The brightness of the moon stretches behind the numerous gray clouds in the night sky. Somewhere, off in the distance, an owl hoots, breaking the silence. The sound of gravel underfoot crunches as the camera crew makes their way into their destination.

“Make sure you get all of this. This dude makes me nervous,” says the woman seemingly in charge of the crew.

“Definitely a ten on the “Weird-shit-o-meter,” another opines as there ground they are walking on changes from gravel to scattered cobble with patches of dead grass in between the stones. The entire crew collectively stops as they reach the first abnormality, a large Santa head with arms coming out of it’s ears, holding onto two candy canes. It has a gaping maw, presumably for children to climb through. No one knows when that last happened, as time has caused the paint to wear away. In other places, the dirt has covered the face and beard in some spots, covering the white with shades of gray and black.

The brisk wind chills the crew who begins to proceed towards their destination. The shadows stretch across the walkway, adding to the eeriness of the situation. The next abomination they come across is a decidedly less creepy Santa Claus. This one wouldn’t be so bad if Santa wasn’t sitting like a model in some kind of magazine spread, laying on his side, propped up by one of his arms and holding his knee at that oh, so familiar angle.

Nearby, perhaps the most horrifying attraction the crew has come across so far, is some reindeer statues that have not held up half as well as the two previous Santa attractions. They eventually come up to a house standing in the back of the amusement park. The white house stands undecorated and unassuming, just as seemingly run down and dilapidated as the rest of the amusement park.

Sitting inside of the house, Ken Davison and Kyra Johnson watch the crew walking up through one of the windows.

“Why in the literal fuck are we doing this?”

“Because I want to get in the right mindset. The Astrocreeps would do the same thing to us.”

“Maybe they would, but I for one don’t wanna get anywhere near the mind of those crazy fucks.”

“Not my cup of tea, either. The whole circus thing was fun, but I don’t think it quite demonstrated how little they actually creep us out. I guess I just have a bad case of “anything you can do, I can do better.”

“Then we’d damn well better do this better.  That’s all I can say.  That and I think I’m gonna need a shower after this because this place is fucking gross.”

“You mean, we’d better take a shower…”

The crew gets to the front door, which has a handwritten note that says “Come in.” They dutifully follow the instructions and walk inside. The front room on the ground floor ran the entire width of the small house. It was illuminated only by the gray light from the window. There were hunter-green leather armchairs with footstools, a tartan plaid sofa on large ball feet, rustic oak end tables, and a section of bookshelves that held perhaps three hundred volumes. On the hearth of the big river-rock fireplace were gleaming brass and irons, and on the mantel was an old clock with two bronze stags rearing up on their hind legs. The decor was thoroughly but not aggressively masculine. No glassily staring deer or bear heads on the walls, no hunting prints, no rifles on display, just cozy and comfortable.

The house was redolent of lemon-oil furniture polish and a subtle pine-scented air freshener, as well as the faint and pleasant smell of char from the fireplace. The camera crew, still nervous, hurriedly crosses the front room to a half-open door. They opened it and went through and found a kitchen. Canary-yellow ceramic tile with knotty-pine cabinets. On the floor, gray vinyl tile speckled with yellow and green and red. Well scrubbed. Everything in its place. Quite rustic. Taped to the side of the refrigerator was a calendar already turned forward to April, with a color photograph that showed one white and one black kitten-both with dazzling green eyes-peering out from a huge spray of lilies. Based on his recent behavior, the normalcy of the house was terrifying. The gleaming surfaces, the tidiness, the homey touches, It was too perfect. You could easily picture Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia sitting down for a slice of cheesecake.

“Anyone else think this is weird?” one of the crew members blurts out.

“We already established that,” the producer retorts.

There is a collective murmur amongst the rest of the crew as they make their way through the kitchen. The ambiance was very much a physical representation of Davison’s skewed mentality. The house serves its purpose much the same way each and every person in his life and has their purpose.

Through the four glass panes in the upper half, they see a back porch, a green yard, a couple of big trees, and the barn. They make their way past the rear door, pausing only momentarily to see if anyone was on the other side of it. Without any partition, the kitchen opened into the dining area, and the combined space was probably two-thirds the width of the house. The round dinette table was dark pine, supported by a thick central drum rather than legs; the four heavy pine captain’s chairs featured tie-on back and seat cushions.

