“Cheers, Sammy. Cheers.”
12
Beer Goggles
When the PBR is warm
and the band is packing up their tattered guitars
into a beat up ‘78 Chevy van
and drinking their pay out in the parking lot
will you still think I’m the sexiest thing
to ever put on a pair of Tony Llamas?
Will you still think my jeans look good
while I’m trying to wriggle out of them
in the Motel 6 across the interstate from the bar
where they didn’t really leave the light on for us
but that’s okay because they don’t ask for your name
and don’t even look at my license I tell them mine’s John Smith
and ask for a late checkout.
Will you remember my name
just long enough to scream it out
after we break the cheap plywood headboard
and get security called to the room three times
between 4:15 and sunrise?
Will you still love me when the ugly lights come on,
or should I buy you another shot of Cuervo
before last call?
13
Dance in the Graveyard
I came off the ropes, hopped over my opponent as he dropped to the canvas, bounced off the ropes on the other side of the ring and…stopped cold. Where the hell was he? I swear I told him to shoot me off into the ropes, drop down, back body drop. I felt a clubbing blow to the back of my neck, and I dropped to one knee.
“Motherfucker!” I whispered, quickly falling all the way down and selling the impact as a lot heavier than it was. It was heavier than it needed to be in the first place. Looks like the kid is going into business for himself, I thought as I rolled around on the mat clutching the back of my skull. A hand reached down and grabbed a fistful of hair, but instead of waiting for me to grab his wrist and control the movement, my opponent, some kid barely able to drink in bars who still had more zits on his face than hairs on his balls, actually tried to yank me up by my hair.
Surprise, dipshit, my hair isn’t strong enough to hold me, what little there is of it. So, he couldn’t pull me up, and since he hadn’t waited for me to get a good grip on his wrist, I dropped back down to one knee, leaving him with a fistful of my hair in his fist and a stupid look on his face.
Fuck every bit of this, I thought as I stood up. Fuck the fact that it was too early for a comeback. Fuck the fact that he was supposed to go over tonight, then I could get back the next weekend. Fuck the fact that he was the promoter’s brother’s wife’s cousin. I didn’t have enough hairs to be leaving them all over some shithole community center in Chester, SC, thanks to a stupid kid who’s never trained and only been in the ring half a dozen times. This was about the third time I’d worked with this promoter, and the talent got worse and worse every time. His guys were unfriendly, untrained, and unsafe, and I was completely fucking over it.
I saw the punch coming at my head, telegraphed as it should be, but instead of taking it and firing back, I decided I didn’t trust the little bastard to know how to throw a working punch, so I grabbed his wrist.
The kid’s eyes met mine, and I saw some of the color drain out of his face when he saw the scowl I wore. He knew he was in for it. He was right. I put one hand on his throat and shoved him back into the corner, then starting laying in the chops. I held my right hand flat as a two-by-four and blistered his chest with backhanded slaps that sounded like shots from a .45 pistol. The sound of my palm striking his flesh echoed off the walls and metal roof of the community center, and the crowd started to count.
They didn’t care that I was working heel and they were supposed to cheer for the kid. They just knew who was the real thing and who was some dumbass kid about to get taken to school. Well, Junior, class was definitely in session. I turned his chest red with the second chop, and the welts started coming up after the fourth. By that time, the ref realized that he wasn’t in control of the match in any way and shoved his head and shoulder in between us. I grabbed the front of his shirt in one fist and leaned down to his face.
“Stay the fuck out of it, Ernie. I’m taking the kid to wrestling school. Just make the five-count and call for the bell, but I’m going to beat the shit out of this motherfucker until you do.” Then I shoved the ref out of the corner and resumed turning the kid’s chest to hamburger meat.
Now you can make a chop loud without making it too painful. It’s always gonna hurt some, because you are slapping the shit out of somebody, but if you cup your hand a little, you can get a ton of sound without absolutely killing your opponent. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything I was supposed to do, except not kill the stupid bastard. It wasn’t fair. He screwed up, but probably not enough to get beat up as bad as I beat him. But I’d seen him work before, and he was reckless. Just two months before, he almost broke Jimmy Star’s elbow with a badly applied arm bar that he never even apologized for. Jimmy missed two weeks of bookings, and when you’re trying to eat on the indies, that’s a big loss.
So I wasn’t just beating his ass for me, I was beating his ass for Jimmy, for Marlie Magic, who got a cut on her cheek that took eight stitches to close when she worked an intergender match with this kid back in the winter, and I beat his ass for the next poor son of a bitch who had to deal with his reckless bullshit for a fifty-dollar payday.
After about another thirty seconds of me unloading on the kid, Ernie made his five-count, called for the bell, and disqualified me for not listening to his instructions. I turned around and mugged for the crowd, holding both my arms over my head like I’d just won the world title. The kid sagged to his butt in the corner, covering his chest with his arms. I think I even saw a tear or two roll down his cheeks as he slid out of the ring and snuck down the aisle to the locker room.
