The compound had only just been blessed with the glow of the morning sun and I was already being greeted by the sounds of my fiancée puking her brains out.
“Not today,” I mumbled to myself with my head still buried in my pillow. “Not today.”
‘Today’ was a big day. The start of a new era. After months of talks with the head of the movement—or was that me?—we were finally starting the process of making this whole thing public. The aforementioned leader was Elijah Lightwood, who managed to grab a decent following while preaching in the shadows, but I’d finally convinced him that it was time that this operation stopped being a secret society and started to become something that the world couldn’t deny.
It all started when I stood in the middle of the ring and dared to mention the mythical being that was Gleebnorb. From there to here, the whispers of mystery have only gotten louder and louder.
So, to say that I was annoyed that I wasn’t getting a full night’s sleep because my fiancée was decorating our toilet with a liquid purge of her stomach would be an understatement.
The whole point to me proposing to her about five to ten minutes into our first date was because I wanted something easy. All the bullshit with Asher, Holly, Syren, Cannon, Selena, Deanna—it just got to me. I saw something sweet and pure that promised a path of little resistance. I guess she’s kind of like Cookie in that way, isn’t she? Two easy girls who were looking for a void to fill, and there I was with a different kind of void. We were corresponding shapes and we slotted together perfectly. Easy, like a jigsaw puzzle.
Issue being, it hadn’t been that easy.
There was the whole thing with us not telling Holly that we’d gotten engaged. I don’t know, we both realized that it was kind of awkward, especially as time went on. It was just one of those moments, you know? You accidentally make a little secret, then it just continues to build until it’s a thing. I mean, it was on the fucking internet. Holly should’ve known, but I guess I know that she’s busy coaching lives, and it wasn’t long after that she was suddenly challenging for the SCW World Championship.
I did try, to be fair. I recall a moment during my vow of silence, which was basically a continuing game of charades with Cookie. I tried relaying the message of my proposal to Cookie, who was relaying it directly to Holly, but when Cookie translated it into some weird church message, Holly seemed to get bored and just walk away while Cookie and I continued our little game.
Plus, Candi wasn’t always there as a fiancée. She’d split her time between the compound and her close community of elderly friends where she lived. Then there was the whole vow of silence thing. I guess I hadn’t made it any easier on us with that. Now, though, that was over, and in its wake, a new problem was introduced via a stomach bug that was ruining my sleep on my big day.
Despite all of this musing about the hardships of engagement, I think I love Candi. Sure, I saw her more as a solution rather than someone who wholly completed me on an emotional level, but as someone who had been living their life by the code of ‘fake it til you make it,’ I could see myself spending the rest of my life with her.
After all, what is love if not listening to your fiancée loudly retching in your bathroom at six in the morning?
Cookie Dreams was in her environment.
Sat on a stool in front of a blank backdrop that might as well have been a beach lit up by her natural smile that made the artificial lighting seem anything but, the photographer snapped away.
I’ve always admired Cookie. Not in a romantic sense, mind you, but in a few different ways.
Her talent always shone as brightly as her curious eyes and it was only made more impressive by the fact that people didn’t always take her seriously. By the time I stumbled back into SCW, she was only just beginning her in-ring career, but it didn’t take long for her to make an impact. Beating people that she shouldn’t have been beating and winning titles that she shouldn’t have been winning.
It sounded so familiar to me. Who would have ever expected me to run through a tournament in May of 2006 to eventually be crowned a World Champion at Redemption, an event that solidified me as a legitimate talent rather than the clown I’d been perceived as? No one saw it coming. As much as I said everything was going according to plan at the time, I wonder if I knew I was so full of shit.
She and I were the same. Hell, if Asher and I weren’t on the run of our lives during the SCW Tag League, it would’ve been Cookie and Jordan—Psychonauts—winning the whole thing.
Could you imagine? Cookie Dreams stumbling her way into a double title match, maybe even stumbling so far as to pin Chris Cannon in the middle of the ring to become the World Champion that the world wasn’t ready for?
I can imagine. We’re cut from the same cloth.
But it wasn’t just her talents that I admired, it was moments like this.
There she was, posing as only she could do, propping a fashionable hat up with her hand, classy—yet typically revealing, as per usual—top, looking out into the distance at nothing in particular, but making it feel like something – like she was looking into the welcoming arms of a better future.
