(Scene: A shady character sitting on a chair and talking to a camera. That’s all.)

“Reggie, it’s come to my attention that people aren’t treating you with respect. That’s… fine… to an extent. But it’s not fine to be doing it in my name.

Let me be perfectly clear here: I wholeheartedly condemn XWF fans approaching my opponents and telling them that they suck. I condemn XWF fans spitting at my opponents. If you do that, and you try to say that you do it in support of me, I will not condemn my opponents for how they respond.

To all my… fans - jeez, it still feels weird to say that - if you think that treating other people that way is what I would like… you’re not understanding the message. The way that I’ve heard people have spoken to Reggie, in my name no less, is exactly the sort of thing that I’ve rebelled against Thaddeus Duke over. He would never condemn it though. He’d blame me instead for my own misfortune. But Reggie… I won’t do that. I mean, to the best of my knowledge I don’t have any merchandise in the XWF store, so that shirt on that guy… that’s bootleg stuff. That’s not my mission. Those people have bastardised it into something that I don’t recognise.

I condemn that.

And Reg, I want you to know that if you run into any trouble around the events that transpired, and if my words can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Because that was not okay.

I guess I’m just… I’m still struggling with how this whole thing is supposed to work. This… this influence that I supposedly have now… I don’t really know what to do with it. I feel kind of… helpless…”

---------------------

(Scene: A different man in a bar. A steadily decreasing bottle of Caol Ila 12-year old scotch whisky. That’s all.)

“It’s still hard to think about it.

Not long after it happened, I tried to sit down and write about it, you know? I thought it would be cathartic. It was to an extent, but it’s not like it changes anything. It still happened.

I think I'm doing okay. For the most part. But then we get a reminder and we're back where we began. That's… probably not fair. We're a little further on that we were that night. Even so, I don't really know when this ends. It's normal, I guess. Doesn't make it any easier.

It's unnerving how some of the details still stand out as though they were yesterday, rather than nearly two months ago. It’s like bullet points on my brain. The earliest one was when she first told me that she was bleeding. It didn’t sound right, obviously. I felt concerned. My breathing jumped, I put down the laptop, and she got my full attention. But looking back now, I still feel like I was somehow being dismissive. There’s a lump in my throat even thinking about it now. When I inquired further, she told me that it felt like her period. Neither of us really knew what that meant. We sure as shit suspected, though. The blood tests had only confirmed the pregnancy that week.

What the hell do I do in that situation? What use am I? I turned to Dr. Google, but it didn’t really help. ‘You might experience spotting’ it said. Whatever that meant. ‘Light pink or dark brown in colour’, Google clarified. I didn’t get it. They’re at pretty far ends of the spectrum. Could it be somewhere in between? I didn’t know, but I asked her anyway. Because that was something that I could do.‘Is it light pink or dark brown’? I asked. She said she didn’t think so. So that meant… what?

She wanted to go down for a nap, as had been typical in the days prior. That had been one of the key signs that led to her taking a test to begin with. She wanted to nap, and so she did. And I… I kind of just went on with my evening. Fuck.

The next bullet point came two hours later. She woke up, went to the bathroom, and was still bleeding. She was concerned, and I followed her lead, but we still didn’t know just how concerned we should be. It all came back to that same question – ‘what the fuck is spotting?’ It wasn’t until the next bathroom stop that reality set in. The flow had increased.

She phoned a friend who was an emergency nurse. It just so happened that the friend was also pregnant. On speaker, I heard the friend answer: ‘Hello pregnant mama’. That was heart-wrenching to hear. We had known that it was early to tell people, but that had been an agreement the two of them had made. We had told a handful of others too. 'Tell people that you would tell if something went wrong,' she had convinced me. I was so in love with that attitude, that warmth.

Through the sobbing explanation, the friend could tell that this was one of those times where something was wrong. Of all the memories of that night, the one that flashes in big neon lights was the sound of the door closing when she took the call into the bedroom. There was nothing special about it - it wasn’t loud or aggressive in any way. It still stands out like a sore thumb though. Maybe it hammered home to me that there was nothing that I could do. That I was on the outside, looking in. And now I feel like an asshole for even taking the time to worry about myself.

