Post by CM Poor on Sept 26, 2014 19:03:22 GMT -5
"YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE A F*CKING ATHLETE!!!"
They say that the even the most instantaneous of occurrences can play out in the present in the most drawn out, expository ways.
To anyone else, opening a hotel room door to be greeted by a bedside lamp being lobbed at their head might illicit only one train of thought - duck.
I saw an assessment fee being added to my receipt the following morning at check out, almost as of each shard of glass that scattered across the unforgiving, unpadded carpet drove the cost up a nickel at a time. The hole in the wall where the base of the lamp struck bore the burden of the cost of repairs - that was an easy $200 right there. There's a myth - maybe more a misconception than anything - that elevating oneself to television appearances packs with it a hefty paycheck. I won't lie and say that I wasn't making more than I had bagging groceries at the local H.E.B. during high school, but to come by a really lucrative income takes years of dedication and hard work, and at that point, time was simply not yet on my side. As such, I'd developed a habit of traveling light, and hotel damages, up until that night returning to the hotel following the Grudge event, were often the furthest from my mind in terms of likely costs to contend with.
All that, in addition to a hulking typhoon of a man, whose physical appearance harkened back to more prehistoric days than a more civilized nature, bearing down upon me, fists clenched and cocked back in anticipation of a meeting with my face, due to start any second, was brought to the very forefront of my concern with one fell swoop and a shattered hotel lamp.
What I did for work was not exactly the complaint I had expected to follow a violent barrage at the hands of a man I'd taken under my wing out of pity back in New York. Having volunteered my time in any number of substance abuse centers over the years, I knew that the coming days, weeks, months, possibly years would be a slow, at times frightening process of peeling away the layers that fog one's mind when captivated by a substance that takes hold, and that the consequential reaction can sometimes spark a wide realm of emotions, ranging from all out sadness, to the type of violent rage that had seconds earlier propelled a lamp in the direction of my head. What I couldn't have ever guessed was exactly what it was about my profession that triggered such a passionate outburst in Frank.
We should probably backtrack for a moment. When last we left Frank, as you may recall, we were calling him "Isaac". What he'd rattled off when I'd asked him his name back at the New York City transit terminal was not so much a response as it was an unconscious reaction - a continuation of the nonsense he's been screaming just moments prior. Nevertheless, it had come out clean and clear, and so, for the sake of all I'd known, he was Isaac.
"Why the f*ck do you keep calling me Isaac?"
"You told me that was your name."
"I did?"
"Back at the terminal. Right before you passed out."
"Huh. Why the f*ck would I do that?"
"So your name isn't Isaac then?"
"Ugh, god, no!"
"Mind making this trip we're about to embark upon a little easier on me?"
"How can I do that?"
"You could start with your name..."
And that, friends, is how I came to formally meet Frank, which in turn, still wasn't his birth name. It was David.
David Francis.
"But everybody calls me Frank."
"Do you prefer David?"
"Not really, no."
"Frank it is, then."
I'd like to say that twelve hours, plus stops, left me learning a bit more about my newfound companion, but by the time we trickled into Indiana, I'm afraid I was no more wise to Frank's story than the day I bought him breakfast and encouraged him to leave the city, and hopefully his old ways along with it, behind. I'd like to say that I went into our trip with just enough edge to think that he was maybe playing me for a fool with his non-responses, but truthfully, I think that his weakness for spirits left him brutally honest when he'd tell me that he doesn't really know how he got to New York, or what he'd done there, or what he'd done beforehand. Surely, he's got relatives, he'd say, but he couldn't tell you the first thing about them. He thought that both his parents were deceased, but couldn't be certain. In his mind, and to my working knowledge, though of course there must have been more, he was little beyond a name, the clothes on his back, the aforementioned abuses that, to him, made the sun rise every morning and set each night.
He'd been enamored with our lodging situation upon our arrival in Indiana.
"Beats the piss outta the H line."
In fact, for a man whose veins clearly coursed a certain toxicity throughout his very being, he seemed perfectly content having gone twelve-plus hours without whatever it was that ailed him. When we stopped, he'd eat like there was no tomorrow, to the degree that I was certain to stock up on plenty of your standard fare, road trip junk food to tide him over while I went to work.
It was an odd pairing to say the least - Frank the Vagrant and Daniel the Christian wrestler, but the truth is, turning that doorknob after being put through the ringer by Joshua Dean, I was actually looking forward to getting in and checking on a man I'd, in such a short span of time, come to grow deeply concerned for the well being of, and further, had come to consider a friend.
That is, of course, before he decided to lob a lamp fixture at my head.
"Whoa, Frank!"
"You're damn right!!"
"What?!"
I could only chalk his incomprehensible response up to a healthy mixture of withdrawal and seething rage. The former I could peg, but the latter...that was something altogether foreign to me. I'd been gone five hours, max. What could I have possibly done, possibly said in regard to my way of life that could warrant such an outburst upon my arrival.
I'd like to have had time to think on the subject, sit down, have a chat, hash out the details, but by then, he'd scooped up a handful of shattered glass and was charging right at my face, and so that bit of introspection would have to be put on the back burner for the moment.
"WHO ARE YOU?!?"