I stomped across the ring and hopped up on the second turnbuckle, roaring to the crowd like it was WrestleMania and not a half-comped crowd of rednecks in Bumblefuck, South Carolina. I wracked my brain trying to remember if I was working heel or babyface tonight, but it didn’t matter. I was pissed off, so even if I’d been the baby at the beginning of the match, I was in full-on heel mode now.
The ring announcer came over the shitty PA system and said, “Matt Monstrous has been disqualified. Your winner, Jason Courageous!” Oh good, I was supposed to be the heel anyway. Okay, at least I gave the “crowd” what they were expecting. I screamed a few more times at the crowd, just incoherent roaring more than trying to actually engage any of the kids or their parents. There were probably a dozen actual wrestling fans in the audience, but mostly it was kids who went to the middle school next door and their parents. I try not to swear too much when there are a bunch of kids in the house. That kind of shit can get you banned from towns in the south, and I live here, so that would suck.
I jumped down, stepped between the second and top ropes, and hopped off the apron to the floor. I made my way back to the dressing room through the mostly uninterested crowd, mentally preparing myself for the confrontation to come.
I knew the kid wasn’t going to try to start any shit. His chest hurt too bad to do anything, even if he could lift his arms enough to throw a punch, which I doubted. The pros in the locker room wouldn’t have shit to say, either. They’d all seen the kind of crap the locals did in these matches, so it was only a matter of time before somebody beat somebody else’s ass, either in the ring or the parking lot. My way had definitely been the less bloody choice.
No, the only people that might want a piece of my ass were the locals, who might decide that it was worth it to beat my ass in defense of one of their own. I’m not the biggest guy on the circuit, only about two hundred twenty pounds and five-ten if I stretch all the way up. But I know how to fight, and I can give every bit as good as I get. If any of the kid’s friends wanted to throw down, I was more than ready.
But of course they didn’t. The guys in the locker
room knew better. No, there was only one person who really wanted to get in my shit for beating up the kid, and I knew it was coming. I’d changed the finish, I’d beaten the shit out of one of his boys, so Fast Eddie was going to come after me. He couldn’t do it right after the match, so I went ahead and showered and got dressed. I had all my gear in my bag and was about ready to head out to my car and get out of Dodge when Edgar “Fast Eddie” Kendrick burst into the locker room.
I mentioned I’m not a big dude, but Eddie is a shrimp. He’s pushing five-six and might be a buck-thirty soaking wet. But he’s got a mouth like a sailor, and he was dropping f-bombs like he was Johnny Appleseed sprinting through New York the second he caught sight of me.
“What the fucking fuck was that, Matt? You tore Jason apart out there! He was supposed to go over, you fucking prick! What the fuck were you thinking? I should ban you from my fucking shows, you asshole! You think you’re getting paid for that shit, you’ve got another think coming.” There it was, the stiffing. By now Eddie was standing over me screaming. I had been sitting on a bench in the locker room tying my shoes, but when I felt a drop of spit land on the top of my head, I popped up to my feet. Eddie’s voice cut off like he flipped a switch, and I put a hand on his shoulder.
I leaned into his face and, keeping my voice calm and even, said, “Eddie, you know I don’t start shit. I show up on time, I do my shit, and I don’t go into business for myself. But your boy? He’s dangerous. He changed shit in the middle of the match, yanked out a fistful of my hair, and I didn’t trust him not to get me hurt. Like he got Jimmy hurt. Like he got Marlie hurt. Well, I wasn’t going to be another notch on his shitty little belt, so I whipped his ass. You got a problem with that? Then don’t book me. But you’re going to pay me for tonight. You’re going to pay me the fifty bucks we agreed on, and you’re not going to take a dime out of my merch for my trouble. Then I’m going to walk out to my car, and there won’t be anything wrong with it. If any of these things don’t happen, I’m going to slap the shit out of you just like I did that kid. We clear?”
Eddie glared up at me and opened his mouth to fire back. I put a finger vertically across his lips and said, “Shhh. You don’t need to say another goddamn word. You just reach into your pocket, give me my fifty bucks, and walk right the fuck out of here. We clear?”
I looked Eddie in the eye, and he must have seen something there that told him my bucket of fucks was slap-ass empty, because he just nodded and reached for his wallet. Two twenties and a ten went from his hand to mine, and I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Eddie. I’m glad we understand each other.”
“You know you’re never working another one of my shows again, don’t you, Stevens?” Eddie said, dropping his voice to try to sound more threatening.
“I should be so goddamn lucky, Eddie,” I said. “I should be so goddamn lucky.” I threw my duffel bag over my shoulder and walked out of the locker room, then down the hall to the double doors that led out into the gravel parking lot where my beat-up Ford Ranger sat. Before I got the doors and my freedom, though, I took a right and walked down another long hallway to a women’s bathroom I’d scouted early in the evening.
It’s not that unusual for a wrestler to walk around a venue by themselves before a show. Sometimes people just like to do pushups or stretch off by themselves, sometimes they’ve got headphones in and want to focus, or they’re looking for a quiet place to read. I knew one guy who couldn’t take a dump with anyone around, so he always found a bathroom way off to the other end of the building when he could, so he could handle his pre-match business privately.
