mother, The Jackrabbit a forlorn look of remorse at the vengeance reminded to him by the doctor.
Into the rooms walk the figures, symbols of their strife, white and black swirling around them, their paths bearing prominent purpose. Dr. Libor Radnik and Eliza McCollough approach their respective subjects, an expression of frenzied determination, an expression of reluctant remorse.
"Good morning. I know you didn't enjoy my last visit, but I'm afraid today we must get deeper to the root of the problem."
The camera spins, surrounding them with its scrutiny, and in its motion it dissolves into a sea of their long forgotten memories. A moment passes.
The camera embraces the past, allowing the memory to swirl around it, the pieces coming together in an eventual collage of history. The house here has seemingly been poorly tended to, belongings strewn carelessly out of place. The furnishings and appliances here are reminiscent of their time, dated by modern standards but perfectly fitting here. Amongst this miscellany of household items, a small child plays, care-free in his innocence. This unorganised place is no bother to him, it is the home he has always known and always loved. Presently, it is the banister of the stairs that entertain the youngster. He focuses all effort into climbing it, with the fearlessness and exuberance that only a child could possess. So long ago.
The young father sits in his study, surrounding by the countless works of his own design, and absorbed in them, and only them. Their precedence is clear, the white leaves covering his work desk, bookshelf and Commodore 64 alike, its blinking screen displaying the blue and whites of his latest conception. He pays no mind to their error message it shows, his preoccupation is elsewhere. The small child enters the room, looking exhausted from his play, but laughing regardless. With a tiny hand, he pulls on his father's leg, a request for his attention.
"Daddy, daddy!"
The little child receives no reply, his father clearly not noticing his presence. Again, the child attempts to jar him from the concentration on his work.
"Daddy, daddy!"
In another attempt to get his father's attention, he bumps into the computer desk, knocking paperwork off the desk. The father stoops to pick it up, barely acknowledging that it was even knocked off at all. Finally, though, his son receives a response.
"Go finish your dinner, son."
"I finished it already, daddy.."
His father, however, does not respond, already returned to writing notes on his current sheet of A3. Jay seems unperturbed by this unintentional ignorance.
"I finished it.."
He receives an off-hand response.
"Good boy, go and play."
The son sighs, looking around the office forlornly. If there were some other way...
"Daddy, will Mummy be back?"
The father looks up from his work, making eye-contact with his son for the first time upon entering the room.
"Mummy is gone, Jay."
This young incarnation of Jay is unmoved; he already knows this much.
"But..."
"Go and play, son."
Jay had learnt when to obey his father's wishes, and makes his exit from the room. Before he has even left, his father has returned to his work, busily making fresh notes and annotations. The child, unresolved, returns to his banister, where he will undoubtedly fall down again.
The camera fades in, its scope taking in another look at the past. However the room that it shows is eminently familiar, from the dark stone walls to the glassless windows. It is evident that the camera is focused within the dark tower that was the ancestral home of the McCollough's. Unlike the present time, though, the tower actually appears homely - even if its furnishings are a little worn. The floor is covered in warm, thick rugs, and on the walls are pictures of two distinct figures that are evidently related - one much older, one much younger - father and son.
In the centre of the room, then just like now, is an ornately carved wooden chair - covered in images of various birds of prey. Sitting in it is a younger Eliza, her face less lined with care and age, her smile more genuinely warm, her eyes softer (yet with a touch of their current hardness) and her dress less plain. She seems almost entirely focused on the book she is reading - the cover of which is written in a script entirely illegible - yet every few moments she glances at the other occupant of the room. The other occupant is young, with short dark hair. Already he is well on his way to his full adult height - despite not quite being a teenager yet. He is evidently Saul, from before Talon was even the slightest imagining, and he is bouncing a tennis ball listlessly against a wall. Beside him, open and upside down, is the book: 'Treasure Island'.
"Mum, I'm bored!"
Eliza barely glances up as she turns a page over.
"Read your book then, dear."
