Jinx sat at a small rectangular table they’d set up a few feet from the stage. In one hand, the jester held a miniature hammer which hovered above a bell that sat on the table. In the other hand, the jester held the AK-47 at the four speedo-clad brawny brutes on stage.
Each of the fellas had been forced to strip down to their birthday suits in front of the crowd and slip into the customized skimpy trunks that Sebastian had provided them. The fabric left little to the imagination; each pair was a different color and had the meathead’s name spread across their buff posteriors.
Brick’s trunks were the color of his name, Luke’s were navy blue, Kwan’s were jet black, and Rocky’s were a smokey gray. They each had been given matching knee pads and either white or black lace-up boots that covered the majority of their calves.
Many of the meatheads wondered why they were dressed like professional wrestlers, but they were hardly surprised. Each of the men nervously stretched out their chiseled frames. As they warmed up, they understood that whatever ordeal they were about to get into would probably require them to be limber to survive.
Sebastian stood at the other end of the stage holding a cloth rope attached to the curtain while the crowd looked on with morbid curiosity. The sweat pumped out from his head and drizzled all over his collar. The veins popped in his neck while an unmistakable madness hugged his face. He cleared his throat and spoke bombastically and with more bass in his voice box than ever before.
“Tonight, we are going to witness the most anticipated match in the history of professional wrestling… for the heavyweight championship of the world!”
He waited a moment before continuing, “Well, not really… but it’s the best we’ve got. But just to keep it interesting, we can make it for that gift there instead,” he said, pointing to a carefully wrapped box that sat on the lip of the stage.
He cleared his throat a second time and opened his eyes, looking out toward his guests, “ARE YOU READY?!” he screamed.
The crowd half-cheered, not knowing exactly what kind of response he was looking for.
“I SAID, ARE YOU RRRRRRRRREADY?!”
The audience let out a roar that was loud but sounded like it was comprised of dozens of death whimpers in an effort to unlock the reaction that Sebastian’s madness desired.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for the hundreds in attendance and the millions around the world that will never know. LLLLLLLLET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Sebastian turned back to the curtain and jerked the cord with brute force until the entire cloth had been pulled aside. Based on his introduction and the attire that the meatheads were currently wearing, what was revealed aligned perfectly.
The wrestling ring was no typical squared circle. Instead of the standard three ropes that normally encompassed the sizable perimeter, they had each been exchanged for triple knotted lengths of razor wire. Additionally, the four corners of the ring that were usually occupied by three padded turnbuckles had been replaced with a multitude of jagged glass shards and nails pointing outward.
A lone pair of steps allowed access into the ring and the floor outside was covered entirely with long modified beds of nails. The lethal foot-long spikes surrounded the entire ring, ensuring that anyone who was tossed over the top rope would be impaled by the ruthless metal and left to bleed out in agony.
Back inside the ring, there was a buffet of sadistic instruments. The harmful and warped weaponry included syringes, a cheese grater, cattle prod, a shopping cart, a fire extinguisher, and even a gas-operated weed whacker.
The eyeballs of the freshly anointed competitors grew lidless and a cutting fear crept inside each of them. Despite their lack of basic intellect, the boys understood what was fast approaching. Instincts gripped them as their flimsy friendships suddenly seemed irrelevant and forgotten. Continuing their warm-ups, they began to space out a bit and started sizing each other up.
“You’re probably wondering how we pulled this thing off, but let me tell you, this place has worse security than the fuckin’ Mandalay Bay!” he laughed heartlessly at his fanboy mass murder reference.
Sebastian activated a switch behind the curtain that turned on lighting in the rafters, illuminating the twisted theater of violence they were set to do battle in. He then took center stage and looked out to the people who were squirming with worry.
“In this four-man battle royal, the only way to win is to eliminate all of your opponents over the top rope. Only then will the champion be crowned and allowed to open their gift. At the sound of the bell, we’ll be underway, and anything goes! DJ Buttaz, hit the music!”
DJ Buttaz put the most hype shit to the needle that he could find. He did his best to appease Sebastian, otherwise, he knew his own fate may be even worse than what was in store for the strong men on stage.
“Entering the ring first, named after construction material and the color he leaves leaking from his opponent’s bodies… he is BBBBBBBBBBBrick!”
Brick looked a little confused but when Sebastian gave the hand gesture, he carefully trotted up the steel steps and worked his way between the razor wire and avoided making contact.
