From the journal of Cozen – December 28th, 2009.

On the road with the laughing man, and yeah he still laughs but not as much as before, maybe like 1/3rd as many laughs, okay 2/5ths. Yesterday when that man asked him what the good word was he said ha-ha what does that mean then he called him some kind of racial slur that I’d never even heard of.

Regan drives because the laughing man is on drugs. I think she’s INSUFFERABLE an alright driver.

Every ten minutes the laughing man takes out his cell phone and makes a call but no one answers and he looks pissed I think he’s calling the slut Katsidy but who knows right I can’t see his phone from here and even if I did I’ve always been slightly near sighted but never really had it checked out so it wouldn’t matter even if I could see. No commas. Wow no commas. That was too big of a sentence for there to be no commas but I don’t even know where to put them right now I can’t be bothered with that.

The laughing man is afraid of Desade but not in the same way that some people are because he does not fear pain he just doesn’t want his game to end. I told him some of the things she has done and holy crap he doesn’t want to die.

He likes laughing too much.

They had been driving for hours, and only one of them had any idea where they were going.

“And you don’t have to call me darlin’…darlin’!”

And he was singing. Thanks to the combination of mood and vicodin, his voice did not sound chipper whatsoever. It was lazy, and out of tune.

“You never eeeeeeven call me by my naaaaaaaame!”

It was a mixed CD that Regan had made, but after hearing it a few times even she was growing tired of it. She was behind the wheel of Lane’s Pontiac Grand Prix, and was tapping said wheel with the fingernail of her index finger as Stevens carried on. For visualization purposes, she wore a red coat with large buttons. Her long black hair was a direct contrast to her pale face.

“You alright back there?” Regan asked, and looked into the rearview mirror.

Cozen’s eyes looked back at her, one of them all white and one of them all black. Her contacts were unique to say the least. The faceless fighter’s head leaned slightly to the side as she pondered this question.

“I mean…temperature wise,” Regan completed her previous thought, and laughed nervously.

“I’m fine,” Cozen replied.

The irony here was that Regan had shacked up with Lane in the first place to help get her out of trouble, and since then he might have found himself in even worse trouble, and was surrounding himself with some strange people. The River Rat had tried to maim Jared Sykes and Amy Campbell, the first was an annoyance to Desade, and the second was liable to lead to a full blown war. In the last few days she had pondered leaving. Several times while Lane was sleeping she sat up in bed, and thought long and hard about it.

But something kept her here, with this man. She couldn’t explain it if she tried.

“Turn off here,” Lane said, stopping his singing suddenly.

“Alright.”

Regan was happy to have some direction, as for a while she thought they were just driving aimlessly. She moved the car into the right lane, and prepared to exit off the interstate.

“What are we stopping for?” Regan asked.

“Ice cream!” Stevens cheered, his mood brightening for a moment.

“I see,” she replied flatly.

“I like ice cream more than I like most other things,” Cozen chimed in calmly. “The last time I was offered ice cream I was a lactose intolerant person and while the person that offered me ice cream would probably have had no way of knowing that I could not take the chance so I had to decline said ice cream and that was unfortunate. I like ice cream.”

“I…see,” Regan re-iterated.

“Listen, there’s something I want you to do when you go in to get the ice cream. It’s a special request.”

“Okay,” Regan said, not thinking much of it.

In this car we’re all trying to kill re-invent redefine ourselves.

The laughing man acts so cool and whatever but c’mon he didn’t like Desade telling him that he couldn’t make his own decisions sure he’s a lackey but he wanted to do this war his own way and now he’s pissy and hurt also he’s jealous of Amy which is pretty much just par for the course no one understands her appeal and they want to bottle it and wear it around like a perfume or cologne depending on gender. He said to me last night that it was always going to be this way ever since he came back and there was no stopping it and it was fun for a while but this is the end game. I believe that now.

I don’t need to become other people I’m really good at martial arts and I’m good at wrestling I have won belts and stuff so there. The laughing man says he understands that, but does he really?

And the girl, Regan, she just wants to be more than just a whore. She wants to be a part of something. I wonder how far she’ll go.

Dairy Queen – somewhere in Utah.

As Regan came through the door she quickly scanned the establishment to ascertain the extent of the embarrassment she would soon feel. There was a large man with a white beard in one of the corner booths, with a pair of hot dogs on his tray. On the other side of the restaurant a woman and her two kids were laughing, and finishing up their ice cream.

As she approached the counter, the sound of her shoes against the floor seemed louder than normal, and this made her self conscious. The young man working the counter couldn’t have been older than eighteen. There was boredom and sporadic stubble all over his face.

“Thank you for stopping at DQ, would you be interested in one of our combos today?” he asked. It sounded lifeless, and rehearsed.

“Uhm, no. Could I have a Butterfinger blizzard, a peanut buster parfait, and a chocolate sundae? And I’m going to need something to carry it in, this is to go. ”

“You got it, will that be all?” he asked.

