There isn’t a more beautiful thing in this thing we call life than giving birth.
My profession affords me to witness such miracles, but to witness the birth of your own child is a different experience entirely.
With all that built-up anticipation of bringing something you’ve created into the world, what happens when the nine month payoff of hearing that baby’s first cry resonates inside your ear drums?
You’re hit with an overwhelming rush of emotion and hormones that forever links your heart to theirs, because it signals something inside you signifying that it belongs to you.
That’s your baby.
You love that baby.
You love it so much that you’d do anything for it.
But it’s what happens immediately after birth that’s the toughest thing for a new parent to do, and equally traumatic:
Cutting the cord.
The untethering of the cord between baby and guardian.
The three of you understand tethers.
The puppeteer cursed with a demon that lives inside him, crying from deep within his soul to be released once again. Those cries are a reminder that there is a part of him that’s missing, and no matter how hard he tries to suppress it, it’s still lives and will always be part of him.
The scientist whose insatiable and irresponsible hunger to create has caused an uncountable number of neglected experiments to be cast aside and left to rot without attention or care including the destruction of the bond between father and son.
And the ferryman whose sole existence to deliver souls to their final destination who ventured beyond his boundaries, awakening a fear inside his master that he’d lose his attachment to, and thus his power over, his grunt worker and more importantly his meal ticket.
What you each desire deep inside whether you’re a puppeteer wishing to mold the next generation, a mad scientist striving to change our world, or a grunt worker dreaming of leaving a legacy is to break the chains that bind you.
The chains that pull you down deep into the dark where your demons reside.
The chains that yank you to the Bleak if you fly too close to the Pantheon.
And the chains that enslave you to your authority’s orders which dictates your life’s work.
I want the opposite.
I want to chain you deep down in the depths of Arcadia away from naive and helpless children where your demons will be safe from harming their bodies and minds.
I want to clip your wings and banish you to be amongst your abandoned and discarded creations where you can no longer disrupt Arcadia’s natural order.
I want to strap you in your little dinghy to do as Igor Mortis says and ferry all those souls.
And regrettably I must cut the cord to your title reign, Tombstone, in order to tether myself to my OSW World Championship.
Because that’s my baby, and I’ll do anything to strap it like an umbilical cord around my abdomen.
My title reign shall be reborn… and a rebirth is just what the doctor ordered.
Foley, Doom, Tombstone: the doctor will see you now.