“That’s it, we’re done here, honey!”

I shouted from the driveway and into an open window with a scathing tone,

“We’re not just getting out of this house, we’re getting the hell out of Nazareth!”

I said while storming from outside and into the kitchen door of the old stucco on the corner; my childhood home. We’d been co-inhabiting the house with my sister’s family since August. But as the checks from the XWF were beginning to pile up in the bank account, a hole was burning in my Trulia app. Given everything that had just transpired, I was ready to get out of Dodge.

It was late in the evening, or early in the morning, whatever floats-your-boat, and my fiancé Marie, and my sister Fannie were relaxing and drinking tea in the twin wing-backed chairs against the wall near the window I shouted through. Sitting between them in the dining-room was an electric-heater that resembled a fireplace.

I hated that thing. The sight of it made me boil. It was tacky and half-working. A band-aid solution to the poor insulation. An attempted fix of damages irrecoverable. Just like everything in this house, and everything in this town, and everything in my life. Coming back here didn’t heal the wounds of my father’s death. It was just duct-tape on the busted fender giving the illusion that things were held together.

Marie and Fannie shook from their serene setting, their eyes were burst with awe and surprise,

Fannie went to speak,

“Ra-”

“Nuh-uh! Nope!”

I interrupted, holding a finger up towards her face,

“I ain’t hearing nothing you’ve got to say, Fan. I’m FU-KING O-VER-IT!"

I hit the syllables hard, stressing my frustration,

"Would you like to know what happened up-on Fort Hill tonight? Hum? Dont’cha’ wanna’ hear ALL about the ghosts SISSY?”

I said with a provoking jab as I started pacing back and forth in the kitchen, pinching at the twist of skin that had furrowed up between my brow.

“Reggie. Baby. Just calm down. I've already put out an offer on a house.”

Marie said in a diplomatic attempt to soothe my ire. It worked briefly. Her voice was angelic and always had a way of leveling me out,

“You did?”

“Mhmm…”

“Where?”

“Louisville.”

She pronounced it: LOO-A-VULL. As was common for Kentuckians,

“Nope. Not working. We ain't staying in Kentucky. We’re getting as far away from that psychopath Misty Waters as possible. Look on the Gulf Coast… and I DON’T mean the Pigeon Forge knock-off on the beach.”

I’ll spare you any of the grim details of Panama City Beach for now...

Misty Waters.



My plague of a mother who I’d known of for about fourteen days. I’ve talked about it until I’m blue in the face. My mysteriously affluent momma, who apparently runs the entire city of Frankfort and all of its surrounding areas like Nazareth. A former, unprecedented, third-term serving Mayor, who could go anywhere and do anything she wanted. What was left of the blood of this town coursed through Misty’s veins.

That was a lesson I had just learned first hand.

“OH! WHOA-HO!”

Fannie’s husband, Todd howled as he entered the house, slinging his backpack to the floor.

“Todd, you and Fannie, and y’alls kids best be getting the fuck up out of here too!”

I redirected my tension towards him,

“DID HE TELL YOU ABOUT THE EVIDENCE WE GOT?!”

Todd ignored me, and shouted out like a child on Christmas morning. His eyes grew wild and lit up as he darted over to Fannie’s feet and kneeled before her, pulling out his video camera.

Dumfounded, my face slung out in exhaustion.

“You’re fucking kidding me?”

Todd and I were just returning from a paranormal investigation that, naturally, produced no ghosts, but did happen to produce-

“WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN DEAD HOOKER?!”

The Midnight Wolfpack all stood there frozen as I scurried ahead towards the pale glare out in the darkness. The invisible dangling tree limbs thrashed at my head as all I could see was my breath, and a brief assumption growing surer. I tripped my way in front of a dead young woman.

“Uh! Todd!”

I retched out. My eyes had immediately welled up from the putrid stench. Like a pot of sun-boiled rat flesh. I could only stand to look at her face long enough to know it was smashed-in. I gagged again, but this time I hurled all over my feet.

