Wrestle Maniacs
Author: Adam Howe; Jeff Strand
Date: 2018-01-11 05:00:00+00:00
Description: A dozen dark fiction masters bring their twisted vision to the world of professional wrestling. Twelve original stories of crime, horror, humor, and taboo. Ohhh, yeahhh! This ain't no kayfabe, baby. This is hard-hitting wrestling fiction that grips like a Camel Clutch, and pins the reader to the page for the count of one, two...THREE!Includes a confrontational foreword by ring legend 'Pulverizing' Pat McCrunch (as told to Jeff Strand)... An all-new story starring Nick 'The Widowmaker' Bullman from James Newman's wrestling noir, "Ugly as Sin"... And ex-boxer turned strip club bouncer Reggie Lev
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Wrestle Maniacs First Published in 2017

Published by Honey Badger Press

Wrestle Maniacs Copyright © 2017 Adam Howe

The Honey Badger Press Logo Copyright © 2017 Adam Howe

Copyright of each story belongs to its listed author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover and Logo by Mike Tenebrae
http://tenebraestudios.net

Internal Design by EyeCue Productions
http://duncanpbradshaw.co.uk/eyecue-productions/

ASIN B0776W4GVP

“Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them believe deeper in something that’s larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized by the storytellers.”

Ultimate Warrior

“If Shakespeare was alive today, he’d be writing wrestling shows.”

Chris Jericho

“There’s no drama like wrestling.”

Andy Kaufman

“Whether you like it or not, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going. Wooooo!”

Ric Flair

Foreword by Pulverizing Pat McCrunch

(as told to Jeff Strand)

Real Americans

Tom Leins

A Fiend in Need... (A Nick Bullman Story)

James Newman

Last of the High-Flying Van Alstynes

Eryk Pruitt

Rassle Hassle (A Reggie Levine Clusterfuck)

Adam Howe

Duluth

Ed Kurtz

From Parts Unknown

Hector Acosta

Three Finger Bolo

Joseph Hirsch

Glassjaw

Duncan P. Bradshaw

El Kabong

David James Keaton

El Neuvo Santo’s Last Fight

Gabino Iglesias

Kill to be You

Patrick Lacey

Canadian Donkey Punch

Jason Parent

A Word From Your Editor

Acknowledgements

Hey, meatheads! Getting ready to read a book, huh? Oooohhh, aren't we fancy? La de da, you know what words look like! That's not how I'd ever choose to spend my time, but if you're going to read something, it might as well be this garbage.

Maybe you're going to throw this book away after you read my introduction. I can get behind that idea. Who needs to read stories by a bunch of pencil-necked wannabes when you've got Pulverizing Pat McCrunch in your corner? My career in the ring is way more impressive than the imaginations of these twerps who'd be crying for Mommy the first time they got bashed in the head with a folding chair.

Remember the first time I fought Cletus "The Sissy" Clark? I know that's not his real nickname, but to me he'll always be "The Sissy." His last name should be Spacek. He talked a big game. "Pulverizing Pat McCrunch is in for a world of hurt!" is what he told the reporters. Remember that? Remember how that match turned out? The only reason he didn't cry like a baby is because he's got some sort of medical issue with his tear ducts, but he was lying on that mat howling in pain and begging for the referee to save him. He tried to blame it on a leg cramp. Loser!!!

Or what about that time I fought Ralphie "Whiny Little Girl" Hellscape? He smuggled one of those giant smoked turkey legs into the ring, thinking he was going to beat me senseless with it. I ate that turkey leg! Including the bone! He's lucky I didn't bite off a few of his fingers while I was at it. He ran off blubbering and was never heard from again.

They weren't all babies. Lord Leisure was a worthy opponent. That blood dripping from his fists in that iconic photo? Mine. I don't mean my phony stage blood, I mean the actual blood that had been flowing through my veins before I climbed into the ring with that madman. I felt a lot of pain that day. But who emerged triumphant in the end?

Okay, it was Lord Leisure. Because he was the better wrestler? Abso-freaking-lutely not. He won because you knuckleheads in the audience would get bored if victory always went to the better competitor. Sometimes we work things out ahead of time. A guy like L.L. has to keep his fan base, so the Global Wrestling Association organizers throw him a bone (but not a turkey leg bone—haw!) every once in a while. I'm fine with that. Unpredictability gets the crowd fired up. It wouldn't be as much fun if I didn't pretend to lose every once in a while.

I've gone on long enough, but my $10,000 contract for writing this says that I agree to write 1000 words. Who the hell wants to even read 1000 words in a row, much less write them? Don't you boneheads have anything better to do? Watch some TV, for crying out loud. Go on YouTube and relive my greatest moments of glory. At this point, the words are turning into a big jumble for me, and I'm my own biggest fan, so I can't imagine what you're going through.

My girlfriend says that I should tell you about my favorite match. That was when I almost broke Groucho the Gargantuan's neck. Remember that? Remember the snap? You probably couldn't hear it from where you were, but I heard it loud and clear. I'd used my signature move, the Chicago Squealer Execution, which wasn't designed to break anybody's neck. Groucho lost his focus for a moment, and you simply can't do that in our line of business, even if a lady with great big knockers is in the front row. He was supposed to break his fall with his hands. Instead, he hit the mat headfirst, and just because those mats are springy doesn't mean you're supposed to land like that on them.

I thought, aw, that ain't good. You can't be a pro wrestler when you're a vegetable. I mean, I guess you could, but your foe would just be flinging your floppy body around the ring and that wouldn't be entertaining for anybody. I was really stressed out for a few seconds, thinking that my legacy would be the guy who turned Groucho the Gargantuan into Groucho the Quadriplegic. Turned out, he'd broken a couple of bones but not in his neck, so all was well. I'm honestly not sure why I consider that my favorite memory. It was a pretty awful day.

Oh my God, I'm not even at eight hundred words yet. I don't know how Stephen King does it. This is the worst way I've ever earned ten grand. Seriously, this page is one big blur for me now. I'm gonna bail early. What are they gonna do about it?

The loser in charge of this book thing asked me to end my introduction with something about how even though my time in the ring was filled with violence, even I'm shocked by the amount of mayhem and mutilation in these pages. Though we all know that's a bunch of bull, I'll let him have his way.

Wooooo-eeeee, kids! I sure had some brutal times in the ring, didn't I? But those don't compare to the tales of murder, carnage, etc. you're about to read! They even make me cringe, and I'm friggin' Pulverizing Pat McCrunch!

Actually, one of my girlfriends just summarized a couple of the stories, and I have to admit that they sound kind of messed up. So if you're the kind of sick bastard who wants to read about depraved crap, you should enjoy the rest of this book. If you're not, throw it away. You've done your job by reading my introduction. You don't have to suffer any more.

Testament, FL. 1999

My Motorola ASTRO crackles to life, so I put down the crack-pipe and grind it under the heel of my police-issue tactical footwear.

I stand up sharply and feel light-headed. Little Julian, one of the hog-tied crack-fiends, laughs as I stumble against the rotting plasterboard.

I glance warily at him, but decide not to stomp him. These boots are new, and I don’t want to get blood on them just yet.

“Play nice boys, or I may forget to come back and untie you.”

They start to complain, but they can’t do jack-shit about it. I’m the fuckin’ law around here, and they know it.

I flick the switch on the Motorola.

“Yeah?”

“John. It’s Lou.”

“Chief. What can I do for you?”

Lou Palomo. Chief of police, Testament PD.

I nestle the two-way in between my ear and my shoulder blade and stoop down to retrieve the stash. Through the tinny handset Lou’s voice sounds like a vagrant pissing against a trash-can.

Girl?

My head feels numb.

Reservation?

The cold, metallic taste of the crack lingers in my mouth.

Dismembered?

Oh, man. I’m far too high for this shit.

The first time I ever got high, I was in the bathroom of a strip-club called the Slop Shop in May 1989. I was 19. It was the night of my first professional wrestling match, at Slaughterhouse 6.

I was the first – and only – Native American wrestler to fight in Testament, so it was a big deal for me and my family. I wrestled the dark match against a heavily-scarred middle-aged man called Gringo Starr – in front of less than 60 people – but it was a start.

After the taping finished, a couple of veteran fighters, Garry Gorman and Freddie Regal, invited me to party with them in town. They gave me a joint laced with angel dust, and waited until I passed out. Then they fucked me like it was a competition. They left me smeared across the bathroom floor like anal discharge. Needless to say, getting high is a lot more fun nowadays…

I place the hold-all full of reservation crack in the trunk of my Tribal Police cruiser, and ignore the two dipshits calling my name. I should have fuckin’ gagged them. Too late for that now. I’ve got a fuckin’ job to do. It’s time to protect and serve.

Testament PD headquarters has seen better days, but it is still a fuck of a lot nicer than our festering breezeblock HQ on the Tribal lands.

Dorfmeister greets me in the lobby. He suffers from gigantism, and he’s 7’3” tall. His hands are roughly the same size as the giant novelty ones that they handed out to fans whenever Mondo McGraw headlined against Freddie Regal at the big events.

Like half the men in this bastard town he used to be in the fight game. Fought under the ring-name Behemoth. He had no real wrestling skills to draw on, but he could squeeze the fuckin’ life out of you with one of his damn bear-hugs.

He clamps my trembling hand in his meaty fist and looms over me with his over-sized face.

“Nice to see you again, John. Ready to crack some skulls?”

I roll my eyes. Dorfmeister’s bones are so brittle these days that he can barely walk between his desk and the restroom without needing a sit down. The only bones he will end up cracking are his own.

“Help yourself to coffee, John.”

“Thanks, man.”

It looks muddy and tastes bitter. The pot has probably been sat on the hot-plate since breakfast time. I drink it anyway.

“You’re looking good, pal.”

He’s lying, of course, but it’s nice of him to pay me a compliment, however insincere. Even the middle-aged ring-rats who drink at the bars in town have stopped paying me compliments nowadays, and half of them are rabid fuckin’ lushes.

As a fighter I was nothing special – a mid-card mauler. One rung above the hapless ‘enhancement talent’ that used to get pummeled in the squash matches night after night. I enjoyed the gig while it lasted, but I didn’t miss getting my ass handed to me by herniated middle-aged rednecks in sweat-streaked leotards.

Giving up the fight game wasn’t the problem – far from it. Giving up the ‘roids and the training regime was the hard part. I look down at my gone-to-fat chest, straining against my Tribal Police uniform. It looks more swollen than Sunday Night Suzette from the Slop Shop after her botched enhancement. I laugh to myself. That was some fuckin’ night. Between her tits and my meaty torso, we couldn’t even get close enough to kiss. I had to fuck her bandit style over the trunk of my cruiser at closing time, while the club spewed its patrons out into the parking lot.

The chief is waiting in his office, chewing on a damp stub of cigar, rearranging his few strands of greasy hair across his scalp in a grotesque parody of a haircut. He’s 76, but looks much older.

“Chief.”

He swivels sharply in his chair and the loose strands of hair creep back across bald head.

“John. Thanks for coming over so quickly.”

He looks me up and down.

“Say, son, are you OK? You don’t look so well.”

I glance in the mirror behind his desk.

Jesus Fuckeroo. I look like I’ve been dug up. My skin looks grey and my eyes look like piss-holes in the snow. The armpits of my uniform are ringed with dark sweat patches, and my fat arms look like particularly scabby pin-cushions.

I rub a hand through my ratty buzz-cut.

“I’m OK chief. I’ve been racking up lots of O.T. recently. Crime never sleeps – especially not on the Reservation.”

He grins.

“You can say that again, John. Some of those bastards are animals. No offence.”

I shrug.

Fuck you, old man... with a rusty fucking knife.

He takes the cigar stump out of his mouth and passes me a Xerox of a crime scene photo.

The picture is blurred, but the horror isn’t.

“She was found across the road from Testament Heights. Next to the chain-link fence that separates the tenement from the old Hell’s Mouth refinery.”

I know the area well. I’ve shaken down skin-popping junkies in that spot more than once. Despite being shut down for at least three years it still produces erratic columns of flame and fumes that make your throat itch.

I study the picture. There is a torso and a pair of legs, but they are no longer connected, and there is a meter of blood-slick asphalt between the two body parts.

“She’s one of yours, John. That’s why I wanted to bring you in straight off the bat.”

I stare at the photo uncomprehendingly – traces of hot sick bubbling up through my gullet.

“Her name is Ayita Atwell. Worked the bar at the Cow Creek Casino. She was only 24.”

I nod.

“What happened to her?”

He stares at me, and then at Dorfmeister.

“Unfortunately, that’s what you two boys are being paid to find out.”

I already know that the only way I’m going to get through today is crack, and lots of it. I’m no stranger to blood and guts, but those pictures turned my fuckin’ stomach.

After getting cut loose by the Testament Wrestling Alliance in ’93 I joined the force down in Gainesville. I was fast-tracked because of my background and wound up working narcotics. After a couple of years I was recruited to work as a UC for an inter-agency task-force that was committed to bringing down a trafficker named Johnny Francisco. The UC life was grueling, and ten corpses later I was strung-out and burned-out, recuperating in a detox center run by an ex-cop known as Father Julio. He pulled a few strings and hooked me up with this gig with the Tribal Police back in ‘97. Within a month I was back on the pipe. Now I’m shaking down shit-birds in fuckin’ stash-houses for cheap thrills. Solving crimes really doesn’t come into it…

Dorfmeister hobbles across the pot-holed forecourt with the aid of a cane the size of a small palm tree.

“Let’s take the chief’s prowl car, John. More leg room.”

I look him up and down incredulously – not for the first time.

“I fuckin’ doubt it, man.”

I double-check the lock on the trunk of my own cruiser.

What kind of dumb shit-head leaves a hold-all full of crack outside a cop-shop? This dumb shit-head right here…

Dorfmeister folds himself into the back-seat of the car, his huge bones creaking with the effort. He’s fuckin’ enormous. I climb into the driver’s seat and glance in the rearview mirror.

“Where to, Dorf?”

He shrugs hopelessly, and I shake my head in despair.

“You’re supposed to be the detective, man!”

He smiles blankly, and we lapse into silence. My skull aches and my guts are churning. Breakfast, not for the first time, was a microwaveable gas station burrito and a cigarette.

My Motorola crackles to life once again, breaking the awkward silence.

“John, it’s Lou.”

I glance towards the station house. Lou’s elderly face is pressed up against his office window. Lazy bastard could have come and talked to us in person.

“Son, the crime lab got back to me. I put a rush on the case. They found a carrier bag full of Fix-A-Flat tire aerosols at the scene. They ran the cans for prints, and got a match. They belong to a guy named Cedric Cecil. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Should it, chief?”

“According to his Social Security records he had the same employer as you in 1990.”

“1990?”

I wait for the drug-fug to clear in my head.

“Help me out, chief?”

“The Testament Wrestling Alliance.”

Oh, man.

Dorfmeister clears his throat from the back of the cruiser.

“Why is he in the system, boss?”

“Torture and fraud.”

“Where did he serve time?”

“He didn’t. The court psychiatrist agreed that he was mentally unfit to stand trial, and he got a five year jolt in the Mendoza Lunatic Asylum instead.”

“Let out for good behavior?”

“Let out when Bobbie-Sue Barraclough burned the facility down.”

We lapse into silence once more.

“Where next, Dorf?”

“Fingerfuck?”

“Fingerfuck.”

Motherfucking Fingerfuck.

Fingerfuck Flanagan. Puppet-master. Pay-master. Pervert. Owner and CEO of the late, lamented Testament Wrestling Alliance.

After the TWA bottomed out in the early 90s, Fingerfuck opened a midget wrestling organization at a former Fat Camp in Crooked Timber. He was bankrupt by this point, and bought the property using his third wife’s life savings. It was the last act of a desperate man. His wife died penniless and traumatized less than a year later, and now he lives on site in a decrepit single-wide with whichever midgets he has cajoled into working with him.

The trailer is rust-ravaged and it looks like the roof has fallen in on itself. I shrug, and gesture toward the crumbling auditorium instead.

Dorfmeister bangs on the door with his enormous fist.

Fingerfuck opens the door almost straight away. So quickly, in fact, that he must have been lurking behind it.

He looks at Dorfmeister briefly and shudders, and thrusts an arthritic, claw-like hand at me, instead.

“Francis Flanagan Jr. … Frank to my friends … Fingerfuck to those bastards who write for the dirt sheets.”

“We know who you are, Mr Flanagan.”

He wipes wig adhesive out of his eyes with a swollen finger, and squints at me.

“Sure you do, son. Sure you do.”

His glaucoma-stricken eyes light up – sort of, and a queasy grin passes across his leathery face.

“My boys! Not many of you bastards left anymore – I outlasted the fucking lot of you, didn’t I!”

He wheezes with laughter, and we look at one another skeptically – or rather Dorfmeister looks down at me, skeptically.

Fingerfuck trembles with excitement in his cheap, ash-scattered suit.

He clears his throat.

“Weighing in at 460lbs. Clocking in at 8’ tall. Hailing from the Persian Gulf… the beast from the east… Behemoth.”

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dorfmeister looks uneasy, hearing his ring-name for the first time in so many years.

Fingerfuck turns to me, looking slightly underwhelmed – presumably because of my soiled Tribal Police uniform, or my swollen torso – or both.

“His opponent tonight: 6’ tall. 255lbs. From Cow Creek, Florida. The one and only Johnny Tomahawk!”

Now it’s my turn to cringe.

“Come on, boys.”

Fingerfuck chuckles as he leads us into a ramshackle locker room in the bowels of the cruddy auditorium. A small wall fan wafts hot stale air in our direction.

In the corner, a brutalized-looking midget has been draped across a stack of moldy, counterfeit banknotes.

As a law enforcement officer, I feel troubled, but not troubled enough to do anything about it.

A horse-hung midget emerges from the showers. He offers me a feral smile, and points towards the ruined little man sprawled across the fake money.

“If I did that on the streets and not in the ring I’d end up in jail.”

I nod, speechless, distracted by his enormous penis, which has left a thick, wet strip on the floor.

“You boys want anything to drink? Beer, wine, brandy….?”

“No thank you, sir – we’re on the job.”

The well-endowed midget grabs a Coors from the cooler and drifts down the corridor, still naked. He glares over his tiny shoulder at us.

“Fuckin’ lightweights…”

I nudge Dorfmeister.

“Dorf, takes the fuckin’ lead.”

“Mr Flanagan, we would like to ask you a few questions about a former TWA employee.”

His smile fades.

“Which one?”

He wears the haunted look of a man who has fielded too many questions about his associates over the years. Given that his wrestling stable included murderers, molesters and mental patients, it is hardly a surprise.

Dorfmeister double-checks his note-pad.

“Cedric Cecil.”

He shudders.

“Cesspool.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cedric ‘Cesspool’ Cecil. His ring-name, dummy.”

Dorf looks at me quizzically, and I shake my head.

“We are investigating a heinous crime, sir, and Cecil’s name has cropped up in our enquiries.”

Enquiries! I snort. Some enquiries. One poxy lead that fell into our laps. We have got to be the worst cops this side of Smut Eye, Alabama.

“We were wondering: do you have a last known address for him?”

He nods, and traipses into a small office space adjacent to the locker room. The room is stacked floor-to-ceiling with dusty looking videotapes.

I rub a finger across one of the spines. ‘Halloween Hardcore 1988’. I don’t remember that event. I gently remove the video from the stack.

It isn’t wrestling, it’s pornography. A pair of thick-necked men dressed as Frankenstein’s monster are tag-teaming a boss-eyed blonde on the cover. I quickly replace the video, as Fingerfuck passes me a card from his rolodex.

“One hell of a collection you have here, Frank.”

He nods, appreciatively.

“It’s my pride and joy, son. When I go I want to be buried with my videos.”

Shit, I think. You’re gonna need a fuckin’ big coffin…

“One more question: what is he like? Cecil?”

He sighs.

“I employed some nasty bastards in my time, but he was one of the worst. Only made it into the ring a couple of times, before he killed a 17-year-old during a light training session. This kid was a friend of the family as well. I had a couple of the boys work him over in the parking lot with bats, and told him to get the fuck out of my town. Crazy bastard turned up at my fucking house with a loaded gun that night. I peppered his damned hide with buckshot and never saw his ugly face again.”

I clap him on the shoulder, and he flinches.

“We’ll see ourselves out.”

“You remember this guy – Cecil?”

“Dorf, I remember very little about the 1980s full stop.”

“Manslaughter. Torture and fraud. Now a spot of dismemberment. He sounds like a barrel of laughs.”

Factory Row is a shitty blur of empty warehouses and emptier whorehouses next to Testament Falls. The address on the rolodex card used to be a textiles factory back in the ‘80s. A peeling, paint-blistered sign above the corrugated iron door reads ‘Cecil & Son’. Grim, skull-colored clouds hang ominously above the strip of derelict buildings.

“Ready?”

I nod.

We remove our handguns from our holsters.

“Home sweet home...”

Dorfmeister hammers the butt of his firearm against the open factory door. The metallic clang echoes through the building.

“Mr Cecil? Detective Dorfmeister. Testament PD. We would like to ask you a few questions.”

No answer, just a slurred echo.

We edge inside, and Dorfmeister’s words continue to reverberate off the rotten brick-work.

We creep deeper into the belly of the building. I assume we are in the canteen, because the furniture is bolted to the floor – like in a prison.

My Motorola crackles again. Fuckin’ chief.

“John. Listen. We have … an issue. There seems to be a problem with your cruiser. Our drug-dog is throwing a shit-fit in the parking lot…”

I let the dialogue fizzle out and place the two-way back in its holster.

“Who was that?”

I hear footsteps, but Dorfmeister is sat on an orange plastic chair, breathing heavily.

“The fuckin’ chief.”

A crooked elbow slams into my spine.

I spin around, gun drawn.

“Kiss the wall, motherfucker, or I’ll bust your spleen.”

The man in front of me is so pale that he looks translucent. His receding hair is shaved down to the scalp. He is wearing orange spandex tights, scuffed wrestling boots and a bulging fanny-pack. He is sinewy more than muscular, but he looks dangerous nonetheless.

To my surprise, he doesn’t kiss the wall.

Instead he points his small hooker-esque pistol at Dorfmeister’s enormous belly and pulls the trigger. It explodes like a week-old carcass on a hot day.

He gets up in my face. His deep-set eyes are the color of gravel.

“Put down the gun and pick up the bracelets, please John.”

He speaks with a distracting lisp, which makes it difficult to work out what he is saying.

“The what?”

“The handcuffs. Put them on, please.”

My gun clatters against the concrete.

I stoop down and retrieve the metal cuffs from Dorfmeister’s belt. The blood oozes out from underneath him, and dampens the knee of my uniform.

Dorfmeister isn’t dead. He’s lying on his side, coughing up thick strings of bloody phlegm all over his mustard-colored sports jacket.

Cecil places his tiny pistol in his fanny-pack and scoops my service revolver off the factory floor.

“Is that…?”

I nod.

“Behemoth!”

He grins inanely at me and rubs his hands together.

“Oh, man. We’ve got a proper reunion show on our hands now!”

This fucker is soft in the head.

“Come with me, John.”

I take one more look at Dorfmeister. He has stopped moving, stopped breathing, and his enormous mouth gapes open on top of a puddle of his own sickly-looking haemoglobin.

Poor, dead bastard.

“How do you know my name?”

He looks bewildered.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

I shrug.

“We trained together. At the Ghoul School. 1988. Happiest days of my life.”

I shrug again.

If you say so.

“Fellas, we have a new play-mate.”

“Fellas?”

He yanks a light cord, and a queasy glow fills the sparse room.

“Jesus Fuckeroo.”

I go weak at the knees, and reach out for the brick-work to support myself.

“Impressive, huh? I take it you recognise this handsome bastard? Freddie Regal. Eleven-time world champion. He always was a hero of mine…”

The withered-looking corpse of the man who sprayed his bad seed inside me when I was unconscious in a strip-club bathroom has been tethered to a scaffolding pole.

His once-bouffant hair hangs limp over his ruptured looking skull, and his skin looks grey. In fact, the most familiar parts of him are his canary-yellow trunks and boots.

This mad motherfucker is some kind of taxidermist – and not a very good one.

He prods me in the spine with my own service revolver, and I shuffle forwards.

“Chupacabra. Caribbean Champion, 1990. I got this ugly piece of shit from a wet-brain C.O. at the Testament House of Correction in exchange for a crate of gut-rot scotch. The poor bastard got his throat bitten out in his own cell. Touch his scales if you want. I don’t mind.”

I reach out. His hands and feet have been hammered into a piece of hardboard, like an amateur crucifixion. He has been varnished, and his scaly middle-aged skin gleams under the strip-lighting. Despite his glossy appearance, the scales feel coarse and dead.

Cecil nudges me forward again.

“Next up: Horace ‘Pigpen’ Pigg. You can barely see the head-wound, right? You wouldn’t believe how much Fix-a-Flat I had to use to pump up that obese bastard...”

“Fix-a-Flat? Seriously?”

Pigpen’s chest looks empty, and the shit that Cecil has pumped him full of has descended into his already enormous gut, making it protrude even further.

I turn to him.

“Why?”

His slate grey eyes blink.

“Why not, Officer John? Everyone needs a hobby.”

He chuckles mirthlessly.

“A few untimely deaths, and this town has airbrushed the Testament Wrestling Alliance from its collective memory. I’m just redressing the balance. Think of it as a museum. A mausoleum. A tribute. This time next year, parents will be bringing their kids here.”

I shake my head.

“I fuckin’ hope not.”

His face colors with anger, but he doesn’t move.

“Answer me this then, Cedric. The girl from the casino. The one you hacked up outside Testament Heights. Why her?”

“It was nothing personal. I just wanted to draw you off the Reservation, my old friend. Our reunion is long overdue.”

“Reunion?”

He gestures absentmindedly at a festering pile of skin and bones in the corner.

“Plus, practice makes perfect, John. You know that. What was it that Shriek Watson used to say at the Ghoul School?”

The bad penny finally drops and I start to recognise him. He was tall for his age. Taller than me. He wore the same lurid spandex trunks even then. He grew up in a group home, and received some kind of scholarship from Fingerfuck to train at the Ghoul School.

Shriek Watson did a German Suplex on him on our first day of training. He wasn’t expecting it, and bit through his tongue when the back of his teenaged skull hit the thin mat. It explains the fuckin’ lisp.

“Don’t practice until you get it right…”

“Practice until you stop getting it wrong.”

He claps me on the shoulder.

“Character-building, wasn’t it?”

He smiles, and I get a brief glimpse of his too-short tongue.

I turn to face him. The revolver dangles from his fist, half forgotten.

I sweep his legs, and he clatters to the ground with a grunt.

“Don’t be rude, John. We were getting on so well…”

He rounds on me, using my kidneys as a speed-bag. I slide the Motorola out of its holster and slam it into his cheekbone. He grunts, and I bring it down on his nose – hard. I crunch the handset into his eye-socket, and he wobbles like a Salvation Army wardrobe. He offers me a mad, rubbery smile. I hit it hard enough to loosen his dental work, and he finally collapses.

I hoist him up awkwardly, wrists still handcuffed together. I rack my addled brains for a move I can use to put him out of commission, but my options are limited. Then I get it. The Hearse-In-Reverse – a glorified DDT. The Jazz Butcher broke my nose doing this move on me at Nuclear Winter ’91.

I lock his head in tight, and launch myself backwards towards the buckled concrete.

His face crumples on impact, and black blood oozes from his ruined nose and mouth.

I’m soaked in sweat, and I think I may have pissed myself as well.

To hell with it. I hit him with my signature leg-drop. The Sitting Bull.

My stocky legs crumple his scrawny ribcage with a queasy crack.

Jesus Fuckeroo.

The best fight of my fuckin’ career. No adoring fans, no applause, no stadium lights – just the sagging cadavers of my friends and enemies under the muted glow of the factory strip-lighting.

I crawl across the buckled concrete towards my half-smashed Motorola.

“John. Are you there? We popped the trunk of your cruiser and found crack cocaine worth $330,000. Please tell me that you were on your way to check those drugs into the evidence locker?”

I’m panting like a sick dog.

“Sure, chief. Absolutely. Listen, I’m going to need a couple of meat-wagons down at Factory Row. The old textiles factory. And a couple of guys with shovels and evidence bags. Largest ones you got.”

“What’s going on, John? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“You know how it is, chief. When it comes crashing down, and it hurts inside, you’ve got to take a stand. It doesn’t help to hide…”

I toss the Motorola at the wall, destroying it, and wince with pain.

Later, when no one is looking, I will almost certainly piss blood. I will miss the toilet and it will splatter on the off-white tiles of the prison hospital wing.

No one will care. No one ever did.

Just another motherfucker down the drain.

“He was one of the only guys who would take a chair shot to the back of the head, which is stupid.”

Christopher Nowinski, former professional wrestler and author of Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis, on Chris “The Canadian Crippler” Benoit (1967-2007)

“There are no tough guys in wrestling.”

“Macho Man” Randy Savage (1952-2011)

I.

“I did something bad, Nick,” sobbed the man on the other end of the line. “I did something really bad.”

He had been dozing comfortably when the phone rang. Kicked back in his favorite recliner, an empty case of beer at his feet. His heart raced as he sat up too quickly and tried to make sense of what was going on.

“Who the hell is this?” he grunted into the receiver.

Nick Bullman didn’t appreciate his beauty sleep being disturbed, as he knew he needed it more than most.

The caller didn’t respond right away. At first Nick thought he had hung up. But then he heard whispering on the other end of the line, a frantic prayer beneath the caller’s breath.

He glanced at the DVD player across the room to check the time. The gadget had been a Father’s Day gift from his granddaughter, but a copy of Cool Hand Luke got stuck in there not long after she gave it to him and he hadn’t bothered trying to pry it out. Now the Samsung was just a fancy clock – a clock that, after last night’s thunderstorm, flashed 12:00 at him, over and over like a childish taunt.

The scene on TV proved slightly more helpful: a man and a woman in a bubble bath. She arched her back and giggled while he soaped up her 36D’s with an expression that suggested he had never seen tits before. Softcore smut on Cinemax. It was late.

“I need you, brother,” said the voice on the phone. “I done something terrible.”

“You mentioned that already,” said Nick. “I knew who was talking, I might give a shit.”

“I fucked up.” A low, grief-stricken moan. Followed by the sound of the guy blowing his nose. “Lord have mercy on my soul . . .”

That did the trick.

“I’ll be damned. Crusoe? Paulie Crusoe?”

“You told me if I ever needed anything all I had to do was call. I remember, even if you don’t. We were at my sister’s funeral down in Charleston. Well, if I ever needed anybody, I sure do need you now.”

Nick refrained from reminding the other man that his offer was just one of those things you said at a funeral. Like he’s in a better place now. Or she looks so peaceful, almost like she’s sleeping. Both parties knew it wasn’t entirely sincere. But Paul Crusoe had decided the time had come to call in Nick’s half-hearted favor, twenty-plus years later.
“I killed her. Christ forgive me, I killed her.”

In the background: an ominous CL-CLACK!

The sound of a shotgun being ratcheted.

“You should hurry,” Paul warned him, in a voice choked with tears and snot. “I’m gonna do the little ones next. Wouldn’t be right to leave them alone in this world without their mama.”

Lord have MER-CY on my SOOOUL!

It was Crusoe’s singsong catchphrase, shouted seconds before his finishing move laid his opponent out cold for the one-two-three.

He was known as the “Holy Terror,” and his gimmick was that he had been sent by God to bring salvation unto his fellow grapplers. None other than the Man Upstairs guided his hand, he claimed, as he won match after match on his way to being crowned the Global Wrestling Association’s World Heavyweight Champion. The writers had originally planned for Paul’s character to wreak havoc as one of the top heels on the roster. They expected fans to despise the muscle-bound zealot who quoted scripture in his on-screen interviews, who fell to his knees in the middle of the ring after every win, placing a Bible on the chest of his fallen enemy and clasping his hands in prayer after defeating “another sinner who had learned the error of his ways.” Instead, the marks found his antics hilarious, and they were soon lifting their heads toward Heaven along with their evangelizing hero. Mere months after his first televised appearance, Holy Terror became one of the G.W.A.’s most beloved tweeners.

Naturally, he had feuded through the years with the demonic Widowmaker, a skull-faced fiend who had sold his soul to the other side for fame and fortune. The championship belt changed hands between them more times than Nick could remember, and their epic battles inside the squared circle were ranked among the best in sports-entertainment history.

In reality, Paul “Holy Terror” Crusoe was no more a fanatical Christian than Nick “the Widowmaker” Bullman spent all of his free time worshipping Beelzebub. The two men had been good friends behind the scenes. They had traveled around the globe together. They had guzzled beer from the same pitcher. Haunted strip clubs from Hong Kong to San Francisco and every place in between. Shared good times, bad times, and even a woman on at least one occasion.

But then two psychotic fans abducted Nick Bullman and sliced off his face. Not long after his ordeal, Nick was forced out of the Biz for good. He rarely kept in touch with his old acquaintances from the wrestling world. Nor were they in any hurry to contact him, as if his scars were contagious and ugly was a disease they might carry home to their families.

Several years had passed since he had last spoken to Paul Crusoe. But Nick couldn’t ignore his old friend’s call, even if his instincts told him he should have dialed 911.

This time of night he could make the trip from Midnight to Charlotte in less than an hour. Assuming the Crusoes still lived in the same Queen City subdivision they had lived in since 2004. Nick wasn’t sure if that was the case. Paulie hadn’t said on the phone, and somehow he had forgotten to ask.

Shit. Everything had happened so fast . . .

As he made his way down I-85 in the Chevy Colorado he had borrowed from a neighbor (a college-age kid who always called Nick “good buddy,” but that didn’t stop him from charging the big man sixty bucks before he’d handed over the keys), Nick clutched the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. His disfigured face, painted green by the dashboard lights, stared back at him from the rearview mirror like something dead and decaying.

For the umpteenth time since hitting the road, he wondered if he should have called the fuzz instead of getting involved.

Paul had been clear, however. “You bring anybody with you,” he had said, before abruptly hanging up, “we’ll all be dead before you get out of the car.”

Later, he would return to Midnight with blood on his hands, new scars on his body, and a sick feeling in his gut that would not dissipate for weeks.

For months to follow, wrestling fans and forensic investigators alike would offer their two cents about what happened in the Crusoe home. Folks would speculate that the superstar, a recovering alcoholic, had fallen off the wagon. But according to those who knew him best he hadn’t touched the sauce for the better part of a decade. That old standby “roid rage” was mentioned more than once. Perhaps he had taken too many blows to the brain throughout his career, one talking head on Fox News suggested early on, but the comment was intended as an insensitive joke more than scientific conjecture. No one would know for sure until pieces of Paul had been placed under a microscope and brilliant minds concluded exactly what went wrong.

Nick didn’t know what he expected to find when he arrived in Charlotte. He couldn’t help wondering if Paul’s peculiar work ethic might have some connection to his bizarre phone call. He was the only worker Nick had ever known who would allow an unprotected slam to his skull with whatever foreign object his opponent wanted to use on him. Even at the peak of his career, after he’d left the Hardcore div behind and it was no longer necessary to abuse his body to such extremes, he always said the marks paid good money for a realistic show and he would give them nothing less. For the last thirty years he must have taken thousands of hits to the head with steel chairs, concrete blocks, and two-by-fours.

Nick ran one hand across his sweaty, misshapen scalp. Rubbed at his tired eyes. Yawned.

An eighteen-wheeler passed him on the left, blatted its horn at him.

He drove on, the truck’s tires humming on the endless pavement.

II.

“Edmund?” Eighty-four-year-old Mildred Mayhew called to her husband from across their bedroom. “There’s someone at the Crusoes’ place.”

Edmund broke wind in his sleep. It happened more and more lately, with those new cholesterol pills he was on. Stunk up the room something awful.

“Edmund, honey, did you hear? There’s a truck parked out front of the Crusoes’. It’s awfully late for visitors, don’t you think?”

Thanks to her own arthritis medication, she had been suffering from insomnia these last few weeks. Tonight was no exception. Now this. She would be lucky if she ever got back to sleep.

With one liver-spotted hand Mildred opened the curtain wider. Bright light from the motion-activated security lamp at the edge of their driveway invaded the room like an ill-mannered houseguest.

Edmund rolled over and covered his head with his pillow. His medical I.D. bracelet glistened in the light.

A car door slammed across the street.

“Edmund, dear, this person’s up to no good, I’m sure of it.”

“Dammit, woman,” his muffled voice protested from under his pillow. “I couldn’t care less about what’s going on next door. Last time my eyes went in that direction you accused me of ogling Tamara Crusoe while she was out tanning by their pool.”

“It was either her or those Mexicans who do the Woodwards’ landscaping that had you grinning like a fool. I’m telling you, this person looks like bad news.”

He grunted something she couldn’t make out.

She fidgeted with the buttons on her nightgown, glanced at the rotary phone on the bedside table. “Do you think we should call the police?”

But Edmund was snoring again, and Mildred was alone with her worries.

III.

It was a fine two-story home surrounded by others just like it. White with gray trim. It sat on an acre or so of immaculately-kept yard. A silver Lexus was parked in the cement driveway (“TAMS-LEX” read its vanity plate) beside a sleek blue motorcycle with flames painted on the tank. At the end of the drive, staked into the lawn beneath a purple laurel bush, a hand-carved sign identified the family who lived here: THE CRUSOES.

So he had the right place. That was good. Maybe.

The house itself was dark, save for the glow of what Nick assumed was a television flickering in a ground-floor window.

He climbed from the truck. Across the street, a floodlight clicked on, bright enough to wake the whole eastern seaboard. As he approached the Crusoes’ front door his shadow stretched across their property like that of some alien behemoth lumbering through the night.

He rang the doorbell. Listened to “Westminster Quarters” resound through the house. As he waited he admired the chopper in the driveway, and remembered how he had loved to ride when he was a much younger man.

A minute passed, maybe two.

Nick rapped on the door with one knuckle. “Paulie? It’s Nick. You in there?”

A glance to his left. A rust-colored privacy fence was attached to that side of the house.

He walked to the gate, lifted the latch. Caught the eye of a naked cherub statue leering at him from a neighbor’s rock garden. He tried to stare it down. The statue won.

A dog barked in the distance.

Nick looked back over his shoulder at the sleeping houses up and down the block. Whispered to himself, “Bullman, what the fuck are you doing?”

He thought of the anguish he had heard in his friend’s voice: I did something bad, Nick. I did something really bad. And what he had said about doing the little ones next. And the sound of a shotgun, being readied for God-knew-what.

He stepped through the gate, closed it behind him.

The strong scent of chlorine invaded his nostrils. He sneezed. Before him, moonlight dappled the gently-rippling water of an in-ground pool. A propane grill and a lawn chair sat beneath a latticed awning in one corner. A few toys were scattered about: a half-deflated beach ball, a float shaped like a shark. The pump gurgled softly, while an automatic vacuum crawled slowly along the bottom of the pool like some strange aquatic bug searching for smaller insects to devour.

Nick headed for a side door at the edge of the pool area. Nearly tripped over a rubber swim-mask in his path. He cursed, untangled the strap from around his ankle.

And saw that the door was ajar.

“Hello . . . ?”

He stepped inside the house, into a kitchen that smelled like lemons. Pots and pans soaked in a drainer beside the sink. A fancy Kuerig coffeemaker sat atop the counter, beneath a shelf that displayed a collection of “his” and “hers” mugs with slogans on them like BEAUTY/BEAST and I LIKE HIS GUNS/I LIKE HER BUNS. A Simpsons calendar and several children’s drawings were attached via colorful magnets to a stainless-steel refrigerator. Someone had written “DAD IN AUSTRALIA” across the last two weeks on the calendar.

“You around, Paulie?” Nick called out, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Door was open.”

Something brushed at his calves.

A fat orange cat meowed up at him, its tail swishing back and forth.

“Hey there, kitty.”

He bent down to scoop the animal into his arms . . .

. . . and noticed the bloody paw-prints it had tracked across the kitchen tile.

The cat meowed up at him again, as if trying to convince the giant human that it had done nothing wrong.

Its prints led toward a dark hall on the other side of the kitchen, beyond an arched doorway. Nick followed them.

“Paulie! It’s Nick. I came like you asked. Where are you, man?”

The cat scampered off, startled by his shout.

“In here, Nick,” a hoarse voice responded at last. “I’m . . . in here.”

Nick gave a nervous laugh. “You, uh, forget to pay the light bill, buddy?”

A choked sob.

Okay, no more jokes. Nick swallowed a lump in his throat. He passed a flight of stairs that presumably led to the second floor of the house, and continued down the hallway until he came to the living room.

A ceiling fan whirred overhead. An enormous wide-screen television was tuned to a twenty-four-news channel, but the volume was muted. To Nick’s left sat a loveseat and a leather recliner, to his right a sofa partially covered by a heavy brown blanket. Framed photographs of the Crusoe family adorned the walls: Paul and Tamara on their wedding day . . . a boy of eight or nine in a baseball uniform . . . a lanky adolescent sporting a mischievous grin . . . and a pigtailed princess who was a miniature version of her mother, minus the store-bought bosom.

“Nick Bullman. The Widowmaker himself. I didn’t think you’d come.”

Nick turned, spotted a dark shape in a corner of the room.  His old friend sat wedged between the wall and the sofa, a few feet away from a big bay window that overlooked his front yard.

“Paulie.” Nick reached for the light chain that dangled from the fan.

“Leave it off. Hurts my fucking eyes.”

He was naked except for his boxers. His face and torso were shiny with sweat in the light from the television. A trickle of dried blood trailed from one ear down to his collarbone. More dark blood was smeared across his wrists and forearms. He was still in great shape considering he’d hit the big five-oh earlier that year – Nick remembered because they shared a birthday – but the cross tattoo on his forearm and the praying hands on his chest had faded to illegible blue blotches. Once upon a time, Paul’s strawberry-blond hair hung all the way down to his ass. Now it was short, streaked with gray, and horribly gapped on one side as if his barber had left the job unfinished.

