Post by Crow McMorris on May 22, 2016 14:56:50 GMT -6
Behind every shining edifice of hope, there's a bastard that makes it happen.
- Unnamed Future Historian.
THE RE:EDIT
History turns left and right, sculpting our reality as it pleases. In one blink of an eye, there exists a thousand possibilities in a billion universes. Two weeks ago, a road ended as another began. A new journey broke loose from the nexus of creation, gathering speed as it shook off it's shackles, outwards towards the harbour of the present day. And as it did so, lives were altered and changed within it's wake. My life, for better or worse, is now not what it was.
My name is Corey McMorris, or “Crow” McMorris is I'm more commonly known. I'm the only son of a single parent named, Sarah McCready, a former lead guitarist for a series of self-destructive metal bands whose names you probably only have a passing remembrance of. I'm the son of a strong, independent woman, who raised me on the road as she carved out the wildest of careers.
Looking back, my young life was a hedonistic wonderland of parties, drugs and adventure. I had it all. But eventually, my Mother saw the damage she was doing to her son's childhood. I was missing out on a more grounded reality; so Misses McCready put down her axe and decided to curtail her ways by settling down in her parents old home in Manhattan, New York. Soon after I was enrolled in the local high school, a troubled teen finding that anchor that he so desperately needed, cheered on by his new friends as I excelled in my father's side of the family business: Wrestling.
Becoming a celebrated Music Teacher at Forest Hills Gardens, Queens; Mother imprisoned her insane past, she buried it deep and left it behind. This was an all-new Sarah McCready now, one that cycled to school and ran the local W.I. meetings, the perfect soccer-mom, the perfect teacher. Everything now neat and in place, except for one inescapable element that will never depart, the matter of my father.
When asked, she will only impart certain facts: that my father named me, “Crow”, and that he was “a man you should fear with every fibre of your being”. The two of them were marooned after the capsizing of the private cruise ship she was working on at the time; spending weeks, “alone and in danger” on a south seas island. Mother recalls they were on the run for their lives, and that it was during these desperate weeks that she saw a side to my father that made him “more than a man, but less human with each passing day.”
Who is my father? Bad news to most. A hero to some. And this Sunday? My opponent. His name is Zombie McMorris; a wanderer cursed with a genome that allows him to exist outside the brittle fabric of mortality. “ZMAC” cannot die; a curse/gift activated by the intervention of rituals based upon voodoo folklore. McMorris is hundreds of years old, and that expanse of time has distanced him from feeling an emotional connection to anything or anyone. “Pops” is now beyond the restraints and dilemmas of morality, he simply, “is”, and it's this unique perspective that makes him so very dangerous.
And alone.
Which is why, after I fell thirty feet to my death battling the psychotic Wade Moor, that ZMAC did what most thought was unthinkable. He intervened. My Father collaborated with my old friend and former rival, Kaz Mazy to bring me back to life; activating the genome within me, a miracle I had inherited from my father that created another immortal man: granting me that precious gift of vengeance upon my own murderer, a former hero and self styled rogue President of the glorious communist nation of Poon Guinea, the Godfaddah of Professional Wrestling himself, Bobby Hercules Cairo.
By the way, if you think all this sounds ridiculous, check out the sign above the door. Yeah, that one. The one marked “professional wrestling”. Read it? Good. Still think this is all crazy? Open your window and check out the world, friend. Insane is the new normal. Has been for a long ass while.
Months passed before I was ready to face Cairo, but when the time came? Both father and son confronted my killer. Two against a legend driven insane by fears of failure and regret. Bobby Cairo, man who paid for his crimes inside the heart of his island's own violent, active Volcano. A man who was seemingly burned alive in the event.
After years of searching for my father on the road, travelling from wrestling promotion to wrestling promotion, I had finally found him. I was a McMorris now; in both name and physiology. Two undead Dank Step Cowboys, tearing apart all comers with no fear of death to blunt our ambition. Managed by “The Shape” Buddy Roman, a physically imposing man who's greatest weapon is his conceiving mind and devious heart.
