“Well, well, well…”


“What?  Hey, where am I?  I’m not dead?”
 
“You are.  You look like shit too, man.  All coked out and naked on some fucking bathroom floor like an asshole.”
 
“Yeah.  That was stupid.  You have no idea how hard it is to get good coke in Malibu though, dude.”
 
“Oh I know, trust me.”
 
“It’s dark in here… who are you?”
 
“Here, I’ll let there be a little light in here.”
 
“Thanks.”
 
“Better?”
 
“Yeah, totally… oh, shit, dude!  Axl?  What the fuck, man?  Are you dead too??”
 
“Ha ha, no way.  I’m kind of… omnipresent, you know?”
 
“Oh, sweet… like in the Estranged video?  With the dolphins?”
 
“Something like that, yeah.”
 
“Wait… you don’t mean… hold on, dude, are you, like… God?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“Holy fucking shit, man!  I fucking knew it!  Dude, I was telling everyone for years, man, and nobody believed me.  They were all, whatever, Axl’s a dick, Slash was the only good part of that group, Axl acts like a fucking … but dude I KNEW it.  Fuck yeah, man.”
 
“Vinnie, relax.  I’m God, I’m not Axl Rose.”
 
“What?  Aw man.”
 
“I just thought it would be easier for you to coexist with an all-powerful essence if I took on the likeness of something you could comprehend, but that you were also reverent to.  So I went with Axl Rose circa 1991. From the November Rain video.  Even I have to admit this coat is pretty sweet.”
 
“SO sweet, dude.  And that Bandanna never looked better, dude.”
 
“For sure.”
 
“So like… is this everything?  I mean, I don’t want to be a bummer or come across like an ungrateful asshole, dude, but is Heaven just some dimly lit room where you chill out with epic rock stars for eternity?”
 
“Oh, Vinnie, I should have clarified, I’m sorry.  This isn’t Heaven.”
 
“What?  What do you mean, dude?”
 
“You can’t go to Heaven, I’m sorry man.”
 
“Why not, dude?  Where is this place, then?  Dude you can’t send me to Hell, man, I know they do butt stuff down there and my ass is was too tight for that nonsense.  It took me twenty minutes and a whole stick of butter just to get that three grams up there.”
 
“Relax, no butt stuff.  This is Limbo.”
 
“Limbo?  Dude, come on, that’s silly.  That’s just some dumb shit they talk about in Sunday School to scare kids into getting baptized.  Right?  I mean… right?”
 
“Yes and no.  Look, we needed a place to put the babies who hadn’t gotten a chance to be baptized, yes, but it’s more of a kind of… waiting room, I guess?  For the soulless.”
 
“Dude, I’ve got soul.  I’ve got more heart and more passion than anyone.  Look how hard I run myself!  Look how far I go to achieve my goals!  Look at my sacrifices!”
 
“See, that’s just it.  You gave it all away.”
 
“Oh come on, man!  Don’t be some after school special or whatever, dude, I know I fucked up stuffing a bunch of snow up my tailpipe, but I had plenty left in the tank!  I was gearing up for the big XWF return show, man, and I was gonna make an example of that poser, Maverick.  I was gonna make him my Hashtag Bitch.”
 
“It’s not that, Vinnie.  Trust me, Heaven knows you weren’t going to slow down any time soon.  I had you pegged to shoot like a rocket right back up through the XWF and reclaim that Universal Title off of Trax.  And yeah, I agree, Maverick is a pussy.  I’m not talking about any of that OR your asshole full of powder.  You gave your soul away a while ago.”
 
“I, uh… I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude.”
 
“Vinnie… come on, man.  Remember who you’re talking to.”
 
“Oh yeah.  Well, whatever.  I had my reasons.  I did what I had to do.  That’s bullshit to punish me for that, man, there are way worse motherfuckers out there than me.  I didn’t hurt anyone.  I saved someone.  Someone who matters a whole hell of a lot, dude.  Way more than… more than me.”
 
“I see.  It isn’t punishment, Vinnie.  You can’t get in without one, is all.”
 
“You can do whatever you want!  You made the rules!”
 
“Yes, I did, and I have to abide by them, don’t I?  Otherwise they aren’t really rules.  I’m sorry, Vin, I really am.  But this is where we are now.”
 
“Well that’s bullshit.  Limbo.  Fuck Limbo.  I’m a god damn Megastar.”
 
“Hey now.”
 
“Right, my bad.  But I am!  I’m a celebrity, I’m an idol to millions, man.  Chicks wanna do me and dudes wanna boo me – they hate me cuz they ain’t me, you know?  I’m holding the world in the palm of my hand.  It’s like I’ve been sniffing life up through a golden fucking straw!”
 
“Well, like you WERE.  I know it’s tough to get used to that all being past tense.”
 
“Yeah.  I was.  Now look at me.  In a fucking room in my underwear.  Where’s my belt, man?”
 
“Oh, well, I didn’t see any reason for that to sit around with you for eons.  Would probably just make it harder on you, don’t you think?  Plus… well, never mind.”
 
“What? Come on dude, that ain’t right.  You can’t just start to say some shit and then stop.  That fucks with me.  What were you gonna say?”
 
“You pissed yourself.”
 
“Huh?!?!”
 
“When your heart lost rhythm, you pissed yourself.  It was everywhere.  All over the belt, the floor, in your hair.  You were seizing up and flailing around… you basically made a big piss angel on the floor.”
 
“Oh, gross, that fucking sucks… did TMZ show up?”
 
“Oh you know they did.  You text them your location and itinerary every day.”
 
“Ha ha… yeah… I do that.”
 
“Did.”
 
