You’re Gonna Be Alright, Boys

MGM Grand – Self-Park Garage

June 4, 2022

11:07 AM

 

It was a maze in there, one of many in a city that was, itself, one overarching maze. Some of the floors in the parking complex sloped one way and some the other, and some of the floors didn’t slope at all. I didn’t know which level we were on. Sometimes the only way to know would be to stumble upon one of the sides of the structure and see how far away the ground was.

I stopped and pressed the button on my key fob, just as I’d been doing any time I felt like I hadn’t done it in a while, but there was no chirping sound. There were no flashing headlights.

“Are you sure this is the right garage?” Nova lit another cigarette.

“I’m not even sure what the Buick logo looks like. Is it like, some lines? Or maybe a shield?”

“I had a full pack when we started.” Nova looked sadly into the space in his box of smokes. “Now I’m going to have to take an extra trip to the convenience store.”

Nova and I had come a long way from our shaky start as solo competitors, and we were beginning to find success as a team. Under normal circumstances, we’d be in better spirits. We’d won our second challenge, and it was down to us and only two other teams. I was more focused on wrestling than I’d been in a long time, and it’d been months since I’d been in an actual match.

I was feeling extra foggy that morning. It was probably whatever we drank too much of the night before, and the heat only made matters worse. I looked around at the cars. Old cars were parked next to new ones. Expensive cars were parked next to the rusty lemons of bygone eras. Vegas took all types. In that way, it was the perfect setting for something like PRIME, I thought relevantly.

I clicked the button on the fob again.

Nothing.

“This is starting to remind me of that jetpack fiasco.” Nova crushed a cigarette butt beneath his foot and whipped out his pack to replace it. “Any chance we can come back to this later? What do we need a Buick for right now?”

“We don’t need the Buick. It’s what’s inside.”

I couldn’t even remember what color it was. Summit White? Sapphire Metallic? Hell, I couldn’t think of too many real colors. Red. That was one. Blue? That didn’t sound real. It was a weird combination of letters. The more I thought about it, the less I was sure. My cognition was sweating out in buckets. My head probably hurt, but I didn’t feel it.

“What’s inside?”

“I don’t know for sure,” I said to the other guy. “But I know it’s important.”

He was a weird looking guy. Every time I looked over at him, he was a little different than I remembered, a little more different every time.

“Hey, buddy.” I could barely hear him anymore. I couldn’t tell if the ramps were sloping up or down anymore. “You okay?”

“I’m good.” I pressed the button again. My head cleared.

“Do you remember what the challenge was?”

“No.” I looked around. We were in a parking garage. “I’m not sure if this is a challenge or–”

“Hey! What the fuck happened to all my smokes?” He shook the pack out over his hand. Some loose tobacco fell out and slipped through his fingers. “Come on. I gotta go buy some more.”

Gentle Meadows Home For Old Timers

June 9, 2072

4:07 PM

 

Johnny, a half century aged from his heyday, is crumpling up a soiled paper towel with all the care–or at least the pace–of an origami master folding a flexagon. The artistic endeavor is interrupted by an alarm that Johnny has set in his VR implant.

“Ah, shit!”

Johnny rears back and whips the clump of paper towel towards Nova, who’s snoring loudly in a rocking chair on his patio. Fortunately, for the sleeping nonagenarian, there’s not enough firepower in his friend’s cannon to clear the gap, and the wadded wad falls short, landing nearer to the concussed figure of Johnny’s grandson, Lil Jon Puddings-Johnny, who got cracked upside the head with a cane for sass-talking too much, a trait he must’ve inherited from every vein of his lineage.

“Wake up, you narcoleptic gasbag!” Johnny tries prodding at Nova with his cane. “It’s almost time.”

“I’m awake!” Nova jolts back to life and regains his bearings. “Time for what?”

Johnny takes a deep breath. “Time to go back and figure out what it was we called ourselves.” 

Nova’s eyes drift listlessly and a sleepy smile spreads back over his face. “I’m tired, Johnny. And it seems like a lot of work just to figure out that we probably just called ourselves GBJ and Nova.”

“I’m sorry, is this like some kind of time-traveling cosplay?”  Lil Jon Puddings-Johnny is clearly awake. “Grandpa Johnny, are you gonna give me money for wrestling school or n-”

*CRACK*

Johnny’s cane bounces off his grandson’s nose with a sound that would shush a racquetball court. With a whimper, Lil Jon crumples from his chair to the DNA-soaked pavement.