Word to the wise, when you see us? You should probably run. That's always the safest solution. If you stick around, though? Know this. I'm the good one. Buddy's the bad. As for ugly? Take your pick. But don't make it known. Keep that shit to yourself. It's real easy for us to make that option: you. And for a very long fucking time.
We're the Dank Step Cowboys, we're the name on those tee's and posters that sell out in minutes and double in price on ebay. The buzz that grips a Vince Russo at night during those small, self reflective hours when it's just him and a microphone, bro. We're the main attraction. The entertainers that remind this business of it's purpose. We're the stars that have our sights set upon the domination of our new home. Our new turf. The United Championship Infinite. The rebirth of our craft. The fulcrum of our future. All that good shit. You see, we're uncut hope man, a needle that injects a mainline of pride and hope back into a fucked up world that has a hard time looking at itself in the mirror these days. We do all that, and we do it well. Better than anyone. Better than Kyle fucking Kemp. And absolutely better than that ignorant pleb, Dustin Beaver.
Yet thought it all, thinking back, it was just one night. One beach. One decision that changed everything. In another Universe, all this could've been very different. But that choice burned in the fires of subatomic heat death; dissipating into nothing as a new reality formed, and grew, and germinated. Cell's splitting and doubling, knitting together planets and solar systems. Creating new life. New hopes and aspirations. New dangers. As out of the black, a tide of clear blue surf crashes across a length of beach on another, better reality; during a moment of violent, desperate history.
THE RE:BIRTH
1993
Remnants of life wash upon the shoreline of an uncharted Micronesian Island; a mid morning sun gazing down upon fragments, fractions of departed, misplaced lives as the tide ensnares a huge, brick sized cell phone, the antiquated mechanism rendered mute by the merciless hooks of salt water that maroon it here. A pair of new balance sneakers follow, laces knotted together by careful hands that will never know their fate. A leather suitcase, it's latches snapped open, a selection of cheap porn scattered across the sand like the guts of a dishonest man. A secret forever kept from a drowned wife, whose eyes are fused shut with the onset of rigor mortis.
Now the feet, one booted with a lace-less Doc Martin, the other simply naked; but both dripping wet; soaked to the skin by the ravages of the deep. Yet undaunted these feet walk, out from the clear blue ocean and onto the baking hot sand. They belong to a man dressed in rags, jeans and a green and black Hawaiian print shirt, a raggedy man, who cannot be stopped by the cruelty of chance. Long blonde/black hair falls over the man's face as he drags, with a casual hand behind him, something heavy ashore. A half corpse that strangely still harbours life.
This almost corpse? This is my mother.
Her shoulder length blonde hair is a lie, roots reveal a patch of black. Her blue eyes are tightly shut, rolled back almost all the way to the rear of her skull. Her face is turning blue, losing it's warmth as her body begins to shut down. Taking me with her. A courageous woman, who held onto life as long as she could. For herself, for her unborn son. She was a fighter under the worst of circumstances. About to experience the worst kind of death.
They say that drowning is not a peaceful end, your entire body fights on instinct, gasping, screaming for that next intake of air that your nervous system always expects to materialise. When it doesn't? Confusion, panic. Unlike burning you don't succumb quickly to the effects, you don't lose consciousness rapidly to smoke inhalation and simply drift away. With drowning you're awake until the fear shuts everything down. Each second an eternity as you experience your body losing the fight, limbs numbing, lungs dying. While your mind is on fire, all too aware of what's happening. No course of action other than to dream of a better world. Of a paradise, as yet unknown.
The raggedy man placed his left hand upon Mother's closed eyelids, opening them, searching for a spark of consciousness that would indicate life. Her maids uniform had lost it's traditional white livery, transformed now simply into a long black dress, a stark, deathly countenance to the vibrant sand that surrounded her. Maybe this is why I have never liked Dune. The desert means danger to me. I fucking hate the beach, the sound of the ocean. All are odd distractions that now have an anchor to a place and time.
