It’s so weird to me that I didn’t even realize we weren’t alone until the car had been moving for at least five minutes. I may have never noticed, actually, had the man in the back seat not introduced himself out of nowhere.

“Where do you think we might be going, Roxy?”

I jumped in my seat. The driver, the creepy guy who only told me he was ‘a friend,’ didn’t even blink. It was like he was some sort of mindless zombie under hypnosis or something the way he just stared at the road while I shouted and spun around to face the voice coming from behind me.

“Who the fuck are you? Jesus, you scared me half to death!”

The man was in darkness, unnatural darkness, considering the bright Los Angeles afternoon we were driving through. I heard a guttural laugh, and saw a puff of smoke, though there was no cigarette anywhere to be seen.

“You don’t recognize me, Roxy dear? Here… let me shed some light…”

He said it with a smile in his voice, teasing me. Then, he leaned forward. He must have seen the shock on my face as the white mask he was wearing came out into the light, because the ink blots moving across its face became something eerily similar to a smile.

“You… Harrison? Is it you?”

“No… yes… whatever you want me to be, Roxy. I’m just a vessel, after all. When we’re done together I won’t even exist at all.”

He disappears back into the shadow, and leaves me just a voice and a silhouette to talk to. I turn to the driver again, but his face lets me know he is long gone.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s nothing. Nobody.”

“He killed my sister!”

“Did he? Or did he just find her before the cops?”

“Stop with the god damn games! What do you want from me? Where are you taking me? What does this have to do with Vinnie?”

Smoke swirls around the back seat compartment, like dust kicked up into a windy day. I sit and stare back at the black form of my abductor’s head, trying to look where I thought his eyes might be. I needed him to see that I was serious, that I wasn’t going to let it go.

After a heavy minute, he went on. A small victory, maybe, but it felt like a big one.

“Your fiancé has a big match scheduled for next weekend. There are… some very important people interested in the way things go.”

“Yeah, who? The mafia? The Yakuza? Vegas thugs?”

“You’re thinking small time, sister. Think much… much… bigger.”

“And what? You need what to happen? You’re going to fix the match, is that it? You think he’ll bow down to you if you, what? Kidnap me? Rape me? Or do you think I’ll fuck you so he can win? Because let me tell you just how fucking wrong you are you backwoods Arkansas – FUCK!”

I didn’t see his hand, I only feel the sting of it across my mouth and taste the leather of his glove as it mingles with blood from my tongue.

“Watch your mouth, harlot.”

I want to spit the blood in his face. Tell him to fuck himself in the back of his own car if he can get it up with a real girl near him. My mind comes up with endless vitriol, but none of it comes through my slowly swelling lips. Instead, I’m sitting there like a reprimanded puppy licking my wounds and just waiting for him to talk again. Classical conditioning. Learned helplessness.

Finally, after letting me stew in my own defeat for what he determined to be long enough, he spoke again.

“What we want is… well, call it a sacrifice. We want to make a deal. You give us what we want, maybe we let your Loverboy wake up. Maybe we let him get what he wants. Don’t think for a second we don’t control everything that happens in your tiny world. Remember who is in this championship match with Lane.”

“Y… you are.”

“If you mean LH Harrison, then yes, LH Harrison is in the match. A bit of a rogue element at the moment, but they all come back to the fold after they test the reaches of their leash, don’t they? He’s just a sheep. A lamb. The shepherd is there along with him, to make sure everything goes to plan.”

“You mean D’Ville.”

“Yes. That’s what you call him. D’Ville.”

“And what do you think I’ll give you? What makes you think I don’t believe Vinnie can just win on his own, without your help?”

“Because, Roxy, as much as your bleached hair and plastic body try to pretend otherwise, you aren’t stupid. How can he overcome the good Doctor when he can’t even open his eyes? You both have the opportunity to make the deal.”

“What do you mean? Vinnie can’t make any deals.”

“Silly girl. There are other places than this. Look into my eyes and see him.”

He leans forward again, and I find myself squinting through the haze of the smoky air and trying my damndest to look into his eyes. All I see are swirling pools of black ink as they slide and shift and change across his face, however.

I try, and I keep trying, and the masked man laughs.

“Good. That’s good.”








As Loverboy walks through the dreamscape unfolding around him, he sees large, floral banyan-like trees sprouting ahead of him, leaving a path for him to follow.

