This is Not the End of the World

This is not an existential crisis. Disregard the fact that I spent the last ten minutes puking my guts out in a gas station bathroom, my only company the exposed serpentine fluorescent light bulb hanging above me, coiled. Sitting in silent judgment. Pay no attention to the writing on the wall, or more accurately the broken mirror where I scribbled something vaguely resembling the Yellow Sign in a fit of rage. If I was going mad, the whole world could too for all I care.

The .38 in my waistband is not a weapon, but a last resort. Nevertheless, it's inordinately happy to see the pimple-faced kid at the register who seems to be lost in his own little world until I approach the counter and lay a box of Tic-Tacs atop it, crooked half-smile on my face.

"I'm so sorry about this, but this is all I have," I say, flashing a hundred dollar bill. It's almost too easy to recede into this persona: the shrinking violet. The timid, anxious girl with terrible posture staring upwards, right through the dutiful employee at nothing in particular. Maybe my eyes are fixed on the door behind him, squinting to make out the worn, faded writing on it, "This is not an exit" perhaps? Or am I looking at the ceiling, staring blankly upwards while pondering the faint taste of vomit on my tongue. He can only guess what it is that's caught my attention, because all it takes is one quick glance downwards at him confirms my suspicions.

See, I've already cast the line. Set the trap. Whatever terminology you care to use.

The smile on his face, warm and courteous and so very naive lets me know that he's caught. He just doesn't know it yet. He says something that I don't bother listening to as he walks over to the register to make change.

Thing is, the bill never left my hand, except to return to my pocket that is.

Hook, line, sinker.

This is the thrilling part. Reeling the poor schmuck in. He thinks we're equals; just two people making idle small-talk while he counts the exuberant amount of change he'll be handing back to me, completely oblivious to the way I'm eyeing him. Like a predator stalking their prey. Teeth ready to sink into his doughy flesh, venom ready to shoot through his veins, to let him rot from the inside out. Oh, the things he doesn't know.

My blade's primed and ready to plunge right into his heart. Jaime Lannister sends his fucking regards.

He finally finishes counting and looks at me.

With the simple gesturing of brushing his hand with mine, the dagger's gone and pierced his skin, pinned him to the counter with three simple words.

"I already paid."

I suppress the urge to smile like an idiot at the absolutely flabbergasted expression on the kid's face. He stutters and stammers, choking on the words he's trying to force out of his mouth. I know exactly what he's trying to say, what he's so pathetically attempting to convey. The truth. I'm lying. I know this and he knows this and the camera that's no doubt watching this entire exchange knows this and I feel compelled to wave at it on my way out, to taunt whoever watches it. Catch me if you can.

"No you didn't," he finally manages to utter, spitting the words at me like they were poison. Sorry kid, the truth isn't the venom swimming around in your veins, spreading throughout your body, infecting you so thoroughly; this is.

"Are you calling me a liar?"

My voice cracks and my bottom lip quivers, My eyelids flutter and I mimic rubbing my eyes long enough to jab my fingers into my tear ducts to get some waterworks going. As the mark looks on, even more taken aback than before, I take a deep breath and sigh, muttering "keep it together" in a frantic whisper loud enough for him to hear.

"No no no. I don't think you lied. I just uh, think you forgot…"

"I paid, I swear I did," I shoot back before he can even breathe.

"You didn't…"

I slam my fist on the table, a single tear running down my cheek. "If you're going to scam me like this, I want to speak to a manager."

Once more he can't even bring himself to finish his sentence without it devolving into a chorus of grunts and stammering, a glorious refrain of ums and uhs and wells… until his words come out; the waterlogged corpse of a concession, drowned in the sea of anxious stalling: "No no, you're right. I must've forgotten. Sorry."

I sniffle, wiping the tear away while grabbing the money.

"You have a good day," I whisper before turning towards the door.

I can't help it. I smile for the camera with my ill-gotten gains in hand.

Goodbye forever, Oskaloosa. I'll probably never forget you.

After all, the best heroes have humble origins.


"Oskaloosa to Davenport. Rest for the night. Davenport to Chicago. Be reborn under the lights of the War(e)house. Crack the sky. Ascend to heights previously thought unimaginable. Touch the God who plagues my dreams with visions of damnation and cryptic pleas for help. Oh, help me." That had been Erin's mantra throughout the drive, whispered under her breath repeatedly, each time a little more frantic. Each time a little more desperate. Her fingers trembled, wrapped around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled vice grip.

