Though my memories are faded
They come back to haunt me once again
July 31, 2021When Joe was last conscious, it was June.
The summer was just getting started. The first episode of Loki had just dropped. Jeff Bezos hadn't gone into space yet. And the 45-year-old JC, a man with a surgically repaired neck and a history of concussions, thought it was a good idea to climb a ladder for a championship belt in a small regional company in Reno.
Then the ladder fell. Soon after, so did he. The ring collapsed. The title belt ended up with somebody else, but that's not important.
His neck turned out fine. Well, relatively speaking. Surprisingly, there was no brain damage. Again, relatively speaking.
Instead, a piece of the ring punctured one of his arteries and nearly caused him to bleed out. He was aware he was bleeding as he lay in the debris, but by the time he might have had an inkling of just how bad it was, he had already slipped into the warm embrace of unconsciousness.
But that was June. Now it was the end of July and Joe was awake. His eyes slowly opened and he immediately noticed how blurry everything was. Once his vision slowly came back to him, his other senses woke up as well. He heard the hum of the machines, smelled the chemicals used to keep the room clean, felt the cool air against his skin.
He wasn't truly aware he had been in a coma, because for him, the match just happened. But now, he realized he had lost some time, if only a day.
In the movies, when someone wakes up from a coma, they're surrounded by family, or perhaps a loved one has been sitting diligently by their side. Perhaps family or friends had visited him, but when Joe woke up, he was alone.
Well, not completely alone. Because Johnny Hitmaker was off to the side, looking down at him.
"I'm in Hell," Joe croaked, before coughing. It was then he realized how dry his throat was, and the pain from trying to speak made him realize that no, he was not in Hell. He was very much alive.
“Oh good, you’re up!” Johnny said as he went for a chair, pulling it up to the bed. “We can continue our little talk!”
Joe’s head was already throbbing, although he was sure that was because he had been asleep for...however long he was asleep. It was definitely that. Definitely.
“Which talk was that?” he replied, his voice coming out harsh and raspy.
Johnny chuckled. It was hard to tell if it was sincere or sinister. “Oh, YOU know! About my plans for Carnage! You seemed VERY receptive to them a while ago.”
Joe’s eyes also felt very dry, so he blinked them. Unfortunately, Johnny was still there. The man known as JC searched his nearby area for a call button, but didn’t seem to find one. His first guess was that Johnny had hidden it, because he had no idea how long he had been out.
He tried to speak and a hoarse cough escaped his lips instead. When he finally recovered, his eyes turned towards the manager of one of his fiercest rivals and glared at him, mustering as much intensity as he could.
“I don’t care how poor of condition I am, you’ve got ten seconds to explain yourself before I put you in a bed like this one,” he growled.
Johnny chuckled with delight, then slapped the side of the mattress a few times, “Love! That! J! C! Spunk! No, but seriously though, I was talking to you about what I planned to do with those Carnage contracts. Granted, I was of course doing most of the talking, but I swore I saw you nod your head a few times there, and when I asked if you were in, you sorta said something that might have resembled a ‘yeah’, which was good enough for me!”
Joe reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, before sighing. Then he pushed himself up a little and glared at his guest. He probably could have hurt him...would have, in fact, but he still felt very tired and unusually weak. Perhaps he lost more blood in Reno than he thought.
“You normally just talk to people while they’re sleeping or am I special?” he asked, avoiding the subject of Carnage because, quite frankly, Johnny could have it.
“Well, I thought I saw one if your eyes open for a sec there, so I figured you were just pretending to sleep.” Johnny replied. “So I did the thoughtful thing and just did all the talking.”
Joe sighed again. The fatigue wasn’t going away. He certainly didn’t care about whatever it was Johnny had to say and at the moment, would have preferred fighting Hide again. At least with Hide, you knew where you stood.
“Look”, he said, his patience wearing thin, “I had a big fall last night, I bled a lot. Just say whatever it is you have to say and let’s get on with it.”
“Uhhhhhhhh, last night?” Johnny said with confusion. “It was a little more than a night ago, m’man!”
The big man’s eyes darted towards Johnny, finally wanting to talk to him for the first time in the entire conversation.
“What are you talking about?” He said. “How long have I been out?”
Johnny narrowed his eyes, “A… month?”
Joe tried to find the words to speak, but couldn’t. They died in his mouth. He squinted and looked around the room for any signs that time had passed but it just looked like every other hospital room he’d ever been in. He didn’t even see his cell phone anywhere, although if they had moved him directly from the ring it wouldn’t be there.
Not that he had anyone to call. Anyone important would be here. Or had been here, if he had been unconscious for a month.
