Flat Fields, Nebraska
I’m not sure I’m allowed to post this here. If there’s a better place, please let me know. I really just want to figure out what happened, so I’m trying to share this on as many forums as possible. If anyone experienced something similar or knows somebody who has, please contact me. I’d be grateful for any information because I really think I’m going insane over this.
I’m a pro wrestler. And yes, I know what people think: Wrestling is stupid and fake, and I should grow up and get a real job already. Heard it all before, don’t care. I’m not a big deal by any means. Unless you’re from the Huntsville area or attend smaller shows in Alabama and Tennessee, you probably have no clue who I am. That’s fine. I’m not here to get my name out. There’s just no point in being vague about what I do for a living when this whole mess took place at a wrestling show. So for the uninitiated, here’s all you need to know about my life in a nutshell. Being an independent wrestler isn’t glamorous. You spend more time in your car than anywhere else, even the smallest backwater locker room has more drama than a Spanish soap opera, and the jokes about getting paid ‘a hotdog and a handshake’ are often true. If you’re doing it for the money, you’re doing it wrong. Nobody gets rich in the indies. In fact, many barely get by. Like anywhere else, there are no handouts in this business. You gotta pay your dues and work your way up. You put up with all this bullshit because you love wrestling, because it’s something you can’t not do.
I trained under Dixie Joe Barlow. That name might ring a bell in the South. He used to be a big deal in his heyday and still ran the occasional show in Birmingham until recently. Thanks to him and his connections, I was off to a pretty good start, especially because I was willing and able to go the extra mile. I didn’t earn a single cent in my first year, so yes, I still had a ‘real job’ to pay the bills. Working in a warehouse wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It sure beat the restaurant jobs some of my fellow graduates had. For them, it was always a struggle to get weekends off. My boss clocked out every Friday at 3 pm sharp, so I really couldn’t complain.
Things were going well for me, against my parents’ predictions. Needless to say, they were not exactly thrilled with my career choice, and me getting paid 50 bucks here and there didn’t change that. To me, it was a clear sign that I was on the right track. When I got my first out of state bookings, even the dream of going full time one day didn’t seem all that far-fetched anymore. I kept putting in the work and it kept paying off.
Until the pandemic hit in 2020. That’s when everything went downhill fast. I know, lockdown sucked for everyone, but it was a different kind of hell for someone who’s usually on the road every weekend. There’s no working from home for a wrestler. Shows were canceled, gyms had to close, as did the warehouse. Without a job or any savings, I had no choice but to live up to the cliche and move back into my parents’ basement.
For a while, I managed to keep busy with my old dumbbell set and daily runs on the trail behind the house, studying matches on YouTube, and chatting with friends. It was fun at first, when nobody expected the lockdown to last as long as it did. We made big plans for our return to the ring, dreamed up gimmicks and new spots that only made sense in our stir-crazy minds. We played out those ideas in video games, but at some point we just stopped. I was probably not the only one who felt it was just another reminder that we couldn’t go out and do it for real. The group chat slowed down as well, and I fell into a slump without really realizing it. The Xbox controller became more familiar than my dumbbells, and I slept in instead of going on my morning run. I lived in a haze for what felt like a lifetime. When the lockdown finally ended, I was actually shocked how much time had passed.
I was out of shape, mentally and physically. My buddy Alec had to drag me out of the basement and kick my ass all the way to the gym to get me back on track. What really woke me up was my first post-pandemic match at Dixie Joe’s retirement show. I certainly felt the ring rust, but it was also incredibly invigorating to finally be in front of a crowd, however small, again. There may have been only 45 people in the audience, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if there had been 5 or 500 instead. When I stepped through the curtain, I felt alive for the first time since the whole pandemic thing started. In that moment, I knew more than ever that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I wasn’t alone in my high spirits. The indie scene returned from the forced hiatus with a bang. More shows were announced every week as venues re-opened, but it wasn’t the land of milk and honey I initially thought it would be. Not for me anyway. After the months-long drought, there was no shortage of wrestlers desperate to get back in the ring. Even many bigger names were willing to travel longer distances, work smaller shows, or drop their rates. Promoters had free pickings from the cream of the crop, and that left small time weekend warriors like myself in the dust.
The fierce competition didn’t curb my enthusiasm though. On the contrary. It motivated me to step up my game. I updated my woefully neglected social media profiles. I uploaded my match from Dixie Joe’s last show to YouTube and tagged the hell out of it. I went to every show in the area, took any opportunity to network I could afford with my drained resources.
At first, my efforts didn’t yield the greatest results, which was honestly not too surprising. It was not like promoters were swimming in money, and they sure didn’t run charities. They needed to sell tickets and that simply worked a lot better with big names on the card. Had I been a promoter, I’d have gone for more established guys myself. Still, what I got was better than nothing. A battle royal here, an eight man tag match or scramble there. Not the most prestigious matches, but every bit helped to get rid of the ring rust, and that was a step in the right direction.
I finally caught a break in late summer. When I checked my inbox, more out of habit than necessity, there was a new mail from ‘Reckless Championship Wrestling’. I had never heard of them, but that’s hardly unusual in the ever changing landscape of small time promotions. My first thought was that somebody had decided to fill the void Dixie Joe’s retirement had left in the area. There had been talk for years about one of the referees taking over. He had probably finally pulled the trigger. Either way, this was exciting. The mail’s subject simply read ‘booking inquiry’ and that was great news.
To my surprise, my assumption turned out to be wrong. I had never heard of Dalton Wyland, who introduced himself as the promoter of Reckless Championship Wrestling. That didn’t mean I wasn’t interested, of course. Quite the opposite, in fact. I was thrilled that my tireless hustle had caught the attention of somebody outside my local network. This was the fruit of my labor; proof that I could get ahead without relying on Dixie Joe’s contacts.
My excitement grew the more I read. Wyland wanted me for a Three Way Dance, and although he didn’t make any promises regarding the card position, I was over the moon. After months of chaotic multi-man matches in the undercard, this was a welcome change of pace. That Wyland couldn’t name the opponents I would face yet didn’t strike me as strange. He had probably sent a bunch of inquiries at once and was waiting for responses to see how his card would come together.
Deep down, I already knew I’d take this booking no matter what. It was exactly what I had hoped for; a best case scenario. But of course I was also curious about Reckless Championship Wrestling and decided to check them out before I’d reply. A quick search brought up a YouTube channel under the account name D_Wyland82. It hadn’t been updated since before the pandemic, and there were only a handful of short clips along with two full matches from the same show. In other words, it was no different from countless other channels of small promotions that had never taken off. Two matches were enough to give me an idea what Wyland was all about, so I watched them.
