Ghost Particles

I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts? Ha.

They govern my life. I stand in a valley of ectoplasm, a veritable Dickensian lineup swirling around me ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Not all of them bother me all the time; Ayame told me about these things called “ghost particles” that we can only detect sometimes. Like, trillions bombard the Earth at any given moment, and we might get lucky to detect a couple thousand at a time. Lord knows my worries are innumerable, but thankfully, I’m a somewhat functional adult that only bogs himself down with a few at a time.

These ghost particles, she said they’re tiny, but mine always feel massive, like the big stone ball barreling down behind Indy in the Temple of Doom. I got a Universal Championship match coming up, hey! That object feels like it’s a goddamn planet. I don’t know if most people know it because it happened a lifetime ago, but I won the World Championship in two different feds back in the first part of my career. Between those two reigns, do you want to know how many successful defenses I had?

If you guessed any number greater than zero, you’re wrong.

The thing is that in order to get that first successful defense, I have to get through Cecilworth Farthington. Yeah, real easy, right? The guy who turned me into a pretzel in the first round of the last Almasy. He spoke into my soul back in Edmonton, not gonna lie. It took a lot of restraint not to go full debate bro on him, but, I mean, this is The ReVival Era. The best wrestlers in history have collected here, and by the grace of Huitzilopochtli and the little gremlin inside of me that thirsted for bloody violence at Manhunt, I have a second chance to win the big prize. In this field, with Snow and Hessian and Jiles and Diamonds and Colton and rest of them. I have to filter the noise out, right?

Man, if only that were the only ghost particle bearing down upon my event horizon.

If only.

-

click

“Who the hell is calling on the landline, babe?”

The scrunched annoyance in Tamara Mooney-Battaglia’s face told a story long enough to make Tolstoy blush.

“Okay, okay. How many times did she call while I was overseas?”

“Shockingly, this is the first time she’s tried calling the house. I think you might have done a number on her before you left.”

Tom winced a little. In the words of his younger son, Ma Battaglia had been a “turbo bitch” to him ever since Dad died, but she was still his mother.

“What did she want?”

“She said she needed to talk to you in person.”

“I hope you told her that you’re not my secretary.”

“I did not. I’m trying to be nice because if anyone’s cutting your mother off, it’s you, not me. No matter how much I want to.”

Tom sighed deeply as he rose from the couch and grabbed his keys.

Fifteen minutes later, he found only the storm door was shut. He didn’t bother knocking before opening the screened aluminum door, walking into his childhood home to find his mother sipping tea on the vinyl-encased sofa.

“Hey, Mom.”

She icily turned her gaze to her oldest son.

“Glad to see you sacrifice a family life to come up short twice.”

A sigh.

“Glad to see you too.”

Tom went to close the big door behind him before his mother’s words stopped him.

“Leave it open. It’s nice out.”

“Ugh. Since you’re still keeping up with my career, you do know that I have a shot at the Universal Title, right?”

She sipped slowly from her porcelain cup before answering.

“I’m glad to see they still give out consolation prizes. You know, your father didn’t need any consolation prizes.”

“Dad was a career midcarder. How many big title shots did he get outside of the Maritimes?”

“There was a reason for that, and it wasn’t because he was a bad wrestler.”

Tom squinted as he approached his mother.

“Mom, why did you want to see me?”

She rose from the couch.

“Come with me into the kitchen. It’s time you knew the truth.”

“About what?”

“Vinny Spandex.”

-

I think Ayame said they were called “neutrinos.” “Ghost particles” sound cooler anyway. More gravity. Fits my situation just a liiiiiiiitle bit better.

Cuz hoo boy.

Vinny Spandex. Or more pointedly, Zapp Scatino.

I thought that bombardment of ghost particles was over sometime during the flight from Perth to Tokyo. He fell off the face of the Earth, or maybe ejected from it like that one time an underground nuclear explosion sent a manhole lid into orbit, allegedly of course. Ayame Hasegawa, barely 20 years old and she knows all this shit about science in addition to wrestling. All I cared about at that age other than my craft and, well, the opposite sex was where I could get the best tortas. Kids these days are amazing.