He gripped an enormous shotgun in both hands. His eyes were wild, his teeth bared like those of a rabid animal.

“Paulie,” said Nick, “you wanna tell me what’s going on? You don’t look well, man.”

“She wouldn’t stop talking,” Paul said. As he spoke he stared right through Nick, as if he wasn’t there at all. “She cut me, and then she wouldn’t stop talking. Gave me a fucking headache. I had to shut her up. I couldn’t help myself, because she wouldn’t stop talking . . .”

“What do you mean, she cut you? Where is she? Where’s Tammy?”

Paul rested the long black barrel of his shotgun against a brow that was crosshatched with old blading scars. His shoulders hitched as he sobbed.

Nick felt a weird sense of shame – and, if forced to admit it, a stitch of revulsion as well – as he stood over his old friend. He had watched this guy jump fifteen feet from the top of a ladder onto the announcer’s table. He had seen him take the full brunt of “Morbid” Lee O’Beast’s weight as the World’s Fattest Hillbilly leapt from a turnbuckle onto his spine. Nick had personally botched a piledriver during one of their early matches together, dropping Paul on his head. Now the muscleman wept like a child who had fallen off his bike and scraped his knee.

It was the most pathetic thing Nick Bullman had ever seen.

“Paulie, did you do something to your wife?”

Paul’s head slowly turned toward the sofa.

Nick followed his gaze.

His breath caught in his throat as he realized that the blanket piled on the sofa had a distinct human shape.

Not daring to make any sudden moves, Nick slowly reached for the blanket.

He lifted it . . .

. . . and he found what was left of Tamara Crusoe.

Paul had wrapped his wife in the blanket as if it were a makeshift funeral shroud. Beneath it she wore only a blood-soaked pair of lace panties. Her long blond hair was matted with blood. Her bright green eyes were open, her lips slightly parted. Dozens of vicious stab wounds marked her body from her throat down to her belly. At least one of them had pierced the implant in her left breast; as Nick stared in horror at her mutilated corpse, a glob of saline slid from a gash beneath her nipple and puddled onto the sofa like drool from a hungry mouth.

Bile rose in the back of Nick’s throat. He let the blanket drop.

“Jesus Christ, Paulie . . . why?”

Paul started rocking back and forth, clutching his shotgun to his chest tighter than ever. The pump rattled in his grip.

“She’d been wanting to cut my hair. I promised her she could do it when I got back from the U.K. Flew in last night . . . we put the kids to bed, had a little sex . . . afterward she got the scissors, started hacking off my mane. But she wasn’t paying attention. Too busy talking about her fucking yoga class the whole time. She almost cut my ear off. Said she was sorry. Tried to fix me up. But her voice. It was like fucking needles in my brain! I told her to stop touching me. But she kept jabbering on and on . . .”

Nick swallowed another lump in his throat as he listened. It got stuck halfway down.

“I picked up the scissors. And when I started stabbing her I couldn’t stop.”

Nick covered his mouth with one hand. Smelled blood. Realized he had gotten some of Tamara on him. He wiped his hands on his jeans.

“You think I’m gonna be like Samson,” Paul asked him, “now that all my hair is gone?”

Nick stared at him. His words made no sense.

“That story in the Bible. His hair was the source of his power. Bitch turned him over to the enemy. They cut his hair, he was fucked after that. That’s gonna be me, ain’t it, Nick?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Paulie.” Nick’s tongue felt heavy. “We gotta call somebody. You need help.”

“You think I’m crazy.”

You’re goddamn right, Nick almost said. Someone who would do something like this, they’re not anything close to sane.

“I can’t think straight anymore, Nick. The headaches . . . I get them all the time. I can’t focus. I start hearing things, seeing things I know aren’t really there. She makes it worse . . . always nagging at me, always going on about something or other, day in and day out. And the kids, too. It’s like they’re in on it together, like they all know what I’m going through and they can’t wait to gang up against me and push me over the edge.”

He’s taken too many shots to the head, Nick thought. His brain’s gone soft, like fruit that’s started rotting from the inside out. Oh, Paulie, you poor bastard . . .

Paul wiped his leaking nose with the back of one hand, rose to his feet.

Nick kept his eyes on the gun.

“I don’t blame the kids, though. They’re just kids. I love them with all my heart, Nick. That’s why I gotta think about them now. No child of Paul Crusoe is gonna grow up in some fucking orphanage. I know what those places are like. Almost ate me and my sister alive. I won’t let that happen to Paul Jr., Cody, or little Caroline. I gotta take care of them, now that their mama’s gone.”

Nick chose not to remind him that Mom was gone because Dad had slashed her up with a pair of scissors like a fucking paper doll. Best not to antagonize a dude with his finger on the trigger of a Mossberg 500.

Paul wiped his nose again, said, “We had some good times together, didn’t we, Nick?”

“We did. Look, man, why don’t you put the gun down and let’s ta—”

“Remember when we tag-teamed those twins in Nashville? You found out later you and them were distantly related?”

“Good times. Paulie, you need to—”

“Those days are over, though. All the old crew, we’re dying off. Ain’t no place for guys like us, with these young bucks coming up. Gigolo Jim dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a Pay-Per-View. Darth Hater’s jobbing to the Bling Boys. Like a rookie trying to earn his way even though he’s been in the Biz longer than those assholes have been alive.”

“Paulie—”

“And then there’s what happened to you.” Paul glanced again at his wife’s corpse on the sofa. “I really fucked up, Nick. They’re gonna fry me in the electric chair, ain’t they?”

Nick didn’t say anything. He couldn’t promise Paulie that he wouldn’t ride the lightning when all was said and done. Even if he wished to try, he didn’t have a straight face to attempt such a half-hearted promise. He had no face at all.

“How’s my ear?” Paul asked him, pushing aside a lock of his sweat-stiff hair. “Does it look bad?”

The tip of his earlobe was just barely connected to the rest of him by a thin shred of tissue and coagulated blood.

“Don’t worry, Paulie,” said Nick. “We enter a beauty contest, you’re still gonna win by a landslide.”

Paul gave a shrill, humorless laugh that turned into a sob halfway through.

And then his jaw dropped as something behind Nick caught his eye.

“Son of a bitch.”

Nick turned to see what had captured his attention.

“You called the law. I told you to come alone, but you called the fucking law!”

Swirling purple light pulsed in the window, as if the whole world outside had turned alternating shades of red and blue . . . red and blue . . . red and blue.

Paul pointed the shotgun at Nick. “Don’t move, Widowmaker. Don’t you fucking move.”

The faded praying-hands tattoo on his chest seemed to ripple in the purple light, like a festering sickness feeding on his flesh.

“Westminster Quarters” chimed throughout the house. Damn thing was louder than any doorbell Nick had ever heard. Its echo lingered for several seconds after the melody ceased.

Someone knocked at the front door.

Nick stared into Paul’s wide, wet eyes, waiting to see what he would do.

A police radio squawked outside. A female dispatcher’s voice said something unintelligible.

“You must think I’m stupid,” said Paul. “They’ve been waiting outside this whole time.”

“That’s not true.”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“We go back a long way, Paulie. But y—”

“You’re just a vulture, picking at my bones like everybody else. Got a hard-on for dead things? Joke’s on you. ‘Cause I was dead a long time ago.”

He’s really fucking lost it, Nick thought. He’s lost it and he ain’t never gonna find it again.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Paulie. I came because you called me.”

“Shut up.” Paul winced, as if in great pain. A bead of sweat trickled down his cheek, caught in his five o’ clock shadow for a moment, then dripped to the carpet. “Just . . . shut up! You’re making my head hurt.”

Nick shut up.

Paul watched the window, where the red and blue lights continued to swirl as if the curtains were changing color every other second. “They’re probably surrounding the house right now.”

“Let me look,” said Nick. He held his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m not gonna try anything. Just let me see what you’re dealing with here?”

Paul thought about it. Sniffled. Motioned with the gun for Nick to do what he had to do.

The big man stepped to the window. Pulled back the drapes . . .

. . . and found himself face to face with a tall, fiftysomething cop with a birdlike nose and a brass nametag on his chest that read HENSLEY.

Nick gasped. So did the man on the other side of the window. The glass fogged up between them.

The cop whirled, stumbled toward his flashing patrol car, which was parked at the curb behind Nick’s borrowed truck. As he ran one hand went to the radio mic on his shoulder: “Request for backup at twelve-one-one Poinsetta Lane! Possible ten-thirty-two in progress. Repeat. Request for immediate backup at twelve-one-one Poinsettia Lane!”

When he reached the car he looked back. His face was deathly pale.

He spoke into his radio again: “Jeanette, tell ‘em to hurry. I know the Crusoes. That ain’t any of the Crusoe family I seen through the window just now. I don’t know what that was . . .”

“What’s happening?” asked Paul.

“I figure we’ve got about ten minutes until this place is swarming with cops.” Nick let the curtain fall back into place. He suddenly felt very tired. “You gotta give yourself up, Paulie.”

Paul gnashed his teeth, held the shotgun in one hand and pressed a sweaty fist to his temple with the other. Veins stood out on his neck and arms like worms beneath his flesh. “Can’t think. I can’t think with everybody always talking.”

“You should put the gun down.”

“They’re gonna take my kids.”

“You need help.”

“It’s too late for that. It’s too late for me.”

“That’s not true—”

“We have to go upstairs now. It’s time to put the children to sleep.”

“Paulie, you don’t want to do this.”

“They won’t feel anything. It’ll all be over in a second, and there will be no more pain. For any of us.”

“We’re talking about your kids—”

Paul ratcheted the shotgun: CL-CLACK!

Nick held up his hands, slowly backed out of the living room.

“Turn around,” Paul commanded. “Stairs are on your right. Don’t try anything funny. I’ll put a hole in you if I have to. I don’t want to do that, Nick. I want you to tell everybody I was a good father. Tell them I loved my kids more than anything on Earth.”

Nick’s footsteps clumped up the stairwell. Sweat burned in his eyes, but he didn’t wipe it away lest any sudden moves spook Paulie. His mind raced: He’s too far away to tackle, not far enough to keep your ass from getting cut in half once he pulls that trigger. Not afraid of pain . . . Felt enough pain in this life to last a thousand lifetimes. Can’t let him get to those kids. Cavalry’s on the way, but they won’t get here in time to do any good. Up to you, hoss. Better figure out what you’re gonna do in the next ten seconds, though, or you’ve got the blood of three innocent children on your hands. Think, damn you, THINK!

The third step from the top squeaked beneath Nick’s weight.

When he reached the second floor of the Crusoe home, he found himself standing in a short, dimly-lit hallway.

“Keep moving,” said Paul.

Shoulda grabbed the gun while you had a chance. Don’t even know which room the brats are in . . .

He passed a small bathroom on his right. The toilet tank made a low trickling sound as he shuffled by. At the end of the hall stood two doors. The one on the left was decorated with glittery pink letters that spelled out “CAROLINE.” A Star Wars poster was taped to the one straight ahead, along with a watercolor painting that looked like Godzilla destroying Tokyo as seen through the eyes of a child.

Halfway down the hall, Nick came to a fancy three-legged end-table, beneath a mirror in a gilded frame. Atop the table sat a small lamp – the only source of light up here – and a chubby ceramic pug.

The pug statue’s lifelike marble eyes stared forlornly at Nick as he drew closer, as if it knew what was about to happen before Nick knew himself.

Nick cleared his throat, said, “Why me, Paulie? That’s what I wanna know. I haven’t heard from you in years. I’m minding my own damn business, dreaming about the first girl I ever loved, next thing I know the phone’s ringing and it’s Paulie Crusoe. You never even called to check on me when those fuckers took my face. So why did you spring this shit on me? Tell me why I gotta deal with this, huh?”

“Long as I’ve known you,” Paul replied, “you were the kinda guy everybody wanted around when they were feeling down. I was hoping you might talk me out of this. That was before I realized it’s too late for second thoughts. Nobody can talk me out of what I know I have to do.”

Nick heard him step on that squeaky floorboard, three steps from the top.

That puts ten feet between us, maybe?

“Well, old buddy,” Nick said, trying to keep Paul distracted, “I wish you had called someone else. Diamond Diva, maybe. Did you know Teresa was a licensed social worker? Bet she would’ve been a helluva listener. I’m just a guy with a fucked-up face, and you’re out of your goddamn gourd.”

He picked up the ceramic pug.

Paul said, “Hey, what are you do—”

Nick threw the dog at him.

Paul instinctively went to catch it. Squeezed the shotgun’s trigger as he did so. The weapon boomed.

Nick ducked, knew in that moment there was no way he was walking away from this unscathed, but he did his best to protect his face and chest. Caught the spray of birdshot in his back and shoulders. It was like being doused with liquid fire.

The recoil knocked Paul off-balance. He tottered backward, tumbled down the stairs. The sound of his body hitting every step on the way down was like an earthquake rumbling through the house.

Nick stumbled forward, bleeding and gasping in pain. For no particular reason he headed for the door with the Star Wars poster on it, but as he passed the adjacent room he heard high-pitched screaming inside. Teeth clenched in agony, he crashed through the CAROLINE door, and found himself in a bedroom decorated with grinning teddy bears and rosy-cheeked dolls.

The Crusoe kids cowered before him on a frilly pink bed. Two boys and a little girl, all in their pajamas. They trembled as they held one another in the glow of a nightlight that cast multi-colored stars across the walls.

Nick could hear Paul’s footsteps thudding up the stairs now. He slammed the door behind him, locked it. Wouldn’t hold against the Mossberg, but it would slow Paul down for a second or two. Long enough for Nick to position himself between the madman and his children, and maybe come up with a plan in the meantime.

“You’re gonna pay for that, Bullman!” Paul shouted. Sounded like he was already halfway down the hall. “I thought you were my friend!”

“There’s something wrong with Dad,” said the oldest boy. He was twelve, thirteen at the most. He would look just like his father one day, if he lived to see it. “I think he hurt our mom.” The little girl buried her face in her brother’s chest and started bawling.

The other boy, a freckle-faced child of seven or eight, was a kid who loved monster movies, judging from the slavering green zombies on his jammies. But he gaped at Nick with quivering wet eyes as if he had never seen anything so terrifying.

Nick desperately searched the room for something he might use as a weapon. A baseball bat. A BB gun. Might have found something like that in the boys’ room. Out of luck in here . . .

“Fuck!” He glanced at the youngsters on the bed. “Umm, sorry, kids.”

The oldest boy shrugged, as if to say: I’ve heard that word before. Nick noticed he was wearing a faded Holy Terror T-shirt (“SMITE THE WICKED” read the logo at the top, above a photo of his father standing cruciform in the middle of the ring). Something about that filled the big man with a sadness like nothing he had ever felt before.

Paul jiggled the doorknob.

“You know me and your mama don’t allow locked doors in this house,” his muffled voice scolded. “You open this door right now, pumpkin.”

He pounded on the door. It shuddered in its frame.

“I want my mommy,” the little girl whimpered.

Nick continued to search for something, anything, to protect them. With every move he made, he could feel the dozens of holes in his back puckering and puking blood like tiny, flame-crusted mouths. He shoved picture books and plush Disney princesses out of his way, heaved aside a giant dollhouse as if he might discover a cache of machine guns and grenades stashed beneath it. At this rate he feared he would be forced to fight Paul with the purple unicorn on the windowsill. Maybe he could stab him with its horn?

The windowsill. Yes! His heart skipped a beat.

He ran to the window, ripped away the blinds. The moon-dappled pool waited two stories below.

On the other side of the door, he heard Paul ratchet the shotgun.

Nick fumbled with the latch, threw open the window. A blast of cool night air hit him in the face. It smelled of chlorine and recently-mown grass.

Nick looked over his birdshot-perforated shoulder at them. “Kids,” he said, “Come here.”

The little girl kept her face buried in her big brother’s chest. She shook her head back and forth. The younger boy covered his face with both hands and let out a keening wail.

“It’s okay.” The oldest boy laid one hand atop his brother’s head, stroked his sister’s long blond hair with the other. “I know this guy. He used to work with Dad.” His eyes met Nick’s. “I met you at my birthday party. You guys teamed up and kicked the crap out of those nerds in Chaos Theory.”

It was true. Nick recalled a backyard bash in which he and a few of his co-workers had put on a private show for Paul, Jr. and his friends. The kid couldn’t have been older than five or six at the time.

“But you looked different then,” said the boy. “Your face—”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “We gotta move.”

The shotgun boomed again. The door exploded inward.

The big brother shoved his siblings off of the bed. They all ran to Nick.

He told the kids to hold their noses.

And then he heaved them, one by one, out the window.

They screamed as they flew through the air and splashed into the pool below.

Paul’s footsteps thudded into the room. Nick didn’t turn to face his old friend until he saw each of the Crusoe kids bob to the surface down there. The youngest boy came up coughing violently. The oldest boy clung to his sister as the little girl cried out for her mother. But they were breathing. Out of harm’s way.

“Motherfucker,” Paul said behind him.

Nick spun around.

“What did you do to my kids?” The barrel of the gun was aimed at the floor, but Paul slowly brought it up now as he spoke.

Fuck it. Now or never . . .

A wild-animal growl rumbled up from deep inside Nick’s chest as he closed the distance between them, and by the time he tackled Paul it had grown to a roar.

The gun clattered away, somewhere off to their left, as they crashed into the hallway.

Nick threw a massive fist at Paul’s face, shattering his nose. Blood streamed down Paul’s chin, soaking the carpet beneath him like tainted water from a rusty pipe. Crusoe responded with an uppercut that slammed Nick’s head backward, jarring every tooth in his skull. Paul’s hand gripped his throat, squeezed. He called Nick a motherfucker again, bared his bloodstained teeth, and growled something about friendship and betrayal and how Nick didn’t understand what it was like to keep getting these fucking headaches.

Nick flipped forward, rolling off of Paul as if they were back in the ring and doing their best to give the marks what they wanted. With some space between them, he stood, caught a glimpse of his disfigured face in the hallway mirror a second before Paul slammed into him from behind.

They tumbled down the stairs in a tangle of muscular arms and legs.

The back of Nick’s head struck the wall at the bottom, leaving a gigantic dent. Plaster dust fell like snow from the ceiling. Spots danced in front of Nick’s eyes, and for a moment he was sure there were three Pauls lying on top of him. He recalled the last time they had lain in this position, when he had dropped the most coveted belt in the game to his old friend. It was a match that had left all three of them – Nick, Paul, and the referee too – lying in the middle of the ring beaten, bloody, and “unconscious.” The ref had “come to” just in time to see the Holy Terror sprawled atop the Widowmaker . . . and with the last bit of strength left in him the official had counted off the one-two-three, awarding Paul with the win.

Paul gripped Nick’s head in his hands now, slammed it against the floor. A large oil painting of a tranquil mountain stream fell off the wall, struck Paul in the shoulder, but he barely seemed to notice.

“Thought you were . . . my friend,” he panted, still pounding Nick’s skull into the floor. “But you’re just like all the rest. Just…like…her!”

From the corner of his eye, Nick saw that ceramic pug lying at the foot of the stairs. Man’s best friend, said a voice in his aching brain, and in spite of his predicament a hoarse chuckle slipped out of him. He reached for the statue, hefted it, and swung the pooch at Paul’s head as hard as he could.

As it connected with his skull, Paul made a “wha-huh?” sound, as if someone had just insulted him and he wasn’t entirely sure if he had heard correctly.

Stiffly, he fell over and thumped face-first onto the floor.

Nick dropped the statue, which was now broken in half. He groaned as he stood, placing one hand on Paul’s back to brace himself before rising to his feet. His knees popped. His pulse throbbed as loud as a bass drum in his right temple, as if he had been the one pummeled by the pug statue instead of his old friend.

Outside, a police siren whooped once then went silent. A screech of tires. A male voice shouted something Nick couldn’t make out.

He staggered down the hall toward the front door.

Be careful. Somehow he found he was still able to think clearly despite everything that had happened. You barge out of here like Frankenstein’s Monster, they’re gonna shoot you full of holes. They take one look at you, ain’t no way they’re gonna think you’re the good guy here . . .

He came to the end of the hall. Held onto the molding at the edge of the doorway as a rush of dizziness overcame him.

Jesus Christ, Bullman . . . how did you get yourself into this mess?

A second later, Paul slammed into his back again like a runaway truck, and they crashed into the living room.

They collided with the sofa. Tamara’s body rocked beneath her blood-soaked shroud, as if she were merely asleep and having a bad dream. One crimson arm flopped out from under the blanket. Her long pink nails brushed against Nick’s forearm as if the dead woman was trying to get his attention.

Nick threw a meaty fist into Paul’s abdomen.

Paul made an “oof!” sound, rolled off of him. But he wasted no time crawling on all fours to the corner of the room . . .

. . . where he gripped the sides of a small knick-knack shelf, used it to pull himself up on unsteady legs. He hefted the shelf above his head. Everything on it – a bowl filled with hard candy, a brass elephant, a crystal cube with one of the kids’ baby pictures inside, a few paperback novels, and framed photos of the Crusoes vacationing in various places – tumbled onto the carpet.

Paul nearly tripped over the stuff as he came for Nick again.

He brought the shelf down on the big man’s head.

Nick ducked, got his hands up just in time. The shelf came apart as it hit him, as if it were made of cardboard. Several of the pieces landed on Tamara’s body like clumps of dirt tossed atop her grave.

Paul wrapped both of his muscular arms around Nick’s head from behind, got him in a sleeper hold.

Back in the day, when they would execute such a hold on one another in the ring, it wasn’t real.

This time, though, Paul meant to choke him, to put Nick down for good. He squeezed, and Nick remembered how strong his old friend truly was.

He threw an elbow into Paul’s ribs. Felt it connect, but the pressure didn’t let up. He did it again – once, twice, three times fast.

Paul let go. Suddenly Nick could breathe again.

He threw an uppercut to Paul’s chin. Paul stumbled backward, thudded into the wall.

A knock at the door.

“What’s going on in there?” someone shouted on the other side. “Open up! Police!”

Paul bent over then, his hands hooked into claws. But his head was up, his eyes glaring at Nick with a hatred like nothing the big man had ever seen before. His nostrils flared. His chest heaved in and out, in and out.

Nick knew what was about to happen.

It was the Holy Terror’s finishing move. The Spear of Destiny, named after the lance that had been used by a Roman soldier to pierce Christ’s side during the Crucifixion. Although it was nothing fancier than a standard football tackle, when his opponent sold it just right it would appear that Paul had leapt with superhuman agility from one side of the ring to the other, colliding with his enemy’s midsection hard enough to instantly knock him unconscious (for “days”, according to the color commentary). But first, the Holy Terror had to get himself worked up and “filled with the Spirit of the Lord.”

Paul’s breathing grew louder. Louder. His clawed hands balled into pale fists.

“Paulie, you need to stop this,” said Nick. “I’ll get you help. Think about your kids—”

“Lord have mercy on my soul,” Paul hissed.

He attacked.

Nick stepped aside.

There was a deafening crash and a shower of sparks as Paul’s head went through his giant TV screen. One second the President was silently deriding reporters for asking questions he did not want to answer, the next everything went black as if he had finally shut down the “fake news” for good. Now the screen was filled with nothing but a dying Paul Crusoe. His hands clenched and unclenched, legs flailing as if he were in the middle of some hellish workout regimen. A stuttering, guttural cry came out of him, a pitiful noise that sounded more like an old engine trying to start up than anything remotely human. The smell of singed hair filled the room, along with a sickening crackle-and-pop, as electricity flowed through his body.

Paul fried for several long seconds before his body slid backward, falling from the jagged hole his head had made in the TV. The television toppled over, landing on top of him. A thin wisp of smoke wafted up from the back of it, and Nick was quite sure he saw tiny fingers of flame somewhere down inside there.

At last, Paul Crusoe was still.

Overhead, in a corner of the room, a smoke detector started beeping.

Nick covered his ears and got out of there.

IV.

“Freeze!” a deep voice shouted at him as Nick stepped out of the house and onto the front lawn.

Bright lights shined in his eyes. A mob of silhouettes stood between the big man and the line of patrol cars in the street. There might have been eight or nine of them or as many as two dozen. Although he could not see their faces, he knew their guns were aimed his way.

“Don’t move! Hands in the air!”

Nick dropped to his knees, held his hands above his head. Fresh, warm blood trickled down his back as he did so, and he remembered that he had been shot. That conjured a humorless chuckle out of him. Forgot all about that . . .

As the cops came for him, Nick slowly turned his head — and only his head — to the right. A pretty female cop was leading the Crusoe kids from the pool area, offering them gentle condolences as they stepped through the gate. Each of the children’s hair was dripping-wet. They wore bulky police jackets and wool blankets over their drenched pajamas. The oldest boy had one arm wrapped around his little sister. Their brother followed a few steps behind. All three of them looked as if they would undoubtedly be traumatized for years to come by tonight’s events. But they were safe. And in that moment, nothing else mattered to Nick Bullman.

The dome of night above the Crusoe property pulsed red and blue, red and blue. As if the Earth were under attack by unseen alien invaders.

Nick turned back to the approaching police officers.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Shut your mouth!” yelled the man who was obviously in charge. As he came closer, blocking the bright lights with his body, Nick saw that he was a broad-shouldered guy with a military-style buzz-cut and a bushy uni-brow. “Don’t move a muscle, freak, or I swear to Christ you’ll wish you n—”

“Wait! I know this guy!” The voice was young. If Nick had known no better, he would have thought the man who spoke up for him was not much older than the Crusoe children. “I think that’s Nick Bullman.”

“You know this guy, Rumery?” said Uni-Brow.

“Yeah. I mean . . . not personally, Sarge. But that’s Nick Bullman.”

“Pretend I know Nick Bullman from John Travolta.”

“He used to wrestle with Crusoe. Called himself the Widowmaker. He was in the news a while back. Took down some pedophile. He didn’t hurt these kids, Sarge. I’m pretty sure he saved them.”

“He’s right,” said the oldest Crusoe boy. “He didn’t hurt us. Mr. Bullman saved us.”

“He threw us out the window,” said the little girl. “It was scary but fun!”

The other cops scowled at Nick, as if refusing to believe that anything so hideous could possess a shred of human compassion. But they slowly lowered their weapons.

“Mr. Bullman,” said the young cop, “I think you can get up now.”

Nick shook his head. Stayed on his knees. Just in case.

His eyes locked with the oldest boy’s. He wished he could go to the children and tell them that everything was gonna be okay.

But that would have been a lie. And Nick Bullman was no longer in the business of lying.

V.

“Edmund, you are never going to believe this.”

Mildred felt a fluttering in her chest as she watched what was going on at the Crusoe house. She was pretty sure she would need a nitroglycerin pill before the night was through. It was too much for her old heart to take.

“Edmund, wake up! There are policemen over there. And I’m pretty sure I heard gunshots!”

Finally, her husband sat up with a heavy sigh. He turned on the lamp on the nightstand, made a grand show of rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It’s a good thing I’m retired and have nothing to do tomorrow except wonder how I fell head over heels for such a worrywart. You know what this is, Mildred? They’re probably filming some bit for that wrestling baloney he’s involved in.”

“At two in the morning? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She decided not to tell him that she was the one who had called 911 earlier. He would think her silly, accuse her of being a nosy parker. Wouldn’t be the first time. That was Edmund for you. Always a logical explanation for everything. Calm to a fault. The kind of fellow who would consider it a minor nuisance if they woke one morning to find terrorists parachuting from the sky, landing in their front yard.

For once, Mildred found herself yearning for the days when that colored family lived next door. At least they were quiet. None of this nonsense going on in the middle of the night.

Edmund said, “Remember when Crusoe invited everyone in the neighborhood to be on his show? They were filming a pool party, needed as many folks as possible before their soiree was ‘interrupted by hoodlums.’” As he said that last part, Edmund stopped massaging the circulation back into his skinny legs to make “quotes” in the air with two wrinkled fingers, something Mildred was pretty sure she had never seen him do. “Quite a bit of fun we had, watching it all from right here in our PJ’s. I’d wager just about anything that this is more of the same.”

Mildred peered through the window so diligently her wrinkled nose flattened against the glass now. “I don’t know. It looks like they’ve got someone in custody.”

“Paul Crusoe is in the business of pretend. Hitting other fellows with rubber pipes, throwing them through breakaway glass, spitting up fake blood. I watched it once. Wasn’t my cup of tea, but to each his o—”

“I don’t see any cameras, though.” She tore her gaze from the chaos across the street, glanced back at her husband. “Edmund, I don’t see any cameras.”

“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They can put cameras in your earrings these days, or in the hatband of my favorite fedora.”

“Are you sure, Edmund?”

“Never been more sure of anything.” He yawned, patted her empty side of the bed. “Now come back to bed and stop fretting over nothing? I’m telling you, that wrestling stuff is as fake as a three-dollar bill.”

He clicked off the lamp. A rustle of blankets as he made himself comfortable.

“And if you’re wrong?” said Mildred.

“If I’m wrong we’ll hear all about it in the morning.”

for Charlie (a.k.a. “Big Daddy Stovepipe”)

I know, in my heart of hearts, none of this is real.

Were it not for the drugs, I'd have fought them off, one by one. So what if there's six of them? I once took on the Fantastic Firebirds and Big Jack Cody and came out victorious. So what if I'm thirty years past my heyday? So what if I'm bent at the waist and nary a one of my toes face the same direction? So what if they’ve got my arms zip-tied behind me, and me strapped to this jacked-up dentist's chair? I could clean the room with these jokers if I had half a mind to.

Were it not for the drugs.

They've got me doped on enough juice to still a steer. I can't, for the life of me, tell you how they stuck me, or how they got me here. All I can say for sure: There's six of them. The little one in the middle has enough medals pinned to his uniform to sparkle like Christmas. His mustache curlicues to a tight point, near-abouts an inch from his cheek. He wears a monocle at his right eye. He leans close enough for me to smell the kraut on his breath.

“You know why you're here, don't you?”

His accent: Pinko thick. For want of a drop of spit, I'd have hocked into his face. Instead, I look him dead in the eye. Same look Beautiful Bobby Munchak used to say could cook eggs. I call all the blood into my cheeks and in the lowest rumble I can muster, I tell him:

“You boys can all go straight to Hell.”

Little Fella likes that none too much. He bites hard on his lower lip. His face turns red as a beet. He spits steam from his nose and, next thing you know, he snaps his fingers to and fro until his men hop to action. Two of them hold me down at both arms while the other two grapple with my legs.

“Remove his pants,” says Little Fella.

It's useless to struggle. The drugs leave my senses foggy, but not my convictions. They wrestle me free from my britches and leave me knocking my knees in that room gone chilly.

“I'll never betray God or my country,” I inform him. “You'll have to kill me first.”

“Kill you?” This has Little Fella tickled. He grips both sides of his belly, then enjoys a hearty chuckle. “Why on earth would we kill you?”

And then, to my horror, I notice for the first time the specimen cup betwixt his pudgy little fingers. The same kind Brett used to ask me to piss in. “They'll find drugs in my piss too, little brother,” I used to tell him, to which he would forever reply: “But they'll find DIFFERENT drugs in yours…”

“I don't know what you sick bastards want with my piss,” I holler, “but you'll fetch nary a drop from me. I'm dry as a bone.”

“Don't be silly,” the little guy snickers. “It's not your urine we are after.” Those curlicues twitch like they're swatting after gnats. He says, “You are Brad Van Alstyne, son of Hermann Van Alstyne. You are the last of an extremely talented dynasty of professional wrestlers. Your seed, my friend, will be the next step on our ascension up the evolutionary ladder.”

“My… My what?”

“Your seed.” The soldier stationed next to Little Fella hands him a pair of rubber gloves, same as the ones Mom would use when scrubbing pots after dinner. “We're here to extract your seed. With your DNA…with your bloodline…we will begin a new generation, a new age…a new race of superhuman!”

I'm not sure if it's the anger bubbling up inside me or if maybe the drugs have begun to taper off, but I feel the fog clear. The blood makes its way to every length of me.

I feel myself getting stronger.

But I can't do it alone.

“Carl?” I close my eyes and turn my head to the ceiling. “Carl, can you hear me?”

His voice: inside my ears, inside my head. Yes, Brad?

“Looks like I got myself in a fix again.”

Yes, it looks like you have.

“I know I ask a lot from you…”

You do.

“But I'm going to ask you for help again.” I lick my lips with a dry tongue. “Just like you helped me on the New Year's card against Zulu Warrior and Pretty Boy Peter Donahue at Texas Stadium. Just like you helped me down in Kountze against Bad Randy Vigeon, when his manager distracted the referee and you—“

I remember, Brad.

“I need you to help me once again.”

You bet, brother.

“Thank you, Carl.”

And Brad…

“Yes, Carl?”

Let's kick their asses.

The post office.

The park where we used to take Rusty to play, back when he was a boy.

The old oak tree I used to climb with my brothers.

We are on our way home.

Tiff drives the car. She's hardly in the mood. She's long past the crying stage, from the look of things. She's got a three-mile stare through the windshield.

“How long I been out?” I ask her.

She doesn't answer. She doesn't even blink.

Tiff's gotten harder.

I reach a hand to her shoulder, but she shirks it away.

“Baby…”

At my wrist, I notice the plastic ID bracelet. The black ink smudged at the tips of my fingers. My hand pulls back in shame. My eyes close. I could stay in the dark forever.

When I open my eyes, she is looking at me. Her heart breaks for the millionth time and I can't stand it when she looks at me like that. I can't…

“It's not my fault.” It's all I can think of to say, but I can't make it sound like I mean it. “They doped me up with something. They said they needed my seed so they could—“

“They found you on a hill.” Her voice is mesquite. Her eyes, blue as ice. “Out near your daddy's place.”

“That must have been where they left me,” I tell her. “If it wasn't for Carl, I'd have—“

“You had a gun, Brad.”

“No, I didn't. I was unarmed. They caught me unawares.”

“You're not listening to me.” She's stopped the car. She's half twisted in the seat to square up, shoulder to shoulder. “You. Had. A. Gun.”

I open my mouth to speak. I close it.

“It was loaded,” she tells me.

All the wind's left my sails. My shoulders hang like sandbags. Water wells at my eyes so hot, I could brew tea. There's a lump in my throat the size of Oklahoma and when finally I rustle enough wind to talk, I ask her:

“Where the hell did I get a gun?”

“You stole it,” she says. “You walked into a gun shop and took it off the shelf.”

“Nobody tried to stop me?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

Tiff can face me no longer. She twists herself back around and slaps both hands to the steering wheel. Those icy blues stare through the windshield a good long while before she gives me the answer.

“Because you're a Van Alstyne, that's why.”

The next time they come for you, there'll be more of them.

I've polished this picture so many times, you’d reckon all the specks of dust in the world would steer clear of it. It's the one of me and Daddy and his boys. Danny, still a kid; Carl, still alive. Brett, Marty…all of them. Not a one of us with any idea what's coming…

“I know,” I say.

You have to be ready.

“I am.”

I don't think you are. This last time was too close a call. We barely made it out of there.

I fix the picture frame back on the shelf. I take a long look at its neighbors there: the belts, the trophies, the newspaper headline.

BRAD VAN ALSTYNE BRINGS CHAMPIONSHIP TO DALLAS

VAN ALSTYNE BROTHERS CLAIM TAG TEAM TITLE FOR TEXAS

LARGEST CROWD ASSEMBLES FOR TITLE MATCH AT TEXAS STADIUM

CARL VAN ALSTYNE, WRESTLER, 22, DIES IN JAPAN

MARTIN VAN ALSTYNE FOUND DEAD

THE VAN ALSTYNE CURSE STRIKES AGAIN

HERMANN VAN ALST—

Quit reading those, brother.

“I don't want to forget any of it,” I tell him.

How could you?

I shrug.

You can't control what you forget. That's not how it works.

I pick up the last picture ever taken of me and Brett. Four days later, Brett would drive his truck out to the back of Daddy's land, then he—

We don't have time to be afraid. They're coming and you can't get distracted by things you can't change.

“If only Tiff would believe me.”

No one will believe you. It's you and me, brother. Just like the old days.

“If only I could show her some proof…”

Who needs her, when you've got me?

I touch his shoulder. My finger smudges the glass.

“But you're dead, Carl.”

Dammit, Brad…

“You're dead.”

Did I ever tell you about the time Beatdown Philly Brown turned heel? They never aired it, not in its entirety, but it was Daddy's annual New Year's Day match so we had about twelve, thirteen thousand people in Texas Stadium. All of them chanting my name.

Anyway, I'm kicking his ass, just like we planned. He'd thrown me over the top rope and I'd strutted around gassed, then he'd tossed me back into the ring. He'd climbed to the top turnbuckle to deliver a finishing blow but—in the nick of time—I'd rolled to safety. Crowd went nuts. He'd bladed himself for a little color, but I clearly had momentum. I slapped the Hammer Claw on his head, much to the glee of the entire arena. All I had left to do was climb that top rope, somersault on top of him and one, two, three…ten minutes later, we'd be eating pizza in the dressing room.

It didn't happen like that.

I got to the top rope and everything went black.

They said it was stress. It was after Marty killed himself and, looking back, I shouldn't have been in the ring. I should have done what anybody else would have done and taken some time off. But with Carl dead and then Marty... After Brett's motorcycle accident and we didn't know if he'd ever wrestle again… After all of that, who was going to draw them in? Who was going to show Texas the Van Alstynes could bounce back from a beating? Who else was going to make sure Daddy's name meant something other than tragedy? What about all those kids who looked up to us?

But I was hurting, man. I'd shoot juice into my knees and maybe suck up a little toot to find some spirit. I don't know how long I'd been drinking… Who knows what it was, but when I came to, I was lying on the mat and the world had gone ape shit. Daddy, the medical staff, little Danny… Brett on crutches… Even Beatdown Philly Brown looked like he'd seen a ghost, his eyes wide and the blood still trickling from that cut on his head. You could have heard a pin drop in all of Texas Stadium, then when I waved to the crowd and showed them I was okay, their reaction measured on the Richter Scale.

Daddy wouldn't let them air the match on syndication. Nobody argued. The last thing Texas needed was to see another Van Alstyne boy go down. Instead, we whipped up an angle and said Beatdown had used an illegal move to immobilize me. He played it up real good, wagging his finger into the camera and calling for a rematch. Threatened to use his new move. Threatened to put me in the hospital, if need be. Anything to get the title.

Imagine my surprise to see, all those years later, Beatdown hasn't much changed. Still he stands a good two heads taller than me. Still his biceps ripple when he ties back his flowing, black mane into a tail. Still he can reach into his dark, gaping maw and produce twin thunderbolts which he holds at the ready, should he need them.

“Beatdown,” I tell him, “I come in peace.”

We're at his front door. Nice house outside Garland. Yard: well maintained. Beatdown did pretty good for himself.

“Nobody calls me Beatdown anymore, Brad,” he says. “I'm Phillip.”

And Phillip is no longer large and buff. Phillip's muscle mass has gone slack. His hair, peppered with grey and thinned at the top. He, too, walks with a hunch, but that fire, that fire in his eyes…

“Beatdown,” I whisper.

“What do you want, Brad?”

Okay, a little Inside Baseball: After Marty died, Daddy checked out for a bit. I was spread pretty thin and Brett felt he needed to hurry along his recovery to get back in the ring. People smelled weakness and one of those people was Beatdown. He was first to jump ship. He left the circuit and started wrestling for the boys in Florida. He took a lot of good people with him. Things were said that nobody can take back. People say that was the beginning of the end for Daddy's circuit, but that's neither here nor there.

Bygones need to be bygones.

We've got bigger fish to fry.

“I'm in trouble, Beatdown,” I tell him.

Beatdown sighs like he's heard it all before.

Fuck him, Brad. I told you this was a bad idea.

“Shut up,” I say. Then, to Beatdown: “This is going to sound crazy, but there are Russian soldiers trying to steal my DNA.”

Beatdown rubs the bridge of his nose. “Brad…”

“I'm not making this up,” I tell him. “They are going to steal my semen because they need to create a super race.”

“From your blood?” Beatdown can't help but laugh. “Even the Rooskies can't be desperate enough to jack with your cursed bloodline.”

He's one of them, Brad. You can't trust him.

I shake that thought out of my head. I put both hands on Beatdown's shoulders.

“I wouldn't have come to you if I didn't need your help,” I tell him. “Nobody else believes me.”

“That's because it's a ridiculous story.” He removes my hands from him, then takes a step back. He measures his breathing. “You need to get help, man.”

“You're starting to sound like Tiff,” I tell him.

“Maybe that's why she left you.”

“She didn't leave me.”

He nods his head. “Yeah, she did. Eight months ago.”

“Don't say that,” I growl. “Tiff would never leave me.”

That look in Beatdown's eye. I fight the urge to slap it off him. Instead, I square shoulders and put a finger to his face.

“I swallowed a lot of pride to be here Beatdown,” I tell him. “If you aren't going to help me, then maybe I ought to give you the whipping I should have given you thirty-five years ago.”

The old Beatdown would have never stood for that kind of talk. The old Beatdown would have taken me on, right there in his front yard.

This Beatdown only shakes his head, then says:

“I hope you find help somewhere, Brad.”

“Mr. Van Alstyne?”

The bay window along the front wall: shattered. A chair lies suspect on its side just outside the window.

Outside?

“Mr. Van Alstyne…Are you okay?”

If the chair is OUTSIDE the window, that means the intruder tried to escape from INSIDE. That means he had already infiltrated the perimeter. That means…

…I must have let him in.

“Mr. Van Alstyne, I need you to inform myself or the other officers if you are armed.”

Are you?

The television upturned and broken in half. Every photograph, every painting has been shorn from the walls and cast asunder.

Brad…Dammit, Brad….

