YOUR EYES

I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I haven't tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good help me I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good why have I tried nobody cares they all call for blood but I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good I've tried so hard to be good they all call for blood but I've tried so hard to be good but they all call for blood they want him more than me but I've tried so hard to be good but he's back I'm back Jacob's home and they all call for blood and soon they will have it soon you will all have it soon your eyes will see your eyes your eyes your eyes
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visit the official SEE NO EVIL website http://www.seenoevilthemovie.com

10:27 AM - 72 Comments - 92 Kudos - Add Comment

Burning

I saw him again tonight. Or he saw me. I did an interview this morning. A lot of interviews. Again and aGain. A press junket, they caLl it. I sit in a room and reporters and rEporters and reporters come through and ask questions. I put the mask on and everything went fiNe right up until the end. I smiled. I rolled over. I barked and sat up and played dead. The last womaN asking the questions wanted to know about the date. I calmly told her that the number had great signifIcance for a variety of cultures. I alSo said how important it was to have a good date for the summer release. I said all of these things with a firm voice of prActiced authority. The reporter seemed satisfied, so I nodded and kept the fixed, smiLing mask on my face and waited for her to leave. It was stifling under the mask. IncomprehensIbly hot and all I wanted was to breathe. To breathe clean air for a moment, just a momEnt to fill my burning lungs. Burning, burning.

But the woman wouldnt leave. She talked and I talked, my voice fading and his voice Growing. It was a cacophony in my ears, but the smiLing mask stayed on until the reporter complimEnted me on my suit. I tried to accept the complimeNt, but all that came out of my mouth was this choked little noise. I begaN to clap my hands at the woman. I barked lIke a seal, screaming at her aS the mask came off. The Girl screamed and ran away. SO did her camera man, and Jacob wished for hIs chain at that moment. He wished for her eyes. Windows to the soul. I thought for a momeNt to chase them down, but instead I turned the other way.

I tore the mask off my face. I tore off my costume. I ripped it all away and made my way to the fire escape, climbinG upward, upward.. I climbed to the roof and stood in the dark as the hunters moon rose. The conflict in my mind was Breaking down. I have worked so long to keep mYself in check. I have workEd for so long to wear my mask. I oBfuscated my true face for so long. Perhaps the laughing man is right. Perhaps the man in the mirror is the truth. Whatever struggle I had was ebbing away. Everyone wants answers. They should praY their desires remain unfulfilled. I have found the answer now. He has found mE.

3:07 PM - 63 Comments - 70 Kudos - Add Comment

Nineteen

Certain Islamic sects believe that there are nineteen devils that serve as the guardians of hell.  Nineteen.  Ive been thinking about numbers.  Everyone is talking about numbers, but I keep to myself.  I think in solitude.  In the lair.  In my lair.  In Jacobs lair.  In his lair.  Its becoming his more and more.  His, his, his.  Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

Nineteen devils to guard hell.  It makes perfect sense.  Nineteen.  So does this: in the Dark Tower, Stephen King notes that Nineteen is a number of great power.  He writes about time and tide and the cycles we go through.  Resumption.  Repentance.Reconciliation.  But never Resolution.  Never that.  Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, knows his place in the world.  The worlds.  He will sojourn to the Dark Tower and do his business.  But I am also learning my place.  Nineteen is teaching me.  Nineteen devils.  Nineteen iterations.  Nineteen resolutions.  Ill ask the man in the mirror what it all means, and he will whisper back at me.  Hell whisper true things and lies, but there will be lies and truths in both.

The man in the mirror wears a mask.  He wears masks.  We all wear masks.  You do.  You wear a mask for your boss, for your wife, for you friend, for your child.  In the darkest watches of the night, you even wear one for yourself.  I am.  I have worn more masks than I know how to calculate.  I have carried more names than any man should, but they all slough off sooner or later.  My happy face is falling away.  The face you all lie to me about.  Scars?  You have no scars, Kane.

But I do.  I do.  Ive seen them ever since I started looking into that cursed number.  They were small at first.  Pinpricks.  The thinnest lattice of white lines, like Charlottes filigree web.  But they have deepened.  Ive dragged a mirror into the lair.  Beveled glass and cracked.  Ive looked carefully at the broken glass and counted my reflections.  Does it surprise you that I have found nineteen?  Nineteen reflections, all looking back to me with different masks, different scars.  

