The Anglo Luchador
The Aztecs believed that the world upon which they, and thus we, lived was the fifth attempt to spark a living civilization under the sun. Four times, Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl sent their children, the scions of the cardinal directions, to ignite the sun and bless the lands and the seas. Four times, their efforts ended in calamity. The barren wastes of Mictlan reaped a population boom each time the sun set for good on an era of creation, but each failure did not stop the creators from trying again. The fifth time, it turned out, would be the charm.
The fifth sun was a splendiferous palace for the Lord and Lady of the Great Land of the Mexica, provided by their noble son and patron of the Aztec people, Huitzilopochtli. From the seat of blinding brightness, they watched as their chosen people descended upon Lake Texcoco from the Land of the White Heron, conquered the Toltecs, and under the banner of their son, bringing the fertile and temperate lands of Mesoamerica into an age of unmatched prosperity.
Then, the Spaniards came.
Under their banner of the cross and with the mandate of the Carlos V Habsburg at their back, the ruthless colonizers brought war, pestilence, and rape to the eastern shores of the great Aztec Empire. Montezuma II and his son Cuauhtémoc fought bravely, but the sun set on the Aztecs in the 16th Century, the bloody rapier of Hernan Cortes plunged in the earth at Tenochtitlan for the greater good of the Holy Roman Empire. The gods had told the Aztecs that blood sacrifices, be they fatal like everyone else liked or just simple bloodletting like that goodie-two-shoes Quetzalcoatal wanted, would keep the Fifth Sunset at bay. The truth of the matter was that no matter how much power the Aztec gods held over that sunny paradise by the Gulf, humanity was still a shared endeavor among all pantheons around the world. Just an aside though, if you’re a god and you get a call from the area code around Mount Olympus, don’t pick up. Zeus is a control freak, capital F-R-E-A-K. The only thing he enjoys more than giving orders is extramarital sex, especially after turning into a bird. But I digress.
That apocalypse is coming though, and it’s going to be much worse than the four that preceded it. Five is the magic number. Whether humanity is still around when it happens or crushes itself under its own hubris is irrelevant at this point. The only thing that matters is that it’s going to happen. The best you can do is keep it at bay.
THE FIRST SUNSET
Thanks to the slipshod archiving of Canada’s finest production teams, not much is known about A1E in the annals of wrestling history outside of the memories of those who lived it and the oral histories passed along the web. How an entire tape library could up and disappear in this day and age is more mysterious than how Cancer Jiles was able to obtain an entire aircraft carrier as a civilian. There’s nothing on any of the Tube sites. Not even Pornhub has any fancam footage of Golden Dreams 2002 or the Pier Six Brawl in 2004, and you can find all kinds of odd videos if you look hard enough and use the right search terms. Pornhub: It’s Not Just Videos Of People Fucking Anymore.
The Anglo Luchador, under a different name, defended his Cyber Championship at a pay-per-view event against one of his blood rivals, a disingenuously cheerful man by the name of Chip Friendly. Don’t let the Mr. Rogers-esque name fool you. Chip was a bastard, passive-aggressive in his speech as foreshadowing for all the nasty, brutal things he had planned for you. That night, the Luchador fought like hell to keep that title around his waist. For those who weren’t there, it was A1E’s equivalent to the Five Star Championship. Needless to say, keeping it was a big deal for him.
As the reader could probably surmise, The Anglo Luchador did not keep his Cyber Championship that night.
He lay on the canvas after being pinned, one-two-three, clean as a sheet by a man who was better than him that night, better than him their entire one-sided rivalry, actually. He had plans to take him out. Earlier in the year, he’d debuted a new finish, the Karelin Driver, named after the Russian amateur wrestler who used a signature lift hoisting his foe from the mat by their belly. As a coup de grace, he would spin them around and use their own momentum trying to escape against them, landing them sharply on their neck and shoulders. For an opponent as crafty and devious as Chip, the Luchador thought he needed a bigger weapon, one that might compress a few vertebrae and leave him lying. Thus, he formulated the Karelin Driver ’01, a move that would take the aforementioned Karelin Lift and instead of using spiral motion, would transition with extra effort from the Luchador himself to bring the victim perpendicular to the mat – a spiking brainbuster out of a move already designed to give the victim shock trauma in the head and neck areas.
He didn’t get a chance to hit it during the match. That didn’t mean he wasn’t leaving the ring without performing that maneuver.
Fans in the early 2000s were trained to have bloodlust, sure. So-called “babyfaces” attacked people wantonly and without regard for their health, and fans cheered. But they weren’t mindless. Generally speaking, if a heroic figure poured on the violence afterwards, it was because the heel tormented them during the course of the build to that final moment. All Chip Friendly did was fluster the brash young South Philly Italian with his superior wit and trolling. And he backed that up with a clean victory in the middle of the ring.