Though there wasn't exactly a shortage of drivers heading the same direction as her, she couldn't help but feel an inescapable feeling of loneliness throughout the drive as her eyes were drawn away from the road, focusing instead on the seemingly endless waves of farmland. Portions of once fertile fields charred black, never to grow anything again. Dilapidated sheds and abandoned homesteads and front yards teeming with weeds. A cross-shaped memorial in a cornfield, in remembrance of an eight-year-old boy stabbed twenty-three times during the phenomenon known only as "1he wav3". At the sight of the thing, peeling white paint and all, she struggled to choke down the bile building up in the back of her throat and returned her eyes to the road, which did little to calm her racing mind.

"There's something broken inside of me," she whispered to a trucker she'd caught a passing glimpse of. She'd been in the middle of reciting that maddening phrase when he caught her eye, and when he vanished from her sight she went right back to what she was saying, not missing a beat. Those words lingered in her head as she drove.

There's something broken inside of me.

By the time she reached Davenport, the sun had tucked itself away. The night sky was a sickly shade of green, oppressive and awful and oh so radiant. It seemed to shine just for the city, as if trying to wash away the ever-present damage of "1he wav3".

After all, every news report afterwards used the same quotable: Davenport had been "kissed by fire," though she didn't know quite what that meant until she made it into the city. The once vibrant, lively storefronts of the East Village were charred ruins, twisted black wood and bent metal and shards of glass. Debris swept onto the sidewalks and into alleys flowed over the curb, still littering the street. The large, historic homes in McClellan Heights were ransacked and left to rot, front doors wide open or ripped off their hinges completely. The city's west side, well, was still the west side.

She felt the sky's cold glow as she stepped out of her car and stumbled on unsteady footing across the brick road, towards a small duplex. Moths flocked to the light by the front door, wings flapping with reckless abandon as Erin made her way to the door and knocked. After a few moments of stillness, where not even the moths dared to make a move, the door slowly swung open and a round, fat face poked out from behind it with wide eyes and and thick lips formed into a scowl.

"What the fuck brought you here?"

Erin hesitated a moment as she finished reciting her mantra one last time. "God, actually."





I've seen the light. I know, that's a statement that's been done to death, uttered so many times that it's almost lost its meaning so please, let me elaborate. Are you familiar with the Allegory of the Cave? This isn't rhetorical, I'm asking you. Both of you. The Star Child and The Madman. C'mon, answer me. Oh, never mind.

Y'see, the Allegory of the Cave is precisely your current situation. Picture this for a second, if you will: A group of people, a congregation if you will, are chained to a wall of a cave for all of their lives. They know nothing else but the wall they're forced to face. On the wall are shadows projected on the wall from things passing by a fire behind them. The shadows are all they see, all they know. The shadows are their reality. Now, let's say for sake of example that you took one of the masses of people who know only the shadows and unchained them. Forced them to look at the fire; the source of the shadows, the architect of their REALity. What do you think they'd do? Would they accept it?

No, the light would blind them. The truth of the matter would literally be too much for them to bear and they'd turn and face the wall once more, despite the fact that they're no longer bound. No longer chained. They'd know only the shadows, only the vague images of life they've been fed throughout their whole existence.

So, you'd think it's hopeless. That if you free one person, let them see what their reality really is, and they still bind themselves to the lies, the falsehoods, the fabrications of their captive lives, that there is no way to help those chained to the wall. That they're hopeless.

How horribly cynical.

See, there is a way to save them from their predicaments. To save them from themselves. It's simple, really. Free them from the chains that bind them, and force them from the cave, into the light of the sun. Sooner or later, their eyes will adjust to the light and they'd see reality for what it really is. Not the reflections on the wall. Not the cave. The whole world outside of their limited understanding.

Soon, they'd accept the brave new world.

Now, you might ask what all of this means. Remember what I said before: I've seen the light. Broken free of the chains that bound me, saw the face of God in my own fire, and did not turn back. The whispering in my dreams, ice-cold bony fingers crawling down my spine pulled me from my own cave, our own cave. I have seen the light of God, and he has tasked me with plunging back into the cave.

Throwing myself into the void once more. Twice more. Thrice more. However many more times as are necessary to pull you all from the cave and into the light. Because, get this: the cave isn't safe anymore. The walls are closing in. The ceiling is falling, heavy boulders raining from the sky, crushing those still trapped inside.

Let me help you.

I know, it sounds crazy. Absolutely insane. It's easy to label me a false prophet, a liar, deceiver; any of those pretty little slurs.

