Rude Introductions

What better time to introduce myself in the middle of a grand scheme of sorts. See, The Detective has no idea of my trap. I've fed him these tapes, and in turn give you a glimpse of who I am. See the place I came from before, it disappeared. It vanished into thin air, but I have a story to tell when this is all through. Just like Natural Born Killers it's smart to leave a camera behind, someone to let you know who did it. We're all lying to ourselves if we pretend we aren't doing this for notoriety.

Me.

Well...

I could give a fuck it it's good or bad.

The man covered in red fled across the Pacific, and The Detective followed…


You can hear a click as The Detective pushes the tape into the VCR, pressing pause for a moment.

“This is tape one delivered to me from a man who was on the inside. It appears to have a backtrack of English’s voice, several snapshots clipped together to show gruesome moments he and his group, The Orphanage, took part in while working at that god awful piss hole of a wrestling promotion… anyway. This is step one of me piercing together evidence against English and his capabilities of killing.”

The Detective clicked off his recorder, pulled a flask from the inside of his blazer and took a shot of warm whiskey.


Maybe I came to Tennessee just for the whiskey. I had been refilling and sipping from a flask since Ransom, Voodoo and I piled our shit into the back of the pick up and headed from Baltimore for the nearly 14 hour drive to Memphis. We decided to do it all in one shot. Well… there was one pit stop V said we need to make before I’m ready to walk like a pig to the slaughter through the doors of murderhaus.

Do you believe in reincarnation? Rebirth? Do you ever get tired of being someone you're not? A watered down neutered version of yourself? It was like that as a journalist, stifling my creativity for political correctness… and it was like that in my previous homes in wrestling. Just dipping my toes in this pool of blood we arrogantly refer to as an industry, like the economics of wrestling isn’t creating a difficult life for every dullard slicing their foreheads open in farmers fields, bingo halls and junkyards.

I signed up for that. I know what I am getting. I am going where wrestling finally meets reality, the rubber meets the road -- where the fans know what they are -- sick. I just don’t know how long I’ll last before I have to turn back to the real game between those ropes and put the knives away.

“Here,” V, pointed to the clay road off the strip of pavement the ½ ton truck motored along, transmission slipping on occasion -- typical Ford.

Ransom turned off slowly, the old truck felt every bump as we could smell rotting flesh ease its way through the air. I knew it well -- lived right next to a hog slaughterhouse growing up. I was amazed we smelled the damned things before hearing the screams.

“Going to tell me why we have to stop at a slaughterhouse,” I asked.

“It’s where you are heading anyway silly,” Voodoo responded. “Off you go to the land of garbage wrestling, thumbtacks, razor wire and early retirement.”

V was never a fan of this type of wrestling.

“They almost had someone’s leg sawed off in a fucking RV on their debut show, why you want to wrestle here is beyond me. But the least I can do is prepare you -- prepare us.”

Swine squealed as Ransom shifted the blue truck into park. V hopped out happily, nearly skipping her way up toward the slaughterhouse.

“Do they know we are coming,” I asked V.

“It’s a friend of a friend's place,” she said grinning, her dreadlocks bouncing on her shoulder as she continued toward the building.

Ransom walked slowly behind us up the yellowing sun baked grass. I pull a single Marlboro from a pack and place it between my lips, lighting it quickly to fill my nostrils with something else's than freshly slain swine.

A large hillbilly type meets V at the door.

“How ya doin’ lil miss,” he asked, taking off his hat, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Name’s V, I’m here for the order.”

He had assumed V was for Victor or some shit, he looks back at the clock on the wall and pulls on the straps of his overhauls.

“Well, I’m sorry miss, but the five hogs ya ordered have yet ta be killed.”

I puff on my cigarette looking at my watch.

“It’ll probably be a few more hours til we get round to er.”

“Can I do it myself…” Ransom says, everyone turning to look at him. “Used to work on a farm growing up.”

The big ol barrel chested man almost deflates, “You, um… I mean it's pretty unconventional but, I guess ya could kill em.”

