VENGEANCE

Just as I finish typing the last few words of the letter, a smirk forms on my face. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my phone. Now grinning ear to ear, I thumb the letters together.

“sending u a letter”

Swoop.

As the text message goes through on my phone, I go back to the laptop I had been using for the last several hours. Guiding my mouse pointer down the page, I click on the “Send” button. Moments later, the email is sent.

Pleased with myself, the crunching of my body on a leather chair fills the hotel room I sit in. The compressor of the air conditioner hums as it cools the already cold room down even further. The freezing cold, if nothing else, is the thing I missed most about Alaska. Twenty-degrees outside or not.

Some time goes by before the “aurora” text tone goes off on my phone.

“wtf is this???”

I can’t help but laugh at his confusion. Soon, that confusion will give way to abject rage.

“i just told u i was sending a letter. thats the letter u doosh” I type back.

Swoop.

I just sit and wait. Looking at the laptop in front of me, I decide to go to HOWrestling dot com. There, under HOTv Spotlight, is a blonde cowboy with two balled up fists that looks like he just ate something that doesn’t agree with his digestive system. His trench coat also seems to be partially hiding a giant mayonnaise stain – or, at least, what I hope is mayonnaise. This suggests the food in question that he consumed without breathing an ounce of air as he devoured it, was some type of sandwich.

It’s that or he likes to spoon it right from the jar like a fucking sadist.

I click the right arrow a few times before finally landing on Liam Neeson’s younger, mustachioed  brother. The still shot is obviously grabbed from the set of Taken 4, which probably looks like “T4KEN” on the international posters. Or are we up to the fifth one? I’ve lost count, truthfully. Regardless, it’s become apparent that even Liam Neeson, the new Nicolas Cage, decided it wasn’t a smart move to do another sequel to such a burnt out film franchise since it hasn’t even made back the cost of its film production of the last two.

Before I become too lost in thought, I click on his roster profile. I’m equal parts shocked, disturbed, and sickened that he is only going on 39 years old. If that man isn’t lying about his age, then he’s one shot-out, pre-40s looking motherfucker. Which makes sense seeing that all Dads are Motherfuckers by definition. Looks like I owe you a nickel, PRIME.

The aurora sound goes off on my phone again..

Finally. Fleetingly, I had thought Arliss Peters did the unthinkable and blocked me.

Picking up my phone, I double-tap the touchscreen. Just as I thought. An all caps tirade.

“ARE YOU NUTS?! I CAN’T READ THAT!! I’D LOOK LIKE I GOT MY LAW DEGREE DELIVERED FROM WISH.”

I laugh.

“didnt u tho LOL”

Swoop.

“j/k. I really need u 2 set up a camera and read it. then ill upload it to HOTv. trust me on this.”

Swoop.

Placing my phone down, I avert my attention back to the laptop.

That’s when I see it. A lone email. No title. The sender is a bunch of nonsensical characters. I’m very surprised it didn’t get offloaded into my junk folder along with all the “Local MILFs” looking to fuck discreetly and orgasm enhancers.

Fuck it. I decide to click the email. If it’s a trojan horse, then so be it.

When I open it, I feel a tingle travel from the back of my neck to the pit of my stomach.

 

 

 

 

……..♥#########♥
…..♥#############♥
…♥###############♥
..♥#################♥………………♥###♥
..♥##################♥……….♥####I####♥
….♥###################♥……♥###########♥
…….♥################♥..♥##WE###########♥
………♥################♥##############♥
………..♥#########NEED#######T0#######♥
…………..♥###########+_##############♥
…………….♥#############m33t########♥
………………♥#######################♥
………………..♥#######2NITe##########♥
………………….♥####################♥
……………………♥#######th3########♥
………………………♥####F1tz########♥
………………………..♥##############♥
………………………….♥############♥
……………………………♥##########♥
……………………………..♥########♥
……………………………….♥######♥
………………………………….♥####♥
…………………………………..♥###♥
…………………………………..♥##♥
……………………………………♥#♥
……………………………………..♥

 

 

 

 

Looking at the piece of text art closely, I realize there’s a message “hidden” inside the hashtags.

“The Fitz? The fuck is the Fitz?”

