by Michael Pool
Tony nodded. "That's okay. He'll get his."
I knew instantly what he was talking about.
Remember how I said the NWA was like the mob? Well, one of the common practices throughout the wrestling world was to have veteran guys sort of police the locker rooms. If anyone did anything wrong (like purposely flub a match because they were a big whiny bitch), the vets would take care of it in the ring. They'd really hurt the other guy. As in: "This shit isn't fake, that guy just really got his nose broken."
Really.
Krusher Kompanski was going to get his. April 15.
Me and Tony had fun planning it. We'd have Kompanski go up against Bob Davis. Bob would kick Kompanski in the nuts, then whip out a blackjack and work his head over. The ref would ring for a disqualification, but who cared? After security came to fetch Kompanski's fat ass, they'd take him out in the parking lot and beat even more shit out him. It was a fitting punishment. There were gonna be at least three hundred people in the arena, and hundreds more watching at home. Humble his ass, you know?
The Davis/Kompanski match was the main event of the evening. I was worried about Kompanski getting the upper hand, so I had security and the other wrestlers on alert, just in case. If something went wrong, they'd all go out to the ring.
Anyway, it was late when the match started, maybe nine. The match before Kompanski's ran over because the guy who was supposed to win broke his ankle jumping off the turnbuckle—and he and his opponent had to come up with another, unscripted end on the fly. That was teamwork. Something Kompanski didn't know anything about.
Davis and Kompanski stuck to the script for the first five minutes. Then, when Davis had Kompanski in the corner, he let fly and nailed the sorry dick-breath right in the sack.
Believe it or not, Kompanski didn't cry out, he didn't double over, and he didn't fall down. He just stood up taller, as if to say, Oh, that's how it's gonna be?
Sure enough, he grabbed Bob Davis up by the throat and started squeezing. The ref, in the loop, tried to break it up, but Kompanski shoved him away.
The ref signaled, and the bell rang: Disqualified.
Not that it mattered. Bob Davis was turning blue. Then, with a taunting flourish, Kompanski drove his fist into Davis's stomach once, twice, three times.
"Goddamn it!" I growled. Tony didn't say anything.
Kompanski lifted Bob above his head and threw him out of the ring. He came down on the announcers' table (which didn't break because it hadn't been cut beforehand), and slid off.
I ripped off the headphones and stormed out of the control booth. The locker rooms were just down the hall. The guys were sitting around, talking, smoking, and laughing. When they saw me, red-faced and hissing, they perked up.
"Ring! Now!"
They all nodded, said "Yes, boss," and whatever, and started toward the ring.
Back in the control booth, I sat down, snatched up my headphones, and put them back on. On the screen, Kompanski was ripping the ring apart. The top rope hung limply from the turnbuckle, which was slanted like an ancient tombstone in an even more ancient cemetery. "What the fuck is he doing?"
"He's going fucking nuts," Tony said.
The first wrestlers hit the ring, sliding under the bottom rope. Kompanski's back was turned. The first hit him hard, but then Kompanski turned around and caught him by the neck. Every two seconds, someone else hit the ring. There were like twenty guys. It was crazy.
Even crazier, Kompanski was winning.
Punch, punch, headlock. Bodies were dropping and flying over the top rope left and right. One of my guys had a steel pipe (a real steel pipe, not that foam crap), and he hit Kompanski square in the face with it. The fucker didn't even notice; he just grabbed the guy and flung him into the turnbuckle, knocking another wrestler down in the process.
Another guy hit Kompanski with a pair of brass knuckles, but he wound up with a broken back from hitting the gate separating the ring from the fans dead-on—so a lot of good that did him.
By then, blood was pouring off Kompasnki in rivulets. He choke-slammed one guy, elbowed another behind him in the face, then snatched a baseball bat from a third and hit him so hard, it ended his career right there.
"Security!" I yelled.
Tony was transfixed. "Jesus Christ."
Before you could say "Kill that son of a bitch," the ring area was flooded with guys in yellow shirts. They had batons and Tasers.
