Dexter Severin hated waking up.

His dreams were wonderful. They were filled with life and laughter, with brightness and joy. With a raven-haired beauty, streaks of vermillion striding boldly in various places, teasing and taunting him, beckoning him to their bed. With music. With family. With love.

Oh CUUUUU-DLLLLLLLLES!

The beauties’ voice, husky with Texan twang, drawing him in like he was sailing with Odysseus and she laying upon her Scyllan island. But unlike Homer’s hero, he was unable to resist her call. Indeed, whenever he took in her curvaceous form, he knew that no amount of stopping his ears, or of tying himself to a mast, could ever stop him from going to her.

It’s time to wake up, Cuddles.

He shook his head in weak defiance. Please don’t make me, that denial cried. Please do not force me from this dream. But despite his angst, and the look of genuine sadness on the beauties’ face, she could not change her command.

Someday. But not today. WAKE!

Some people would snap their eyes awake, perhaps let forth an anguished or surprised cry, and sit up in bed in one go, looking left and right, trying to discern if their dream was real. Were they still in it? Was this reality? Was this the dream? But not Dexter. Oh no, Dexter knew where and when the dream ended.

The real world was his nightmare.

So he kept his eyes shut, his body saying still, until he could no longer hear the fading chuckle, beginning as a whisper to start with, of his lost wife. And even then, he lay there, eyes closed, savoring what little remained of the dream. But nature’s call, and the call of reality, would ultimately win out, no matter how hard the sadness held him.

And hold him, it did. As he sat up, a groan escaping his lips as he pushed to his elbows, he wore sadness like a mantle; heavy, heavy, heavy.

He sighed and pushed himself up all the way to a sitting position.

Dexter Severen was not a young man, midway into his 40s, though the sadness worn all around him added years: His brown hair, wildly unkempt, was grizzled with gray, as was the thick beard across his face, long enough to touch his chest. His eyes were blue, but the bags around them were so heavy as to seem the skin was being weighed down by anchors. His cheeks were also pulled down under that beard, pulled down into a resting scowl that made his jaw droop.

Another sigh as he pitched his legs to the side, swinging them until his feet touched the floor.

Dexter sat on a couch, his back hunched forward, his forearms on his legs, his head down. The couch was nice, a deep brown, and comfortable, with a white sheet crumpled to the floor. He could have had a bed, he knew that, but there was something wrong with that. A bed meant permanence. A bed meant you were putting down roots. He didn’t want to do that to Mary. Didn’t want to do that without Zed.

Zed.

He sighed again, large enough that his whole body moved up and down. He was not a tall man at all, only 5’9”, and likely shorter in real life with the way that mantle of sadness hung on him, but he was large. Too large. Too heavy. Barrel-chested and with a heavy lower half to start, he had gotten larger and larger over the years. Too much cheap booze, bad food, and no one to keep him in line. His bulk had been useful at times, of course, but it wasn’t exactly a good thing, and he knew that. He knew how he should eat and drink, knew how he should take care of himself, but what was the point? What was the point of a long life without Zed?

Zed.

He picked up his head and looked around the room, his eyes glazed, his gaze lazy. The room wasn’t much, he didn’t want it to be, but it sufficed. And was worth more than he was. It was furnished simply, the furniture and fixtures provided by his landlord, if that was what she was. His few belongings were there, of course. His guitar. His laptop and phone. His pens and papers. His duffle bag. His favorite picture of himself and Zed.

Zed.

Both he and the couch groaned as he pushed himself to his feet before making his way to the table that held that picture. The TINK! and CLINK! of glass filled the air as he kicked a variety of empty bottles on his way to the table, bottles with numerous, but never expensive, labels adorning them. Upon reaching the table, a dirty finger reached out and caressed the picture encased in the crystal frame. That frame had been a wedding gift, though certainly not one he had put on any list, and it gleamed in mid-morning sunlight coming from a window in bright contrast to the black clothes worn by her.

Zed.

He laughed to himself over what they were wearing in the picture. No way was Zoe Chaos going to wear a normal, white wedding dress. Heaven forbid! She wore a black dress, heavy in lace, with a neck cut so deep that it ran down to her belly button and showed so much of her cleavage that even a streetwalker would find it scandalous. He wore a black and gray suit, which had been rented, and looked rather dapper, if he said so himself. His hair was shorter, a lot more brown, and his beard was short and clipped. He had been many years her senior, but she had made him feel young.

