He had taken his eye off the ball. Like Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby, he had let his hand drop and forgotten to protect himself.
He saw Archyle coming and he did what his instincts told him to do – get in the way. Unfortunately, as is the case with most terrible injuries, he never swathe one that hit him.
When Thunderbolt X came crashing into Loverboy’s body, it was a complete shock. It was as if he’d been hit broadside by a speeding car. The impact threw him back and into the corner in the course of a single second that took two minutes for him to live through.
Time does something funny when an important moment comes around, like it doesn’t want you to miss the point. It slows and stretches in the same way a writer will italicize or underline something that he doesn’t want to you to miss.
This, the universe said to Loverboy, this matters. You can’t afford to forget this.
There was impact, but not pain. A flash of light, but no sight. Just the sound of a woman screaming.
No, she screamed.
No.
In the weeks that passed since that time, Loverboy had done a lot of thinking, but in the most unusual way. He had become finely attuned to the biological processes of his own body. He felt air going into and coming out of his lungs, first as it was thrust into him by a machine and then later, thankfully, under the autonomic power of his unconscious diaphragm.
He began to know the feeling of his blood as it coursed through him. He could feel the race around his body after the propulsion from his heartbeat. He felt it pushed into his lungs where it absorbed the oxygen, then into his brain and down through the rest of him until it came back again. He clocked the entire process at around 65 seconds.
For days, this was what he did with his life while the outside world went about the business of keeping him clean and comfortable. He was aware of them, though he couldn’t feel, hear, or see them. Just a sensation of a cloud crossing in front of the sun that let him know someone was there, looking at him.
More often than not, he would sense flowers. Fields upon fields of flowers. He knew somewhere deep within him that it was his Roxy, her perfume fighting its way through his comatose brain and letting him know she was there.
What happened in between life and death, though, was what could only be described as elsewhere. When Loverboy was in between, he saw things. Impossible things. And he met people who were both strangers and well-known to him at the same time.
It started about a week after Loverboy got to the hospital. After hour after hour of counting his breaths and heartbeats, he started to fall. As a professional wrestler, he was familiar with the sensation. The thing of it was, he couldn’t be falling. He knew, somewhere in the cortex of his brain, that he was bedridden. With enough concentration he could even almost feel the sensation of the rough hospital sheets and the firm cushions. He wasn’t moving, but he was falling all the same.
Then, just as suddenly, he hit the ground. Spongy, wet ground, but nothing that soaked into his clothing or made his skin and hair wet. He blinked for the first time in days, but his eyes back up in the hospital bed didn’t move at all.
“Hello?â€
He screamed silently. A vast expanse of complete soundlessness was in every direction. When people describe silence, they typically mean a lack of loudness. Here, though, wherever here was, was completely silent. No air passing over his eardrums, no groans or bubbles from his own body. He wasn’t even in his body, so far as he could tell, so the heartbeats were gone, as were the breaths. All that there was, was nothing.
“Hello? Where am I?â€
It was the lack of an echo that really got to him. The little things that we subconsciously take for granted are the ones that start to fuck with you the most once they’re gone. Loverboy began to be acutely aware that he couldn’t taste his own spit any longer, or smell his own breath. Here, there was nothing at all other than a bright, colorful landscape that seemed to move independently of the invisible ground he stood on, like a sort of Hollywood backdrop.
“If this is what dying is, dude, this is fucking weird. Close the gate, St. Peter, I’ve got shit to do and I ain’t ready to tap out just yet!â€
Loverboy walks along what he perceives to be the proper path. The clouds swirling in the edges of his peripheral vision all seem to point him in one direction or another, though he merely seems to float along at a predetermined pace. Something tells him he would have arrived to the same destination regardless of any decision on his part.
Eventually, the backdrop shifts to darker colors, and what appear to be trees adorn the still-moving scene. Loverboy feels the intense desire to sit down, and so he believes he does.
A lifetime goes by, and Loverboy begins to miss the heartbeats.
“Hello, my friend.â€
Loverboy’s conscious swings around and finds the source. A cartoonish demon man with a familiar smile… nearly familiar. Just wrong enough that Loverboy knows.
“You aren’t him. I know that now. You fooled me last time, but you aren’t him at all.â€
“Good for you, Mister Loverboy. Telling me who I am not is a simple feat - now tell me who I am?â€
“I don’t care who you are. I care what’s happening here, what’s going on? Why am I here and not in my body?â€
“This is the way home, Mister Loverboy, I assure you. I’m putting things in motion just for you. But first, I need you to do me a favor.â€
“Ridiculous. Why would I do anything for you?â€
“Because, Mister Loverboy, if you don’t, you’ll never wake up. And your little girlfriend will have a terrible, terrible go of things without you there to protect her.â€
“You fucking won’t touch a hair on her head, whoever you are. I’ll break your god damn neck just for threatening it.â€
Loverboy hears nothing, but feels the sensation of the fibers of the world around him shaking. After a few moments, he realizes what he is sensing is laughter. The world laughing at him.
