Post by Michael Callahan on Feb 23, 2013 15:09:31 GMT -4
When the chorus sing the second verse, it sounds exactly like the first.
Exactly that way it was for Michael Callahan as he lurched upright for the eighth night in a fortnight, drenched in his own perspiration and with ragged breath from his labouring lungs. He reached out into the darkness, fumbling for his bedside table until his roasted, clammy hands found the cold metal of the lamp and crawled up along the base until he found the switch to flick. A dark amber glow flooded the room and everything returned to normality. There were no more shadows for ghosts to hide in.
For two weeks now, almost nightly visions of the Hell behind his closet door had haunted Michael Callahan's ordinarily peaceful slumber. It seemed like not a night had gone by where he didn't go for a shower before retiring for the evening, only to need to return less than four hours later. Repetition didn't make it easier either. No matter how many times his recurring nightmare plagued him, it did not and would not feel any less real. The only difference now was that when he woke up, he knew he'd been dreaming and didn't immediately kick out for his shotgun.
Michael had been thinking about it constantly since the second time it happened, having dismissed it as a symptom of his loss to Phil Atken the first time but giving it some more attention on it's repeat. The triggering event, it seemed, was clear. Losing to Phil Atken after being so perfectly sure of victory, so certain of championship glory only to have it snatched away from him. Yet the eve he defeated Shane Borderland and assured his place in the main event of Rasslemania IX, the terror was more clear than ever. When the demonic overlord slew him, he woke up coated in a thick river of his own blood from what Ellen Bishop put down to a spontaneous nosebleed. But that didn't explain why his throat felt like it was being ripped out.
Michael Callahan looked to the other side of the bed and saw Ellen, the stuttering girl he'd picked up from the diner lying face-down and naked next to him with skin that glimmered the colour of ivory in the moonlight through the windows. She was never in his dreams. Everything that had ever mattered to Michael, that he'd ever held close seemed to tie somewhat into his visions, but never her. She remained mysteriously absent throughout it all. When she was there, everything seemed alright. Her body softly rose and fell slowly against the mattress as she slept soundly, something she admitted to Michael she seldom could do on her lonesome. Well tonight, she would have to make do.
Michael Callahan: I'm... not insane.
Michael climbed out of bed and fumbled around underneath the king-size futon he called his bed to find the clothes he wore last night before bed; stone-wash blue jeans, a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs and a dark grey button up shirt with a packet of cigarettes in the right breast pocket. He pulled on his clothes, buttoning the shirt only halfway then fished a lighter out of his pocket as he opened the slide doors and stepped out onto the balcony of Fortress Callahan, his country home in Kelso.
He lit up a cigarette and took a steady drag, reminding himself mentally that he needed to quit soon before management got on his back about it before remembering that he was main eventer and above such nonsense, then leaned over the edge of the balcony to stare at a solid wall of redwood trees that parted to show a glimmering lake in the distance, a serene view a million miles removed from what his dreams kept in his closet yet both were in reaching distance.
Michael Callahan: Right now, the way I feel inside is beyond description. I can't even begin to grasp the foundations and scratch the surface of the way my head is working right now. Every move, no matter how positive feels like a wrong foot placed. Every swing of the arms, every strike of the bat, every Victory Lock cinched in feels like it's out of key, like I'm not dancing to the beat of my own drum and that my rhythym is all gone... and I've had enough. I'm trying to convince myself that this is only a phase, that I'm undergoing depression because of my loss to Phil Atken... but what really is so bad about that? I've already got myself a rematch... and on the show of all shows, the main event, the headline event of the APW calender. Nothing could possibly be better for my wrestling career. So why do I feel like this?
He took another long drag of his cigarette, then twisted his mouth into the shape of an O so that he could plume smoke rings into the crisp night sky. He flicked his ashes to the cold ground below then dug back into his thoughts.
Michael Callahan: Is it the pressure? An expectation to perform to a certain degree and calibre that's making me feel like this? No, it can't be. I've made a legacy off of defying expectations and climbing the seemingly endless cliff-face of public opinion. Keaton Saint is a man who knows all about pressure and public opinion. It's been the bane of his career for years. Ever since he built himself an Experts reputation, an APW reputation, he's been stuck in that rut, failed to shatter the glass ceiling and failed to break through to the other side, to immortality because he constantly carries the weight of the people on his back.
The winter chill of the wind rushed up along his spine and into the back of his head, making him shake and his breath catch in the back of his throat. He wondered if Keaton Saint ever got chills like this, in the bleakest and lowest points of his career when facing consistent failure.
