“Look down at me and you see a fool, Look up at me and you see a god, Look straight at me and you see yourself.” - Charles Manson

“Where are we?”

It was the only thing I could get out of my mouth, as I tried to stall the man in the back of the car. Unfazed, he simply ignored me and exited the vehicle as the deer-in-headlights driver, the same man I’d thought was the one to be afraid of just an hour or two prior, dropped the gearshift into park and shut down the car’s engine.

“Why did you bring me here?”

I’m pleading with the driver, just trying to get him to respond to me in some way. A facial tic, an extra blink to show that my words were getting through his stone faced façade. Nothing, though. Not so much as a twitch of his eyeball.

Instead, it’s me who gets startled when the man from the back seat unlocks the passenger’s side door of the car from the outside and swings it open, standing there silently and looking down on me with his mutable Rorschach mask swirling and changing in hypnotic, kaleidoscope waves.

I hesitate, knowing that once I get out of the car I’ll have to make a decision to either run for my life or capitulate completely and put it in the hands of this mysterious madman.

“My shoe’s loose… wait…”

I know it won’t work, but I try my old tricks anyway. Leaning down extra far to adjust the heel of my stiletto, making the hem of my skirt ride up higher and higher as my chest dips low enough to see almost everything.

“Get out of the car, slattern.”

Like I said, I knew it wouldn’t work.

I slowly slide towards the door, putting one foot out onto the littered ground, and I start to stand from my seat. As I put my other foot into the dirt, the masked man is momentarily distracted by the movement of a car driving by a half mile back up the road.

I don’t know what I’m thinking, but it seems worth a shot. Ducking down, I grab a fistful of dirt and dead leaves, standing and flinging them into the masked face of my abductor just as he turns back to face me. In a flash, my shoes are kicked off and I’m spun around, running towards the road, with a scream loud enough to shatter windows building in my throat.

“HELP M - ”

It’s as far as I get before my head snaps backward from the whiplash of a fist wrapped in my hair pulling me from behind. I flail my arms around but lose my footing in the slick filth of the ground on my bare feet and start to fall backwards. I hit a solid chest with my back and an arm like a vise clamps around my ribcage. The voice of the masked man hisses in my ear, but I feel no breath hitting my skin.

“Do not try that again, Roxy. Your path only moves in one direction.”

And, like a vicious dancer, he spins me away from him, twirling me almost gracefully on pointed toes, but the momentum is more than I am prepared for and I fall to the ground, dirtying my knees in the muck.

“Get up. Go to the door of this hovel and let yourself in.”

“This is where you’re going to kill me and fuck my body? Like you did to my sister? You can’t even spring for a decent hotel room?”

“My friend and I will wait here for you to complete your transaction, Roxy.”

“My… transaction?”

“Give us what we want from you when you go in that door. If you follow through on your end, we will give you what you want.”

“Vinnie?”

“Yes, exactly. Your precious Loverboy, almost in one piece.”

“And if I don’t?”

The man’s laughter sounds like breaking rocks.

“What do you think?”

He then actually turns his back on me, confident in the fact that he’s laid it all out for me to make my choice. Surprising myself, I stand and begin to walk, slowly, towards the little ramshackle house. Almost a shed, really. I’m nearly at the threshold when I hear the masked man speak again.

“Roxy… make sure you look in the cardboard box by the door.”

Confused, I look around… then down. At my feet, just inches from my dirty toes, I see a box, sodden with rain. Reaching down and moving one pulpy flap aside, I gasp and stagger back.

Inside the box are my sister’s clothes on the day she went missing. And a sharp, bloody knife.

“Make your choice, Miss Cotton. We’re running low on time.”

I take the knife, and I open up the door.

”Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eye and willing ear, Lovingly shall nestle near. In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream — Lingering in the golden gleam — Life, what is it but a dream?” - Lewis Carrol, Through The Looking Glass

“Loverboy” Vinnie Lane has been down the rabbit hole with his otherworldly host for what seems like days to the megastar.

After walking circular miles in concentric spirals from the eternal autumn forest, the two come upon a vast desert of red sand.