“Mr. Van Alstyne, please show us your hands.”

Two cops, both in uniform. The older one with his hand on his weapon, holstered at the hip. The second, much younger, with his drawn. Both their eyes, wide as saucers.

“Show me your hands, Mr. Van Alstyne,” says the older one. Then, in a shaky voice: “Please.”

I bring them out from under me. My fists: bloodied and pulped.

How did that happen?

“I don't…I don't know.”

Asks the older cop: “Don't know what, Mr. Van Alstyne?”

The younger cop's weapon sinks lower, its barrel now pointed toward the carpet smeared a rust red. His jaw drops as he takes in the wreckage. The bent-up trophies, the championship belts. The newspaper clippings.

“Wait…” he breathes. “This is…Oh my God…My dad told me all about you. Your brothers…They—“

“Carson,” snaps the older one. “Why don't you secure the perimeter?”

“Secure the—?”

A moment passes between them before the younger man catches on. He nods his head, holsters his weapon, then steps over broken glass to the back room. As he moves from bedroom to bedroom, the older cop steps closer to me. He bends down to squat on creaky knees.

“Mr. Van Alstyne…?”

My cheeks burn hot. Do I know this man? Have we met before? The plate on his uniform reads O'DONNELL, but…

How am I supposed to know anymore?

I can't fight back the tears.

“Hey… Hey…” The cop’s hand goes to my shoulder. “You're okay. You're going to be fine.”

I open my mouth. I close it before all the air can quit my lungs.

“You know, I saw you fight off Big Bad Joe Quint in 1985,” he says. “Greatest match I've ever seen, and I've seen a few. I worked security at the big gig two years ago. Everyone says that's the high mark for wrestling, but I know better. Without a Van Alstyne on the card… Hey, enough of that now.”

There's no stopping the tears. Nothing I can do. My face buries deep into the man's chest, nose pressed against his badge. It's coming out in torrents. I muffle my screams into his uniform.

“There, there…”

When I take my head from his chest, I see the younger cop standing in the hall, watching us.

“Who did this to me?” I ask them both.

The younger cop cocks his head. “Why don't you tell us what happened here, sir.”

O'Donnell shushes him, then turns back to me. “Do you have anybody you can call, Mr. Van Alstyne?”

“Nobody believes me,” I tell him.

“From the looks of things,” says the younger cop, “you've got a bit of an anger issue. Maybe if we carried you down—“

Again, he is shushed. This time, O'Donnell orders the kid outside. He doesn't like it much, but the younger officer obeys. He doesn't stray far from the front porch.

Says O'Donnell: “Look, I know you got a lot going on. How about I call a couple guys I know and have them come help you clean this place up? Get you straightened up, good as new?”

“It won't stop them,” I say.

“Maybe not.” O'Donnell looks around the room. When his eyes return to me, he smiles. “Maybe not for long, but maybe I can put a guy outside. Just for a night or two. Just to keep an eye on you.”

The cops can't stop them, Brad. Not these guys.

Everything is so heavy. My shoulders, my head… All of it, so damned heavy. I could sink into the carpet, through the baseboards, down to the foundation and on and on and on until I come plum through the other side. I could sink forever.

If this cop really wants to help you, he'll leave you his gun.

“Thanks, Officer,” I tell him. “That won't be necessary.”

That way, you can end this once and for all.

“I appreciate all you've done for my family,” I say. “But I'll handle it from here.”

This whole thing is an angle.

These guys are heels and I'm the face.

None of this is real.

“Carl?”

Nothing.

“Carl? Is that you?”

For the third time since snapping awake five minutes ago, the lights flicker.

They are coming.

“Carl?” When the first shout produces no answer, I repeat it again. It bounces off the empty living room walls. It abandons me down the darkened hallway. “Where are you, brother?”

The phone rings. CALLER UNAVAILABLE. I don't dare answer it.

It rings again.

Again.

“Dammit.” With a sigh, I pick it up.

Breathing at the other end. Then, “Do you know what time it is, Mr. Van Alystne.”

“Where's my brother?”

“Your brother is dead.”

The first time somebody told me those words, it leveled me. It took everything I had to get back into the ring. But I did. I got back into the ring and rocked Texas by the face.

The second time, it lost a little of its shine. By the time they'd come to tell me they found Danny, dead in the woods, those words no longer meant a thing.

I knew Brett was dead long before anybody told me.

When I first heard those words, my first instinct had been to shrivel. Now they make me want to fight. They make me want to grapple the world by its meaty throat. To throw a Hammer Claw to the temples of the planet and squeeze until it pops like a ripe tomato.

“I'm going to kick your ass,” I say into the telephone. “I'm going to kick it good and proper.”

“I'm sorry it has to come to that.”

“You'll be more sorry once I'm through with you.”

“Let me ask you a question.”

“Let me punch you in the face.”

“You have two sons, don't you?”

I won't let them hear me weak, but I drop to my knees. I tumble headlong to the carpet.

Anything but that…

“You lay a hand on my boys…”

“Your father put up much the same fight, and look how it turned out for him.”

I'll do anything to keep this from my boys.

Folks would always ask how I could have a child, given what's happened to my family. I tell them there was never any question. If God had his arms around anybody in this world, I would tell them, it was my two boys.

However, if I'm being honest, I never would have had either of them had I known. If it had been ten years later, I'd have driven Tiff to a doctor out of town. I'd have them cut out. But I didn't know. I hadn't any idea.

Now, the best I can do is protect them. Even if it means steering clear of them.

“Carl?”

Still, no answer.

“Hell of a time to bail on me, brother.”

Outside, the crickets chirp a fiesta. Outside, the whip-poor-will. The hoot owls.

“I'm not going without a fight.”

I imagine what he would say. I wonder what Daddy would say.

Daddy…

“Don't come at 'em with a pillow when what you need is a pit bull.”

That's what Daddy would say.

Daddy…

Oh, what have you done?

“Are you still there?”

The line had gone quiet. I could still hear breathing.

“I said—“

“Yeah. I'm still here, Dad.”

Sigh.

“How's…How's your brother?”

Another sigh. “You can't remember his name, can you, Dad?”

“I can remember it. Don't say that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I love you, son. I love both of you. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone or anything.”

“You can't even remember his name, can you?”

“It… That doesn't matter, son. What matters is—“

The boy will take none of it. He lets me have it.

“When are you going to admit that something's wrong? When are you going to get help?”

“I know his name, dammit. He's my son.”

“Do you know mine?”

What's the use, I ask myself. What's the point?

“If you don't get help,” he says, “I can't ever let you see your grandchildren again.”

“Grand—“ I draw breath into shaky lungs. “I have grandchildren?”

“Dad…” If the boy has any heart left, it's just been broken. “Dad…”

“Wait… Wait.” Again, the line is silent. “Are you there?”

“I can't keep doing this, Dad.”

“I know…” I don't know much anymore. But I know this. And: “Rusty. Your name is Rusty.”

“The dog's name is Rusty, Dad.” Yet, another sigh. “I'm hanging up.”

“No, no…Wait, son.”

He does.

“There's a reason I called.”

“Is there?”

“Not just to torment you.” I laugh, to let him know it's okay for him to laugh too.

He doesn't.

“I wanted to tell you…” I haven't fought this hard since the Ennis 1988 card against Beatdown Philly Brown, the one me and Brett got so zonked we were seeing double. Beatdown did all the work in that one, having to pretend I was of sound mind and body. But I got him down—one, two…three—and defended the title another day.

“I wanted to tell you…”

I look to the empty chairs at the dinner table around me.

I look at the walls with no photographs.

I look at the ivory-handled Colt lying in a pool of yellow light from yonder ceiling fan.

“I wanted to tell you I'm sorry.”

It takes him a minute.

“Dad?” he says.

“Yes, son…Rusty.”

“You're scaring me.”

And I smile. “If there's one thing you ought to take with you, son,” I tell him. “It's that you ought not be scared of anything. Do you hear me?”

No answer.

“You're a Van Alstyne,” I tell him. “We don't quit. We never surrender.”

If he's still on the line is anybody's guess.

“We go out fighting.”

The Henhouse was always a little quiet after Wet G-String Nite, and yet the tonk’s sumo-sized dancing queen, Marlene, could always count on her most ardent admirer for a standing ovation, literally or just in his shorts.

Old Lou was a defrocked Sunday school teacher, with an encyclopedic knowledge of smut movies, from soft to hard to don’t-ask core, which never ceased to make me wonder if it was somehow related to why he lost his job. He never missed a show from Marlene, come rain or shine. That night, Lou was parked at the end of the runway stage, taking flustered sips from an umbrella drink while Marlene worked the dance pole to Trace Adkins – and at three hundred and fifty pounds, most of that caboose, there was a whole lotta Marlene to badonkadonk.

Marlene finished her set to Lou’s rapturous applause. She allowed him to help her down from the stage and dry her hard-to-reach places with a beer towel that was soon soaked with sweat. From the corner of my eye, I saw the sweat-sodden beer towel vanish inside Lou’s jacket, and I shuddered to picture him at home in his La-Z-Boy with it draped over his face like a wet flannel, inhaling deeply.

I was on the job: Hunched at my spot at the end of the bar with a bottle of Coors and The Ring magazine, reading an article about a pug called Jimmy Allcorn whose ring record made my own former boxing career seem distinguished.

The owner of The Henhouse, Walt Wiley – my boss, and God help me, my best friend – was on the business side of the bar, watering down the liquor while the tonk was quiet, quite shameless about it.

The temperature dropped as Marlene’s shadow cloaked me. She was surprisingly light on her feet for such a hefty gal. I hadn’t heard her creep up on me, and I startled in surprise. “Heckuva show, Marlene.”

“Reggie,” she announced, “I need a favor.”

I tensed.

There used to be a time when I’d do favors without hesitation. But recently it seemed like every time I lent a helping hand, I ended up getting my fingers burnt.

Take, for instance, the time I set off on a backwoods safari to rescue our high school football mascot, Boogaloo Baboon, and the man inside the monkey costume, Ned Pratt, from a creature believed to be an oversexed skunk ape, and found myself butting heads with the Damn Dirty Apes biker gang, not to mention boxing an orangutan… Or another time, when what should have been the simple retrieval of a Chinese crested terrier from a roadside zoo, where the ugly fucking mutt was being exhibited as the chupacabra, found me embroiled with neo-Nazi drug smugglers, an ex-porn star donkey called Enrique, and Hollywood superstar Nicolas Cage...

After all that, I was naturally a little cautious.

“What kinda favor?” I asked Marlene.

Marlene plucked from the cord of her G-string what I first assumed to be one of the damp dollar bills Lou had tucked down there. Then she wrung the sweat from it, gave it to me, and I saw it was a handbill advertising a local wrestling show. With little surprise, I said, “You’re wrestling now?”

The size of Marlene, I would have liked her chances versus Andre the Giant.

“Not me,” she said. “Hector needs someone to take him.”

I glanced across the room at Hector. That Marlene’s eight-year old pup was a rasslin’ fan was no secret. The kid’s regular wardrobe was an improvised wrestling cape (a red and white check tablecloth appropriated from the Pancake Palace) and the black leather, zipper mouthed, silver studded ‘lucha libre’ mask he had discovered at the bottom of his momma’s closet, buried beneath an avalanche of Marlene’s other sex toys.

Hector was standing on an upturned beer crate to reach the flippers of the Smokey and the Bandit II pinball machine. The new pinball machine had been a gift from Nicolas Cage, thanking for me saving his life when a vengeful neo-Nazi shot The Henhouse to hell with an AR-15… Long story – and a not-bad Video On Demand motion picture called Tijuana Donkey Showdown, starring Cage as yours truly.

The boy had become a regular at The Henhouse ever since Marlene brought him to the tonk for ‘Bring your kid to work Day’ and realized it was cheaper than hiring a babysitter. Walt didn’t mind having a minor in the place; he put a push broom in the kid’s hand and paid him off in quarters for the pinball machine.

I returned my attention to Marlene – but not before noting, with a flash of panic, that the kid’s pinball score was rapidly gaining on my own high score. I would have done anything to prevent that happening… Almost anything.

“Jeez, Marlene, I don’t know.”

I was hardly rushed off my feet at work. I rarely left my barstool except to take a leak or to fetch a fresh cold one. And my girlfriend Sue was out of town visiting her mother. I could have said yes quite easily.

Walt accurately voiced my fears. “Reggie at the rasslin’?” he said. “What could possibly go wrong?” I believe he only ended up giving me the night off to satisfy his curiosity.

“Can’t the boy’s daddy take him?” I said to Marlene, looking for a way out.

“Carlos was deported last month,” she said.

“I’m so sorry, Marlene. I didn’t know.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. Lou glared at me jealously. “One of the other boys’ daddies?” I said, delicately. Marlene had a thing for aliens – and you can keep those anal probe jokes to yourself.

“Them, too.” She made a snuffling sound. “They’re all gone.”

I scowled at the MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap Walt was wearing. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“But her emails, Reggie!”

“What about Lou?” I suggested to Marlene. “I’m sure he’d be happy to help out.”

But the thought of Lou in charge of a minor? Well, we all had a good laugh at that.

“Without his daddy around,” Marlene said, “I’m worried the boy’s getting light in the loafers. Not that there’s nothing wrong with that!” she was quick to add. “I mean, I’ll still love him near most the same.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, good thinking, Marlene. A few hours eyeballing oiled and sweating muscle hulks wearing Speedos oughta straighten the kid right out.”

“A positive male role model is what he needs, Reggie.”

Walt cackled. “And that’s Reggie?”

Marlene batted roadkill-doe-eyes at me.

“Please, Reggie?”

I gave a long sigh.

I never could say no to a beautiful woman.

Needless to say Marlene paid me fifty bucks.

The next night, against my better judgment, I drove Hector to the wrestling show. It was a two-hour drive to Elwood, the rinky-dink town north of Bigelow where the event was being held. Make that four hours in Lou’s rattletrap AMC Gremlin. I’d still yet to replace my truck after it was pancaked flat by a kamikaze helicopter – don’t ask – but Lou had been glad to loan me his car as I was doing a favor for Marlene. The long drive felt even longer on account of Hector wouldn’t stop yapping about his favorite wrestler, ‘Cottonmouth’ Clayton Kincaid, who was headlining the show. I was almost tempted to close the zipper across the mouth of the kid’s gimp mask, just to buy myself five minutes peace, but I didn’t have the heart.

I remembered my own boyhood heroes. The walls of my bedroom had been plastered with posters of the boxing greats I’d aspired to emulate. Once, I even hitched interstate to meet Randall Cobb in Oklahoma City, where he was making a movie with Rutger Hauer about a blind samurai; Tex signed my boxing vest (I was still fighting amateur back then), bought me my first beer, and taught me a limerick about a man from Nantucket.

Just as I’d idolized ol’ Tex, so Hector idolized ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid. I just hoped the man lived up to the boy’s expectations. That the former wrestling superstar was now topping the bill at small hall shows did not bode well. Hell, the man had been wrestling back when I was Hector’s age. I could still picture Kincaid in his prime. Mullet billowing in his wake as he marched purposefully to the ring. Blessed with the kinda Frank Frazetta physique that came only from taking your vitamins every day, saying your prayers every night, and a shit-ton of steroids. Slung on his shoulder was the bulging burlap sack containing Slash, the defanged water moccasin that Kincaid would drape across his beaten opponents after he had knocked them out cold.

But that was a long time ago. How old was Kincaid now? I wondered. The man had to be borderline geriatric. And his serpent sidekick, Slash? Someone’s boots, belt, or hatband. Father Time catches up with us all, and none harder than fighting men, even fake fighting men like wrestlers.

Arriving at last in Elwood, I drove around searching aimlessly for the American Legion hall where the show was being staged.

Eventually I swallowed my pride and stopped to ask directions from three guys loitering outside a strip mall between a late-night Laundromat and a liquor store.

A black guy, a Latino, and a white dude – if the white dude was Polish or Irish then we had all the makings of a pretty good ‘walks into a bar’ joke on our hands.

In the window of the liquor store, a middle-aged sad sack was hunched at the counter with the racing pages, eyeing the punks warily like he was praying for no trouble.

I pulled up and honked the horn and the white dude pimp-walked over.

He was wearing sweats and a hoodie so baggy they might’ve been Paul Bunyan’s hand-me-downs. His pants were sagging around his knees as if he hadn’t bothered to pull them back up after taking a crap that morning. I could see more of his underwear than I would have liked. He ducked his head towards my unrolled window. His face was tattooed with a spiderweb, his beady black eyes like the desiccated husks of dead insects. “Watchoo need, cuz?” Then he saw I was riding with a kid wearing a leather gimp mask, and shot me a reproachful scowl, like Chris Hansen ambushing a pedo on To Catch a Predator.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I assured him.

He nodded dubiously.

“We’re looking for the rasslin’ show,” I told him.

“Another one!” he called back to his buddies.

He sucked his teeth and swished his hand at me angrily.

“The fuck outta here with that fake-ass bullshit!”

Hector gave a horrified gasp. I doubted the profanity bothered him – not with Marlene’s tongue – so much as the implication that his beloved sport was anything but kosher.

“We working here, motherfucker!” snarled Spiderweb, and pimp-walked back to his buddies, so indignant that he nearly tripped on his saggy pants.

I was tempted to climb from the car and fix the guy’s ass for him, and then pull up his pants, talking like that in front of a kid, even a kid wearing a leather bondage mask.

Seeing me still there, Spiderweb lifted the bottom of his hoodie to reveal the butt of a pistol stuffed in the waistband of his shorts. “Whut? Whut?”

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I hit the gas and the Gremlin tootled away with a panicked fart of exhaust fumes. I felt a little bad for the owner of the liquor store. Trying to run an honest business with trash like that slinging dope outside. But it wasn’t none of my beeswax.

“Uncle Reggie,” Hector said, hesitantly. “What did that man mean about wrestling being fake?”

“Don’t you pay him no mind, kid. Wrestling’s real as Santa or the Easter Bunny.”

Maybe the kid was a little old for that nonsense? I thought.

“You, uh, still believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?” Hector said in alarm.

“No reason,” I said, and quickly turned on the radio to silence any further questions, leaving the kid with more shattered illusions to dwell on.

After another half-hour of driving round in circles, I found the place, parked up, and we went inside.

The small hall was crammed with a little under a hundred people, the kinda crowd you might find at a revival tent meeting – or shit, at The Henhouse.

I bought a plastic cup of Coors from what passed for the concession stand – a keg on a card table – and a sody pop for Hector, and then we took our ringside seats. The undercard action was already underway. A babyface and a heel were trading theatrical chest slaps in the middle of the ring. The crowd cheered every pulled punch. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.

No sooner had I choked down my first sip of flat, piss-warm beer than an anxious voice whispered in my ear, “Reggie Levine?”

I turned to see a tubby little guy wearing a Stars and Stripes stovepipe hat with matching jacket. Flakes of dandruff glittered on his shoulders as if Old Glory was shedding states. He looked like the bastard offspring of Uncle Sam and Wilford Brimley. “Oh, thank God…” he said, in choked relief. “It’s really you.”

It always surprised me to learn how far my celebrity had traveled. But I guess that’s what happens when Nicolas Cage plays you in two motion pictures, Damn Dirty Apes and Tijuana Donkey Showdown, irrespective of their quality.

He thrust a paw at me, pumped my hand eagerly.

“Tammany Dawes,” he said, still pumping my hand, and apparently in no rush to relinquish it. “I’m the CEO of Red, White, Black and Blue Wrestling, Limited.”

He gestured grandly about the hall. “This is my event.”

The place might’ve looked a mite more impressive if he’d bothered taking down the posters from last night’s A.A. meeting.

“Good to meetcha,” I said, extracting my hand from his sweaty grip and wiping my palm discreetly on the leg of my jeans.

“Mr. Levine—” He paused. “May I call you Reggie?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Reggie,” he said. “We got a situation here.”

Right away I didn’t like this ‘we’ shit.

“Would you come with me please?” Dawes said.

“I’m just here for the show,” I told him.

He clutched desperately at my shirt, bug-eyed and scared.

“If you don’t come with me now,” he said, “there won’t BE any show!”

William Shatner was never so melodramatic.

“No show?” Hector gasped, eyes wide through the holes in his gimp mask.

Dawes glanced at the kid, did a double take at the leather mask, back at me.

I gave a long sigh.

“Alright, alright… Wait here, kid. I’ll be right back.”

Dawes led me through the hall to the restroom corridor out back. We stopped outside the ladies room.

Taped to the door was a Magic Marker-scrawled sign:

‘COTTONMOUTH’ CLAYTON KINCAID

The few women in attendance that night didn’t seem to mind that Kincaid had requisitioned their toilet facilities, and were lining up with the fellas outside the men’s room.

With his own private dressing room, Kincaid was getting star treatment compared to the other wrestlers, who were taking turns to change in the janitor’s closet.

Crashing and banging resounded from the ladies room; either someone was trashing the place, or the Blue Man Group was rehearsing inside.

Dawes winced at the sounds of destruction.

“There goes my security deposit.”

“Alright,” I said. “What’s the problem here?”

“It’s ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid,” Dawes said. “He’s point blank refusing to wrestle unless he gets his rider.”

I shrugged. “So give him what he wants.”

“It’s not that simple, Reggie.”

In my experience, it never was.

Dawes knocked timidly on the door. “Mr. Kincaid—”

“Have you got it?” The voice sounded like Nick Nolte gargling ground glass after a weeklong whiskey-and-cigars bender.

“Still working on it,” Dawes said.

“Work harder, damn it!”

Cue more smashing and banging and cussing.

“I’ve got Reggie Levine here with me,” Dawes said.

“Reggie Levine…?” Kincaid said, trying to place the name.

Then it came to him: “The skunk ape moron?”

“The very same,” Dawes said, before I could explain myself.

“You bring him here to try and scare me or something?” Kincaid growled.

I jumped in quick: “No, sir. Absolutely not.”

The last thing I needed was a professional wrestler on my ass.

“Mr. Kincaid…” I said through the door. “I got an eight-year old boy sitting ringside tonight. He’s your biggest fan. If you don’t wrestle tonight, he’ll be heartbroken.”

“Well, boo-fucking-hoo,” Kincaid said. “I don’t get my rider, I ain’t going on.”

I glanced at Dawes. “What does this prick want?”

Dawes produced a rumpled cocktail napkin, on both sides of which Kincaid’s rider was scrawled, the handwriting about as legible as a doctor’s prescription.

I scanned the shopping list of items:

4 Crates, Olympia

2 Bottles, J&B

1 Carton, Marlboro Red

12 Scratch-offs

One Box, Slim Jims—

“Just go to the 7-11,” I said. “I don’t see why you need me for.”

“I’ve already done that,” Dawes said. “It’s the last item I can’t get.”

I read aloud from the rider:

“‘Fifty dollars…crack cocaine.’”

I looked up sharply.

“Hold on. You expect me to—? You got the wrong man, Dawes.”

I scrunched the napkin in my fist, tossed it against Dawes’s chest, and then I turned on my heels, started striding away.

Dawes scuttled after me. “Reggie, wait! Please!”

God help me, I stopped and heard him out.

“If ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid doesn’t wrestle tonight,” Dawes said, “those boys out there will tear this Legion Hall apart! And me along with it!”

With the help of an eight-year old boy wearing a leather gimp mask and a tablecloth cape, I thought.

“For Pete’s sake, Dawes,” I said. “I’m a strip club bouncer, not Freeway Rick Ross. Where in the hell am I gonna find fifty dollars worth of crack co—”

Then the answer hit me, and I let out the long labored sigh that was fast becoming my go-to catchphrase.

After checking that Hector was good for sody pop, I drove back to the strip mall.

The three no-goods were still outside.

Inside the liquor store, the guy at the counter looked surprised to see me again.

I honked the horn for window service, but my old pal Spiderweb, having had his time wasted once tonight, refused to wait on me. So I climbed from the car and slowly approached, taking my time to size them up. They sure made for a strange bunch, as if they’d just stepped off the set of a Troma street punk movie.

The black guy had half his hair styled into cornrows; the other half was an unruly Afro, wedged with a comb like a wafer in ice cream. The Latino wore a top-button shirt, and a hairnet over his bald dome, as if he wasn’t about to let male pattern baldness prevent him from conforming to racial stereotypes.

Corn-‘fro, Hairnet, and Spiderweb… I thought, depersonalizing the dudes. Something I only did when I was about to open a can of whup-ass. I just prayed it wouldn’t come to that tonight. “Evenin’, fellas.”

“Watchoo want, fool?” Corn-‘fro said.

“Oh…” I said, the world’s most awkward drug buyer. “‘Bout fifty bucks’ worth oughta do it.”

The punks laughed at me; I would have laughed at me too.

Then Corn-‘fro said, “You got the do-ray-me?”

“Say what?” My jive was a little rusty.

Hairnet said, “The de niro, homes.”

It occurred to me then that Dawes hadn’t given me any money before I set off on this fool’s errand. Grumbling under my breath, I fished in my pockets for my wallet, and the fifty bucks Marlene had paid me for my time.

“Wait…” Hairnet said, eyeing me closely. “I know this pendejo from somewhere.”

Once again my celebrity had preceded me; Hairnet must’ve caught one of my Nicolas Cage movies on Netflix.

Then he said, “This the motherfucker killed Harambe!”

It was an easy mistake to make, I guess, especially for a guy with no hair wearing a hairnet. Once I explained the misunderstanding – that in self-defense I’d once killed an orangutan, not a gorilla – we might all have had a good laugh about it, and gone about our drug transaction in a courteous and civilized manner. Unfortunately, they didn’t give me a chance to explain.

In the blink of an eye, Spiderweb thrust a gun in my face; the other two had their phone cameras out and were chanting, “World Star! World Star!”

I shot a plaintive glance at the owner of the liquor store. The guy raised his newspaper back in front of his face. I was on my own.

But this wasn’t the first time I’d stared down the barrel of a gun, or even the second or third, and compared to the bad hombres I’d butted heads with in the past, this was strictly amateur hour.

I raised my hands in a pantomime of terrified compliance.

“Take it easy, fellas!”

Scenting blood, they crowded closer…within striking distance.

With a flick of my foot, I stepped on the knee-high waist of Spiderweb’s saggy pants. He stumbled forwards. I snatched his gun hand at the wrist and wrenched it. There was a crack of bone and he cried out, reflexively firing off a shot between the heads of Hairnet and Corn-‘fro. Deafened by the shot, they staggered back. I tore the gun from Spiderweb’s grip, stunned him with a clubbing blow of the butt, before ejecting the magazine and tossing the piece into the gutter. I didn’t need a gun; I was packing cannonballs on each arm. I dropped Corn-’fro and Hairnet with a left-right combo, and they crumpled to the ground, out cold before they landed. Then I grabbed Spiderweb by the front of his hoodie, yanked him toward me and snarled, “Now cough it up.”

I hadn’t meant it literally. But he dutifully shoved two fingers of his unbroken hand down his throat, and spewed up a dozen or more Saran-wrapped crack rocks, along with a geyser of puke that splashed my boots.

I borrowed Hairnet’s hairnet – he didn’t need it, he was out cold; hell, the bald bastard didn’t need it to start with – and scooped a few crack rocks into it. The rest of the rocks I crushed under my boots, sweeping the gunk into the gutter where it belonged.

“Pleasure doing business with you, fellas.”

I glanced in the liquor store, gave the shocked guy at the counter a little raised fist salute, and then I swaggered to the Gremlin, and drove back to the hall.

Tammany Dawes was awaiting my return, pacing anxiously outside Kincaid’s dressing room, wincing at every crash and bang and cussword from inside.

His eyes lit up when he saw me. “Did you get it?”

“That’s fifty bucks you owe me,” I told him.

I had no intention of telling him that Kincaid’s rider had cost me nothing more than bruised knuckles.

“I’ll take it from the gate after the show,” he promised.

I hammered on the ladies room door.

“Kincaid! I got what you want!”

“Push…push it under the door.” His voice was a hungry rasp.

“Before I do,” I said, “I want you to do something for me. I want you to dedicate tonight’s fight to the young fan I’m with. His name is Hector.”

“It’d be my pleasure. Anything for the fans,” Kincaid said, sounding almost magnanimous.

Then he said, “Now push the shit under the door!”

I took the hairnet full of crack rocks from my pocket, and slid it through the gap beneath the door.

“Daddy’s missed you,” I heard him say.

I shook my head sadly. Kincaid wasn’t the first fighting man to have fallen on hard times. I counted my blessings I had a good job, a good friend like Walt, and most of all a good woman like Sue…

On second thought, maybe I was lucky just to have Sue.

I returned ringside and retook my seat.

“Uncle Reggie,” Hector asked me, “is everything okay?”

“Sure, kid. The main event should be starting any minute now.” I gave him a sly smile. “And a little bird told me that ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid has a big surprise for you.”

I retrieved my Coors from under my seat where I’d left it; I’d earned it.

No sooner had I taken another sip than Tammany Dawes whispered in my ear once again, “Reggie! We got us another problem!”

I pounded my fist on the ladies room door.

“Kincaid! Goddamn it, we had a deal!”

“I think he might’ve hurt himself,” Dawes said.

“OD’d, more like.”

“What did you give him?”

“You just told me to get the stuff,” I protested, “I never vouched for it!”

I pressed my ear to the door; heard nothing inside.

“Stand back,” I told Dawes.

And then I kicked down the door.

The ladies room had been smashed to smithereens. Place looked like the men’s room at The Henhouse come Saturday night. The doors were torn from the toilet stalls. The sink units had been ripped from the walls and shattered to porcelain rubble. Empty beer cans bobbed like fishing lures on the flooded floor.

Dawes entered the room behind me.

“Really, Mr. Kincaid,” he said, tallying the cost of the damage, “if you were unhappy with your accommodation, you need only have said something.”

Hector’s hero was slumped in the corner. The years since his prime had been brutal. I’d seen carny geeks who looked in better shape – and given my own shabby physical condition, I was rarely one to point fingers. His snakeskin patterned wrestling briefs were hiked above his navel in a pitiful effort to disguise his beer gut. His leathery skin was wrinkled and brown, his man tits drooping down his chest like an elderly E.T.’s testicles. His once magnificent mane of hair was now wispy and bone-white, like the ghost of cotton candy; in stark contrast, his handlebar mustache was dyed boot-polish-black. He was wearing one wrestling boot; the other boot was stuffed down one of the commodes, the leg draped over the bowl like a wrinkled and soiled prophylactic. Acrid smoke lassoed from the glass, serpent-shaped pipe Kincaid clutched limply by his side. That he had his own personalized crack pipe said a lot about the man’s ego. Unless the pipe was official ‘Cottonmouth’ merchandise.

“I been bit,” Kincaid rasped, and then took a slug from the J&B bottle he was clutching in his other hand.

“Bit by what?” I said.

“The name’s Cottonmouth, son. The hell you think?”

He motioned feebly to the empty burlap sack on the floor.

I liked snakes about as much as Indiana Jones does.

I backed up a step. “But the snake’s been defanged, right?”

Kincaid gave a rueful laugh that turned into a coughing fit.

“I pawned Slash years ago,” he said. “For this here show I had to catch me another snake.”

“And you didn’t think to catch a grass snake or something?”

He gave his hair a haughty toss. “I still got my pride.”

“Where’s the snake now?” I asked him.

“I wrangled the damn thing into the commode,” he said, “then plugged the bowl with my boot.”

That was something, at least; I didn’t have a venomous snake to deal with here.

“We gotta get him to the hospital,” I said to Dawes.

“I don’t got insurance for something like this,” Dawes said. “Or at all, while we’re on the subject.”

“That’s just swell, Dawes. Then what do you suggest?”

“Someone’s gonna have to suck out the poison.”

“Venom,” Kincaid corrected him.

I didn’t envy that poor bastard.

Then I suddenly noticed how Kincaid and Dawes were staring at me.

“Uh-uh,” I said, backing away from them. “Not a chance in hell.”

Dawes said, “But Reggie—”

“‘But Reggie’ nothin’! This is your promotion, Dawes. Why can’t you do it?”

“I got chapped lips,” Dawes said, pouting to prove it. “I’ll be poisoned myself.”

“Envenomed,” Kincaid said.

“Son,” he assured me, “there’s nothing to it.”

“This has happened before?”

Kincaid gave a little shrug. “My reflexes ain’t what they was.”

He produced a hidden razorblade from under the athletic tape coiled around his wrists. “I use this to cut myself mid-match,” he explained. “Give the fans a little color.” And there was me hoping he was about to commit seppuku and spare me the trouble of sucking venom from his bite wound.

He held out the razorblade to me.

“You’ll need to crosshatch the wound before you start sucking.”

“I ain’t sucking shit. Sorry, Kincaid. But you’re on your own here.”

Kincaid nodded sadly, as if he’d heard such protests a hundred times before.

“The young fan you said you brung with you…?”

“Hector.”

“Do you really wanna explain to Hector how you let his hero die on a ladies room floor?”

“He’ll get over it.”

But would he? I wondered. I pictured Hector as a young man, old before his time, reliant on booze or Kincaid’s poison of choice just to see him through the days. Wrestlemania would become a traumatic event, haunting Hector just as Christmas haunted Phoebe Cates in Gremlins. “And that’s how I learned that wrestling was fake…” I could hear him say to his drug counselor or the prison chaplain. I didn’t need that on my conscience. The kid had a big enough cross to bear having Marlene for his momma.

I gave a long sigh.

“Where are you bit?”

“Help me up,” Kincaid said, holding out his hand.

I hauled him to his feet and searched his legs for the wound, guessing that’s where he must have been bitten. “Which leg is it?” I still hadn’t located the wound, when Kincaid shuffled about face and clapped his left butt cheek. Twin ribbons of blood dribbled from the parallel perforations in his Spandex briefs.

“I’d do it myself if I could,” he assured me.

That was little consolation.

I sank to my knees behind him, as if in prayer – and I’ll admit I was silently begging the Man Upstairs to get me out of this mess, to take me before my time if necessary… Anything!

Kincaid tugged his briefs down to his knees, casual as a man at his annual physical. A ball of sports socks fell from the crotch and bounced on the floor.

“I’ll thank you not to mention nothin’ to nobody about that,” he said. “I got a legend to maintain.”

“Kincaid,” I said. “I’ll happily go to my grave without anyone ever hearing a goddamn word about any of this.”

Hovering before me, the hairy ass resembled a semi-deflated skid row Pac-Man. The sagging cheeks were pockmarked with steroid needle scars, mottled with zits, and above the crack was a violent red boil like a cop car bubblegum light.

Now I’m not saying I’d have relished my task if he’d had a more aesthetically pleasing derriere…but this was a damn horror show.

I turned my head and dry-heaved.

“What’s going on back there?” Kincaid said. “What’s the hold up?”

“Excuse me if I don’t just dive right in!”

I gave Dawes the razorblade. “You’re gonna have to cut him. I don’t like blood.”

He frowned at me. “But you were a boxer?”

Which should have told him everything he needed to know about my boxing career. “Just make the damn cut!”

Dawes carved a crosshatch incision between the twin puncture wounds the snake’s fangs had made, and wiped away the blood with a sanitary napkin.

Kincaid stifled a hiss of pain.

Was it pain? Or something else? I pushed the thought from my mind.

“Now shave some of those butt hairs down,” I told Dawes.

He did, and then disinfected the wound with a splash of J&B.

Kincaid gave a shuddery moan.

I’d stalled for about as long as I could. With furtive herky-jerky movements, I forced my face towards Kincaid’s ass. The sharp stench of Tiger Balm choked my nostrils, made my eyes water. My panicked breathing wafted the butt hairs that Dawes hadn’t shaved like grass in a gale. Stifling a cry of revulsion, I clamped my lips over the wound, sucked an overflowing mouthful of coppery blood and bitter snake juice from his buttock, and then I lurched back and retched the foul mess into Dawes’s upturned stovepipe hat, which he was holding out like a spit bucket.

I continued sucking and spitting like I was siphoning gasoline through a hose. Kincaid’s legs trembled, his knees knocking together. He pressed his palms and forehead against the tiled wall, and made a series of guttural lowing noises. “Would you stop making those sounds?” I begged him.

“Can’t help it,” Kincaid said, throatily. “You remind me of a ring rat I used to know.”

I literally puked the next mouthful of mess into Dawes’s hat.

At long last, Kincaid reached a trembling hand behind him and patted my head.

I felt dirty.

“That about does it, I reckon,” he said.

I swear he sounded almost sated.

I didn’t need telling twice.

I snatched up the bottle of J&B and gargled and guzzled the contents.

“You’re a good man, Reggie,” Dawes told me.

“Real good,” Kincaid said, still a little breathless.

I was necking the dregs from the bottle, and hoping there was another bottle lying about someplace, when a tiny voice croaked, “Uncle Reggie?”

The bottle fell from my hand and shattered on the floor.

Hector was standing in the doorway. His wide eyes shone glassily through the holes in his gimp mask. I didn’t need to ask to know how long he’d been standing there. “Is – is this my surprise?” Hector said.

“What?” I said. “God, no!”

Kincaid, with surprising professionalism, wheeled towards the boy. The gimp mask didn’t faze Kincaid in the slightest, which told me a lot about him.

“And you must be…”

Kincaid glanced at me like a stage actor requesting his line.

“Hector,” I said.

“Hector!” Kincaid boomed. “Your Uncle Reggie has been telling me all about you… Always a pleasure to meet a fan, but especially my biggest fan.”

Kincaid puffed up his chest, much as his man tits allowed, and planted his hands proudly on his hips.

For a moment there, standing in the sallow light of the ladies room, with his head held high, he was a shadow of his former self, and looked almost heroic.

Or he might have done if it wasn’t for—

“Kincaid,” I said. “Briefs.”

Without skipping a beat, Kincaid reached down, hiked up his drawers, and then continued as if he hadn’t just exposed himself to a child. He fetched his balled socks from the floor and stuffed them back down the front of his briefs.

“Thanks to Reggie here,” Kincaid said, “‘Cottonmouth’ Clayton Kincaid lives to wrestle again…”

Eyes wide with admiration through the holes in his mask, Hector looked at me as if he now had two heroes in his life. For a moment, it almost made my humiliation seem worthwhile. Almost. And only for a moment.

Then Kincaid said, “Yessir, I’ll grapple again… But not tonight.”

Dawes spluttered, “What do you mean not tonight?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to wrestle with a snake-bit ass!” Kincaid said.

“But – but you’re the headline act,” Dawes said. “Who the hell am I gonna find to rassle a killer like ‘Mad Dog’ Munrow at this short notice?”

Wearing blue jeans and boots, I was stripped to the waist, my gut drooping over my belt buckle. I felt like the fat kid in high school gym class, forced to play skins in a pickup game of B-ball. Hector had insisted I wear his Pancake Palace tablecloth cape and gimp mask. For luck, he said. At the very least, the mask hid my embarrassment. Kincaid had offered me the loan of his sports socks, to pad out the crotch of my jeans, and started rummaging in his briefs – a little longer than was strictly necessary – before I told him thanks, but no thanks.

I was waiting for my cue behind the curtain at the back of the hall. Fighting flashbacks of the last time I’d set foot in the prize ring. That was versus ‘Boar Hog’ Brannon for the state strap, lightheavy, many Coors ago. Brannon had whupped me so bad, I’d called it quits and hung up my boxing gloves.

I reminded myself that this bout would be faked.

Peeking past the curtain, I saw Tammany Dawes in the ring, addressing the crowd through a bullhorn-cum-ring mic. “Ladies and gentlemen! In a change to our featured main event, ‘Cottonmouth’ Clayton Kincaid is unable to wrestle tonight, on the advice of medical professionals—”

Boos and cries of “Bullshit!” from the crowd.

He might’ve been too sick to wrestle, but that didn’t stop Kincaid from sitting ringside next to Hector and guzzling the rest of my goddamn beer.

“In ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid’s place,” Dawes continued, having to shout above the rioting crowd, “making his wrestling debut, boasting a professional boxing record of seventeen wins, one loss, with fourteen of those wins coming by way of knockout, please welcome… ‘The Bigelow Bleeder,’ Reggie Levine!”

I sucked a deep breath and emerged from behind the curtain.

If I’d assumed I’d be the babyface in this match, the jeers and mocking laughter from the crowd, the beer and peanuts they pelted me with, quickly relieved me of that notion. Ducking my head to avoid the rain of missiles, I scurried to the ring and climbed through the ropes. I bounced around the canvas, leaned my back against the ropes, getting a feel for the space.

“Before we meet his opponent,” Dawes said through the bullhorn, “please be upstanding and pay your respects to a fallen warrior – ‘Star-spangled’ Steve Johnson – whose tragic passing we pay tribute to tonight with a ten-bell salute.”

As the ten bells toned, I said to Dawes, “Who’s ‘Star-spangled’ Steve Johnson?”

“Munrow’s last opponent.”

“He – he killed a man in the ring?”

“Heavens, no!” Dawes chortled. “Johnson hung on for near most a month before the doctors shut off his life support.”

Before I could respond to that—

“And now!” Dawes announced through his bullhorn, “hailing from parts unknown, and released for one night only from the Arkansas State Hospital for the Criminally Insane… ‘Mad Dog’ Munrow!”

An awed silence descended on the crowd.

I craned my neck towards the back of the hall. Four midgets wearing correctional facility uniforms marched my opponent to the ring behind pump shotguns. He wore a blaze orange jumpsuit and a straitjacket. Saliva, thick as shaving foam, slopped from his wild black beard.

On closer inspection I realized that the midgets weren’t midgets, but in fact regular-sized guys. Hell, a couple of ‘em were taller than me. The straitjacketed giant simply dwarfed them. With a swish of his redwood-sized legs, he stepped over the top rope, and into the ring, the canvas sinking slightly under his bulk. I chinked my neck looking up at him, expecting to see clouds haloing his head. He glared down at me, his eyes blacker than the shark from Jaws, and crazier than Manson’s on the cover of Time.