The web of scars deepens with each passing day.  Angry, red, endlessly, impossibly deep.  Some of them weep.  Foul, virulent ichors spill from the scars and pour over my face like some impossible, obsidian rain storm.  But the more vile the gashes covering my face, my nineteen faces becomes, the more than central wound widens.  I smile, and my nineteen reflections stare back at me, smiling and laughing and screaming and weeping.  I smile because I know what lies beneath the scars.  I know what boils up from under the wounds.  I see my true face.  I see it coming through at last.  Even Jacob smiles, having found a kindred soul at last.  Nineteen faces.  All of them mine.  All becoming one.

6:24 AM - 31 Comments - 50 Kudos - Add Comment

The Lies in the Mirror

Hi!  Kane here!  Isnt it a glorious day?  You know, when I was in Australia filming, I got along with my fellow cast members like gangbusters.  Especially the kids in the cast.  The kids most of all.  Just like this past Monday night.  Christina Vidal, Michael Pagan and Samantha noble were like family!  I remember all those long days on the set when we would sit around and tell each other stories.  Good times.  We laughed and laughed together, just four actors perfecting their craft.  

Gee whiz they welcomed me into their little clique.  They looked up at me and not a trace of fear crossed their well-scrubbed little faces.  Their reactions in the movie?  No that was all acting.  Just performance.  They looked at me and saw good ol Kane.  Just a big, lovable teddy bear.  Gregory Dark?  The director?  He was the same.  Not a trace of fear on his face when he told me what to do.  Nobody fears me.  Im an actor.  Im friendly.  Im going to be a star.  Everybody loves me.

The lies we tell ourselves to get through the night.  The lies in the mirror.  Im a good person.  I have friends.  The face I see in the mirror is handsome and calm.  When I smile, its genuine and true.  It doesnt look a thing like a hatchet cleaved a hole in my face.  The scars have come back, you see (liar, liar you have no scars).  I thought they had gone away for good, but they havent.  I lie to myself.  We all lie to ourselves.  I thought I could go out there do this.  Be among you.  You want truth?

Michael Pagans throat felt good in my hand.  I felt his pulse beneath my fingers and wondered what it would look like spilling onto the ground.

Christina and Michael, Gregory and Samantha, Dan and John and the cast and the crew cowered with my every step.  The scrabbled before me like rats, and the first day I held the chain in my hands in Australia it felt like home.  The set became my home, and Jacobs lair my refuge.  Because in the lair, I could be untouched.  In the lair, there were no mirrors to plague me.  I look into mirrors a lot now.  The lies we tell ourselves vanish under the gaze of a clear reflection.  The ghosts of memory and timeless time echo to me in mirrors.  I see the truth.  I see my true face.  I see what they cower from.  It comes from under the surface, pouring out like heat shimmering off desert blacktop.  We lie to ourselves, but the truth arises.

8:06 AM - 46 Comments - 69 Kudos - Add Comment

The Journey

The past and the present dovetail madly together.  The chain from my war with Snitsky.  The chain of Jacobs rage.  The chains that bind us together.  The chains that break us apart.  The masks we wear to get through every day.  To hide ourselves.  To hide from others.  Everyone asks me questions.  Everyone wants to know what I hear.  They want to know what I want to say.  Questions circle me like condors, their hungry small eyes bearing down on prey they know is falling for the last time.  But I wont fall.  I wont.

It seems like only yesterday I was writing of my trip to Australia, my journey to filming "See No Evil."  But so much time has passed.  An eternity.  And only a few days.  A few simple dates.  Dates.  A sequence of numbers we all agree upon to denote a moment in time.  Have you ever thought about how ridiculous the calendar is?  You reading this with your voyeur desire to understand?  You with your slithering questions?  Do you ever consider how completely random a date is?  There is no objective reality to time.  No Lord sitting on high with a nuclear clock.  Its just an agreement.  A simple agreement founded on nothing more concrete than a handshake.  The calendar is as hopeless and transient as the tide in morning, the sun reflecting off the sea like blood.

Do you know what Im saying?  I can almost see you there, shaking your head at this manic ranting.  "Tell us about it", youre saying.  Then you whisper your date.  Your favorite date.  The date you all keep asking about.  But heres what Im going to tell you.  Heres the truth.  Heres the big revelation: the date is a lie.  All dates are lies.  I know.  The man in the mirror told me so.