Wearing a miniskirt, and some type of halter top, there was truly no way of knowing how many seasons she cooked and froze over on that hill. Todd and his ignorantly credulous paranormal team all made their way over to me and the body. Each taking turns looking on the departed with a biting grimace and turning away to dry-heave in some form or fashion. All except for Squatch Man.

The aging and lumbering, bearded man in full camo, a guy right out of Duck Dynasty. He was the self-proclaimed savior of the alien sasquatch species, his real name was Jim... or Robin… or something. Squatch Man dropped to his knees as I dialed the police from my cell.

“THEY DID IT!”

He bellowed out with this echoing voice that sounded like a deep-cave,

“THEY’VE TURNED ON MORTALS! I FAILED YOU OH-WISE ONES!”

As I rang through and reported the situation to the authorities, the Squatch Man continued to scream incoherently, his moon-like face bent towards the stars, and his snotty nose leaked onto his white mustache.

“BAA-LAA-GAA-SHAMA-GAA-BAA!!!!”

Squatch Man then began babbling out some weird sasquatch language. It sounded like a rolling gargle of some George Lucas creation, mixed with a high-pitched burst of unstrung verbiage. Like he was speaking in tongues at a Presbtaryian service.

I hoped, if nothing else, the police overhearing his frantic gibberish might get them to the scene with greater haste. Only it didn’t. The cops wouldn’t arrive for another hour...

Misty Waters beat them to the scene of the crime.

“Reginald-Lewis, sweetie!”

She said with a sound of earnest concern stepping out of a black Chevy Suburban.

“Y’all come here now…”

She nurtured as she carried towards us, her nose pointy and red from behind her Carhart hood.

“...are y’all okay?”

She asked all of us as I stood facing her, Todd and his team aligning at my shoulders.

“How…”

I struggled to find the words,

“...Where are the police? Why aren’t they here yet?”

“Guess I beat ‘em’ to the punch. Heard it called in on my police scanner. One of the compliments of being former Mayor.”

Even while standing in the midst of people who were willing to believe anything, and though the bidding on insane theories I heard throughout the night was low, I couldn’t be sold. Something felt… off.

The police wouldn’t arrive for another quarter-of-an-hour. While we stood there waiting for the police, Misty nonchalantly reviewed some of the team’s paranormal “evidence” with a natural vigor and enthusiasm. Just like a good politician, pretending to be interested in the lives of people they'd never see again. I was floored, and conversations would only get weirder between me and Misty in the brief, unfortunate time that I remained upon that dreadful hill.

“You’d better hurry on back to that woman of yours, Reginald-Lewis.”

She said in an inscrutable way as Todd and I loaded up his truck. The first time she called me by that name my skin crawled, now I was getting annoyed. It felt robotic and empty.

“You’ll have to be on the road defending that Hart Championship soon.”

“...”

I returned a blank stare to her lifeless words, but she broke through with a facetious laugh laying her hand on my shoulder.

“I’m saying it’s gonna be a while before you see her again, baby. I hear those international wrestling tours can put a real strain on the home life.”

“Uh-huh. Well, thanks. Bye”

And like that, I closed the door to the truck, and Todd and I left Fort Hill under a blanket of flashing police lights. Misty just stood there looking at me, waving her hand just as we pulled away…

"Listen..."

Marie started as she took me by the hand from the dining-room and into the hallway,

"...I believe you, baby. I trust your instincts. We’ll take the kids and we’ll leave right now!”

She was as sincere and steadfast as ever. My ride-or-die. Marie knew everything that I could sense about this ridiculous scenario. She had been the only person I could confide in. She knew Misty had the say-so on who could, and couldn’t visit Fort Hill.

Sure, I would like to be told that it was all just a coincidence, the hill, the body, Misty, even Dad’s letter proclaiming her to be my mother… But it wasn’t. I knew something was, in the words of George Carlin: ‘seriously fucked up.’

In the same way that I dismiss Todd’s ghost stories, I guess you could call me overly credulous to circumstantial evidence. But at least my theories have merit.

