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**Vincent Lane** · (03-31-2016)

“Look, dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about… hand me another smoke?”

“Loverboy” Vinnie Lane is uncomfortable. He’s sitting in a hard-back chair in an LAPD interrogation room with one wrist shackled to a table leg, and he’s been there for hours. One dying cigarette butt joins its fallen brethren as the Universal Champion crushes it into a plain black ashtray, blowing out an exasperated cloud of grey smoke as a nearby officer hands him a replacement and stands at the ready with a lighter.

“Thanks, dude.”

“Big fan, Loverboy.”

“Whatever.”

Loverboy leans back in his chair with the cig in his mouth, turning his head slightly so that the fanboying cop can light him up. After brightening the cherry on the end of his smoke, the rocker tosses his hair back and blows out another stream of cancer.

“What more do you want me to say, man? I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Let’s go through it again from the beginning, just to be thorough.”

When the detective across from him says this, Loverboy coughs out a series of little grey clouds, throwing his hands up in the air until the chain on his wrist pulls taut with a metallic jangling.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now, dude? We’ve been over this a dozen times! You’ve got six cassettes filled with me repeating myself over and over again! What the fuck else is there to say, man? Jesus Christ, you’ve got me locked to a table like I’m fuckin’ Hannibal Lecter over here, and the only thing we’re talking about is what I ate for breakfast eight months ago. Where’s my lawyer?”

“She’s on her way. Listen, Vinnie, I know this isn’t how you planned to spend your day today, all right? But we’ve got a dead girl with your DNA all over her, and not a speck of evidence connecting her to anyone else. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t, dude! It’s not my job to solve murders, man, it’s yours. I don’t know shit about forensics or DNA or anything like that, man, but like I’ve told you repeatedly already, Dani and me hooked up the same day she went missing.”

“Yeah. You mentioned that. So you had sex with Dani?”

“Yes.”

“Your fiancee’s sister.”

“YES.”

“And she’s just… fine with that.”

“It was her god damn idea! Dude, do you fucking listen? God damn. It was in the shower, I didn’t know it was even Dani until I got out and Roxy told me, like it was a prank. Yeah, I fucked my girl’s little sister, and yeah, I blew my load inside her, and yeah, Roxy was totally down for the whole thing. Ask her.”

“Well we would, Vinnie, but she’s not answering our calls.”

“Yeah dude, you arrested me while I was dropping her off for a flight to fucking Canada. I don’t even know if she’s landed yet, and if she has the first thing she’s seen since getting off the fuckin’ plane is me getting tossed into a cop car for killing her sis. I’m guessing she’s avoiding answering unknown numbers, you know?”

“That may be the case, Vinnie, but I have to admit… I have a hard time accepting the idea that any woman would let her boyfriend screw around with her 18 year old sister.”

“What can I say? It’s good to be me sometimes, dude.”

Loverboy smirks, but the detective doesn’t so much as blink. He just stares a hole into the champ, who responds by lying back in the chair and blowing a smoke ring into the air above his head.

“Okay, Vinnie. How about we talk about something else?”

“That would be fuckin’ fantastic, dude. What do you wanna know? Which famous chicks I’ve bedded? Who I’ve caught staring at my dick in the XWF showers? Spoiler, it’s Ghost Tank.”

“No. Vinnie, do you know a person who calls himself Albino?”

Loverboy freezes, like someone hit the pause button. For a long moment he stares silently at the detective, the only hint of time passing being the smoke rising from the end of his cigarette and the slow growth of ash on the tip, curling under Loverboy’s finger’s like a slow-moving snake.

When the shaking of the champion’s hand eventually loosens the cherry enough from the cigarette to send it falling onto the wooden tabletop, it seems to snap Loverboy out of it a little. He chuckles a nervous laugh and grinds the butt into the ashtray, watching the embers fade out rather than keep eye contact with his interrogator.

“He’s not a person, dude. Albino’s a ghost. He’s like a phantom, you know? A bad memory.”

“And Donny Brooks? Is he real, or just a memory?”

Loverboy’s eyes grow icy as he sneers at the detective, leaning forward over the desk and balling his hands into fists with whitened knuckles.

“Donny was a good dude, and one of my best friends. That bunny-eyed freak killed him and left him at my door. I know you know this shit, dude, it’s all in the reports.”

“What’s not in the reports though is that no one has ever seen this Albino except you, isn’t that right? Not since a certain trip you and your friends took to Okeechobee ten years ago?”

Loverboy’s mouth drops open in a stunned silence. Luckily though, the interview room door swings open then and a beautiful woman walks in.

“Finally.”

