Ollie Maverick- A Glimpse Into the Void

A conversion van pulls into the darkened parking lot of a shady gas station and a figure emerges from the drivers side door. In the back was a nice cozy little setup with a mini-kitchen, bed, TV, laptop, a Nintendo Switch… It was clear the driver was living here. A raccoon was quietly dozing on a little pet bed in the passenger's seat.

The Driver's face is totally concealed thanks to a facemask, sunglasses, and a ballcap. His ‘Guardians’ shirt has a few holes in it and a little stain courtesy of some Taco Bell volcano sauce.

“You know you don’t gotta wear those no more. It was all a hoax” The gas station employee says with all of the scientific authority they had accrued in their many years of selling truckers coffee, cigarettes, and pornography.

“The virus? Oh yeah, total hoax. This is to keep the waves from the 5G antennas from getting into the fillings in my teeth so I don’t go to the zoo and start trying to jerk off all the Gorillas again. One of them was a girl gorilla so they clearly need to work on their tech.” The masked man says. He puts his coin change in the ‘Kids with Cancer’ charity jar. He takes his bag of caffeine, sugar, gelatin, and reprocessed potato in a tube and walks out the door.

Into a completely dark void. He turns around and there is no gas station anymore. He is in a completely empty void, but he does not seem panicked.

Our shot switches to the ground in front of our mystery figure where a… white stick is laying?

The figure leans down and picks it up and when he stands back up to be in full view of the camera the mask is gone. Instead his face is completely obscured by digital blurring and he seems to be wearing wrestling gear along with a very fancy ring coat.

‘Here Comes the Hotstepper’ by Ini Kamoze begins to play and slowly this man begin to roll his hips along to the groove. When the beat picks he begins full-on dancing. Strutting, vibing, and even at one point moonwalking his way through the foreboding darkness like he owns the place until finally he comes to a place where something begins to emerge from the darkness all around him…

All of them broken. His strut is interrupted when he notices the sound of glass shifting beneath him and it stops him just short of hitting the Griddy. He looks into one of the broken mirrors as the music begins slowing. It keeps getting slower and slower and slower until it’s just a l o n g   d  u  l  l  d   r    o     n      e .

“If you don’t know who I am because you can’t see my face… That’s understandable, I suppose.” He says, seemingly realizing we can see him. Don’t think too hard about the logic of it. I certainly haven’t.

“You’ve seen me before but…I don’t like to show my face anymore. I have my reasons for that. I also think masks make me too sweaty and I lose my peripheral vision so… I like this way better. All of you ‘why not just wear a mask’ people are annoying. I can hear you now. Your voices are shrill and you’ll never know the touch of a woman. Anyway, I’m Ollie. You might know me. Might not. Who cares? I don’t, but not introducing myself would be rude and even though manners are a social construct we all made up its one of the few I like. Welcome to this place. I don’t have a name for it but I’m here off and on. Sometimes I just pop in. Sometimes I’m here all day.” Ollie says with a shrug.

“Maverick, by the way. Ollie Maverick. I have retained the chosen surname of my far more successful elder sorta-brother. Benefit of not knowing from which womb you sprung from is you really get to pick whatever you want to be. Woulda been nice to know who birthed me so we could know if what is wrong with me is genetic. I really hope for their sake they don’t turn out like me.” Ollie says. There is a long and heavy silence as Ollie is lost in a troubling thought he will not articulate out loud. The darkness begins to gain ground until...

“Anyway.” He says. He falls backwards and lays amidst the broken glass, his heavy jacket protecting him from the most of the damage. The camera views him from above as he moves his arms and legs to make a ‘glass angel’.

“There’s someone very specifically I came to Hybrid to see… and I bet he just feels like the most special boy knowing he has my attention. So… let’s talk about Nathaniel Dixon. The man who had a hand in successfully convincing the woman I loved that I was not worth loving anymore.” Ollie sits up and looks around.

“Granted, I’m not saying he was wrong. I mean… I’m kinda a mess if you haven’t gathered. I’ve also come to the conclusion that love isn’t real, it’s just a chemical imbalance that very cruelly can just fade away… but hey, I can talk about the cruelty of our own brain chemicals all day. That’s not what we’re here for.” Ollie says, then he pauses to try and remember what we actually ARE here for.