As a final courtesy, the raggedy man placed his hand upon the woman's pregnant belly and wished his unborn bastard a safe journey home. It was an action undertaken more on instinct than by design, an echo of humanity as ZMAC began to stand, turning his back on a woman whose name he could barely remember.
“In the end, all of this would fade”, thought the raggedy man, years turning the gears of history, building new antidotes to distract and entertain. That's the life of an immortal man, a shade of a life, always in motion. Which was an odd thought, in hindsight, because motion would be what froze him to the spot.
Her belly, twitched.
Her eyes, fluttered.
I kicked out. We kicked out. It's not an unusual occurrence, anyone who's tried to pin me in the squared circle knows this. I learned my craft early though it would seem; because on that beach; I wasn't going to give in. Mother and son, nether wiling to give up. We fought, and in one slender corridor of fate, we caught the attention of our saviour, my father. Her lover. Zombie McMorris.
ZMAC reaction to this? Well, he sort of...shrugged. He thought about it. Considered his options. If they live? They'll need feeding. Constant care. That means foraging for food, instead of sunbathing. And there was that porn. His days didn't really need the company, I mean, it was really good porn. Not that a Dustin Beaver would ever know what I'm talking about, that child still has virgin tattooed across his face. Right now, Dustin's more of a baby than I am in this story, and I haven't even been born yet. Which brings me back to:
My mother. Her mouth spluttered.
A fountain of water regurgitated up from her desperate lungs that announced our first resurrection back into the living world. “Dah fuck!” exclaimed ZMAC, sorrow weighed heavy on his brow, he really liked Razzle: all that British girl next door poon. This turn of events was most distracting. But the problem was seemingly not going to dissipate anytime soon as a weak arm raised and reached out for the man that would be my father.
Sarah McCready: Help...us...
ZMAC observed the action. A spark of humanity betraying his better, more callous self. I honestly believe that if Mother had said, “me”, instead of “us”, we'd both probably be dead by now. The two of us still on that beach, two corpses whose fate hinged on one, two letter word. A word that echoed back into the miasma of ZMAC's past, stinging his mind with a buzzing tragedy that dragged his cumbersome humanity back to the surface, as the hot, mid-morning sun blinded the Zombie with a painful reliving of history. Of a family that died on his watch. Of a sea of corpses all around. A loss that refused to die as he refused to.
ZMAC: Gawddamnmuddahfukkerupdahdufffuckkinballanchain....
Mom recalled this emotional exchange as “You've started your contractions, I'll start a fire and heat up some water”, but knowing my pops? It's more than likely the above.
It's right here, at this juncture, that reality took a left turn. Like a wild mustang galloping off the reservation; heading towards disaster with it's tail up. Running blind. One life saved, one future altered, a stone skipping across the water, causing a ripple that alters and twists the future. A flashpoint that ignites others, gathering pace until twenty three years pass. A Mexican epicentre acts as the tipping point, the final catalyst that shatters everything.
Later that day, the incident makes landfall across the Continental United States, it's the 13th day of May. A day of infamy. A catastrophe the world would later christen as:
1HE WAV3
THE NEAR FUTURE
The first thing I hear that morning are the sirens, police cruisers hurtling out of a heat mist; cutting a sway for a motorcade of Ambulances and Fire Trucks that follow. Nothing special for a mid morning alarm bell, truth be told. Just a typical day in Los Angeles as the temperature rises across the city. My stinging, dry eyes begin their ritual of blinking open; taking in the less than impressive sights of my motel room, a cheap renting that hugs the edges of the strip like an elderly shadow.
“Evi. Whats that noise?!”
This square hovel I call home is just another rundown shithole past it's prime, although the place did have noble edges of fifties art deco elegance about it, if you cared to ignore the cockroaches that roamed about the place with arrogant impunity; snacking on my three day old pizza from the cardboard box on the floor like they fucking brought it.
“Evi! There's a starwacker nearby! Get the gun!”
