So Grows the Army, or Asshole Jambalaya

“Bullshit.”

Paxton rolled his eyes. “Bullshit” had been a popular response from Jonathan Rhine over the past few months. In fact, he said it so much that Paxton thought a cow farm had been moved to the Mud Pits by Shweta’s warehouse.

The former SCCW Universal Champion ignored Paxton’s facial expressions and stared up at his girlfriend Shweta, who to her credit did not wither under his glare. “What is bullshit, Jonathan?” Paxton couldn’t stop a grin from forming: when Shway went full name, it was clear she wasn’t putting up with Jon’s bullshit.

“You know what. I fought hard to keep this asshole out of our lives, but I finally relented. And now you want to add more assholes to the asshole jambalaya?”

Paxton snorted. “What kinda sausage is that?”

Shweta turned to Paxton, and he felt an admonishment coming, but she wrinkled her nose and smirked. “It’s probably spicier than andouille.”

“And now you’re teaming up with my enemy against me,” Jonathan pouted, slapping the notebook on his lap.

“Oh lighten up, Jonny,” Paxton said. “I don’t like the fucker either, but ya should know when Shweta has a plan, there’s a reason for it, which I’m sure she’s gonna tell us ‘bout now.”

“Thank you, Paxton.” With that, Shweta settled into presentation mode. “A few days ago, I found some information pertaining to Magen Nackedy’s whereabouts. Though we don’t know where she is, we do know who took her.”

“I thought Foster did ‘cause she was fuckin’ Rosy,” Paxton said.

“That was a fun theory,” Shweta said, “but it is untrue. No, it is a more obvious answer. Magen has fallen into MESSIAH’s clutches, which means she is located at one of the dozen plus facilities across the world. If we are lucky, she will be in the same one as Nora, but I’m sure that’s unlikely. Now, as we said last time, the scope of our mission has increased. And as much as we may not like it, that means we need help. So grows the war…”

“So grows the army.” Paxton turned around to see Foster Nackedy, concussion helmet affixed to his head, smiling.

“Asshole jambalaya,” Jonathan muttered.

_______

Paxton Anger Journal 9/3/2024

I ain’t gonna be a whiny baby like Jon, but I ain’t exactly jumpin with joy to work with Foster again.

I can’t remember the show, but there was an episode where a man rejected a woman because she loved him. He knew he was a piece of shit so anyone who loved him had somethin wrong with her. I feel that a lot, especially with Julie, but it applies to Foster too.

When I was with him, I was about the lowest and angriest a man can be. I didn’t care bout nothin. I just wanted to hurt everyone. I know how shitty it was bein around me, whether you were friend or foe. Most people were foes.

Foster was there every step of the way. He delighted in my destruction. He liked bein seen as the brain to my brawn. He only got off the Paxton train when his son was affected. 

A man like that only cares about hurtin the people he hates and protectin the people he loves. Which is why he’s here now – he’s got an unhealthy obsession with his wife, but at least it means he wants to help. 

But as I start to see everythin I did wrong in my quest to get Nora back, I know that I don’t wanna do the same thing with him. I’ll accept help, but I’m keepin my distance.

_______

“You look like shit, Pax,” Foster said.

“Bein’ tossed off a stage in a port-o-potty will do that to ya,” Paxton mused, looking up at the balcony. “It was ‘bout that high up if ya wanted t’try it yourself.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Foster turned to Shweta. “So, fake ex-girlfriend, what’s the plan?”

Shweta blinked rapidly, trying to process how her life brought her to this exact moment with these men. “As I mentioned earlier, we have a list of potential locations for the MESSIAH compounds. Not accurate coordinates, but close. I sent someone to investigate the one in Japan, and it was empty, so we can scratch it off the list. That leaves a little less than 20 other locations to look into.”

Foster raised his hand. “If there are any stateside and Canada, I can check them out. I’ll take Ian with me. Don’t have much going on right now.”

“Sure. Here’s a location you can start at.” Shweta handed a piece of paper to Foster, then looked at Jon’s aghast face. “What?”

“You’re just blindly trusting him? He worked with MESSIAH before.”

“That’s before they took my gym, and then they took my ex-wife,” Foster said. “And you can ask toiletface over there, I never enjoyed being their partner.”

“Never enjoyed much’a anythin’, seemed like.”

“Says the guy who hasn’t smiled since 2020.”

“Smilin’ hurts my face,” said the Bayou Butcher, though a grin was forming on his lips.

“You really want these two as part of our team?” Jon asked.

Shweta rubbed her temples. “Do I want a sadist and my ex-boyfriend…”

“Fake ex-boyfriend!” Foster cheerfully interjected.

