One Step in the Right Direction

Paxton’s Anger Journal May 17, 2024

Sittin here after the show in this little locker room. I had to get my thoughts down after this bullshit. 

STRONK got me. Fred tried to humiliate me. Sage saved me. Now I got a match against Fred at Turmoil, which will be a lot of fun but tonight proved that little fucker will do anythin to win. 

All of that fits right in this journal. Shit that pisses me off, that makes me mad. But I’m sittin here with sweat and blood drippin on this page, and I don’t feel a shred of anger. 

I feel sad. 

I ain’t sad about losin the tag match. Daytona cheated and got himself on my shit list. And I ain’t sad that I had to be saved by Sage. That actually made me feel better, knowin he had my back. 

I’m just sad because…man I don’t fuckin know. 

It all feels so pointless, you know? Showin up to work, tusslin with assholes, goin to another weird European city. Meanwhile my daughter spends day after day separated from me and her momma, trapped with some weird ass evil with an unknown agenda. 

And I can’t do nothin about it. 

Hell, I was sad tonight when the fans cheered me. They ain’t cheered me for two years, when I was runnin around with Jon. It felt weird, like they were givin me somethin I didn’t earn. I ain’t no hero, I jus don’t like the same piece of shit they don’t like. 

No one should cheer me. 

I don’t even know why I’m writin this. Hell, I don't even know why I’m doin this. There ain’t no reason, no hope. 

I don’t even feel better when I’m beatin people up anymore. 

What

_______

The door opened slowly, causing Paxton to look up from his journal. His eyes narrowed with annoyance, then widened as he realized who it was.

“Hello, Paxton,” Shweta Kallemullah said.

Paxton stared at her for a moment, then scribbled quickly in his journal.

_______

the shit is she doin here

_______

He tossed the journal to the side and stood up. “I think you’re lost. New Orleans is 20,000 miles that way.”

Shweta smirked. “More like five thousand, and you’re pointing north, but I understand your point.” The Former Chairperson of Fighting For Nora slipped inside, closing the door behind her. “You want to know why I’m here.”

Paxton shrugged. “Bein’ honest, I stopped gettin’ surprised when ya spy types show up in weird places. I figured there’s some tunnel system all across the world that only masterminds know ‘bout.”

“This isn’t Super Mario, Paxton. I’m here for mundane reasons. Lindsay and I have been negotiating a role for me and Jon in the company for some time. We weren’t ready to commit, but we may be soon.”

“Whatcha gonna do here?”

It was Shweta’s turn to shrug. “Boring behind the scenes work, as is my specialty. But more importantly, you’re asking why I’m here in a room with you. But I think you know the answer to that as well.”

“I can guess.” Paxton looked over at the journal and sighed. “But you’re a bit late. I done gave up already.”

“You would give up on your own daughter?”

“Ya know these goons better than anybody, Shway. They ain’t gonna get caught. They ain’t gonna give up. An’ if I keep pushin’, somebody else is gonna get hurt. They know who I care ‘bout. They got targets if I push.”

“So let me do the pushing. You do exactly what they told you to do, which I assume is wrestle for Lindsay and growl on camera. I helped hide her in the first place; I can help find her now.”

“An’ why the fuck would you wanna help me, huh? I put your boyfriend in a wheelchair. I ruined the foundation ya built. I basically hired a cult t’track down my daughter and undo all the work ya did. So why are ya tryin’ to get her back for me now?”

Shweta stared at Paxton for several long moments. He felt drops of sweat fall down his face, though he wasn’t sure if it was due to his match or anticipation for her answer. When she finally answered, her voice was low and unsteady.

“I still…am unsure if letting you see your daughter again is the right play. My involvement does not absolve you of your sins, nor does it serve as an olive branch between us. But no matter how vile you have been, no matter my personal feelings towards you…you are Nora’s blood. And the alternative is letting a nine year old girl waste away with a cavalry of soulless men who do not care if she lives or dies. I’m not doing this for you, regardless of whether you are worth helping or not, but you happened to create someone for whom everything is worthy.” Shweta sighed. “So I’m going to save her. And if you think saving her will save yourself, you should work with me.”

“Always on top’a things, ain’t ya?” Paxton muttered, staring at his feet. “Well ya got one thing wrong. Directly or indirectly, I ain’t worth savin’.”

