Being AWOL

There’s a funny thing about being crazy. It doesn’t happen overnight. There isn’t one incident and then, snap-pop, your brain fries a fuse and burns out and now you’re drooling and running around the streets wearing an Aquaman onesy. It creeps onto you, one little bit at a time. One little event in your life, one little moral compromise, one little violation are the things that do it, and with each one your sanity shreds away from you bit by bit. Often you don’t even notice it happening until it’s too late. You’re walking out to your car, and the next thing you know people hit you in the back of the head and stuff you in a trunk, and they find you wandering down the street babbling to yourself a few days later.

Hmm.

Ok, so maybe sometimes it does happen all at once.

***

AWOL sits on a park bench. He’s staring forward into space, eyes slightly unfocused. His ring attire is on, looking plainly out of place given the bright, sunny, daylight surroundings he finds himself in. Behind him, children play a game of Frisbee. Squirrels dash back and forth in the grass surrounding him, chasing each other around for whatever indiscernible reason squirrels chase each other. Suburbia surrounds him, a pastoral scene of peace and tranquility broken only by the scarred, shirtless frame of a very dazed, very confused man sitting there staring off into the distance.

Suddenly, with a little twitter of music, a bird flies down from the sky, landing on the black cast-iron hand rail of the park bench. It looks up at the big man, cocking its head spastically to the side, and letting out an inquisitive chirp. He turns his head, slowly, eyes coming back out of their gaze, staring down at the blue-feathered avian. He blinks, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. He shakes his head, rubbing his knuckles against his eyes as he stares around. The bird takes a tentative hop closer to him, dropping down onto the seat next to him.

“Where the hell am I?” AWOL says.

“You got me, pal,” the bird says, looking up at him. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

AWOL seems surprisingly non-plussed to be having a conversation with a blue jay. “I don’t remember coming here. I’ve never seen this place before. Are we in the city?”

“If by ‘In the city’ you mean ‘In a hallucination somewhere in your frontal lobe,’ then yeah, I guess you could say we’re in the city.”

He looks around, still very confused.

“So, I guess that means I’m crazy again.”

“Looks like it.” The bird gives a wistful shrug of his shoulders, which somehow manages to convey itself despite the bird’s non-human features. “That’s a drag, huh?”

“You’re telling me.” AWOL looks around regretfully. “I wonder what put me over the edge.”

“Well, I’m sure Generation Next hitting you in the head and shoving you in the trunk didn’t help.”

AWOL gives a dismissive “pfft” and shakes his head. “I’ve been getting jumped every show for months now and it hasn’t set me off until now. And it’s ‘Generation Now’ by the way. ‘Generation Next’ was a Pepsi ad campaign.”

“Yeah, but you were thinking about using it to mock them in a promo, I think, so that’s why I know it.”

“I guess that makes sense,” AWOL responds, though it clearly doesn’t. “So what are you supposed to be, my conscious mind trying to guide me out of the hallucination? Or maybe some kind of metaphor about the thing that’s really bothering me?”

The bird shrugs again and holds its wing up, examining it closely. It looks back at its tail, giving the feathers an experimental wiggle.

“As far as I can tell, I’m a talking bird.”

“Oh, ok.” This clearly does little to alleviate AWOL’s confusion.

The two sit for a moment in silence, looking around at the park. In front of them, a forty-something woman walks by, her puggle dog straining hard against the leash and pulling her along.

“You know,” the bird says, “I’ve gotta say, when I pictured what the inside of your head looked like, this was really not what I expected.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” the bird seems very disappointed. You know this because you’re the audience, though how it conveys this, given that you’ve likely never seen a disappointed bird, is left unclear. “I figured there’d be a lot more fire and brimstone and stuff. You’re supposed to be the angry monster guy, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“Well, what kind of monster goes into a mental collapse and starts thinking about a kiddy park?”

“Monsters don’t get to like parks?”

“Well, they do, but I just figured your kind of park would have benches built out of skulls and wading pools filled with blood, or something.”

“Hmm, I suppose you’re right.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes closed, concentrating. A moment later the ground begins to rumble, a violent earthquake rending it in twain. The sky immediately darkens, changing from a brilliant ultramarine to a dark, bloody red color. The grass fades from brown to black, withering as if being blasted by the heat of a raging fire. With a deep exhalation (that shoots smoke from his nostrils) AWOL opens his eyes, turning back to the blue jay, who has now transformed into a bat.

“Better?”

“Much.” The bat nods in appreciation. “That’s more like it.”

Behind them, the kids continue to throw the Frisbee, giggling with glee as it soars through the air.

***

“Miss, I really have to protest.”

Maya is standing with a man wearing green medical scrubs. He is flipping the pages of his metal clipboard in agitation, walking stride for stride with the former stripper as they head towards an end room.

