Short Bus Hero

by Shannon Giglio

  Drake Murray climbs into the ring and gets in Stryker’s face.

  “Get the fuck out of my ring right now,” Murray screams, his face going crimson and veiny. “That’s my star.” He is humiliated and outraged. Who the fuck does Stryker think he is? How many times does Murray have to show someone the shitcan before they get the message? Un-freaking-real. “You can’t come in here and—”

  “And what?” Stryker says. Despite his confidence, his whole body is shaking. Adrenaline. “Win? Win my way back in? Why not? I’m better than anyone here! Including that asshole,” he points to Gemini, who is trying to get up.

  Oh, Stryker is loving this. Definitely made for TV stuff, right here, right now. Did Drake Murray, Maven of Melodrama, really not recognize that fact? Wow, tragic. The new and improved Stryker is solid gold, and the only way for him to go is up. But, Murray is too blind to see that.

  This is the best wrestling drama I’ve ever see. And that’s a bold fucking statement.

  “You have no personality.”

  Whaaat? No, sir. Come on, is Murray that stupid?

  “Nobody likes you. Nobody even hates you. You can’t move merchandise. You can’t draw crowds. You’re nothing but a fucking jobber!”

  Okay, that may have been true about Stryker’s first couple of years, but, hadn’t Murray seen the more recent numbers? Stryker had been getting paid the big bucks and everything. Didn’t he see what he just did to his boy Gemini?

  “Get out of my sight. I’m not taking you on. Ever.”

  Murray launches a big green lugie right in Stryker’s eyes.

  Humiliation jumps on Stryker’s back and digs in.

  Shit.

  I want to tell him that all is not lost. Yet.

  But, it’ll be more fun to watch him figure that out for himself.

  27. Gelotophobia / jə-lot-ō-fōˈ-bē-ə / fear of being laughed at

  “Do you like vampires?” the reporter asks.

  “Yeah, I-I-I like them,” Ally says, “but Jason’s fa-favorite is…is…is the Moravian Raven.”

  A crowd of reporters and camera men crowd once again into the Formans’ old front yard as Ally holds court from the tiny porch. They really need to move into the new house. Soon. It would look so good on-camera. The lawn has enough room for all these people. And it’s in a more private location. The address is kept secret, so people can’t send them any more sad letters or come to their front door, begging for cash.

  Since Ally had won the lottery, she has been under constant siege by people hounding her for money. All the big charities send her personalized form letters, the hospital had an executive staff member call her, random people from all walks of life write to her. Of course, Lois doesn’t tell her about all the letters—she hoards most of them in the back of her bedroom closet, in boxes with Ally’s and Kevin’s baby clothes. If Ally read them, she’d give away every penny she has. Sometimes, random people show up in Jeffersonville, roaming the streets, staking out the town, until they find Ally. That’s a little harder than the mail for Lois to control. It’s tough to pull Ally away from some crying, single, crack-whore mother with a wailing baby on her hip and a dirty pre-schooler hanging on her ragged shirt sleeve. It can be scary sometimes, too. One time, a junkie, complete with crusted over needle tracks in his neck, knocked on the door and threatened Kevin with a knife. Ally wrote him a check for a hundred dollars just so he’d go away. It was crazy.

  “And you bought the VNO for your friend?” the reporter continues.

  “My fiancé. I love Jason,” she whispers, blushing and putting a hand over her eyes. The whole story comes out that her friend is suffering from acute myeloid leukemia and that Ally just wanted to make him smile. She tells the reporters how she and Jason had planned to get married someday—not to have babies, but to get married anyway, and live together forever. She goes on to say how their relationship was so much better, how everything was so much better, before she won the lottery. She tells of how she tried to commit suicide because she couldn’t make herself feel “normal,” even after she won all that money. She gets carried away and lets slip her mother’s terrible secret: that she’s one of those freaky hoarders who fills their house with collected trash until someone outs her. That really burns Lois up; she wants to smack that kid. Then, Ally tells how she wants to bring happiness to everyone. Through wrestling.

  And her mother is proud.

  It warms the heart of the nation.