Shweta smiled as her eyes drifted somewhere far away from the cramped locker room. “Someone told me that exact thing once. Ignoring him was the best thing I have ever done.” She turned around. “I will continue to try and find your daughter. I heard you were afraid of returning to America, but I can assure you that you’ll be fine. Maybe you should go home between shows to reconnect with some people trying to help you, like Julie.”

“Julie,” Paxton repeated. He watched her walk towards the doorway. “Wait. What if…” Paxton wiped his face. “What if I’m too far gone? What if I’m too much of a monster to ever be a good father again?”

Shweta turned around in the doorway, appraising Paxton with piercing eyes. “I am one of the very few people who knows exactly where you are right now, Paxton. Others can imagine, or empathize; I have lived it. So with that in mind, I say this with absolute certainty: it doesn’t matter how far from the path you have strayed. All it takes is one step in the right direction. And then? You just keep walking.” Shweta turned and exited the locker room.

_______

That fuckin woman speaks in riddles as if she thinks I passed the tenth grade.

She should see me as a criminal, a beast, a demon to slay. Instead she sees me as someone worth fightin for. She says it’s for Nora but I know she thinks she can save me too.

She thinks she walked this road before but I can’t see how she ever felt this way. I doubt she walked with clenched fists because she wanted to punch a hole in every hallway. I’m sure she didn’t fight thoughts of attackin everybody she talked to. 

She thinks it’s so easy to just snap my fingers and try to do things the right way. Who the hell knows what the right way is anyway? Two years ago she thought the right way was to use my daughter’s cancer diagnosis as a resume builder. I thought the right way was to become a barbarian to make hospital payments. 

Of course I want Nora back. But sometimes you make a choice and you face consequences. I chose to be this person. This person ain’t a father. 

I don’t think I could even see which direction is the right one.

_______

May 21, 2024 New Orleans, LA

Paxton smiled in spite of himself as he entered his empty apartment. The smell of stale air made that smile dissipate as he tossed his bags down. He instinctively went to the fridge before realizing that nothing in there would be good enough to eat.

To drink, though...

He grabbed a beer and slid into his leather chair, leaning back and closing his eyes.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Ya gotta be shittin’ me,” Paxton said. He waited a few moments, but the knocking continued with increased frequency. Shaking his head, he put his beer on the counter and opened the door, expecting to see the jagged grin of Julian Bathory.

Instead, he saw a deer in the headlights.

“Dith? What the fuck are ya doin’ here?”

Aaron “Dith” Timble, wearing a MESSIAH Wrestling Academy shirt, sheepishly waved. “I was t-told to wait for you to come home.”

“Obviously.” Paxton opened the door and the small man scampered in. “Whatcha got for me? Threats?”

“D-do you think if they w-wanted threats they’d send me?” Dith asked, sitting down in Paxton’s leather chair.

Paxton stared at Dith with his eyebrows raised. “Feelin’ comfortable?”

“Oh, very. It helps that I know that y-you won’t hurt m-me because of what MESSIAH will d-do to you.”

Paxton laughed. “Everybody’s a fighter when they got an army behind ‘em. Fair enough, Dith.” Paxton walked to the fridge and grabbed another beer, then tossed it to him. “So if it ain’t threats, what’s up?”

“I was sent to d-deliver a message. You aren’t in t-t-trouble for hurting Quinn.”

Paxton took a sip of his beer and smacked his lips. “Why not?”

“Director Ward t-told me, and I forgot some of it, but let me try to remember what he s-said.” Dith’s beady brown eyes blinked rapidly as he took a micro-sip of beer. “If you are p-playing with a spider in your h-hands, and you’re being rough with it, it c-can bite you, and you c-can either squash it or let it go because you know it was your fault you g-got bit.”

“God that guy is fuckin’ weird,” Paxton said, shaking his head. “So they’re blaming themselves for it. Good enough, I guess. But don't that mean they don't mind if I beat your ass too?” He laughed at Dith's gulp, then said, "Jus' fuckin' with ya. So how is he doin'?”

“He’s g-going to walk again. Maybe even wrestle. The broken bones were in his ribs, which was r-really the best case scenario. You should go visit him, Paxton.”

“Why?” Paxton asked. “So he can call me an asshole? So his dad can threaten t’sue me?”

“Quinn has actually been really subdued. And…and k-kind.” Dith fights a grin, but it makes its way to his face anyway. “I think you knocked the a-asshole out of him.”