“Where’s Kincaid?” His voice was like rumbling thunder.

“Snakebit.”

He gave a snort of derision. “That old line.”

“Say what?”

“Let me guess,” he said. “His ass?”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had been the last item on Kincaid’s rider.

I glared daggers at Kincaid, sitting ringside, drinking my beer. He raised the cup of Coors in a cheery toast, as if we’d shared something special.

Munrow’s handlers released him from his straitjacket, and then retreated from the ring.

The crowd bayed for blood as we circled each other.

I prison-whispered to him, “How do you wanna do this?”

“Do what?”

“Make it look real.”

Munrow flinched as if someone had goosed him.

I didn’t know it yet, but I could not have insulted him more had I confessed to relations with his mother, his sister, and the family dog.

Kayfabe… That’s what they call it. The wrestler’s code of honor. A good grappler will go to his grave before admitting his sport is simulated.

“You won’t have to worry about that,” he promised me.

Oblivious to the hell I had wrought, I pawed out a light jab—

And he snatched my wrist and forearm and hurled me across the ring.

I bounced off the ropes like a missile shot from a slingshot.

He chopped me to the ground with a flying clothesline.

“That feel real to you, boy?” he said, as he dragged me to my feet.

“Too…too real,” I gasped.

After every backbreaker and brainbuster, piledriver, powerbomb, every chokeslam and suplex, he hissed in my ear: “How ‘bout that, does that feel real?”

He didn’t seem interested in hearing my answer, which was an emphatic

YES!

My memories of the rest of the match are a little hazy. Being dropped on your head from the turnbuckle by a seven-foot, four-hundred-pound freak of nature will do that. I do recall, shortly before the end came, that Munrow had my outstretched arms snared between the top and middle ring ropes, that I was hanging there like a half-assed Christ, watching in swollen-eyed horror as he backed to the other side of the ring and prepared to bull-charge me.

Then a siren started wailing. Red and blue lights flashed through the hall. My first thought was that it must be my ambulance, or a snazzy hearse. Then a small army of cops stormed inside. When I saw who was marshalling the troops I figured I had to be concussed. And I was concussed, but my eyes weren’t deceiving me. It was the guy from the liquor store, wearing an Elwood P.D. windbreaker. With him was Corn-‘fro, also wearing an E.P.D. windbreaker, and his police shield on a chain around his neck, and missing several teeth courtesy of the right cross I’d kayoed him with.

They entered the ring and loomed over me. Trapped in the ring ropes, I could only gape up at them, blinking foolishly and drooling blood from my gimp mask.

“You stupid sonofabitch!” Liquor Store Guy barked at me. “You just blew a six-month undercover operation!”

Corn-‘fro gestured to his hair and the gangbanger garb he was wearing under his P.D. windbreaker. “Do you think I like looking like this?” His voice trembled with rage. “The rare times I can even go home, my own wife can’t bear to look at me. My kids cry when they see their daddy. And now it’s all been for nothing!”

Liquor Store Guy said, “Tonight those punks were gonna lead us to their supplier. But thanks to you the kingpin’s in the wind. You just nixed the entire operation!”

Then he finally noticed the giant in the ring.

“Oh, hey! ‘Mad Dog’ Munrow! Jeez…”

He pumped the giant’s hand. “I’m a big fan, Mr. Munrow.”

Liquor Store Guy returned his attention to me.

“You’re in a world of trouble, pal,” he said.

I was so grateful I could have cried; I’d take a night in the cells over this beating any day of the week.

Then he said, “Just as soon as this match is over.”

Regaining consciousness at the E.P.D. stationhouse, later that night, I used my one phone call to drop a dime to Randy-Ray Gooch, the town constable back in Bigelow. Gooch explained to Liquor Store Guy (who I now knew as Sergeant Mullen) that I was his reserve town constable, which was stretching the truth somewhat, and a natural born shit-magnet, which wasn’t. In the end, after another earful of abuse, Mullen released me without charge, but warned me to stay out of Elwood. I’d planned on doing that anyway, in case I met someone who recognized me.

I drove with Hector back to The Henhouse, where Marlene was finishing her set, and receiving a rubdown from Lou.

“Mama!” the boy cried, scurrying across the bar to embrace her meaty thigh.

“Did you have fun with Uncle Reggie?” she asked him.

“Uncle Reggie sucked ‘Cottonmouth’ Kincaid’s ass!” Hector said.

And that’s all he said, which turned a lot of heads in my direction.

I tossed Lou the keys to his Gremlin.

“You fill her up?” Lou asked me.

I sighed, fishing in the pocket of my blood-spattered jeans for my wallet. I dreaded to think how much tonight’s little trip had cost me. Needless to say, Tammany Dawes never paid me for wrestling Munrow; whether he ever intended to or not, the cops had hauled me away before he could, in handcuffs no less, which seemed unnecessary given that I was unconscious at the time.

I limped to my spot at the end of the bar, and collapsed on my stool with a pained groan befitting a man twice my age. Walt put a cold one in front of me. He didn’t say a word, just eyed my injuries and allowed his imagination to run riot. I glanced at the wall behind the bar where Walt kept a shrine of news cuttings detailing my previous escapades, and noticed he’d already cleared a space for a new cutting. He wouldn’t have to wait long.

“So…” Walt said, at length. “Wanna talk about it, Reggie?”

“Nope,” I said.

Walt grinned.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just wait for the movie.”

Copperhead Jake made up his mind: Saturday’s exhibition in Minneapolis was going to be his last barnstorm. The impresario hadn’t made up his mind about the outcome of the match just yet, but Jake was well past giving a good goddamn. He’d win or lose, but either way he was going to collect his pay and catch the first available train up to Duluth. By sundown on Sunday, Jake’s daddy would be dead and Copperhead himself hell for leather to the Canadian border.

Slick with sweat that morning, Jake warmed up in the makeshift ring, which wasn’t much more than an oblong patch of dirt cordoned off with frayed rope and railroad ties. He marveled at the heat of the day, the punishing sun unobscured by any cloud cover. It was halfway through September already and at least as hot as he remembered Arkansas and Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Wasn’t Minnesota supposed to be cold by now? Jake couldn’t really say. He’d never been farther north than Kansas City before. He dismissed the notion altogether, wiped his face on his forearm, and threw himself into an evasive somersault, skirting around the thrusting arms of an imaginary opponent.

As carnivals went, this one was steady work so long as the rubes kept traipsing in from their farms and outlying tenant shacks, but Jake Kowalczyk was the only regular wrestler traveling with this bunch. It seemed every other place they hit drew out two or three hopefuls, brawny kids or fat men either out for a lark or looking to live the life, any life away from what they had. They’d have to talk to the impresario, who might bring them on for a day as a featured performer in the AT show, or might plant them among the rubes for the exhibition after a bit of coaching, or he might just as well send them walking on home. In any event, Jake rarely had a partner to practice with and never had the clearest idea of what would happen in the match, despite both parties understanding who was supposed to win. He could be slated to best his opponent and still break a rib, like in Macon last spring, or take a wild punch to his ear, as that preening pretty boy did to him outside Nashville in May. Jake hadn’t heard right out of that ear ever since.

Squinting against the sun, he fell into a measured jog and circled the fairgrounds. He nodded at a couple of ropers, eastern dudes playing at being cowboys, and watched as one of the clowns emerged from a Ford runabout with his powder still on only to puke in the grass. Some of the hayseeds were already beginning to straggle up to gawk, as well as a few small colored boys, so Jake puffed up his chest and tried to look a little mean for their benefit. When one of the boys took a step back and dropped his jaw, Jake just gave him a little wink and a grin. The other kids fell down laughing.

“Kowalczyk!” called the impresario, stealing Jake’s attention. The reedy man was strolling toward him from the mess tent, a walking cane in one hand and a cracked cup of weak coffee in the other. His ever-present straw boater’s hat tipped at the same supposed-to-be-rakish angle as always, as though soldered to his skull that way. Jake hadn’t ever seen him without it. “Say, Jake!”

“Boss,” Jake said by way of acknowledgment, slowing down to meet him on the midway.

“There’s a fellow here I’d like you to meet, Jake. A man with a camera, out from St. Paul.”

“Camera?”

“Motion picture camera,” said the impresario, his eyes widening and mouth spreading into a smile. “He’s taking some films of the shows, and he’d like to get some of you, my boy.”

Jake wrinkled his nose and peered out over the chaos unfolding all around him, drunks and freaks, washed-up dreams and hidden identities. How many of them were going to leap at the chance to be immortalized in a moving picture, assuming they weren’t on the lam for a vag charge or violating the Mann Act with some farmer’s daughter? A last gasp effort at something, anything, to make it all mean a little something in the end. He chuckled.

“I never even saw a picture, boss.”

“Makes no difference, Jake. Makes no difference at all. This fellow is going to want to point that thing at the exhibition, naturally. But have a jabber with him now, would you? Probably you’ll just have to flex and strut about, your cock-of-the-walk routine. Like you do before a match.”

Better now than later, Jake reckoned. He had business after the exhibition. He’d been putting it off for years—if he waited much longer, the old man would drop dead on his own before Jake could get his hands on him.

Chrissakes, he thought.

“All right,” he said. “Who is this old boy, anyhow?”

“What we call it is kayfabe,” Jake said, rolling his shoulders and trying not to look like a total hick the way he was staring at the movie man’s contraption. “Kind of a way to say fake but all mixed up so’s you don’t really understand it. It’s all a show, see? But you gotta make ‘em believe it.”

“Hell,” said the man. “That’s all showmanship is.”

He grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He was all teeth, long and straight and uniform, like he’d had them all done by some high-dollar jaw doctor back east. Pomaded hair parted straight down the middle, he looked to Jake like his head had been split with an ax. Under his brown tweed jacket was a matching waistcoat, and his two-tone cap toe shoes were already spattered with mud and horse shit. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

“It’s athletic too,” said the wrestler. “That’s how come it’s called an AT show. Not just anyone can do it, you know, and I got to be ready for anything. That’s how come I developed my hooks.”

By way of demonstration, he curled his arm around an invisible antagonist’s neck, locking the adversary in the crook of his elbow.

“A lot of times there won’t be no plant, see, so I’ll have to go with any old rube from the crowd for an exhibition. Maybe he’s damn good, so I got to be on my toes.”

“Is that reality,” asked the tweed-man, “or fantasy?”

Jake laughed.

“Might could be both. You never know for sure.”

“Ain’t that a fact?”

The grin got broader still, the man’s lips curling back. Jake wrinkled his nose. He couldn’t see any gums, like the teeth just kept going all the way up into his head.

“Let’s see a little something,” said the man, and he moved behind the camera. He positioned his left hand delicately on the crank and peered through the eyepiece without shutting the other eye, which seemed to gaze blindly ahead.

Jake stepped back from the lens, his own eyes fixed on it like he was looking down the barrel of a carbine.

“What d’you want me to do? I ain’t got nobody to grapple with yet.”

“Do like you did just now, with the hook. Like you have got somebody. Make believe, Mr. Copperhead.”

Jake parroted: “Make believe.”

That was, after all, his bread and butter. He cocked an eyebrow and considered if he and the movie man weren’t really of the same stripe, sort of confidence men who sold lies to people who hungered for them. Striking an aggressive pose, his back hunched and arms curled down like snake’s fangs—his signature move, hence the stage name—Jake worried a little about looking stupid and his stupidity being permanently captured for posterity. Worse still, hard and clear evidence that he’d been in Minneapolis, just a hundred fifty miles south of his old daddy in Duluth, on the same day the mean old bastard got killed. Even as he flexed and grimaced at the man’s camera, he was beginning to think this was a terrible idea, indeed.

“The hook, Mr. Copperhead,” the man urged. “Show me the hook again.”

Jake resisted heaving a sigh and readjusted his stance, preparing to take on an imaginary rival yet again. The shtick was getting old already.

The movie man turned the crank at a measured pace, his breathing picking up until it almost matched the rhythm. His left eye remained open, glassy. He licked his lips, and then his matchstick teeth. Jake managed a weak Copperhead hiss and locked his arms into a classic hooker formation. The last time, he’d pushed back against air, making his own back and shoulder muscles the tension against which he squeezed. But this time, he found he didn’t need to. Where before there was only open air, now there tightly fit a man’s head and neck.

Jake Kowalczyk yelped and released his hold. A small body collapsed at his feet, scrambling in the dust and gasping for air. Not a man, but a boy, wearing only threadbare trousers and probably no more than eighty-five pounds soaking wet.

“Christ!” Jake shouted.

The boy hoisted himself up on his hands and knees, coughing and spitting. From behind the motion picture camera, the man in the brown tweed suit shook with laughter, never taking his eye from the eyepiece.

“That’s it, you goddamned pansy! Get the hell back up and pin that sumbitch!”

The body inside the suit bulged, threatening the seams. The trousers were too short for the legs and the shoes looked about ready to burst from the big feet crammed into them. Gone was the city-slicker haircut; only a shiny bald pate showed now, greasy with sweat and webbed with burst blood vessels. The right eye stayed glued to that eyepiece, but the left one widened and rolled around wildly in its socket. Where before it was brown, now the iris turned a pale blue.

Where in the blue fuck had that boy come from?

“Hey,” Jake growled. “What is this shit?”

The boy moaned, rising shakily to his feet. The big man behind the camera snarled, “You little girl, you weak fucking pup.”

Copperhead Jake squinted at the man, the sweat dripping into his eyes and obscuring his vision. He wiped them with the back of his hand and glanced down at the child, who looked back up at him with tears in his own eyes.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” said the boy. “But my pa…”

“The hell with your pa,” Jake said, and he stormed past the boy in a direct line for the camera and the stout man behind it. “Now you listen here…”

He seized the man by the arm with which he cranked the machine and roughly spun him about. The eyepiece snapped as the man staggered away from the camera, the viewer still fixed to his eye. It was an amalgam of flesh, steel, and wood, fused with the man’s face and spurting dark blood from where it had broken. The man cried out in agony, but nevertheless retained that wild, repulsive grin. Apart from the narrow picket teeth, the face did not belong to the motion picture man the impresario brought onto the fairgrounds. This was Jake’s own father who clawed at the seeping column of skin and metal that protruded from where his eye ought to have been.

“You damned shit,” screeched the elder Kowalczyk, “you worthless damned shit.”

“It ain’t so,” Jake muttered.

Reality or fantasy, the movie man had asked.

Kayfabe. The outcome fixed.

“Get him, Jakey!”

Jake turned at the waist to find the boy hopping in the dust, shaking his fists and baring his crooked teeth.

“C’mon, Jakey!” the child shouted. “Kill that ol’ bastard!”

It’s me, the wrestler thought as cold fire climbed up his body. That’s me when I was a boy.

“You ain’t my blood, you ain’t no good, I’ll bury ya…”

“Kill him, Jakey—break his neck.”

Shut up shut up shut UP SHUT UP SHUTUP SHUTTHEHELLUP

The boy kicked his bare feet at the dirt, sending up a small cloud around his flailing legs. “Kill ‘im, kill ‘im,” he whined.

“Pin him, you worthless fucking shit,” Jake’s father growled in response, his torso awash with blood. To which of them his vitriol was directed, Jake didn’t know. “Pin him or I’ll throw you to the fucking dogs.”

Jake screamed, and screaming he thrust his arms into the whirling dust cloud that encircled the boy, clutched him by the waist, and turned running at his father with the child squirming and kicking as Jake hefted him high and then launched him at the obese, blood-spattered man in the tiny tweed suit. All the while Jake shrieked, “SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP…”

He heard the boy’s spine crack when his small body collided with the big man’s jerking head. Jake’s father hit the ground hard and fast, flat on his back. The boy slumped on top of him, the vertebrae poking up like miniature camel’s humps beneath the skin of his back. Neither breathed a word. The dust settled around them and on top of them. A magpie squawked somewhere overhead and Jake thought he heard calliope music softly emanating from the midway some two or three hundred yards to the east. The sun shone relentlessly, almost directly in the center of the clear, white sky, and Jake reckoned it had to be past noon by then. The shows would be getting underway soon. Idly, he wondered if the impresario had sussed out the Saturday exhibition yet. For the briefest moment, he seemed to forget all about the two corpses splayed out in the dirt before him, the boy wilted perpendicularly across the man’s chest and shoulders so that together, they looked like a cross.

“The hell with you both,” Jake hissed, and behind him a bell rang tinnily.

“The winner and champ-een! Copperhead Jake Kowalczyk!”

There stood the tweed-man, not a single pomaded hair out of place and his eyes glinting, unharmed.

“What are you supposed to be, then?” Jake asked him. “Who are you, anyhow?”

The man took a slight bow and, plucking something from his coat pocket, strode lightly past Jake to the motion picture camera. He unfastened the broken eyepiece and tossed it into the dust, at a smooth, undisturbed spot where Jake would have sworn to God Almighty his father lay dead beneath the cadaver of his own younger self a minute before.

The thing the man had taken from his pocket was a new, unblemished eyepiece, which he fixed into place. He then patted the side of the contraption like it was a faithful beast of burden and gave Jake a quick wink.

“Kayfabe,” he said. “I shall have to remember that.”

Lifting the camera, he deftly collapsed the tripod with one hand and leaned the whole apparatus over one shoulder like a soldier with his rifle. Jake’s eyes surveyed the stranger, from crown to foot, and he saw that the fellow’s shoes were as clean as the day he’d bought them.

“Looks like rain,” said the man, who looked directly at Jake rather than the sky. Steel-gray thunderheads gathered in the far distance, rumbling above a copse of evergreens to the south, moving up. “There won’t be any exhibition today, Mr. Copperhead. You’d best get going. Daddy can’t wait now, can he?”

“You ain’t from St. Paul,” was all Jake said to that.

The man nodded.

Jake sucked in a deep breath through his nose, exhaled it through his mouth, and headed west, to a little corn farm he’d spied on the way to the fairgrounds. Those folks had a sturdy old truck, and Jake imagined they wouldn’t fuss about giving him a lift to the Northern Depot on Hennepin, down in town.

There would be no exhibition today, or any other day. No more broken ribs and cauliflower ears. No more kayfabe and no more Copperhead. Just one more opponent, and then either Canada or the penitentiary, whichever the outcome was fixed to be. Jake considered stopping, going back and asking the movie man which it was, as though he was the impresario behind it all, which he might as well have been. But his legs kept pumping, and his head never turned.

Hell for leather.

Wherever Jorge went, the city underneath his feet sank, the cobblestone streets dipping and rising like scales on an impossibly long snake. Abuelas, thinned and gray haired, pushed past him, lugging frayed bolsas de mercado behind them and hurrying to catch nearby combis. The green little microbuses were parked on street corners, throwing out black smoke and loud music as they waited to maneuver around broken streets. Turistas lumbered in large, sweaty masses, led by confident speakers who pointed at the buildings surrounding El Zócalo and gave ample time for pictures to be taken. Bits of history from Mexico City’s main plaza reached Jorge, and he slapped the facts away like a doctor swatting a recién nacido, not caring about how the plaza, and Mexico City itself, was still recovering from the earthquake which had struck only six months back. In the distance, La Catedral Metropolitana plunged through the sidewalk, a group of workers in hardhats and reflective vests working to staunch the bleeding of stone, concrete, and soil scattered all around them.

It had been years since Jorge stepped foot in Mexico City, having chosen to ply the trade he learned here across the border and in Japan, where the pay was better but the schedule and style of the matches left his body exhausted and sore. Even when he lived here, Jorge hated the city. Hated how no matter where he went, there always seemed to be more people than space available, hated how la contaminación from too many vehicles on the road hung thick in the air, burning your throat and nose the moment you went outside. And most of all, Jorge hated Mexico City because even before the earthquake, the city had been sinking, receding into the soft clay bed it’d originally been built atop of.

The realization came to him as he lay in bed one night, thin bedsheets draped across his body while a fan circulated stale air across his tiny room. Pulled from his dreams by the groans of the building, his bed tilted as his room shook and the building succumbed to a breaking foundation. He tried to pull the covers away and get out of bed, only to find he couldn’t, fear gripping his entire body and keeping him immobile from the neck down, even as tremors overtook the building and angled his bed to the right. Shouts for help lodged in his throat, unable to complete the passage into the open. Jorge stared at the stains on a tilted ceiling, unable to do much of anything else. As the hours passed, the stains changed, years of water damage shifting into black and red pools, like the cells of some unknown organism. Eyes, dry and red from going without blinking, watched as the ceiling expanded into a wide and everlasting vista. Jorge witnessed the stains colliding among each other, feeding on one another and growing bigger. One, resembling a giant, feathered snake, crossed across the vista and sent the other stains scattering, screeches and sounds like gnashing bone penetrating Jorge’s mind. Movement stemming from the corner of his eye caught Jorge’s attention, and he slowly, agonizingly slowly, moved his head to the direction of his sole window and saw adjacent buildings descending into the ground, brought down by giant long strands of negro, like fumes from bent mufflers which embraced the stone buildings, breaking plaster and stone as they did so. The rest of the night, Jorge alternated between watching the ceiling and the window, waiting for either one of the tendrils or the stains to reach out to him.

They never did.

Dropping his travel bag, Jorge stopped and dug around the red fanny pack tied around his waist. Pulling out a clear medicine bottle, he unscrewed it open. Three green pills, the same color as the few U.S dollars left in his wallet, fell into his open hand. After a moment of indecision, he placed one back and crushed the other two between his teeth. Fingers tingled as he stuck the bottle of pills back in his fanny pack and dug out a scrap of yellow paper. His tongue ran up and down the length of his teeth, seeking out any remains of the crushed pills as he read the note one more time.

Ven al Templo. Yo te pago.

The note had been waiting for him after a show in Corpus Christi, folded in two and lying on top of his gym bag. Jorge had been in a sour mood that night, angry about the low turnout and the promoter trying to use that as an excuse to short him out of his pay. He’d been about to head back to his motel room when he picked up the note and immediately recognized the handwriting as Miguel’s.

Another headache rolled through Jorge, carrying with it a low hum which settled on his ears. Glancing up from the note, Jorge looked around the plaza, tension gripping the back of his neck. His eyes landed on a big, bald headed Mexican watching him over by the fountains. The man stood apart from the various groups of tourists snapping pictures and tossing monedas into the fountain’s murky waters. Rather than the shorts and T-shirts everyone else around him wore, the Mexican had on a neatly pressed blue business suit and black dress shoes. Calm professionalism poured out of him.

The tension on Jorge’s neck reached down and squeezed his heart as the businessman started walking towards him. Jorge took a step backwards, already his eyes flittering to the nearby streets and buildings for the best route to take.

Every step the man took sent a tremor across the plaza and caused the buildings to shed tiny chunks of themselves. Only Jorge seemed to notice this, even as a piece of building the size a watermelon came inches away from a mother and her child.

Jorge was about to run when the Mexican turned to wave to the same mother and child. Blinking, Jorge watched the reunion and wondered what happened to the stone he’d seen almost crush them less than a minute ago. A look around the buildings revealed no damage.

Calmate cabrón, Jorge thought, reaching back into his fanny pack and popping a third pill. Swallowing it dry, he read the last words of the note again. Yo te pago.

I’ll pay you.

Stuffing the note back into his pocket, Jorge picked up his travel bag and started walking again. He turned his attention back to la pregunta of how his brother had managed to find him. The last time Miguel reached out to him, it was to tell him of their father’s passing. The conversation lasted only a couple of minutes, the static of the phone line filling the silence between brothers. Jorge attending the funeral was never discussed.

Jorge’s head pulsed at the sight of the angled buildings around him, like stone teeth jutting out of a diseased mouth. His eyes alternated between them and the crowd, trying his best to stay removed from everyone. His steps were measured and slow, a means to stay upright in a shifting landscape, and he followed his memory across the plaza farther and farther away from the group of tourists. Many of the paths he used to take were closed off to him now, some still in the process of being repaired, others simply gone and replaced with congested streets or blocked off avenues. This troubled Jorge, who couldn’t imagine forgetting los callejónes Miguel and he would run through as boys on the way to El Templo, the sound of their chanclas hitting the cracked pavement of Mexico City yet to wake up.

A spark of pride ignited in Jorge’s belly when he reached a familiar looking building, though it was quickly snuffed out. Built in the same style as the countless others Jorge passed by on the way here, El Templo stood apart by the mere fact it remained upright, untouched by the earthquake even as the building next to it sunk so low to the ground its wooden door frame was in splinters. The walls of El Templo, which Jorge remembered as being as red as the marks left behind on a man’s chest after a hard chop, had lost their color, revealing the gray bones of the building’s original material.

A cracked plaque hung next to the door. Jorge stopped to run his finger across the etched words, just like he’d done countless times before entering.

Gimnasio.

Jorge’s father greeted him as he stepped into El Templo.

The sight of his father threw him off balance, the ground beneath his feet becoming malleable. Closing his eyes, Jorge took deep, even breaths, el viejo’s hard stare burrowing from his memory and pressing against Jorge’s skull. The smell of leather soaked in sweat and blood stretched Jorge’s nostrils as the sound of bodies slamming against the ring mat crashed against his ears. The ground shuddered.

“Jorge.”

Using the voice like a ladder, Jorge climbed from his memories and opened his eyes, the ground becoming solid once more. His father’s eyes were still there, but he turned away from them and faced a brother he hadn’t seen in years.

The days when no one could tell the twin brothers apart were long gone, Jorge decided, with Miguel lacking the patas de gallo crowding Jorge’s eyes and signaling his age. The bulbous nose all Reyes men inherited somehow fit the contour of Miguel’s clean-shaven face, and the soft, pillowy chin Jorge remembered mocking throughout their years together was shaved away, by a scalpel if Jorge had to guess. Miguel wore a pair of training shorts and a tight tanktop revealing a trim body, and most surprising of all, tattoos.

They circled most of Miguel’s arms and legs, deep black markings with no discernable style or shape. They reminded Jorge of the roads of a map which had been cut up and then randomly pieced together again. Some of the designs were only an inch in width, others so large they swallowed any visible flesh around it. They traveled up, down, and around Miguel’s limbs, and as far as Jorge could see, reaching all the way to his neck and chest.

Resisting the urge to suck in a panza bred from too many fast food stops on the road, Jorge pointed to the tattoos. “That’s new,” he said before pointing to the wall. “Eso también.”

His brother nodded and asked, “¿Te gusta?”

Jorge glanced at the wall again.

The painting took up one entire side and featured the red, white, and green backdrop of the Mexican flag. In the center, where the eagle perched atop a nopal cactus should be, stood their father, El Rey Justiciero in all his masked glory. He had on his most iconic mask, the black one with gold accents around the eyes and mouth and a small crown framed on its center. Behind the mask laid two hard, black pearls, and Jorge imagined the artist who painted the picture dipping into tar to get the right color.

“No,” Jorge said.

Miguel laughed, and gripped Jorge’s hand in an unasked handshake. “Es bueno verte, Jorge,” he said, patting him on his back.

“It’s good to see you too,” Jorge said and looked around El Templo—the name he and Miguel gave the gym their father ran after his retirement from las luchas. It looked much like Jorge last remembered it, with the same dim lighting and workout equipment already outdated when Jorge and Miguel used it. The place was hot, stank of sweat, and despite it all, was packed. Men danced around heavy bags and feinted punches, the clang of weights cutting through grunts of exertion. Over by the corner stood a small ring with four young boys, all of them running through the drills as a gigante of a man stood by a turnbuckle and watched them, arms folded across his chest.

This should be mine.

The thought bubbled past Jorge’s headache and grew bigger the longer he stood next to his gemelo, filled with a bitterness he could taste on the tip of his tongue. “I got your note,” Jorge said, much too fast.

Miguel smiled, his head tilting to the side. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. You’ve had other invitations, right? CMLL and AAA both wanted you in their last tours, and you said no to them. Unless I’m wrong, I don’t think you’ve set foot in Mexico in over a decade.”

It was true, Jorge having refused every offer thrown his way to step back into Mexico. Even being close to the border in towns like Juarez was too much sometimes, his dreams filled with a multitude of swarming beasts with gaping mouths and eyes which never blinked existing in a sunken world.

“How did you find me?” Jorge asked.

“I’ve got some guys who travel back and forth, doing a couple trips a year to towns across the border. Told them to let me know if they ever hear of you wrestling in those areas.”

“‘You got some guys’?” Jorge mimicked. “I thought you were just a wrestler, Miguelito.” The bubble inside his head burst, pangs of jealousy and resentment pressing into his mind.

Another tilt of his head, the smile still plastered on. “You’re mad.”

Biting the inside of the cheek, Jorge said, “Estoy cansado.” He considered popping another of his green pills, but wasn’t sure they were even helping. “Bus ride here was hell, and I haven’t even gotten a chance to settle down.”

“Come on,” Miguel motioned, “let’s go to my office where we can talk.”

It took them almost ten minutes to cross the gym, Miguel greeting every person they passed on the way to the office. He reminded Jorge of a político on the campaign trail, a smile etched on his face as he gave workout advice, asked how everyone’s niños and esposas were doing, and made a point to shake everyone’s hands. Jorge noted how every man stopped whatever exercise they were doing and took the time to talk to Miguel. Reaching the gym ring, Miguel motioned to the trainer.

“Jorge, meet Carlos.”

Up close, the guy was still a giant, at least for a Mexican. Deep brown skin and thick, long black hair marked him as an Indio, though from what region and tribe Jorge couldn’t guess. He moved with an unexpected grace, easily sliding between the ropes and jumping down to the ground. “I heard a lot about you,” Carlos said, offering his hand.

The grip was strong, but not challenging, Jorge noting Carlos had the same markings as Miguel.

“Carlos helps me run things here. You might remember him as El Tormentor,” Miguel said.

Jorge knew at least three men who went by that moniker at one time or another, and none were as tall as the one standing in front of him. He said so.

“Your dad trained me.” Carlos’s words were measured, as if he thought about everything before it came out of his mouth. “He was a great man.”

He was an asshole, Jorge thought. “You still wrestle?”

“No,” Miguel answered for Carlos. “He suffered an injury a few years back. He’s our lead trainer here and does a hell of a job.”

“Thank you, Miguel,” Carlos said. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

Miguel shook his head, and Carlos turned to Jorge. “It was nice meeting you. We will see each other again later I hope.”

Jorge watched him climb back up to the ring. There was nothing in the way the man moved hinting at any kind of injury, and Jorge wondered if Miguel was lying to him.

“You’ve become popular,” Jorge said once they were inside Miguel’s office and he’d closed the door behind him. The room was spacious, though it featured no windows to look in or out of. A grand looking desk and two leather chairs were on one side of the office.

Miguel shrugged in a manner Jorge guessed was supposed to exude humbleness. “People know me here,” he said, taking a seat behind the desk. “Siéntate.”

Ignoring him, Jorge walked over to the wall lined with photographs of El Rey Justiciero, from his starting days in Guadalajara wrestling for tens of people, to one of him shortly after winning el Campeonato Mundial in front of a crowd of thousands. Jorge stopped at one taken on the day of the funeral. Their father was laid out in an ornate, gleaming white casket, the same mask as the one on the mural draped over his face. Without it, Jorge would have never recognized him, the cancer having eaten his powerful body and leaving nothing but a thin husk behind. Even the mask no longer fitted him correctly, the eyeholes drooping to sallow cheekbones. The picture captured many of the attendees of the funeral, church pews filled with a promotion’s worth of past and present Mexican luchadores, their somber funeral attires clashing against the colorful and exaggerated masks they hid their features behind.

“You should have attended,” Miguel said.

The leather of the chair Jorge sat in was warm and stiff underneath him. “He wouldn’t have wanted me there.”

Reaching underneath the desk, Miguel opened a drawer and took out a bottle of tequila, along with two shot glasses. “If it means anything, at the end, he admitted he handled things wrong with you. Kept saying he was going to reach out to you one day and make things right.”

Jorge raised his hand. “Párale. I didn’t come seeking to make peace with a muerto.”

Filling the two glasses, Miguel slid one Jorge’s way. “No, you’re here because you owe the Rocha Boys money.”

Mierda. The tequila slid down Jorge’s throat in a wave of a fire before settling in his chest like a purring cat. “Your guys tell you about that too?”

“You know how it is,” Miguel said. “Word gets around. Especially when it’s the cartel speaking.

“It’s all dad’s fault.”

Miguel raised an eyebrow. “Papá made you bet all that money on the dog races?”

“Jódete.” Jorge downed his drink. “Who would have guessed the oldest Rocha, Pancho, was a fan of El Rey? You should have heard him gush about our father the first time I met him. Damn, if I hadn’t been pissing my pants in fear that he was about to cut my head off, it would have funny. The guy even showed me one of the old man’s masks.

“Next thing I know, I’m like his best friend. Keeps asking me about how it was growing up with El Rey as a father, buying me dinners, taking me to boxing matches and stuff like that. Half the time I kept wondering if he was just trying to fuck me.”

“¿Cuanto les debes?”

Closing his eyes, Jorge hesitated for a second. “Diez,” he finally answered. Hearing the number aloud twisted his stomach and brought bile up his throat. “Te juro que they rigged those first few races so that I won. It wasn’t till I started betting big that suddenly everything went a la chingada.”

“Diez mil pesos, though.”

His stomach twisted harder and Jorge shook his head. “No, Miguel. Ten grand. As in U.S Dollars.”

“That’s a lot of feria.”

“It’s why I’m here.”

“I can’t pay you that much.”

Leaning forward, Jorge pressed his palms against the table. “No chingues, Miguel. Not after giving me a tour of this place.” He motioned around them and said, “Looks like shit, but I counted a good dozen people here. They gotta be paying you something, right?”

“They don’t pay me anything.”

Jorge blinked. “Me estás echando el rollo.”

Miguel shook his head. “None of them do. That’d be like the church charging the people who come to pray.”

The headache clawed and trembled behind Jorge’s eyes. Shaking fingers brought out his pills and he swallowed two more. “This isn’t a church, Miguel. El Templo? We gave it that name as a joke.”

Miguel refilled Jorge’s glass. “It was never a joke. Not to me. Not to dad.”

Snatching the glass, Jorge drank it, the liquid pushing back the headache far better than the pills. “Al diablo contigo. I did everything that man asked me to do right along with you. Every weight he added to the bars, every mile he told me to run. Every bump he asked me to take.” The room tilted, a scale out of balance, but Jorge wasn’t bothered by it anymore. “And for what? For him to refuse to give up the name to one of us.”

“One of us meaning you?”

Jorge shrugged. “Claro. I was always the better of the two of us. Even dad would have said as much. But that night he said I wasn’t ready for the responsabilidad the mask brought with it. That I still had a lot to learn. ‘Por mi propio bien,’ he said. For my own good my ass.”

“Maybe he was right.”

“No, he just didn’t want to share the spotlight with anyone. I know he wrestled till almost his last few months. Surprised you all didn’t prop his casket in the ring and have one last match.”

“You still didn’t have to leave. You could have waited.”

“Like you did? I didn’t have that sort of patience, hermanito.”

Jorge didn’t tell Miguel the other part. About the city becoming too much for him, and how the tendrils he’d seen the first night as he felt the world shift underneath him became nightly visitors, pressing themselves against his window, skulking in the corners of his room and sliding up the headrest of his bed.

Looking down at his glass, Jorge was surprised to find it empty. He thought about reaching for the bottle, but the distance between it and him felt like a stretch of desert he couldn’t maneuver through. “Me debes,” he told Miguel. “You owe me. Me leaving was the best thing that could happen to you. But your older brother—by cinco minutos if I gotta remind you—is back now. I could take everything here, starting with the office,” Jorge swept his arm, striking a framed photograph on the desk and causing it almost fall to the floor, “but I won’t. I just want a small piece and then I’ll be gone, and you can be the sole heir to El Rey’s legacy.”

“I already told you, no one pays any membership fees.”

“There’s gotta be money. What about everything our father earned? We never lived extravagantly. He must have saved a fortune by the time he died.”

“The cancer took most of it,” Miguel said, the simplicity of his words vibrating against Jorge’s skull. “Medicine and treatment is expensive, and he also owed taxes on this building.”

“No. No. There has to be money.” Jorge pushed the chair back and stood. He dug through his pockets and pulled out the crumpled note, throwing it at Miguel. “Why send me this then, huh?”

The note bounced off Miguel and he said, “Porque te necesito. We need you here.”

The ground shook, Jorge’s hand holding onto the chair as the office’s floor rocked back and forth. Photographs fell from the wall and shattered behind him, pencils and pens rolling off the table and being swallowed by the pockmarked floor. Everything moved. Except Miguel.

No, that wasn’t true. While Miguel never stirred from his chair, he did move. Or at least, his tattoos did. They shifted in his skin, living things that congregated and pulled away from each other, dancing to a drumbeat Jorge swore he could also hear. He watched as tattoos by Miguel’s shoulder pooled together, shaping themselves into fangs and eyes and mouths. Then into beasts too big for the flesh, and too enormous for the eye.

The last thing Jorge saw was Miguel putting away the bottle of tequila, his brother’s glass still left untouched.

Las bestias trembled with hunger.

Their need reached Jorge, slithering down his throat and collapsing his stomach. His tongue skimmed across his teeth, desperately seeking any stray bit of morsel available, finding only the chalky taste of medicine.

They were all numerous and large, existing in a cosmos littered with others like them. Jorge peered at them through cracks in the reality which blinked in an out of existence, taking his sight with them until he managed to stumble across another crack. This never allowed Jorge to see the entirety of the beasts, and he knew it was intended. Just like he knew the things on the other side used the cracks too, pushing parts of themselves into Jorge’s world, shaking cities and bringing buildings down as they grasped on something to feed.

“You see them now.”

Jorge opened eyes he hadn’t realized were closed and stared at his brother, who stood against the backdrop of metal lockers. Jorge himself was seated on a metal chair, hands cuffed behind his back. A sharp pain cut across his shoulders, and he wondered how long he’d been out for. Looking around, Jorge realized they were in a locker room of some sort. From somewhere beyond the room, he could just make out the sounds of a crowd.

“You drugged me.”

“Sí” Miguel said. He’d changed out of his workout clothes, and was now wearing black and gold tights and wrestling boots. A bare chest revealed the extent of the tattoos, which covered almost every piece of flesh available. They remained still, which Jorge was thankful for. “Though the way you were throwing down the drinks, I think even regular alcohol would gotten us here. That and this,” Miguel added, tossing Jorge his bottle of pills. Bouncing off his chest, the bottle hit the floor, little green pills scattering among his feet, “probably didn’t help you.”

Pushing against his restraints, the chair threatened to spill over, taking Jorge with it. “What the hell is going on, Miguel?”

“You should have told us. Dad and I.” Miguel took a few steps forward and reached down, plucking one of the green pills off the floor. “We would have shown you not to be afraid. That you didn’t need these,” he nodded at the pill and flicked it at Jorge.

Jorge stopped rocking his chair and stared at his brother. “Estás loco.”

“Do they even help, Jorge? Do the pills keep the world from shaking underneath your feet and block the things at night from reaching for you?”

“Let me go!” Jorge screamed.

Miguel sighed. “They don’t, do they? How could they? What we see once can never be forgotten. Though I will admit you gave me pause when you told me we named El Templo.”

“We did!” Jorge grasped this point, because in the wrongness of everything else, it was one thing he knew to be true. “We named it that because we used to say dad was stricter than el sacerdote Goméz at church. All his rules and stupid little rituals he made us do before setting foot in the gym. Don’t you remember Miguel?”

“I remember the rituals. Mejor que tú. But I’m hoping we can help you with this.”

From the side of the room a door opened and in stepped Carlos. He wasn’t dressed to wrestle, wearing the same clothes Jorge first saw him in. In one hand he carried a black lucha mask. In the other, a knife.

Jorge started to rock the chair again. “Is this a joke? Is that it? Alright, very funny. Pero ya no más.”

Carlos ignored Jorge altogether. Walking over to Miguel, he presented him with the mask. Miguel nodded and accepted it.

“Los ritos de Morma aren’t exact, you know,” Miguel said, fingering the fabric of the mask. “Every sect has their own ways and mannerisms. But some things remain the same. Dad taught us this early on. Las mascaras,” he said, stretching the mask, “to make us more than the men we are. And to make us one, like they are.” The mask was one of El Rey’s, the same one Jorge had seen his father be buried in.

“But there are consistencies. Like la comunión. Father never had a chance to show you our sacred communion, and so it falls on me.” Taking the blade from Carlos, Miguel held it in both hands and bowed his head. When he raised it, he spoke not to Jorge, but to Carlos. “Know that we do this because we must. Because we need the strength to face them.”

Carlos lifted his shirt. Jorge expected to see the same myriad of tattoos like Miguel had, but instead he saw something worse. Scars. Scars all over his abdomen and side. Some were faded, neatly stitched zigzags. Others had been done in a hurry and were still fresh, peeking out from stained bandages.

Miguel lifted one such bandage. “Father did this first. Then, when he gave the mask to me, it was done to him. Until the cancer came.” He cut. Carlos’s flesh gave easily to the blade, like a flower opening for the rays of the sun. Flecks of blood arced and hit Miguel’s mask, more blood flowing down Carlos’s side as Miguel took a chunk of the man.

“Stop, stop!” Jorge shouted, bile pushing up his throat. “What the fuck!”

Pinching the sliver of meat between his fingers, Miguel separated it from Carlos, who never once uttered a gasp of pain. He pressed his palm against the wound afterwards, Miguel muttering a few unheard words and putting the bandage over Carlos’s side again.

“I reacted the same way the first time I saw it. And father had prepared me for it. I would have done the same for you, if we had more time.” Miguel walked over to Jorge, the piece of flesh dangling from his fingers. “Abre.”

It took Jorge a moment to process what Miguel was saying. “Miguel, stop this.”

“What must be done,” Miguel said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Carlos.”