The new Cyber Champion extended his hand. The old one looked around the crowd of stunned fans, disappointed in their seats over the supposed hero of the day losing ground to a smarmy fake-polite insult machine. Taking dead aim with his eyes into his victor’s, he clasped the outstretched hand.
WHAM.
A boot to the solar plexus. The hand that clasped hand turned up to acquire wrist control. The shocked body of the new Champion flung into the hanging gutwrench waistlock. A half-turn. His head perpendicular to the canvas.
CRACK.
The stunned crowd didn’t know how to take the move. Some ribald male drunkards cheered it, but wrestling, at heart, has always been a family affair. Kids didn’t know how to react to bad sportsmanship. Some of the people started booing him. It was a confused reaction.
But the young Anglo Luchador was a confused man at that point. Frustrated. Angry.
No peace.
–
The Ometeotl created the heavens and the earth, and it was good. Sound familiar? Creation myths run eerily similar throughout the world. That’s another digression. When their deed was finished, the dual god split into husband and wife, and Omecihuatl bore her partner four sons. Quetzalcoatl with bright plumage and soft, merciful eyes, was given dominion over the western lands and the great sea. To the south, over the great Lake Texcoco and the vibrant jungles, Huitzilopochtli sat on a stone throne with his mighty spear. In the east, by the soft, fertile shores of the great gulf, Xipe Totec and his plow tilled the good earth and cultivated maize and maguey. And to the north, well, the bitter Black Tezcatlipoca lay claim to the dark, dead mountains, the last face many a dying man would see before he was sent careening into Mictlan.
The creator gods wanted to provide a world for their children, but each time they would craft a home for the men and women who’d live under the rule of their progeny, it would lose footing and careen into the realms below even Mictlan, in the vast, cold abyss dominated by the flattest fuck who’d ever patrol any body of water, Cipactli the Earth Crocodile. They would need light. The only source of illumination powerful enough to guide the engines of creation had to be borne of the gods. The four children of the creators held a vote to see which one of them would serve as the light to help their parents create a world magnificent not just for them but for mankind. The Black Tezcatlipoca lost by a vote of three to one.
For the record, he voted for that smug prick Quetzalcoatl.
It turns out being a bummer all the time didn’t endear Black Tezcatlipoca to his brothers all that well. The joke was on them, anyway. They were going to exile him into the sky? He’d do a shit job illuminating the world. His parents tried to create mankind. His cold, black heart put not even a quarter of his ass into lighting the sky. As a result, the humans his parents created were misshapen. Malformed. Huge in proportion. And as they wandered the land with not enough light to shine on their footfalls, one by one into the jaws of the waiting Cipactli. The bad feelings BT had for Quetzalcoatl were soon reciprocated, as the feathered lord of the west didn’t quite appreciate not having an actual dominion to care for. He took his giant stone club, wound up, and knocked his goth-as-fuck younger brother halfway to Kansas City. The first and longest home run in recorded history.
The First Sunset left the great earth in darkness, and the world was cold, black, angry.
No peace.
THE SECOND SUNSET
“Shit, another promo came in? Gotta reply.”
The Anglo Luchador hurriedly stuffed his lucha mask atop his head and rushed over to the makeshift soundstage his team set up in their gymspace for the week. The Pier Six Brawl was a raucous affair, a battle royale not unlike what will occur at Culture Shock. Several companies ran their versions of “everybody into the pool, err, I mean, ring!” match. A1E’s wasn’t anything hellish or unique like the Dual Halo, but it was chaotic and intense.
And Tom was determined to outwork everyone and get to the pinnacle of the company after a long, arduous journey.
“I dunno, kid,” the gravelly voice of his agent, Steve DelVecchio, rasped. “You been replyin’ to everyone in between reps and drills here.”
“Yeah, I have to win this. I have to make sure I’m the only one the fans support and the only one who’s driven and tested enough to last the entire thing if need be.”
“Ah madone, kid, there’s value in rest and moderation. Do you think having the most is gonna help you beat the best?”
“This is a battle royale, Steve. It’s about having both. I can’t get blown up within ten, 20, 30 minutes. I can’t just focus on one or two guys. I have to become the panopticon. Omnipotent even.”
“You’re nuts, kid. N-U-T-S. Bonkers. And what makes you think that if you win this, that shitbag Marcus ain’t gonna make short work of you when you get your shot at him?”
“I’ll just be that much more conditioned.”
The then-young luchador rolled out of the ring and over to the area with the cameras and lights. Glistening with sweat, he grabbed the microphone and waited for his cameraman to count him down.