Of course though, he’d come sliming back into my life like a messy mass of ectoplasm right when I didn’t need him. Even when he’s not here, he’s throwing wrenches into my plans. The snail trail from his grimy-ass personal life rears its ugly head again in full bombardment from my blindside as I have to face another one, just as sticky but somehow less gross from my front flank.

Dealing with this shit now? Look, anyone I would have to face for the Universal Championship would be a handful by themselves. Ivan, Youngblood, Rezin, Lizard Boy, hell, even Hayes Hanlon, who’d lull me into false security talking about what tie he’d wear to the press conference, high as a South African billionaire on ketamine, and then plant me into the mat without second thought. Again, this is the greatest collection of wrestlers on the planet, and somehow, I worked into the upper echelon a second time.

But Farthington is different, man. He’s taken what I can do, the nuts and bolts of it, you know, the grappling. That stuff is the core of lucha libre, not the flippy shit. God, now I sound like my old, dead father, another ghost I have to deal with. But it’s true. The flippy stuff is nice, but it’s high risk, low reward. The real success stories get down and dirty on the mat, and I’ve been voted Best Technical Luchador a couple of times in a past life.

Cecilworth Farthington? He lays that shit bare. Like naked. No one’s better than him at the ground game. I’m not saying I can’t beat him, because hey, I did it once. I know how to in chaos, and you’d be shocked at how well chaos can dictate how systems behave in order. But to deal with him with a witness protection-sized monkey leaping on my back, well…

-

“Well, take a seat. This might take awhile.”

“Mom, I’m not sitting down like this is before Dad died and you just wanted to get me some soup because you were so distraught at how gruff he was with me.”

She put her head into her hand, propped up by her gaunt but sturdy forearm propped up on the kitchen table.

“I mean, if you hated wrestling so much, why the facade when Dad was razzing me about how shitty he thought I was at it? Why lie to me? Shit, both my parents, liars their whole fucking lives.”

She sighed deeply.

“Sit down.”

“No. I’m tired of all this.”

“You want answers?”

Tom stared at his mother, stone-faced.

“Sit down.”

He sighed as he took a seat.

“Okay, so what’s the deal? What connection does this guy have with our family?”

“Back in the days before wrestling was this worldwide thing where you could make all this ungodly money doing it, your father had this cockamamie idea to get into investments. One of his biggest fans actually had this plan to open a chain of, Jesus Mary and Joseph, I forget exactly, but he somehow got to talking with your father. We became friendly with him and his girlfriend at the time.”

“And that guy was Vinny Spandex.”

She shook her head and snorted.

“Do not interrupt your mother.”

Tom thought to say something smart in return, but his desire to learn the truth of what had upheaved his life for the last nine months overrode his sense of playing rhetorical pickleball with his mother.

“Anyway, the whole thing went pear-shaped. We lost so much money out of the dealings, and your father threatened to kill him. Or at least that’s what Vinny alleged. Lorenzo swore up and down that he didn’t, but Vinny had friends in high places in New York. Once the restraining order was public, well...”

Tom furrowed his brow.

“Well what? You guys lost a lot of money, and then Dad never got a shot at the main events? Did he somehow lose his wrestling talent?”

“Boy, you really are dense, aren’t you? Vinny Spandex was a big deal in New York, especially Long Island. The big shows were in Madison Square Garden, but they shot TV at the Coliseum. And this story was all over the news for a hot second. The promoters got scared.”

“Okay. So they didn’t wait until it blew over? If Dad was this amazing wrestler…”

“Things were different then.”

“No they weren’t! If guys won, they won. It didn’t matter how scummy they were behind the scenes.”

“Again, you’re dense. I’m not sure how you’re my son. Maybe your father’s, but you got none of my brains.”

“I might not be a smart man, but I know this business. There’s gotta be something deeper. There just has to be.”

She shook her head and arose, going over to the shelf next to the stove. Teatime was over. The hour for gin and tonic had arrived.

“Sometimes, it’s just not that deep, boy. This Spandex, he was a big deal on Long Island. Could force the territory’s hand, especially since your father was big with children. Jacob Mondt, hell of a booker, but a total coward in the face of mainstream pressure, and he ran everything from Boston down to Richmond.

Tom shook his head.