Me, I had other reasons for needing a quiet spot away from the crowd. I needed a place to hide out for a couple hours until the building was empty so I could start my second job. The one that paid even worse than wrestling for fifty bucks a night, with no extra cash for food or gas. In case you’re wondering, that does mean that I basically work for free most nights. I can’t help it. I love it too much to quit, even if I am getting too old for this shit now, and I’ve got aches on top of my bruises every morning.
My other job is way more important than wrestling, even if the pay is worse. I’m a paranormal investigator, and I try to help people when I can. Sometimes that means I check out a house where folks are hearing weird noises, and I show them that a loose shutter on their attic window is the cause of the odd banging they hear sometimes, and Aunt Ethel is resting comfortably in her grave at the Methodist Church. Sometimes it means I check out cold spots in the floor, and I find a broken piece of duct that is spraying air from the AC unit right onto the hardwoods. But every once in a while, I check out something that can’t be explained away with normal physics or shitty home maintenance, and that’s what I was looking into tonight.
The school was built on the site of the old National Guard Armory, in some weird kind of municipal land swap deal that built a new armory on the other side of town, and build this school here, right next to the middle school, so the buses could park right between the schools and load kids from both directions. It was kinda weird. Efficient, but weird.
I’d spent the better part of two days going over the place with my EMF meters, my IR cameras, my thermal imaging scanners, and every other kind of gadget and gizmo I had in my arsenal. All I had to show for my efforts was a bunch of dead nine-volt batteries, some squiggly lines on reports, and an overwhelming feeling that something in this school was really, really out of the ordinary.
So I was hiding out in the handicapped stall in a deserted women’s room in a high school at ten o’clock at night in a small town in South Carolina on a Saturday night, reading a thriller on my Kindle and questioning pretty much all of my life choices. Just like most weekends.
But, all shitty things must end, even Eddie’s shows, so after a couple of hours of reading time, I heard the last truck of ring gear roll away, and I got to work. Emergency lighting meant that I didn’t need a flashlight, so I left the bathroom and made my way to the library, where most of the paranormal activity had been centered.
I was called in by the Assistant Media Specialist, an older woman who was a holdover from the old school. She found me through a referral, which is how I get most of my business. I have a website, and a Facebook page, and even a Twitter account that I never use, but word of mouth is the best way for a guy in my line of work to get hired. I did a job a few years ago for a woman in the librarian’s church, and when weird shit started happening at the school, and nobody seemed interested in an explanation other than “you’re imagining things,” she called me in.
Most of the activity had been centered on the library, and it was all pretty innocuous. Books moving after the place was locked for the night, furniture out of place when people came in on Monday…all the sort of thing that could be chalked up to harmless mischief or people misremembering things.
Except for the messages. Mrs. Wargle, the librarian who hired me, started finding nastygrams left all over the library. Sweet, simple messages like “burn” and “thief.” That sort of thing. Again, stuff that could have been left behind by kids pulling pranks, but when I set up cameras with motion sensors to watch the library all night, nothing showed up on camera. But there was still a letter on the circulation desk the next morning that said, “Return to me.”
So something was definitely up, and my guess was a ghost. A pretty pissed-off ghost, too, if the messages were any indicator. And one with very nice penmanship. So either I was hunting a calligraphic specter, or I was about to unmask some serious Scooby-Doo level shit up in here.
I pushed open the door, which Mrs. Wargle said she’d leave open for me, and stepped into the site of my investigation. The library was cold, which was odd for April. It was sixty-five degrees outside, but I could see my breath in front of me as I passed the front desk.
I heard the whispers the second I crossed the threshold. Indistinct things, no words I could make out, just the kind of background murmuring that got under my skin and gave me goosebumps. T
here were only a few emergency lights on in the library, so I flipped on the overhead lights. The room had no exterior windows, so I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing the light from the outside, and I knew exactly how cheap Eddie was with his security, so the chances of an overzealous guard walking all the way down here from the gym were about as likely as Eddie putting his heavyweight title on me at next month’s show.
The room blazed to light, then snapped right back to gloom as the lights flipped back off. I turned to the switch, which was down. I stared at my hand, then flipped the switch up. Bright. I took my hand away from the wall and was plunged into darkness. I looked back, and the switch was down.
“Okay, this is just petty shit,” I grumbled, and flipped the switch again. This time I left my hand on the switch, at least until a wave of icy cold passed through it, chilling me to the bone and causing me to yank my hand back.
Dark. The lights switched out again, and this time I took the hint. Shaking the frost from my hand, I wiped it on my jeans, then stuck it under my arm to warm up my fingertips. I’ve experienced some cold spots before, but that was a whole new level. It felt like I shoved my hand into a bucket of ice water, only dry.
“What the actual fuck?” I asked the room, turning around in a circle to see if I could catch a glimpse of something. “Is there someone here?”
“Someone here…” My words came back to me, a sibilant echo in a higher pitch. Great. Not only had I found a real ghost, but it was mocking me.
“Do you need my help?”
“Heeeelp,” came the same eerie hiss.
Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails Page 13