“It’s more than just a name.” Johnny says slowly, deliberately. “Those were some of the best times in my career. And now we can either sit around on our asses sucking down semi-solid foods, or we can use the technology of the time to go back and live it again!”

Johnny groans as he presses against his cane and leverages himself to his feet. He limps over to his friend and places a gnarled hand on Nova’s shoulder. Nova looks up at him with glassy eyes.

“Aren’t you ready for one more adventure? A REAL adventure?” Johnny asks. Nova’s look says it all. “LIL JON!”

Johnny’s grandson wakes up, groggily. The elder Johnny points at him with his cane.

“If you want that money, you’re going to need to help me prepare this time machine.”

“Ugh, fine!”

 

4:19 PM

Back on the patio, everything’s set. Garbage Bag Johnny is perched atop his grandson’s shoulders as Nova mans the slider of an eight foot tall bong made out of space-age materials. Multi-colored LED’s are bedazzled up and down the side of the device. A sign that reads “TIME MACHINE” is affixed halfway up the chamber.

“Alright, Nova. I want you to light it in…” GBJ looks at his watch while Lil’ Jon tries to balance him. “Three…tw-”

The three of them are interrupted by a long crooked shadow cast over them. They all look out at the source: a ghoulish, shadowy figure, crooked limbs jutting at unnatural angles, the musk of an unsealed sarcophagus visibly emitting from the edges of its shape.

MGM Grand – The Casino Floor

June 4, 2022

11:50 AM

 

Following a short detour to the convenience store, Nova and Johnny find themselves back on the casino floor. Their faces have grown more confused, and the flashing lights and arpeggiated beeps from the slot machines further distract the duo from the matter at hand.

“Maybe it’s here somewhere.”

Nova lights a cigarette and looks over to GBJ, who stares at him blankly.

“What’s here?” GBJ asks.

Nova pauses. “I…I thought you knew.” After a moment, “The Buick, right?”

“Oh, shit!” GBJ’s eyes widen, “FUCK YES, the Buick. We gotta find it, Nov. Seriously.”

Nova takes a drag and massages his temple. “Okay. I hear you. We got nowhere in the parking garage…so I think my thought was in coming here, that…maybe we see it on, like, a showroom dais here? Is that a thing?”

“I don’t know, man,” GBJ shakes his head, running a hand through his hair.

Nova shakes his head, his eyes refocusing. The lights on the casino floor are too bright, piercing. “Look, I think we need to take a minute. We’re…scattered.”

“Yeah, dude. Something’s definitely not working right in the old coconut.” 

Nova guides them both over to a couple of barstools and waves down a server. “Old-fashioneds, please.”

He lights a cigarette.

“You’re already smoking a cigarette,” GBJ points out.

Nova looks down and there are two lit cigarettes in his right hand.

“Wait…don’t I also smoke?” GBJ reaches a hand out. “Give me one of those.”

Nova inattentively obliges, and Johnny puts the filter in his mouth before drawing in a huge breath. His face contorts at the taste.

“Maybe it’s here somewhere,” he offers. 

“What’s here?” GBJ asks, stifling a cough.

Nova pauses. “I…I thought you knew.” After a moment, “The Buick, right?”

“Oh, shit!” GBJ’s eyes widen, “FUCK YES, the Buick. We gotta find it, Nov. Seriously.”

Nova takes a drag and massages his temple. “Okay. I hear you. We got nowhere in the parking garage…so I think my thought was…”

The server interrupts them with two old-fashioneds. Nova swirls his for a moment and then takes a long gulp.

“Actually, fuck whatever my thought was,” he says, wiping his beard, “it doesn’t look like it’s here, does it?”

“What’s here?” GBJ asks.

“The Buick,” Nova responds, now smoking both of his cigarettes at the same time.

GBJ’s eyes scan the casino floor. “It doesn’t look like it’s here,” he agrees.

 

The Nevada Desert

June 4, 2022

10:05 AM

The hair on the back of Future Nova’s scalp is pretty choppy and uneven, patches of thicker and thinner hair gathering around the lumps on the back of his dome like an old-growth forest at the base of a mountain.

The Buick, stationary on the side of the desert highway, shimmers in heat waves.

Cut to Future Nova’s silhouette, staring through the open driver’s side door of the Buick at the unmanned steering wheel and multi-setting heated ass-cushion waiting for him.

“You might not ever just stand there, looking at it…”

Future Nova wraps his shaking, liver-spotted hands around the polished leather of the steering wheel.