Michael Callahan: While glorified highwaymen like Terry Marvin and Level One spit in the face of the people, Keaton Saint uses it as his crutch so that the man may walk again when he falls time and time again on his face. Anthony Bailey is no different, but he at least had the decency to win the championship first before being crushed by the tidal wave of the people. But that can't apply to me. I've always been at odds with the rest of the world, no matter how much I try to argue what I'm doing is for their own good, to improve the quality of their programming and to make for a better product. It can't be that. … or can it?
Callahan cast his mind back to some of the rougher shows he'd performed at, entire front rows of angry wife beaters with beer cans giving him the finger and shouting “WE WANT TABLES!” and “FUCK YOU CALLAHAN!” over and over until it became as a part of the ambience as his entrance music or the lights above the stage. An idealist almost to a fault, little had changed in Callahan's viewpoint other than the desire to fight fire with fire. An open-palmed approach to the problems with the sport no longer meant anything to Callahan, who now almost took a sick glee in pounding at opposition with a bat.
Michael Callahan: Time and time again in my past twelve months as a Megastar, the times I performed best was when I was on my lonesome. When I knew I was the underdog, walking into a packed London crowd as a nobody and walking out as the Suicidal Champion to the shock of everyone in attendance, when I walked into Mayhem as a Pro Life Champion, against the first female Undisputed Champion and certified Hall of Famer Sally Talfourd and I made her tap out, it seemed like then that there was no extreme I could not overcome, no convention I could not repeal and no expectation I could not defy.
One of the most magical moments of Callahan's life so far was easily the look on the faces of everyone in attendance the night he first beat Sally Talfourd. With a Victory Lock sealed in tight, Sally struggling for breath between his legs and a tenacious grip and a lusty rage never before seen by Callahan, he achieved the impossible and made one of APW's toughest tap out. Yet more beautiful than that tapping sound was the lock of horror as he pushed Sally off her, and saw waves of shocked fans staring flabbergasted at him being heralded the victor. It was a true Kodak moment.
Michael Callahan: Then people started supporting me, I became a household name, people started listening to what I said and I was being touted as a future icon, a world champion within a year, bonafide, and maybe it was the pedestal that I myself was now being put on that ultimately lead to the stiffer fall when I was unceremoniously pushed off it. Anthony Bailey never went bat-shit crazy and started having nightmares when he lost to Sally in the chamber, Keaton Saint never dreams of being slaughtered by demons because he got bested by Terry Marvin on a multitude of occasions. So why? Why me?
And then the answer came, along with a light shower of rain that pattered onto the wooden deck, soaking through Callahan's hair but cooling his skin. It was barely rainfall, but it was refreshing and welcomed and coaxed his memory into the one side of his life that the cameras couldn't pick up, his tumultous personal life and the destruction of his friendship circle. The loss of his fiance, the loss of his mother, his friends and employees leaving him, all had played a significant part in the tearing of the fabric that made Michael Callahan human.
Michael Callahan: Anthony Bailey, Keaton Saint, hell, even Terry Marvin has people who call him friend. They're few and far in between but they're definitely there. Their personal lives aren't falling to pieces around them. Terry Marvin doesn't care his wife is leaving him because he's on top of the world. Anthony Bailey has a girlfriend that he loves. Keaton Saint has a strong, powerful circle of allies around him in APW in The Pillars and The Experts. Me? I have a nutjob veteran, a shrink who's riding me as a cash cow and women who-...
Callahan was oblivious to the sound of bare feet padding out onto the decking behind him, too lost in his own thoughts to notice. He wasn't however able to drown out the voice of stammering Ellen Bishop, Callahan's confidant and live-in friend.
Ellen Bishop: Please.... d-d-don't finish that s-sentence.
Callahan twirled around and spotted the raven haired, white as a ghost young woman in her night clothes stepping out of the shadows and into the light of the moon. He smiled weakly, shocked more than anything that she'd woken and managed to sneak up on a former Marine.
Michael Callahan: You're awake?
Ellen's sullen expression told the story.
Ellen Bishop: I t-t-told you, I can't sleep al-lone... and you're r-really l-loud when you're th-th-inking.
Callahan chuckled and put a brave face on the situation, walking towards Ellen with open arms to embrace her and reassure her that he wasn't about to describe her as “a woman trying to impose her idea of his best interest on him” but possibly in less polite terms. She retreated into his embrace and sighed deeply, inhaling his scent.