He glanced back at Johnny again, more weary than before. “Are you telling me that I’ve been in a fucking coma?”
“Well, everyone’s been throwing that word around,” Johnny started, “But they all were acting like you were gonna, gonna DIE or something! PLENTY of people fall into comas and not too many of them die. Me, I TOLD them you’d be okay, but do they listen? Do they listen to The Johnny ever? Nooooooo!! ANYTHING but listen to The Man who merely has Two Brains!”
Johnny shook his head in disgust. Then he grinned. “I think they should owe me money for this one! I mean, we didn’t make any bets or anything, but still.”
Joe’s thoughts traced back to all the people that weren’t here. Had his life really been that bad that no one was here to check on him? Stacy? Eric? Trent? Even Lucy would have been preferable, even if she…
No, he thought. No sense in being bitter.
Either way, he still wondered why he had to be saddled with the manager of someone he fought before…and a manager he didn’t even really like.
It was insulting more than anything else.
“Johnny,” he said, all the fight removed from him. He didn’t even feel like insulting the spud anymore. “Talk like a human being and not a manager for a second. Is there a reason you’re here and not someone that I actually have a relationship with?”
Johnny suddenly became a bit restless in his seat. He looked like he wanted to say something, but not at the same time.
He sighed in defeat, and leaned in a bit, “Look, it’s not that no one WANTED to come visit, but you gotta look at it from their perspective too, you know: nobody likes to be face to face with their mortality. What happened to you, they damn well know it could be one of them any time they enter that squared circle. They’re SCARED, Mr. C! And that’s all there is too it! Don’t take it too much to heart.”
The man known as ‘The Answer’ sat quietly for a moment, almost certainly making Johnny nervous. He thought it was probably a good bet that someone had come along, but if he had been in this coma for a month, perhaps they just moved on with their lives. Maybe they didn’t think he’d wake up.
Johnny’s answer held weight, and Joe didn’t like that. But sometimes the truth hurts. And Johnny was here when they weren’t. He didn’t have to be, and maybe he did or didn’t have ulterior motives, but he was still here.
“Joe,” he said quietly. He caught Johnny raising his head out of the corner of his eye.
“You can call me Joe,” he added.
“Well… uh, Joe,” Johnny began. “They’ll come around. Not to mention, who’s to say they didn’t come to visit when you were fully out?”
Johnny shrugged. “Forgot about that possibility, honesty.”
Johnny leans back in his chair, “Most importantly, you need to know that the world you’ve woken up to is very different from the world you once knew.”
Joe laughed a dry, sarcastic laugh. “As long as people are still assholes that need their faces kicked in, I think I’ll be okay,” he said. “But what’s changed? I’ve only been out a month, apparently.”
Johnny looked nonplussed. He sighed. “I didn’t expect you to actually ask. It’s just something you hear people say in movies. It’s only been a month; not much has changed, actually.”
Joe furrowed his brow and rubbed his eyes. “I’m not really fully awake yet.”
He then tried to move his legs around the side of the bed, but they felt stiff and weak. He decided he didn’t want to embarrass himself right now and gave up.
“Either way, I think I’m ready to get the fuck out of here. So if you don’t mind, Johnny, I’m gonna call the nurse and get that taken care of.”
Johnny slapped his hands together and rose to his feet. “Alright! Well anyway, I’ll see myself out. Welcome to consciousness again!”
Joe nodded, then held a hand out. “And hey, I’m sorry for all the grief I gave you in the last year. You didn’t have to be here, and you were. You’re a better man than people give you credit for.”
“Water under the bridge!” Johnny said as he shook Joe’s hand. “But never mind that ‘better man’ stuff; I’ve got a reputation to uphold, you know!”
“Oh, I’ll keep trolling you to keep up appearances, I’m sure.” Joe said, a humorless grin forming on his face.
He then laid back in the bed, letting the conversation end there. Johnny exits the room, and just as he does, his eyes dart back and forth, he pulls out paperwork from his inside jacket pocket. It appears to be a contract.
“You were right to tell me to keep you tucked away.” he told it.
“You say something?” Joe asked, clearly still able to hear him from where he is.
Johnny frantically shoved the contract back in his jacket. “Oh, nothing, nothing, Mr. C! Just on my way now!”
He then made a beeline for the exit out of the hospital.
And though my mind is somewhat jaded
Now, it's time for me to strike again
January 30, 2022Nearly six months later to the day, Joe was finding himself in a familiar situation. He was packing a bag, preparing to hit the road to the West Coast.
