Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

worse and worse every time. His guys were unfriendly, untrained, and unsafe, and I was completely fucking over it.

I saw the punch coming at my head, telegraphed as it should be, but instead of taking it and firing back, I decided I didn’t trust the little bastard to know how to throw a working punch, so I grabbed his wrist.

The kid’s eyes met mine, and I saw some of the color drain out of his face when he saw the scowl I wore. He knew he was in for it. He was right. I put one hand on his throat and shoved him back into the corner, then starting laying in the chops. I held my right hand flat as a two-by-four and blistered his chest with backhanded slaps that sounded like shots from a .45 pistol. The sound of my palm striking his flesh echoed off the walls and metal roof of the community center, and the crowd started to count.

They didn’t care that I was working heel and they were supposed to cheer for the kid. They just knew who was the real thing and who was some dumbass kid about to get taken to school. Well, Junior, class was definitely in session. I turned his chest red with the second chop, and the welts started coming up after the fourth. By that time, the ref realized that he wasn’t in control of the match in any way and shoved his head and shoulder in between us. I grabbed the front of his shirt in one fist and leaned down to his face.

“Stay the fuck out of it, Ernie. I’m taking the kid to wrestling school. Just make the five-count and call for the bell, but I’m going to beat the shit out of this motherfucker until you do.” Then I shoved the ref out of the corner and resumed turning the kid’s chest to hamburger meat.

Now you can make a chop loud without making it too painful. It’s always gonna hurt some, because you are slapping the shit out of somebody, but if you cup your hand a little, you can get a ton of sound without absolutely killing your opponent. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything I was supposed to do, except not kill the stupid bastard. It wasn’t fair. He screwed up, but probably not enough to get beat up as bad as I beat him. But I’d seen him work before, and he was reckless. Just two months before, he almost broke Jimmy Star’s elbow with a badly applied arm bar that he never even apologized for. Jimmy missed two weeks of bookings, and when you’re trying to eat on the indies, that’s a big loss.

So I wasn’t just beating his ass for me, I was beating his ass for Jimmy, for Marlie Magic, who got a cut on her cheek that took eight stitches to close when she worked an intergender match with this kid back in the winter, and I beat his ass for the next poor son of a bitch who had to deal with his reckless bullshit for a fifty-dollar payday.

After about another thirty seconds of me unloading on the kid, Ernie made his five-count, called for the bell, and disqualified me for not listening to his instructions. I turned around and mugged for the crowd, holding both my arms over my head like I’d just won the world title. The kid sagged to his butt in the corner, covering his chest with his arms. I think I even saw a tear or two roll down his cheeks as he slid out of the ring and snuck down the aisle to the locker room.

I stomped across the ring and hopped up on the second turnbuckle, roaring to the crowd like it was WrestleMania and not a half-comped crowd of rednecks in Bumblefuck, South Carolina. I wracked my brain trying to remember if I was working heel or babyface tonight, but it didn’t matter. I was pissed off, so even if I’d been the baby at the beginning of the match, I was in full-on heel mode now.

The ring announcer came over the shitty PA system and said, “Matt Monstrous has been disqualified. Your winner, Jason Courageous!” Oh good, I was supposed to be the heel anyway. Okay, at least I gave the “crowd” what they were expecting. I screamed a few more times at the crowd, just incoherent roaring more than trying to actually engage any of the kids or their parents. There were probably a dozen actual wrestling fans in the audience, but mostly it was kids who went to the middle school next door and their parents. I try not to swear too much when there are a bunch of kids in the house. That kind of shit can get you banned from towns in the south, and I live here, so that would suck.

I jumped down, stepped between the second and top ropes, and hopped off the apron to the floor. I made my way back to the dressing room through the mostly uninterested crowd, mentally preparing myself for the confrontation to come.

I knew the kid wasn’t going to try to start any shit. His chest hurt too bad to do anything, even if he could lift his arms enough to throw a punch, which I doubted. The pros in the locker room wouldn’t have shit to say, either. They’d all seen the kind of crap the locals did in these matches, so it was only a matter of time before somebody beat somebody else’s ass, either in the ring or the parking lot. My way had definitely been the less bloody choice.

No, the only people that might want a piece of my ass were the locals, who might decide that it was worth it to beat my ass in defense of one of their own. I’m not the biggest guy on the circuit, only about two hundred twenty pounds and five-ten if I stretch