Michael Callahan: Sorry. I wasn't going to say anything bad. I just-
She looked into his glowing ocean coloured eyes and trembled in his clutch, not wanting to push the subject but not wanting to feel lied to.
Ellen Bishop: Y-you were talking about your p-poor ch-choice in company... I d-don't w-want to hear what c-c-comes next. Is s-something the m-matter?
Michael Callahan: No, Ellen. Nothing is the matter. I'm fine. I'm just... having trouble sleeping at the moment. There's some really big initiatives at the moment with the WRNC, trying to figure out how to get Joe Fitzgibbon to pack it in with this marijuana conviction overturning.
Frowning, Ellen pounded her hand lightly against the chest of Michael and gave him the sad eyes that had ensured her residence with Callahan for the past two weeks.
Ellen Bishop: I sm-smoke oc-casionally...
Callahan chuckled and ruffled her hair, trying to brush the subject away in his mind.
Michael Callahan: Not in my house you don't. Anyway Ellen, go back to bed dear. I'm going to go take a shower then I'll be right there with you. Okay?
Ellen Bishop: O-okay sw-sweetie. Don't be long.
She leaned up on her tippy toes and pressed her lips to Michael's, smiling and pecking him before returning back to the balls of her feet.
Michael Callahan: I won't. I promise. Now please, go back to sleep.
Michael turns her around and she reluctantly walks back into the bedroom, shutting the sliding door behind her as Callahan takes a final drag of his cigarette before flicking it over the edge of the balcony. He takes one last look at the moon above, returning to his derailed train of thought and putting it right back on the track like Engine Number 9.
Michael Callahan: ... Maybe I can find answers in the ring. Beating my old rival Anthony Bailey and his once Overdrive equivalent might help me clear my head. Beating that train-wreck Shane Borderland did little, matter of fact it made it worse... but maybe... just maybe, notching a win over a fresh face and an old rival might just help me. If nothing else, picking up steam on the road to Rasslemania is essential and with Phil Atken in confidence of his abilities against me, I need to do everything I can to tip the balance. Tooth and nail, I've gotta' put it all on the line to prove that I can still hold myself together even in the face of the stiffest competition in the business.
And with that, Michael took one last look at the shimmering lake then turned away back to the sliding door. Letting himself back in, he smiled at Ellen who was already making herself comfortable on the bed as he walked towards the en suite bathroom ready to try and cool himself off and return his thoughts to sanity.
Exactly that way it was for Michael Callahan as he lurched upright for the eighth night in a fortnight, drenched in his own perspiration and with ragged breath from his labouring lungs. He reached out into the darkness, fumbling for his bedside table until his roasted, clammy hands found the cold metal of the lamp and crawled up along the base until he found the switch to flick. A dark amber glow flooded the room and everything returned to normality. There were no more shadows for ghosts to hide in.
For two weeks now, almost nightly visions of the Hell behind his closet door had haunted Michael Callahan's ordinarily peaceful slumber. It seemed like not a night had gone by where he didn't go for a shower before retiring for the evening, only to need to return less than four hours later. Repetition didn't make it easier either. No matter how many times his recurring nightmare plagued him, it did not and would not feel any less real. The only difference now was that when he woke up, he knew he'd been dreaming and didn't immediately kick out for his shotgun.
Michael had been thinking about it constantly since the second time it happened, having dismissed it as a symptom of his loss to Phil Atken the first time but giving it some more attention on it's repeat. The triggering event, it seemed, was clear. Losing to Phil Atken after being so perfectly sure of victory, so certain of championship glory only to have it snatched away from him. Yet the eve he defeated Shane Borderland and assured his place in the main event of Rasslemania IX, the terror was more clear than ever. When the demonic overlord slew him, he woke up coated in a thick river of his own blood from what Ellen Bishop put down to a spontaneous nosebleed. But that didn't explain why his throat felt like it was being ripped out.
Michael Callahan looked to the other side of the bed and saw Ellen, the stuttering girl he'd picked up from the diner lying face-down and naked next to him with skin that glimmered the colour of ivory in the moonlight through the windows. She was never in his dreams. Everything that had ever mattered to Michael, that he'd ever held close seemed to tie somewhat into his visions, but never her. She remained mysteriously absent throughout it all. When she was there, everything seemed alright. Her body softly rose and fell slowly against the mattress as she slept soundly, something she admitted to Michael she seldom could do on her lonesome. Well tonight, she would have to make do.
Michael Callahan: I'm... not insane.
