Parsley, Rosemary, and Thyme Would Have Been Better Off Without

“I told you.”

Darkness.  My eyelids slowly open, the right so swollen it wouldn’t lift more than halfway. I’m honestly not sure they’ve opened at all before I scan to the right and see the lit screens of my heart monitor.  Fuck, it’s so dark, what time is it?

“I told you what would happen.”

Familiar.  We’ve done this dance before, he and I, sang this song.  Normally I find this refrain tiresome, but… somehow this feels different.  

“You can’t stay above it all.  You can’t stay clean in a world this dirty.”

Same lecture.  Different… different tone?  His voice is wobbly.  

“They’re going to keep coming at you until they either drive you out or… or…”

Is that a second, no wait, third contraction?  Shit, he’s really upset.  Is he crying?  I better speak up.   …fuck, I can’t speak up.  Why can’t I speak up?

“What happens NEXT time?”  He sniffles.  I try to rotate my neck only to find it’s locked in place by something stronger than I am.  Despite trying to rotate my body to face him, I’m just too weak.

“There will not be a next time.”  The sniffles and wobbly voice stop.  Good.  “There can not be a next time.  I will get my hands even dirtier for you to ensure it.  There is simply no other way.”  Wait, what?

Is this real?  I… I can’t tell anymore. The darkness embraces me, and I’m just. So. Tired.

 

—🦖—

 

A figure dances with ethereal grace amidst the void, wrapped in a verdant dress with glimmering hair that reflects an unseen light. With each gentle movement of her feet, smoke rises and the darkness beneath smolders.

An astringent scent invades my nose, bringing clarity and focus.  Sage.

A field of sage lights aflame as she dances.  With every step, the ground burns, and as she twirls the vapors are pulled upward and distributed into the void in all directions.

“Why do you dance?”

“To bring love and joy.  To heal.  To provide wisdom.”

“Why do you burn the sage?”

“The same reason.”

 

—🦖—

 

“So if you look here, at this chart, you’ll see that there are constant interruptions in the line.  You’ll see it starts to track, but then *BOOP!* no line aaaaand then fifteen minutes later the line is back.” A new voice.  Feminine.  Unfamiliar.

It’s brighter now, but keeping my eyes open is a chore. Eh, why bother?

“What’s this part here?”

Stu’s back.  

“That’s his REM phase.”  Paper flips.  “You can see another here, aaaaand here.”

“Should they all be so short?”  He sounds worried again.  New MO, I guess.

“Perceptive!  No, they should not all be so short, but remember the boops I pointed at before?  Did you notice they all happen approximately 20 minutes after REM ends?”  She jabs at the clipboard loud enough for me to hear it.  Why is she hitting it so hard?  

“Is that significant?”  I can practically hear him slide his glasses up his nose.  Been in the dark so long I have bat ears, now.  I’m Batman?  Maybe?  No, probably not.

“Oh my, yes!  It means he’s never actually entering deep sleep.  The human sleep cycle is built around five – well, six if you count waking up – phases.  These include rapid eye movement, otherwise known as R.E.M., two phases of light sleep, and two phases of deep sleep.  If what we’ve observed since he’s been here is what’s happening all the time… Rocky has been operating under severe sleep deprivation for some time.  How long is difficult to say.”

I said I was tired.

“So… what do we do?”  There’s the worried voice again.  I don’t like it.

“Well, long term we may want to bring him back in for a sleep study.  It could be sleep apnea or another physical issue.  It could also be a temporary result of anxiety or other psychological problems.  For right now, I’m going to prescribe him some Ambien.  Just make sure if he has a romantic partner that they’re informed that he’s taking it.”

“Why would they need to know?”

“Erm.  It can have some… libido enhancing side effects during the phase where it starts to make him sleepy.  That said, the odds are good that anything he does while in that state he won’t remember come morning, and it is best to avoid actual encounters so he doesn’t feel taken advantage of later.”

Oh come on.  You’re going to give me sleepy time pills and that’s going to make it all better?  Good lord, I can tell you right now I don’t need help getting… to… sleep…

 

—🦖—

 

A man feverishly claws at the walls.  Blood drips from his fingertips and pools on the ground below.  Bloody writing decorates the barrier…

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy 

All Masy and no belt makes Sage a dumb boy

His hair, flopped to one side, reveals a partially shaved head.  Evidence of scratching has left a bizarre pattern of bloody fingerprints on his scalp.  His shirtless body is adorned in a bloody runic scrawl – a language I can’t make out, and I’m not sure I want to.

He turns, his head cocked, looking in my direction.

“What’s behind YOUR mask?”  A field of fangs reflects the void.

I don’t know, I’m sorry.

“NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” 

He lunges at me, his mouth opens.  The gaping maw widens, the teeth sharpen and extend.  Rows upon rows of teeth like a shark’s mouth envelop me before closing on my body leaving only darkness and pain.

 

—🦖—

 

Blonde hair again.  Man, I don’t like cryptic dre… oh wait, no, Cindy.

