:: Jason Helms :: He's No Superman ::

Royal Farms Arena
Baltimore, Maryland
27th May, 2020

Regrettttttt’s… I’ve had a fewwwwww… I’m Jason Helllllmmmms… and I’m a fuck uuuuppppp… Okay, so maybe that’s verbatim where the lyrics of Frank Senatra’s ‘My Way’ is concerned, but I mean, it kind of fits, right? Fuck you, go eat a shit sandwich or something. Seriously though, tell me where it’s wrong. I mean, I am Jason Helms, so we can’t refute that one. I have a birth certificate, it says my name right there on it. Birth name: Jason Donald Helms. So that’s that one fact checked and you only have to look at my life story to know the final part is accurate, so really, is there anything to refute? That said, it’s not easy for me as a person to admit I regret things, mostly because until lately I’ve not had a habit of doing it. I mean, I’m me, you know? I’m the arrogant, cocksure, overconfident jackass who does stuff that gets him in trouble, the guy who lets his mouth run away and do as it wants and just deal with the consequences later… so you can imagine how fucking difficult it is to admit that I was a fucking idiot for pushing things the way that I did with Gio heading into Cold Blooded, but fuck me bro, I do regret it! I mean, I’d be a fool to even attempt to keep the facade up at this point by saying I didn’t regret pushing things as far as I did… because I don’t know what the bastard did to me, but… my life feels like a great big mess right now, for various reasons. And I put all that at the feet of Giovanni fucking Aries! Or… I don’t. I mean, I did, but… lately, I… I guess you could describe it as a crisis of faith maybe? But, i mean… fuck… maybe not? Faith may be the wrong word, in the traditional sense anyway… what I’m saying, because I know I’m not making a whole lot of sense right now, is that… fuck, let me start this again.

Regrettttttt’s… I’ve had a fewwwwww…

...okay, okay, I’m only joking, don’t hate. But the point I was trying to get at before I lost the thread of things was that I used to put the blame firmly at the feet of Gio for how my life feels like everything is up in the air at the minute, but truthfully… Gio may be an asshole, but can I paint him as the villain when I got myself in over my head with this shit? I think I’m maybe looking to absolve myself by pointing the finger at Aries, that I’m trying to find an excuse for why things are the way they are right now that lets me ignore the fact that truthfully, I’m actually afraid for my own sanity at present. That’s not easy for me to admit, either. Any of it; the fact I’m questioning my own health right now or the fact that I’m legitimately fucking scared about what the hell is wrong with me. And knowing that I drove this thing onward myself, knowing that I brought it on myself when I couldn’t stop poking the bear, even after we won that New Jersey street fight? I fucking hate myself right now, because once again my fucking ego got in the way of just moving on and what did it actually get me? How did I actually benefit from trying to push and poke and prod the way I did heading into Cold Blooded? I didn’t! I lost more than I gained, even if the record books are going to say that the match ended in a draw between the two of us… because I simply haven’t felt right since that fucking fall! And I don’t even know what to tell you, bro. I don’t even know what happened to me after we fell through that stage, because it shouldn’t have been anything, it wasn’t… I mean, the Wonderland, it isn’t fucking real, is it! Is it? Fuck, now I’m doing it again. See, this is why I’m losing my damn mind right now, because I’ve started questioning everything since that night in New Orleans. And I hate it! I hate that I’m second guessing myself! At least before all this, whether I got an ass kicking or not, I was at least fucking sure of myself heading into whatever situation stood before me! But this… I hate it. I absolutely fucking hate it! And I want it all to stop!

But I don’t know if it will. Because I don’t know what it really is, and that does nothing to help matters whatsoever! And now I have all these questions, these… things… running through my head, and I ask myself was it all worth it? Absolutely not! One hundred percent, one hundred and ten percent, none of it was worth it, not for this! I feel like I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing anymore, and why? Because I had to try and put the exclamation point on that feud, I couldn’t just let it go and be happy knowing that Gio and his cronies came to our yard and left with their tails tucked between their legs, I had to go to his yard and try and embarrass him there too! Well fuck that! Fuck my decision, fuck my arrogance and fuck myself, because this is what it got me; it left me a nervous wreck, emotionally unbalanced and mentally unstable!