Around her, there was a war between factions. The Holly Adams Brand made an attempt to overthrow those dastardly Frosts. Physical and mental scars were being carved into all of us in a struggle of power that also included Cookie’s best friend Jordan Majors, who seemed to be feeling the effects of the pressure of fame, fortune, and daunting success the most out of everyone. No one was safe.
Yet, looking at Cookie at that moment, those things hardly seemed significant. She was in the moment. She was everything we strive to be.
Granted, something stirred beneath that sparkling gaze, certainly. Something dark. Suffocating. I’d even drawn it out of her in order to get her on my side. I’ll never forget breaking her down like that. It sounded wrong and maybe it was wrong, but my hope was that the end result would justify it all. I just saw it as yet another thing we had in common with one another – that stranglehold our fears had on us. But…still. She had moments like this, however fleeting. Moments where war didn’t matter.
I admired that. I envied that.
“Mister Cidney, I would like to be on your propaganda poster,” the brickhouse Uber driver known as Vihaan said to me, drawing me out of my strange sort of trance.
“It’s not propaganda,” I sighed. “Propaganda makes it sound like we’re misleading people. We’re not. On the contrary, we’re leading them!”
“I would like to be on your non-propaganda poster, Mister Cidney.”
“I don’t—look, maybe you can be on the next round of marketing. I mean, as far as diversity goes—”
“I can teach you how to drive, Mister Cidney.”
“Do you have to address me by my name every time?” I asked. He always did it when he was pleading. Strange quirk, not to mention the whole ‘Mister’ thing, making me sound old as fuck. “And as far as driving goes, I don’t need to know how to drive. Way I see it, Jordan and Cookie had the right idea with you. No need to drive when you have enough status to get someone to do it for you.”
“Hypothetical,” Vihaan began, immediately causing me to brace for nonsense. I nodded, giving this odd Indian fellow the floor. “You are in a warehouse.”
“Why?”
“You are a businessman. Businessmen do business in warehouses.”
I nodded again. “Carry on.”
“You are in a warehouse and it has caught fire. Unfortunately, everyone has perished.”
“Sad.”
“Except you.”
“Oh, okay. That’s alright.”
“But as you go to leave, you notice something,” he says in an attempt to build suspense for this hypothetical. As he lets the words linger, I can’t help but realize that I’ve never been inside of a warehouse before. My tongue remains bitten. “The only exit is a large roller door—”
“Wow, that’s a safety hazard.”
“—and the heat of the flames that have killed all of your friends and colleagues have also melted the supports of the door shut, leaving you trapped inside this warehouse of fiery hell! But then, you notice the large truck to your side.”
“Ah, cool!”
“It is so large, in fact, that if you were to drive it, you could burst right through that big door, out to safety! But you cannot drive. What do you do?”
I’m not really sure if any of this made sense, but I felt that he had gotten me nonetheless. His victory would not be acknowledged by his superior.
“Go out in a blaze of glory like all great men should,” I lied. I mean, what bullshit. I don’t ever want to fucking die, especially not in a goddamn fire.
It may sound unusual coming from someone who’s had moments of weakness where diving into oncoming traffic was up for debate, as well as someone who’s dedicated their life to combat sport, but I never understood the whole ‘men have an inherent death wish’ thing. I spent years of my life fearing death. I don’t like to needlessly fight people. I’m not into that macho bullshit. My art manifests through the canvas of competition, not in the middle of some drab bar after midnight where the end result is either having the hollow triumph of beating the hell out of some drunk prick or having half of a shattered bottle in my neck.
“But there is a fire,” Vihaan reminded me, sounding a bit defeated. The man really wanted on the poster.
Right, the poster. After brainstorming with Elijah, it was decided that the marketing material would contain both me and Cookie. Me, because I’m the host to this creature that will lead us into the future (or something, I don’t know), and Cookie, a golden child of the cause. If I’m being blunt, a smiley blonde girl with big tits sells well, and I’m quite confident that this was the unspoken reason for Cookie being a big part of this campaign. As stated, she belongs in front of a camera, in front of people, in front of the world. She was born to be a star.
“You doing alright, Cook?” I asked, walking away from Vihaan and walking behind the photographer, who kept snapping away as Cookie smiled at me.
“I was born for this,” she said back.
Told you.
“And I was reborn for this!” I added on, trying to act proud about the presence of Gleebnorb rather than confused about the whole thing like I usually am.