Hey, look at that. Someone taught a sex doll how to talk. Now maybe if someone could teach her how to fight she’s be able to last for ten minutes in the ring with a pair of certified legends like Luca Arzegotti and myself instead of just being a prop for the Eiffel Tower during the afterparty. But hey, a start is a start. We all have to start somewhere, right Rebel? I know I started by carrying bags for bigger stars and getting job after job after job booked for me, and I took it as a learning experience. Because dude, you might look at me and see a pretty face – and trust me, sweetheart, you ain’t the only one who sees a pretty face here – but you’ve already lost this match if you don’t realize that my brain is a bigger sponge than the one you got from Walgreens to suck the spunk of your last three johns out of your scientifically perfected twat. I did my time on the crew, I did my jobs, and in every waking moment I learned how to do better. That’s some shit that you can’t learn from a turkey baster in a petri dish, dude. Yet, here’s this chick who isn’t strong enough to even carry the Universal Championship that I wear around my waist seven days a week because the only training she’s gotten in the business I have become a god damn MASTER of was being passed back and forth by the boys in the locker room for twenty minutes before Warfare started a couple months ago. Seriously, dude, who rents a sex toy and then decides to keep it? That’s fucking nasty, man. Don’t try to tell Rebel Star that she isn’t ready though, oh no. She beat Tommy Gunn, guys! You remember Tommy? The guy who hasn’t had the heart to compete full time in the ring in… ever? The guy who never even let the ink dry on his part-time contract before walking right back out the door and into irrelevance? Let’s clear one little fact up, dude. If Tommy Gunn had WANTED to win his match against Rebel Star, then it would be him I was spending my Wednesday afternoon running into the ground while Reb was back to hosing cum spatter off her thighs from wannabes who couldn’t afford a Real Doll.

Sister, you’ve had a little bit of rookie luck, you’ve turned a head or two, but you’ve never come anywhere close to a star of my magnitude. I handled you in our team match to start this tournament off because I knew I could do it without suffering any consequences. Don’t you get it? I knew I could win against the REIGNING TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS without you. I knew I could beat the X-Treme Champion, one of the hottest stars in the business right now, along with his proven main event caliber co-champion, and that I could do it whether or not I kept you around. Call it hubris if you want, dude, but what I call it is proven correct. And to think, the only thing you took from that match is that you somehow got revenge by preventing me from winning the X-Treme Title? Listen, Rubberdoll, I’m the Universal Champion. I have precisely zero want or need to hold a title that’s below me. The reason that the X-Treme Championship seems like an accomplishment to you is because it’s something hanging high above your station in life, and something that you’ll never get to touch unless Frodo Smackins saves up enough spare change to lease you for fifteen minutes.

Baby girl, you’re only as good as the worst person that’s beaten you. Take a look at my track record, if you want. You won’t find a loss on that list that didn’t come from a multiple-time champion. You won’t find anything to be ashamed of in any fashion when it comes to actual in-ring competition. When the lights go on and my music plays, you can guarantee that you’re about to see a five star masterpiece. I’ve dragged match-of-the-year performances out of scrubs like Cain and Mastermind. I’ve been the measuring stick for everyone who’s come into the XWF in the last two years. I’ve seen more main events than you’ve seen nutsacks. But one thing I’ve NEVER done is been a disappointment, or had to explain why I lost to someone incapable of stepping up. So no, Rebel, I’m not impressed with ‘some new chick’ getting into the finals of the King of the Ring with me. Why? Because what you and I both already know, and what I proved in front of thousands of XWF fans last time we were in the ring together, is that the only reason you made it past the first round of the tournament in the first place is by being on the winning team. Congratulations, Rebel, you won a match that LeStrange won too. And you even did it the same way he did… by watching from outside the ring while a MEGASTAR did the hard work. Smart move, little lady, but it all adds up to the same thing in the end. By the time the final bell rang in that match, I’d already proven once what the finals will prove again – I can beat you as readily as I can beat Luca. In fact, if you’d have been on his team instead of, say, Maverick, you’d have already been forgotten by these XWF fans… so, like, you’re welcome.

I like your attitude, though, I’ll give you that. I don’t want you to quit. I don’t want the crushing depression associated with learning the hard truth about being outclassed by main event talent to ruin you. Let this loss, and every one after it, float away like butterflies just like you said. It ain’t about how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get back up, right? And sugar, you’re gonna have to get back up a whole lotta times… starting the day after Shove-It. But hey, no matter what happens from now until the day you retire, at least you got Sugar Daddy’d a nice house to live in. But, honestly, dude, I feel kinda bad about taking home the winner’s purse in a match against an orphaned waitress… so here’s something to tide you over for a few hundred bucks, since I’m a fuckin’ gentleman.

Talk to you soon, Reb. Don’t take it all too personal, okay?

Oh, real quick before I go… you seen Luca? That bitch owes me money.

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