Prologue: One Month Ago
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
Gavin Taylor recognized the tone in his agent Ava St. Claire’s voice. She was pissed about something he had done – again. Truth be told, there were times where Gavin couldn’t quite remember what the normal tone in her voice sounded like. It seemed there was always some kind of craw stuck up her ass – something Gavin had done (or hadn’t done) to earn her ire. She stuck around mostly because of Gavin’s high profile – the position he’s in would be a tremendous boon for any agent with even half of her prowess and was something Ava couldn’t afford to lose. She had invested a lot in her All-Star, even if his stock had suffered since the loss of the SCW World Tag Team Championships.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” the All-Star responded with a slight note of sarcasm in his voice. This, of course, only incensed his agent further. She wondered to herself how a man could be so thick in the head… and this is after knowing Gavin for the better part of two-and-a-half years, so you just know there’s some real hamsters running around her head.
“Specific? Are you shitting me?” she responded incredulously, unsure whether he was really as thick as he is “letting on”, or whether it actually is an act – one which he extended to all corners of his life, even with her. “What were you doing saving Syren like that?”
The previous night on SCW Breakdown, Zoe Sperling – known as Syren to the wider professional wrestling world – was subjected to a blindsided attack at the hands of Gavin’s former Trios tag team partner-turned somewhat rival Katie Steward and her family. And while Syren’s family had been absent from the ring – a factor that Gavin had noticed but not particularly pieced together – Gavin wasn’t about to let that go down that way. He stormed the ring and saved the day in a manner of speaking. Still, like Atlas he shrugs.
“It was a three on one attack and, honestly, Katie Steward getting that rub kind of irked me,” he confessed. Professional jealousy is not something that the All-Star is above by any stretch of the imagination. Ava, however, can only slap her forehead with her open palm.
“It “irked you”?” she asked – though not in a manner of an actual question. Gavin still nods his head in response, because he of course treated it like an actual question. “You want to know what irked me?”
“Not really, but I have a feeling you’re about to…” Gavin responds dangerously – apparently being married for 12 years… to a Chase daughter, no less… hasn’t dulled his wit nor taught him any tact. Still, he gets sharply cut off.
“It irked me that you rushed to the aid of your rival’s spouse,” Ava continues, Not only irked! That’s past tense… it irks me right now!
“That’s heavy, but…”
“No, Gavin… there’s no “but” here!” Ava immediately jumps in, cutting Gavin off at the pass. “The optics aren’t good! After everything Ravyn Taylor…”
“You mean Thompson,” Gavin cuts in, “correcting” his agent. Her face tells the story and she is having absolutely none of that nonsense.
“Be serious, Gavin!” she chides him.
“Sorry.”
“After everything she did to sabotage your momentum, you rush our to Syren’s aid without a second of hesitation?” Ava rubs her temples, nursing a headache greater than one Gavin had ever given her before. “I just don’t know how we can reconcile this with…”
Before Ava can finish her thoughts, the pair are joined by one of Ava’s employees, April Anders, enters the room. She immediately cuts the tension off as she moves closer. “Excuse me? Ms. St. Claire? Do you have a minute?”
“Ugh… fine,” Ava rolls her eyes… she was really on a roll, and felt as though she was getting somewhere. Instead, the conversation needed to change. She turns back to Gavin. “Gavin, give us the room… we’ll finish this conversation later.”
“Actually it might be a good idea if he stayed,” April says, almost nervous to see what her boss might say about it. However, she doesn’t get chewed out.
“Why?” Ava asks. April immediately procures two separate folders, handing one to Ava, and the other to Gavin. Gavin begins to look at the information but clearly has no idea what they mean.
“We got the results in from the polling after Breakdown,” she leads in, letting that thought hang in the air. Gavin is still too oblivious to figure out what it all means, but for Ava the answers were already known. She was just about to have all the ammunition she needed to continue chastising her prized client.