“I wonder if we shared the same star,” Cookie quietly remarked. She looked up at the ceiling as if she were looking up at the stars. I’m pretty sure that the stars weren’t even out yet so she was just looking at a wall with the sun behind it, but she had a vivid imagination, I suppose. “I remember going UFO hunting with Kylie once.”
Kylie. She always brought up Kylie, much to my confusion. By this point, I gathered that it was Jordan’s real name. I also gathered that Cookie doesn’t even realize when refers to Jordan as that, usually while she’s reminiscing about her lost sheep of a friend.
“We got so close!” she exclaimed, continuing a story that I couldn’t really relate to despite being worshiped as some sort of alien overlord. “But I explained to her that some of the stars have their own worlds and that so many people down here can’t wrap their minds around that. I knew she could though. She always got me in that kinda way. Anyway, I told her that my star was up there somewhere and that I’d maybe get to go back to see it one day.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled. I was never really sure how to carry conversations like this. It usually just resulted in me nodding along like I get what’s being shared.
“But now that I’m here,” she continued, bringing her eyes back to mine. “I feel homeward-bound. I mean, here you are! Gleebnorb! From the stars!”
“Right, but you can call me Cid,” I urged her. I’d continued to forget that Cookie actually believes that I’m an alien. Probably because it was basically what I told her the day I convinced her to join the cause. It seemed like the only thing that would fully sway her. Hey, maybe it was true anyway.
“I know that she’s all confused about this stuff, but I think everything’s gonna be okay,” she said with a confident nod. “You always tell me that. ‘We’ll be okay, we’ll be alright,’ and I believe you! She will too, eventually. I can’t wait. I can’t wait for you to fully heal me so I can go back home and show everyone—Kylie, Daddy, everyone—just how much I’ve grown and how tall I can stand all on my own!”
“Home?” I echoed. “Like, in the stars?”
“Oh, no, I mean, home, with Daddy,” she clarified. I kind of felt my heart drop.
“You’re going home?”
“Once you’re done with me, yeah! Everyone’s gonna be so proud! Oh, my God, and imagine once I start wrestling again! All on my own.”
“All on your own.”
All on her own.
She could barely contain her excitement. Actually, she didn’t contain it. She got up from the stool and rushed over to me, giving me a hug, which I guess was to display how grateful she was.
On the other hand, it had only just hit me that the whole point of this was obviously to help Cookie, but a deeper point of it was to surround myself with people who I could rely on, in turn giving them someone that they could rely on, creating relationships where we depended on each other.
It’s probably not healthy. You should probably always be able to just stand on your own, just like Cookie was envisioning. Me, though, I think being surrounded by people who see me as God—or something—is what keeps me from losing my mind any further.
No wife, no kids, no love. This is all I have.
I mean, I do have a fiancée. I also have a kid. And I think I’m in love with three women. But, you know, sometimes it just feels like this Gleebnorb stuff is all I have.
I guess I just sort of imagined Cookie would remain by my side even after her recovery, kind of like how I’m still here after Elijah helped me see the light. Of course, a lot of that had to do with the fact that Elijah basically put his entire life in my hands by christening me ‘the chosen one,’ but still!
Maybe I just had to let Cookie know how important all of this really was.
As she took a look at the results of the photo shoot with the photographer, I made my way over to Vihaan, who was looking out a window at all the people in the compound. Probably the women. I’d noticed the man’s wandering eye ever since the day he came here with Cookie. God, that’s probably the only reason he’s involved in this whole thing: Cookie, yet another girl he had eyes on.
I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, let’s grab Cookie and you can teach me how to drive.”
His eyes lit up. I think he thought this meant he was going to get on the poster. Poor guy.
I have driven before, to be clear.
I made it all the way up to the actual driving test. My instructor was an intimidating bastard despite looking like he was 80 years old. Former military type, if I had to guess. Super curt with a scowl that just made me assume he lived a tragic life. I wondered why I couldn’t get an innocent little lady who’d make me feel comfortable about transitioning into adulthood.
Anyway, I was sweating bullets. I didn’t want to just pass the test, I wanted to impress this man. It felt like I wouldn’t be passed unless I proved that I was beyond ready. So, you know, I kept everything real tight, but not too tight. My dad told me that too many drivers overcorrect on either side, but not me. Here I was, breaking barriers like the young prodigy I was.
Everything was going smoothly until I saw my first yellow light.