“James Irish, I respect you, but…”
It would be cliche to say that he flamed out of the battle royale early. He didn’t. He won the thing handily. He defeated Beast for the title too. Everything was coming up The Anglo Luchador, except it didn’t in the longer term. Not two weeks later, he dropped the title without a successful defense. Richard Farnsworth of the Highland Park Social Club sniped him, his exhausted body unable to counter the technical torture of the group’s leader and financier. The luchador’s fuel tank contained not even a fume. Within a month, he was out of A1E for good, the sun set permanently on his career in a fed that only exists in people’s memories anymore.
The quest for peace again was at a dead end.
–
The Ometeotl were not deterred in their attempts at creation, no sir. Mother and father did not leave the choice to become a sun bright enough to be provident not only for their creative efforts but for those products to live long and prosperous lives to the whims of their children. The last thing they needed was the Black Tezcatlipoca half-assing it again and providing another orgy of falling meat for the ravenous Cipactli. They asked the only among their offspring they could trust let his inner light shine upon the world they’d created.
Needless to say, when BT got the news that Quetzalcoatl would assume duties as the sun, he threw up in his mouth a little bit, turned his face a shade of unnatural green like in a cartoon, and talked his kuitatl to whoever would listen. Mictlantecuhtli specifically may have said if he heard one more word out of the Black Tezcatlipoca’s mouth, he’d flay the whiner god himself and wear his skin as a peacoat. Did the Aztecs have peacoats? Does it matter at this point?
Life under the second sun started out idyllic. The population flourished under a bright and provident fixture in the sky. The Ometeotl created lush plants, beautiful animals, and people proportioned the way they intended. All the makings of a robust civilization were in place. After two shots, the gods finally had their grandest achievement.
Or would they?
As it turned out, the resentment that BT held for his goodie-two-shoes brother had festered and turned into spiteful hate. He was not about to let Quetzalcoatl’s big project be a success now, so he did what any hateful little troll deprived of sunlight would.
*extremely Adam Horovitz voice* I’M TELLIN’ Y’ALL IT’S SABOTAGE.
The Black Tezcatlipoca went to work among the people, whose outer beauty with flawless bronzed skin and sculpted musculature reflected the inner beauty endowed upon them by their creators. One thing to know about the disfavored son of the Ometeotl is he had neither inner nor outer beauty. He had to work from the shadows in whispers. Some say he took the form of a snake, but methinks those rumors came from Catholic zealots trying to QED everyone else’s mythology into their own, thus proving the supremacy of their own creation story. WE’RE ONTO YOU, OPUS DEI. No matter the form, his whispers took hold. He told Zuma that Izel was stocking more maize in his coffers and eating twice as much for dinner. He put the idea in Yolotli’s head that she hadn’t found a mate yet because Xochitl was fucking four different men on the sly. Slowly, the inner beauty of Quetzalcoatl’s chosen people deteriorated into a sludgy vileness, and with each instance of their acceptance of greed and jealousy, their perfect bodies went from healthy temples to revolving doors of disease and malady.
As he saw his chosen people turn bitter and cruel, Quetzalcoatl knew he couldn’t sit idly by as an unknown force sowed discord among them. He descended from his throne on the sun and pleaded with the great civilization to let go of greed. The speech captured the attention of all the citizens of the land as the sun which he powered through his own force of will glowed behind him. The brightness and love started to crack the fetid shells the people with which they had coated themselves. He was getting through. This would be the salvation.
At least until Black Tezcatlipoca started turning people into rabid monkeys.
One berserk primate might have caused enough chaos to shock people back into their rancor, but that wasn’t enough. He had to keep sowing breeze so the whirlwind would be great enough not only to ruin Quetzalcoatl’s great solar empire, but to embarrass him for all eternity. He turned a second person into a monkey. Then a tenth. And a hundredth. And a thousandth. Soon, monkeys outnumbered people. It was overkill, but BT was having too much fun.
The havoc swirling in his pristine land vexed the colorfully plumed master of the sun so much that the only thing left for him to do was take the nuclear option. He summoned a great whirlwind to blow away the monkeys. However, the howlers had sharp claws, and they dug into the trees, the homes, the rocks, anything they could to anchor themselves. Quetzalcoatl had to make the storm stronger. The whirlwind became a cyclone, then a hurricane. The winds blew so ferociously that all the monkeys careened over the side of the world into the waiting mouth of Cipactli. So did the humans. So did everything else that wasn’t a god. The force of the wind was so great that when it calmed to a breeze, all the light had been blown out. Thus ended the era of the Second Sun.
The quest for peace was again at a dead end.
THE THIRD SUNSET
“You know, Tom,” Dan Ryan said with an air of defeat around him, “We can make lemonade out of these lemons.”
It hurt for The Anglo Luchador even to move at this point. Some around him in his inner circle joked that he’d spent a good bit of time carrying Empire Pro Wrestling on his back, which was the cause of his injury. Their sycophancy never made him feel better anyway. To be honest, he knew his place in the pecking order. Sean Stevens was on top, no matter who the Champion was. Lindsay Troy was second. Then you could start talking about the man known only as “JA” then. If the Ego Buster, the company’s CEO, looked defeated, Tom looked as if he was near death.