Saul glances down at the book in disgust, and sighs.
"All I ever do is read! I wanna go outside and play."
"It's night, Saul. We don't go out at night."
With a growl, Saul throws the ball hard against the wall and catches it, turning it over and over in his hand. With a slightly petulant look he speaks.
"We did when Dad was around."
Starting slightly, Eliza looks up. The smile on her face is already fading.
"No, sweetheart. When Dad was ... alive. Not just 'around'."
Saul falls silent for a moment, watching as his Mum tries to regain control. Inside he feels just the same, and can almost feel the tears welling afresh - just as they did when he was told his father had died a few short months ago.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Mum. I just want something to do."
Eliza's attention turns back to Saul, and despite her own tears she walks over to him and wraps her arms around him in a comforting embrace. Saul returns the affection in kind - secure in the knowledge that at least his mum is still here.
"When we've got some money, Saul... we'll get a television, or something. That'll keep you entertained, sweetheart."
The child smiles into his mother's embrace, but even the knowledge of getting something to entertain him can't quite drown the feeling of disquiet he has whenever he touches his father's death.
A moment has passed. Both figures are still curled on the floor, the unorthodox and the enigmatic both. Libor and Eliza each sit near them, their stares predatory, and caring. An eager light shines in their eyes as they digest what has been discovered - yet somehow the eyes are also filled with a tear for yesteryear, for the memories that were. That they might yet still exist.
Their hands move lightly through the air, the room shimmering about the arms in a misty haze - unfocused yet absolute, the sum of two rooms. Their hands both rest on the shoulders of their subjects, with a callous kindness - before their voices break through the silence.
"Childhood. An... interesting place to start. What did you learn then, dear Saul? To hide mistakes? That if you forgot, it couldn't hurt?"
They stand up, and move away from Talon, away from The Jackrabbit. They walk over to a wall, staring inwardly ahead. Libor looks into the one-way glass, his mirrored reflection glaring introspectively back at him. Eliza stares out of the arrow-slit window, at the uncaring night sky mirroring the sorrow in her eyes. Sad lips speak softly into the mirror and cruel lips curl in consideration.
"No, I think not."
"No, I don't think so."
A moment passes. We close our eyes.
The camera focuses. We are in the past, once more. A film of silveriness covers the lens of the camera for a few seconds, before fading. Yet before it has even faded, the camera is zooming forwards - shooting past milling people with nondescript movements and empty faces, shooting through a monochrome world in facts - towards a patch of colour. The seats are bottle-green, in theory. In fact, they are so stained that they encompass every shade of green imaginable - and many other shades besides. One of the seat backs is ripped badly, foam almost spilling out of it, and reeking with beer. In the middle of these seats - that surround it on three sides - is a table. The legs are screwed to the floor - a pointless attempt to ensure that no one will steal it. Yet as the camera focuses on the table, the question is more - who would want to? Stained and ancient, food growing mouldy as it lodges in the cracks, graffiti scrawled upon it, it is anything but desirable.
Yet as the faceless, colourless people move past, the stop-animation of their movements making them blink forward every few seconds in a jarring fashion, it becomes evident that this table is one person's focus. He sits there, a pint of lager in one hand, an expression of mild distaste forcing itself across his face before disappearing every few moments. His hair has grown long in the intervening years, and he wears a simple blue, open shirt with a white t-shirt and denim jeans. Yet as the camera focuses still more clearly, it is evidently Saul. Occasionally he glances out, looking upon the milling crowd. Every so often, one will gain a splash of colour and perhaps a face, yet most remain as they are - unknown and forgotten. Evidently Saul awaits someone.
The people in this place jostle and joust, their only regard being their own desires for more consumption, or their necessary exit as their night comes to a premature close. Their appearances though remain blurred and discrete, their identities for the most part a mystery, and where there is momentary recognition there is only a momentary greeting from the figure making its way through the room. Carefully balancing a pint of cider in one hand, and his wallet in the other, Jay makes his way to the seat where his friend awaits him. The days of his lonely childhood are long forgotten here, memories that have no place in his new social world. The young Jay takes a seat beside Saul at the neglected table, taking a long swig of his cider before even considering conversation.
