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The small cottage on the easternmost point of Long Island was among the only places Zapp Scatino could feel comfortable. It was his Fortress of Solitude. Only a few people were aware of it and Zapp himself spent limited time dwelling inside of it.

It was three days since he and the Anglo Luchador conquered the tandem of Max Kael and Kenny Fuckpants, securing their spot in the finals of the PRIME Tag Team Tournament. Their next bout was essentially meaningless. For Zapp, it was just going to be an exhibition of their dominance. The Big Dick Stallions (a name suggesting it's members were overcompensating) were so little of a threat, Zapp decided to take the week off.

Instead of traversing the country with his alleged twin, Zapp opted for some alone time.

The problem was, Zapp could only be alone for so long before the dark thoughts began to deep into brain bringing feelings of guilt and regret with them to the point where he would scream hoping to scare the thoughts away.

It did not work.

Not in this house.

Instead, Zapp decided to try and keep himself occupied. Although, try as he might, a cloud of loneliness always seemed to find and envelop him.

On this particularly muggy evening, the type of August evening where the humidity was so moist, it clinged to the body the second one walked outside, Zapp found himself in a grim, forlorn state of mind, standing his living room, microphone on hand, wearing nothing but a kimono and a magenta banana hammock singing karaoke to an audience of no one.

“Kohime, 

Well you came and you gave without taking

But I sent you away, 

Kohime,

Well, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking

And I need you today 

Kohime

I'm standing on the edge—-”

A knock at the interrupted Zapp's heartfelt rendition of a Barry Manilow classic. Zapp wiped away a manly tear that was trickling down his cheek as he paused the karaoke machine, took a deep breath, forced a smile, and opened the door. A familiar face stood in front of him.

“Tommy Batts!”

“How serendipitous,” Tom said in his best deadpan. The bleating of a goat could be heard in the background. The ruinous stain of hours of New Jersey Turnpike and Long Island Expressway traffic marked his face. The air smelled faintly of goat droppings, mainly because his cargo had taken to doing his business in Tom’s vehicles

SMASH CUT

Tom stood with Old Max, the three-legged goat Zapp absentmindedly left at the Battaglia residence in a corner rowhome in South Philadelphia, on a leash, in the grassy area of the Grover Cleveland Rest Area on the Turnpike, a frustrated look on his face as the goat intook but did not expel, the express reason why he stopped in the first place.

STAR WIPE

The Lincoln Tunnel was bumper-to-bumper, Jersey berth all the way to the other opening in Midtown. Tom crinkled his nose as he started to get notes of pellets, grass, and hydrogen sulfide.

“GODDAMMIT, OLD MAX, WE DO THAT OUTSIDE! THAT’S EXPRESSLY WHY WE STOPPED WHEN WE STOPPED. FUCK.”

DISSOLVE

“Kohime Mori was one of the topics I came here to talk to you about.”

Zapp slowly lowered his head and slowly nodded. He knew nothing good could come from talking about the time he, with no provocation other than the rotten mess of tangled synapses and memories of his childhood singed with burnmarks from watching far too much television called a brain, slugged the last woman he’d ever cared about with his already on-edge tag partner.

“Might as well get that part out of the way first. Just one question.”

Beads of sweat formed on Zapp’s forehead.

“Are you sorry?”

“Huh?”

“Did I stutter, Mortimer? I asked. Are. You. Sorry? For what you did to Kohime Mori?”

The mention of his previous nom de plume caused Zapp to sneer. It was downright offensive for Tommy to bring up Kohime with that disrespectful tone. No greeting, no “How ya doin’s”, just attitude. After everything Zapp had done for him, Tom had the audacity to talk to Zapp like he owed him money.

“You got some fuckin’ balls, Tommy. Why don't you grab your wife's dildo and go fuck yourself?”

Zapp attempted to close the door only for The Anglo Luchador to plant his foot inside Zapp's home, stopping him. Zapp, already drowning in his own misery, was not about to take any shit from Tommy. Not in or near his home away from the home away from home.