“...fake ex-boyfriend to be responsible for saving two lives? No, they are not at the top of my wishlist. But they both have personal ties to the victims. And both seem willing to put their pride aside to save the people they love.”

“Well let’s give them a fucking medal of selflessness then,” Jon muttered, sweeping his arms out and knocking the notebook on his lap to the ground. His eyes widened as he started to roll towards it, but Foster was too quick and picked it up.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking at the cover. “Oooh. Old Life: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Rhine. Is somebody writing an autobiography?”

“Give it to me,” Jon snarled with all the anger he could muster.

“Nah.” Foster rifled through the pages. “Oh, this is good. Such imagery-invoking language. Such visceral emotion. Paxton, would you like to hear what he thinks of you?”

Paxton shrugged. “I can guess.”

“Well I’m going to read it anyway.”

_______

The first time I met Paxton Ray, I already knew he was a liar and a snake.

He was so careless that he lost his own daughter in our first meeting. I was pitching him the opportunity of a lifetime, a way for him to earn notoriety for his skills and to make money to help pay for his daughter’s cancer treatments, and he didn’t even see her slip away.

I knew it was the right thing to do for this little girl, so I ignored the obvious signs and tried to give this poor, rough-around-the-edges man a chance.

We all know what he did with that chance.

_______

Paxton looked from Foster to Jonathan. “Angry much?”

“I wonder why,” Jonathan spat.

“That’s not how it went neither. Nora didn’t run away. She was jus’ on the other side of the playground. Tryin’ t’make me sound like a shitty dad.”

“You don’t need any help from me.”

Shweta sighed. “Can we move on? There’s still work to do here.”

“Yeah, I wanna help find these compounds too,” Paxton said.

“Unfortunately, you’re too well known in MESSIAH circles to sneak around random parts of the country. Bathory is pretty good at keeping tabs on you, so we need to keep you out of the boots on the ground stuff.”

Paxton frowned, but nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair enough. I may actually have a solution for that, though.” Paxton’s phone buzzed, and he took it out of his pocket. “Damn, it’s like he heard us talkin’.”

“Who?”

In answer, Paxton’s phone lit up and the smiling, bruised face of Sage Pontiff emerged.

“Sat Sri Akaal–what’s the ups and the downs of the universal furies, dude?”

Jon’s eyes bugged. “Him? You’re inviting Patchouli Granolapants to this?”

Paxton, who had dealt with the attacks on his character with grace, narrowed his eyes at the shots to his friend. “Sage an’ I help each other out. I been helpin’ him with his shit, so he wanted to help me with this.” Paxton looked to Shweta. “Sage is smart and dedicated when he feels something is worth his time. We keep each other grounded. He’ll be an asset.”

Shweta looked at the phone for a moment, then nodded. “Mr. Pontiff, are you able to make stops at certain areas in the country if I send you a list? Don’t go out of your way, but if there’s a potential compound near one of PRIME’s shows, can you investigate?”

“Yeah, that sounds like an easy enough job for ‘Patchouli Granolapants’.  Especially if it’s helping Paxton, I’ve got no issue going out of my way to confirm things.”

“Then your help is more than welcome.”

“This is fucking bull–”

“Bullshit, we know,” Paxton finished. “Gotta say, Jon, for bein’ the only good guy here, like ya claim t’be, ya sure ain’t showin’ the helpin’ spirit that the rest of us are.”

Jonathan’s eyes went wide as he gripped the handles of his wheelchair. “Because this mission is becoming a group of assholes bad enough to rival The Poor Whoresmen!”

Paxton stepped back as if he had been slapped. “Don’t ya put that evil on me, ya know I hate those fuckers.”

“Then you’re a self hater. At least those guys know they’re shitheads. The only difference between you and them is you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you can be redeemed.”

“Jonathan–” his girlfriend started, but he didn’t let her continue.

“And yes, Paxton, I’m the only good person here besides Shweta. Let’s see – we got Foster Nackedy, a man who was so blinded by jealousy that he plotted to take away the gym I inherited when he paralyzed his son’s boyfriend. We have Sage Pontiff, a man who has no direction unless it goes through a path of fire and broken bones. And we have the biggest asshole in our asshole jambalaya, Paxton Ray, who fucking paralyzed me for no fucking reason at all. So yeah, I think I might be the north star of morality in this particularly shitty constellation.”

A silence loomed over them for a few moments before Foster answered, almost in a whisper, “You sure about that?”

“Whatcha mean?” Paxton asked.

“Wha…?” Jon’s eyes widened as they met Foster’s. “Oh. No. Please, Foster, no.”