“You call a torn latissimus dorsi lemons, Dan?”
His tone was a mixture of exhaustion, melancholy, and disbelief, blended into one disgusting milkshake not even the thirstiest desert traveler would deign to drink.
“You know how many people tear that muscle? I don’t even know how I’m going to come back from it. There’s no lemonade here.”
His eye ducts held back water like the Hoover Dam at this point. The strength it took for him not to cry in front of his boss and only the most fearsome wrestler on the planet (in other companies, of course, what kind of monster books himself in his own fed?) was greater than any feat of strength he attempted before his back failed him. He sat on the trainers table, the only part of his body that didn’t feel hollowed out and empty being his head. That space encased within his skull was full of questions, doubt, worry. The apartment above the pizza shop on South Street barely was big enough for continued occupancy for him and his wife, freshly married. It certainly wasn’t going to be big enough for the baby on the way. Yeah, Tamara took a job with a pharmaceutical company. Paid well too.
But life staring down the end of the only career he’d ever known or wanted only amplified every worry he had.
“I mean, if you look at it from the pessimist’s point of view, yeah, I get it. But I didn’t become a legend in this industry by looking at what could go wrong.”
Dan looked as if he was about to elaborate on the speech he thought was pretty inspirational and wise, but the look in his former Champion’s eyes suggest that he was about up to his nose in whatever the boss had to say.
“I’m just saying, Tom. No matter how you feel, how healthy you are. I, uh, we, we still want you here. You’re one of the most popular guys in the locker room. The fans love you. We could find an ambassadorship for you. An office job. Maybe you can transition into life out of the ring?”
Life out of the ring. Ha. Rich one, Dan, he thought to himself. A life out of the ring while still around a wrestling promotion. As if Tom hadn’t already suffered enough ostracism from his father for his chosen career path, choosing lucha libre over the tried and true normal wrestling he’d plied his trade in during the glory days. What did it get him? Hurt. A bitch boy around the office. Making sure Dan with his real muscles had his coffee or Troy Windham’s limousine, a car fit for a TRUE star, was pulled up to the service entrance to avoid paparazzi.
“What’s the use anyway.”
Dan sneered, shock at the utter limp dreariness in the Luchador’s face.
“The use? Do you think I, cold-hearted, ruthless, Dan Ryan, would offer you a job if I thought you were useless? Christ.”
The poignant animation in the Ego Buster’s face was as intense as the lack of it in Tom’s face was empty.
“Look, Dan, this injury, it stole something from me, a piece of me that I’m not sure I can get back if I’m sitting around here, watching everyone do the thing I want to do more than anything else in the world. If I stick around here, or any promotion, you know what’s going to happen?”
Dan didn’t answer verbally. He just furrowed his brow, implicitly waiting for Tom to continue.
“I’m going to destroy myself from the inside out and take your company with me.”
Dan cleared his throat.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But my door’s always open, man. Take care of yourself.”
Dan sighed and exited the room. Peace was further away than it ever was at this moment.
–
The old gods were not ones to give up so easily. Well, at least the offspring of the Ometeotl were persistent. Mom and Dad had washed their hands of the process after the Second Sun blew out. Quetzalcoatl, however, quite fancied the idea of using his godhood to illuminate the great lands of the world. He also took quite a liking to the idea of the “human being.” He came to believe in the cause so much that he needed his entire attention to foster his own little ant colony. Which god would be tasked with providing the power to light the sky and give this pet project a puncher’s chance to survive? The first two attempts using Cardinal Gods were less than stellar, pardon the pun. Xipe Totec and Huitzilopochtli were out of the question. Neither of the Ometeotl would return his calls. It was time he had a heart-to-heart with his own god-children.
Tlaloc, whom he’d sired with, uh, well no one really knew who his mother was, was the god of rain and fertility, and he was in love. Xochiquetzal was her name, and flora was her game. The two became ensnared in torrid romance sometime before his dad turned into a Category-5 hurricane, giving the all-consuming earth crocodile a monkey feast that he was still sated from. Even Black Tezcatlipoca didn’t object when the time came to exchange nuptials. However, with any marriage, their love didn’t pay the bills. What bills could a god have in the time before money? Well, it’s a figure of speech, man. The point is, his dad needed someone to do a job, and the best person who could do it, ironically enough, was the rain god.