Yeah, you know you're close to rock bottom when Randy Quaid is your neighbour. This was what my reality had descended into over the past twelve months, my world was now a low rent aesthetic of stench and decay. I was a McMorris now, a dead man living beneath the radar; out of the collective mind's eye so that those I cared about stayed alive. As much as they protested back in Poon Guinea, I knew Kaz and his family deserved a better life without me in it. A life without the danger I bring. Same for my Mother, who I hadn't seen in six long months.
“BANG!”
“...oh fuck. Evi?”
Yeah, best not knock for milk after all. Stick to the shadows. Out there was that shadow government, that Cabal of pharmaceutical companies that had hunted those dayum McMorris boys all the way across America and into Mexico . The Owls, they where still out there, waiting. Listening for a pin to drop on the radar so they could pounce on those erstwhile Poondock Kings and dissect my ass. Searching relentlessly for the secret to my immortality. That's why I decided to followed the teachings of my father. Be the guy no-one wants to look square in the face. Wear poverty like a shield. Live life like a rotting troll under a bridge and become invisible. That was the plan as we parted ways and I wished my father good luck after the wars, and so far? The plan was working.
Money however was tight. The Federation Wars meant that I was a soldier without a battlefield. Even the underground fight scene was dead; brought to it's knees by a whole slew of Elliot Ness's out to make a name for themselves by killing off the combat sports business. That “Anti-amateur Combat and Entertainment Sports Bill”, was a licence to incriminate my way of life. A free reign to turn me into a traitor to my own country. Vilified and ostracised under a new sun of red state paranoia as Grandfather's screams rang out over the dying light of my perfect, little wrestling world. “They're doing it again, son! They're doing it again! We have to stop these cocksuckers! I won't wear their fucking yellow star!”
Buddy would never be a hero, but I was kinda proud of him that day. Someone needed to scream, since everyone else had a black sack tied over their head as their beaten bodies where thrown into the back of a waiting van. An Orwellian boot, crushing our freedom. Seemingly forever.
The months that followed saw it all disintegrate. No more did huge multinational corporations broadcast PPV's across the globe, selling their unique brand of hyper-violence to fifty plus countries at a time. Those glory days where dead. Deader than as I was. My business was water boarded. Tortured with white noise. Branded terrorists. Even Donald Mosley was pulling the company line now, and that I never expected from him. It seemed like the whole damn fucking world had just turned on it's head; although, none of us knew just by how much; not until the 13th was done.
“Evi? Fuckkkkkk!”
I stood up from my bed and checked my leather wallet as I sauntered to the exit, I had about thirty bucks to my name in assorted change. Money was indeed tight, but it wasn't a necessity. For me, being on the run had become second nature. After all, I had immortality on my side. I didn't even need to eat or sleep any more, all was a luxury, secondary and unimportant. Meaningless if it meant exposure. I could hide, live under a rock if I had to. Learn from those cockroaches eating my stale pizza that never seemed to pay the damn rent.
I wasn't ready for the key's to a dumpster, though. Not yet, but close. My clothes carried the stink of three months straight use. I was an undead wreck. By one in the P.M. That midday heat really shined a light on my unwashed “condition”. As I shambled into Meltdown comics, smiling with yellowed teeth, the stench from my grime core attire had lit up the room like a Roman Reigns candle; my long, thick black hair was sculpted tight to my scalp by a thick layer of rancid grease as I skimmed though the week's meagre releases, leaving behind fingerprints on pages few would care to examine. Nothing impressive on the shelves to capture my imagination this time. But then, I was just wasting the hours until the sun set so I could hit the strip joints and make some cash, dealing out soup bowls to undesirables who where lookin' to pull off a River Phoenix down by the viper room. Crack some heads, drink some suds. Do coke. That was the plan. But those sirens?
They grew louder. Two sets, one clearly chasing the other. What the hell was going on? A sudden howl of metal scraping across stone shook our collective ears as it approached at speed, the front of the store falling back from harms way as a wave of human lives scattered seconds before a police cruiser CRASHED through the front of the store! Obliterating it! I fell to my knees as my back was showed by shards of razor sharp glass.