My mind races in a million different directions as I search for anything related to ‘The Fitz’.

First thing to pop up is some fitness bullshit that looks more like a cult than anything else. Could this be it? It’s out of Manhattan, though. Why would this person want to meet all the way out east in New York City?

Looking further down the search results, I see something that stands out to me. A med spa. More importantly, it’s in Chicago.

But…it’s a med spa. Why a med spa?

I scroll down further, having this instinctual response that I would find what I’m looking for as soon as I saw it.

Sure enough, that’s precisely when I see it.

The Fitz. A diner in Milwaukee. Hmm. That’s probably it. Plus, when you combine the fact that it’s in the city where I’m currently located for this week’s Refueled, the odds of this being the correct meeting place climb into the ninety-nine percentile range.

Diners are much more appropriate for clandestine meetings such as this. Lots of common folk who won’t think twice about calling the police if they’re the least bit suspicious of you–of course, this goes double if you’re an out of towner.

I realize perhaps I should message someone if I’m being murdered tonight. Picking up my phone again, I tap away at the touchscreen again.

“hey sum1 sent me a weird email. they wanna meet @ sum diner here in milwhatsit. If you dont hear back from me in a few hours, call the local police here. thx”

Swoop.

*****

I feel sorry for you. 

All of you.

Well, MOST of you, honestly. 

97% of you out there in the land of High Octane Fucking Wrestling think you know what tag team wrestling is all about. But the reality of it is? Most of you wouldn’t know what tag team wrestling meant if your pathetic fucking lives depended on it. 

Jeffrey and I?

We’re fucking pissed.

We’re fucking angry.

We’re… fucking… vengeful.

‘Cause… there’s no escaping it. We lost. We FUCKING lost, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s… okay. That it’s… actually beneficial for us in the long run.

This rage… it serves us well for what we have planned.

Without even realizing it until Jeffrey and I had this sort of… epiphany, I guess you could call it? That’s all we needed to push us over the edge from ‘dangerous’ to ‘fucking unstoppable’. To put us past the precipice of “hey these guys are good together” and into “holy shit, these guys are fucking great” territory.

And there’s nothing better in that goddamn ring than a pair of violent fucking sociopaths ready to do anything and everything it takes to win a fucking match. Even if it means flaying a bitch alive and dropping a motherfucker on his empty fucking head so hard, it causes paralysis or death.

I look at you two, Clayton and Steven, and I don’t see a tag team. I don’t even see a genuine friendship.

I see the ever spiraling remnants of a bygone era.

I see two competitors who are on the verge of stagnancy—two ordinary fellas who think they’re selling out crowds as some comedy duo with barely a shared interest in anything aside from a past link from a dead faction they can’t let go of. A bottom-feeding circus act that is one Dad joke or inconceivable kidnapping away from slipping into the inevitable obsolescence we all know is coming.

Ironically enough, it’s pretty fucking funny considering where you both were a year ago. You know, Best Alliance and shit. How many of you left are there for us to beat, anyway? Harrison got his with Kostoff. Jatt felt it in our debut along with Jace. SRK isn’t even around anymore, and if he does comeback, I’m sure he’ll team with another has-been Hall of Famer like Christopher America and we’ll just straight up send ‘em back into retirement. And now? You two are exposed to the elements of solitude, trying to figure out how to carve a path forward with nothing more than the metaphorical plastic spork.

Clayton. Your Behemoth ass is the whopping 2% part of the missing 3% that pretends to know a fucking thing about tag team wrestling. Truth is, Leatherdick? You don’t know shit about motherfucking shit as of late and it’s clear you’re not even trying to hide it. And if you are? MAN. Then you’re doing about as good of a job as Bobby Dean would on the Keto diet.

I mean c’mon, now. The fuck are you doing, Behemoth? You’re six-foot-seven inches, nearly three-hundred pounds. Setting fires to buildings with kids in them? Seriously? Letting Mike Best get to you so badly that you just had to have a match with him before he retires? Thought you were better than that, Clayton, but clearly I was dead wrong.

