Post by Chris Callum on Jun 9, 2019 4:50:31 GMT -5
Silence and Debt
“I’m not going to wax poetic on greatness anymore, I swear,” Peter said, rubbing his eyes.
A hotel restaurant in Houston, Texas. Soft music fills the air. Chris Callum looks across the table at the boy, Peter, with a thin smile on his face. He twirls his drink in the glass as Peter tries and fails to contain his laughter.
“You haven’t stopped flattering me since we sat down. Why stop now?” Callum flashed a smile.
“Because it’s getting boring. If any man understands the need to move on, I think it’s you.”
Callum nodded as he took another sip of his drink, appreciating the proof that the boy had been listening. The story that spanned from GIW to CWC, and everywhere that came before, between, and since, is a hard one to handle. But Peter loved the twists and turns.
“No sense in moving on unless you have a plan for what comes next. What comes next for us?”
“My room. Upstairs.”
As Peter waited for a ‘yes’, Callum looked around the restaurant. Peter, with his dark hair and blue eyes, was the best catch in the place. Callum reached for his wallet and placed it on the table. Opening it, he hesitated for a moment as his fingers reached the credit card. He felt a pit in his gut as Peter’s hand found his.
“I got it. How often will I get to say I bought a millionaire dinner?”
Callum smiled and exhaled. He covered it with a laugh as the two stood and made their way out of the restaurant and up to the hotel room. It was awfully serendipitous, he thought that the two of them would meet at the hotel bar. And what exactly does Peter do? Why is a 25 year old man staying in a hotel as nice as this, alone? These are questions that Chris thought to ask, but Peter’s endless praise and questions and flirations left no time. As they arrived at the door, however, Chris realized he did not care.
Peter opened the door and held it inside the room for Chris, who entered as he took off his suit jacket. He rounded the corner and out of the corner of his eye caught glimpse of a figure. He turned, and his heart jumped. It was Aspen Chaud, his frequent business associate, and he was certainly not expecting her. Callum yelped, and Aspen found it funny.
“Long time no see Chris. How long as it been, a whole year now?”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yes, I’m here. Petey, you can go now. Thanks for taking one for the team.”
Peter and Callum exchanged a glance. Peter shrugged, apologetic, and then left.
“You’re not the fucking mafia Aspen, what is this?”
“You won’t return my calls or my texts and we need to talk.”
“So you made the decision to hire that guy to lure me into a trap?”
“Petey is my stylist. Boys have always been your weakness, boys and your incomparable levels of self-doubt. You aren’t exactly hard to trap.”
Callum sat down on the bed and rubbed his hands on his face. He had a feeling that he knew what she wanted, and he had been avoiding her for a reason. Aspen rose from the chair and pulled a folded paper out of her purse.
“I got an invoice last week from a company in LA claiming that you owe them sixteen thousand dollars for film equipment purchased last year for CWC shows. I need you explain why this isn’t paid, and more importantly, why the hell this was sent to me.”
He hesitated. He knew that hesitating around this woman was an affirmation in her mind that her assumptions were absolutely correct, but he couldn’t find the right words.
“How broke are you, Superman?”
When he said nothing, she crumpled the paper up and tossed it at him before sitting back down in the chair. She thought for a moment, and then spoke.
“I don’t know what in the world made you think that CWC debts can be left unpaid now that you’ve moved on, but I’m happy to be the one that tells you it absolutely doesn’t work that way. So I made some arrangements and we are back in the wrestling business. You’ll sign your contract with Valor Pro Wrestling tomorrow morning and we will be on a plane to Cairo within the week. Your first match will be a battle royal with title implications.”
“No.”
A long moment passed. Aspen tightened her grip on the chair.
“No?”
Callum tapped his feet on the floor, visibly shaken, as he spoke with a quivering voice.
“No. I’m not wrestling again. I’m not… no.”
“You clearly cannot make decisions for yourself -”
He interrupted her with a burst of emotion.
“I have spent my whole career trying to be respected. I don’t care if it’s love or hate anymore, I just want the respect. CWC… what we did… all those people we got together under one roof… people finally realize that I’m not just a… one off champion or something. They respect me for what I did. I finally have that and I’m not letting it go. So no. No more wrestling business.”
Aspen tilted her head. It’s hard to know if what she felt in that moment was sympathy, or a strong desire to appear sympathetic. She rose and crossed over to Callum, finally sitting beside him on the bed and placing her hand on his back.
“Chris - no one will ever respect you.”
He lifted his head, disgusted with her. They locked eyes.
“The feats you accomplished in Galveston were mocked. CWC has already been forgotten. You need the money, so that’s why you need to wrestle. But if you still want respect, you can’t expect anyone to remember those triumphs. You have to constantly shove it in their faces, and the only way to do that is to stay in the wrestling business and shove it in their fucking faces.”
He shook his head.
“People respect me.”
Aspen grabbed him by the chin and turned his head toward hers.
“You are forgotten. I didn’t choose Valor because they were the only ones interested in you, Chris. Valor currently employs all of the Zombies, Brennan Devlin, Cosmo Cooper, Caroline Burchill, and even that little interview girl. You signed all of their checks in CWC. And Cosmo and Caroline… you plucked them from the gutter and turned them into stars. They don’t think about you anymore. They don’t mention your name in their thank you speeches. They took what you gave them and turned it into a career. You need to make them pay for that… disrespect.”