“I mean, you may never even sit in the back seat…mmmm, that would be a shame…”

Future Nova watches himself in the rearview mirror writhe happily in the Buick’s backseat…

*TH-THUMP*

A noise from the cargo space in the back rouses him from his Buick fever dream and he comes to, barreling down the Nevada highway, muscular rock music blaring from the state of the art Bose speakers. Immediately he presses on the brake and pulls over to the side of the road.

*TH-THUMP*

He hears the noise again as the Buick slows to a halt. He opens the driver’s side door and walks around to the back of the Buick. 

He pops the back hatch…and stares for a moment. 

“Fuck.”

He shakes his head.

“Fuck. Fuck. Okay…” 

Future Nova lights a cigarette. 

“…we can fix this.”

Gentle Meadows Home For Old Timers

June 9, 2072

4:21 PM

 

The Time Machine remains unkindled. Lil Jon’ Puddings-Johnny lies on the ground, resting his back. Nova and Johnny are staring at the mangled figure before them, trying to figure out whether it’s human or demon or somewhere in between.

It’s making a very uneasy noise, part wheezing moan, part choked gargle.

“Jesus, Johnny.” Nova backs up a few steps. “What the fuck is that thing?”

The gargling intensifies. It looks like it looks at GBJ and Nova with what looks less like an eye and more like a cloudy black marble. The gargling is arrhythmic and deliberate.

Johnny approaches the creature cautiously, leading with his cane, using it as both sword and shield.

“I think it’s human.” Its exterior is scaly and colorless and covered in splotches of matted white hair coming out of places that didn’t make any sense. “I think it’s just like, a million years old.”

The assessment coaxes Nova from the patio, and he joins Johnny to look at the being that’s appeared at their patio. Nova lights a cigarette and takes a drag. The being slowly reaches a limb towards Nova’s hand. Nova instinctively yanks away his cigarette and jumps back a step.

“I think it’s you, man,” GBJ says incredulously.

The creature’s limb is still outstretched towards Nova. Nova looks at Johnny. Then he looks at the figure.

DON’T GO…COUGH

Nova takes a step towards it, examining the appendage reaching for him. It’s spidery thin and ends in a bundle of knuckles.

DON’T…COUGH…GO BACK!

Ash builds on the end of Nova’s cigarette. He doesn’t know what to make of being confronted by a half-decayed version of himself. That version finally snatches the cigarette.

IF YOU…COUGH…GO BACK…COUGH…COUGH COUGH…HE DIES!

The instance of Nova that is naught more than a disintegrating heap of his remains is pointing the cigarette at Johnny. He can barely sustain the weight of his own hand. The long journey is over. He uses all the strength he has left to take one last drag.

 

4:26 PM

“So I was thinking…” Johnny puts a hand on his shoulder, but it does little to shake Nova out of the state he’s in, having witnessed his own demise. “Who really gives a shit what our tag team name was. How about we forget all that and go check out the talent on the shuffleboard court? It’s culottes weather!”

Nova stares ahead, looking in this moment somehow even older than his ninety-plus years…

…and then places a hand over the one Johnny has rested on his shoulder.

“Whatever you say, buddy.”

MGM Grand – The 28th Floor

June 4, 2022

12:35 PM

 

*DING*

The elevator doors open.

Nova and GBJ stand inside, staring out blankly. After about fifteen seconds, the doors begin to close. Nova holds out an arm, and the doors react by opening again.

…

Another fifteen seconds go by, and GBJ holds out an arm as the doors attempt to close again. They open back a second time, and then the “NAH FOR REAL THO” alarm goes off.

EEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“Come on.”

Nova grabs GBJ by the arm and they step off in the roughly six-minute window they have before the doors close for the final time.

“I think it’s here.” 

“What is?” GBJ asks.

“The, uh…thing that we’re looking for. Buick?”

“Where is here?” GBJ asks.

“That I actually don’t know.”

“What’s Buick?” GBJ asks.

Nova pauses. “Fuck…what is Buick…” 

He lights his last cigarette. “I feel like I don’t remember now, but the further we walk down this hallway, the more confident I’ll get about an answer to that question.”

So they walk down the hallway, eventually passing the entrance to their hotel suite.

“I know this!” GBJ exclaims happily. “Hell yeah, this is our place.” 

“Lead the way, mon frere,” Nova gestures, “let’s find ourselves a Buick.”

GBJ swipes his keycard, and they enter their hotel suite. GBJ looks back at Nova with an excited grin. “I feel like there’s a Buick here.”

“If not here, then where?” Nova replies with a giddy shrug, “if not us, then whom?”