“Move your fuckin' foot or treat me with some FUCKIN’ RESPECT!!!”

Tom stared coldly into Zapp’s eyes.

“I am.”

He muscled the ratty door open, entering the filthy yet quaint cottage with his nose crinkled again. He preferred the goat shit in his car all of a sudden.

“If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t give a shit about any of this. Wouldn’t have cared about the first three matches. Definitely would let you fend for yourself against two overrated dickheads whose hygiene somehow makes this…”

Tom looked around the cottage as the moldy aromas wafted into his nostrils.

“...place look like a model home kept by a Stepford wife. I would resent you for the situation you dragged me into against my will, and then I would make plans to get my revenge against you at UltraViolence for taking me off my stated plan to stop wrestling in a way where I would need to take revenge on people.”

Splat.

Tom stepped in a wet spot on the rug. Beer? Piss? Something even more horrific?

“But you know what? Yeah, the first week could’ve been a fluke, but it felt, I don’t know…”

Tom looked at Zapp again dead in the eye.

“...real.”

Zapp rolled his eyes in the breath between Tom’s blowhard monologue.

“I remembered the Mortimer Kjedelig that rocked my ass on a few occasions at Great American Nightmare inside barbed wire. I realized this two-bit fraud was good enough to win the Alias Title and hold it for a hot minute. So I played along, because I respected your talent. But a couple of weeks ago, in the car, going out to Lancaster, I felt something. Maybe the guy who was so sweet and romantic and fucking downright respectful to a close friend to a close friend of mine was underneath all the fraud and the lies. I figured I would try to explore that after I came up here after I dropped off the goat you forgot at my house.”

Tom turned to the opened window and stared directly at the three-legged goat.

“A VERY BAD GOAT WHO NEEDS TO STOP SHITTING IN CARS I DRIVE.”

“He’s a fuckin’ goat.”

Tom ignored Zapp’s defense of Old Max.

“So I need to know, Zapp.”

Tom turned towards Zapp again, this time, staring daggers at his tag partner. Almost literally. Like he was Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? At least that’s how Zapp would describe it to Old Max later on.

“Are. You. Sorry?”

“No. Needed to be done. It don't mean it's somethin’ I'm proud of. You familiar with the scorpion and the frog?”

Zapp does not give Tommy a chance to respond.

“There's this scorpion and this bird, and it ain't none of them shitty birds like a pigeon neither, she's more a painted bunting, one of them rare types. They're in someplace pretty fuckin’ depressin’ like Cleveland or some shit and the scorpion promises not to harm the bird if she takes him to Acapulco. The frog, bein’ all good and ozempic helps the scorpion, flies him across the country to their mutually agreed upon destination. Upon landin’ BAM! The scorpion whacks the bird, stabs her with his tail. When the bird, dyin’, asks why, the scorpion says ‘It's cuz bein’ a piece of shit is what I am. Trust me, I'm bein’ humanitarian about this’. The scorpion feels devastated about what he did, but what can he do? He is what he is. It's his nature. He's a fuckin' scorpion and she's a bird, birds need to spread their feathers and fly. Scorpions and birds don't go together. It's fuckin’ cross-contamination. Make sense?”

The look on Tom’s face could have stopped a freight train.

“It doesn’t. Not in the least.”

Tom advanced further into the cottage, its dingy, spartan interior making the Brandon Youngblood Wisconsin Wrestle House look like a mansion, looking around, mostly at the floor to make sure he didn’t step on any other puddles or, worse, dead rodents.

“But in some fucked up way, it kinda does. It’s hard to shake the brainworms sometimes. But at least you identify with the scorpion. It’s a start.”

The goat’s bleat could be heard in the distance. Faint, but unmistakable.

“But before we move on, our next two matches.”

“One match. The Micro Pony Pricks don’t matter.”

