by Неизвестный
“Really?”
“Yeah. Slamming Jumbo was just so rare, but he wanted to do it. He wanted to put the kid over.” He shrugged. “I still lost.”
“Ah.”
“But the crowd. I don’t know who Dale fought. And the main event was, I think, Coffin Ed Robinson versus Col. Stone. Man…no one, no one, was walking out there talking about that. Everyone was leaving there talking about how that black kid planted Jumbo Jenko.”
“Wow.”
“So, y’know, I don’t know if that answers your question–”
“No, no it does.”
“Yeah.” A slight pause. “So what’s the best thing you ever drew?”
“Oh me?” he thought about that in the darkness. “I got this idea. It’s called Searcher.”
1:20 am
Josh looked over at Jim, “there’s something you said earlier.” Jim looked at Josh. “ I’m kind of confused.” Jim didn’t change his expression. “When you said storytelling…”
“Yeah?”
He rolled his neck. “I never heard Dale talk about it like that. What’s it mean?”
“Well, it’s like...it’s the story…”
“...being told?”
Jim looked at Josh, who met his gaze. Both cracked a grin. “I was saying before, you got a big guy. Let’s say he fights a little guy. What’s gonna draw the audience in? Well just look at it. Andre the Giant, you know him, right?”
“I know who he is.”
“He’s just such a presence in the ring. And if you’ve got a little guy it’s like ‘how’s he gonna beat the giant?’ Just two guys standing there you got something to be interested in.”
“The visual component.”
“Right, right. Or let’s say you don’t get that, and I mean for me, like I’m big for a regular guy but for a wrestler I’m just kinda average.”
“No shit?”
“I–”
“I seen wrestluz that wuz bigger than dinosaurs,” Josh said, doing a passable Burgess Meredith imitation.
“Right, right, so I say, okay, let’s see what I got? I’m a rookie. So maybe we set up the moves, the action so that it’s like I’m doing everything I can to stop this veteran. I’m on the offensive, I’m trying to get the guy, but he’s just a little bit better. He’s beating me to the punch, he knows all my reversals, but really,” Jim gave a half-laugh, “if the guy’s being generous, he’ll make me look good. Like he reverses a move, but he don’t do it with his eyes closed. He beats me to the punch, but he’s spent too. He thought this would be a walk in the park, but this veteran bit off more than he could chew.” A car zoomed past them on the right. “Find something to do so that it’s not one guy just pounding the shit out of another guy for five minutes and then pinning him.”
“Right.”
“‘Cause that’s boring.”
“Right, yeah.” Josh shrugged. “I thought it had more to do with the characters or whatever. Personas.”
“Oh it can, yeah.” Jim nodded. “I mean if you got Mister All-American against the, y’know, Nazis or something, yeah. Or if this guy beat the other one for the belt and now there’s a rematch. It’s all those aspects. I was just talking about in the ring, you get it?”
“Yeah, yeah.” A pause. “I like what you said about just don’t make it dull.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t have two guys hitting each other for ten minutes.”
“Yeah, man. There’s a lot of psychology involved. I mean it’s…” Jim looked to the ceiling and had his hands up like he was searching his mind for the ultimate answer. Racking his brain’s knowledge for a chance to put it into words. “It’s gotta be simple but nuanced. That’s the best way I can say it.”
“I think I get it.”
2:19 am
“How you doin’?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?” Jim asked.
“No problems,” Josh blinked. “I don’t sleep a normal schedule.”
“Yeah, that ain’t good for you,” Jim said.
“It’s good to have you here,” Josh said. “It’s good to have you here to keep me awake.”
“You too,” Jim said.
They could hear the sound of the car. There was no sound in outer space and, he supposed, there was no “sound” in the world either. It was just a collection of sounds, and right now, in their car, the same car they’d been in for almost four straight hours, in the middle of th night, was their world. There was the hum of the engine and the sound the car made as it drove. Very slightly you could hear the revolutions of the tire and the way the car trembled as it cruised along. The vibration, the shaking, was enough to drown out the sound of their breathing. Their world was this puny hunk of metal racing towards a hospital hundreds of miles away.
“I just hope Dale’s okay,” Josh said.
“Me too.”
2:47 am
“What made you want to write superhero stuff?”
Josh shrugged, his hands never leaving the wheel. “It’s kind of always been there. I stopped when I was, like, ten for a while.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah I just...I didn’t really like the stories anymore.” He looked at Jim. “They weren’t interesting.”
“Why not?”
Josh shrugged. “There were lots of reasons. I just kind of outgrew them for a while.”
“But you grew back into them?”
“Hm. More like they grew up for me.”
“Ah.”
“Dale’s the one that got me back into it, actually. Same night I met him, actually.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
The hum of the world.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Hm?” Jim said, turning his head.
“You’re wondering how much better the stories could be.”
“I wasn’t–”
“You were thinking it’s just two men in tights just hitting each other for thirty-two pages.” He looked at Jim. “Am I right?”
“Maybe.”