They hit the ring as one, but Kompanski was ready. He snatched the first one up, twisted his arm behind his back until he screamed, and then threw him into the rest. They swarmed him like ants on a dead body, but he threw them off like they were nothing. I know like hell I saw him get tazed at least a dozen times, but it didn't faze him. I couldn't believe it.
Of course, the fans were going crazy. It was the best damn thing they ever seen.
On the screen, Kompanski ripped out one of the turnbuckle pikes and swung it at the security guards, hitting one in the head and nearly killing him. They came forward again, but with one swing, Kompanski took them all out. I swear to God, he musta took on fifty guys that night.
But that wasn't the end.
He climbed over the top rope and started back up the entrance ramp.
With a dropping heart, I knew where he was going.
"That crazy son of a bitch," Tony muttered. "What's he doing now?"
"He's coming for us!" I said, standing up.
Tony opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, a loud crash filled the hall. "Jimmy! Tony!" Krusher Kompanski screamed.
Tony's eyes went wide and he struggled to his feet. "Lock the door," he said.
I sprang forward and turned the thumb lock. The door was a piece of shit. It wouldn't hold up long against Krusher Kompanski.
"You made a big mistake tonight!" Kompanski screamed. More crashing. He was tearing down the house as he came.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the big Colt Python I kept in a shoulder ring. Tony's eyes widened. "What are you doing?"
"I'm gonna kill this motherfucker," I said. To my ears, I sounded more scared than anything else.
Tony shook his head.
Kompanski was at the door. One punch, and the thing flew off the hinges, skidding halfway across the room before crashing to the floor. I turned, startled, and the monster himself filled the threshold—big, huffing, and covered in blood. He looked like a bull—a bull that fucking ate people whole and spat out their skeletons.
"Come here, Jimmy!"
I raised the gun. "You asked for it!"
He started toward me, and I fired, the sound of the blast like a cannon in the confined space. Kompanski jerked, but he didn't stop. Hell, he didn't even slow.
"I'm going to kill you!" he screamed.
Tony was behind me now, cowering. I fired again, and again. Kompanski jerked as both bullets hit him in the chest.
I put one his stomach.
That one slowed him. Blood was gushing now. He pushed himself on, like a man trudging through three feet of snow.
I aimed directly at Kompanski's head and fired.
Like a massive Cali redwood, Kompanski swayed, toppled, and crashed to the floor.
He was dead.
With all the controversy surrounding the death of Krusher Kompanski, Tony decided to sell the MWF.
But not to Vince McMahon.
Owing to the destruction and the thirty-five plus assaults (some of them were technically classified as attempted murder), the shooting was declared to have been done in self-defense and I was cleared of any wrongdoing. A famous doctor in L.A. claimed that Kompanski most likely lapsed into a sort of rage-fueled blackout, rendering him unable to control himself and granting him superhuman strength. I don't know if that's what happened or not, and I really don't care. That motherfucker deserved it either way.
Hall of Fame my ass.
The Calumet
by Amanda Marbais
Liz was parked in an industrial corridor of Gary watching
stray dogs dig in the dirt of an abandoned lot. The paper factory chugged a cloud of sulfides enveloping the houses in the scent of wet wool and cabbage. Liz smoked out of her cracked window despite frozen-white fingers and blue nail beds, an idiot for freezing, waiting, and for being conspicuous. She texted her boyfriend—Get up douche, or we’re done. She honked. No Rich. She was beginning to wonder if their static was becoming radio silence.
She reached for another cigarette and felt around in her half-zipped duffle bag. There was the reassurance of the thick envelope of cash from the sale of her Toyota. Her mom had padded that payout for sure, because she was a better person than Liz. All her cash in the world, and it was starting to make her paranoid. She slammed on the horn again. A dog barked. Rich’s battered front door didn’t open.
Of course, Rich was hung over from the Low Down last night and gun-shy about what they had decided to do to Janet. Honestly, Liz was scared too. But, they needed to move on this or spend another year in Gary.
She pressed the horn for a full three seconds. Nothing. A cruiser turned the corner, creeping past the factory gate. There were always police in this neighborhood and honking only brought them closer, the equivalent of shark-chum. They had to investigate everything. Two forms of job security in this town: cops, and crime scene cleanup. The cop passed Liz and looked in the car, a dude with a big mustache and mutton chops creeping over his cheeks like an illness. She sent Rich the text, Walk, asshole, and hit the gas before Serpico could turn around.
