- Event: Bottomline
FRIDAY, 11 PM, THE LODGE TAVERN
Outside in the near crawlspace like environment, Jack Harmen nurses a few drags of a cigarette. The smoke has one of those worm like ash trails that only an elderly smoker can properly do. The embers almost light his graying long hair as he sucks in the nicotine. He’s had a few beers. Perhaps he shouldn’t have, but what’s done is done. Don’t regret the past. Look to the future.
Tomorrow, he faces the Sun God.
And the world wonders what sort of version of High Flyer will show up.
There’s been a lot of different versions over the years, so it’s a valid question. Is it the young upstart showman from the late 90s. Who wow’d and thrilled audiences with death defying leaps of despair? Or the cynical corruptor of dreams of the Mid aughts, who dominated across the wrestling world selling out arenas worldwide. Or maybe the manipulative coward of the teens, hiding behind a false frailty disguised as cancer.
Here’s the thing. Jack Harmen, High Flyer, El Harmattan, Nirvana, Thirteen, Pepsi Man 3000, he’s got enough personas to fill Pandora’s box. As he stood there, one leg standing on the wall, he took two or three quick swipes at his own skull with strikes. He looked around, making sure he was alone, before taking another drag.
Did he get in over his head?
Is the Sun God truly holy? Will Jack Harmen, aka High Flyer, burst into radiant light in the sheer presence of the almighty?
Or is this God a lie?
Flyer takes one last drag, and throws the cigarette against the signature bricks.
Rah? He’s just a man, ready to be toppled.
**
High Flyer, with long almost santa claus-esq white beard and graying dyed green hair, a white toga-esq robe covering his naughty bits, birkenstock sandals…
No… That isn’t High Flyer. Not anymore. High Flyer was once the epitome of youth and exuberance, of risk and reward.
Not this… deranged lunatic of an individual.
This man, known to the wrestling world as Jack Harmen. Cold and calculated. Guarded. Ready to strike. Insane in all the right ways.
Jack Harmen stands in front of a giant redwood tree, sporting that upper dad mid 40s bod. The metal clanks of weights tied to his legs beneath his loose fitting jogging pants, as Jack reaches out and strikes the tree with a calf kick. The white stripe goes vertical to the earth as Harmen strikes the tree.
The metal clanks, with a resonating thud, and splinters fly off.
And another.
And another.
Shards and pieces of wood fly off into the air. Repeated strikes by Flyer show his focus, determination, as each one gets him closer to cutting down the redwood. And if Jack Harmen can cut down a Redwood?
Maybe he can cut down the Sun God…
As his kicks increase in speed, the tree buckles, a small chunk carved out from repeated physical blows. It may have taken him hours, but it looks like a deep crack loosens the structural integrity.
So Jack Harmen backs off, takes a moment, and charges toward the Redwood.
LOCOMOTIVE!
After a moment, birds flee in the skies. Rodents screech and rush off. A large redwood falls in the woods. Everyone hears it, creak, timber, and CRASH. Even people who aren’t there.
If a tree falls in the woods and it’s kicked over by High Flyer’s locomotive? Everyone hears it.
Everyone.
**
Listen Rah. It doesn’t matter what happens. You’ve already sealed your fate.
You refused to speak to me. To treat me with respect. I won’t forgive. I won’t forget.
I will make you rue this decision.
I told you I will follow you to the very ends of this earth to destroy everything you love if you didn’t speak directly to me, and you still refused. Now, Jimmy Buffet’s death is on your head.
As is Barbie.
As is Dawn’s.
Struck a nerve, did I? BOTTOMLINE… I ensure the end of everything you hold dear. I don’t care. It’s fun to me.
Everything you love will be ripped away from you. By me.
You’ve done this to yourself. You could have avoided this.
You could have talked to me.
Just. Talked to me.
Now? I won’t stop.
I will persist, forever.
A perpetual energy machine, one that disobey’s the laws of thermodynamics. I will disrupt every moment of your life until you can’t remember a time I wasn’t involved.
I will make you pay for being YOU.
And I’ll laugh in your face as I do.