“Don’t be such a fool, Mister Loverboy. Your heart only beats because I continue to allow it to. At any moment I choose I could cause the neurons in your spinal column to shrivel and perish, and you’ll spend the rest of your life defecating into a bag for your little trollop to empty for you. Is that what you’d like?â€
Loverboy doesn’t answer. He furrows what he thinks might be his brow and he waits, fuming at the words this little incubus is spewing at him. Time passes.
“Good. Now I believe we are on the same page about who is in control of whom. Shall we move on?â€
And just like that, the horizon spins and changes. The background is blackened and dripping, it seems, like the air itself is oozing. The entire landscape shifts into a stygian swampland, moving in a slow, pendulous rhythm. Loverboy feels his own spirit sinking into the morass.
“No, no, no, the doldrums are not for you, Mister Loverboy. This is where the suicides live. Look, there goes the harbormaster now.â€
A momentary lifting of the ubiquitous fog reveals a long boat being poled along by an impossibly tall and impossibly thin man with a head like a medieval plague mask. As Loverboy watches, he sees that the cattails the harbormaster is stabbing at with his pole are, in fact, hands sticking straight out of the muck, grasping at him as he drifts by.
“I don’t understand. Why am I here? I didn’t kill myself.â€
“Please, try to pay attention, Mister Loverboy. I may have an eternity to do with as I please, but I do so loathe repeating myself. This. Is not. For you.â€
“Right… but why then? What is your purpose in bringing me to this cesspool? The doldrums, or whatever you call them… they’re chilling me and I can feel them eating at my will.â€
“They do have a way of doing that to your kind. Mister Loverboy, I want you to rescue your friend. Your banter over the past year has been amusing to me, particularly when you interact with this fellow. Do you see him? There, in the bog? Just behind the harbormaster’s boat?â€
Loverboy squints into his dim surroundings, seeing only a putrid sky meeting a marsh of identical color.
“I don’t think I - â€
But then he sees it. One of the hands, stretching and yearning from the greyblack emptiness is different from the others. Instead of oil-slicked skin, the hand is covered with red fabric.
“What? You don’t mean… didn’t you say this place was for suicides?â€
“Indeed.â€
Loverboy pushes himself forward, feeling the weight of the swamp as it pulls at him like quicksand. The resistance cloys at him, and saps him of strength, but eventually he finds himself standing over the red hand as its fingers flex and strain, looking for anything to grab onto.
Without understanding how, Loverboy grabs the hand. Though he is formless, he feels the palm on his own as if he were as corporeal as ever.
With a surge of effort, Loverboy pulls a strange man out of the swamp, clad in a red bodysuit. Like his spectral host, his appearance is best described as almost, but not quite.
“Is this supposed to be funny? You and this… guy… being cheap knock-offs of the real thing? What should I call him, Crocodile?â€
“He’s a surrogate, Mister Loverboy. A copy of a copy, I pulled him right out of your memory. You know what happens when you copy a copy… things begin to blur. But he may as well be exactly who you think he is, for all intents and purposes.â€
“I don’t understand.â€
“Of course not. Suffice it to say, Mister Loverboy, that in a short time you will find yourself in a very familiar scenario. Well, that is, if you show me you deserve the continued effort of breathing life into you.â€
“I don’t…â€
“Understand, yes, I know. Mister Loverboy, you are going to get another chance at making your dreams come true. At Relentless.â€
“Relentless? That was last year, dude, I dominated. Did you know I pinned Duke?â€
“Yes.â€
“Because I totally did. I pinned Duke.â€
“Yes, you did. Pay attention. Do you remember after that? A certain four way match?â€
“Hell yeah, I wasn’t supposed to win that one either! The whole planet had priapism over the return of Luca Arzegotti, and yet it was me that walked away with my hand held high that night, dude. LH Harrison, Gator, and Luca all came in second place behind yours truly.â€
“And all of them will be in the ring with you again. As will your nemesis, one Doctor Louis D’Ville.â€
Loverboy feels life coming back into him at the thought of another chance at the XWF Universal Title. He focuses, and then the red body of the rescued man stands in front of him.
“Well?â€
“Well what?â€
“Tell me why you’re going to beat Gator.â€
“This is stupid. This isn’t Gator, you aren’t Doc, and no one can see this but me anyway. What’s the fucking point, dude? I’ve been here before, set up to fight all of these guys… what is there to learn from this?â€
“If you want to make it to the fight, Mister Loverboy, you’ll do what the surrogate says. Entertain me. Now.â€
“You should listen to him, mate.â€
“Or what?â€
The red pajama’d man shoves at Loverboy, sending him down into the black muck.
“What the fuck, dude? I rescued you, what are you doing?â€
“I’m not real, LB. I’m a surrogate, like he told you. Your choice though, innit? If you want to sink into that mud and just let it all go or if you want to work your way out of this nonsense.â€
Loverboy rises from the swamp, recouping and pulling himself together as the faces of his tormentors look on at him in bemusement.