They both immediately begin looking around. GBJ disappears behind the kitchen island before emerging with a Vitamix blender in his hands. 

“Buick?”

Nova frowns. “No, I don’t think so.”

Nova turns to his left and sees a cratered indention that suspiciously – artfully, even – resembles his face, etched into the drywall with a rusty spattering of dried blood caked around the edges.

 

Garbage Bag Johnny: We may not have a catchy name…or even a name at all…but count me in! Nothing like a palate cleanser after a delightful meal.

GBJ grabs the bottle of gin on the kitchen island and arranges a couple of shots. Before Nova can take a full step towards them a figure emerges from the shadows and face-palms him into the wall.

 

In the center of the cracked indention is…

“Hey, there’s a note!”

…a note.

 

Dear Nova and GBJ:

It’s Future Nova. I took the Buick.

 

Nova and GBJ nod at each other knowingly. Mission accomplished.

 

It’s a sweet ride, I was clearly eye-balling it the whole time, and I basically won the last challenge, so you’re welcome.

I’m gonna go find Future Johnny. I can’t imagine he’s gone far, he’s really drained by this whole thing. We knew it would be like this, but we didn’t know when it would catch up with us. Seems like it’s catching up with him.

Would you believe he was the one pushing for us to do this? 

Anyway, I wanted to say that I think you guys are doing great, seriously. You could win this whole thing. Hopefully you will. You don’t need us after all. 

I mean, maybe a little boost out of the gate, but I speak for The Future of Wrestling when I say we think you can take it from here.

Thanks for the Buick.

Love, Future Nova

 

Nova looks over to GBJ, who wipes a tear from his eye.

“That was beautiful,” he says, “but do you know anyone named Future Nova?”

Nova shakes his head.

The Nevada Desert

June 4, 2022

10:40 AM

 

The Buick roars down the highway. Future Nova white-knuckles the wheel with his old-man hands, windows down, wind whipping wisps of hair away from his face.

He looks over to the passenger seat, where the slumped corpse of Future GBJ leans against the door panel. His long, gray locks hang over his face, tangled around his mouth and beard. Future Nova takes a hand off the wheel and wipes Future GBJ’s hair behind his head.

Looking ahead, he sees a rock wall expanding across the right-hand side of the road. 

Future Nova kisses his fingertips and places them on Future GBJ’s forehead. Then he focuses ahead on the wall, a broad grin flashing across his face.

“You’re gonna be alright, boys.”

He punches it.

MGM Grand – The 28th Floor

June 11, 2022

5:14 PM

 

The hotel room is still in a state of utter disrepair, but Johnny and Nova have long been acclimated to the shelter they’ve built for themselves during PRIME’s Survivor challenge.  Garbage Bag Johnny sits cross-legged on the couch, eating a bowl of cereal. Beads of milk speckle his beard, breakfast dewdrops at the beginning of a new day. A toilet flushes in the background

“They do the weather yet?” Nova walks in from the bathroom, sits down next to Johnny, and lights a cigarette.

“Nope.” Johnny crunches another spoonful of Cookie Crisp. “Those things are gonna kill you, you know.”

Nova scowls and shakes his head.

“Can you bum me one?”

“Dude.” Nova reaches for his pack with the standard amount of irritation commensurate for the occasion. “You’re eating cereal.”

“So I’ve been thinking.” Johnny lights the cigarette and takes a drag. “If we win the challenge at ReV 10. Who do we take with us?”

“One of the teams left has a dummy, right?”

“Yeah,” Johnny grins. “And the other has a mannequin.”

There’s a pause to let the studio audience’s laughter subside. It’s long enough where it’d be too late for Nova to address the joke and thus, more socially appropriate to introduce a new topic.

“Holy shit!” Nova points at the screen. “Isn’t that the Buick?”

Johnny squints and moves his face towards the television. The footage is from the desert, three-quarters of a Buick Envision Avenir luxury utility vehicle smashed against a rocky embankment somewhere in the desert. Yellow tape cordons off the scene. Glass, blood, and pieces of Buick dot the land.

 

“A car was found smashed into a rock wall in Unincorporated Clark County on Friday. Police found one body in the passenger seat–an elderly male–but as of yet they are unable to identify the victim.”

 

“Yeah, dude. That’s the Buick”

 

“…no other bodies were found.”

 

“BORING!” Johnny shouts, simultaneously changing the channel to something with a hell of a lot more monster trucks. Nova pumps his fist in support, and for the first time in a while, the duo is able to enjoy a nice, relaxing evening without a worry in the world.