Title: Another Long Day on the Parade to the Tomb (UltraViolence, Universal Title Defense)
Featuring: Nova
Date: 05/04/07
Location: In the space between the '>' and the '='

"Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost."

- Marie Howe, What the Living Do


"Like the coldest winter chill
Heaven beside you, hell within"

- Alice in Chains, "Heaven Beside You"


Canton, Mississippi, October 25th, 1979, early evening

"Ergh…come on, now…oooommph…come on, you sonuvabitch, come on!"

The irritated mumblings issuing from the mouth of Jackie Vega float up above his head as puffs of steam before dissipating into the chilly autumn air. His faded brown work-boots grind across gravel as he keeps one hand on the wheel of his rusty ’65 Chevy pick-up and the other firmly against the metal joint where the door meets the frame. Slowly the truck rolls along the driveway towards the quaint, wooden two-story house that sits at its end like an expectant host.

With a final grunt of exertion, Jackie pushes the truck to a rolling stop at the foot of the stairs leading up to the front porch. He leans against the Chevy’s bed, one hand immediately darting to his lower back as the wrinkles around his eyes are drawn tight into a wince. Decades before sleep technology will involve anything besides cotton and coiling metal, Jackie’s aware that sleep tonight will not come easily.

Grabbing a rag out of the back, he wipes the sweat from his face. His hair, still full thankfully, if completely gray, is soaked with it, poking out in random spikes that make his wife laugh and himself scramble for the nearest ball cap.

Gritting his teeth to prevent from crying out, Jackie steps away from the truck and makes his way up the steps of the porch. The wooden rail on which he leans for support gives an unsure wobble, and Jackie sighs…another project, another domestic malady. The house is open, a simple screen door serving as a barrier between inside and out. He opens the door and steps inside…

"Catch it."

…before turning and stopping the door with his hand, letting it gently and silently fall back against the frame. His eyes follow the source of the voice, and his first smile of the day threatens to mutiny against the fatigue and gloom present on his face.

In the fading light of the afternoon’s hug goodbye with the evening, Bernadette Vega’s long silver hair glitters like cold fire. It hangs down over her shoulders and across the face of the infant cradled in her arms.

Jackie does his best impersonation of a young man without back problems as he moves towards his armchair, but he can’t hide the pain from his wife of thirty-one years. He sits down slowly and leans back in stages before relaxing his muscles and allowing the chair’s cushions to begin massaging the day’s labor away. "Ahhh…how is he?"

Bernadette looks down at the baby’s face, serene in slumber, and smiles warmly. "He’s tired."

"I imagine he would be," Jackie replies with a wry grin, "been pullin’ some long hours at the plant."

He reaches over to the nightstand and slides out a drawer, removing an ornately carved wooden box and setting it in his lap. Opening the box’s lid Jackie pulls out a plastic bag of reefer and a package of rolling papers…his last holdout from the wild ‘60s. He’s too old now to be fighting with the police, or the rednecks, or setting out on foot for Washington; but unlike those things, weed is something that only seems to get more relevant as Jackie’s body begins calling in the favors that he’s requested of it over the years.

"You look hurt," Bernadette says quietly.

Jackie is silent for a moment as his fingers work their familiar pattern over the paper. "They’re killin’ me, Bern," he replies at last, his voice hoarse, "I’m no spring chicken. Hell, I don’t recognize half the guys I work with anymore, and these new studs in suits have no problems cleaning out the garbage."

"You’re not ‘garbage,’ Jackie," Bernadette scolds.

Her husband smiles again, grateful that she’s never made allowances for his despondence. "You’re right." He tucks the joint behind his ear and stands up with great effort. "I’m gonna go lay down, alright?"

Bernadette nods and watches Jackie walk towards the stairs. The defeat lingering in his body language makes her sad. She looks down at the sleeping child nestled against her bosom, oblivious to the complications of the world. She leans in and whispers in his ear as her eyes roam around the room and its artifacts of her and Jackie’s life together. "This is all just stuff, you know. Just stuff. None of it really means anything."

She runs a finger across the child’s forehead. "My little Caesar, my gift from a faceless benefactor…I wanted that name because one day I know you’re going to be a king. But hear this, little Prince Vega: be sure…be sure you find yourself a good woman, and surround yourself with friends you can trust…because when the glitter washes away, when the gilt fades…"

She leans in close, her lips almost touching the baby’s ear.

"…you’ll still be royalty to them."


------*~*~*------


The bushes outside the Vega Mansion, Olympia, Washington, May 1st, 2007, nighttime

This is their spot.