The tour guide leads Loverboy up atop a massive dune, its grains shifting like smoke from a cigar. Stopping at the peak, the gentleman then sits in the flowing sands, his legs folded beneath him as a yogi in trance.

“Please, have a seat Mister Loverboy. You deserve a rest.”

“I’d really be cool just getting to wherever the hell it is we’re going, dude. No offense.”

“None taken, my friend. Sit.”

Remarkably, Loverboy does as he’s ordered, dropping his haunches into the sand and sinking into the dune.

“Good boy.”

“Thanks, dude. That’s adorable. But seriously, I’m fine, I don’t need to rest. This isn’t even real, you know? I don’t get tired in my coma dreams, man. We don’t need to chill out on some… giant beach or whatever.”

“We’re here, Mister Loverboy.”

“Huh?”

“This is the final destination. This is where we were meant to go.”

“Really? There’s… nothing here though.”

“You really must learn to see the world in more than three dimensions, my friend. Open your eyes wider. Tell me where we are.”

Loverboy leans back and looks around. He tries to find a landmark of some kind, but everywhere he turns he merely sees more sand.

“I don’t know, dude… I don’t see anything other than what I see right here. Just more and more of this stuff. It never ends!”

“No. Look again. Don’t look at the sand, look at the sky. Look… over there.”

Loverboy again follows his instructions and turns his attention in the direction his shepherd points toward. The expanse of white light which exists as the sky in this dream desert extends in all directions. Nearly snowblind from the ceaseless brightness, Loverboy desperately squints into the pain until, finally, he catches a glimpse of something hiding in plain sight.

A simple gleam, curved along an edge, refracting its incandescence in an almost imperceptible prismatic cut in the solid fabric of white.

“There! The sky bends inwards! It has a shape, like a border!”

“Good. And what is it shaped like?”

“I see… it starts wide the higher up I look, but it pinches in as it approaches the ground. All around. And the sand, sinking down into its funnel, like… it’s like a… uh…”

“Yes? Think, my boy.”

“An hourglass! It’s an hourglass!”

“Very good. And what do you use an hourglass for?”

“To measure time. But dude, there have to be a million miles of this sand, and it’s slipping away so slowly… we could be here forever.”

“Nothing is forever, Mister Loverboy. There is an alpha and, indeed, an omega, to all things. When you focus on the glass… what do you see?”

“I see… I see… my reflection, man. Barely, but I see it. It’s like a giant mirror.”

“Loosen your focus. Allow your perception to drift away from yourself, Mister Loverboy.”

“Okay… I see… trees? Yeah, totally, there’s, like, a forest or something, man. And there’s… a little girl, walking in the woods! And a man… holy shit! It’s D’Ville!”

“Ah.”

“What is this thing, dude? It’s like I can see anything just by looking through the right part of the glass.”

“My friend, when you’ve looked into mirrors over the course of your life… haven’t you ever wondered what might be looking back at you?”

“What the fuck is Doc D’Ville doing in some fairy tale forest with a little kid, anyway? What the hell is going on? This is the undefeatable Universal Champion? This is the guy that took everything I had to give and threw it right back at me? What is he doing, playing Snow White with his magic mirror?”

“He broke you, didn’t he Mister Loverboy?”

“Fuck no he didn’t break anything. In fact, if anyone showed any signs of wear and tear, it was that son of a bitch. Before Bad Medicine, all he had was a handful of quick losses, most notably to Gator last year. Just a flash pin, a three second stumble, you know? But man, I showed him he could be beat, and that it wasn’t a fluke. I put him down more than once, and I could have done it again.”

“But you didn’t. It was you who lost.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I lost. I had everything exactly how I wanted it but I came up short. You’re right. He found a way to catch me off guard, man, and he used some fucking voodoo magic to toss me into the air and drop me, stun me, and pin me while the time ran out. But you know what, dude? This time around I only need one. I only have to do what I’ve already done and pin him for a three count in the middle of that ring while the others look on.

