All star bright and tongue-tied, she stood on my balcony looking down at the fluorescent shine of the pool below. Her head hung low, her arms crossed on the railing, tears all a-drip down onto the graveled walkways below. With her stifled sobs ringing out over the night, I watched as Judith began to break down.

The summer sighed over Chapel Hill, turning the outside world into a sweltering furnace. This time of year always brought back those adolescent memories, now old and decrepit in the back of my mind. Those heat wave summers when life was a carousel of absurd notions, teenage awkwardness, and vicious curiosity. When us kids paraded around in the streets, reveling in our own foolishness, baptized in our stupidity. When nothing mattered more than how much fun you could have in a single day.

Long days bathed in the sun’s orange glow. Late nights underneath a blanket of stars. We’d trespass into fields fenced in by barbwire only to lay beneath the night sky and count the constellations hanging over head like Christmas ornaments.

Now, Judith stood vacant, her skin as salty from sweat as it was sweet from perfume. I nestled back into a deckchair, lighting a clove cigarette. The thick aroma slid up into my nostrils as I breathed in deep and released a cloud of smoke up toward the starry dynamo overhead. With both our innocence laying broken beneath the evils of age and change, we were now more confused than ever, and it took us this long to realize it.

With her belly beginning to show signs of her pregnancy, Judith looked to me out of corners of her eyes, most of her face masked by the shadows of the night. Her words came out with that same sobbing urgency of her actions, more hysterical than ever before. She said, “You know, I love you, Sean.”

And I said, “You know I love you too.”

Looking back now, I wonder if I really meant it?

If the body is a burden, then what does that make the mind?

The mind suffers more than the body, does it not? The mind is what receives the whiplash from people’s actions, isn’t it?

The mind is just as prone to weakness as the body. Or am I mistaken?

The real difference between the body and the mind, besides the physical and non-physical aspects, is the way they react.

When the body breaks, it stops. It’s over. It’s done. Good riddance.

When the mind breaks, it pushes forward in the worst possible way. It becomes a danger not only to itself, but to those around it.

When the mind breaks, the mind becomes a time bomb.

And when that time bomb finally explodes, nothing is safe and nothing is sacred. Everything and anything is in danger.

Take Charles Manson for instance.

Take John Wayne Gacy for instance.

Take Ted Bundy for instance.

The body may be a burden, but at least it isn’t going to make you think it’s a good idea to kill somebody or even yourself.

Understand?

8. 17. 07.

The bright headlights burnt through the darkness as the interstate stretched out in front of me, the words “Washington or Bust!” written in big, bright, girly lettering on my back window, the ‘I’ dotted with a heart and all the ‘O’s turned to smiley faces.

The clock on the radio read “3:00am”. Judith sat in the passenger side, curled up against the door, her face pressed against the glass and her eyes closed tight. With a small smile curling the ends of her mouth, she slept serene and silent, buried beneath an avalanche of dreams.

Before we left, before she made her decision to stay with me, she made me promise that I would treat her right. She made me promise that things would be different this time. She made me promise I would change, for her and for our unborn child.

And although I agreed, although I promised, I could feel myself being crushed beneath the pressure. I could feel my hands tremble with withdrawal, tempting me to reach for the glove compartment and my stash of pills.

The radio spewed staticy music as my fingers fiddled with the dials, trying to pick up a station that wasn’t made up of shit-laced country or intelligence-defunct hip-hop. The further I got from Chapel Hill and the more I delved into the middle of nowhere, the worse the music got, and eventually I settled on turning the whole damn thing off.

This was a long drive with no one to talk to and even worse when you didn’t have any pills to keep you company. Not to mention my lack of sleep.

I looked to Judith out of the corners and my eyes. I could an animosity towards her growing. A sort of undeniable hatred that building up like a tower, ready to topple over. As she slept like an angel, my mind was polluted with terrible thoughts.

Thoughts like, I wish I could reach over right now and strangle the life out of her.

Thoughts like, if I had a match and a can of gasoline, I would pull over right now and set this whole damn car on fire, with her in it.

Thoughts like, if I really wanted to, I could slit her throat right now and bury her a little ways off of the interstate. No one would find her in this backcountry. She’s be chewed down to the bones by the voles and the weevils within a few days time.

