KILLING THE TOWN Chapter 1
Hey!'
This week, we start something new. Instead of releasing my new novella on Kickstarter, I will post it chapter-by-chapter here. Once it's finished here, I'll do a short Kickstarter campaign (a Quickstarter, if you will) for the paperback.
KILLING THE TOWN is a quasi-prequel to GAIJIN. It features Crawford Lockhart, aka Warlock, a character introduced in the Book of Jericho novel, BOOK OF WARLOCK. Unlike GAIJIN, a straight thriller, this one delves back into the supernatural.
It's 1987, and Crawford Lockhart has burnt every bridge in pro wrestling before washing up in the dying western Canadian territory. During a winter tour of the remote First Nations Reserves, their bus breaks down in the desolate wilderness, and the wrestlers are forced to confront a villain who will be very familiar to readers of the Books of Jericho.
Read the first chapter right here.
Thanks!
Chapter 2 should it Friday.
J.D.
Puerto Rico -1987
I know what I saw.
Momma would have called it divine intervention, but that's bullshit.
I think.
"Goddamn it, Warlock!"
My name is Crawford Lockhart, but it's been a long time since anyone's called me either of those names. Instead, I go by Warlock, short for The Might Warlock. Pro wrestling is weird like that. We all commit to this fictional reality —the kayfabe, as we say — we play a role to the point that even in the locker room, we don't call each other by our real names.
It's easy to get caught up in the bullshit of this business. It's easy to start believing you're the guy who stands in the ring and pretends to be…whatever gimmick you're playing. Some guys are cowboys, superheroes, or brainless monsters. In my place, I'm a guy who wears a black and purple robe to ring and acts like he's got some kinda connection to the supernatural. I'm luckier than most. It's easy to remember I'm not some cackling madman who talks to ghosts cause there isn't no such thing as ghosts. The supernatural isn't real.
But then, what happened out there tonight? How else can I explain it?
Growing up on a farm in Northwest Wisconsin, we were good church-going folks, but I don't know if any of us ever believed in magic or anything like that. Momma thought that God would make his presence known sometimes, but I always figured that was bullshit.
God certainly didn't stick his nose in and stop me from making a damn fool of myself on national television two years ago. He let me make a mistake that cost me a job with the biggest wrestling company in the world. I can't even begin to think about how much money it cost my family, and I'm not even talking about the lawsuits and such. I'm talking about how much I missed from box offices in arenas from Madison Square Garden to the LA Forum.
Instead, I caught myself a blackball, and now I can't seem to find work for any of the other promotions in the States. I'm a liability, I hear. You'd think that would be good for a guy who pretends to be a madman, but it's not. It just means I can't work.
I had a good gig in Japan before I went to New York and their promotion. I made good money over there and thought it was where I could make a full-time career. I could spend twenty weeks a year wrestling in places like Hokkaido and Osaka, not to mention Tokyo. Then, come home to my farm in Wisconsin and be an average person who doesn't have to act like he talks to ghost the other thirty-two. Instead, I incinerated that bridge when New York offered me a spot working on top of the card. Not only did they give me a deal, but they provided me an extra $5k to bail out on my Japanese employer without giving any notice. I did as told, but now that New York no longer requires my services, I've discovered that people in Japan have a long memory.
Can't go back there.
"What the hell were you thinking out there?" asks Big Bully Braddock.
Braddock was my tag team partner tonight. He's also part of the booking office here in Puerto Rico. Braddock and I have been friends since our days in Houston when I was breaking in. He might be the only guy willing to give The Might Warlock another shot, and there might be a chance I blew it tonight.
You see, wrestling, at its core, is a gross business. Selling tickets for the show we're on is almost secondary to making sure we can sell the fans another ticket for the next time we come through town. The easiest way to do that is poking the crowd a bit— piss them off. But only so they wanna watch you get your ass beat. It's called getting heat.
I might've gotten too much heat tonight. Story of my life.
Braddock's been booking (writing the shows) here for a bit. He doesn't speak the language, but he knows enough to get the right reactions from the crowd. Well, I do speak the language, and when I said, "Sois todas unas putas," they got mad. Real mad. I thought it was going great.
That's when I saw the cup flying from the crowd into the ring. I saw the foamy yellow liquid spill out as it sailed through the air and assumed it was beer until it hit my eyes. I've never felt beer that warm or taste that salty.
I should've just walked to the back, but the Mighty Warlock doesn't make wise choices. It's part of the character. Instead, I doubled down.
"Tus madres chupan pollas!"
That's when the batteries started flying. The AAs sting, but the Ds really hurt. Again, I should have run, but I was getting heat. And I'm damn good at getting heat.
"Malditos coños!"
That's when I saw the chair. I've heard those stories about how when people are going to die, time seems to slow down or freeze. Like, I know that isn't possible, but damned if it isn't what happened.
I saw the chair twirling like a runaway helicopter blade rotating on an axis. I've spent enough time in pro wrestling. I know folding chairs, believe me. Usually, we use the metal ones because they make a nice SMACK sound when they hit your back. This was a wooden chair, and it was broken, like whoever tossed it at me had smashed it against the ground and made sure the back splintered into jagged fragments, making it a more-than-efficient projectile weapon.
Those barbed wooden shards rotated perfectly as they headed right for my face. My only question was whether it would find my eyes or my throat. Would I be blinded or worse? I probably should have tried to get out of the way, but I didn't. I stood there, locked in place.
Warlock is mighty, alright— mighty stupid.
That's when I saw the second chair. It came in from the left, moving somehow faster than the other. I'm by no means an expert at physics or thermodynamics or whatever, but I also know that's not possible. And yet….
The second somehow collided with the first one just before it hit me. It was like being in the center of a 7-10 split. Both of them completely missed. I stood there in the ring motionless as AA batteries rained down upon me, staring at this chair that just a ] second earlier seemed ready to decapitate me. I didn't even care about the welts pushing up from my sweaty flesh. Those were tomorrow's problems.
Maybe I was making a big deal about nothing. But maybe it was something else.
Momma would've said God was trying to keep me alive. A D battery to the side of my head says otherwise.
Finally, I followed Braddock to the locker room, where he met me with a punch to the nose. A coppery taste ran down my throat, but I couldn't feel a damn thing. I only heard about every third word from Braddock's mouth. I picked up enough to realize I had blackened another territory off my ball. I don't think I'm coming back to Puerto Rico.
Some divine intervention.