But hell! Who knows? Maybe the woman really was killed by a sasquatch, and I was actually sent here by Chewbacca to save the White Rhinos from going extinct. Maybe believing that would force Todd’s hand in selectively taking-my-word for at face value. What a treat that would be!

But with, or without Fannie and Todd, we were leaving Kentucky… for good.

“Let’s do it, honey...”

I confirmed as her eyes drew open with a sparkle,

“...cancel the offer on that house and we’ll start looking elsewhere. In the meantime you and the kids are coming overseas with me, I don’t want that woman trying to come anywhere near her ‘grandchildren’.”

A week later, Marie and the children got settled into a nice little rental in southern France as I toured on Warfare between Spain and Italy.

Back in Frankfort, news broke about the body found up on Fort Hill. After cross-examining DNA samples, the main suspect in the case became Doug Williams, the current Mayor of Frankfort, and his lover, Attorney Richard Lang. The press and the public then began calling for a fourth term for former Mayor, Misty Waters.

“This is all wrong…”

Marie said reading the article on her cellphone and lying in a beach chair while the Meditrainan waves splashed alongside the palm covered sandy shores of Nice.

“I’m worried about Fannie and Todd, baby.”

Marie continued,

“I know. But what can I do? They won’t listen to me, if only I had some evidence…”

I said, though the thought of those two needing actual evidence for anything seemed laughable.

“What about Muddy? Your half-brother?”

“Unreliably drunk and pilled-out. Might as well ask one of them’ palm trees.”

“Well… what about your niece?”

Now there’s a thought. My niece.

“You mean Dolly?”

“Mhmm. Maybe she knows something about Misty.”

-to be continued-


The scene fades in and we see R.L. Edgar walking barefooted along the beach, his sweat pants rolled up just past his knees. It may be too cold to dive right in, but the temperature is just right for a nice stroll. Just over a hilly isthmus, the sun is seen rising up beyond the reaches of the Mediterranean. Edgar continues walking, the sun at his back as he speaks into the camera, a gratified smile curling on his lips.

“Well... here we are again, folks.

Another day...

...another dollar.

Another notch in the win column for your Hart Champion, R.L. Edgar, on the horizon.

You can mistake what I'm saying as the regular, off-the-cuff smugness if you choose. That's fine. I don't care. But please indulge me for a moment.

Lycana?

Marf?

Their mystery crapshoot?

We all know there's no chance they're winning this match. It's The Dissentients! How many chances have we all seen them squander away? Be it as a team, be it in singles action? It's become par-for-the-course every Warfare.

Now, I'm not saying that Marf actually had a chance to beat Betsy Granger last week. That's a joke. No one would've said that. I'm being polite here.

But Lycana?

You had a chance to knock me off, to hurt my ego, to punish me, to make me suffer. It's what you said you were going to do…

You wanted a chance to swing-up and smack this stupid mouth of mine right from my face. To embarrass me.

To win the Hart Championship and prove that you're better than all of the things your opponents have said about you. Prove that you are a winner. Prove that you actually can hang here in the Thunderdome that is the XWF. The place that your entire party has struggled to disregard as being beneath your abilities since day one.

You could've done all of those, but you didn't, and you never will. You'll never be willing to shake your dead weight and drop the baggage that pulls you down just short of the finish line. If you weren't willing to abandon your empty sense of superiority last week, long enough to take me seriously, with the Hart Championship on the line, what makes anyone think that you will now?

You and Marf have proven time and again how simple and basic you've both allowed yourselves to become. Like you're stuck in some horrible loop of finding unwarranted ego, and promises you keep in vain. I called you a trainwreck, last week, and that's not fair. Lycana, you've failed to even leave the station. You're busy searching for your ticket to the party in a bag that was packed by someone else. So long as that's the case, you'll never have it...

You worked twice as hard as me, the man you find likened to a box-of-rocks, and you still couldn't get the job done. I spent the last two weeks being terse, gunning for not just your throat, but your spirit. I made it my mission to liven things up, to desensitize, and to properly remind you the hard Reality, Lycana: You're not all you've cracked yourself up to be and no amount of cheap parlor tricks is going to fix your situation.