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”

Sounds from outside his small house pulled him away from the picture. Picking up a random bottle…he didn’t care what it was…he shuffled towards the noise. Taking a drink, it turned out to be a bourbon that burned harshly down his throat, he pulled upon his door. He winced as the light pierced not just his eyes, but his entire skull, an ignored hangover making itself known. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the pain away with pressure, before taking another drink of the burning alcohol and looking out the door.

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”

He grimaced, though wasn’t sure if it was more for the alcohol or the farm equipment outside his door. Close to a year ago, though it simultaneously seemed like both yesterday and a lifetime ago, he drove his old Tundra, the one with the good tires, to its final breath, coming to a halt before the STA Ranch in Texas. It wasn’t so much that his tail was tucked between his legs or anything, but more that the mantle of sadness had weighed him down so much that breathing was difficult, much less generating any kind of income. He had lost his apartment, the shithole that it was, in Corpus Christi, and needed a place to stay. Just for a bit, of course. Just to get his wits about him.

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”

He chuckled to himself, despite his mood. Sitting atop a massive tractor, one of those compact Bobcats, was Angelica Vaughn, wearing blue overalls and a massive sun hat. The Bobcat didn’t have a backup alert tone, of course, so she was doing it herself. Safety first, and all that. He wasn’t sure about the details, but it made sense that not too many of her crops were doing well with the transition. Sorry kiddo, but you were going to need to embrace the blueberries. And if she could hear his thoughts, she suddenly looked up, saw him, and waved at him wildly with a bright smile.

He shut the door.

He wasn’t sure exactly what Angelica thought of him, or what she should think of him. She had come home one day from Lord knows where, after a match with Lord knows what company, and found him, of all people, sleeping on the couch in the family room of her ranch. After questioning her mother, the only other person there at the time, all she got in answer was not much more than a shrugged shoulder and a plea for trust.

He had slept for a week straight.

Dex wasn’t much help around the ranch. While he had been an on-and-off-again wrestler for the last decade, he was by trade a writer, and neither of those skillsets exactly translated well to being a farmhand. And while Angelica had been kind and patient, perhaps to a fault, he never really improved, or even seemed to care to. While Angelica and her various farmhands toiled and struggled, embracing the “salt of the Earth” mentality, he spent most of his time drinking and sleeping.

And talking to Mary.

Names were weird things, he well knew. Angelica mostly knew him as “Coach GH,” one of a variety of odd adventures he had found himself in across the last few years, but her mother? Mary knew him as Tragik. Even when she found him on their porch last May, shoulders slumped in sad defeat, clothes becoming threadbare and his hair ragged, the name out of her mouth had been Tragik. And to him, no matter if she was going by “Vaughn” now or not, he knew her as Hightower.

Mary Hightower.

One of Jean-Paul’s wives.

They hadn’t seen each other in years, of course. She had fled Maine all those years ago at the behest of Richard, afraid for the safety of the unborn child she kept secret. These years later, once everything had come out, he hadn’t blamed her. The reason for that fear, that Jean-Paul’s other daughter, a baby at the time, would eventually become the prophesied “demon child,” was fully understandable. His goddaughter or no, Sarah was a manipulative, jealous, petty bitch.

That’s MY goddaughter you’re talking about, Cuddles.

Even when being admonished, Dex was happy whenever Zed’s voice was in his head.

Long talks with Mary over the last year, long sessions of finding themselves, of sharing their adventures. Mary found herself in Canada, basically squashed under the thumb of an overly zealous Richard, cut off from the world. She had told a story about almost going back to Jean-Paul, of surprising him at a show with baby Angie in hand, but had chickened out at the last moment. All things considered, he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. Both, probably. He shared stories, too. Stories of Jean-Paul’s sanity going into the gutter as the cancer raged through him, of good intentions turning to hate and pain. Of an equally crazy woman “winning” the prize of actually getting a ring put on it. Of Sarah growing up into what she became.

