...And it's Time to Wake Up [DT EOD3 RP 2/2]

[Dave D-Flipz]

*The scene opens up in a room that is dimly lit, as if by fireplace and candle light. The room is homey, lived in. Bear skin rug on the ground and a beautiful lounge chair. Looks soft. The camera pans the idyllic living room and finds DT sat in another reclining rocking lounge chair with a book in hand, glasses on his face, and a pipe in his mouth. He is in a luxurious looking robe.*

: Mmmm yes. Quite entertaining. Oh ho I didn't see you there. How do you do this fine evening. It has been a long time since I've been in a lounge like this one, Mongo really springs for the big bucks for World Champions. Oh this book? Why it's the dictionary. I needed to look up a word because it was spouted at me so many times in just two short promos!

*He puffs the pipe ... which blows bubbles ... DT doesn't so drugs ... and is incapable of being fully serious*

: Why you can forgive me for being a bit offput. I keep hearing about nightmares and to quote a favorite movie of mine ... You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

*He puffs more bubbles into the air. He then points the mouth end of the pipe at the camera and looks at it over the rims of his glasses, like an angry dad.*

: Your education must have been lacking son. You keep telling me to believe in the nightmare and I can't quite figure it out. You see nightmares are unique in that they are real and also fake. The concept of one is certainly real, you get jostled awake when you have one. And everyone sees different things that frighten them. For me? Being forgotten. Also spiders. They are creepy and I don't care for them. Nightmares can have a very real effect on people you know. They can be debilitating if consistent and you can't figure out how to deal with them. But then ... they are not real, they are the issues of the mind coming to the forefront and interrupting your sleep. They are momentary nuisances that very rarely do anything even close to damage to a person beyond maybe a fractured psyche or a mental case. But then let's check that one too.

*He opens the dictionary back to where he marked it and makes a show of scrolling his finger down it ... until a trade paperback of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman volume 1 falls to the floor from inside. DT looks down then back at the camera and nervously laughs.*

: Oh ... oh my how did that get in there!?

*he tosses the dictionary over his head and out of frame. We hear it shatter something off screen. A message on screen says, "Charge all damages to Mongo the Destroyer c/o XHF Network HQ, Minneapolis, MN". DT picks up the comic book.*

: I just ... how odd! I mean granted I don't read the dictionary for pleasure. That's what these are for.

*He points to a stack of Michael Crichton novels and another stack of the Dexter book series by Jeff Lindsay (A great read you should all buy them! Did you know he has a new book coming out this December about a plucky thief?)*

: No you know what? This works. The Sandman is a fitting look into the realm of dreams. In this universe nightmares actually can be destructive. Here Dream can trap you in an neverending nightmare, never to wake up. The dreams in this beautiful book series have meaning and power. Gods fear the power of Dream and his ilk. A wayward dreamer can cause a vortex to open and destroy the fabric of reality and the universe itself. And in the absence of the ruler of dreams things really go haywire. But you ... you are no nightmare Duke Kosloff. You are a man. A flawed, tragic, sad man. You may be monstrous and surely there are those who would be haunted by your very appearance or presence but I am not one of them. You see nightmares just hold no sway over a man who has seen as much as I have seen. Nightmares are for the realm of comics and entertainment where the stories can be properly served. Not in the ring. The ring is very much in MY world. And you my precious, precocious little dreamer ... need to wake the fuck up.

*He stands up and tosses the pipe into the fire. He strips the robe off revealing his classic "Feeling Trapped" t-shirt and his MCCW world title around his waist holding up his black jeans. He pulls the glasses off and folds the earpieces and places them into a case and tosses the case onto the chair as he approaches the camera*

: You see Duke. Life is a nightmare. The only nightmare you can never wake from, only fall back to sleep from. I'm sure there's a whole speech on it in the promos of that man you beat last week. And when you have fought through what you and I have fought through there is really little serious meaning in droning on about nightmares and using cliche'd catchprases. I know coming from me that's rich but trust me. You aren't going to rhetoric your way into my head and make me fear you. I fear myself more than anyone else and nothing you can say can fix that.

*he gestures out in his standard pose *the orton one...* and looks up*

: This life ... is both a blessing and a nightmare Duke. A year ago I was just coming out of my stupor. I was addled and mentally deficient. A shell of a man. I didn't recognize the world around me or myself in the mirror. A man like you surely has ghosts in the closet he wants to be rid of but let me just say having everything you are, were, and will be purged from your brain by the very thing that brought you fame, fortune, meaning, and joy is something I cannot describe. You all saw the video Nelly showed when we first reopened XHF. You all saw the fade from glory, the fall from grace. Me sitting on a bench with Gravedigger getting my ego shattered and my future ruined. Me at the doctor's office unsure of who I was even talking to. Losing your identity ... TO your identity ... can you fucking imagine that Duke? Through all the shit you talk about and show us in your promos you still always had a grasp on who you were. You were fucking deprogrammed by Russian secret agents and yet you still knew who you were. So don't talk to me about living nightmares and believing them Duke. Because I promise you if you were in my shoes you'd still be a blithering wreck on the floor of your mansion unable to make a goddamned grilled cheese sandwich because your brain was full of holes. Do you know what it takes? Mentally, physically, emotionally ... for me to step out there knowing I could be putting myself back into that prison in my own head?