Wordlessly, the gigante walked over to Jorge, the way he favored his left side being the only hint of what he went through. Jorge fought the restraints again, shaking and trying to push away from Miguel. This stopped the moment Carlos’s calloused hands landed on him, one on his shoulder and the other in his jaw.

“The earthquake created a bigger tear in the veil than we first predicted. Soon they will be upon us. Unless we stop them. Like father did. Please, Jorge, open.”

Jorge shook his head, a petulant child refusing to open his mouth to be fed vegetables. His eyes pleaded with Miguel, who said, “Carlos, if you will.”

Fingers gripped his chin and squeezed, Jorge’s ears filling with the sound of his bones breaking. Tears welled in his eyes as he tried to remain silent, but it became too much, his mouth releasing a single whimper. This was enough for Carlos, who jammed his fingers into Jorge’s mouth and kept it open.

“Aceptamos la ofrenda,” Miguel muttered and deposited the flesh upon Jorge’s tongue.

A surge moved through Jorge, the landscape twisting and shifting as it had countless of times before. Only this time, Jorge blinked and the ground became still, the world aligning back to its true nature. Carlos stood next to him, a bridge formed between them, through which all the man’s memories and experiences passed on to Jorge. He saw his father the way others saw him, as a man tasked with keeping the world from being swallowed up. A man forced to pass on the responsibilities to his sons, whether he wished to or not.

And Jorge remembered. Remembered the teachings of Morma. Remembered El Templo not as the building itself, but as the ground beneath it. A ground in which his ancestors had once stood and sacrificed the willing and unwilling to keep the snake they saw in their dreams from feeding on the world. How when the men from across the other world came, Jorge’s ancestors took them and treated them as gods, not because they were, but because if they could be built as such, they would someday be the ones tasked with ensuring the beasts would never be sated.

Carlos’s offering slid down his throat, and when he could talk, Jorge said, “I see it. I see it all.”

The fabric of Miguel’s mask stirred, and Jorge imagined his brother smiling beneath it. “Then you know what must be done.”

Jorge nodded.

The crowd was small, though not the smallest Jorge ever stood in front of.

He recognized the faces as those he met in El Templo, when Miguel had first shown him around. That specific moment felt less like a memory and more like a scene from a movie now, and it was odd to watch a Jorge so unconnected to the world and people around him.

He walked down the ramp, eyes focused on the ring again.

It’s the same as any other match, Miguel had told him when he freed Jorge. “Don’t think of it as a fight, because you could never hope to beat one of them. None of us could. But you can snare them. You can dance with them and keep them busy, let their hunger grow to the point they will retreat behind the cracks. Si eres bueno, and I think you are, you’ll get them so tired they’ll sleep again.”

The ground swelled underneath him as chant moved through the crowd. For a moment, he wished for his pills again, or for a drink.

“How long can I do this for?” Jorge had asked, changing into his wrestling gear.

“I’ve done it for five years now. Father, well, father did for most of his life.”

“Until the cancer.”

The ring was his anchor, and Jorge found himself focusing on it. The more he did so, the more the ground moved underneath him, and the louder the chants from the crowd got.

El Rey. El Rey.

Miguel told him he didn’t know if the cancer was a result of matches, but Jorge couldn’t imagine otherwise. Couldn’t imagine the things he’d seen in that dream touching him without consequence.

At least he had the mask. It felt strange and hot on his face. But also reassuring. Another layer to put himself behind. He stepped into the ring by sliding through the first rope. He paced back and forth and tested the ropes. They felt good.

The crowd became still as a darkness encroached them. Hairs on his arms rose and a loud hum rubbed against his ears. Across the arena, on the same rampway Jorge walked through, the blackness pooled and started to take shape. The chants grew louder.

It was human. No, Jorge decided. It was human-like. It was like a sketch drawn by a small child, limbs too large, head too small, too many fingers in one hand, not enough in the other. Jorge stared, even as every part of him shouted at him to look away. Even as his mind felt like shattering. The thing…la cosa took a step forward.

So did El Rey, the ring mat feeling solid under his feet.

It started in Lloyd Berman’s office on the sixth floor at the Franklin Park Hotel. Berman had been sitting behind his desk, smoking his cheroot while Bam-Bam Abruzzi waited on the wrestling promoter’s plush carpet.

Berman finally spoke. “You can’t swerve the Combine in the big cities.” The rotund old man hitched his suspenders and pointed his limp dick of a cigar toward the slats of the Venetian blinds over his window, as if those Italian thugs were waiting downstairs to break Bam-Bam’s jaw for him. Maybe they were

“I couldn’t take a dive,” Bam-Bam said, and held his arms up in protest as if he were pleading with a priest. He should have known better than to try to explain something like pride to this money-grubbing toad. Bam Bam didn’t take any soft touches in the ring. He worked his record to 20-0 the hard way, beating journeymen and ham-and-eggers in VFW halls and armories, putting the okeydokey on fellow fringe contenders and crushing the dreams of up-and-comers with his own Susie Q of a right hand.

Then, one night after a first round KO win in the Olympia, he’d been in the shower when he saw two sets of shoes appear beneath the stall. All four shoes were Italian and with fawn-colored winged spats. He continued washing himself down and listened.

“Next month against Fordham…” He knew the man speaking to him worked for Blinky Palermo. He recognized the raspy quality of vocal cords cut wrong by an Ellis Island croaker. “You’re going to dive in the third. After that, you’ll get your shot.”

Bam-Bam had killed the showerhead, let the water bead over the hard musculature of his back. “And if I don’t dive?”

There was a pause, a tubercular cough. “Then you-know-who will be offended, and maybe a little scared.”

“Scared?” Bam-Bam laughed at the idea that Palermo would be scared of a top-ten contender. He could have the mayor bumped off with a slight nod of the head.

“Yeah,” the tough said. “Scared you might say something. So me and Gaetano got instructions to take the box cutters to your throat, reach in and up, and pull your tongue out from inside your neck.”

The other goon spoke up. “Tongues is longer than you think.” His basso voice echoed through the locker room. “I can turn yours into a bowtie for you.”

Bam-Bam’s options at that point were to do something that would make it impossible for him to look in the mirror ever again, or to buck the Combine and lose his tongue. He surprised everyone, himself included, when he cited a sprained back to the local wannabe Winchell and Runyon ragtag squad, and then went to see Lloyd Berman about making the transition from slugger to grappler. Primo Carnera had done it, and it had worked out well enough for the Ambling Alp, hadn’t it?

Hadn’t it?

He was still asking himself that question when Berman barged into the dressing room where Abruzzi waited on a massage table, playing with the ties of his loaner “Opponent” robe that the house at this venue had given him.

Berman got a look at his hangdog mug and offered him a toke of his lit cheroot. Bam-Bam shook his head and the promoter patted him on the shoulder. “Just hang tight, kid. A few more of these shows on the Chitlins and Chorizo circuit and then we can get you a few real money matches.”

Bam-Bam nodded faintly, glanced at the cracked plaster of the far wall of the dressing room. There was a rumbling din from the main room that carried all the way back here now, making the hippodrome shake so that he feared a cave-in.

Berman fidgeted with the sleeves of his sport jacket, which was speckled like a trout. “Hey, kid…” His eyes glowed, the scarred and ruddy flesh of his face making the two pinpoint pupils glow like firecrackers. “Remember that night at the Polo Grounds? You worked Duke Casey’s face to mush.” Berman shook his head, reveling in the memory himself now. Bam-Bam looked up and saw it wasn’t an act. The old booker was a true fight fan, despite being in the kayfabe and carnie racket. Abruzzi fought down a smile as he relived the memory himself now, tasting the recoil from the one-twos he had landed on Casey’s ribs as the shouts of the crowd merged into one insectoid adenoid shriek that put him in that special place, beyond the flashbulbs and cigar smoke, that place where Walcott and Marciano had waltzed, where Dempsey and Firpo had danced. He hadn’t been to the mountaintop, but he’d seen it a moment before those grease balls had taken it away from him. They’d even had the nerve to call him Paisan, as if the fact that they were Italian and he was Italian made what they were doing to him any less dirty. If anything, it made it worse.

“Hey…” Berman chucked him under the chin. Bam-Bam stared at him. The old head was an okay sort. “You ready?”

Bam-Bam nodded. “What’s the angle?”

“It’s a work,” Berman said, puffing his stubby cheroot. “You guys can jazz it for all three rounds until the timekeeper hits his gong.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Then the Hungry Hun puts you in his dread toe hold, you cry out uncle, we get paid, and the rubes go home happy.”

Abruzzi continued nodding, but he didn’t like the idea of losing, even in a work. He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have taken that dive for the mob and then got his title shot. He was getting paid to lose tonight, and for a lot less than the Combine would have given him to hit the canvas. But he had promised his father on his deathbed that he wouldn’t take any dives in a boxing match…

Anger boiled in his veins. Berman saw it and tried to head it off. “We get a hundred in wampum flat-rate, or two-hundred and a piece of the gate if you get some color.”

“Color?” Abruzzi squinted.

“Color.” Berman clutched the cheroot in his fat mouth and held out a piece of razorblade concealed in a bit of athletic tape.

Bam-Bam sighed. “On the level? You want me to slice myself?”

Berman pointed the bit of razor toward the door on the other side of which was the arena, where the crowd was roaring for a warmup act of two midgets wrestling in polka-dotted clown outfits. “They’re smart marks. They pay more for blood and don’t fall for corn syrup and food dye.”

The manager tapped his cane on his eyebrows. “You had good defense as a pro, almost too good. Maybe if you got some cauliflower ears or some fish scale scars you could bleed without the blading.”

“I did have a good defense, didn’t I?” Bam-Bam tried to let the old days rest in the past, but it was hard with the ancient bastard complimenting him like this, on top of which there was now an ugly present before him and an uncertain future ahead of him that made the memories worth reliving.

“You fought like one of Mendoza’s disciples, a true Hebrew style.” He tapped Bam-Bam on the head. “Most Eye-Ties only use this thing for catching shots, but you was a thinker in there.”

“Not no more.” Abruzzi reached out for the razor hidden in the athletic tape, and made several quick, minor incisions in the flesh of his forehead.

“Not too deep. You don’t want to be bleeding like a tomato before the Hun lays his paws on you.”

Bam-Bam winced from the cat-scratch pain of the razor edge as it sliced him. Berman winced right along with him. His voice was now sotto voce. “I won’t take nothing out of your purse for this one.”

His lack of greed worried Bam-Bam. “Tell me about the Hun,” he said.

Berman looked around their cramped quarters uncertainly, his beetle brow furrowing so that his eyes disappeared in shadow. “This is the first time I’ve booked here, so I couldn’t rightly tell you much about him.”

“Is he a real kraut?” The war hadn’t been over long enough for that not to matter to Bam-Bam, who’d humped as part of a recon platoon in the Ardennes.

Berman waved smoke away from his face. “Christ, you ain’t the Jew here, and it don’t bother me none even though I lost relatives to those Germans. Just go out there and give the rubes a show.”

The door to the dressing room opened. The booker was there, tight spit curls plastered to his forehead with flop sweat. “Your boy ready?”

Bam-Bam stood before Berman could answer for him. “Let’s go.” He followed behind the booker, the aquamarine rhinestones of the man’s jacket the only light to guide them as they moved as a threesome through the tight confines of the tunnel, where the one syllable chant of the crowd reached their ears. It was muffled, but Bam-Bam could feel the sound carrying through the marrow of his bones, and it chilled him even though he didn’t understand it.

He leaned toward Berman, as much for support as to ask him a question. The old man carried a spit bucket and towel in one hand, and smoked in the darkness. “What are they saying?”

The man in front answered before Berman could take the cigar from his mouth to speak. “They’re saying, ‘Meat.’”

They entered into the main room of the hippodrome, which smelled like an old slaughterhouse and the jockstrap of a junior-high wrestler who reached puberty too fast and didn’t do laundry often. The crowd was duded out in rodeo flannel and straw hats concealing the points of their pinheads. The faces were all red, weather-beaten, sandpaper rough and lined like the features of wooden Indians. Abruzzi was a city boy made uneasy by even garden variety rednecks. That this bunch was a bit more backwater and were screaming for “Meat!” did not put his heart at ease.

An old woman’s purse made of leather tough as pemmican flew into his face, drawing blood from the razor cuts he’d made in his own mug. He covered his face to keep the lady in the first row of the grandstands from reaching farther over the railing and delivering more blows with her handbag. Berman shielded Abruzzi, who was his investment, after all.

“Well,” Bam-Bam shouted, his voice as audible as a whisper when set against the roar of the crowd. “They’ve got their color.”

Chicken coops had been turned over and glued together to form steps up into the ring. Bam-Bam ascended to a cacophony of boos. He’d never been a shitheel in the squared circle. Women had thrown panties to him at the Garden, and one had even cast down a rose to him when he out-boxed Angel Orozco at the Hollywood Bowl. Now here he was in East Bumfuck drawing heat from a murderer’s row of hillbillies out for his blood, which was flowing fast enough from the grazes in his skin for him to feel slightly dizzy already and the match hadn’t even started.

He made it to his corner without passing out, and he leaned against the turnbuckle. Now all he had to do was last three rounds, collect his ducats, and then head for greener pastures (and hopefully more greenbacks on a job that wouldn’t require him to slice through his baby face). His Italian mother would notice the difference when he went home, and she wouldn’t leave him alone until he told her what he’d been up to and where he’d gotten the new scars. Then it would be the rosary, and praying to more saints than an Irishman could shake a blackthorn shillelagh at.

The cries for “Meat!” died, and there was silence. The booker had disappeared from sight. Bam-Bam knew Berman was still behind him because the musk of his cigar was still strong, cutting through the dunnage scent that came from the stands in overpowering waves.

A busker at center ring in a gold Lamé jacket held the crowd’s attention. He smelled of lilac atomizer, which gave him a hearty contrast with the plebes in the crowd who depended on him to work up their blood from center-ring. “And now, ladies and gentlemen…” The houselights dimmed, the emcee smiled, and cratered acne scars pancaked with makeup to look like dimples creased on his dolled up, rosy cheeks. “Please welcome the Austro-Hungarian, Hitlerian man of the hour. The Hungry Hun!”

The crowd exploded into an orgy of applause. Bam-Bam waited in the darkness, and spoke to Berman through clenched lips as the blood beaded and then trickled down his face and into his mouth. The coppery taste of his own life leaking from his veins tasted strange and salty on his lips. “I knew guys in the service who made out like bandits on the black market, but goddamn, I thought people in the sticks were supposed to be patriotic. Why are they cheering for a Hun? What gives?” He turned to see that his manager was no longer behind him, that he had disappeared somewhere in the darkness.

Bam-Bam was about to protest, but the surreal details piling one on top of another took the words from his mouth and the breath from his lungs. The clown midgets sporting the silk polka-dotted onesies and dunce caps worked in the darkness, circling the ring like sharks. Bam-Bam noticed they held an unfurling spool of barbed wire, which they were drawing around the ring. The smiles on their white-painted maniacal little faces were impossible to miss even in the dark.

“What the hell?” The barbed wire was now taut around the square in which he was imprisoned. He delicately allowed a finger to rest on the topmost strand, just barely, and the barb responded like a sharpened thorn, drawing some blood from the end of his pointer finger.

“It’s real,” the voice came from the guy in the gold Lamé outfit. That getup was gay enough for Bam-Bam to suspect if the man farted his flatulence might bubble out of his rectum as a variation on Pomp and Circumstance.

Twee or not though, the man had evidently done this often enough to actually leap out of the ring clutching the top rung of the barbed wire without cutting himself. Bam-Bam had heard that Tunney made his hands leather-tough by soaking them in brine and doing thousands of finger-pushups per day. Maybe this man had a similar regimen.

Bam-Bam’s mind was diverted from the announcer to the lone spotlight that appeared. The beam broke out so fast that it made him think of guard tower kliegs meant to shine on an escaping prisoner rather than upon the grand attraction of the evening. The circle of light did actually linger on Bam-Bam for a moment, long enough for the fans to feast their eyes on the bleeding meat, before the roving eye in the sky gravitated across the ring and toward the tunnel that was carved cattycorner from the one through which Bam-Bam had entered the arena.

“The Hungry Hun is ready to feast!”

Bam-Bam wiped blood from his eyes and watched a hunched-over, half-naked man emerge to thunderous claps and sporadic whistles. The Hun wore spiked epaulletes on his shoulders, from which hung leather thongs cinched in the center of his chest by a miniature hussar’s Totenkopf, the little death’s head bauble grinning from its place in the crux between the man’s well-defined pectorals. The Hun’s ensemble was topped by a pickelhaube helmet. He marched toward the ring, goose-stepping along with the ghost of his Führer. Deutschland über Alles blared through the public address system, and one of the midget clowns spoke from behind Bam-Bam.

“Careful you don’t get caught by that spike on his helmet.”

“Yeah,” the other clown said. “He soaks it in piss, so if he spikes you and you happen to live, you’ll die anyway.”

“Peritonitis,” the other clown offered. “My grandma got it from swallowing a toothpick at a barbecue shack.” The clown crossed himself.

Bam-Bam smiled weakly. “This is just a work,” he said.

The little clown pointed at the blood leaking from Bam Bam’s finger. The crimson drops had already begun to pool on the canvas “It’s all real.” The clowns sensed the Hun’s approach. They tossed, tumbled and somersaulted out of the arena, entertaining the fans with their exit as they slid on a greased red trail that Bam-Bam was certain was the purplish blood unloaded from his promoter’s veins.

He decided to forget the wrestling, got into a crouch, and tucked his elbows in. He was going to try to box this fucking lunatic. “Ready to die, mein Freund?” The Hun grasped the topmost rung of barbed wire emphatically, choking the barbs and looking upward. He was lost in an ecstatic trance brought on by pain. His eyes were closed, and the points of his mustache even seemed to grow more erect. He front-flipped forward inside the ropes and the ancient ring apron gave as if the plywood beneath it was one pile-drive away from collapsing to the foundation.

Bam-Bam guessed the question was rhetorical, but decided to goad him anyway. “Hitler only had one ball.”

“Lügner!” The Hun jutted a finger out in Bam-Bam’s general direction. “He was wounded in the leg at the Somme, but his virile parts were undamaged.”

First mission accomplished. He was under the man’s skin and in his head, although Bam- Bam might not be able to win a mind game against someone who lacked much mind to lose. The Hun lowered himself and pointed the spike of his helmet toward Bam-Bam. He let out a blood-curdling scream and charged forward.

Bam-Bam had no desire to get impaled on the piss-soaked pickelhaube, but he didn’t want to swerve too fast in this game of chicken, partly out of pride but mainly owing to strategy. He tried to control his fear as the man charged forward and the cheers deafened him like mortar rounds being walked closer and closer to a base camp.

Wait…He allowed himself to feel the fear, controlled the reflexive desire to jump aside too soon, and at the last moment he pivoted so that the man rammed his way helmet-first through the second and third strand of barbed wire with the force of a torpedo round lodging in a submarine’s hull.

The Hun was caught, tangled, with his back exposed to Bam-Bam, who could now have his druthers with regards to punch selection. The Marquis of Queensberry was long dead and buried a continent away, so Abruzzi squared himself up to the man’s back and went to work with shoveling hooks into the liver, digging toward the kidneys with closed fists, fighting not just with the Hun but with his own self-hatred and the blood-clouded rage of a cornered and terrified man who had been on the short end of too many sticks to count. The Hun got a fist to the organ meat for every marble pilfered from Bam-Bam’s collection when he was a kid in Hell’s Kitchen. The Hun took shots to the breadbasket for every piece of laundry stolen from Abruzzi’s mama’s clothesline, every dollar the bastards had siphoned from his prizefighting purses.

Horrifically the boxer discovered that his power, his craft, and his hate were not enough to overcome the beast in front of him. If anything, the Hun just lapped it up, grunting like a masochist who’d finally found someone who knew how to twist his nipples right. He extricated himself from the barbed wire, bleeding profusely, with openings of torn flesh puckering from his skin like flowers in bloom or the mouths of Venus flytraps opening for fattened bluebottles. He seemed to love the sight of his own blood almost as much as that of Abruzzi’s. Almost.

Bam-Bam threw a left jab at the Hun’s face. The wrestler smiled with a mouthful of teeth chiseled by metal file. The vampire Hun opened his yawning maw and timed it just right. On one level, Abruzzi was horrified by what happened. At the same time, he was in awe of the man’s skill. It took a certain genius – a ring IQ that would have made the old “Ghetto Wizard” Benny Leonard jealous – to wait for a man to throw a punch and then catch his fist just right in the molars and then bite down through skin, fat, and bone with canines and incisors.

Abruzzi heard the crack, but felt nothing. It reminded him of a guy he saw in the medical field hospital during the war who was missing his right arm. The poor sap said he’d closed the hatch on his tank, felt water spill over him, and figured he’d crushed his canteen as he shut the hatch to close himself in his steel behemoth. Turned out he’d taken his arm off, and passed out shortly thereafter.

Bam-Bam realized two fingers were missing from his left hand only after the Hun had already bitten them off and begun chewing. It was hard not to notice, since the twitching remnants of pinky and ring finger were dangling from the Hun’s sharpened choppers, and that same “water” the tanker in the field hospital talked about was leaking from his hand like someone had gotten drunk while watering their roses on the lawn and left the hose on at full blast.

He balled up what remained of the fist, less intent on using the hand to fight than to give some compression and keep himself from passing out. If he saw those black lights, he might not wake up in the dressing room. He might wake up trussed on a table in front of the Hun and his faithful band of hillbillies, who would carve him from asshole to appetite and serve him up like a Thanksgiving bird.

“Shit…” He backed up, and whether it was the blood loss or some heavenly vision, he saw his old trainer Fudge Mackinnon in his mind’s eye. Fudge was blind from chronic conjunctivitis but used the sound of the skip-rope and thud of the heavy bag in the gym to let him know where his boy was and how he was coming along in his maturation as a prospect. They called him the “Bat” because old Fudge trained by echolocation and could probably even throw his fists by sound if it came down to scrapping with a live opponent.

“Get on your bicycle!” the voice said. He did so now, back-peddling and throwing a three-fingered jab to keep the Hun at bay. He was a righty, but if he needed his other paw to set up a Susie Q or a Sunday punch, he still had two of the three principle fingers required for punching. Some guys like Slappy Maxie Rosenbloom used their wrists to punch, but that was how a man broke his hands.

It was all academic for the moment, he realized, as a crimson mask of perspiration and blood caked to his face, and a fount of blood tried to pump from his hand and ended up oozing out in an obstinate purple sludge from the compressed fist remnants. The Hun was busy masticating on the fingers he’d already bitten off. It was almost as if he had forgotten he had an opponent in front of him. The digits were now soft as aspic jelly, as the man worked his jaws around the disarticulated fingers like a cow chewing cud. The presence of this man-morsel had robbed the Hun of all strategy or desire to perform and Bam-Bam decided to use that to his advantage.

He pressed forward, ready to hook from the right and spin the man’s head with a blow to the jaw that would twist the neck and short-circuit his haywire brainstem. He would follow that with a shot to the soft meat of the solar plexus in order to try to stutter-step the man’s heart rhythm or short-circuit his ticker altogether.

He knew he couldn’t count on one punch. Fudge’s words were in his ears again, the old bluesy cadence of a man who picked up songs from sharecroppers who picked them up from their parents, who’d been slaves on plantations and had needed those biblical ditties to carry them through storms maybe even more tumultuous than his one. “A fight ain’t no picture, so even when you do good work, don’t stand back to admire it. Keep throwing till your man hits the canvas. Then rush your white ass to a neutral corner and then and only then can you look at your masterpiece you painted with your two fists.”

Here was his attempt at the pugilistic equivalent of abstract expressionism then. He threw the right hook as planned. It caught the Hun flush on the button of the jaw so that the pickelhaube spun three-hundred and sixty degrees, but the man was still on his feet and the helmet was still on his head.

Bam-Bam was already mid-combination in a one-two and there was no stopping the follow-up punch aimed for the cannibal’s solar-plexus. The Hun caught the throw in his own two bleeding hands. The wrestler held the boxer’s fist, and grinned with a mouth still leaking with bits of skin that dangled like sausage suet sleeves clinging between the pink-stained teeth. He opened his mouth wide to gobble some more fingers from Bam-Bam’s hand and see if they tasted as good as the other ones.

The struggle now resembled an arm-wrestling bout, a test of wills, biceps burning and triceps quivering as the Hun pulled the delicious mini-sausages toward his maw, and Bam-Bam struggled to pull what remained of his livelihood and dignity back to his side.

He brought up a knee without thinking, aiming between the Hun’s legs. Whether or not Hitler had gonads, his disciple most certainly had a set of two healthy balls, if the man’s shriek of pain was any indication. The Hun fell to the canvas. Boos erupted in the crowd, although there were also some scattered cheers and even a few laughs. Maybe he could win these sick cretins over to his corner.

He lifted his right boot to stomp on the Hun’s head, but then slipped in his own blood, which was painted in profuse sheets across the canvas beneath his feet. He crab-scurried as fast as he could backwards toward a neutral corner, eyes filmed over with a red haze that he blinked back as he smeared blood with his tailbone while scurrying rearward. He struggled and blinked against the sheet of claret, regaining his vision just in time to see the pickelhaube point moving for him with the speed of a lone bayonet charge. Bam-Bam regained his fighting stance and waited for the next onslaught.

Stepping aside and letting the Hun get tangled in barbed wire again wasn’t going to work. Beating his body and catching him on the side of the chin with a hook hadn’t done much but spin his headgear around. Bam-Bam knew he was running out of options, blood, and time.

He heard everything now as if submerged deep underwater, but even there he couldn’t escape Fudge’s admonitions. “Rocky Marciano punches underwater until that swimming pool looks like a witch’s cauldron! You do the same! Use that resistance to your advantage!”

That bit of wisdom wouldn’t help now. He listened to other adages and bits from Fudge’s repertoire, how he called a three-punch combo a “two piece with a biscuit” and once told Bam-Bam Jack Johnson’s defense was so good he could sit in a chair and a standing man couldn’t land a single shot on the black bastard.

That wasn’t helping either, and the pickelhaube was coming and the rednecks were screaming to see him get skewered like a Turk challenging Vlad Tepes.

Bolo! The word came to him in a fraction of an instant perhaps, that shot Fudge had told him never to use unless he had no other recourse. It was the boxing equivalent of baseball’s bottom-of-the-ninth, two outs, bases loaded, three balls and two strikes swing, or a Hail Mary in the fourth quarter of gridiron action. If you were deep in the hole and it was time to go for broke, you used the punch that Kid Gavilan had perfected swinging a machete in the sugarcane fields of Cuba.

Good punches came from pop! From the legs and the twisting motion of the hips, from whatever a man used to swing an axe to split logs for firewood. Good punches didn’t come from the arm, except the bolo, which wasn’t even much a punch in the first place. It was a sweeping backwards motion, a half-moon rotation that went toward the rear, down, and up and hopefully into the chin of the oncoming opponent but usually into thin air, at which point you were screwed, countered three or four times and punished for throwing that one looping, lazy shot.

This was it, though. Either win or get eaten. He heard his mother praying her rosary for her husband whose only English was the mantra, “America good country, give me job.” He saw Berman’s sad Semite eyes, and he saw Gavilan black as dark chocolate, sweating in the fields, working that scythe while Palermo and his greasy compatriots carved up Havana, the white-sanded jewel of that tiny island, and made it into their casino-playground and resort.

The Hun came in head-down, sharp piss-soaked pickelhaube point forward, screaming like he believed he could pierce the Maginot Line alone. Bam-Bam felt himself do it, watched himself in one of those rare moments that deserved to be freeze-framed on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, immortalized and talked about by the barroom cognoscenti who would assure a fella you shoulda been there. Shake the hand that shook the hand of John L. Sullivan. I saw a longshoreman fight a Kangaroo to a draw in international waters, etc.

There was the long looping windup, the slow arcing rainbow striation, followed by a shot that came around and landed on the Hun’s jaw like an anvil with a sixteen pound head swung hard against the side of an overinflated tire that popped with the impact of a blowout. The Hun didn’t have a mouthpiece in, which meant that his teeth clamped together and the enamel first sanded and then broke like porcelain. Not only were his days of biting people done, but his tenure with solid food was at an end. The Hun was already unconscious on his feet, but Bam-Bam wanted to catch the man on his way down, just to make the ghost of Fudge proud and get a bit of revenge for what the bastard had done to his poor ailing south paw. A split second after the subdural hematoma began to form on the Hun’s bleeding brain from that crunching right, Ritchie “Bam Bam” Abruzzi (20 Wins, O Losses) took one falling step forward and followed up with a three-fingered left that torqued on the bridge of the Hun’s nose. The boxer landed with the point of one of his remaining knuckles, connecting with all the force he could channel into his suffering, maimed makeshift fist. There was a splintering crunch that Bam-Bam mistook for one clean break, which was actually the bone around the cartilage of his poor opponent’s nose splintering in twenty-two places, certain shards fissured and then slicing upward in the cannibal’s skull hard enough to slice jagged paths through orbital sockets as easily as a child tears rice paper.

The Hun’s eyes overflowed with blood and he fell to the wrestling mat in a crumpled heap. Bam-Bam felt they were even now, and he raised his right hand in a fist and basked in the cheers of the fans. It had cost him two fingers, but he’d made the rare turn from shitheel to baby-face, all on a well-placed two shot combination. And he’d done it legit, not on a work for a carnival barker or on a threat from the Boys back East.

It felt good to be boxing pure and simple again.

Nice to meetcha, son. It’s Mickey, ain’t it? Don’t you worry none about this sweat pit right now, it looks worse than it is, trust me on that. You may know me, you may not, I’m Ronny, but everyone, whether they’re out beyond that curtain drinking, or back here ready to rock ‘n roll, calls me Ballbreaker. On this here wrestling circuit, a name is your most important selling point. It’s gotta tell someone immediately what you’re all about. Has to be something real simple to let anyone know, regardless of their current level of sobriety, what they can expect. Needless to say, you can guess my area of expertise real easy.

You seen me fight? When was that?

Ha, that summer, huh? I wasn’t in a happy place back then. I’m mighty surprised you’re here if that was the bout got you interested in this life.

Nope, I don’t see or hear from Gouger no more. Last I heard, he moved down to the ‘Glades, lives out there with his barely legal lady friend. I still wager he speaks an octave or two higher, and if he can have kids after what I did to him that night, then, well, I guess there must be some kind of higher being up there after all.

Now look, you’re here because you spoke to the big man, Pauly. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that in no time at all, he gave you his weird-ass smile and promised you the world. He’s kind of a necessary evil to get your foot on the first rung of the ladder. Thing is, and he can’t argue against this, though he might try, he’d get you stripped down to your tighty whities and out in that ring, before you had a chance to write down your next of kin.

Just in case, you understand?

But, if you take just one itty bitty piece of advice from an old timer like me, don’t sign shit till you’ve slept on it. What he likes to do, is swoop on in as you’re lying belly up on your bunk later, still glowing from winning your first bout. You see, in that moment, with all that adrenalin pumping, you’d say yes to Old Nick asking for your earthly soul in exchange for some magic beans. So do not, under any circumstance, put your John Hancock on that contract till you’ve passed out and woken up.

Trust me, come morning, win or lose, you’ll know whether this is the life for you.

It ain’t pretty, shit, in thirty eight states, it ain’t even legal, but for some, most of us if I’m being honest, if we weren’t doing this, we’d be in those shitpits of Leiber or Lee, counting the days off another stretch inside.

I’ll tell you this for free, son, when you open those baby blues in the morning, and try to sit up, every bone in that body of yours will be screaming. There’ll be a voice in your head that’s either telling you to go again, or head back to momma. Either way, that decision is yours and yours alone. Don’t let Pauly, me, or none of these other meatheads tell you otherwise.

Good, now we’ve got that sorted, let me show you around.

You don’t get your own stoop first off, only old timers like me get those. We’re on the payroll, we get what few luxuries are owing because of that. You can share mine tonight, just don’t touch my shit. Else, me and you will fall out real easy.

Lesson one, everyone, from Marjory on the door, to Tony who cleans the jockies, is superstitious as all hell. Whatever you do, do not fuck with another person’s shit. Ever. Just because a belt buckle looks like it ain’t on straight, don’t mean it ain’t supposed to be like that. One tiny thing out of place will fuck up someone’s day, and, by way of universal wrestling karma, fuck you up, got it?

Good. You’re a quick learner, I can tell that about you, son. You’ll be alright. Dump your shit on my chair, I ain’t too fussy about that on fight night. Now close your eyes a minute.

Go ahead, it’s okay, I ain’t gonna grab your junk or nothing.

Good. Take a deep breath, don’t stop till you feel your boot leather being pulled up your nose.

Ha, spit if you need to, that’s okay, there’s a bucket down there. That aroma is something you’ll get used to, but first off, it’ll hit you in waves. It’s everything you’d expect: sweat, blood, tears, puke, booze and smoke. Shit, it’s hopes and dreams, son. That’s one powerful cocktail, some days you won’t even notice it, others, it’ll wrap around you like a Boa Constrictor and crush the very shit out of your ass.

See that guy over there? The one with his back to us?

That’s right, the one who looks like he’s been dragged through town at the end of a rope, that’s Serge, they call him Sander.

See those burns on his back? Got ‘em from a belt sander a while back, bled like a stuck pig, but damned if I ever seen someone with a bigger grin on their face after. Anyways, I’m going off at a tangent. He reckons that the smell of this place on the night, tells you what’s gonna happen. Figures he’s some kind of all-knowing Nostradamus or some shit. Once or twice, he’s called it. A nasty leg break here, a busted jaw there. Course, he’s got more wrong than right, but even I gotta admit that sometimes, that smell…it’s eerie. Like a goddamn spectre. All those aforementioned hopes and dreams the way I figure it. Some nights that ghost is like motherfucking Casper, and your best friend. Other nights? It wants to rip your goddamn face off and chew the meat down to the bone.

Next to Sander, you’ve got Chomper. He don’t need no mouthguard. Didn’t lose his pearly whites in the ring, he got tanked one night when he was starting out, and was set upon outside the venue by some folk who didn’t take kindly to him having whipped their boy’s ass. They’d lost a tidy sum, and decided to work out their frustrations on him. This one guy caught him a good ‘un with a house brick. Shit, Chomper lost most of his teeth, got a fractured eye socket, smashed jaw, and his face, which weren’t a picture to start with, swelled up like an artificial titty. But let’s just say this; they won’t be finding those good old boys any time soon. I promise you that. Alabama dirt don’t give up its secrets easy.

You look a little green around the gills there, son, wassa matter?

Ha, of course you won’t be fighting those two. Hell, those sons of bitches would rip your head off and shit down your throat no sooner had you set one foot on the mat.

Lesson two, the newcomers fight each other, no exceptions. See over there? By the shitters? Yeah, you’ll be fighting one of those boys. We tag team up the fresh meat, gives us a good look at you first. Plus you get to take a breather every now and then. Them lot over yonder have been out front once or twice before, so this is why you get ol’ Ballbreaker bending your ear tonight.

Nope, don’t know which ones, and if I’m being honest, don’t much care. You boys will just go off at each other for as long as you have spunk left in ya. You’re there for two reasons, to keep the crowd entertained ahead of the main fights, and to see which of you will still be here tomorrow, hand in the air, looking to give it another go.

So, tonight you’ll just be ‘The Okatie Kid’ and twenty bucks richer, anything above and beyond that, you’re gonna have to earn, son. Every goddamn scrap of it.

Yep, twenty bucks, win or lose. Pauly knows that for anyone to have the sack to stand toe to toe with another man in that ring, with all kinds of hollering going on around you, folk shouting at you to kill that sumbitch, well, the one who gets tapped out is as brave as the one standing over him.

Now, lesson three, and this one’s a doozy, I sure as hell wished someone had told me this when I was in your boots. Look after yourself. In this place, it’s all too easy to say yes to anything and everything. You’ll be offered all manner of substances you can snort, smoke or stick in your veins to take away every last drop of pain. There’ll be women that’ll promise to do the same, but manage nothing except make your dick turn green and hurt so bad when you piss, you’d wish it would fall off.

Look at me, son. I’m forty-three years old, four divorces down and two kids I ain’t seen since they were delivered screaming an ungodly racket into the world. I’m two hundred and thirty two pounds of scar tissue, gristle and regret. You see this here body? It’s formed from burritos, bourbon, barbiturates and bad decisions. Yeah, so what? I can take a punch, I can damn near take losing a limb if I had to, and I’d still be standing, but that ain’t outta choice.

Pick up that bar. That’s right, that one. Now I want you to pop me on my arm. The left one. Shit, you do know your left from your right? I only ask, cos if you get me on my right, you’re liable to be eating your food through a tube for the next month.

Go on now, on my upper arm, hard as you like.

Harder.

See. Nothing. Nerve damage. Pretty bad too. So bad that sometimes I can barely wipe my own ass. Got hurled out of the ring onto a church pew when we was down in Jesup a few years back. Done near gone broke my back. Busted up my shoulder real good. By all accounts I was speaking in tongues for two days. When the morphine wore off, my entire left side was just sorta numb. It comes and goes. Some days are worse than others, but most of the time, you could drill through to the bone in my bicep and I wouldn’t even whistle Dixie.

Though I would only suggest doing that in my sleep. I’m liable to choke you out otherwise.

That’s a joke, son.

You gotta lighten up, don’t take this shit too serious.

These moments, before? After? You gotta enjoy them the best you can. We ain’t out there sitting at a desk, pushing paperclips about, or selling people cars or burgers. You could die out there in that ring, so you gotta make sure that when you’re not staring a man down, wondering if you’ve got enough left in those heavy legs of yours to make a move, that you make the most of it, okay? Good. Now, come on. We probably got time for lesson four, before you learn the big one all on your lonesome.

Mickey, meet Marjory. No cussing or spitting, son, stand up straight and don’t let those spidery eyelashes or those big doe eyes fool you none. She’ll snap your wrist if you decide to put your hands on her without an invite. This fine lady will no doubt be the first person you see if you go and get yourself knocked out. Either out there on the mat, or laid up in a fancy hospital bed. So whatever you do, treat her like she’s kin. She’s also in charge of paying ya.

Nope, not Pauly. Trust me, soon as that first bell goes, and the snot starts flying, you won’t see hide nor hair of him. He’ll be firmly ensconced in one of his many lady friend’s erogenous zones. Hitting it up like it was the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah, so don’t even bother looking for him. Nope, Marjory runs this circus, and if you have any human resource type questions troubling that thick head of yours, you speak to her first. Period. Got it, son? Good, now say, ‘goodbye Marjory’.

Come on, follow me, watch out for those wires, you don’t want to be known as the idiot that was beaten by a length of flex. Duck beneath that curtain, but be real quiet like.

This is it. The ring. It’s our own, so we just take it up and put it down anywhere we’ve been paid to, and a few places in between. The sheriff over in Macon requisitioned it one time, to settle a grudge with one of his deputies. Those doughy sons of bitches were going at it for near on an hour before Marjory stepped in and declared it a draw. Tell you this for free, ain’t never seen two men bitch slap another for so long, without growing a vagina, make of that what you will.

The chairs all belong to the venue, some are nailed down, you’ll come to like those places. Others, like tonight, they truck ‘em in from all over, that’s why no two chairs look the same.

Why will you like the nailed down ones? What kind of question is that? Son, have you ever been hit in the face with a chair? And I ain’t talking about one of those aluminium tubular things, with a fancy foam seat which folds up nice and neat. You know, the kind your momma keeps in the basement until the holidays. The one she always puts your pop’s momma on, just so she can lord it over her for an afternoon.

No, I’m talking about one hundred percent American hardwood. High back, sturdy, the kind you used to get in school. See, if it’s a prop, and when you’ve shown your mettle a few times, you’ll get in on that, more cash you see. If it’s a prop, then one of the crew, those morose looking motherfuckers skulking round down there, hunched over like that French fella who lived in that bell tower, well, they’re supposed to doctor it. Just enough. Saw through the back rest a little, so that when your opponent introduces it to your body, it breaks instead of you.

Problem is, most of the crew are drunks or retards. Shit, some are a healthy mix of both. See ol’ Brian down there? He’s dumber than a post, and ugly to boot, I’ve seen him this one time, trying to start the truck. Took him half an hour to realise that he was sat on the wrong side. Dumb shit is sat there, hands clutching thin air, his stupid Pinocchio foot, he lost the real one outside of some shitty village in Iraq, going up and down like a cheap whore on payday. Just sat there, ain’t paying the silence no mind. Grinning like he’s sat in his own shit in a sewer.

Anyways, you won’t be getting props tonight, so lessons on power tools and barbed wire bats will keep just fine for another day. Course, you might get the odd bottle or coin throwed at you, so keep your eyes peeled.

Look around you, son, people are here for two things, fighting and drinking, so the odd bottle will find its way into the ring. Take a look at my forehead. Yep, looks like road rash, don’t it? This head’s had more bottles broken over it than all the ships down at the docks. It don’t hurt too bad, just if you see someone come at you with a champagne bottle, well, put ‘em down before they brain you, is my advice. Else the world’ll be going black, and you’ll be looking up into Marjory’s eyes in no time at all.

Fifteen minutes. That’s what you get. Don’t sound like much, but when you’re out there, one minute can drag its sorry ass for an eternity. The only rule is that the last man standing wins. You get draws, not many, but you do. Regardless of whether you win or lose, show your appreciation to these drunken bums and respect to your opponent. We’re a tight crew, so you can bet your bottom dollar that within a week or two, you’ll be fighting that man again. The last thing you want is for there to be bad blood between you. Trust me on that one, son.