Hunched beneath the dense green foliage that seemingly protects the estate from the outside world, a small collective of young boys sit quietly, peering past branches for a glimpse inside the enigma of this strange and beautiful house.

It’s a long walk, five and a half miles, to reach the Vega Mansion (though they don’t call it that, of course), but the energy of youth coupled with insatiable curiosity propel the group back to this spot time and time again. They want to know who the man is that sits every night on a couch in a big room downstairs, always alone, and always drinking.

The boys have deduced that with adulthood must come some incredible, unquenchable thirst. After all, the glass never leaves the man’s hand except to sit on the countertop while he refills it. Even in their naiveté the boys can sense melancholy about the man, the sterility of his home, the Solitude of his Fortress. They want to make him laugh, play games with them, allow them inside to give his home that liveliness that can only come with the presence of children.

But he terrifies them, too. Sometimes he drinks a lot out of the glass very quickly and stands up, veering wildly like a zombie out of the movies, shouting at no one and throwing things. If any of the boys ever worked up the courage to go and introduce themselves, who’s to say it wouldn’t be this side of the man who answered the door?

Who’s to say that…

"Shoot!" one of the boys hisses as headlights illuminate the bushes around them, "someone’s coming! Run!"

They scamper away, in shock that another person is approaching the house. Their desire to observe the man in actual human interaction is overwhelmed by their fear of discovery. One of the boys turns back for a moment to catch a glimpse of the visitor; it’s a momentary and fuzzy one, but he sees a woman taller than any of his mother’s friends.

She reminds him of Xena.


WHAM!

The wind does Lindsay Troy the favor of shutting the front door behind her. She wastes no time in walking briskly through the foyer to the living room.

"I don’t suppose you took your shoes off?" Nova asks from the couch, looking up at the "Queen of the Ring" with glassy eyes.

Troy’s answer comes in the form of a leg swung wide, the boot of which passes inches in front of the Risen Star’s face, instantly waking him up. "What do you think?" she replies coldly.

"I think…," Nova says slowly, his reaction time inhibited by the evening’s self-medication, "…that you stepped in some gum on your way in here."

"Oh, shit," Lindsay grumbles, lifting up her leg and attempting to scrape the gum off her boot by grinding it against Nova’s cherrywood table.

"You should try the corner, I bet that would help," Nova offers helpfully as flecks of wood chip away from the table’s side.

"Oh, fuck it, it’s not important," Troy growls.

Nova reaches for his glass, but Lindsay swipes it off the table and carries it into the sink where she pours its contents down the sink and replaces it with tap water.

"HEY!" Nova protests, "I’ll have you know I drained that from the veins of a felled Whiskey Monster! Its street-value is comparable to uranium processing schematics!"

Troy carries the glass back over to Nova and shoves it in his face. "Why are you here, anyway?" he asks, looking up, "if I weren’t soused, I’d think this was crazy, you barging in and trying to sober me up. This isn’t some kind of covert-ops booty ca-"

"Shut the hell up," Lindsay interrupts, choosing to remain standing, looming over the Universal Champion. "Ariel called me yesterday."

All traces of goofiness fall from the face of the Risen Star. "You…Ar…Ariel called you?"

Troy nods, her expression remaining stern but her voice softening slightly. "She sounded terrible, Caes. She didn’t even have anything to talk about, or if she did, she wasn’t making any sense." She pauses and taking a deep breath. "She didn’t even know what day it was."

"I…," Nova begins, but can only shake his head. Words fail him in these moments of shame. "I don’t know how, uh…"

"Can it," Troy interjects dismissively, "it isn’t important. You have to go see her, Nov. Now. You can’t let your own indifference and inaction cause any more damage."

"Hey, I fucking…," Nova starts angrily, but again Lindsay refuses to hear it.

"You what?" Troy cuts in, her voice rising and eyes glowing, "you’ve tortured yourself for half a year over your daughter’s death and not being there, not caring enough…well, WAKE UP, asshole! Ariel is not okay. You need to go see her, see if you can find the words that might begin something that resembles a healing process, because as of right now, you’ve done approximately jack to constructively cope with this situation. Go, Caes. Go right now."

She steps away from him, and he runs a hand over his hair before instinctively eyeing the liquor cabinet. "I…I dunno, Lindz."

"Yes, you do," she replies, unfazed. "You know that the only way to ease the pain is to stop washing it down with swigs of Jack Daniels, but you're too used to wallowing that you've forgotten how to cope. I don't know Ariel from Eve, but I know that pain she, and you, are going through. Search yourself and you’ll know that this is the first thing you’ve probably felt right about doing in a really long time."