"Ah! Frank, settle down! It's me, Daniel!"
"I know your name - WHO ARE YOU?!? DAMMIT!!!!"
I knew for certain that if he managed to get his hands on me, that'd be it. For all his mental inhibitions, Frank was a big guy, and I wasn't about to take one to the face, much less a hand chock full of shattered glass, so naturally, my instincts diverted from "what's wrong" to dodge pretty quickly. That, of course, left Frank palming a hand full of shards into the wall, and I can only imagine that his exasperated cry was from the glass powdering into his skin as it struck the papered drywall.
Seizing the opportunity to subdue him, I hooked my arms under his from behind, pressing both palms to the back of his skull. Planting a knee firmly into the small of his back, I managed to, despite his writhing and profanity laced shouting, force him to the ground. The first hold I'd ever learned...
Walter Kirkbride isn't a name much known to most of those living in the Austin City limits, but to those that dwelled within the Menchaca region just on the outskirts, Walt's name may as well have been John Law. There was a time when I longed to be just like him - even before I found charity in the name of Christ, helping people just seemed to be a noble and worthy cause to dedicate one's life toward. Growing up, I was often the envy of the other kids in class. Who else got to spend dinner in the front seat of a cruiser, listening intently to the pops and cracks of the radio as calls came in and dispatches were issued? Who else knew how to apprehend a resistant suspect with restrained force by the age of eleven?
It struck me as sort of funny, there, holding Frank down on the floor of the modest hotel room while he writhed and wriggled trying to break free. Before I found wrestling, I wanted nothing more than to follow in dad's footsteps and find myself a career in law enforcement. Polar opposites, I know, but I have to think that there is some sort of poetry there, given the fact that long after I'd abandoned my ambitions to wear the badge and go out on patrol, I still found myself, having embarked out on my own path, locked into a restraining hold against, for the sake of all argument, a vagrant, substance riddled street rat.
For all he lacked in mental faculty, Frank was hardly short on fight. It felt like an hour that he resisted, twisted, and turned, trying anything he could to break the hold, before he finally submitted. I felt his joints go limp as he countered his anger and rage into a vocal outburst, screaming, swearing, and gasping, occasionally slamming the fore of his head against the floor. I wasn't prepared to let him go until I could, with all certainty, assure myself that he wouldn't lunge right back out on the attack.
Something had struck a chord with Frank, to the degree that he sought to harm, if not kill me upon my return. If I was none the wiser to this man's story, I was ready to declare myself a versed expert in the fact that there was something deeply rooted and altogether wrong with him. A lesser man might have cut him loose, locked him out, and severed all ties as they left him to his own new defenses there in Indiana as they hopped town to the next stop in the tour. It just wasn't me. For whatever reason, maybe in my youthful naïveté, I saw a man who needed help, and for all the harm he'd tried to do me just then, I couldn't, in that moment, turn my back on him. I made a solemn vow to myself and to God to find a way to somehow better this man who was hurting so before we finally went our separate ways.
If there's something that tends to surprise people once I "let them in", so to speak, and begin allowing them access to what makes me Daniel Kirkbride beyond my self identification as a follower of Jesus and a product of God's creation, it's a small bit of trauma that wallows in my past. By and large, the stories that make up the broad spectrum of what makes each WFWF star unique sort of trump my little corner of darkness by way of their severity or lasting impression, but none the less, I'm a firm believer that even the most remote, minute instances in a man's life sort of each play a role in developing the final product that he will one day become. After all, even a missing teaspoon of an early, key ingredient can cause irreversible damage to even the simplest of culinary creations.
Between the ages of six and seven, I was haunted, almost on a nightly basis, by a a chronic, contiguous series of night terrors. Now, I know right off the bat exactly what you're thinking - every kid has nightmares. They see a scary movie, or something on the news that their still developing minds cannot quite comprehend, and those sorts of images kind of get wedged into a funny part of their brain, shocking them out of a good night's sleep and creating a few restless nights for all those in the household.
Were my dreams the fleeting, momentarily scary type that sort of went away when mom came by to assure that they were nothing than dreams and that they weren't real, then in all likelihood, I wouldn't stop to bother with conjuring up the memory, but as we've established, these dreams, regardless of content or context, were something more. Something surreal. Something so impactful that I hold staunch in the notion that they became a part of who I am today.
Early in my career with the WFWF, it was interpreted by some that I had something of a shaken relationship with my mother and father, on account of the opposite ends of the spectrum to which we each fell in regard to my choice in career. The reality of it all couldn't have been further from the truth, and over the course of that year or so in which I was shaken from my sleep on an almost nightly basis, they out forth the effort to try everything in their power to make the fear go away. Parenting, though far from my list of priorities at any given time, must be one of the most simultaneously rewarding and challenging undertakings two people can embark upon, and I thank God each morning for blessing me with two that cared so much to provide as best of all life's comforts as well as they possibly could, for better or for worse.
For all their efforts - the money they sunk into specialists and sleep studies, the humiliation that must have come with the investigations into their own persons, hardly eased by the relief of being proved to be non-effects in their only son's terror - nobody could quite pin downturn source of the gut wrenching, nauseating fear that was Malkav.