What I saw made a good first impression. The wrestlers, none of which I had seen before, knew what they were doing. The crowd was small, but vocal and invested in the matches. The venue, some sort of community center, was almost aggressively generic, but two details caught my eye. First, there was a sign pointing to the ‘Back Exit/Parking’ which suggested I wouldn’t have to drive around town to find a parking spot. A convenience promoters often neglected to consider, so this was a big plus. Then there was also a prominent banner that advertised a local overnight car repair service, likely a sponsor. While it didn’t necessarily mean there was good money to be made, it at least spoke to a certain level of organizational skill behind the scenes.
Halfway through the second match, the camera moved and the new angle revealed a part of the car repair banner that had previously been covered by a ring post. The full address was visible now, and confusingly, it read Flat Fields, Nebraska. I had never worked in – or even been to – Nebraska. Why would anyone want to book me there? The other possibility also didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would a car repair from Nebraska advertise at a small wrestling show out of state? Puzzled, I switched back to the mail and skimmed until I found an address. The venue was indeed in Flat Fields, Nebraska. In my excitement I had either overlooked it or simply not processed it the first time around.
For a moment, I just sat there and wondered what had given Dalton Wyland the idea to book me. The ways of promoters were often mysterious, but I couldn’t possibly be a draw several states away when my name barely had value at home. Unless… Maybe my recent social media activity made me look like a bigger deal than I really was. Maybe Wyland saw something in me that I didn’t even know I had. Or he really had generous sponsors and didn’t need to worry too much about travel costs.
I had been clear on social media that I was willing to travel, so it wasn’t unreasonable that someone would ask me to do just that, right? The longer I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that it wasn’t strange at all. If Wyland wanted to shell out the extra buck for whoever suited his vision, I sure wouldn’t stand in his way. And so I wrote back that I’d be available for the show’s date. Just in case Wyland had overlooked my location, I not only included my rate as requested, but also how much gas money I’d need. If this was a mix-up with a local worker, I’d rather find out right away.
When I returned from my morning run, Wyland had already replied. He thanked me for the quick response, confirmed that my travel costs would be covered, and said he was looking forward to meeting me at the show. The mail also included the addresses of two nearby motels; one in Flat Fields, the other just outside Omaha. Either he had been aware of my location all along, or the additional cost didn’t faze him. Whichever it was, this was fantastic news for me, and I immediately messaged Alec to tell him about my windfall.
His reply was frankly a bit disenchanting. “That’s great, man, but I can’t tag along,” he said. “It’s the same date as Frank’s next show in Birmingham. He said he wants to build me up for a shot at the Southern title later this year. He’s finally throwing me a bone. I’m not going to cancel on him now.”
Although I was disappointed, I understood where he was coming from. Frank Dekker was well-established and had been one of the first promoters to reopen after the pandemic. Ever since, he had taken full advantage of the situation and brought some fairly big names to Birmingham. With or without the prospect of a title, Alec would have been an idiot to trade a match on Frank’s show for a 12 hours drive to Nebraska where he wasn’t even on the card.
I tried my buddies Izzy and Dustin next, but had no luck with them either. “Fuck no! Do you even know where Nebraska is?” Izzy shut me down before I had a chance to ask if he and his brother wanted to come along. Instead, he tried to talk me into going to a show in Atlanta with them that weekend. “There are always no shows with Danny. Good chance we’ll get to fill in for someone!” I reminded him that Danny often neglected to pay wrestlers, and people walked out when they got yet another excuse instead of what they were owed. “Well, yeah,” Izzy conceded. “But you don’t know for sure you’ll get paid in Nebraska either. I rather take my chances closer to home.”
Over the course of the next two weeks I tried and failed to find a travel companion. A 12 hour drive without a guaranteed match wasn’t all that appealing to begin with, and that Frank Dekker handed out spots in his newly announced rookie battle royal like candy didn’t help my case either. The prospect of traveling alone dampened my excitement a little, but it didn’t last. Two days before the show, Dalton Wyland messaged me again to ask for my entrance music since his sound guy couldn’t find it online. The simple request reignited me. I was just as pumped as I had been when I received his initial inquiry. I mailed him the song, then began to prepare for my road trip.
The drive was almost as dull as expected, but only almost. After leaving in the early hours of morning, I kept myself entertained with podcasts for a good while. Around noon, I took a break at a rest stop for lunch. Since I had underestimated the distance by quite a bit, I also created a new playlist for the rest of the way.
I was used to traveling with Alec who pretty much only shut up when he slept. Having random podcasters talk about everything and nothing was the next best thing. By the time I spotted the exit sign for Flat Fields ahead, the prattle barely registered anymore. I was only relieved that the worst part of my weekend was finally over and the reward for putting up with the long drive was in reach.
Flat Fields lived up to everything I had imagined when I had looked it up. Which wasn’t much. A nondescript small town surrounded by fields, a handful of grain silos in the distance, probably a high school or park named after one of the lesser known presidents. While I’d never want to live in a place like this, I always liked to perform in sleepy little towns because they have easy crowds. Being stuck in a place defined by its dullness seems to make people more appreciative of the little entertainment they can get. From what I had seen on YouTube, Reckless Championship Wrestling was no exception.
Judging by the road signs – both of them – the Flat Fields Event Center was the only point of interest around here. I had therefore no trouble finding it and even arrived half an hour earlier than the route planner had predicted. The venue blended in perfectly with the blandness of the town. One of those multi-purpose buildings that didn’t stand out in any way. If it hadn’t been for the long drive, it would have been easy to believe that I had been here before and simply forgot about it. The one telltale sign that I was far from home was the abundance of Nebraska license plates in the parking lot. Other than mine, there were only two from out of state; one from Kansas, the other from Colorado. I parked next to the latter, not out of solidarity, but because it was the free spot closest to the open backdoor of the building.
Before I grabbed my bag from the trunk, I quickly texted my mom. She had lent me the money for gas despite not being thrilled about the trip, less so when she learned I was going alone. The least I could do was comply with her request to let her know I had arrived safely. Once the message was sent, I put the phone away and headed inside.
The dimly lit backstage area was already fairly crowded when I walked in. No surprise there, considering everyone else lived closer by. Looking around, I didn’t spot any familiar faces which was also unsurprising, and I’m not sure who I even expected to see. If any big names had been booked, Dalton Wyland would certainly have mentioned it in his mails. So I did what one does; made the rounds, introduced myself, asked where I could find the promoter. As it turned out, I was not secretly famous in Nebraska. Nobody knew who I was, everyone seemed astonished when I told them where I was from.
Near a door with a sign that said ‘Showers out of order’, I finally got a different reaction from two guys who had set up camp on a gym bench. They were as surprised as anyone else to hear I had come all the way from Alabama, but my name rang a bell. I had found my opponents. The smaller of the two, Lyle Tennant, was about my age and still wore street clothes while the stockier dude, Rory Rage, was a little older and had already changed into ring gear. We chatted for a bit, then Lyle reminded me that I should probably let Dalton Wyland know I was here.
