QUESTIONS & ANSWERS (Chapter 39: SWAN SONG) [wgwf]

Yurievich Residence (Rock Hill, NY)||| August 20, 2024
(off camera)

It felt like 2023 all over again, like the way it had when the rug had been yanked out from under him in IIW and – irony of all ironies – his eyes had been opened. A gimme championship to keep him busy while Shaun Hart and JMont and Clyde Newton plotted the company's demise. He'd played stupid. That had been the first straw, the realization that Montuori only cared about himself. Sev had been a fool once again. Loyalty was his biggest weakness and he had agreed to follow along, to throw in with The Fortunate Ones. Had bided his time and now all that poison had filled him to the brim, tainting everything, including his marriage. Desperation had sent him to search greener pastures in DWL even though he had to start over at the bottom yet again.

He'd almost allowed his career to be cut short, all for the sake of the hubris that goddamned Smash Championship had forced upon him. He could hear the clock ticking, louder each day and he knew that he was going to have to swallow that bitter pill sooner rather than later – he wasn't immortal. As much as they liked to tout that tagline, he wasn't a god – capital G would never be earned even if he kept following those Sisyphean cycles. Getting cut down at a show he'd had no business even being at had been a stroke of divine providence, forcing him to look in the mirror, to finally admit he was human, to admit he was frail and stop trying to hide the nagging injuries. It was easy to point fingers, to shuck the blame. He'd known it was borrowed time.

Peter Vaughn.

John Cable.

Joe Montuori. It was only a matter of time before the bubble popped for good.

He'd been cautioned not to fly for a few weeks so he'd been grounded, has missed out on facetime and appearances as the Smash Champion and now the critics were back to their usual bullshit, picking him apart. They called him a coward. Lazy.

Miles from the fighting champion, from the PILLAR he had promised to be when Smash had told him about that brand split, about that show that WGWF was going to launch with him at the helm. His ego had loved that. The childish need for acceptance reared its ugly head and when the masked man had told Sev that he was the top choice, he'd gobbled it up without leaving any crumbs.

The lines of communication were still strained, his wife far more content to send text messages than to speak to him directly and while he understood on the surface, every time his phone lit up, he felt that knife twisting in his guts.

Time – as much as he hated to resort to putting big black X's on the calendar on the wall – was slipping through his fingers, one day bleeding into the next and his sleep patterns were erratic. He'd been obsessively reviewing tapes, watching anything and everything he could find on JMont. Twice now, he'd beaten the man. The first time was clean. Two of three falls in PWE — respect had been earned then. A friendship blossomed.

He'd been working on counters for everything in Joe's arsenal. He had books full of names and dates and places, all these perfect little boxes ticked off the list, all the neat little lines in their orderly rows as if chaos could be negated that easily. Three volumes had been filled, those black-and-white speckled covers battered, covered in doodles and blood that had long since dried.

Thoughts filled the margins, little phrases in lieu of snapshots. He'd never wanted to see what he looked like in those moments anyhow. He'd never found any sort of fascination in his reflection beyond cataloguing the damage. The scars grew more prominent as the years passed.

February 13, 2022
Man is not what he thinks he is; he is what he hides.

The third book still had two blank pages. He wasn't sure he was going to last long enough to fill them but he'd written SWAN SONG on the cover, underscoring it – tongue-in-cheek, of course but now it felt prophetic. It felt like too many things were riding on this moment so when the ego had overflowed and he'd become indebted to someone else, he'd latched onto it completely. It was easier to backslide into those familiar patterns. He didn't have to think about the violence. To weigh the pros and cons and consider that albatross around his damned neck.

The weight of Smash's legacy was killing him.

Slowly but surely.

He couldn't bring himself to actually break the silence and the more days that passed, the harder AND easier it became to just let it ride. It made more sense to flip through the pages now. To read the lyrics and half-formed thoughts in the margins – the evolution of a MONSTER.

OCTOBER 12, 2023
Feed the good wolf. The bad wolf is stronger. Sharper teeth

The words were never his own. No. They'd come from those he'd defeated. From those he'd admired. They were twisted, re-purposed from others he'd picked up over the years. The abyss had swallowed him whole so many times he started to look forward to that moment, to find comfort in that repetitive cycle. There was always venom somewhere and the business grew more toxic by the day. He started to pick and choose the places that would hurt him more, as if those urges that had dragged him into the business had never really gone away. He'd known it was only a matter of time before he was alone again, despite his wife's assurances to the contrary. He'd built a giant wall between them and he was too weakened now to tear it down on his own.

