Though he'd never admit it, there was something picture-esque about this: A plume of smoke billowing from the end of Zane Kingsley's cigarette as he leaned over the balcony railing of his penthouse apartment in Oakland, California, eyes on Lake Merritt. The smoke trailed upwards until it disappeared into the burnt-orange sky: the man in black loomed over the sunset. Darkness swallowing light.

"Nah dude, you're not getting it," Zane said with a sigh, shaking his head as he adjusted the small wireless device in his ear. "There's a certain like, decorum, to it. Ya can't just go in there and start makin' demands 'n shit. Think about it: if everyone did that shit then it'd be chaos. Nothin'd get done."

He snuffed the half-smoked cigarette out in a black plastic ashtray that sat on the railing before flicking it over the ledge. The voice on the other end - a high-pitched, whiny, nails-on-a-chalkboard cacophony - continued to drone on about a problem Zane had only a vague understanding of. He waited patiently, elbows resting on the railing, drumming his fingers on his chin and mockingly mouthing along with the voice on the other end. Barely listening; hardly attentive. A smile crossed his face when the voice stopped.

"Yeah, yeah. Hear you loud 'n clear. I'll swing over and talk to the promoter in the morning."

Fucking wrestlers, he thought to himself as the line went dead. Are they all a bunch of primmadonnas or am I just unlucky?

Of course, he invited the company he kept. His association with Luca Arzegotti put him on the map as far as the wrestling business was concerned, which was a blessing and a curse. There was no shortage of potential clients, scratching and clawing for Zane-senpai's attention. However, he noticed that they were all pretty much the same. The phenomenon could be described by looking at their Twitter bios: Zane was blown away by how many loudmouthed, under-talented drug addicts in the wrestling business called themselves "The Next Luca Arzegotti" or something to that effect. It was baffling to think that so many people wanted to compare themselves to the miserable fuck; but, of course, they only saw the success. The glitz. The glam. The fame. They didn't know the whole story.

Zane ran a hand through his hair and chuckled. Even when Arzegotti disappeared off the face of the Earth, he was fucking with him.

On the table behind him, his phone rang, pulling him out of his head and back into the beautiful reality. Zane cleared his throat and approached the table, sliding his finger across the screen to accept the call, not bothering to check the name at the top of the screen.

The voice he heard in his earpiece was one he recognized immediately: one that brought a wide grin to his face despite grating against his ear drum. A favor was about to be called in. Just as he'd expected.

---

Amy Laurent (nee █████████) glanced up from her menu with a beaming smile, silently cursing her inability to decipher the upper-class gibberish placed before her - surely his intention. She studied her date - a New York State Senator with a crooked smile, a tacky haircut, and a ten dollar suit - with intense fervor. The phantom scent of blood lingered in the air: a wondrous, familiar odor. Her lips parted and she bared her teeth at the inattentive Senator, struggling to contain the urge - a shrieking choir drilling through the inside of her skull - to lunge across the table, knife in hand, and allow her base instincts take over.

"Nice place," she said in a light, breathy, almost whispering voice as she leaned over the table, narrowing the distance between her and her prey lover companion. She was establishing dominance, not that the Senator - whose eyes did not meet hers when she captured his attention - would know or even care. She'd made the right choice with her attire for the evening, even if her dress was dreadfully revealing for such an establishment.

"Yeah, it is. I come here all the time." His smile persisted in spite of his faltering grip on the facade. Amateur, Amy thought as the cracks in his mask became more and more pronounced. She settled back in her seat and looked down at the menu again, before placing her finger on one of the indecipherable chunks of text and clearing her throat.

"I'm sorry, all of this is just so out of my pay grade. Can you tell me what's good here? I can't make heads or tails of this menu."

"It is a bit indulgent, ain't it?" the Senator chuckled, his fingers wrapped around the edge of the table. "Say, how about we go somewhere a little less uh, snobbish?"

Amy's eyes widened almost involuntarily. "Oh no, I didn't mean it like that! It's just, um, I don't know... but I certainly didn't mean to imply anything about you."

The senator placed his hand on Amy's shoulder and shushed her, the arrogance in his smile seemingly emboldened by her seeming faux pas. "You're fine, doll."

Their wonderfully touching moment was interrupted by the soft vibration of Amy's cell phone against the bare flesh of her leg. Rolling her eyes in a display of faux-annoyance, she retrieved the phone from its resting place in her stocking and took a quick glance down at the screen.

New Message Luca I wanna talk to you. U free?

She maintained her frustrated demeanor as she quickly typed up her response:

Call you soon

A grin crept across her face as she slid the phone back into place and returned her attention to the Senator. "I mean, if you want to get out of here, we can."

Her mind drifted to Luca - to the chaos that accompanied him wherever he went - as she reached under the table and stroked his crotch, smile growing wider. "I think you do."

She thought about the knife strapped to the garter on her other leg: so clean and shiny and sharp, it was begging to be broken in.

This was going to be a good night.

---

Luca Arzegotti awoke with a skull-splitting headache on the dirty floor in a Motel 6 in Topeka, groaning loudly as the first rays of sunlight poured into the cramped room through the sole window. He rolled over onto his back, grabbing the thin pillow he'd been resting his head on and pulling it over his face to block out the painfully bright light. In the newfound darkness, he yawned into the rough pillowcase, his head falling to the side as he grimaced in agony. There was no fighting it: he wasn't getting back to sleep. He braced himself as he pulled the pillow up and forced himself to sit.

The clock read 7:43 AM.

"Way too early for this shit," he mumbled under his breath as he hopped off the bed and stumbled towards the bathroom. The sound of aluminum crunching under his foot startled him into some kind of alertness as he accidentally stepped on of the many discarded cans that littered the room. He almost fell into the bathroom sink as he inspected himself in the mirror. Truth be told, this was a better morning for him. Sure, he was just as fucked up as ever: pale as a sheet with wild hair, unkempt facial hair (most of which was stained red as the result of a dried up nosebleed), sunken in eyes, and dry, bitten, and bleeding lips. Yet, something seemed better. Felt better.

Amy.

That's it, he thought as he continued checking himself. He'd talked to Amy for the first time in months the night before. He couldn't remember anything they talked about, but he remembered registering something in her voice he hadn't ever heard before.

Joy - or failing that, any sort of identifiable emotion.

She'd missed him.

His sudden positive mood was ruined however, when the obnoxious, blaring ring tone of his cell phone blasted through his ears like a gunshot. Scratch that, I've been in gunfights that weren't as loud as this shit. He shook his head and stumbled back towards the bed, scooping the phone off the nightstand. Without looking, he accepted the call and placed the phone to his ear.

"Congratulations, dude," spoke the remarkably chill, surfer accented voice of Zane Kingsley III, "You got a purpose in life again.