“Right. Nathan. So charismatic and clever and did ya hear? He’s a good guy now! Isn’t that…nifty? Well I’m here to tell him no. You don’t get to move on from the person that you were. Not so long as one of the results of your cruelty still has a heartbeat. I’m the Frankenstein’s monster you had a hand in creating… and try as hard as Victor Frankenstein did to move on with his life… The Monster was always there to serve as a reminder of his mistakes and to punish him for them.” Ollie says. He kips up to his feet which sends glass flying all over, the inky darkness having supplied him a copy of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ in his hand.

“OH but I forgot! I get my pick of either ‘The Lord’ or ‘The Monster’. It must be so nice to get to choose, Nathaniel. Because I-“

We get random clips of recent bouts Ollie has had. The now infamous ‘Trash Land Invitational’ popping up to show Ollie doing a moonsault of a Ferris wheel, dragging someone through broken glass, breaking a boat oar over someone's head, using his hands to smear someone else’s blood all over his own censored face, and finally the flaming roundhouse kick heard round the world… now back in the void.

“-I don’t get to choose. I don’t get the pleasure of ‘deciding’ what aspect of me I will be exhibiting at any given moment. Just one of the many other things you had a hand in taking from me. A luxury YOU have and I don’t. After EVERYTHING you have done you still get to show your face to the people who love you. You still get to leech off of their warmth as if they suddenly forgot what you are.” Ollie says, reaching into his jacket pocket.

“An Ollie-phant never forgets.” Ollie says, taking out a length of piano wire strung between two wooden handles.

“Do you THINK you can go as FAR as I will go?! Nathaniel, I don’t even know if any of this is REAL anymore. For all I know I’m talking to a wall in a mental health facility right no-”

The video/reality flickers and we see Ollie bound in a straightjacket delivering this speech to a picture of Nathaniel hung on the wall of a padded cell.

“-w. Do you think you can STOP this? PLEASE STOP THIS. Make it STOP. STOP ME before people really get HURT, NATHA-”

Ollie is interrupted as orderlies in medical scrubs rush into the room, one of them jamming a needle into Ollie’s neck and suddenly we are

“-niel. Look around and tell me what it is you see, bud because I can't trust my brain anymore. You and so many others can stop at any one of these and see a broken mirror. I look and I see a broken man. But I’m trying… I’m trying so goddamn hard.” Ollie says, a sorrow and shakiness finding his voice. We can’t see his face but we can tell he’s started crying.

There is a cut. Something has been edited out.

“...And I don’t know if hurting you is gonna fucking fix anything but I just… I’m not gonna tell you I’m gonna beat you within the invisible structure of a wrestling match. I’m not gonna sit here and promise the world I’m taking some belt from you. I can BUY a belt if I gave a shit about a belt.”

Ollie wipes his eyes, seemingly calming down a bit.

“I can promise what I’m taking from you won’t be measured in pounds but in pints.” The sorrow in Ollie’s voice gives way to a darkness. As inky and black as everything around him.

“Whether or not Hybrid sanctions it… I’m coming for you, Nathan. I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to make my best effort to destroy this pleasant new world you’ve built for yourself… and I’m going to make you face me as I wrap this around your neck. I want to see the look in your eyes when you realize I will never let you forget the man that you were…and the man you helped create…” Ollie says, gripping the wooden handles.

“…So let’s dance, Franken-Daddy.”

Ollie snaps and the music starts back up…

And then he’s sitting in the front seat of his van. Back in the mask and sunglasses. Parked in front of the gas station.

‘Here Comes the Hotstepper’ is playing on the vans speakers. Ollie looks over to his right to see Rocky annoyed at being awake now and giving him a look that Ollie is seemingly able to interpret.

“Yes I went to the place. I wasn’t there long.” Ollie says. Rocky still looks annoyed. Ollie grabs the plastic bag and takes out the tube of Pringles. He pops the lid and hands a few of them to Rocky.

His munches seem to serve as an acceptance of Ollie’s apology.

Ollie’s watch beeps.

He takes out one of those pill organizer things.

He downs his scheduled medication with a ‘Sour Patch Kids’ flavored energy drink.

And then he pulls out of the parking lot and drives away.