You cant talk about dates without talking about the agreement.  The social contract that makes up our seconds, our minutes, our hours, our days.  You and your neighbor agree that its Tuesday at 2:17pm, and so it is.  Your government says that the 4th of July is a holiday, and you head to the lake for your time by the water.  A man in Rome says that December 25th is sacred, so you blithely agree and tear your presents open.  You march like a sheep.  You ask me your questions.  The date, the date, the date.  Why does it make you so angry, Kane?  What does it mean, Kane?  What happened on that day, Kane?  

What day?  What is a day?  Ill tell you a truth.  Ill tell you a lie.  Ill tell you what the man in the mirror says to me: all dates are lies.  Time is a lie.  Time is nothing more than an agreement to make your lives seem linear and true.  But the days of your life are not.  Time is flexible.  It shifts madly, sanely.  I am in the arena, savoring the pain racing through my body after Snitsky used the chain.  I am on a set with a smile on my face, showing Jacobs lair to all of you.  I am in my Lair, looking at the girl in the box, loving her and hating her.  Jacob is in his box and his mother shows him pictures.  All of this now.  All of this past.  All of this on the date.  The Date.

1:30 PM - 44 Comments - 58 Kudos - Add Comment

Home

Imagine my home.  Kanes home.  Do you see an old warehouse with moats of dusty light beaming in through the gaps in newspaper-covered windows?  Or perhaps some shack in a rural place, the Unabombers palatial estate?  Maybe you see a nice apartment, or a cave in the desert, or an ominous black van forever moving from place to place?  What you imagine will do.

What matters is that I walked out of my home a few days after Taboo Tuesday, a few days after that dream or vision or schizophrenic break.  I walked to a payphone.  I called information, and a computer voice said, what city, please?

Stamford, Connecticut, I answered.

What listing?

World Wrestling Entertainment.

Clicking and whirring.  Finally, a ring.  A receptionist answering.  Where should I direct your call?  I listened to her voice, young and vibrant.  A recent college graduate, ready to take on the world.  I thought I could hear her pulse under the words, the steady sound of her breath.  Jacob could hear those things.  I asked for Vince.

Who may I say is calling?

I told the receptionist the Name.  She put me through.  Vince picked up the phone.  I said three words:

Ill do it.

Two weeks later, I was on a plane for Australia.  Jacob Goodnight was with me.  He has been ever since. 

12:06 PM - 44 Comments - 55 Kudos - Add Comment

A hidden Life

I have a hidden life.  A secret life.  Some of you know what it is.  Or you think you do.  A hidden, secret life with a hidden, secret name.  Names have power.  And the child new the Name.  The child with the empty sockets for eyes knew the hidden, secret Name.  He whispered it to me in the threshold of the old hotel and he took power.  

You are what you are, whispered the boy.  The gouged hole where his eyes used to be wept black ichors, and his tiny hands grip on my own was vise-like.  But you can be more than you are.  You can Become now.  The boy led me past the foyer of the hotel, dust covered and filthy, but what we walked into was not the lobby.

What we walked into was outside.  The day was bright and cheerful.  A suburban street under a blue sky, picturesque and stunning.  I was wearing a summer suit of the finest linen.  I answered to another Name.  A hidden, secret one.  We approached a white picket fence and a charming house beyond.  The feel of the sun upon my face warmed my entire being and I knew I was home.

The blind child led me through the gate and up the stairs of the suburban home.  Up and down the quiet street, every other little house looked exactly the same, cookie cutter homes in a cookie cutter world.  Before we walked in the door, I looked around and realized that the chain still hung over my shoulders, its weight almost comforting in its reality.  When the child opened the door, I heard the gentle tinkling of steel rattling against steel.  We walked inside, and instead of a well-appointed living room, we stepped into an abattoir.

The walls of the room were covered in money.  Thousands upon thousands of bills were pinned to the wall, untold riches for the taking.  But I knew without trying that were I to reach out for any of the green temptations, they would crumble to dust in my hands.  The copper smell of blood filled my nostrils.  The room was dark, but somehow I could see past the darkness and to a cold, crimson light beyond.  The boy looked up at me with his unseeing face.

Out with the old and in with the new, said the boy in a singsong voice, something borrowed and something blue.  When I looked down at him, the boy was gone.  Instead, the script for SEE NO EVIL was in my hand.  The pages ran black with blood, or bile, or something worse.  An acrid, heavy smell filled the air, and that musical noise of steel against steel jangled.  I looked up from the screenplay and saw why.