The larger Saul watches his friend join him at the table, sipping his own drink as though in patient wait of a greeting from his companion. He pays no mind to the insignificants around them, no attention to the two women at the bar giving the pair an examining eye. With a chuckle, Jay finally relieves himself of the drink at his lips.
"Haha, I thought for a second that guy was gonna I.D me!"
"But he didn't?"
"Nah... I just flexed my bicep before he even tried it, haha!"
"Now that's a surprise. He didn't even think before serving me."
Saul glances down, and then shrugs slightly - grinning.
"Guess I'm just more of a man, buddy."
Jay laughs off his friend's retort, cheekily swigging down the majority of his pint and holding the glass up to Saul.
"Well the drinks say otherwise... why couldn't you come out earlier, man? We had a blast down at Ikon!"
"Aw, low blow Jay, low blow. I mean, c'mon, you know I had that bloody essay to finish."
Saul swigs his pint, swiftly catching up with Jay. Smirking, he continues.
"But. Now that I am here, I'll drink you under the bloody table."
"Oooh-ho, that's a fuckin' challenge if I ever heard one. Guess it's time to show you how we drink here in the States, big man. Your round, eh?"
The bigger man finishes his drink, chuckling.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you somethin', Jay - I don't care how you drink, but I swear what you drink is just watery piss."
"Oh yeah? Well if that's how you see it, forget the pints, man... let's hit something heavy this round."
Jay rises from his seat, a look of playful enthusiasm on his face, and Saul just laughs, shaking his head patronisingly, following him in the direction of the bar, making sure though to leave his coat on the chair to 'keep' the table. The two friends hail the bartender, beginning down this fateful slope. As the two women from earlier slip their way towards them, the camera slips away from this recollection, the surface rippling like hot mercury.
A moment has passed. One has sat up, the other remains huddled, the dual eyes keeping their watchful vigil. They are both learning now, the tales they witness of a time new to each of them, a shared orb that to one is a mystery but to the other a hidden commodity. Libor Radnik keeps his watch over The Unorthodox One, making notes, analysing findings, always surrounded by the nagging cry of an eagle, whilst Eliza, the mother, haunts The Enigma with her probing enquiry, loving but wishing to unlock lost truths, always surrounded though by the nagging sound of manic laughter. In her mind, to her knowledge, and in his mind, despite his lack, the orbs float, their silvery surface carefully avoided in the endless organisation as the right ones are sought out. Plucked, as it were, from their eternal residence, for this one application, this one time, that they may be of some use. A moment passes.
The fall. The moment that shaped the fate of two. A memory told so often, recalled so often, seen so often. A memory that is lived by two men, the memory that created them. Yet to one that memory is naught but a lie, a flawless silver orb tainted forever with the darkness of that which is broken - eternal static on the defining moment of a mind. The block of flats is high, the night is cold. The wind whistles about the two men standing on its flat roof, their voices raised in drunken argument. Their curses turn the air about them blue as they stagger around, the taller Saul almost squaring up to the shorter Jay. Jay's usually boisterous side is suppressed by his rage, yet a quick gasp of mocking anger escapes Jay's lips, before he turns - staggering drunkenly towards the door, full of a fury made potent by alcohol.
I felt the anger; I knew that I was right, and he was wrong. I was drunk... we were both drunk... and so I didn't see things from anyone's perspective but my own, warped way of seeing things. Forget that we were friends, forget that the argument was pointless and petty... he would apologise and that was that.
Saul steps quickly after him, the rage mixed within him diluted by the expression of lonely worry naked upon his face. As he reaches to lay a hand on his shoulder, the whistling wind falls silent, the drunken footsteps fall silent, the laboured breathing falls silent. At the depth of hearing the solitary cry of a hunting eagle can be heard. Saul's hand falls on the Unorthodox One's shoulder, and gibbering maniacal laughter echoes around.