Who gives a fuck if you broke an arm and ended up being cost a World Title opportunity at ICONIC?! That was sooooo 2021! In fact, dare I say the show was better off without you. Besides, let’s say you ended up facing Conor Fuse rather than Mike—he would’ve just outsmarted you and beaten you with a bunch of creative gamer puns anyway so, in all honesty, thank the Son of GOD for getting you out of an embarrassing situation, you hulking mass of tumbleweeds. 

This is pro-fucking-wrestling, Clayton. We break limbs and tear ligaments like children lose their baby teeth, Bobbi cries into magenta-colored tissues, and your partner over there phones it the fuck in every other Sunday. The fuck you think this is?! When you puff your chest out and put yourself in harm’s way with someone who’s made a career out of making people look like fools as Mike Best has, and Cecilworth Farthington for that matter – who I retired with one kick to the noggin’, by the way—you deserve to get your arm broken.

But when you waste everybody’s time by going through the motions before a Pay-Per-View, playing comedy in your shitty fucking truck like you’re just winding down the time until you get what you want? 

That’s when you deserve to get your fucking face smashed in until you look like a sundered Picasso painting thrown out because it went a little too abstract.

That’s when you deserve to get your massive, Texas-sized-neck broken in four different fucking places. 

And when you climb your bloated, blonde, inbred ass into a ring with either of us on Sunday? Let me be… ‘FRANK’ … with you, Clayton (get it?!): you will give us your undivided goddamn attention. Or you and your silly fucking redneck ten-gallon hat will not make it to that steel cage with Mike. 

I’ll make sure of it with a Calamity Pain.

And if I can lift that scary bastard Kostoff and hit it? Behemoth or no Behemoth, you BEST believe a two-inch and ten-pound difference isn’t gonna stop me from destroying you with it just the same.

*****

As I sit here in a booth in the back of The Fitz, where the lights are dimmed considerably. The usual sounds from inside a diner can be heard through the paper-thin walls: plates rattling and clattering, the cooks all cursing at each other, and the waitresses cursing at the cooks for orders that should be up. Through this surrounding amusement, I find myself lost in thought about Jeffrey and I’s match at Refueled.

“So this is what it looks like being in the loser’s circle, eh?” I think to myself. It’s a hard pill to swallow knowing The Devil’s Advocates, the best team in HOW, will take part in the finals of a tournament within a tournament that’ll crown a consolation prize on the best team to NOT make it to the finals? Eh, not bad. Not bad at all, the more I think about it.

Dipping my finger into a lukewarm cup of Green Mountain coffee, black this time, I taste the tip of it. Holding a hand up for the waitress, I realize quickly she won’t be able to see me with how dark this seating area is. Whistling, I catch her attention. She comes over right away, looking a bit flustered. Probably with how unconventionally busy it seems to be this evening.

“Sorry hun. We’re busy tonight. Is everything okay?” she asks plainly.

“Yes. Can I get another cup? This time, I want it scalding my tongue and burning a hole in my fucking esophagus.”

She chuckles, appreciating my candor, “You got it.”

I hand her my half-drunk cup of coffee and she walks with a quickened pace back to the kitchen to fetch my freshened cup.

I keep looking across the diner and out the windows for anyone resembling somebody who would’ve sent me an email like that earlier in the day, but there hasn’t been anyone within my view who fits that description.

My mind wanders again as I think about the match with the speed-teaming (think speed-dating but with less chemistry) one-on-one session I’ve repurposed in my mind as a tag team and affectionately dubbed ‘Solbyrd’.

Winner gets a future title shot at either Noble Gamers or Sektor and Ellis; the teams that made it to the finals and will compete against one another at March To Glory for the reintroduced HOW World Tag Team Championship. This is a big deal for a variety of reasons.

One, Jeffrey and I will face one of these teams once we put down Solbyrd, and two, John Sektor is involved in that match.

Now it makes sense why he keeps feeding me the same bullshit line of, “This isn’t the time or place.”, as he’s apparently incapable of walking and talking at the same time. However, if he does eventually get out of his own head and starts believing his own hype as ‘The Machine’ that he always says he is, he’ll be involved in two title matches at the View of Pay-Pers.

This puts me in an extraordinary position and just further enhances my chances of becoming the new LSD Champion.