Tom sighed.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Zapp. Sure, we’re locked in. They’re not. They’re going to be fighting for their lives, and regardless of what you think, it still hurts when they hit you even if there are no consequences for us. For example, take STRONK Godson.”

Tom shuddered at the mere mention of the Beast from the Deep.

“He may not be human. He certainly doesn’t feel pain like a human, and he certainly hits harder than the average one. If he gets either one of us in the Loop Hold, we might as well not show up to Seattle because we’ll be in a hospital bed. And then there’s Fred Dick.”

Tom shuddered again. Deeper. Ripples peaking on his skin higher.

“I… all I can say about him is he made me feel sympathy for a guy who nearly killed me with a shock collar. Not only are they dangerous…”

Tom looked Zapp dead in the eye again.

“They’re desperate. And they’ll have that unwashed taint Reed Young on the outside of the ring, and if we’re unfortunate enough, that human spider colony Lowell too. I don’t know about you, but if we are to win the tag titles in Seattle, we should do so without any spiders nestling in our skin, or without any of our muscles turned into STRONK-umms on the way. So we need to be on the same page.”

Tom reached into the back of his jeans and pulled out a rolled up envelope. A manila envelope. That manila envelope. He pulled out the picture of his parents with two other people that Zapp had given to him. It was creased and rolled up to Zapp’s shock.

“OHHHHH! The fuck you doin’?! That photograph is, uh, a priceless family birthmark.”

“Okay then. If it’s so important to you, spill. Why are my parents in it? If we’re going to be on the same page, you have to spill about this picture, why you have it, and why it caused you to have a psychotic break to make you think you were my twin fucking brother.”

Zapp cocked his brow and rubbed his glorious ‘stache. Tommy had to go there, didn't he? The one subject he had been avoiding for the past couple of weeks. Tommy put Zapp in an awkward position.

“You want somethin’ to drink? Fresca or somethin’?”

Zapp pointed towards the kitchen behind him. He had planned to go to the ShopRite, but he was not feeling up to dealing with people throughout the day. Hc regretted that decision since the “or somethin’” offered included expired milk, an unopened V8 he purchased a month ago, and cranberry juice.

“I’ll pass. No offense, but if the living area of this house is this, uh, rustic, I’m not sure I want to see what science experiments are lurking in your toilet. Last thing I need is the dreaded candiru swimming upstream into my urethra while I’m taking a piss.”

Zapp mouthed, or at least he tried to mouth, the word “candiru” like it was the first time he heard the word. Probably because it was the first time he heard the word. If you don’t know, don’t look it up.

“But I’m being serious. This picture means a lot to you. I need to know what I’m dealing with so we can work through this shit. Again, the Whoresmen across the ring trying to take our heads off or not, we punched our ticket.”

Tom looked around the cottage, breathing in deeply. He’d finally gone noseblind to the rancidity in the air and was now allowing his earnestness to break through his exterior of disgust from the odors he’s dealt with since, well, the Lincoln Tunnel.

“Being the Intense Champion here, it was the biggest thrill of my comeback. Maybe one of the biggest in my career. A secondary title in PRIME, man, that’s like winning a World Title in a lot of other places. I want that rush again, Zapp.”

Tom turned to look at his tag partner with softness in his eyes, a softness he’d not shown to anyone except his wife and kids in a long fucking time.

“And I can’t do it this time alone. So that means we have to get on the same page.”

Tom trudged towards the coffee table. Picking out one of the few spots on the ratty sofa without a spring exposed, he lowered his ass as gingerly as he could and laid the picture on the surface, flattening it out as best he could.

“Tell me about the picture. Please.”

Zapp shook his head.  As he covered his epic banana hammock with his legendary black and cherry blossom kimono. Zapp leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. Zapp looked at the man who came into his modest, yet admittedly messy home and judged him for it.

“Why you gotta bring that up? We had a good thing goin’. As a certain associate of my cousin would say: ‘Don’t rock the boat cuz you might drown. Especially when wearin’ cement loafers.’ It would be remissive of me not include ‘allegedly’ to that. Let the sleepin’ dogs sleep, Tommy.”