The Police Cruiser's Ford Mustang engine continued to over rev as one of the store owners, an early thirties man, dressed in a lime and yellow “Love and Rockets” tee with a flannel patented flat cap, long black dreads and a long van dyke beard, approached the Cruiser cautiously, it's engine block now wrapped, concertina like, around a large yellow concrete and metal post affixed firmly in place at the centre of the store.
My hand reached out as I attempted to stand, regaining my bearings as my ears rang. I tried to warn the owner that something wasn't right here, that he should step back as--
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The front half of shop owner's skull was blasted apart by close range gunfire. The rounds splintering his face into shards as his body crumpled to the floor; a new wave of screams erupted, reverberating outward now from the store as a broken and shattered Police Officer stood on bloody legs; clambered out from the cruiser; his cold, stone like expression tainted with a wav3 of seething madness, levelling his revolver at a cowering woman with blood dripping down from her lacerated Latino scalp. Her slender, tattooed arms raised in a futile gesture to shield her young face from the incoming blast.
No choice then.
I ran forward, the first of the bullets lodged deep into my guts. Standard practice against a moving target, aim for the largest area so you can't miss. They slowed me, but didn't stop me. Three more fired, one skimmed my upper left arm, the rest whizzed past my skull. The officer aimed again, but I was already upon him, a swift headbutt, followed by a kick to the abdomen. His gun, a silver plated Kimber Custom 2 .45 calibre automatic, fell to the floor after an uppercut I swung connected. His only option left was his holstered X26 Taser, but I already had his pelican flash light in hand, using it like a nightstick as I rained down heavy blows to the side of his deranged skull. Bludgeoning him to the floor.
I stopped. The gathered crowd...didn't.
They surged forward as one; as deranged now as their uniformed oppressor. Punching and kicking the officer as his body crumpled under the sheer ferocity of the attack. I had little sympathy for the Officer, but this wasn't justice, it was...primal. I reached out to the Latino woman as she stood over the Officer. Her whole body shaking now with pent up rage. Perhaps a caring hand would calm her down, make her see reason as I placed my dirty paw on her shoulder. Offering her support.
Crow McMorris: Ma'am. I'm sorry, but...
That's when I felt the volts surging through me. The X-26, fired at close range from the Latino woman's grasp. Her eyes, as crazed as the rest. “1He Wav3” had found her; taunted and teased her succumbing mind with a constant stream of violent imagery, reprogramming her to kill...
To kill anyone.
The volts shut me down after that. I lost consciousness as the world carried on it's night of insanity around me. The last image I saw was the Latino Woman beating up an elderly Chinese man to death. Her actions mirroring my assault on the Officer mere minutes ago. In another lifetime I would have let that fresco of hate haunt me in my dreams. But I don't dream any more. Not since the fall. I just file it all that shit away and remunerate on it from time to time. Just to remind myself that humanity ain't what it's always cracked up to be. There simply ain't any reason left now to be jealous. I'm dead/alive. And that's more than some of you.
The next day I awoke to the sound of flies buzzing around corpses. That buzz was busy on the 14th, it arched out across the strip as the city became an early morning ghost town. The grid was off line. No power. The only illumination now, as the Santa Ana winds howled their misery, was a burning Hollywood sign; a beacon that acted as a signal, telling me to get my dead ass the fuck outta town.
And so I did, on the back of a stolen BMW police bike. Aimed straight for Mexico. I went straight for the source. Because If there's one thing a McMorris knows how to find, Frank...it's trouble.
THE WAREHOUSE
Crow knew these ring posts, the metal might have been fire damaged, but the tarnished steel still keep it's history. The mat draped over the wooden panels that comprised the twenty by twenty squared circle still had Crow's bloodstained outline indelibly burned into the canvass. Through it all; the exodus of the Federation Wars, the nightmare of the 1he Wav3, this ring survived. It survived, while baring the mark of the Crow.
