What's In Storage
We open in a drugstore. There are aisles of shampoo, vitamins, and greeting cards. A bored clerk stands behind the counter. The bell over the door jingles, and Dirty Dragón strides in, mask on, moving with tremendous purpose. He slaps both hands on the counter.
„Buenas. I need your strongest product. Whatever you have. Cost is not an issue.“
The clerk straightens up. „Sure. Strongest product for… What, exactly?“
Dragó leans in and whispers. „For my seed,“ he says, deadly serious. „I have the most important match of my AWS career, and I must have the strongest, number one seed in the entire tournament. So. What do you recommend? Pills? A cream? I am very open to a cream. Just no injections.“
The clerk blinks. „Sir, I, uh, think maybe you have the wrong idea about what kind of… See, this is a family pharmacy,“ he stutters.
„Sí. And I wish to be the number one seed in the entire AWS family.“
„Sir, you look like a wrestler, so I’m just going to… Assume what you’re talking about. A seed, in a tournament, is a ranking. A placement. It is not a thing you buy here, or, um, produce,“ the clerk whispers.
Dragón stares at him for a long, long moment. Something recalibrates behind the mask.
„…A ranking.“
„A ranking.“
„Not a…“ Dragón makes a small, vague gesture in the air.
„Nope. Definitely not that,“ the clerks shakes hishead.
Dragón slowly removes his hands from the counter and takes out his phone. He begins to scroll, sighing.
„Well, uh… In that case, I have to cancel a few more appointments.“
DIRTY DRAGÓN IN…
WHAT’S IN STORAGE
We cut to days later, in dusty storage facility on the edge of town. Rows of identical orange roll-up doors bake in the hot summer sun. Dramatic reality-television music sounds for no reason at all.
Standing before a padlocked unit, in full mask and gear, holding a pair of bolt cutters, is Dirty Dragón. Beside him, holding a clipboard and an enormous ring of keys, stands Doug, the facility manager. Doug has worked here for nine years. Doug has never once been asked to be on camera. Doug would like to go back inside where the fan is.
„Doug,“ Dragón says gravely, not looking at him. „In two weeks, I enter a Japanese Deathmatch. Eight men. Bring your own weapons. No rules, no mercy, no referee to save me.“ He turns. „So I have come to the one place a warrior finds his destiny. A storage facility next to the airport.“
„These, uh… These are just units that belong to people who stopped paying,“ Doug says, trying his hardest not to stare at the camera. „It’s mostly old furniture, I think.“
„It’s mostly WEAPONS, Doug. You simply do not have the eyes to see them,“ Dragón raises the bolt cutters. „Open the first one.“
Doug unlocks the padlock and hauls the door up with a rattle. Dragón immediately begins bidding.
„Two hundred! Do I hear three? Three, from the man in the back! Four! FIVE HUNDRED, going once, going twice…“ He jabs a finger at Doug. „Sold. To DIRRRRRRRRRRRRTY DRAGÓN!“
„Nobody else is bidding, sir. Nobody else is here. It is only us. You don’t have to yell,“ Doug asks.
Inside the first unit, buried under a tarp, is a baseball bat wrapped from handle to tip in barbed wire. Dragón approaches it slowly, reaches out a reverent hand, touches a single barb, and yanks his hand back with a small yelp.
„…No,“ he decides. „This is not a very tactical weapon. Terrible design, probably hurts more to hold it than to get hit with it.“ He backs away from it. „Next unit, Doug.“
Doug rolls up the second door. This one is full of packing supplies. Rolls and rolls of bubble wrap, foam sheeting.. Dragón gasps as though he has struck gold.
„Madre de Dios. Doug. Do you see it?“
„Bubble wrap, yeah.“
„You small minded man… It’s ARMOR!“ Dragón shouts, grabs a roll and begins winding it around his own forearm. „I wear this under my gear. Every light tube, every chair, every barbed bat, it hits me, and it goes…“ He pokes the wrap. It pops. „…pop. Harmless. And the loudest pop some of my opponents will ever hear,“ he laughs.
The third door goes up. This unit is, by any honest assessment, garbage. A cracked mannequin missing one arm. A karaoke machine. A cardboard box of expired snacks of questionable origin. One of the boxes of cereal boxes says BLUEBERRY SMLURPS, whatever that is.
„Welp, that’s a write-off,“ Doug sighs. „Sorry. Sometimes you get a dud.“
But Dragón is already inside, hoisting the one-armed mannequin over his head like a trophy.
„A DUD? Doug, this is the greatest find of the entire day,“ he says and props the mannequin upright. „This is a decoy. In the chaos, I put a spare mask on him, I stand him in a corner, and while the animals beat my plastic twin into confetti, the real Dragón is somewhere safe and quiet. You cannot eliminate a man you are not hitting.“
He turns to the camera to appraise it. „A cracked mannequin, in a normal life, is worth nothing. In a deathmatch? Priceless. This is why I am the smartest buyer in this facility.“
„You are the only buyer in this facility,“ Doug insists.
