She was with me, always.

She was my light, my everything.

Until she wasn’t anymore.

I rose to my feet with the pounding of a drumbeat throbbing in the back of my skull. That damned drum was growing louder and more intense throughout my match, building relentlessly until it crashed into a deafening crescendo. I could barely even hear the ringing of the bell, signaling yet another victory for The Nickleman: but I could feel it. I could sense the end of the match in Yelena’s distraught expression, in her desperate pleas with the referee for more time.

I had survived.

I was still the double-champion.

Gorgo had tried so hard to usurp my reign, but in the end, it didn’t even matter: the presence of the wraith had protected me. The referee walked over to me with both of my heavy belts in hand, and even as the drum beat in my head thundered louder, I couldn’t stop smiling.


This was our moment to bask in the glorious spotlight, together, as a family.


The overhead lights were almost blinding, but throughout my match I saw her in the ring with me, whispering her sweet words of encouragement. Her gnarled, headless image was a constant reminder of what I was fighting for. I searched for her again now, with the weight of both the X-treme and TV divisions heavy on my shoulders. I saw her standing there in the corner of the ring, her form flickering beneath the lights, distorting like a hazed mirage.

She was angry with me.

I could tell from the way she balled her bloodied fists with rage. The air around her twisted visage thickened and slowed, growing denser, blocking out the deafening noise of the crowd as she whispered once more.

“You didn’t pin her.”

Her words floated through the air like a hushed bubble of hatred, popping in my ears.

“We won…that’s all that matters, darling.”

“You failed me.”

Her bloodied fists unclenched as she lifted an outstretched palm in my direction. Her image grew more and more distorted by the second, slowly fading out of my view beneath the overbearing stadium lights.

“No, no I didn’t fail you! We won! The champion always wins a draw, and since I’m a double-champion, that means we just won twice! We played it smart, we have another match tonight, we-”

I reached out to grab the ghost before she vanished, but the weight of the expectations upon my shoulders slowed me down.

“You always fail me.”

Her beautiful headless form melted into the air as if she were never there. I cried out in a panic, stepping forward to the spot where she just was, trying to cling to the memory of my daughter long lost.

“Wait, no, don’t go!”

I never even saw Yelena Gorgo’s roundhouse kick coming. I was focused on the other daughter. And just like that my ghost was lost, as if she were nothing more than a championship belt in the night. One more Warfare was in the books, and one more disgrace was added to the pile of my misery.



You Always Fail

We cut to a shot of the 24/7 backstage hallway, just outside of the medical examination room. XWF superstar Jim “The Jim” Jimson is standing against the wall standing watch over two middle schoolers, one boy and one girl. The tweens don’t look like they’re here to get autographs, instead, their innocent faces are burdened with heavy concern. Jim Jimson stoops down to the kid’s level and places his hands on their shoulders.

“Don’t worry kids, your dad’s going to be fine! I’ve seen him take a hell of a lot worse, and trust me, he just dusts himself off. I know it seems bad on TV: but remember, he’s just playing a character to cause controversy and get his name out there. He’s just trying his best for you kids, I promise.”

“I wish he’d get a different job, maybe then he’d have time for us.”

Jim Jimson cringed as a comedically sized bead of sweat began rolling down his scalp. That’s when the door to the examination room suddenly swung open, a golden ray of light shining in the doorway, the reflection of the lights off the XWF TV championship as Charlie stumbled into the hallway with the assistance of XWF’s chief physician.

“Try to take it easy now, Charlie. You’re developing the single worst Grade 3 concussion I’ve ever seen. You are starting to become, and I don’t say this lightly, but you are legitimately at risk of permanent brain damage and long-term amnesia if you carry on like this.”

The young boy started walking down the hallway towards his father, but Jim Jimson quickly cut him off and urged him to wait.

“It’s nothing I ain’t seen before, Doc.”

The doctor, a tired old man with bags under his eyes and deep wrinkles across his face, sighed in exasperation as he placed his hands into his coat pockets. 

“But that’s the thing, Charlie: it quite literally is. Your symptoms are…confounding, to say the least. If I had it my way, I would never clear you for in-ring action.”

“But I have to do this for my daughter, Doc! You wouldn’t understand! I have to do this for her!”

The young girl’s face immediately perked up, her expression changing instantaneously. The physician, meanwhile, placed a caring hand on Charlie’s shoulder, trying to calm him down.