It had been a long eleven months. An eleven months which, of all things, included the entire ranch being airlifted out of Texas and plopped down here in Maine.

No one had bothered to tell him.

He had gone to sleep one day after shuffling into “bed” after a hard night of working as the Generic Heel…if anyone could even classify what he was doing lately as “working”...and woken up in Maine, stepping out of his tiny house like Dorothy after a tornado. But instead of crushing Nessarose and being greeted by Glinda and the Munchkins, he had instead found himself surrounded by the cultists who had laughed at him as Tragik the Magnificent and cheered him as “The Sultan of Swag” Dexter Severin.

A long, strange eleven months.

Eleven lonely months wrapped into the void of years that was life without Zed.

Zed.

Dexter’s heavy feet absently kicked bottles aside as he walked from his door and to his table, his tired eyes falling again on the picture frame. He picked it up and clumsily walked backward until he hit the couch hard enough to make his knees buckle and bring him down to a sit. His fingers trembled as he touched the picture with a surprising delicacy.

November 2nd, 2017.

The day Zoe Chaos died.

It had been sudden, as these things so often happen. It was a cold, right? Just a cold. But the cough didn’t go away. It got watery. Why did you cough sound so thick, Zed? Why-

Blood.

Water and blood filling the lungs.

Emergency room.

Dour-faced doctors carrying clipboards.

And finally

Finally

Dexter walked out of that hospital wearing a mantle of sadness that he refused to cast off over six years later.

Aren’t you supposed to be working, Cuddles?

Ha. Working. Dexter hadn’t properly worked since that dark day. No writing. No wrestling. No radio show. No interviews. Just climbing into a bottle in that old shithole apartment and not caring to ever come out.

There had been times, of course, where there was a need to pay some bills. But Dexter Severin? He wasn’t going to wrestle without Zoe Chaos on his arm. The last match Dexter had been booked for was a tag team tournament with Zoe in a defunct company. Part of him missed some of those guys. Manny. Cashe. Thunder. A few others. But after November 2nd, what was the point?

His eyes moved away from the picture and to his duffle bag underneath the table.

Skeeter, his old drinking buddy, had hit him up one day, asked him about maybe getting the band back together. Benny had poked his head up, maybe get the three of them back together? But Dexter couldn’t imagine regressing back into Tragik. Sure, that was the dummy who first caught Zed’s eye, but Dexter was the man she fell in love with, the man she married. He couldn’t go back, even if a Sons of Swag reunion sounded like fun.

No, no moving backward.

The bills didn’t care about his refusal to regress, though. Didn’t care about his mantle of sadness. DIdn’t care how they got paid. Just as long as they got paid.

So, an idea had struck. What if he took up the mask of the Generic Heel? He knew that the Generic Heel he knew was not THE Generic Heel, of course. Just like how Westley was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts. But, like Westley retiring and Inigo arising, he could let the current GH sleep upon a mountain of money like Smaug in Erebor and he could pull on the red and blue mask and tights.

As embarrassing as that was.

And, oh my, as embarrassing as it has been.

Dexter pushed himself to his feet, stumbled towards the table, gently placed the picture back atop the table, and bent over, his hand snaking into his bag. And as he straightened, a lucha mask trimmed with red came up with him. He stared at it for many moments.

A great, shaking sigh. A sigh so filled with sadness as to make the world weep.

He pulled the mask over his head.

It was time to go to work.

---

---

You know what really puts ketchup on my escargot? Backstories. Fuckin’ backstories, mang. Most people in this business are obsessed with where they came from, why they’re where they are, and how that translates to where they’re goin’. But you know what? Nobody gives a shit about your backstory, mang.

Nobody

Gives

A

Flying

Fuck

See, there’s this…wait…hold on…

BAM!

There ya go, sweetling. Got enough change for cab fair? Uber? The fuck is that? An app? Some kind of appetizer? What does that have to do with you scootin’ outta the Swag Pad after a double helping of Generic Lovin’? That’s better.

Where was I? Hmm….well…I hope that chick says hey to her boy Noah. He’s a sweet kid. Ya know, it’s a shame he’s spent so much time looking for his dad when his momma coulda just told him the truth about being one of the Generic Bastards. ‘Specially since most of that time was trying to get ol’ Fuzzball to pick up the tab.

