Calm…
There is no calm.
BE CALM! DAMMIT!
Still, the anger.
Always that anger. That rage. That hurt.
It was always there in him. Driving him. Giving him that unquenchable thirst for murder. For revenge.
Revenge against the world.
If he was back home in America, they would have hunted him down by now.
Not the usual suspects either – Sideshow purveyors, small town cops. No…given the body count that had been mounting – and after he destroyed that entire police department in that po-dunk town…
It would have been the US ARMY coming for him.
And so he left Granny Ruth and his brother and even his own misbegotten and horribly disfigured children behind in America.
How he came to become one of Kim’s Champions in North Korea is a long and very strange tale.
We will look at the highlights here.
However, like any tale, it’s the details that make it full, the make it rich, that bring the ordinary to life and give color to the otherwise bland canvas.
YOU, reader – YOU will get none of that. We have no time for such detail. We’ll give you enough though in the spots we do highlight – you will feel sadness, remorse, terror and disgust. When the light shines – it will shine brightly and you might even wonder if what you are reading is real…or fiction...
How about we say it’s a mix of both and anything not covered – you fill in the blanks?
Now, come with me.
We part the veils of time – we delve in to the past.
It’s 1991. We see a triumphant Belial – standing over the corpse of Renaldo. Renaldo was a talk show host. On this fateful day, he decided to do a show on “Freaks…and the women who love them”.
This was a big mistake, given Belial was in a nearby town on Granny Ruth’s bus. Belial – a conjoined twin cut from his brother and left for dead. He was tossed into the garbage by his own father. He was called a monster. Dwayne – his brother – was his father’s true son….
…Not the sick, twisted freak attached to his side.
So ‘DAD’ had said.
Belial was essentially a ball of round malformed flesh with two arms protruding from his sides….these arms also acted as legs. He was, as many who later met grisly ends would say – hideous.
Hence, Renaldo’s show touched a nerve. For him…and for the rest of the Unique individuals on Granny Ruth’s bus…and so the bus emptied and Renaldo felt the full wrath of Belial.
In his last moments, the talk show host tried to apologize…he begged for his life but Belial was outraged and would not hear it. He used his claw like hands to rip the face clean off Renaldo…and then stuffed that torn off face into his ear. Renaldo screamed as Belial pulled the skin through one ear and reached into the other ear, tearing through the hole and into his brain to retrieve the other side of the face and pull it through. It was like bringing through a bloodied dish towel.
After that, with the police closing in, Belial vanished. He made his way out the back of the studio where the show was filmed and took refuge in the woods behind it, rolling down a large hill there and down into a gorge. Eventually he found his way to a river…
And from there, the details are sketchy. We know he turned up in Chichen Itza in Mexico roughly five years from when he was last seen on Renaldo. The Pyramids there were vandalized at some point with crude drawings of Belial and some folks there will actually tell you about the time Belial spent there with them. They worshipped him as some sort of god and even to this very day, a small sect of Belial Cult Worshippers remains in that part of the world. They say he was amongst them for 5 years and there are some photographs to prove it. Belial lived like a king amongst the Mexican folk. He was adorned in jewellery, silk and was presented what seemed like an endless stream of women to try and sait his voracious sexual appetite.
TO no avail, if you asked the people. Belial was ravenous….but eventually his lust for blood overwhelmed his lust for the pleasures of the flesh. It was the rage in him…the burning anger….
At night he would awaken, screaming, remembering how the veterinarian’s blade felt as it sliced into him – the pain as he was cut from his brother like gristle cut from a steak.
He would remember that long ago anguish and loss as he was discarded in the trash like so much flotsam. His own father had him carved up and left for dead.
What chance did he have?
And so after years of being worshipped by his Mexican cult – using their women over and over while their husbands slept in cold beds, using their drugs like candies, eating their finest fruits and savouring their best meats…in the end, even paradise couldn’t dull that ache in his heart. Couldn’t fill the void in his soul.
So he left. More years passed… a lot of them infact. So many that Belial passed from reality into myth. He was spoken of in hushed tones and then not at all. It was like he never existed at all…
…unless you went to a certain Mexican village where many of the children bore similar deformities as their father.
There, the women would tell tales of Belial and would smile as they remembered his urgency and ferocity when they lay together. The men would talk about the drug induced communing with higher powers. The feasts. To those people, it was like he never left.
To Belial though, those days of avarice were long in the past.
For we now find him in modern times – just a couple of years ago after making his way to North Korea. There, he was finally free to be himself.
To be the monster his father thought he was.
