Let Go

The unsettling feeling of deja vu set in the head of Thomas Battaglia as medics loaded him into an ambulance. Circumstances were different, sure. Jiles offered him a fair fight. A vicious one, but a fair one.

Cancer and fair, in the same sentence. What a fuckin’ world.

Maybe the lack of gastrointestinal chemical warfare made a difference, but he felt better physically. Callouses developed over half-a-year of Intense Championship defenses helped. The physical and mental and spiritual all working in harmony create a championship wrestler, an elite wrestler. The spiritual had been on life support since this time last year. Take your pick. The rabid gator whose daughter he’d been harboring in secret taking his title. The nepotist fuckface who turned tail and ran as soon as he took his second loss in a company where everyone’s got at least three. The lizard-man collecting his neck.

He’d learned to live with nihilism, with pessimism, unbridled antipathy even. But the paranoia was too much.

First it was Pleasant. Then Paxton. Then KING. Now the Red Army and two hangers-on. Even his brother and an entire police force outside of the ring made him always looking over his shoulder. He was shocked that they didn’t dose him with fentanyl on the ambulance ride to U of P hospital.

Worst of all? He’d finally maybe kinda sorta found solace in a team full of wastrels, commonality found in always having to watch their own backs.

And he couldn’t even fucking be there to congratulate the King among them on his biggest victory ever, on the biggest victory perhaps in PRIME history.

-

“I’m sorry, what kind of fucking quack are you that you’re clearing my husband for action?”

Tam loved New York for some god-forsaken reason. Tom, he knew the Big Apple was overrated. He was always more a pear guy anyway. But all the things modern day troubadours romanticize about the city drew Tam closer and closer to it. Anytime Tom visited there, even if she wasn’t managing him, she made it a point to go.

That moment was the first time she reconsidered taking the drive up the Turnpike.

“Look, the office asked for a checkup. Your husband seems uncannily to be in good shape after the beating he took.”

“You get used to it,” he said from his ER gurney, face caked with blood still.

“This is ridiculous! The doctors said you…”

“I know what the docs said after Philly, babe,” he said rolling his head to look over his shoulder. “What can I say though? Maybe I want this.”

Tam’s mouth opened wide, her eyes inflamed.

“What? Two shows in a row, twice in two weeks…”

“Yeah, but this is a chance. I mean, whoever Lindz has in store for me, maybe I get a crack at the big fucker.”

“You’re gonna have to specify, babe.”

She was right. Ivan was the most recent assailant, but one could not forgive someone for thinking Tom might want to punish Bobby Dean a little.

“Oh no, I think after 42, I don’t wanna see Beautiful Bobby again for a long time.”

Bzzzzzzzzzzt

The text message came in from the office.

“TAL. KK. Second match from top.”

“So?” she pried newsily. “You got the Russian shitbag?”

“No. I got one of his teammates. Kerry.”

“But he wasn’t even involved in the attack! What the fuck, you know, I have half a mind to cancel on the next PRIME Girls Day with Lindsay over this.”

“No, don’t.”

Tom looked up from his phone, grim determination setting into his face.

“This is the perfect opportunity.”

-

There are no survivors to engulfment. One could argue the Luchador died in the silo in Philly and was dismembered at Barclays. They’d be wrong. You take a man too stupid to die when he’s supposed to, pour enough mezcal down his throat, and give him a sense of purpose even in the face of hardship after hardship, and you get a motherfucker swimming through staple crops like he’s the Scrooge McDuck of Nebraska. Maybe it was the years of video games. Die once. Get two free guys to try again so you don’t lose your spot. The NES and its lack of save states really made the earliest gamers calloused to failure.

No one knows where Tom keeps getting the green mushrooms. Not from Rezin, that’s for damn sure. Wrestlers evolve, at least the good ones do. Just like gamers. Keeping the hardscrabble resolve of the 8-bit world has done well for those thrust into the latest generation, with games that make entire television series seem threadbare, multiple avenues for gratification. Revenge against the Russians, War Games, his personal issues, they were main quest material.

Kerry Kuroyama represented a prize sidequest beast. A trophy to separate the casuals from the hardcores. Mewtwo. Ruby Weapon. King Gleeok. Two words, a gold standard in pro wrestling.

Vae. Victis.

Fuck you, Lindsay. You wanna make a man beaten near death twice in two weeks fight? He’ll take your knight off the board and shove what’s left of him up Guy’s ass. Or Ivan’s. Hell, maybe Cancer wants round two in the cell. That’d be fun.