“Right, but, see, the thing is there’s potential in there. We’re just scratching the surface now. I was talking about this with Sammy. We’re evolving. As a medium, comics aren’t just growing. They’re evolving. They’re telling more complex stories. I mean there’s just something kind of cool in these characters so that it’s the same story told month after month but it isn’t.”
“Hm.”
“Batman’s super serious. Who’s all dark and scary and who’s he fight? The Joker. A clown. Purple and white. He’s mirth.” He looked at Jim. “See how they’re opposites?”
“Kinda.”
“Or like you have, uh, the Hulk. Pure rage. All muscle, but his mind is weak. He fights the Leader who physically is weak, but fights the Hulk with his intellect.” He looked at Jim. “You know Captain Marvel?”
“No.”
“Uh, Shazam?”
“Oh Shazam, yeah.”
Josh looked back at the road. “Well his big enemy is Black Adam, and–”
“Black Adam?”
“Yeah he…” he looked at Jim “it’s not a racial thing.”
“Is he black?”
“No.”
“White?”
Josh made a weighting motion with his head. “Egyptian, actually. See Captain Marvel–Shazam–gets his powers from a wizard. The wizard wanted someone to carry on his fight against evil, so before he chose Captain Marvel, he chose this Egyptian guy to be his champion. Only the power was too much for him. He couldn’t handle it and he went evil. That’s the best kind of story. The one where the villain and hero are equally matched.”
“I gotcha.”
“That’s the best kind of story.”
3:27 am
“You tired at all?”
“Nah.”
“You just yawned.”
Josh smirked. “I been up longer than this before. This? This is nothing, man.”
“I’m good. I told you I don’t keep a regular sleep schedule.”
“Yeah, and I told you that’s not such a good idea.”
He looked at Jim. “I got you to keep me up.”
“No problem.”
Silence.
“You wanna play a game?” Josh asked.
“What kind?”
“Two lies. You ever play it?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Josh shifted in his seat. His foot didn’t add to the gas pedal, but his body moved. He was tired, he just didn’t want to admit it. And, though he’d said as much, he really was glad Jim was there to keep him awake by talking. “We each tell the other two stories about ourselves. One’s gotta be a lie; one’s gotta be the truth. The other’s got to guess what it is. Got it?”
“Okay, yeah.”
“You go first.”
“Alright, alright…” Jim was moving around now too. Both were overtired now, two little kids up too late who had extra energy from the sheer thrill of the night. “Alright okay...okay…” he was accessing that information in his brain now, formulating the truth and the lie. “ I have an older sister–”
“Candace?”
“No, Candace is the younger one. Mary’s the older one.” Bouncing in the seat again. He was facing Josh now, his hands shaped in a vague outline of a square. Josh imagined Jim as a movie director, framing the shot. “I was thirteen and my parents were both out. Mary was in the TV room with her two friends, Tanisha and Sharon.” He licked his upper lip as he brought his hands down to his legs. “Now they used to always make fun of me and they–it hurt, you know–because I thought Tanisha and Sharon were fine.”
“Nice.”
“I mean I was thirteen and they were sixteen. Just–OOOH–nice, you know?”
“Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”
“And they would ALWAYS tease me, call me names.” Weight shift. “So one time I decide to get them back. And I walk into the TV room where they’re at and they just start making fun of me. ‘Little Jimmy’ and all that.” A slight giggle. Giggling seemed out of character for Jim. “I come in. Bend over. Turn around. Drop my drawers–”
“No–”
“Mooned ‘em.” Jim paused. “I laughed so hard I farted. And it was one’a those–”
“Oh no, NO,” Josh laughed.
“Just a little bit, a little tiny bit of shit comes out. Lands on the floor. Girls scream. I’m so embarrassed. I run to the bathroom. Clean up. And then I run back and I wipe it up before my parents can come home and they are just laughing at me like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.”
“Jesus Christ. And you cleaned it up?”
“I had to man, my parents were coming home soon.”
“Oh Christ,” Josh laughed. “Oh my God. That’s…that’s awful…what’s the other story?”
Jim slyly slid back to his seat, back flat against the back of the seat. “I only have one testicle.”
“WHAT?”
“One testicle. Serious. I had a hernia when I was seventeen–”
“WHAT?” Josh was laughing now too.
“One was dead and they had to–”
“Jesus Christ, dude. I-I dunno. I honestly don’t know.”
“Which is it?”
“Oh man…oh man…I…I don’t know.”
“Liar’s poker, man,” Jim grinned.
“Ah, jeez…the…the nut?”
“Oh yeah,” Jim said. “Good job, good job.”
“Jesus,” Josh said. “WOW, that was tough.”
“Your turn.”
“Alright uhm…either I was arrested once for vagrancy when I was in Chicago…”
“Or?”
“Or I have a son.”
“Jesus .... neither one of them seems very likely, uh…” Jim looked to his right, away from Josh. He turned his head back and said “arrested.”
Josh slowly turned and smiled.