We can make it, I told the instructor. This is what seasoned drivers did. They tested the limits. For the first time during the test, the old man gave something other than an order. It was a plea. Wait, he said. Don’t. But instead, I ignored the orders of my instructor (which I found out later was an automatic fail, along with what happened next), I put the pedal to the metal, and promised him, WE’RE GONNA MAKE IT!
We didn’t make it.
More than that, an overly eager driver with a fresh green light gunned it as I was mid-gun, and it ended up totalling the car that my parents had so graciously lent me for the test. I’m pretty sure that the instructor was in the hospital for a week. Me, I’ve always been pretty durable, besides the ol’ stenosis. What didn’t survive was my confidence in getting behind a wheel.
I felt like a teenager again as my sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel of Vihaan’s Cadillac Escalade. Worse than then, actually. Now I dealt with this stressful situation as an anxiety-ridden adult. Anxiety wasn’t a word I knew the meaning of back then. So peaceful, so innocent.
“Go faster, Mister Cidney,” Vihaan instructed. Worth noting that we were twenty above the speed limit already as we cruised down an empty highway along the coast of California. The sun had set and the only light source we had along these roads was the light of the moon. “You are driving like my mother. Bless her, but she cannot drive like me.”
Last time I denied an instructor, it almost got three people killed. With that in mind, I pressed my foot down a little bit harder. We continued to fly down the lane, feeling dangerously close to the edge of the road which led down a rocky hill and to the sea. This far out here, these roads didn’t see a ton of action. Now, they were being kissed by the tires of an oversized Escalade with a student driver at the helm. I was hoping that I wasn’t about to become a statistic or a story.
Hey, did you hear the story of that guy who flew off the road after his tire blew due to excessive speeding? You better slow down or you’ll end up like that loser!
While it’d be nice to go down in history as a legend, I’d rather live as some sort of alien deity than die as a cautionary tale, so I discreetly slowed down while starting a conversation to hopefully distract Vihaan from me daring to drop closer to the speed limit.
“Cookie, let me ask you something.”
“Hmm?” she curiously hummed from the backseat. She must’ve been used to this dangerous driving from Vihaan because she didn’t seem to mind that we were going fast enough to travel through time. “Yeah?”
“You remember earlier—us talking about how I’m gonna make you better like I made myself better?” I saw her nod in the rearview mirror. “When that day comes, are you gonna go back to Jordan?”
“Well, yeah!” she answered. Instantly too.
“But why? All she’s done is try to discredit me, which in turn discredits you and the amazing work you’re putting in to try and be better while she continues to flounder around aimlessly. The nerve of that girl.”
“Well, uhh,” she droned, scratching the back of her neck. After a moment, she returned to her chirpy self. “Like you said, she’s like us! Well, like you used to be, but like I am now. Lost, I guess. What’s kinda funny is that she saw that about me even before you did, but she can’t see it when it comes to herself.” She paused, letting the ambient sounds of the cruise fill the silence. “I guess it’s not funny. Just sad. I wish she would listen to me—or even you! We could be going through this process together. We used to do everything together…”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t want help,” I remarked bluntly. “That’s what separates you two. You may not see it, but that’s what makes you stronger than her. The second you pledged yourself to me—to Gleebnorb—you surpassed her. I swear to God, she knows that. That’s why she’s being so bitchy about all of this. It’s jealousy. Pure jealousy. You know how hard it was to come to terms with the fact that you needed help. It took my cosmic knowledge to make you see it and you went through a rigorous breaking in process to finally accept it!”
“Yeah…”
“Jordan’s scared to face her failing mental state,” I went on. “She chooses to linger in the negative state rather than achieving a positive state like me and you. I’m trying my hardest here, Cook, but some people are too damn stubborn to admit when they’re wrong. It’s Jordan’s biggest fear to admit that she’s spent her entire life not living the way that she should.”
“I know, I know,” Cookie muttered.
She chewed on her bottom lip while looking out into the sea. Nothing got to her as much as Jordan. This required a careful approach. I wanted to keep Cookie on my side by letting her know how wrong Jordan was, but I couldn’t drive a wedge between the two. Jordan was a useful tool in her current state.
“We’ll make her see it,” I promised her.
“I dunno, she’s pretty strongly against you,” Cookie confessed. No shit. “But maybe after you help me, she’ll see that not only do you mean well, but you produce results! Then I can use all the things you taught me to teach her and everything can go back to normal! The Psychonauts could reform!”