“Yeah.  Right.  Thanks.”
 
“You do love her quite a bit, don’t you, Vinnie?  Why else would you have given it all away the way you did?”
 
“Man… loving me was killing her, dude.  Trying to always be there for me, watching me break my back every night in order to make it in this business.  Watching all of it get ripped away at the whims of guys like John Madison or Kirk MacClay.  She knew that there were only two things in my life that ever meant a damn, that she was one of them, and that she could never, ever take me away from the other.  I couldn’t let her just sit there and watch, knowing that she was probably expecting me to break my neck at any time, you know?  After the coma… I mean… she was THERE, man.  Every day.  All the time.  She stepped up.  She dedicated her life to taking care of some breathing sack of meat that USED to be ME.  I couldn’t let her be that person, dude.  I couldn’t let myself ruin her.  I had to let her go.”
 
“Ah.  So you were a martyr.”
 
“Yeah man, kinda.  I mean, not like THAT kind of martyr, no offense.  I know that I did it as much for me as for her.  It’s not like I didn’t benefit.  I mean, I got to be THE champion.  THE guy.  It’s what I wanted for my whole life, since I was, like, seven years old, you know?  I used to wrestle my fucking pillow and pretend I was winning the big belt, and here I was thirty years old, holding the real thing over my head.  I lived my dream, man.  The only problem was, I had to pick one or the other.  I never got to have both.  I thought there might still be time, but…well.  You know.”
 
“For sure.  We all leave a lot on the table.”
 
“Even you?”
 
“Well, no, not me.  You know what I mean though.  It sucks.  Now we get to watch Maverick win a main event by forfeit.”
 
“Jesus Christ.”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“… no, no, not you, dude.  Sorry.  I meant, like, SHIT that sucks.  It was gonna be fucking great, man.  I was gonna put that orange spray-tanned butthole surfer through a table and then throw him off a scaffold.  It was gonna be the exclamation point on the return of the XWF, man, the highest rated episode of Warfare EVER.  Now what?  All the wannabes tune in just to see my ‘in memory’ of segments and Maverick gets all the credit for the high numbers?  No way man, fuck that.”
 
“It is what it is, Vinnie.”
 
“Bullshit, dude.  I need to fix it.  No way I’m letting Iceman the Little Shit Princess benefit off my dead ass.  Did he cut a promo?  I bet he did.  I bet he’s talking all sorts of fucking shit with pictures of my rigid cocaine face on the screen behind him.  I hope they at least blurred out my death boner.”
 
“He didn’t actually.  Surprising, I expected him to take this shot seriously, but I guess maybe… he thought he could just breeze through you?”
 
“No.  No fucking way.  I’ve kicked Maverick’s ass more times than he’s touched a naked titty that wasn’t feeding him alcohol-infused milk.  There’s no way he thought he had the night off.”
 
“Well… he does though.  He was kind of right.”
 
“Damn it, Axl.  Quit being all logical and shit.  Tell me there’s a way we can take care of this, dude.  I can’t let this travesty happen.  Maverick is only alive today because someone realized the cord was wrapped around his neck quickly enough for him to only sustain catastrophic brain damage and not actually kill him, man.  There’s no way I can have a loss to that wannabe, even a posthumous one.  That shit gets put on permanent record, man!  In fifty years when kids are doing research papers about world-changing athletes and they Google up my Wiki, they’ll see ‘lost a three stages of hell match by forfeit to Maverick, who later went on to be arrested for public masturbation in a gay bar’ RIGHT THERE under my name!  That’s not cool, dude!”
 
“Shitty.”
 
“Yeah.  Totally shitty.  Come on, God, quit messing with me, dude.  You wouldn’t waste your time sitting here with me when there’s shit like ISIS and Ghost Tank happening in the world unless you had a plan for me, right?  There’s some sort of lesson or whatever?  This is basically like the afterlife version of Punk’d, isn’t it?”
 
“Well… now that you mention it…”
 
“Aha!  I knew it!  What is it?  What do I have to do?  Go back and help people?  Feed the poor?  Ring a fucking bell outside of Wal-Mart so some little trailer trash kids don’t grow up to be like Mav?  I’ll even wear a condom next time I sweet talk a pole dancer into a little hotel room lapdance, man.  Whatever it takes!  Hit me!”
 
“Vinnie.  You have to promise to get her back.  Get your soul back.  It’s the only way you can ever come in.  And next time you cross over, there won’t be a Limbo.”
 
“Wait… so… If I go back, beat Maverick until he’s even more , and get my soul back… that’s all I have to do?”
 
“Yep.  It’s harder than it sounds though, Vinnie.  You hurt her.”
 
“I know.  I didn’t mean to.”
 
“I know.  But she doesn’t.  I’m serious, Vinnie.  Next time you go downstairs.  And yeah, you were right about the assplay.  They LOVE that shit down there.”
 
“You know what, dude?  I’ll do it.  I’ll risk it.  I mean, I know I can beat Maverick this Wednesday, even if I have to go straight from the hospital room to get to the arena in time.  He’s nothing, man.  He’s like if someone took a real wrestler, cut off his balls, and then told him the only way he could ever have them back is if he impersonated a transsexual with a shit fetish.  Wrestling Maverick is like wrestling a physical incarnation of sadness and regret, only with more Axe body spray.  No, Maverick isn’t the hard part.  It’s what comes next.  But I think I know what I’ve got to do.”
 
“I hope you do, Vinnie… now – CLEAR!”
 
“Huh?”
 


“CLEAR!!!”



 
In a Las Vegas airport men’s room, “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane’s heart is restarted with a pair of electric paddles – puddle of piss notwithstanding.