“Big black hat, hard to miss.” Rory gestured to the curtain we’d later use for our entrances. “Probably complaining that the microphone isn’t working properly.” Something felt off about the way he said it, but I couldn’t tell what. Maybe the tone of his voice just didn’t fit the words? Something like that.
“At least that’s what he’s been doing since we got here.” Lyle shrugged and turned to his bag on the bench. “Let’s hope he gets the thing fixed before bell time.”
When I entered the auditorium, I was strangely relieved to recognize it from the videos. Thank God, I’m in the right place. I distinctly remember that thought flashing through my mind – and realizing in the same moment that it didn’t make any sense. I had just talked to my opponents. I was at the address from Dalton Wyland’s mail. And the man himself – if Rory’s description was to be believed – stood at a commentary table, microphone in hand, and intently glared at a laptop. Of course I was in the right place. Maybe I’m just glad to have found something familiar, I thought on my way to the commentary table. The long drive, trying to remember a whole new locker room’s worth of names, the uncertainty whether this trip would be worth it… Yeah, maybe it got to me more than I wanted to admit, and that’s why the sight of a car repair advertisement was so weirdly soothing.
Dalton Wyland, who turned out to be not only the promoter, but also the ring announcer, was an odd fellow. A stout man, dressed in some sort of velvet tailcoat straight from the seventies, with a black western hat and tinted Lennon shades. Typing it out makes him seem like a memorable figure, but the gaudy outfit is the only thing that stayed in my mind. He had the kind of face eyes slide right off. When he greeted me, I thought he looked like a relatively well-known actor, but I couldn’t have said who or which movie he was in.
I didn’t really have time to ponder the resemblance anyway. After an exuberant handshake, Wyland emphasized how relieved he was that I had really shown up. “Out of state bookings are always a gamble.” He sighed and glanced at his watch. “Lonny Parks, maybe you know him?” I did not. “From Iowa. He was supposed to be in the opener, but I still haven’t heard from him. So close to bell time, I doubt I will.” Another sigh, then Wyland’s nondescript face lit up. “But that’s not your problem. Come, let me show you around!”
Had I listened with closed eyes, I’d have been convinced to be in Madison Square Garden when Wyland ‘showed me around’. There was honestly no need for a tour. Everything was easily visible from the commentary table, except for the separate backstage area I had already seen. I followed him to the ring, around it, and along the rows of chairs anyway, and occasionally muttered ‘yeah, very nice’ or just hm-hmed while Wyland talked up the venue.
“We really lucked out that the Event Center reopened just in time,” he concluded, his voice oozing with satisfaction. “I had a smaller venue for our comeback show, right after the lockdown ended, but it was no good, really. Bad light and sound, to a point where I didn’t even put any of the matches online. This place? I have no complaints whatsoever.”
Although the ‘Showers out of order’ sign popped into my head, I didn’t say anything. Clearly, Wyland was very proud of the Event Center – he had referred to it as the ‘home arena’ of Reckless Championship Wrestling several times – and I didn’t want to rain on his parade. Not only because being snarky would have made a bad impression. It just wasn’t such a big deal in the end. First, I had worked in far shoddier venues, some of which didn’t have showers or even sinks to begin with. And second, the motel I planned to stay in was only an hour away. So I just agreed that it was indeed a very nice home arena that had made a good impression in the videos I had seen.
“Speaking of good first impressions…” Wyland stopped and reached into the inside pocket of his outdated tailcoat and produced two envelopes. After checking the scribbled writing on them, he gave one to me and returned the other – presumably meant for Lonny Parks – to his pocket with a sigh. “Count it if you want,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “I won’t take offense.”
I didn’t count, but I did open the envelope and thumbed through the bills. Getting paid anything at all, upfront at that, was already a victory in my book. “Exactly what we agreed on,” I said and slid the envelope into my pocket. Wyland’s demeanor, albeit a little strange, made me hopeful for future bookings, so I wanted him to know I’d be easy to work with. The no show from Iowa seemed to bother him quite a bit. I, on the other hand, had already proven to be reliable. The more rapport I built today, the more inclined Wyland would be to look at workers from my area; people who’d travel with me and make the long drive half as bad.
“Have you already met your opponents?” Wyland changed the subject without further ado. “If not, I’ll…” He broke off and glanced to a long-haired guy who had moved the laptop and microphone to the other end of the commentary table, but apparently hadn’t made any progress with it.
“I have,” I quickly said. “Lyle Tennant and Rory Rage, right?”
Wyland nodded and checked his watch again. “Good, good. Go ahead, get changed then. I’ll be there in just a moment to go over the card.”
When I headed back to the curtain, it felt as if hours had passed. According to my phone, it had barely been 30 minutes since I had arrived, and I had spent most of that time introducing myself backstage. Wyland’s unbridled enthusiasm for the Event Center must have made the ‘tour’ seem much longer than it really was, because it had honestly not been all that interesting. I absently checked my messages and was mildly surprised that my mom hadn’t replied yet. Usually she was quick about it, so I found that a bit strange until the display reminded me – again – that it had only been half an hour. Maybe I’m jetlagged, I thought to myself, then put the phone away when I reached the curtain.
As soon as I stepped through it, I was hit with a sudden awareness that I didn’t know anyone here. New faces in the backstage area were hardly unusual. In recent months, I had probably not been in a locker room where I knew everyone on the card personally. Not knowing anyone at all, not even from hearsay, was a new situation for me, and it made me somewhat anxious. At the same time, that also seemed silly to me. Why would I be nervous now, after I had already introduced myself? Delayed reaction. Jetlag. That had to be it. I got a hold of myself and looked around for Rory and Lyle, the closest to ‘familiar faces’ I had around here. The backstage area wasn’t especially large, but I couldn’t find either of them. My anxiety grew the longer I surveyed the room, and I more and more felt like an idiot. How could I not find two guys I had just talked to ten minutes ago? What did they even look like?
A tap on my shoulder jolted me out of my daze.
“Did he get the mic working?”
It took me an uncomfortably long moment to realize that I was looking at Rory when I turned around. He wore the same blue singlet as before, but I wasn’t sure about the beard. Hadn’t he been clean-shaven? Confused, all I managed to say was: “Who?”
“Wyland.” That had to be Lyle, now in ring gear; white tights with a black and pink star design down the legs. Other than his outfit, nothing about him had changed. At least not that I could tell. “Did Wyland get the mic working?” he repeated. “You just talked to him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, I did.” I shook my head in an attempt to gather myself and forced a laugh. “Must be my jetlag. I’ve been up and running since four in the morning.”
Lyle and Rory exchanged a puzzled glance, then the latter turned back to me. “Four in the morning? Man, and I thought I had to get up early to make it on time!”
