mercy (or living half to death)

"Partnah"

CRACK

Fade to black...

There were flashes of light and somewhere in the ether Charlie Brown's teacher was talking. Wah wah wah wah, you know? Slowly they faded in and starts making some type of sense to me, but I still couldn't see shit.

"And who do we have next?" a female voice quizzed from wide blue yonder.

Who the fuck was that? What the fuck was going on? I didn't know a sneeze from a wet fart and buddy, it was fucking jarring. But there was something about that voice that felt like a heated blanket during a fall rainstorm. Just made me all sweet and gooey inside.

"Robert Williams, madam." a man's voice responded in a tone of servitude.

"Who is Robert Williams, hmm?" the female voice asked with an authority that clarified the hierarchy. I realized my head was in this woman's lap. Her hand brushed through my hair in the exact way I'd always wanted. I was seen, loved, cared for. Here, in this void, I found what I'd looked for in panties across the world. All my worries were butter on warm toast.

This was the shit that made men write fucking poetry and go to war with one another.

My neurons were firing, but the outcome was abysmal. The puzzle began taking shape and I could just make out the edges of the woman's face. Despite the fog, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"Let's review a few recent quotes," The Servant audibly fumbled around. I ain't sure if it was in my head, my imagination, or what - but a vivid screenshot of Jabber appeared.

"You're a disingenuous asshole that loves the sound of his own voice. What do you even believe in, my dude? Cuz quite frankly, I'm over your bullshit." -RIA, Beacon of Love and Hope

You know, when I started poking at RIA in Jabber, I was being genuine. Giving up what you want to be to get by in this crude world. That first promo she cut about wanting to be an infusion of love, it really meant something. But, like always, I poked and poked, then got my fucking feelings hurt when she pushed back. Fucking christ, maybe she's right.

"You are no prophet. These things did not come to pass simply because you believed they would. Children like you who fill their simple little mouths with heresies should be burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the wind, forever forgotten. I sleep well at night Rob Williams, knowing you will spend eternity burning in Hell." -Don Winters, known Holy Man

Fuck that guy. And... where the fuck did that one go wrong? I thought we were two peas in a fucking pod when I first met that guy. I took it too far. I always fucking do. Now he's resting easy at night knowing I'm spending eternity burning in hell.

Well, I just may be.

"Colorful, but not WHO this man is, now was it?" the Woman lamented as her nails traced the scars on my face.

"How right you are, madam. Maybe this will help," The Servant replied and suddenly ReVival 44 was front and center.

"In a desperate move, Hessian pummels Williams’ midsection with bone-crushing punches before effortlessly hoisting him into the air. With a sadistic grin, he holds Williams aloft before slamming him down in a devastating Stalling Brainbuster that leaves the former Five-Star Champion crumpled on the ground." -War Games 2024, Hessian

Wherever I go, there I am. That was enough, the pain had hit a crescendo.

If I could've moved I would have strangled both of them. Then I would find Hessian and enucleate one eyeball and skullfuck him. I would have soaked the HQ of PRIME on kerosene and watched it burn.

"A brave one, hm? You've fallen on tough times, haven't you?" The Woman's motherly love boiled all of that bullshit to a simple reduction: I just didn't want to hurt anymore.

"What about his past, before all that?" The Woman asked as she looked down at me.

After some fumbling another picture came to life, fuzzy and grainy. Unlike the highlight reel of the worst few months I've had, this looked weathered. Sadness floated to the surface.

A young boy with a dirty-blonde rat tail sits on a linoleum floor. The bone colored sheet vinyl does nothing to hide the filth. If anything, the filth is accentuated by the pattern, as if each green square were a framed picture of what happens when you don't give a shit. But the little boy is undeterred. In fact, he's ecstatic. In his hands is a  "Mr. Cool ICE" toy from some knock off Batman only found in Dollar Generals. The boy is in the process of filling the toy with water, being as careful as he can to follow the directions.

No.