*He points to his head*

: Every time I go out there and do what I love, what I NEED to be fulfilled and have a life worth living ... every time I do that I risk making that nightmare a reality. It;s why I have to be perfect. It's why I need to read my opponents and be better. It's why I am so meticulous about knowing my ways in and out of a match. Because our past defines who we are ... and our future defines who we need to be. I am a ticking time bomb, my own body is my greatest weapon against myself. But yeah keep telling me why I should fear you. Seven foot four inches of muscle, rage, and insanity. Keep telling me how you are going to be the one to beat me, how you are going to be the one to make me believe. Buddy I've BEEN there and you are not the one to put me back. You aren't good enough. You aren't threatening enough. I know what you are in that ring. I know how to handle it. There is nothing you can show me I won't be ready for. Sure there is a chance you might keep me down for three. But you will not dominate this match. You will not break my spirit. You will NEVER be the first to make me tap out, and you sure as hell aren't going to be my executioner. Because you look at me and you see a shell. You look at me and see someone who needs to find the man he once was. But what you don't understand is that looking in the mirror and wishing for the past means you are already defeated. How can you hope to be the best if you can't even trust the man in the mirror to evolve, to grow, to learn, to get better?

*he takes a deep breath and quiets his mind and voice.*

: No Duke, it is you who lives in the past looking for who and what you were. So let's examine that shall we? What exactly are you? You've been abandoned, split off from your blood, a victim of tragedy. You never grew up did you? You saw all that blood and ash as a child and you never got it out of your head. Am I on the right track? You've made yourself a weapon all because you weren't able to stand up for that family back when it mattered. A horrific thing to be sure. But you need to move on. And you are not very good at that are you big man? Your past keeps coming back to haunt you and it's always through your own faults. You come into a match with a fellow experiment of your crazy homeland and rather than be logical and fight the man you go into the place you were a prisoner, a slave and try to poke the beast. You PUT yourself into harm's way, on their radar. All for your sick thrills. All to try and find meaning in your past. All to make it all link together so you have a reason to keep looking back. Always walking through life in a haze, a living nightmare. What a pathetic existence. All this nightmare talk and you are the one who needs to sleep with a teddy bear just to be able to knock out for the night.

*He turns his back to the camera*

: So what do you do when confronted with a relic of the past, something you can actually confront and take forward with you and confront some of these issues you seem to have? You run and cry for mommy. Still eternally that child sitting outside a burning house, alone, abandoned, and wanting a hug. You go find more ways to bring up the past. And for someone who has a bright future if you ever hone that wrestling skill, someone who holds a world title that was recent, you sure seem to like existing as a ghost of a dead time. And it's time to wake up. No more playing shaman on some crazy island. No more murders, no more rapes, no more commiting crime to camera. It's time to stand up, grow up, and WRESTLE. And here you are crying to your old boss, crying to your mom's headstone, crying to your brother. Threats, burying the emotion, living in the past. You lost to Hyperion that first tournament. You didn't learn from it. You lost to Bobby Barratt last year. You didn't learn from it. You took the lesson that you weren't good enough and instead of getting better you made excuses. You ran to other places to find success. And when you had it you regressed. You became everything you loved to rail against in those early days. Congratulations you've managed to make no progress. That's what you are Duke. You are failed plans, lost progress, unmet expectations, and wasted talent.

*He faces the camera and scoffs*

: You will not fall. It's pretty hard to fall when you never get up. You hit the dirt and you live there. You don't need to worry about preventing a fall. You've already fallen. You're already living in the past and focusing on all those times you already failed. Your head is on Hyperion, Bobby Barratt, Anthony Caffrey, all those failures. All those times you DID fall, so you tell yourself you won't ... they were only bad dreams. Duke the fact is you've already lost. You're in your OWN head. You've done the work for me. But I won't let up. I won't because that is who I AM. That's the man I am now. I am the sum of my decisions and fights. All the wins, all the losses, all the lessons. I am the culmination of a life lived wide awake and in the light. I am the finely honed, beat down, scarred, damaged, perfect piece of machinery you see here. I am a World Champion. I AM! Not was. AM. I live in the now. I don't wish to be what I was. Because what I was wasn't good enough. Lessons needed to be learned. Work had to be done. Damage had to be repaired. And Duke, you will never be able to take me out like you are now. Not until you fucking WAKE UP!

*Fade out*