„I will call him Decoy Dragón,“ the luchador says, paying no attention to Doug’s comments. He also grabs one of the cereal boxes.
„Uh, I don’t think those are FDA approved. Also, they expired in, like 1997,“ Doug says.
„Only a fool turns down a bowl of blueberry Smlurps in the morning, Douglas,“ Dragón insists as they move to the final unit.
Doug rolls up the last door. This unit contains no weapons whatsoever. It contains a folding lawn chair, a cooler, a small beach umbrella, a paper sign that reads RESERVED, and a battery-powered fan. It looks an arsenal for nothing but pleasant afternoon.
„There it is,“ Dragón breathes. „The ultimate weapon.“
„It is patio furniture.“
„It is a master plan, Doug.“ He lifts the folding chair lovingly. „You see, all the others, they will bring their light tubes and saws and terrible little barbed bats. And they will run at each other, and hit each other, and one by one they will be carried out of the building on stretchers. And where will Dirty Dragón be during all of this?“
He unfolds the chair and sits down in it, right there in the dusty aisle. He opens the cooler and produces a juice box, presumably as old as the questionable blueberry snack. „Underneath the ring. In my chair. With my snacks. Waiting.“
Dragón pierces the juice box with the little straw and sips.
„They are bringing weapons to hurt people, Doug. I am bringing furniture to outlive them. That is the whole difference between a fighter and a genius.“
He gestures at the facility with the juice box. Some of the juice splashes around. „I will take all of it. Bill it to AWS. Tell them it is a training expense.“
Doug looks at his clipboard, then at the masked man sipping a juice box in a lawn chair in the middle of his storage aisle, and quietly decides this is well above his pay grade.
The scene goes static for a few seconds. When we come back, Dirty Dragón sits in the folding lawn chair, but this time in a plain dark room, the cooler beside him, a different juice box in his hand. He looks into the camera.
„So… AWS figured out they made a mistake when their CONSPIRACIES prevented me from winning the Gold Rush tournament for the… What is it called? The 90210 Championship? Anyway… To make things right, they put me in ANOTHER tournament, this time, to crown the King… of the Deathmatches.“
He sighs.
„Listen, I am not the biggest fan of mindless violence and barbed wire and exploding thumbtacks, or whatever you got in store… But if there is a tournament to win, a title to go after, a chance to be called the KING? Count me in,“ he smirks and finishes his juice box, then throws it carelessly on the floor.
„Before we even get to the tournament, the people running this freakshow put us all in a match to determine the order of it. And let me tell you, it’s a real who’s who of America’s Most Wanted. A guy whose name is Pain, just misspelled. A guy whose name is Chaos… Also misspelled. An actual psycho from… Slovakia? That sounds made up. A lady who’s called after the disease that kills potatoes. A capitalist… That’s probably the worst one,“ he says and spits on the floor in disgust.
„You get the gist of it. Seven violent people. Seven psychopaths, like in the movie. And then… Me. The only one whose brain is capable of something else than cheesy horror references. The only man with a plan, as always,“ he smirks.
„Amigos, I’ll give you a little insight into the genius of Dirty Dragón… Sometimes, to really conquer the idea of a match, a tournament, whatever… You gotta flip it on its head. Take this one. Eight people in the ring at the same time, Japanese Deathmatch rules AND elimination on top of that, everybody brings their own weapons… What does it sounds like to you? Violence. Chaos. Disorder. Some real straight to VHS Michael Dudikoff shit, right? Well, then what’s the best way to get out of that alive?“
Dragón leans back in his lawn chair with a wide smile, hands behind his head.
„Just sit back. Watch everybody fly in, swinging their weapon of choice, eliminate each other… And then, when the time is right, when there’s the last exhausted maniac left in this bloodbath… I swoop in and take it,“ he chuckles.
„Read the rules and look for loopholes muchachos. It doesn’t say the toughest man wins, anywhere. Just the LAST man. The one still standing when everyone else is stretchered out of the building. Those were never the same thing. The so-called toughest man runs in with bloodlust, dives head first into the violence… And he’s usually the first one out. The smartest man,“ he taps on his head, „is the one that really survives, because he takes part in as little violence as actually possible.“
He gets up from the chair and walks a little closer to the camera, kicking the empty juice box to the side in the process.
„You wanna get violent, muchachos? Be my guest. Hit harder, go faster, empty the tank early. Every time one of you takes a big, scary bump that makes the crowd go HOLY SHIT, you take one step closer to the stretcher, and I make one leap closer to the number one seed. So bring chairs, tables, light tubes, thumbtacks, barbed wire, bring a Sherman tank for all I care.“
He gets annoyingly close to the camera.
„You will find out the only weapon that matters… Is PATIENCE.“
He cracks a smile for the camera and we slowly fade to black.