“Here we go…” she says unenthusiastically. It gave her no pleasure to be right… okay, maybe just a little. .
“Gavin’s approval ratings…” April lets it hang in the air a moment longer. Ava is sure she knows what the next words are… but doesn’t expect them when she hears… “Are up.”
“…” Ava is stunned to silence.
“I don’t know what that means,” Gavin honestly responds. The polling numbers… everything around that was never of his concern. He always let Ava handle that kind of thing.
“Are you sure? Let me see here,” Ava continues to react with disbelief, looking inside the folder she was given. Her eyes go from shock and disbelief to elation and disbelief.
“You know that the ratings have been pretty static since the “Uncle Roy” controversy,” April continues explaining. However, the name used gets Gavin’s attention.
“Uncle Roy isn’t real!” he insists. However, his passionate response only gets more attention from Ava.
“Gavin, shut up!” she says, shooting him “a look”. Gavin takes the advice, shutting up. April continues.
“But Gavin’s save of Syren was viewed favorably by men 18-49, saw a spike in his appeal to housewives, and kids? There are stories of kids practicing their own Gavin Taylor Lariats.”
“This is…” Ava remains in disbelief, but a smile is plastered on her face. “Fantastic! I don’t believe it!”
“Well, the Lariat thing might not be the best news,” April interjects. “There are parent groups concerned about children using violent attacks on each other.”
“That’s no problem,” Ava brushes off. She had dealt with those kinds of groups before. “We just get Gavin to do a PSA encouraging children to not try this at home. Gavin, would you be open to that?”
“Sure?” Gavin responds, only half paying attention. “I don’t…”
“Perfect!” Ava jumps back in, not paying attention to Gavin’s reactions herself. “The people love that kind of fluff.”
And while fluffy public service announcements and opinion polling can be great on their own, Gavin only has one thought on his mind… “Does that mean I’m not in trouble now?”
“Gavin, that means that your instincts might have actually worked to our benefit for once,” April points out. Gavin thinks about it briefly, before smiling.
“Oh… cool.”
“What’s important now is that we go out there and capitalize on whatever it is you did,” Ava points out, her mind working a hundred miles a minute… them hamsters run very fast. “Get some wins. Build some on-screen capital. Make yourself a household name.”
“You know in Australia…” Gavin begins, his obsession with his one-time home nation continuing to be evident in his presentation. It was a miracle that he never asked to be accompanied by a kangaroo, or get a koala for a pet.
“This isn’t Australia,” April again cuts in with the buzzkill. “This is America.”
“They love me to…” Gavin points out. “Just not as much as Australia.”
“We’re going to fix that,” Ava chimes in, her confidence in her client’s position growing by the minute.
“You know they name kids after me there?” Gavin continues with his canned points. Ava, by this point, is listening through his words, seeing Gavin on a different level altogether.
“And soon they will here,” she confidently overestimates the popularity Gavin could attain in North America. But for the All-Star, it’s all… what do the kids say? Gravy? It’s all gravy.
“Cool,” Gavin responds, allowing the thought to enter his head and become canon. “Cooooool.”
This particular portion of our story draws to a close. Would Gavin pick up wins in the interim? No. Would his stock increase? Kind of. Syren’s challenge to The All-Star for a thirty-minute Iron-person match at the biggest pay per view premium event extravaganza of all the times managed to spark some confidence into him – a dangerous prospect considering what many consider to be his still untapped potential. Could such a challenge against a decorated Hall of Fame wrestler like Syren be what it takes to bring the potential in the All-Star to the forefront? Only time will provide the answer for that particular query…
AND NOW… OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION
Gavin Taylor can’t believe it.
“I can’t believe it,” he says, confirming what the previous line of narration stated.
“I can’t fucking believe it!” Gavin emphatically states. Apparently the thing he can’t believe is so grotesque and unacceptable that it has drawn The All-Star to profanity. I hope you’re happy, whoever upset him this way! “Those two were supposed to be easy… they were supposed to be a gimme! How did they survive? How did they DRAW!?”