“YES!” Vihaan happily screamed in the passenger’s seat. “And I can go back to driving the both of you! Miss Jordan can be such an angry girl, Mister Cidney. I think it is because she has the body of an angry little boy who is wishing to hit puberty. But I still hope she and Mistress Cookie get the help they need.”
And once again, we arrived at a hypothetical that didn’t seem to include me. Was this really the life with a healer? Sinking your time into someone, only for them to inevitably leave and just…move on? I wonder if this is how teachers felt. I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about any of my teachers as a kid. Couldn’t even recall a single name. Was my name destined to be forgotten by all these people? Maybe it was an idea to start going by Gleebnorb. Try and forget that name, kiddos.
In retrospect, I should’ve been proud of Cookie for even believing in the process as much as she did. Not even a month under my guidance and she foresaw herself not only getting back to her old self, but improving upon it. It’s everything that I should want as this figurehead of mental and spiritual health.
That’s in retrospect though. I say that as I sit at my desk, writing these words. At that moment, I was more concerned that Cookie was already looking ahead to life without me. My reaction wasn’t exactly a good example of mental and spiritual health.
“You know, Cook,” I began, white knuckling the wheel. “It’s one thing to improve, y’know? To reach a point where you’re truly happy. That’s a journey for sure.”
“And I’m super glad you’re taking me on it,” Cookie beamed.
“Of course, but…it’s another thing to reach that point and stay there. The road to the positive state never truly ends. You need to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.”
“Totally!”
“You can sit there and agree, but really…imagine it. For example, here we are right now. Driving a machine that is responsible for over a million deaths a year, just cruising down on a road. Not the road to recovery, but a literal road. But let’s picture it as your road, yeah?”
“My road?”
“Your road to the positive state,” I said as I gently pressed down on the pedal. Beyond the whites of my knuckles, I watched the odometer slowly climb. “Everything’s going well. Smooth sailing, huh?”
“Uhm…yeah!”
“I really am proud of you,” I told her. It was the truth. She’d taken to the cause quite well. I guess I could thank Selena for that. “You’re standing up for yourself, for your new circle of helpers—me, GiGi, Holly—and I can see you getting mentally stronger every day.”
“I can feel it.”
“That’s great! But what if I did this?”
I turned the headlights off. It almost felt like the highway just swallowed us right up. Everything went black.
Cookie shrieked, though it seemed like she found it fun more than anything. It was a fun little trick, killing the planet’s light. For the first time, I sensed some hesitation from Vihaan.
“I cannot see, Mister Cidney,” he said right before a truck came around the corner, lighting up the highway. “Oh, never mind.”
“See, it’s a bit harder to navigate now,” I continued as the truck drove by us while honking, presumably to tell me that my fucking headlights are off on a road with no street lamps. Once again, we fell under the cover of darkness. “Still manageable, I suppose. But what if I closed my eyes?”
“Mister Cidney, as your teacher, I would advise against—oh, my, he has done it.”
I noticed my grip instinctively tighten. My eyes remained closed despite Vihaan’s worried muttering. I could imagine the odometer rising and rising.
“Flying blind,” I managed to utter, though I noticed the hitch in my voice. It had been a minute since I felt my voice waver. Brought back memories. I thought of Asher at that moment. I hoped he was doing well in rehab. I still had yet to answer a single phone call from him. The guilt was too much. “Borderline useless, but I guess I still have some sense of control as long as my hands remain on this wheel huh?”
“Cid, what are you doing?” Cookie asked from just behind me. By the sound of her nails digging into the back of my seat, I assumed she was leaning a lot closer now and wasn’t having fun anymore.
“But if we neglect our sense of mindfulness on this road—the eternal road to the positive state—then we might just lose control.”
Calmly as I could, I lifted my hands off the wheel.
The worried stammers of Vihaan and Cookie masked any sort of sound coming from the road, so I focused on how I felt inside.
My heart pounded and my hands shook. The sensation of drifting held a soft sway in my body. Such a mysterious feeling, floating along with no earthly idea where you’re going or where you’ll end up.
I wondered which way we were being pulled. Was it towards the edge of the cliff that threatened to pulverize us before turning this Escalade into our own little personal incinerator? Or were we being dragged into the other lane, where a trucker just didn’t notice us caught in his headlights until it was too late, granting us an instant expiration while giving Vihaan’s interior a gooey paint job.