MARCH 15, 2024
Death comes for everything that lives, even love.

He felt responsible but he felt no remorse. He hadn't done it intentionally, after all. He wasn't trying. Every ounce of energy had gone into proving a point that had never been necessary. Nobody cared. Smash was gone and every day that passed, his memory was muddied more and more. The curse of remembering the truth was gutting him, devouring him from the inside out.

He hadn't said a word in three days. He couldn't find anything new to say. They were communicating by text now. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and disappear into the darkness, let the void inside swallow him up again but they wouldn't stay closed. They felt sticky, his eyelids raw.

He turned to that last page. Picked up the Sharpie from the table and wrote the first original thought.

The only one who was ever DAMNED was me.

The sand was rough against his soles, instantly sobering with its cool texture. His fingers were full of splinters and glass shards and the pile of rubble had grown in the last hour to where it blocked the view of the dock, of the orange buoy bobbing in the water now that dawn was creeping over the horizon to kick off another day and he turned without seeing any of it to make one last trip inside. The room was empty now, stripped to the bare walls and he felt the warm wetness dripping down, pattering on his feet. There was no blood on his skin. He was crying – he felt the moisture on his hands as he lifted them to his face and then he turned, pulse racing, desperate to get whatever this was under control before he woke Elle up. She had been feeling lousy all week, fighting a summer bug and he hated the thought of disturbing her with another one of his breakdowns.

He stopped, pulling himself up short when he saw a shape in the doorway. He blinked. Sniffed and rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. He bit his lip, resisting the urge to blurt out something stupid, to try and explain what he was doing. If he put words to it, the urgency would pass. It wouldn't make sense. Nothing did anymore.

He took a breath and a single step back, shaking his head. She was still there and he couldn't make out her features, couldn't read her mind by those million little cues and tics and the colour of her eyes but this was no apparition knocking on his chamber door.

She leaned against the doorframe, bare from the thighs down, wearing one of his steampunk kraken t-shirts and holding a mug of his favourite tea. She moved quietly, her feet instinctively avoiding all the spots that creaked and now that he could see her clearly past the sheen of tears, he saw nothing but love in her eyes — not a trace of fear or loathing. "Sev? Honey? Are you okay?"

Am I dreaming?

Her hand touched his cheek as she offered the mug to him. He stood there for a few seconds, immobile. The press of her hand against his skin was a balm to his shattered psyche and he dragged in a deep breath, eyes closing for a brief second. "Needed to…" he broke off with a sigh, his voice coming out hoarse and softer than usual. "The ego…hubris. Summer Madness. It will be the end of everything. This thing with JMont…." he took the mug from her finally, taking another step back to force her hand away from his unworthy face, his bare foot sliding through grit on the hardwood floor that was as abrasive as his bitter words.

"I know." Her smile was gentle and suddenly she had the SMASH championship in her hands. "You need to get rid of this. You need to break the curse, my love. Set us free."

He forced himself to take a drink. It was lukewarm the way he liked it, peppermint sweetened with honey that hadn't quite dissolved yet. Even after everything he'd done to whittle away their bond, she still knew what he needed. Every time she did that, he was floored. He hated himself more for these sad little pity parties – what an idiot he'd been.

"I'm not…" he tried to force words out, knowing she was right. Even if he tried to put it off forever, he would continue to spin his gears forever if he didn't end this on his own terms. "This place was sup..." the word caught in his throat, jagged and he abandoned it with a sigh. Silence was better than stumbling, stammering like an idiot.

"This place was supposed to be different, but not because you're doing anything differently. You made a promise to a dying man on what turned out to be a highly emotional day and you have honoured that for almost a YEAR. Nobody will fault you if you walk away now."

He nodded, taking a drink of the tea as he turned his back on the pile of rubble in the room that he'd torn apart twice now. Everything felt blurry. Wobbling around the edges but she was clear and he watched as she stepped past him and picked up the hammer lying on the floor, next to the rubble of what was left of their office. Holding it in front of her, she swung and broke a piece of wood, splitting it into a couple smaller pieces.

