Ken Davison lays across the horrible orange and brown fabric of a couch seemingly found at an estate sale of a couple who hadn’t bought new furniture since 1974. With his arm resting on the arm rest, he is surprisingly comfortable. The walls are covered in a wainscoting, similar in look to the wood paneling you would see on the side of an old Station Wagon or an Atari 2600. It is exactly as Ken remembers his grandparent’s house back on Vernon Street from when he was a kid. It was one of the few safe havens he had from his mother’s mental hubris. In between moves, it would always seem as though that would end up back in Rockland. When his father left, when they were between moves, when his mother just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, find a job… this was the closest thing he had to a permanent home.

In his surreal, absurd, bizarre, crazy, fanciful, fantastic dreamworld, Ken still felt anxious, despite the odd familiarity of the room. He lays, arms across his chest, fingers interlocked but refusing to hold still. Ken keeps looking up at the ceiling while he is speaking.

“You have to understand something. I don’t understand how I can fly across the world, win a World Championship in another country, then come back here and lose to Vespertine.”

The truth of the matter is that Ken wasn’t upset about losing to Vespertine in and of itself. Vespertine was a good wrestler, a solid opponent.

“It’s like I can’t buy a win here. I won that clusterfuck of a match at Wrestlestock, but my entire life has been a clusterfuck. It makes sense. But outside of that, as a singles wrestler, I haven’t done shit aside from glimpses of my greatness in other companies. Kyra and I can beat anyone that the put in front of us. By myself, I am nothing.”

“That’s cuz you ain’t good enough for my mommy!”

Ken sits up, snapped fully into this unreal reality by the voice of his stepdaughter Adina. He rubs his eyes, confused. Adina looks at Ken with a look of anger which is like a miniature version of her mother’s.

“You win cuz Mama helps you. You’re not good. My daddy won all his matches by himself. You ain’t good like my daddy is.”

“What the fuck?” Ken says aloud. He places his head in his hands, covering his eyes. The words sting like a scorpion’s tail and feel just as venomous.

“You aren’t worthy to be a champion.”

Looking back at the chair, Adina has been replaced by Ken’s oldest and closest friend, Mac Bane, the man that Ken had coincidentally defeated for the Sin City Wrestling World Championship two weeks prior.

“You aren’t good enough to be a World Champion. You took advantage of me, took advantage of our friendship and you took advantage of what is going on with my wife. That is the only reason you beat me. You knew I was vulnerable and stabbed me in the back. You are not my brother. You’re a Goddamned small, petty, jealous, little man.”

“I’m not a snake,” Ken pleads to this reality displaced apparition. “I challenged you, face to face, man to man. I showed you respect, damnit!”

Ken turns away from Mac, clutching at his non-existent hair in frustration.

“I love listening to lies when I know the truth.”

“Of course you…” Ken spins around. He finishes his sentence, but slowly, shocked at the sight of Chloe Hawkhurst sitting where Mac had be a moment before. “…know… the… truth.”

“The truth is that you will never be a real father.”

Another voice, another venom entering his consciousness.

“You are a horrible person. No amount of good will ever make up for the things you have done. Just because you adopted Adina and took me in doesn’t make you a father. God killed your fiance because you don’t deserve to have children.”

The words are sharp, cutting like a knife. At the same time, they ring true to Ken. He looks around the room frantically, looking for somewhere, anywhere to run. The four walls have no doors, no windows. If Freddy Krueger wanted him dead, this would be the time and the place to do it.

Ken falls to his knees, sobbing. He doesn’t have any words. The walls close in around him, the lights darken, the room moves with his emotions, representing how he feels in this dream state. He cannot leave. He cannot escape. He cannot wake up. Face down on the ground, he curls up into the fetal position

“Know your worth, Ken.”

Ken is once again snapped back to this false reality. This time, he does not hear Adina, Mac or Chloe tearing him down. He hears his departed fiance, Crystal. He looks up, and through the magic of some stressed induced fever dream, sees her now sitting in the same chair.

“A bottle of water can be fifty cents at the supermarket, two dollars at the gym, three dollars at movies and six dollars on a plane. Nothing has changed its value but its place. If you feel like you are nothing, maybe you’re in the wrong place.”

As she speaks, the lights come up slowly, the walls seem to slide backwards into their original place. Even the decor changes, morphing from 1970’s chic to 2020 modern. The clean white walls, black molding and window frames that have suddenly appeared, allowing a bright moonlight through them.  

