For one rare day, the rain falls hard upon The Promise Land, drowning the fields in a downpour the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the summer began. David himself hadn’t seen rain land here since he arrived. A whole two months’ worth of dry, burning sun. Being honest with himself, David was thankful for the rain. It was something oddly sentimental to him. It reminded him of home – of Redditch, that sleepy city-town that barely saw the sun. It had been a dreary, rainy day when he experienced his first kiss at age 15, walking home with a girl that had almost matched his ghostly paleness.

As the rain came down lazily that day many years ago, David couldn’t be sure if his palms had been moistened by the precipitation or merely from his instinctual nervousness lining his hands with a slick sweat. He had made some pointless conversation; something about Liverpool FC’s recent win or something silly. He really hadn’t followed professional sports since he still lived at home with his father. The words echoed in his ear as the girl had smiled at his weak attempts at small talk.

“No one could ever love a sod like you.”

A chorus of that deep, masculine voice piercing his ear canals, sending him over the edge again and again. By the time he had finished his rant on who-ever scoring a hat trick, the girl was already by his side, close enough for him to smell the sweet, subtle scent of her perfume. It was a rose-tinted smell, which had made his knees weak and his heart flutter like a hummingbird. She had grabbed his hand, laced it in her own fingertips. Before he could even react to the sudden motion, she had leaned into him, not breaking the pace of their steps on the wet sidewalk, and planted a quick peck on his quivering lips. Mind sent spiraling, David couldn’t have reacted even if he wanted to before the girl looked deep into his horrifically blue eyes, like those of a summer’s sky, blushed, and darted away. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to say a word before she disappeared around the corner and into the deeper parts of the city, her sloshing steps haunting his empty head.

“No one could ever love a sod like you.”

With a clap of thunder, David awoke from his daydream. He’d been staring out the single window of his shack for who knows how long. Somewhere out in the distance, a bolt of lightning streaked the sky, painting the world in a shower of light for a single instant. In that moment, David could swear he saw a figure out near the woods, hunched over like an animal. Silently, David muttered a name to himself, but his lips moved without his discretion. By the time the name has slipped past his mouth, he himself wasn’t sure what he had said. It was all one big mystery to him. Another of life’s unusual circumstances.

Deciding it was unhealthy to stare for so long out the window, David made for the fireplace to retrieve the kettle, which had begun to whistle minutes earlier, almost in exact timing with the clap of thunder. With a detached sigh, he pulled the metal pot from the fire and placed it neatly upon his desk next to two simple white tea cups. These were different from his usual ornate set he had fetched from civilization earlier in the week. These were the dressed-down cups, steeped in modesty. He was expecting company.

By the time he had poured the hot water over the twin satchets of Earl Gray tea, there came a knock at the door. He could still hear the rain smacking against the roof tiles, and so quickly made for the door. Swinging it open, he found the soaked figure of Becky awaiting him, a face wrought with a combination of annoyance with the rain and a look that told David she was happy to see him. Without a word, David stepped aside and beckoned Becky in, closing the door behind her. There came the instinct to offer to take her coat before he realized she wasn’t wearing one. Awkwardly, he moved past her to pull up a chair for her to sit. She gladly took it, and the cup of tea David handed her before he himself took a seat on his bedside.

“Did Eli send you?” David asked quickly, not even bothering to test his tea.

“What?” Becky replied with a warm chuckle. “No.”

“I suspected he might have,” David admitted. “Can’t imagine he’s very happy with me losing the titles to The Brotherhood goons.”

“You couldn’t have seen that chaos coming.”

“So you watched?” David asked eagerly, a tinge of nervousness in his voice. With shaking hands, he brought his cup to his mouth, burning his lips with a sip much too large.

“Yes, why?” Becky asked in response, mirroring David’s move, also scalding herself slightly.

David paused, basking in his own internal misery. It wasn’t a result of a single moment. It was a collective misery, brought on by multiple external sources. He sighed and took a more prudent sip, this time enjoying the warmth of the tea as it sank down his throat.