“Yeah, it’s…” I trailed off. Had I not mentioned where I was from? Were they bad at geography and didn’t know where Alabama was? Since I didn’t know what to say to that, I nodded to the bench where I had left my bag. “I’ll get changed and chug an energy drink. That should wake my scatterbrain up.”
The energy drink was almost lukewarm and therefore not especially refreshing, but it did its job. While I changed into ring gear, my brain fog thinned out a bit. It still baffled me that I had somehow managed to overlook Rory and Lyle. The former, ok, maybe. He had that dime a dozen indie guy look; shaved head, plain singlet, average height, somewhat chubby. My confusion about his beard was probably owed to that, too. There were tons of guys just like him, with and without beards, on the indie circuit. But Lyle’s eye-catching tights should have stood out from the crowd. He hadn’t worn them before, I reminded myself. How would I have known to look for bright colors? I tried to picture him in street clothes, but no matter how much I racked my brain, I came up empty. Maybe one lukewarm energy drink wasn’t enough to shake off this weird jetlag, so I grabbed the second can from my bag, then headed back to Rory and Lyle.
Luckily, I had no trouble locating them this time. They still stood by the curtain and talked to a referee whose name I couldn’t recall. It didn’t matter because he rushed toward a different duo before I got there.
“Looks like we’ll have a full house tonight,” Rory welcomed me back. “Zak said there’s quite the crowd outside. Definitely more than what we had last time, he said.”
I was about to reply, but a microphone-enhanced voice from behind the curtain – “One, two, test, test!” – got there first. The locker room erupted in cheers, applause, and laughter, and once it calmed down, Rory took up the thread.
“Although that’s not hard. Last time we barely drew 50 people.” He crossed his arms and eyed the curtain, probably expecting Dalton Wyland to come through. “It wasn’t a bad show,” he continued when no such thing happened. “Just low attendance. Small, local card; you know how it goes. I think I was the only one from out of state.”
“The ‘local card’ wasn’t the problem,” Lyle chipped in. “It was the timing. Wyland announced the show before the lockdown was officially over. Nobody knew if it would really take place. Of course people didn’t flock to the show when there was a good chance it would be canceled last minute.”
Rory shrugged and glanced to the curtain again. “I guess. Maybe for some bigger names, they’d have taken the risk.”
I wanted to join the conversation, but simply couldn’t think of anything to say. It wasn’t because I obviously knew nothing about the average attendance of Reckless Championship Wrestling shows. I could still have asked questions or shared my own experiences with smaller shows. But I didn’t. There was just something off about the conversation, about them. The longer I listened to their weirdly indifferent quarrel, the more I thought it sounded rehearsed. Like they were reciting lines from a script for the umpteenth time and couldn’t be bothered with the appropriate inflection anymore. Maybe it’s a test, I tried to come up with an explanation. A pretend-disagreement to see if the new guy would take sides or mouth off about other promotions.
Before I had decided whether that made any sense or not, the curtain finally moved and Dalton Wyland entered the backstage area. Something seemed different about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Did he look taller than before? Were his shoulders not as broad anymore? Maybe he had worn different glasses? While I tried to puzzle it out, I absently followed Rory and Lyle to the center of the room where everyone gathered for the meeting. Only when Wyland tried to reach into his inside pocket did I realize what was different about him, and he probably felt just as silly as I did – albeit for a different reason. He didn’t wear his velvet tailcoat anymore.
And from here on, my recollection gets hazy. I do remember that someone, likely the long-haired sound guy, came to bring Wyland a piece of paper, and that the meeting began after that. I also remember that my match was the 5th on the card, that Lyle was booked to win, and that our referee was somebody other than Zak. I’m relatively sure there was a title on the line in the main event, but for the life of me, I can’t recall which one or who held it. Or anything else about the card, for that matter. Not a single match or name comes to mind, nor what change Wyland had to make due to the no show from Iowa. And it’s not like I didn’t pay attention or got distracted. No, I just stood there, sipped my second energy drink, and listened. At the time, nothing about the meeting seemed strange to me, but thinking back, Wyland could as well have spoken another language.
My memories from after the meeting are even more jumbled. Some parts are crystal clear, others a blur. Seeing there were four matches before mine, I spent – at the very least – an hour in the locker room. Likely longer. I kind of know what I did during that time, but only kind of. What I remember is like a collection of photos without dates or locations; snapshots of moments I clearly recall, but can’t say when or where they took place.
I ate pepperoni pizza, but don’t know where it came from. Maybe someone ordered it, maybe there was a food truck outside, maybe a caterer showed up at some point. Not a clue. Good pizza though.
There was some kind of dispute after a match. It got loud and someone, maybe Wyland, had to step in and calm down the situation. I don’t have the slightest idea what it was about, who or even how many people were involved, just that it didn’t escalate in the end.
Rory talked about ordering new gear and being annoyed that it hadn’t arrived in time for the show. Kneepads? Kickpads? Tights or trunks? No idea. I’m not even sure it was Rory. I just assume it was him because his look needed an upgrade far more than Lyle’s.
We discussed a TV show; something I’m sure I watched, but fuck if I knew what it was. Could be anything, really, because I watched a damn lot of random stuff during my lockdown slump.
At some point, we must have gone over our match although I have no recollection of that at all. But if we hadn’t talked about it, I wouldn’t have been so confident that we’d put on a good show. I know with certainty that I was, but that’s all I have to go on.
I vividly remember the moment just before I walked out for the match. Hearing the first beats of my music, anxiously waiting for my cue to burst through the curtain, being pumped to finally go out there and show Nebraska what I could do. It was worth the long drive, I recall thinking. This is going to be one hell of a match.
The Flat Fields Event Center was absolutely packed. It had been clear that there was a hot crowd all along because I had heard the noise during the earlier matches. Until I walked out and saw it with my own eyes, I had expected it would be like in the YouTube videos though. A small crowd that made up for its size with enthusiasm. But there was nothing to compensate for. There were easily twice as many people as chairs; cheering and chanting and rattling the guardrails.
Frankly, I was a bit taken aback by the red-hot reception. At home, where fans actually knew me, I had never gotten a reaction like this. Certainly not just for walking to the ring. I had to work for my pops, and sometimes even my flashier spots fell flat. Here, I received a welcome worthy of WrestleMania simply for existing. This crowd was really something else, and that’s definitely not a complaint. It just took me a moment to process and match their energy.
Rory was already in the ring. I vaguely remember him saying he’d go out first earlier, so him being there wasn’t weird. However, had I not been so baffled by the size and heat of the crowd, I’d probably have questioned why I hadn’t heard his entrance. No boos or jeering although his demeanor clearly said ‘heel’. No music that could have drowned out such a vocal audience. Of course it’s possible that I was just too busy hyping myself up behind the curtain. But seeing how jumbled my memory is, it’s also possible that there was a dead silence right before the crowd went nuts for me, and I simply forgot.