“I’m doing the best I can. I only wanted to make you proud, to do your memory justice. That was always my place.”

“It’s not your place anymore, Ken. This is…”

Instead of the sudden disappearances Ken has experienced so far, Crystal slowly dissipates, replaced by Kyra who appears in the chair, comfortably sitting with her legs crossed, eating a banana and making aggressive eye contact with Ken.

“I told you not to do that, it’s distracting,” Ken deadpans while trying to dry his eyes. He can’t. Where there were tears of frustration and sadness, there are now tears of joy. “Even in my dreams you do this shit to mess with me. What the fuck?”

“You know you like it,” dream Kyra coos seductively.

“I do,” Ken says, still collecting himself. “But, is THIS the time?”

It was a dream. Kyra would say anything Ken’s imagination told her to. Ken was somewhat unaware of this fact, even though he realized it was a dream.

“You need to stop doubting yourself. Carl Jung said: “We are not what happened to us, we are what we wish to become.”

Ken realized that had to be his subconscious talking. For all of her positives, quoting Jung was not one of them.

“Listen, asshole. I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me.”

“Backstreet Boys? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Kyra smiles.

“With everything we have been through, I’m not going to let you talk shit about yourself. Now , wake the fuck up.”

The room seems to fade away, almost dissolving around him.

“Ken! Wake up, dammit!”

“Huh?” Ken groans, somewhere in between sleep and reality. “What?”

“You were talking in your sleep. Something about the…” there is a confused pause on Kyra’s part. “Backstreet Boys?”

Ken sits up, quickly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

“I’m a good man. Right?”

“Of course you are. Why would you ask?”

“Adina likes me?”

“She adores you! Sometimes I think the little shit loves you more than she loves me.”

“And Chloe?”

“She’s grieving. She’ll come along.”

“What about Mac?”

“What’s with all the rapid fire questions? You want to tell me where this is coming from?”

“I just had a dream. I haven’t decided if it’s good or bad yet. Adina was telling me how you’re carrying me, then Mac was telling me I stabbed him in the back, the Chloe popped up and told me I wouldn’t ever be a real father, and,” Kyra puts her finger up the Ken’s mouth, interrupting what could have become the world’s longest run on sentence. 

“It was just a dream. They don’t really feel that way.” Kyra straddles Ken, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him. “It’s okay. I promise.”

“Crystal was there. She said my place is with you.”

Ken’s words were simple and direct. Usually when Crystal’s name came up, there was an awkward pause. This time, the pause was different. 

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I think she’s got a point.  I know that’s how I feel.”

“But, like, why now? Why in a dream? I know where I belong so why would I dream this? If I had any doubt, I wouldn’t be married.” Ken sighs. “I’m overthinking this, aren’t I?”

“That’s not my place to say.”

That’s Kyra’s way of telling Ken that, yes, he is overthinking it. After all this time, he’s become quite fluent in Kyra.

“How about we don’t worry about that and start worrying about that project we’ve been working on?”

“What project?” Ken asks. Kyra gives her husband a demure style. “Oh! THAT project!”

Kyra pushes Ken down on the flat of his back and leans forward, kissing him again, slowly, deeply, passionately.

“Yeah, that project.”

“Godly” Ken Davison is sitting in his bedroom, this time in his full regalia. On the wooden stool, he is front and center. In the background are two shelves, one to his left displaying his UGWC Cooperative Championship and to his right, the Sin City Wrestling World Championship. Today, he sports a pair of purple tinted sunglasses to match the purple collar around his neck.

“Holden Orson, Congratulations on your grand return to the Coalition. Having spent time away from companies in my illustrious career I understand wanting, needing, to make a comeback to prove something. I came back to this business after a widow-maker heart attack to prove to the world that I could be a World Champion once again. In my former company, I did exactly that. In fact, when they closed their doors, I was a triple crown champion. At face value, I don’t see you doing that. I see you’ve made this grand comeback to be Phrixus Deimos random tag team partner number three. Bro, you ain’t even good enough to get him as sloppy seconds. He must feel so dirty. So very, very dirty.”

Ken shakes his head as though he is ashamed of Orson.