“Next, we have a toned foreigner who makes all the honey’s hearts throb, sleeping in the basement of Gold’s Gym, Kwwwwwwwannnnnnn!”
He gave him a nod and Kwan did as he was instructed, ascending the steps with grave terror unmistakably encapsulated in his expression.
“Heading in now, a man with the strength of ten oxen, and about the same wit. He is the modern-day Lou Ferrigno, misspelled but sounding the same… LLLLLLLLLLLLUKE!”
Luke raced inside with his adrenaline pumping, preparing to fight the men he’d spent most of his days with. He was a little too excited. As he stepped through the razor ropes, his tense shoulders didn’t get low enough and the metallic shredding steel raked across his massive bronze back.
“Agggghhhhhh!” he shrieked, falling down to the mat as blood began to gush from the ripped patch of flesh that let his insides show.
The other men looked shocked when they saw what would be the first blood of the contest.
“And last, but not least, with fists as hard as a boulder and also the mental capacity of one, he is the cynical stud, throwing shots as heavy as a two-week buzz, ROCKYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
As Rocky stepped up, he knew he needed to be more cautious when entering the ring than Luke’s dumb ass. But that thought was in the back of his mind. Primarily, he couldn’t stop thinking about how much Sebastian knew about them.
He had a secret, one that he kept so close to the vest that even the three men in the ring never knew. Rocky was a huge fan of wrestling, something that the other three tended to ridicule and poke fun at.
Regardless of their feelings toward the offbeat form of entertainment, Rocky watched it religiously and had even been training with a retired former ring legend by the name of Madman Moses twice a week. The hardened veteran showed him a few things when he could catch him on a sober day.
It had progressed to the point where Rocky was scheduled to make his indie debut the following month. But his official inauguration would come sooner than expected and not with the well-thought-out measures taken beforehand. Rocky’s first match would most likely be his last…
Sebastian watched each of the nervous men trying to keep loose in their corners. They had no words for each other, only a mixture of fear and dread in each of their pupils. Sebastian grinned and turned to the audience. “You’re welcome,” he said, pointing to Jinx who immediately dropped the hammer down three times on the bell.
Kwan looked the most nervous, grabbing hold of the handle of the shopping cart and pushing it forward gently as if trying to keep a bit of distance between him and the other competitors.
Rocky keyed in on him. It turned out the little dick jokes, racist cracks, and other frequent stinging jabs he constantly took at him weren’t just playful locker room banter. Something about Kwan legitimately annoyed him. He couldn’t really understand what, but either way, he wasn’t ready to die, and thus took hold of the cattle prod laying on the mat a few feet away.
“I never really fuckin’ liked ya anyway,” Rocky mumbled, looking at his frightened friend.
Brick and Luke were both a bit shocked by his true feelings. But slowly, the surprise on their faces contorted as they each searched for anything they could to motivate enough hatred to fuel a murder. They weren’t quite ready to fight but they were trying to figure out a way to get there.
Meanwhile, Rocky needed no extra thoughts to proceed. He noticed that the handles of the metal shopping cart didn’t have the plastic handguard that the grocery store normally did. Rocky’s cagey observation revealed the whole carriage for what it was—a conduit to the real first blood.
Rocky activated the cattle prod and stuck it against the front of the cart that Kwan was so feebly trying to protect himself with. The wave of voltage was so overpowering that it froze him in place and caused him to gyrate violently.
With Kwan stunned, Rocky pulled back on the electroshock and kicked the cart, causing it to fall over onto its side in the middle of the ring. Then he put the boots to Kwan’s solid abs, launching him back-first into the glass shards and rusty nails that peppered the corner turnbuckle.
As the ruthless combination of Sebastian’s sadistic ingenuity tore into his screaming friend’s bare back, he pushed down on his pec muscles, sending him deeper into anguish. Rocky jolted him one more time with the Taser before pulling him off of the spikes and synching his arms around his waist.
The polished snap on the belly-to-belly suplex launched Rocky’s bleeding buddy over his head and saw the small of his back connect first with the base of the shopping cart. Kwan cried out again and laid motionless and gushing on the mat.
Brick was horrified by the violence that Rocky had unleashed on Kwan, and so was Luke. Except, Luke was so disturbed that he made it a point not to let it happen to him.
While Brick was focused in on the action, Luke had discreetly gotten hold of a pair of the syringes with the mysterious substance inside them and decided it was time to make his move.