But… no. I was no murderer. I was a lot of things, but not that. Even so, my mind felt as tight as a tourniquet. It felt paper thin at this point.

And that’s when I heard His voice from the backseat, foul and dry as a funeral drum.

“Kill her.”

I snapped to attention and looked over my shoulder, into the backseat. It was littered with fast food wrappers and forgotten junk that I hadn’t bothered to clean out, but nobody was there. Not a soul. Especially not Him.

If you’re curious, by Him, I mean the man who has been stalking me for the past few weeks. The omen. The nightmare. The man who claims to be my future self. A lunatic, in all likelihood, but who am I to speak of who is and who isn’t a lunatic when I’m starting to become one myself?

I turned back to face the steering wheel and the highway only to see, out of the corners of my eyes, standing in the grassy median of the interstate, Him. Cloaked in back and grinning as always. He was only there for all of a second before he disappeared in a flash. I looked into my rearview mirror, wide eyed and horrified, but there was no one. Nothing. Nobody.

I told myself, it’s okay, it’s okay.

I told myself, it’s just my imagination.

I told myself, I’m just hallucinating from lack of sleep.

…until I felt breathing on the back of my neck and heard words all whispery in my ear, “You have to kill her.”

I looked over my shoulder quick, and once again, nothing.

“Shut up,” I muttered beneath my breath as a felt a sort of paranoia set in. There was no one else on the interstate for miles, and even though Judith slept only a few feet away in the passengers seat, I felt like I was completely alone.

His voice came out crackling, popping, fizzing, “She will destroy you…”

I was helpless as I said, louder this time, “Shut up…”

His voice oozed with malice and cruel intentions, as cold as a razor blade, “If you don’t kill her, she will be your ruin, and you know it…”

I was defenseless as I said, this time above a whisper, “Shut up.”

His voice sent chills down my spine, piercing my flesh like a thousand needles, “You’re already changing yourself for her. Have you forgotten who you are?”

Powerless. “Shut up.”

“You’re Sean fucking Sterling.”

Weak. “Shut up.”

“You’re your own god, your own savior, the way Christ should have turned out.”

Frail. “Shut up.”

“Or am I wrong? Are you just a jester in her court of fools? If you ask me, it would seem she’s in control of you nowadays. What a way to reverse roles, huh? You used to control her by beating her physically, now she controls you with her own mind games. Who saw that one coming?”

Nothing but a shadow of my former self. “Shut up.”

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen…”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

My voice rose to a shout and caused Judith to spring up from her sleep, looking to me with wide eyes and a mouth slightly agape.

She said, in a soft voice, “Sean, are you okay?”

She said, “You don’t look so good.

She said, “Maybe we should pull over.”

She said, “You don’t need to be driving in this condition.”

She said, “I’ll drive for a while.”

And I said, “Okay.”

Slowly, but surely, I really was beginning to lose control of my own life. Even in the most miniscule of ways.

Undeniably, eventually, no matter who you are, you will die. This is fact. This is a promise. Death conquers all. End of story.

Most people, at some point in their lives, will fear death. A lot of these people hide beneath an umbrella of comfort, fooling themselves into believing in the afterlife. Judith is one of these people. From day one, her life had revolved around the church. Although age had brought about some change in her Sunday morning rituals and her life certainly didn’t constantly revolve around the idea of God, she did, however, still believe and cherish the idea of eternal life in the presence of God.

Though the Judith who once carried a Bible to every class and prayed every night before bed had long left this world and had since been replaced with a cynical, depressed, wreck of a woman, Judith still believed in her lord completely, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s funny how much we can change with the addition of a little age, isn’t it?

If you were to ask Judith what kept her safe through the trials and tribulations she faced in her life, be it her family disowning her or the beatings she took from the man she claimed to love, she would answer with no hesitation.

“The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.”

Needless to say, when asked if she feared death, Judith would answer with something to the effect of, “No, of course not. I know I’ll be given a mansion in heaven and be a part of God’s kingdom, forever.”

Ironically, when finally faced with the reality of death, the only thing Judith could sputter out was, “Oh my God!”

8. 22. 07.

A week.

A week had passed and my malevolent thoughts directed towards Judith had grown even more grotesque. My sleep was plagued by surrealistic dreams in which I raped her, beat her, and left her for dead on some backcountry road for the vultures to pick to the bones.