The first couple of decades were fine and good. Tlaloc would spend most of the day shining solar radiation upon the land where Quetzalcoatl was busy tinkering with the bodies and souls of mankind, and then at the end, when it was time for Coyolxauhqui to come on in with her lunar chariot, he’d sneak back home and have just the freakiest animal sex with Xochiquetzal you could imagine. I mean, gods, doing it? That had to spook the local wildlife at least. Woe be to the human who approached a burning, shaking, moaning bush and saw two celestial beings mid-coitus. Now I feel like this is turning into divine erotica, and that’s not where this story ends up now.
After a century or so, Black Tezcatlipoca got bored. He could only turn wastrels staggering into his northern mountain lair into rabid howler monkeys so many times before it lost all interest to him. His annoying brother kept too close an eye on the humans for him to sneak in like a shadow and wreak havoc. Seriously, the way he had eyes everywhere, it should’ve been called the Quetzalcoatl Prison Experiment, co-opted by Stanford University. BT stewed and simmered and ruminated for years, thinking of the best way to get back at his brother. He then thought, hey, what if I fucked with the kid?
Further stewing and simmering and rumination led him down a dark path, which for him wasn’t troubling at all. Black Tezcatlipoca was malice incarnate by this point in his life. Tlaloc pretty much was the largest swinging dick among all his nieces and nephews. He couldn’t hurt him directly, but there was one way he could stick it to Tlaloc.
One day, he happened upon Xochiquetzal’s home, finding her harvesting maize on their lands which stretched over the horizon, as she was wont to do during the day while her husband and lover was off being the sun. BT searched the fields until finding her. Breathless, he claimed that he had a message from her beloved so urgent that it couldn’t wait until he got back for the day. The completely fabricated story was that Tlaloc wanted to have NEXT-LEVEL sex that night, and the only way they could make it as exciting as it could be would be to become one entangled off the edge of the world. It should be noted that “butt stuff” wasn’t invented until the Age of the Fourth Sun. She was skeptical at first, but since Hamlet and The Lion King were several millennia away from being written, she didn’t think her husband’s uncle would lie to her.
Later that day, before her husband came home from work, Xochiquetzal hurried to the edge of the world, her heart bursting at the seams with love and lust, awaiting the freaky shit she and her husband were about to engage in. She saw a rustling in the bushes along the treeline and grew even more anxious. What emerged wasn’t her husband, but his uncle. BT stalked towards her. Puzzled, she cried out asking where her husband was. He didn’t reply. Instead, about 50 yards out from where she precariously stood, he took a three-point stance and charged. Xochiquetzal stood paralyzed in fear and panic. Had she moved a nudge in either direction, she might have sent the heartless Cardinal God careening to his death. Instead, impact sent her helplessly plummeting into the dark void, where Cipactli, FINALLY hungry again after eating all those monkeys, snapped her up for an exquisite meal.
Tlaloc knew something was up when his wife wasn’t at home when he returned. He searched the cornfields and the well and the henhouse. He searched their entire estate. When he returned to the pueblo where they lived and loved, he only found his uncle, who regaled him how his wife tragically fell to her death after unsuccessfully seducing him. BT was not a good liar, and Tlaloc saw through it. However, his anger was consumed by an all-encompassing sadness, one that sapped his will to live, to shine, to rain, to provide extra mojo to all the humans trying to procreate on their own.
Thus, the land of the Fourth Sun grew cold and dry. Crops died. Women stopped being able to conceive. The drought lasted for days, weeks, months even, before Quetzalcoatl noticed something was up. For as idealistic and noble as that guy was, he could get his head stuck up his ass at times. He saw that women stopped getting pregnant and corn stopped growing and it was uncharacteristically cold for the middle of August, so he whistled up to his son and asked him why the fuck he wasn’t doing his job.
At that moment, Tlaloc snapped out of his funk. How dare his impudent father not care about the well-being of his son? He made a shout that his uncle, Huitzipochtli, god of war, found impressive, and then he started to do his job again. In fact, he combined his two main jobs, which were “shining as the sun” and “providing rain.” The fiery downpour resulted in a scorched earth the likes of which would not be seen again until William Sherman marched to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta. Nothing survived unless it could fly. Only the magpies and hummingbirds, the bees and the condors, the butterflies and the bats. No man, no plant, no cat, nor ox was spared from the incendiary wrath of Tlaloc, the widower.
Peace was further away than it ever was in this moment.
THE FOURTH SUNSET
The match itself was a bloodbath. Losing the Intense Championship in the manner in which he did, against what critics like Eddie Cross would say was the first “real” contender, as if Tony Gamble’s Hall of Fame credentials meant nothing, that hurt. Giving into Foster Nackedy’s clear mindgames just to send a message, make a callback, reinforce a point, whatever. The aches and the pains. All of it suuuuuuuuucked. There had been losses since Tom returned to the ring. Not that he’d kept them in his mind in painstaking detail. No, not Brandon Youngblood in the Almasy Quarterfinals. Certainly not ReVival 7 and 8, losing to Randall Knox and Phil Atken consecutively, or the ReVival 11 roadblock that was Anna Daniels, non-title of course. They didn’t fester in his brain like lesions sapping his will to concentrate on even the slightest task.