"It's not the where, but the who, Sev. All these years. All these little groups and factions and tag teams — what's the common thread here? You, my love. YOU. An instrument of infinite destruction. An agent of chaos. A harbinger of change. They never listen. They never SEE the true you. And that's your strength. That is how you've managed to cement yourself at the top of this industry in such a short time after being caged for so long. You never needed any of them. They needed YOU. And now? This is your moment, Sev. You choose how it ends." She turned and held out the sledgehammer to him, her eyes locked on his as though daring him to contradict her.

When he said nothing, she nodded, "no matter what comes next, I will always be here. Always, Sev."

He wanted to argue the point, and the words slipped out before he could check them. "You're wrong," he finally said it, shaking his head as he took the sledge from her after setting down the now-empty mug. "I could have walked away. A million times over the last year I almost did. Wanted to be the big dog for once. The Entity was good. So good. And I wanted more of that. I felt special. WGWF embraced me. They sold me like I was elite—"

"You are." Her fingertips lingered on his wrist, warm and comforting. "How can you not see that? After everything. After every last person in that locker room who dared step between the ropes with you was conquered and humbled… how can you not accept that you're one of the best in this business?"

At her words, the dam broke and he turned, swinging the hammer, smashing it into the wall behind where the shelves and cabinets had been. There was something satisfying in that motion, in seeing that gaping hole he'd created. The embers in his guts were starting to flare up again. He could feel the anger as he tightened his grip on the hammer, swinging it again.

She slowly smiled as the wall broke, the hammer being pulled away then hitting the wall again. More of the wall crumbled. "And now you're in control of things. Little Boy Joe is running scared. He knows he got lucky landing on that overhang." She watched as the hole in the wall became bigger with every swing of the hammer. "You've been breaking him down little by little. You think I didn't know that? I know you, love. I know everything in your heart. I know you've had that egotistical child in your sights forever. And the fact that he took so long to catch on speaks volumes about HIM, not you. You need to end this. For us. Promise you will, Sev. I want to hear it."

The cracks begin to show, he thought, that little snippet of a lyric flashing through his head before he whispered that oath – he had never been able to deny her wishes. "I promise you this."

"…and at Summer Madness, the last of the WGWF talent will crumble at your feet, just like this wall is now."

For the first time in months, he felt the warmth of joy spreading in his chest. She stretched up and kissed his cheek, whispering in his ear as he pulled her into his arms.

"I love you," her voice was sleepy, her body warm as she pressed into him and he opened his eyes to see light creeping through the curtains. He was in bed, warm and cozy but the wetness on the pillow beneath his head was a testament to that disturbing dream, even as it faded away, leaving behind nothing but the conviction that the walls of his self-imposed prison could be SMASHED after all.



"In all my years in this business, I have never seen a charlatan become a martyr – that's a good hook, isn't it? A con man should never be deified. And let's be clear, JMont: we both know that's what you are. You surround yourself with goons and stooges, these eager little lemmings who would run off a cliff for you, and for what? So you can maintain that illusion of dominance while they all do the heavy lifting for you?"

The Monster Machine's voice is softer than usual but he falls silent pretty quickly, leaving nothing but a hiss of static followed by the soft clearing of a throat.

"Once more around the mulberry bush, here I go chasing the weasel. In all fairness to the animal kingdom, strictly metaphorical. You lamented about the loss of a friend, about how I stood up for you when you made that commitment to Mia. Should we dissect that a little? Yes, let's.

In two years, you did absolutely nothing for me. I was a weapon yet again, that willing instrument that I spent the better part of two decades being. You never heeded my advice. You paraded around, oversaturating every broadcast with your childish antics to the point where your little gaggle of idiots were arrested. And the internet had the audacity to ask me where I was that night… to ask why I wasn't there at your back as if the TOP TALENT on Smash should be gallivanting around on Brawl, pranking and punking the powers that be. OPEN YOUR EYES, JMONT. You are nothing more than a spoiled child in need of discipline."

The static resumes for a moment, the muffle sound of a cricket buried under that hiss before there's a long inhale.

"The end of everything in an era is looming on the horizon. You know this will not end favourably for either of us. I intend to cut you down, Joe. That was not an idle threat, although the part about your mother was. I wouldn't touch her with Flash Rotten's three-inch pole. But I digress. This is not about the origin story. This is not about FOCUS or THE FORTUNATE ONES or any of the other fucking identical groups you have been part of over the years. This is about making good on that promise made to a dead man, exactly one year ago today."

His voice is shaking although it's unclear if it's from anger or some other emotion.