“Hey there, slugger, how ya feelin’?”  She brushes her hand through my hair.  Is… is she signaling something?  Or is that the only part of me she thinks won’t hurt me to touch?

I manage to groan and lift my eyes to meet hers, but words don’t come.  Still groggy.

“Yeah, they said ya ain’t been sleepin’ too good, Rock.  Somethin’ on yer mind?  Someone on yer mind?”  She winks, grins, and air-punches at my shoulder.  

I manage to smile.  I try to wink back, but both eyes go and my body starts to slump back into sleep.  Can’t have that.  Not right now.  “My mind is a weird place right now, Cindy.  It’s really good to see you, though.”

Her grin turns to a soft closed-lipped smile.  Her eyelids lower a little and she meets my eyes.  Hers are so beautiful and green.  Might be even more vibrant than the dress she wore when she thought I was dying.  No dress today, but somehow she still looks good in an eraser-pink track suit.  “It’s good to see you, too, Rocky.  Did that orthodontist’s wet dream hurt ya too bad?”

Can’t remember the last time I smiled, but she knows how to make it happen.  “Nah.  He just got in a lot of cheap shots and managed a lucky hit that knocked me out.  I haven’t heard everything the doctors have said, but it sounds like I’m still good to go for the tournament.  I think they’re just keeping me here for precautionary reasons?”

A hand pushes my hair back.  She looks in my eyes again, but this time it feels like she’s searching for something.  Did she find it?  I can’t resist closing my eyes as she runs her hand through my hair. Please don’t stop…

 

—🦖—

 

Gone.  Where’d she go? 

At least I had one visitor today who wasn’t talking about me like I wasn’t here.  Sometimes, I swear Stu thinks of me more as his responsibility than his friend.  I guess he’s not entirely wrong in that, but by now you’d think that would have changed a little.

“Oh, hey, dude!  You’re up!”  

I swear I told this guy to go away.

“Hey, hey, don’t ignore me.  Look man, there ain’t that many people to talk to on the other side.”  Somehow his translucent blue appearance is bright despite the darkness, yet he isn’t casting light onto any surfaces.  Weird.

“That sounds like bullshit, Mateo.  There have to be billions more people dead than alive.”  It’s just simple math, really. “What do you want?”

“Mostly I wanted to know if Espy came to visit you yet.”  He waggles his eyebrows.

“No, Mateo.”

“Is she GOING to come visit you? Maybe she’ll bring you cookies.”  Admittedly, cookies do sound really good right now.

“I don’t know, dude.”

“Should I wait in the closet?” His eyes widen and he grins. “I’ll wait in the closet. Don’t mind me, just watchin’.”  I swear, he’s actually drooling.

“For fuck’s sake.”

A familiar chuckle fills the air next to me.  “Come on now, Matty, leave the boy alone.  He’s in the hospital for goodness sake.”  Wait… is it… is it really?

“I KNOW, that’s why I’m playin’ with him.  He can’t leave, so he’s a captive audience, and also, I mean, laughter is the best medicine and all that shit, yeah?”  

“Alright, alright. Go haunt your wife.”  The specter to my side rolls the wedding ring on his left ring finger.  Is mom with you?

“In a bit.  Jerry said it’ll be another 12 hours before I can go poltergeist again.  It’s more fun when I can smack dat-”  Sgt. de Leon waves his hand, and the pervier Mateo disappears.

“Sorry ‘bout him.  He’s a little bored here.  How ya been, Pebbles?”  For the first time in years, my father smiles at me.

“Dad?  Are you really here?”  Different from the other Mateo.  Papi’s figure has more color.  He’s still translucent, but he seems… more real.

“Are you?”

“Fair enough.  I’ve missed you, Papi.”  I try to reach my hand out to touch his.

“I’ve been here.” His hand passes through my hair.  It’s not as comforting as Cindy’s.  “You’ve been having some, er… interesting times lately.”  His faint smile widens as his eyes narrow, lines forming in the corners of each.

I don’t know what to say. Silence fills the air between us.  He places his hand on mine, and I find the words. “I don’t know what I’m doing.  I thought… I thought you’d want to see this.  To see me living your-OUR dream.  But, now that I’m here it feels wrong. There’s so much happening that I don’t understand.”

“Sometimes it’s easy to feel like our dreams should just stay dreams.”  Papi stands and walks to the open window.  “Often they don’t look quite like what we expected when they finally get here.” His finger traces the card Cindy left on the bedside table. “That could mean that you just didn’t really understand the dream when you had it and needed to flex a little.  It could also mean you’ve got work to do to make the dream take shape.”

“Which one is this?”  He stops looking at the card and turns to face me.

“You tell me.  Do you feel like you don’t belong?”

“…no.  No, when the crowd is cheering me on, when I land complex moves, and when I see the looks on children’s faces when their hero wins, all this work feels like the right choice.” I wish I could show him my costume.