While I'd come to discover exactly who and what Malkav was as an adult, a discovery that forever alter the trajectory of my life, my career, and everything I ever thought I'd known, at the age of six, he was little more than the very embodiment of terror to my sleeping mind's eye.
The dreams were very often the same - I'd find myself slowly walking down a nondescript, slowly deteriorating, narrow hallway bathed in just enough light to see my steps ahead of me. Either side was peppered with a repeating pattern - door, window, window, door - for as far as the eye could reach, reappearing with each step I took as the corridor drew on and on, seemingly endless, the darkness providing a void for the hall to stretch on for an eternity.
Finally, when it felt like I could walk no further, a figure would manifest at the furthest reach of visibility, drawing me closer to focus the image in my sight. As I closed in upon the figure, his minimal features would come into sharp contrast. Bathed in the darkness, he was visible from the knees up. He was always draped in the same, tattered dark outfit, akin to a boiler suit or a mechanic's clothes. Drawing closer still, his face, or what served as a face would twist and contort into sharp focus, yet it was like no living face I'd ever seen before. Rather than a tone of any color flesh, it appeared rather to be stitched together from assorted scraps of rotten, deceased flesh from another being, the mouth twisted into a broad, open smile.
As I came to a halt, he'd reach out his hand, beckoning me closer, almost as if reaching for my throat. Only then, before he could clasp his fingers around my neck, he'd try and speak, only able to utter a raspy and harsh series of groans and hisses...
...and I would wake.
The name "Malkav" was never once uttered in the realm of sleep. Somehow, in conscious cold sweat, I just knew. That was the name that came out. If I'd known then what I know now, the end game solution would have come so much easier, sparing the cost of an immeasurable amount of specialists who spent the year diligently questioning me from all angles, trying to source the root of the man called Malkav and the specific, to a drawn detail manner in which he manifested.
As quickly as these dreams came on, one night they ceased. I slept through the night, and again, and again, and somehow, the normalcy of life that a seven year old boy should be able to come expect out of life slowly returned. That's not to say, of course, that Malkav had been washed from my mind entirely - for years I pondered just who or what this demon in my dreams could have been, and at times, mostly when I was running on empty, I'd find myself strolling down that hall toward inevitability once more.
I credit the pairing of faith and the consequence of my strengthened resolve with helping to eradicate the dreams of a twisted, vile man named Malkav from my life. By the time I'd reached the age of ten and had begun studying under the tutelage of Father Marshall, my visions of Malkav had dwindled down to an occasional nuisance that I was quickly able to consciously pull myself from. While never one to turn my nose up to the advances of science and medicine, Father Marshall, as usual, helped me to put my fears into perspective, and in turn, make them not into something that controlled me, but rather, something I could take the reigns of and steer toward my own personal betterment as a person and a walker of faith.
"Well, try and look at it this way, Daniel. Do you fear death?"
"Not really, no."
"And why is that?"
"Well, I mean...we've talked about this before. It's like you said, death is sacramental. Good, bad, or indifferent, whether we believe we're headed to Heaven or Hell or a hole in the ground, we've all got that one intermediary step in between to get to our final destination, right?"
"We focus on the end result, not what will put us there."
"Exactly. We should fear what we can control - heights or water, things like that."
"And these dreams, this man that haunts them. Can you control that?"
"I've tried..."
"No offense, Daniel, but as best as your mother's told me, even the state's finest doctors have sort of come up empty in that regard, yes?"
"Heh, yeah..."
"So why waste the element of fear on that, like death or taxes, which cannot be controlled?"
My dreams, of course, as these things tend to do, soon became so much more than subconscious manifestations of ingrained fears of the unknown, but prior to that, Father Marshall's words allowed me to mold Malkav until he became something of a token for me when it came to encountering the unknown, conquering uncertainty. For years, a mystery that haunted me as a child in a very real and very lasting way became my beacon, my trophy. It helped me to cope when I'd lose a relative old age, or to serve as a rock to a friend who'd just lost a beloved pet. For me, the unknown - be it death, the future, an opponent, or a haunting, became almost void of my concern. Through my faith, through overcoming fear, through vanquishing Malkav and all which could not stare me in the face and pose an obvious threat, I became stronger. I became empowered.
Surely, if I could conquer Malkav, then nothing God could put on this Earth could become an immovable obstacle in my path.
Looking back, if I were to give the notion of inevitability in the WFWF a name, it would be Dave Demento.
By all accounts, Dave Demento's career had, by the time is carved out a small little niche for myself in the earliest days of my own, become so much of what I had wanted for my own path to whatever God held in store for me, having put me on this path. While I can't speak to much of his early days playing second fiddle to an aging Randel Benjamin, the fact is, Dave had broken free of the chains that bound him professionally, established a place for himself at the top that should be the envy of any man or woman looking to our field when considering their own livelihood, and moreover, he'd broken out of the shadow of Randel Benjamin, the shadow of ultraviolence, and the shadow of a sneak attack laden with cowardice and poor intent to step back into the spotlight, call to gather a band of like minded comrades, and inspire those around him toward a better, brighter tomorrow.
You can sort of draw your own conclusions here.