And I’m gonna be honest, I’ve considered quitting… I’ve considered giving up on all of it, because these migraines that have plagued me since Cold Blooded, if you gave me the choice between giving up everything I’ve earned through this business to get rid of them, you wouldn’t hear the name Jason Helms on television ever again, and that’s not an exaggeration bro, that’s the cold hard truth! I want it to stop, I want them to end… I want my life back! I want to feel like me again!

Or maybe I just don’t want to feel… I mean, that would kind of be an improvement on these fucking migraines, believe me on that one. And I can’t say that I have any sort of answer, either. I’ve had scans, checks, tests up the wazoo, and everything came back as normal, so why in the unholy fuck do they keep happening?! And it slowly started to creep in that the only way I was going to get answer to that would be for me to go to the one person that I wanted nothing to do with but had to speak to anyway, because I started to realise that I wasn’t going to get answers unless I went to the source of the question: Giovanni Aries. Truth be told, I should have approached him sooner anyway, there’s no denying that; not just to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me but because… well, I think it was fair to say that there was other stuff that needed to be addressed between the two of us and I admit, it was probably the fears about my own health and my insecurities that the recent issues had given me, which is something I think I’ve been frightened to admit even to myself let alone someone else… but when the truth about Gio’s parents was brought to light, I knew that the inevitable would have to happen sooner or later, that I was going to have to tell Gio what Niamh’s brother Petey had found. And there was a part of me that wondered if my problems, if these migraines, were all part of a bigger picture, where the weight of everything was weighing on me, that it was a subconscious thing, like stress or some shit… but then the gaps between them seemed so random, there was no rhyme or reason to them and was I really all that stressed in general when they hit? Which didn’t exactly help with how fucking scared I was about losing control because I didn’t really understand it, so how could I get someone else to?! How could I admit to feeling broken after my fall into The Wonderland when everyone thinks the wonderland stuff is a loaf of bullshit to begin with? It’d be like telling people I was petrified that the Boogeyman was going to get me if I shut off the light or that I was excited for Santa to turn up with my presents at Christmas. I’m a thirty three year old man, too afraid to open up to those around him for fear that people would laugh! And finding out Gio was our family, our blood… that added insult to injury, it rubbed salt in the wounds, because the only person I could talk to about this shit was the asshole who did it to me! The only person who would believe me was the condom full of custard that had put me in this position in the first place!

And I hate that. I hate that he’s the only one who could help, that he’s the only one who would actually believe what I say. I hate the fact that I feel like he’s the only one who can help and I really hate the fucking fact that he’s related to us! But hating something doesn’t stop it from being true, does it? Can’t all pull a Trump with any piece of inconvenient information and cry ‘fake news’ can we? So I had to bite the bullet and do what I probably should have done right after Niamh dropped her bombshell, and go and talk to Gio face to face! Baltimore was the final stop before Taking Hold of the Flame and I assumed that the ass-butt would be around backstage despite not being booked, but I had to tear ass from my locker room to try and catch him when I realised he wasn’t planning on entering the building in protest of his minions being suspended by Sasha when they crashed the main event a week earlier, my messenger back bouncing on my hip as I jogged through the backstage area. The hubbub had died down by the time I made it outside, the crowd of Sasha, Amy, Jay and Kelsai had all cleared out, and I feared at first that perhaps I’d missed Aries too, until I spotted the worn out, beaten up camper van of his at the rear of the parking lot. The headlamps illuminated the wall it sat in front of, but I could see Alice Ames sat inside through the open side panel door, listening to her savior Gio as he delivered some sort of lecture to her from outside of the van. No idea where Cain was, I couldn’t see him from where I stood, but I didn’t waste time in wondering about it. “Hey, asshole!” I shouted, grabbing the attention of Gio who turned on the spot to glare at me with that batshit crazy expression of his. You know the one I’m talking about, the crazy eyed maniac look that made you want to slap the taste out of his mouth. Alice jumped out of the van to stand behind Gio and the door to the driver’s side of the cab opened and out stepped Cain too, which explained why I couldn’t see him at first, and he looked about ready to rush me on the spot, veins popping out of his temple as she clenched his jaw tighter than the security at Fort Knox. Cain shifted so he was slightly in front and to the right of Gio as I got close enough to be in speaking distance, and there was not flight or fight discussion to be had, he clearly wanted to knock my head off there and then. “Easy big guy, I’m not looking for a fight,” I told Cain as I threw my hands up defensively, trying to make sure they could see I legitimately wasn’t coming to give them grief like the welcoming committee had when they first arrived at the arena.