“So what’s the problem?”  He sits back in the chair, his head leaning to the side supported by his left hand, his right hand rests on the edge of the bed.  I don’t have the energy to touch it.

“Everything else.  This job… this fed.  I had no idea what the business of wrestling looked like.  I had no idea what kind of people these wrestlers were.  You and Tio Arturo told me stories of rudos y technicos and made the world of wrestling feel like stories of heroes and villains, but I never once thought the rudos would be… actual villains.  The violence, the in-fighting, the politics… I don’t know.  It just isn’t the world I thought I was entering.”

“When you were little, and your toys didn’t work the way you wanted them to or weren’t quite what was advertised on the TV, do you remember what you did?”  He takes his hand from the bed, and I can see an action figure in it.  It is a man wearing a blue suit with a white circle in the middle.  

“Cry?  Break them?  Throw them away?” 

Papi laughs.  “No, Carlos. You changed them until they were as close to what you wanted as possible.  I mean, I guess breaking them is also a way of changing them, but you were never prone to tantrums. Do you remember being in love with the Fantastic Four comic books?”  He holds the toy closer so I can see it.

“Yeah, Reed Richards was always my favorite.”

“YES!  Do you remember how disappointed you were when this action figure of Reed couldn’t stretch his arms, legs, or body?”

“Yeah, it was super lame.”  False advertising is a bitch when you’re eight.  I swear, in the commercial that thing could stretch its arms from here to Canada.

“Do you remember what you did to him?”

“…I pulled the limbs and head off, then attached rubber bands to each limb and its connection point on the body so they could stretch.”  The toy’s limbs and head fall six inches out of Papi’s hand, suspended by rubber bands.

“Exactly!” He dangles it in the air. “So, when the world isn’t the way you think it should be, what are you gonna do?”

“…I’m gonna rip these wrestler’s limbs off and reattach them with big ass rubber bands.”

“Close enough, hijo, close enough.” He smiles big enough to fill my heart and memories.

“Papi?”  I reach out to him.

“Si?”

“I love you.”

He comes close and leans down to hug me.  “I love you too, Carlos.”  I can feel him.

 

—🦖—

 

“You wanted to see me?” Stu pushed his glasses into their proper location and stood at attention.  “Dr. Ambrose” was embroidered on the white coat of the lady in front of him.  Ruddy-brown hair draped her shoulders and a pair of thick-lensed black plastic-framed glasses filled her face.  “How is he?  Is he ready to be discharged?”

Dr. Ambrose continued to scribble on a chart for a few seconds before acknowledging Stu’s presence.  Brown eyes lifted to meet Stu’s, though the mutual glare of hospital lights on glasses prevented either from seeing the other’s true colors.  “Yes, he’s all checked out and ready to go.  Will you be driving him home, or does he have someone else coming to get him?”

“I will be escorting Mr. de Leon home, yes.”  Rocky would have noticed the lack of contractions and felt better for it had he been present for the conversation.  

“His prescription will be at the pharmacy downstairs.  It should be ready for pick up by the time you two get down there.  Please be sure he takes them tonight.  He’s been… I think he’s been talking to himself in a fugue state for over an hour, now.  Hey now, none of that.”  Dr. Ambrose read the look on Stu’s face.  “He’s perfectly fine, MRI and brain scans are clean.  He’s just wildly sleep deprived.”

“Are we really sure that is the problem?  I have seen this man take ridiculous naps at the gym.  From what his uncle tells me, his ability to fall asleep on a dime is unparalleled.”

“He could sleep for seven days and still be tired with the pattern he is locked into.  In fact, that is probably WHY he is able to fall asleep on a dime, as you say.   Get him home, make sure he takes his pills, and force him to rest for a few days.”

“Yes, doctor.”

 

—🦖—

 

I’ve challenged Butchers to attack my open wounds.  I’ve stood toe to toe with former Universal Champions and nearly won.  I’ve even been sucker punched by a dude with razor teeth.  So why on earth should I be scared of you?  What do you stand for, Pontiff?  As best I can tell, you exist to fight and get high.  

You’re a roadblock, nothing more.  I need to make serious changes around here to get this world to be what it needs to be.  I need to break off some limbs.

I dreamt of a beautiful woman, earlier. I know even less about this woman than I do about you, which is impressive. She burned your namesake with her dancing and told me it brought her healing, wisdom, and joy. 

You’re no Buddha, and you’re no enlightened being. I can assure you, pain and drugs are not the pathway to enlightenment. You, like the rest of PRIME, are just a toy that can’t really live up to what you’re supposed to be. But that’s ok – I’ll just break you off, fix you, and move on. Sure, I’ll still reattach you to the core in the process, but you’re really just practice for the main event. So come on, let’s get this over with. I’ll give you the pain you so clearly desire, and you can get out of my way. 

I can’t say whether this dance you and I are about to start will bring me healing or wisdom, but I know one thing – I’m about to bring myself a whole lotta joy.