“So basically this promoter and Dad were too yellow-bellied to stand up to a two-bit grifter, and you held a grudge against your husband AND oldest son ever since? Real fuckin’ nice, Mom. Shit, I’m glad I didn’t inherit Dad’s spine. Like, why didn’t we move to Chicago or St. Louis? Start over if Dad really was…”

“It wouldn’t have mattered!” she shrieked, slamming the highball glass on the table. “Your father chose greed over family, and I’d like to say all he had to do was keep his head down and wrestle and not try to leverage the tiny modicum of fame he had for more money, but this business attracts the greediest people in the world.”

Hand trembling, she lifted the glass to her lips and drank deep.

“And not only was your father greedy, he was foolish. And that’s why I’m here in a goddamn South Philly rowhome and not in something nicer. That’s why I have to rely on Social Security and money from you and your brothers and not residuals from footage your father would have put down in more lucrative territories like Greensboro or the NWC. And now I have to watch it all over again with my oldest, most foolish son.”

Tom’s face grew red with anger, but before the steam could shoot out of his nostrils, he exhaled slowly, a forced breath to keep him from losing even more of his cool with his mother, no matter how much of a “turbo bitch” she was being.

“Just one more thing though.”

Joelle was unimpressed. She watched many episodes of Columbo. Peter Falk, her son was not.

“Who’s playing me right now? Because I fail to see how me and Dad are a one-to-one comparison.”

Joelle shot her son a side-eye like she expected him to answer the question himself.

“Don’t fuckin’ play games with me, Mom.”

“You are. You’re playing yourself if you believe you’re doing anyone any favors masquerading as a wrestler. I don’t care how many times you get to the top of shorter peaks than the ones your father could have climbed.”

Tom got up and turned away from his mother to walk out the door until he stopped, a retort forming in his brain. He turned his head slightly.

“You know, it’s like he never died.”

“He always sugarcoated it! He told you about your flaws in hopes you’d improve. I don’t see an end that turns out good for you. You’re forty-something, you’re not getting any better, and your best calling is at home, as a father and husband, while your wife makes the money.”

Tom turned around in furious rotation.

“Do you think I’m doing this in spite of her wishes? She’s behind me 100 percent, like I have always been for her in her career.”

“Pfft, two people who don’t know what’s best. And I’m sure you’re going to tell me that my grandsons are behind you too when you damn well know you’re abandoning them to go get clobbered every week the way your father abandoned you.”

Tom closed his eyes and turned to walk out again, but his mother beckoned to him.

“I’m not saying this out of hate or spite. I don’t want to see you end up like your father did at the end of his life, ruining your body in service of a business that will only deliver you aches and pain. Not the glory you seek.”

He turned back around, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. The good feelings he had since the Tokyo Dome and the end of Manhunt dissipated in his brain for good.

-

No wonder Zapp dipped on me. He figured he’d be better tagging with the ghost of my goddamn father. I still don’t know why he disappeared off the face of the earth. I care a lot more now than I did sometime around the beginning of ReVival 63. But man, why couldn’t these two haunt the ghost of Vinny Spandex and not me with my mother doing the world’s worst Vickie Hall on the outside of the ring?

Fighting Farthington is a tall task. Fighting him while looking over my shoulder for people like FLAMBO or Hanlon or Joe or, worst of all, Fabby…

…oh, sorry. I mean fabby…

…is even taller. But all that plus having to fight the tenor of my own history, the failures to reach or remain at the top of the mountain, the abandonment, the sabotage, and the fact that two people who were supposed to love me unconditionally actually resented me?

Fuck.

Maybe if this were some fuckstick promotion where the guys in charge gleefully jump in front of gamma rays charged with toxic masculinity by calling their constituents “buttercup,” this wouldn’t matter, but to fight gravitation from the most massive galaxy in the whole universe, all while being irradiated from all angles with no signs of mitigation?

The universe is a brutal place. I guess to be the king of it, you have to be brutal. Farthington is good delivering monologues while shaking them off from those he’s aggrieved. The perfect avatar. My Mom dictating those terms in her own way, that I’m better off shielding my kids from the harsh truths, it all feels too on the nose. One of my kids is depressed over Luka Doncic. The other is waging war against his biology teacher. Fatherless behavior, huh?

