Post by Michael Callahan on Mar 10, 2014 5:34:55 GMT -4
OOC: The dumb clocks changing caught me out. I thought I had 'til 10. This is what I had written before 9 for fairness.
Time. The infinite, man-defined deity whose power transcends even its creators. They say you can't kill what you did not create, but they never said what you create can not kill you. Whatever your colour, code or creed is, the all-seeing, all-knowing God of Time reigns sovereign over every last one of us. In its omnipotence, every measure, every moment, every fleeting fraction of a second that slips right past us, Father Time births innovations, ideas and empires, while setting out the blueprints for regression, revolution and decay. He brings with him the perfect shining summer days with the people we love as well as the battering, torrential rains, alone in an empty office. Michael Callahan pressed cold, pale hands against the glass window knowing one thing to be true. His time was running out.
“I have something to confess to you all. I haven't exactly been a very good boy,”
Michael stared vacantly into Westlake Park below, watching people scatter for cover as whiplash winds picked up between the pillars and the benches. Out in the midst of it all, holding onto your umbrella was a herculean effort and navigating through streets swashing bitingly cold water at your ankles bordered on a swim team try out. Yet inside his office, Michael felt the rising water of his conscience up to his neck and he was about to go under.
”It's been over a year since I last set foot in a wrestling ring to compete. It's been over a year since I officially withdrew from the Republican Party and the Washington State committee. Three hundred and sixty five plus since I last did what I do best. But I don't mean politics and I don't mean wrestling. For all my capability, I'm talking about something far deeper embedded in me, weaved into the fabric of my soul. Beyond my adult and professional life. Something that I've done every day since I was first born to this Earth by the grace of God. Run away from failure.”
”Since I was an adorable little bigoted tyke in training, I constantly drilled and conditioned my mind to fear failure beyond all else. I make no secret of the fact that my family grew up poor and that life was tough growing up in the inner cities of Seattle. Seeing my mother turn to drink, my father struggle to keep himself together while working a woefully underpaid, woefully demanding job that taxed his heart as it did his salary. I never wanted to see that again in my entire life, nor did I ever want to be that in life. So I ran. I got up and I ran.”
”So I ran. I got up, put on my shoes and I ran. Whatever I put my mind to, I gave it my all and I won. Over and over again, I flourished in the face of challenge. Whether it be junior debates, being the star pitcher on my Little League baseball team and beyond, learning to Amateur Wrestle in high school or constantly succeeding in my academic studies right through to my proudest possession, my Yale degree, the idea was to avoid returning to that life. That's why my father and I never got on. He knew how little I thought of the life he'd built for us and understandably, he hated me for it.”
”Now I don't tell you this to have myself a pity party. I don't feel I particularly deserve one and the idea of your sympathy makes me nauseous. I tell you this to illustrate how it was until APW left. When I lost my championship to Level One and got sectioned at the Sunnyside Institution, the legs I'd been running with had given out and the air in my lungs was gone. I collapsed and my ability to run never truly came back. Failure was Aesop's tortoise to my ragged, exhausted hare. Even though I went onto find gainful employment in a warehouse and opened a promotion, it wasn't going to last. PURE collapsed under its own weight within weeks and at this point in life I'd put far too much investment in avoiding that blue collar life to just sink in and accept my roots and drive trucks until the day I die.”
”Now I'm here. I want to say that if I could go back and do it all again, it would've been different and I'd have got myself a 9-5 and not been such a psychological screw-up but I can't. I have no regrets. I maybe ashamed of where I came from but I will never be ashamed of doing everything I could in my power as an American citizen, as a man of God to pull myself by the collar and into something more. I will never regret aspirations, nor the missed opportunities that my attitude brought with it. That if I'd been less prone to manipulating and smashing obstacles that I'd have found love in Sally Talfourd, my Aphrodite and my Artemis, the perfect hunter with the perfect passion, or any of the other women in my life I'd driven away and the countless friends I'd made.”
”But even as I stand here neck deep in these murky waters, a thousand dollars left in in my bank account without any idea where I'm going for the future, staring down the barrel at one of my greatest rivals, the one who got away if you will I know that I will never regret anything I've done to myself or to others unless I fall at the feet of the man who had my number, the man who stood for science against my faith, APW's true mastermind Phil Atken without baring everything I have left to give in that ring.”
”Once upon a time Phil, despite having the same inclinations towards bending the rules, I considered you no better than the average wrestler with a guile about you. That legendary cunning, the tight entourage around you and the tomfoolery and doofus act that you brought to us. But when we finally fought for the championship, finally did battle and gave each other the fight of our careers, I realised that it was only one layer of a far more elaborate puzzle. After that match at Survive and Conquer, I swore blind to anyone that would listen that anyone calling you a fluke champion regardless of how you beat me was completely wrong. You're capable of crushing anyone you like, but you buffer your arsenal with deception and foul play to add depth to your arsenal and once I realised that, I knew I was never going to underestimate you again and that next time around I was going to annihilate you and take your title.”