  It renews my faith in the human race.

  And it makes Lois feel better about not having Ally declared incompetent. She did the right thing by leaving that alone.

  “What else are you planning to do in wrestling? We heard that you wanted to help Stryker Nash…”

  Ally looks at Lois, who stands next to her, arms folded across her chest, lips pursed. She still wants to call the police, but Ally says no. Ally wants to give Stryker a few more days. She has a “hunch,” she says. For some reason no one understands, she believes in Stryker. Call it faith.

  Good job, Ally, I whisper.

  “I…I…I’m w-wor-working with Stry-Stryker Nash right now,” she stammers, eyelids fluttering.

  * * *

  Across numerous state lines, Stryker switches off the national news in his hotel suite as Ally forces out that last sentence.

  Across the Strip, in the bar at the WWC resort, Gemini and Drake Murray look at each other (Gemini twisting his entire torso since he’s unable to turn is head) and bust out laughing.

  The heartless bastards.

  (Sorry, little too emotional for an angel?)

  * * *

  Later on, the heartless bastards make a little trip to the resort next door.

  “Hey, buddy,” Gemini and Drake walk up behind Stryker at the black jack table, laying their hands on his shoulders. Stryker glares at the dealer, gesturing to be hit.

  Seventeen.

  Dogshit on a shoe, Stryker thinks. Stick, he signals.

  He says nothing to Murray and Gemini. He sees Gemini’s big faker collar out of the corner of his eye and enjoys one second of pride and joy. He drains his glass and waves to the cocktail waitress. He can’t believe these pricks showed up to hassle him.

  Wait, yes, he can. He can believe it from Gemini, anyway. He’d never had any direct dealings with Murray before the whole buyout thing. He’s not sure why that man is so hostile toward him. He doesn’t care. It is what it is.

  “Aw, what’s a matter, little guy?” Gemini snickers in his ear. “We heard the lottery winner’s gonna take care of you.” He makes a “duhhh” sound and pulls a stupid face.

  Dealer gets black jack. Of course. Vegas sucks.

  “Yeah, we hear that fucking mongoloid short bus rider is wor-wor-working with you right n-n-now.” Murray’s breath smells like smoked salmon and gin. “Maybe you could be the new Dr-Dra-Dracula in her pretend vampire world.” He and Gemini giggle like a couple of high school bitches, mean girls making fun of a retard.

  Oh, what you freaking humans do to each other. I’d like to smack each and every one of you. I’m sure you all deserve at least one.

  Stryker thrusts his face into Murray’s so they stand nose-to-nose. “Don’t you ever, ever fucking call her that again.” He glares into Murray’s eyes before turning to sweep his chips off the table and head for the exit, leaving Murray and Gemini to share a nervous laugh with the waitress.

  He escapes out into the neon night, his self-loathing amplified by the passing tourists in loud shirts. No one is wearing jackets, even though tiny ice crystals still fall from the sky. The ass-hats from Indiana and North Dakota think they’re in fucking Hawaii or something. He hates Vegas.

  Stryker thinks he will never wrestle again. Today was the fucking end of everything. He wonders how long he could last in Bermuda on the money he’s got left in his hotel room safe.

  That was the original plan, why he was going to ask Ally for half a mil in the first place. He wishes he’d never watched the news that night, seen fuckface t
alking up goddamn Vegas Vilification. Dammit.

  He sees three cops talking to each other on the corner. Paranoia whispers that they’re looking for him. Would Lois call the cops? Who fucking cares.

  He slips into a taxi headed for oblivion.

  28. Demonophobia / dē-monˈ-ō-fōˈbē-ə / fear of demons

  Three slivers of ice chase each other around the perimeter of the sweating highball glass Stryker swirls in his fist. The scotch and soda make a much more pleasurable cocktail than bitterness and shame but he has no choice but to swallow them both, the former just beginning to blot out the taste of the latter. Stryker is the only one sitting at the bar, in the relative dark. The cacophony of hemorrhaging slot machines, ringing bells, and intermingled cries of pleasure and pain echoing through the adjacent cavernous casino sound filtered and distant.