Satisfied with his work, the rat tailed kid gets up to put the toy in the freezer. His bare foot snags a lump of the linoleum that has been split open. Not from his family sitting down to enjoy home cooked meals, but from hiding when Pop comes home after a night of drinking Irish. Which is most nights. He holds in the yelp as his foot is split end to end from the jagged edge of the vinyl, but instinctively grasps for it as he falls. The toy flies through the air, tossing water everywhere and smacking into the wall with a thud before landing in the mire of muck below. The boy winces at the noise, more shaken by the toy hitting the wall than his own foot sliced end to end.

Please stop.

The puddle of water shakes with a loud boom in the distance. The boy watches the cadence of the vibrations increasing as the thunder gets louder. A figure appears in the doorway. It's wretched and dark, nondescript, some apparition from the bowels of hell. A pause like the silence you didn't notice before a car crash and then the figure is on top of the little boy. All the boy does is whimper, knowing that if he gives into the pain and fear and cries, the violence will only be that much worse.

The Authoritarian looked at me with compassion.

"Shall I queue another, madam?" came quietly from the Servant.

Have mercy.

"No, I believe we've seen enough of that. Hm. Might explain some of the recent behavior. You know I've always been a believer in nurture in the age old argument. How did he get here, though?"

"You are a most merciful god, madam. Forgive me, there is a lot to unpack here."

Ok, there was a fleeting chance that the "in between" wouldn't be so fucking acidic. Here came a new set of images out of the dark.

The floor of the State Farm Arena in Atlanta shakes with the electric energy of thirty-thousand wrestling fans on their feet screaming as a twenty-one year old Rob Williams stands on the top turnbuckle at UCW's Bound For Glory pay-per-view. The fans just survived the Y2K scare. Buttrock is in style unironically and people are still wearing JNCOs. It's a wild time to be alive and here, before the packed crowd, Rob Williams is about to secure the UCW World Championship from The Massacurist. Yes, the Massacurist. See JNCOs, buttrock, and and Y2K, these were simpler times. Soaring through the air, a bright eyed Williams drops an elbow on the incumbent champion. One, two, and three. The ref calls for the bell, handing Rob Williams his first World Title in front of his hometown crowd. This kid is on fire and he has the world by the balls.There's nothing in this world that can stop him. He will sit at the top and be acknowledged as a god. 

"Ok, he's an adept warrior. He was successful." God remarked. "What changed?"

The screaming fans faded out and the chiclet tile of a bathroom stall faded in.

Rob Williams sits on a comically small toilet in what has to be an elementary school bathroom. The year is 2011 and Rob has just gotten out of prison. Again. Despite all the sweet promises laid upon Charlotte, he's back in another podunk town getting ready to go bleed for a bunch of ungrateful hicks in a school gymnasium. Sitting in Rob's hands is a CD case."Loose Women and Looser Guitar Strings" - his failed foray into the world of alt country. To this day Rob swears that it was because there was already a famous singer named Robbie Williams who sued the shit out of him for trademark infringement, but the critics would tell you that it was because the music sounded like the noise a dog shitting razor blades might make. But, the case was perfect for cutting out a few lines of that sweet, sweet hillybilly dust to get the blood pumping before destroying your body to a rousing crowd of twenty. They call it crank because the bikers used to carry it in the crankshaft of their bikes. As Rob dips his head to power up that hoover, the vision cuts to Charlotte. She's trying her best to make do with her two best friends (boxed wine and dilaudid) in the shitty little trailer she shares with Rob, chasing those ghosts and wondering where the fuck Rob is now. Again. Flop back to Rob, back in the bathroom after his match sewing up a hole in his leg that looks WAY out of his depth. The promoter pops in and gives Rob a hundred bucks and a small bag of white powder. As Charlotte drinks away the pain of not knowing where her man is, Rob sits at a merch booth with "LeGenD" shirts and, smiling at the fiery red head aptly named Miss Take sitting at the merch table across from him.

When all you have is a hammer, everything look like a nail.

"Oh my. Hm," God aloud as she looked down at me, "I have an idea."

She closed her eyes as if trying to remember a date. With the snap of her fingers, everything disappeared and I was freefalling into the black void again. I landed with a thud.

But where?

Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was the dirty-blonde rat tail. Sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of me was, well, me. The young boy was glued to the game he was playing. Pro Wrestling on the NES. Fuck, I loved that game. I used to spend hours playing it. By myself, of course. Dad had better shit to do like drink himself blind or beat the fuck out mom than play a silly ass game.

A shaky "hello" trembled from my mouth.

He turned around as if he had been expecting me and smiled at me with a gapped tooth grin. We never had money for braces. Without saying a word he backed out to choose two player from the main menu. He walked over to the NES in his knockoff TMNT pajamas and plugged in the second controller I had stolen from Wal Mart. The little boy held the controller out to me, beckoning me to join him on the floor next to him.

I knew that controller was broken. My hand instinctively moved to the back of my neck and found the scar it gave me. Pop had used it to whip the shit out of me once after I breathed wrong or some shit. The boy knew it didn't work, because he, too, had the scar.. Yet he took it with a smile, just happy to have someone to play with him.

"Are you sure, kid?" I gave him an out, like nobody had ever fucking given me.

"Of course!"

I sat down next to him. We picked our characters, he Starman and I The Amazon. It was nearly impossible to take my eyes off him as the match booted up. So much pain in his world and here he was smiling, handing me the controller he knew was broken because I'm a fucking guest. Was I ever like this? If I was, what happened?

The best part of me wanted to throw the match to this kid. This kid who I knew was wearing bruises and cigarette burns under those pajama sleeves with his little broken controller. But, I knew this kid needed to learn the pain of loss because he was going to face a whole fucking lot of it in this world.

But I couldn't. At the last second I showed him mercy.

"You're real good." He smiled and then quietly, with his head down, "Thank you. Nobody ever plays with me."

He gave me a hug. His little, tiny arms squeezed me so hard. Everything was said without any words being spoken. Queue the fucking water works. I scooped him up and hugged that little boy the way I always wanted someone to hug me. The type of hug that shows a kid that they're safe. Everything will be ok. You're good enough just as you are. I hugged him so tight that I didn't notice the living room of my youth and that sweet little boy had faded away.

I was hugging God.

"Is he going to be ok?" I looked up at her.

"That's up to you. Is he going to be ok?" God smiled as she caught a tear with her thumb and wiped it away.

God gently cooed a nostalgic tune in my ear and patted me on the head.

Wild Horses.

"This one isn't quite done. Send him back," She called to her Servant before returning to me, "Do take care of that little boy, my love. Don't hurt him anymore and don't let any others hurt him. You are charged with protecting him. Now please, wake up."

"Please, wake up," She spoke in a man's voice now.

"Please, you have to wake up."

This wasn't the first time I had woken up in a hospital with little memory of how I'd gotten there. Shit, that's old hat, buddy. But this time, I was fucking grateful. Turns out I wasn't ready for my performance review just yet. I looked around as my eyes and heart settled and saw...

Lem?

"You're awake!" Lem stood by my side, placing a hand on my shoulder.

It didn't make sense.

The last time I saw Lem I had played interior designer with his facial structure. In fact, his face was still discolored and bandaged. Yet there he was by my side. Fucking Lem.

"Harley Walker about fucking killed you. He hit you over the head with a toilet lid and you've been out since last Friday. It's Thursday, man. Almost a whole week. It's a fucking miracle you're ok."

"You mean Harvey Walker?" I tried to picture that half-assed Hot Rod braining me. "Forget that, Lem. I saw God."

"What did he say?"

"She said to protect him."

Before Lem could ask what the fuck that meant, Little Sister burst into the room. They talked, but it was all muddled to me as Little Sister eyed up the egg on my head. I was informed that they had booked me against, of all people, fucking Hessian. Go figure. Get assaulted on ReVival 48 and get booked against The Murder Express at 49.

"We have to fucking go, then." I remarked, pushing to a sit.

"No fucking way," Lem shot back at me. "We need to cancel the match, man. You're fucked up."

"I think Rob knows what he needs. Don't you, babe?" Little Sister bit her bottom lip.

I didn't know fuck about shit, but I knew I couldn't stay in that hospital any longer. The Vincent, some fresh air. Hessian? Sure, fuck it. Line them up and I'll do what I was made to do. My whole ass hung out the back of the hospital gown as I put a hand on Lem's shoulder to push myself up to a stand.

