Aggressive Craig and the Curious Case of the Consensual Fajitas

Hello, yes!

Welcome, Stefon Lummox, to the biggest challenge of…

Huh.

This feels oddly familiar. Have we done this before?

If you are hearing this, it means that we have successfully made it back from the Kingdom of Unity and were not arrested after doing some light trespassing at the Cecilwerthers Farthingtoriginalcandies headquarters. It also means that neither of us is spending time in the wrestle jail for doing big wrestle crimes such as carrying an unlicensed firearm across international borders and trying to do a big murder of an innocent cow-man.

Good for us!

It also means that you have survived your murder-burgering at the hands of Big Jonas Salk and his many polio vaccines. I am not surprised, Stefon. I am also not disappointed. Not in the outcome, anyway. This is what you get when you try to fight an esteemed medical doctor on top of a giant sandwich. Maybe you will remember this the next time the Dickman says something that you have to answer for.

…

Johnny Wombat is telling me that it should be someone named Rick who should have been slammed bodily through hundreds of pounds of ground beef, flame kissed and perfectly seasoned, because he was the one who said the thing. Do not listen to Johnny Wombat, Stefon. He is young, and also a marsupial, so while it is a miracle that he has been blessed with the gift of speech, that does not mean you should heed his words. Wombats are feisty creatures, Stefon. They jump around thinking themselves all big and bad, and sometimes engage in the fisticuffs. Many Vosses have been pummeled to death by abnormally original wombats.

…

I am being told that is kangaroos.

I am also being asked if this is my new “bit.”

I do not know what that means, Stefon. Perhaps you can tell me if you survive your next challenge. Did I mention the challenge?

Stefon?

Well, you have a new challenge ahead of you. I think I might have mentioned that. And it’s big! I think I might have mentioned that, too.

Would you like to know what it is?

Stefon, you have to tell me if you would like to know what the challenge is.

Honestly, it is very rude to ignore people when they ask you questions, Stefon.

…

The Dickman is telling me that you will not be able to answer me, because this is a recording. He is also telling me that we did this same thing two weeks ago when you decided to eat all those horse tranquilizers before getting on a plane to the Kingdom of Unity to set a man’s garden on fire. Is that what a “bit” is?

Anyway, the challenge.

Once upon a time, there was a television show where many people came together on an island to see how long they could survive. Those people banded together into little cliques, or tribes, or gangs… whatever. I was always a fan of the Bloods. Red is a wonderful color. Very summery, though it goes well with the autumn hues as well.

Sometimes the people on that show did the kissing.

That show was called Lost.

This is not what you will be doing.

No, instead this is the true story of many strangers who have been picked to live in a house and find out what happens when people stop being nice and start being real. It will be just like that show that they used to air on the MTV. Flavor of Love.

It is your job to become the Foofy-foofy, Stefon. You must…

Hold on.

…

The Dickman is insistent that I have the wrong televisual program in mind, and the one that I am thinking of aired on the VH1. I don’t know what that is.

Still, there is one thing to take away from this.

Do not kiss your fellow gang members, Stefon.

Also, your first task will be to climb a man named Aggressive Craig. You must climb his chiseled, masculine physique as if you were a sexy, sexy spy lady doing big undercover work. 

Undercover is a double entendre.

Ask the Dickman if you don’t know what that means.

…

I do not know if this is a consensual climbing, so please be sure to ask before the challenge begins. We do not want you to be known for unwelcome touching, Stefon. That will surely get you in the wrestle jail. Why, I may even prosecute the case myself.

Aggressive Craig is the one responsible for all of those smoke machines that keep appearing at all of the PRIME Wrestling shows.

Okay, so maybe this is a little bit like the television show Lost.

Be patient with Aggressive Craig, Stefon. He does not read very well, so you will have to speak slowly.

You must climb him, Stefon. You must climb him the way a spider in the web climbs the web that the spider is in. Do you understand?

And then you can have celebratory fajitas with your housemates.