Paxton had been sipping his beer but spit it out. “Jesus Christ, Dith.”

“What? He’s an asshole. So are you. S-so is everybody there.”

“You’re feelin’ really comfortable in that chair there. Let’s get ya outta it.” Paxton walks over and gently pulls Dith to his feet, then begins ushering him to the door. “I dunno ‘bout visitin’ him. Not sure he’d wanna see me anyway.”

“Probably not. But it’s the right thing to do. Here’s the address of the hospital.” Dith handed Paxton a piece of paper and opened the door, then looked to the right. “You’ve g-got a lot of mail in your mailbox.”

As Dith left, Paxton looked at the paper in his hand. He looked back to the door, then crumpled the paper and threw it on the ground before opening the door and grabbing his mail from the mailbox.

_______

Is visitin Quinn the right step?

Who knows. I did an awful thing to him, and no matter what a little shit he is, nobody deserves that. But what’s goin to the hospital gonna do? It ain’t like I’m gonna bring flowers. And it ain’t like he’s dyin to see me.

I ain’t afraid to face my consequences. I’ve done enough of that every time I saw Jon last year. I got numb to it, and I’m sure I can get numb to this too. Hell, I’ve hurt so many people like this that I’m gettin used to movin on and pretendin it didn’t happen.

Let’s play it out. I go to the hospital. I go into the room where Quinn and his shitbag dad are waitin. Am I gettin welcomed? Am I gettin hugged?

Nah. I’m gettin kicked out, shamed, rightfully hated for what I did.

That’s the real reason I went numb. Apologies ain’t accepted when you do what I did. So why even try? 

Ain’t a step worth takin.

_______

Paxton tugged to get the mail of his mailbox as envelopes were folded on top of each other, fitting into every possible inch of space. When he finally wrested the mail from its sheath, a few envelopes fluttered to the ground.

“Guess it’s what I get for abandonin’ my home,” Paxton said as he bent down to pick up the litter. He noticed a loose piece of paper and grabbed it as well. Walking inside, he placed the rest of the mail on his side table and scanned the piece of paper. His eyes went wide for a moment.

“Julie.”

After another pause, he walked over to the chair and sat down. Reaching for his beer and missing, he began reading aloud, his tone low and reserved. “Dear Pax. I dunno why I’m writin’ this. Ya made it pretty clear that ya have different priorities than helpin’ Shweta find Nora or…or spendin’ time with me. I hate to admit it, but it’s easier t’write it down on a piece of paper than it it t’say it to ya, so I’ll jus’ be honest: I’m more hurt by the second part. Of course Nora is and should be the most important thing in your life, and if ya don’t want to find her, you shouldn’t waste a second thinkin’ ‘bout me, right? If only it were that easy. I’ve tried tellin’ myself to let ya go a thousand times, but I jus’ can’t.

“So why am I writin’ this? I guess I just want ya t’know that I’m here. An’ it don’t make sense, an’ there’s a thousand reasons why it won’t work – on both sides – but I’m writin’ this anyway, hopin’ that whenever you get home and see it…you’ll give me a call. I still think ya should work with Shweta. I still think ya need Nora back, as much for her sake as yours. An’ most of all…I think ya need me, an’ I need ya. So please. When you get home…call me. From, Julie.”

Paxton’s hand dropped to his lap, his eyes closing. He brought his other hands to his face, wiping sweat and other wetness away. Then he heaved a sigh that could knock over a ton of bricks and let the paper flutter to the ground.

_______

Is gettin back with Julie the right step?

Probably so, for some reasons. She’s smart, she’s sweet, she’s endlessly forgivin. She’s also part of the team that wants my daughter back, and unlike Shweta she wants her back for me. No matter what a monster I’ve been, no matter how many lives I’ve ruined, hers included, she still cares about me more than pretty much anyone else has.

But that’s the exact reason it ain’t the right step.

If you care about me that much, there’s somethin wrong with you. I dunno what she’s got wrong in her head, but it’s got to be big if she looks at me and thinks there’s some sort of future. 

Her job is about makin people better. She works to undo all the evil I did to Jon. Maybe she thinks she can do the same thing for me, but she’s wrong.

Let’s play it out. I grab my phone and call her. She comes over, we hug and kiss and she makes some comment about me shavin so it doesn’t tickle her lips. Then what? We go to the mall? Go on double dates with Shweta and Jon?