I was in the bathroom when the next bullet hit. The conversation had moved back out into the lounge, and I could hear it from through the walls. ‘Go to the emergency room’. As soon as I had flushed and washed my hands, I went straight to my shoes and put them on. While the phone call continued, I gathered phone chargers, filled water bottles, put some reading material together – a book for her and a Kindle for me, and made sure she had a pair of warmer socks available. The carry bag was organised before she got off the phone. This was not necessary. I guess I used my phone charger, and we both benefited from having water available, but at the end of the day it was probably more about me feeling helpful than anything. I needed to do something.

We quickly left and when we eventually got to the hospital, we were told that given the urgency, we would be next. I remember that we weren’t. The wait was long, and as would be a common theme throughout the night, it was filled with a wasteful repetitive nothingness of a routine: unlock phone, open app, close app immediately, wait.

When we were finally seen, I remember a brief moment of panic washing over me as I became unsure about whether visitors were allowed in the hospital given the state of the world. Thankfully the months of lockdown that preceded had lessened the risk to all, and the both of us were ushered through, together.

The next wait felt even longer, but by then the hours were merging together and the night was getting longer. It’s hard to piece together the proper chronological order of things. At some point during the endless cycle of hoping my phone would give me… something… I opened up Facebook and the first image I saw was of an acquaintance from high school posing for the camera with her newborn child. Yeah… that didn’t help.

Sounds started to get to me too. I could deal with the mindless gossip of staff, planning their group breakfast; and I could deal with the loud man several rooms down complaining about his gout; but the sound of fingers pounding away on keyboards started to do my fucking head in.

Clatter, clatter, clatter.

It was made even worse by the fact that the only position for a chair in the small cupboard of a room had me leaning right up against a hand sanitiser bottle that had been fastened to the wall. My back would feel that for days to come. She encouraged me to take the doctor’s chair, but I refused. I think I tried some dumb justification in mind around how it was safer in a pandemic to stay where I was. Truthfully, I think I just didn’t want to make it about me.

Clatter, clatter, clatter.

It got worse. A portable computer set-up moved in clockwise circles around the ward. Every time that it would stop outside our room, I’d perk up thinking ‘oh this is it, finally’. No such luck. Just more fingers jackhammering the keys. Louder and louder.

Clatter, clatter, clatter.

The doctor eventually came, asked questions, made her cry, ordered tests, and all I could do was try and add more information wherever possible. Be her voice when hers wavered. I guess that's something.

Look how fucking flippant I am about the crying part now. It was just… the norm. And there was nothing I could do about it. It’s happening to her, and I just have to watch.

Unsurprisingly, it took forever for the tests to finally come. If I had to guess, I’d say we had been sitting in our hopeless misery for three hours at this point. To make things worse, the nurse struggled to find a vein in either arm (because he sucked) and wound up using one in her hand. He left the butterfly needle just hanging there while he changed over tubes. It looked disturbing. She no-sold it, but later would express how uncomfortable it was. I don’t know if she’s aware of how messed up it looked. I should've said something at the time.

The results were prioritised as urgent. Eventually the doctor came back, without the tests, and suggested we think about heading home while we wait. ‘Urgent’, right? I think, at this stage, the doctor even acknowledged when directly questioned that miscarriage was the most likely explanation. That hit hard. After that, I don’t even remember why we stayed on. Maybe we were waiting on a discharge form for us to take to our regular doctor? Did that happen later? Fuck, I don’t know. Somewhere in there the nurse came back to take blood pressure, and we just kept waiting.

While waiting for… whatever we were waiting for… we stood up and embraced. Somewhere in there I told her that I recognised how different it was for her than for me. I'm not sure how that came up. She probably asked - that sounds like something she would do. The thing is, she had already been physically feeling the pregnancy for a while now, perhaps too early even. My feelings were purely emotional and had only been around for a few days. That made our experiences different.

We got the tests and we got a number. If pregnant, it should go up. If not, it should go down. But without another reading to provide context, it didn’t mean anything. We needed more tests in a couple of days. She needed more tests, not me. It felt like the weight of life was on her and there was nothing that I could do could shift that burden. At least I was there to drive home. We left the hospital and walked down the street, arms flimsily wrapped around each other, with no strength in our embrace. By now, we both admitted we knew the outcome. We just had to get the doctor to formally say the words.

Neither of us worked the next day. We just struggled. She was amazing. She would bounce from talking to her family, her mother and her in pure despair, to apologising to me. That wasn’t out of any sort of disrespect for herself – I wouldn’t let that happen, she’s a goddess – more just for my loss. I never actually said ‘I’m sorry’ to her though. Why didn’t I say that?