Whenever two separate movements strive toward one common end game, there will always be variances in approach. While I'd come to admire the purpose and intent that backed the SOS, it's probably no secret that I'd have done things a bit different. While getting involved in the politics of Lila Sleater and how they defy those of Trace Demon and his Final Revolution sort of comes with the territory they'd embarked upon, I feel that a movement such as theirs, occupied by those that drive it forward, was laden with unnecessary distractions that could, in turn and kept unchecked, turn into detractions.
Dave Demento had embarked on a path that, given the fortunate circumstance, I'd have gladly taken up arms alongside, and should those who'd benefit from the ultimate accomplishment of the SOS' mission deem it worthy, I'd have been honored to take the reigns of when Dave's days drew to a close. It's probably no surprise that a lot of what is at the forefront of the WFWF as a whole comes into a sort of clash with my own personal set of morality. I'd come to the WFWF not to vanquish it, so much as shed a bit of light amid the darkness, so as to not come here just to step on my own two feet and wind up hurting my own personal cause. Dave, clearly the more seasoned of the two of us, was a much more obvious shoe in to lead the charge against what was plainly diminishing the value of the WFWF. Where I'd lead a one man charge, Dave could assemble an army. Where my cries for change would be met with looks of confusion and uncertainty, Dave was a household name. I'd come to the WFWF to inspire others, to bring light where there was none, and in turn, by taking up arms in a fight that boiled down to the classic dichotomy between good and evil, Dave had inspired me.
We imperfect humans, however, cling so to our vices.
A battle cannot be won if the field is fogged and hazy. An enemy cannot be focused upon if the cavalry is flanked by the half hearted, and an army cannot be whole if there are soldiers unfocused on the task at hand.
Dave Demento's intentions were all pointed in the right direction - the truth is, we all stood to benefit from the toppling of Trace Demon's regime. I just can't help but wonder how much focused Dave may have been if he weren't out imbibing with Penny Shannon and rubbing romantic elbows with the likes of Lila Sleater. Too often, it's these distractions that become the fall of many a great idea. To see Demento and his SOS fail was never on the radar of things I wanted to get out of my venture with the WFWF. I wanted to succeed. Push myself. Overcome the odds. To date, I'd accomplished all those things, and was on track to continue doing just that, but then, of course, we must factor in the rearing of inevitability.
It was always going to be Dave Demento. Having overcome matches against Nikki and Josh Dean, it was only the natural next step in the path to wherever it was I was headed. The game had changed. Nikki Dean had not yet captured the National Title when first we met. Josh Dean's days of International glory had not yet resurfaced. At the Takeover, for the first time ever, I would be setting foot inside the ring against a reigning champion. Victory would solidify my place among the top echelon of the company. To face defeat would be the ultimate setback - insurmountable to some. Odds stacked higher against me then they'd ever previously been. Going undefeated can only drive you so far, and with each win, the prospect of that first loss swells and swells with ever increasing impact. Each win makes the prospective fall that much further.
In more favorable circumstances, Dave and I might stand shoulder to shoulder. Truthfully, were the lines to become drawn in the sand, I can tell you that without hesitation, I'd find myself on his side of the battlefield,y own reservations about the distractions hounding the SOS aside. Every great parable about the clash between good and evil begins with a group of like minded people taking a stand against the roots of evil. There are leaders - Dave Dementos. There's the muscle - Nikki and Josh Dean. Penny Shannon. And more often than not, there are those of us that need to be coaxed into battle.
At the Takeover, I'd stand across from Dave Demento, an opponent. The stakes were inevitably high - maybe more so for me than for him - but win, lose, or draw, I headed into that arena telling myself, at least, that even a curt nod from Dave would indicate that we had, at very least, an understanding. An unspoken agreement. The acknowledgement that though our approaches may vary, though we may never draw arms together and though on that night we stood apart as opponents that through the thick of it all, we stood on the same side. For the same cause. To overcome the same obstacles that would make tomorrow better for him, for me, and for all who made their living through the WFWF.
Squaring off against Dave Demento was not a path easily traversed. Dave's path to the SOS and the International Title was no walk in the park. Collectively, the WFWF roster had achieved so much, overcome so many insurmountable odds. Every man and woman who walks through that curtain has a story. It's those who become complacent, who reach certain divets in the totem and feel that for all they've overcome, the path from there on out will be akin to a peace walk, who falter on by the wayside. Who stands to come out stronger - the man who settles for all he's got, or the man who strives to improve himself with every waking sunrise?
"I let you go, you gonna keep cool, Frank?"
He exhaled something chokingly fierce, but nontheless, nodded defeatedly. He was drained, likely cramped from having had his arms hooked for what must have felt like an eternity - I can only guess, based upon how the strain had started to wear my own arms down. Anticlimacticly, I broke the hold, letting his collapse exhaustedly into a heap, face down upon the floor. Stretching my own arms out, I settled in, leaning against one of the room's queen beds, tilting my head back, hoping to crack my neck.
"We're gonna need to find a way to get you sorted, Frank."
He pulled himself off the ground, stretching himself out, though I imagine he'd find himself feeling this a lot more come morning than I would. Seemingly contented to let me make it through the night alive, he settled in beside me, favoring his neck from the arch I'd put on it pressing down on his head.
"We're gonna need to find a way to get you calling me by my given f*ckin' name..."