Was I about to become the ultimate cautionary tale of this California highway?
“MISTER CIDNEY, THAT IS A LARGE TRUCK COMING AT US!”
I guess that answered my question as to where we were being pulled.
I opened my eyes, flicked the lights back on, put my hands back on the wheel, and jolted the wheel—without overcorrecting, of course—to swerve us back into our lane after a pair of screams, neither of which I was responsible for, though I may have felt like it.
I took a deep breath and nodded. The sound of the trucker’s horn eventually faded out of distance. They really should install some lights along those roads.
“Sooo, yeah, Cook,” I said before clearing my throat a bit. “We gotta make sure we stay on top of these things. Not to worry though! I’ll always be here to guide you when you feel lost. I may not drive well on these roads, but no one navigates the road to the positive state better than me! Always remember that. Let Gleebnorb take the wheel.”
“I may have shitted my pants,” Vihaan quietly admitted.
So stupid. What am I doing? Why do I do these things? Maybe I really am a macho man. Maybe I really do have a death wish. Or maybe I just don’t want to be left alone.
After convincing Cookie and Vihaan that my vehicular stunt was nothing more than a joke intended to be a fun lesson for everyone, I returned to my room where Candi—still on the toilet, but thankfully no longer sick, apparently—and a new poster for the movement waited for me.
Poster in my hands, I carefully studied it. Didn’t know they made them physically anymore. It would eventually find its way on social media since that’s how marketing works these days, but at that moment, I held the one and only physical copy of it.
The Positive State.
A name inspired by a phrase Roy Holman threw at me back during my last—and to date, final—mental breakdown, up in Alaska. If you don’t remember Roy, he was an older fellow who looked after me after a bear almost killed me in the Alaskan wilderness. He had some nuggets of wisdom, including telling me that I need to get out of my negative state and into a positive one. I think he was drunk at the time, but it worked, I guess. Not sure if he counts as a ‘teacher,’ so to speak, but I still think about him sometimes. I did leave him though, didn’t I? We grow, we leave. Damn it.
The poster depicted me, front and center. Cookie looked inspiring right there next to me. An artist’s depiction of Gleebnorb watched over us both. It kind of looked like the squid from those pirate movies with Johnny Depp.
Maybe the most notable thing about the poster was the bottom right side, where a sort of blob/shadow of a man sat next to Cookie and I. With no distinguishing features, it was meant to represent…nobody. Or everybody, I guess. The point was, it could be anybody. It could be your significant other. It could be your child. It could be your friend. It could be a stranger. It could be a celebrity, such as Jason Singer, celebrated co-host of The Holly Adams Hour. Anyone. Anyone could join The Positive State and be under the mindful eyes of Gleebnorb. You can fill that void.
“Uhm, like, here you, like, go, Cidnay,” Candi giggled from behind me.
I looked in her hand to see a vegan weiner in a bun. “Did you just bring that from the shitter?” I asked.
“Like, no,” she lied. I know she lied. I saw her in the shitter. But why was she lying? I wondered. “I, like, made you a, like, snack!”
My eyes narrowed as I took the vegan hotdog, tossing the poster to the side. I took a bite and chewed. It tasted like piss. I fucking knew it came from the toilet.
“Why does this taste like piss?” I wondered rather nonchalantly.
“Like, does it?”
“Yes,” I answered flatly. For some reason, I took another bite. My teeth met some resistance. I looked down at the vegan weiner to see something poking out of it. “What’s this?”
“I don’t, like, know,” she teased, telling me that she very much knew.
I grabbed the tip of the object and retrieved it from the vegan weiner. It was a pregnancy test. I don’t really have to tell you whether it was positive or negative, do I? It was in my fucking vegan hot dog. Of course it was positive.
“Is this—”
“Can you, like, even believe it?!” she squealed. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe that she just put something she pissed on inside a snack and made me eat it. Admittedly, it was a unique way to reveal the surprise, but its effect was dampened the more I processed the fact that I had ingested Candi’s pregnant piss. I swallowed that first bite, for fuck’s sake. “I’m, like, so excited! You look, like, super overwhelmed too! That’s, like, so sweet of you!”
“Congratulations,” I awkwardly mumbled. I wasn’t sure how to react. I wondered how much different I’d be feeling if not for the whole pee-in-my-mouth thing. After a moment, I sort of snapped out of the funk. I brought Candi in close and gave her a strong hug. “I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.”
