Engulf

According to Wikipedia, while workplace deaths have decreased steadily in the time since the creation of OSHA, grain engulfment fatalities hit an all-time high in 2010. Dying surrounded by staple crops, an ignominious way to go, but that’s what happens when your job catches you lacking. One minute, you’re doing maintenance inside of a silo. You don’t even realize where the next footfall is going to land because you are taking the fact that there will be a footfall for granted. Looking at your phone, laughing at a meme, talking shit on socials.

The next thing you know, the same thing that people with “gluten insensitivity” think is harming them is on the fast track to killing you.

-

New home, same nausea. The stressors changed, yeah, but the all push the same exact buttons. Family always lingered as a monster in the background, but it was mostly Mike’s best turn as Mickey from the Rocky franchise or Dad spewing some nonsense that everyone after that video will knew was nonsense. The game changed. Mike barely could stand. Dad was horizontal underneath six feet of cold earth. The new monsters Tom thought he had slain years ago were only sleeping. Dad’s death? A clarion call.

“There’s absolutely no other statement that we can make,” said Michelle Johnson.

PRIME’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer had her fill of PR nightmares. The fallout from Jon Rhine had her noticing gray hairs in the mirror in the morning. Just because she was used to it didn’t mean she particularly relished dealing with these things.

“Regardless of what anyone in the office feels, and believe me, there are a lot of people who are on your side, including myself…”

She paused for a second. The coming words needed jostling to leave her throat.

“Well, we have to consider public perception, and the timing of this, especially coming to Philadelphia, could not be worse.”

“But what about my side of the story, ‘Chelle? You know, Killean knows, Lindsay, you all know there was more to that conversation…”

“I know, believe me, I do. Cops lie all the time. Think about it from a business standpoint though. It’s your word against actual video. And you’re not being punished for it. You’re still in the main event, in your hometown, against a former Universal Champion. It’s just…”

Her voice trailed off, and Tom had no answer. The loaded silence exerted its osmotic pressure on both ends of the cellphone conversation until Michelle broke the dam.

“Why would your brother do that to you anyway? Aren’t South Philly Italians all about family?”

Tom threw back on his sofa, sighing deeply at how unwittingly loaded the executive’s question was.

“Wow, well, he, uh, he found another family that was more important to him than his brothers.”

More silence. This time, it was Tom’s turn to pierce the wall.

“It started with Mike. He wanted to have him prosecuted for the heroin use, thrown in jail. He took it out on me specifically when Tam and I decided to pay for rehab and use the good stuff that Tam’s company makes to get him clean. I thought maybe the fact Mike was his brother would maybe soften him, make him look at addicts as people, but nope. He said it was his long-held belief, but whatever. I know for a fact he did whippets under the bleachers in high school. But that’s not the worst part.”

He inhaled deeply before continuing.

“The reason why my kids don’t call him uncle, the reason why it had been years since we talked to each other before dad died, is I posted ‘Black Lives Matter’ on Facebook back, shit, ten years ago with Michael Brown and Ferguson. Didn’t say anything about cops or racism or whatever. Just three little words. And he called me bitching at me to take the status down, carried on in the comments, just…”

Tom trailed off. Old scars were torn from well knitted substrates; the pain and shock of how his own brother reacted to an innocuous, at least to a reasonable person, statement oozing out and lurching down his skin.

“It’s okay, Tom. I understand…”

“But you can’t do anything except issue that statement.”

“We, well, I want to. Unfortunately, we can’t really risk getting into trouble with the PPD so close to show time, and as much as you have supporters here in the company, well, it’s a hard job.”

“Yeah. I get it. But it wouldn’t fix the overall problem anyway.”

Another pause. Michelle furrowed her brow and scrunched her nose as Tom continued.

“I mean, it feels like my entire family is just bearing down on me. They’re engulfing me.”