One more thing, you may have seen some hardcore wrestling matches, in places like these, where folk use blades or glass to cut their head, jazz everything up with a bit of color. Don’t do it. If your opponent sees you with a shiv, the only way it’s going to end, is with you in the care of an EMT if you’re lucky, or with a toe tag on if you ain’t. We put on a helluva show as it is, there’s more than enough blood and guts to send folk on their way satisfied. We’re gladiators, crappy paid ones, but gladiators. Don’t turn what we’re doing into something it ain’t. If people want make believe they can watch the wrestling on cable, not get sprayed with sweat down ringside.

Okay, so that’s all she wrote. I’ll be working your corner for the first fight. Can’t say I’ll be much help, but if I can impart some knowledge along the way, I will. Good luck, son.

Get your ass over here! Look at me. Not him. Don’t go eyeballing him, not unless you’re hoping to take him out on a date. Let me ask you a question, son. Do you fuck like you fight?

Answer the question.

Do you fuck like you fight?

I only ask, ‘cause if you do then you must blow your load mighty quick. Answer me another question, how long did that feel like?

Ten minutes?

Son, that was closer to two. One hundred and twenty seconds, if that. In all that time, you were running round that ring as if the Lord Almighty had magicked up a swarm of locusts in your pecker. This here is a marathon, it ain’t no sprint, you ain’t gonna get a gold medal for wailing on him the most.

It don’t mean shit.

Really? You disagree. Okay, son, take a look at him. Take a long goddamn look. Does he look like he’s hurting after your vicious assault? Is he sweating so bad, that Noah is going to float his motherfucking ark on the puddle he’s created from his exertions, filled with every animal, two by motherfucking two? No. He ain’t. There ain’t one bead of perspiration on that man’s brow. Not one salty drop. Look at you. It looks like you’ve been messing with the AC down the whorehouse. You’ve got another ten, twelve minutes of this. If you keep going as you are, how long do you think you’re gonna last?

Shut up. I’ll tell you this for free, son. You’re gonna finish second. Out of two. Now that might not mean much to you, you’ll still have twenty bucks in your pocket, perhaps a cold beer in your hand, but you won’t have learned a goddamn thing.

Slow it down, okay? You can’t beat a man till you know what he’s like. Feel him out, find out what he’s good at. What he ain’t. He’s shorter than you, so you know you’ve got a better reach, use it. At the same time though, he’s going off his right leg all the time. If you move in too quick, like you might do with your favourite cousin, he’ll pinwheel you. Before you know it, his sweaty balls will be resting on your chin, as he chokes you the fuck out.

His pimply face will be looking down at you, laughing, as your cheeks go red and your hands slap against his thighs, wishing that you’d listened to ol’ Ballbreaker before you black out. Mind you, if he pushes too hard, he might burst a brain vessel in that noggin of yours. It ain’t beyond the bounds of possibility to think that you could become afflicted with retardation, allowing you to help out ol’ Brian starting the truck. Two dumb fucks together, pedalling away at nothing. Going nowhere.

Fight smart, son, use your strengths, and make sure he don’t get to use his, okay? Go on now, looks like your pal wants you to tag him. Get on back out there.

This ain’t Oprah, son, shut up, take a goddamn breath and quit trash talking him. You know what he’s doing, don’t you? He’s riling you up, and sure, if you’re an ornery alligator, I might very well suggest it’ll work. But you ain’t, son, not even close. If I had to say what you were, it’d be a pissy muskrat, staggering down the 76, seconds away from being crushed under the tires of an eighteen-wheeler. You want to spend your opening night, crawling round the mat on your hands and knees, looking for a tooth, or worse, an eye? How about your goddamn self-respect?

Now shut up and listen. You started off well, almost like you were actually listening to the fucking words that were coming out of my mouth, then what happened? You got sucker punched and started to pout like a bitch. There ain’t no Queensbury rules out here, son, you hear me? All you’ve got, if you’re lucky, are your balls, and enough fight left in you to keep going when your brain is telling you to stay the fuck down.

If you let that little ball slap throw you off your game plan, then you better go back to whatever pissant town you crawled out from and stay there. You gotta be smarter than that. Look at me, you think I’d still be doing this at my age, if I flew off the handle every time some punk punched me in the happy sack?

Okay, so look, at the beginning you were on him, but you didn’t keep on, why was that?

You thought he was going to tap out?

Son, were you born stupid, or did that pussy punch of his, hit the only brain you’ve been blessed with? You see that man over there? The one in the middle, with the gut that looks like he’s eaten his family for breakfast, and that stupid fucking bowtie?

He’s the referee. He, and he alone, decides when the fight is over. Shit, son, you could be down on the canvas, your leg hanging out of its socket, knee deep in your own blood and piss, Archangel Gabriel and all of the angelic motherfucking host around him, calling out to you, beckoning you unto their bosom, but if that fat fuck doesn’t say it’s over, you get your ass up and you fight, okay? Hell, if you need to, pull that useless limb out of its socket and club him back up his momma’s cooch, okay? Just do not stop until he says otherwise, got it?

Good. Now, get the fuck out of my face and back in that ring.

Son, you okay? Yeah, yeah, I know I told you that it would be Marjory’s face you’d see first off, but she’s trying to disentangle the man you threw into the grand piano. Yep, the one five rows back, over there. Don’t think it was too expensive, shit luck if it was, leaving it there while we’re working was just plain stupid.

Stop trying to talk, son, there’s a reason why it hurts to speak, smile, or do any of the things you used to enjoy doing with your mouth.

You don’t remember, huh? Well, piano boy over there was getting a bit of a pasting. You’d clotheslined his ass, and after a rather showy suplex, were on the cusp of dislocating his arm in a rather nice lock. Anyway, as mentioned previously, there are a lot of bottles around this here ring. He grabbed one, smashed it on the turnbuckle and proceeded to try and integrate it with your other facial features.

Shit, son, I’ve seen all kinds of nasty injuries, we used a nailgun once, and some dipshit loaded it up with the wrong nails. Poor Bob ‘Tendon-Tugger’ Pastorella caught one in the eye. Dumb bastard, acting on instinct I guess, tries to pull the darned thing out, failing to adequately think through his plan. Next thing you know, he’s screaming louder than a banshee in season and doing laps of the ring, holding his eyeball on the end of that nail as if it was a candy apple. Only way we could get him to stop hollering was to administer a baseball bat to the back of his head. He still comes in from time to time, though he don’t say too much to me. On account of the fact it was me holding that nailgun at the time.

Anyway, I digress, mainly because you look like seventy-four shades of fucked up. Piano boy rammed the broken bottle through the bottom of your mouth. Now? It’s like you have two sets of teeth in that big ol’ skull of yours. One lot are a lovely enamel white, the other set is made of glass, blood and bits of spongy tongue.

I’m gonna be honest with you, son, I think your karaoke days are over.

Ahh shit, my bad, I didn’t mean to make you laugh, I’ll be dead serious from now until the paramedics manage to extricate that Coors bottle from your face. Please, don’t move your mouth or swallow too much. For one, the sound of that glass grinding against your teeth is making my balls shrink, and two, I don’t want you swallowing nothing, and then shitting it out, when they might’ve been able to stitch it back on again.

You know what though, son? You did alright, there are grown men in the front row who have lost several pounds of weight through puking at the mere sight of your face, and what’s left of piano boy over yonder. One of the strings wound around his ankle and, well, in the process of attempting to free hisself, he degloved his foot. You want a skin sock? I could see about getting it for you? Wouldn’t be no trouble? We could pickle it, and leave that jar on your own stoop when you get fixed up.

Hey, don’t look like that, son, chin up, you should be proud, your momma might not be, but the woman who carried you around for nine months and squeezed you out of her holiest of holies, ain’t never gonna be beaming with maternal pride at this particular life choice of yours, and its inevitable consequences.

You see, this is lesson five. Everyone takes a pasting, don’t matter if you’re Samson or Delilah, everyone gets their licks. Sure, looks like you’ve taken enough for eleven people about now, but that just means that you’ll come back stronger.

Plus, and I mean this with the greatest respect, I’ve got your name all worked out. Now before I say it, some folk will think that it’s derogatory, but that won’t last long, only up until the time that they hear the story, and see the pictures. Think of this as an honor, most don’t get their own fighting name till they’re five or six fights in, but I’d say you’ve earned it…

Glassjaw.

What do you reckon, son?

While I was still stumbling around trying to figure out why my pants suddenly didn’t seem to have any leg holes, police officers were pounding on my door eager to tell me my wife was found dead in a guitar case. When I finally got dressed, I found them perched on my porch, rocking back and forth on their shoes, one big, one small, and a medium-sized buzzcut standing in the middle. The bookends were in blue, wringing hats in their hands real noble, while the middle guy was the porridge that was just right apparently, wearing the sharp suit and a blood-red power tie which divided him neatly in half. He was clearly in charge, looking me up and down, left, right, left, head tapping like a thumb memorizing a videogame cheat code. Because of this insufferably officious body language they were throwing at me, I knew they’d come to report something horrible. I knew this because I’d actually watched a movie or two in my life, though Angie hadn’t been missing long enough for me to be prepared for the absolute worst. But in that moment, the worst was my certainty that these three cops were going to be comforted by their loved ones later on tonight about how hard their jobs were delivering tragic news.

I’d already imagined their dinner-table conversations, and I was convinced they got off on this stuff. I pictured them making sure their wives caught them staring pensively into the distance, a countdown to the sympathetic backrub later, and, sure, I knew these guys were ready for my reaction, too. But only if it was reasonable.

I could feel the suspense coming off them like an audible hum. I also knew from watching a million true-crime shows that I, as the husband in the equation, was the prime suspect. The detective in the middle, with his bush-league semiotic strategies of interrogation, like a red power tie pointing at a belt buckle, for example, had it written all over his scowl, so our encounter was forever blighted by expectation.

But in spite of my confidence clocking all their motivations at 99% accuracy and my very real horror at the prospect of losing the love of my life, none of this mental chess stopped me from being the most suspicious spouse in the history of bad news delivered on doorsteps. I could feel misdirected rage boiling up and over and shooting in all the wrong directions before I could stop, even if I’d wanted to.

“Mr. James…” the small cop began. “We’re sorry to inform you that…”

Somewhere in the thunder of blood rumbling in my ears, I heard the words “wife,” “murdered,” and “guitar” coming from the guy, and I had questions. But I couldn’t stop thinking how they were obviously relishing their roles as harbingers of bad news. Who does this? And why did they need three of them to do it?

I was really stuck on all this.

Mainly because I knew they were watching me experience something I always found excruciating to witness in others, where a tragedy becomes an excuse to be a monster. And if there were two things my previous job of closed-captioning crime shows had taught me, it was that monsters were typically ridiculous, and human beings didn’t fit in guitar cases.

My first memory of this bad-reaction loophole goes back further, and involves much lower stakes. In high school when I delivered pizzas, a co-worker got the mirror knocked off her car by some bump-and-run, and she came running in yelling, “Call the cops!” But I hesitated, understandably wanting details, and she flipped, upending the perfectly symmetrical pizza I was crafting, screaming those words again, this time inches from my nose. I remember thinking, “No way you’re this upset. You just wanted to trash my pizza ‘cause we broke up.” I understood the urge to launch a pre-cooked floppy disc across the room to see how they landed, but what I didn’t understand then was, in a moment like that, you’re hovering in a limbo of split-second understanding that you’re going to take advantage of your new-found, tragedy-induced immunity in case it never happens again… but you’re also genuinely upset. So on my doorstep, I finally understood why she’d launched my first geometrically perfect pie into a ceiling fan, and I ground my teeth in a crimson haze of despair that was still coherent enough to hope these cops gave me any reason at all to flip out, or at least flip the metaphorical pizza right the fuck out.

Later, I got more facts about the case, the horrible stuff, about how she likely survived in that guitar case for half a day, hogtied and folded up and running out of life while she listened to truck after truck piling the city’s trash over her. But in that moment at the front door staring at this real-life representation of an Ascent of Man evolution poster, I just really wanted to lash out.

I scanned the big one, with his all-too-enthusiastic hat wringing, his lumpy blue shirt and matching necktie, making it practically invisible and therefore powerless, and I imagined him using these encounters to explain away impotence, alcoholism, maybe missing his bully son’s big moment of sanctioned assault in a hockey game.

“When did this happen?” I asked the big one, his mouth wriggling around so much it was practically eating itself. I squeezed my doorjamb and watched my own knuckles turn white, as he turned white, too. I was extra strong in doorjambs, you see. Even though I hadn’t gotten to the point where I could do 500 chin-ups on the bar I’d hung in our sagging bedroom-door frame, I was squeezing this wood so hard all three of them heard the cracking. But I wasn’t sure this wasn’t my knuckles.

“Well, sir, we don’t know much,” the detective in the middle answered, holding up a hand to keep Lumpy quiet. “But due to blood pooling on her right arm and leg, we believe, at this time, she was killed in another location, and, subsequently, brought to the garbage dump.”

“No kidding,” I said, not really asking, not really talking, just squeezing the door harder despite the forearm cramps. “So, you’re saying she didn’t live there? At the garbage dump, I mean. So you’re saying you got cutting-edge forensics telling you her day didn’t start on a mountain of beer cans and diapers and TV dinners? Thanks, Sherlock!”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re still trying to ascertain…”

“‘Ascertain’? How about you stop bumbling over big words and just tell me what you know about my wife.”

“We understand you’re upset,” the little one stepped forward, screwing his hat back on his pointed head to exert authority. “And you have our word, we will do everything in our power to…”

“Now, can you tell us…” Lumpy started to say over him, and at that I stepped onto the porch into their arena, eyeball to eyeball with the disheveled one, and, oh, he didn’t like me in his bubble. But I figured I wouldn’t get another chance like this to toss a perfect pizza into the fan blades, so I got even closer. Today was my diplomatic immunity, before my depression or their defensiveness took over. Like that moment you get pulled over for speeding, but your wife is going into labor, and they say, “Follow us!” and put on the sirens, and you all break the laws together, pizzas flying everywhere. All three of them were trapped with me in these bubbles of rising crust and huge, impervious, potentially nuclear explosions of ruby-red pizza goodness.

“Listen, please don’t use the word ‘power’ when you stand there twisting the sweat out of your lid,” I said up into his nose, considering a quick bite of the booze-busted blood vessels on the end of his beak. “You stand there fantasizing how you can tell this story over pork chops later, and I have to endure making you feeling okay about making me feel bad?”

The big one got a little fire back in his eyes, remembering I was just some citizen disrespecting him, and he was going for the mirror glasses so he could push back with his sovereignty, too. But a hand appeared on his shoulder, then his hand appeared on that guy’s shoulder, then my own shoulder, then a couple more hands clapped over each other’s chests, and miraculously this Twister party calmed everyone back down. We were all cupping hands and it was impossible to blow up now.

“Sir, we know how upsetting this must be…”

I tried out a small shove against the big guy’s chest. He stumbled down a step, and the other two held up their hands.

“Whoa, whoa…”

Hands were back on everybody’s shoulders but mine.

“Let’s go, Joe,” the small one said, pulling the big one away. I watched them get into their car, the detective looking like he still had a lot to say. So I pushed my luck and followed them to the cruiser, knocking on the window good and hard. I’d always wanted to do that, too. The detective stood with the door open, and the big cop, the driver, rolled down his window, holding his breath behind pursed lips.

That’s when I saw their hands hadn’t been clapping each other’s chests and shoulders to restrain themselves, but instead they’d been covering up the electronic eyes of their body cameras in case one of them snapped.

A brave new world, I decided. And a whole new kind of restraint.

“Don’t leave town, Mr. James,” the detective said finally, climbed in. “Someone will be by to talk to you again.”

I smiled. Even though I’d just found out my wife was dead, and even though I would begin the second half of my cursed life where things that made sense for half a minute when we were together wouldn’t make sense anymore and happiness was only like that movie we saw once but couldn’t remember the ending. I smiled because I could say something in that moment to make a cop feel foolish. And how often do you get the chance? This smile would cost me months of guilt and incrimination, and eventually something even worse, but I still believe it was worth it.

Then they were gone, and any dashboard cameras or body cameras or covert plastic eyeballs would miss my honest reaction, even if it was no different.

After the cops left, I may have stood there for an extra dozen deep breaths, even considered sticking around if I had any faith in the Louisville police department, or if I hadn’t so effectively gotten the investigation off on the wrong foot by jamming mine in my mouth. I thought about my wife and our future baby curled up in a guitar case like grisly Russian nesting dolls, and I thought about how much she would have enjoyed that doorway exchange, considering her recent anti-authoritarian research, but mostly I stood there and thought about how we’d always joked about her height, about her being so short a hawk might swoop down to grab her on a jog. Which is kinda what happened after all. But she was no nesting doll. This didn’t make any sense. A guitar case? Even Angie wasn’t that small.

“Matryoshkas,” she told me once. “That’s what those dolls are called.”

I’d mangled the word when we came across a pile of rusted playground hobby horses during our honeymoon trip to Corpus Christi, stacked up high under an overpass in order of decreasing size. She loved horses, even though she knew this was expected.

I thought about how impossibly small a guitar case was to comfortably house a human body, alive or dead, and remembered the time we’d watched guitar cases chase each other around a Louisville airport carousel after Texas as we waited for our lost luggage. We were getting frustrated by the passengers breathing down our necks and elbowing us in the ribs, all waiting for their lost bags, too. We got a good laugh when one little fiddle case got stuck on the conveyor belt and backed up the bags to upset everyone even more, until a guitar case slid down to knock it loose. I almost pulled the guitar out of it to pretend it was mine as an excuse to abandon our stuff and be done with the day. Until Angie asked me, “What if you have to prove you can play it?”

Eventually our heads were hanging low, and the sleepy tail-end of her wine buzz had quieted us both down to grumbling and teeth grinding. Then she pointed to a sign and laughed: “Wouldn’t it be more fun if this said ‘Personal Baggage Claim’ instead?”

It took me a second, but then I lost it, too, no matter how close to home that joke was. I said, “Oh, you mean you’d rather watch a turnstile full of exes, neglectful parents, missed birthdays, broken promises, minor scandals, Electra and Oedipal complexes, all rolling down the ramp?”

“Yes. That,” she declared. “Then these people might hesitate to swarm this carousel so darn close!”

She always got away with stuff like that because of her height. And when she explained how “Matryoshka” didn’t really mean “nesting doll” at all, that it was just a name for any little old Russian biddy, small but sturdy, I realized this was her in a nutshell. Curled up in a nutshell, I mean, feet pinned over her head.

But that day, strangers backed up from the turnstile when she shouted. She was small, but had that kind of power. I wouldn’t wield that level of power until I put on the horse’s head.

Before I could come to my senses, I ran back inside and packed up all my stuff to leave town, jamming a couple head-to-toe changes of clothes into my suitcase with the ratty customs slips still attached, quickly realizing that a suitcase was almost too small to hold a textile facsimile of a human being, let alone the entire human, alive or otherwise.

And a guitar case was smaller than this? Insanity.

I also realized I’d lost my wallet somewhere in the chaos of the day, and for some reason, the loss of a valid I.D. helped to convince me in the moment that I was doing the right thing by getting the hell out of Dodge. The rubber horse’s head went in last.

The streets of Kentucky were quiet, even with my windows down, and I drove holding my breath in my throat. I headed down Bardstown road, back to the alley near the Keep Louisville Weird shop with the cut-out circus-clown photo-op out front. This was the store where I used to make Angie laugh by putting on the same floppy horse’s head, but never buying it. It was always her idea to do it, and I complained it would be terrible for a bank robbery because the animal’s eyes never lined up with my own, and she’d say, “Ride your horse head for good, not evil.”

I knew it was a borderline fetish for her though, because every Wednesday Angie and her girlfriends would head down to the Davis Arena for another Ohio Valley Wrestling moron-a-thon. The problem was Louisville’s wrestling scene wasn't small enough for a bunch of PhD students to be there ironically, like Pittsburgh's rattly little Keystone State Wrestling Alliance had been, a weekend laugh where we’d hung out a couple times back in grad school just to watch assholes munch light bulbs and smack staples and thumbtacks into each other's heads, everything sinking into their skulls with the ease of December porch pumpkins. And Davis Arena wasn’t big enough for the full-on kitsch factor either. Like Arena Football, and remember how embarrassing that shit was? It was kinda in the middle. The porridge that was just stupid.

Her girlfriends would tease her because she used to root for this big dude who was supposedly "half horse." I hoped they meant his head. Seriously though, there really was this Mexican kid who called himself the "Lucha Horse." They bought her the T-shirt and everything. Maybe he was Mexican. No one would know with the mask, so it was a real mystery. Which meant, in the days of the internet, that nobody gave a shit enough to make anything up. At the time though, Angie had been practicing one of her Learn Spanish apps with me for so long that I did know his name in English translated as "Something Horse."

Goofy horse heads everywhere though! It was a big Derby town. It was also where I chatted up a clerk I called “‘90s Ex-Girlfriend” because she had that reddish Kool-Aid colored hair so popular back then. I’d have that clerk repeat how much the horse head cost at least a dozen times because all I could ever think while looking at her was what I wanted to say to the real ‘90s ex-girlfriend who unceremoniously dumped me, like, “Sorry for all the free movies!” This was also the joint where they had a terrifying life-size Walt Disney, who was sporting half a moustache and steadily disintegrating much faster than the real thing. They had some cool stuff, too, like a Spencer’s Gifts from back before malls morphed into boat shows, and Angie talked me into buying one of their ant farms, even after what horror befell my first ant farm back when I was a kid.

But I was circling their stomping grounds, and the musicians were gone. Calling them “musicians” was a stretch. In any warm state, they were a common infection, a topical rash. Where Angie had grown up in Minnesota, they called street musicians “buskers.” This word made me homicidal the first time I heard it, and this was before I suspected one of murder.

Then I saw a conspicuously clean spot on the street where a guitar case used to be. A spot that at first glance resembled the curve of a woman’s hips, and I remembered this particular guitar case on this particular corner because I was always amazed how little money the guy always made. I got out of the car and crouched down in the street to touch the edges of the sidewalk outline, still unable to comprehend how my wife could have fit inside. I glanced up at the Keep Louisville Weird store and wished I’d bought that horse head for Angie, and not just so I could be wearing it right now. It was supposed to be our final Kentucky Derby costume, “a jockey and her steed,” she called it, and all she’d need was her ‘90s Fly Girl hat. But what turned out to be our final Derby had been a fiasco, so the idea was dropped.

Inside the store, I could see ‘90s Ex-Girlfriend rearranging the skin-tight hipster Mothman T-shirts for the window display, and I noticed she was about six months pregnant, but only three months from the Kool-Aid growing out of her hair. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of an instrument thrumming low inside its coffin as it bounced around off someone’s scrawny knees, and I turned to see a musician slinking through the alley. He turned the corner, top hat all askew, carefully manicured orange beard and ragged accordion under one arm, metal triangle around his wrist, heavy instrument case of unknown origin clipping the brick road every third step. He saw me and set up shop, squeezing out a song in record time, tapping the triangle like Pavlov and bringing his fingers down on that tuneless monstrosity, and suddenly I was convinced he’d switched to the accordion because something had happened to his guitar.

I grabbed him around the collar and got right up in his coffee breath.

“Were you here this morning?”

He smiled and croaked a mournful note from the harmonic rig around his neck, it was almost enough for me to snap right there. Then I remembered the triangle.

The man has a triangle.

I buried my fist in his mouth, then kneed him in the gut, java breath covering us in a cloud. Then I put the toe of my boot through the teeth of the accordion’s grill. Both of them made the same tortured squawk, and they both kept smiling. I’d never worn boots in my life until we moved down south, but after six months or so, Angie and I both ended up with a half dozen pairs each. Boots were required in Kentucky, even if it did mean you slipped all over the sidewalk when it was wet. But one benefit was made clear when I booted my first adversary with those sharp toes. That’s when I was suddenly swarmed by a bevy of stinky street maestros avenging their friend, but I would have thought it was just one busker moving really, really fast all around me in a tornado of weed and onions if it wasn’t for the colorful tinkling of holiday baubles in their beards. Trendy beard bling made for great targets, and my fists were finding them.

So much for never punching anyone in Kentucky…

But they seemed to be multiplying around me. A whole band now, including jug and spoon sections, and I beetled up on the street, realizing the alley would hide the brawl long enough for me to conceivably get hurt pretty severely by these dudes, though I was soaking up shots like they were barely there, their fists and hard-earned guitar-string calluses rebounding off my head like balloon animals. I wrote this off as adrenaline and their vegetarian diets, but I was still nervous enough to reach into my jacket for my secret weapon.

My hand went deep into my pocket, then past the pocket where the lining had torn, and my fingers found the extra pouch sewn into the back of the coat for hauling waterfowl. My duck coat was one of those big hunting jackets you’d find at Cabela’s. Angie got it as a gift back when she still harbored dreams of me hunting with her dad and bonding someday. Her dad was one of those guys who practically lived at Cabela’s and killed every animal that made the mistake of wandering onto his property, and he was always trying to goad me into going out and “getting us some ducks.” But I’d had my fill of adventures with her dad ever since the first time I stayed at their cabin for Christmas and he went out for groceries and hit a deer with his car. He ran back inside asking someone for help, and Angie said, “Go with him. Bond!” So I dutifully rode back to the scene of his crime and tried to aim the headlights into the ditch as ordered, while he bumbled around with the .22 from his pile of pistols in the glove box. I heard a gunshot, then a “Damn!” then another shot and a panicked “Pop the trunk!”

Then he came back into the light dragging this gangly limp thing by the head, blood all over his chest. Her dad was a hairy man, and there were several times I’d seen him from a distance and thought, “Oh, man, now he’s sleeveless?” but then he’d turn out to be shirtless instead. This night was no exception.

So I jumped out and ran behind the car and did what I was told, and there in the trunk was a coyote so frozen you could pick it up by the tail. He’d forgotten about the last thing he shot, or maybe hit with his car, and he was staring at it just as confused as I was. But I did take the expensive coat from Angie as a peace offering, pretending I might hit the woods with her dad one day after all. Because there was a silver lining to it all, literally. Hidden in the back of my jacket, for just the right opportunity.

The brass knuckles I’d bought for the best man at our wedding were illegal, but that’s what I needed. I figured if you could commit a crime against humanity like playing an accordion in public, there was no reason they could outlaw such a beautiful natural extension of a man’s hand. Originally, I’d gotten all my groomsmen the brass knuckles as a joke, but quickly realized there was a whole subculture of knuckles mania online, all custom made, all very serious. So once I secured some decent knuckles for my brother Lloyd, I couldn’t just give everybody else the tin versions. So everybody got heavy-duty knuckles, forged from Nautical brass and surrounded by warnings and disclaimers, and Lloyd’s cost something like twice as much as the rest. Some of my groomsmen, the ones who’d driven to the wedding, they’d taken to displaying them on their coffee tables or man caves whenever I came to visit, which made it very easy to steal them all back, but I still hadn’t got the knuckles back from my brother. He earned his though, being the first person I’d ever seen in a real fight. And on that day, he was smart enough to put in his plastic football mouthpiece before he ran into the mob, which was the next best thing to wearing a huge rubber horse’s head in a brawl.

But during the Apocalyptic Busker Beating, I grabbed my golden fist and worked on putting these musicians to sleep. Then I blew some blood out my nostril and moved on to the blackjack. A few cracks across the temple and half the musicians were on the ground in seconds, dreaming of album covers they’d never autograph, while the other half were running for their lives, beards trailing like neckties. It seemed like they were trying some made-for-TV moves on me during the battle, but maybe it was my imagination. Do buskers dig wrestling, too? They have that sort of earnest sincerity that they’d totally believe in it, I bet.

But there’s one big clue wrestling is fake, only you'd have to be in a fight to realize it. When things end up on the ground in real life, they stay there forever.
I tried some moves myself just for kicks, things I remembered as a kid, or maybe from the half-ass talents of the Keystone Wrestling League. Cross chop, forehand chop, Mongolian chop. Wrestlers were always using a those open-fist chops instead of punches to minimize actual damage. But that shit changes real quick when you're chopping with a blackjack. In fact, if you handed every professional wrestler a blackjack instead of a feather boa, the sport would be more famous than Rollerball, or at least roller derby. Do they still have roller derby?
“Clotheslines,” now that move was a great visual punch line on the television screen. Face down on the street though? With nowhere to fly, it breaks all the bones.
One move I did try to highlight was the Bronco Buster, since it seemed to fit the theme. It's where you ride a dude like a horse. Only I was the horse. What a twist. There was probably a Mule Kick in there, too, but that's as close as I came to a signature move. I guess a blackjack “Go to Sleep” move probably counts, too, but that move is universal, no matter the tool, and certainly not relegated to an arena.

It seems like a no-brainer, but the one thing I did not do was break a guitar over anyone’s head.

Remember the ol’ "El Kabong!" a shout made famous by the cartoon horse Quick Draw McGraw? More specifically his vigilante alter ego and his patented guitar smash over the bad guys' domes. I couldn’t do it. It felt like way too much symmetry to risk it.

I crouched over Orange Accordion Man where he still laid and open-hand smacked him until he told me every corner where Louisville guitar players danced for their dinners. I wasn’t even sure why I needed that info, because I’d come with the intention of accosting the first singer-songwriter I saw, but suddenly I had this fantasy about being a seedy, sweaty fuck of a private eye right out of the movies, bumbling my way around Kentucky, beating the treble clefs out of hippies and hipsters alike.

Afterwards, I went back to the guitar-shaped spot on the street. It was a huge mistake what I did next, but on the list of incriminating things I’d done since I’d received the news, it was barely in the top five.

I took out a piece of chalk and outlined the clean spot for real, like the crime scene it needed to be.

Quick Draw McGraw…

I outlined a guitar that wasn’t there, then the shape of my wife within that outline to see if she’d fit.

I hoped this would help the police. Maybe one of the buskers was mad Angie didn’t throw ‘em a quarter, or maybe she threw the quarter too hard, or maybe our heated discussions outside Keep Louisville Weird about class theory and padlocks and doomed childhood ant farms drowned out all their terrible music.

Then I saw Orange Accordion Man wasn’t getting right up, and the accordion wasn’t smiling. So I ran across the street to the Smoothie King and asked for some ice, remembering how Angie did the same weeks earlier when she went jogging too far and almost stroked out, calling me from the shade of a trash can, scared her body had stopped sweating. That was the most terrified I’d ever been. Until this morning with the cops at my door.

I came back with the ice and poured some down the guy’s shirt to see if he’d jump. Nothing. So I worked on the outline of the guitar again, and Angie inside the guitar, then I laid down with them both and put my arm around her. I still wasn’t entirely convinced my wife would fit inside. But it was close. I might have blacked out.

I came to my senses and rolled toward the prone tunesmith, his shirt wet from the melted ice, survival instincts beginning to kick in. I was no doctor, by any stretch of the definition, couldn’t even claim the rhetoric-and-composition PhD loophole like my wife could, but my earlier ice-down-the-shirt diagnosis was good enough for me. I got out my throwback ‘90s clamshell phone and called the police, told them to check out some sidewalk art in the alley. Said it might help with their case, knowing full well it wouldn’t. This, combined with skipping town before dusk on the same day I was informed of my new status as a widower, probably shot me right to the top of their list, of course. I imagined the head detective from my doorstep at that exact moment, taking my picture from the pile and pinning it to the tip top of their pyramid of suspects, then taking a magic marker and drawing on a bridle. Seriously, I prayed it was my caller I.D. picture from Angie’s phone, where I was wearing the leering rubber horse head from Keep Louisville Weird, because no way a picture like that ever gets demoted from the top spot, even if they ever catch the real killer.

Later I would read in the comic-book version of my story that the cops searched that alley real good, but instead of pondering my chalk outline, they found an innocent street musician in a coma, triangle somehow locked around his neck in a permanent chokehold, and an accordion that would need braces.

They also found the rubber horse head I was wearing throughout the assault, though I’d swear on a stack of telephone books I had no recollection of ever buying such a ridiculous thing, let alone putting it on when I stepped out of my car. But a splash-page sketch of my horse head askew on my shoulders, my golden fist clenched tight, my full uniform with my collar up high, would all be right there in the middle of that dog-eared paperback. I vowed to find a horse’s head that would fit much better than that and wouldn’t look quite so crazy.

“El Niño Maravilla took the slap to the chest like a champ. It felt like someone had smacked him in the sternum with a bunch of dry twigs and he wanted to rub the area and take a break until the stinging sensation went away, but his life was in danger and he had to stay in the match. He knew that he needed to do something big to defeat La Momia de Guanajuato, so he waited for the next open-handed slap to come his way and ducked underneath it. La Momia was kinda slow and El Niño Maravilla was very fast and agile, like you, mijo, so he pulled it off without problem and ran to the corner. While La Momia was turning around, El Niño climbed like a monkey to the top of the turnbuckle and then turned around and placed his feet on the top rope on either side of it. La Momia came at him, his skinny legs moving stiffly across the ring, puffs of dust coming from his mouth as it tried to scream in frustration. When it was close enough, El Niño jumped, did a fantastic somersault in midair that left the packed theater breathless, and came down on top off La Momia’s head with his fists together. His hands weren’t that big, but put together like that they turned into a little wrecking ball that knocked La Momia’s head off and…”

“The whole thing?” asked Luisito, his eyes almost popping out of his tiny skull.

“The whole thing, mijo, clean off. The head landed on the mat and started rolling away. El Niño Maravilla took advantage of the situation and kicked La Momia’s stick-like legs really hard. One of them snapped. The rolling head and broken leg had some people in the audience passing out and others screaming at the top of their lungs, but El Niño didn’t care; it was time to win the match. He rolled away from La Momia’s falling body and stood up. As soon as the sack of bones hit the mat, El Niño was on top of it, his legs splayed for balance and his small torso pressing down on the wriggling monster. The ref landed next to him immediately. His hand came down hard on the mat…one…two…

“Three! El Niño Maravilla wins again!” screamed Luisito, getting up, lifting his arms, and jumping up and down on the mattress.

“Keep it down, mijo, or your mom will come in here and send us both to bed with red asses.”

Luisito smiled at his father and sat back down.

“That was an awesome story, daddy. Can you tell me the one about El Niño Maravilla and El Zombie Maldito?”

“No, it’s too late. You got school tomorrow. I’ll tell it to you tomorrow night, deal?”

Luisito grunted his disappointment, but then moved his tiny body forward and hugged his father. Juan hugged his son back and felt a pinch on his right shoulder. He needed some aspirin and rest. He had some matches coming up that weekend. Big matches. The new company in town, Capitol Sports Promotions, wanted top-notch entertainment, and he wanted to deliver exactly that. Rumor had it that they were offering juicy contracts to any talented wrestler who also happened to be a crowd favorite, and Juan knew he had both of those things going for him. Yeah, the years were catching up to him, but with the right chemicals, he still had a few good years in his body, and he wanted to make the most of them, especially if it led to some decent money.

“Time for bed, mijo. Get in your spot and I’ll tuck you in.”

With a smile on his face, the kid did as he was told. Juan’s massive hands tucked the thin sheet all around his son’s body. Then he kissed his head and wished him a good night.

Instead of going to the kitchen and grabbing some food, Juan stopped in the hallway’s bathroom first. He wanted to keep the shoulder pain under control before it became a thing. He opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed the white aspirin bottle, and popped two in his mouth before swallowing them with a handful of warm water from the sink.

He was putting the bottle back on the shelf when a scream came from the kitchen. It stabbed him in the ear like a knife covered in fear. His wife, Marisol, had been doing the dishes when he and Luisito started their nightly ritual. A thousand scenarios flashed across his brain as he ran out of the bathroom. Juan’s large body was halfway through the kitchen door’s threshold when something slammed into his midsection with the power of a mule kick. He bent over, the air leaving his lungs with the speed of a bullet. A hand the size of a baseball mitt grabbed him by the back of the neck. A knee came up to meet his face. The crunch was loud and blinding. Balls of white light danced in his vision. Juan felt his body fly back and he instinctively threw his arms back to lessen the fall. Tears flooded his eyes.

“Enough!” said a nasal, angry voice. “Pull him up and sit him down.”

The same meaty paw that had grabbed him by the neck now pulled at Juan’s shirt, this time with some help from its twin. Juan felt his body defeat gravity with too much ease and wondered if Bigfoot had somehow ended up in his kitchen because he’d never met a man capable of manhandling his 250 pounds like that, inside or outside the ring.

The Bigfoot pushed him toward the table and shoved him down into a chair. Juan blinked away the tears and inhaled, wondering if he had any broken ribs. Through his flooded eyes, he saw his wife sitting across from him and a man standing behind her. Then a muffled scream came from the door and he turned. A man about his size was coming into the kitchen with Luisito in his arms, one hairy hand covering his mouth. He placed his hands on the table and jumped up. Whatever had been used to deflate him as he entered the kitchen was used again, this time across his back. His body interpreted the message and sat the fuck back down.

“Relax, Santo,” said the man behind his whimpering wife. “I’m here to discuss business, not to hurt your family.”

Juan rubbed his eyes and blinked again. He saw the man more clearly now. He was pudgy, dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit. He had a bad comb-over and a goatee that looked painted on and did nothing to hide his second chin. He had a small, black gun in his right hand. Juan peeled his eyes from the goateed asshole and looked to the right. Standing next to him was the biggest man he’d ever seen. The guy was almost seven feet tall and looked like he was smuggling bowling balls in his biceps. His arms were a roadmap of veins pushed against too-thin skin stretched tight over cartoonish muscles. Juan had walked into a gym for the first time at 17, and now that he was 38, he had seen everything steroids could do. Whatever this man had been injecting came from Jupiter. The bat the man was holding looked like a fat toothpick in his hands. Looking at it sent another jolt of pain into Juan’s brain. He was going to need an aspirin and morphine burrito to keep the pain that was coming his way under control.

“My name is Carlos Ramírez, Santo. I’m the owner of Capitol Sports Promotions. I bought the company from Carlos Colón a few years ago and decided to move it to Mexico, which is a great place for wrestling. By now you’re aware that we’re here and making waves. I know this because your name is on the card for this weekend’s fights. You with me so far, Santo?”

Juan’s wrestling name was El Nuevo Santo. It was a name that paid homage to the wrestlers he grew up loving, but mostly a moniker that celebrated El Nieto del Santo, his coach for many years and the man responsible for making him a known figure in the world of wrestling. When El Nieto del Santo retired, he made an in-ring ceremony to name him El Nuevo Santo. Then the old man had allowed his religion to take over and, instead of staying in town and reaping the benefits of being a legend, had disappeared to a small shack on the outskirts of town in order to spend his days praying to his Orishas and sacrificing small animals far from judging eyes. Hearing someone call him Santo in his own kitchen was weird.

Juan nodded. He wanted to tell the man to go fuck himself, but his wife’s pleading eyes, Luisito squirming in the big man’s arms a few feet away, and the monster standing next to him ready to homerun his nuts into the night kept him quiet.

“Good. I can see you fine folks were already calling it a day, so I’ll keep this short. The man to your right? That’s Ringo “El Crazy Gringo” Cannon. He already ended a few careers in the states, including those of Grizzly Devil and The Sexecutioner, who had more female fans in Florida than you do in this whole damn country. This weekend, he will establish himself as Mexico’s next sensation…by defeating your old, tired ass. You’re on your way out anyway, so consider it a small sacrifice.”

The chubby man stopped talking and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Then he brought the hand, gun included, down and placed it next to Marisol’s left temple.

“Just so you understand what is being negotiated here tonight, let me tell you how it will all go down. Ringo will not only defeat you; he will defeat you in a bloody match that will go down in history as one of the most hardcore matches ever. You will bleed for me, Santo. You will bleed at the hands of Ringo in order to make him a celebrity, a fucking legend. If you don’t, then your lovely wife and your snotty brat over there will bleed for you. I will come back, tie you down, and make you watch as they bleed, you hear me?”

Juan tried to nod again, but this time his mouth took over.

“Fuck you. I will…”

Carlos cracked the butt of the gun down on top of Marisol’s head. She screamed, threw her hands up and grabbed her head while making herself small on the chair. Luisito whimpered. Juan jumped up. The bat lashed out and struck near his kidney. He collapsed. He was going to piss blood for a week.

“This is not a ring, Santo. You can’t do shit about this. I’m actually playing nice with you, and I suggest you do the same. It’d be a shame to have your son watch as Ringo has a little fun with mommy, wouldn’t it?”

Juan wanted to get up, rip the bat from Ringo’s hands, and take his time pummeling each of the three men invading his home. He wanted to watch them bleed, to watch them cry with toothless mouths. Instead, he had to focus on not passing out from the pain.

“Now that you know what you need to do on Saturday, I will take my man and walk out of this house. If you try anything funny or call the cops, which in this town is always a mistake, I will do everything I just told you before Saturday rolls around. You copy all that, Santo?”

The grunt that came from Juan’s mouth was far from a yes, but that’s how Carlos chose to interpret it.

“Good, old man, good. I will see you on Saturday.”

Carlos pointed the gun at him and addressed Luisito and Marisol.

“You two need to stay put. Don’t even go to help him up until we’re outta this place. If you do, I will make him pay for your mistakes while you watch.”

Ringo chuckled. The other man put Luisito down and shoved him toward his mother.

“Hey, Santo, you remember those epic, ridiculously bloody battles between folks like Carlos Colón and Abdullah The Butcher? I grew up on that shit. Anyway, that’s how bad I want it to be this weekend. I want the match to go down in history as a fucking bloodfest. I want ladies to pass out. I want dudes to turn to the side and puke their guts out looking at the carnage in the ring. You do that for me and Ringo, you get to come home…well, you get to go to the hospital and then come home to a bit of peace and your family intact. After that, maybe I’ll send you a little something, a little retirement gift if you will, but I don’t want your brown, masked ass in another ring as long as you’re alive.”

The anger bubbling in Juan’s chest was almost strong enough to get him off the ground and make him start swinging. Almost. Instead, he felt close to blacking out and his head was already working on a way to fix the clusterfuck he was currently in. From the floor, he nodded again, swearing to himself that he would make Carlos pay for every damn nod.