I think I meant it. I’m sure I meant it. The pee had thrown me off. Plus, even though I’d been a father for seven years up to that point, I wasn’t there for Liz’s positive test. I wasn’t there for Sydney’s birth. I wasn’t there for her life, quite frankly. Sometimes I feel like I’m still not really there, so…maybe this was a second chance.
At the very least, The Positive State had another follower. One that couldn’t possibly ever leave me.
They’re all out to get me.
I mean, it makes sense. Look at me. I’m the Male Wrestler of 2021. That’s an entire year, folks. It truly was the Year of Cid. I won titles, awards, and beat just about everyone you can imagine.
Only two people can say they’ve pinned me since I’ve returned to SCW. One’s a member of the Hall of Fame and the other is currently keeping the SCW World Championship warm for Holly Adams. Everyone else? No such luck.
It’d take me too long to list the names. God, that’s not even getting into their résumés! I’ve beaten so many legends since coming back to SCW after almost a decade of being away that it’s probably earned me another Hall of Fame induction. Of course, we’ll probably have to wait until I retire again until I can renew those vows, and by the looks of it, I’m not exactly slowing down at the moment, am I?
Which is why I guess I understand all of you—Tommy, Britt, Jordan—being on my ass so much.
It’s not really because of whatever excuses you guys are coming up with, right? Like, it couldn’t be.
Look, Tom, we had a good run. Really. There’s no way you can actually be mad. We made it all the way to the finals of the Trios Tournament! Think of all those memories we made!
Remember when you gave me that weird little speech before the match, trying to act like a leader despite me being your clear superior? That was brilliant! Hilarious! I understand though, Kandis was right there. Don’t worry, bro, I know what it’s like. You need to look tough in front of your lady. Maybe ‘lady’ isn’t the best word for your other half, but I’m sure you can gather what I mean. No hard feelings there, your pre-game speech was decent enough. I mean, it didn’t inspire us to victory, but it was fine. Lesson learned: always let the natural leader lead.
Oh, oh, and remember when Gavin Taylor nearly decapitated me with his patented Gavin Taylor Lariat?! Well, you should, damn it. I’ll never forget that feeling. We’re both vets here, right? You should know better than anyone that enough hits like that and your career is suddenly shortened. You know I have spinal stenosis, right? That’s a disability, Tommy. Yet, I fight through it. Against all odds, I overcome. You know how I’ve survived this long with that around my—no pun intended—neck?
Because I know when to play it smart. I had already taken one Gavin Taylor Lariat, one of the most notorious moves in SCW history. You wanted me to take another? And for what, just so I can look like a martyr?
I felt bad for you and Kennedy. I really did. I felt bad for us, Tom. I felt bad for our team! We had such a great run, making it all the way to the finals! I remember all those names we beat together, like…uh…those other teams we went through to reach the finals! It felt like a Cinderella story, didn’t it? Unfortunately, Kennedy’s foot was just way too damn big for that glass slipper. She let us down, bud. Let’s not lose sight of that.
And while we’re on the topic of Kennedy Street and big feet, let’s talk about Brittany Lohan. What do you gain, Britt? Like, you’ve made it clear, you’re getting paid to do this, and while I respect you for draining that brain-dead china doll’s money, there’s gotta be a better way to get paid—ideally, a way that doesn’t include you chasing me with a baseball bat and kicking my head off. Like, maybe instead of doing all of that, you can focus on actually winning your matches so you can collect the winner’s purse, or maybe even winning a title to get that monthly champion’s bonus, huh?
Though I imagine that it got personal somewhere along the way. I just kept ducking you, over and over again. That really pissed you off, didn’t it? You seem to have a temper. Made you angry to look like a bumbling fool on a weekly basis. Well, congrats. You finally got me. Right in the kisser. Almost knocked my head clean off. I can only imagine what else you would’ve done to me if Jordan hadn’t tried to play hero by latching herself on to you. She can never really stay out of other people’s business, can she?
Ah, never mind her, Britt. This Sunday, you just focus on earning your pay. No, I don’t mean from Kennedy, though I guess if you do a good enough job then the boss lady might hook you up with a bonus or something, but what I mean is…take your shot. You’re in the ring with the last World Champion and there’s gold on the line. Show that you’re not just someone’s muscle, show that you’re actually worthy of sharing the ring with royalty, and not just when my back’s turned. Hell, don’t stop there. Sort out your familial business while you’re at it. Knock some sense into Jordan’s little head for me, would ya? Grab a win, pick up some gold. Do something from bell-to-bell.