“Look Charlie, I get it, I really do. We all have to provide for our families, but your symptoms are...”

The XWF Doctor sighed once more before looking down towards the ground in disgrace. He was violating his hippocratic oath and he knew it, but it wasn’t his first time. To survive in this business, he had to make a different pledge: a hypocrite’s oath. The wrestling industry seemed to always have a way of turning men into monsters, no matter how long they tried to resist.

“Beyond my control at this point. Peter Principal said we can’t keep the TV Championship off TV, and no matter how much I argued, he said he would always wheel the TV champion out there….and I think he means he’s literally willing to grind your body down so much that he has to wheel you out for your matches. For the love of God Charlie...”

The doctor sighed in defeat before pulling a bottle of prescription painkillers out of his coat pocket.

“If you’re going to keep doing this…at least take these. One in the morning, and one at night. That drumbeat you told me about? The constant pain you’re feeling? These will at least help you manage.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Louis?! I’m 6 months sober, everyone knows that!”

Charlie slapped the pill bottle to the ground immediately, causing the cap to burst open and dozens of tiny pills to spill across the floor.

“Get out of my sight, you prick!”

Sensing further escalation in hand, Jim Jimson rushes into the center of the frame with the kids close behind.

“Hey, Chuck! Look who’s here! I brought Emily and Tyler up to Canada to see you!”

The Nickleman stumbled away from the physician and exhaled slowly, painfully. His eyes, glazed with frost, bounced around their socket incessantly, uncontrollably, as if searching in the shadows for a sight unseen.

“What are you saying, Jim? Who’s here?”

Jim steps back and ushers both tweens towards their father, a hopeful smile spread across his lips. Charlie heaves and grunts, forcefully pushing himself off the wall so he can face them head-on.

“It’s so cool that you’re the champion!”

Tyler pumped his fists up and down with excitement as he saw his father for the first time in nearly a year, here in the middle of a Canadian arena, miles and miles away from their family home in Steubenville, where Charlie’s presence was still missed to this day.

“I heard what you said, dad, and I just want to tell you...you don’t have to wrestle for me. I just want to spend more time with you.”

Emily sheepishly stepped towards her father, nervously rubbing a shoulder with her opposite hand, an instinctive move to protect herself. Nonetheless, her face was tinged with the naïve hopes of innocent youth.

“But Emily, it is really cool that he’s the champion! Hey dad, can I hold your belt?”

The Nickleman looks his own offspring up and down for a mere second before huffing loudly and turning back towards Jim with a clear aura of disapproval.

“I don’t have time for autographs and photo ops, Jim! I don’t care about any of BOB’s “Save The Children” bullshit. I’ve got to find her, man! I haven’t seen her since she left!”

As Charlie dressed Jimson down in front of his own children, that look of hope in Emily’s eyes was immediately dashed.

“But…you said…”

Tyler’s face morphs into a bewildered look. He cocks his head to the side, as if he were trying to hear his father’s hurtful words from a different angle, from an angle where they somehow made sense.

“Dad…”

Jimson placed a tender hand on each child’s shoulder, his own face wrinkling in confusion as he tried to make sense of Charlie’s words for himself.

“Settle down now kids, your dad’s just a little woozy from his match and trying to be funny! That’s all. Aren’t you happy to see them, Chuck? You've been talking about your kids in your promos constantly!”

Charlie looked at the children for a few moments, then back to Jimson. The Nickleman swayed back and forth on his feet, clearly struggling to stay balanced until he plants his hand on the wall beside his kids. The loud slapping against the wall startles the kids, causing them to jump behind their Godfather Jimson.

“I don’t know what kind of sick joke you’re playing Jim; you’ve always been my friend. If you know where my daughter is, tell me now! Don’t play these games with me, not now, not on the eve of the Ides of March! I need her by my side now more than ever!”

Jim Jimson cautiously places a hand on Emily’s back, pushing her forward gently, directly in front of Charlie.

“Emily’s right here.”

The Nickleman leaned forward unevenly to inspect the girl, clearly weighed down by the heavy belt on his shoulder. With one hand still firmly planted against the wall, Charlie’s searching eyes suddenly ceased their exacerbated nystagmus as they settled directly upon the child. Charlie inhaled deeply, soaking in the air around the girl, as if examining it for any trace of his beloved ghost. After one breath, his expression twisted into a gaze of disdain as he stared back up at Jimson.