They say that the even the most instantaneous of occurrences can play out in the present in the most drawn out, expository ways.
To anyone else, opening a hotel room door to be greeted by a bedside lamp being lobbed at their head might illicit only one train of thought - duck.
I saw an assessment fee being added to my receipt the following morning at check out, almost as of each shard of glass that scattered across the unforgiving, unpadded carpet drove the cost up a nickel at a time. The hole in the wall where the base of the lamp struck bore the burden of the cost of repairs - that was an easy $200 right there. There's a myth - maybe more a misconception than anything - that elevating oneself to television appearances packs with it a hefty paycheck. I won't lie and say that I wasn't making more than I had bagging groceries at the local H.E.B. during high school, but to come by a really lucrative income takes years of dedication and hard work, and at that point, time was simply not yet on my side. As such, I'd developed a habit of traveling light, and hotel damages, up until that night returning to the hotel following the Grudge event, were often the furthest from my mind in terms of likely costs to contend with.
All that, in addition to a hulking typhoon of a man, whose physical appearance harkened back to more prehistoric days than a more civilized nature, bearing down upon me, fists clenched and cocked back in anticipation of a meeting with my face, due to start any second, was brought to the very forefront of my concern with one fell swoop and a shattered hotel lamp.
What I did for work was not exactly the complaint I had expected to follow a violent barrage at the hands of a man I'd taken under my wing out of pity back in New York. Having volunteered my time in any number of substance abuse centers over the years, I knew that the coming days, weeks, months, possibly years would be a slow, at times frightening process of peeling away the layers that fog one's mind when captivated by a substance that takes hold, and that the consequential reaction can sometimes spark a wide realm of emotions, ranging from all out sadness, to the type of violent rage that had seconds earlier propelled a lamp in the direction of my head. What I couldn't have ever guessed was exactly what it was about my profession that triggered such a passionate outburst in Frank.
We should probably backtrack for a moment. When last we left Frank, as you may recall, we were calling him "Isaac". What he'd rattled off when I'd asked him his name back at the New York City transit terminal was not so much a response as it was an unconscious reaction - a continuation of the nonsense he's been screaming just moments prior. Nevertheless, it had come out clean and clear, and so, for the sake of all I'd known, he was Isaac.
"Why the f*ck do you keep calling me Isaac?"
"You told me that was your name."
"I did?"
"Back at the terminal. Right before you passed out."
"Huh. Why the f*ck would I do that?"
"So your name isn't Isaac then?"
"Ugh, god, no!"
"Mind making this trip we're about to embark upon a little easier on me?"
"How can I do that?"
"You could start with your name..."
And that, friends, is how I came to formally meet Frank, which in turn, still wasn't his birth name. It was David.
David Francis.
"But everybody calls me Frank."
"Do you prefer David?"
"Not really, no."
"Frank it is, then."
I'd like to say that twelve hours, plus stops, left me learning a bit more about my newfound companion, but by the time we trickled into Indiana, I'm afraid I was no more wise to Frank's story than the day I bought him breakfast and encouraged him to leave the city, and hopefully his old ways along with it, behind. I'd like to say that I went into our trip with just enough edge to think that he was maybe playing me for a fool with his non-responses, but truthfully, I think that his weakness for spirits left him brutally honest when he'd tell me that he doesn't really know how he got to New York, or what he'd done there, or what he'd done beforehand. Surely, he's got relatives, he'd say, but he couldn't tell you the first thing about them. He thought that both his parents were deceased, but couldn't be certain. In his mind, and to my working knowledge, though of course there must have been more, he was little beyond a name, the clothes on his back, the aforementioned abuses that, to him, made the sun rise every morning and set each night.
He'd been enamored with our lodging situation upon our arrival in Indiana.
"Beats the piss outta the H line."
In fact, for a man whose veins clearly coursed a certain toxicity throughout his very being, he seemed perfectly content having gone twelve-plus hours without whatever it was that ailed him. When we stopped, he'd eat like there was no tomorrow, to the degree that I was certain to stock up on plenty of your standard fare, road trip junk food to tide him over while I went to work.
It was an odd pairing to say the least - Frank the Vagrant and Daniel the Christian wrestler, but the truth is, turning that doorknob after being put through the ringer by Joshua Dean, I was actually looking forward to getting in and checking on a man I'd, in such a short span of time, come to grow deeply concerned for the well being of, and further, had come to consider a friend.
That is, of course, before he decided to lob a lamp fixture at my head.
"Whoa, Frank!"
"You're damn right!!"
"What?!"
I could only chalk his incomprehensible response up to a healthy mixture of withdrawal and seething rage. The former I could peg, but the latter...that was something altogether foreign to me. I'd been gone five hours, max. What could I have possibly done, possibly said in regard to my way of life that could warrant such an outburst upon my arrival.
I'd like to have had time to think on the subject, sit down, have a chat, hash out the details, but by then, he'd scooped up a handful of shattered glass and was charging right at my face, and so that bit of introspection would have to be put on the back burner for the moment.
"WHO ARE YOU?!?"
"Ah! Frank, settle down! It's me, Daniel!"
"I know your name - WHO ARE YOU?!? DAMMIT!!!!"