Stunned from the informational and emotional overload, Nova sits silently for a moment before looking up at his personified conscience. "Why did you come here? If Ward, or Killean, or fuckin’ a, Ferguson found out, they’d be furious. Was it really to tell me to go home?"

Troy walks to the edge of the living room and looks back at Nova, bitterness welling up in her eyes. "I don’t know why; I can fix everyone else’s lives apparently, just not my own. But I don't care if they hold me accountable for showing up on your doorstep."

“Lindz…,” Nova says, holding out an arm to halt her departure.

"Please, Nov…," she replies, waving him off, "just go do the right thing…for once. Okay?"

The Risen Star casts his eyes downward, unable to meet the "Queen of the Ring’s" stare.

"Okay."


------*~*~*------


The Old Vega House, Detroit, Michigan, May 2nd, 2007, around noon

Pulling into the long driveway of his old home, the first thing Nova notices is the grass.

Actually, perhaps "jungle" is a more appropriate term. The lawn appears not to have been cut in weeks, maybe months. The grass, grown thick and wild with weeds, stands almost to Nova’s knee as he steps out of his rented Accord. He approaches the front steps of the house, and again is taken aback as he notices garbage randomly scattered across the porch.

He feels like George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, standing in front of the place where his house should be and seeing only a dilapidated collection of refuse.

Knock, knock, knock.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

Nothing.

Nova tries the knob, and it turns, the wind at his back swinging the door open wide. Stepping inside cautiously, his breath catches in his throat as his eyes survey the living room in complete disarray. Dirty dishes clutter every surface. Dust lays thick over the mantel and on the woodwork. Nova walks over to the coffee table and lifts a plate off of it, staring underneath at a dark, dustless circle…the plate’s place-marker.

Setting the plate aside, he notices papers scattered across the table. His first inclination is that it must be some documentation from Ariel’s office, but upon turning some of them over he finds that they’re sketches of Lulu. He remembers most of the photographs that the sketches were modeled after. He had forgotten that Ariel even knew how to draw.

"I thought you were a bill-collector."

Nova jumps, half out of surprise and half because the voice that just shattered the house’s silence does not sound like his ex-wife at all. Turning, Nova is horrified to discover that the image of the woman before him matches the voice.

Ariel sits on the couch only feet away from him, her features half-hidden in the room’s darkness but still distinguishable from the light fighting its way through the drawn curtains. The pallor of her skin matches the dust that lies in silence all around her. Her hair is knotted, greasy, disheveled.

And when she looks up at Nova for the first time since that day in the children’s hospital, her eyes are hollow, detached beads sunken into her skull and surrounded by dark purple circles almost mistakable for bruises.

"Ariel…," Nova says softly, taken aback, "what…what happened?" Immediately regretting his choice of words, he adds quickly, "I’m sorry, that wasn’t…what I mean is…I just…"

Again with the "not finding the right words" thing.

"Have you been working?" Nova asks, looking around. "Have you been…God, I don’t know, I heard from Lindsay that you weren’t doing so…well, I mean, I needed to come and see you anyway, it’s just…God, I don’t know what I’m trying to say."

"I talked to Lindsay…," Ariel says absently, "I talked…I think it was…Lulu’s sick, and she…"

Tears begin to well up in Nova’s eyes as he realizes Ariel’s thoughts are running together in delirium. "Ariel, sweetie, Lulu’s…"

"She said something yesterday," Ariel continues, her eyes wandering past Nova to some far-off point, "you missed it. She’s so funny already…"

"Ariel," Nova says, his voice shaking, "I…I’m just so sorry. I’m so sorry."

Somehow this triggers a moment of clarity in the Risen Star’s ex-wife, and her eyes sharpen up as tears dribble down the sides of her cheeks. "I…hated you for a long time, Chris. You left me to watch our baby die. But this…"

She looks around at the room, her lip curling in disgust with herself, "…this isn’t your fault." She puts her hands up to her face and then runs them down, over her chest and stomach, seemingly gesturing to herself. "And this won’t be either."

Ariel hugs herself as sobs wrack her body. "Please…please go, Chris."

"Ariel, I came…," Nova begins.

"Please go," she repeats, looking at him with the puffy eyes of a thousand nights spent crying, "this won’t be your fault, Chris. Go."