I trained Fuzzball, ya know. It was…oh…back in ‘85 or so. He was going by his real name, as that was the style for the rooks, and he was wearin’ this scraggly bush of facial pubes that even my left pinky toe knuckle could outgrow, and I kept sayin’ “Hey, Fuzzy! How’s the fuzz doin’, Fuzzball?” He’d cry a lot, as that was the style for the rooks, both in the closet and right in front of the rest of the boys, but he eventually realized I was right. He got plenty of character growth from the Generic School of Wrestling, of course, and eventually embraced the name I gave him. Not that anyone cares about HIS backstory, of course. Because no one cares about them.

That’s one of the problems with Marky, in my estimation. His backstory has never ended! Every time the dude opens his mouth we get a deluge of retelling and rehashing history. Took him ten years to get going, set out a master plan that will take fifty lifetimes to work, blah blah blah. Even fifty damn years from now, he's STILL trying to tell people his backstory!  No one cares, mang! No one cares about telling old stories about where you came from or where you learned things. But, hey, just for fun let’s think about that for a second, okay? If we wanted to talk about backstories, you could combine your story with every member of the XWF roster…even the madness dweebs…and it’s only about a year in the life of mine. Because on the day I was born? The world didn’t just rejoice: It was reformed. They needed a way to celebrate such an occasion, never before realized, and so they created wrestling. But Mark’s backstory? Ten years of middling success before he let himself be pulled up by my boy En Kay Dub Cee.

And after his droning backstory verbal purge? He breaks down people’s records. That’s gonna be a tough row to hoe this time, mang. Because me? I’m undefeated. Thousands of matches, all across the globe, in stakes from jerking the curtain to filling stadiums, I’ve won them all. At no point in time have I ever seen someone else’s hand raised. Well, there was that website that was showing a whole bunch of clearly faked photos of people “winning,” but we all know how fake all that crap is. It’s the same place that shows Mastermind being cheered and Bobbi London turning me down! All a bunch of hogwash.

Balderdash.

Poppycock.

Even, dare I say it…..


……….do I dare?

Yes, I dare. Because Bravery, Thy Name is GH!

Baloney.

Yes, I said it!

A whole steamin’ PILE of baloney mixed with hoohaw, if you ask me. My record is undeniable, unlike Marky. Make no mistake, he’s fantastic when fighting people who have gone 0-1, ya see, and he’s really good at putting up graphics of them and their shitty one-off records. But against someone that is ∞-0? No stinking way he puts up THAT graphic, let me tell you! And while he’s got that awesome record against nobodies, including that run outside of the XWF he’s so proud of that was against, from what I can tell, three twitter lesbians, that hobo dressed as a Mountie we saw eating poutine at Anarchy, three Saga vs. Page matches that everyone bought a hotdog during, and five…maybe six…DTF accounts run by one dude, he can’t do jack all against a graduating member of the Generic School of Wrestling.

Didn’t go well for him against ol’ Bourbon, did it?

Mr. Record Profits found himself staring in shocked surprise two times in a row, mang, and I’ve rarely been prouder of my students. I guess Mark’s obsession with trying to figure out how to counter someone’s move didn’t work too well with the Bobbybomb. I taught him how to do that move, ya know. It was in…oh…maybe ‘73? ‘74? Somewhere around there. And Bobby…he was going by Robert Ale at the time, but I pitched him ‘Bobby Bourbon’ and the rest is history, ya see…and I was trying to teach him the Piledriver, ya see. He was scrawny then, as he didn’t get buff until he got on my Generic Muscle Building Diet, but he was still freakishly strong, like Mongo Punching a Horse strong…I still get a royalty check from Brooks for giving him that idea, by the way…and every time he would lift his opponent, he would pull him up too high and the guy’s back would just about go flat. After seeing him do it over and again, I told him to see if he could go even HIGHER, and the next thing we knew? He powerbombed the guy. Then I told him that he should try to come up with as many variations as I had sluts trying to gobble on my knob, and his creativity soared. One might say that, since Mark couldn’t defeat the neverending variety of Bobbybomb/GH Slut variations, I’m really the one who beat him for the Universal title.