Crow leaned back against the ropes as Frank Patrick Venable stood opposite. FPV was dressed in a simple tee and jeans. Nothing fancy with Frank. The veneer of honesty was refreshing after so many years of interview types pretending to be celebrated Journalists. Frank was one of the boys. That didn't change, not for anyone. The stadiums may have been gone, the era of the Federations a memory, but the spirit remained, here, inside a shithole warehouse held together though the blind ignorance of it's crumbling bricks and mortar. A 900 ft space sectioned off into small pockets of enterprise. A former paper mill, that now served as the headquarters for the United Championship Infinite. Grandiose dreams, living deep below in a basement of nightmarish squarer.
At least, for now.
FPV: They say, Crow. That you were the one that started the convoy. That you lead the exodus out of the warlands, towards Las Vegas. They say it was you that ended the siege of Fremont. The man that saved those people.
Crow McMorris: Yeah, people, they say a lot of things, don't they? Look at me, Frank. I ain't no saviour. I'm a McMorris. And a McMorris knows only two things, how to cause shit an' how to survive. I rode to Mexico because it as the eye of the storm. If the world was still looking for me? It damn sure wouldn't expect me to turn up at the centre of it. As for the hell I found there? I'm built for it. This canvass knows me, Frank. Knows what kind of survivor I am.
Crow bent his knees and lent down. Placing his hand on the bloodied canvass.
Crow McMorris: I've etched my history with blood, Frank. Wrote sonnets with it. Conducted orchestras with the screams of my enemies. Think this Sunday will be any different, just because it's against a #beachkrew fuccboi apologist named Dustin Beaver and my old man?
Crow stood. The fire burning in his fierce blue eyes.
Crow McMorris: Think Again. They can randomise the shit outta my match all they want. But they'll be nothing random about the conclusion. No A.I. Can unravel me, nor understand the hell I can bring. Pops though, I bet he knows. So probably does Gramps. They have an inkling, an idea of what I can unleash. But to the extent that it will go down this Sunday? Not so much. This ring though, it knows. It knows all too well. It knows what I see when I see a Dustin Beaver standing before me, I see a victim. A fucking chromosome light, shit-eating turd that reminisces about “the good old days” those times when his “family” danced on my grave and kicked over the bell that sang out my salute. Dustin fuckin' Beta and his wake for the death of #beachkrew. He needs to save himself one more coffin for that wake. Have the Undertaker take his measurements. The deep awaits little Dustin Beaver. It cries out his name. This Sunday? I'll make him hear it. I'll make him scream it. This time it's me kicking over their bell, me destroying their salute. Then afterwards I'll 4chan the shit outta my victory and gloat over Dustin's demise.
FPV: He wears their colors...
Crow McMorris: And he pays their price. Exactly, Frank. Dustin may have joined #beachkrew after my, “hiatus”, began, but he did so because he was, “inspired” by their actions. Inspired by a gang of vultures circling my corpse. Well, that corpse is back, Frank. I'm not looking for answers either. I don't need any. All I need are victims. All I want are statistics. The damaged and the broken at my feet. All wearing the pink and black. Their collective asses kicked all the way back to angelfire. Eye blinking open inside a geocities nightmare. Check this shit out:
Crow lifts up one of his size twelve Dr. Martins, props it up on the ring post. There's a hashtag carved into the sole.
Crow McMorris: #beachkrew want to leave a mark on this business? Good. Because I'm gonna leave a mark on them. This Sunday, when Dustin finally drags his ass out of Gags's basement and stops playing “Shower with your dad simulator” then he'll finally see the light. The truth. That no Beaver pun that his microscopic mind can imagine will ever match up to a Murder of Crows raining down on his head. This shithole maybe Thuggin's turf. But it's my house now. And by the time that second bell rings? It will have received my unique seal of approval. Hashtag: I just fucking killed Dustin Beaver. Hashtag: I just broke Beaver's spine as a statement. Hashtag: I am the first UCI World heavyweight fucking champion.