I knew for certain that if he managed to get his hands on me, that'd be it. For all his mental inhibitions, Frank was a big guy, and I wasn't about to take one to the face, much less a hand chock full of shattered glass, so naturally, my instincts diverted from "what's wrong" to dodge pretty quickly. That, of course, left Frank palming a hand full of shards into the wall, and I can only imagine that his exasperated cry was from the glass powdering into his skin as it struck the papered drywall.
Seizing the opportunity to subdue him, I hooked my arms under his from behind, pressing both palms to the back of his skull. Planting a knee firmly into the small of his back, I managed to, despite his writhing and profanity laced shouting, force him to the ground. The first hold I'd ever learned...
Walter Kirkbride isn't a name much known to most of those living in the Austin City limits, but to those that dwelled within the Menchaca region just on the outskirts, Walt's name may as well have been John Law. There was a time when I longed to be just like him - even before I found charity in the name of Christ, helping people just seemed to be a noble and worthy cause to dedicate one's life toward. Growing up, I was often the envy of the other kids in class. Who else got to spend dinner in the front seat of a cruiser, listening intently to the pops and cracks of the radio as calls came in and dispatches were issued? Who else knew how to apprehend a resistant suspect with restrained force by the age of eleven?
It struck me as sort of funny, there, holding Frank down on the floor of the modest hotel room while he writhed and wriggled trying to break free. Before I found wrestling, I wanted nothing more than to follow in dad's footsteps and find myself a career in law enforcement. Polar opposites, I know, but I have to think that there is some sort of poetry there, given the fact that long after I'd abandoned my ambitions to wear the badge and go out on patrol, I still found myself, having embarked out on my own path, locked into a restraining hold against, for the sake of all argument, a vagrant, substance riddled street rat.
For all he lacked in mental faculty, Frank was hardly short on fight. It felt like an hour that he resisted, twisted, and turned, trying anything he could to break the hold, before he finally submitted. I felt his joints go limp as he countered his anger and rage into a vocal outburst, screaming, swearing, and gasping, occasionally slamming the fore of his head against the floor. I wasn't prepared to let him go until I could, with all certainty, assure myself that he wouldn't lunge right back out on the attack.
Something had struck a chord with Frank, to the degree that he sought to harm, if not kill me upon my return. If I was none the wiser to this man's story, I was ready to declare myself a versed expert in the fact that there was something deeply rooted and altogether wrong with him. A lesser man might have cut him loose, locked him out, and severed all ties as they left him to his own new defenses there in Indiana as they hopped town to the next stop in the tour. It just wasn't me. For whatever reason, maybe in my youthful naïveté, I saw a man who needed help, and for all the harm he'd tried to do me just then, I couldn't, in that moment, turn my back on him. I made a solemn vow to myself and to God to find a way to somehow better this man who was hurting so before we finally went our separate ways.
Malkav
If there's something that tends to surprise people once I "let them in", so to speak, and begin allowing them access to what makes me Daniel Kirkbride beyond my self identification as a follower of Jesus and a product of God's creation, it's a small bit of trauma that wallows in my past. By and large, the stories that make up the broad spectrum of what makes each WFWF star unique sort of trump my little corner of darkness by way of their severity or lasting impression, but none the less, I'm a firm believer that even the most remote, minute instances in a man's life sort of each play a role in developing the final product that he will one day become. After all, even a missing teaspoon of an early, key ingredient can cause irreversible damage to even the simplest of culinary creations.
Between the ages of six and seven, I was haunted, almost on a nightly basis, by a a chronic, contiguous series of night terrors. Now, I know right off the bat exactly what you're thinking - every kid has nightmares. They see a scary movie, or something on the news that their still developing minds cannot quite comprehend, and those sorts of images kind of get wedged into a funny part of their brain, shocking them out of a good night's sleep and creating a few restless nights for all those in the household.
Were my dreams the fleeting, momentarily scary type that sort of went away when mom came by to assure that they were nothing than dreams and that they weren't real, then in all likelihood, I wouldn't stop to bother with conjuring up the memory, but as we've established, these dreams, regardless of content or context, were something more. Something surreal. Something so impactful that I hold staunch in the notion that they became a part of who I am today.
Early in my career with the WFWF, it was interpreted by some that I had something of a shaken relationship with my mother and father, on account of the opposite ends of the spectrum to which we each fell in regard to my choice in career. The reality of it all couldn't have been further from the truth, and over the course of that year or so in which I was shaken from my sleep on an almost nightly basis, they out forth the effort to try everything in their power to make the fear go away. Parenting, though far from my list of priorities at any given time, must be one of the most simultaneously rewarding and challenging undertakings two people can embark upon, and I thank God each morning for blessing me with two that cared so much to provide as best of all life's comforts as well as they possibly could, for better or for worse.
For all their efforts - the money they sunk into specialists and sleep studies, the humiliation that must have come with the investigations into their own persons, hardly eased by the relief of being proved to be non-effects in their only son's terror - nobody could quite pin downturn source of the gut wrenching, nauseating fear that was Malkav.
While I'd come to discover exactly who and what Malkav was as an adult, a discovery that forever alter the trajectory of my life, my career, and everything I ever thought I'd known, at the age of six, he was little more than the very embodiment of terror to my sleeping mind's eye.