Fun. What a foreign concept to the Luchador in PRIME anymore…

-

If the New Jersey Turnpike sucked on a clear day with breezes and sunshine and the entire cast of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? singing showtunes on the side of the fucking road, imagine it in the aftermath of a winter storm. At least bumper-to-bumper traffic in Tam’s Toyota Prius was quiet, climate-controlled, and smooth. Perfect for conversation.

Gloriously uncomfortable conversation.

“So, are we going to talk about why you’re so jazzed to be fighting one of Lindz’s BFFs? I thought you two were tight?”

“It’s a complicated relationship. Besides, do you like your boss all the time?”

“No, he’s a craven capitalist jerkoff that I can only wish to have punched in the face legally. I mean, you have wrestled her before, right?”

He stopped in his thoughts, furrowed his brow, and rubbed his chin.

“Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure? Fuck…”

“Well, I mean, theoretically it had to happen. Sorry for asking Captain CTE to remember something.”

He groaned.

“Love you too, honey. And don’t throw anything at me, I’m driving.”

She peered over at him, smirking like the Cheshire Cat before continuing.

“But seriously, what does KK have to do with all of *this*” she said, momentarily lifting her hands off the steering wheel to gesticulate. Traffic was crawling anyway. She’s had to take defensive driving classes for work and knows the value of safety behind the wheel.

“I mean, the promotional materials are gonna sell themselves. Team Sykes and Team Hall clash! The shitheads on the wrestling Reddit will say it’s hollow because it’s not Ivan or Max or even the fuckin’ ship burner. But it’s not to me.”

“Okay, so, I’m your wife and your coach and the only person you seem to wanna talk to about anything these days, which I contend is a huge problem when you have a team of five other guys, two of whom I know you wanna hang out with more. What is so fucking special about Kerry Kuroyama?”

“He’s a benchmark, babe. He’s…”

He sighed and looked out the window at the cars crawling on the northbound side too. Years of having pronounced winters and New fucking Jersey still can’t get its act together.

“You ever get the feeling that something’s passed you by? Like…”

“No, we’re not doing the sadsack bullshit about your win-loss record. You’re…”

“It’s not about that!” he interjected. “Look, I know this place is rough. People get hot. But I’ve been at this for going on 15 months. Like, I need refreshment. I need zeal.”

“You need to stop speaking like a Final Fantasy character.”

He grumbled, trying to muffle the laughter. When she was right, she was right.

“But seriously, maybe If I beat one of the members of Vae Victis, that name carries weight, right? Maybe I can pull my own weight. Cuz right now, it’s like, we’re all marked men. People love picking us off, fucking with us. We’re the tecnicos. The only fucking ones in the company. And I feel like right now, I am just…”

He trailed off again. Tam wasn’t sure if he was just getting too emotional again or if the outside air coming in reminded him too much of Bobby Dean. They were just outside of Bayonne, after all.

“Why do you feel the constant need to compare yourself to other wrestlers?”

“Because when other wrestlers get picked off in the hallway, they do something about it afterwards to remind people how much of a badass motherfucker they are.”

Awkward silence. There were times when Tam knew she was arguing with a brick wall. This might have been one of them, she thought.

“Look, I know it doesn’t make sense on the outside. I’m a star. I make a shitload of money. Kids I father look up to me. It’s all anyone could ever want, right?”

He sighed. She looked over from the road momentarily to see her husband, a man she’d seen cry a million times before, with glassy eyes and resignation on his face. The herculean pressures that would break men of lesser stock had exerted their pressure on his shoulders before, but never did he look so…

Pathetic.

“But I…”

He trailed off, and she didn’t hesitate to pick up where he left off.

“Is it Guido? Ivan? The constant stream of people who think poaching you is a statement against hypocrisy? Tell me. I want to help.”

She knew the answer. He knew it too. Neither one really wanted to verbalize it and give the monster birthed in that lawyer’s office days after Colossus nourishment to grow, but they knew it incubated in his brain, eating him from the inside.

From her point of view, it was the selfish covering of one’s tracks after a life of neglect and borderline abuse under the guise of playing a heel. Nine out of ten of her work friends would agree. The tenth? That nosy son-of-a-bitch Edwards who thinks Tom should nut up and stop being a baby.