“Yes,” Foster said. “Let’s tell them about our talk a couple years ago, oh mighty north star.”

_______

August 12, 2022

Foster Nackedy’s phone rang, but it was further away than his beer bottle, so it took him until the seventh ring to finally grab it. “Yello?”

“Foster?”

Foster’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you calling, Jonathan?”

The voice on the other end was low, weak. “I never apologized for punching you in the face.”

“And you probably aren’t going to now, are you?”

“...no.”

Foster smirked. “Then why are you calling?”

“I’m having some feelings, and I thought you might be familiar with them.”

“And what feelings are those?”

A sigh on the other end. Then: “Jealousy. Regret.”

“Yeah, I’ve felt those once or twice.”

“This year has been, in some ways, the hardest year of my life. Getting back into wrestling after such a long absence. Promoting a cause bigger than anything I’ve ever fought for. And I hope this isn’t weird, but I’m sort of dating Shweta now.”

Foster’s eyes widened for a moment, then he shrugged. “She only pretended to date me, no big deal. The sex was real, though.”

Jon paused. “Gross. Anyway, Nora is in remission. We did it.”

“Congratulations,” Foster answered without inflection. “So, why the jealousy? Why the regret?”

Jon didn’t answer immediately. “I should be thrilled. This was the goal. But at the end of the day, I’m just…I’m angry.”

“Why?”

“You know what it’s like to wrestle, Foster. And what it’s like to stop, and then start again after a long absence. I was so numb to the world after Katie’s death that I didn’t think I’d ever feel anything again. But this year I’ve felt it all. Good and bad. Wrestling did that for me. And now that Nora is better…”

He didn’t finish, so Foster finished for him. “You think your wrestling career is over.”

“...yeah.”

“Maybe it is.”

Jonathan sighed. “It feels awful, but the first reaction I had to the news that Nora was cancer-free was…disappointment.”

Foster’s eyes widened again. “Yeah I’d say that’s awful all right.”

“I know. I even wished it wasn’t true. That the doctor got the report wrong.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jon.”

“I know. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Forget telling everyone, why are you telling me?”

“I don’t know. I guess because I thought you’d understand.”

“I guess I sort of do. But I don’t have any answers for you. We’re not mentor and mentee anymore, remember? You’ve got my gym. You’ve got my fake girl. You’ve got the cape you wear to pretend you’re a superhero despite being a selfish prick like me. Sorry, Jon, but I don’t have anything for you.”

“...Yeah. You’re right. I guess I’ll figure it out on my own. Later.”

Foster hung up the phone and reached for his beer bottle. “What a fucking asshole.”

_______

No one moved. No one spoke. No one breathed.

Until finally, from Paxton’s phone, Sage replied.

“That's a harsh to my mellow.  That sucks, right?”

Paxton’s fingers tightened around the phone. “Ya tol’ Foster…ya wish my daughter still had cancer.”

Jon’s eyes refused to meet Paxton’s. “I was in a bad place.”

“Fuckin’ clearly.” Paxton looked over at Shweta. “An’ how do ya feel? Knowin’ your man thought that back then?”

Shweta looked at the ground, then walked towards Jonathan and crouched so they were eye-level. “It makes me feel that maybe he fits right in with the people on this mission.”

“Shway…” Jonathan started.

“And that’s okay.” She gripped his hands and squeezed. “Those thoughts are wretched. They came from a dark place. I was there at the time, so I remember the dark place we were all in, with the specter of MESSIAH over us, just like it is now.” Shweta looked up at Paxton. “And no, Jonathan’s not perfect, nor is anyone here.” Shweta smiled at Jon. “I remember the conversation we had right after that. You tried to break up with me, remember?”

Jonathan, in spite of how he felt, smiled back. “Tried to, yeah.”

“And right now you’re trying to break this mission apart. And I understand it. It must be tough being around people you’ve fought against. But you know now what you knew then: that there is a greater fight ahead. And I know that you will do anything you can for Nora to be safe from MESSIAH’s clutches.”

“I will.”

“An’ so will I,” Paxton said. “Sage too. An’ even puffy head over there.”

“I’m just trying to save my ex-wife so she’ll sleep with me again,” Foster said, “but I’ll help Nora if it’s on the way.”

Shweta nodded and stood up, facing them. “So no, this isn’t a band of mighty warriors. Maybe it is closer to Fred Dick and Daytona Diamonds, like you say. But it’s what we have. And we’re going to give it everything we got.” Shweta looked over at Paxton’s phone. “Sage?”

“I don’t have a gear that isn’t ‘give it everything’, for better or worse.”

