FICTION BY LUCY TAYLOR

Lucy Taylor’s fiction has appeared in the anthologies Body Shock, Into Painfreak, Cutting Edge, The Big Book of Blasphemy, Peel Back the Skin, The Best of the Best Horror of the Year, and many others. Her longer work includes the horror/western novella Desolation, the Stoker-finalist novelette Sweetlings, and novels Dancing with Demons, the Stoker-winning The Safety of Unknown Cities, Eternal Hearts, Left to Die, and Spree. Her work has been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, French, and Russian.

She lives in the high desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.

THE DEMON MASTER
by Lucy Taylor

Even after all these years, fans still debate how the Demon Master and Wild Card Promotions pulled off the most over the top bloodbath in pro wrestling history. Legendary. How the hell did they do it? Because the whole thing was a gimmick, right? No way could it have been real.

To this day, nobody knows.

Except me. And God help me, I wish I didn’t.

*****

Like a lot of kids, Howie and I were obsessed with pro wrestling. Saturday nights you’d find us front row at the Allen M. Blye Auditorium in Pine Station, Georgia, watching the great ones like Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, the Freebirds, Dusty Rhodes, and the most dastardly heel of them all—Lord of Chaos, Hell’s Enforcer, Beast of Bedlam—the Demon Master himself, a terrifying avalanche of a man hailing from “parts unknown” as ring announcer Tommy Mitchell always said.

Nobody drew heat like the Demon Master. His promos were furious tirades where he cursed his opponents and mocked the “pencil-necked geeks” who flocked to his matches. When he strode to the ring with a python draped over his shoulders and two squat, snarly “imps” following behind with flaming black candles, bedlam broke out. The fans jeered and hurled soda cans—they middle finger’d and motherfucked him and ate up every unhinged minute of the savage spectacle.

Of course, Howie and I knew it was fake. Our older buddy J.P. had told us the matches were (mostly) scripted and explained the term kayfabe, meaning that the wrestlers pretended the feuds and alliances were real even outside the ring.

Naturally, Howie and I dreamed of growing up to be wrestlers. On weekends we’d about kill each other trying out dropkicks, atomic elbows, and body slams in my backyard. At the matches, Howie would even hit on the ring-rats, older girls who hung out near the dressing rooms hoping to get lucky with one of the Boys. I don’t think he ever scored, though. The rats were there for beefcake, not his skinny ass.

J.P. came to the matches whenever he could scrape up the money. When he couldn’t, he hung around outside the arena, hoping to get autographs. I felt bad for J.P. He was a dropout who lived with his mean drunk of a dad in the Rose Bell Trailer Park outside town. A quiet, brooding kid with a shaggy mullet and gray eyes too old for his age, he laughed at Howie and me for thinking we’d go to a wrestling training camp in Florida after we finished high school. As far as I knew, J.P. didn’t have any dreams except to get gone from his angry old man and far away from Pine Station.

So when J.P. boasted he’d been hired on as the Demon Master’s ring boy and gofer, my jaw about hit the tarmac. I couldn’t imagine J.P. even getting up the nerve to speak to the Demon Master, let alone finagling employment.

”Was Clemson Creed signed me on,” he admitted. “The Demon Master told him to find him a good ring boy, and Mr. Creed picked me out.”

We were thunderstruck. Creed was a bald, nasty-smelling dude who claimed to have been a  wrestler back in the day. He hung around the arena, always alone. Sometimes I’d catch him sizing up Howie and me with a kind of sick curiosity, and I’d feel like I needed a shower. Creed liked to booze it up at the Hojos on Main, where the Boys partied after the show. Like most everyone else, they ignored him. I only wish J.P.’d had the smarts to do same.

“I’m gonna help set up the ring, feed the python, leash the imps,” he continued.“I do good, Mr. Creed says I’ll get schooled how to wrestle.”

“No way,” Howie said. “Creed’s prankin’ you.”

“And there’s no imps,” I added. “Just short guys who ain’t scared of the python.”

“Fuck you nerds. You’ll feel stupid when I’m tag-teaming with the Demon Master and you’re frying up wings at Chicken George.”    