”Until Keaton Saint got to you first.”
”Weeks away from an epic Rasslemania collision, you got slack. You fell out of sorts. You arrived to the building a week before a match three months in the making that would've been the hallmark of our careers no matter who came out on top and you let Keaton Saint rip you apart. I've never forgiven you for that and I never will. Robbing me of my chance to redeem myself for failing in my first attempt. I don't know if you did it because you were scared to face me again now that you knew what I was capable of or if Keaton got the better of a Phil Atken whose scientific mind was uncharacteristically absent. All I know is that I have waited anxiously for the chance to prove that I could beat you and at Rasslemania X, you can say all you want for science but it was my prayers that got answered.”
”The belt may not be on the line, but it doesn't matter. It was never about the belt between you and me. It was a symbol of who was the better man, or rather, who was the better cut from our cloth. Who was the better manipulator and schemer? Who could out politic the other and annihilate the other with deceipt and lies? We were never saints and that is what was so compelling about our war. The battle lines were blurred. Nobody knew where the truth and the lies began and ended and nobody could ever see what was coming from us next.”
”Now, I'm about to turn a new chapter in my life. I'm about to ride off into the sunset with my head held high and a steely, far-away look in my eye and prepare to be who I really should've been. Honest, decent, loyal, respectful, on the right path like the Christian tenets I used to preach while hypocritically smashing in heads with a baseball bat, but before that Phil, I'm going to come to Rasslemania and I'm going to stand across from that corner and you are going to see the true manifestation of the evil I can conjure. You could never on our best days out scheme me, not now that I know you. Science will not save you. Faith will not save you. Every last trick in the book will be thrown at you. Eye pokes, baseball bats, maybe even a few old friends of mine make a run-in distraction. I'm not going to beat you at your own game, I'm going to beat you at MY game.”
”And after that? Once I've choked you out or put you down for the three count? I'm out for good. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm going as far away as possible from where I've been. I'm going to embrace the failure I've so desperately been avoiding because it's now that I see it's not failure. Mediocrity, maybe, but not failure and let me tell you, my performance will be anything but mediocre. After Rasslemania, you will never see Michael Callahan in front of a TV camera again. This is the last call for Michael Callahan. This is the last of the Devil's potions that I supped throughout my political and professional career and it's the last dance for Phil Atken when I prove to you that I was the better man, once and for all.”
Michael grabs his backpack and leaves, closing the door on his old office and on everything he'd dreamed to build for the last time.
========================================================
Last Call
========================================================
Last Call
========================================================
Time. The infinite, man-defined deity whose power transcends even its creators. They say you can't kill what you did not create, but they never said what you create can not kill you. Whatever your colour, code or creed is, the all-seeing, all-knowing God of Time reigns sovereign over every last one of us. In its omnipotence, every measure, every moment, every fleeting fraction of a second that slips right past us, Father Time births innovations, ideas and empires, while setting out the blueprints for regression, revolution and decay. He brings with him the perfect shining summer days with the people we love as well as the battering, torrential rains, alone in an empty office. Michael Callahan pressed cold, pale hands against the glass window knowing one thing to be true. His time was running out.
“I have something to confess to you all. I haven't exactly been a very good boy,”
Michael stared vacantly into Westlake Park below, watching people scatter for cover as whiplash winds picked up between the pillars and the benches. Out in the midst of it all, holding onto your umbrella was a herculean effort and navigating through streets swashing bitingly cold water at your ankles bordered on a swim team try out. Yet inside his office, Michael felt the rising water of his conscience up to his neck and he was about to go under.
”It's been over a year since I last set foot in a wrestling ring to compete. It's been over a year since I officially withdrew from the Republican Party and the Washington State committee. Three hundred and sixty five plus since I last did what I do best. But I don't mean politics and I don't mean wrestling. For all my capability, I'm talking about something far deeper embedded in me, weaved into the fabric of my soul. Beyond my adult and professional life. Something that I've done every day since I was first born to this Earth by the grace of God. Run away from failure.”
”Since I was an adorable little bigoted tyke in training, I constantly drilled and conditioned my mind to fear failure beyond all else. I make no secret of the fact that my family grew up poor and that life was tough growing up in the inner cities of Seattle. Seeing my mother turn to drink, my father struggle to keep himself together while working a woefully underpaid, woefully demanding job that taxed his heart as it did his salary. I never wanted to see that again in my entire life, nor did I ever want to be that in life. So I ran. I got up and I ran.”
”So I ran. I got up, put on my shoes and I ran. Whatever I put my mind to, I gave it my all and I won. Over and over again, I flourished in the face of challenge. Whether it be junior debates, being the star pitcher on my Little League baseball team and beyond, learning to Amateur Wrestle in high school or constantly succeeding in my academic studies right through to my proudest possession, my Yale degree, the idea was to avoid returning to that life. That's why my father and I never got on. He knew how little I thought of the life he'd built for us and understandably, he hated me for it.”