“Thank you. I’ll have Paxton reach out to you with details.”

Sage signed off, leaving the four of them staring at some mixture of each other, the floor, and their own lap. After a moment, Shweta excused herself to her office.

Foster walked by Paxton, shoving the notebook in his hands. “In case you ever wondered why I helped you back then?” Foster sneered back at Jonathan. “He said you didn’t have a reason to do it, but now that you know, I’d say you had a pretty good fucking reason.”

Paxton looked from Foster to Jon, who wouldn’t return his stare.

_______

The thing I kept thinkin about after that mess was what kinda group we all were.

I used to think Jon was a lot of things: pompous, selfish, navel-gazing. But I never thought he was a bad person until today. 

And like Shweta said, he fits right in. 

Jon brought it up as an insult, but he was right. This group does kinda remind me of Daytona Diamond’s group. And I’m callin it his and not Fred’s because we know exactly who’s the Shweta of that numbskull operation. A buncha shitheads who shouldn’t get along because of all their flaws, but somehow they become bigger than the sum of their parts. 

I been wantin my hands around Daytona’s neck for a minute now, but I ain’t gonna pretend it’ll be easy. He’s good, he’s smart, and he’s really fuckin good at cheatin. 

But they’re unified, and we sure as hell ain’t. I already said I didn’t wanna work with Foster, and now that I know how Jonathan really felt about my daughter, I’m not sure how long I can even be in the same room with him. But we’ve still got a purpose, and so that will bring us as far as we can go.

That’s also what makes us different from The Whoresmen.

What’s the goal, the purpose? What was the pitch from Daytona to the rest of those shitbirds? “Hey, you suck and I suck, let’s suck together"? You see it when they go out to the ring to talk to the crowd, and goddamn are they always doin that. All they care about is the boos, about getting people to heckle them. They like pissin people off.

Even when I was at my lowest, I didn’t give a shit about what the crowd thought. Sometimes I barely noticed they were there. Because I’ve always had a purpose. To hurt people, to cure my daughter’s cancer, to get her back after she was taken. I have somethin that drives me, that makes me care, that makes me dangerous.

What the fuck does Daytona Diamonds even care about? That piece of gold he wears? His stupid fuckin jet ski? Sex with random people?

I hate Fred Dick for a lotta reasons. He’s fuckin annoyin, he’s ugly, he’s cruel. But one of the biggest reasons I hate him is he ain’t no twisted soul waitin to be uncovered. He’s just a fuckin douchebag. Same as Daytona. They ain’t had a daughter with cancer, they ain’t do nothin but do drugs and make people nauseous. 

So I’m a shithead who’s working with other shitheads, just like Daytona Diamonds. But one day I’m gonna be watchin a TV show with my daughter, pretendin I don’t like it so she can tell me why she loves it, and I know all of this will be worth it.

And one day Daytona is gonna wake up and there ain’t gonna be nothin. I’m happy to start him on that path at 55. He probably thought he was just helpin a friend out when he hit me with a whiskey bottle and threw me off a stage, but what he was really doin was puttin a big ass bullseye on his stupid cowboy hat.

_______

Paxton looked through the pages of the journal as he took slow, measured steps towards Jonathan Rhine. The New Life was frozen in place, refusing to move or look up.

After going through a few more pages, Paxton found himself standing directly over the man who wished his daughter had never gone in remission. Finally, his face still in his lap, Jonathan muttered, “Go ahead.”

“What, ya think I’m gonna finish the job?”

“I deserve it.”

Paxton laughed. “Yeah, I’d reckon ya do. An’ make no mistake, part a’me wonders how fast I can toss that wheelchair into the street. But I got a job t’do, and so do ya.” Paxton dropped the notebook onto Jon’s lap. “Startin’ with that.”

“What? You want me to be nicer to you in there? Because I–”

“No, ya fuckin’ baby, I want ya t’be nicer t’yourself. This shit is so bitter. Writin’ everythin’ from the frame of a victim. Ya call this book the Rise an’ Fall of Jonathan Rhine? Old Life? You’re 38 years old. You’re still alive. Your story ain’t done yet.”

Paxton walked away, patting Jonathan’s shoulder as he went. “Ya got plenty of rises and falls left in ya, and as long as you’re helpin’ me get my daughter back, I ain’t gonna let my actions be the last story ya tell.”

“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why aren’t you attacking me?"

Paxton stood in the doorway and smiled. “‘Cause my story ain’t done yet either.”

After Paxton left, Jonathan wheeled towards the table and grabbed a marker. He drew a line through the cover of the notebook, then drew a few letters and smiled.

Renewed: The Rises and Falls of Jonathan Rhine