- Event: Refueled LIV
Left eye twitch.
Simon Loveless is either focusing on something or he is having a brain hemorrhage. We’ll go with the former and if it’s the latter, well then everything will just suddenly stop. As the camera pans back from the twitching eye of Simon Loveless it appears that he is looking at a hand of five red backed Bicycle cards. In front of him as well is a pile of chips, and just as the camera stops moving back it is peaking over the shoulder of another player’s poker hand. Five stud, to be exact. The visible hand is two pair sevens over fours, a decent hand.
A good one to bet on.
Especially when your opponent is having an apparent brain hemorrhage concentrating on his cards that much.
Chips splash the pot from the unseen man with two pair.
Loveless looks up from his cards just to get an idea of what the raise might have been. He goes right back to looking at his cards as a sly smile begins to grow across his lips.
LOVELESS: “Alright, boss man. I’ll call you. And don’t splash the pot.”
Loveless pushes what chips he had left in front of him, and lays down his hand. Trip-fours. An absolute monster of a hand.
LOVELESS: “Whatcha got?”
The unseen man lays down his hand, somehow that two pair he was holding has transformed into four aces. There is a laughter off camera from the unseen man as the look of shock grows on the face of Simon Loveless. Loveless scrambles his arms across the ring as the look grows into one of bewilderment.
LOVELESS: “Wha… I don’t get… how?”
The laughter continues as Loveless knocks the chips around looking through the cards.
VOICE: “Haven’t you figured it out kid? I hold all the cards, all the time.”
The voice continues to laugh at Simon.
LOVELESS: “Bu… but you’re fucking blind, how did you know?”
Left eye twitch again.
This time he’s not concentrating on his cards.
The camera fades to black.
SNAP of the fingers!
And back to reality, well at least a twisted reality of sorts. There sits Simon Loveless on a couch next to the love of his life and his manager, Missy Monet. Missy is dressed up in complete opposition to Simon, who looks like a pro-wrestler at all times even at the supermarket, and she is not even holding her phone in her hands. Yes, Missy Monet is not holding her phone or looking at Instagram. Instead she is leaning forward, which is awesome for all you motorboat fans, and intently stares at the person who just snapped their fingers. That person is dressed in a sweater-vest, collared shirt and tie get up and is about as stereotypical looking as a person who does couple’s therapy would look. We’ll call him Tad and assume he’s a vegan.
TAD: “Thank you for sharing with us, Simon. So, would you agree that work might be the biggest cause of stress in your life with these dreams? Do you have any different dreams?”
Simon leans forward, but Missy cuts him off.
MISSY: “No, please stop asking about the dreams. All I hear about are the variations of the one dream with the rigged poker game. He watches Rounders, constantly. So, it’s either that or he works in the line ‘pay dat man his money’ or ‘he trapped me’ over and over again. The other day he held up the line at the store telling the check out girl about the dream and instead of playing poker against the blind guy, it was against a blind Johnny Chan. Enough with the dreams, I’m sick of the dreams.”
Missy leans back on the couch, the crowd gets angry. Simon is a little taken back by this revelation and the fact that Missy spoke for this long. There’s a look of shock on his face.
TAD: “What I’m hearing is that these dreams are a strain on the relationship? Good. What do you think of that Simon?”
The look of shock disappears from Simon’s face.
LOVELESS: “Okay, no more dreams then. Tad here asked me about why I wasn’t sleeping and I told him about the dream. I get it, you’re sick of me talking about my dreams. No more dream talk today. Let’s move onto conspiracy theories then.”
There is a roll of the eyes by Missy and an audible groan. In fact, she completely tunes out of everything as she picks up her phone and begins to swipe through it. Simon doesn’t seem to notice as he leans in towards the doctor and continues to speak to Tad.
LOVELESS: “…see? This is what I put up with, Tad. I try to say my peace and the moment I do, she flips out the phone and begins to Instagram or Snapchat or I don’t know what else. Just the other day I was explaining about how no matter what I do, the blind man is always one step ahead of me because there have to be ears everywhere and Missy goes off about something about one of the Kardashians doing something.”