“Well?â€
“I have no idea what to say… I don’t know what I’m doing here, why this cheap off-brand version of my friend Gator was in the suicide swamp to begin with… you want me to pretend?â€
“No, Mister Loverboy, I want you to believe it… because the outcome of this is very real. If you fail me here today, you will have chosen to end your own life, and you will stay right here in the doldrums until I see fit to do away with them, clawing out of the mud with the other retched souls who wish to change their minds too late, attempting to grab onto the harbormaster as he does his rounds. Your options are to tell the surrogate what you plan to do, or to commit suicide. Now choose.â€
And so Loverboy chooses life.
“Gator… or whatever you are… look, man. This is what we both wanted from day one, isn’t it? Going all the way back to when you were some snot nosed punk in J-Pro, all the way through our debuts here in the XWF… I think we both knew that someday it would be you and me in that ring at the same time fighting for the top prize, didn’t we dude?
For longer than most people realize, you and me have been close, dude. Shit, I’m almost certain I took the first Disaster Drop, you know? We were green as fuck back then, but there was something beneath the surface and anyone in the same ring as you and me knew it. We were a different class.
When I got here, I saw you as a familiar face, a lighthouse in a storm. With you, I knew exactly what I had to look forward to. I saw you taking step after step to the top of the XWF, and it told me I could be there too. That’s how I KNEW I’d be main eventing here, and why it was never a matter of “if†but “when.â€
But man… I would be lying if I said what you’ve become in the last six months hasn’t been a blow to the vision I had of you, dude. It was always supposed to be me and you, man. I shouldn’t have had to pull together some motley crew of dissidents and start an uprising on Madness without you by my side. I shouldn’t have had to watch as you built some cool kids’ club with flashes in the pan like Justin Sane and Austin Fernando. Those guys were coming after me, man, and you took up with them. Why would you do that, dude? Why would you sell yourself out just to get to where we always knew you were going to be, just one minute sooner?
You slapped me in the face when you formed Defiance. You spit right on top of the bleeding body of our history together when it needed you most. We could have made this place OURS, man. I was going to own Madness, that was inevitable, and Warfare would have been ripe for you to harvest. We could have held the tag division in our grip for as long as we wanted, instead of just having you and Sane shit the bed as soon as that new belt smell wore off for you.
See man, when you went after the Uni against the Doc the first time, I was right there cheering you on. Your success was my success, dude, even after all the shit we went through. I could have swept all that Defiance and Underground nonsense under the rug and we could have been exactly where we started. Gator and Vinnie against the whole motherfucking world.
But where were you, dude? Where were you when I was locked in that cage with D’Ville? Where were you when I needed every ounce of support I could get? There were dudes I’d only known for a month cheering me on, but every time I looked up during my most grueling and trying time, it as YOUR face I kept looking for… and you were nowhere to be seen.
No. You took your ball and you went home, didn’t you? You came up short one time and you just went ahead and asked for the check. You lay down for fucking MAVERICK, dude. What the fuck? There’s a reason that John Samuels, as decorated a performer and respected an athlete as he is, still hears shit about losing to that belt-shitting dipshit. It’s not an option to let yourself get put over on by the likes of him, dude. That wasn’t part of the plan. You quit on me, dude, and you quit on yourself.
Maybe that’s why you’re sitting here rotting in a garden of sleeping pill overdoses and bridge jumps. You may as well as put a gun into the mouth of Gator as soon as Jacob Woods decided to pack his bags and catch the first plane back to Manchester.
Now you want to show yourself back in like it’s the second coming of the messiah, and you want to just pick up where you left off, fighting for the Universal Title, something that belongs to those of us who stuck around and kept fighting while you were licking your little wounds and trying to feel better about not winning every single time.
Well guess what, Gator dude? The truth is, you’ve had better luck against the unstoppable monster that is Doctor D’Ville than you’ve had against me. I’ve beaten you before, in exactly this kind of environment. The only time during your legendary Television Title run that you didn’t come out on top. And when you had me one on one? Well, you had to have the rules changed to beat me, didn’t you? When it was the same match everyone else had, fifteen minutes then go home, you couldn’t get it done. If it weren’t for interference and an extra five minutes added on, you wouldn’t have the rare privilege to say you’ve gone into a match with “Loverboy†Vinnie Lane and be declared the winner.
The difference this time, dude, and what must really be eating you alive, is that you’re just a side dish to the main course this time around. I’m there for one reason and one reason only – to beat the Doc and take home the title. You’re just in the way.
Face it, Gator… I’m still the main event. And just like last year, you, LH, and Luca will just be standing there watching while “Loverboy†Vinnie Lane gets a win.â€
“Very good, Mister Loverboy. Very good indeed.â€
“Yeah? I mean, I’m a little rusty…â€
“You did well. Jacob will be excited when I pass it on to him.â€
“Wait…. How…â€
“Never mind that, Mister Loverboy. Now… follow me.â€
The ethereal non-Doctor floats away, and the thing that Loverboy has become trails him, leaving the surrogate in the red costume to sink back into the doldrums.
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