Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to CWF Forums. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
KingCast: Burning Desire
Topic Started: Jan 24 2010, 11:39 PM (90 Views)
Jarvis King
The Hall of Fame Hallmark
“Ow! Damn it!”

The otherwise relative quiet of the King family home was interrupted by Jarvis King’s exclamation. The three weeks that he had been living with his younger brother had not been kind on the farm house, and the scattered pizza boxes and CWF action figures had finally gotten the best of Jarvis in the twilight of that Sunday morning.

Ian, fast asleep in front of the muted Country Music Television, stirred slightly but didn’t awake. Jarvis knelt down and massaged his largest toe on his left foot. The proverbial minefield that the living room had become caused him to slip on one of the empty pizza boxes, slide forward and stub his toe on the nearby wall. After getting a sufficient amount of blood flow back to his toe, he limped gingerly towards the back door, trying even harder now to not wake his sleeping brother. He slid a heavy winter coat on, grabbed a duffel bag nearby and silently opened the door, taking great care to close it as quietly as possible.

The clock on the wall read 4:39 and Jarvis King was sneaking out.

Reaching into his left pocket, Jarvis produced both a pack of cigarettes and his cell phone. Shuddering slightly in the cold, he placed one of the Du Mauriers to his lips and lit it, his breath hanging in the air even when he didn’t puff on the cigarette. The quiet solitude of the country road was only interrupted by the far-off rumbling of a car’s engine. This was undoubtedly Jarvis’s ride, but even still he flipped open his phone, dialed a number and put the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” came the response on the other end of the line. The tone, belonging to Nancy McDonald, Jarvis’s lawyer, was surprisingly professional and polished for 4:40 in the morning.

”How much longer?” asked Jarvis, curtly.

“I’m less than five minutes off,” replied Nancy.

Jarvis stood quietly, awaiting the only car on the road and dragging on his cigarette. The biggest night of his career was three days away, counting the very long day that was ahead of him, and the look of determination on his face certainly showed it. The lights were already on bright as far as Jarvis was concerned. His jaw was set, his strong jaw-line peeking its way through his scruffy beard.

Cain had become bold, sure of himself. King expected that. It wasn’t outside of the norm for the CWF champion, and why not? King had read his advanced copy of the CWF magazine, and it was true: Cain had never lost a World title match, at least as the champion. But, then again, neither had Jarvis – even when he lost the Paramount title, no one pinned him.

Flicking the butt of his cigarette into a nearby snow bank, Jarvis sighed deeply. He was certain that this was his time. He needed that title. Nothing had consumed his every thought like it had. Every waking moment of his life was dedicated to it; every day he lived, ate, slept, breathed, sweat, bled, shit, and, most of all, desired the CWF title. Even with the day-to-day care that he had to provide for his brother, Jarvis could only see gold.

He unzipped the duffel he was carrying with him, glancing at its contents. He smiled and zipped it back up as Nancy pulled her conservative sedan to the side of the road, idling and waiting for Jarvis to get in.

The weeks since taking on his younger brother had felt like months to Jarvis. What exactly does one do with an autistic 20 year old anyhow? No one had taught Jarvis how to be a caretaker; indeed, it was the difficulty alone that had driven his father, Ernie, to ‘entrust’ Jarvis with the youngest King.

“Don’t treat him like a child, Jarvis,” said the specialist that Jarvis had seen just days after his match with The Blue Scorpion; just days after taking Ian on. “He’s not a child, he’s a man. He just has special needs.”

“All he wants to do is play with fucking action figures,” Jarvis had replied with a twinge of irritation, sleep deprivation and sarcasm rolled into one. “What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Find out what he likes, what he dislikes, Jarvis. Get to know him! He’s your brother, you must have some things in common.”

“Fuck you, Doc.”

Maybe he and the kid had more in common than Jarvis cared to know. He hadn’t bothered to find out; he just let Ian do most of what he liked to do around the house. Served Ernie right for trying to control Jarvis’s life; it wasn’t his fault that he was successful while Ernie was nothing but a small town councilman and teacher, amounting to nothing after a promising high school wrestling career.

One specialist in autism became two, then those two became a neurologist, then a public health nurse, then therapists, pediatricians, general practitioners, teaching assistants with experience in the field…a seemingly endless conveyor belt of experts, specialists, authorities and helpers. Not a single one of them gave a lick of damn help, and Jarvis had grown tired of running around with an overgrown child screaming in the back seat. His Cadillac was a mess, his loft apartment was empty and he was exhausted.

