Post by Douglas Crane on Feb 2, 2022 22:55:32 GMT -5
Douglas Crane lays down in a sofa at a psychiatrist office, here for mandated sessions by Project: Honor, if he is to remain employed there. His erratic behavior in and out of the ring, his violent attacks in the backstage area and questionable actions during his promos have landed him here. Many other places have tried to get him to go to one in the past, but they all failed. Project: Honor must feel special to Douglas; he has said recently that this place was it for him. It is unknown if it was meant as in ‘he has finally found a home’ or as ‘this is his last shot’ or if another way, but whatever the case may be, here he is, in his second session, the first one not having gone so well.
Douglas Crane is sitting across from the first psychiatrist he has ever visited in his life, he is staring right at him with that cold stare of his, gripping the wooden handles of the chair tightly. Why he does this is not clear, is he fighting the urge to leave? To attack? Is he just uneasy being here, or are the words being spoken by the ‘shrink’ having some sort of effect on him? The shrink is not visible, his voice is heard, but not one hundred percent clear. It is also not muffled, but not distant either, just as if his voice was being heard from behind a glass or being filtered through something.
Crane breaks the handles off the wooden chair, gets to his feet and then launches himself across the desk and begins to beat the shrink with both pieces of wood, sending blood flying everywhere. Only until he has broken both pieces of wood on the man’s skull does he stop. He looks at the blood on his gloved hands and then begins to smear it all over his face and neck.
IT FELT LIKE THIS ASSHOLE!
Static noise fills the air and the screen, and as if the scene was reset, Douglas Crane is back to sitting in the chair, gripping the handles tightly; beads of sweat coming down his forehead.
Crane: Yes doctor, I am.
Crane: Angry doctor, it made me felt angry.
Crane: Of course.
Crane begins to blink rapidly after not blinking at all the whole time he was here and then suddenly; he breaks the handles off the wooden chair! He looks at the two pieces of wood in his hands and smiles so creepily before jumping to his feet and then unto the desk! We still don’t get to see who the shrink is, but we get a repeat of what we thought we saw earlier: Crane beating the hell out of the shrink with both pieces of wood, sending blood flying everywhere. Only until he has broken both pieces of wood on the man’s skull does he stop. He hops down from the desk, looks at the blood on his gloved hands and shrugs.
Crane: Oh well, we tried.
Crane is looking out the window, his right arm resting on his forehead while his left arm hangs to the floor where his hand is doodling with his index finger on the fancy rug.
Crane: No.
Crane: Why do you ask questions for which the answers to, you won’t believe.
Crane: We do not need help.
Crane: Explain.
Crane: Like LeeAnn Morgan.
Crane: My opponent this Saturday.
Crane looks away from the window and then stares daggers at the shrink.
Crane: What did you say to me?
Crane: Never you mind, who did I hurt last week?
No response.
No response.
No response.
Crane lays back down and goes back to looking out the window.
Crane: Is not a decease. A decease is something that makes you ill, hurts you, maybe even kills you. What we have, is nothing but perfect harmony.
Crane: No.
Crane: Yes.
Crane: There is nothing going on with us.
Crane: It’s not a disorder!
Crane: Like legion, we are many.
Douglas Crane closes his eyes as he has a flashback, he remembers the elevator leading up to the first floor, he remembers all the buttons he could press, so many numbers, so many floors, but they are all out of order, he tries to organize the numbers, tries to figure out how many floors there are but he can’t. He comes back.
Crane: I don’t know.
Crane: I do.
Crane: Yes.
Crane: Yes, I know. Some of us don’t like to follow the rules, some of us don’t like order, some of us have been waiting a long time to come to the lobby and some haven’t, and just keep finding ways to sneak out or to cut their place in line. Unfortunately, when they get out of hand, it causes us in the physical world to lose control and to block out. The more of us there are out here in the physical world, the less control the valet has.
No answer.
Crane: Correct.
Crane: No.
Crane: I don’t know, I am but one of many, but I do know who is the only one that is allowed to be violent. He is the only one allowed to be released.
Crane: No.
Crane: The Douglas Crane you see in the ring, he’s the grappler. He is the wrestler, the one that loves the sport and the one who can keep most of us in order, specially… The Monstrosity.
RELEASE ME!!