How many more nights must Marf whisper you out of the chains of your colorless nightmares before you realize you're living a lie? That all of your masquerading around as some monolith, some mythical force that people should fear is contrived nonsense? When will you realize that it's this inability to soak in the true worth of the XWF that's turning you into a joke? Those antics are NEVER going to get you over a worthy adversary. No matter how much you improve in the ring, no matter how many times you watch one of those sick R.L. Edgar promos, no matter how many t-shirts with a goofy logo you sell, you will remain stuck in your own futile sense of excellence.

The sad truth is no matter how many times you find yourself humbled and asking "How? Why?" you'll continue to piss away the chance at any real growth. Finding yourself bumbling into another match, winless, and stammering on like you've copied and pasted a bunch of bad jokes from the internet into your lexicon. Failing to remember that it's not WHAT you speak, it's HOW you speak, and how that translates into your actions. You'll drag-ass back on the television, throwing some edgy pity-party, finding every excuse under the sun as to why you lost... only to lose again.

See, you can dismiss me all you want, Lycana. You did it during the entire lead-up to our match. R.L. Edgar was just some joke that you were going to make an example out of. A fraud, an unworthy champion, a wrestling dummy for your sadist desires. But I didn't really have to say anything did I? You jumped hard to discredit me without me even barking all that loud. Wasn't I just being childish and redundant like everyone else? Isn't that all I'm capable of? And yet you felt the need to try harder than you ever have. You exhausted every trick up your sleeve, and it still wasn't good enough.

Now it's back to the drawing board for you and Marf, but you only know how to draw one picture, it's the same stuff we've all seen. It's disgraceful. Here's Marf, a man who will follow you and all of your bad choices into oblivion. Loyal to a fault. A husband who keeps quiet as his wife parades around, promiscuous to the point of nausea, making a fool of out of both of you on international television. I don't even want to say the word... because...

I'm.
trying.
to.
be.
polite.

But Marf, you're being cuckolded by Thaddeus Duke. He beat you up, and now he's stealing your lady, and news flash! She's welcoming it!

All of the same lack of willingness to grow, and sticking with a bought-and-paid-for script that applies to Lycana, also applies to you. How much longer are you going to be led on a wild goose chase that promises a gold egg, only to find your shoulders pinned down again and again? How many more cheaply produced parodies of your opponents, or precious little sweet-nothings will you have to whisper into Lycana's ear before we see that Marf we've been promised?

You both can come at me, call me whatever you want, tell me that I was lucky to beat Lycana. Tell me how close the match was, I'm here for it... but don't do it without remembering that being close, is only being close and nothing more if you're not smoking a cigar afterward.

I can say that my win over Lycana was "close". Doesn't bother me. Anyone watching saw it... she was already out on her neck allowing me to practically float to the turnbuckle before finishing her off. A simple leg hook, the shoulders glued to the mat, and that was all she wrote.

Tell me how dumb and worthless I am, that's fine too, but don't do it while having to scramble up another flat, and forgettable attempt at shock-and-awe with some new mystery Left Hander. We've seen this story too many times, and we know how it ends.

See, contrary to my esteemed tag partners Demos, and Ned Kaye, I don't want to see the two of you destroyed. No. I want to see you actually try to not suck. I want to see you actually fight to get better. I want you to remember what you're chasing, and why you're TRULY here. It's not the Left Hand first. It's THIS. The XWF. The creme de la creme of professional wrestling. You both want your names up in those lights, but you also hide in the shadows of your horrible ideas.

The two of you, no matter who your partner is... you're not winning this match. But let my words sink in, let them fester. I know what it's like to be real. It's a grind... but it works. Maybe after Demos, Ned, and I grind you fools out this one last time, you'll finally be ready to start playing for real.

Edgar out.

Former:
1x Hart Champion
1x Federweight Champion
April 2021 RP Of The Month Still Waters Run Deep