3:59 am
Dale sat in the wheelchair. The Hangman had been smart enough to throw Dale’s duffel bag in the ambulance with him. He stewed right now, imagining the Hangman, The British Punks, and even Boo Willie Jones sleeping in a warm motel bed, ready to wake up in a few hours after sleeping the booze off. In a few hours most of them would make the short commute down to Jamestown (wherever that was).
And here he was, sitting in the chair, his foot up, wrapped in gauze. They’d had to cut the boots off to get to his grapefruit-sized ankle. Those were good boots. He’d have to order a new pair now.
The waiting room of the ER was about as depressing as it could be. As far as Dale could tell, Buffalo was a pretty good-sized city. Why there seemed to be no more that three other people in the room on the chairs was anyone’s guess. Most of them looked like they were composed enough that whatever was going on, whomever they were waiting for, they were probably going to be okay. Dale could see the automatic sliding glass doors from his spot. Outside it had that four in the morning darkness to it. They said it was always darkest before the dawn. Dale wasn’t sure that was true, but when you stared out at the world from an isolated and artificial hub of florescent light and all you saw was blackness for hours and hours, it did make you feel depressed. Dale wondered if the sun went out how long it would take for the world to go mad just from seeing that endless darkness outside your window.
Inside the ER the rug needed vacuuming and the furniture looked like it was about ten years old. That wasn’t a bad lifespan, but the aqua upholstery had been pulled, scrunched, torn, and replaced so many times, it seemed, that ten years in an ER seemed like twenty-five in real-life.
The same seemed to be true for the people that worked there.
Dale was pretty sure in reality, he was pretty sure the ratio of cute girls in the profession of nursing probably wasn’t much higher than most other professions, but Jesus Christ did these ladies look worn-out.
Third-degree ankle sprain. That was what they’d said. The cast could come off in three weeks, ideally, and he could wrestle comfortably in the future without any real risk of repeat injury. At the moment he was sitting with his chin in one hand and staring out the doors. In his other hand he held a beat-up copy of a book about the life of Genghis Khan he’d picked up in a used bookstore about a month ago. It was interesting, but not interesting enough to keep reading after sitting in the waiting room for three hours after finally letting him out with the cast. The duffel bag was at his side and in the background, somewhere to his right, a TV was playing a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show on some cable station.
It was a clumsy mistake, and he knew it. At first he’d been angry that he’d be out for the three weeks with the cast due to his own incompetence, but once the doctors and nurses saw what a big deal he was making over such a minor injury and told him to calm down, he did. Without the willpower to stay angry he found it faded away pretty easily.
There was really nothing to be angry about.
“Just put me in a wheelchair and get me to the show,” Dale said, humming The Ramones under his breath, “hurry, hurry, hurry, before I go loco.”
The doors opened and it took Dale a second to put it all together. Jim and Josh were walking in. Smiling, they were looking at each other and not at him. Dale raised his hand and waved the book to get their attention. They came over and Dale caught snippets of their conversation.
“–taking Vaudeville seriously, man. I’m not saying I’m–”
“It’s not a race thing. You don’t have to be black to be offended.”
“It’s a part of our history.”
“Not for me.”
“Even Bing Crosby did blackface.”
“He get a bigger dick too?”
Dale wheeled himself closer. “Hey guys.” He looked up at them as they smiled in front of him. “Glad you finally came.”
Jim and Josh looked at each other.
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Each man pointed.
“He only has one nut.”
“He thought you were retarded.”
Unedited Excerpt from Fable of the Immortals by Megan E. Vaughn, coming in 2013.
Riley came up behind me, the human wavering from the disorienting experience of other worldly doors. We stood in a cave, the stones glittered with flecks of gold. Light caught the screen of the cell phone in Riley’s hand and the keys hanging from his pocket, glimmering across the ceiling, cheap Tinkerbelle-like stage effects which caused him to slump his shoulders.
“This is the world of the fairies. I imagined something…different,” Riley spoke at last, looking around with dissatisfaction.
“This is just an entrance, dork,” I told him, pointing to the far end of the cave. His eyes followed my finger to the ominous darkness which awaited us as guests. “You have to walk to get to the pretty stuff.”
We started down the dirt path, stepping clear of stalagmites. Phil ran in front, his head stayed low to the ground, following the sent of the kidnapped Ali Parker as we entered the levels of Faerie.
Riley raised his hand to his eyes and groaned in protest when we stepped into a brilliant light. The cave opened up into a lush, green forest being sunned by unseen beams. The branches of trees danced without a breeze to move them. Toadstool rings were scattered along the ground, gateways to the human world for Fair Folk to engage in their mischievous games. Animals, ancient cousins of rabbits and foxes, scurried through the branches, startling a cluster of violet pixies who flittered from leaf to leaf. Everything buzzed with magic, pure energy giving the world an inviting glow.
One of the delicate creatures flew up to Riley Parker. She giggled at him, her transparent wings shaking as she did. Her little face and purple skin glowed at him with curiosity. Her hair whispered to her pointed ears and flowed around her like water. Coyly, reminding me of a child feigning innocence, she start to hide her nude form behind a descending leaf.