We don’t see the psychiatrist, but we do hear him jump out of his chair as Douglas scream those words out of nowhere and then settles back down on the sofa.
Crane: Yes, The Monstrosity is the violent one within us, the one doing the attacks, the one always thirsty for blood. If you hear us screaming that during our match is because he is trying to get out but the grappler holds him back. He wants to kill, the grappler in us just wants to wrestle with honor.
Crane: No, is likely that the monstrosity did the attack, but someone else released him. There is one more when it comes to the wrestling aspect of our lives, we call him conspiracy theory, or CT for short, and he acts as a sort of manager or agent for the grappler. He even calls the tree of them the wrestling trinity, and he too can control the monstrosity.
Crane: Because he feels that the ownership of Project: Honor, but frankly, any promotion we join, is always out to get us. He feels like they keep us down and will never allow us to reach our full potential. He is the one feeling like Project Honor is not giving us our due shot at the Warrior Rising title.
Crane: Very good doc, I guess you are good at your job!
The doctor notices a slight change in the voice of Crane and quickly catches his eyes as they blinked rapidly before going back to that cold stare. “This” Douglas smiles at her.
Crane: The very same.
Crane: The question is, why not? But before I answer that, I do want to be clear that is nothing against LeeAnne, we didn’t know a thing about her before last week and had she not been the one placed in front of us, our paths would likely never have crossed. But she is the lamb being led to the slaughter by management and so we must do what we must do.
I am so sick and tired of being put on the shelf while wrestler after wrestler, old and new, gets opportunities for the title we are after. Four people jumped the line and when I went to see ownership about it you know what they said? Oh, don’t worry, you are in the ‘next’ bracket of challengers along with LeeAnn and Lexie Gold… What kind of bullshit is that doc?! We have been here over two months and have yet to get a shot at the title that is supposed to be for new wrestlers like us looking to make an impact.
Besides, LeeAnn already got a title shot, she fought the Gatekeeper champion and lost and yet she is thrown in the mix for another title right away? No, she doesn’t deserve it, she needs to go to the end of the line and earn her shot again, I don’t care that she made Diane say the words I quit. She got a shot at a title, she failed, let others have a chance now.
I am so tired of waiting, and I will not wait until an official match to send our message. That is why I released the monstrosity on LeeAnn in the backstage, though I really wanted to do it out there in the ring so the masses could watch live just how destructive we could be. But it wasn’t meant to be and so we took care of business in the back. What we did to Morgan and Gold is but a sample of what we can really do and continue to do until we get what we want.
At the next Proving Ground, inside the square circle, the grappler can have his match, but he better release him again and let him send a message to the entire roster by complete destroying her.
Crane: For now. It’s only a matter of time until he realizes that wrestling along isn’t going to get the job done, we need to be vicious if we are going to get past Morgan and Gold and those four nobodies that jumped the line ahead of us.
Crane: Not if I’m behind the wheel. These sessions are a waste of time, consider yourself lucky that you didn’t end up like the shrink from two weeks ago.
Crane stands up and moves towards the desk, we hear the doctor wheel the chair away from him.
Crane’s right eye twitches, he shakes his head slightly and then goes completely still. The doctor tries to get his attention, calling him by his name or the names she just learned but nothing. She snaps her fingers at him in front of his face, but nothing, he’s gone. Static noise fills the air and the screen again, but this time the scene doesn’t reset, instead it changes completely to the old house we saw in a few promos back. Except that the house is not condemned but in great shape, neatly painted with vi, the grass freshly mowed. In the backyard, there is a playground set up as well as a trampoline and it is here where we see tree children, two boys and a girl jumping and having a good time. On the deck of the house, their mother watches them play from a rocking chair as she sips on some lemonade. Just then the sound of a motorcycle is heard arriving at the house and the mother quickly jumps to her feet, tossing the lemonade aside. She quickly calls for the children.
Mother: Quickly, hide before he sees you.
The children laugh, clearly, they are playing hide and seek with their father who has just come home from work. While the children laugh, the mother doesn’t, and seems quite worried. One of the kids hides in the shed while the little girl hides in the bushes. The younger of the three, hides underneath the trampoline. The door of the house leading to the deck swings open and the dad, dressed in a business suit, stumbles out, he is clearly drunk and not looking to happy. The mother goes to greet him happily, but he slaps her hard across the face, knocking her down. Two of the three children don’t see this happen, but the one underneath the trampoline does. He stares at his father standing over his mother as he takes off his belt. He watches this, but doesn’t make a sound, just watches with those ice cold blue eyes of his.