The dreams were very often the same - I'd find myself slowly walking down a nondescript, slowly deteriorating, narrow hallway bathed in just enough light to see my steps ahead of me. Either side was peppered with a repeating pattern - door, window, window, door - for as far as the eye could reach, reappearing with each step I took as the corridor drew on and on, seemingly endless, the darkness providing a void for the hall to stretch on for an eternity.
Finally, when it felt like I could walk no further, a figure would manifest at the furthest reach of visibility, drawing me closer to focus the image in my sight. As I closed in upon the figure, his minimal features would come into sharp contrast. Bathed in the darkness, he was visible from the knees up. He was always draped in the same, tattered dark outfit, akin to a boiler suit or a mechanic's clothes. Drawing closer still, his face, or what served as a face would twist and contort into sharp focus, yet it was like no living face I'd ever seen before. Rather than a tone of any color flesh, it appeared rather to be stitched together from assorted scraps of rotten, deceased flesh from another being, the mouth twisted into a broad, open smile.
As I came to a halt, he'd reach out his hand, beckoning me closer, almost as if reaching for my throat. Only then, before he could clasp his fingers around my neck, he'd try and speak, only able to utter a raspy and harsh series of groans and hisses...
...and I would wake.
The name "Malkav" was never once uttered in the realm of sleep. Somehow, in conscious cold sweat, I just knew. That was the name that came out. If I'd known then what I know now, the end game solution would have come so much easier, sparing the cost of an immeasurable amount of specialists who spent the year diligently questioning me from all angles, trying to source the root of the man called Malkav and the specific, to a drawn detail manner in which he manifested.
As quickly as these dreams came on, one night they ceased. I slept through the night, and again, and again, and somehow, the normalcy of life that a seven year old boy should be able to come expect out of life slowly returned. That's not to say, of course, that Malkav had been washed from my mind entirely - for years I pondered just who or what this demon in my dreams could have been, and at times, mostly when I was running on empty, I'd find myself strolling down that hall toward inevitability once more.
I credit the pairing of faith and the consequence of my strengthened resolve with helping to eradicate the dreams of a twisted, vile man named Malkav from my life. By the time I'd reached the age of ten and had begun studying under the tutelage of Father Marshall, my visions of Malkav had dwindled down to an occasional nuisance that I was quickly able to consciously pull myself from. While never one to turn my nose up to the advances of science and medicine, Father Marshall, as usual, helped me to put my fears into perspective, and in turn, make them not into something that controlled me, but rather, something I could take the reigns of and steer toward my own personal betterment as a person and a walker of faith.
"Well, try and look at it this way, Daniel. Do you fear death?"
"Not really, no."
"And why is that?"
"Well, I mean...we've talked about this before. It's like you said, death is sacramental. Good, bad, or indifferent, whether we believe we're headed to Heaven or Hell or a hole in the ground, we've all got that one intermediary step in between to get to our final destination, right?"
"We focus on the end result, not what will put us there."
"Exactly. We should fear what we can control - heights or water, things like that."
"And these dreams, this man that haunts them. Can you control that?"
"I've tried..."
"No offense, Daniel, but as best as your mother's told me, even the state's finest doctors have sort of come up empty in that regard, yes?"
"Heh, yeah..."
"So why waste the element of fear on that, like death or taxes, which cannot be controlled?"
My dreams, of course, as these things tend to do, soon became so much more than subconscious manifestations of ingrained fears of the unknown, but prior to that, Father Marshall's words allowed me to mold Malkav until he became something of a token for me when it came to encountering the unknown, conquering uncertainty. For years, a mystery that haunted me as a child in a very real and very lasting way became my beacon, my trophy. It helped me to cope when I'd lose a relative old age, or to serve as a rock to a friend who'd just lost a beloved pet. For me, the unknown - be it death, the future, an opponent, or a haunting, became almost void of my concern. Through my faith, through overcoming fear, through vanquishing Malkav and all which could not stare me in the face and pose an obvious threat, I became stronger. I became empowered.
Surely, if I could conquer Malkav, then nothing God could put on this Earth could become an immovable obstacle in my path.
Inevitability
Looking back, if I were to give the notion of inevitability in the WFWF a name, it would be Dave Demento.
By all accounts, Dave Demento's career had, by the time is carved out a small little niche for myself in the earliest days of my own, become so much of what I had wanted for my own path to whatever God held in store for me, having put me on this path. While I can't speak to much of his early days playing second fiddle to an aging Randel Benjamin, the fact is, Dave had broken free of the chains that bound him professionally, established a place for himself at the top that should be the envy of any man or woman looking to our field when considering their own livelihood, and moreover, he'd broken out of the shadow of Randel Benjamin, the shadow of ultraviolence, and the shadow of a sneak attack laden with cowardice and poor intent to step back into the spotlight, call to gather a band of like minded comrades, and inspire those around him toward a better, brighter tomorrow.
You can sort of draw your own conclusions here.