Regan nodded, and stared at her shoes. A few seconds later he gave her the total, and swiped her debit card. During the entire time that the ice cream was prepared, she did not look up.

“Here you go, ma’am,” the kid said, and pushed the three ice cream treats towards her in a cardboard beverage holder.

At first she didn’t take them, she simply stared at the young man.

“Is there something else?” he stammered.

And then she slapped him right in the face, as hard as she could. It almost knocked his headset off, but instead it just dangled off his forehead. His expression was blank, and confused. The mother with her children stopped talking all at once, and stared. In fact the only sound in the place was the older gentlemen slurping his slushy.

Then, as if she had just realized what she’d done, Regan ran out of the DQ with the ice cream in hand.

When Regan got back into the driver seat, The River Rat was leaving his twelfth message for Katsidy.

“…and if you don’t answer the phone, I’m going to hit you so hard that Hunter Sabuani’s cum falls out of your…”

Regan’s presence made him trail off.

“…yeah just give me a call, for fuck sake.”

He closed his phone, and regarded his lady friend with a skeptical eye.

“So you...”

“I did it,” she announced curtly, and handed him his peanut buster parfait.

Stevens broke into uproarious laughter that seemed to go on for minutes. Cozen joined in for a moment, because let’s face it, slapping a pimply Dairy Queen employee for no reason at all is pretty goddamn funny.

“Why did you want me to do that?” she asked.

He finally stopped laughing, and then Cozen started up again, which made Lane do the same. Regan looked straight ahead, and breathed heavily. Finally, after another minute, they finally stopped.

“Two reasons. One, just to see if you would. Bravo there.”

“If anyone was wondering I’m still laughing on the inside,” Cozen added.

“Number two,” Lane continued, “I want you to get used to not giving a damn how people look at you. In a few months, I’d like you to be able to shit on Kensington’s desk with him in the room if you had to.”

“I’m laughing on the outside now.”

“Well I’m not,” Regan said, and they started to pull out of the parking lot. “What if he calls someone?”

Stevens pulls an imaginary phone.

“Officer, a woman slapped me. For the love of god bring back-up!”

Cozen made a siren sound effect.

She put the vehicle in drive, and began to pull out of the parking lot. Stevens went back to talking into his imaginary phone, all the while Cozen continued to drone on in the background with the sound effect. It was unnerving in its authenticity.

“We’ve raised the terror level in Utah, because this woman is going on some kind of goddamn crazy slapping spree.”

Finally, Regan cracked a smile.

“So where are we going? No more games, no more jokes…where the hell are we going?” she asked.

“To see about an old friend, and a new contingency plan,” The WMD said.

She turned into the interstate, and before long Regan had a good chuckle herself.

I don’t think the laughing man really has old friends so what I assume he means is someone he used to take advantage of that got tired of him and now he’s hoping they aren’t still holding a grudge and are willing to still do him favors which makes me wonder if someday he’s going to refer to me as an old friend.

Huh.

This was humiliating.

“So I guess what I’m saying here is, if you decide to piss me off…you might want to check your great grandfather’s resting place, see if there have been any disturbances.”

This was really humiliating.

“Cause I might be wearing his watch.”

Charlie Mittens had been wrestling for fifteen years, and while it would be cliché to say that he had seen better days, that’s not exactly true. This was more or less par for the course. What you are eavesdropping on now is an event for XUWA or Extreme Utah Wrestling Association. Charlie doesn’t look like much, he stands a hair under six feet and a hair over two hundred and ten pounds. But what sets him apart from a lot of wrestlers is he has been willing to take on almost any wrestling gimmick over the years.

His most infamous gimmick, however, was Graverobber.

So on this night, Charlie stood in the center of the ring, dressed in black wrestling tights, and with dirt smeared on his face. He was addressing his arch rival, the Matt “Mad Dog” Mattson, who was standing by the entrance. Has it been mentioned that they were in a bingo hall?

“Or maybe I will take his wedding ring!”

“Nice try Graverobber, my Grandpa was never married!” Mad Dog answered.

“Yeah, but…” Charlie trailed off, and removed the mic from his mouth. “Seriously dude?” he whispered to no one in particular.

“In fact, he never wore a watch either…because he hated time!” Mad Dog added.

“And I hate this,” Charlie said flatly, still off the microphone. “I hate this so much.”

He scanned the eyes of the crowd and wondered: could anyone really get into this? Sure, later on in the evening there would be barbed wire and light tubes, and the fans would lose their shit because these two were going to beat the absolute piss out of each other, and one of them would win…he vaguely hoped it was him. But there was no integrity in this. In the big leagues, Amy Campbell got to be herself. He had a poster of hers at home. Plenty of people did.

But this, this was not himself.

“Fair enough Mad Dog, then perhaps I will take your late mother’s underwear!”

Several members of the audience cringed, as did Mattson.