The noise of a running shower was apparent in the kitchen because the pipes were routed through the rear wall of the old house. Water being drawn upward to the bathroom made an urgent, hollow rushing sound through copper. Furthermore, the pipe wasn’t tied down and insulated as well as it ought to have been, and at some point along its course, it vibrated against a wall stud: rapid knocking behind the plasterboard, tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta. The noise could be construed as either comforting, as there theoretically should be someone else in the home, or rather disconcerting, as the vibrations make you feel as though everything is moving, even though all except the pipes are perfectly still.

At the north end of the dining area was another door. Adorning the door is a hand-painted sign, the color of blood, are the words “This way.” The producer turned the knob as quietly as she could, hand visibly shaking. She crosses the threshold with caution, motioning for the rest of the crew to follow her. Beyond lay a combination of laundry and storage room. A washer. An electric dryer. Boxes and bottles of laundry supplies were stored in an orderly fashion on two open shelves, and the air smells like detergent and bleach. The rush of water and the knocking pipe was even louder here than they had been in the kitchen. To the left, past the washer and dryer, was another door-rough pine, painted lime green. She opens it and sees stairs leading down to a black cellar. Her heart begins to beat faster.

Black. Pitch black.

There are absolutely no windows at all below. Not even a turbid leak of gray storm light seeping through narrow casements or screened ventilation cutouts. Dungeon dark. It’s the sort of thing where you would expect to turn on a light and find someone locked up. But if there were someone that demented and was keeping a captive down there, how odd that he wouldn’t have added a lock to this upper door. It offered only the spring latch that retracted with a twist of the knob, not a real lock of any kind.

But that’s part of the game for Davison. Even without his presence, he is deep in the collective minds of the camera crew. It was the same feeling that the Astrocreeps used on their opponents. The hopefully hypothetical captive might be sealed in a windowless room deep below, of course, or even manacled. They would have no hope of reaching these stairs and this upper door, even if left alone for days to worry at her restraints, which would explain why Davison would be confident that one more barrier to their flight wasn’t necessary even when he was away from home.

The producer is snapped back into reality by the lights that came on behind her. In this day and age, everyone had a flashlight on their phones. Her shadow cast against the wall, she is leaning through the doorway, feeling along the stairwell wall for the switch, and snapped it up. Lights came on both at the upper landing and in the basement. ‘How in the hell can they aim a camera but not a flashlight?’ she thinks to herself. The bare concrete steps-a single flight-were steep. They appeared to be much newer than the house itself, perhaps even a relatively recent addition. “Be careful of the stairs, everyone. We don’t need anyone busting their ass.”

Halfway down the stairs, she glanced back and up. At the end of a trail of her wet shoe prints, the landing seemed a quarter of a mile above her, as far away as the top of the knoll had seemed from the front porch of the house. Alice down the rabbit hole into madness without a tea party.

“Do we really have to do this? It seems a little outside of our pay grade,” one of the crew members questions.

“Unfortunately,” the producer responds. She had a feeling of uneasiness. To her, this feels like one of those haunted houses that you go to on Halloween. At the open doorway between the in-kitchen dining area and the laundry room, the crew listens for something.. anything…, hoping to hear something other than their own breathing. Davison stalks the crew, who are only a few feet away from him, around the comer, past the washer and the dryer. He stands blinking but otherwise motionless in the fragrance of laundry detergent and in the wall-muffled rattle of copper pipes. ‘This is going to be fun,’ Davison muses.

“Um… Kyra? Ken? We know you’re here…uh… somewhere.”

The cellar door stands open. The stairwell light is on. The crew is not in sight. Truth be told, Davison has never put a lock on the door to the cellar steps because he is concerned that it might accidentally trip, imprisoning himself down there when he is at play and unaware. With a key-operated deadbolt, of course, this catastrophe could never happen. He is incapable of imagining how any such mechanism could malfunction and trap him; nevertheless, he’s too concerned about the prospect to take the risk. Just as he does inside of the ring, he considers every possibility outside of it. He takes a deep, but slow and quiet, breath. Perhaps family life had dulled Davison’s predatory spirit. Perhaps, this was going to be the game that awakened it.

After a brief hesitation, he leans through the open door and looks down the cellar stairs. The last member of the camera crew, a towheaded young man, short and slender, is only a few steps from the bottom. He’s got one hand on the railing. His full attention is aimed in front of him, following the direction of the producer. as though she were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Regardless, even if she were the piper, he was the puppetmaster pulling her strings. He could have just as easily met the crew somewhere else, but he enjoyed this feeling of control.