2 Weeks ago
Douglas Crane is sitting across from the first psychiatrist he has ever visited in his life, he is staring right at him with that cold stare of his, gripping the wooden handles of the chair tightly. Why he does this is not clear, is he fighting the urge to leave? To attack? Is he just uneasy being here, or are the words being spoken by the ‘shrink’ having some sort of effect on him? The shrink is not visible, his voice is heard, but not one hundred percent clear. It is also not muffled, but not distant either, just as if his voice was being heard from behind a glass or being filtered through something.
Well I must say Mr. Crane, I am impressed that you have agreed to finally come see me as your employer didn’t think it was possible. Admitting you have a problem is the first step after all. Now I’m looking at your file here, which is quite thin, barely anything is known about you so clearly, we have a lot of work to do here but let me see if I can summarize what has been going on the last few months with you OK? So, you are a professional wrestler, currently working for Project: Honor but it seems that the wresting inside the ring, which can be quite violent, is not enough for you as you seem to have this pent-up anger that you are releasing in the backstage area, the arena and in public places when you are not even scheduled for any sort of event. You had a trios match which your team lost so you, in your anger for losing I’m guessing, decided to take out one of your opponents, and you left him incapacitated for a couple weeks. Now you recently had a match with him to settle your differences, but unfortunately you lost. It seems to me that you went after TJ because he was the one that won the trios match, and since you weren’t the one pinned, you thought you needed to prove that it wasn’t your fault. However, when you finally fought TJ one-on-one, you also lost. So, let’s focus there: how did it make you feel knowing that a, you were wrong and b, this loss was all on you?
Crane breaks the handles off the wooden chair, gets to his feet and then launches himself across the desk and begins to beat the shrink with both pieces of wood, sending blood flying everywhere. Only until he has broken both pieces of wood on the man’s skull does he stop. He looks at the blood on his gloved hands and then begins to smear it all over his face and neck.
IT FELT LIKE THIS ASSHOLE!
Static noise fills the air and the screen, and as if the scene was reset, Douglas Crane is back to sitting in the chair, gripping the handles tightly; beads of sweat coming down his forehead.
Mr. Crane? Are you alright? Are you still with me?
Crane: Yes doctor, I am.
Would you like me to repeat the question?
Crane: Angry doctor, it made me felt angry.
Can you elaborate?
Crane: Of course.
Crane begins to blink rapidly after not blinking at all the whole time he was here and then suddenly; he breaks the handles off the wooden chair! He looks at the two pieces of wood in his hands and smiles so creepily before jumping to his feet and then unto the desk! We still don’t get to see who the shrink is, but we get a repeat of what we thought we saw earlier: Crane beating the hell out of the shrink with both pieces of wood, sending blood flying everywhere. Only until he has broken both pieces of wood on the man’s skull does he stop. He hops down from the desk, looks at the blood on his gloved hands and shrugs.
Crane: Oh well, we tried.
Present Time
Mr. Crane, can you hear me?
Crane is looking out the window, his right arm resting on his forehead while his left arm hangs to the floor where his hand is doodling with his index finger on the fancy rug.
Douglas, are you with me?
Crane: No.
Then who is?
Crane: Why do you ask questions for which the answers to, you won’t believe.
It doesn’t matter if I believe them or not, right now, this is our first session just to establish a baseline of where we are and what kind of help, I can provide to you. I need to know the basics, and not the basics you have given your employer but yours, who you truly are and where you are in your life at the moment. Only once I know who and what I am dealing with, I can help you.
Crane: We do not need help.
Yes you do, but not in the way you imagine.
Crane: Explain.
I can help you control your anger, so it is released at the right times, at the appropriate times: inside the ring and only inside the ring, when you actually have an opponent across from you who wants to hurt you as much as you want to hurt them.
Crane: Like LeeAnn Morgan.
Who is LeeAnn Morgan?
Crane: My opponent this Saturday.
You mean the person you already hurt two weeks ago?
Crane looks away from the window and then stares daggers at the shrink.
Crane: What did you say to me?
You? What happened to us?
Crane: Never you mind, who did I hurt last week?