Ransom smirks and walks up toward the door of the slaughterhouse where the kill floor is specifically, all concrete and drains. Hoses hanging from the wall to wash down the blood. Ransom picks up a Reesemart brand sledgehammer leaned up against the door.

“Oh, son, we haven’t done it that way in years.”

“It’s what I’m used to,” Ransom said, shutting the door behind himself entering the kill floor.

I didn’t say anything, just sat there smoking as V chatted with the farmer. I could see what Ransom was doing through a crack in the wooden wall as I puffed away at my cigarette.
Ransom pulls his shirt off, his muscles flexing as the pigs caged around him shrieked in fear. Ransom pulled on a leather mask, a gimp -- steam punk mashup. He had been wrestling on the indy circuit a little under the mask. He was going by the name Bash Daddy now. I wasn’t sure what brought about the change, but after recently coming out as queer maybe he’s a little too use to hiding himself -- maybe it brings comfort to slip into that persona.

Bash Daddy let a pig out of its cage, it ran circling, but Bash just closed his eyes.

The pig eventually stopped right near him, gnawing at Bash’s boot.


It sounded like the opening to a fucking grindcore album. Bash took off half the thing's face, but it still hung there, fragments of flesh and bone dangling off the poor creature's head as it frantically ran in a circle.

Precision.


He pulverized the things fucking skull. Looked like a raspberry filled pancake.

Bash Daddy drags the carcass to the side of the room leaving a dark red snail trail. Bash hoisted it up, tossed the body on a hook, pulled a knife from it’s pocket, slit the pig's throat and let it bleed out into a bucket.

Bash did it five more times.

I don’t think he broke a sweat.

I don’t think he said a word.

Probably just wondered when Reesemart was coming out with the five head sledge so he could do a pack of pigs at once.

Off between two trees I could see the black paint of the car which had been trying to secretly follow us since Baltimore. If the detective had seen the way Bash dispatched those pigs -- he’d likely get a warrant for my arrest today.



The old abandoned church we decided to buy was a little drafty. A notch chopped off of the bible belt, either that or the parish outgrew the place. I didn’t care. I got it cheap and it was perfect as a new home for The Orphanage.

Bash rolled a large barrel on its side down between the rows of rotting pews.

At the front of the church -- overlooked by a stained glass rendition of Christ -- was an old Victorian bathtub.

Voodoo was standing off the left where a priest would. She wears a long cloak, a cross upside down in the centre.

Bash stops rolling the barrel, halting near the bathtub. He grunts, pulling the lid off sending ripples through the top of the thick pig blood. He drops a large bucket inside, letting the blood consume it sinking down. He pulls the bucket of blood up and out slowly, putting pail after pail into the tub.

“Is this even sanitary, am I going to end up with some salmonella or mad cow or some shit?,” I say looking at the tub filling up slowly, Bash letting red splash up the white sides.

“We need to wash you in the blood, baptize you. Where you go -- gore rules all -- sickness is the norm. You need to be stronger, you need to be ready. You need to be normalized to the pools of blood you hope to create.”

Holy fuck, this jibber jabber again. I mean sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t and was I willing to put my faith in her once more. With this shit in my eyes, down my throat, up my nose, with the iron taste in my mouth, I’ll be lucky to make it to the show without getting sick.

“Get naked.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“You’re not going to get in a bath of fucking blood in your clothing -- that’s fucking disgusting.”

I stared blankly for a moment, cursing under my breath as I shed down to bare ass naked. Putting your balls in the water is always the worst part, I wonder what half cool thick hog blood will feel like.

I dip my foot in, then the other, the blood goes up my legs adding a pink hue as I slowly lower myself into it. As I sit, trying to get comfortable it’s as if I can feel my entire pulse around me -- gently pumping.

“You know what it’s like to be around blood, guts, murder. I know you clawed your way to the top, I know you want to do it again… in the underground. But this place… it’s full of evil this entire industry. It’s full of people willing to kill to gain control. It’s no holds barred."