I’ll add it to my pile of championships. Best part of having never lost a match is that, unlike Mark who had to suffer the indignity of his championship saying buh-bye, is that I have so many titles at home that I use them as party favors and coasters. Just like my big time matches and attractions. See, one of the things Mark has prided himself on is all this big matches with big crowds where he’s doing remarkable shit like golfing and chess and fuck all. But that’s nothing compared to the biggest matches of my career! Why, just last week, I entered unannounced in the Martin County Middle School wrestling tournament and I beat them all! Three weeks ago, I-

…hold on…someone’s calling me…

Go for GH.

Oh, hey Roxy, what’s up?

What? Right now? Aren’t you on vacay with Vinnie?

Oh, you need some encouragement to get you going? Hold on…good thing I’m still not wearing pants after bangin’ Noah’s mom…

Oh yeah, she’s a sweet lady.

Okay….and….that should get your juices flowing. You’re welcome, Roxy.

Okay, where was I? Big moments. BIG moments. What kind of big moments has Mark had, huh? Has he fucked a girl so hard that she went back in time to stop the sexing because she knows its going to ruin her for other men for the rest of her life? I have. That’s the story of how I took Angie Vaughn’s V-Card, ya see.  Has he shut down an entire freeway by accident because he went for a walk and the entire town followed him just to get a glimpse of his booty? I have. That’s the story of how Alias’ original group of hippies relocated. Has he ever started an annual music festival just because he showed up with his guitar in a random park one day? I have. That’s the story of Generic Music Festival. Yes, THAT Generic Music Festival. You’re welcome, if you’ve been able to get a ticket. I know it’s hard to get through that waiting list.

Speaking of hard to get a ticket, did you know that I once sold out the Tokyo Dome by advertising that I was going to jerk off in the middle of the ring? No shit, mang. Baba was havin’ trouble gettin’ people to show…this was the early 90s, you see, and Japan was havin’ a hard time. This was before entire swaths of girlie wrestlers took over the world, you see. And so I went up to Baba and clapped him on the shoulder, he smiled at me, thanked me for my presence and wise counsel, he was sweet in that way, and I pitched my idea:  The Generic Jerkoff Challenge: Just me, in the center, versus me. His eyes welled up with tears…he didn’t actually cry, you see, as that’s the style of Japan…and he shook my hand. I nearly crushed his hand with my grip, of course, but I made sure to not cripple him. Sweet guy. After the card was booked, it sold out in about ten minutes, and the night of the show was standing room only. Men and women flew in, came over in boats, parachuted in, did whatever they could to even be in the city when I main evented with myself. And no matter what people tell you, that sellout had nothing to do with a young Korean War Criminal being in the match right before me; you see, he still needed a bit of OOMPH and so I suggested he add “North” to his name and then a star was born, but that wasn’t for a few years. But at the end of THAT night? After I went to a 60 minute draw with myself? About two thirds of the audience got pregnant. Even the guys.

Has Mark ever main evented against himself? NOPE!

Has Mark ever caused 47000 people to become instantaneously pregnant? NOPE!

That’s one more for the Generic Guy, as far as I’m concerned.

Next week, I’ll enthrall you all with a few more of my tales. I’ll tell you how I taught Thesz to press, gifted the Claw to Fritz, made Caesars’ Dome super, and the hows and whys of me already being the greatest Xtreme Champion the XWF has ever seen in it’s 25 years. But for now, I’ll leave you with this:

At Mayday, we’ll see ANOTHER one for the Generic Guy when I piledrive Mark through the mat, pin his shoulders for three…no need for a hooked leg, of course…and successfully defend my Xtreme Championship. Because while we all have been force-fed Marks’ unending and eternal backstory of midcard adversity, while we all have been forced to listen to and watch him do the same damn shit every week, from looking at records he doesn’t understand with analysis he’s too dumb to orate, to deconstructing movesets and thinking of counters like this is some damn video game where he just has to press a couple of buttons on a controller to enter a counter sequence, to inane claims about profits and health plans…trust me, mang, all I get from the doc at the show is a goddamn granola bar and a hopeful smile…we all know everything he is and has to offer. But GH the Great?

You only thought you knew who I was.

And now you all know how fucked he is.

See ya around.