At first, following his coma and subsequent convalescence, he simply wanted to retire and fade away. He had a good career. And with the way his last relationship ended, as well as a friendship or two, he was fine with his last match being one in which he was able to dominate everything but gravity. But as any wrestler worth their salt knows, you don't stay out of the business for long. He soon got the itch, that desire to return and put his body on the line again.
He thought he would quell that with a place that operated with monthly supershows. But every match he'd find he was more beat up than when he wrestled a normal schedule. Success, sure, but all it did was give him all the downfalls without a lot of adrenaline.
It was there, however, he decided to drop the walls and become the darkest incarnation of himself. He would take all of the negative attitudes, all the lies, all the insults...everything everyone ever said or thought about him, and he'd channel it. He killed 'The Answer', his former persona. He became The Bogeyman.
And now he was packing to bring that nightmare to Las Vegas.
He stuffed his boots into the bag, pretty much the last thing he had left. Well, not quite.
There was...the mask.
But before he could grab that, he felt a pair of long, slender arms wrap themselves around his waist from behind, and felt a body press against his. He dropped himself out of his mental preparation long enough for a smile to creep up on his face. Not the first, but it had been a long time since he had them.
"Aren't you getting a little old for this stuff?" Stacy asked.
Stacy and Joe used to be married, until problems between the two and Joe's indiscretion split them apart. But time heals all wounds, and in the process of trying to be there for his child, they began to bond again. They remembered why they were together in the first place. And so, they began to date. He got an apartment near hers and now saw his daughter all the time.
He lost so much in 2021, but he was now finding things he lost long before that.
"You're not the first to ask me that," he replied. "First was this one masked douchebag on Twitter. Then of course my neck when I got up this morning."
He pulled free of her grip and turned around to face her. The mask would wait. Not that she didn't know about it, or his routine, because there were no secrets. That was the rule for starting over. No secrets. Not one. It doomed their last attempt at a relationship and a general lack of communication ruined the relationship that interrupted this one.
So he had resolved to do better. And so far, he had been.
She leaned against the bed, wearing nothing but an oversized shirt, one leg crossed over the other.
"You know how I feel about you getting back out there again," she said, sighing. "But I also know how you feel about doing it."
Joe nodded, running a hand through his hair and tying it behind him. The plane would not wait, and they knew he had to go. But he wasn't going to rush out. He'd hear her out, if he needed to.
She kept on. "So just take care of yourself. If I have to watch you fight for your life in a hospital bed..."
She let the words trail off, before walking up to him and stepping on her tiptoes to kiss him. He returned the kiss in kind.
"I'll fuckin' finish you off myself," she finished, getting a surprised, bark of a laugh out of him.
The shock of the joke wearing off, a solemn look came over his face and he took her hand.
"You shouldn't have taken me back, you know," Joe said. He had been very lucky in the last six months. He woke up, he got his ex-wife back and his career was picking up again. He was very lucky. And he knew it.
Stacy smirked and wrapped her arms around him again, facing him this time, leaning her head against his chest. He placed a hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair for a moment. Older and wiser, the both of them.
"You're right," she said quietly. "I shouldn't have."
She gave him a squeeze and let go.
"But we never stopped loving each other and I'm mature enough to forgive you."
He nodded.
"I know it's gonna take work. I mean, I did basically leave you for years for someone else," he added.
Her soft smile turned into a frown, briefly, as she thought of the 'someone else', but she shook her head and the smile returned. She never did trust the person that had Joe wrapped around her finger. Not entirely. And she took that breakup worse than Joe did, considering.
"The way you were treated at the end of that was punishment enough," she said. "I'm not gonna pile on. Just come back to me in one piece and we'll keep working on it."
"It's gonna take work," Joe repeated. She nodded, stole another kiss and then traipsed off to the bathroom, her bare feet clapping the linoleum as she did so.
Joe turned back around and reached into the drawer, pulling out the mask. It was a symbol. A symbol of the darkness he had always kept inside him. His mental illness. His rage. His bloodlust. He took all of that and put it into this mask. This replica Michael Myers mask that itself was beat up. He put it on, entered the headspace he needed to and got the job done. But once the job was done, that was it. This mask was an outlet. It was more of a window into the darkness of who he really was more than anything else. It was a way to unleash that version of himself, but to later keep it locked away.
He stared at it, and he watched it stare back up at him with its pale, vacant expression. He knew he wasn't a monster. He knew he wasn't some Hollywood ghoul. But with this mask, with a somewhat healthy way to channel his urges, he knew it wouldn't make a difference to his opponents when he was done with them.
The world could say what they wanted for his in-ring actions. It didn't matter. Those who truly loved him, who weren't fairweather friends, would still be there when the job was done.
"I've got work to do," he said quietly.
Then he shoved the mask into the bag and closed it up.