He pounced on Brick, sticking both of the needle tips into the cheeks of his face and pushing down on the plungers immediately. Whatever was inside them wasn’t friendly toward a human host.
Brick took a step back into the razor-wire rope screaming. As the slices reddened his skin, he placed both hands on his face. Almost right away, it had started to balloon. His cheeks pushed outward until the skin closest to the puncture holes started to come undone. The melt of human essence puked outward from his skull and left his hands collecting a bloody bubbling broth as it drizzled off the bone.
Brick fell to the foundation, shaking and losing control of his bowels. Like an abused dog relieving himself in extreme stress.
Luke was taken aback by what he’d done; the viciousness was too much. He didn’t really know what he was expecting, maybe it was to survive, but what he’d done seemed far worse than just trying to hang in there.
Had he been as heartless as Rocky, he probably would’ve started up the weed whacker already, but instead, his hesitation left the device coming at his belly. The whipping plastic shredded Luke’s gut.
The reoccurring theme of the crowd looking on in horror had no exception in this instance. They watched as the skin particles and tissue were knocked off of the muscle man’s overly disciplined physique. His body’s division looked like sweat flying off a boxer’s scalp when he got struck with a knockout blow, or dust coming off an old shelf that had a slightly red tint. Luke watched on, and with each rotation of the whacker, a little more of him went missing.
The unexpectedness of the strike quickly sent Luke stumbling backwards into the razor-wire. His stomach looked like it’d received hundreds of mini corporal punishment lashes. The speed in which he back-stepped allowed the pointy steel to sink deep into his flesh. His arms flailed upward and curled around the ropes as the metal bit into his armpits.
Luke jerked his brawny body uselessly but he was now fully entangled. Rocky didn’t wait to elevate the whacker blade to his face. The shredding lines of chaos burrowed into his nose and lips. It only took a few seconds to uncover his entire nasal cavity and leave his lips hanging off his face like wet mashed nightcrawlers.
Still snagged like a worm on a hook, Luke had stopped moving from the agony it caused. He sounded like a motor boat trying to plead for mercy liplessly to his dear friend.
Rocky wasn’t having it and again pounced on the glaring opportunity, looking to finish him fast. He took a few steps away from Luke and cocked back the weed whacker. The big boy dashed forward and swung it with everything he had in the tank, like he was about to clothesline him with a baseball bat.
The steel arm connected under Luke’s chin with such meathead force that it snapped in half and sent him toppling backwards over the top rope. Rocky pushed him forward for good measure and listened to the sickening rip of the flesh being detached from his previously intertwined underarms.
Two juicy hunks of humanity were left hanging on the spiky rope as Luke fell belly-first onto the tall bed of nails below. The long spike impaled its way through his vital organs and exited numerous areas of his back and legs.
A gurgling noise could be heard as his motionless frame lost all movement, but Rocky wasn’t waiting to bask in the glory. He knew that the deathmatch was far from over still.
While he understood the urgency of the situation, a small part of him kept yelling in his mind; get your shit in. The things that Madman had taught him couldn’t go to waste. With Brick’s head liquifying in the corner, and Luke already done for, Rocky wanted to put on a show. It was probably the only opportunity he’d get a chance to.
Rocky tossed the busted gardening device out of the ring and sized up Kwan. He was finally working his way back to his feet, but was favoring his back and his eyes were tight with anguish.
As Kwan saw Rocky barreling down on him, he was helpless. The forceful dropkick sent him flying into the barbwire. It ripped into his back, leaving flaps of skin fluttering. As he pulled himself away, Rocky was already standing up and waiting with the next spot in the deathmatch keyed up.
Seeing the glimmering cheese grater on the mat, Rocky realized the opportunity to have a little fun. He took Kwan’s head into his armpit and yanked him down to the mat DDTing him head-first onto the cheese grater.
Kwan’s forehead hit the unforgiving steel and the many sharp edges pushed his skin through the tiny holes, leaving hearty chunks of his cranium oozing and wedged inside.
The device had sliced into the back of Rocky’s triceps too, but he enjoyed getting opened up a little. He shot to his feet quickly and removed some of the blood from his arm and smeared it like war-paint over his face and chest.
As Rocky stared out at the mortified crowd, screaming like Madman had taught him, he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t getting over. He clearly wasn’t the babyface he’d envisioned himself as, but that was no worry to him. He was happy to shift into a heel turn for the ages.