Man, I can’t get anything right, and these ghosts are doing nothing but hitting me with double team moves while I drift weightlessly in the interstellar medium.

But man, who says things have to stay this way? Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. See, I do remember some shit from high school.

Who says I can’t be the outside force?

Who says I can’t be the one to seize the universe and remake it in my image and likeness?

-

A few hours had passed. Tam went into the basement to hit the heavy bag on her husband’s behalf after he’d told her. Tom decided to take a more liquid route. Just him, his thoughts, and a bottle of the rare mezcal from that distillery from Oaxaca only he seemed to know about. A ship in flames, adrift on a sea of the distillate of the maguey cactus, a lonely sailor and…

“DAD!”

Zo burst into the living room, look of distress awash on his face.

“What’s up, kid?”

“I wanted to ask Mom, but she looks mad, like the time Edwards asked her if she was pregnant again at the company picnic last year.”

Tom knew that look.

“You were right to come see me, son.”

“I wanted to know how girls think so I could ask Madysyn out in a way that she wouldn’t say no, but I figured you might know because you and Mom have been together for a long time.”

Tom deeply exhaled.

“Kid, so, uh…”

He looked at the half-full glass of liquor on the endtable. He thought about downing it, but no, his older son needed a less-inebriated point of view, not more.

“Okay. Your first mistake is trying to ask another human being something without giving them the option of saying no.”

“But I really like her.”

Tom sighed. He knew what it was like to be young and hormonal and with an underdeveloped frontal lobe. Those boys, they don’t think straight.

“Okay, let me put it this way. You don’t like ramen, right?”

“Ew, gross.”

“Yeah, so how would you like it if you and your boys were trying to figure dinner out, and they asked you if you wanted ramen in a way that you couldn’t refuse. And then you went there and basically spent your allowance on shit you didn’t even eat.”

Zo was silent, but his face said “eureka.”

“Now, think of that, only with someone’s actual bodily autonomy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The two guys sat in silence for a minute before Tom realized he had to give his son something resembling advice.

“Listen, me and your Mom, uh, we lasted a long-ass time because I don’t see her as anything less than a partner. I know you’re still a kid, and it ain’t that deep, but I mean, this girl, you like her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t you want her to be with you cuz she likes you?”

The son nodded.

“Okay. So, you just go up to her and ask, and be yourself. If the prospect of being with Lorenzo Battaglia ain’t appealing to her, then trust me, not a single moment spent with her is going to be enjoyable. And if you liked her, you’d want her to enjoy herself. Right?”

Zo nodded again.

“That’s, like, the smartest thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks, Dad.”

And just like he entered, Zo exited. Tom reached back over to his glass and slackened his posture a little more.

Unbeknownst to him, someone watched the entire exchange from the basement foyer. A sweaty but far less angry Tamara Mooney-Battaglia smiled at her husband.

“That bitch doesn’t even know her own son,” she said under her breath.

-

I looked up ghost particles on Wikipedia - God, I fuckin’ love that site. Like, I don’t know why people give it a bum rap. Everything on there seems true. But anyway, ghost particles, it turns out you really gotta be looking for them to show up. Zapp, Spandex, Dad, all of them ghosts I don’t need to be looking for right now. Easier said than done, right? I don’t know what the fuck the correlation between Zapp and me was last year, and I don’t know if I’ll ever know. Zapp’s floating in one of those scary-ass voids between galaxies. The only time I ever saw Ayame as spooked as when she’d talk about those was when Chiyo bolted to her feet faster than the speed of light when Ayame turned Peppa Pig off as a prank.

But Cecilworth Farthington? He’s not a ghost. He’s flesh and blood and encyclopedic grappling knowledge. He’s a gamma ray blast. Not many people can pin him.

But I did once.

I can do it again.

Because I am the change I want to see in this Universe.

I have to be.

If I’m not, then it’s the same old horror story in a cold, indifferent cosmos that rewards sociopaths like Cece, psychopaths like Ivan…

…and liars like my mother.

I refuse to let it go down like that, or else the mission I set out on this time last year?

It’s as detectable as a ghost particle.