”Now I don't tell you this to have myself a pity party. I don't feel I particularly deserve one and the idea of your sympathy makes me nauseous. I tell you this to illustrate how it was until APW left. When I lost my championship to Level One and got sectioned at the Sunnyside Institution, the legs I'd been running with had given out and the air in my lungs was gone. I collapsed and my ability to run never truly came back. Failure was Aesop's tortoise to my ragged, exhausted hare. Even though I went onto find gainful employment in a warehouse and opened a promotion, it wasn't going to last. PURE collapsed under its own weight within weeks and at this point in life I'd put far too much investment in avoiding that blue collar life to just sink in and accept my roots and drive trucks until the day I die.”
”Now I'm here. I want to say that if I could go back and do it all again, it would've been different and I'd have got myself a 9-5 and not been such a psychological screw-up but I can't. I have no regrets. I maybe ashamed of where I came from but I will never be ashamed of doing everything I could in my power as an American citizen, as a man of God to pull myself by the collar and into something more. I will never regret aspirations, nor the missed opportunities that my attitude brought with it. That if I'd been less prone to manipulating and smashing obstacles that I'd have found love in Sally Talfourd, my Aphrodite and my Artemis, the perfect hunter with the perfect passion, or any of the other women in my life I'd driven away and the countless friends I'd made.”
”But even as I stand here neck deep in these murky waters, a thousand dollars left in in my bank account without any idea where I'm going for the future, staring down the barrel at one of my greatest rivals, the one who got away if you will I know that I will never regret anything I've done to myself or to others unless I fall at the feet of the man who had my number, the man who stood for science against my faith, APW's true mastermind Phil Atken without baring everything I have left to give in that ring.”
”Once upon a time Phil, despite having the same inclinations towards bending the rules, I considered you no better than the average wrestler with a guile about you. That legendary cunning, the tight entourage around you and the tomfoolery and doofus act that you brought to us. But when we finally fought for the championship, finally did battle and gave each other the fight of our careers, I realised that it was only one layer of a far more elaborate puzzle. After that match at Survive and Conquer, I swore blind to anyone that would listen that anyone calling you a fluke champion regardless of how you beat me was completely wrong. You're capable of crushing anyone you like, but you buffer your arsenal with deception and foul play to add depth to your arsenal and once I realised that, I knew I was never going to underestimate you again and that next time around I was going to annihilate you and take your title.”
”Until Keaton Saint got to you first.”
”Weeks away from an epic Rasslemania collision, you got slack. You fell out of sorts. You arrived to the building a week before a match three months in the making that would've been the hallmark of our careers no matter who came out on top and you let Keaton Saint rip you apart. I've never forgiven you for that and I never will. Robbing me of my chance to redeem myself for failing in my first attempt. I don't know if you did it because you were scared to face me again now that you knew what I was capable of or if Keaton got the better of a Phil Atken whose scientific mind was uncharacteristically absent. All I know is that I have waited anxiously for the chance to prove that I could beat you and at Rasslemania X, you can say all you want for science but it was my prayers that got answered.”
”The belt may not be on the line, but it doesn't matter. It was never about the belt between you and me. It was a symbol of who was the better man, or rather, who was the better cut from our cloth. Who was the better manipulator and schemer? Who could out politic the other and annihilate the other with deceipt and lies? We were never saints and that is what was so compelling about our war. The battle lines were blurred. Nobody knew where the truth and the lies began and ended and nobody could ever see what was coming from us next.”
”Now, I'm about to turn a new chapter in my life. I'm about to ride off into the sunset with my head held high and a steely, far-away look in my eye and prepare to be who I really should've been. Honest, decent, loyal, respectful, on the right path like the Christian tenets I used to preach while hypocritically smashing in heads with a baseball bat, but before that Phil, I'm going to come to Rasslemania and I'm going to stand across from that corner and you are going to see the true manifestation of the evil I can conjure. You could never on our best days out scheme me, not now that I know you. Science will not save you. Faith will not save you. Every last trick in the book will be thrown at you. Eye pokes, baseball bats, maybe even a few old friends of mine make a run-in distraction. I'm not going to beat you at your own game, I'm going to beat you at MY game.”
”And after that? Once I've choked you out or put you down for the three count? I'm out for good. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm going as far away as possible from where I've been. I'm going to embrace the failure I've so desperately been avoiding because it's now that I see it's not failure. Mediocrity, maybe, but not failure and let me tell you, my performance will be anything but mediocre. After Rasslemania, you will never see Michael Callahan in front of a TV camera again. This is the last call for Michael Callahan. This is the last of the Devil's potions that I supped throughout my political and professional career and it's the last dance for Phil Atken when I prove to you that I was the better man, once and for all.”
Michael grabs his backpack and leaves, closing the door on his old office and on everything he'd dreamed to build for the last time.