Michael climbed out of bed and fumbled around underneath the king-size futon he called his bed to find the clothes he wore last night before bed; stone-wash blue jeans, a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs and a dark grey button up shirt with a packet of cigarettes in the right breast pocket. He pulled on his clothes, buttoning the shirt only halfway then fished a lighter out of his pocket as he opened the slide doors and stepped out onto the balcony of Fortress Callahan, his country home in Kelso.
He lit up a cigarette and took a steady drag, reminding himself mentally that he needed to quit soon before management got on his back about it before remembering that he was main eventer and above such nonsense, then leaned over the edge of the balcony to stare at a solid wall of redwood trees that parted to show a glimmering lake in the distance, a serene view a million miles removed from what his dreams kept in his closet yet both were in reaching distance.
Michael Callahan: Right now, the way I feel inside is beyond description. I can't even begin to grasp the foundations and scratch the surface of the way my head is working right now. Every move, no matter how positive feels like a wrong foot placed. Every swing of the arms, every strike of the bat, every Victory Lock cinched in feels like it's out of key, like I'm not dancing to the beat of my own drum and that my rhythym is all gone... and I've had enough. I'm trying to convince myself that this is only a phase, that I'm undergoing depression because of my loss to Phil Atken... but what really is so bad about that? I've already got myself a rematch... and on the show of all shows, the main event, the headline event of the APW calender. Nothing could possibly be better for my wrestling career. So why do I feel like this?
He took another long drag of his cigarette, then twisted his mouth into the shape of an O so that he could plume smoke rings into the crisp night sky. He flicked his ashes to the cold ground below then dug back into his thoughts.
Michael Callahan: Is it the pressure? An expectation to perform to a certain degree and calibre that's making me feel like this? No, it can't be. I've made a legacy off of defying expectations and climbing the seemingly endless cliff-face of public opinion. Keaton Saint is a man who knows all about pressure and public opinion. It's been the bane of his career for years. Ever since he built himself an Experts reputation, an APW reputation, he's been stuck in that rut, failed to shatter the glass ceiling and failed to break through to the other side, to immortality because he constantly carries the weight of the people on his back.
The winter chill of the wind rushed up along his spine and into the back of his head, making him shake and his breath catch in the back of his throat. He wondered if Keaton Saint ever got chills like this, in the bleakest and lowest points of his career when facing consistent failure.
Michael Callahan: While glorified highwaymen like Terry Marvin and Level One spit in the face of the people, Keaton Saint uses it as his crutch so that the man may walk again when he falls time and time again on his face. Anthony Bailey is no different, but he at least had the decency to win the championship first before being crushed by the tidal wave of the people. But that can't apply to me. I've always been at odds with the rest of the world, no matter how much I try to argue what I'm doing is for their own good, to improve the quality of their programming and to make for a better product. It can't be that. … or can it?
Callahan cast his mind back to some of the rougher shows he'd performed at, entire front rows of angry wife beaters with beer cans giving him the finger and shouting “WE WANT TABLES!” and “FUCK YOU CALLAHAN!” over and over until it became as a part of the ambience as his entrance music or the lights above the stage. An idealist almost to a fault, little had changed in Callahan's viewpoint other than the desire to fight fire with fire. An open-palmed approach to the problems with the sport no longer meant anything to Callahan, who now almost took a sick glee in pounding at opposition with a bat.
Michael Callahan: Time and time again in my past twelve months as a Megastar, the times I performed best was when I was on my lonesome. When I knew I was the underdog, walking into a packed London crowd as a nobody and walking out as the Suicidal Champion to the shock of everyone in attendance, when I walked into Mayhem as a Pro Life Champion, against the first female Undisputed Champion and certified Hall of Famer Sally Talfourd and I made her tap out, it seemed like then that there was no extreme I could not overcome, no convention I could not repeal and no expectation I could not defy.
One of the most magical moments of Callahan's life so far was easily the look on the faces of everyone in attendance the night he first beat Sally Talfourd. With a Victory Lock sealed in tight, Sally struggling for breath between his legs and a tenacious grip and a lusty rage never before seen by Callahan, he achieved the impossible and made one of APW's toughest tap out. Yet more beautiful than that tapping sound was the lock of horror as he pushed Sally off her, and saw waves of shocked fans staring flabbergasted at him being heralded the victor. It was a true Kodak moment.
Michael Callahan: Then people started supporting me, I became a household name, people started listening to what I said and I was being touted as a future icon, a world champion within a year, bonafide, and maybe it was the pedestal that I myself was now being put on that ultimately lead to the stiffer fall when I was unceremoniously pushed off it. Anthony Bailey never went bat-shit crazy and started having nightmares when he lost to Sally in the chamber, Keaton Saint never dreams of being slaughtered by demons because he got bested by Terry Marvin on a multitude of occasions. So why? Why me?
