"See if you can spot this one." (3)

Another piece of fan fiction. This one is tirelessly self-reflexive. A part of the final run, with five posts in one night to finish thirty only a few minutes into July. I offer this because it'll be the reason that this is a bit weird, a bit too complex or not really complex, but confusing. My mind was already fried when I started writing.
There are multiple stories to tell because the powers at be wanted it to be that way. They wanted the ambiguity, they thrived on it, and it helped them live through another day. It’s like criticizing any happy ending. It’s like randomly cutting the book to a close by killing off your main character. Some days it really does seem like a spit in the face of the audience, but you can only tell as much of a tale as you know. It makes sense, then, that if you don’t know how something turns out, you end it there, because you must. Those fingers, holding tightly to the cliff’s edge; it’s not your fault that you do not know what happens after the person hangs there. It’s not your fault at all. There are multiple stories to tell, that’s true, but to say that the stories must be equal in length is wrong, because one way is the easy way out. One way is simply one line.

He falls to the ground. He dies. She cries. The fans, as always, go crazy.

And did that happen? Well, none of it happened, which is the point, actually. So that’s sort of a silly question. But this is all an exercise in that same silly territory; the child that continues to badger the parents who will not give any reason other than “because.” This is a bit of a useless existence; there’s an unnecessary air about this, but it’s also fun and what’s fun does not need to be necessary. What’s fun will get done on its own, no matter what the benefits are. So this falls into a different Platonic category.

There are multiple stories to tell, but the only grasp to be currently found is that of the specific question at hand. There is only one split to be understood here. Which means that although there are multiple stories, they are not infinite at the moment. It all comes back to Heisenberg in the end. To write is to define and to specify. By telling the multiple stories you limit them, you cut them right down the edge. Until the words are typed, the stories go on and on and are continuous. Discreteness is always advised against and yet never escaped; a human mechanism, to classify and categorize. To create the abstract and call things what they are not. Man is the only animal that looks at the world and sees not what is before him, but what is behind him. Or just as truthfully, woman is the only animal that looks at the world and sees not what is before her, but what is behind her. Ah! the morbidity of language. Oh! the terrors of the past.

He falls to the ground. This is a known fact, because he climbed the ropes and leapt. What goes up must come down. And once that line is written, it is true. This is not to say that there could not have been the possibility of Randy “The Ram” simply floating away as he entered the sky, floating and floating, dealing with the unbearable lightness of being until his body began to decompress, getting that special form of the bends offered by space. It is simply to state the obvious. That didn’t happen because it was written out of the plot line. It was perceived as impossible. A coin flip going the other way and maybe that’s what happened. Flip the page in the book where this is written and maybe that’s what you’ll find. But of course you can’t, because this is too little information for any book. This is looking at the particle in close-up and you lose any way of judging its speed.


Randy gets up and spits out some blood. He wins the match like he was always going to. This is not questionable. Even had he died, he would’ve won. That’s the point: this is so much more acting than writing. But he’s alive and it’s a miracle of truly writerly proportions. And other things were held in the balance in that fall: there is the man Randy who upon standing up and feeling the support of the fans, becomes someone else for only a moment, before changing back completely, no longer the “Ram” or even Rand, but back to Robin; there is Pam who is also Cassidy; this is a story where a lot of names hang in the balance; not to mention relationships.


Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; therefore, when Robin lives, Randy does at least begin to die. Either they both go out like a candle blown out in the night, making this a snuff film, or one usurps the other. This town’s not big enough for the two of them. The center will not hold.


What to say about various children? They eventually consider their lover’s offspring as, in some small way, their own. Robin lived and so did Pam on this side of the coin and they had no real trouble living their lives the way they wanted to live them. That’s the difficulty of the novelist. You want to keep the stories sharp but then you get to liking the people you’ve made. Or you’ve always liked the people you’d eventually steal, either from real life or from someone else’s thoughts made manifest.


Suddenly a pattern break and the story now looks like a broken mirror.

He won’t get married
unless his daughter will be present
which, for a long time
means he’s never going to cross that bridge with her.

And what does she think?
But what does that matter,
it’s not her place
it’s his heart.

A phone call one late winter night. We’re cheating right now. We weren’t supposed to do this. I told myself I wouldn’t do this. I’m too old for this shit anyway and you hate me and have every right to. But no matter what you might think, Steph, you mean something to me and it would be my honor for you to be at this…thing.

He can’t say it;
throat clenched up like an allergic reaction.
But she takes the phone.
Hon, I’m not going to speak for your father and I’m not going to let him beg. This is a man who’s beaten himself up enough in his day and even if not enough of that was in response to what he did to you, it’s not something you can keep track of. He means something to me and you mean something to him and by way of the transitive property I am putting a part of myself in your hands, so you have the choice to tear it apart or to give it back to me through him.

And on and on, anger burning at times, always there, even under the cool of compassion. This is where another thread is left off. Another story splitting into an infinity of narratives. This is all there can be said by the present writer. The new hold on the cliff; another figure hanging on.




Cheat Sheet
The Wrestler