V tossed two Tarot cards into the blood -- they floated. I didn’t take note of what they were, but she did. Her eyes grew wide -- she rolled them into the back of her skull. Bash lowers his head as if to pray.

She spoke in Latin briefly, “You must submerge,” she said.

“Go under the surface?”

She spoke in Latin again.

“You have to dunk under and hold your breath as long as possible. I want you to remember…”

I held my breath and forced myself under the now warm blood. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, V speaking Latin again behind it. I see him now. My father is across from me at Millhaven, him in the closet face to face, just across a table. A convict, a killer, and I could hear his bladder give way. His piss pooled and stank as I explained I was his son. A hand from the darkness reached out before he could offer rebuttal. They cut his throat so deep it splashed on me. He looked like a Pez dispenser -- serial killer collection.

A sense of calmness washed over me.

I didn’t want to come back up.

I don’t know how long I was down there. Fast forwarding through my career. Nail matches Byran Williams with him chasing me with a rooster head. Me almost pulling my own face off as it’s opened up at the forehead by a chunk of concrete. Fans vomiting. Flashes of Warchild, a referee… dying in an electric cage match as i volinetly hold his body against he metal baking the poor bastard so I could escape. A fever dream, flashes of the word Murderhaus.

All I see is black.

I need rebirth. I will do what it takes to draw blood, pull out fingernails, rip out tampons… whatever it takes. This art of war I learned of the deathmatch scene I’ll take into battle in my fights overseas and around the world… and it’s screaming for me.

Glory. Respect. Honor.

You don’t get there til you have been through the mud and boy have I been dragged.

Now, now it’s time to rise up and take the things I wasn’t given before. Get the respect I deserve by beating it out of the so called elite -- and the top tier crumbles first.

I’m a warrior rising.

Emerging.

I burst up from the pool of blood, deep red dripping down my face, staining my teeth red.

Voodoo stands smirking, amused.

“How long have I been down there,” I ask.

“Depends on how you look at it. Minutes… hours… months. You’ve been taking these baths and doing meditation for months.”


The tape stops, The Detective’s blazer is now hung over the back of his chair. He’s leaned forward… intrigued English knew he was on to him… and that he admitted here on this tape… whether or not he claims it to be art... was a confession.

“Son of a bitch,” The Detective said aloud, taking the final draw of whiskey from his flask.


“What the fuck,” The Detective said as he could hear shoes tapping in the darkness on screen, a cigarette ignite and English’s face appear… still covered in blood.

“Got me!” English said, doing a twirl and blowing smoke at the screen as if he was clipped in the shoulder by a bullet.

“Here it all is, what you have been working the last seven years all to prove, gift wrapped and laid on your fucking lap all because I want it to be. You think any of this is an accident detective? Do you think after all this time this is how I would go down. I’d admit I took out my disgrace of a father because deep down I’m a sad ol’ boy who hates who he is -- but unlike the rest of the self loathing world I actually have a reason to be so fucking mad. You must know what it’s like… feeling like you are doing the work of two people. Holding the weight of the universe. It can be tough.”

English takes a drag off his cigarette and blows and plume at the camera.

“I’m tired of this narrative. This cat and mouse bullshit. See I join companies and they die, abandon me like daddy did and to be honest… it still doesn’t sit well. I will work my way to championship caliber to watch everything I worked for burn and turn to ash. Hell, I went from the Southern US to getting booked in Japan on one of wrestling’s biggest cards overnight. So here I am, beginning all over again. Starting a new. Watching my whole world burn and trying to salvage the will to keep doing this shit… and well if I have to start over. I think you should too… it’s only fair.”

English steps toward the camera slowly, embers on his cigarette burning so red The Detective swears he can smell it in the tiny room he is sitting in.

English flicks the cigarette at the camera… and the tape starts to burn, catching the VCR, hitting the other tapes which were just dummy cases of accelerant.

“Fuck!,” The Detective said, trying to reach his hand through the flames.

Too late.

All his recordings… melting away before his eyes. His years of hard work destroyed in one calculated move.