Rich had been so excited about their plan to cheat Janet, it surprised Liz he was screwing it up. A walking disaster, Janet would sit at the dingy Low Down and openly admit her toddler slept unsupervised a block away. Like every stripper, she was ridiculously skinny, bony limbs like a praying mantis. Whenever she did bumps without going to the bathroom, Ronnie, the owner, would tell her, "No drama." Despite having slept with Janet, Ronnie gave her no slack either. A lot of people in Gary wished the worst on Janet.
"Janet, I wish half your bullshit was true," Rich had said after his fifth shot of Red Stag. He and Janet had gone to high school together. Of course, that’s not why he believed her. Rich was always hopeful a scam would pay out. He sat forward on the red vinyl bench listening, his eyelids licking back over ghost-like orbs. He worked his mouth, wanting Janet’s alleged stash to be real with the same anxiety he displayed at any difficult situation—anxiety floating above him like a Tesla sphere.
It amazed Liz that Janet had been her first friend since leaving New York, and they once spent every night at the Low Down getting wasted. It was the kind of bar where a country band performed behind a cage of chicken wire. The walls were decorated with beer signs, and on weekdays, Credence blared like it was 1975. Occasionally there was an Eminem track. Liz wasn’t proud of using Janet to unload as she verbalized the worst of her past. Janet was the kind of girl who took it and was too insecure to say no.
In turn, Janet drilled out tales about her movie "star" granddad, Dick Jarmen, who was an extra on Bonanza for three seasons, gave up and returned home to collect Medicaid. She bullshitted with anyone in earshot. People grew weary of it and moved tables. Ronnie pretended he didn’t know her. But, everyone around here had a brush-with-fame story.
Last night, Rich and his friend Derek listened to Janet’s bullshit about a mountain of meth worth seventy-five thousand, enough to get anyone out of Gary. Derek was one of those friends Liz hung out with, the one friend left over from Rich’s "less than aboveboard" days. Together, Rich and Derek had tried so many marginal activities—a little bit of insurance fraud, a car scam he didn’t really explain, and skimming credit cards at Gas Depot.
Lately, Derek worked at one of the clean-up companies, Clean City!, and had done a meth job until 6am. A fucking bear trap had been hidden under some blankets. A crew member walked right into it. "Sliced to the ankle bone," Derek had said. They got off early. He’d been resting his head on the back of the booth, motionless for a half-hour like the taxidermied elk above him. But when Janet said three pounds, Derek sat up as if someone were already throwing free money through the bar. “We could sell it for you,” he said.
"I dunno. It’s going to be shit anyway," said Rich. But he was already getting that vulnerable-yet-crazy look where money was concerned. When he and Derek talked money, they grew desperate, words gathering in a power-source with the potential to light a city, creating their own grid. They could pull it from nowhere.
"It’s good stuff," said Janet.
"Why would a guy with that much product hang out with you, anyway?" said Rich.
Janet was leaned back so that her hair was tinged blue by the flickering neon Milwaukee’s Best sign inches above her. "He just likes what I give him, man," she said.
"Janet, you pick the worst guys. You can’t see shit in the opposite sex. I told you that in high school," said Rich.
"I’m not really into him. I’m waiting around to take his shit, because he hit my kid and all."
"Rich, none of this is true," said Liz.
"I’ve known Janet a long time," said Rich. "She doesn’t lie when it counts."
"That’s exactly when she lies," said Liz.
Liz’s real hate for Janet could be summed up in one incident. Last summer, Janet left her three-year-old, Destiny, in a car for five hours, windows rolled up, ninety-degree heat. The kid’s lips were a dry, puckered crater in her face. And even in the hospital, she wouldn’t drink for hours. They hooked an IV to the kid, who was one giant blister in the white hospital sheets.
"I’m no skank, like you, Liz," said Janet. "I didn’t have no three-way with these dudes. That’s why I can’t be friends with a person like you. Sorry."