Cain clearly didn’t believe a word I was saying. “It’s hard to fucking believe a word that comes from a mouth filled with a forked tongue,” the meathead told me as Alice nodded enthusiastically behind Gio’s back.

“Fork tongue?” I asked, actually chuckling a little. “That’s snakes, isn’t it?”

“You are a fucking snake!” Cain told me, clenching his fists with a loud audible pop of his knuckles. “You’re the snake, the second Judas!”

“A pawn of the lizard king,” Alice added from behind Gio still, her arms wrapped around him as if protecting the messiah. A literal human shield almost. It was a picture perfect explanation of just how batshit insane the two of them were, and how they were completely and totally devoted to his insanity, worshiping the ground he walked on. “You come here with your silver tongue and reptilian aura and you expect us to believe a word you say about how you didn’t come here looking for a fight? Fine…”

“...then you came here to try and fuck with us in some other way,” Cain said, finishing Alice’s sentence for her, which was kind of fucking creepy to tell you the truth. Like, straight up something out of a fucking horror film or something. ‘Come play with us Jason’ or some shit.

“Look, you can think what you want,” I told the trio of whacko’s, turning my attention to the Whacko in Chief in the middle of the psycho sandwich. “But I came here to talk to Gio here and then when I’ve said what I need to say then I’ll leave you to do whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

Cain’s lip curled at the notion and Alice shook her head vehemently. “More falsehoods from a prophet of the Lizard Kingdom,” she said, and normally I would have been rolling my eyes or sighing heavily or whatever, but… after everything I’d experienced since Cold Blooded, it was enough to leave me with enough uncertainty about everything to do so. “And you think you deserve an audience with-”

Alice fell silent almost immediately as Gio raised a hand up; it wasn’t an aggressive motions, it wasn’t quick. He simply raised a hand and Alice fell silent as if on cue. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so fucking insane. Cain wasn’t so quick to fall silent though and he turned to look at Gio in disbelief. “Gio, you can’t seriously be entertaining the idea of giving this traitorous bastard the time of fucking day?!” he asked in disbelief, but Gio turned to him and put a hand on Cain’s shoulder.

Despite the big fuck’s jaw tightening and his nostrils flaring like an angry gorilla, he gave a single solitary nod and stepped aside, out of Gio’s way. Alice’s arms slid from around him too and she shrank back into the van behind her, as Cain stepped towards her. Jesus, was there any wonder I made such a big deal out of them blindly doing as Gio asked? They hung on his every word, did his every bidding, no matter how much Gio had stressed that they were all equals within the might of the Wonderland or whatever the fuck it was he said to me. “You have some nerve Judas,” he said calmly, his eyes wide and still fucked up as he looked me up and down. It made my skin crawl being that fuckign close to him. “You offend the Wonderland, the stench of the Lizard Kingdom clinging to your skin like it does, and then you come here looking for an audience with it’s strongest, most loyal warriors? I should have allowed Cain the opportunity to do what we were unable to do inside of a ring… but we both know you have already paid your price for your betrayal don’t we, Judas?” he asked, and it didn’t take the smarts of a mensa member to know he was talking about the migraines I’d been suffering since Cold Blooded, which brought a slither of a smile to his annoying face. “Say your piece and then leave…” he finished, reaching inside of his coat to pull out those fucked up cigarettes of his, lighting one up with a zippo lighter before placing them both back in his pocket.