The word gave him goosebumps.
“Cosmo and Caroline and all the others still need to work. I don’t expect them to carry my corpse around with them everywhere they go.”
He turned to Aspen, his blood running cold.
“I don’t expect them to let me share their glory, like I have done with you for years.”
Aspen blinked and stood. She spoke as she paced the room, her voice raised in intensity, but remarkably still calm.
“You’re right. You carry me around with you everywhere you go. But you do that because you know that I plucked you from the gutter years ago when you were working in an oilfield in Montana.You were pathetic. But I saw one glimpse of your tape and I knew you were a star… so I invited you back to Galveston and made you a goddamn star! I’m the only one who truly knows your potential because I saw it when no one else did. And to this day, Chris Callum, you still know that. And you still respect that. So where you go, I go.”
Her lip snarled as she leaned into his face.
“Did Cosmo Cooper give you that respect? Did Caroline Burchill? Did any of these kids give you that respect? No matter if you brought them into this business or not, CWC changed the wrestling industry. Without you, God knows how many of these people would have sniffed a professional wrestling ring.”
She leaned back as he stared right into her eyes.
“I’m not asking you expect anything more from them than you expect of yourself. Go in there, be the best wrestler in the world like I know you are… like I made you to be… and put those kids in their goddamn place.”
He said nothing. He contemplated her words and did not move. He was frozen at the crossroads of two realities - his own and Aspen’s.
“Do you remember when we toppled Alioth Starre? Bronx Valescence? Alexis Terry? When we redefined wrestling with CWC? We changed the world Chris, and the world has repaid us with nothing but silence and debt.”
Callum closed his eyes. He saw the flecks of those memories pass by, but not long enough to truly imagine them. And then they were gone.
“Silence and debt.”
He opened his eyes. She was packing her things. She made her exit, stopping at the door. She turned to him as she fixed her purse on her shoulder.
“The room is yours. Think about it. I know you’re a slow thinker but I need to know by tomorrow afternoon whether or not you’re going to sign that contract.”
She opened the door, but stopped once more and turned to him, speaking to his back.
“Do you want me to send Petey back up? I’m sure he won’t mind.”
Callum let his head fall into his hands once again. He spoke to her like a disciplined child.
“No.”
Aspen exited with a shrug. Callum sat still for eternity. Thinking.
---------
Days pass. Callum finds himself in the spare room of his home in Galveston. He stands in front of a black screen with Aspen behind the camera pointed at him.
“Do you need the notes again?”
“No,” Callum said softly.
“Then go.”
He lifted his eyes to the camera and, for the first time since he had seen Aspen again, he smiled.
“One year ago I sat high in my throne on top of the world. I looked down and saw the arms of the Championship Wrestling Coalition extend to every corner. Little dots ran around, doing as I say, for me. No one has ever held power like that in the wrestling industry before I held it, and no one ever will again. Chris Callum - the architect of professional wrestling for a new age.”
“And when I was bored of it, I let it go. The world kept on going, but there was no order. No one to move the little dots around from high above. No one even tried, because they knew they would fail. When people try to accomplish the feats I accomplish, they fail.”
“For a moment, I had what I always wanted. Fear. Gratitude. Respect. But time marched on, and I was left in the past.”
Callum’s irritation was growing more visible. His eyebrow twitched as he leaned closer to the camera.
“Men like me are called legends in this business, and this business treats legends with respect. Book deals, manager gigs, guest appearances… Hall of Fame rings. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to live my life peacefully and be given all of those small gratitudes. That would have been enough for me to hang up the boots and the suit. My conquering days would have been over as a wrestler and a promoter and I’d have transitioned into the celebration… the twilight of my career.”
“Cosmo. Caroline. Zombie Clan. Katya. Devlin. You wouldn’t forget me like that, would you? You wouldn’t ignore my contributions to your careers, would you? You’d wouldn’t pretend it never happened, would you?”
“Did you?”
A beat. He stepped back, his mouth forming into a frown, his eyes screaming with sadness and rage and all of the emotions Aspen told him to feel.
“Yeah. All of you fucking did. And that cuts deep. Deeper than you can imagine.”
His pace quickened. Rage took over.
“When I wrestled in Galveston I tore down everything in my path to become the champion! Wrestlers, institutions, and and even glass ceilings fell before me. I don’t regret a single thing I did there but I never wanted to go down as a man who only took care of himself, so I gave back. I started CWC and gave hundreds of small time, inexperienced, poor little girls and boys their dream of becoming a professional wrestler. I put you on national television! I toured you around the world! I made you into stars! I am THE reason all of you have a place in this business and no one thought to even say thank you?”
“I can’t even a get a ‘welcome’ tweet from Cosmo Cooper, my prize of GCW, who no longer remembers the gift I gave him.”
“So when I signed here and everyone asked me ‘why?’. Now you know why. Because I tried to build people up, and now I need to tear them down again. One by one. Piece by piece.”
“At Rite of Kings on June 16th, the apocalypse comes for the future of wrestling. I will eliminate every wrestler in my path in that battle royal. You will all remember who I am, and the power I wield. And no empty ‘thank you’ will save you now.”
A sinister smile. Then, fade to black.