“I figured Eli might have sent you,” he grumbled. “Why else would you accept an invitation to drink my tea?”

Becky smirked and admired the plain white cup in her hand, tracing a finger along the ivory rim.

“It’s growing on me,” she replied with a weak smile. David didn’t have it in his heart to return the smile. Instead, he looked away, back out the window at the rain, which was still coming down heavily. He could see the tall grass in the fields being pummeled and weighed down by the torrent, like soldiers being mowed down by a machine gun.

“If you watch,” David said somberly, “who else here watches?”

“A few people. Mostly just me and Eli’s sisters. Couple others.”

David gave her a look of abject dread, which she responded to with a slight chuckle.

“No, silly,” she assured him. “Not her. Which reminds me…”

She placed her cup of barely-drunken tea on the desk surface. For a second, David let his mind wander, and pondered whether he should have bought coasters. No doubt the cup would leave a rung on the fine wooden desk.

“I came here because I have infooooo!” Becky said in a sing-song voice, causing David to cringe in a combination of empathetic embarrassment and incoming fear. What good info could she possibly have for him regarding this, the most fragile of topics in his agenda?

“Do tell,” he managed to sputter out in a hoarse whisper, taking a long sip from his cup.

“Well, I got you a name,” Becky smiled as she pushed a long strand of her wet hair from her eyes. “Her name is Rose.”

Rose. David froze, this time not in dread, but in the warmth of something unknown. It was the very idea of knowing someone’s name – their identity on this earth. The title by which a person answered their loved ones and strangers alike. Rose. Oddly fitting. In an instance of blind desperation, David tried to change the subject.

“This rain will be good for the sunflowers,” he said, still looking out the window. But here, his gaze fixed upon the modest flower garden he had planted. Just like the tall grass, the flowers were being beaten down by the falling rain. It wouldn’t hurt them, but for the moment, it was a struggle to remain standing and prideful. An odd parallel to David’s internal mechanisms, spinning like gyros and gears in a clock, steadily falling out of time with the world itself. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

“Do you plan on giving them as a gift?” asked Becky.

David froze up once more, his mind coming to a screeching halt. He hadn’t thought of that, and he had to be honest with himself. He had no concept as to the idea of dating. Even…where to begin. How could he introduce himself to her when he had so little knowledge of who she was. All he had to go on was the little moments of last Sunday, when he had seen something beautiful in her face – the emerald green eyes and freckles he wished to play connect-the-dots with. He pondered for a moment if those freckles stretched onto her shoulders like ants fleeing from a flooded anthill, but chased away the thought. That was thinking too far and too fast.

“I um…” David sputtered, his eyes darting back and forth as though he were being interrogated by a detective. “Maybe. I should uh, maybe…plant some roses. That would be a bit proper, I suppose.”

“Roses for Rose,” Becky said, verbally studying the phrase and irony of it all. “Cute.”

Becky’s phrase brought a pain to David’s chest. It was an aching he couldn’t quite describe, rooting him at the core, spreading throughout his body to his limbs, sending him spiraling down into a pit of worry and further aching. Agony in the heart. A sickness to the stomach, like concrete solidifying. He gave a hard gulp.

“Yeh, cute…” he sighed, looking back to Becky, who had taken her cup of tea back from the desk and was now eagerly sipping away, even beating David’s consumption in an unspoken contest of who could enjoy the aroma and flavor of the beverage more. Not wanting to fall behind, David took in a deep sip, and realized for the first time in this conversation that his mouth had run dry from the complete nervousness of it all. He had to laugh at himself internally.

“No one could ever love a sod like you.”

He coughed, awkwardly sending the gulp of tea spitting down the front of his shirt. Becky gave a bit of a laugh as he tried to rub the stain away. It was a futile effort. He’d have to scrub the stain out later. No big deal, yet a subtle motion of what had been said internally. That voice, still taunting him from years back. Father knows best.

“You’re quite a klutz when we talk about her, you know,” Becky mentioned, pointing at David with a sort of mocking gesture. He could only nod in half-agreement.