After sneering at our dismal career prospects, he strode off, chuckling.

That was the last time we saw J.P. He never showed up at the matches, never called from a pay phone in some tiny town to brag about his crazy times on the road. After a couple months, we got worried and went to his dad’s place. Told him we thought J.P. was in trouble, that he might’ve been kidnapped by this Creed guy, but all the old man did was call his own son a loser and order us off his property.

That weekend, the Demon Master was wrestling Cowboy Swagger in a Smash ‘N Bash Death Match, so we decided to get to the arena early and together confront Clemson Creed. But when Creed finally arrived, Howie had flaked off and was busy hitting on Amy Ellen Swan, a girl I’d liked since third grade. I couldn’t admit to myself I was jealous, so just to prove how manly a man I was, I intercepted Creed by myself.

“Excuse me? Sir?”

Creed pivoted his three-hundred-pound bulk, towering over me. His pale skin was crinkled and creased, like paper someone’s crushed and then tried to smooth out. Blubbery lips. Eyebrows thick and black as cigars.

“That ring boy, J.P., you hired to work for the Demon Master, ain’t seen him for a while. Where’s he at?”

Creepy Creed bent so close I could see the grime in his over-large pores. His hot breath smelled of infection and rot and, bizarrely, cotton candy.“Hell, he took off. Didn’t have the balls to work with the Demon Master. But you—” He measured me with small, avid eyes. “Maybe you wanna be a ring boy yourself?” He bared nicotine-stained teeth. I backed away and hightailed it back to Howie, who was hiding something in his pocket as Amy Ellen sashayed away.

“What spooked you?” he said.

“Creed! He says J.P. run off, but he’s lying. J.P. would never quit a job with the Demon Master.”

“We’ll wait for the main event,” Howie said, “After the Demon Master makes his entrance, we’ll sneak backstage and search his dressing room for clues.”

If I’d rolled my eyes any harder they’d have bounced off my face. “Yeah, sure, ‘cause the Demon Master’s gonna leave the door unlocked for us, right?”

Howie grinned. Like a huckster flashing a wad of Ben Franklins, he pulled a key out of his pocket. “Demon Master gave this to Amy Ellen. Now she’s madder’n hell ‘cause she walked in on him doing the nasty with the Alison twins when it was s’posed to be her ridin’ the Magic Pitchfork.”

“Magic what?”

“She says that’s what he calls it.”

I reeled. I knew older girls came and went from the wrestlers’ dressing rooms like customers at a drive through, but Amy Ellen?

“Now I know I’m gonna be a wrestler,” Howie crowed. “It’s the best job in town!”

*****

We fidgeted through the undercard matches until finally the Demon Master’s entrance music, The Executioner’s Axe, blared over the sound system and the man himself stalked up the aisle. He wore gold tights and a black cape stitched with flames. His face was granite. There was death in his eyes. He looked two inches from murder.

At the ring, he handed off his cape and the python to the two imps, who trotted with them backstage. Moments later, Cowboy Swagger, entered the arena to a twangy western ballad and hysterical shrieks from the girls. When Swagger turned to wave to his fans, the Demon Master hauled him into the ring by his blond curls, bounced off the ropes as Swagger was trying to rise, and executed a brutal clothesline.

It was now or never. With all eyes on the ring, Howie and I snuck through the door under the bleachers, where we’d often seen the wrestlers and the ring rats come and go. We found ourselves in a fluorescent lit corridor with metal doors on either side. I said a silent prayer that Clemson Creed wasn’t lurking back here, that he’d already left to get a head start on partying.

Amy Ellen’s revenge key did the trick. We entered a dingy room smelling of mold and liniment and hot, hurried sex. A metal desk held a pile of Hustler and Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazines. A stained fold-out bed looked, unsurprisingly, like it had hosted an orgy. Weirdly, I could hear crickets chirping underneath it.

While Howie checked the bathroom, I looked in the locker, but found only a bottle of Georgio cologne, a pack of Marlboros, and sweat-stained t-shirts for Nine Inch Nails and Metallica.

