Pick a Corner

As a kid, I didn’t really listen to my mom unless I knew ignoring her would get me in trouble.

She always liked to use these… sayings. Little pieces of advice that she would drop every time she thought I needed to learn a lesson the hard way and make it stick.

You know the ones.

“If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

“The early bird gets the worm.”

Stuff like that.

But it was the day-to-day things that always seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

“Nathan, remember to do your dishes.” “Yeah, mom.”

“Nathan, make sure to do your laundry.” “Yeah, mom.”

“Nathan, be sure to pick up your room, okay?” “Alright! I got it.”

But then there was this one day. I was 10, or 11, and I guess I let my room get a little dirty. Okay, a lot dirty. I’m talking a week’s worth of accumulating nastiness covering every inch of the floor, turning the carpet into a science fair project.

My mom was a single parent on one income and trying to raise a kid like me so she hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until one night she went to go cook dinner and realized nearly all of our kitchenware was missing from our cabinets.

It wasn’t until I heard the footsteps on the stairs that I knew something was wrong. Just the right amount of pressure and urgency for a kid to know they’re in deep shit.

I looked up from my Batman comic and saw the state of my room for what it was; realizing how bad it had gotten and how screwed I truly was. I tried to reach the door before she could and hold her off until I could think of something. But I was too late.

She pushed the door but it immediately stopped with a thunk, hitting a literal tower of trash next to the door jamb. And then in real time I saw her expression go from shock, to anger, and then to defeat in a split second.

So, I cleared a path for her and then retreated, head down and hands behind my back. I didn’t need to see my mom to know her eyes were scanning every piece of trash in that room like she was the T-1000. Every spaghetti-encrusted dish. Every mismatched sock draped over a chair. Every open DVD case strewn around the room like somebody just dropped a bomb in the center of a Blockbuster.

I was in tears before she even said a word.

Partly because of the way I knew she was looking at me, but mostly because I realized the mess was my fault. Not an accident. A failure so bad I didn’t even know where to start fixing it.

“Nathan,” my mom finally said, crouching down and placing an arm on my shoulder as she wiped away my tears. “This may be your mess, but no one - not even me - can clean a room like this all at once. The only way to get things back to the way they should be is to pick a corner and start there.”

📼 📼 📼

“The Lighthouse” could feel the creak of the wooden bench at his back as a gust of wind kicked up salt and shore, the briny mist settling over him while Michael Stipe’s voice drifted through his ears.

Oh, life is bigger It's bigger than you, and you are not me

He opened and closed his hand into a fist. How long had he been sitting here?

After Sonja’s video, he grabbed his gear, walked out the back doors, and didn’t stop until his legs gave out.

Blaze reached down and checked his phone.

Midnight.

He squeezed the device tightly and let out a heavy sigh as he looked out across Boston Harbor. Out on the sea were a cluster of beacons blinking at him from high above, as if trying to send him some sort of message in Morse code.

He just wished he knew if they were guiding him to shore or urging him to turn back.

The lengths that I will go to… The distance in your eyes…

He exhaled slowly, shoulders finally starting to sink and eyes feeling heavy.

That's me in the-

BZZZT BZZZT

The song cut off abruptly as Blaze’s phone began to vibrate in his hand. His eyes snapped open and then he saw the name flash across the screen.

Dr. Millicent Armitage.

His heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t spoken to the doctor in weeks — not since his match with Max Kael.

BZZZT BZZZT

“Shit.”

Blaze clicked the green button on his phone screen and swallowed, hoping the sound of ocean waves crashing against nearby rocks would slow his breathing.

“Nathan. I… heard what happened. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

His hand curled again without him noticing.

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t.

“Is she…”

“She’s awake.”

“Sh- she’s…”

“Yes. And she’s asking for you.”

His hand trembled.

“W-w-what do I… where do I…?”

“I’m sending you the address.”

PING

Blaze glanced down at the GPS in confusion.

“Rhode Island?”

“Just come,” Millicent said, softer now.

Blaze looked back out at the water. At the lighthouses.

“Yeah… Okay.”

Her tone shifted. It was warmer.