When you are done, please put this audiocassette recording in your car. I am told that if you leave it there long enough it will eventually become a copy of Queen’s Greatest Hits. I read that in a book once.

But remember the challenge.

Aggressive Craig.

Consensual climbing.

Fajitas.

If all goes well, it will be the most magical night of your life.

No one denies this.

Okay, that’s all. This recording is done.

I will let you decide whether you leave the audiocassette under one of the seats or if you bury it in your glove compartment.

#

Etienne

He stared at the phone in his hand, wondering if he should just let the call go to voicemail. It would solve the immediate problem of the argument that loomed only seconds away, but would only delay the inevitable. Better to rip the bandage off now, give the wound some time to breathe before it scabbed over.

“When are you coming home?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

It struck Etienne as odd that his father spoke to him in English. The man was tried and true Quebecois, having identified that way since the term first gained prominence. Etienne knew that his father had supported both of the referendums on Quebec sovereignty - the most recent having created a rift with Etienne’s uncles that made every family gather an exercise in awkward silence.

But Henry Lemieux was a man who didn’t believe in wasting time, always getting right to the point, so Etienne shrugged it off, thinking a silent prayer that this be the strangest part of the conversation.

“Hello to you, too,” he said.

His father’s reply came after a considering beat, and was just as clipped as his greeting. “You sound tired.”

“I didn’t get home until very late last night.” Or was it this morning? “It was a long drive back from Columbus. No, Cincinnati. The cities here, they all look the same to me. Like a blur.”

“Mm.” Was Henri’s hummed response, and Etienne felt his jaw tighten. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but rather a reflex honed through years of hearing his father;’s disappointment expressed in a single wordless sound. “How many people?”

“At the match? Fifty, I think. Maybe sixty.” A number that included the janitor, the ringside crew and referees, the kid playing entrance themes from a beat-up old Macbook Pro.

These were not the crowds that he wanted, only the ones he could find. He told himself it was temporary, that he wasn’t going to allow himself to become another “hotdog and a handshake” journeyman, grateful for whatever scraps he could scrounge.

Miss Dolores had told him to be patient, that his big break was coming. And Etienne had been patient. At first, it had not been easy, but it was manageable. Miss Dolores was a PRIME sponsor, after all. She had a direct line to the head office and the woman who sat at its seat of power; the Queen of the Ring atop her gilded throne.

But that was a year ago, and Etienne’s patience had dwindled and been left to drift - the last autumn leaf, paper thing and clinging to the branch lest it be torn away and cast into the cold. His desperation for a chance - for any chance - had become transcendent. He no longer simply wanted to show them all how wrong they were to ignore him, he needed it.

Craved it.

He knew that when his moment came he would let the taste of it linger on his tongue, savoring the sweetness of his triumph, the salt of the sweat and tears he spent to get there, and the bitterness of everyone who doubted. He would relish every last bit of flavor until there were none left to enjoy, then spit the dregs back in the face of every person who had told him, “No.”

In the darkest, basest parts of his subconscious, Etienne Lemieux lusted for his opportunity.

Etienne heard his father exhale through his nose, the closest ever he heard the old man come to a laugh. On the other end of the phone, and as if reading his thoughts from a thousand miles away, Henri asked, “And the promoter, he paid you?”

After a too-long pause, Etienne said, “He says that he will,” and forced himself to bite back the shame of it.

The silence stretched between them, pushing them farther apart than any amount of distance could.

Etienne imagined his father sitting alone at the small table in the house on the edge of Laval, frowning into the empty space as calloused hands held the phone to his ear.

“When are you coming home?” Henri repeated.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" Etienne barked.

"What do you want me to say instead?"

"Something else. Anything else. Ask me how I am doing, or how my day was. Ask me about my last match. Ask me...," he paused, daring himself to say the words that still clung to the forefront of his mind after all this time. "Ask me when I am going to make my debut for PRIME."

"Is that going to happen?"

"It is. I know it is. Miss Dolores says that we are close, despite everything that has happened so far. She says there are still steps that we can take, ways to convince Ms. Troy that she has made a mistake. We only need more time."