  There would be no WWC contract. The realization hits Stryker hard. The misery he feels is worse than the day he’d been forced to move out of his lavish Squirrel Hill home and into the stinking shithole in Braddock.

  How could it be true? He was one of the biggest stars in wrestling, only a few months ago, with all the material rewards that came with such a distinction. He’d lost everything: the house, the cars, the boat, absolutely everything. Why hadn’t he saved anything during all those successful years? How could he have been so foolish? He felt like Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler—broke, defeated, desperate, alone, a one-trick pony with no pasture in sight.

  The bartender brings him a fresh drink and turns away, texting someone on his tiny phone. Stryker imagines the guy is telling someone that the famous loser, Stryker freaking Nash, is getting totally shitfaced at his bar, right this second.

  He doesn’t give a shit.

  His mind flashes on Ally’s sweet round face, on Lois’s trusting brown eyes. He bats the thoughts away as one would beat out flames on their own burning clothing. The images of the Formans pull those scribbled out faces and censored text of Stryker’s past along with them into the melee in his head. He floods his being with alcohol until his thoughts become incoherent threads of pain.

  A tall blonde wearing a black sheath and fishnet stockings saunters up to the bar and takes a seat a few stools away. The smiling bartender rushes over to take her order. He grabs a pair of bottles from the back-lit shelf behind him and flings them up into the air, catching them by their necks and pouring the contents into a chrome martini shaker. The blonde watches him with the wonderment of a child at the circus. After the barkeep has made some ridiculous toss and grab with the shaker, the woman claps her hands and shows off a perfect smile. Stryker follows the contours of her profile with his eyes. She has a slightly protruding forehead, partly covered by the fringe of her bangs, a hooked nose, and full, perfectly colored red lips. She looks at Stryker. He sees the spark of recognition widen her heavily made-up eyes and pull at the corners of her voluptuous lips.

  Who’s the carny “butcher” now?

  “How’d you like to buy a girl a drink?” she says, slinking over to the stool next to Stryker and climbing up to sit down.

  “I’d like that very much,” he says, nodding to the bartender. The bartender smirks and winks as he mixes her fru-fru drink. The woman is a regular. Lots of men buy her drinks, every day. Except for Wednesday, when she goes to church in order to avoid the Sunday crowds. When she’d left Oklahoma, she promised her mother that she’d keep going to church every week. Apparently, lots of other people promised their mothers the same thing because they really pack them in at the Assumption Roman Catholic Cathedral, two miles from the epicenter of Sin City. This woman is not morally bankrupt. Like most Vegas residents, she merely stands at the edge of complete ruin.

  One drink leads to a dozen more. Hours pass in a numb haze of awkward laughter and slurred chitchat. A very public and passionate kiss in front of the pirate ship at Treasure Island ignites a fuse that leads to the powder keg of Stryker’s suite. A clear slap and a broken heel come sailing out of the murky mess inside Stryker’s head.

  Stryker fumbles for his key card as he and his—ahem—“friend” kiss and grope each other in the hotel hallway. The lock snicks open and they stumble into the suite. She pulls him toward the red velvet sectional sofa, kicking off her stiletto heels as they cross the room. For an uncomfortable amount of time, they cling to each other on the couch, mouths sealing them to one another, hands everywhere, clothing cast onto the plush carpet below. Stryker stands, pulling her to her feet, and gestures with his eyebrows toward the adjacent bedroom.

  “Carry me,” she says. His muscles were sore from the Vilification, and he’s drunk as shit, but he’s into her, so he bends to pick her up.

  “Okay.” He lifts her, then sets her back down on the floor. “Wait, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do.” She watches him weave his way to the closet that stands by the suite’s front door. He squats down and reaches into the closet, punching a code into the digital lock on the safe. When his hands emerge, clutching an obscene pile of cash, her mouth falls open and her heart soars. He’s actually done this before, he just doesn’t remember it. He grins at her as he passes on his way to the bedroom. He spreads the cash all over the bed and grabs her in a tight embrace, kissing her neck. Her eyes never leave the money.