As soon as each tree reaches its full, colorful height, though, the petals immediately begin to fall and brown. They land on the ground withered and dead just as he walks over them, feeling the crunch of them between bare toes he didn’t know he had.

The voice of his astral spirit guide, always from inside his own head, is the only sound to be heard in this time-lapsed autumn scene.

“How did you like seeing your old friend back in the swamp, Mister Loverboy?”

“That wasn’t Gator. You know it wasn’t him.”

Laughter. No humor in it, but laughter just the same.

“Mister… Vincent. I feel that I can call you Vincent now. We are friends here, after all, why not eschew the formality?”

“And what’s your name then, dude?”

“Ah… so many to choose from. Never mind, then, Mister Loverboy will suffice. But tell me, do you believe there is only one of you? One version of you, I should say?”

“I… think so? I mean, I don’t know, dude, I’m pretty agnostic. I don’t follow any of that Brief History of Time quantum shit either, man. I just work with what I can see and feel, you know?”

“Pity.”

“What do you mean?”

The man with no identity seems to look back over his shoulder at Loverboy, maybe even smile. A long while passes as the two walk through the woodlands, following the roadway which the trees lay out for them.

Loverboy becomes fascinated watching the blank, pure white horizon morph into blossoms of color ahead of them, and vanish again into nothingness behind them – like walking in a snow globe of color surrounded by nothing at all.

“Think of it this way… maybe that man you rescued back in the doldrums, the surrogate, maybe your words were not meant for him, specifically, but through the great design of things they travel through the proper channels and arrive on the proper ears. Would that not, then, make the man you said those things to the very one and the same as the man you were directing them to?”

“I… I don’t know?”

“Exactly. Ah, here we are.”

And then the trees vanish. The whiteness deepens into a cornfield-like layout, with a sky full of purple storm clouds. Heat lightning dances back and forth between the thunderheads, and an electricity fills the space around Loverboy, giving him the sensation of hair standing on end.

“Where? Where are we, man?”

The figure opens his arms wide and gestures above, spreading the clouds open like Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Look at the clouds, Mister Loverboy. The high-stacked cumulus-like billows of mist. What do you see?”

“What… you mean, like a game? Like a little kid lying on his back outside, seeing horses and dragons and shit in the clouds?”

“Something like that.”

And then, like the heavens themselves were in on the act, the clouds swirl and form together into… a face?

No, not quite.

An ink blot. A Rorschach.

“Whoa, wait a minute… what the hell is this, dude?”

“What do you see?”

“I see Hysteria. Or Harrison, I guess. I don’t know. But the mask is gone, I thought? I mean, isn’t Harrison on my side?”

“Look again.”

Loverboy stares up into the expanse of electric firmament. Then, the fibers of lightning seem to form a picture. Through what could be considered black splotches of eyeballs in the sky, Loverboy sees his fiancée, the voluptuous Roxy Cotton, staring back at him as if searching for something.

“Roxy? Roxy! Baby! I’m here baby, help me! Get me out of here!”

“Pay attention, Mister Loverboy… be quiet and watch. She cannot hear you.”

“Roxy! ROXY!”

But the tour guide seems to be right. Roxy stares and searches from side to side with her eyes, but never seems to focus on Loverboy, nor does she react to his words.

After a moment of looking, she brings her hand to her lip and wipes away a drop of blood.

“What’s wrong with her? What happened? Are you trying to tell me Harrison did that to her?”

“I’m not telling you a thing. Perhaps you have something to say about Mister Harrison leading up to your match this weekend, though?”

“Yeah… yeah, you’re damn right I do…

Harrison! If you can hear me dude, and for whatever reason I have a pretty good idea that you can, you’d better pay the fuck attention right now. I don’t know what role you’re playing in all of this, I don’t know what drove you to the side of the Doctor in the first place, but dude, when you lay a hand on my woman you cross a fucking line.

You know dude, our history together in the XWF has been documented over and over. Shit, man, I sound like a broken fucking record every time some genius comes up with the idea of pitting you against me for the hundredth time. The long version? Ever since birth, you’ve been inferior to me. You’ve been destined to be, at best, the Gilligan to my Skipper, “Little Buddy.” You’re the Robin to my Batman, complete with the gay yellow underpants. If you’re lucky, dude, once I win the Universal Title at Relentless II, I’ll do the same favor Doc did for you and let you touch the fucking belt from time to time, or hold onto it while I’m in the ring giving the fans of the XWF what they paid for.