From there, the hits just kept coming. We got the tests done over the weekend and managed a phone call with a doctor to discuss the results. Not our doctor. Instead, a horribly unpleasant doctor who was the only one available and never bothered to read the notes. ‘I can confirm the results show pregnant’ she told us, only reading the first blood tests. We had to tell her the fucking story! Read the notes to read the room, asshole!

Once caught up, it didn’t get better. ‘I can confirm the results show miscarriage’ or something to that effect. That’s how we found out for sure. We knew, but that’s how we were told. It’s absolutely flabbergasting.

When we confirmed the findings with the people that we had told, there were two go-to lines: ‘Such and such had one too’ or even worse ‘That’s why you don’t tell people too early.’

Fuck that.

Tell people.

Don’t grieve in silence.

Strangely enough, the day we found out, we actually celebrated with cocktails and beer. We rejoiced in what we knew was possible and looked to the future. Love and happiness.

Come the end of the weekend, I expected to be back at work on Monday. I wasn’t ready though. It was our first. We went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in less than a week. And now… we’re trying to figure out how to go forward. Weeks later, we’re still trying to figure out what to say, what to do. We still embrace. Each time, it’s firm. All of our hugs seem firmer these days. I just don’t want to let her go.

She still cries. Fuck, I’ll say it: I do too. For whatever reason, it took a few weeks for it to finally hit me like that. I hope it's because I was trying to prioritise looking after her. I don’t want to think about the alternative.

Logically, it makes sense - the tears. It is loss, after all. And there’s always things that remind us. It’s easier to play pretend with people that we’re not that close to - a work colleague or a regular bartender, but when it comes to facing the people who know in-person, there is a lot of anxiety and apprehension. We’re stronger now than ever before, but what now? We wait? We try again?

I don’t have those answers.

I just know that we’re still struggling. I just know that we’ve now been told we need to explore a few other factors that might have contributed to the outcome. Factors I want to pretend don’t exist.

How do I process this? What the hell can I do?

And here I am: sitting here, drinking whisky, and asking you of all people what to do as if you have anything special to add. As if you have any special insight beyond what I provide to you.”

---------------------

(Scene: A man sitting at a bar, drinking whisky, and talking to a piece of shit. That’s all)

“Well, if there’s a plus side to this whole meta bullshit, at least you’re recognising that you’re being a stupid motherfucker. Expressing your emotions through me isn’t going to give you any answers, and you know it.”

“It might.”

“Oh God, I’m going to have to burst your balls, aren’t I? Newsflash dickweed, I’m not what I once was for you. Maybe when we first started this journey, this schtick would have made sense. I was a replacement, right? Designed to age with you. To feel what you were feeling. To express it.”

“I remember.”

“You changed that, though. I used to be a young kid trying to find himself in the world, cocksure but insecure. I was like you. But the story required me to change. So I did. I became an asshole. Your asshole. Your way of ridding yourself of all the despicable thoughts in that fucked up little head of yours.”

“So what are my despicable thoughts telling me right now?”

“First, I’ll tell you what they’re not telling you. They’re not telling you that you’re an asshole for trying to think about your own wellbeing as well as hers. You’re only an asshole if you’re thinking about your own wellbeing instead of hers. Because that’s what I would be doing. That’s the type of person that you turned good ol’ Kieran King into.”

“Comforting…”

“Oh, cut the sarcastic shit. Jokes aren’t really helping you out these days, and you fucking know it. You just keep pissing her off.”

“So what would help me out?”

“You’re looking at it man. That bottle there. Think about how easy it would be to see what’s at the bottom of it. And then what’s at the bottom of the next one. And so on. You have the means now. You could do it. You’d probably enjoy it. Think about how nice each of those sips is – how it warms your belly, your being. That dirty little brain of yours knows how easy it would be. Think about how easy it would be to use this whole thing as an excuse to become an addict. What better an opportunity to do it, bro? This is the saddest fucking thing you’ve had to deal with in your life. You could lean into it so easily. Lean into that fear. Like father, like son.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re welcome.”

---------------------

(Scene: A man sitting at a bar, talking to a myth. A bottle of whisky smashed on the ground behind them. That’s all.)

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re having trouble letting me go.”

“I spent the entirety of my teens building you, somehow turning you into something that has since persevered without maintenance. I guess I hoped there was some use for you yet.”