Or they did. This narration will self-destruct in 10 minutes.
The physical pain of losing always both paled in comparison to the mental wounds and was also inordinately amplified by the voices in his head, screaming insults worse than any antagonist could ever dream of ideating. Our own worst enemies, after all, live in our own brains. The poisoned synapses held him down forcefully. He nearly missed his flight out of Tampa because he stayed in bed too long. Under the torture of a demon masquerading as his father shouting invective within his head, he nearly swung on a TSA agent who asked him to throw away his Coke Zero. The internal voices put him on edge so bad that seeing it from the outside nearly threw him into a blind rage.
Monday morning after ReVival 21, he woke up from a night of sleep that could be considered rocky at its most generous. Slapping down a dollop of toothpaste on his electric brush, he settled in for another day of trying to cope with losing the title. Letting people down. Allowing Paxton Ray and Foster Nackedy another notch in their sociopathic belt. How much capital he’d put on this match, from even before the incident with Jon Rhine happened. He put his whole ass into that charity. He wasn’t there for Jon afterwards until it felt convenient for him. He took shots at Paxton like he was Jared Sykes and not just a shithead Rhine felt sorry for. Then he had the audacity not to finish the job. He did fail.
Intrusive thoughts are a phenomenon most psychologists only barely understand. Some of them only classify the most violent and deranged thoughts, one that involve assault or worse, as intrusive thoughts, while others have a wider range of eligibility. Either way, no one knows where they come from, why people with OCD get them out of nowhere. They’re not true, and medicines are available to treat them. But extreme traumas can break past the medications, undo years of therapy. An average OCD patient can keep them under control if they don’t lapse on their meds. An average OCD patient also does not willingly step into a ring with an overgrown Cajun man with the intent on enjoying inflicting violence on people and the ability to leave them paralyzed. Intrusive thoughts linger even with ill-advised increases in dosage. He couldn’t stop brushing his teeth, no matter how many times the automatic timer in the brush stopped it from running. It was the “C” part of the OCD that kept him brushing.
At least until he noticed in the mirror that the barbed-wire wounds on his forehead, the ones that ripped his mask, started seeping blood.
When he took to the company-issue internal social media platform to regale the audience about what had happened to him, he knew he wasn’t going to get well-wishes or even laughs. He was looking for a fight, and he got it. He needed an excuse, any excuse, to start lashing out at people. Ivan Stanislav gave him his first intro, and he took it. Eddie Cross and Tony Gamble filtered in thereafter. Three against one. He liked those odds. The dogpile left him with busy fingers in the morning, furiously tapping at his phone in wait for everyone to come at him. At least until he noticed the blood dripping onto his screen.
He sported a crimson mask that would make a deathmatch specialist blush by this point. Whatever caused his wounds to open, be it the simple vibration of his toothbrush or the tossing and turning, combined with the utter lack of trying to stop the flow left him gory and grisly. Blood stained his shirt and his basketball shorts. It dripped onto the toilet seat and onto the floor. He was off work, and he still was on his way to needing a transfusion. Yet, with each drop pouring from his head, he felt more clarity.
Tam didn’t have the luxury of one day of work every fourteen, so when she moseyed into the bathroom to get started on her prep for another fun-filled day of work, she nearly dropped dead.
“Jesus Christ, Tom, what happened?”
“Uh, got into a fight with a toothbrush?”
“Fuck. Jesus, c’mon. Take care of that, will you?”
“Oh, I am.”
She meant the seeping gash on his forehead. He didn’t.
He stood up and exited the bathroom, not taking his eyes from his phone. Instead of looking at Jabber this time, the phone app active on his screen was for travel. He booked a single round trip ticket to San Luis Potosi for Tuesday, leaving Thursday. Philadelphia International to Love Field in Dallas to San Luis Potosi International Airport to Love Field again and then back home.
By this point, his face was covered in blood. His shirt was completely stained. He didn’t care. The peace he craved was going to take a lot of work to attain now.
–
Tlaloc rebounded quite nicely after the whole “rain fire upon the creations of his father” thing. He settled down, cleared his head, and even found a new wife, Chalchiuhtlicue. The god of rain hooked up with the goddess of all the other kinds of water that didn’t fall from the sky. No one really knew how they came to fall in love, but I bet it was a meet cute by a pond or a river. Or would that be too on the nose? She helped him heal, and thus their love was as deep as the ocean, almost as deep as the drive and determination of his father to create the perfect human.