"You have made it abundantly clear that The Entity never mattered to you. It was just another stop on the JMont EGO train. You had so many. Thunder Pro. IIW. The Entity. WGWF. Last year, I put all my eggs in this basket. I dropped everything else to follow Smash – and for what? To be ridiculed? To be insulted at every turn, despite the fact that NOBODY in this fucking locker room has been able to pin my shoulders for three seconds?

I know how much you covet MY glory. I know that the SMASH Championship looms larger than life over all of this and you want that more than you want to punish me for seeing through your little charade of ‘friendship'. This past week, I have struggled with several urges, the worst of which was to dig a hole in the middle of nowhere and bury this damned thing so deep that you would never find it – the urge to protect you like my own flesh and blood is still there, despite everything you've done to try and incinerate that. This thing is a curse, Joe. It'll warp you in ways you'll never understand until it's too late. It whispers in your ears. It banks the fires of hatred until all you want is to be soaked in the ochre of those who would look at you sideways. You have a daughter. A wife. A family just like me – would you want to walk this road for the next 365 days, Joe? Would you want to be locked in a prison of your own making until you have SHATTERED everything around you?"

He sighs.

"I am a cautionary tale. I am Humpty Dumpty, the scattered remains after the biggest fall imaginable but I scrape myself up time and time again. I put the pieces back but they never fit the same and when I look in the mirror, a stranger looks back. This is who I am, JMont. The willing monster. The machine who does what he does without reflection or remorse. This is the difference between us, Joe. You are needy and narcissistic; you require constant ego stroking and after all this time, it blows my mind that you have no idea who I really am.

No filters tonight. No lies. No promises or platitudes. I need to purge, vomit up all this poison I've had stuffed down inside me for far too long. Kudos to you for ripping the lid off that box, though. I don't claim to be a genius, to have this shit all figured out. What I do know is that there's joy and sadness in everything – darkness and light – yin and yang. We all have that dark inside us – the bad wolf. To hide that darkness is to allow fear to conquer the truth. I don't need that gold to stand tall before you. Don't need 365 days of holding this bauble to look you in the eye, Joe. I know you feel slighted. I know you fail to understand that this entire situation was YOUR doing. I know you're going to load all the vitriol into the cannon and' you're gonna keep firing 'til there's no ammunition left. So pack it in tight. Reinforce the futility of even trying to conduct yourself like a champion."

His voice grows softer yet, as if this battle has drained him completely. You have no choice but to turn up the volume to try and catch every last word from the lips of the SMASH Champion, feeling like this is an epitaph now, or maybe a eulogy? Either way, it feels IMPORTANT, as if the continuation of life as we know it hinges on these final thoughts.

"Bleed all the blood you can from that stone, Joe. Tell me enough is enough, because I can't stop myself now. Over the fucking edge with this, well past the point of no return. I thought I was cold, that all these endless miles, in all these foreign cities had hollowed me out. I thought I was this magnificent, untouchable bastard because I've been huffing the hype for so long that it's become REALITY. I'm not going to try and talk my way out of this. Nope. Going to go into that ring and SMASH you to pieces. I am going to conquer you again, for the THIRD time. If you're looking for some quality mercy to start drizzling down like syrup on your big ol' stack of lies... you're looking in the wrong place, kid. You know that by now. You KNOW what I'm about and that's why you continue to watch me. That's why half of you hate me, and the other half imitate me to absurd degrees.

I know the answer to everything you're going to spew my way.

You know all of this, yet you stare in stupefaction when I remind you. You blink and shake your head like you're dreaming when you see that belt firmly around my waist since OCTOBER last year. You laugh and say you can do it better. I'm doing it wrong. Words aren't how to play this game, Joe – that's where we differ. I know that words are useless. Actions are better. Louder. Crisper and cleaner. This is INEVITABLE. Written in the stars.

You'll look me in the eyes, speak out of both sides of your mouths and call it a day. I know all the steps to this dance – I have been DAMNED since the moment my fingers touched this gold, since the moment the words 'I promise to have your back' left my lips. And you think this is about you? About your fragile little ego and the so-called ‘things you did' for my career? Fuck you, Joe. FUCK. YOU. This needs to end. YOU need to END. I can't stop it. Not now. We have to play it out, Joe. The universe demands resolution. Someone has to DIE–"

The video cuts abruptly into static, jarring and loud. FUCK.