You act surprised, were you not aware that you attacked LeeAnn Morgan two weeks ago for no apparent reason in the backstage area? Earlier in the night you came out for her match and watched her but unlike when you were watching Lexie Gold, you actually jumped the barricade and for a moment everyone thought you were going to attack LeeAnn right then there. But you didn’t; what changed?
No response.
What changed Douglas? What was going on inside your head then?
No response.
What is going on inside your head now?
No response.
Douglas you have to give me something to go on please, anything.
Crane lays back down and goes back to looking out the window.
Douglas do you know what decease you have?
Crane: Is not a decease. A decease is something that makes you ill, hurts you, maybe even kills you. What we have, is nothing but perfect harmony.
You don’t think you are sick then?
Crane: No.
So you know what’s going on with you.
Crane: Yes.
Tell me please, I need to hear you say it.
Crane: There is nothing going on with us.
We’re back to us I see. Douglas, you are telling me that you are aware that you have an identity disorder correct.
Crane: It’s not a disorder!
Fine, is not, but you are aware that you have multiple personalities within you.
Crane: Like legion, we are many.
How many?
Douglas Crane closes his eyes as he has a flashback, he remembers the elevator leading up to the first floor, he remembers all the buttons he could press, so many numbers, so many floors, but they are all out of order, he tries to organize the numbers, tries to figure out how many floors there are but he can’t. He comes back.
Crane: I don’t know.
OK good, you may not even realize it but we are making progress as we speak. Do you remember when you were in New York city, when you did a promo for your match with John Blade?
Crane: I do.
Do you recall having a conversation with yourself, well, one of yourselves, the cab driver?
Crane: Yes.
He told you then that “some of you” had gotten out but you didn’t know how many. Do you think it is possible there are some of you that you are not aware of, that there are some of you that you can’t control?
Crane: Yes, I know. Some of us don’t like to follow the rules, some of us don’t like order, some of us have been waiting a long time to come to the lobby and some haven’t, and just keep finding ways to sneak out or to cut their place in line. Unfortunately, when they get out of hand, it causes us in the physical world to lose control and to block out. The more of us there are out here in the physical world, the less control the valet has.
The valet? Who’s the valet? And what do you mean by physical world, what other worlds do you know?
No answer.
Fine, so if I am understanding correctly, the Douglas Crane I am speaking to, was not aware of the attack on LeeAnn?
Crane: Correct.
But do you know who did the attack?
Crane: No.
How is that possible Douglas?
Crane: I don’t know, I am but one of many, but I do know who is the only one that is allowed to be violent. He is the only one allowed to be released.
Released? Whenever you are wrestling, you are always screaming those words, specially during your submission. Is that the same Douglas Crane?
Crane: No.
Then who? You have to help me Douglas, I can’t call you all Douglas Crane, specially since you are fully aware there are many of you.
Crane: The Douglas Crane you see in the ring, he’s the grappler. He is the wrestler, the one that loves the sport and the one who can keep most of us in order, specially… The Monstrosity.
The Monstrosity?
RELEASE ME!!
We don’t see the psychiatrist, but we do hear him jump out of his chair as Douglas scream those words out of nowhere and then settles back down on the sofa.
Crane: Yes, The Monstrosity is the violent one within us, the one doing the attacks, the one always thirsty for blood. If you hear us screaming that during our match is because he is trying to get out but the grappler holds him back. He wants to kill, the grappler in us just wants to wrestle with honor.
*ahem*, I think I understand the wrestling dynamic. But if the grappler or the monstrosity didn’t do the attack, who did?
Crane: No, is likely that the monstrosity did the attack, but someone else released him. There is one more when it comes to the wrestling aspect of our lives, we call him conspiracy theory, or CT for short, and he acts as a sort of manager or agent for the grappler. He even calls the tree of them the wrestling trinity, and he too can control the monstrosity.
Why conspiracy theory?
Crane: Because he feels that the ownership of Project: Honor, but frankly, any promotion we join, is always out to get us. He feels like they keep us down and will never allow us to reach our full potential. He is the one feeling like Project Honor is not giving us our due shot at the Warrior Rising title.
I see, wow Douglas, I am learning so much from you but unfortunately, we are out of time. Before we end, let’s circle back to who attacked LeeAnn Morgan and why? Do you think CT took over at the last show since you didn’t have a match and there was no need for the grappler? Do you think he ‘released’ the monstrosity on not only LeeAnn but Lexie Gold?