The worst, of course, was travelling with Ian between shows. With the increased security at the airports, travelling with an autistic brother was even more taxing than it should have been. Especially when that brother has a thing for old John Wayne movies and refuses to go anywhere without his bang-bang pistol. Jarvis had to fill his iPod with hours of Taylor Swift and Brooks & Dunn just to calm the kid down enough to get through the security checkpoints at the Stanfield International Airport, let alone when they started to make landfall in places like Tulsa, Oakland, and worst of all, New York for the ride to Rochester.

That was mostly behind him, however. The chase for a title was infinitely more taxing in Jarvis’ mind than defending the title, and that chase was only lasting another three days. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Nirvana.

Jarvis snapped back to the present. He and Nancy were cruising down the highway 102, riding in from Windsor, the nearby town that contained his father’s house, to Halifax. Jarvis flicked out another cigarette and lit it, drawing a darting glance from Nancy. She knew better than to ask King to not smoke in her car, as she knew that the answer would not be in any way favorable to her.

She found it slightly hard to return her gaze to the road, however…she knew that Jarvis was an attractive man, but there was a certain something about him lately. Even the sour smell of stale, burnt nicotine smelled the tiniest bit sweeter to her that morning.

The thought was ridiculous and she returned her eyes to the road. King was a client. There was no way, no good ethical way for her to even begin to entertain the thought of even thinking of him in that light. Besides, he was a bit of an egotistical, chauvinist jerk. But, he was cute…

“We’re stopping for a coffee,” said Jarvis, snapping Nancy from her trance. It wasn’t a question, it was purely a statement. She thought of kicking up a fuss over his rudeness, but there was something about him that morning that drove her to get off at the next exit and pull into the Tim Horton’s drive-thru.

“Two large double-doubles,” she said, the very standard order at the Canadian institutional doughnut shop. Nudging the car forward, she accepted the coffees and paid for them, not even bothering to ask Jarvis for the change she knew he didn’t have, and certainly wouldn’t offer even if he did.

“So, what’d you do with Ian?” she asked as they pulled back onto the highway. Jarvis sipped away at his coffee, allowing the milky brown liquid to wash over him, reinvigorating his senses.

“He’ll be fine. The kid’ll be asleep till noon, and even then he won’t notice I’m gone…there’s a Reba marathon on TV today.”

“You just left him there? Aren’t you afraid of losing your inheritance?”

“Listen, the terms were that I would keep him well under my care. He’s well. He’ll be completely fine in that house. He’ll park his watermelon head in front of that TV for hours and then ask if there’s pizza when I get home and start reciting Cain promos by heart.”

“Jarvis, you have to be careful…” Nancy began.

“I am,” he interjected.

“…one slip-up in the mind of your father, and you very well could lose everything. I know that your mother’s stuff means a lot to you, and so does Ernie.”

“Yeah, that reminds me,” said Jarvis, “any news on suing the pants off of whoever got a hold of my personal goddamn logs?” He flicked his cigarette out the window.

“Not really, no. It might be protected by freedom of the press laws, as long as we can’t prove that he or she illegally accessed the entries. Anyhow, you’ve really got to watch out, Jarvis. Ernie’s lawyer is a shark and will do anything that his client asks for.”

“Well, what Ernie doesn’t know won’t hurt.”

The two sat in relative silence for a few moments. Nancy’s mind was still swimming with a number of dark, somewhat disgusting thoughts about what she and Jarvis could do with a riding crop. She shook her head slightly and pressed forward on the pedal a bit harder, accelerating the car towards Halifax just a touch faster.

King’s mind was in a completely different place; he hadn’t the time to think about sex, not even with his fairly attractive lawyer. He knew that he had gotten under Cain’s skin for certain now, the old man was even confident that sixty minutes wouldn’t be enough now. Good enough, he thought. Let the old man cloud his own judgment with delusions of grandeur.

The car pulled into park about thirty minutes later. The two had arrived at a studio, undoubtedly destined for KingCast tapings. It had been weeks since the last KingCast, but the crew was at the ready. Jarvis walked into the building with a confidence that belied the fact that during the last tapings, he had received news of his father’s accident.

“Why the hell are we here so early?” queried “The Premier” Colton Mace, Jarvis’s newest running mate and tag team partner. Clearly there for KingCast as well, Mace rubbed his eyes and looked down at his watch, “seriously Jarvis. It’s not even six o’clock yet.”