He took a deep drag and closed his eyes as he held it back for several seconds before blowing the smoke in my face, leaving me to wave it away as I tried not to inhale any myself. “Why the fuck does everything have to be so dramatic with you, bro?” I asked, as I waved away the last of the smoke. “Jesus, it’s like dealing with a villain from some vaudevillian stage show…”

He laughed out loud, but it was cold and humorless. He scoffed at me, basically. Tittering still as he took another drag on his cigarette. “You say theatrical, Judas… I say enlightening. But you didn’t approach me to discuss my character traits and I don’t want to spend more time in your presence than I have to so get to the point or leave.”

“Jesus, alright, fuck,” I said, my frustration showing through already, as I shook my head. I was already starting to wish I’d not decided to tell the asshole the truth that Niamh’s brother had discovered. “Look, I need to show you something, okay?” I said, reaching into the bag that I’d brought out with me. I could see Cain shift position by the van, as if I was going to pull out a knife and shank Gio right there in the parking lot, but he eased when I pulled out a folder with copies of everything Petey had discovered and held it out for Gio to take.

He looked at it like I was trying to hand him a severed hand. “What’s this, more Lizard Kingdom propaganda?” he asked, sneering at the folder I held out to him, which he took as if it was covered in something disgusting, holding it between thumb and finger tips. “Anything you want me to see I doubt is worth looking at…”

“Just open the damn thing,” I told him, my patience running thin already, but I did my best to keep my cool as I watched him flick open the folder.

He scoffed. “My birth certificate?” he asked, his voice filled with scorn as he looked from the documents, to me. “Do I look like a presidential candidate that has to prove his birth? I know where I come from and who my parents were.”

“Do I look like a racist idiot trying to find reasons to cancel you?” I asked in return, rolling my eyes. “Keep going, asshole.”

Gio glared at me but reluctantly went back to the documents. Next up was my birth certificate and he scanned it quickly, before flicking to the next, which was Dave’s. Both of them confirmed our parents, where we were born, the dates and all the usual stuff on a birth certificate. “You’re wasting my time with meaningless stuff like this?” He said, going to close the folder, but I put a hand in it to stop him. “Why are you making me look at this shit?” he asked, reluctantly opening the folder again and I removed my arm, noting that Cain was once again poised to rush in at a moment's notice. Probably wouldn’t take much to set the big lug off to begin with, so me being here… sharing the same breathable air as them was probably enough of a reason for him to want to go after me in all honesty.

“Just keep going,” I told Gio, tearing my gaze away from the silverback to talk to the organ grinder again. “It’s gonna save us a fuck ton of time if you just look at everything instead of stopping after every damn page to make snide remarks or ask questions. You want me out of here sooner, then fucking read!”

I could tell he did t like being told what to do, even if my words made sense. He grudgingly went back to the documents and he flicked to the next. My moms birth certificate. He scanned it quickly, evidently noticing the name because his eyes flickered momentarily and then a greedy hunger built on doubt caused him to quickly flick to the next document. The ace in the hole. Or the led weight dropped down the hole I guess. “Lies!” He snapped as he closed the folder and thrust it at me, pushing it into my chest to force me to take it from him but I did nothing but take a step back. I really hadn’t come looking for a fight and even the silverback couldn’t misinterpret a step backwards as a declaration of war. “You betray me, betray us, and then come to me with this bullshit?! What’s the angle, where’s the money?!” He demanded as he went back to the old faithful of staring at me with that crazy eyed zoned out look on his face.

“You think I want that to be true?!” I asked, trying to keep my cool with him. I wanted nothing more than the whole thing to be a fucking dream but there we were regardless, having to face up to the same truth in that moment. I’d just had a little longer to process it than he had, that’s all. “Trust me bro, there’s nothing more I’d like in the world right now than for that stuff to be wrong, for it to be some sort of joke… but facts aren’t something you can twist to fit your own desires!” I told him, trying not to think of all the assholes that did just that on a weekly basis in SCW let alone the wider world beyond our slice of the business.