"She's right, Lem. I've got work to do. I need you to hang back and cover for me."

Lem nodded in acceptance. He was a good kid that didn't deserve what I had done to him. When there was more time, more solitude, I would make things right with him. I would make things right with all of them after ReVival. But at that moment there was wood to be chopped and water to be carried.

Little Sister smiled, crawling under my arm to help me walk. She was either an angel or the antichrist incarnate. The jury was still out on which. Making as little noise as possible, we left Lem unceremoniously. Now I was three sheets from my little dream and the general cocktail of painkillers they had me on, but I could've sworn I heard Lem call out, "It's ok, Father, I trust you."

Surely I had misheard him.

Little Sister and I pulled a Houdini on the hospital staff, and unfortunately Lem, I found some quiet time to watch Hessian's promo while we filled the Vincent up with l'essence. What a fucking hell hole this place was.

Before she had rescued me from the hospital room, Little Sister had managed to procure a litany of painkillers from the hospital's pharmacy. I chewed a darvocet and pondered how that cretin managed to navigate his obvious brain damage well enough to string a fucking sentence together.

I thought about War Games and the things he said in his interview and those old feelings bubbled to the surface. Fire. Skull fucking.

Little Sister ate it up, biting at my ear and tugging it, absorbing the hate radiating from me.

"You should grab the camera from PRIME and..."

OH SHIT, IT'S HAPPENING!

"Do a promo." She finished. "Like you used to do, babe. We can send it to PRIME for release before the show."

I thought about that kid playing Pro Wrestling. He wanted so badly to be a wrestler. Strong enough that no one would hurt him again. Would I allow Hessian to hurt that kid?

No.

"Get the camera."

Little Sister found the camera PRIME's marketing staff had sent when I first signed on. She quickly rearranged the shitty hostel room we rented and I sat in the chair, outlined in shadow by the lamp Little Sister positioned, as she counted down. Somewhere along the way I had picked up a Zippo and pack of cigarettes. When in Rome.  Three... two... one.

"Hessian. You know who the Hessians were, big guy? I'm sure you do, just humor me. Germans soldiers pimped out by their prince to the Brits during the Revolutionary War. Much like you, Germany was ruined financially from infighting, so they exported their biggest bastards to fight for the Brits. Brutal fucking bastards. So much so that Great Britain defeated America."

I drew on the cigarette, letting the smoke roll from open mouth before continuing on.

"The Hessian army was made up of the expendables sent to bleed and die because that's all they could do. Well shit, sounds like you, Hesh. Expendable. A big dancing bear in this circus act of PRIME, fat and flesh moving in a pattern of muscle memory for someone else's gain."

That electric feeling. Smoking cigarettes and talking shit.

"Honestly, it's perfect. Your career is being pimped. You're just a whore, all used up. Out there walking for the sweet promises from one more pimp. If you just get fucked this one last time, the golden days are coming back. Jesus man, you're so brainwashed, you're out here saying you're gonna even the score for Winters. Tell me, Hesh, where was Donny when you got your shit pushed in by Sykes, you walking shot of anabol? Did he send you his thoughts and prayers? Nope, too busy pimping his Five Star Bibles and sticking his hands in puppet holes. Of course you're drawn to him."

"I bet I know what you're saying right now. History doesn't matter."

A booming clap emitted my hands as I slapped them together.

"Fucking exactly. You were great. You held the Universal Title. These are ghost stories, old man, feats from a dead era. Ghosts and that ain't got no value in this revolutionary age. Shit in one hand and hold your fucking nostalgia act in another, see which one fills up quicker. This ain't overtime, Hesh, it's the Revolutionary War and you ain't ever gonna eat another Bethmännchen. I hope you bring the Hessian of yesteryear to ReVival 49 and not this sad, dancing bear shit. Come get fucked baby. And know that despite the bullshit you said, it ain't personal, it's mercy."

I snuffed the cigarette out in the ashtray resting on the arm of the chair and nodded to Little Sister. She turned the camera off and knelt before me. "Jesus, babe, that was fucking hot."

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

Hessian wouldn't hurt that boy.

No one would again.

fin