“Loverboy” Vinnie Lane struggles to open his eyes, a bright light from overhead burning into his brain and exacerbating the throbbing headache he’s got.
Every limb of his body seems to weigh a ton. He can’t lift his arms from his sides, can barely bend his leg into a pointed position.
“Urg…”
Barely a whisper. The sound of Loverboy’s voice is more like the creaking of a rusty hinge. Something dry and rusty, like he hasn’t spoken in years.
From somewhere else in the room, Loverboy hears a woman’s soft cries. His ringing ears won’t allow him to focus in and locate the source of the sound, but the sobs are familiar. A voice he knows.
Eventually, Loverboy manages to peel his eyelids apart. The bright white light spills into his eyes like a dam released, sending a thousand stabs into his skull. With a wince, the megastar groans again and attempts to roll over… but can’t.
“What the… hello? Who’s there?”
The scratchy feeling across his throat agitating him, Loverboy pulls on his arms and attempts to brush away the cause… however, he finds that his wrists are bound together behind his back.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Loverboy shouts into the abyss around him. His voice echoes through the dark room as the overhead bulb swings back and forth on the end of its cord.
“Vinnie? Is that you?”
The voice of the sobbing woman, weak, warbling, comes through the room. His mind still disoriented, Loverboy can’t find the location, but he arches his neck back and attempts to scan the area in an effort to find the weeping woman anyway.
“Bevin? Bevin are you in here?”
“Vinnie, help me!”
“Dude where are you? Where are WE?”
“It’s Reginald Murphy, Vinnie… he ran us off the road, and he took me here…”
“Did he hurt you, Bev? Are you all right?”
But the sound of choking sobs are his only answer, telling him everything he needs to know about the things Murphy has done to his friend.
“You just hold on, Bev… I’ll get us out of here… somehow…”
Loverboy struggles against his bonds, rolling back and forth and straining to get himself free. His sore muscles and aching bones revolt against him at every move, sending seizures of agony through every nerve ending. After several fruitless minutes of desperately flailing to and fro, he hears a new sound, sharp, overtaking the soft crying from Bevin.
Clapping.
“Well done, Loverboy.”
“Who the fuck are you? Murphy? Let me up and take me on like a man you motherfucker. I’ll make you wish you stayed in jail.”
“Is that right? And just how are you going to do that?”
A fistful of his hair drags Loverboy up into a sitting position, the noose around his neck apparently having been untied from wherever he had previously been tethered to. Loverboy turns his head back and forth, finding the silhouette of the man terrorizing him.
“Untie me and I’ll show you, dude.”
“Oh… you poor man. You think I brought you here for a fair fight? That’s adorable.”
Then all the sound goes out but the high pitched ringing, similar to a tuning fork. Loverboy’s mouth explodes into pain and he spits a gob of blood onto the concrete floor after having been struck across the face with a wooden board by his captor.
“No, Loverboy… I didn’t bring you here to fight you. Or to kill you. I brought you here to destroy you.”
“Ow! Vinnie!”
Loverboy shakes away the cobwebs of being struck in the skull with the wooden plank just in time to see his assailant dragging Bevin by her long, black hair across the floor of the vast, empty room. Wearing only her bra and black pencil skirt, she screams for Loverboy’s help as the Magic Man pulls her upright on her knees in the middle of the floor.
“Help! Help me!”
“Shut up, you annoying cunt.”
Murphy rams his hand between Bevin’s legs underneath her skirt, and a moment later a loud ripping sound fills the air. He withdraws his hand, showing that he has forcibly removed Bevin’s lace panties… and then stuffs them into her mouth.
“There. Much better, don’t you think, Loverboy?”
“Dude… what do you want, man? What’s the point?”
Loverboy says with a weak and wary voice. Barely able to keep any sort of focus on the scene unfolding before him, he squeezes his eyes shut in an attempt to solidify what he’s seeing before him.
“You don’t have to hurt her, dude.”
“No. No, Loverboy, I don’t have to hurt her. I didn’t have to hurt your girlfriend’s little sister either. I didn’t have to hurt any of them. I did it because I wanted to, Loverboy, and right now… right now, I want to hurt this one too.”
“Wait, Murphy, no!”
But it’s too late. With remarkable speed, Murphy pulls a large knife from the waistband behind his back, bringing it around to Bevin’s throat and opening her up I one fluid motion. Blood pours from the massive laceration across her larynx, flowing down the front of her body until she looks as if she’s simply wearing a red latex bodysuit.
Bevin’s body convulses as the last of her life’s blood spurts from her throat in lower and lower arcs as her heartbeat fades away. The light leaves her eyes, and she dies with a pleading expression on her face – one that went unfulfilled.
“Holy shit, dude… holy shit! Why? Why did you kill her? What the fuck is the matter with you? We didn’t do a god damn thing to you!”
Bevin’s body falls forward onto her face with a fleshy thud, the wet blood around her spattering across the floor. Murphy casually steps over her dead body as if she were furniture, then gets his face as close to Loverboy’s as he can.
“I told you, Loverboy. I wanted to. But now… the best part.”
Murphy once again grabs Loverboy by his hair, pulling him up to his feet and forcing him to stumble towards a large open window, one that goes the length of the wall from top to bottom and overlooks the great city of Los Angeles. Loverboy can see the moderate pace of the cars below as he inches closer to the window and begins to wonder if this is the way he’s going to die.
“See Loverboy… what I enjoy most of all is taking away someone’s life. Like your friend Bevin over there… she had so much going for her. A future. A career. Love. Now she’s as much a pile of meat and bone as a store-bought turkey. She’s nothing. Her life is nothing. I took that from her, Loverboy, and now I’m going to take yours away from you as well.”