“I don’t believe any of it!” Gio shot at me and over his shoulder I saw the goon squad edging a little closer to their leader, ready for this to turn ugly. “I don’t believe anything said by a silver tongued Judas like you, who never does anything that isn’t for his own gain!” He added for good measure, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what kind of angle he thought I was working with this. Not until he dropped it on me anyway. “This is a ploy to help your knight in shining white armour… you think you’ll manage to distract me from my war with the Perfect Pack, you’re trying to protect them on David’s behalf!”

“Do you think Dave or I want to be related to you?!” I asked, incredulous that he could be so dense about the whole thing. “Gio, we literally just spent weeks beating the ever living fuck out of one another, why the hell would I go to these lengths now?!”

“Easy!” He said, cackling at me like it was all a huge laugh and joke. “You labour under the notion that I will be destructed from the task The Wonderland has presented me! That I will be distracted or deterred from showing them that their ‘path of righteousness’ is little more than a pack of lies leading them to their own destruction!” He said, glaring at me again as he pointed at me with the folder. “Or perhaps… yes, that’s more your style, isn’t it Judas? I know what this is now… you wouldn’t think about anybody else, when you can think entirely of yourself!” he raves, before breaking out in another round of insane cackling that set my damn teeth on edge.

“Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?!” I asked, legitimately lost at this point. I struggled to understand what the fuck he was talking about at the best of times, but now? He was talking in damn riddles, or he may as well have been for all the good it was doing.

He continued to cackle for a good four or five seconds before stopping so abruptly that it almost caused me to jump as he looked up at me with wild eyes. “You’re so transparent, Jason Helms!” Gio told me, shaking his head in judgement. “I can see through you with more clarity than I can the window of our van here… this is all about you, isn’t it Jason?! Ahhhahaha… I would be sickened by the tactic if I didn’t expect this of a man like you!”

“I have literally no idea what you’re ranting about bro…” I told him, wishing he’d actually cut to the chase from time to time instead of being so fucking mysterious and whimsical. “So here’s what I’m gonna do; I’m just going to leave now. You can do what you want with the information, you can shove the papers up your ass if that’s what you’re inclined to do, but what you can’t do is say I kept anything from you, should you have somehow found out on your own. Okay? Awesome. Later...” I said with sarcasm dripping off of my words now. I was done with even trying to hold a civil conversation at this point, all he was doing was talking in riddles anyway and it really didn’t seem worth the extra headache, no pun intended.

I barely managed to make more than one step after I’d turned my back on him though. “Ah, just like the Jason Helms we all know and hate, turning and running away from his problems,” Gio said with another dry cackle.

I turned back to him. “The fuck is your problem, bro?” I asked. “Look, I know we’ve got our problems, but I came here in good faith, and--”

“Good faith?!” he asked, laughing again. “You don’t know the meaning of the words, Judas! And this?” he said, waving the folder he was still holding. “This is just a feeble tactic to try and get information out of me, it’s a ruse, a trick! You want to know how to fix what happened to you when you were dragged down the rabbit hole, and you think this is how to get that information!”

It felt like ice ran through me as those words came from his mouth, a cold chill ran all the way through my bones as he basically confirmed that he was responsible for the headaches I was having without saying what he’d done to me! “So it was you, you bastard!” I shouted, getting in his face but Gio only shot a wide eyed grin back at me.