“Protest all you like, this is happening right now.”

“But mi-“

“My name is Maya, by the way.”

“Maya, your friend is in no shape to be discharged. Mr. Wolworth has suffered a massive psychotic break. We absolutely cannot let him out of this hospital until we’ve finished examining him.”

The two walk into the exam room, where AWOL is currently lying strapped to a bed. He lies, staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling, his massive chest rising and falling beneath the beige restraints crisscrossing his body.

“Well what’s holding your examinations up? You haven’t found anything physically wrong with him, have you?” Maya says, walking over and gently stroking AWOL’s hand. He does not respond.

“That’s beside the point. There are a number of forms of brain damage we may have missed. We need more time.”

“You’ve had almost a week. If you haven’t found anything by now, I’m sure you won’t if I leave him to rot in your beds for a few more days and he’ll get behind in his conditioning.”

“Are you listening to me? Mr. Wolworth-“

“AWOL,” she interrupts him. “You can call him AWOL. The cameras are on, after all, and we wouldn’t want to confuse the audience.”

The doctor looks in irritation into the camera lens for a moment before continuing, “Whatever, AWOL is completely disconnected from reality. He alternates between states of catatonia and violent outbursts. Something is very wrong with him, and he is a danger to himself and everyone around him right now. It would be the height of irresponsibility to release him in this state, particularly given what you have in mind for him.”

“What I have in mind for him?” she looks up, shock evident on her face. “All I want is to get my AWOL back, doctor. I’ve done nothing but worry about him ever since he vanished after the Two for One Special, and I want to get him home so he can get well. It’s the evil IWC who want to…no, no that’s lame. Can we do that over again?”

She turns, looking just above the camera lens. Apparently someone nods at her somewhere behind it. “Yeah, don’t worry. We can edit it out in post.”

The doctor looks flabbergasted, but Maya just nods and resumes her grieved facial expression. “Ok, on me in three, two, one…all I want is to get him so he can get well, but the IWC executives don’t care. They’ve booked him for a match this week, and he has to compete or be fired.”

“Are you serious?” the doctor slams the clipboard down onto the table. “This isn’t a television show, Maya. This is a man’s life you’re putting at risk. Ethically there is no way I will discharge this patient, and seeing as how you don’t have power of attorney for him, I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere.”

“There’s no choice, doctor. You don’t understand what you’re up against here. These IWC people, they don’t care. Their parent company made him wrestle once when he was in a coma. They’ll pull some sort of legal loophole and get him out of here. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again. Like it or not, next week he’s going to be climbing into that ring against Max Craven.”

AWOL’s eyes suddenly snap into sharp focus, and he starts to scream inarticulately for a moment, straining against his restraints. “CRAAAAVEEEENNN!!!! YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!! I’LL FUCKING MURDER YOU! I’LL EAT YOUR CHILDREN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!!!”

He strains against the bands, the whole stretcher creaking from the stress his flexing muscles are putting against it. The doctor quickly smashes the call button with a palm of his hand as Maya dives back from the stretcher, true fear finally in place on her expression. A pair of nurses dash into the room. The two grab hold of AWOL’s head and upper body, pinning them in place as the doctor quickly draws a syringe from the bedside and jabs it into his neck. Almost immediately the Big Crazy Bastard’s thrashing starts to slow, the glassy expression returning to his face. Very slowly, at last, his eyes circle around in their sockets, at last focusing on Maya’s face.

“The bat made me do it,” he whispers, before his eyes gently drift shut.

The doctor looks up from the bedside, fixing her with an accusing glare. Maya, for her part, smiles innocently.

“He looks ready to fight to me.”

***

AWOL walks down a ruined street, the bat turning lazy circles in the air above him.

“Oooh, that one, over there,” the bat says, gesturing with its head towards an expensive Mercedes parked next to the curb. AWOL turns towards it, looking around for a second before picking up a long, jagged piece of metal from the blasted and charred surface of the street, evidently the last remainder of a signpost. He walks across the pavement, broken glass crunching beneath his boots, to stand in front of the hood. He looks up for a moment to the bat, who nods encouragingly, and then reaches back, swinging the metal bar down onto the car’s hood. The vehicle promptly explodes, a massive fireball expanding in all directions in an instant with a massive blast. A moment later, AWOL walks out of the still raging inferno, seemingly unscathed. He looks down at the metal bar in his hand, dropping it back to the pavement, no longer interested in it.

“This is kind of boring,” he says, looking up at the bat. “What’s the point of this, exactly?”

The bat flutters over to a lamp post, hanging upside down from the overhanging arm. It tucks it’s black, leathery wings around its torso as it answers, “You’re supposed to be AWOL again. I’ve already explained this to you. Part of being AWOL is violence, meaningless though it may be. You’ve still got the potential in you, but you just don’t seem to be interested in it anymore. Come on, man, aren’t you having fun?”

