Chapter 1: Familiar Faces
'They don't know who the hell I am,' Mark Calloway thought
as he walked down to the ring to provoke Stone Cold Steve Austin. The sounds of
Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" echoed through the arena and depicted the band in the
background of Mark's thoughts. 'Bullshit,' he though, 'They don't even know the
half of it.' His thoughts ceased to exist a he entered the ring and grabbed a
mic. Frustrated by the size of his own hand, he ripped the Smackdown block off
of the mic handle and paced back and forth before drawing the mic to his lips
and uttering his thoughts aloud.
"Austin," he started, "last Monday night on Raw, you came
out here to the yard and tried to beat the big dog down with a steel chair.
Lemme tell you something, boy, it didn't work. I stand here before you
tonight—" he was interrupted as the arena lights dimmed. He stopped pacing and
looked up to the stage as a bell tolled and a spotlight appeared. His eyes
widened as two women appeared on the stage. One of them, the blonde one, had a
mic in her hand. She stared at Mark with a glare in her eyes. 'I know them,'
Mark thought. 'This can't be happenin'. They…' his thought never completed
themselves as the shrill voice of the young woman filled the arena.
"You look surprised to see us, Mark." She smirked.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Would you rather I called you Father? My mistake.
Mark's eyes stayed glued to his little girls in their black
dresses. His little girls. What could they want? "Why are you here, Gwendolyn?"
he finally spoke, a questioning look on his face.
""You abandoned us. You left me to take care of her," she
said bluntly, and motioned to the woman beside her. Mark looked into the eyes
of his other daughter. She had brown hair, like his, and the same brown eyes.
There was an incredible likeness in their appearance, too. With the mic away
from his face, her name slipped out of Mark's mouth in a whisper.
"Drusilla…" he blinked a bit before looking back at
Gwendolyn.
"You left us with nothing. With no one. I mean, come on.
You had to expect us to come for you sometime."
Mark's thoughts overcame his mind. He did leave, when
Drusilla was only eleven, too young to understand why he was going. He had left
the Darkside in search of a place where he could capture souls but still go
unnoticed. He found that here in the World Wrestling Federation. He had created
the Undertaker and evolved into the American Bad Ass. He was living now…
"Daddy?" Gwendolyn said into the microphone, almost a
whisper. "Daddy, are you listening to me?"
Mark nodded.
"Good. Now tell me something. Why did you leave us?"
"Gwen, I—"
She raised her hand to stop him, "Don't. I don't even want
to hear it anymore. Forget that I asked. We came here for a reason. We want our
father back. You robbed us of the man we thought we knew and we want him back.
Now I have pondered for many months how to get him back, and there's only one
way."
"Gwendolyn, dear, what are you talking about?" Mark
questioned from the ring.
"Don't you remember what you said? They tried to destroy me...
wishing I would just go away. But what is it--what have they really done? The
simple minds of mortal men, they sent me back to the place that is my origin.
Destroy me? The more they try, the more powerful I become. And now I've risen
from my unearthly grave, and I will slay the ones I once saved. The reckoning
is upon us," she paused and spoke the
last sentence slowly, "the day that the Ministry of Darkness seizes the land and destroys all that you
hold dear, making play things of your heroes and devouring your
innocence..."
Mark's eyes widened as her remember the
day that he had muttered those very words into one of these very microphones.
He watched his daughters disappear into the darkness as the their spotlight
turned off.