Okay so maybe that was a bit much, Mittens thought. The microphone had never been his strength, but he had never been this bad. As he scanned the crowd’s faces, and pondered where to go with this exchange from here, his eyes locked on one man in particular.

“Sniff that dead bitch’s panties!” Lane Stevens yelled out from the third row, and a moment later added, “WOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Oh Christ,” Charlie muttered.

An hour later.

Sitting in the front seat of his red Ford Taurus, Charlie was icing his knee after a particularly nasty fall in the main event of the evening. Graverobber was able to secure several main event spots in independent promotions because he was willing to take a ridiculous amount of punishment, and he had wrestled such NWC greats as Alexander, and Damon Hayes back in the day while working for the Hawaii Island Wrestling region.

Outside the rain was coming down unexpectedly hard, but he found the sound to be relaxing. Maybe he would sleep in the car tonight and save money. The idea of treating himself to a fancy lunch the next day was far more appealing right now. He was pondering a good place to take his car, when he saw the duo approaching.

The duo had attracted quite a bit of attention that evening. They even signed a few autographs.

One of them was, with the exception of Wyatt Connors, one of the more vile and infamous villains on televised wrestling. The other was no saint, and had been the Prime Universal Champion. Lane Stevens and Cozen walked through the rain, only the latter had an umbrella. Charlie had wrestled with Lane on the independent circuit before he hit it big in FUSE and watched him on TV when he could. Sometimes he wished he could be a real villain like Lane, and not a joke like Graverobber...but most of the time he felt disgusted by his former colleague. Now would have been a good time to just drive, but alas he did not.

Not surprisingly, The River Rat entered his front seat without asking permission. Cozen stood outside the vehicle, keeping a watchful eye.

“Heya champ,” Lane said, clearing some of Charlie’s possessions into the backseat.

“Hi Lane,” Charlie’s voice was hoarse, and strained. His short blonde hair was clumped together, and still sweaty. His face was skinny, and still quite boyish despite his age. There was dried blood on his forehead. He had gotten out of there without showering, hoping to avoid a confrontation with this man.

“Hell of a match.”

“I lost. It sucked,” Mittens summarized.

Lane nodded, even though Charlie wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at Cozen who had her back to the two men outside the vehicle.

“You’ve both been a lot of people,” Lane said.

“It’s not really the same thing,” Charlie replied.

“I suppose.”

“So what,” Charlie fired back immediately, “you came here to shoot the shit? Not likely man, not fucking likely at all.”

Lane laughed briefly and said: “Touche, sir. Touche.”

“I’m not going to act like I’m not interested, because Jesus Christ on a stick I think I’m booked to fight Ham Ham Pigelow next week and fuck my life.”

Lane patted him on the back.

“Did you watch Sin on Spike?” The River Rat asked.

“Yup.”

“Well let’s just say…this isn’t another swerve. I might be in some trouble. I would have preferred that it not come to this, but just the same…I knew it would. Desade has been gone for months, and I never had any problem with that. I would have done anything she required of me. But Amy, she could just never let our past go…she made me do this. It’s not my fault Alex can’t see the forest through the pussy.”

Charlie looked confused.

“Why come to me for help? Why not throw in with Wyatt? I’m sure there’s a bunch of rich dangerous people she’s pissed off…I’m nothing. I’m less than nothing.”

The River Rat gazed out the window, and watched several of the wrestlers make their way to their vehicles.

“Because what I’m going to do has nothing to do with money or influence, Charlie. Now I need you to do me a favor.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I want you to start talking in the locker room, I want you to ask those chuckleheads who wants to be famous.”

“Every goddamn one,” Charlie said, still looking a bit perplexed.

“I know,” Lane smiled, and flipped his former colleague a few hundred dollar bills. His phone number was written on one of them. “Call me in a few weeks.”

“You’re seriously going to go against the Dead Man’s Hand?”

“Charlie,” Lane started as he opened the car door, “I am the Dead Man’s Hand.”

The Warlord slammed the door, and even through the rain Charlie could see his grin.

Walking back to his car through the rain, Lane and Cozen were side by side.

“How’s it going?” the faceless fighter asked, curious about the meeting he had just come from, and excited about where it was all going.

He did not respond at first, as he felt something in his pocket vibrate. He quickly popped open his phone to see that he had just received a text message. The sender was “Tits” – also known as Katsidy in some circles. And the message was, “Hey Laney. You’re right, we need to talk.”

“It’s getting better all the time,” Lane said.

Maybe I’m not here because anyone is going to treat me any differently maybe I’m here because the laughing man does not try to escape what he is he just runs with it and maybe I can learn how to do that I just hope no one makes me be Marilyn Monroe because come on that shit is just cheap.

I am a person bullet.

The laughing man is a bullet too I think we will go all over collecting other bullets and we’ll all end up in one big chamber and boom boom boom boom boom boom.

You’re dead.