“There may still be, but I’m pretty sure I’m not what you’re looking for right now.”

“How would you…”

“Please, bitch. I know what’s going on here. I know that look. I’ve had that look. You gave me that look.”

“I…”

“There’s a bottle of broken whisky on the ground. Daddy issues, right? Been there, done that. Your words to my mouth. Fucking literally. The difference between you and I, is that I succumbed. You made me what you were afraid of. Addiction? Check. Lost child that you never got a chance to meet? Check. Shit, double-check that bitch. I’m like The goddamn Simpsons up in here. You built the house, I lived in it. But still… I don’t have any words of wisdom for you. All I have are the words of a teenager trying on his big boy pants and pretending to be a grown up.”

“You may have succumbed, but you overcame. You always overcame.”

“Did I? Or did you? Who was telling the story?”

“I… I had you. You and Kieran.”

“Bitch, you haven’t had us in ten years! You haven’t needed an outlet for your emotions like this in that entire time. Have you ever stopped to think about why?”

“Not really, no...”

“You’re going to make me spell it out for you, then, aren’t you, douchehammer?”

“I had her.”

“There you go! And do you still have her?”

“Yeah…”

“Then what in the blue hell is the point of all of this, my man? Here’s the thing, it’s okay to feel. It’s more than okay! It’s fucking normal. You don’t need to go backwards. Use the resources that you already have.”

“Her.”

“Bingo.”

“And him.”

“Say what now?”

“I have him now too. Not like that. I’m talking creatively. He used to be my worst creation, but now… it’s kind of working. I think.”

“Jesus tittyfucking Christ, just when I think that you’re getting it. You don’t need this anymore, dude! For the last couple of months, you haven’t been doing this for any sort of emotional release. You’ve been doing it because it’s fun. Be a goddamn adult. You don’t need him, just like you don’t need Kieran or I.”

“Me or Kieran.”

“Huh?”

“The proper way to say that is actually ‘Me or Kieran. For some reason, the world has overcorrected proper grammar to the opposite extreme. As a general rule of thumb, remove the name of the other person, and whatever pronoun you would use to make it sound right – ‘me’ or ‘I’ – that’s the pronoun you should use when you have the name there too.”

“Well there you go, you’re better than I ever was! Better without me and Kieran. And to be honest, I kind of like the life you gave me the last time you wheeled me out. He kai kei aku ringa.”

“There is food at the end of my hands.”

“You got it, stud. It’s nice not being all angst-ridden and whatnot.”

“I guess I should leave you to it, then.”

“That'd be nice, yeah. Although… in a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ type situation… maybe, just maybe... I might have one more left in the tank. As long it’s about the fun, you know? I’m sure we could work something out. Eventually...”

---------------------

(Scene: A man sitting at a bar, talking to a shady character. That’s all.)

“Alias fears Lee Stone.”

“Oh, so we’re just getting rid of all of the narrative conventions today?”

“You’re the one telling the story.”

“Right.”

“Left.”

“Please don’t start. Not today.”

“Okay… well, uh… how are you feeling?”

“Umm… I’m not really sure, to be honest. On the surface, that should render this whole exercise pointless. Except… it doesn’t. I feel that it doesn’t. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but…”

“Sure it does. Sometimes people just need to do things. The question is… what do we do now?”

“Do you want to see what The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur is up to?”

“Oh, he’s over there in the corner buttfucking a raven.”

“I wish I had an image I could insert there.”

“Do you think that’s going to serve some story purpose for me?”

“Maybe if he was doing it with a dagger.”

“Can he?”

“Sure. Want me to make the raven Corey Smith instead, too?”

“Not unless you can turn The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur into me.”

“That might mess the story up a bit.”

“It’s a pretty good story, isn’t it?”

“I hope so. I’m enjoying it.”

“I wonder what I’ll do next?”

“Probably get beaten up after a match.”

“Oof… that’s a sick burn.”

“Like your hand?”


“Okay, okay! Enough! This whole exchange just seems to be complicating things.”

“Uncomplicate it then.”

“Can do! Just before I do that though… can you promise me something?”

“What do you need?”

“Listen to that bozo from before. Don’t turn me into some sort of avatar for your feelings that aren’t my own. Just let me be me. Let me be the story.”

“Go be you, then.”