“I’ve got some shit to do later on today. Besides, you should be used to arriving on set early in the morning, shouldn’t you?”

“Whatever. Anyhow, the costume guys brought something…erm…weird over. What the hell is this for?”

Mace reaches into his dressing room and produces a huge fat-suit, clearly meant to make its wearer look like an incredibly portly woman. Jarvis sniggers and walks towards his dressing room. “You’ll see. They’ll bring by a script in a few minutes.”

---

With that, the feed cuts over to the traditional KingCast fare. Jarvis is standing, in a full suit with the CWF title lying lazily on his shoulder, it’s glittering golden plates shining effortlessly and mirroring his own glowing smile. Jarvis breathes in deep and begins to recite a poem in an overly dramatized voice.

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

This is KingCast.”

Cue the traditional sleek production values, and KingCast is indeed off to a glorious start. Footage of Jarvis’s successes in the early weeks of 2010 are shown in rhythmic timing to the driving guitar hook of Stevie Nicks’ hit song, “Edge of Seventeen”. The wild, painful submissions of Scorpio and Mr. Re hit the song’s climax, and the scene shifts to the soundstage that houses the KingCast studio.

The usual raucous canned applause greets the so-far empty set, as the movie voice-over introduces the star of KingCast. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to KingCast, the Squire of Sex Appeal, the Entertaining Enigma of Your Ecstasy, the bombastic, fantastic, exciting, delighting, skilled, strong willed, World Famous, makes screaming contagious, International Icon…The one, the only, Jarvis J. King!”

The applause gets wilder as King makes his way onto the stage. The lights are indeed on bright, mirrored properly by only Jarvis’s own smile. The CWF title is still atop his shoulder and as he takes a seat, he places it on the desk, stretching it across and propping it up, to display it properly to the camera. Jarvis puts a hand up, asking the applause to stop, and after a few seconds, it does.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you all! Welcome to KingCast, I am the Entertaining Enigma, the Hottest thing out of Halifax, The International Icon, Your Hero, Jarvis King…and what a show we have for you today, huh? It’s just three days till I drop Cain faster than NBC dropped Conan, which means it’s only a matter of time until I take Angel to the cleaners as well.”

“But, before we get to all of that, I’ve got some good news to deal with. See, it came to my attention that many of the greats in my line of work never got by on their own. Don’t get me wrong, I can do well for myself on any damn day, but Jarvis King isn’t above having allies either. See, even Bret Hart had his Jim Neidhart. Jeff had his Matt, Shawn had his Marty…err, bad example.”

“Point is, I know what it takes to get to the top, and having friends along for the ride is only gonna make my victory this week that much sweeter. So, please welcome the Costello to my Abbott, the Oates to my Hall, the Police to my Sting…”The Premier” Colton Mace!”

More applause, as “Yeah” by Usher welcomes the second member of the Entourage to the KingCast set. Mace smiles as he high-fives Jarvis and takes a seat next to the desk on a new guest couch.

“Welcome to my partner in crime…see, in 2010, I’ve decided to start having guests on KingCast, and it made as much sense to have you on as the first one,” says Jarvis, his once absent swagger back in full force.

“Yeah,” says Mace, with a bit of discomfort in his voice. “I understand that I’m not the, uh, only guest on today’s show?” He seems to swallow deep on something that isn’t there as he finishes that sentence.

“That’s right…but first,” says Jarvis, picking up a bottle of champagne and a couple of flutes, “my newest segment: Cheers. This is where my guest and I toast the movers and shakers in the CWF.” He uncorks the bottle with a huge pop and pours the bubbly fluid into the two glasses. Jarvis and Colton each take one, and Jarvis lifts his glass first. “Alright, I’ll kick it off with a toast to Chaolame Sahn. Here’s to you finding something that you’re worse at than wresting: commissioner-ing.” They clink glasses, and Jarvis takes a sip of his drink.

“Alright, I think I get it. To Mark Carlton,” says Mace, raising his glass, “for being the only guy lamer than Carlton Banks from Fresh Prince.” He takes a sip.

“Finally,” says King, raising his glass, “to Cain. For crafting an imaginary land where up is down, down is left and he has any shot of stepping out of Genesis World Champion.”

“Cheers to that!”