Okay, so we can surmise from the additional information that Gavin is referring to the recent edition of SCW Breakdown where he and his tag team partner of the night, Syren (also his Rise to Greatness opponent, but let’s not muddy the waters too much here) were felled to a draw with Samuel T. Davies and Chlamyd… er… “Where’s the Beef?”. And whilst the metrics of the draw were suspect at best… after all, it was a double-count-out, and everyone knows referees are supposed to overlook some minor rules infractions in tag team contests… the fact goes that Gavin Taylor now has a draw in the record books opposite those two competitors (if you could call them that (we’re debating it ourselves)). But for a self-professed future Hall of Famer, Gavin is very passionate about his performance. What happened was…
“That was bad…” he clarifies, cutting off our narration (what a dick). “This was worse than losing to Katie Steward! This is a low!”
Gavin spirals.
“Maybe…” he begins ominously, looking out into the distance as though this was a scene being filmed for a movie or a made-for-TV after school special. “Maybe it would have been better off if I never became a wrestler.”
BZZT!
CRACK!
Lights begin to flicker all around the All-Star. Gavin spins around, frantically attempting to trace a pattern in the lights message… Morse Code? No, Gavin knew that from his childhood walkie-talkies. A system blinking lights corresponding with each letter’s placement in the alphabet? He certainly hoped not, or he’d never be able to keep track. But it wouldn’t be a thought that envelopes his mind for very long, because not before too long the lights stop their show. Gavin breathes a sigh of relief before turning around and bumping chest-first into a being of light, falling back onto his ass.
“Who the fuck?” he asks.
“Who the fuck” indeed… because this appearance, an apparition at Gavin’s best guess (even if he can’t spell or really define “apparition”, he knew it was a Matthew Good Band song – that’s about it) filled Gavin with a sense of calm and dread, like he was simultaneously in the first and last places he ever wanted to be.
“Gavin,” the figure spoke to him, bellowing out with a deep and booming voice.
“Yeah?” he answered meekly.
“I am Claust,” Claust (evidently) stated. “I am an angel who has been sent to you to show you the folly of your ways… to guide you to clarity… and to foster peace within your troubled soul.”
“Troubled soul?” Gavin was genuinely confused – a running theme for the All-Star. “Look, buddy… I don’t know what you heard, but my soul is just fine. Golden, actually. It’s just a little bit of negative juju from a drawn wrestling match. Nothing of consequence.”
“This “negative juju”, as you call it, has drastic consequences,” the angel states. “For your desire to have never competed would have a far-reaching ripple effect on the industry as a whole. Whether you believe it now or not, every piece of the industry as a whole plays a vital role in it’s current composition. Had you not entered it, the industry itself would be unrecognizable from it’s current form.”
“Oh yeah?” Gavin asks, kind of impressed. He didn’t quite comprehend the idea that everyone shapes the industry, but he certainly did appreciate the idea that he was a vital component of the industry as a whole. Smirking to himself, he continues to ask. “Unrecognizable how?”
“Allow me to show you,” Claust stays, and he claps his hands. Suddenly, Gavin is standing in the middle of an all-white room. Gavin looks around, kind of shell-shocked at the speed at which he “transported” (thanks to our wonderful literary world, this became instantaneous… isn’t that neat!?). Gavin looks around, trying to find some reason as to why he was here. Then, one of the panels on the wall lights up. “This is an inner sanctum of reality. Here we can decipher the ways in which the world would be different stemming from your exclusion within it.”
“Cool…” Gavin says, not entirely understanding anything he was just told. But he still looks, seeing the screen. As he looks, he can see his old friend, Nicole “Ducky” Kinneck sitting alone in a room all her own. “What is this? Some sort of voyeur peep show?”