"Etienne…," his father breathed.

"Do not 'Etienne' me!" he snapped. "I am not a child anymore. This is not a fantasy. I have worked my entire life to get to this point, and now that I am so close I will not let some... some... fraud take what should be mine."

"Maybe it was never yours to begin with." The words were a scalpel that sliced through Etienne’s defenses and dared expose the soft tissue beneath; the truth that he had dared not say, not even to himself.

"What?"

"If you could lose an opportunity like PRIME so easily to a man who can not even run the ropes without tripping on his own feet, then maybe that spot was never yours to begin with."

Alone in his small apartment, Etienne recoiled, stumbling back as if struck, and braced himself against an empty bookshelf. "You… you think that I'm a disappointment."

"I did not say that."

"You didn't need to. And you didn't deny it."

"Etienne, please. You are being ridiculous."

"Ridiculous? Was it ridiculous when you got me booked in Quebec City after I finished my training? Was that spot not supposed to be mine either?"

"I had…,” Henri paused, considering. “Leverage."

"You called in a favor."

"That is leverage, yes. And I had timing on my side." When he spoke again, the tone of Henri's voice was softer, more melancholy. "You have neither."

"She... Miss Dolores… she told me I'm close."

"They always say that."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"I have watched more men than you know chase that ring, Etienne. I have seen it take everything from them. Their families. Their sense of purpose. Their self-respect. What is it taking from you?"

Etienne let the weight of it push him back until he was against the wall and his legs could no longer hold him aloft. He slid to the floor, grateful that no one was there to see him unravel so completely.

"When are you coming home?" his father repeated.

He pulled the phone from his ear and pressed his eyes shut. He had spent his life - his entire life - training his mind and his body for a sport that ground down the weak until they were little more than raw, bleeding stumps. He had kept himself in peak physical condition this past year, so that when the call came he would be ready.

So why now did it feel like he was suffocating?

“Etienne? Are you still there?”

Etienne released one last, ragged breath, and moved the phone back towards his face.

"I will be home,” he said, “when I have taken my spot back."

#

Steve

By the time the recording finished, there was only one thought in Steve’s head.

“How the heck did he get that in here?” Strike that. There were two thoughts. “And where does he keep finding Sony Walkmans?”

For the second time in the last few weeks, the humble proprietor of LeMoo’s Fine Sandwiches had been forced to confront the recording ramblings of Dr. Zeke D. Badguy, Esq., the man who had somehow installed himself in Steve Lemieux’s life. If you were to ask Steve, he would have neither any idea nor any explanation as to how or when this transition took place, only that he felt like he was on the bad end of a contract he had no memory of signing. He often wondered if this would be what it was like for people who bartered their soul with the devil, though what he was getting out of this unholy bargain was anyone’s guess.

If there was any silver lining to the situation Steve found himself in, it was that at least he was able to listen to this tape in the comfort of his own office instead of an unfamiliar hedge maze. That, and there were no horse tranquilizers involved. So far, anyway.

The Walkman had been found on top of a stack of estimates from the myriad contractors from which Steve had received estimates over the last few days, and with the message now heard, he was able to get back about the more pressing task at hand. It had been weeks since Big Ian Salt had defaced the Lemieux family restaurant, while at the same time also trying to deface young Oliver Cade. Quite literally, based on the footage of the encounter that had aired on ReVival.

“Did you ever hear from the Maestranzi brothers?” Leland Lemieux, the man who’d built this restaurant up before his son had inherited it, leaned against one of the prep stations and flipped through a yellow notebook. The voice seemed to wake Steve from his own thoughts.

“What? Oh, no. They closed the family business years ago,” Steve said. He opened one of the drawers on his desk, held the Walkman over it, then contemplated dumping it in the trash instead. He’d heard Queen before, and found the music too abrasive for his ears. No need to risk Zeke’s message coming true and having the cassette transform. “A few years ago, come to think of it.”

“That’s a shame,” Leland said. “Their dad, Gino, was always good to your mother and I.”