MISSY: “That was our waiter and all he asked was would that be all.”
LOVELESS: “Well, he did ask. I’m going to need a ruling on this Tad.”
Tad leans back as Missy goes right on back to swiping through her phone again.
TAD: “I’m not here to judge or to give rulings, Simon. This is couples counseling where we try to work through your problems together. We only build bridges here.”
Simon looks towards Missy, and then towards Tad.
LOVELESS: “Wait, this is couples therapy? I thought this was HOW Human Resources. You tricked me, Missy. You tricked me!”
Simon gets up and storms off.
We fade to black.
Let’s hear from our hero, all by himself.
“Say what you want, but for me? Couples therapy was a complete waste of time. I know where I stand, I know where Missy stands. As for Tad? I don’t care where he stands. In all honesty, I could never trust a man who would ever say the phrase ‘we build bridges’ and when asked what he had in his fridge responded by offering me ‘a good craft IPA’ beer. Could you imagine that? Someone thinking that anyone else on planet Earth would actually want to enjoy a good craft IPA. Especially a guy who was supposed to quote unquote help me work through my problems.
My problems.
These are not just my problems, let’s be clear on all of that first off. And secondly, I am the only one who can work out these problems. See, this puzzle piece here?”
Sure enough Simon holds up a puzzle piece.
“To the untrained eye this is just a puzzle piece, one of thousands that might be located within a single set. But to me? This is just one piece in a grand conspiracy that grips the entire HOW. Yes, every single person in that locker room is under the thumb of one blind bastard who controls everything. Doesn’t seem like much of a conspiracy, right? But when you ask the question how does the blind man see, well that’s when the pieces begin to fall into place.
Who is helping him, exactly? Is it just the Best Alliance? Maybe, are there others? Probably. And it’s time to start figuring out for myself. Maybe then when I fit the pieces of the puzzle together I could get myself a good night of sleep.”
And Simon slaps the piece down onto something just off camera.
“Scottywood! Long time roster member! Multiple time champion! Hall of Famer! And best of all… management. Does he even own thirty some odd percent of this place anymore? I don’t know, and honestly I don’t care. Once you get that stink of management on you, there’s no getting it off. Once a rat bastard, always a rat bastard and definitely the type of person to nibble the old man’s ear after he’s done spilling everything he knows into them.
Scottywood! Hall of Famer! Class of two thousand and twelve. Really? Shit. That’s like a decade ago, I’m sure it has expired by now, no? You probably should have taken the hint when they immortalized all those years ago and just walked away from it and became immortal. You’re just hanging on now… and it’s gotten sad. But since you’re a legend and all, what was it like wrestling Betsy back in the day? You probably don’t even remember back that far, let’s face it Scotty you’re to the point in life where that cool and hip “A” tattoo on your chest no longer stands for anarchy. That sagging skin and mid-life crisis “A” tattoo just stands for Alzheimer’s disease. I think your next trip to the shop you should get your phone number and home address added.
I kid, I kid. You’re not in that bad of shape, you spent weeks working on those forearm muscles while you trapped yourself in Alcatraz. How’d that match in solitary turn out for you? Do you even remember? I do.
I remember a lot.
I remember how the old man screwed me over in my match, and now I’m just waiting for the next one here. But before he does, I’m going to hurt you Scottywood. I’m going to hurt another Hall of Famer, and more importantly I’m going to hurt another member of the conspiracy against me. Here’s just a taste of how I’m going to do it too.
What’s this?”
Slowly Simon picks up one of those craft IPA beers, he gives it the old sniff and grimace look because that’s piss water. Instead of drinking it, Simon turns that beer ever so leisurely to its side allowing the hand-brewed craftiness of that beer splash onto the floor below. As more leaks out Simon keeps rotating the beer over.
“Looks like I got something out of couple’s therapy, afterall.”
As the last bits of the beer hit the floor below, Simon cracks a sly smile and winks at the camera. We fade to black.