The two men down their glasses and Jarvis smiles. “Alright. With that out of the way, it’s high time that we get to our other guests for this week. As it turns out, in an incredibly gracious and good-natured turn of events, Insurgency stars Angel and Cain have agreed to appear right here in a pre-taped vignette on KingCast!”

“Alex, I have to admit…I really admire you for being the bigger man and trying to bury the hatchet. Really big of you, man…anyhow, take it away.”

“Oh god…” says Mace, as the feed cuts over to the pre-taped vignette. The set-up is pretty simple. King sits in a chair opposite a comfortable-looking leather couch. “Alright,” he says, barely able to contain his own laughter, “just waiting on Cain and Angel here. Exclusive interview.”

With that, the distant sound of a puttering motorcycle is simulated by someone blowing a raspberry on their own arm offstage. Mark Carlton, dressed up as Cain, wheels in on a bright red tricycle, “parks” it next to the couch and takes a seat. This is followed by loud stomping sound effects. Edging his/her way onto screen is Colton Mace dressed as Angel in an enormous fat suit. The Premier has a sour look on his face, but he takes a seat.

“I can’t believe that I agreed to this.”

“Shut up, Angel,” says Carlton with a smile. As Mace takes a seat, the couch – clearly on hydraulics of some kind, tilts heavily towards his end of the couch. Mace simply sighs.

“First question, Angel: What is it like to hold the World Record for getting scraped more often than any woman on Earth?”

“Seriously Jarvis, I hate you.”

“Now, now…we were gracious enough to bring you on the cast, the least you could do is answer properly.”

Mace sighs and looks down at his lap. “Abortiontastic.”

King laughs at the joke that he clearly wrote. “Alright, Cain. You’ve never lost a World Title match going in as the champion. Two questions: One, how do you think you’ve done it; and two, how does it feel to know that a better man is going to be CWF champion?”

“Well,” Carlton says in a suddenly thick Cockney accent, “I’d say that A, I’ve never faced a guy quite like you, Jarvis…and two, I can’t wait to be turned out for the fraud that I am.”

“Alrighty, final question: some people theorize that you two have been bumping uglies. Any truth to the rumors?” asks Jarvis, barely able to contain his laughter. Out of nowhere, “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate begins to play, and “Cain” begins to make eyes at “Angel”. Colton simply looks in his hands and shakes his head.

“Well, well…I guess that the rumors are true. This has been an exclusive with Angel and Cain. Good luck, Cain-o.” Carlton begins to make a move at Mace before the scene shifts back to the KingCast studio. Mace slaps at Carlton, swatting him off from going too far.

Back in the studio, Mace simply shakes his head as Jarvis smirks. “Alright,” King says, “time for the final segment this week: Jarvis’s Closing Thoughts. This is where I give my…well, closing thoughts. This week, I finally get my shot at the big time, and there’s a lot of talk about how I’m unproven; how I can’t possibly be more than another punk kid pretending at the CWF crown. Cain honestly believes that he’s got some sort of leg-up on me, that he’ll actually have what it takes to beat me at Genesis.”

“Newsflash, Alex: I’ve proven myself time and time again. This is a classic story, frankly, Cain. You’ve been grasping at the glories of your past, pretending to be the badass you used to be, but realistically, you’re nothing compared to Jarvis King. Your desperate attempts at relevance mean nothing when you step across the ring from me; everything that you’ve done since the CWF’s return, I’ve done bigger and better.”

“So, you know what…believe that I’m just some cocky kid that has no shot at winning the title. Keep a hold of that little pipe dream, Cain…because dreams are all you’re going to have after Genesis. Nothing gold can stay, Cain…and it’s time that the gold leaves you.”

With that, “Edge of Seventeen” kicks back up, and KingCast draws to a close.

---

Back in his dressing room, Jarvis smiled with a grin of self-satisfaction. The show had gone swimmingly, and he was more than justified in his pride in how it had gone. Sure, Colton was a bit upset, but with Mark Carlton joining the Entourage, Jarvis didn’t really care. Things were falling into place.

“Jarvis,” Nancy said from his doorway.

“What?”

“The fire marshal just called…your father’s house is on fire. Ian’s in the hospital.”

(EDIT: The poem that Jarvis recites is "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost.)
CWF Hall of Famer

Posted Image

The John Dulong Show: Every Monday on Apple Podcasts and Google Play
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · RP Board Archives · Next Topic »
Add Reply