He picked up the already gory and dented cheese grater along with Kwan’s limp head and looked out at the crowd.
“HOW IS THIS SHIT NOT GREAT TO YOU MORONS?! I KNOW WHY! IT’S BECAUSE NONE OF YOU JABRONIES KNOWS WHAT GREAT IS! YOU WOULDN’T KNOW, EVEN IF IT SMACKED YOU RIGHT IN YOUR UGLY FACES! I’LL SHOW YOU GREAT!” he said, holding up the bloody cheese grater like it was a relic passed on to him by God himself.
He brought his pathetic promo pun to life as he mashed the shredding steel into Kwan’s already busted open face. As the crowd grumbled in discomfort, he raked the kitchen utensil back and forth over the exposed meat, shaving it off slowly while he screamed in a deranged manner.
Kwan was too concussed from the prior offense to scream along with him. As the blood rained down his nose and mouth, Rocky elevated his now nearly incapacitated friend to his feet and tossed the cheese grater aside.
He bent Kwan over towards him and stuck his gushing head between his legs and looked out over the top rope toward the crowd as if saying, ‘I want you to see this nice and clear.’
Rocky hoisted Kwan up in powerbomb fashion but, instead, leveraged his incredible strength and allowed Kwan’s mammoth frame to slowly slide behind him. Then he carefully hooked his hands under Kwan’s armpits while keeping him elevated. As Kwan’s lifeless body laid back-to-back with Rocky, he used all of his power to elevate him high over his head.
The Razor’s Edge was an incredibly difficult and taxing move and was typically not performed when tossing the opponent over the top rope. It was dangerous enough to kill someone without the bed of nails on the outside of the ring, but nonetheless, that is where Rocky’s eyes were aimed. In this one unlikely circumstance, it was horribly perfect.
Rocky launched him into the air back-first over the top rope. His brawny assets allowed him to vault the meaty bastard into the air about another foot or so. In total, the distance between Kwan and the nails was about seven or eight feet.
As Kwan’s tattered and torn frame came down at breakneck speed, the onlookers knew it was going to be a rough landing. They gasped as the girthy spikes crushed through his once pristine bones and flesh. First, they pierced his wheezing lungs, and then punched a hole of violence through his rapidly pumping heart.
Maybe the most gruesome of the nightmarish injuries were the pair of girthy spikes that had lined up perfectly with each of his eyeballs and blasted through the back of his skull. It was like a cheesy B-movie that you saw back in the day in 3D how his eyeballs were left projecting outward with the gory orbs occupying the end of each spike. The rest of his head was driven backwards by the force of his motion, and his brain tissue slimed the rusty steel that had already run its way through him.
Expecting the roar of the crowd, Rocky threw his arms up. There was nothing offered to him. The best he could get was a gander at the slimy smirk on Sebastian’s face and the blank and expressionless nothingness of his disturbed comrade still waiting to ring the bell.
“FUCK IT THEN! I’LL FINISH IT!” he grumbled, turning his way toward the final faceless bastard.
Rocky had gotten too cocky in believing that Brick’s melting head had no wherewithal left in it. On a good day, it was rare, but on a bad day, it seemed impossible. But that day had already championed a lot of firsts.
Somehow, in all his runny glory, Brick had gotten his hands on the fire extinguisher. Just as Rocky turned around, he activated it and let a smog cloud of cold frost out toward Rocky’s eyes.
Temporarily blinded, Rocky staggered about the ring punching at air while Brick wiped the blood out of his eyes and took aim. He charged him like a ram fighting for the right to deflower the prettiest in the herd and speared him with the extinguisher held out in front of his chest.
The impact of the blow was so powerful that when Rocky’s shoulders connected with the top rope, it was too much. The poorly placed steel unfastened from the turnbuckle and the big son of a bitch flipped backwards out of the ring.
There was too much blood in his eyes for Brick to see exactly what happened to Rocky but he heard it quite clear. The squishy tissue tearing and ripping as the pointed bed penetrated his hulking physique upon awkward landing. The last gasps and gurgling blood running were music to his ears. But more important than anything else, the sound of the hammer cracking against the bell and it ringing out three times in a row let him know it was real.
“RING THE FUCKING BELL!” Sebastian screamed. “And here is your winner! BBBBBrick!” The PA system bellowed out with Sebastian’s hyper enthusiasm.
He gestured to Jinx, and without exchanging a word, the strange jester left the table and slung the AK-47 behind his back. The demonic helper skipped to the stage and up the lone set of diamond-plate steel steps that were at ringside.