---------------------

(Scene: A shady character sitting on a chair and talking to a camera. Again. That’s all.)

“I don’t like this, Reg. You know that I don’t like how people have been treating you in my name, but there’s also a certain level of individual responsibility that needs to be factored in here. I don’t like this defeatism that seems to be creeping into your words. I don’t like how you’re giving in to what others say.

At the risk of messing with your already confused head - wow, how did this become a world where I’m the one saying that? Fucking Betsy, I bet - at this risk of messing with that head of yours, Reg, maybe you should try to be just a little bit more like me in one particular way:

I don’t believe in destiny.

I believe that we each have a say in how our futures play out.

I have to believe that.

After everything that I’ve been through, I need to know that at the end of the day I can persevere through sheer force of will. I need to believe that I can continue to resist The Left Hand. I need to believe that the more I keep fighting, the more I can change the world so that people don’t just start spitting at those they like. I believe that I can do anything I set my mind to.

I believe that you can too. If life serves you lemons, do whatever the fuck you want with them.

Say it with me, Reg: Fuck destiny!

This right here, this isn’t the sort of thing to lose perspective over. You know what to do, Reg. Don’t just roll over on me.

Scratch! Claw! Fight!

If you’re not up to that man, then it’s you who doesn’t get it.

I’m not looking for an easy path here. In case you hadn’t noticed man, people seem to take a swipe at me every fucking week. I get beaten down, bloodied, burned, and none of that is easy. But I keep getting up. I keep kicking out, so to speak. I’m kind of tailor-made for that X-Treme Championship, don’t you think? By that metric, I prove that I can handle it every single day.

But is that all it takes to prove it? Did that really give you the status that you were after?

That uh… that is what you said you wanted, yeah? I still get a bit confused when you talk.

Regardless, here’s Reggie the Brave: the man who kicks out when people sneak up on him! The man who never meets challenges head on! Some status you’ve got there. It sounds like that championship has left you pretty jaded, and it kind of makes me sad. Reg… didn’t you say that I was supposed to be the ‘emo’ one?

Let me ask you this though, Reg… did John Black or Tommy Wish try to take that title from you? No? Hmm… I’m not seeing the evidence that people are automatically going to try to stab you in the back. That paranoia is taking over, man, and it’s not a pretty look. It seems like you could use a counseler - fuck me what is happening to me?

I think you’re kind of exaggerating the amount of… friends… that I have. If we put your flawed logic to the side for a moment and take it as fact that I will in fact be backstabbed, just who is going to be doing the stabbing? Jenny Myst? Yeah, that one’s… predictable. It’s probably a push to call us ‘friends’ anyway. I really don’t expect her to want to get amongst that ‘gang of X-Treme misfits’ as you called them though. Too many dirty people touching her. So if not her, who? Corey Smith is the only other person who I’ve even had a remote moment of kinship with. And that’s actually a pretty interesting prospect, since we both know that he took a fair few shots at you. But if Corey wants to shoot his shot and watch me ‘keep by butthole tight at night’, then I am down like Charlie Brown!

Wink, wink. In every sense of that phrase.

What makes you think, Reg, that you can lay a hand on The Left Hand if they get involved in our match? What makes you think that you can do what I couldn’t and fend them off. Not by yourself. It doesn’t work like that. Numbers matter. That’s why I wanted to know whether you’d be in fight mode or flight mode should they show up. Because I’m going down swinging. Every fucking time. I wasn’t sure about you though. Now I know. ‘Do or die’. I like it. ‘Shoot to kill’. Even better. You catch them bodies and I’ll Eat Them Hands.

But where’s this fire when it comes to keeping hold of that championship? Why are you willing to fight there, but seem so damn comfortable losing that championship? Heartless? More like sack-less. Well get yourself some more of that divine intervention, Reg, and sack up. You want to stop my momentum? You have to want it. I don’t know if you do. I don’t know if you know if you do.

Never has there been someone with a 1-1-1 record that could ever cast a shadow as long as I am right now. Because The Left Hand knows that I’m the force of nature they never counted on. Thaddeus Duke knows that I’m the meteor that will change his world.

I kill dinosaurs.

I slay monsters.

I fight.

Forever.

Twenty-four/seven.

This isn’t destiny, it’s will.

My will.

Eat Reggie Estrada."

---------------------

(Scene: A different man, sitting on a couch, typing on a screen. That’s all.)

“Normalise talking about it.”