“I think he’s down in Florida now.”

“Ah, yes. The Golden State.” Steve raised a finger to correct him, but decided against it. His father had always been an innocent kind of absentminded. Maybe this is why Steve had been able to tolerate the arrangement with Zeke for so long. “Good for him, though. Good for him.”

“It’s okay though,” Steve offered. “I’ve got a few quotes here that are pretty reasonable, but I’m honestly willing to spend a little more to make sure that it’s done right.” He stood from his seat, cast a quick glance back over his shoulder at the poster of American Gladiators’ Laser that hung on his office wall, and joined his father in the kitchen. “This place deserves better. Better than me, too, I think.”

Leland’s eyebrows knit together, a mask of concern having slid into place on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Just that, I dunno…” He paused, running over the words in his head. “I let this place down. By not being here when everything happened. By not fixing it sooner. Heck, by letting it happen at all.”

“Are you worried that it’s going to happen again? Maybe while you’re away at your Air Bud with all your new friends?” Steve’s brows arched, and though he wasn’t sure his father could read the expression, he was certain he saw it when the man added, “Sorry, that’s not what it’s called. Airbunbuh? Is that it?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

“Well, have you tried not worrying?”

“How can I? This place has been like a second home, and it was wrecked because of me. How can I just leave it again now?”

“You didn’t cause this, Steven.” Steve stiffened. A full name only meant one of two things, and even though he was pushing forty years old, the sound of it made his palms sweat. “What happened here wasn’t because of anything you did.”

“But-,” he started, before Leland put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“How many times have you fallen down, Steve?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Probably a lot, right? Especially back when you were in school. I know those years weren’t easy for you.”

Steve only nodded, memories of being chased by Danny Petcheski suddenly rushing to the forefront.

“I know you used to try to hide the cuts and bruises from your mom so she wouldn’t worry, but she knew. She always knew.” Leland smiled. “Band-Aids don’t just disappear, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“How is putting in a new window any different from that? How is washing the floor any different from cleaning a little dirt off your hands? I’ll tell you. Wounds heal, Steve, and it’s okay to trip and fall.” He set the notebook down and put his free hand on Steve’s other shoulder. “Because we both know that you always get right back up.”

#

Henri

There had been a smell, faint and brief. It could have been rotting meat, or perhaps the scent of garbage drifting in through one of the open windows. There had been something sour underneath it, almost sweet. It lingered in the room for only a second before dissolving into the air.

He didn’t turn to glance out the window, instead treating it like a momentary sensory blip. It wasn’t worth any more time than the few seconds he gave it, because time was something Henri Lemieux did not waste.

Then a strange sensation seemed to overtake him. Slowly at first, it started at his lower back before dancing upwards along the length of his spine. When it settled, cold and dull, at the base of his neck, Henri felt like a guest in his own body. Aware of everything he was doing, though unsure of his own actions. It was as if someone else silently slid into the driver’s seat.

He didn’t see the shadow that had bloomed in the corner of the room, growing and unfurling into something that stood tall and lanky, with limbs too long for its frail, pallid form. It hunched in the darkness, craning a contorted neck against the ceiling before reshaping itself and settling into a new form; its favorite disguise.

Had Henri looked over his shoulder, he would have seen a woman close to his age standing near the wall dressed in a jacket and skirt of matching burgundy. The shade was not too distant from her lips, which had pulled back to reveal a set of too-white teeth. The shadows swirled around where she stood, and one of them drew itself away and snaked silently towards Henri along the floor. It had climbed the side of his chair and taken hold at the base of his spine, unfurling black fingers that pawed up, up, up along his back until Henri’s thoughts were no longer his own.

He took the phone in his hands, found the contact entry for his son, and waited. It was strange to Henri that the first thoughts that came to him were in English, and so were the words that he spoke as soon as his son answered the call.

Words that the woman behind him, the one he did not know was there, had silently mouthed into the darkness.

“When are you coming home?” he said.

Dolores grinned, hungry and feral