But to the victim of this spiritual vampirism… a father ashamed to show love to a child until after he was dead and could skate from all the negative connotations. It was easier for him to die than admit he was proud. The cascading deluge of shit from the doors that act of cowardice opened, facing his brother again, bringing out his mother’s passive aggression. Leaving him prone at work for the bigger predators to stalk him.

And what would his legacy be if Ivan succeeded at putting him out of his misery?

Jared had the Universal.

Brandon had godhood.

The Next Diamond had a future that could eclipse both.

Chan is just doing a victory lap with real triumphs behind him to celebrate.

Tom had fucking IcyHot.

Bagging Kerry Kuroyama would be the start to fixing that legacy.

“I know what you’re doing, babe. You’re thinking of a way to drag this out, but…”

She looked over at him again as traffic once again ground to a halt. What the fuck is there to do in Newark on a Saturday afternoon anyway, shitty weather or not?

“...while I’m not going to pretend to get why this guy, like he’s not even the Kraken or the Cowboy dude. It’s just association. But if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

She moved her right hand off the wheel as she looked back onto the road, a Ford F-350 with Truck Nutz - they always fucking have Truck Nutz - trying to wedge itself in front of her, to hold his.

“That was your wife saying that. As your coach, you need to find something inside of you that motivates you other than your resume. Because I’m certain no one else on your team, in that War Games match, anywhere, obsesses about legacy as much as you do.”

-

Only a man too stupid to die would find himself hanging from a cliff by his fingertips after somehow escaping engulfment, but The Anglo Luchador never finds himself in good situations anymore now, does he? The roving herds bearing down, crashing through gypsum, white powder creating a literal fog of war. Angry protestors outside a home arena holding signs, screaming for your blood while the man responsible sat in a cruiser with powdered sugar caked on his fingers. And the reason he’s hanging on for dear life is because he saw something shiny over the edge. A trinket shiny enough to make the average crow soar in for the plucking.

He shuts his eyes, hanging on for dear life, and he sees a familiar figure. Two of them, actually. He can make out the face of one, the current Universal Champion, his team’s captain. But the face isn’t fully exposed. There’s a blue and white mask covering it, and the person sitting next to him is certainly not Justine Calvin. In fact, calling a now-deceased mannequin a “person” is generous with the idea of, well, personhood.

They’re in a sea of attendees. Angie Brooks. Dusk. Rezin. Karen Puddings. God, remember the Puddings family? What a fucked up band of miscreants they were. PRIME hasn’t been the same since they left.

And on the stage, there sits a tub of IcyHot.

Shame. He should be feeling intense shame right now. But he’s not. The Luchador isn’t cringing with every muscle in his body. He knows what’s going to happen. He’ll eat the linament. And he’ll flail around the room like a cartoon character who just scarfed a hot pepper.

But there’s no feeling of dread.

Balaam and Hoyt aren’t there.

But neither is Vae Victis. No Red Army. Dusk didn’t bring his daughter. Paxton Ray is still a lovable redneck with a daughter fighting illness. Arthur Pleasant is a distant nightmare. FLAMBERGE still in the blocks against a buxom drama queen with weird hands. No Best Family. No Octane. No pressure. Just jester’s privilege.

The room is an emotional abyss, a void. And it feels good.

He feels free.

Maybe if he lets go of the cliff, he’ll fall into the pit. And he’ll continue to be a jackass for the rest of his career, but he’ll feel something other than fear and shame. Anything’s better than than the kudzu telling your brain everything you’ve done since coming back was a mistake, suffocating your creativity.

You were creative once.

And now you think just winning a match against someone because he’s friends with your boss and the cool dude with the airship and the tiger means something.

Thomas Francis Xavier Battaglia… who the fuck are you anymore?

(No disrespect to the tiger, of course. Helen is on the Christmas Card list. Not Henry. Just Helen.)

Let go.

Free fall out into nothing. Leave this world for awhile.

-

Tam was right, he thought. Tam was always right. Not in the way that sitcoms tell everyone the woman in the relationship has a preternatural gift to be correct. She just didn’t spend several years having her vascular and powerful peers slam her head into the canvas or turnbuckles or onto concrete. Don’t even get into all the deathmatch stuff. Have you ever taken an unprotected chairshot to the head? Tom would never recommend it.