FPV: You think you can do it, Crow? Get past your old man and Beaver, Move on and win the whole damn thing?
Crow McMorris: There an old Mexican saying, “Al vivo todo le falta, y al muerto todo le sobra”, basically it means, if you're dead? Everything is too much. Well, take it from me. They only got that proverb half right, jack. It all matters to a dead man, but it's never enough. I need this, all of it. The title. The fame. Being in that top spot. I need to show the world that it's my spine that can carry that gold. My shoulders that can bare the honour. Blood red honour, that I'll paint onto that strap with the agony of my challengers time and time again. Dustin tried once to stand up and be the hardcore champion. And he failed. Look around you, this isn't a pampered environment for a cos-playing pop idol. This is a fucking cesspit for maniacs. This isn't a playpen for a cosy afternoon scuffle, then scones. It's hell. My kind of hell. The hell a dead man like me should haunt. And own.
“A little ahead of yourself, don't you think?”
Crow looked up. Standing there on the office balcony, dressed in a neat bespoke suit and grey sweater, was Spencer Adams: His face seemed older than Crow remembered. More haunted perhaps. As if his new position had drained away part of his youthful appearance.
“My office...El Fantasma”
Crow McMorris: Does Betty know you're out this late?
Spencer didn't reply, he just turned and waited inside for Crow's arrival.
FPV: Not exactly smart there, Crow.
Crow: Look at my face, Frank. I'm a ghost faced tramp, making a living by smashing my knuckles into desperate faces. I'm way past smart.
EL FANTASMA
Six months on from “1he Wav3”; and my life had attained a nice, new, neat little groove. After a few weeks getting settled in the capital I began to wrestle again in small little bars that hosted nameless promotions. Not as Crow; that was still off limits. But as “El Fantasma” an idea that came from the villagers of a small town I was hiding out in. I shanty town that I fixed them up with a generator of sorts, a noisy beast that I somehow kept running. In exchange, I had a trailer to myself. Rusted and cold at night. But mine.
It didn't take long though before trouble arrived. Seems this spot was drop off point for the local branch of the Los Zeta's syndicate. Waking up to find a dead body rolling past your window isn't new to me, as horrific as that sounds. It's the part when you find out it was a young mother just looking for help with her new born daughter, begging for assistance from the child's father, a crazed gang member that slit her throat and cut out her eyes.
That's when the bullets rained down. I dodged as many as I could as I snapped necks and ripped open Zeta's throats, but a few well aimed shots from their Glock's got through. The wounds leaving their temporary, fading marks. That's when the villagers discovered my true identity, as I walked unscaved though a haze of death and flame.
The towns people held a meeting the next day to discuss my fate. A few hours later they hatched a plan. “El Fantasma” was born. That's what they began to call me. The paint would hide my face from a world that existed now under constant C.I.A surveillance. I would be a wrestling celebrity again. But this time not for fame, but to simply disappear. A living ghost, walking among life, invisible.
As a phantom I saw figures, familiar wrestling faces moving through the crowed markets of the capital like lost pieces of a distant jigsaw puzzle. Maybe I should have reached out to them. Yet I had acquired a cover in Mexico City that I wasn't about to blow. Not when it strangely brought me a level of fame that ran paradoxically along with my new found anonymity. Fame I could use to make contacts, open up investigations into 1he Wav3.
Discover secrets.
THE WAREHOUSE
Spencer Adams: Your father stopped by earlier. Is he going to be trouble?
Crow McMorris: Trouble? Yeah. That's the plan.
Spencer leaned forward, resting his elbows on his polished desk. Linking his fingers together as he did so. All the while thinking out loud so Crow would notice. A gentle warning it seemed as Crow noticed how Spencer carried himself, as if a self stylized young turk about to make millions; sitting behind that oak desk in his plush leather chair. Idealistic, and perhaps a little naïve, to the horrors that were to come.
Spencer Adams: Perhaps we should look into changing that plan? Keep things harmonious.
Crow smiled. The answer to that was simple.
“No way in hell.”