Lyle’s entrance is a bit clearer in my mind. That might seem obvious because I was already in the ring and actually saw it, but there’s still a strange quality to it when I think back. It doesn’t feel like something I saw happen right in front of me. It feels like something I saw on TV; something I had on in the background and didn’t pay full attention to. I know for sure that the crowd cheered for Lyle, and that’s about it. They were even louder than they had been for me, but I couldn’t even guess what they chanted. I think Dalton Wyland introduced Lyle from somewhere in Nebraska, but that might just be me trying to fill in the gaps.
The match started out normal. Maybe we improvised well, maybe we had planned some of it; either way, there was nothing noteworthy about it. Feeling out the opponents, some lock-ups, some reversals, the usual. Until Rory complained to the ref that Lyle had supposedly pulled his hair during a headlock. A heel making an unfounded accusation against the fan favorite wasn’t unusual either, but the crowd’s reaction sure was. Rory was met with a storm of outrage; vehement demands to disqualify him, paper cups flying in his direction, insults that would have made Tracy Smothers cry. And this was two minutes into the match, at most. I had seen rowdy smalltown crowds before, but ‘rowdy’ didn’t even begin to describe this. These folks were outright unhinged.
While I covertly looked around for security staff at ringside, Lyle approached Rory and the ref, and a moment later, the hostility dissipated completely. All Lyle did was reach for Rory’s shaved head to remind everyone that there wasn’t any hair to pull. The crowd completely lost it. People were in tears, gasping for air, roaring and shaking with laughter as if the world’s most hilarious skit had just played out before their eyes. Although I was relieved that the mood had shifted, I was stumped why the hair pull thing was this funny to them. It had to be some sort of running gag around here, I figured. Maybe Rory and Lyle had even mentioned it to me and I had brushed it off because it didn’t seem like a big deal.
As the match continued, I came to think that the crowd’s disproportionate enthusiasm was probably owed to the recent entertainment drought. An outlet for penned up energy from the lockdown or something; going nuts for the sake of going nuts. Nothing we did in the ring warranted the strong responses we got, and yet they kept coming. Simple kicks and punches were rewarded with cheers; a plain old hip toss momentarily left the crowd breathless. At some point, I performed the most awkward bodyslam ever against Rory. He wasn’t as heavy as he looked, and misjudging his weight almost led to me losing my balance when I heaved him up with way too much gusto. I got frenetic chants for it anyway.
I don’t mean to say the match sucked. There were some really good spots, and they too were met with deafening cheers. For instance, Lyle performed a picture-perfect Moonsault against me. Maybe my perspective on the receiving end was a bit skewed, but man, it looked out of this world. Truly gravity-defying, as if he had all the time in the world to make the full turn in the air. Something like that sure deserved the huge pop it got, but not everything did. The crowd never calmed down though. No matter what we did, they were too loud, too enthusiastic, to a point where it just didn’t feel like genuine excitement.
Although the vibe was quite uncanny, it was better than a bunch of cross-armed grouches or, worse yet, empty seats. That’s what I kept telling myself, but it was hard to ignore the uneasy feeling in my stomach. Whenever Rory had the upper hand and the crowd launched another volley of insults and cups at him, I was reminded that there was no ringside security. All that divided us from the raging mob was a metal guardrail, and not an especially sturdy one at that. Thankfully, the crowd’s mood was a fickle thing. The bursts of anger never lasted long enough to escalate, but I was admittedly a bit worried here and there.
The crowd turned out to be the least of my concerns though. Things took a really weird turn about halfway through the match. I think. I’m not sure in what order things happened. It’s all messed up in my head, but I think it started after I had thrown Lyle out of the ring and Rory was supposed to hit me with a Running Lariat. He did just that, and I took the bump, but in that split second it took me to fall, I realized that something wasn’t right about this. Rory’s arm hadn’t touched me at all. There was no way he had missed me on purpose, and it couldn’t be a matter of timing either. I had gone down precisely when I expected his arm to connect with my chest. Call wrestling ‘fake’ all you want, there’s simply no way not to feel any impact when a guy runs straight into you. By all accounts, Rory should have hit me, but he hadn’t. What added to my confusion was the crowd. Like I said, their volume was no measure for how good or bad a spot looked, but the kind of noise told a very clear story. They wouldn’t have been booing if Rory had missed. And yet they were. I didn’t even know whether I should sell the move because I genuinely couldn’t tell if I had been attacked.
Ultimately I trusted my body more than the crowd, so I didn’t bother pretending to be hurt. I just sat up and looked around to figure out what had gone wrong, with moderate success. Rory was exactly where I expected him to be, where he should have been after mowing me down. In the ropes. And I mean literally in the ropes. He wasn’t merely leaning back against them. The ropes went into his back, through his body. Like a glitch in a video game where the hitbox didn’t quite line up with the character’s dimensions. What the hell? That couldn’t be real. People can’t just clip through solid objects. Rory did anyway, and it didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. While I was still trying to understand what the fuck I was seeing, he signaled me to get ready for a Running Knee Strike.
I must have gone into auto-pilot because all I remember is that this move connected. Nothing weird about it, just business as usual. No time for me to think about the rope glitch either. I probably brushed it off as dizziness from the energy drinks, lack of sleep, or having had something in my eye at the time. Thinking back, however, I’m dead certain that I saw what I saw.
If it had been just that one weird thing, I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now. I doubt I’d even have given it a second thought. Who remembers ‘that one time when I looked at my opponent from a funny angle’ months later? Yeah, exactly. But it wasn’t just that, and it wasn’t only what I saw. It was also what went through my mind during the match. I guess the best way to describe it is that it felt like being in a dream. One of those strange dreams where nothing out of the ordinary happens, but you just know there’s a lurking threat.
When Lyle jumped back into the ring to interrupt my brief brawl with Rory, I just knew that Lyle was in the air for too long. Obviously I had no stopwatch, but a gut feeling told me that he was jumping too slowly. That doesn’t even make sense. How does one jump slowly? Just ignore gravity? Something was off about the way Lyle moved in general when he came running toward us. Not casually walking, not strolling. Running. He looked like he was running, too. The motions were right. But his velocity wasn’t. He looked like a videogame character whose frame rate was misaligned with his surroundings. Just ever so slightly out of tune with the speed of the world.
I was glad when Rory hit me with a hard elbow strike and gave me something to sell. Not that I really had to sell much. It’s probably more accurate to say he gave me a reason to look as dazed and confused as I already did. Either way, I crawled to the nearest corner and the brawl continued without me.
There was nothing unusual about the exchange between Rory and Lyle, but I couldn’t help thinking that the former seemed hollow. The longer I watched, the stronger the thought grew in my mind. Rory had no substance. He was hollow, weightless, unconvincing like bad CGI in a dated movie, without physical presence in the space he supposedly occupied. Had he taken off his singlet, there would have been nothing underneath. A singlet-shaped hole between hollow limbs. I just knew it. As absurd as the notion was, I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. And it completely freaked me out.