-

The grains by themselves are slight, fragile even. One flight of fancy can see you swimming in them like a fucked-up Scrooge McDuck, but reality disconnects from these fantastical views once the grains surround you. One kernel of corn couldn’t crush an ant. A billion of them exert force enough to crush your chest and rob you of air until your view is black and your throat in desperate need of a deluge to rinse the debris and dust proving proverbial insult to literal injury.

If you’re lucky, the confined space rescue team fishes you out of the sea of staple crop. You spend days, weeks, maybe even months recuperating. Most aren’t fortunate though. They’re the ones found with terror frozen on their blue-tinted face, their dying thoughts resting on how helpless they felt sinking into the edible quicksand.

-

The call with Michelle was frustrating, but he didn’t expect it to go any different than it did. He knew he’d garner some sympathy, but what he wanted was a chance for full-throated rebuttal. That was never happening; left or right, PRIME is a business in liberal America. Police provide security for the show, traffic control around the Wells Fargo Center, other things that the company couldn’t afford to lose over one wrestler, no matter how much the story of the ReVival couldn’t be told without him.

It was a pipe dream all along. He leaned back on his couch, imprinting upon the back cushion, hands between the back of his head, pits exposed in the classic college football doom pose called “The Surrender Cobra.” Feeling his eyelids press upon him like slabs of granite, he closed his eyes slowly until he caught an image on his coffee table, one that reminded him of yet another column crashing down on him.

The miniature ice axe.

The threat wrapped in sentimentality from the Russians weighed heavily on his mind for the entire week since its reception. He wasn’t necessarily afraid of stepping toe-to-toe with the Russian Bear. His clean 0-5 record against Universal Champions didn't bother him, though he hoped to change the number in the win column next Friday. His philosophy had always been to hunt the biggest, most dangerous game, literally and figuratively. Ivan towered over him, but he was no bigger than Dan Ryan. The Ego Buster was all lean muscle in his prime at the time too, not a barrel-chested sexagenarian.

It was the fact that the Russians, yes, plural, had him surrounded. Alone, he could take all of them, maybe. Kenny Freeman and Randall Schwartz were formidable as a team but more interested in playing footsie with the roster under the table. Arthur Pleasant was a battle he’d already claimed, a rare marquee win for The Anglo Luchador in calendar year 2023. Alexei would be easily swatted if he tried anything more than psychological warfare. And Ivan, yeah, Ivan would be the biggest test, but nothing that would have Tom in fits more than Youngblood or the new glue-bound Champion had.

Just as a hornet could pick off wasps individually but couldn’t fend off a hive surrounding it, roasting it in its own body heat through smothering and engulfment, it was the collective of the Red Army that frightened him. Their “Socialism In One State” might not survive against a fully-armed collective of radical believers in Permanent Revolution, but the coterie he brought with him to Colossus, a gambit that ended up mired in colossal failure with Rose seeing through the gambit, wasn’t ever to be permanent in the first place. Miranda had a career of her own. Chick got himself banned. Suleimon, a shell of himself. Garry had a country over which to lord his iron fist. Tom still had no idea how Nelson-Land got so out of control, but his time in PRIME and its satellite promotions like Bang! left him no choice but to expect the absurd anyway.

What comrades did he have left to join his side? Who could protect his flanks, watch his six, cover him from above while he made a hard charge towards Ivan in preemptive attack? All he could see was a mass of bodies with wilderness in their eyes, enclosing upon him, raining blows upon his body while one of them, that lapdog Alexei most likely, closing in on the back of his head with an icepick to deliver the final blow.

He drifted off, the light fading slowly and ominously as his eyes shut in precognitive anguish.

-

Although silo engulfment death relatively speaking is rare per capita, the horror one suffers while enduring it is enough to turn hair white just thinking about it. Unlike its cousins like being caught in an avalanche or, more commonly, a trench collapse, the false hope with how pliable the grains are will give you just enough of an idea that yeah, if you fight a little harder and not a little smarter, you can get out of this mess. All of it happens in slow motion, and you can see it take you no matter how hard you fight.

