Just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder with my life, this happens. Whatever this is. I'm still trying to piece that one together. What I do know is this…. I'm strapped to a chair in the living room of a shitty one bedroom apartment somewhere in south Chicago, hands cuffed behind my back, feet tied to the legs of the chair, the whole works, and that my captor is a man without a face. Literally. There's nothing where his face should be, except for a pitch black concave void. He's dressed nice, though. A charcoal black suit, a little worn and specked with dirt but still respectable, I think. I don't really know for sure, the line of work I'm in hasn't exactly acclimated me to the ins and outs of the wonderful world of formalwear.
It is kind of a prerequisite.
Fair enough.
The faceless man chuckles this awful, croaking laugh that makes my skin crawl. I fidget in my seat, scraping my handcuffs against the leg of the chair. Something, anything to get free. If he could smile, I assume the faceless man would be smiling at me right about now. Instead, he just stands there, presumably looking at me. I stare into the abyss that eclipses the front of his skull, hoping to find something resembling human features behind it, but no. There aren't any. Just, blackness.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. We are going to be here for a while after all.
How about you tell me about you?
Do you honestly think you're in any position to make requests?
Underneath the gas mask, I smirk at him. Just a little more force and…. there we go! The handcuffs' chain snaps and I bring my hands forward.
Maybe just a little.
You're good, I'll give you that.
There's a but, there has to be. The captor never just says that to his hostage, not unless there's going to be-- and he's holding a gun to my head.
But don't get cocky.
….There we go.
With just these two hands, I could fuck you up before you get a chance to pull the trigger.
He takes a few steps backwards and laughs once more. Instinctively, I make my hands into fists.
Didn't figure you for the suicidal type. Guess you just might have a death wish after all.
What did you just say?
Hmm? You've given thought to the possibility that you have a death wish, haven't you? Oh, right. I don't know anything about you. No sense beating around the bush with it now that we've established that you'll risk certain death on the off chance that you can get out of this predicament.
My eyes widen and I swallow hard.
Who are you?
Isn't that the question of the hour? I ask again, what makes you think you're the one asking the questions here, Claudia?
Wh--
He presses one bony, veiny finger to my lips.
It is Claudia, isn't it? Or is it Delilah? Between all these pseudonyms, it's hard to remember which one's real, M--
The world around me freezes. He stops talking, his finger still on my mouth. Everything's red. I try to move, to get out of the remaining constraints but I just…. can't. Can't move a muscle. For a second I see a black box appear in the red, followed by a flash of white…. text?
Then it all goes black.
II
Steve Sayors jumps halfway out of his skin and all the way out of his chair as his guest awakens, screaming her head off and spasming like an epileptic at a rave. Shaking his head and slowly getting back up, he stares at the woman having a seizure on the floor a few feet away from him, eyes wide and lips pressed tightly together.
Wh-where am I?
The woman scampers up to her feet, head moving rapidly, side to side, scanning the whole room before tackling Sayors and mounting him, driving her forearm into his throat. She coughs before repeating the question.
Where am I?
H-Hawaii.
She pulls her arm back, ever so slightly. Sayors takes the opportunity to cough and take a deep breath before elaborating.
Honolulu, Hawaii.
A breathy, manic laugh escapes her lips.
On the outside, Sayors keeps himself as cool as a cucumber. Or, failing that, as cool as he can be. On the inside, he's cursing his decision to take the job of "XWF Interviewer" for the twenty-second time this week.
And why are we in Hawaii?
Sayors opens his mouth, but she shuts it real quick with a punch to his face. Then another. And another. The aftermath? Sayors bleeding from the lips and the mouth, the right side of his face red as a tomato, staring in disbelief at one of his molars laying on the carpeted floor a few inches from his face.
For the XWF!
All it took were those three letters, and the woman just stopped. Sayors, not wanting to risk being prone for another freakout, pushes himself away from her and hurries to his feet, walking over to a nearby mirror to observe the damage.
Oh…. Jesus. I'm so sorry.
Sayors grabs one of the hotel's provided towels and presses it to face.
Don't sweat it. This is hardly the worst thing a wrestler's done to me.
Just like that, her entire demeanor changes again.
Really? Now I'm curious, what is the worst thing a wrestler's done to you?
I, really don't know. I think I've repressed like half of the interviews I've given because one awful thing or another happened.
Well then, it appears my decision was indeed the right one.
Speaking of, we're rolling right?
Sayors looks over to a cameraman standing in the corner of the room. The man nods his head and gives a thumbs up gesture.
Has he been here the whole time?
Yeah. Guy's a damn ninja.
With the towel still pressed against his face, Sayors steps into frame of the camera.
Anyway, back on topic, the first question I was going to ask you is about your raison d'etre. Actually no, the first question was about your name but that isn't too important. Yeah, why are you here? What made you decide to be a professional wrestler?
I'm pretty good at beating people up and being a professional wrestler is pretty much getting paid to beat people up. Add in the surging undercurrent, if you could even call it that, of criminality that pervades the XWF, and you have my driving force.
Sayors shrugs his shoulders and nods his head.
And is there anything you have to say about Dick Powers and Cain, the two you're set to face in your debut?
Dick Powers is cute. And immensely talented, I think anyone with half a brain can see that much. He is undefeated and he's made all of his wins look pretty easy to boot. Honestly and truly, it doesn't take a genius to see he's the odds on favorite to win here. I'm debuting and Cain, well I'll get to him.
However, he's distracted. How can he not be? Between the new TV series he and his friends are airing, the Brick Squad's run for the Presidency, and all of the other antics he and his buddies have gotten themselves into since their arrival, it's a wonder any of them even have time to compete at all.
And in a profession where being off your game for just a second comes with the risk of career, or hell, life threatening injury, those types of distractions are the most dangerous things.
I, on the other hand, don't have those same distractions. I'll come into the, umm….
Stan Sheriff Center.
Stan Sheriff Center with a clear head, focused on one goal. Beating one of those two, and walking out with a win in my debut. To build momentum going forward. You know the drill.
Now, I have a lot to say about Cain.
Cain's scum.
A killer without regret or remorse.
So, you might think it odd that I got all giddy when I heard I'd be facing him this week. Because, even though he does kill, and kills often, he's not very good at this whole wrestling thing. Maybe it is the fact that he is more accustomed to just ending someone's life, not beating them at a mental and physical chess match.
That's all wrestling really is. A chess match. You can't just come in with brute force and expect to win, but that's Cain's strategy, always has been no matter how many times he slaps a new nickname on himself and says he's reborn. Something new. Never something better, in any regard.
Same penchant for murder.
Same brutish behavior.
The same holes still trip him up. Time after time.
In saying these things, I do I fear being the next name on his list of people whose lives need ending? Not particularly, because he is smart enough to realize killing your co-workers for talking bad about you isn't a very wise course of action.
It's either that or I have some kind of death wish. Been thinking a lot about that as of late.
So, in summary: Dick's a bit preoccupied and Cain's playing the same game he's been playing for a long time, and it's going to yield the same poor results.
In other words, I'm confident in my ability to win.
I'm done, I think.
Sayors opens his mouth to say something else, but the cameraman powers down the camera. What was it that our esteemed Interviewer extraordinaire was going to ask?
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