It felt like I sat in that corner forever and just stared in horror. The erratic tides of the roaring crowd crashed over me, but barely reached my mind anymore. Chants, cheers, and boos blended together; garbled noise from a TV in another room, disjointed echoes from another time and place. Everything seemed so fickle, like reality itself was on its last legs. Even the ropes I clutched didn’t feel entirely real.
The brawl I had watched like hypnotized ended, but I couldn’t say how. All I know is that Lyle somehow gained the upper hand, and Rory was down on his back. I still couldn’t stop staring at him, couldn’t stop thinking that he was hollow. When Lyle, now moving faster than he should, rushed to another corner, my panic reached a new peak. I just knew he was about to go for another Moonsault, and I just knew he’d fall right through Rory if he did. I wanted to jump up, pull Lyle back and warn him, but I didn’t.
Get a grip, I told myself as firmly as I could muster. You’re just tired. No need to fuck this up. Nobody is hollow. This is all just in your head. I wasn’t especially convincing, but it was enough to fight down the urge to stop Lyle. Maybe seeing that nothing weird happened with his Moonsault would jolt me out of this strange state of mind. So I kept my eyes fixed on Rory and waited.
I could feel Lyle climb the ropes since I still clung to them. I could see him move up from the corner of my eye, but didn’t dare looking away from Rory. What if he was hollow, after all? My imagination conjured up a scene of Lyle landing on him, and their bodies clipping into each other, forming some fucked up, two-headed, eight-limbed human crab. It’s not going to happen. Keep watching. You’ll see it will be fine. My voice of reason had lost the little persuasion it had a moment before. I didn’t believe a word I said to myself. All I wanted was to jump up and run, but my body didn’t obey my commands.
Until a sudden realization threw me off track, so much that I momentarily forgot my panic. Shouldn’t Lyle have jumped by now? What was he doing on the turnbuckle for so long? Rory hadn’t moved much, beyond slightly adjusting his arms, but he couldn’t sell whatever punch or kick had floored him forever. Cautiously, I glanced up to where Lyle should have been. And wasn’t. The confusion about his disappearance finally woke me up. My ring instinct kicked in, and a different kind of panic took over. Had he slipped and fallen out of the ring? Was he possibly injured?
A quick glance to the referee said otherwise. The guy just stood there, neither confused nor concerned, and he certainly made no move to leave the ring. I couldn’t tell whether that was a good sign or a bad ref. He was supposed to check on wrestlers if something went wrong. Either that wasn’t the case, or the guy didn’t know or care how to do his job. Somebody had to check if Lyle was hurt though. Since Rory still waited for the Moonsault, I figured it had to be me. So I shoved all my strange notions aside and leaned out through the ropes.
Lyle wasn’t outside on the mat either. Not on that side of the ring anyway. Without leaving my corner, I couldn’t see if he was on the far side, so I pulled myself up and realized that I was rather wobbly on my legs. Holding onto the top rope like a drowning man holds onto driftwood, I tried to regain my bearings. While doing so, my gaze drifted across the roaring crowd, and I had another puzzling epiphany. The fans were still clamoring for Lyle to jump. They all still looked up, cheered on the empty ringpost.
I didn’t just feel my sanity slipping when that realization sank in. No, I felt it rapidly slide toward a steep cliff. Had Lyle become invisible to me? Could everyone else still see him? I had to force myself not to dwell on that thought. Had I entertained it just one moment longer, I’d probably have frozen up again right away. Rory isn’t hollow, I repeated my mantra. Lyle isn’t invisible. He’s not a fucking X-Man. Wrestling down my own instincts, I turned around – and what I saw left me completely aghast.
Lyle. I saw Lyle, but it took me a moment to process it. Him. Whatever the fuck I was looking at. It was neither invisible nor on the ringpost. It was under the ceiling, 25 feet above the ring, as if gravity had just decided not to bother with this mess anymore. It had the same colors as Lyle; dark-blond, tanned skin, and the white and pink of his trunks, but it didn’t have Lyle’s shape or dimensions. Hard to tell because it didn’t have much of any shape. Twisting and twitching, it was in constant motion. What most resembled limbs stretched and contracted erratically; formed sharp, long spikes that collapsed back into the swirling, wobbling, Lyle-like mass. Some kind of extradimensional spider trapped in its own web, that’s what it looked like, or those really broken character models in ‘Worst Games Ever Made’ videos on YouTube.
I stared up for what felt like a lifetime without even the faintest whiff of comprehension. Neither my eyes nor my brain could make any sense of the sight. This can’t be real, I kept thinking. Not even in a feeble attempt to convince myself that this had to be some kind of optical illusion. No, my inner voice spoke in a tone of quiet acceptance. I had finally lost it, had become untethered from the shores of sanity altogether, and drifted aimlessly in a sea of utter madness. There was a certain serenity in that. Yes, I was crazy, no doubt about that. But I had also been right all along. The persistent feeling that something was wrong here had been spot-on the entire time.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement in the ring and reflexively tore my gaze away from the writhing, mesmerizing, Lyle-like jumble under the ceiling. On one hand, the knee-jerk reaction was a blessing because I don’t think I could have made a conscious decision to move. On the other hand, the sight that presented itself in the ring wasn’t any less bizarre. Rory had finally gotten up, but he wasn’t on his feet. Not exactly. He was upright. And there were no feet he could have been on. His legs, from the shins downward, were in the canvas. There was no hole or anything. They just ended where the canvas began, as if he was stuck in quicksand, and yet he still had some semblance of balance. Unlike before, when his torso had clipped through the ropes, he was aware of his predicament. At least his flailing movements looked like a struggle to free himself and reach the referee – who had absolutely no reaction to any of this.
In all this madness, the ref still just stood in the middle of a ring like a robot that had run out of power. The only thing that had changed was his face. Not his expression. He didn’t have one. He blankly stared to the ringpost like before, waiting for a Moonsault that would never come. And yet his face shifted and flickered like a hologram that was rapidly loading every possible expression in its database. A split second of shock followed by a split second of anger followed by a split second of disgust; a slot machine of emotions spinning out of control.
All the while, the crowd roared and raved as if nothing horrifically inexplicable was going on in the ring. Frenzied and spaced out at the same time, they cheered on the empty ringpost. Glazed eyes, grimaces of ecstasy, fists pumping the air in a choppy yet predictable interval; trapped in a time loop that played the most exciting moment of the night on repeat. They didn’t even look like real people anymore, more like the copypasted audience in a videogame where the developer had reused the same handful of animations again and again.