No matter how hard you post on Jabber calling out Ivan Stanislav on his hypocritical bullshit.

No matter how much you yell back at Justine Calvin when she brings up things you have actually did that sound really bad when someone else describes them.

No matter how many times you spell “messiah” in all lower cases to make some dickhead lawyer with an even bigger dickhead of a son mad.

No matter how many times you explain to your brother that maybe he should practice what he preaches about family or to your mother that “he started it” is not deflecting but has 100 percent validity in some cases.

Nothing matters when your verbal targets fight dirty.

All your words do is create the footfall that sends you careening to your grainy death. Each principal in your life, Stanislav, Fleetwood, Ray, Guido, all their minions, your own perceived demons in people you should otherwise trust and befriend, they all turn to grain in an instant, falling down on you, crushing you from the outside in.

And there’s nothing you can do except flail endlessly, hoping one of your targets catches a well-earned fist to the jaw before they take you down ultimately in victory through overwhelming.

-

“Babe! I got a plan for you for 42.”

Tom was roused from his struggle nap to find Tam rumbling down the steps to their living room.

“Sorry to wake you but…”

Tom shook his head, the trail of spittle forming at the corner of his lip flying across his living room.

“No, ugh, no it’s okay. Didn’t think you had time to do the ol’ wrestle analytics jawn again.”

“Well, I was able to trick Edwards into taking on the Walter Reed account for this month so some time freed up.”

“Good. Fuck that guy. Make him work.”

“Exactly my plan,” she replied with a giggle. “Anyway, I think 2024 can be really big for you. I want to help.”

Tom sat up on the couch at attention.

“So, the good thing is, it’s a Philly Street Fight, so you’re like, real fuckin’ good at that kind of shit.”

“The Philly part or the street fight part?”

“Hey… shut up,” she replied, throwing a decorative pillow at his head. “In all seriousness though, Cancer might be able to take punishment like a sponge, and he cheats as bad as anyone in this business not named Roderick.”

“Don’t even mention him. I think Lindsay can sense when he’s mentioned, and then I get yelled at.”

“Since when do you care about your bosses yelling at you?”

She laughed and smirked, looking at her husband as he groggily tried to shake off the last remnants of his depression nap.

“It’s a lot. I need friends right now, and I…”

She interrupted. “Yes, you do, but maybe not as many as you think for this match. First thing, I don’t think Coral will get involved.”

“Really? Cancer’s salt is rubbing off on him, whether he knows it or not. I think…”

“I mean, sure, he could, but you two have decent rapport, and I still think he’s not at all thrilled to be a Bandit. Do you really think he’d go all in on you?”

Tom shrugged. Perhaps it was the stress of paranoia building up like plaque in his brain, but he couldn’t get a read on the situation, no matter how much his gut told him Coral would be a non-factor.

“Then there’s Bobby, winning streak of his or not, I’m not entirely sure he’s going to be as effective as a goon here. I mean, all you have to do is throw him a cheesesteak and he’s pacified like a baby.”

“I hate playing into the fat stereotypes, babe…”

“They’re not a stereotype in this case. I mean, have you even watched the fucking company you work for in the last two years? Bobby is a glutton. Like, it’s ingrained in his soul.”

Tom shrugged. When she was right, she was right. And Tam was right.

“So that leaves Tony Gamble. And unfortunately, he’s the most likely to interfere because he still hates you.”

He still hates you. Another member of the PRIME roster with an eternal axe to grind against the masked whetstone that was the First Intense Champion of the ReVival. With his brother and the Red Army bearing down on him, with MESSIAH always lurking in the background, with KING still manufacturing consent for another attack on his person, the last thing he needed was a reminder of those in the company who had enmity towards him.

“Okay. So what’s the plan? Prepare like it’s a handicap match? I can do that. I think the two of them combined weigh less than one of Dan Ryan’s traps.”

“Deflect all you want, but all it takes is a distraction from that slimeball Jiles and BOOM, Stop Laughing At Me. Or even worse, he’s the one distracting and then you get hit with Terminal Cancer.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“You need backup.”