His Korean adventures were legendary. He took to the streets and, feeling no sympathy at all for the plight of the ungrateful students and religious zealots, he butchered them one after the other. Wives forced to eat the severed limbs of their husbands before he took them…Students made to praise the government as their bones were broken. Belial debased everyone he came in contact with, one after the other and at last he felt that hole in his heart being filled. Bringing misery to a people who didn’t think they could sink any lower. THIS was his calling. He would tear of faces and feast on their eyes, he would tie up the fathers so that they could watch as he ate the wives and children alive.
The years passed in a haze and whatever part of Belial was still human was buried under so many mounds of gore, that part of him would never see the sun again.
It was only a matter of time before Kim had him rounded up.
…and given the highest medal and honors the state could afford.
Services to HIS country.
Kim knew how to treat people like Belial well.
Where the squads and eyes had failed, Belial had succeeded. Though the brute didn’t know it, he had quashed many nascent rebellions.
Soon, Belial and Kim became fast friends. Soulmates.
Belial retired to a life of splendor, only called to duty when needed to punish student leaders and organized labor bosses.
In recent times though, Belial grew bored…and was more than happy when Kim invited him to watch some of the new ‘Fights’ he was holding in secret. Belial took part in these and became one of Kim’s champions.
Since he began fighting in the arena – he had not known defeat.
…and now my friends, we arrive in the present.
Here we see Belial, sitting comfortably on a huge king sized bed. The sheets are satin and beside him are two trays – one with grapes, the other with olives and cheeses. In front of him is a large silver dish containing the finest cuts of fish and some peking duck. Belial throws in the duck in one bite and swallows it down.
What a far cry from his time in the Hotel Broslin where his brother Dwayne would hit up the local McDonalds and bring back 20 or 30 of those small cheeseburgers they made. The 99 Cent gut grenades.
How he missed those days sometimes. He and Dwayne on the hunt – punishing those veterinarians –VETERINARIANS!!! – who separated them. His father was such a despicable human being, he couldn’t even have him mutilated by an MD. He was just an animal and the right people were brought in that dealt with Animals.
“STOP!...Your hurting me!”, one of the two ladies sharing the bed with Belial cries out suddenly. It seemed in his reminiscence, Belial had squeezed the breast in his hand a little too hard.
He turns to the woman, his eyes glowing red for just a second and grunts. She nods and goes under the covers to do as he asked.
A knock at the door.
Belial grunts again and three people walk in. His official interpreter, a man in a suit and a stoic looking soldier from Kim’s guard.
“Mr. Clawman”, the man in the suit begins, “Kim has scheduled you for a match this weekend. He has something very special planned! A tournament! Some of the best fighters in the world will be there! Professionals from Ultimate Online Wrestling! A very prestigious wrestling federation! Kim is a huge fan! Their finest warriors – of their own free will – have agreed to participate! It’s called Bloodsport!”
Belial grunts.
The interpreter looks at the man in the suits and responds, “It’s called Death Sport and yes, he has already heard of it. Mr. Clawman is very happy to be invited to participate. He would like to know if Brother Abishag will be there?”
The man in the suit looks at Belial – whose seems to almost be smiling now – and something was going on under those covers….
Belial grunts again and the interpreter says, “Mr. Clawman would appreciate if you pay no mind to the ministrations of the lady under the covers. He says you may continue with the business at hand.…”
Before the Man in the suit can begin to speak, Belial makes a loud noise…and then breathes out loudly. He reaches under the blanket and pitches the lady there onto the floor.
He grunts again.
The interpreter looks at the woman and says, “Bitches, get out…”
One of the ladies takes offense and looks at Belial.
“Bitches? You freak!”
Without warning he leaps up onto her face and rips out her tongue. He leaves her to bleed out on the floor. The other lady runs out of the room screaming.
“Uh…so….yes, Brother Abishag will be there”, The man in the suit says.
Belial clenches his fist and grunts.
“And what about Vastrix the Cyborg Warrior?” The interpreter asks the man in the suit.
“Yes, he will be there too. And Kronin…and Brother Buzi and Takuma Sato and Walter Reagan and…”
Belial is visibly pleased. This would indeed be a test of his skills….
“And also some of Kim’s other in house warriors.”
Belial’s smile drops.
THE OTHERS.
This was going to be tough. Kim had some particularly brutal in house warriors other than himself.
This was going to be a challenge for sure.
The blood was going to run in rivers.
He was getting excited and demanded the woman who ran from the room be returned to take the edge off. He couldn’t be distracted by lust – which always seemed to come hand in hand with the thought of murder. He needed to be calm so that when the time came, he would strike.
The man in the suit spoke. “Your first match will be against Vastrix. In a hangman match.”
Belial began to laugh. A hangman match. How fitting. Since he didn’t have a neck, what were they going to hand him by?
His dinger?
Poor poor Vastrix.
The man was doomed.