Whenever two separate movements strive toward one common end game, there will always be variances in approach. While I'd come to admire the purpose and intent that backed the SOS, it's probably no secret that I'd have done things a bit different. While getting involved in the politics of Lila Sleater and how they defy those of Trace Demon and his Final Revolution sort of comes with the territory they'd embarked upon, I feel that a movement such as theirs, occupied by those that drive it forward, was laden with unnecessary distractions that could, in turn and kept unchecked, turn into detractions.
Dave Demento had embarked on a path that, given the fortunate circumstance, I'd have gladly taken up arms alongside, and should those who'd benefit from the ultimate accomplishment of the SOS' mission deem it worthy, I'd have been honored to take the reigns of when Dave's days drew to a close. It's probably no surprise that a lot of what is at the forefront of the WFWF as a whole comes into a sort of clash with my own personal set of morality. I'd come to the WFWF not to vanquish it, so much as shed a bit of light amid the darkness, so as to not come here just to step on my own two feet and wind up hurting my own personal cause. Dave, clearly the more seasoned of the two of us, was a much more obvious shoe in to lead the charge against what was plainly diminishing the value of the WFWF. Where I'd lead a one man charge, Dave could assemble an army. Where my cries for change would be met with looks of confusion and uncertainty, Dave was a household name. I'd come to the WFWF to inspire others, to bring light where there was none, and in turn, by taking up arms in a fight that boiled down to the classic dichotomy between good and evil, Dave had inspired me.
We imperfect humans, however, cling so to our vices.
A battle cannot be won if the field is fogged and hazy. An enemy cannot be focused upon if the cavalry is flanked by the half hearted, and an army cannot be whole if there are soldiers unfocused on the task at hand.
Dave Demento's intentions were all pointed in the right direction - the truth is, we all stood to benefit from the toppling of Trace Demon's regime. I just can't help but wonder how much focused Dave may have been if he weren't out imbibing with Penny Shannon and rubbing romantic elbows with the likes of Lila Sleater. Too often, it's these distractions that become the fall of many a great idea. To see Demento and his SOS fail was never on the radar of things I wanted to get out of my venture with the WFWF. I wanted to succeed. Push myself. Overcome the odds. To date, I'd accomplished all those things, and was on track to continue doing just that, but then, of course, we must factor in the rearing of inevitability.
It was always going to be Dave Demento. Having overcome matches against Nikki and Josh Dean, it was only the natural next step in the path to wherever it was I was headed. The game had changed. Nikki Dean had not yet captured the National Title when first we met. Josh Dean's days of International glory had not yet resurfaced. At the Takeover, for the first time ever, I would be setting foot inside the ring against a reigning champion. Victory would solidify my place among the top echelon of the company. To face defeat would be the ultimate setback - insurmountable to some. Odds stacked higher against me then they'd ever previously been. Going undefeated can only drive you so far, and with each win, the prospect of that first loss swells and swells with ever increasing impact. Each win makes the prospective fall that much further.
In more favorable circumstances, Dave and I might stand shoulder to shoulder. Truthfully, were the lines to become drawn in the sand, I can tell you that without hesitation, I'd find myself on his side of the battlefield,y own reservations about the distractions hounding the SOS aside. Every great parable about the clash between good and evil begins with a group of like minded people taking a stand against the roots of evil. There are leaders - Dave Dementos. There's the muscle - Nikki and Josh Dean. Penny Shannon. And more often than not, there are those of us that need to be coaxed into battle.
At the Takeover, I'd stand across from Dave Demento, an opponent. The stakes were inevitably high - maybe more so for me than for him - but win, lose, or draw, I headed into that arena telling myself, at least, that even a curt nod from Dave would indicate that we had, at very least, an understanding. An unspoken agreement. The acknowledgement that though our approaches may vary, though we may never draw arms together and though on that night we stood apart as opponents that through the thick of it all, we stood on the same side. For the same cause. To overcome the same obstacles that would make tomorrow better for him, for me, and for all who made their living through the WFWF.
Squaring off against Dave Demento was not a path easily traversed. Dave's path to the SOS and the International Title was no walk in the park. Collectively, the WFWF roster had achieved so much, overcome so many insurmountable odds. Every man and woman who walks through that curtain has a story. It's those who become complacent, who reach certain divets in the totem and feel that for all they've overcome, the path from there on out will be akin to a peace walk, who falter on by the wayside. Who stands to come out stronger - the man who settles for all he's got, or the man who strives to improve himself with every waking sunrise?
Getting Sorted
"I let you go, you gonna keep cool, Frank?"
He exhaled something chokingly fierce, but nontheless, nodded defeatedly. He was drained, likely cramped from having had his arms hooked for what must have felt like an eternity - I can only guess, based upon how the strain had started to wear my own arms down. Anticlimacticly, I broke the hold, letting his collapse exhaustedly into a heap, face down upon the floor. Stretching my own arms out, I settled in, leaning against one of the room's queen beds, tilting my head back, hoping to crack my neck.
"We're gonna need to find a way to get you sorted, Frank."
He pulled himself off the ground, stretching himself out, though I imagine he'd find himself feeling this a lot more come morning than I would. Seemingly contented to let me make it through the night alive, he settled in beside me, favoring his neck from the arch I'd put on it pressing down on his head.
"We're gonna need to find a way to get you calling me by my given f*ckin' name..."
I dont know good luck 