“This is your friend,” Claust says, pointing out something that Gavin already knew. As he watches, Nicole… or possibly Ducky… definitely not Pro or Luna… speaks to herself. Themselves?
“Hey, nany-nany, wee, nany-nany…” she says, expressing thoughts of abject gibberish. Gavin steps forward to the screen, reaching his hand to it.
“Oh Ducky…” he shakes his head, pressing his hand to the screen. “You’ve lost your mind completely.”
“Worse,” says Claust. “Without you to be a guiding light in her wrestling career, Nicole Kinneck abandons professional wrestling and joins a local theatre group…”
“Oh God…” Gavin, not a fan of public theatre, says as disgust begins to seep into his visage.
“Playing Ophelia in a hip-hop adaptation of Hamlet,” Claust finishes.
“OH GOD!” Gavin’s disgust lashes out at full volume. He could think of no worse fate than to be a part of a hip-hop adaptation of any Shakespearean property. “That’s enough… that’s enough…”
“That is hardly enough,” Claust points out. After all, this was only one vision of a present that had been averted by Gavin Taylor’s presence in the wrestling industry. There were more, surely.
“Why are you even doing this?” Gavin asks, clearly leading to something. “Why are you helping me?”
“I am helping you because I am an angel, and that is what we do,” he answers.
“How are you an angel?” Gavin asks. “I don’t even see any wings.”
“I help to earn them… for every time a bell rings, an angel gains his wings,” Claust says in a stoic, almost iconic manner. Gavin, however, remains unmoved.
“If that was true, why don’t you just hang out around wrestling shows?” he asks in a fully earnest manner. “There’s at least two bells every match. You guys hang out there, you’d be popping wings like D12 hung out around Purple Hills.”
“You know that song is about drug use, right?” Claust asks, showing concern that Gavin doesn’t actually realize this fact. “It’s called “Purple Pills”, not “Purple Hills”.”
“I know,” Gavin responds, reassuring the angel. “But I have something of a PG audience here, and don’t want to muddle the waters with things like referencing drug use.”
Gavin turns directly to your screen and smiles at you,. Because he does care. But this moment of fourth-wall breaking sugary goodness is cut off at the pass, as the screen lights back up and shows an empty square in Sydney, Australia. Gavin immediately perks up.
“What did you do to my statue?” he asks.
“What statue?” Claust asks, driving home the point that Gavin probably should have gotten by this point. “You never wrestled, right? Because of that, you never travelled to Australia, and your legendary status was never attained here.”
“You know I’m like Rocky there,” Gavin points out, disengaged from the conversation.
“Not in this universe, you’re not,” the angel reminds Gavin, who seems saddened by the revelation. “Without you to carry the Outback Wrestling League as it’s megastar, the league was forced into receivership and, subsequently, liquidated. Professional wrestling in Australia went south and they renewed their focus on…”
“Local theatre?” Gavin asks, showing a demonstrable bias against live theatre that is not shared by this narration, by the way. Some athletes think of themselves as above the theatre troupe, and personally I find that sad. Claust just sighs.
“Sure,” he says, just wanting Gavin to move on. “But do you get my point? Without you in professional wrestling, the industry would have a vastly different landscape.”
“But… STD…” Gavin begins, before being shot a dirty look from the angel, who Gavin didn’t think could give such a dirty look. He recoils slightly. “Right… fine…”
“Did you learn anything, Gavin?” Claust asks, hopeful that the very minor lessons shared mostly for effect would have resulted in a profound impact capable of earning his own wings. Gavin kind of shrugs.
“Ehh?” he responds. Claust throws his hands up in the air, almost ready to give up the pursuit until… “What am I doing?”
A light bulb moment.
The angel turns his head towards Gavin, an eyebrow rising as a smirk crawls onto his face. The screen lights up one more time… Gavin Taylor can be seen at a desk, rapping a pen against a stack of paper in front of him, pondering something or other. Our Gavin… the one watching himself be mundane, steps closer.