The short version? You can’t beat me. You never have, never could, and never, ever will.

And how many times have you tried to make a name for yourself at my expense, dude? You tried to spoil my debut. You tried to spoil the ascension of the Underground. And now? You have the brass fucking balls to try and spoil my chance at the Universal Championship. You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, dude. A lot of fucking nerve. See man, just like Gator, you and me, we could have made some waves around here. When we coordinate, there’s not a better team out there. Look at what we did together at the Lethal Lottery, man. We took down Mystica and Game Boy, two dudes who pretty much never lose. When you stay in your lane and remember who the leader of the pack is, and remember to fill the role you’re assigned, we get shit done. But every few months, like fucking clockwork, someone gets into your head and convinces you that you can hang with me. Spoiler alert, dude: you can’t.

You know… I should have known after what you did at Bad Medicine. I should have known that you’d sold your soul and turned your back on the only meal ticket you’ve been able to latch onto in this federation, man. You think the Doc was gonna take you to the promised land? You think that motherfucker wanted anything other than a do-boy that would be willing to get his hands dirty for him? You’re more delusional than when you were on your knees at the end of your bed praying to an invisible man in the sky, dude. At least then it was honest, you know? Now you put a stupid mask over your head and pretend to be some sort of prophet, all while proving over and over again that you can’t get shit done on your own.

And then what do you go and do? You do what you do best and stab your new hero in the back too! Jesus Christ, H, you’re more predictable than a Nicholas Sparks movie and about half as interesting. Whose nuts are you going to swing from now that you kicked your new daddy to the curb, huh? You gonna try to get Brick Squad to let you do their dishes for them? You gonna see if Drew Archyle needs any help getting semen stains out of his laundry? Why don’t you ask Frodo if you can get back into that closet of his and watch his daughter shit some more?

Man, I don’t even know why you try anymore, dude. You blew it. You blew your shot with me, you blew your shot with Doc, and now you think you can get into a ring with BOTH of us and come out on top? Dude you’re more delusional than Peter Gilmour convincing himself that his lap band can withstand the strain of pinching his bottomless stomach together. Luca has a better chance of winning the title on Sunday, and he’s not even in the damn match. Your dead wife has a better chance of digging her way out of the ground and pinning anyone in the ring than you do. Hell dude, those dead kids have a better chance of actually being yours than you do of winning the Universal Championship.

LH, dude, when I’m done wrecking you for the tenth straight time, you’re going to wish Morbid Angel had finished the job and wiped your whole DNA record from the face of the Earth. The way you keep booking yourself against me, it would really just be Darwinism.

And when it’s all said and done, Harrison? Don’t you come sniffing around here, dude. Don’t come begging for scraps once I’m the man in the ivory tower and you’re still just a beggar on the streets. Once you lay your hand on my queen... well, that’s a stain that won’t wash off of you, man.

You and me? We’re done.

And at Relentless? Your career? Is done.”

Loverboy swings himself around and attempts to attack the mysterious man he’s been following through the wilderness of his own unconscious, but of course there is nothing to hit and nothing to hit it with.

Instead, Loverboy resigns himself to catching his breath as, in the sky, the vision of his beloved with a tear in her eye fades into obscurity.

“You make sure Harrison hears that. And you make sure he pays for what he did to my Roxy.”

“Very well, Mister Loverboy… but you should know. LH Harrison is not the man who struck your girlfriend. It was just a copy of a copy.”

Loverboy nearly loses his composure, his lower lip trembles and his knees get weak… or at least that is what he feels as the man turns and leads the way once more.

“Follow me, Mister Loverboy. We are nearly done here.”

Loverboy hesitates.

“Follow me.”

And finally... Loverboy follows.






“Did you see?”

The man shrouded in shadow asks me, the smoke intensifying and making my eyes water in spite of my efforts to look strong in the face of danger.

“No. There was nothing there.”

“Pity.”

I turn around and watch the road as the sun begins to set outside of my window. We keep heading south until suddenly we take a turn towards the coast.

Silently, the driver weaves through a series of back roads until nothing resembling L.A. can be seen. Eventually, we come upon a beaten down hovel away from everything else, surrounded by shrub. The car stops and the engine is killed.

“We’re here, Roxy.”

God help me.