Don’t think for a second I’m going to be happy sitting back and watching the three of them fight it out so I can save my strength, man. I’m going to WIN the title because I’m going to BEAT the champion. No excuses for him, dude. No way for him to say he didn’t lose it to me or that I couldn’t get it done against him. I’m GOING to get it done. Losing to him at Bad Medicine just made me more capable of beating him, man. It tells me, the way he had to use that hocus pocus crap, that he knew he was going down. Ad this time? Dude, this time I’m not falling for any tricks. I’m not getting caught up throwing punches with Gator outside of the ring while Doc gets a cheap, easy win over Harrison. I’m not going to be caught with my pants down while one of the others steals my victory away from me.

Look, Doc D’Ville has proven repeatedly that he’s the best in the XWF right now. He’s been King for almost a year. He held the X-Treme Title longer than anyone, right up until he basically decided he didn’t want it anymore. He cashed in on Gator, sure, but then he beat him in a rematch, legitimizing the cash in. He hasn’t lost it, either. Defended it against everyone he could find. He was better than Gator, and yeah, at Bad Medicine he was better than me. But dude, that was then. Now? It’s a whole new story, man. I’ll be more physically capable, more rested, more knowledgeable… shit, for me it’s like Bad Medicine happened yesterday, dude! I hung around another week or two and then took a fucking nap, you know? I remember the way he ducks, the way he dodges, the way he reverses. I know how his weight shifts when he executes a throw. I know the rhythm of his punches, the strength of his kicks.

I know everything there is to know about Doctor Louis D’Ville, dude… the simple fact is, if I can’t beat him? He can’t be beat. And there isn’t a man alive who can’t be beat.

This Sunday, this is the time I’ve been waiting for. I thought it was Bad Medicine, but I see now that I needed to learn more. There’s nothing left for me to know about Doc now, man. This is it. This is the time when I walk into that ring, slap the taste of Viagra right out of Doc’s mouth, and walk out as the new Universal Champion. My dream. My destiny. My fucking moment in the sun, man.

All good things come to an end, Doc, and your sun should have set a long time ago. Just think of me as fate, coming to claim what’s rightfully mine.”

Loverboy smirks in self-satisfied hubris, before turning away from the woodland scene starring Doctor D’Ville and the young girl and back to his dreamland Sherpa.

“I think I’m ready, dude. Take me home.”

“No, Mister Loverboy… not yet… look again, over here.”

And so Loverboy once again gazes into the reflections of mirrored glass, only this time, he sees a dirty man living in squalor. He sees a door swing open, and a wild-eyed blonde woman storm into the room wielding a large knife.

The man is caught off guard, and Loverboy is struck with the realization that he is watching his own fiancée, Roxy Cotton, as she knocks this man to the floor and stands over him, screaming silently and brandishing her weapon.

“Oh god… Roxy! No, don’t do it!”

“She cannot hear you, I have already explained this to you Mister Loverboy.”

“Dude, she’ll go to prison! She’ll spend the rest of her life in jail! Roxy, please baby, you’ve got to hear me! Don’t kill him!”

In the glass, Roxy Cotton kicks the helpless man in the stomach, curling him on the floor into a fetal position. Loverboy can see the anguish and hatred in his lover’s eyes as she comes down on top of the fallen man, straddling him and striking him across the face with the handle of the knife.

“Okay… dude, what do I need to do? How do I stop this? How do I make it right, man?”

“Right? There is no right, Mister Loverboy. There only IS. Now… what there IS… well, sometimes we have a choice.”

“What choice? Please, anything, I’ll do anything for her!”

“Anything? Is she worth everything to you, Mister Loverboy?”

“YES!”

“Is she worth your very soul?”

Loverboy is stunned silent. He sees the demonic smile spreading across the face of his guide, then looks up again and sees the flash of a blade as Roxy lifts the knife high into the air above the beaten man’s chest.

Her arm moves down.

“Alright! Yes! Anything you want, just please… please save her!”

“Good boy.”

And then the guide, and the sand, and the reflections… all turn to black.






Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Beepbeep.

“What was that?”

“Nurse? Can I get a nurse in here?”

“Vinnie? Vinnie can you hear me?”

“Please, give us some room to work Miss Cotton.”

Beepbeep.

Beepbeep.

“What… what happened… where am I?”

“Oh my god! Vinnie! He’s awake! Vinnie’s awake!”