Chains dangled from the ceiling.  They were everywhere.  They were rusty and wet and glistened in the half-light, their surface slick with indescribable gore.  Across the gulf of space, one of the chains squealed as it made its pendulum arc, carrying a massive weight that none of the others bore.  I looked across and knew why instantly.  All of the chains had heavy meat hooks on the ends.  This one carried a body.

The muscular form dangling from the chain swayed too and fro gently, as though touched by a gentle wind.  I approached.  Heavy curls of oily, curled hair hung down over the poor creatures face.  I reached up and began to brush the hair away when the thing reached out and grabbed my arm.  Its head lifted, and I gasped when I looked into my own face.  My old face.  My true face.

Who are you? Kane asked.  My mouth worked silently as names, meaningless Names ran through my head.  I couldnt answer.  Who are you? Kane demanded.

I.  I am but still, the cacophony of voices running through my head gave no real response.

I will ask you once more.  You will answer, said Kane.  I looked into my own true face and I longed for it briefly.  Behind the mask of truth the other Kane wore, I saw that there was nothing where his eyes should be.  His empty sockets ran vile fluid over what some think of as a mask but what I know as truth.  

I blinked and said, Jacob.

And all of this happened in the blink of an eye as I wrestled with pain in the locker room.  There was pain in the middle of my back and I knew why: I was sitting, the chain wrapped around my shoulders digging into the small of my spine.  I leaned forward and the tension relaxed.  The chain dropped into the chair.  I stood on unsteady legs and walked toward the mirror.  Fell toward it, the gulf across the locker room seeming to expand exponentially.  I stared into the looking glass.

I saw my face.  Scarred and broken (not scarred and broken).  I saw Kane there.  All Kanes.  I saw other masks from years past.  I saw the Name.  And I saw Jacob Goodnight.  More than anything else, I saw Jacob.  Jacob the boy.  Jacob the man.  I saw into his black heart, and I saw into my own.  I splashed water as cold as ice across my face.  When I looked back in the mirror, something caught my eye.

In the reflection, the chain from my war with Snitsky was gone.  The script lay in its place.  I went and picked it up.

6:20 PM - 47 Comments - 70 Kudos - Add Comment

The Hotel

Snitsky hurt me at Taboo Tuesday.  Perhaps it wasnt his fault.  Perhaps it was my distraction.  Perhaps it was the Fates, spinning their thread, weaving their tapestry, cutting their string.  Regardless, I peered into my reflection in the mirror and the same sense of dislocation I felt when I was reading SEE NO EVIL overwhelmed me again.  I still had the chain.  It was covered in blood.  But when I gazed at myself in the mirror, when I stared into my own mismatched eyes, it was Jacob Goodnight who stared back at me, and the blood on the chain was not my own.  It was not Snitskys.  It was the sinners in the hotel.

As I caught my breath and drove away the pain from the match, I went back to Vinces rehearsed speech about the movie: Hollywood is looking for a new monster, he said.  A franchise villain.  A Dracula, a Jason, a Pinhead.  If you take the part, Jacob Goodnight will be that monster.  But now, in this moment, in this place, pain screaming through my body, the gore-slicked chain sticky and wet in my sore hands Jacob and I were one in the same.

Still, I did not commit.  I cast aside those who tried to help me and I crept from the arena away from the fans who only wanted to chant their support.  It was not support I craved.  It was solitude.  Like the predatory wolf injured in a fight for dominance within the pack, I wanted to lick my wounds to return all the stronger.  Despite my best efforts, one fan did find me.

As I limped into the night, I was confronted by a child.  The boy was tow-headed.  Blond, wide-eyed, innocent.  He held forth a picture and a pen in trembling hands.  I frowned at him and asked where his father was, and the boy responded only with a nod across the street.

I looked to where the boy gestured and saw the impossible: the rotting edifice of a hotel long out of date.  The top two floors were blasted and blackened, the result of some long-ago fire.  As I stared up at the place, rain began to fall, freezing cold.  It brought clarity with it.  I looked back down at the boy with his picture.  The ink on the photograph was running like blood.  It warped my image on the page.  Twisted it so I was like some Jackson Pollack version of myself.

My eyes turned back to the boys own, and I gasped.  Where his eyes had been, there were only gaping holes.  The side of his face was burned.  Scarred.

Do you see? he asked.  My father is there.  I am there.  We are there.  The boy let go of the pen and the photo, now an indistinguishable of ink or blood.  He reached out to me and took my massive hand in his own.  Together, we crossed the impossible abyss and walked toward the hotel.