  She places her hand on the front of his jeans. She doesn’t feel anything. She sighs and looks at her watch. In her mind, she is probably already roaming the mall at Caesar’s Palace, buying clothes and shoes and jewelry.

  I don’t, in fact, know for sure what she’s thinking—she’s kind of off-limits to me. When I try to see into her thoughts, it’s like looking at a garage door. It’s always like that with the Lost Ones. Sometimes, though, they leave the garage door open.

  But you never want to see what’s inside anyway.

  Stryker’s mind, I can tell you, is definitely elsewhere. Where, I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be thinking at all, about anything. The unintelligible images and words are even absent at the moment. He has reached the state of serene oblivion he’d set out to find. He sits down on the bed, bills crumpling beneath him. The woman kneels between his splayed knees and smiles up at him, licking her perfectly outlined lips.

  Okay, I could not endure what I knew would come next. Way too much for me.

  I pick up a crystal glass from the nightstand and throw it against the wall. It explodes in a sharp blizzard of crystalline fragments on the edge of the slate hearth in front of the fireplace.

  Stryker jumps.

  The woman turns to see what he is gaping at. Not seeing anything, she resumes her fruitless stab at arousing his carnal desire. Too late, baby. This guy’s got work to do.

  I unleash a piercing howl.

  Stryker’s hands fly to the sides of his head and he shouts in pain and surprise.

  His lady friend remains oblivious to my presence. She stands up and gives Stryker a look of confusion mingled with disgust. If I had one of those cell phones, I would snap her picture.

  “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?” Stryker doesn’t hear her. His eyes track wildly around the room as he jumps to his feet. “Listen, if you’re having DTs or something, I gotta get out of here,” she says, glancing around the empty and fully intact room.

  Stryker still doesn’t hear her. Not over all my screeching and smashing things. I smash the glass covering the painting above the headboard. I pull drawers out of the dresser, ripping them right out of their cheap squeaking tracks. I launch a front kick at the TV and shatter the screen with the ball of my foot.

  Dude, I should have tried out at the Vilification. I’m kind of a black sheep anyway.

  His eyes roll around in his head as he pulls at his hair and flops back down on the bed. He has no freaking clue what’s going on. I slash at the curtains, cutting them into ribbons that flutter in the air blowing through the wall mounted heating unit. His mouth stretches in a silent scream.

  I laugh at him.

  I wish I could interrupt all stupid human
tricks, you know, maybe scare people into being good.

  “You are totally freaking me out,” the whore says to him. As he seems absorbed in losing his mind, she gathers up her clothes, pulls them on, grabs a handful of hundred dollar bills off the floor, and backs out of the room. “Fucking nut case.”

  Then, I let him see me. I appear in a series of stuttering jump cuts, my face a blur of continuous side-to-side motion, smoke curling from the top of my head and from the tips of my fingers.

  Stryker’s eyes bulge in their sockets as they follow me from hearth to window. He thinks he is going crazy. He doesn’t think I’m real. He thinks it’s the booze and the drugs playing tricks on him.

  Then, I punch him square in the nose, feeling the cartilage fold beneath my smoking knuckles. Then, he knows I’m more than a trick of the liquor.

  The crack whore slams the door behind her. Off in search of her next trick or fix, no doubt. Call it a waste of a life.

  Stryker cries out, his eyes the size of dinner plates. “What do you want from me? Who are you? What are you?”

  I whisper to him in an ancient hideous and chiding voice. “What are you hiding from me?”

  He ignores the blood gushing from his nose and tries to follow my flickering image with his eyes. “What? I don’t know what you’re—”

  I grab his unzipped suitcase from its stand and hurl it just over his head. It explodes on the wall above the ravaged dresser in a firework of designer jeans and polo shirts.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” he whines.

  “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  A child with a scribbled out face takes shape somewhere in his mind.

  “I’m not hiding anything. Please, who are you? Oh, my God.”

  He can’t tear his eyes away from the flickering image of my whirling head. He is trying to make out my face. He can’t do it. His mind can’t grasp the concept of me, of what I am, yet it begins to open and yield its long-kept secrets.