I snap out of that counterproductive thought process, realizing I need to take my own advice that I previously gave Clay and focus on the match at hand. Not the (almost) looming one.

The waitress, whose name tag egregiously reads “Krystle”, with a dumb fucking K, arrives with my coffee. I can see the steam rising from it. Nodding my head in appreciation, I take the cup from her with my right hand and blow on the surface of it to cool its temperature just a bit.

That’s when I saw him. This… figure. A man, one might hazard a guess.

This ‘man’ is just standing there, outside one of the many windows to The Fitz, gazing in. A baseball cap is pulled down over eyes covered by sunglasses. He has a trench coat on and sports a mustache that wraps around his chin into a goatee.

He stares into the diner, but it’s clear that he’s staring right at me.

Looking down at my phone, I text frantically to Arliss again.

“hey this contact is here and… im not getting a good vibe. make the call cuz i wanna find out what this is about”

Swoop.

I look up from my phone… and the man is gone.

*****

Steven. I gotta ask you the same way I asked your sidekick Clayton there. 

The fuck are you doing, Superdad? Kidnapping children? Are you Superdad or John Wayne Gacy’s heir apparent only without the clown make-up and sexual deviancy? Granted, it gives me much entertainment by how inherently dumb Scott Stevens looks. You know, for focusing on yet another futile attempt at championship glory rather than giving a shit about his own son going missing. But given how he doesn’t know up from sideways or a lamp from a snickers bar, it shouldn’t surprise me. 

Jesus Christ, Richard Hauptmann, you really are the sort to go to the well one too many times, aren’t you?

As evil and violent as I am – and believe me, I have no illusions about being that guy – I can’t say that I’ve ever lowered myself to the level of… snatching kiddies. I mean that’s… what in the ACTUAL fuck?! 

You’re looking at a dude who’s shot his own stepmom in the tits, spent the rest of his childhood in an institution only to get out, head for Japan, compete at 15 in the most sadistic death matches ever imagined, all the while being groomed into a dangerous Yakuza family. I’ve performed many “deeds” to climb their ranks, tripped a pregnant lady at a picnic and laughed when I heard she miscarried three weeks later, and committed so many other violent atrocities that would make Jeffrey blush (if he only ever knew).

But me? I’m Arthur Pleasant. I’m the Provocateur. That’s what I fucking do. I live for the blood and decay on the gluttonous underbelly of society. Yet, the worst thing I ever did to a kid was steal his ice cream.

You? You’re supposed to be this legend. A legitimate Hall of Famer. And yet, you’re the lowest form of fucking scum I’ve ever seen. 

It’s almost impossible to grasp, given all the fiends I’ve known throughout my life. But you? You just might take the cake on that front, Peter Griffiths. I’ve scraped gum off my shoe from a stick that was previously used to pick up dog shit from the park that has more of my respect than you’ll ever have. I promise you that… you mid-life crisis having five-star cunt-store.

But I question that fucking dog tag that hangs around your neck, Ottis Toole. Nobody honorable who served this fucking country goes around kidnapping children. Or are you going to hide behind some mental health disorder that gives you free rein to do whatever the fuck you want just because you’re too goddamn lazy to re-up or stay on your medication? What’s next? You gonna fire up the laugh track and shoot up a barracks on the next episode of your vapid Nick At Night bullshit? Hey, if it cures the frustrations you have over your dwindling success here in HOW? Have at it then. 

But this ain’t even about any of that horseshit. I’m just making conversation with a piece of trash that I’m going to enjoy seeing physically harmed in a wrestling match come Refueled. Everything else? Your side projects and secret fucking hobbies and delusions of what constitutes as entertainment? That’s all you, Cho Doo.

And I want you to remember that, Alpha; a self-anointed designation à propos for the actual meaning behind it. Because, just as fitting, Jeffrey and myself, the Devil’s Advocates, are the OMEGAs of High Octane Wrestling… and we will end the worst night of your life by becoming the number one contenders to the HOW World Tag Team Championship.

While you, Soledaddy Dipshit? You, your toxic masculinity, your witless show, your conduct unbecoming of a Hall of Famer and every other questionable thing you represent…

…can consider yourself canceled.

See you two fuck wagons Sunday.