“Am I an accountant?” Gavin nervously stammers.
“Oh, God no,” the angel answers, shaking his head and oblivious to his own use of the Lord’s name being in vain. “With your math grades, you’d have to hire your own accountants for years to come.”
“Fair…”
“Gavin, you are in this world a sports agent, much like your long-suffering Miss St. Claire,” Claust points out. “The stack of papers on your desk are appearance contracts for your client.”
“Oh, well that’s not so bad,” Gavin says, resigning himself to a happier life. “Can we just slip into that o-WHOOOOOOOOA GOD NO!”
Gavin reacts with absolute abject horror as the Gavin on the screen stands up, revealing the six-pack that Gavin is so proud of has been lost under a paunch. The sight is too much to overcome and Gavin falls back, hitting his head on the floor as he passes out.
…
…
“Gavin?”
A voice echoes out in the All-Star’s head as he slowly comes to. Laying back on his locker-room floor, Gavin finds himself surrounded by the people closest to him – Ava St. Claire, Jack and Karl Barker, and a few backstage workers. He looks around…
“Where is he?” Gavin asks as he tries to pull to his feet. “Where’s Claust?”
“I’ll do you one better…” says Jack. “Who’s Claust?”
“I’ll do YOU one better…” says Karl…
“I swear, if you say “Why is Klaust”, I’ll see you fired,” Ava threatens outright. Karl tucks his proverbial tail between his legs and backs off. The Barker’s help Gavin sit up as Ava hands him a bottle of water.
“I think I just had the strangest dream…” Gavin continues infringing on another popular piece of fiction. “But none of you were there… what the hell, guys?”
“Sorry?” Karl asks, as though the apology was uncertain. Jack nods.
“What happened, Gavin?” Ava asks.
“I was taken to this… this room… it was all white with the panels all being TV screens. And I saw my present,” he relays the story… “At least, it was a present… one that would have been if I wasn’t a wrestler.”
“Gavin, did you take anything?” Ava asks in earnest. She was concerned off the bat that Gavin was somehow intoxicated and wouldn’t be able to compete in what would prove to be the biggest match of his career. Gavin, however, shakes his head.
“Nah, I’m clean,” he answers, belying Ava’s fears. “I think I just hit my head on something. But man… what a fucking weird dream.”
Gavin drinks some of the water, contemplating what he had seen. While he didn’t actually wish he never started wrestling… the visions he had were horrifying even without his paunch… Gavin had an increased awareness of his place in the industry, as well as the places of everyone else who laced up a pair of boots. But, at this juncture, as he thought back to the experience, he smiled knowing he was wear he was meant to be…
DING DING DING!
“What the…” Gavin was startled, remembering what Claust the angel had said about gaining his wings. He smirks, listening to the bells and knowing what it meant… until Jack Barker pulled his phone out.
“Sorry… I gotta take this,” he says, holding up his phone before exiting to take the call. But Gavin wasn’t dismayed. He nodded his head.
“Good job, Claust… good job,” he says out loud, confusing Ava and Karl, who look to each other before looking back to Gavin.
“Okay, Gavin, seriously…” Ava asks. “Who the fuck is Claust?”
The scene draws to a close.
“Good morning, afternoon, evening or night. It all depends on whenever you happen upon this recording for Supreme Championship Wrestling, really. I just wanted to come on here and give you a disclaimer personally. You see, I workshopped many ideas for what I wanted to do prior to Rise to Greatness weekend, and the idea of having a confessional… you know, like the kind they have on Big Brother… seemed like it might work. But when we brainstormed names for it… well, that was an ordeal. Who knew coming up with something fresh and original would be so difficult. So Confessions won the day. As for the Part IV you see there? Well… a little insight to the creative process here… when Usher re-emerged with his Confessions album, he didn’t really take anything away… it was the song Confessions Part II that did that. But even that was workable until musical genius “Weird Al” Yankovic released his Confessions Part III. Well, after that move, it just felt… wrong?… to have any further iterations of Confessions not be suitably and aptly named. So, since I haven’t scoured the world to see if anyone else had tried to lay claim to the fourth part, I felt it would be time now for me to plant my flag here. So, forevermore, when you see Confessions Part IV, you know where it came from.