Come on, Alex. Come on, Bonnie. Let me save you.

Break free of your chains.

Tell me, Alex: how do you like being the -- oh what was it again? -- "The Archduke of Mass Confusion"? Tell me, what does that mean? You weaponize your own mental instability, wear it like a badge of honor because it makes preparing for you a moot point? After all, how can you prepare for a mental case with no regard for himself or others?

Maybe it's a ruse. You want us to think you're a deranged lunatic. You want us to fear that side of you, the violent, brutal side. You want to play mind games without doing any work, letting us slip into a fit of paranoia and insecurity over absolutely nothing at all. Because, after all, our own minds are the architects of all our fears. All our insecurities. We destroy ourselves and convince ourselves that it's the work of others.

In that sense, you're brilliant.

The problem is, I'm of clear mind. I'm not bound by those thoughts and fears of self-doubts and insecurities. My God is the only thing on my mind. My God will be the only thing on my mind when we meet in the ring. Your games are just that -- games. Futile, finite games whose control only exists if someone lets them exist.

I see you, Alex. Or, more accurately: I see right through you.

Please, let me save you.

You too, Star Child. Clone of legends, Daughter of Time, and any other moniker I or others think to attribute to you. What do you dream of? Do you dream? I do, even when I forget to sleep. They aren't pleasant. In my dreams, the days before I was freed from the cave I saw the apocalypse. The end of the world. Hellfire raining from the sky, man turning on itself, forces of darkness stamping babes into the dust… I'm rambling.

There's a point to this, though. There's an idea of the type of person I am. Some conclusion that I'm at a distinct disadvantage, that I should be intimidated to be standing across from two veterans in my professional wrestling debut: but considering the things I see when I close my eyes, the gasping whispers I hear in my waking hours, it's hard to look on the Star Child, on the Madman and feel the same numb, tingling sensation than the prophecies that could come true should I turn and run.

My God never sleeps. He says he'll never die. But he's seen you, Star Child. He watched you come into existence and he's watched you draw your last breath. After all, to a God, everything has and hasn't happened yet.

Do your worst, the both of you.

I won't fall.






To say my dear brother wasn't exactly thrilled to see me turn up at his front door unannounced would be an understatement. In actuality, the expression on his face was somewhere between bewilderment and frustration. The only feelings my brother has for me are those of bitter resentment, how could he not? Only in a family of thieves and liars would the straight-laced child: the one with the fancy college degree in some field I had no idea in, the one who'd have a family of his own, who'd manage to make it out of that forsaken town in central Iowa, would be the black sheep. The forgotten one. He'd burned his bridges with us when no one on his side of the family could be bothered to show up at his wedding. Not that I blame him, though I would've expected him to move, at the very least. This was a shot in the dark as is. Of course, he never inherited that mentality. No, he thought all he had to do was yell and scream into his phone, tell me and assuredly everyone else he had the displeasure of sharing a last name with that our absences were the last straw, and that would be it.

No. Sorry about that. Not really.

"You gonna let me in?" I ask, looking away from his judging face, examining my nails. He clicks his tongue and sighs, and as I shoot my eyes back up to meet his I see his brow furrow and watch for a second as he savors the span of relative silence before firing a question of his own right back at me:

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I'm your sister and despite it all you still love me?"

Yeah, didn't expect that line to work. He pulls his head back into the black abyss behind the door and goes to close it, but I stick my hand out to stop him momentarily.

"What? You think you can waltz right back into my life like nothing happened? You found Jesus or whatever and now everything's good? It doesn't fuckin' work like that."

This is a waste. I pull my hand away and backpedal towards the steps leading back to the street.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. We aren't family, Erin. Never have been."

I spit at the ground and turn around, groping for the handrail.

"You're welcome, by the way. I don't think your wife would've appreciated getting to know your side of the family."

"Shut the fuck up."

The door slams shut behind me as I embrace the sapphire night and stumble towards my car. He'll come around when he hears about the shit I'll no doubt get myself into. He wants to act haughty, all holier-than-thou but at the core, he's just like the rest of us. When my name's in lights, he'll want something and then we'll be a family again.

This was the olive branch I expected him to swat away.  The permanent reminder that I made the first attempt to reconcile when he inevitably decides it in his best interest to down the road.  

I expected this from him tonight.

Next time we meet, I'll get to return the favor.

I'm waiting eagerly for that day.

Good night, Mark.

Goodbye forever.

I definitely won't be missing you.