“Lies. Deceit. Trickery. I know what my daughter looks like, even if she’s long-lost. I’ll never forget, I’ll never be forgiven…she’s long lost, must be found…”

With a heavy heave and a guttural grunt, The Nickleman pushes himself off of the wall. The sudden movement startles Emily again, but before she has time to step back the TV champion is already walking right past her, brushing by her without a single consideration in the world. She’s knocked slightly off balance by Charlie’s sudden burst of movement, causing her to fall back into Jim’s arms.

“I’ll find you…I need you more than anything…”

Jimson breaks her fall, bending down just in time to catch her falling body. The two bastard children stared back at their bastard father, their eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and hurt, trying to understand why their own father looked at them like they were strangers. The pain in Emily’s expression was particularly raw, a desperate yearning for a connection that should have been instinctive but was somehow lost.

“Where the hell are you going?!”

Charlie didn’t even look back to see the emotional havoc he had wreaked. He simply stumbled forward,
clutching his TV title as he responded absentmindedly.

“I’m going to find her, and I don’t care what it costs.”

Charlie staggered off in a hurry, leaving behind a puddle of tears and a pair of broken hearts. Jim Jimson stared daggers into the back of The Nickleman as he gently wrapped his Godfatherly arms around the pair of forgotten siblings.



ANOTHER BRIDGE BURNED

What do you know about fighting monsters, Ruski’?

Have you ever seen a ghost in the flesh?

What are you going to do when I finally find her?

You want to see a real MACHINE?

SHE will show you a MACHINA!

You’re not ready to fight a real Monster Machina. You never were. You’re not an Enigma: you’re just
another floundering talent desperate to find a niche. You were a complete dud at War Games. You were nothing but fodder at Snow Holds Barred. While I’ve been busy raising the bar and reaching new heights, you’ve kept yourself occupied by moving into the cellar of the XWF. But living in the company’s basement doesn’t make you a monster: it just makes you a talentless bum.

You should’ve stayed in the WGWF, Ruski’, cause here in the XWF we eat frauds like you for breakfast. ‘’The Monster Machine’, ‘Enigma’…you hide behind these fairytale monikers, because at the end of the day, you know you’re going to die nameless. I don’t hide my name behind cheap gimmicks, because at the end of the day I know my name is going into the XWF history books. But you? You’ll just be another dead Russian, grinded into dust by the endless cycle of Warfare. 

And yet still, you really think you’re something special, don’t you?

The pretentiousness just reeks off you. Your hometown isn’t ‘The Abyss’, your hometown is some shit-hole village with no plumbing. Who do you think you’re fooling with this whole monster charade? The only pair of eyes you’re pulling the wool over is your own. I see right through you and your cheap carnival antics. If you want my respect inside that ring, you need to earn it with chair shots and barbed wire. Just painting your face and peddling fairytales don’t impress me much.

I’m not worried about defending my championship against you. The only thing I’m worried about is sending a strong enough message to her. She needs to understand that The Nickleman is back, just like he never left- just like I never failed her. She needs to read my message of reclamation, written across the ring in your blood. She needs to watch as I peel back the layers of an Enigma’s storied flesh, because then and only then, will she know that a monster’s blood runs just as red as man’s.

I will make you all beware The Ides of March...because then and only then, will she come back. 

Charlie sat alone in his hotel room somewhere along the road to the next Warfare, just as he had done every night since he lost her. He hadn’t seen her since the match, and the raging drumbeat in the back of his skull wouldn’t let him forget it.

Charlie couldn’t bear the pain.

Charlie couldn’t even bear the overwhelming light from the ceiling fan, so the only light in the room
came from a small lamp on the end table. The cheap lamp didn’t illuminate much, but it allowed Charlie to see all that he needed to: he could see that she was still long lost, with no return in sight. The shadows bounced around the edges of the lamp’s light, dancing in tune with the drumbeat throbbing in Charlie’s skull.

As the lonely nights rolled on, Charlie began to question more and more. Where had he gone today? Did he eat anything? Was he still on the road to Warfare? These questions plagued Charlie in the dark of the night, but they all slipped into the recesses of his mind, because there was only one question that really mattered:

Where was she?

As Warfare drew ever closer, The Nickleman grew ever more concerned: had she truly abandoned him? He didn’t deserve these lonely nights. So what if he had failed her once or twice or a dozen times, he could still fix it: her ghost just had to believe in him like he believed in her.