The men slowly moved around him and left the house. When the door closed behind them, Marisol and Luisito ran to him, both asking questions he was in no shape to answer. In his brain, used to years of planning in less than a second, a plan had already formed. He didn’t have much time, but at least he knew what he needed to do. If that pudgy asshole wanted blood, Juan was going to make sure he had enough of it to drown an army.

The sun was beating down on the world as Juan approached the tiny village on the outskirts of town. He noticed the same things he had noticed on his two previous trips here to check on his mentor: boarded up windows, no mailbox, and everything around the house that was supposed to be green was either brown of yellow. The house stood against a desolate backdrop, and anyone seeing it from afar would guess the place was abandoned. Juan knew that wasn’t the case.

He stepped up to the door and knocked. No sound came from the other side.

“Maestro, soy yo,” he said.

A second later, the door creaked open. El Nieto del Santo looked like a deflated, shrunken version of a large man. He wore white pants and no shirt. His brown skin hung from his body like an oversized shirt and his muscles painted lines under his skin with the remaining tautness in them. The man made Juan think of a stick figure covered with burned chicken skin. Vein-covered egg yolks had apparently replaced the whites of his eyes and the lines in his face and forehead were deep enough to plant trees in. Around his necks, multi-colored beads hung like a remnant of a wild night in New Orleans.

“Hola, mijo, es bueno verte,” said the old man, stepping aside to let Juan enter the house.

There is an unspoken understanding that defies reality between people who have spent a lot of time together, and the invisible bridge that joined El Nieto del Santo and Juan was as strong as any stone bridge built by man. The old man knew his protégé needed something and Juan knew better than to beat around the bush when talking to a man who was like a father to him. Instead of wasting time the way normal people would, Juan simply asked about his mentor’s health and then told him about the men who had come into his home and threatened his family.

“Mi cuerpo ya no aguanta peleas, Juanito, así que dime cómo puedo ayudarte.”

If Juan had needed muscle to back him up, he would have gone to the gym. Instead, he was here, and he explained to his mentor what he wanted. The old man’s rheumy eyes widened, but he didn’t say no or shake his head. In fact, there was no reply at all. El Nieto del Santo motioned for Juan to follow him and led him into a tiny backroom where small tables full of candles, fruit offerings, and tiny round plates filled with coagulating blood stood at the feet of a bunch of saint statues. The bones of larger animals littered the floor. Dark stains on the walls spoke of the violent splattering of bodily fluids and who knew what else. The smell was overpowering, but there were no flies to be seen.

El Nieto del Santo began to pray, mumbling under his breath in a language Juan had never heard. Then he picked up a bottle of rum from under one of the tables, took a large gulp, and spat it in Juan’s face and across his chest. Juan closed his eyes, but he knew better than to wipe it off.

The old man whispered and screamed and smeared rum and blood all over Juan’s body for about twenty minutes. At first, it just felt weird and a bit scary, a tad crazy. Then Juan realized that the pain in his ribs was gone. The feeling was followed by a new energy inside him, something strange that made his muscles feel the way they felt when he had a good pump going at the gym. He felt bigger, fuller, far more powerful than he had ever felt.

Finally, El Nieto del Santo stopped his prayers and patted Juan’s cheek in a paternal way.

“Lo que pediste ya está hecho, mijo. Ahora tienes una oportunidad de usarlo todo. Después de eso, los Orishas se irán de tu cuerpo, saciados con la sangre que derrames. Sólo recuerda beber un poco de ella.”

Having to drink some blood in exchange for this power, even if it was for a single night, was a deal Juan was willing to take, and he told El Nieto del Santo he would follow his instructions religiously.

At the door of the dark shack, Juan turned around and asked his mentor for one more favor. The old man nodded. Juan would trust that nod with his life, so that’s exactly what he did.

The place was packed. Even if the man running it was an asshole, Capitol Sports Promotions knew what it was doing. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house. The crowd was buzzing. Children, adults, and even a couple of old timers talked about their predictions, all wondering if, like the flyer said, they would witness “a passing of the torch” that night. The sound of bodies hitting the mat and the crowd screaming in response was a wonderful cacophony that flowed into Juan’s ears and calmed his soul.

In the locker room, Juan did pushups and allowed his mind to drift into that of El Nuevo Santo. Two goons had shown up at his house hours before the fight and told him to bring his family to the auditorium. They would keep them company while he was in the ring. Any funny business, and Marisol and Luisito would disappear from the venue before he could reach them. Juan used that anger to keep himself focused. He was eager to get to the ring. The new power in his muscles made him feel weird, and he was aching to try it out. He’d lost count of how many pushups he’d done, but his chest felt fresh and his triceps felt like he could keep going for hours.

Juan stood up, stretched, and looked at the clock above the lockers. It was almost time. He picked up his bag from the floor and entered the bathroom beside the locker room. He locked the door behind him, approached the sink, and placed his bag on top of it. He unzipped the bag and pulled out some ketamine and a gram of cocaine. The bottle of ketamine said VEDCO on the front. Juan pulled out a new syringe, uncapped it, and used it to puncture the top of the bottle. The clear liquid quickly filled the syringe. Fuck measuring it, thought Juan. This was all or nothing. His arms were so pumped from the pushups that he didn’t even need to tie his biceps. The needle slid into his vein without a problem. He slowly injected the entire contents of the syringe and pulled it out. No blood came out. Next, he opened the blow baggie, poured its contents next to the sink, and scraped them into two thick lines with his finger. He bent over, placed his head right above the first line, and snorted it into the back of his throat like a feral hog at a Hollywood party. The Devil’s dandruff punched his brain. Hard. It was good stuff. It would let the ketamine do its thing while keeping him on the ground and moving. Juan tensed his jaw, slapped himself in the chest, and bent down again to make the second line disappear.

Something new invaded his system. The power El Nieto del Santo’s gods had given him in exchange for blood was great, but this was like icing on the cake. He was a monster. He was indestructible.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Hey, Santo, you’re up, man!”

Juan zipped the bag back up and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils larger than he’d even seen them. He grunted and walked out.

The crowd’s “San-to! San-to!” chant was battling against a large portion of the crowd who were screaming “Rin-go! Rin-go!” This was an epic clash, a battle of titans, a match for the ages, and everyone in the crowd knew it. Some wanted their old favorite to prevail, to show the gringo that Mexicans were still the kings of lucha libre. A second group of folks wanted new blood, a larger-than-life antihero to fill their lives with destruction and make them vicariously feel the glory of absolute domination. Juan was ready to find out which group would go home happy.

The bell rang. Juan vanished. El Nuevo Santo lived.

El Crazy Gringo darted forward at a speed no man his size should have possessed. He and Santo locked into each others’ heads. The gringo brought his massive boot up and kicked Santo’s stomach so hard his 250 pounds left the mat for a second. Santo felt nothing. He looked at El Crazy Gringo with wild eyes and laughed.

“That all you got, pinche gringo? You’re gonna need more than that to walk away from this match.”

Ringo looked confused for a second. Then he smiled.

“Nice acting, old man. Now start playing your part or I’m gonna find out how it feels to be deep in your wife’s guts.”

El Nuevo Santo started bending Ringo’s hands. He felt the strength of old gods flowing through him. Ringo yelled, his macho smirk gone, replaced by confusion and pain. Santo kept turning the man’s gigantic hands toward his forearms, feeling the tendons strain way past the point they were used to. When Ringo screamed, Santo stopped, dropped the man’s hands, and punched him with a straight right that shattered his nose and cracked his two front teeth. The big man stumbled back, looking at Santo the way someone looks at an empty parking spot where they expected their car to be.

“Dude…your…your family, man!”

El Santo kept walking toward the bleeding giant. Ringo threw a haymaker. Santo turned toward the punch while turning his head down. Ringo’s wrist slammed against his forehead and cracked. Santo didn’t feel a thing. He brought his leg up and kicked the big American in the balls. The man bent in half. Santo threw his right leg back and then brought the knee up as hard as he could. Ringo’s jaw snapped like a dry stick in an alligator’s jaw. The huge body flew back against the ropes. Ringo howled and brought his hands up to his face.

El Nuevo Santo’s next two punches were a mean left hook to the body that snapped two ribs and a second straight right that smashed whatever was left of Ringo’s nose half an inch into his face. Blood came out like water from a busted faucet. However, the humongous man stayed upright.

“What the fuck are you…”

Santo silenced Ringo with another right. The gringo spat out chunks of teeth like white gravel. Santo looked at his hands, turned to the audience screaming, and licked his knuckles. He was feeding the old gods in his body, but as far as the audience was concerned, he was just giving them the spectacle of a lifetime.

Santo turned to Ringo again, bent his knees, and gave the big man an uppercut that sent him into the air. The big man came down hard, his body smacking the mat with the force of a pig carcass thrown from a second-story window. The crowd erupted again, frenzied like sharks smelling a bucket of blood. Santo kneeled next to Ringo’s head, held his hands away from his face, and sucked at the blood pouring out of the hole that had once been his nose.

With a mouthful of blood, Santo moved his knees and used his right one to trap Ringo’s forearm. Then he grabbed the man’s shattered wrist and pulled with everything he had. With a loud snap that could be heard above the screaming crowd, the gringo’s forearm bent ninety degrees in the wrong direction.

Santo stood up and looked at the crowd. The screams and blood coming from the man and the strange angle of his broken arm had been enough to plaster a look of fear on many faces, but the majority of them were whooping like horny gibbons, their arms thrown to the air, their faces full of excitement.

Ringo cradled his flapping arm and made a sound like a flooded engine. Santo looked at him and knew two working legs meant the man wasn’t entirely out of the fight yet, not with his size and strength. He looked at the crowd again, scanning it, and finally found Carlos near the first row, right behind the announcers’ table.

“Hey, Carlos! Remember how you said you grew up watching Carlos Colón? Watch this.”

Santo grabbed Ringo’s sprawled legs by the ankles, placed his left leg between them, crossed the big man’s leg, and threw his right leg over them. With the figure four leglock in place, he looked out at Carlos again. The chubby asshole’s face was redder than a cheap whore’s lipstick. Santo smiled at him and put as much pressure as he could on Ringo’s legs. This time, the snap came accompanied by a crunch as every ligament in the large wrestler’s leg gave out and his knee bent back so far it hit the mat.

With the beast out of commission, Santo stood up, kicked him in the face one last time for good measure, and looked at the crowd again. The doors in the back slammed closed. El Nieto del Santo had done his work. No one could leave the joint until Santo gave the word.

The men holding Marisol and Luisito looked ready to soil their pants as Santo jumped out of the ring and made his way toward them. The guy on the left took off, realizing he wasn’t being paid enough to take whatever the luchador was about to give him. The guy on the right, the big fucker who had pulled Luisito out of bed, cracked his knuckles like some idiot in an 80s straight-to-video action film. Santo looked at his wife and son and nodded. Marisol elbowed the man in the stomach and took off with Luisito. The man grabbed his gut and came at Santo.

Instead of ducking or blocking the punch, which the guy telegraphed like a newbie, Santo took it on the chin, shook his head, and yelled at the man.

“Fuck you, pinche pendejo!”

The luchador’s arms came flying from both sides and smashed into the sides of the goon’s head, right over his ears. Something cracked. His arms dropped. He visited some dead relatives in another dimension for two seconds. That was long enough for Santo to get his arms back into position and deliver a devastating elbow to the guy’s droopy face. Teeth shattered and the underside of his left eye socket caved. A second later, his eye wiggled a bit and dropped out of the destroyed socket with a wet plop. The man dropped back before Santo could pop him again.

The sound in the auditorium had built to an unstoppable frenzy. The chanting mixed in with the screaming to bring forth utter chaos. The old gods in Santo’s system feasted on all of it and whispered in his belly, telling him to drink more blood. Santo bent down, placed his mouth around the fallen goon’s eye socket and drank greedily from the warm, thick liquid that poured from it.

A bullet bit into the back of Santo’s right shoulder. He merely felt a push. He stood up and turned around. Carlos stood there, pointing the same blocky, black gun he’d used to hit Marisol on top of the head. Santo roared, slapped his chest, and walked toward the terrified promoter.

“I’ll kill you, motherfucker!”

Before Carlos could squeeze the trigger again, a small arm flew up between his legs from behind. Luisito. The hit didn’t crush his testicles, but was enough to get the wind out of him and distract him the two seconds Santo needed to get to him and wrench the gun out of his feeble grip.

“You came into my house and threatened my family, cabron. You said you wanted blood, right? Well, here’s some blood for you.”

Santo let his right hand fly. It crashed against Carlos’s face and his nose stayed crooked to the left. The fat man covered his face. Santo moved to the side and, remembering the bat against his kidney, gave him a hook to the left kidney that would have knocked out a horse. Carlos oomphed and dropped quicker than if he’d been shot in the face. Santo bent down and slapped his hands away before hitting him with another right. Then he took the obese bastard by the lapels and pulled him up. Santo’s teeth came down on Carlos’s forehead and he bit down. Carlos moved his hands up to protect himself, but Santo held him up with one hand and hit him with two more rights. The promoter’s hands dropped. Santo placed his mouth over Carlos’s eyebrow, bit down, and pulled back like a rabid pitbull. The chunk of flesh tore off. A flood of blood followed. Carlos didn’t even move. Santo licked at the flowing redness while the crowd around him became so loud the walls of the auditorium shook and threated to bury them all in rubble.

Santo slapped Carlos away. The man looked at him with one eye, the other one closed under a small flowing curtain of blood.

‘You’re gonna pack your shit and get the hell out of my town tonight, you hear me? If I ever see you again, I will rip your chest open and eat it before you die, pinche cabron.”

The look on Carlos’s face told Santo the man had heard him and would happily comply with his request. Santo lowered his right hand to the bleeding man’s thick neck and his left to his crotch. He squeezed both as he lifted and then heaved the bastard above his head. With a scream that silenced the auditorium, he threw the man like a sack of potatoes. Carlos landed about ten feet away.

Hands surrounded Santo. They lifted him into the air chanting his name. Then he saw other arms lifting Marisol and Luisito, bringing the family together under a pile of sweaty bodies.

This was his last fight, but after this, and after he told everyone what Carlos had done, he would go down in history as one of Mexico’s greatest luchadores. His legacy was cemented and his family was safe. Someone would make this night into a movie, and they’d have to pay him for it. He would also open up a gym and become a trainer, a mentor for the new generation. It was all good. Santo smiled. The electricity in his muscles was leaving. He didn’t feel as strong any more. That was not a problem. The Orishas had fed. They were happy. As Marisol and Luisito jumped into his bloodied arms, Santo wondered if the guy who’d hooked him up with the K and the blow would be able to get him some morphine because he had an inkling that aspirin wasn’t gonna cut it come the next morning.

At first, Mick thought the guy was wearing a mask.

A mask of his face.

The scar along his right eye didn’t check out but the broken jaw matched perfectly. Mick’s own jaw hung slightly to the right, a gift from the cage match back in ’96 that ended his career in the ring. The man wore a trench coat and army boots and gave Mick an exceptional case of the heebie jeebies.

“What was it like?” the girl in front of the table said.

Mick shook his head and he was back at the horror convention, surrounded by overpriced headshots.

“What was what like?” he said, wiping sweat from his cheeks.

“Working with Meyers, I mean.”

Of course. He’d never heard that one before. Work with Paul Meyers, legendary screenwriter and director, and you never heard the end of it. Especially when you worked on his most maligned film.

“It was great, honey. Real great. That man is a legend. Who should I make this out to?”

She seemed satisfied with his answer. “One to me, Megan, and the other to my friend Tiff. She’s a huge fan too.”

“That’s wonderful.” He wrote his signature, wincing from the stiffness in his left hand. On cold days the injury still gave him grief. The picture was a much younger “Mighty” Mick Manson. Less wrinkles and one hundred percent more badass. He wore an eye patch, a torn black tank top, and held a futuristic laser rifle. In the background was an army of spiderlike robots and behind them was a desecrated city that could’ve been New York or Chicago, though they’d filmed in Toronto.

The Reckoning was supposed to be his second shot at fame. It was a guaranteed blockbuster. A sci-fi summer popcorn flick with robots, aliens, mutants—hell, even a talking cybernetic ape as Mick’s sidekick. On paper, it had seemed like a solid financial decision. His agent had been adamant. Mick’s injury was not getting better, she’d insisted, so he’d done what many wrestlers had attempted and even fewer succeeded. He’d made the transition to action star.

And failed miserably.

The movie opened to countless shitty reviews, the kind that stung no matter how thick your skin. Mick stopped reading after a while. He’d hung a few in his office, pretended like they gave him inspiration, but truth be told, they made him wince to this day.

A fifth rate Arnold.

Terminator without the plot and talent.

Sci-fi snooze fest that begs the question: Who let this slip by?

To this day, Meyers refused to answer any question related to what he called his Vietnam. Before the film’s release, he’d had a string of so many hits, there were rumors the guy had sold his soul to the devil.

Fewer and fewer roles had come Mick’s way after that. A slasher here, a buddy cop flick there, until they stopped coming altogether. So he’d hopped on the convention circuit and made a decent living. If you counted one-sixteenth of his wrestling salary decent.

He signed the next few autographs on autopilot until the figure in the trench coat moved to the front of the line.

This close, the resemblance wasn’t just uncanny. It was fucking Twilight Zone.

A doppelganger.

Hadn’t he read somewhere that everyone had one?

Hadn’t he also read somewhere that if you came face to face with one, you’d lose your mind?

He felt himself sweating through his shirt. His bladder filled without warning and the men’s room seemed a day’s hike across the convention center.

The guy said nothing, only stared. Not at the pictures or the leftover “Mighty” bobble-heads. Just at Mick.

The scar ran from his forehead, through a milky eye, and stopped just above his lip. Something about it seemed familiar.

The concept drawings, he realized. When he’d been cast as Viper, the producers had shown him sketches of what his damaged eye would look like without the patch.

And the more he thought about it, the guy’s outfit was identical to Mick’s during production. He had photographic evidence scattered across the table.

The man held his hand out, clad in cut-off leather gloves. “Nice to meet you.” Even the voice was similar, like hearing yourself on the phone.

Mick gulped. “You too. Would you like an autograph? This one’s on the house. I’ve seen cosplay in my day but this is unbelievable.”

“Cos what?”

He’s just yanking your chain. It has to be a costume. You’re at a fucking costume Mecca.

Mick held up a Reckoning still and pointed. “You even got the scar down. Is that latex?”

“Latex?” The man leaned forward. “Look, we need to talk. Is there anywhere more…private?”

“You can ask me anything right here at the table. Don’t want the fans to think I’m leaving for the day.” Mick faked a smile.

The man sighed and scratched his stubble with yellowed fingernails. “Fine. Look, this is going to sound crazy but you’ve got to believe me.”

“Try me. I’ve heard it all.” It was only half true. His fans were, for the most part, of sane mind. He’d seen a selection of weirdos, even had a stalker once, but nothing compared to this.

“I’m sure by now you’re noticed that my resemblance is…uncanny.”

“You’re a bit a skinnier and older looking but I guess we could be cousins.”

The man did not laugh. Mick’s assessment, though, hadn’t been far off. His twin’s cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes encased by black circles. He looked as though he hadn’t had a warm meal or shower since Mick had still had a career. “We aren’t cousins. We’re one and the same.” He leaned in so that their noses were nearly touching. His breath was one part decay and three parts gingivitis. “I’m you. From another dimension. And I need your help.”

Mick’s smile widened, his jaw coming alive with pins and needles. He did not blink or flinch, even as he politely excused himself from the table. To call security.

From behind the curtain he watched as two men escorted his twin away from the table and into the lobby.

The guy looked back only once and though Mick was certain he was out of sight, he felt that milky eye look deep into his soul.

“You’re shitting me,” Tony said a few hours later.

“Scout’s honor.” Mick finished his drink in a generous gulp.

The hotel bar was packed. It was Saturday night and civilians and D-list celebs alike were getting drunk. It was almost beautiful.

“And you’re sure he’s not harmless? Just bustin’ your balls?”

Mick shrugged. “I guess he could be but he seemed so…I don’t know.”

“Convincing?”

“Yeah, convincing.”

Tony sipped his drink, something pink that smelled of pineapple and bubble gum. He’d never lost his flare for theatrics. His stage name had been Tony Terror, a pseudo biker character, clad in leather tight enough to classify as skin. He hadn’t been fooling anyone with the hot blondes on each arm that accompanied him to the ring. Now, years later, he too had resorted to horror flicks. Except he’d chosen more wisely. No failed blockbusters like Mick. Only hundreds of straight-to-video gore fests that brought in a steady if underwhelming income.

“So what,” Tony said, “you think this guy’s for real? Like he’s you from another planet?”

“Another dimension. That’s what he called it. And of course not.”

“These people are harmless for the most part but every now and then you get a real psycho. Just look him in the eye and smile.”

“That’s another thing.”

“What, honey? You gonna tell me he has your eyes?”

Mick didn’t answer.

“You sure that’s only your third drink?” He nodded toward the empty scotch that Mick badly wanted to refill.

“His right eye is…white. As in milky white, like it was damaged or something. Just like Viper.”

Tony did a piss-poor job at covering his smirk. “Just like Viper. I see where this is going now. And I like it. I’d feel bad if it wasn’t so much fun to watch. In fact, I’m gonna sit back while this plays out.” He looked at something behind Mick. “Because you, old pal, got company.”

A hand touched Mick’s shoulder. Not hard but enough to let him know this wasn’t a drill. He spun around and saw Milky Eye sitting on the closest bar stool. “That was some stunt you pulled earlier.”

“I’m sorry about that. I asked you nicely.”

“As did I. And now I’m asking again. I need to speak with you.” He looked at Tony, who sized him up in return, then lowered his voice. “Please. Just give me five minutes of your time. That’s all I’m asking. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

Mick sighed. He considered calling security again but they probably had their hands full this late into the night. The thing to do was listen to whatever the guy had to say and let him be on his merry way.

“You got five minutes.” He raised his glass. “Buy me a drink first.”

“I don’t have any money.”

Mick rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

Tony interjected. “Don’t worry. This one’s on me.” He flagged the bartender down, ordered another scotch for Mick. “Does your friend want anything?”

“Water.”

When the bartender brought their drinks. Viper drank his in two large gulps, belching loudly as if he hadn’t drank in weeks. Then he walked toward the lobby.

Mick turned back to Tony, who wasn’t trying to hide his laughter this time. “It’ll be fine. I’m dying to know what he has to say. Who knows? Maybe he really is Viper.”

Mick took his drink and left the bar.

The lobby was a tomb. A few straggling families sat at high tops finishing up burgers and shakes. A girl, dressed as a demonic angel, had fallen asleep on her stomach, skirt hiked up to reveal the world’s largest wedgie.

Viper leaned against a wall near the elevators. “You ready to listen?”

“Your five minutes start now.”

“What I said earlier, about this sounding crazy, it’s an understatement.” He closed his good eye so that only the milky white orb stared for a moment. Mick fought the urge to sprint back to the bar. “Ever heard of string theory?”

Yup, crazy all right. “You mean different dimensions and all that?”

Viper shrugged. “I guess. Heard it called that before. I’m not a man of science. But I am a man of my word. And I gave someone my word that I’d find you at all costs. Their life and the lives of millions depend on it.”

Mick didn’t know what to say so he just let the guy talk.

“I’m not some impersonator. I’m you—a different version of you. From a place like this one, only different. Where we’re standing right now, where I come from—it’s all rubble. In fact, most of the world is rubble.”

“Of course it is. Lemme guess. Alien invasion?”

“They’re called arachnoids and they’re dangerous beyond description. They were here, on earth, billions of years ago. Something scared them away but now they’re back and they’re ready to take it back. The world, I mean.”

Mick nodded. “I know all about arachnoids. I was the one to wipe them out. You gotta aim for the small red spot in the middle of their faces. It’s where their brains are located, the only soft spot on their exoskeleton.”

“I know what you’re thinking. This was my biggest fear about coming here. You think I’m just talking about the movie you made. The Reckoned.”

“Reckoning. Was supposed to make me millions.”

“Whatever it’s called, it’s not a movie where I come from. It’s life. And that’s why I’m here. I need to bring you back. The arachnoids have agreed to a trade. They want me in exchange for the planet. I killed one of their highest in command and they’re pissed about it. We both know they’ll kill me and the rest of us. But if there were two of me. If we could use you as a distraction…it might just work.”

He slow clapped. “I’ll give you points for originality. No one’s ever told me my shitty movie is real and monsters are going to wipe out Earth 2.0. But I’m tired and drunk and I just want to go to bed so I can sign headshots for six hours tomorrow. Your five minutes are up.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Maybe not. But I’m done listening.”

Viper tried to say something else but Mick wasn’t having it. He passed the bar, too exhausted to face Tony, and took the stairs two at a time.

He tried to convince himself he couldn’t feel Viper’s white orb following his every move.

He woke either very late or very early to a sound in his hotel room. He’d been dreaming of the ring as he always did. Not a day went by where he wasn’t brought back there when he nodded off. It was normal, his shrink had reassured him.

“Some part of you is still trapped in the past,” she’d say as if reading off a cue card.

“And how do I fix that?”

“Only you can figure that out.”

One hundred and fifty bucks a week to hear the same rehearsed lines over and over. Ah, the power of therapy.

In the dream he was back atop the steel cage. He’d barely made the climb. In reality the bars had been cold and slick with his sweat but by nightmare logic they were prickled with barbed wire spikes, each of them cutting flesh along his trek.

He stared at the audience, his daughter and ex-wife among them, though they hadn’t been anywhere near the place that day. They’d been smart enough to leave his ass two years prior. It wasn’t booze or hookers or anything remotely as interesting. He’d just been a shitty father and husband.

In the dream he did not slip as he had in the match.

In the dream something slimy and tendril-like grabbed onto his feet.

In the dream he didn’t just break both arms and his jaw when he hit the floor.

Because in the dream the floor was not a floor at all but a nearly bottomless pit filled with broken glass.

And just as he hit the shards, he’d wake up screaming.

Except tonight, when he woke, he had another reason to scream.

Viper sat on the bed, watching him.

“Jesus.” Mick bolted upward. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough. The nightmares again?”

He wiped his face and hair, both soaked. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Because I dream them too. We’re linked, you and I. It’s the tendrils. They wrap around you every time and pull you down. They aren’t just a figment of your unconsciousness. They’re from my world. The arachnoids. And they’re calling to you.”

Mick grabbed the phone on the bedside table. “I’m going to call the cops if you don’t get out of here right now.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” Viper stood and pressed a tiny button on what looked to be a futuristic smart watch. “That’s why I have to do this.”

He pressed another button and a third figure appeared in the room.

A figure with an exoskeleton in the shape of a spider.

A figure with what looked like tendrils peeking beneath the armor.

A figure that was, as crazy as it seemed, a living, breathing arachnoid.

During filming, it was hard not to laugh at the things. They looked much more convincing on screen, despite the negative reviews, but getting up close and personal was like talking to an enlarged action figure. Now, though, there wasn’t anything funny about the metallic shell and the inner flesh it housed. The red spot in the middle of its face was larger in reality. He reached for his laser rifle before remembering this wasn’t The Reckoning.

All three hundred muscular pounds of Mighty Mick Manson shivered as he dove back and hid behind the bed. He’d fought hard to keep the muscles, getting up before the sun and lifting until every inch of his body burned. But no matter how strong he might’ve looked, he was certain this thing in the room—this arachnoid—could tear him apart without effort.

“I can get rid of it,” Viper said.

“Then do it!” Mick held an arm up as a shield.

The thing stepped forward, scanning the two humans in the room. It did not speak, for it communicated with its brethren by way of telekinesis, but its intent was clear.

Shoot to kill.

There came a clicking sound as hatches appeared on either side of its head. Two small, asymmetrical turrets ascended like Gatling guns. One pointed at Viper, the other at Mick.

“Now do you believe me?” Viper said.

Mick lowered himself to the floor so that the arachnoid was hidden.

The room filled with smoke and wind and he smelled something burning. Something sweet and acrid, like barbecued meat that had long since spoiled. In the distance: screams and pleas and the undeniable sounds of explosions. Before Mick could wrap his head around it, the noises faded.

He risked a glance and saw only Viper, still sitting on the bed, foot tapping impatiently. “I’ll ask you again: do you believe me now?”

Mick rubbed his temples. “Just part of my nightmare. That’s all. You’re not here right now.”

“It might be a nightmare but it’s just as real as those pictures on your table downstairs. Just as real as your piss-soaked pajama pants.”

Mick looked at the stain around his crotch.

Viper stood. “Think about what I said. Do you really want to be signing autographs for the rest of your life for a movie you loathe? Or do you want to make a difference? You could save lives. Thousands of them. You could be the hero you pretended to be.” From his pocket he pulled out an eye patch, placing it over his wounded orb, completing the Viper package. “I’ll need an answer tomorrow.”

Without another word he left the room.

Mick rinsed his pants.

Morning came quickly and without sleep. Mick packed for a quick escape. He couldn’t leave yet, lest he pay back his money. But Sundays at conventions were ghost-town-like. He could sneak away an hour early without notice.

In the hall he checked every nook and cranny but found no trace of Viper. The lobby was alive with fans. Some looked his way but most were preoccupied fighting off their hangovers. Mick could relate. He ordered a large coffee and didn’t bother with the overpriced breakfast sandwiches. The thought of slimy bacon reminded him too much of tendrils.

He stepped into the celeb room and was overcome with a wall of melancholy. It wasn’t the first time. He’d felt this way after his daughter and wife hit the road, after he’d been told that wrestling again would likely kill him, after he’d read the first damning review of The Reckoning. But this was worse.

He looked at the other has-been stars, Tony among them, and thought: this is my life now. I have become a relic—a novelty.

His stomach wasn’t keen on the revelation. He sprinted to the bathroom, set his coffee down on the hand dryer, and puked his insides into the urinal. After several waves of vomit, he stood and held the wall for support.

And yelped when he saw Viper standing by the mirrors.

“How the hell do you sneak up on me like that?” He grabbed his stomach, wondering if a sequel was brewing in his gut.

“Out of necessity. Arachnoids have strong senses, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

He nodded. “I had to train with a navy seal to learn stealth techniques.”

“Do you still remember them?”

Mick shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Good. They’ll come in handy. Assuming you’ve decided to come with me. I need an answer.”

He thought of the fans, how he’d been immortalized as a crappy actor in a crappy sci-fi flick. How one of the world’s most beloved directors refused to mention their time together. How the cage match that almost ended his life was now the subject of gifs and memes galore. Melancholy indeed.

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

A smile crept across Viper’s ruined face. “I’m glad you’ve come to our side.”

He pressed more buttons and soon the room was alive with chaos. The familiar smells and sounds returned. Mick closed his eyes, reached for his coffee, but his hands touched something different. Something sharp and broken. When he opened his lids, the bathroom was gone. He nearly fainted when he saw his hand touching what looked like a human spine. The body had been shoved through a stake in the ground, dangling at an odd angle. Most of the flesh had rotted away, revealing organs and ivory white bone.

He recoiled and Viper caught him before he fell to the rubble-littered ground.

“It’s just this way,” his twin said, pointing toward a ruined building. The rebel outpost, Mick remembered. They were going to meet with top commanders to cement their plan.

Smoke drifted through the air and fires burned in the distance.

Viper walked quickly and Mick fought to keep up. Workout routine or no workout routine, his alternate version was in much better shape.

Mick stepped over remnants of skyscrapers and mounds of corpses. The original sets paled in comparison. Had this been their shooting location, they would’ve at least won awards for production design.

By the time they reached the front steps of the outpost, Mick was sure he’d see the two main guards: Valtor and Benjamin. They’d been the film’s comedic relief, though there’d been nothing the least bit comedic about them. The jokes had all fallen flat. Now, though, the entryway was abandoned. He saw no laser rifles or binoculars staring their way through the opening. Something didn’t seem right.

Nothing seems right, he reminded himself. You just left your dimension.

“You coming or what?” Viper said. He’d reached the top of the steps.

“Sorry, I’m not as spry as I used to be.”

“I can tell. We’ll have to work on that.”

“Asshole,” Mick muttered.

At the top he was offered a view of the ruined city. The sky was grey with ash, the distance red with flames. Though nothing moved around them, though they seemed to be alone, he felt the opposite. He felt hundreds of eyes peering.

He followed Viper through the front door into an equally desolate chamber. The desks were unattended. The computer screens had gone black. “Where is everyone?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean this place should be swarming with rebels, right? This is their headquarters.”

Viper paused a little too long for comfort. “They’re downstairs…in a bunker.”

“There’s no bunker.”

“They built one, okay? Things got bad topside and they needed extra security.”

Mick tensed. “They?”

“Yes, the rebels.”

“Why not we?”

“Look, we don’t have time for this. We need to hurry. It’s just this way.”

Alarm bells rang in Mick’s mind. He allowed Viper to take the lead once more but when he turned the corner, Mick spun around, made for the entrance, and—

And fell back when the arachnoid pointed its two turrets centimeters from his face.

“I’m sorry, Mick,” Viper said from behind.

“What the hell is this?”

“A sequel.”

Mick sidestepped but the creature was too fast. Its legs moved in sync with his, blocking any hope of escape. “Who are you really?”

“You, Mick. Just like I said. That part is the truth. The rest I may have twisted. See, the rebels are mostly gone. After the last battle, the arachnoids received back-up from their planet. They wiped out most of our planet. But before the massacre, one of our brightest star scientists, Marcus Shwartz—he created this handy trinket.” Mick heard Viper press another button on his watch. “It allows me to jump between worlds. And when I found you, I thought ‘this is too easy. I’ll just switch places. I’ll bring the enemy what they want and live out the rest of my days as a has-been.’ See, I don’t mind being a failure. At least where you’re from, that doesn’t mean being blown to bits.”

“Why?” Mick looked underneath the creature. There was just enough space to duck and roll, assuming he had it in him.

“Because he wrote it that way.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? Meyers. You nearly ruined him. If it hadn’t been for Cretaceous Land, his career would’ve flatlined. A lot like yours. He holed up in a hotel room, drank himself mad, and wrote this. The sequel. The Reckoning II. Maybe it’ll be a trilogy or maybe he just wrote it to see you die on the big screen, or, in this case, reality. All I know is that this film has a much darker ending.”

Viper went on but Mick stopped listening. The two turrets began to spin, which meant only one thing.

He reached once again for a laser rifle that wasn’t there, wondered if this was all part of his nightmare, if he’d wake up back in the cage, back in the ring. He got ready to duck, ready to roll.

And Mighty Mick Manson’s third shot at stardom ended with a bang.

The following was taken from the LA Times review of The Reckoning II.

Paul Meyers’ improbable sequel to the film that nearly ended his career in Hollywood is a shockingly well-made and timely summer blockbuster. While bloated and self-indulgent at times, the narrative makes up for these minor gripes and manages to do what its predecessor could not: entertain. The arachnoids have made the jump to CGI flawlessly, looking better than ever, and the film’s lead actor, Mick Manson, former professional wrestler, tops an all-star cast. His performance is both convincing and impressive. Some call this sequel a miracle. Meyers has admitted that he himself had little faith it would ever see the light of the day, considering the first film’s notorious failure, but Manson claims he’d been waiting all along for the phone call.

“Call it a hunch,” he told reporters at the film’s opening.

Rip Von Willebrand fixated on the zit. The goiter-sized lump of raw, irritated, white-capped skin drew his gaze with super-magnet force. The skin over it stretched thin like a balloon at the verge of explosion. The pustule had no business surviving the exertion of a title match that had already gone more than twenty minutes.

Yet, there it sat, a pus-filled bulb in all its train-wreck magnificence, standing stalwart against wave after wave of brutality. The steroid-induced abomination had been ripe for the popping at the match’s outset, keeping Rip at a distance. After twenty minutes, it had become more engorged than a tick in need of fat camp.

Instead of focusing on the action, Rip tried to calculate the trajectory the pimple-juice projectile would take on blastoff so he could remain clear of it. All of his attention should have been directed toward the match he was supposed to be refereeing, the biggest match of his too-long career, and the spectacle for which he’d been given a significant bonus to ensure a certain outcome. But just as gawkers will gawk at car accidents, his eyes were drawn to that zit.

He’d seen much that would turn a weaker stomach than his over the course of a decade in the employ of Muscle Power Wrestling. Having worked his way up from refereeing untelevised jobber matches, through the mid-card, and all the way to prime time, Rip was finally starring in his first ever Pay-Per-View main event, live from the sold-out Jubilee Bell Pavilion in frigid Montreal proper.

Well, maybe not starring, but definitely a critical supporting role.

His job had never been easy, and he often wondered how he’d stayed in it more than fourteen years. A gay man working within a man’s man organization, he’d bared an endless onslaught of insults, waved off every jeer, and suffered intolerance and discrimination from management and colleagues alike.

Rip had grown up around the business before growing into it. His father had been one-half of a heel tag team no one remembered. He’d died in the ring, doing what he loved most and a whole lot more than his son did. A table that was supposed to break broke him instead, all for the entertainment of a handful of spectators during an untelevised match in a dingy high school auditorium.

Rip once believed Axel “Boss-Man” Powers had offered him the refereeing job out of guilt, not the sham, self-imposed diversity quota he had come to suspect. Referees weren’t worth shit to MPW, a gay referee even less. They were meant to be faceless, their sole purpose to direct or misdirect audience attention toward the action on the mat then set themselves apart from it.

But no ring corner was far enough away to escape the malfunctions of grown men grappling. Snot rockets flew into his face on average twice a week. Blood and spit were common fare. Shit and vomit were less common—but prevalent enough to warrant hand sanitizer in Rip’s pocket at all times—both regular occurrences when some overzealous meathead hit his opponent a tad too hard in the gut or chose showtime to kick his dope and smack and crack and ’roid and painkiller habit, sending his body a’tweaking and his asshole a’leaking mid atomic drop or airplane spin. Cameramen at MPW were trained to avoid shots of the Speedo streaks, but each time Rip slid down to the mat to count off a pin was an exercise in testicular fortitude, sometimes adding leopard spots to his zebra stripes.

As he was recalling Lustrous Lizzie’s rippling shart that bubbled over the lip of her bikini briefs at last summer’s Beach Battle, a stream of melted strawberry cheesecake-like pus spattered against his forehead. It trickled in a slushy line down over his eye and across his lips. The rank odor of infection wafted up his nostrils, masking the usual stench of man musk and unwashed canvas.

He covered his mouth with his hand to hold back a heave. The lurch of his stomach brought with it a snap of synapses to his brain, and he remembered the need for focus. The mammoth Hercules Peril, longtime MPW Heavyweight Champion and fan favorite—particularly there, in his city of birth—had his opponent, the sinister Lian Maim (pronounced lie and maim, the d silent), in a sleeper hold. Pus, oozing out like a Play-Doh French fry in the making, smeared across Lian’s cheek and glistened on Hercules’ arm. It reminded Rip of the time pus had been oozing from his—

“Rip?” Hercules hissed between gritted teeth.

“Fuck.” Rip chided himself for daydreaming. Lian’s arm had gone limp, his cue to act. Licking his lips, he grabbed Lian’s wrist and raised it over his head. “Blehh!” He shivered and released his hold, letting Lian’s arm fall to the pretending-to-be-losing-consciousness wrestler’s side as Rip swallowed a bitter globule of the man’s excretion. Vomit rose in his throat, but he swallowed it down.

After wiping his face with his sleeve, Rip grabbed Lian’s wrist and raised it again. Like everyone else in the arena, he knew how this would play out: the arm would fall a second time. Don’t worry, my fine-feathered Canadian friends. We’ve got a surprise in store for you.

As Lian’s wrist fell a second time, Rip frowned. It better not fall a third time, or it’ll somehow be my fault, and I’ll be heading to Totally Extreme Wrestling with Hercules, if they’ll have me. He grunted, reaching for Lian’s arm for the third and final raise. I doubt they’ll pay me even a fraction of what they’re paying him.

A swirling concoction of the Seven Deadly Sins, which also happened to be the name of MPW’s most reviled tag team despite there only being five of them—Sloth hadn’t shown up for work in a month and Wrath was doing time for beating a fan with his own “Wrath Needs a Bath” poster—ravaged through Rip. He glared at Hercules as he lifted his opponent’s arm. He doesn’t deserve any of it.

The so-called hero was far from a good man, reportedly having paid off several women with whom he’d used muscle instead of charm to bed. Add to that the two arrests for domestic violence and a string of backroom brawls that left one wrestler paralyzed from the waist down and another eating his meals through a straw, and Hercules was nothing short of a violent criminal and all-around asshole. He should be in jail.

But money and fame had shielded Hercules from serious trouble. The main-eventer had it all: the loyalty and adoration of millions of fans; the body to whom his non-copyrightable name paid homage to (the demi-god, not the Belgian detective whose last name Hercules had stolen because he thought him French and subsequently exploited to sell millions of ridiculous sleuth caps of a kind Hercule Poirot never wore); supermodels and celebrities begging for a chance to blow him; fancy cars; big houses; and enough money to pay Rip’s salary for the next six hundred years. And the greedy son of a bitch was leaving MPW for the promise of even more of all of it.

Good things happen to evil people. Ain’t that the American way? Rip sneered. Not bad for a Canadian. The lingering guilt he’d felt for taking the extra twenty grand Boss-Man Powers had offered him eroded like a sandcastle in the tide.

Lang, Guido, Black… even the “legendary” Errol Heckner, or fuck, his half-ass evil twin, Dale, would have taken the payday if I didn’t. Let them get all high and mighty afterward. They would have done the same thing. I’ve worked too hard and taken too much crap to turn down this opportunity.