“Wasn’t nothin’ in the can,” Howie reported.

From under the floor came a loud thump. “What the hell?”The sound came again, hard enough to rattle the legs of the desk. Human, animal, or imp, whatever was down there was desperate to get out.

“Help me move the desk.”

Howie looked unsure. “What if he comes back?”

“A main event lasts an hour,” I said. Like I knew. The match might last ten minutes if a new angle was introduced or if somebody got legit hurt. I didn’t want to think about that.

We pushed the desk aside and lifted the rug. Underneath was a metal hatch. We’d got it open just a few inches when I peered down and saw a pair of tiny slit-shaped pupils in angry red eyes glaring back. “Shut it! Shut it!” I yelled, but even Howie’s and my combined strength wasn’t nearly enough. The python heaved itself up through the hatch, its trianglular head slapping the floor. Black coils thick as the Demon Master’s biceps slammed my ankle, knocking me flat. I screamed as it rolled over my leg. Howie looked paler than Creed and was shaking so hard his teeth clacked, The python ignored us and went straight under the bed. The crickets fell silent.

For the first time since this adventure started I wanted to give up and go back. Then I thought about J.P. and felt ashamed.

Howie pointed a quivering finger at the underside of the hatch where a thick rope dangled into the dark. For a python or a man with the Demon Master’s brute strength, it would be easy to descend and then climb back up, but I wasn’t so sure about us.

Howie’s voice trembled. “You think J.P. is down there?”

I hoped to hell not. But what if he was?

“We gotta look. I’ll go first,”

I’d climbed ropes in gym class, but this rope was thicker and rougher, like it was meant to hurt hands. My sweaty palms couldn’t get a good purchase. The last few feet I dropped to the dirt floor. Howie followed me. We were in a narrow tunnel, the walls made of large stones, ill-matched and hastily mortared. Torches set into the stone provided a dim light.

“What hell is this place?” Howie whispered.

As a little kid, I’d heard my dad joke about tunnels where some distant relative supposedly made illegal whiskey. Whatever the Demon Master was hiding down here, though, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a stash of his booze. I started to shiver and hoped Howie didn’t see.

“Come on.”

Howie grabbed me by the arm. “Wait! You hear that?”

From ahead in the tunnel came a low mumbling and grunting, like a bunch of people waking up in a bad mood, muttering in confusion. We moved carefully, guided by the flickering of the torches.

Suddenly ahead I saw what looked like a ghost floating above the dirt floor. I almost peed myself until I realized it was just a stained white robe. The sleeves were spread wide like a crucifix and attached to pegs hammered into the stone. A broad hood flopped over the front. It looked big enough to accommodate the Demon Master’s massive physique, but plainer than his usual style. Ordinary even. Maybe it was the very ordinariness that drew my attention.

While Howie hung back, I crept close enough to see the markings I thought were stains were actually moles and birthmarks and scars. The rot I smelled was mixed with the sickening sweetness of cotton candy I’d smelled on Clemson Creed.

Howie must have seen my expression because he looked alarmed. “What?” I couldn’t find the words to say what I’d seen. Maybe I’d just imagined it. I wanted to pretend it was only a robe.

Suddenly, the sounds we’d been hearing intensified into snuffling and moaning and long, plaintive wails. The fear and desperation in those cries was impossible to ignore. I forced myself to go on. Howie followed me.

Abruptly the tunnel ended in front of a huge cage filled with terrified imps whose wild eyes had clearly seen hell. At the sight of Howie and me, some climbed the cage and uttered strange, throaty grunts. Others reached through the bars, seeming to plead. They babbled and whimpered and howled. I thought of the white, crinkled abomination I’d just seen, the “costume” the Demon Master must put on when he wanted to play Clemson Creed. I didn’t want to imagine what a horrible fate he had in store for these imps. I couldn’t just leave them here.

Slide bolts secured the cage door. I turned to ask Howie for help and saw him galloping away up the tunnel. I wanted to go with him, but I turned back to the bolts. They were tight and my hands were bleeding by the time I yanked them both back.