He sat in the window, overlooking South Philly in what would be the golden hour if not for the gloom of overcast skies drizzling chilly tears. Kids walked by with their hoods down, no care to the frosty dampness covering their person. People of all colors and sizes walking with singleminded purpose. The gods hadn’t granted him the power of telepathy, but it was clear a vast majority of people didn’t have such pretentious worries on their minds.

Most people in the world don’t have worries about legacy and “their place in the world” unless that place means a steady job and a roof over their head. How privileged was he, Tom thought. He had to let go of his high-falutin' ideas and get back to what got him to the dance.

He stumbled into the bathroom in whirlwind haste and threw open the cabinet. The tub of IcyHot stared him in the face like an ex looking for a quick lay. His eyes widened. Was he really going to do this again? Jump back into the linament like the ReVival was still in primordial ooze three Ria Lockhart character makeovers ago?

Lid off. Right index and middle fingers scooping it out. Into the mouth it went.

Burnt like hell like it did before. But it didn’t trigger the flight reflex again, mainly because he could brace for it this time.

He couldn’t brace for what came next though.

“Dad? What the hell are you doing?”

Zo stopped dead in his tracks in front of the bathroom foyer.

“Did you just eat IcyHot? I’m telling mom.”

“She knows,” he said with all the grace and elocution of a dental patient whose mouth is stuffed with cotton.

The look in his elder son’s eyes said it all though. He swung too far on the pendulum.

-

All privilege sucks. Even “jester’s.” The reasons Jared Sykes entered PRIME as King Blueberry at first were well-documented, but he didn’t claw his way out of the decade-long funk by macerating his berries in vanilla-spiced syrup to make some weird jams. Speaking of confections, never mention chocolate around him.

Ever.

Maybe leaping off the cliff for a morsel of credibility feels like his way of jump-starting his own run to the top, but as he hangs by fingertips, the realization hits him that it would just be an Asylum Films level knockoff.

Vae Victis. Hmph.

Who gives a shit about DEFIANCE anyway? Don’t answer that. I see owls circling in the distance.

The thing about letting go though, it’s not just about sacrificing the life and starting over again at the checkpoint.

The best players have co-op mode. A friend to catch them so they can spring back into action. Like if a trust-fall was organic and not some bullshit team-building exercise the CEO makes you do at a secluded cabin in the Catskills. Tam still won’t forgive Edwards for letting her fall on her ass intentionally.

Let go.

Free fall.

Someone will catch you… or will they?

You have to make plans beforehand.

Nothing occurs by happenstance.

Justine Calvin didn’t appear out of the ether one day as a deus ex machina.

Vae Victis wasn’t formed in the prehistoric ooze of wrestling, sidling next to Abe Lincoln as he defended his World’s Championship with the World’s Most Honest Chokeslam.

Legacy is nothing.

Wrestling is everything.

But you can’t just wrestle in a world where everyone has an agenda. Your job as a tecnico cannot be as a butting-in paladin or a white hat. You have to course correct and make it about the wrestling. The cults and the Communists and the weirdos bonding over adhesives and receiving gifts from Guyana. That’s all just dressing. You drag them by the nose and tell them the prize is the tap or the pin.

Beating Kerry Kuroyama isn’t a prize because you put a chink in Vae Victis’ armor.

Beating Kerry Kuroyama is the prize because he’s the wrestler. And so are you.

The good guys know it’s all just holds and counterholds. The bad guys?

They get gangs and try to be something they’re not.

Kerry Kuroyama is full of shit. Vae Victis is full of shit.

You’re going to prove it.

Let go, Tom.

Let go.

But let someone catch you because that duplicitous fuck Scott Hunter isn’t going to not hit you because you ask him nicely.

-

The menthol taste had worn off, but the look on Zo’s face lingered. He stopped cringing over the press conference stuff a long time ago, but not because it wasn’t ridiculous. It was part of who he was. But he realized going back would do no one any good.

He looked at his phone, his kids and wife behind an array of app icons. As before the Jiles match, his finger hovered over the “call” button. Finally, the finger overcame the massive atomic forces keeping it from pressing the button. He scrolled down furiously.

“Uncle Nate.”

Dial. Click. A greeting.

“Hey, hey Nate, it’s Tom… yeah. Uh. I…”

He looked around the living room for nothing in particular but something specific he couldn’t define.

“Yeah, I need to talk to someone about something, and… I need to talk to you man…. I’m sick. And tired.”

He paused a beat.

“And I’m scared.”

Silence on his end.

“I just really need to talk to a friend right now.”