There is a moment, one moment of purest nothing. Saul's hand rests on Jay's shoulder, and the silveriness of the orbs fill the camera lens. Jay's rage-filled face twists with a drunken retort while the Enigma touches the orb with a curious look of drunken concentration on his face. The camera shifts violently, a vomit-inducing spin about the two men that stand amidst a sea of silver, orb-like beings - twitching and waiting for the touch. Saul squeezes hard on Jay's shoulder, and the orbs split, liquid silver running between his clenched fingers.
I didn't know what was going on... I felt the burning, I felt everything becoming hazy, nothing quite made sense. I was sure I hadn't drunk that much. The pain got worse, something was not right. The images, what did they mean? What was happening? It was like... hahah!... it was like a thunderstorm was going off in my mind, and... can't move, legs don't work, arms... what arms?... like a wounded animal... poor bunnies, ahahhaaaaaaaaa!..
A scream, loud and forlorn fills the air, yet the sound that truly grates, that truly scares, is quieter. So quiet as not to exist. The sound of a million connections cracking, followed by a tsunami of maniacal laughter as the sea of rabbits pours from the building like lemmings from a cliff.
Jay's face is twisted in a rictus of agony, and The Jackrabbit screams, and screams, and screams in a fit of giggling laughter. His hands clutched tight to his head, he staggers to the side, unable to see through the hysterical agony. Saul stands, the shock on his face plain for all to see as he reaches desperately for his friend's arm. But he is too late, and he falls, and two men are broken - one on the heights, and on the ground - neither what they were.
And then they pushed me, the rabbits and the birdies and... hahahaa!!... humpty.. dumpty... was... pushed!! Hahaha! But why? Why, Talon? Did you enjoy that? Was this what you wanted all along, Talon? hahahaha! This pain is nothing! Oh, silly Talon. Silly, silly, Talon. Get out, Talon! Out now! Out... Of... My... Head! Get out, doctor!
A moment has passed. The two watchers are, in their own way, both astonished and horrified at these happenings. A great breakthrough, a startling understanding, a step forward and a step backward. Libor Radnik flinches away from his subject, The Unorthodox One is distressed, and almost lashes out at his captor. Eliza McCollough is torn, almost wishing to console her subject, The Enigma is distressed, and curls deeper into his foetal position. One marks paper, one marks their mind, one sees a rabbit, the other a bird. Enigmatically, one relaxes, unorthodoxly, one lifts its head.
"Troubling."
"Troubling."
A moment passes.
The canvas, stained; the ropes, loose; the turnbuckles, mismatched. The wrestling ring is old, used, a hash-job put together to accommodate its fundamental requirements. Yet here is absolution, here is the continuation of a life. Here is the beginning of a return to normality, here is the start of everyone finally coming back together. Here is redemption. Here is vengeance.
Within this memory of years past, Talon's steps are slow as he paces towards the rings, and his eyes show an evident distaste for what he sees. Within this memory of years past, The Jackrabbit approaches the ring now, his eyes scrutinising the ring beneath dark sunshades. In utter silence the Enigma reaches towards the top-rope, pulling himself onto the ring apron. The Unorthodox One enters the ring, almost with a bouncy determination, his feet immediately testing the loosely stretched canvas. Stepping over the loose rope, Talon walks into the ring, looking around - and his mind's eye fills in what is missing; the screaming fans, the crumpled opposition. This is where it will be, so very soon... the crowd, the opponent, and Talon... crumpled.