“You’re not here…you’re supposed to be here! You’re supposed to always be here for me!”

But she wasn’t.

And as the nights carried on, each one growing longer than the last, Charlie was forced to ask himself: had she ever been there? Had it really been the ghost of Latina Submission Machina haunting him in the ring? Or had the specter been someone else – something else – entirely?

Perhaps his mind had simply been playing tricks on him: perhaps the doctors had a point. Or perhaps, Charlie thought, perhaps the ghost he had been seeing wasn’t his daughter at all: but rather, the ghost of his own career. Once thought dead and buried, the resurgent ghost of The Nickleman’s career had certainly been terrorizing the XWF roster…but had it been in the ring with Charlie, too?

No matter who, or what, had been in the ring with him, Charlie knew only one thing: he needed to get
them back.

As Charlie sat cold and alone, his mind began to wander to the far reaches of his sanity, desperate for answers.  The drumbeat in the back of his mind was pounding like an alarm. He could barely muster the strength to force a coarse whisper through his chapped lips.

“You’re not here…”

“Oh, Charlie my boy- I’ve always been here for you.”

Charlie jolted as the smooth voice purred, slipping into the room as if it had always been there. A gnarled hand reached out from the darkness and rested lightly on the shoulder where Charlie's TV championship usually sits. Nickles looked down at the bony, sore-riddled hand before immediately turning around to confront the shadowy menace. The man just stood there like he’d always been there, as if Charlie had simply missed him in the darkness. Tall and slim, the man donned a dark blue suit so polished that it seemed unnatural. The man’s skin was sickly and pale, nearly as white as the shark-like teeth he bore into a predatory grin.

“What are you doing in my room?!”

Charlie looked into the man’s shadowy eyes. In his eyes he saw darkness incarnate, as if there was no end to them, as if they were just a bottomless void that swallowed up everything they saw. As Charlie confronted the man in the shadows, the blaring drum in his mind suddenly ceased: only to be replaced by the incessant ticking of a clock.

Tik. Tok.

The air around the man shifted, growing colder, denser. As the space between the men thickened, Charlie found himself unable to breathe without feeling the weight of this man’s presence in the room.

“You’re lonely, you’re scared, you’re broken….but I can help with that.”

He moved closer to The Nickleman, his polished shoes silent against the floor. Shadows danced along the walls, and as the man stepped toward Charlie, they twisted into thin, dark lines—strings. The strings slithered toward Charlie like dark tendrils, wrapping around his arms and legs.

“Who the hell are you?!”

“Oh, Charlie, I can’t believe you’ve forgotten my name! After all the time we’ve spent together, after all the crazy nights, all the wild highs. If I didn’t care so deeply for you, my dear boy, I’d be downright offended.”

The man starts moving through the shadows around Charlie, circling him, as if he were a predator just waiting for the moment to strike.

“I’m your dear friend, Geppetto.”

The goosebumps on Charlie’s arms stood up in fright as the constant ‘Tik, Tok’ of the clock echoed in the back of his mind. The strings connecting Charlie to the shadows shifted and contorted, holding him in place. The shadows seemed to close in, tightening their grip on Charlie, as the man in the blue suit merely grinned.

“You’ve lost so much, Charlie. The pain in your soul, I can’t believe you’ve been managing without me…I don’t believe you’ve been managing without me.”

Geppetto’s eyes narrowed, his brow rising as his empty, yet never-ending eyes stared right through Charlie’s public veneer of bravado.

“I know what you’ve been craving, Charlie- what your body’s been missing. You can either suffer alone, or you can make the pain go away.”

Geppetto pulled a crystalline pipe out of his coat, a sinister smirk floating upon his lips as he placed the pre-loaded glass upon the table.

“Remember what the good Doctor said, Charlie? You need to make the pain go away if you want to see her again..and you know how to make pain go away, don’t you, Charlie?”

Tik. Tok.

“The choice is yours, boy. You know what to do.”

Charlie sat there trembling; his eyes locked on the glass pipe in front of him. Every muscle in his body screamed with pain, but the dark strings held him tight, binding him to his own destruction. He knew what it would cost to give in, what it had already cost him in the past. Geppetto lurked in the shadows, just waiting for the moment Charlie would break. Sweat dripped down The Nickleman’s brow as his fingers twitched, the battle raging inside him. But Charlie just stared at the pipe, frozen, knowing that if he moved, it was all over.

Tik. Tok.