Valquist: Derrida's Diary (Prologue/Epilogue)

Night had beckoned on a peaceful city. Governed by a loose mandate of expression, the city was still bustling at night. A sky of solar-powered lights litter for mile after mile. Chris McCarthy was lost amongst the span of the city, slowly losing focus with the day as his eyes drain and the sustenance of the day wears thin on his chest. Once again based in Infinity Arena, sleeping comfortably in an executive sweet that overlooked the central ring from high above, Chris had retreated. Spending the day doing Val’s bidding, researching into Cameron Behringer. When presenting any case against his opponent, Valquist was not interest in reading into it. ‘Let me be me’, it’s a saying that Chris keeps hearing from Val.

Those words followed Chris as he finally lay flat on a thick-tog king sized duvet. Waiting to fall asleep, too tired to change from his uncomfortable denim trousers and stinking black and blue chequered formal shirt. Life on the road, In Infinity, and across the many oceans with the Visionaries, Chris knew he wasn’t built for sustainability in the long run. The time he had, believing his own path to be one potentially short, was ruthlessly spent building a global audience on his flush site, Intro to Wrestling. Just as Chris had begun to switch-off from the day’s work, his eyes closed but still aware of the outside world, a bang. Followed by another, and another. Faintly, growing louder and more intense with each passing minute. Chris was surrounded by darkness, every light in every Infinity executive box was switched off. Chris ignored the thuds until he could hear the sound-board vibrate against the glass overlook.

Infinity Arena was dimly lit, and as Chris looks up the ring-ropes were shaking but nobody was in the ring. Chris turns back to bed, and once again begins to drift off, too tired to take notice. He knew he was safe in his luxury. Five minutes pass and nothing.

Thud, thud, thud.

The ring ropes shakes again, but as Chris looks, nothing. Not a single soul in the Infinity Arena. Chris keeps looking this time, ducking so that he wasn’t to be seen. Nothing, no trace of movement, no noise. Static bliss. Then thud. The ring-mat is forced down, the ropes vibrate, but nothing. Chris watches carefully as he sees gusts of wind pass in the ring, as if a ghost had taken to the ring for fun. Ten more minutes pass, it is obvious to Chris that somebody, or something, is occupying the ring, but he didn’t want to get himself seen, as before. Anyone even loosely associated with Valquist didn’t want to be seen with the Infinity wrestler.

They all believed Chris to be a part of the wider media, leading Chris to believe that Val was still associating with wrestlers linked to Infinity Wrestling. But none had come forward, even though he had seen Val train with these mysterious people. Chris was briefly absorbed by this thought as he watched what he believed to be a man or women, coated in a layer of invisibility, occupy the ring. Secrecy from a shamed wrestling federation, Chris couldn’t believe that so many wrestlers in the past, wrestlers that once showed eternal passion and love for their craft, had become stranger’s to the world.

The ring-work had stopped, and then there was silence. Chris kept looking, but he was to be lost in the fading ring. He turned, glad that he was not in a horror movie, thankful that the wrestler wasn’t sitting at the end of the bed. Instead Chris’s fright was only seconds away. A black silhouette filled much of the overlook. Wearing a hood, Chris was fear-struck and moved away from the window. It followed Chris’s every movement with its head, it obviously wanted the attention of the Brooklyn native.

“Do you believe that you are safe behind your own reflection?” the voice asks, the vocal pitch altered to deliberately be dark and unrecognisable. “Do you believe yourself to be free?”

The figure stood, completely shrouded, Chris calm about the intimidation. Standing next to his bed, up right, adrenaline filtered through his body. Even though Chris stared directly into the wilderness, his eyes were looking for a means of a weapon in case of a worst-case scenario, but found nothing in his eye-line.

“It entirely depends on who is threatening me,” Chris speaks, knowing an introduction was unwise, this figure probably already knew who he was.

“The only way you’ll ever find out the truth is understanding what we endure.”

“I am at arms-length. Valquist has made it clear to me that none of you want anything to do with me.”

“Valquist?” the voice asks, deliberately as a question. It laughed, briefly. “You mean to say the mantle of this cities affection.”

“I do?” Chris asks, his journalistic brain powering up, armed for questioning. “I mean, what am I left to think? He is the only one that wishes to show himself to the world.”

“That he is,” the voice questions, again. “A man of nobility, drawn to an order of honesty and conviction. As it’s always been.” The voice mocked Val, believing differently.

“You’re speaking in riddles,” Chris responded, looking for something concrete and real.

“I am?” it questions, enlightened his or her beliefs.

“It’s hard to see beyond the veil of secrecy,” Chris speaks, believing the entity to be hostile only in its words. “The divide between me and you is only there because of fear. But now you have sought my presence, and broken the tether. There must be a reason for seeking me, otherwise this is all fruitless?”

“Do you believe that you are safe behind your own reflection?” the voice asks again, with Chris beginning to rethink the question entirely.

“I have to be,” Chris states with authority. The lone figure seemed frustrated by the answer, twitching its head, irritated by the generic answer.

“You’ll be the next him,” the voice speaks, preluding to a grander reality than Chris is willing to admit.

“The next Valquist?” Chris laughs.

“The next me,” it says, pulling down its hood but turning to face away from Chris. It didn’t matter, Chris couldn’t make out a single detail, other than the stocky frame, leading to believe that it was a male. “The next one pushed into an oblivion, for his sake.”

“What does that mean?” Chris asks, his voice over the top to get the figure’s attention.

‘I am speaking with Isis Derrida?’ Chris thinks, keeping the thought to himself. 

“If you are flesh and blood, he is ideal, a mantle of creation,” the voice illuminates, without actually giving clarity. “If humanity is flesh and faith, he is eternal and immaterial.”

“That solves it,” Chris says, laughing, but his chest with heavy with fear. He ends up coughing to reveal such fear to the lone figure.

“It’s not too late to walk away before you are just words within his diary.”

“What do you know about Val?” Chris boldly asks, quite frankly uncaring about whether or not he angers this darkened horizon.

“Do you believe that you are safe behind your own reflection?” This time the question was rhetorical. “No, Chris McCarthy. You’re not safe.”

Infinity Arena’s lights return to their dimness, but the intimidating figure is gone. Chris immediately draws the blinds and sits in front of the only door all night with an unbroken glass bottle in his stronger right hand. Chris fades due to exhaustion and is only awoken when room service budge the door open slowly, appearing to see a young adult passed out from intoxication.

Valquist enters the room, and is the man that wakes Chris up, slumped on the floor in yesterday’s clothes. Chris’s eyes are immediately drawn to Val’s polished white teeth and innocent smile. Chris clenches the clear, empty bottle, but only for a second.

“One too many nightmares?” the Valiant one asks.

“More like a twisted reality,” Chris replies, honest in his words. “Why are you even here, Val?”

“I’m not wrestling Cameron Behringer in Infinity.”

“That’s right, Canada,” the New York native mocks. “You’re sure you’re on the show this time? I had to go to VOW’s website to see our segment from the last Breakthrough.”

“I’m sure.”

“You ready to read my note’s yet?”

“I’ve my own diary,” Val says, helping Chris to his feet. “A little black book left to me by ‘that’ guy. We both know the one.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Chris ends, Val reading Chris’s words as light heartedness between the two. The duo leave to Ontario after Chris packs his small luggage. The endless flight through mountains of cloud was nothing more than a consumption of thought process as Chris was piecing together multiple versions of what he believed to be truth.