Liz rolled her eyes. "Janet. Shut up."
Janet, eyes still on Liz, opened her purse slightly and aimed it toward the table revealing a Ziploc of meth—800 labs shut down, and the stuff still floated around in the coffee shops, the rest stops of Gary.
Rich had barely let his eyes flit down, but he was looking. "See babe? I told you she didn’t lie about important stuff."
"I just can’t find anyone to buy it," said Janet.
"I know people," said Derek before he started laughing, a deep rumble like the sound of a freight truck passing. But that’s when Ronnie had turned up the music and gave them the get-the-fuck-out look. Rich and Derek had grown jumpy.
Talking a mile a minute, they made an arrangement for the consignment situation—a small amount of cash up front, courtesy of Liz, and a quarter of the proceeds down the line. They’d meet at Victor’s Tap the next night, and make a trade. They were gulping the last of their beers when Ronnie kicked them out.
By the time she hit the highway towards Victor’s Tap, Liz was pissed as hell at Rich for sleeping away his hangover. She would have to stall Janet while Rich dragged his ass out of bed. So much for them coordinating shit. She reached over to the passenger’s seat and opened her duffle again to recheck it. She had clothes, shampoo, weed, a toothbrush, and Fight Club, the last book she’d read for college, back when she was still an Environmental Studies major, floating to class, buffeted safely on a river of students. She ran out of money, and she didn’t want a hundred grand in debt. Something more immediate was needed. Before driving to Rich’s, she’d spent the morning packing at her one-room rental while her landlady downstairs, a single woman named Ms. Turley, cranked a Lifetime TV movie, feeding two Retrievers Cheetos and shouting commands.
Rich had said, "Once we get the money, let’s crash at your mom’s in Chicago." But, when they got to Chicago, she wouldn’t be stopping home. She’d see her mother when things improved. To witness the worry Rich would inspire in her mother would be too much.
Liz felt burned out from the last year. Whatever she had done, she didn’t want to get caught or fucked over. She pulled her grandma’s hand-me-down Buick into a Citgo and parked under the glow of an orange light. Everything from the stacked tires to the white smoke pluming from the smokestacks drove her nuts. She put her head
on the steering wheel, in dread over her shit decisions.
When she lifted her head, a guy pumping gas was staring. His kid in the backseat looked up from his iPad and stared too. Hands fluttering, she opened the envelope, fifteen thousand deep—a fat haul. She suspected the extra money her mom threw in was from the sale of Grandma’s house. She wondered again how her mother could be so much better than her.
Some dude walked past on his way to the highway and turned toward the car. "Keep walking," said Liz. She would have run him over for half this money. He kept walking.
What to do with the money? Rich hadn’t been right since he lost his dad. Rich and his dad had been on a hundred hunting trips, Indiana’s pastime. Liz thought the 12-gauge in the face was intentional. She’d never tell Rich that, since he found his dad still harnessed to the tree stand. In a way she wasn’t good for Rich, since she couldn’t reach in and find any strength, any sympathy. If he mentioned the word Dad, she was immediately back in her own home.
She pulled two thousand—a little insurance—from the envelope, rolled it in a pair of underwear, and wedged it in the metal supports under the seat. Rich complained of her glibness and insincerity over his dad’s death once he began a cocktail of Olanzapine and Depakote, which gave him a brief calm. She decided to go back to Chicago. But when she was leaving, he freaked out. Folded like a paper-doll in their kitchen, split his lip from the fall. She held his face between her hands, watched his chest rise and fall, blue eyes focusing and receding. He went from sadistic and strong to being reminiscent of a tagged deer, his sharp features and pale brown hair, blood trickling over one blank eye. She took care of him for days, kept him from sleeping in his car when paranoia drove him to find a safe space.
For someone living in a city where the drinking water was suspect and the air quality was a breath of cancer, he was incredibly optimistic. He was just waiting for this Janet thing, or something like it. Of course it was one last trip "below board," as he put it. He’d gone off the meds a month before. Running and lifting weights had become his answer for everything. Even though he was drunk last night, he’d still jogged three miles, had come home shouting about meth labs and dead animals in the abandoned lot.