Quetzalcoatl tinkered and toiled and finally came to a design he thought would be perfect. All he needed was a sun to get the whole thing started. Dad showed up at Tlaloc’s house with a jug of pulque, five barbecued iguanas, and a lovely corn salad. Son knew what was up, and almost immediately locked the door, but dad assured them he wasn’t there for him. Chalchiuhtlicue was his choice to become the Fourth Sun. The last three were all men anyway; he thought the job maybe needed a woman’s touch.
Despite seeing what happened with the last three gods whose aura fueled the sun, Chialchiuhtlicue could not refuse her father-in-law’s offer. She too loved the presence of people, how they filled her world with such purpose, love. In the years since the Third Sun went out, she grew cold and depressed, only finding solace when she was with Tlaloc. For that, she relished the opportunity to face the challenge of lighting the world.
Of course, she failed to consider Black Tezcatlipoca. Once was dissatisfaction with a short straw. Twice, okay, maybe he’s maladjusted. The third time was so evil and twisted that Tlaloc wouldn’t forget such treachery. He wouldn’t try again, right? Well, technically, one would be correct in assuming that because he didn’t really try all that hard this time. In fact, legend says he was overheard in his mountain cave, bereft of all light and joy, among thousands of feral howler monkeys and whatever other abominations he magnetically attracted around him, talking to a weasel. He allegedly told said weasel he was just going to walk up to the new sun and insult her so bad she’d quit on the spot. This being a myth, the weasel obviously could talk, and he replied with a wager of ten-dozen ears of maize.
One day, BT walked up the steps into the Palace of the Sun, ignored all the guards pointing spears at him, flipped off Tlaloc, and said only one sentence to the new solar entity.
“You don’t love these people; you’re a faker.”
The guards finally wrangled the Black Cardinal God and tossed him onto his miserable ass outside the palace, but the damage had been done. The Sun brushed the words off initially. OF course I love the people, she’d say to herself, first in a calm demeanor, then with increasing panic and urgency. Each time, the voice in her head telling her BT was right got louder, so the other, counterweighted voice had to yell with even greater volume. The weight in her mind became unbearable.
Sometimes an intrusive thought can have a concrete source. A hurtful word someone says to you can latch onto your cerebral cortex, like a barnacle on the hull of a ship. No one knows why it attaches there, why such insecurity allows such doubt to fester and germinate until one day, it breaks you. One day, a couple of days after Tlaloc’s uncle visited her with one sentence, Chalchiuhtlicue primally screamed and started crying. Her tears did not stop after a minute or five minutes or an hour or even a day. And they weren’t regular tears either.
She cried blood.
For 52 years.
An entire Aztec calendar cycle, she spent weeping blood, covering the earth in her sanguine tears. Quetzalcoatl’s humans were resourceful and powerful. They transformed themselves into fish in an attempt to survive, but the thing about fish is they are equipped to live in water. Even as aquatic creatures, one by one, the fourth race of humans died slowly, choking on the blood, their bones descending to the bottom of the gory deluge covering the planet. And there, Mictlantehcutli claimed them for his own riches in his realm of the dead.
Poor Cipactli did not get to eat anything at the end of this cycle. Pour one out for the earth crocodile.
When Chialchiuhtlicue stopped crying, she noticed the destruction she had brought on. Although no one blamed her – even gods can’t escape mental illness – she took full responsibility for ruining the world Quetzalcoatl had built. She disengaged her energy, and the sun went dim once more. Quetzalcoatl sighed. The peace he craved was going to take a lot of work to attain now…
THE FIFTH SUNRISE
…and he would be damned if he wasn’t going to get grinding to make his ultimate dream become a reality.
HIs first order of business was to head down to Mictlan and pay his old buddies, the lord and lady of death, a little visit. He found all the bones of the fourth race of humans he had created, sliced open his arm with one of his brother’s spears, and let his own blood wash over their remains. One by one, the human race sprung up, though still stuck in the land of the dead. Mictlantecuhtli would not let him leave his realm unless he answered a riddle, but Quetzalcoatl had e-fucking-nough for four lifetimes. Using a heavy plow from his other brother, Xipe Totec, he bashed the door to the overworld open, and one by one, his people rose from the realm of the dead, although with the lack of sun and the barren, bloody wastes left behind from the last apocalypse, they might have preferred Mictlan.
Quetzalcoatl gave one nod to his brother, Huitzipochtli, and without a word, the god of war ascended to the sky to serve as the Fifth Sun. He then threw the plow back to his other brother, Xipe Totec, who, using the unmatched power of the strongest sun yet, whipped up a harvest of maize and maguey within minutes. Finally, there was the matter of the third brother. If there would be a Fifth Sunset, Quetzalcoatl was damn sure it wouldn’t be because of the guy who ruined this shit four times already. He walked into the barren wastes, kicked Black Tezcatlipoca in the gut, gave him a DDT, and threw him into the open door to Mictlan.