The Jackrabbit smirks very slowly, allowing a brief laugh to escape his throat. He makes his way to the nearest turnbuckle, entirely ignoring its mismatching colours. Talon's face cracks into a sadistic smile, but it quickly fades at the memory of a laugh. He leans against the nearest turnbuckle, its disrepair disregarded, with a sigh on his lips. Slowly, The Jackrabbit takes a few steps back from the turnbuckle, measuring, estimating, and then lies himself down on the mat, prone; this will be it for Talon, this will be his turn to fall. With the slowest of pushes, Talon raises himself to standing on the top rope, and looks down; five, ten steps away - that will be the opponent, and they will feel death from above. Saul broke Jay, and The Jackrabbit will break Talon. Sooner rather than later, justice will be served in full. Revenge will be his. The broken are in the past, and now there is the future. It is a crime without forgiveness, a remorse that will never be assuaged. But here, now - causing pain and not receiving it - This is peace. This is war.
A moment passes. The camera shines silver, distorting the vision of the occupants of the room. Eliza sits, motionless now, in the ornately carved chair. Talon lies, curled in a foetal position, the stone floor stained with glistening silver tears. Through the arrow-slit window above him the night passes, oblivious to the soft sobs that escape his moistened lips. His mother, too, seems oblivious to these noises as she stares at the night, wondering what it might bring next - hoping only that it is different to what came before.
Dr. Libor Radnik has seen all he can see. He has learnt all he has hoped to learn. Behind him, arms folded, a stern expression on his face, stands one Stevie Sol. With a weary sigh, Libor Radnik turns and, ushering Sol with him, leaves the Unorthodox One to himself, curled still in his huddled ball on the padded floor. Slowly, The Jackrabbit rocks back and forth, sobbing softly, images of the past still flickering in his sunshades like a never-ending projector. Weakly, he murmurs, not to the doctor, or to himself, but to his unseen opponents, to the men and women he looks forward with such importance to meeting in the ring at Uprising 17.
"Oh, Jinjin. Poor, poor Icey. Aphykins, you sorry thing, and sad, little Stoney. Don't worry Sprite, and tell your new buddy not to worry either. It's all... going to... be okay. The ring, it's waiting kiddies... waiting now, waiting lots and lots for... the wrestling. Don't worry... The Jackrabbit... that's me!... The Jackrabbit won't forget you. You forget us so easy, all of you. Why do you forget us? Are we so unimportant in your lives? We're... We're the Tag Team Champeenos, you know?... Best friends... Always best... champeenos. Always, and after. Oh, Sunday... the forgotten story of... the monsters, the mismatch, the merries.. and Fusion. The retards... HAHA! Oh Aphydodah, Aphykins, Aphydoodle, Aphycakes... you funny person... you sweet, funny... nice.. person... do you really... are we really retards? I... I sometimes forget what it means, Aphypie... I sometimes forget... but I really... I'm not sure... and all your stupid make-up.. your silly gothy ways... your vampwolfs and weredingbats... And we're... the freaks?! Ha... Ha... Ha... I don't understand, doctor! Tell me what it's about? I'll give you ice-cream...
Not for all the ice-cream in the world! I won't show you these memorisms... I won't show you those things, I won't... and the fall, why the fall? Shame on you, doctor. Shame on you, Talon. Shame on you, all six of you... I'll show you something different. I'll show you our belts. Gold belts. Nice, shiny, tag team ones. I'll show you those. If you just... zoom the camera in... That's a close-up, kids. There's that one last bit... you know the bit... I say it often... Sometimes. I say it all the time. The bit that ends it all. The bit that makes it... all... go... away. I remember. Ha... Ha... Ha... I remember, Tal! The Jackrabbit... always... gets... The... Last..."
The camera focuses. We are here, and it is now. The Enigma on the floor, and his mother sits above. She cries, and her tears fall unseen upon her cheeks, smudging the dirt of a sleepless night into moist pink rivulets on her skin. To one side is Jacob, who watches her, a look of disapproval on his face at Eliza's obvious emotion. And on the floor is Talon, sobbing. Yet...
Talon is not sobbing, Talon lies still. And then Talon rises, stretching. His look to Jacob is one of disgust, but when he looks upon his mother, perhaps there is pity - or perhaps it is hatred. Yet as Jacob stares in shock, and Eliza does not even see, the Enigma leaves the room.
We close our eyes.
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