Post by Kai Stevens on Jun 6, 2019 18:12:00 GMT
CHAPTER NINE:
complicit
“All the clocks stop.
From then on it was only night.
The snow turns black before my eyes
at the end of the mighty white.”
Alexisonfire
“Many men before you have tried and failed to take me to the gallows,” a voice hisses as we fade in from an enveloping black. “And you will be no different, Kelly.”
It becomes clear as we complete our materialization into color that the voice belongs to none other than Pure Champion Kai Stevens. The Infernal Baptist sits on a black steel folding chair, much like the one Stevens longs to use to teach his Number One Contender a lesson he would never forget, with a hangman’s noose knotted tightly in his hands. Behind him, the setting appears to be a blackened studio, perhaps. The black walls serve to emphasize the fire dancing upon his eyes, the striations on his cheeks from the clenching of his jaw. He dons a pair of black jeans, a pair of black Timberland boots, a black belt with a silver buckle, a black Hayley Webb t-shirt, a black Divine Wrestling beanie with the logo over his right temple, and a black leather jacket. Leaning forward and resting his upper body’s weight through his elbows on his knees, Kai looks down at the noose and narrows his eyes. He allows a soft chuckle to escape his lips before flicking his eyes up to the camera stationed opposite him. As a sinister smirk spreads across his bearded visage, Stevens continues his wrathful rhetoric.
“The people closest to me have been pleading with me to let it go... To be magnanimous about it,” he explains. “But at Bloodshed, Ryan? I’ll be anything but magnanimous. Y’see, throughout my time here in Divine Wrestling, I… I’ve gone toe-to-toe with the best this company’s got to offer. And while I’ve grown tired of reiterating where I believe I rank in comparison to my so-called peers, it’s worth noting that I am the only person to have held the Pure Championship. I am the only person to have defended their title with success at the rate I have. And so while I’ve gone toe-to-toe with this company’s best, they pale in comparison to those I’ve gone toe-to-toe with around the world. I’ve faced the best this business has to offer, and what’s more? I’ve beaten them.” Stevens shakes his head and looks down at the noose again, tossing it lightly back-and-forth between his hands. “And yet you still decided to pick… A fight... With me. The people closest to me want me to let bygones be bygones… Forgive you for your transgressions against me over the past couple of months… But by now you must know me well enough to know forgiveness isn’t really something that I do. If you don’t know me well enough by now, Kelly? You’re even dumber than you look,” he chuckles humorlessly. “If there’s anything I refuse to tolerate, it’s disrespect. And disrespecting me seems to be what you’re hinging your entire fucking career upon. I’ve taken my knocks on the chin in this business, Ryan, but you? You’re nothing. A nobody. There’s damn sure not enough blood on your knees, blood on your hands for you to have the balls to disrespect me the way you have… I’m a fucking institution in this industry, motherfucker. And you are just a cog in the machine. You’re nothing more than cannon fodder, and y’know what? People like you, people who don’t know the meaning of the word respect? They don’t deserve Championship opportunities… They don’t deserve Championships like mine... But what they do deserve? What you deserve, Ryan? Is your teeth kicked clean through the back of your scalp.”
As he says this, Stevens lifts his white-knuckled right fist and extends his index finger beside his head, gesturing to the back of it. When he lowers his hand back down, he once again gazes down upon the noose with a contemplative tightening of his eyes. He remains this way for a moment or so before shaking his head and continuing to speak without lifting his gaze back to the camera. Once he utters the word ‘truth’, his eyes flick up with nefarious intentions.
“They tell me I should take it easy on you,” he spits disdainfully. “That I should be… Merciful. They say you don’t belong here, and that… That somehow you being in over your head places the burden of clemency on my shoulders. But you and I, we know the truth, don’t we? We both know that when it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter if you belong here or not. You’re in my line of fire either way, Ryan, and I don’t fucking MISS.” The Judge, Jury, and Executioner pulls his right hand from the noose he grips and points his index and middle fingers at the camera in the shape of a gun. After ‘firing’ his thumb down, he snickers and narrows his eyes so as to continue. “Just ask Michael Maddox. Just ask Ricky Stanton. Neither of those two bottom bitches have been heard from since I kicked their teeth down their fucking throats... And you? You managed to escape from my full wrath at Supremacy, Ryan, but I can promise you... There’s blood on your name and I’ve come to fucking collect.” Kai nods his head for emphasis, malice aforethought coursing through his every vein. “There’s no escape for you this time, you stupid son of a bitch. Nobody’s gonna’ be worried about running from the Dullahan, save for those in the audience with weak constitutions who can no longer stomach the visual of what I’m about to do to you, motherfucker.” Wetting his lips, the Prodigy of Ronin snarls as he elaborates further. “But you? There’s nowhere for you to run, nowhere for you to hide… There is only Bloodshed. There is only the Matthews Arena in Boston, Massachusetts. There is only somewhere for you to die.”
His own verbal skewering of his Challenger seems to amuse the first and only Pure Champion, as a small stretch of foreboding laughter parts his lips. Scratching at his beard, Kai Stevens thinks back to various moments in his hundred and eighty-five day-long reign as Champion, from winning the title in the first place from his former New Age Plague brethren, Miles Taylor to ending Michael Maddox’s career at Seasons Bleedings, from successfully defending the title in a triple threat (every Champion’s least favorite stipulation for a title defense) at Supremacy to SAGA 6’s six-person mixed tag team match alongside the impressive Sophia Alva and Jessica Anderson. As he gazes back down upon the noose in his left hand, Kai visualizes what will, in all likelihood, become his personal favorite moment in his reign: the permanent dispatching of Ryan Kelly at Bloodshed.
“What do you actually know of the gallows, Ryan?” asks the Revenant rhetorically. “Did you know that death by hanging is a long, painful experience unless your neck breaks? Did you know that… That it will be SO much more than just your neck I break come Bloodshed? Did you know that no method of execution this world’s ever seen could compare to the brutality... To the macabre of the End you’ve got coming your way. By the time I’m through with you, if you even have enough life left in you, you’ll be begging to be hanged to just get it over with... But I will not oblige you, motherfucker. I must taste in your torment, Ryan… I must bathe in your blood.” As the Cowboy Killer continues, he does so with a furrowed brow and the corner of his upper lip curled into a venomous sneer. “Without Ricky Stanton, Ryan, you wouldn’t even be alive to face me for my title again. Without me? You wouldn’t even be Number One Contender. It was me who carried our team at SAGA 5. It was me who won that match for us, won that Contendership for you. You haven’t earned a DAMN THING in this company, this business, and you challenging me for my title, doing so as disrespectfully as you have? It’s the single biggest mistake of your career— Of your life... And the last one,” he quips. “I would take this last chance to say goodbye to family and friends… To say goodbye to alcohol, the only thing that could EVER love you back… Because there won’t even be enough left of you for a proper fucking funeral once I’m through with you. It’s the price you pay for your insolence… The price you pay for opening your fucking mouth.” A truly evil grin spreads across Kai’s face as he snickers ominously under his breath. Narrowing his eyes, he continues his devious diatribe. “When I hear the scream of the banshee, Ryan, it won’t be me who perishes… Because that scream? That scream is really just your own. And no matter how desperately you plead, no matter how sincerely you beg for mercy, motherfucker? I am your gallows. Your End is Nigh.”
With this, Kai pulls the noose and every inch of the knot unravels, leaving Stevens with a length of rope in his hands. Grinning confidently, he chuckles with a sinister tone and throws the rope away. Nodding his head, the last image we see is the ominous sneer of the Infernal Baptist before we fade to black...
fin.
Follow Us On Twitter! 