“He’s YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM now,” he screamed to Mictlantecuhtli before slamming the door shut. No one knows what happened to BT. Some say he escaped, cowed and humbled from his time among the dead. Others say he withered and died, turning into the very mask that John Kennedy Royko wore when he terrorized PRIME as Balaam the Mask of Malice. Still others said Mictlantecuhtli kicked him out when he found him hitting on Mictecacihuatl, and to this day, he’s running eternally from the hungry maw of Cipactli. Either way, when this sun sets, it’ll be someone different pulling the trigger.
THE FIFTH SUNSET?
They didn’t even let him fight.
The Anglo Luchador spent more money than financially advisable on last minute tickets to San Luis Potosi. He appeared on television for a company not broadcast on ACE Network or under the purview of the Phoenix Wrestling Alliance. He was going to pay more in fines. He was ready to pay the stiff price to engage in sacred ritual warfare, to show the people shit-talking him that he was a man of action, and they wouldn’t even let him fight.
If there was a perigee in his orbit, he was seated right there at the most dangerous point, ready to burn up upon reentering the atmosphere. Right then, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Ah, good to see you again, muchacho.”
El Guapo Grande held only a faint whisper of the handsome looks from his prime that earned him that nombre del luchador. But his gregarious smile and rich, mahogany voice still lit up a room, no matter how dim.
“You got your pay envelope from LUCHA ESPECIAL 1, right, boss?”
“Oh ho, yes, but that’s not what I meant. I see you’re in the same spirits I found you in that hospital room.”
He didn’t even tell Timo about that alleged vision. He tried to feign ignorance.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Then again, it’s on me to know that a man named Thomas in denial is hard to shake for someone who grew up Catholic like you. Regardless, you are the one who put a number on yourself doing this, no?”
Silence.
“Muchacho, you have war in your head. You know the old myths. Quetzalcoatl tried so hard to create life on earth, but he left too many threads dangling.”
“I feel more like Black Tezcatlipoca at this point.”
The older luchador laughed.
“Amigo, you are the protagonist in your own story. You can be the great apocalypse, sitting alone in your lair, talking to weasels. Or, you can do the work and make it right.”
Tom scoffed. He wasn’t in the mood for lectures at that moment. He rose from his seat and pulled out a cellphone he had to not only clean but disinfect after spilling so much of his blood on it to pull up an Uber to the airport. He drifted away from Guapo, without even attempting to say goodbye, but he was caught off-guard.
“Muchacho, before you leave. You should know something.”
He turned around, pulling the lucha mask off his head to reveal gnarly scarring on his forehead, puffy eyes, and bruised cheeks.
“Death comes for us all,” the older luchador continued. “That’s undeniable. One day, the Fifth Sunset will claim its bounty.”
“Yeah, that’s really enlightening.”
“Let me finish, perro. You may not be able to prevent the end, but you can hold it off for as long as possible. Get the most out of your life, your career, before the Tzitzimimeh close in on you.”
“And how would I do that?”
The older luchador smiled.
“Well, the first thing you need to do is calm the voices in your head. A tall task, sure. But peace is always an option, and it starts with you.”
–
The Aztecs believed ritual warfare and sacrifice gave the gods the blood they required to stave off the Fifth Sunset. Without the blood, Huitzilopochtli would be weak against the invading forces around him, a troupe deadlier than any bitter brother could ever wish to be. The Tzitzimimeh were an elite fighting force, consisting of all the lesser brothers and sisters of the Ometeotl who took up residence in the other stars in the sky. Their jealousy, hardened and galvanized by their leader, Coyolxauhqui, the goddess of the moon, made them resentful of the leadership his reign as the Sun provided. Every night, they would attack the Sun, and as the celestial law stated, as long as the Aztecs kept their patron god strong with human blood, he would be able to fend them off until sunrise.
After the Spaniards sacked Tenochtitlan and ritual sacrifice stopped, the sun still rose every morning. Huitzilopochtli survives to this day. If blood isn’t the key, then what is? A legend, not found in any surviving Aztec codex, states there’s a secret battle technique he uses to fend them off, one that is inescapable and unable to be countered. However, one day, he’ll fail at recognizing when the attack is coming, and he will be unable to employ his tactic. Huitzilopochtli will fall, and the Tzetzemimeh will slaughter all mankind. A gigantic earthquake will render the land unrepairable, and final sun will set on the world.
It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.
–
He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. When he opened them again, only his own image, plain and unadorned by the perception in his brain, stared back at him. He shook his head and walked towards the door. Before descending downstairs to meet Vinny at The Shitty Green Explorer™, Tom pulled out his cellphone.
“Guapo… yeah, Tom. Anglo… I gave some thought to what you said. How would you like me to fly you up here?”
Information on the myths of the Five Suns was found on Wikipedia. All embellishments made by yours truly.