“Amy is going to need a lot of time to fully recover, Nathan, but she’ll get there. Right now, though, you need to be here.”

Blaze didn’t answer.

“Just remember. You don’t have to solve everything tonight; you just need to take the first step.”

And with that, the line went silent.

Blaze lowered the phone from his ear and then looked back up toward the flashing lights in the distance, steady as a metronome, as the music crept back in.

And I don't know if I can do it.

Oh no, I've said too much I haven't said enough

Blaze closed his eyes and pressed his hands down on the bench seat to lift himself up.

Then he got to his feet and started moving.

📼 📼 📼

Pick a corner. Start there.

I’ve had those words rattling around in my head these last few weeks.

Long enough to realize that 33-year-old Blaze Claymore hasn’t changed all that much from 10-year-old Nathan Lake.

Ignoring the mess literally piling up around me because I thought I had all the answers. Or worse; that I didn’t need anyone’s help.

In those quiet moments alone in a hotel room between shows, or sitting in one of the hundreds of terminals I’ve hopped between over the years, I always told myself that’s how it had to be.

Blaze Claymore. Mr. Hollywood. The SAG-Award Winning Actor. The Main Event.

My hometown, my mom, my agent — all the people who showed up and kept showing up when I gave them every reason not to. They were my supporting cast. Extras. Worth nothing more than a meal voucher and a selfie.

Then they became my dirty plates. My unwashed clothes. My empty DVD cases.

I didn’t recognize it because it didn’t happen all at once. Just like it never does.

Every chance I had to course correct, I just deflected. Excuses. Compromises. I was the Jackie Chan of emotional maturity until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. But when it finally caught up to me… I had no idea how to start fixing it.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw my mom’s eyes staring back at me.

Shocked, angry, and defeated.

I wish I could lay the blame at the feet of Max Kael, for what he did to me and for what he took from me. And while I will never forgive that man as long as I live, Max Kael did not make me refuse to reconnect with my mother when I joined PRIME.

He didn’t make me drink myself into oblivion after every show.

He didn’t make me shut the world out when I needed help the most.

And even though he defeated me at Culture Shock, Max isn’t the reason I am 0-4 in singles competition since winning the Alias title nearly six months ago.

I am.

This is my mess.

📼 📼 📼

The sun was still several hours from rising over the eastern horizon when Blaze saw it.

Like a turret on the top of a medieval castle, a church sat perched above a cluster of aging rowhouses that seemed to be maintained, albeit poorly, since the early days of the original 13 colonies.

His Lyft driver promised to take him to the edges of the town, but no further. Blaze had thought it was because the streets may not be large enough to fit a modern SUV, but now he was beginning to think the driver knew more than he was letting on.

As he got closer, Blaze could see that the exterior wasn’t the traditional white he remembered from Montevideo; it appeared almost black from age and wear. And that was what made the windows so jarring: giant, arching stained glass monstrosities that looked like a pair of glowing eyes backlit by candlelight from the inside.

A burst of frigid spring air nearly knocked Blaze off his feet as the street, flanked by five-foot high retaining walls created a wind tunnel disguised as a labyrinth. Still, he kept his focus on the church as he continued his approach. And the church kept its focus on him.

This was Dr. Armitage’s safe haven?

The building was all misshapen stone brickwork, parts of it clearly forced onto the structure later. As he slowly approached, he saw that the ivy didn’t just cover the exterior walls — it swallowed them whole.

Blaze finally reached the church’s main doors that looked like the entrance to a mad king’s torture chamber.

He took a breath and grabbed a hold of the door’s knocker and gave it a forceful slam against the scraped and scarred metal underneath.

THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.

A beat. Then another. Another.

“Christ. I’m going to wake the entire village…”

Blaze grabbed a hold of the heavy metal ring with the ugly gargoyle face once more and lifted it up, ready to bring it down with force but was stopped as Dr. Millicent Armitage pulled the door open with a massive CREEEEEAKK sound.

“Nathan. Good. You’re here” she said, almost clinically, pushing her glasses up from the bridge of her nose, somehow impossibly alert for it being so early in the morning. “Come with me.”

Blaze stepped across the threshold and his jaw dropped.