“Where you are now, that is exactly where you are supposed to be, just as I am now. This is where <b>I</b> am supposed to be. This is where my wife and I are supposed to be. You see, I went to the cardiologist and I was told that I shouldn’t wrestle. I looked at the guy, looked him dead in the eye, and I told him to just hurry up. The reason that I didn’t care, the reason why I wasn’t worried about the consequences is because I knew that I was meant to do more, that I was destined for greatness. 2019, when I had my heart attack and made my comeback, was a horrible year for me, personally and professionally. 2019 was the catalyst, the spark, that gave birth to the greatest version of “Godly” Ken Davison that I have ever been. I know that I should have listened, I probably should have stayed retired.” 

Ken looks to the camera, waving his finger “No, no, no,” as if he were Dikembe Motumbo.

“But, that’s not who I am as a person. I’m a fighter. I have fought for everything I’ve earned or taken in this life. Kyra and I earned our Co-operative championships and Kyra and I took what was rightfully ours. Look at the two of you. The reason that the two of you have been thrown together is because your little buddy Pricksus seems to be the only one in this company who has the balls to try to challenge us. I don’t understand why he would choose someone like you when he couldn’t succeed with Donovan Hastings as his partner. You may remember Donovan, Coalition legend, the man with a resume as long as Ragdoll’s rap sheet. You know the guy, one of the greatest this company has ever seen. They could not defeat the Baltimore Elite. What makes you think that you can do better than Hastings, himself? Just a little food for thought. That’s not what’s important right now.”

“What is important is that you understand exactly who the hell it is that you are fucking with. All the personal shit, it’s brought me to this point. All of the high schools I got kicked out of… the two wrestling companies I’ve gotten kicked out of… all of the bad things I’ve done in my life have brought me here. Hurting kids. hurting other wrestlers, men and women alike… doing everything I’ve done wrong… it’s all out the window. Because when I defeat you… when the Baltimore Elite beats you and Pricksus at Massive Melee, it brings me one step closer to my redemption. For all the wrong I’ve done, Kyra Johnson is the one thing I’ve done right. To be here, with her, to take that next step towards becoming the greatest cooperative champions that this company has ever seen, continues with you. When Kyra and I break the record set by the Thames Valley Hit Squad, I have my redemption. I will have my penance. I need it. I need that absolution to wash away the sins of my past.”

That one vein in the front of Ken’s forehead is bulging because of how worked up he is. 

“I live with my demons. I have accepted who and what I am, what I became because of the things I have done in the past. Now, I have a future. I have a wife. I have a child. And it doesn’t matter what I do to or for the rest of the world, the fact of the matter is I need to do right by both of them. This whole creepy, spooky bulshit that we’re going to have to deal with again is nothing new for us, I know you’re just along for the ride, but since you’re on this Kendamned ride, you’d better fucking hold on because you are just along for the ride. I am the man behind the wheel. I am the man in control. I am the man that needs this more than you do.  I need to crush you underfoot and take another step towards my redemption. I am so tired a beating myself up. I am so tired of feeling like I’m a piece of shit because of what I’ve done. I am tired of feeling this pain every minute of every day.  One day, I want to look my daughter in the eye, when she goes back and watches my old matches and tell her that even though what I did was wrong, I was able to make it right. I need that for my conscience. I need that for my soul.“

Ken is slapping his chest, fired up. Even through the layers of fabric that he is wearing, you can hear the sound of his hand smacking against his chest. Once he gets that out of his system, he points to his wife, who just happens to be holding the camera.

“My wife will be at ringside with me. Our daughter will be back in the locker room watching my every move. That does not mean that I will show you any kind of remorse. From the time the match starts to the time the final bell rings, I will do whatever is needed to put you down. That does not mean that I will be any less vicious. There are plenty of ways to hurt a man well staying within the confines of rules. My personal favorite is when I catch a common, simple man such as yourself by the stomach and I take my left hand and I squeeze, and I turn your belly into jelly, as a once famous wrestler used to say. As I watch you squirm, writhing in pain, I take my right hand and I simply encompass your entire skull with my hand and crush your cranium. With the excruciating pain at not one, but two points, I am going to watch as you try to figure out if you’re going to involuntarily vomit or simply pass out. I hope that you have some spine. I hope that you have enough intestinal fortitude to choose one of those two options. Most people, they are weak, in body, mind, and soul. Those people, they simply give up. And when you do, the timekeeper signals my victory, then, and only then, will I show you mercy.”

Davison stands up, causing the stool to fall loudly to the floor. The video cuts out while Ken stares intently at the camera.