Tonight
It's a hunter's moon
He had a flight to catch, but he had something important he wanted to say first.
It was a moonlit night, in the middle of a relatively warm January for New Jersey. That of course was rapidly changing with the winter storm moving in. The mask that was Joe had slipped, revealing the Bogeyman underneath. The other mask, his true face as far as anyone watching knew, was clutched in his hand.
It will destroy me too, one day, this rage that drives me.
JC said the words without looking up at the camera which now recorded him. Not paying his newfound audience any attention.
I used to be an outsider, I used to bleed orange and I used to be part of both a coalition and a revolution. Now I'm simply a roamer, wanderer, nomad, vagabond. Call me what you will. And my journey has brought me to Sin City. And oh, SCW, trust me when I say I am indeed a sinner.
Some of you know me. Some of you have competed against me. For those of you who don't, there's no need to worry. You'll learn all about me soon enough. There's no need for me to introduce myself. There's no need to list my accomplishments. Because it doesn't matter. What matters is the here and now.
And the here and now is that JC has arrived in Sin City Wrestling.
Now he looked up, a grin that was a little too wide, a little knowing creeping on his face. He knew why he was in Las Vegas and soon everyone else would know it took. The wind began to blow his hair into his face and he ignored it. Maybe it'll make him look more of a wild man. Let them think that of him. Let them form their opinions.
First impressions were key, after all.
If you know me, I know already what you're thinking. 'Here comes JC to talk about how much he wants to be a champion. Here he is, ready to get close and fail again. I've seen this movie.'
Not this movie.
This one is different. Because I've become self-aware. There's no need for The Answer anymore, that self-assured icon that was too wrapped up in his history to embrace his present. The truth was, he died when the world began to turn its back on him for not living up to some ideal that perhaps he himself had projected.
As it turns out, people are flawed. I know that. I'm more flawed now than ever. My body is breaking down. I haven't been champion in half a decade, and I'm more than well aware of that fact. I've become more bitter than I've ever been, as much as I try to fight it.
JC shook his head, grimacing, refusing to let negative thoughts interrupt him. He was in the zone and he was a different entity now. The divide between the mask of sanity and what lurked underneath was thinner than ever.
But none of that matters now. Now I not only acknowledge my flaws. I embrace them. The ghost of wrestling's past, the bogeyman, here to haunt Las Vegas and inflict as much damage as I can. The past has already happened. The future hasn't happened yet. The present is all we can control and sadly, you no longer have control of yours. That stopped the moment you offered me a contract.
While everyone else in this business seems to love the past, revel in it, I adapt and change. The past molds who I am today, but I'm not beholden to it. So you'll have some bald asshole boasting on Twitter about beating some old variant of JC, but he doesn't realize that times have changed. I no longer have dead weight holding me back and I can be the most violent, most pure version of myself.
That's bad news for you, SCW. Especially for this poor son of a bitch you saddled me with at 'Climax Control'.
Joe's frown returned to form a slasher smile again. A large man grinning at what he planned to do. Even the bravest of men might find that sight uncomfortable.
The Troll?
I'm above these 'getting to know you' matches with obvious nadirs of talent. Seriously. And my history, which you hyped on the damn announcement, doesn't even play into it. Look at me, and look at him. I am a goddamn monster and he's the unlucky son of a bitch unable to run as fast as his friends. I'm going to rip this poor sack of shit apart.
It's not even his fault. I don't know him. Although given the fact he's probably popular on r/incels, I can't imagine who would. Hopefully he will have wiped the Cheeto dust from his hands before he steps in the ring with me, although given how badly he's sure to smell, I'm sure I'll need multiple showers anyway.
Listen here, Gabriel Thomas Unfortunate-Last-Name. You stand absolutely no chance at Climax Control. None. If I were you, I'd quit SCW. Because your bosses don't like you very much. They can't, because they put you in there with me. There's no tiki torches or red caps to help you here, I'm afraid. Can't hide behind a Pepe picture on Twitter.
But you can rest assured that after I'm done with you, you'll wish all you were is cancelled.
The Bogeyman is real, you walking stereotype, and you found him. He's real and he's hungry for blood.
JC raised his left arm up, still clutching the mask. He wouldn't do something as theatrical as to wear it now. He didn't need to. He was already using it to channel what he needed to channel. And letting the world see what he was becoming was important. It was necessary.
As for the rest of you, you can pray that this feast is enough, but it won't be. The hunt has only just begun. The rage might destroy me in the end, but I'll take you all with me if I have to. I'm no longer fighting it. I am unleashing it.
JC has arrived in SCW. And more importantly...
JC kills.