“Um, no,” AWOL sits down on the curb. “Meaningless violence is, as you put it, meaningless. It would be nice if it felt like there was some point to all of this.”

“You mean besides going along with the new ‘AWOL’s crazy again’ gimmick?”

AWOL looks up in alarm, shhing at the bat.

“Stop breaking the fourth wall,” he admonishes the flying creature.

“My bad,” the bat answers. “Sigh. Alright, what the hell, I’m bored with blowing up cars too. Here, tell you what champ, how about we try some meaningful violence on for size.”

AWOL looks up in confusion for a moment as across the street one of the ground floor windows light up. Inside, AWOL is shocked to see his own face inside the well lit home. Vivian is with him, and the two are sitting around a coffee table in their living room. She laughs, taking a sip from her wine glass as the bright orange glow of the candles arrayed throughout the room dance amongst the red locks of her hair.

“What the fuck?” he mumbles, rising back up to his feet. “Why are you making me watch this?”

“You really need me to explain this to you? I guess you must be more in denial than I thought.” the bat says, swinging back and forth on the light pole in irritation.

The AWOL and Vivian inside the apartment share another laugh before, from outside the visible part of the room, a young boy comes running in, jumping and landing between the two of them. He holds up an AWOL action figure towards the big man, who takes it out of his hands. The resemblance between the faces of the boy and the man is unmistakable as AWOL picks up the action figure, holding it up and adopting his trademark in-ring scowl. The kid laughs and claps in glee as the big man clearly starts to cut a mock promo in the living room, Vivian smiling and wrapping an arm around the young boy’s chest.

“This was what you wanted,” the bat says, “What you dreamed about. This is the future you desired for yourself.”

“Stop,” the AWOL in the street says, pain clearly wracking his features, “Turn it off. I don’t want to see anymore.”

“Yes you do,” the bat admonishes him. “You want to see it, because you want it to be real. You’re still holding out some hope that it can happen someday.”

“Is that so wrong? Is there some reason why I can’t want a normal life?”

“Anthony can want a normal life,” the bat answers, “but I have news for you: nobody gives a shit what Anthony wants. Look, big guy, it breaks my heart to tell you this, but all anybody wants from you is AWOL. They want the monster. They don’t want some crying little bitch sitting in a street, dreaming about the family that they’re never going to have. It’s time to face facts. Jiminy Cricket isn’t about to come hopping around the corner to let you wish upon a star here. You need to get with the program, get on board, and move on from this. The world of IWC could be your oyster, if you’d just reach out and take it.”

AWOL shakes his head, regretfully, and lets out a rueful sigh. “That’s why I walked away. That’s why I left the company. I was tired of the shit they wanted from me day in and day out. I realized that I had the choice of getting what I wanted in the ring or outside of it. I chose to try and build a normal life.” He points at the window. “I wanted what that guy has.”

The bat sighs, rolling its beady red eyes. “We really don’t have time for this. You’ve got a match in a week, and we have to get you on your feet by then. If you won’t do it on your own, I’ll do it for you.”

AWOL looks up in confusion as the bat suddenly soars down from the light post, landing on AWOL’s face. He starts to shout in shock, inadvertently allowing the bat to get a grip on his upper and lower jaw with its small feet. Before the big man can react it dives forward, squirming its way down AWOL’s mouth. The big man gags, grabbing hold of his throat as a tell-tale bulge crawls its way down past his larynx and into his chest. AWOL drops to his knees, eyes wide in horror, before slumping over to his side. He twitches for a few moments, spasming, before suddenly letting out an audible near death-rattle of a sigh from the depths of his throat.

He rolls over onto his face a moment later, pressing himself slowly back up onto his feet. He cracks his neck to the side, an audible pop echoing out into the street. He turns back towards the windowsill, where AWOL is waging an action-figure battle, pitting himself against a well-worn Max Craven doll. The two plastic grapplers bash back and forth before the young boy knocks the Max Craven figure onto its back, dropping the AWOL toy on top for the cover. AWOL slaps his hand down three times onto the coffee table, and all three occupants of the room raise their hands into a cheer at the victory.

In the street, AWOL smiles, a vicious glint in his eyes, before raising his arm. His right hand is pointed, fingers making a mock pistol. He pretends to fire it, making a “boom” sound and raising his hand up with the imaginary recoil. An instant later the apartment explodes, another massive fireball flying out into the street, the orange glow of the firelight illuminating the sadistic smile on the big man’s face.

He turns to walk away. “Well, that’s one mental block down. Let’s see what other damage we can cause tonight.”

Behind him, lying on the pavement, the AWOL action figure rests, limbs twisted, the top of its head smoldering in the flames…