9:48 AM - 37 Comments - 42 Kudos - Add Comment

The Chain

Taboo.  Against the norms of society.  A violation of the communal codes that tie a society together.  At Taboo Tuesday in 2004 I stood in front of thousands of fans with a chain in my hand and the cold steel felt like liquid fire.  I lost that battle against a man who claimed it was not his fault.  He was right; the fault was my own.  But my main recollection was the way the chain felt, and the way that for a brief moment, Jacob Goodnight became flesh.

Vince never spoke again of SEE NO EVIL after that first conversation, and life went on.  I had an issue that took up most of my time.  A Jezebel who lied with every word, a stalker whose obsessions proved dangerous, and a hatred coursing through my veins that drove me forward.  When the script for the movie showed up under my door, I paid no attention.  But for weeks, it appeared time and time again.  Finally, I flipped open the cover on that fateful Tuesday.  Instead of warming up for the match with Snitsky, I wrapped the chain around my shoulders, liking the weight and cold heat of the steel and I read.

As I read, I went away.  I was no longer in a locker room.  I was no longer preparing for a match that could prove deadly.  I was no longer driven by that rage that made me cringe, clutching at my stomach whenever I thought of my erstwhile opponent.  Instead, I was in a dilapidated hotel.  I was looking into the unclean eyes of lambs walking into a slaughter.  I saw their misdeeds and knew that their moment of justice was at hand.  And then, to my surprise, the world of the arena and the world of the script collided like freight trains, bodies piled beside the tracks.

The world spun as I read.  Jacob carried his chain.  Kane sat in the locker room wrapped in his chain.  Jacob and Kane together, Jacob and Kane apart, Jacob and Kane both one in the same.  Jacob and Kane, me.  When the time came for my match, I approached the ring on legs as light as air.  Reality and fantasy were indistinguishable.  Then earth came crashing up at me and there was pain.

7:00 AM - 43 Comments - 53 Kudos - Add Comment

Kane's First Blog

Most people confuse silence with inarticulateness. Most people think that because I let my eyes and my actions do most of my talking that I must be incapable of stringing the lines and circles that make up our language together into coherent thoughts. Most people are wrong. Actions usually speak louder than words, and the eyes... the eyes are the windows to the soul. The eyes are what started me down this road to begin with. SEE NO EVIL is about many things, but it is about the eyes more than anything else.

There had been rumors. For months, there had been rumors that Vince McMahon wanted to ask me for something. Usually, when Vince asks for something there are bodies left in the wake of the request, and this was no different, but when he finally summoned the courage to call me into his office one week at Raw, surrounded by security, his Adams apple bobbing up and down in a harlequin pantomime of nervousness, I saw in his eyes that this would be no normal request. He had not summoned me like some imperious ruler to meet out some perversion of justice on his behalf, to take some paltry revenge, to perpetuate some meaningless deceit. No. Vince called me before him to show me a different mask entirely.

He babbled about convergence. He babbled about corporate branding. He babbled about media expansion. I stood in silence waiting for the point to reveal itself, and it finally did. Vince said that WWE was starting a movie division, and that he thought I should be the standard bearer. He said that the first movie he wanted to make was a terrifying journey into the mind of a madman. He said that I could be a star. That I could become famous. That were I to perform in the movie he wanted to make, I could become a figure as iconic as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers a post-modern boogeyman to frighten children into doing their chores. Vince McMahon said that Kane was ready to become a movie star. As he talked of mansions in Beverly Hills, fast sports cars and beautiful women, I tuned out his escalating, enraptured voice and focused on his eyes.

Vince wanted to make money off the sweat of my labor. This was not unusual. He finished his pitch for the movie, ending in a gravel-voiced call to arms. The smile on his face never touched his eyes. When he asked what my answer was, I said a single word.

No.

The chairman is not used to hearing that word. His Adams apple continued to bob madly. His eyes bugged out. He spoke for another fifteen minutes, trying everything from saying that I was afraid of my own success to begging. In the end, I turned and walked out of the office without a word while he droned on behind me. No meant no. I had no intention of acting in a movie, or working with thespians and writers and directors and grips and eating at the craft services table, of becoming a celebrity, of one day writing an internet blog and standing in front of hundreds of eager fans at comic book conventions. I had no intention of stitching this smiling mask on my face.

I wanted none of this. Until the chain. Until the dream. Until I saw the eyes.

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visit the official SEE NO EVIL website http://www.seenoevilthemovie.com/

11:33 AM - 113 Comments - 149 Kudos - Add Comment