And then the answer came, along with a light shower of rain that pattered onto the wooden deck, soaking through Callahan's hair but cooling his skin. It was barely rainfall, but it was refreshing and welcomed and coaxed his memory into the one side of his life that the cameras couldn't pick up, his tumultous personal life and the destruction of his friendship circle. The loss of his fiance, the loss of his mother, his friends and employees leaving him, all had played a significant part in the tearing of the fabric that made Michael Callahan human.
Michael Callahan: Anthony Bailey, Keaton Saint, hell, even Terry Marvin has people who call him friend. They're few and far in between but they're definitely there. Their personal lives aren't falling to pieces around them. Terry Marvin doesn't care his wife is leaving him because he's on top of the world. Anthony Bailey has a girlfriend that he loves. Keaton Saint has a strong, powerful circle of allies around him in APW in The Pillars and The Experts. Me? I have a nutjob veteran, a shrink who's riding me as a cash cow and women who-...
Callahan was oblivious to the sound of bare feet padding out onto the decking behind him, too lost in his own thoughts to notice. He wasn't however able to drown out the voice of stammering Ellen Bishop, Callahan's confidant and live-in friend.
Ellen Bishop: Please.... d-d-don't finish that s-sentence.
Callahan twirled around and spotted the raven haired, white as a ghost young woman in her night clothes stepping out of the shadows and into the light of the moon. He smiled weakly, shocked more than anything that she'd woken and managed to sneak up on a former Marine.
Michael Callahan: You're awake?
Ellen's sullen expression told the story.
Ellen Bishop: I t-t-told you, I can't sleep al-lone... and you're r-really l-loud when you're th-th-inking.
Callahan chuckled and put a brave face on the situation, walking towards Ellen with open arms to embrace her and reassure her that he wasn't about to describe her as “a woman trying to impose her idea of his best interest on him” but possibly in less polite terms. She retreated into his embrace and sighed deeply, inhaling his scent.
Michael Callahan: Sorry. I wasn't going to say anything bad. I just-
She looked into his glowing ocean coloured eyes and trembled in his clutch, not wanting to push the subject but not wanting to feel lied to.
Ellen Bishop: Y-you were talking about your p-poor ch-choice in company... I d-don't w-want to hear what c-c-comes next. Is s-something the m-matter?
Michael Callahan: No, Ellen. Nothing is the matter. I'm fine. I'm just... having trouble sleeping at the moment. There's some really big initiatives at the moment with the WRNC, trying to figure out how to get Joe Fitzgibbon to pack it in with this marijuana conviction overturning.
Frowning, Ellen pounded her hand lightly against the chest of Michael and gave him the sad eyes that had ensured her residence with Callahan for the past two weeks.
Ellen Bishop: I sm-smoke oc-casionally...
Callahan chuckled and ruffled her hair, trying to brush the subject away in his mind.
Michael Callahan: Not in my house you don't. Anyway Ellen, go back to bed dear. I'm going to go take a shower then I'll be right there with you. Okay?
Ellen Bishop: O-okay sw-sweetie. Don't be long.
She leaned up on her tippy toes and pressed her lips to Michael's, smiling and pecking him before returning back to the balls of her feet.
Michael Callahan: I won't. I promise. Now please, go back to sleep.
Michael turns her around and she reluctantly walks back into the bedroom, shutting the sliding door behind her as Callahan takes a final drag of his cigarette before flicking it over the edge of the balcony. He takes one last look at the moon above, returning to his derailed train of thought and putting it right back on the track like Engine Number 9.
Michael Callahan: ... Maybe I can find answers in the ring. Beating my old rival Anthony Bailey and his once Overdrive equivalent might help me clear my head. Beating that train-wreck Shane Borderland did little, matter of fact it made it worse... but maybe... just maybe, notching a win over a fresh face and an old rival might just help me. If nothing else, picking up steam on the road to Rasslemania is essential and with Phil Atken in confidence of his abilities against me, I need to do everything I can to tip the balance. Tooth and nail, I've gotta' put it all on the line to prove that I can still hold myself together even in the face of the stiffest competition in the business.
And with that, Michael took one last look at the shimmering lake then turned away back to the sliding door. Letting himself back in, he smiled at Ellen who was already making herself comfortable on the bed as he walked towards the en suite bathroom ready to try and cool himself off and return his thoughts to sanity.