“Me?” He replied, acting innocent. “No, no, no… you did this to yourself, Judas. Your actions against The Wonderland are why you suffer the way you do. But this?” he asked, once again waving the folder at me for emphasis. “This is such a thinly veiled attempt to find out how to fix yourself that I actually feel sorry for you… almost anyway…”

“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about bro!” I told him, wishing he’d get it through his thick fucking skull that I didn’t go there trying to play games. I understand that he’d be wary, I can’t fault him for that. Our recent history wasn’t exactly great and he’d also decided that I wasn’t to be trusted after deciding years later that he shouldn’t have trusted me before either, but seriously… did he think I wanted the stuff in those documents to be real?! “Look Gio, no matter what you fucking think of me at this point, I don’t care okay? But I didn’t come here hoping for some quid pro quo or whatever, this wasn’t me trying to get you to do something for me because I had some information for you… I just couldn’t live with us knowing the truth and you not, I couldn’t live with that on my conscience okay?” I explained. The bastard actually laughed in my face.

“You don’t have a conscience, Judas!” He told me, still fucking laughing. “And this stuff? I don’t think it’s worth the paper it’s written on!” He said, grabbing the paper folder with both hands and tearing the whole thing in half. It wasn’t exactly a show of physical prowess given it was a paper folder and about six sheets of paper at most, but I guess he was trying to be dramatic more than impressive, as he threw the pieces of ripped paper into the air above us right after. “You may have fooled me once before Jason, but I won’t allow you to do so again… and if you think the ridiculous notion of us being blood is all it’s going to take for me to forgive you and help with your problem then you are a bigger fool than I imagined!”

I wanted to grab him by the collar and yell at him. I wanted to beg him to tell me how to fix whatever the fuck was wrong with me. I wanted answers… but… but I sort of stood there, feeling… I dunno, lost I guess? I know he’s basically as crazy as a flat earther or conspiracy nut. I know he has more trust issues than a neurotic pomeranian with abandonment issues… but fuck, did he really think I would stoop so low as to try and trick him like this? And at the same time… hearing him confirm he was behind everything, that he was responsible for what I was going through… I wanted to scream, to yell, but I just felt numb. “Believe what you want,” I said, the energy gone from me by this point. Even if I had any fight left in me and I wanted to get up in his grill, I wasn’t going to be able to compete with all three of them anyway. “Everything in there was public record anyway… some research online would prove it was true, so believe it or ignore it, it’s up to you…”

“I don’t believe a word of what comes from the mouth of Judas,” he said coldly, sneering at me as the ripped pieces of paper danced and fluttered across the ground at every slight breeze that blew through the parking lot.

“Fair enough,” was all I had left in me and I turned to walk away. The last thing I saw was a hint of confusion in his face before I turned on my heels to walk away; was he surprised I was giving up, or was it enough to make him question whether this was a game after all? I don’t have an answer to that, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with him anymore either… I walked back into the building without another glance at Gio and his minions, I don’t know how long they watched me, whether they picked up any of the papers, I didn’t even care at that point. In part, maybe he was right, maybe there was a part of me that maybe hoped he would tell me what the fuck he’d done to me once he realised the truth about the connection between us… but I can honestly say that while maybe a small part of me was an idiot for believing in, I didn’t go to speak to him because I expected that to be the case. Yeah, even I’m not that stupid. But as much as I knew I could have held that shit over him if I wanted to be spiteful, I knew that it was wrong to keep the truth from Gio and not give him a chance to do with the information as he liked. Guess we know what he planned to do with it now, at least. If he wanted to ignore it, that was on him. If he wanted to believe it was a pack of lies and part of some elaborate scheme on my part then more power to him. All I could do was ensure he had the information, what he did with it was entirely his own decision and it’s not like I expected anything to change anyway. I wasn’t looking to rebuild what I once viewed as a friendship with him, if anything it made my skin crawl knowing we were related… but he couldn’t ever accuse me of hiding shit from him either. He can spin the ‘truth’ regarding stuff about me all he likes, he can paint whatever fucking picture he wants about Jason Helms being Judas or new Judas, I couldn’t care less. But the one thing he can’t say is that I didn’t at least try to tell him the stuff we’d discovered. If he chose to fact check it or not, what happened going forward was down to him and him alone. And he was free to ignore it… but he was also free to accept the consequences were on him too. The burden was lifted from my shoulders and in truth, as I made my way back inside to meet up with Dave before his match… I couldn’t be fucking happier about that.