Cracked plaster fractured the vaulted ceilings, arched upward and looking like a pair of skeletal arms as nearby rows of confessional booths sat empty with rotting doors barely hanging on by their hinges.

He followed Dr. Armitage past a row of meticulously carved pews covered in what had to be decades of dust and a carpet running from the doors to the pulpit eaten away by time.

When they reached the altar, fresh candles sat burning, illuminating a broken marble statue of the Virgin Mary in pieces on the floor, shredded canvas dangling like tendons from the frames above.

“You took my mother… here?”

Millicent was already on the move, a set of curious-looking books swinging from her waist like guns off of a cowboy’s concho. She snagged a lantern from a nearby pedestal and brought it to life with a match from her pocket.

“Not quite.”

The head librarian of Miskatonic University took Blaze to the rectory calmly, as if offering a guided tour, unfazed by the strikingly colored robes and vestments still hanging in their cubby holes — the only bit of color Blaze had seen since he arrived in the village.

“Hold this.”

“What are you-”

Armitage pressed her hand lightly against a plain, wood-paneled wall and then released, bringing that section of the wall with her as it popped out with a mechanical *click*.

A freaking secret door?

She grabbed the lantern back and kept moving with Blaze following quickly behind. He peered around the entrance's frame to find a row of stone steps spiraling down into the darkness.

“What’s down there?”

Millicent didn’t answer and so the pair traversed downward in silence. Five feet. Then fifteen. And deeper still until everything behind them had become swallowed and lost.

Blaze's eyes grew wide as Dr. Armitage opened a thick wooden door to reveal a massive sitting room lined wall to wall with ten-foot tall bookshelves filled from edge to edge. The smell of aged paper and leather hit him before he'd fully entered.

A thick mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room buried under papers and folders stacked like a game of Jenga.

“What the hell is this place?”

With a sigh and weary voice Dr. Armitage flashed a weak smile before turning and pointing to an innocuous looking door and nodding.

“There will be time for all that. Right now she is what is important. And she’s waiting for you.”

Blaze looked over at Dr. Armitage.

“When you’re ready.”

“Okay,” he said, forcing one foot in front of the other.

📼 📼 📼

Pick a corner. Start there.

But where does Blaze Claymore start?

Often our corners are chosen for us — especially in this business.

You’re a good guy or a bad guy. A newbie or on your retirement tour. On Lindsay’s nice list or her shit list.

Kidding.

Mostly.

If I have nothing else to hold on to from the lessons I took away from Culture Shock, it’s that at least in the ring you always know which corner is yours and, from bell to bell, who is going to be there with you win or lose.

But after that bell rings things get a bit more complicated, especially for me.

I’m not Whoresman. I’m not a part of Vae Victis. I’m not a Foot Soldier. I’m not a Lasagna Boy. And I’m not a comrade in the Red Army.

I’m just Blaze Claymore.

That’s why getting picked to be a part of TAL’s team, especially after the literal shit I put him through, and getting to work in the ring with Lindsay and with Sage, was the goddamned happiest I’ve been in months. And to win with them? Especially after what happened the night before?

It made me believe, even if for just a second, I could finally find a way to fix my messes.

The truth is that on my very first day in PRIME I thought if I was going to make a name for myself here I needed to be someone like Tony Gamble. After all, the accolades speak for themselves.

A three-time Alias champion.

A two-time Five Star champion.

An Intense title holder.

A tag-team champion.

The “most decorated” man in the company’s history. Why wouldn’t the “Main Event” aspire to be like that?

But for all the titles, the tag teams, the stables; for giving up his body in every type of match under the sun, and even creating new ones, over 20 years; for everything that should make someone an icon in this business… now all I see is what happens when someone confuses momentum with inevitability.

A man with so many titles and so few friends. A court jester who fancies himself a king.

There’s a version of this story where Blaze Claymore would have continued down that same path.

But it’s time for the director's cut.

📼 📼 📼

Blaze’s hand rested on the door handle a moment longer than it needed to, but finally he turned the knob and pushed it open.

The room was small. But warm…

A single kerosene lamp illuminated mundane white walls, a single rug on the floor, and a narrow bed with an elderly woman in a nightgown.