Nova’s head spins as he stands in the room he once spent Christmases decorating. Lindsay told him to "go, go, go" to Ariel, and now Ariel is telling him to "go, go, go"…but he doesn’t know to where. Stepping back, Nova’s eyes meet Ariel’s, and for whatever reason…

…he goes. Turning away, Nova can hear Ariel curl into herself on the couch, burying her face in its faded cushions. He walks to the door, and removes a check, placing it on the lamp-stand.

One hundred thousand dollars…the going rate for ruining two lives.


Wiping his eyes, Nova puts on his turn signal as he comes to a four-way stop not far from his old house. His mind replays her words over and over again, like the CD left in the stereo after the party’s over, skipping and skipping and skipping.

"This won’t be your fault…this won’t be your fault…this won’t be your fault…"

Suddenly Nova’s eyes widen and the breath rushes out of his lungs. With a screeeech, he swings the Accord around in a U-turn and roars off back towards the house.

Bouncing over the curb, Nova drives through the grass up to the very steps of the house. He leaps out of the car, the door left hanging open, and rushes inside. He sees the imprint on the couch where she was sitting.

"ARIEL!" he screams, "Ariel, where are you?!"

She closes the bathroom door gingerly behind her. She stares at her reflection in the mirror…someone else’s face.

"ARIEL!" Nova shouts, running into the kitchen, "Ariel, please!"

She opens the medicine cabinet. Her fingers dance over prescription bottles until they land on the Vicodin. She removes it and stares vacantly at the translucent orange bottle.

Nova charges up the stairs towards the master bedroom. "ARIEL! FUCK, WHERE ARE YOU!?"

The bottle bounces off the white tile floor. She lifts a two-liter of Coke to her lips and gags as she forces dozens of the little white headache-helpers down her throat.

Nova runs out of the upstairs bathroom, hands gripping his hair as his eyes search around wildly. He bolts for the door and almost falls running down the stairs. He reaches the hallway bathroom and grabs at the handle.

It’s locked.

She dips a toe in the bathwater serenely, already swaying from side to side. The temperature is perfect. She steps into the tub and slides slowly down into the water, feeling it soak her pajama pants and bathrobe.

"Aaagh!" Nova shouts, gripping his shoulder. He slams it into the door again. "ARIEL, DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!!"

Again he throws himself at the door. Again.

Again.

She feels the water rising around her. She sinks into it, allowing it to massage the grief from her shoulders, the back of her neck, the back of her head.

Wood begins to splinter. Hinges begin to fail.

"ARIEL, PLEASE GOD STOP!" Nova cries out desperately, "STOP, GODDAMMIT!"

Her senses fade into a low, white hum. She is at peace for the first time in her life.

The last restraints shatter apart and the door swings open. Nova charges in and drops to his knees next to the tub, his arms flying around her and ripping her out of her aquatic cocoon.

But there will be no metamorphoses today.


------*~*~*------


Two hours later…

As lingering policemen walk around the living room, Nova sits at the kitchen table, hands together.

"Sir?" comes a voice bringing the Risen Star back to reality, "we found this on the coffee table."

The officer, a young man with brown hair, hands Nova a folded note. He backs away respectfully, and Nova opens it as the tears return.

Chris,

I used to be so bitter about wrestling and the way it pulled you away from me like another lover. Then I realized that’s exactly what it is…your lover. More than that, it’s your life. You abandoned me. You abandoned your daughter. But I can’t hate you for loving wrestling. It’s awe-inspiring. I’ve never seen anyone love anything the way that you love wrestling. It consumes you. It is, quite literally, your life.

I wish that we could have been your life. I wish that you had given that intense, obsessive love to us and shown the same dedication to the life we tried to build together. But nothing could supersede wrestling, and I came to understand that.

I can’t go on like this. I’m a shell. I lost you, but I had my baby. Without Lulu, I’m nothing. I’m a ghost, living in a dream world of half-awake observations that mean nothing.

You do what you love, Chris. Don’t stop, because you’re in the relatively small group of people in the entire world who are truly driven by something, kept alive by it. You’re a part of wrestling, a piece of a machine that won’t function on its own if it’s removed.

Be a part of what you love.

I love you,

Ariel

Placing the note on the table, Nova closes his eyes and leans his head against his hand. His hand reaches into his pocket and removes a pack of cigarettes. He lights one and exhales smoke into the kitchen.

It’s the first cigarette he’s ever smoked inside this house. Out of consideration for Ariel and Lulu, he always smoked on the porch.

It tastes like shit.






*Special thanks to Lindz for her help with the "Queen of the Ring" Lindsay Troy
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