Although not a single fan made an attempt to climb over the guardrails, it felt as if they were closing in on me. It was a different kind of unease than before. The thought that they might storm the ring didn’t even cross my mind. Instead, I was overtaken by a crippling fear of being suffocated, consumed by this sea of unintelligible noise and poorly-rendered bodies. I couldn’t even put into words what I thought would happen if they got to me. All I knew was that it definitely wouldn’t be good. My thoughts were racing in a thousand directions without going anywhere, until my inner voice put an end to it with one simple and surprisingly coherent instruction.
Run, dumbass! Fucking run!
And that’s exactly what I did. I ran. Past Rory, still staggering and flailing in the ring mat. Past the ref, still flipping through his catalog of facial expressions. Underneath the Lyle-like malfunction that had spread out farther across the ceiling when I briefly glanced up. Toward the curtain. Toward terra firma.
The crowd didn’t acknowledge me, thankfully, but the mind-numbing fear that they’d come crashing down on me remained. Worse yet, my own movements felt off. Too slow, too ponderous for the effort. Like one of those nightmares where you’re trying to run, but it feels like you’re trudging through knee-deep water. I got closer to the curtain, yes, but every step was a struggle. When I jumped out of the ring, I was sure it looked like slow motion, much like Lyle had looked to me earlier. Halfway down the aisle, I thought my feet were clipping into the blue mats on the ground. I don’t know if I actually saw it happen, but the mere suggestion of sharing Rory’s fate kicked my panic into a whole new gear. As soon as I was close enough, I just blindly lunged toward the curtain, stumbled into the backstage area, and everything after that is a blur.
I must have grabbed my bag on my way to the parking lot, and I must have driven off. How, I will never know, but the bag was on the passenger seat when I woke up in my car the next day. I still wore my ring gear, kneepads and all, and at first I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was. Some highway rest area, as plain as they come, shrouded in a dull grey morning mist. No buildings, no people, no other cars; not even a trash can. Endless fields in every direction, the lone shape of a grain silo in the distance.
For a long, long time, I just sat there, wondering what the fuck had happened. My mind concocted some half-assed explanations how I had ended up here, but none made much sense. I never really arrived at the show. I was in an accident on the way, this was just a strange coma dream, and I wore my ring gear because… Maybe I had been drugged or sustained a concussion? Physically I felt as fine as one could after spending the night in a car. My head didn’t ache and I wasn’t nauseous either. Still, I twisted my neck to check my eyes in the rear view mirror, but the investigation remained inconclusive. No dilated pupils, no signs of injury, and I frankly didn’t even know what I was looking for.
Resigned, I leaned back and tried to piece together what I remembered. Maybe the missing parts would come back to me if I put everything else in the right order. The journey to Nebraska was clear in my mind; stops at gas stations, eating lunch, the relief when I saw the exit sign for Flat Fields. Things got hazier in the backstage area with all the unfamiliar names and faces, but there were still no obvious gaps in my memory. No point where I couldn’t recall where I had been or how I had gotten there. Conversations blended together, sure, but I knew I had eaten pizza, talked about TV shows, and prepared for my match with Rory and Lyle.
Rory and Lyle.
The memory hit me out of nowhere. Rory sinking into a quicksand-canvas. The ceiling-bound eldritch horror that was Lyle. How the fuck had that not been the first thing I remembered? Everything else felt phony. A bit distant, like thinking back to a relatively recent movie. But not this. These images were overwhelmingly vivid and clear in my mind; a lived experience, something I had witnessed in person. Something that had almost consumed me. It felt like I was suffocating all over again; the same primal dread that had washed over me the night before.
I only realized that I had clutched the steering wheel as tightly as the ring ropes when my hands began to hurt. It took actual effort to let go. My thoughts were racing, my heart was pounding, and my mind just wouldn’t get back on track. What had happened after the match? How had I escaped this madness? Had there been any strangeness in the locker room or outside? Had people backstage turned into bizarre glitch creatures as well? Was I the only one who had made it out?
No matter how much I racked my brain, behind the curtain wasn’t a memory gap, but a memory black hole. The last thing I remembered was the terror I felt on the aisle; my feet clipping into the mats, the desperate lunge toward the curtain. After that? Nothing at all. As if my brain had simply shut down and only been rebooted after I woke up in the car.
Reliving my frantic escape led me to a new horrifying question. What if my feet were gone? What if I had become infected with whatever had befallen Rory, Lyle, and the ref ? I didn’t dare to look down, but I had to know, see, if my feet were still there. If they were clipping into the footwell or through the pedals, or had become a tangled, shifting mess. My heart almost stopped when I finally managed to move and force my eyes down, but the shock was short-lived. At first glance, my black kickpads and shoes had blended into the black lining of the footwell and made it look like my legs ended at my knees. Realizing that was not the case, I slouched back in the seat, relieved, yet just as confused as before.
I sat there for another long while, unable to think of anything else that might explain last night’s weirdness. Sitting around and pondering my sanity wouldn’t help, so I finally heaved myself up again and got out of the car. No wind, the air damp and stale, and the world as a whole seemed unreal and fleeting. I stretched, half to limber up, half to make sure my limbs were still there, then pulled my bag to the driver’s seat. Upon opening it, I first found my phone. Dead. And unlike my limbs, the charger wasn’t where it should have been. Defeated, I threw the damn thing back, put some street clothes on, then almost had another heart attack before I realized that my car key wasn’t gone, but still in the ignition.
Thankfully, the tank wasn’t empty. At least I wasn’t stranded in the middle of nowhere. My best guess was that I was still in Nebraska. Other than that, I had no clue where I was. There was only one way to find out, so I pulled out of the rest area and onto the deserted highway.
It didn’t take long until my suspicions were confirmed by a road sign. I was indeed still in Nebraska – and actually hadn’t ventured too far during my blackout. The next exit, 10 miles ahead, was Flat Fields. While I was relieved that I hadn’t unwittingly driven to Wyoming or something, the sign was far from a comforting sight. There was absolutely no way I’d leave the highway there. I needed gas and I was getting hungry, but I’d rather have starved at the roadside than go back to Flat Fields.
When I drove by, I felt queasy. That’s probably not the right word, but it’s hard to describe. It wasn’t a physical sensation; not like being nauseous or dizzy. From the highway, Flat Fields looked as non-descript and sleepy as any other smalltown on an early weekend morning. No mysterious aura, no strange shimmer in the air, no looming dark clouds. But I just knew that being in its presence, even at a distance, did something to me. It felt as if the town siphoned the essence of my being, made me less real. A sense of evanescence. Pure existential dread.
Once I had left Flat Fields and its incomprehensible terrors behind, my journey became comfortingly uneventful. Even though I came across a gas station after about an hour on the road, I didn’t stop there. Instead, I drove all the way to Omaha. Being in a big city, surrounded by people, felt refreshingly normal, and that was exactly what I needed. The kid that filled up my tank will never know what a huge favor he did me simply by not reminding me of somebody else.