There is nothing in the world more horrifying than feeling yourself slipping into the bowels of insanity and knowing you can do absolutely nothing to stop it.

While the rest of the world continued to move fast and I watched as my fellow employees prepared themselves for War in Washington, I fell beneath a dark and hideous curtain, buried beneath a mountain of terrible thoughts. Everything was slow motion, and even in DC where over five hundred thousand people made their home, I felt completely alone. Even in the crowded streets at the peak hour of the day or at the most popular tourist attractions that Judith dragged me to, it was as if I was spending a lifetime in solitude.

Thoughts like what to do with the murder weapon. Thoughts like whether or not I should commit suicide afterwards. Thoughts like when to do it. Thoughts like how to do it. Thoughts that began to resemble actual planned out actions.

And the funniest thing of it all? The coupe de grace? The icing on the cake? Judith had no idea.

I hid all these thoughts, all this depression, all this madness beneath a Cheshire grin and a shower of affection. Generally speaking, in her opinion, I imagine things had never been better between us.

For once, she must have felt loved.

Funny how you never know what the other person is really thinking, isn’t it?

From the Notes of Sean Sterling:
Title: Dream Number Four
Date: 8-22-07

I woke up in a cold sweat yet again.

Another night, another nightmare. Every time, it feels more and more real. The blood splattering, my own sick laughter ringing through the air, Judith’s shrieks of terror. They all mix together to form a kaleidoscope of terrible visions and worse ideas.

This dream, it all started in an emergency room where Judith laid on a bed, giving birth to a child I didn‘t even want. For some unknown reason, it was as if the entire hospital was deserted. Like all the doctors and nurses had decided to call it quits and send the rest of the patients home, so it was just me and her in this cramped little hospital room.

Everything had a bright white glow to it, pure and immaculate, the way you think of heaven as being. Judith was all huffing for breath and sweating as if she were about to die. She started screaming bloody murder for me to help her, but I just stood back from the bed, lighting a cigarette and watching without a word.

As the dream furthered, the lights began to flicker like mad. A sort of fog began to work it’s way throughout the hospital halls, making everything look cloudy in a Hollywood-esque way. Next thing I know, this baby is beginning to cry as it pushes it’s way into life and I’m suddenly stepping toward the bed, a gun in my hand.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three shots to the chest. Judith began to gasp for breath, coughing violently as blood began to trinkle down from her lips, a river of blood starting to flow out of her mouth. All I could do was laugh as she began to go into these god-awful convulsions, her body all shaking and quaking. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Bones began to splinter and pierce through her skin. The lights flickered faster, making everything jumbled and disorienting. All the while, that goddamn baby cried louder and louder, raising it’s voice to a high pitched scream as it tried, tried, tried to fight it’s way out.

And all I could do was laugh.

Judith began to scream with the baby, her face beginning to contort in a way that would make Picasso proud. I looked down, and I realized I was up to my ankles in blood.

Without hesitation, and still with that twisted grin on my face, I placed the gun beneath my chin.

Bang.

A fountain of blood sprayed out of my cranium just as I woke up, gasping for breath and feeling under my chin to make sure there wasn’t a gaping hole in it’s place.

I spent the rest of the night knelt in front of a toilet, coughing up my mortal remains, and then just dry heaving for an hour straight until I settled down.

I’ve kid myself by saying that every man fears fatherhood.

I’ve fooled myself into believing that this is just a passing phase, just another bad time in my life.

But goddamn. This ain’t right. This just flat out ain’t right.

-Sean Sterling

8. 23. 07. Morning.

We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us.

The sun rose up over Washington D.C. Corporate zombies polluted the streets, each and every one of them suit and tie, a briefcase in hand, trampling over tourists and turning public transportation into a nightmare. I left early, before Judith woke up, and stood on the curb for thirty minutes before I was able to hail down a taxi. Some big oaf was at the wheel, looking like he was born in the bowery, with tattoos of anchors and mermaids turning his skin into an art museum.

A bobblehead of Jesus bobbed to the beats in the pavement as we drove, his rough voice asking if I was that Sterling guy from television, asking if I could give him an autograph. Little did he know that, by tomorrow, that autograph would be worth a fortune.