Lian peered out from between Hercules’ forearms, his eyes practically begging Rip to let go of his wrist. Hercules shifted the hold, staring at him with equal impatience. Rip dropped Lian’s wrist and stepped back in disgust. The cards would fall where they would or, at least, where he arranged them.

About halfway through its downward swing, Lian’s arm stopped. It hovered, Lian’s fingers stretching outward, grasping at air. He raised the quivering pillar of muscle as if saluting Hitler before curling his fingers into a fist. Stomping his foot—once, twice, three times, each paired with an elbow to Hercules’ stomach—he broke his opponent’s hold. He staggered around the ring as though he’d been on the verge of la-la land, his considerable ring prowess having saved him at the last possible second.

Hercules propelled himself off the ropes, racing toward Lian for a clothesline meant to cleave head from shoulders. But as his arm swung, it sliced through air, Lian recovering at that precise moment and ducking under the blow. Circling Hercules, he executed a belly-to-back suplex that sent Rip bouncing.

While Hercules writhed on the mat, Lian leapt to his feet. He raced to the corner and climbed to the top turnbuckle, the crowd jeering his ascent. He laughed and raised his arms, encouraging more boos. He glanced at Rip, who offered a nod, a silent exchange that ensured their boss’ plan was in motion.

Lian’s grin took on an almost maniacal quality then. Rip chuckled even as his armpits dampened and sweat pooled on his brow. The once and future king.

The match wasn’t over. He bounced on his toes to keep his feet from getting cold. Lian was going to miss his finishing move, the Lion’s Roar, which consisted of a bellow that was more howling monkey than lion but had the “scientifically proven” effect of raising a dazed opponent to his feet. Lian would then flip over him, locking his arms around his challenger’s waist while swinging his head between his legs. As the circular motion finalized with his opponent being whiplashed down between Lian’s legs, the referee would count off the pin. Whether real or not, the feat was athletic and dangerous, and Rip wondered how no one had yet been seriously hurt by it, least of all Lian himself.

With an ear-splitting shriek and a flop of his eighties hairband hair, Lian perched on the top rope as Hercules lurched to his feet. An instant later, Lian was airborne. He soared over a hunched-over Hercules and slid down his back. Suddenly clear-headed, Hercules resisted the pull and plopped down on Lian’s face.

Again reminded of Luscious Lizzie’s brownie-filled bikini, Rip stifled another heave. Lian flopped beneath Hercules’ sweaty ass crack and, if the rumors were true, his sole pistachio-sized nut. The crowd cheered as Hercules twerked.

Rip snorted. And they call me a homo.

Hercules jumped up with a yelp. Rip assumed Lian had bitten him—actually bitten him, knowing the two despised each other outside the ring due to Hercules’ alleged relations with Lian’s wife, daughter, daughter’s friend, daughter’s yoga instructor, and daughter’s pony, though that last part was probably exaggerated. Still, Lian did own a horse farm.

The heel’s nose gushed. He slapped the mat and scrambled to his feet, his face red with more than just blood.

Hercules glared back at him, his well-oiled pecs dancing to an unsung tune. He gnashed his teeth, those pearly whites yet another reason Rip disliked the man. The money and fame rewarding a morally inept and abhorrent individual—and also the prominent butt chin, Rip having no chin of which to boast—were highest on his laundry list of gripes against Hercules. But the Canadian hero’s perfect teeth were next on that list and an affront to the profession.

The O Face will come next. Rip bit into his lip as he bounced on his toes. His stomach gurgled nonstop. Here we go…

Lian struck out widely, swinging his fist with enough force to level an elephant. The move was so blatantly telegraphed that Hercules dodged it effortlessly while kneeing Lian’s gut. His poofy hair flopped over his face as he keeled over. Hercules gator-rolled him down to the mat.

Rip cracked his knuckles. Here it comes… The set up to the set up to the finisher.

Hercules grabbed Lian’s hair with both hands as he straddled his opponent’s back. The crowd’s cheering grew louder. Many were on their feet, their chants sending chills rippling through Rip. No matter how many times he’d felt that stir of electricity in the air, the buzz and hum of excitement brought to life, it still gave him goosebumps.

And this particular time, more pronounced sweating.

He let out a deep breath as Hercules pulled back Lian’s head. The Canadian muscleman basked in the deafening roar of his fans, no doubt savoring his last night as MPW’s top draw.

Then he slammed Lian’s face into the mat.

Rip threw up a finger, counting off the move with the nearly eighty thousand in attendance. “One!”

Lian’s busted nose spouted fresh blood.

“Two!” Rip shouted as Hercules slammed Lian’s face down again.

“Three!”

Lian’s head seemed to be bleeding from every orifice. Is it coming out his eyes?

“Four!” Rip thought he heard a whine, impossible to tell with all the noise. The smears on the canvas as Hercules raised Lian’s head for the final blow gave new meaning to the term “face painting.”

“Five!” the crowd yelled as Rip shot up his open hand, and Hercules threw down Lian’s head. A wide grin stretched Hercules’ cheeks. He paid his adversary no heed as the noise level continued to rise, the match end but two moves away.

“Don-Key Punch! Don-Key Punch!” The crowd, entirely on its feet, chanted.

Rip sucked in his breath. The Canadian Donkey Punch wasn’t Hercules’ finishing move but was more cheered and revered than his true finisher, the Compound Bowstring, neither move bearing any relationship to the detective or demi-god parts of the wrestler’s persona. The move was indecent, offensive, and definitely inappropriate for all the wide-eyed youngsters in attendance.

Smiling perversely, Hercules straddled a blubbering Lian, knees pressing against his opponent’s sides. He sat down, Speedo to Speedo, sliding his shaft into Lian’s ass crack as if forcing a hot dog into the slit of a bun.

Rip scowled as Hercules blew him a kiss. Lian’s muscular-round buttocks flexed as if to repel penis to anus contact, but Hercules wasn’t having it. Smiling mischievously at Rip, he gyrated his hips, smooshing himself into the crevice until a dark spot appeared on the front of his short shorts. The move was meant to be more humiliating than harmful until Hercules finished it off by driving his knuckles into the back of Lian’s head.

The “science” behind the Canadian Donkey Punch was simple if not scientific. The humiliation-inspired rage the man-on-man simulated sexual assault brought forth in opponents would cause them to rise with blind fury, the punch delivered to the cerebellum in an exact location only Hercules could target (and with one hundred percent accuracy). Like the Lion’s Roar, victims of the Donkey Punch were left dazed and confused.

All right, all right, all right, Rip thought as Lian pushed himself up to all fours. Time to earn my bonus.

While kneeling perpendicular on Lian’s back, Hercules hooked one arm around the heel’s neck and the other around his leg. He rocked onto his back, keeping Lian’s torso snug against his shins. Pulling down with his arms while pushing up with his legs, he bowed Lian’s body at his spine. The stadium rumbled louder than a game of red rover on a minefield.

As scripted, Lian was supposed to submit. Rip would declare Hercules the winner, allowing him to depart from MPW as the reigning Heavyweight Champion. But Powers didn’t like the fact that his cash cow was leaving him for greener pastures and sure as hell wasn’t allowing the belt to go with him no matter how many promises he’d made to Hercules otherwise. So he’d bribed Rip to go off script.

As soon as Hercules rolled onto his back to apply his finishing move, Rip sprawled onto the canvas. He slapped the mat three times as fast as he could then hopped to his feet and signaled for the bell.

It clanged over the silence of a stunned crowd. Face reddening with rage, Hercules threw Lian off him and sprang to his feet, raising a fist at his felled opponent. Lian rose to his knees, threw up his hands, and shook his head, denying any knowledge of what had just occurred.

Apparently, Hercules bought his coworker’s confusion because he turned toward Rip. He towered over the referee like Godzilla over Tokyo. The madness behind his eyes was enough to make Rip shudder.

“No… I…” Rip cowered away, shielding his head with his arms. “Easy, Herc. It wasn’t me, I swear. It was… It was Powers!” He backed away, his baser instincts screaming at him to get the hell out of that ring.

Before he could duck under the ropes, Hercules was upon him. The freak of nature’s hand curled around his neck and lifted him off his feet. Pressure mounted in Rip’s skull as Hercules squeezed.

“It… wasn’t… me,” Rip uttered through gurgles and gasps. His eyes felt as though they might shoot out of their sockets. Oh god, oh god, oh god, he’s going to kill me, and everyone here will think it’s part of the show!

The knowledge that help wouldn’t come sank like an anchor into a black abyss inside Rip. “Powers… made me… do it.” He thrashed as his air supply grew short. Still, Hercules would not let go.

Through his tear-filled vision, Rip caught movement behind Hercules. With a clang, he dropped from Hercules’ hands and collapsed onto the mat, wheezing and rubbing his neck. Big purple spots clouding his vision slowly began to shrink. The mat shook as the “good guy,” Rip’s would-be murderer, crashed beside him.

“Go!” Lian shouted. An aluminum folding-chair with a large dent in it hung from his hand.  “While you still can!”

Rip didn’t need to be told twice. He rolled out of the ring and dropped to the padded floor. The breath rushed out of him, but he forced himself up and stumbled toward the ramp as if his life depended on it. Given the rage he saw in Hercules’ eyes, he figured maybe it did.

A large soda cup flew by his head, and Rip realized that the wrestler wasn’t his only trouble. The fans were glowering at him, booing as loudly as they’d been cheering only moments earlier. Some were yelling four-letter words and insults directed toward him, his mother, or children he didn’t have.

Please let me get out of here safely, he prayed to no one in particular. He hoped to live long enough to regret his twenty-thousand dollar mistake.

Deep breaths. They’re just words. You’re okay.

As Rip was telling himself that only one fool would waste the twelve-dollar soda, which was like forty bucks Canadian, another cup hit him square in the chest. Syrupy liquid splashed down his collar and ran under his shirt.

Food came next. Burgers and burritos, candy and Clamato, and poutine—lots and lots of poutine. Nothing that hurt him anywhere but his pride.

Until a half-full beer cup flattened his nose. The alcohol stung his eyes, but the tears brought about by the direct hit washed out the burn. Thank God they don’t sell drinks in glass bottles here.

He gasped. Better move, he thought, remembering how many people snuck in their own supply. He shambled to the bottom of the ramp that led backstage. Another forty feet or so, or however many meters that was to the Canuck fucks who were trying to kill him, and Rip would be home free, never to set foot in that socialistic, clean-aired, free-healthcare-for-all country again. He just had to make it backstage before he would need to reap the benefits of that free healthcare. He wondered if it applied to Americans there on work visas.

Not wanting to find out, he picked up his pace. More Canadian cuisine, condiments, and confectionaries flew past him or clattered harmlessly at his feet. His confidence grew as he waded through the litter, growing more adept at bobbing and weaving out of its flight path.

A quarter of the way up the ramp, a fan leaped over the railing. He was short, pudgy, not more than seventeen, still awkward and pimply and probably couldn’t grow a mustache. The Hercules Peril sleuth cap atop his head likely didn’t help his game. “Hey USA, we call our ‘Canadian bacon’ ham!” his sign read. He held it like a baseball bat.

Rip could just make out the picture of a spitted pig wrapped in an American flag as the sign smacked him across the side of his head. Ringing blocked out all other sound as he struggled to stay on his feet. A string of drool hung from his lip.

Knees buckling, he lost his balance. He fell sideways toward the rail, where fans whipped garbage and poured drinks on top of him or hocked green Canadian loogies on his face. Humiliating, sure, but not life-threatening. He tried to clear his head and locate the pimply-faced boy before he struck again.

A boot caught him in the ribs. Found him, he thought as he coughed out part of his lunch. He curled into a ball as wave after wave of kicks battered him black and bruised.

“You’re gonna pay for that, you bald, ugly piece of shit!” the boy howled. Despite the physical pain, Rip hurt more from the critique of his appearance. Sure, he wasn’t the most dashing prince at the ball, but he’d been doing his Pilates, watching his calorie intake, and—

The kicking stopped. He peeked through his arms but saw no sign of his tormentor. Slowly raising his head, he scanned the ramp for the boy. He ducked back down as a security guard hopped over him, then over the railing, chasing after the boy.

“Get that fucker!” Rip rose to his knees, wondering why no one backstage had come to help him. Sucking in breath, he crawled as the onslaught of waste rained down on him anew.

“Fucking hell! Powers had better give me extra for this shit!”

Inch by inch, hand over hand, he made it to the curtain and certain freedom from his torment. As he breached the veil, a blue boot stomped on his fingers. He hollered as if a toothpick fish had swum up his urethra. The boot belonged to Roidrage Rex, who didn’t even slow on his way to the ring.

More feet pounded over concrete. A herd of wrestlers stampeded his way, heading to the ring to calm Hercules or beat down Lian. Whimpering, Rip covered his head as the off-the-scale-sized feet of One-Ton Juan blasted toward him, his cankles shaking over orthopedic moccasins. Rip uttered a silent cry as all Juan’s weight bore down on him.

Mercifully, Juan passed without incident. More were coming. Rip assumed the fetal position. Get my things. Get out of here. He squeezed his eyes shut as the next surge of testosterone barreled toward him. Get my things. Get out of here. Get my things. Get out of here.

The backstage area quieted. Rip opened his eyes as a final few wrestlers passed without so much as looking his way.

Okay. Get my things. Get out of here. He took a deep breath and slapped his hands down on the concrete to urge himself up but ended up screaming instead. His index finger rested behind his middle finger, the two digits almost perpendicular. Everywhere else, blood oozed from torn flesh, suctioning his fingers together.

But he was alone. Rip breathed a sigh of relief. Wait…

He listened as he struggled to his feet. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Soft footsteps, heading his way.

The Hong Kong-hailing, midget tag team—they hated being called “little people”—of Nee-Hi and Waylo, together known as Snack Pack, waddled toward him on bowlegs. Rip rose to his full height, summoning what remained of his dignity. He’d always had a good relationship with both Nee-Hi and—

“Oh god…” Riotous pain exploded from Rip’s nuts into his stomach. Wincing, tears emerging from the corner of his eyes, he cupped his hands over his balls as his knees pressed together. Waylo, that little fuck, had given him a five-on-two with a baby fist packing grown-up power.

“You… motherfucker…” Rip blinked the tears away just in time to see the tag team scurry through the curtain. He took a step in their direction, heat flushing through his cheeks, breath hissing through his teeth. With a growl, he turned and hustled toward the locker room, praying he’d seen the last of his coworkers.

The locker room sat brooding in silence and darkness. Rip peeked inside and bounced with joy upon finding it empty. Hands shaking and fumbling with his combination lock, Rip whimpered every time his broken finger grazed the edge of the cold metal. He made slow but steady progress. God, how he just wanted out of that arena. He’d catch up with MPW at its next stateside event, maybe take a long-overdue vacation. Surely, Powers would understand after what had happened to him that night.

Not bothering to clean up, he grabbed his duffel bag and threw a jacket over his food-encrusted prison stripes. A moment later, he was trudging down the hall to the staff-only parking lot.

As he pushed open the door, the clean, crisp air felt like baby’s breath on his cheek. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, relishing his escape from the madhouse. All that insanity… over a goddamn wrestling match.

The hell was over. He was a little beat up, but for the most part, intact. He was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

As he stepped toward his car, something hard as steel collided with the back of his skull. Purple and yellow spots danced in front of his eyes, until the purple swallowed all and darkened to black. He felt himself falling and wondered if he’d ever hit the ground.

Sharp pain stung through Rip’s cheek. His head swiveled on his neck as blinding white light stabbed at his eyes. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think.

Another sharp, stinging sensation rippled through his cheek. A man with an awkward, pitchy voice said, “Hey asshole, wake the fuck up.” Rip could barely tell where the voice had come from, never mind make out its speaker’s features.

“Mon Dieu!” a second person with a deeper, French-accented voice blurted. “He’s got a bon-air.”

“A boner?” Pitchy asked.

Confused, Rip looked around the white oblivion that surrounded him for faces to match the voices, for setting and context, some way to ground himself in empty space.

“Oui,” Francophone said again. “A bon-air.”

“Never mind his morning wood,” Pitchy squawked. “Let’s just…”

His words blurred into gibberish. Rip concentrated, but the voice became too muffled to understand, sounding as though it or he was underwater. A throbbing tightness built in his groin, Rip barely aware of his gyrating hips.

“He’s rubbing it against my shoulder!” Pitchy shouted. “Get him off! Get him off!”

“What should I do?” Francophone asked.

“Just… help me get him into the chair. Not the La-Z-Boy. Hurry, before he creams all over me.”

Rip’s eyelids fluttered. Light again stabbed into his pupils, this time revealing a spectrum of colors, swirling details. Spinning? He twirled through the air before crashing against hard wood.

Pitchy yelped. “Oh, God. He’s still… I don’t know… twerking? I’ll hold him down. Get some rope.”

“Rope?” Francophone asked. “I don’t have rope.”

“Come on. He’s waking! We need to tie him down!”

“With what?”

“I don’t know, you useless… Check the kitchen. There’s gotta be something. I’ll hold him down… so fucking gross.”

Weight pressed harder against Rip’s lap, and it felt amazing. He moaned and arched into it.

“Hurry up!” Pitchy cried.

“Don’t rush me,” Rip murmured. His eyes slowly rolled forward. Drool hung from his lower lip. A snot bubble popped in his nostril.

Thudding steps hurried toward him. He could just make out a hazy outline of a second man hovering near him as Pitchy rode his lap.

He smiled through a gurgle. Double lucky.

“Will these do?” Francophone asked, holding out his hand.

“What are—Ay, buddy! Did you tear the pull strings off my trash bags? Fuck, never mind that now. Just tie his wrists.”

“K-ki-k…kinky,” Rip sputtered. His head pendulum swung until his non-chin parked against his chest. His penis went harder than brick. Squinting, he thrust his hips upward and let out all the frustration and stress that had been building ever since he agreed to screw Hercules out of his title belt.

He collapsed into a chair, wondering where he was, how long he’d been sitting, and how fucked up he had to be not to have noticed. The back of his head throbbed, a dull persistent pain. His muscles relaxed, but his dickhole stung, the head of his penis stuck to his zipper. His eyelids fluttered again as something caressed his arm. The weight on his lap lifted. Rip tried to move his hand, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What the…” He tried again, but his arm was pinned in place. His grogginess dissipated. The pain piercing his skull intensified.

“He’s waking,” Pitchy said. “Hold down the other one.”

That voice? Rip’s vision remained blurred, but his ears had fully recovered. He’d heard that voice before, not that long ago. A boy’s. A pimply faced boy’s. “You?” An image of the fucker who’d hit him with the sign formed in his mind. “You!”

He tried to rise, but Sign Guy/Pitchy pinned his arm down while his cohort, the one with the on-and-off French accent, tied his wrist.

And like that, Rip was awake and fully aware of the shit into which he’d landed. He was in a room divided in parts by flooring. A cement floor sprawled out to his left, on top of which sat bicycles and the remains of at least two smart cars. To his right, a carpeted teenage jerkoff factory. Posters lined the wall, some for Cirque du Soleil, but most for MPW, Hercules Peril prominently featured. Dirty laundry, soda cans, and candy wrappers lay strewn over the floor. A small kitchen area adjoined a dual functioning bedroom/living room. The whole thing looked like a studio apartment made out of someone’s garage. And along the wall, just a few feet from the door, Rip saw his duffel bag.

Pitchy’s pimply face blocked his view. “That’s right, me! I told you you were gonna pay for what you did to Hercules. And now look at you, all tied up and at my mercy.”

“Why are we thanking him?” Part-time Francophone asked. “He screwed our hero.”

“Not merci. Mercy!” Pitchy slapped his thighs, exasperated.

“Je ne comprends pas.”

“Never mind.” Pitchy raised his right hand up to his eyes. “What the…” He examined his skin more closely in the light. A milky globule of gunk slid across his palm. “That better not be what I think it is.”

Francophone burst into a fit of laughter, the sidesplitting kind that made him bend over and hold his stomach. He laughed so hard he was crying.

“Shut up!” Pitchy stepped toward him, hand raised. “Shut up, or I’ll wipe it on you.”

“He—” Francophone began, only to suffer another fit. “He… how you say… he cheesed on you!”

“It’s jizzed not cheesed. But it’s not jizz, anyway. Probably just some Toaster Strudel icing or… or… or something else. I don’t know.” Pitchy gave his hand a sniff, then touched the tip of his tongue to the globule. “It’s poutine. Cheese curds, so technically you were right when you said he cheesed on me. Well, whatever the fuck it is, it’s his now.” Pitchy smeared the gunk on Rip’s head.

Maybe it’ll stimulate hair growth, Rip thought as he cringed away. He was doing his best to remain calm and gauge the nature and motives of his kidnappers. The trick he’d pulled in the title match seemed to be the root of all his present problems, but that was just wrestling. Sure, some fans took it seriously, some a little too seriously, but deep down, they all understood that it was scripted sports entertainment. Everything was predetermined, even if not everyone was in on the plan. They have to know that.

Don’t they? Rip glared at his captors, his mounting anger taking the place of the better part of judgment. “What do you assholes want with me?”

“Assholes?” Francophone bitch-slapped Rip. “How dare you call us this name!”

“Yeah,” Pitchy said. “After what you did, you don’t have the right.”

“What did I do?”

Pitchy snorted. He turned to his partner in crime. “You hear this guy, Bastian? Maybe his memory is a little foggy from the braining you gave him with your wand. Perhaps a little pain will help jolt his memory.”

His hand clamped down Rip’s wrist. Rip swallowed hard.

“Looks like you hurt your finger. It’s your lucky day, though. We can fix that, can’t we?” Pitchy’s fingertips danced down the back of Rip’s hand. Rip tried to jerk away, guessing what came next, but Pitchy and his binds held fast. Pitchy grabbed Rip’s crooked index finger and straightened it for him.

Rip howled, a guttural sound loaded with agony and hatred. Bastian punched him in the nose. Blood filled his mouth and he choked on it, coughing and sputtering it out.

“Shut up!” Bastian ordered.

Rip spat on the floor. It splatted on a sheet of plastic. Having watched the entire series of Dexter, he had a good idea what his captors had in store. The audacity and stupidity of their actions bolstered his fury, and he glared at Pitchy with unadulterated contempt. “Security should have thrown your ass in jail, you motherfucker.”

Pitchy grinned and threw his thumb over his shoulder. “I had an ace in the hole, there.”

Bastian punched him again. “I told you, fermez la bouche.” He puffed out his chest. For the first time, Rip noticed the word “Security” embroidered on his shirt.

His shoulders heaved. The number of indignities Rip had suffered in one night swirled like a cyclone inside him. He couldn’t take any more of it. “It’s fake, you morons! Fake! Don’t you know that? Or are you really that fucking stupid?”

Bastian raised his fist again, but Pitchy waved him off. “Fake? Fake! Was it fake when Geronimo Jones was scalped by Apache Warrior—”

“That was part of a storyli—”

“Or when Randy Rudeness suffered amnesia from the back brain kick Bella Donna nailed him with, so bad that he thought he was a chicken for a month?”

“Also a storyline—”

“Ooh!” Bastian raised his hand. “Or when Glory Boy Daniels broke his neck when Warpath landed his piledriver wrong?”

Pitchy smirked. “Or when your father died?”

Rip’s gaze dropped to the floor. “That… was real.”

Pitchy re-bent Rip’s finger. “And what’s also real is the fact that Hercules Peril was going to leave MPW as the longest running and most popular heavyweight the sport has ever known! You ruined that with your greasy, fat, stubby, asshole fingers.” He snapped back Rip’s middle finger.

Rip roared in pain, but kept enough wits about him to watch for Bastian’s attack. When the pot-bellied security guard threw his punch, Rip kicked him in the knees. Bastian fell on top of him, cracking his right armrest and knocking it askew. Rip pulled it into place, hoping his idiot captors hadn’t noticed. He continued to pull at the ties over his left wrist.

Bastian scurried to his feet. “Merde! I got poutine all over my sleeve.”

Intending to provoke the security guard, Rip laughed at the grayish-brown smear running down Bastian’s arm. He’d almost forgotten about all the waste that had been thrown at him and assumed most of the beer and soda had washed it off. “Serves you right. What kind of asshole puts gravy on French fries?”

Bastian’s face flushed red. “It’s not gravy. It’s—”

“Who cares what it is? It’s fucking gross.” Come on, hit me. Almost got my wrist loose. “Your ancestors invent the food, and you idiots don’t even know how to eat it.”

Bastian’s face turned a shade of deep purple. “Americain imbecile! We invented the food, c’est vrai, and you know-it-all, ego-testicle… Tabarnak! You think you know how to eat French fries. Poutine! That’s the way. They are not Americain fries, you stupide stupide Americain!”

“We call them ‘freedom fries.’” Or at least we did for like one week several years ago. Fucking terrible name. “Only douchebags eat poutine.”

Bastian charged. He drove a forearm into Rip’s teeth and toppled the chair over. The cracked armrest broke free. Bastian’s forehead collided with Rip’s face, the guard’s ear within biting distance. Rip chomped on it as he continued to tug at his left wrist.

Bastian hollered. “Help me!”

Pitchy pulled his friend up, the ear in Rip’s mouth stretching like taffy. Rip swallowed blood as his teeth scissored through flesh and cartilage. The chunk of ear came free at the same moment his left hand wriggled out from the ties.

He was free, sort of, still having one captor on top of him and the other standing over him. He lashed out, hitting and stunning Bastian with the armrest. As he drew back for a second strike, Rip noticed the broken shard jutting beneath it.

And its sharp point.

He drove it into Bastian’s neck.

Arterial blood sprayed like a running hose with a finger over it. Bastian squealed, rolled off him, and writhed on the floor, his palm pressed over the leak that had sprung.

Rip rose to his feet. Pitchy stood between him and the door. The boy had lost his bravado. His hands were raised in a defensive posture, his eyes wide and full of fear. Rip raised the armrest. Bastian’s blood dripped from it in a steady cadence. He shook his arm, and Pitchy flinched.

Rip punted the teenager in the balls with enough force, he hoped, to end all chances of procreation. Pitchy’s beanbag made a sickening crunch and his face turned ghastly white, his knees bending and drawing together before he toppled onto his side. Rip grabbed his bag and strutted toward the door, spitting a shot of blood and phlegm onto the boy’s face as he passed. He wrenched open the door and fled into the night.

He didn’t know how far he’d run or where he was, but he knew where he was heading, the large dome of the Jubilee Bell Arena glowing white under the moonlight. Adrenaline had gotten him to within a few kilometers before he had to stop and catch his breath. He looked back the way he’d come. No one followed. He was safe. The armrest, still strapped to his wrist, had served him well but was no longer needed. He pried it free and dumped it into the next trash barrel he passed.

When he made it back to the lot, few vehicles remained. Rip looked around for security but saw no one. That was fine by him. The overhead lights were off, but even in the dark he could see his car parked right where he’d left it.

He pulled his keys from his bag and hustled toward his car. He planned on heading straight for the border, back to American soil, where wrestling fans could be just as fanatical but wouldn’t have the same hometown allegiance to the demi-god detective he’d screwed over.

Opening his car door, Rip heard gravel crunch behind him. Turning, he saw a newspaper blowing across the lot, rustling as it passed. He turned back around and tossed his bag onto the passenger seat. He was just about to get into the car when he was hockey-checked into the side panel.

Gasping, Rip stared into the eyes of Hercules Peril. What he saw in those eyes made his bladder yearn for release.

His voice barely more than a whisper, Hercules said, “Do you know what you cost me with that little stunt you pulled? I was supposed to leave here as champion! All the endorsements, the ridiculous sign-on bonus I was getting, just for bringing over the belt to MPW’s biggest competitor? You cost me millions, Rick. Fucking millions!”

Rip shook like a palm tree in a hurricane in Hercules’ grasp. And yet the fact that they’d worked together for years and the bastard still didn’t even know his name lit a fire in his gut. “It’s Ri—”

Hercules pressed him against the car. “How are we gonna fix this, Rick? Huh? I can’t hear you.”

Rip’s fire fizzled. “I-I-I’m sorry. It was Powers. He made me—”

“Powers will get his. Don’t you worry. That just leaves you.” Hercules gave him a once over, a wicked grin curling up his cheeks. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked, stroking his butt chin. “Hmmm… Which hand did you slap the mat with?”

“Hercules, please, I—”

“It was your left, wasn’t it?” Hercules grabbed Rip’s forearm and forced it between the open door and the car’s frame. Rip resisted, but even using only one hand, the wrestler was too strong. He was a mouse squaring off against a bear.

The car door creaked all the way open. Rip closed his eyes. He felt a whoosh of air and the hollow pangs of dread as the door closed on him with juggernaut force. The pain didn’t register immediately. Rip opened his eyes as Hercules reopened the door.

Rip screamed then. He screamed loud enough to wake the entire city. His hand hung from his wrist by mere strands of muscle and tendon.

“Stop screaming, you goddamn pussy.”

But Rip couldn’t stop. The pain was like nothing he’d experienced before, as if all nerve bundles in his body were being stabbed simultaneously and repeatedly. But his endless cry was for more than that, for all the humiliations and frustrations of a life unnoticed, the runt of the litter in a whole pack of alphas. He was done with the life of a referee, done being a nobody among giants.

Giant fucking assholes.

“Be quiet.” Shoulders rising and falling with every breath, hostility gleaming in his eyes, Hercules grabbed Rip by the nape of his neck and bent his head toward the open door. “I said be quiet!”

But Rip would not be quiet, his body needing to release the hurt. So much of it, stored up over so many years, finally set free.

At perhaps the worst possible time.

Hercules snarled. “Okay. Have it your way.”

The door slammed into Rip’s head, his arm jerking up as if counting off the move.  As the door drew back for a second swing, he slumped in front of it, his mind retreating inward, looking for a happy place where he could count his blessings on his phantom fingers…

A happy place he never found, before the door slammed shut one last time.

“Will somebody stop the damn match? Enough’s enough!”

Jim Ross, Hall of Fame wrestling commentator

“I just wanna thank each and every one of y’all…for all you’ve done to your bodies… It’s still real to me, damn it!”

Dave Wills, wrestling fan

“And that’s the bottom line, cuz Stone Cold says so!”

Stone Cold Steve Austin

It started with a skunk ape.

In my novella ‘Damn Dirty Apes,’ the first of the Reggie Levine escapades, which you can find in my ‘Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet’ collection, I describe the mating call of the skunk ape as sounding like “Ric Flair being sodomized by a moose with his pecker greased in pepper-spray.” This colorful turn of phrase was based on my extensive research into hominid behaviour, and not a little artistic license. I wrote the line, snickered (I’m not above laughing at my own jokes; someone has to), and thought little more of it.

I had no idea the hell this innocuous simile would wreak.

I’m not referring to my widely publicized falling-out with the Society for the Preservation of the North American Skunk Ape. (I have no wish to relive that nightmare here, and would direct curious readers to my account of events, The Damn Dirty Apes Controversy, published among my story notes in the ‘Die Dog’ collection.) Rather I was deluged with messages from wrestling fans (who knew they could read?) demanding to know if my nod to The Nature Boy meant that I too was a follower of the (ahem) sport.

One of these nutjobs (I hesitate to use the word ‘reader’) goes by the internet handle, Castor. He pitched me the idea for an anthology of wrestling-themed fiction. I expressed an interest, just to be polite, and then quoted my fee to scare him off. Time passed. Nothing came of the project. But the idea stuck with me.

With Castor’s permission (I would’ve stolen the idea anyway), I began developing the project myself, recruiting a murderer’s row of writers under the banner (and bankroll) of a respected small press publisher. Initially this was to be a whopper of a book, with almost double the number of writers, including reprints from some BIG NAMES, and even a few gals (I believe ‘diva’ is the correct rasslin nomenclature). Alas, at the last moment – like, a couple of weeks before the deadline for stories – I unexpectedly lost my funding, parted ways with the publisher, and was forced to pull the plug on the project.

This was infuriating for a number of reasons, not least that I’d already received a number of stories from my writers, who would now be left out of pocket, with crazy wrestling stories they’d be hard-pressed to place elsewhere, given the scarcity of fiction publishers seeking crazy wrestling stories – it’s a niche market.

Now these things happen in publishing, and the writers were very understanding, but nonetheless it pissed me off, especially since this was my first foray as editor and I was determined there would no fuck-ups on my watch.

Feeling bruised and betrayed, beaten down and blue, that might have been the end of WRESTLE MANIACS right there…until I recalled the wise words of a great man:

“When you crawl out from underneath those covers and swing your legs out over the edge of the bed, don’t sit there with your head and shoulders slumped over and your chest caved in. Stick your chest and chin straight out and welcome the first full blow of the day. Say: Bring it fucking on because I am going to kick your ass the rest of the day so you better make it your best fucking shot!”

Ultimate Warrior

Suitably inspired, I decided to take the plunge, and, over my wife’s tearful protests, financed the project with our kid’s college money. (That’s right, folks. My child’s education is in YOUR wallets. So if you’ve come to this book by less than honest means, shame on you.) With more than a little help from Duncan Bradshaw at EyeCue Productions, the Igor to my Dr. Frankenstein, I established Honey Badger Press, the home of fearless, ferocious, FUBAR fiction, grit-lit that just don’t care. Grrr!

WRESTLE MANIACS is the first release from Honey Badger Press. Depending on how the book is received, there may be future volumes of WM, including Diva editions, Tag-Team stories, even a Royal Rumble; I might also open to general submissions. So if you dug the book, or fancy writing for a future volume, please leave a review (ideally a positive one) and help spread the word. If you didn’t…? Well. Goddamn it, we tried.

Until next time, bruthas and sistas, keep taking your vitamins every day, saying your prayers every night, and you will never go wrong.

Adam Howe, Oct. 2017

MEET THE AUTHORS

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JEFF STRAND

Jeff Strand is the author of over 30 books that have little or nothing to do with wrestling, though his novel CYCLOPS ROAD does have a sweet cage fight. He used to live in the same state as Hulk Hogan. You can visit his website at www.jeffstrand.com

PULVERIZING PAT MCCRUNCH

Pulverizing Pat McCrunch needs no introduction. If you’ve never heard of him, that’s your fault, you damned poseur. Famed for his trademark move, The Pulverizer – the most spectacular groin kick in the history of the sport – McCrunch is a three-time Global Wrestling Association Heavyweight Champion. He has never read a Jeff Strand book and never will.

TOM LEINS

Tom Leins is a disgraced ex-film critic from Paignton, UK. His short stories have been published by the likes of Akashic Books, Shotgun Honey, Near to the Knuckle, Flash Fiction Offensive, Horror Sleaze Trash and Spelk Fiction. A novelette, Skull Meat, is available via Amazon. A short story collection, Repetition Kills You, will be published in 2018. Contact him at https://thingstodoindevonwhenyouredead.wordpress.com/

JAMES NEWMAN

James Newman lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife and their two sons. His published work includes the collection PEOPLE ARE STRANGE and the novels MIDNIGHT RAIN, THE WICKED, ANIMOSITY, and UGLY AS SIN (which first introduced readers to disfigured ex-wrestler Nick “The Widowmaker” Bullman). Newman’s latest release is the critically-acclaimed novella ODD MAN OUT. Up next are the collaborative novels DOG DAYS O’ SUMMER and SCAPEGOAT (co-written with Mark Allan Gunnells and Adam Howe, respectively).

ERYK PRUITT

Eryk Pruitt is a screenwriter, author and filmmaker living in Durham, NC with his wife Lana and cat Busey. His award-winning films include FOODIE, LIYANA ON COMMAND and next year’s GOING DOWN SLOW starring Meredith Sause and Michael Howard. His short fiction has appeared in THUGLIT, PULP MODERN, and in GREAT JONES STREET. In 2014, he was a finalist for the Derringer with his story “Knockout.” His novels DIRTBAGS and HASHTAG have been reissued by Polis Books in anticipation of his latest novel WHAT WE RECKON, currently available in stores now.

ADAM HOWE

Adam Howe writes the twisted fiction your mother warned you about. He is a British writer of fiction and screenplays, and the Fuhrer of indie publishing outfit Honey Badger Press. He lives in Greater London with his partner, their daughter, and a hellhound called Gino. Writing as Garrett Addams, his short story “Jumper” was chosen by Stephen King as the winner of the international ON WRITING contest, and published in the paperback/Kindle editions of King’s book. His short fiction has appeared in places like NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE, THUGLIT, GREAT JONES STREET, and YEAR’S BEST HARDCORE HORROR VOL.1. He is the author of BLACK CAT MOJO, DIE DOG OR EAT THE HATCHET, GATOR BAIT, and TIJUANA DONKEY SHOWDOWN. Up next: SCAPEGOAT (co-written with James Newman). You can stalk him on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter @Adam_G_Howe

ED KURTZ

Ed Kurtz is the author of several novels including The Rib From Which I Remake the World, Bleed, and The Forty-Two. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories and Best Gay Stories, and has been collected in Nothing You Can Do. Ed lives in Connecticut, and you can find him online at www.edkurtzbooks.com

HECTOR ACOSTA

Hector Acosta thought about working in the ‘it’s still real to me’ quote but decided against it. He is the author of the wrestling inspired novella Hardway, and his stories have appeared in Weird Noir, Thuglit, Shotgun Honey and Killing Malmon. You can follow him on Twitter @hexican.

JOSEPH HIRSCH

Joseph Hirsch has been widely published in diverse genres, and is the author of novels including TOUCH NO ONE, THE DOVE AND THE CROW, THE BASTARD’S GRIMOIRE and KENTUCKY BESTIARY. He served four years in the U.S. Army, wherein his travels took him to Iraq and Germany. He previously worked as a sports correspondent for Fight Hype covering boxing matches around the globe. His latest novel, MY TIRED SHADOW, is published by Black Rose Writing. More information can be found here: www.mytiredshadow.com He currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be found online at: www.joeyhirsch.com

DUNCAN P. BRADSHAW

Yo, dawg, put away the steel, I ain’t fronting. I peep you over there, honking on that peace pipe yo mama gave ya. I feel ya, you out on da streets, pimpin’ and cruisin’, searching for a little something-something from that verbal gangsta, Duncan P. Bradshaw. All ya had to do was ask, dawg, I’ll sort yo out. Y’all know dat his zombie short story collection, CHUMP was nominated for a Saboteur Award? That shit is dope. Fo’ real, I gotta bounce, if you ain’t, peep his Facebook y’all, thems the dopest lines https://www.facebook.com/duncanpbradshaw/

DAVID JAMES KEATON

David James Keaton’s fiction has appeared in over 100 publications, and his first collection, FISH BITES COP! STORIES TO BASH AUTHORITIES, was named the 2013 Short Story Collection of the Year by THIS IS HORROR. His second collection of short fiction, STEALING PROPELLER HATS FROM THE DEAD, received a Starred Review from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, who said, “Decay, both existential and physical, has never looked so good.” He is also the co-editor of the new anthology HARD SENTENCES: CRIME FICTION INSPIRED BY ALCATRAZ and teaches composition and creative writing at Santa Clara University in California.

GABINO IGLESIAS

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, and book reviewer living in Austin, TX. He’s the author of ZERO SAINTS, HUNGRY DARKNESS, and GUTMOUTH. He is the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine, the TV/film editor for Entropy Magazine, and a columnist for LitReactor and CLASH MEDIA. His reviews have appeared in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, 3AM Magazine, Marginalia, The Collagist, Heavy Feather Review, Crimespree, Out of the Gutter, Vol.1 Brooklyn, HorrorTalk, Verbicide, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other print and online venues. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

PATRICK LACEY

Patrick Lacey was born and raised in a haunted house. He currently spends his nights and weekends writing about things that make the general public uncomfortable. He lives in Massachusetts with his girlfriend, his Pomeranian, his oversized cat, and his muse, who is likely trying to kill him. Follow him on Twitter (@patlacey), find him on Facebook, or visit his website at https://patrickclacey.wordpress.com/

JASON PARENT

Jason Parent is an author of horror, thrillers, mysteries, science fiction and dark humor, though his many novels, novellas, and short stories tend to blur the boundaries between these genres. From his EPIC and eFestival Independent Book Award finalist first novel, WHAT HIDES WITHIN, to his widely lauded police procedural/supernatural thriller, SEEING EVIL, Jason’s work has won him praise from both critics and fans of diverse genres alike. His work has been compared to that of some of his personal favorite authors, such as Chuck Palahniuk, Jack Ketchum, Tess Gerritsen, and Joe Hill. Jason grew up near Fall River, Massachusetts, the setting for several of his novels. He has lived in New England most his life, currently residing in Rhode Island.

_____

Thanks to my ring rat, Suzie, for indulging this project. Needless to say that Suzie is a HUGE professional wrestling fan, and was thrilled when I started this book.  “Does this mean we get to watch wrestling every night for the foreseeable future?” It did.

I owe a huge debt of thanks to Duncan P. Bradshaw. Not only did Dunk write one helluva story for the book, he also helped me format it…and by helped, I mean, he formatted it. Couldn’t have done it without you, Dunk. (Readers: Any formatting problems, you know who to blame.)

Thanks to the writers who stuck with the project when we hit an early speed bump. You could have bailed (some did) but you didn’t and I appreciate it.

Thanks also to: Rosemary, Carlos, Marc Tams, Alexis Liosatos, Andi Rawson, James Nunn, and Nev & Jo @ Confessions!

Also by Adam Howe (pub. Comet Press)

“Raw, punky and genuinely surprising.”

Stephen King

Mike Tenebrae

The man behind the cover and the Honey Badger Press Logo

MEET THE ARTIST

Mike Tenebrae is a freelance illustrator working from his studio in Cape Town, South Africa. He enjoys a wide list of clients from around the world, and has worked on everything from book covers to fantasy games such as THE LORD OF THE RINGS and TALISMAN. He enjoys working both in digital and traditional mediums.

http://tenebraestudios.net

All the formatting and interior design was done by EyeCue Productions

http://duncanpbradshaw.co.uk/eyecue-productions/

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