He eases through the doorway onto the upper landing. As close as they are, they do not hear him because all is concrete, nothing to creak. He aims his hand as though it were a pistol, pointing at the center of the blonde gentleman’s back. The first shot would catapult him off his feet, send him flying with arms spread like an eagle. Instead of taking flight, the body would fall toward the basement below. The second shot would take him as he is in flight. Davison would then race down the stairs, firing the third and fourth rounds, hitting other members of the camera crew in the legs if possible. He would then tackle the producer from behind while she took in the carnage. He would drop on top of her, press the muzzle into the back of her head, and then, then, when he’s totally in control of her, dominant, he can decide what to do with her. Just as the minds of the camera crew had wandered, so had Davison’s. This, however, was not that kind of hunt. For as much as the idea intrigued him, he was no killer and this was not a LITERAL death match.

The outer wall of mortared stone was to their right. There was nowhere to go in that direction. To her left was a chamber about ten feet from front to back, and as wide as the house. The crew moved away from the foot of the stairs, into this new space. At one end stood an oil-fired furnace and a large electric water heater. At the other end were tall metal storage cabinets with vent slits in the doors, a workbench, and a tool chest on wheels. Nothing that would seem out of the ordinary, with a lone exception. Directly ahead, in a concrete-block wall, a strange door waited. Click-whoosh. The sound of the furnace startles the crew, revealing exactly how on edge they are. Over the sound of the furnace, they could still hear the vibrating pipe. Tatta-tatta-tatta. It was faint here, but still audible.

The door in the back wall was padded like a theater door, in leather grain maroon vinyl divided into quilt-like squares by eight upholstery nails with large round heads covered in matching vinyl. The frame was upholstered in the same material. No lock, not even a spring latch, prevented her from proceeding. Putting her hand on the vinyl, the producer discovers that the padding was even plusher than it appeared to be. As much as two inches of foam covered the underlying wood. She gripped the long stainless-steel, U-shaped handle. When she pulled, the vinyl-encased door softly scraped and squeaked across the upholstery on the jamb. The fit was snug: When the door swung all the way free of the jamb and the seal was broken, there was a faint sound similar to that made when one opened a jar of vacuum-packed peanuts. The door was upholstered on the inside as well. The overall thickness was in excess of five inches. Beyond this new threshold lay a six-foot-square chamber with a low ceiling, which reminded her of an elevator, except that every surface other than the floor was upholstered. The floor was covered with a rubber mat of the kind used in many restaurant kitchens for the comfort of cooks who worked on their feet for hours at a time. In the dim light from the recessed overhead bulb, she saw that the fabric here wasn’t vinyl but gray cotton with a nubbly texture.

Directly opposite the door that the producer held open was one more door. It was also padded and set in an upholstered frame. Finally, there were locks. The gray upholstery plumped around two heavy-duty brass lock cylinders. She and the rest of the crew couldn’t proceed without keys. Then she noticed a small padded panel overlying the door itself at eye level, perhaps six by ten inches with a knob attached. It was like the sliding panel over the viewport in the solid door of a maximum-security prison cell. Tatta-tatta-tatta… whoever was in the shower seemed to be taking an unusually long shower. On the other hand, they hadn’t been in the house more than three or four minutes; it just seemed longer. If he was having a leisurely scrub, he might not be half done.

Tatta-tatta-tatta. Beyond was rose-colored light. The port was fitted with a sturdy screen to protect the viewer from assault by whoever or whatever was within. The producer put her face to the port and saw a large chamber nearly the size of the living room under which it was situated. In portions of the space, shadows were pooled deep, and the only light came from three lamps with fringed fabric shades and pink bulbs that were each putting out about forty watts. At two places along the back wall were panels of red and gold brocade that hung from brass rods as if covering windows, but there could be no windows underground; the brocade was just set dressing to make the room more comfortable… or maybe it was designed to make the room more uncomfortable. It was hard to say. On the wall to the left, barely touched by light, was a large tattered tapestry: a scene of women in long dresses and cloche hats riding horses side-saddle through spring grass and flowers, past a verdant forest.

The furnishings included a plump armchair with antimacassars, a double bed with a white headboard painted with a scene not quite discernible in the rose light, bookcases with acanthus-leaf molding, cabinets with mullioned doors, a small dining table with a heavily carved apron, two Directoire chairs with flower-pattern upholstery flanking the table, and a refrigerator. An immense dark-stained armoire, featuring crackle-glazed flower appliques on all the door panels, was old but probably not a genuine antique, battered but handsome. A padded vanity bench sat before a makeup table with a triptych mirror in a gilded, fluted frame. In a far comer were a toilet and a sink. As weird as this subterranean room was, like a storage vault for the stage furniture from a production of Arsenic and Old Lace, it housed terrifying horror and Halloween-based decorations.