I ain’t domesticated and I’m never gonna be. As good as it would be to make Julie happy, and as much as it’d make part of me happy too, it can never work. 

That can’t be the right step.

_______

Sighing, Paxton shook his head and reached for his beer before getting interrupted by his phone buzzing. He looked at it and his eyes went wide.

The card for ReV 49 had been released for a few days, but between travel and self-pity Paxton hadn’t looked. He even created a jabber account just to distract him when he was on his phone so he didn’t look at anything real.

But there it was, staring him in the face to where he couldn’t ignore it.

Main Event. Jared Sykes. One more time.

Paxton’s fingers traced an outline along his lips, where over a year ago Jared Sykes used Paxton’s own chain to choke him out. There were no visible scars, but there were two small sections by his lips where his beard wouldn't grow. Just like how that night ended, Paxton formed a wolfish grin.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout,” he said aloud, reaching over for the television remote. The original hero vs. villain match in new PRIME. When everyone, including Paxton himself, knew exactly who he was.

“Let’s try an’ remember what the monster was like,” he said as he turned on the television.

After a painful few minutes of internet searching, the screen lit up with a Colossus hype package from 2022.

He watched himself stalk the ring, approaching the masked man Sykes had been. He watched himself lose his job, then saw Sykes beat him within an inch of his life. Paxton cackled as he saw the chair bash him in the head.

The smile faded as he saw the next part, aired out of order in the hype package: Paxton tossing the limp body of Mark Lemon through a glass window. Paxton blinked a few times, then rewound the video and watched it again. But unlike the rest of the video, where he felt like he was watching a comedy, he now sat somber.

The video continued to show Jared Sykes, still under the mask, scowling at the camera. And in that moment Paxton withered under that scowl. Grabbing his phone, he started to scroll.

“Fuck.”

_______

I know what the right step is.

Let's play it out.

_______

After more digging and research, Paxton raised the phone to his ear. He waited for a few rings, then closed his eyes as he heard a click. “Hello?” a weathered male voice answered.

“Uh…hi. Is this Mark?”

After a pause, he heard a softer voice come on. “Hello?”

“Mark?”

The pause felt like minutes instead of seconds. When Mark Lemon finally answered, his voice was flat. “Yes.”

“Hey. This is, uh…this is Paxton Ray.”

He endured another pause and opened his mouth to speak when it became clear that Mark wouldn’t, but the MGM Grand assistant finally responded. “Okay.”

“Listen. This is a long time comin’, an’ I don’t expect nothin’ from ya, but…I am so sorry for what I did to ya back then. I didn’t have any reason for it. I jus’ wanted t’hurt somebody else. I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my life, not all of ‘em caught on camera, but what I did t’ya was prob’ly one of the worst things I’ve ever done. An’ I apologize.”

“...Okay.”

Paxton nodded slowly, as if he knew how this would go. “How are…did ya recover okay?”

“...eventually.”

“Well that’s good.” Paxton let another pause waft through, then started speaking quickly. “Well I’m sure ya don’t forgive me, an’ ya don’t need to, but I jus’ wanted t’tell ya that I’m sorry. An’ that I haven’t been sure who I am in a long time, if I’m still that asshole who threw ya through the window, or a lovin’ father who wants his daughter back, or a troubled man facin’ the ghosts of his past, or all of ‘em or none of ‘em. But I know today that I don’t ever wanna be the kinda guy who hurt ya like that for no reason. ‘Cause I met a ton’a those men in the past year, an’ I don’t think I can do what those people do anymore.” Paxton’s eyes opened suddenly. “An’...an’ I ain’t gonna let ‘em hurt other people anymore either, if I can help it.”

Paxton anticipated Mark’s reaction, but still felt a pang when he answered, “Okay.”

“...Well okay. I won’t keep ya. I hope ya continue t’get better, Mark. An’ I hope one day t’be somebody who stops people like me.” Paxton hung up before receiving another half-hearted confirmation.

The Bayou Butcher leaned back in his chair for a moment, feeling the weight of the conversation pushing him down. Then, he stood up and grabbed his phone again. He scrolled through and dialed a number, then waited again. When he heard the click, he didn’t wait for the voice to answer. “Shway? I’m ready t’walk in the right direction.”