He groaned and leaned back on his chair. To have backup, one would need friends. He had them, sure, but how many of them were liquid at the moment?

“That’s complicated.”

“Complicated, schmoplicated you big dummy.”

She threw another pillow at him.

“Stop that!”

“No, you stop being a thick-headed gabbadose!”

Hah, Tamara Mooney, using Italian jargon (gabbadose meaning “stubborn jackass” in American Italian vernacular). She really did love his ass.

“Yeah, SHOOT Project’s new schedule makes having Miranda watch your back problematic. But you were just named to a War Games team. Like, I know you and Tsonda don’t really know each other that well, and same with Ellis…”

“Although maybe if I win the heartland kid over, his wife will let me use one of her guns.”

Tam wanted to stifle her laughter in a show of seriousness, but she couldn’t. Ginny Van Lear packing heat was never not funny in any circumstance.

“I’m being serious! I mean, our kids call Colton ‘uncle.’ You trained at Youngblood’s Shining house for a whole week while your brother was in the hospital. Fuck, I know you and Sykes aren’t on the greatest terms, but he picked you for his War Games team. Ask one of them. Fuck, ask all of them in case I’m wrong about Bobby and Coral. Or in case Doozer shows up or whatever.”

“Nah, I think Lindsay had Doozer killed or something.”

Tam ran out of pillows to throw, so she grabbed a Philadelphia Magazine from the coffee table to throw at her husband.

“Stop trying to make me laugh when I’m being serious!”

“You should know better than to be serious with a luchador in distress. You know we only try to diffuse situations with humor when we’re very distressed.”

“I hate you sometimes,” she said with a chuckle. “But seriously, it’s clear you need help here. You’re not going into a regular match where you can rely on the referee to throw a rogue Bandit out of the ring. You play by their rules, the ones where you have to be the prideful tecnico and they get to be the carefree rudos, you’re just going to get lost in there.”

She moved over to the couch and sidled up next to her husband.

“You have to change the narrative if you don’t want to fit the textbook definition of insanity. Be smart for once. Ask for help.”

Tom sighed deeply. She was right again. In her presence, the strongest excuses glued to his synapses dissolved like cotton candy on a wet tongue. But if he mulled too hard and long on it, they built their matrices back up, yelling at him that Sykes didn’t truly respect him, that Youngblood was too busy chasing his adhesive dragon, that Colton had his own blood family to take care of. How could he even approach someone like Tsonda with whom he had little in common? Was he even sure he spoke the same language as Ellis? A depression-addled mind, especially one where the lethal venom of paranoia flowed freely and rapidly, is not a rational one.

“Ok, I’ll think it over.”

She kissed him on the forehead.

“Do more than that, you dingus.”

She got up from the couch and went into the kitchen, presumably to grab a Fresca from her hard work coming up with a gameplan.

Tom took his phone out of his pocket and opened his contacts. “Uncle Nate” stared him in the face. His finger hovered over the call button for a perilously long time. It lingered and lingered and lingered but didn’t move. His own anxiety let open another gate, and the crush of another thousand pounds toppled onto his already laden mind.

-

Engulfment isn’t always fatal. But the only way out is with help. In the literal case, you need a team that’s trained in rescue from a confined space, and the wrong people in any situation will only make things worse. Luckily, the problems facing the Luchador were less sophisticated than even drowning in wheat or sorghum.

There was a hand reaching into the silo with a hook, ready to pull him out. The only question was whether he’d take it. You’d think it was a no-brainer, but that’s the funny thing about a wrestler’s ego.

He could take the rescue out of the silo.

Or maybe there was another way…

PRIME JABBER

1/12/2024 7:36 PM @TAL the gods have abandoned me

1/12/2024 7:37 PM Replying to @TAL @PRIMETime Then it’s time to make new ones

1/12/2024 7:37 PM Replying to @PRIMETime @TAL no, it’s time to become one