On the side table next to one of the Directoire chairs is a severed pig’s head, covered in a rather convincing version of fake blood and wearing a beat up Santa hat.. Bookshelves are lined with several iconic weapons, a replica of Freddy Krueger’s bladed gauntlet, Jason Vorheese’s machete, as well as the pride of Davison’s collection, and a handmade version of Lucille from ‘The Walking Dead.’. Perhaps, the most disturbing of all the decor is a tree, carefully positioned in one of the darker corners of the room. The branches are adorned with several bloody body parts. From the size of them, one could assume that they belonged to a small child.

The most shocking thing, however, is Kyra Johnson, sitting in a chair upholstered in a fine Corinthian leather. Her arms are flat along the armrests, a piece of fabric seeming to hold her there. Her hair is wet, handing in front of her face and her mouth is bound by a piece of cloth.

“Holy fuck!”

“She okay?”

“We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Help her!”

The crew’s reaction seems to all blend together, like a beautiful symphony of stupor.

“What’s red and hangs around trees?” The entire production team jumps, startled by their host appearing suddenly. “A baby hit by a snowblower.” The entire production team jumps, startled by their host appearing behind them. “What’s green and hangs around trees? Same baby three weeks later.”

Davison was obviously going for shock value, not that he needed it. His memorabilia was shocking enough. They filled the bookshelves, peered out through the glass doors of some of the cabinets, perched on the armoire, sat atop the refrigerator, stood and sat on the floor along the walls. Others were piled atop one another in a different corner and even some at the foot of the bed, legs and arms jutting at odd stiff angles, heads cocked as on broken necks, like stacks of gaily attired corpses awaiting transport to a crematorium. Two, maybe three hundred or so small faces either glowed in the gentle light or were ghost pale in the shadows. Kyra stands up having gone along with the prank, but the look on her face tells you that she certainly wasn’t certain with Ken’s decision to give “method acting” a try.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure we got the right mood for what we are going for. I would say it worked.”

“If you really wanted the right mood, you should have really tied me to that chair. But you’re still a bit of a dick, you know that?”

Kyra says with an amused grin as she throws her ‘bindings’ onto the chair. In the background, some of the crew can be heard agreeing with her.

“Listen, if I’m really tying you to that chair, that’s not the type of games you’d want cameras here for.”

Davison pauses as Kyra gives him a look.

“Is it?”

Kyra chuckles and shrugs her shoulders.

“Maybe.”

The crew scurries to finish setting up while Davison walks over to a panel of some sort, flipping the switches so the ambiance changes from the gentle rose color to the harshness of a deep crimson. Also, around the border of the ceiling, are strings of led christmas lights, bright enough to be seen, but not enough to change the room. Kyra takes her place back in the chair next to the bloody pig’s head and sits down as though it isn’t even there. Ken stands confidently behind her.

“I am not the type of person that denies the truth. It is a fact that the Astrocreeps defeated Kyra, Hide and myself a few weeks back. It is also a fact that Ragdoll managed to defeat me on Synergy. It is also a fact that when my girl, Kyra and I stand on our own, no Maggie Lockheart, no Lucy Wylde, no Rogan McLane,”

“MacLean.”

“What she said. And lastly, no Hide Yamalamadingdong. When you deal with the Baltimore Elite, and just the Baltimore Elite. You get put down.”

“Time Jumpers?”

“Squash.”

“Maggie Lockheart and Sloan Taylor?”

“Toast.”

“Liam Davies and his lack of friends?”

“Steamrolled.”

“So I guess what we’re trying to say here is… Ragdoll, Montague… We see you. We know what you’re up to, and you may think that come Monday – you two have all the advantages. Crazy has gotten you more than enough ‘W’s on your record, and why is that? Because you’re simply better than everyone else? Nah. It’s because everyone else is too damn stupid to understand what’s going on in those fucked up minds of yours.”

Kyra smiles.

“But that ain’t us.”

“I was making it a point to try and leave the past behind us, but with this match coming up,I feel that you need to be reminded. Kyra Johnson and I earned our reputation as two of the most violent motherfuckers in Carnage Wrestling. We were leaving trails of blood, not just our own, not just our opponent’s, but each other’s. In the ring, when you strip away the rules, there is no low. When we go to the ring and we choose to take a pound of flesh from our opponents, we don’t do so with some kind of crazed, uncontrolled, feral insanity. We do it in the most calculated manner.”