Crane: Very good doc, I guess you are good at your job!
The doctor notices a slight change in the voice of Crane and quickly catches his eyes as they blinked rapidly before going back to that cold stare. “This” Douglas smiles at her.
Um, CT?
Crane: The very same.
Why attack LeeAnn? You already knew you had a match with her in a couple of weeks, why go after her?
Crane: The question is, why not? But before I answer that, I do want to be clear that is nothing against LeeAnne, we didn’t know a thing about her before last week and had she not been the one placed in front of us, our paths would likely never have crossed. But she is the lamb being led to the slaughter by management and so we must do what we must do.
I am so sick and tired of being put on the shelf while wrestler after wrestler, old and new, gets opportunities for the title we are after. Four people jumped the line and when I went to see ownership about it you know what they said? Oh, don’t worry, you are in the ‘next’ bracket of challengers along with LeeAnn and Lexie Gold… What kind of bullshit is that doc?! We have been here over two months and have yet to get a shot at the title that is supposed to be for new wrestlers like us looking to make an impact.
Besides, LeeAnn already got a title shot, she fought the Gatekeeper champion and lost and yet she is thrown in the mix for another title right away? No, she doesn’t deserve it, she needs to go to the end of the line and earn her shot again, I don’t care that she made Diane say the words I quit. She got a shot at a title, she failed, let others have a chance now.
I am so tired of waiting, and I will not wait until an official match to send our message. That is why I released the monstrosity on LeeAnn in the backstage, though I really wanted to do it out there in the ring so the masses could watch live just how destructive we could be. But it wasn’t meant to be and so we took care of business in the back. What we did to Morgan and Gold is but a sample of what we can really do and continue to do until we get what we want.
At the next Proving Ground, inside the square circle, the grappler can have his match, but he better release him again and let him send a message to the entire roster by complete destroying her.
But inside the ring, you don’t control him, the grappler does.
Crane: For now. It’s only a matter of time until he realizes that wrestling along isn’t going to get the job done, we need to be vicious if we are going to get past Morgan and Gold and those four nobodies that jumped the line ahead of us.
Well Mr. Crane, I thank you, um, all of you, for your time. See you next week, same time?
Crane: Not if I’m behind the wheel. These sessions are a waste of time, consider yourself lucky that you didn’t end up like the shrink from two weeks ago.
Crane stands up and moves towards the desk, we hear the doctor wheel the chair away from him.
Listen, I understand your frustration. You feel like you deserve something, and you are not getting it, but maybe you just need to work a little harder for it. Please, let’s talk after your match this weekend. I would love to get to know you better, maybe we can talk about your past and see if there is anything there that can help us. I would love to know about your childhood…
Crane’s right eye twitches, he shakes his head slightly and then goes completely still. The doctor tries to get his attention, calling him by his name or the names she just learned but nothing. She snaps her fingers at him in front of his face, but nothing, he’s gone. Static noise fills the air and the screen again, but this time the scene doesn’t reset, instead it changes completely to the old house we saw in a few promos back. Except that the house is not condemned but in great shape, neatly painted with vi, the grass freshly mowed. In the backyard, there is a playground set up as well as a trampoline and it is here where we see tree children, two boys and a girl jumping and having a good time. On the deck of the house, their mother watches them play from a rocking chair as she sips on some lemonade. Just then the sound of a motorcycle is heard arriving at the house and the mother quickly jumps to her feet, tossing the lemonade aside. She quickly calls for the children.
Mother: Quickly, hide before he sees you.
The children laugh, clearly, they are playing hide and seek with their father who has just come home from work. While the children laugh, the mother doesn’t, and seems quite worried. One of the kids hides in the shed while the little girl hides in the bushes. The younger of the three, hides underneath the trampoline. The door of the house leading to the deck swings open and the dad, dressed in a business suit, stumbles out, he is clearly drunk and not looking to happy. The mother goes to greet him happily, but he slaps her hard across the face, knocking her down. Two of the three children don’t see this happen, but the one underneath the trampoline does. He stares at his father standing over his mother as he takes off his belt. He watches this, but doesn’t make a sound, just watches with those ice cold blue eyes of his.