Of course, to know what confessions mean, you have to look at the very nature of what it actually represents. To the Roman Catholic Church, confession – or the sacrament of reconciliation – is about purging one’s soul of the sin that would otherwise see one damned for all-time, and not in the Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar kind of way. After all… who sings that much at confession? It requires deep introspection and, ultimately, penance to show true remorse for one’s sins. This is not that kind of confession.
To reality TV fans, it’s where the dirt comes out. People like that guy or the blonde one or whatshisname or simply a guttural “her” can sit down in front of a camera completely in isolation and air their inner most thoughts. They’re often salacious and derivative, require no expending of intellectual faculties and will, more often than not, result in some kind of drama within the wider community, even if the revelations remain implied rather than stated outright in the “public square”.
This is more one of those.
Because the truth is, when Syren challenged me… The All-Star Gavin Taylor… to a match at Rise to Greatness, I wasn’t certain I deserved the spot. It’s not that I’m not great. It’s not that I lacked confidence. It’s just that… well, actually yeah. It was that I lacked confidence. I’ve never exactly been shy about my slumps. They happen. The problem was lately they seemed to be happening more frequently and with greater potency. That can really do a number on the ol’ ego, right? So when I was challenged, my first thought was cynicism… Syren wants a win at RTG and figured that your boy, Gavin, would be the right person to exploit for one.
But as the weeks went on, and she spoke to me, I began to come around. She didn’t challenge me looking for an easy W… she challenged me because she knew it wouldn’t be easy, because nothing I do has ever been easy. Look at my past to see that… I became a legend in Australia because I was the one to carry the fans back to a company on the brink of extinction. Even my marriage was a matter where we got hitched after her boyfriend made her choose between him and me. I won that one, by the way. In case you were wondering.
When I think about the match I have for Rise to Greatness, that’s something I remind myself – a former multi-time World Champion, someone who has once main evented this very show, wanted to face…
Me.
And not just in a regular one-fall to a finish contest. Oh no… that would be too simple, too run-of-the-mill. Instead, we’re giving the world thirty minutes guaranteed of Gavin Taylor versus Syren… a thirty minute Iron-person match. That’s another thing that, when I think of it, is perfect. Iron Man is my favorite Black Sabbath song, my favorite Avenger, my favorite endurance race, and my favorite Major League Baseball world record. So this match seems to be Taylor-made… that is tailor-made for Gavin Taylor. You know what? That line would be so much better if it was written down instead of spoken, but oh well… socks.
Oh… just to clarify that “socks” thing… when you spell it out, you get a Spanish translation for “It is what it is”, so I just say “socks” to save time because I’m clever.
The real confession here though… is that I really don’t know what to expect. I’m walking in to Rise to Greatness with one thing on my mind: Doing the absolute best that I can because if I can pull this off and beat Syren, my name is made. I’ll be set for life, and that’s even before my Trios contract comes into the picture. Thought I forgot about that? I never forget about opportunities that I’ve earned. Never! But in the end, I’m taking nothing for granted. I’m taking no guarantees. Doing the opposite of that cost both Syren and me a victory this last Breakdown. I’m not making that mistake again. Syren wanted me at my absolute best. She wanted the All-Star. Well, by God she’s going to get the All-Star! I could use any one of my nicknames right now, but this isn’t about tawdry gimmickry or anything like that. If you want that, watch the Gimmick Battle Royal. If you want an example of The. Very. Best. that there is to offer inside an SCW ring?
Watch Gavin Taylor versus Syren. Thirty minutes. It’s going to be memorable, I can promise you that much.”
"The All-Star" Gavin Taylor 