“And maybe, just maybe you’re gonna tell us that we’ve been kinda hit or miss here in the UGWC so far. And you’d be right. While Ragdoll here came from the same place we did, she’s found herself on real solid ground here. Good for you, you little psychopath. But unfortunately for Ken and myself, our path’s been a little harder to traverse. But that’s okay. This week, this match.. Ken Davison and Kyra Johnson get to return to their roots. We get to show everyone what we’re talking about when we say we’re two of the most violent motherfuckers out there today.. And we get to use you two to prove our point.”

“We’ve had some difficulty finding our footing on our own. We’ve shown that we don’t play well with others. This match… UGWC decided that they wouldn’t sanction this match. This match doesn’t even count for anything. That having been said, it counts for pride. More importantly, for Kyra and I, this is about more than just a partnership at work. Cervantes, talk to Ragdoll and ask her the lengths that she and I will go for one another. It’s in the highlight reel. Speaking of which, you guys got that ready?” Ken asks a production member off camera. “Good. Roll it.”

The scene quickly changes to what seems to be an old Carnage Wrestling clip. The first of which is Ken Davison standing and speaking as Kyra flies into the shot from off screen, sending Davison to the ground like, well, a ragdoll. The next clip is Kyra putting a boot to Ken’s temple, crushing it against an equipment box. In the next clip, Johnson charges at Davison who catches her with a drop toe hold that sends her head first into the concrete foundation underneath some seats. Davison wipes his hand across his crimson forehead and proceeds to write the word ‘DIE’ on his chest using his own blood. The final clip shows Ken setting Kyra up for a powerbomb. Kyra doesn’t give “Godly” time to execute a move, as she musters all of her strength and sends Ken over the top rope with a hurricanrana, but Ken holds on to her and they both crash through a burning table on the outside, landing with such force that the rush of air puts the flames out!

“Now, we could have found some other clips, but we didn’t want to have to pay a piece of shit like Jack Mi-” Kyra puts her hand over Ken’s mouth.

“We don’t say that name here.”

“Anyway, we could have shown me tearing his arm apart with a screwdriver while his own daughter looked on, but we didn’t want to have to pay him royalties. Let’s just say, it was a blast.”

“While rummaging through our past exploits is fun, we’re not trying to say that seeing what we’ve done in the past should worry you.  But it is nice to let everyone know what we’re capable of.”

“Cervantes, you claim to be many things. Magician, chief amongst them. You are a trickster, a showman, a bard of sorts. You are attracted to the spectacle. I am guessing that this is why you were the one chosen for this match. Ragdoll? We all know that she’s a psycho Twinkie with a rotten filling. Her childlike wonder and enjoyment as the sheer sight of violence makes you wonder if she shaves her legs with a straight edge razor just to make herself bleed. She absolutely has to be full on, batshit crazy because she isn’t pretty enough to be that stupid. Her birth certificate should be an apology letter from the condom factory.”

Ken pauses for just a moment.

“But you… Cervantes, you are something different. You wouldn’t be my first choice for an opponent, but I guess I’m ‘Stuck With You.’ Well, Cervantes, you need to understand that ‘This Ship’s Going Down.’ Well, ‘Goodnight, Demonslayer.’ Also, ten points to anyone at home that gets those references.”

“I don’t get the references..” Kyra whispers to the camera. “It feels like we’re kinda stuck with both of these two, honestly.  And not because they’re without talent.  I think they’ve shown they have what it takes.  But do they have what it takes to end the year with a win over us?  I’m not so sure.  But what I do know is Ragdoll, you’re completely fucking mental and it’s served you pretty well… aside from a few bumps along the road.  How’s that Conquest title run treating you la–OH.  Nevermind.”

Kyra grins. 

“I kid.  I kid.  But in all seriousness, if you weren’t completely demented – I think I’d actually like you.  And I’m gonna really enjoy trying to cave your head in because that’s just what us crazy bitches do, right?”

Ken turns and just stares at Kyra, completely dumbfounded.

“Don’t. Just don’t. I signed up for crazy. I didn’t sign up for that brand of crazy.” Ken turns and looks back at the camera, still with the same look on his face. “This match, or whatever you want to call it, is not a match for the Coalition. This is a match for the Carnage faithful. At Horizons, we bring Baltimore to Chicago. At Horizons, we bring the Carnage back to the Coalition. At Horizons, Kyra Johnson, “The Ultraviolent Goddess” and the GKD, “Godly” Ken Davison remind Ragdoll exactly where she came from. Cervantes, buckle up, because unfortunately for you, you are coming along for the ride.”

Ken puts his hands firmly on Kyra’s shoulders, Kyra raises her right hand to hold Ken’s as the camera fades to black.