Can I trust you to do that? Apparently not. If I could, then Jordan probably wouldn’t be here right now as our Adrenaline Champion, crowing on about how much I’m taking advantage of Cookie. You would have nipped that in the bud at Apocalypse. I guess it’s true what they say, “you want something done right, then you gotta do it yourself!”
Hello, Jordan. Bright-eyed Jordan. Jordan, the lovable loser.
I guess I can’t really call you that anymore, can I? You became a winner. You had your moment. Almost an hour inside the Chamber. Good God, girl, congratulations. The same night that Kennedy Street set ol’ Tom and Britt down a path that led straight to me, you were outlasting five other people in a match that immediately raised the prestige of the title you were fighting for—the title that you still hold.
With you and that title now in my sights, do you look back at Under Attack and that Chamber match and think you made a grave mistake?
Oh, I bet you do.
If not because of me, then just because of yourself. To anyone else, that might sound strange. “Why would she feel she made a personal mistake? She won!” Yeah, yeah, I get it. Winning is what we’re here to do, right? We win and we feel happy. That’s just the way it is.
Not for people like me. Not for people like Jordan.
For anyone that’s unaware, the first time I won the World Championship last year—I have to specify which time because I won it more than once, the extra effort us Male Wrestlers of 2021 have to put in—I wasn’t happy. I didn’t feel like I deserved it. That belt felt like a golden mistake around my waist, squeezing the life out of me. It was something that should not have been.
Of course, I fixed that. Through the power of Gleebnorb, I entered a positive state, and positioned myself to be worthy of holding that title. By the second time I won it, I just knew that I lived up to the moniker of World Champion. That took a lot of work though. It took growth.
Jordan Majors has a lot of growing to do.
I know she doesn’t feel worthy of carrying the Adrenaline Championship. I can see it in her eyes. It doesn’t matter how much blood she shed inside that Chamber. It doesn’t matter how many minutes she survived, it doesn’t matter how many people she beat, it doesn’t matter that her name is etched into that gold. Nothing matters if you don’t feel like you matter.
This is why she resists me. This is why she goes against the best wishes of her former tag partner Cookie Dreams. Cookie, she just wants help. She’s like you, Jordan. She’s a lost little lamb. You two, you have so much in common, I tell ya. I can see that so clearly. The big difference between the two of you right now is that Cookie has allowed me to herd her back to safety while you’ve chosen to saunter right into this slaughter.
And let’s make no mistake about it, that’s exactly what this is. I’d like to think that I have a gentle approach to all of this. I survived years of being crippled with anxiety and depression—not to mention being literally crippled—just so I could use the knowledge that comes with being a survivor to make sure that the people that need help don’t need to go through what I went through to get it.
You three, though…you’re three living reminders that sometimes you just can’t take the gentle approach.
No more excuses, Tom-Tom. I have no ill will towards you. I know it was Kennedy that screwed us over. It wasn’t you, it wasn’t me. To get that through that thick skull of yours, I’ll show you just how good I am inside that ring. If me being your Male Wrestler of 2021 wasn’t enough to convince you, maybe adding you to my list of accomplished victims will give you something to think on.
As for Britt, I hope this convinces you that sometimes you have to just work for yourself. When I spike you on your big-ass head, I hope the lights you’re looking up at brighten your perspective a bit. Go on, branch out. Leave the boss behind. Stop worrying about Jordan’s neverending drama. Start putting some actual work into your job here. Maybe one day you’ll get paid because you’re actually good at something rather than being paid to chase someone around aimlessly.
And Jordan goddamn Majors…consider this another moment. No, it’s not one that’ll end with you standing tall in the middle of the ring with a title raised above your head. It’ll be even more important than that, because when I take that title from you—that same title that you bled for, that you fought for an hour for, that you survived a Chamber for—you’ll come to realize that I was right all along.
In your victory, you didn’t gain the fulfillment you so desperately sought. In this defeat, however, you’ll see first-hand what it takes to be better. You’ll see exactly why Cookie Dreams stands by my side. You’ll see what it takes to enter a positive state. You’ll see what you need.
THE RISE OF THE FALLEN KING 