“Then perhaps we should speak of something else,” David grumbled, turning his head away from her.

“Your match, maybe?” Becky replied with a sort of apology in her voice. David could hardly notice it, however, as a bit of a headache began to grip his temples. The rain had brought it on, or so he hoped.

“Alright, so four people and a…ladder?” Becky asked, sort of amused by the very idea. It all seemed quite outlandish to her.

“Yes,” David replied.

“First to grab the title wins?”

“And it’s more of a nuisance than a victory, I’d say,” David muttered, gently lowering his face to rest in his palms. He looked a bit childish now, hiding away from the light of the world. “Because whoever wins has the lovely honour of defending it twenty-four hours a day. Every day. Like working every hour of your life for no additional pay. Don’t know how Stevie does it, really.”

He turned in his chair, slowly looking away from the darkness of his hands and back out the window. He sipped his tea carefully, taking in the slight aroma of bergamot, a minor comfort to him on this day. It was the tiniest of things, insignificant, that kept him anchored to what he was feeling. Suffering, anxiety…

“Eli told me he has a demon inside him,” Becky added, thumbing the side of her nose to gently scratch an itch. David didn’t notice. His gaze had focused on something outside.

“Yeh…” David answered, distracted. “Calls it Gary. Kind of like my predicament, but…the man is fragile. Again, like me. But Stevie himself isn’t much of a fighter. It’s that Gary fellow who does his war. Like a machine, tooled to no one’s liking. Monstrous, disastrous…sound familiar?”

Becky downed the rest of her cup of tea as she listened, then nodded in answer to David’s question.

“Sounds like you,” she noted. David gave a slight nod in response and took a deep breath.

“The difference being that I have control of my demons. Stevie…I don’t know. Don’t know what exactly he’s dealing with. He’s an average man with a not-so-average problem. I’m more refined, like a metal in the rain. Wash away the dirt and you have a shining piece of a larger puzzle. Life. One big puzzle.”

He coughed, causing Becky to jump a bit. She seemed on edge, and David has to wonder why. He looked away from the window and into her eyes. What he saw there was an apprehension – she was clearly uncomfortable.

“You okay?” he asked, suddenly realizing that she was certainly not okay. His voice had dropped several steps. “Oh, hell…”

He coughed again, much more violently this time, and closed his eyes. The pain throbbing in his head came to a climax, and finally subsided. As he reopened his eyes, there was a new serenity that flowed through his veins.

“Go on,” Mystica said with a devilish smile. “Ask me about the others.”

“Um…uh…Alexan—“

“Lovely woman,” Mystica interrupted, taking up his tea and finishing it before getting up to fetch another cup. He motioned to his cup, silently asking Becky if she’d like another. She shook her head almost robotically, not taking her eyes off him for fear of something unspoken. He chuckled.

“Keep asking,” Mystica ordered, almost relishing the discomfort this caused her.

“Angelus. Er, Peter Lake?”

“Eli’s problem, for the most part. Just another traffic cone in my intersection. Most people steer away, but me…” he laughed, pouring another cup of the Earl Gray. “I like to steer into them and watch them all disappear under my bumper. Almost gratifying. He’s the big orange cone and I am the tanker truck. Tick, tock. Beep beep…”

Without a flinch, he downed his new cup of steaming hot tea in a single gulp and slammed the cup down onto the desk. It shattered in his hand, leaving him to hold onto only the handle which had remained intact. Coughing more, he looked back to the window, then to Becky, and back to the window. There was something that needed doing. A talk that needed to be had. The peace in his veins began to subside, and the man emerged once more, frazzled. Taking in the sight of Becky in a state of abject fear and the shattered cup on the desk before him, David made a quick apology before making for the door, grabbing his white pea coat on the way out. It was a humid day, but oh-so-wet outside. No time for interruptions. Places to go, demons to see.

Achievements

• 1x Tag Team Champion
  
• August 2013 Superstar of the Month (Thank you all so much!)
  
• 1x US Champion
  
• 1x X-treme Champion