Amy Lake sat on the edge of the spring mattress, a wool blanket pulled to her waist with a single pillow sitting on top as she fumbled her hands back and forth.

She looked smaller than he remembered. Frail. But her eyes were open. And when they found his, something in his chest came loose, the weight he’d been carrying for months suddenly melting into a sticky warmth.

Without a word, Blaze crossed the room in three steps and joined his mother's bedside. What seemed like an eternity, neither of them said anything at all. They just looked at each other and held hands.

Then, with her free hand, his mom reached up and placed her hand on his face. He could feel her bones on his cheek, skin barely taut. "You look tired."

Blaze felt a genuine smile cross his lips. “Not as tired as you do.”

Amy Lake shook her head softly.

“Do you know how long I’ve been asleep? I don’t think I could be any less tired than I am right now.”

She paused and then her expression dropped.

“What? What is it?”

“Oh Nathan… I think I may have missed your birthday. I’m so sorry.”

Amy lowered her head, but Blaze quickly grabbed it to push it back up.

“Don’t.”

She closed her eyes softly and grabbed Blaze’s hand, holding it to her skin.

“But I had something so wonderful planned… now that you were back home.”

Blaze held her hands in his.

“Don’t worry mom. There’s still Mother’s Day.”

Amy’s eyes opened, looking at her son as if seeing him for the first time. The trauma of the past six months truly registering for her.

Her chin trembled for a split second before she wrapped her arms around Blaze's shoulders. In return, he dropped his head onto her shoulder and began to rock her back and forth slowly.

And for the first time in longer than he could remember, the noise in his head stopped. All of it… gone.

He barely even registered when his mother finally spoke.

“Nathan?” she whispered.

Blaze slid off the bed and crouched down in front of her, reaching up to wipe away a tear from her cheek.

“Yeah, mom?”

She smiled, letting out a small laugh.

“When the hell did you get so strong?”

📼 📼 📼

I know what it looks like when someone is fighting to fill a hole rather than fighting to win. To prove something to a room that has stopped listening.

Every teacher that told me I was too eccentric.

Every casting director that told me I didn’t have the right look.

Every person who tried to convince me I wasn’t good enough to stand on my own.

Sometimes you spend so long avoiding corners you forget they’re where you stop long enough to see straight.

To breathe. To think. To choose what comes next instead of just reacting to what’s already broken.

My mom used to watch a movie with me all the time about a woman who kept getting pushed into corners until she learned to treat them like decisions instead.

I spent years trying to be someone else's version of what I was supposed to be. And when that didn't work I tried to be nobody at all.

But I know who Blaze Claymore is now.

And at ReVival 86, he’ll stand in Nathan Lake’s corner.

That’s where we start.

📼 📼 📼

Blaze found Millicent Armitage exactly where he left her.

Arkham’s resident scholar sat perched over a massive tome laid open on the room’s mahogany desk with a fresh pot of hot tea off to the side. “Don’t you ever stop working?”

Blaze meant the words as a joke, but Dr. Armitage didn’t seem to find them particularly funny as she lifted the book’s hefty cover and closed it - a puff of dust escaping from the edges. From a distance he could make out the words “extra dimensional” and decided he didn’t want to know.

Millicent pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“How is she?”

Blaze walked over to a nearby loveseat and sat down, his body and brain exhausted.

“She’s resting. Just like I should be…”

Dr. Armitage stood up from the desk and moved toward the bookshelves. Blaze began to doze off, but then felt something land on his chest with a heavy thud.

His eyes opened to find a familiar leatherbound book — the one from the Montevideo library. The one with his mother's message inside.

Don’t let the light burn out.

Blaze looked up in confusion.

“Where the hell did you get this?”

“You mean where I saved it from.”

Millicent crossed her arms and looked down at Blaze.

“You can't go at her directly. Not yet."

Blaze looked down at the book like it weighed more than paper should and then back at Millicent.

"Your mother didn't leave that by accident," Millicent said. "Start reading."

“Yeah, but–”

He was too late. She had already set the lantern down and made her way to the stairwell.

Dr. Armitage turned and gave Blaze one last look before stepping past the threshold and closing the door behind her.