He tried his best to make chit chat, but I remained unresponsive as the D.C. scenery made a slow metamorphosis from the patriotic beauty that you see in all photos and travel shows into an ugly slum where bullet holes bit into walls and a liquor store occupied every corner.

Liquor, however, wasn’t what I was here for.

I told this taxi driver, this big dumb oaf with a crooked cigar hanging out from between his lips, “Take me to the nearest gun shop.” He made some half-assed wisecrack, asking if I was planning to go hunting or something. I told him, “Yeah, something.”

We parked outside of this dirty looking building, plagued by rust and graffiti. A neon sign hung over the doorway with the words “Greg’s Guns and Ammo” written in cheap cursive lettering. I told the taxi driver, “Stay put. I’ll be right back.” and climbed out of the car, stepping inside of the shop.

Tomorrow, the whole world would wake up with my face on their morning newspaper. My name in headlines. My actions would stigmatize not only my own name, but the wrestling industry as a whole.

Behind the counter, a man stood with bootblack fingertips, nicotine stains on every nail, his peppered hair puffing out like Albert Einstein’s. The room was in half-light, but even in the dimness, you could see the tiny glints of light off of the guns that lined every wall. This place, it looked like some paranoid Vietnam vet’s wet dream. All those crazy bastards preparing for the end times or stocking up in case of a zombie invasion? This place was made for them.

The man behind the counter, he said, “Can’t I help you?” in the brashest voice possible. His breath was whiskey plied as he leaned back in his chair, dipping his cigarette down into a nearby ashtray.

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to mimic his assertiveness, but failing miserably, “I’m looking for a handgun. Something concealable, something small…”

With a wide grin, all his teeth yellow or missing, the salesman, he said, “Sounds like your in the market for a Saturday Night Special, friend.”

Before I could ask what that was, he was pulling a small revolver out of a drawer and sliding it across the counter, saying, “It may not look like much, but it gets the job done, friend.”

My fingers quaked at the bones as I wrapped my hand around the cold metal, as I touched the trigger and pointed it off to the side, just to get a feel of it. Nodding my head, I said, “I’ll take it.”

“Good, good,” The salesmen hissed between his teeth as we exchanged currency, coughing up some aliased laugh as he said, “Now don’t be killing anybody now, you hear?”

I simply grinned as I tucked the gun into my pants, saying, “Of course not. Do I look like a murderer to you?”

He didn’t bother to give me an answer.

Media vita in morte sumus. In the midst of our lives, we die.

Let’s all be truthful here for a minute. In all honesty, throughout my life, I’ve never been the most sane person in the world. I’ve certainly never been the greatest person in the world. It’s either by the splendor of luck or by God’s sick sense of humor that I’ve managed to stay alive as long as I have.

It’s funny. We’re all born into this world destined to fail. Problem is, most of us can’t cope with that fact. Your birth is the mistake you spend an entire lifetime trying to correct. Those of us who end up failing at that as well, we’re the ones who you end up seeing on the streets, dragging themselves through the ghettoes at dawn after a late night sticking ourselves with needles to escape reality.

We’re the ones you see crying our eyes out on park benches, washed up without a dollar our name, only shitty oil paintings and our own bleeding hearts.

We’re the ones you see buried in the graveyards, years before old age, underneath tombstones with half-assed epitaphs.

The dreamers dreaming their lives away. The schemers sculpting new schemes to get even with their enemies. The poets piling the coffeehouses with words like they worth anything other shit. The whores selling their God given bodies to men for money. The heathens hating and denouncing that almighty bastard we call our Lord and Savior. The bastards bawling in the boweries. The addicts wasting their lives away with meth and malice. The murderers. The monsters. The rapists. The fools. And, of course, the thousands upon thousand of lonely suicides that take place every year.

If Peter Pan ever grew up, I can guarantee he’d take the same path as me.

Give me back my childhood. Give me back my innocence. Give me back that inner peace that I once knew and loved.

Or give me death, god dammit.

8. 23. 07. Night.

Some people may call it an act of cowardice. I call it my right as a human being.

There’s nothing like being able to tell yourself, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is the day you’re going to die. As strange as it sounds, it’s calming. You skip the climax, all the bullshit that goes with death, and just get on with the inevitable end of it all.