Once the door opened, I saw the imps’ desperation replaced by sheer fury. Instead of the sad, cringing creatures they’d been inside the cage, they surged out shrieking and inferno-eyed, fangs bared, claws out, heading for the rope and the arena beyond.

What had I done? Panicked, I joined the fleeing imps, but they were faster and stronger and I was forced close to the wall of the tunnel. Still, I didn’t realize the danger until a hollow tube of what had once been an arm whipped around my neck, jerked me off the ground and began crushing my throat. My feet pedaled the air, my arms flailed as the cursed skin of Clemson Creed wrung the life from me.

Behind my eyes a black merry-go-round whirled faster and faster. I heard flames crackling. A terrifying thought—had I died and gone straight to hell?

Hell wasn’t ready, I guess. I thudded to the floor and looked up to see a torch-wielding imp setting fire to the terrible skin, which writhed and curled in on itself. Afterwards all that remained was a soft rain of black, stinking ash.

The imp who’d saved me helped me get to my feet. He brought his face close to mine and struggled to speak, but his stub of a tongue produced only meaningless sounds. I stared into his mournful face and felt sick to my soul. The anguished gray eyes were familiar. Part of me wanted to sob and embrace the pitiful creature I’d known as J.P., but to my shame, I did not. At the time, just knowing such monumental cruelty existed in this world overwhelmed me. I sprinted for the rope and climbed it like a squirrel.

Even after what I’d just witnessed, I wasn’t prepared for the unholy bedlam in the arena where the Battle Royal to end all Battle Royals appeared to be taking place in the ring. Frenzied imps clamored over each other to savage the writhing red horror on the canvas. Gleefully they yanked out innards and unsocketed eyes. The turnbuckles were garlanded with guts, and an unimaginable stink fouled the air. Most of the fans stampeded for the exits, but a few diehards who seemed to think the carnage was part of the show whooped and hollered at the hated Demon Master’s final, ghastly comeuppance. Others watched with a kind of religious awe, like the End Times were here taking place inside a wrestling ring. Maybe they were.

As I pushed my way toward the ring, I saw Cowboy Swagger bent over puking while ring announcer Tommy Mitchell hunched in a corner, tipping a flask to his face. The referee stood on a chair, screaming, “It’s a work, right? A work! Goddamit, tell me it’s just a work!”

Even he didn’t know.

In the ring, the bloodletting stopped abruptly. As if on command, the imps ceased their butchery and scurried for the rear exits, some rabbiting on all fours while others unfurled webbed wings and took to the air. They left behind a savaged, half-eaten corpse whose flensed face emitted thin trails of smoke. And yet the next day the Wild Card promotors went on TV, declaring the gory horror had been a spectacle concocted by the Demon Master himself, who never was seen again.

Neither was J.P., whose old man died still railing about the no good, bastard son who stole his booze and ran off with “all them fake rasslers.”

And me, I’m left with the memory of those eyes that looked into mine with the anguish of the damned.

To this day, I believe all of the imps were human once—lost, sad boys that no one would look for, kids who got caught up in the Demon Master’s evil sorcery. When I’ve had a few shots, in fact, I like to think that eventually the imps found their way to someplace safe, someplace welcoming to strange, scary-looking little people who’d once been regular boys, that they’d escaped to some “parts unknown” full of kindness and love.

But hell, who am I kidding?

*****

Howie and I rarely spoke after that night. He lost all interest in wrestling and after high school, married Amy Ellen Swan, who gave him five kids and, last I heard, keeps him in line. He still lives in Pine Station and sells dry wall for a living. Me, after college I moved to Chicago and became a detective. When the wrestlers perform at the Allstate Arena downtown, you’ll find me there, front row center.

I can’t give it up. ‘Cause I know now it’s not just the wrestlers who have secret lives nobody sees, it’s everybody, including yours truly. Especially yours truly. I make a good living while digging up the secrets and scandals and shameful obsessions under all these nice, respectable, kayfabe exteriors everyone wears.

What I find is frequently horrifying, but at least I’m never surprised.