Mid-Autumn's Night Dream

[Guest Powerplay]

Mental is still ahead of him by a couple feet now, but Kaze’s left leg is barely useable now. He gets himself on top of the cage slowly, putting his right foot on the top. He balances himself for a moment and....

 

 

“KA…… MI….. KA….. ZEEE!!!!!!

 

 

 

Kaze leaps as hard as he can toward Mental, who looks up to see a 235 pound object flying at him! The Judge pulls himself against the cage as Kaze comes at him… and wraps his arms around Mental’s neck…

 

…

 

…

 

“NOOOOO!!!!!”

 

William Hearford jumps off the top of the steel mesh cage, flying down at the Cobra King and latching his arms onto the snake man’s neck! The crowd goes absolutely wild as he tries to consolidate his grip and the snake charmer struggles to hold onto the cage…

 

“AMAZING!” says Bobby “The Bull” Hernandez. “He just leapt about 6 ft across to catch onto the Hardcore Champs back!”

 

Mental wiggles around, desperately holding onto the back of the man…

 

…

 

…

 

Mental holds on desperately, trying to hold on against all the pain. The man on his back shakes hard, loosening his grip on the wire mesh of the cage. Suddenly, his feet slip off the cage, and he hangs on by his fingernails to the cage. The man on his back jerks around hard, and Mental’s grip begins to slip. “Goddamnit! Are you crazy?” He says, and he takes a look over his shoulder…… and sees himself from about 17 years earlier. “I’ll never let you win this!” Says a younger version of him, and the doppelganger grits his teeth in pain as he gives a mighty jerk on the neck of Mental, and the man loses his grip.

 

The pair begins to fall…

 

And fall…

 

And fall…

 

And it seems like forever until…

 

The next thing he knows he’s standing on the ground. Complete blackness surrounds him, except for one shining thing in the distance. He moves toward it… or is it moving towards him? It’s hard to know whether you are walking or not when your whole body feels numb… Is this death? How far did he fall? Hearford shakes his head as the object moves closer… and closer… until he can finally make out what it is: A mirror. He stares at the thing, looking at the image cast in it. It’s the man who was hanging on his back only moments ago. The image smiles at him and laughs.

 

“Don’t laugh at me!” Mental says, curling his hands into fists. “All that you are is a face in the mirror! You are nothing to me, you are GONE!” The mirror image continues to laugh at him, and Mental can’t take anymore of this. He winds his fist up back, and punches the mirror……

 

 

But the mirror image catches it before it hits the glass. He catches his fist right in his hand, and walks straight out of the mirror, holding Mental’s fist in one hand. Mental struggles to pull his fist out, but he can’t. The image of him grows… and distorts… until it is much larger man, like a giant trucker. He gazes at the Judge giving him an animalistic grin as he pulls Mental up one handed onto his shoulders. In one quick motion, he spins him off, grabbing the old man’s neck and snapping it down on his shoulder.

 

Hearford falls down in a heap on the ground as the sound of a crowd begins to fade in. Mental can’t move, no matter how hard he wills his numb body he can’t move from the ground. He feels as if he can barely breathe as the black silhouette of the younger him stands over him.

 

“You betrayed me.” The crowd in the background begins to get louder, reigning boos down upon the pair as the younger self speaks on. Please, not again, not this way, Hearford thinks to himself, unable to shut himself out of the moment. “You’ll never be as good as me again. You’ve changed.” The man puts his foot on Hearford’s neck and leans closer, showing his face with clarity:

 

The face of Kamikaze.

 

“I will destroy you.”

 

William Hearford III shoots straight up in the stiff, small motel bed, a bucket of cold sweat running down his face and panting like an Olympic runner after setting a record time. He runs his hand along his face, moisture dripping off his face. He gives a quick look at the clock: 2:04 A.M. Hearford takes some deep, slow breathes, trying to calm his racing heart. Dear God… He shakes his head, and gets out of bed. A chill runs down his spine as he remembers the nightmare. Cobra King… My first cage match. For a man who looked an angry Norse Deity in the face without so much as blinking, Hearford is a much different man right now: His nerves of steel are more like clay as he tries to forget the nightmare, trying to push it from his mind. But, no matter how hard he tries, the memory, the images burn in his mind. He looks across the room at the door, and sees the mirror hanging on the door.

 

He walks over and stares it for a moment, looking right up to it into his own face, gazing into his own eyes. It’s still him; his gray hair, his beard, his face covered in hundreds of drops of perspiration. Hearford stares at it for what seems like hours until he brings his hand around in a sudden and incredibly quick motion, putting his fist right into the mirror and breaking the glass. The shards fly all around, reflecting what little light shines into the dark room around the walls and Mental’s face. He thinks of the reflection in the dream and speaks softly but spitefully. "You are just my reflection. I am the real man. When I look away, you are the one who disappears, not me." Hearford looks down at one of the bigger shards, and crushes it slowly with his foot.

 

Never again will I be humiliated like that. NEVER again.