For once, you’re completely in control.

For once, fate, destiny, and God can all go fuck themselves.

I hid the gun in my pant’s waistline as I stepped into the empty hotel lobby, a certain sort of undeniable paranoia beginning to set in. It wasn’t that I was thinking about backing out of my plan, forgetting all of this, and going back to being a depressed and sorry sap of a man, but with every venture this unsettling, it’s impossible to go through with it without at least a miniscule amount of fear involved. I had dropped pills before even getting out of my car, in some sort an attempt to calm my nerves.

Upstairs, Judith was probably sound asleep. Little did she know that she’d never wake up again. They’d find her with a bullet to the head and two bullets to the belly, just to make sure that mistake would be over and done with as well. After that, I’d have to decide how to take care of myself. A bullet to the head was too done, too cliché. I wanted to go out with a bang, a boom, something to be remembered through

Hang myself from a ceiling fan still spinning. Bungee jump off the balcony with the cord tied around my neck. Self-immolation in the middle of the lobby while a couple of family‘s sit and eat their continental breakfast. Something like that.

I climbed the stairs, taking a deep breath every step I took, a quiet anticipation rearing it’s ugly head. Every step brought a new reflection on my life. It was like seeing my life flash before my eyes, only slow, giving me time to consider each thing I’ve done in my time spent. Every moment of rejoice. Every moment of regret.

The stairs seemed to sprawl upward forever until I reached the top floor. With one last deep breath, I pushed open the door and began down the hall. The wall was covered with a floral wallpaper. Dim lights set a peaceful mood. An amazing contrast when held up against my cruel intentions.

Even now, I heard His voice whispering into my ear.

Kill her.

With every step, He whispered.

This is your moment.

With every breath.

This is your time to shine.

I rounded the corner to my room, seeing my door just a few steps away.

This was it. This was how it was all going to end. Goodbye and good riddance.

…and that’s when I saw the door busted open wide.

I saw the cops inside, snapping pictures and conversing as they shook their heads in disbelief and disgust.

I saw detectives in trench coats, saying things like, “What a way to go, eh?”

And then I saw Judith, tied to a chair, her stomach cavity practically ripped opened. Blood still dripping out, making the carpet even redder. Her face was bruised, her skin cut with symbols and words that made little to no sense. Her mouth hung agape, toothless. Her lower extremities, mutilated and massacred, probably raped considering dried semen stained her inner thighs. Fingers missing. Toenails peeled back. A slit across her neck, almost all the way around. Her forehead crowned with a bullet hole, like a Hindu tilaka.

And of course, smashed against the wall, an underdeveloped fetus, crushed and forgotten, almost blending in with the floral pattern of the wallpaper.

Someone had beat me to the chase, and I had an idea of who.

Suddenly, suicide didn’t seem so necessary.

They took me in for questioning, but came up with nothing besides the unused gun I still had tucked into my waistline. They asked me why I had it, what my intentions were, all that bullshit and I told them some lie like ‘I bought it for self protection‘. I had enough alibis to get by with proof that I had nothing to do with this murder, even though I had something similar planned.

They ended up telling me to head back to the hotel, try to get some rest, if at all possible.

They told me the hotel would give me another room to stay in for the rest of my time in Washington DC.

They told me, once they went over the evidence, they’d contact me.

But I already knew who was responsible for all of this.

She‘s dead.

Who else would have a mind sick and depraved enough to go through with something like this?

You should have heard her scream.

Who else would go to such extreme measures to prove a point?

You should have seen her cry.

Who else but Him?

You should have been there.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I laid in bed with every door locked, every light turned on bright, and of course, my gun tucked underneath my tear soaked pillow. I knew this wasn’t going to end with Judith. I knew he was going to be after me next. That nightmare. That goddamn omen. The man who says he’s me, from the future, here to make me or himself immortal.

And honestly, I’m in the state of mind right now where I’d be willing to believe him.

But right then, my thoughts were plagued by other things…

Outside, the rain poured down over Washington DC. The night sky pulled a blanket of stars over the whole town. While the rest of the city was alive and well, all abuzz with anticipation for War in Washington, I was busy dying a little inside.

Her name was Judith, and I loved her, in my way.

And right about then, I missed her more than I could put to words.

Life’s a funny thing, isn’t it?