Jinx entered the ring and slowly guided Brick out of it as carefully as possible. With Brick’s face looking more like a bowl of melting fruit-flavored ice cream, he would need assistance to seek out his reward. Jinx led him down until Brick’s shaking legs gave way and he found himself kneeling in front of the pink mysterious box that contained his gift.
“Go ahead, big fella, have at it. That’s all for you,” Sebastian said.
Brick was in no condition to do his Christmas morning impression. He’d only received one strike in the match but it was a potato, and arguably the most devastating chess move to transpire amongst the four of them.
His cheeks, mouth, and chin area had dissolved down to the bone, showing off his glistening crimson skull exterior and lipless massive choppers. He fell over with his teeth chattering and his arms wrapped around himself like a child.
“Well, it’s not really fun if I open it… but I suppose we don’t have a choice,” Sebastian said, shrugging his shoulders at the audience.
“I suppose it was a bit of a gag gift anyhow,” he said, tearing into the perfectly wrapped packaging. “It’s not for you but it’s for you, you know what I mean?”
Brick couldn’t respond, he was too busy starting to defecate all over himself. He couldn’t even focus enough to watch as Sebastian extracted the wireless nail gun and squat over his trembling body.
“Seeing as you nailed my wife so many times, I think it’s only fair that I get an opportunity to nail you too, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Brick as he was just about finished shitting one.
He pressed the gun up to the exposed area of his face and started there. The nails traveled into the bone, sending shockwaves down Brick’s body with each shot. He moved onto the teeth and pressed down hard. When the nail launched from the gun, it blew out the tooth and sent it flying down his hatch along with the pointed metal.
As Brick gagged and began to regurgitate the parts of his face and sharp steel he’d swallowed, Sebastian worked his way down to his abdomen and continued punching the nails into his guts. When the fast-moving spike rode through his intestinal tract, the additional pressure on his stomach helped further motivate the flood of feces that was now leaking out the edges of his wrestling speedo.
Like a lethal legion of ants, the nail trail started on Brick’s face and trickled down his chest until Sebastian was left staring at his steroid-shrunken junk. He used the tip of the gun to feel around for his cock amongst the moat of rancid brown that secreted out of his overinflated trunks. Once Sebastian had located it, he aligned the end of the nail gun over the tip of his dick.
“It took a little while, but I think I finally found the wood,” he laughed.
Another blast of hard steel punctured through his speedo and into the head of his cock, pinning it to his pelvis. Blood and excrement exited the front of his speedo as Brick squirmed in crippling pain.
Sebastian looked back around at Taylor who sat with an expression of defeat on her face; like she’d been homeless and beat down for decades. He’d almost forgotten about his bride since he was so involved in the match, but once it had concluded, he remembered the point of it.
“Sorry, honey, this sausage is smoked. I’m not sure you’ll be able to snap into this Slim Jim ever again,” he joked with a crinkle in his brow.
The madman sent three more nails out from the end of the device and into Brick. The shots followed down from the shaft and into his balls. With each potentially lethal injection, his runny secretions erupted upward into Sebastian’s mug.
Heavily speckled with crimson and excrement, he rose the handle of the nail gun above his head and drove the weighty tool down with all his force. The metal unit fractured the already exposed skull and Sebastian watched the bone crumble before his eyes.
Sebastian continued to work on Brick’s head but targeted the brain now. “Baby,” he said, again trying to gain his wife’s attention, “this Brick is one hard-headed mother fucker!” he bellowed out. “No pun intended…”
His relentless pounding eventually mashed the resilient dome as easily as an over-boiled potato. The body that he’d taken such scrupulous care of had been desecrated, along with the rest of his buddies.
Sebastian dropped the nail gun at the side of Brick’s corpse while it gave off a finale of shudders, then walked back toward the curtain rope. He pulled it once again, this time, closing the curtain on the thoughtfully crafted death and mayhem that had been left on the stage.
Taylor and the rest of the spectators wished that making the horror vanish meant that it didn’t happen. But even though a curtain was obstructing their view, they knew it was real. Besides, even with the curtain closed, there were still plenty of dead folks and other body parts sprinkled elsewhere in plain sight.
Sebastian took a tired look back at the crowd. Even he seemed to be getting a bit exhausted by the constant adrenaline surges and high tension.
“Show’s over,” he muttered.