“Wait… dude, just wait…”
Loverboy is right in front of the window now, standing out and looking down at the city from high above. It must be twenty or twenty-five stories. Loverboy closes his eyes as he feels Murphy getting close behind him.
“No more waiting. It’s time to end this.”
Loverboy is shocked to feel the cutting of the knife through the ropes around his wrists. His hands fall free to his sides and he rubs his hands, trying to regain some semblance of comfort in them.
A swift punch to the midsection sends the weakened megastar down to his knees, coughing up blood and wheezing for breath. Then the bloody knife is dropped right in front of him, and the silhouette of Murphy walks right into the gigantic window’s precipice.
“Pick it up.”
Loverboy stares straight ahead at Murphy, looking for any signs of deception. Murphy merely stands stoic with his back to the champion, looking down from high up above the traffic congestion and panhandlers down below. Eventually, Loverboy reaches forward and picks up the knife from the floor.
“Now… Loverboy? Are you going to take the chance to bring me to justice or aren’t you? You have the decision to make. I’m merely here as an ambassador to your own self-conscious, you know. I can and I will kill again if you don’t do something to stop me, right here and now.”
“Then… dude… I’ve got no choice but to place you under citizen’s arrest, pending the arrival of actual law enforcement. It looks like I win in the end, huh Murphy?”
Murphy smirks and cocks his head, looking incredulous at the words Loverboy spoke, and the rocker moves forward slowly towards Murphy.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Loverboy.”
And with that, Reginald Murphy turns toward the window and dives headfirst out of it. Loverboy rushes forward, but only gets there in time to see the impact of Murphy’s body as it hits the roof of a parked car, starting the repetitive chime of its anti-theft device.
With a look of stunned, shocked emotion, Loverboy understands.
Murphy’s been thrown out of a window. Bevin’s had her throat sliced open. And he’s holding the murder weapon which is covered in his own bloody fingerprints.
“Oh. Oh no, man.”
In the distance, police sirens start to swell.
Peter, I was going to just call it a day and give up on trying to get through to you, dude, but I just can’t. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you get into bed with that trained goat you call a wife without trying one last time to make you see the way things are.
Listen… here’s the big secret, Peter. The XWF? It’s fucked. Right now, I’m standing here talking to you as the greatest champion of a dying company.
There’s just too much going on, man. Ever since this management upheaval, the whole operation has just been spinning out of control. And unfortunately for you, Pete, you’ve gotten yourself caught up in it.
Let’s share a little truth between the two of us, okay man? I’m not a popular guy in the front offices. I’ve never been good at biting my tongue or keeping quiet when the bosses are around and treating you like garbage… you know? It’s just a skill I don’t have and never will.
Pete… they picked you to do their dirty work. They made you a champion to their cause. Even I didn’t see it the right way until extremely recently, dude. The star of the month was the giveaway. An empty title to go along with the plastic crown they gave you almost two years ago. They gave you everything, man! A weak Hart Champion for you to make a run onto, a meaningless monthly award, dozens of replays and hype to make you look like a viable threat to my title.
It’s all a setup, Pete.
They got you.
You’re dancing at the end of Frodo Smackins’ strings, and you don’t even realize it. This little Detroit Dickhead has you wrapped around his stubby, underdeveloped finger.
Peter… you aren’t going to win. You were never supposed to win. You were just supposed to keep people looking the other way while Frodo’s machinations got him one more step closer to the ultimate prize – the highest title in the sport. People barely blinked an eye when Frodo had the X-Treme Title handed over to him, Pete, and why? Because they were caught up in the Cinderella story of Peter F’n Gilmour trying to redeem himself and live up to all he nicknames he’s gotten over the years,
We were all asleep at the wheel, and now we’re that much closer to a complete travesty so despicable that it threatens to completely sour the entire history of the XWF. The XWF’s own existence, maybe.
Peter… you gotta wake up, man. Your dream is over. It makes its one last stop on Wednesday, and then it goes back to being the forgotten, underwhelming Gilmour and not the new, fancy Gilmour that’s got people cheering for him.
You’re a prop in one midget’s play, dude, and you should be god damned ashamed of yourself.
This week… this week the charade ends. The battle lines are drawn and we’ll all get to see if you still believe Frodo and his empty promises, or if you can see him for what he really is. A manipulative, scheming little man who can only purchase self–esteem for fifteen minutes at a time in the back of a male strip club.
I don’t have a lot of faith in you though, Peter, because I know you. I know you and I know that there has never been a thirstier, greedier son of a bitch on this green earth than you, Peter. You ask for handouts more often than those starving kids in Africa trying to get by on the price of a cup of coffee for days at a time.
All you care about is the prize. The title. Who you become in the process doesn’t even warrant an afterthought in your mind.
So give me something to cheer for on Warfare, Peter. Give me a moment when I can see real human emotion in your eyes and the struggle within you to stay loyal to the business that has made you a name or to the all mighty dollar.
Give me the chance to say I beat a guy with a lot of fucking heart, instead of just being another guy giving it a chance, man.
Don’t give it a chance. Don’t half-ass this. It’s too important.
Stand up to the corruption. Do away with the evil that’s oozing through the veins of the XWF like one last dose of black tar on its way to stop the heart.
You won’t win the title this week, dude… but you might be able to win over the hearts and minds of the greatest fans in the world by standing up for what’s right and refusing to be used as a pawn by the new architect of self-aggrandizing bullshit.
You and me… together… we can make a difference and bring this company back to the level of respect it deserves. We can make the changes happen, because without the names “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane and Peter Gilmour, then there IS no XWF.
Don’t be Frodo’s puppet. Don’t be his pawn.
Stand up.
Or be sat down.
You’ve got one more day to make the right decision, and for once dude? I’m really, really rooting for you.
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