Before I got back on the road, I turned my car upside down until I found the damn charger under the passenger seat. Assured that the world of podcasts would soon be at my fingertips again, I almost looked forward to the rest of the journey. Or maybe my mood improved because I knew I was putting more distance between Flat Fields and myself. Either way, nothing of note happened once I was on the interstate. I visited the rest stop I had been to the day before, ate the same lunch, soaked in the relative familiarity of the place, and created a playlist. Then I was on my long, monotonous way again.
I don’t know when exactly I got home. Late enough to be careful not to wake my parents when I staggered down the stairs to my basement. I crashed onto my bed as I was and slept like a rock; for the second night in a row still in my ring gear. Can’t recommend that, by the way.
The next day, I woke up around noon. My phone showed two missed calls from Alec, and I became keenly aware of the fact that I didn’t have the slightest clue what to tell him. Surely, he’d want to know how my debut for Reckless Championship Wrestling went. And surely, he’d think I had gone crazy if I told him that my opponents had glitched out of time and space. After a hot shower, I still didn’t even know where to begin, but seeing my laptop on the desk gave me an idea.
The Flat Fields Event Center had been packed. With lunatics under some sort of spell or mass hypnosis, yes, but maybe their madness had also compelled them to film the show and post clips online. Even if the glitches were not in the videos, I’d at least be able to show Alec the crazed crowd. He’d see that it was definitely not normal and, hopefully, be more inclined to believe that I had really seen those impossibly weird things.
My search yielded exactly one result. Dalton Wyland’s YouTube channel. There hadn’t been any new uploads since my last visit. I tried again with different search terms, and again nothing came up. Not a single mention of Reckless Championship Wrestling on social media. Admittedly, I hadn’t posted about the show myself, but that was because I didn’t think there was a point. My local fans wouldn’t drive to Nebraska to see me, and fans in Nebraska would give two shits whether a no name from Alabama would be there. Most of the other wrestlers were from the area though, so why hadn’t they promoted their upcoming appearance?
I tried again, this time adding ‘Lyle Tennant’ to the search. There should have been something since from what I had gathered, he was kind of a big deal in Nebraska. Or had been before his eldritch transformation. And yet there were no results. And I mean none at all. No social media accounts, no mentions or tagged photos; nothing. With growing bewilderment, I changed the search to ‘Lyle Tennant Nebraska wrestler’ and quietly cursed myself for not paying attention to the announcement when Lyle had come to the ring. Not knowing what town or city he was supposedly from probably didn’t matter. The search returned zero results.
Puzzled, I stared at the screen for a while. Lyle hadn’t struck me as one of those hardline old school guys who shunned social media because ‘it breaks kayfabe’, but who knew? Maybe he really didn’t have any social media. I couldn’t even remember the guy’s face, so it was certainly possible I had forgotten a remark to that end.
There had to be something, somewhere about the show though. I refused to believe that absolutely nobody on the card had seen a need to post about it because it simply didn’t make sense. How would fans even have known about the show if it hadn’t been announced anywhere? Surely, Dalton Wyland hadn’t filled all those seats by inviting his 300 closest friends, word of mouth style.
I recalled Rory saying that he had been ‘the only one from out of state’ on a previous show, so I tried his name and the states from the two non-Nebraskan license plates. ‘Rory Rage Kansas’ got me nothing. ‘Rory Rage Colorado’ gave me a blog about road rage incidents that hadn’t been updated in six years and had nothing to do with him or wrestling in general. ‘Zak referee wrestling Nebraska’ went nowhere as well. ‘Dalton Wyland’, with or without the promotion or ‘wrestling’, always took me back to the YouTube channel and nothing else.
I couldn’t remember a single other name from the card, but I wasn’t willing to give up. Anything that came to mind and kind of, possibly, maybe sounded right went into the search bar. Sean or Shawn Hamilton. Brian or Bryan Eston or Easton. Jace Fate or Fade. Sometimes I got results, but the people I found were clearly neither wrestlers nor from Nebraska. There was also no wrestler named Lonny or Lonnie Parks in Iowa. Or anywhere else in North America, for that matter.
After searching and not finding anything for two or three hours, I was genuinely creeped out. Had I imagined the entire thing? Had I never been booked in the first place? Had reality collapsed and erased Reckless Championship Wrestling from the timeline? The mails from Dalton Wyland were still in my inbox when I checked, but I couldn’t bring myself to reply. I did send a mail a few days later, and got an automated response that it couldn’t be delivered to ‘an inactive account’. I also went back to Wyland’s YouTube channel, tried to find the wrestlers from the few videos, but even though I had their names, I got nothing. I even looked up the 24/7 car repair from the banner – which I did find, but when I called, I always got an answering machine and nobody ever called back.
The only tangible evidence that I had ever been to Flat Fields was the envelope Dalton Wyland had given to me. It really contained the amount we had agreed on, but that was cold comfort. Ultimately, it proved very little to anyone but myself.
I eventually told Alec the whole story, sometime the following week on our way home from gym. When I got to the weird parts, I expected him to laugh or tell me to drop the bullshit, but he didn’t. I guess it was more obvious how shaken I still was than I tried to let on. Alec listened, asked a few questions, and when I was done, it was very quiet in the car for a very long time. We were already parked in my driveway when he found his voice again.
“You know, I’m all for taking opportunities when they come up, but we should really stick together,” he said, staring straight ahead to the garage. “You never know if some asshole holds a grudge for some reason and decides to put some shit in your drink.” He turned to look at me. “We have to watch each other’s back, so bullshit like that doesn’t happen again. From now on, if a date doesn’t work out for both of us, it’s no deal. Agreed?”
He didn’t believe me and I couldn’t blame him for that, so I just nodded. His interpretation of my recount sounded far less crazy and far more plausible than the truth. It didn’t explain why there was absolutely nothing about Reckless Championship Wrestling or its wrestlers online, but anyone who heard his version would understand why I never wanted to go back to Flat Fields. So I decided to just run with it and tell anyone who’d ask that somebody had spiked my drink there.
And that’s where I’m at now. I have a good enough excuse not to talk about my trip to Nebraska. Alec pulled some strings with Frank Dekker, and I now get more frequent bookings from him. Things are looking up for me, but that doesn’t mean I simply put the events in Flat Fields behind me altogether.
My memory, hazy as it already was, fades more and more. That’s why I’m writing down everything I still remember now. I don’t want to forget all about Flat Fields. I want to remember. I want to know what the hell happened that night, why it happened, how I can stay the fuck away from it in the future. So if you know anything at all – about Dalton Wyland, anyone who worked or attended his shows, whatever is going on with Flat Fields – please contact me. I promise I won’t think you’re insane, no matter what you witnessed. We can keep everything anonymous if you’re worried about attaching your name to this madness. Just please, if you know anything, tell me. If nothing else, I at least need to know I’m not the only one who got away.