“No.”

“Whaddaya mean no?”

“What’s so hard to understand about the word no? I drove up through New Jersey, across tunnels and bridges and the span of this wretched island to get here to find out why my parents are in a picture that was in your possession that was clearly meant to be taken.”

Silence for a beat.

“I mean, this isn’t some private detective bullshit. You know two people who knew my parents. My fucking parents. Sociopaths. A father who berated me and tore me down until the day he died, only to tell me he was working the whole time beyond the grave. A mother who resented being married to a wrestler and waited until he was gone to take it out on me. Fucking SOCIOPATHS.”

The creepy crawlies peeking out from the tears in the wallpaper retreated into the spaces between the walls.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. But maybe this relationship they had. With those two people. Maybe it gets me some insight into why they were the way they were, are.”

Tom looked Zapp straight in the eye again.

“So I absolutely need to rock the boat, Zapp.”

“What if I told you that it don't mean shit? Just a photo chopped photo usin’ computers and tricorders and the like? A means to an end. Would that be the end of it?”

“If I say no, are you going to not believe me again?”

Tom once again looked around the dingy shithole Zapp called home.

“I don’t for a minute believe that you know how to use Amazon Dot Com to order pomade and gabbagool let alone use photo manipulating software. I mean, where the fuck is your computer?”

Long pause before Zapp began to pace around the room.

“You know why I bought this shithole?”

Tommy shrugged. Zapp thoughtfully nodded as moved about the room, the karaoke machine paused behind him. Zapp waved his hand in the air as if he were a magician performing an illusion.

“This. This is where we stayed after ma’s divorce. Didn't change one fuckin’ thing. Growin’ up, I thought when she was talkin’ about the Italian Stallion, I assumed it was Rocky.  Who knew? I always felt like number two compared to that prick. Vinnie Spandex, I mean.

Maybe it was subject matter or his attire (or lack thereof) that caused but Zapp was feeling vulnerable and getting choked up. He debated whether or not he should continue. He decided to push forward, feeling the rage boil and bubble inside of his gut. The more Zapp talked, Tommy became a bigger and bigger douchebag in his eyes and the angrier he got.

“You know how my old man, the hapless cuck my mother was married to while she bein’ an infidel, you know how he found out about her indiscretion? Syphilis. She, on the other side of things, she wasn't a huge fan of doctors, so they didn't catch til it was too late. Fuckin’ disease rotted her brain. She's got the dementia. She's in mental health facility on Upstate. My Uncle Frank is flippin’ the bill. So wanna know the truth about that photo? I put together enough of a tapestry and you just me to spill it?  As if. If you really want the full fuckin’ story Mister Cronkite, why don't you ask her instead of shittin’ all over me? Maybe you'll catch her on a good day. Now fuck off.”

Zapp turned his back on Tommy and stared at the blue screen with the word time highlighted in yellow.

“I’m not tagging with her though.”

Zapp remained unfazed.

“I’m tagging with you. And I’m sorry it’s hard for you to trust people. I really am.”

Zapp nudged his head around slightly as Old Max bleated as if to remind the two men he was still present.

“But your mom isn’t the one who shoved the picture in the envelope in my face. Your uncle isn’t the one barging into my house and drinking my liquor. It’s you. I’m not trying to shit on you. I’m trying to understand you. Because if not, then STRONK and Dick knock our heads off in Portland. And then whoever gets the other spot in the tag final? They steal our chance to win titles here. Not on my watch.”

Zapp turns around.

“Our chance.”

“You a gamblin’ man, Tommy?” Zapp asked. He wanted to believe the words coming out of Tommy’s mouth but his actions and body language were contradictory.

“Here’s what I am surmisin’, Tommy.. After we extinguinate Dick and Dickless, I'll give you the explanation as I see it visa-visa that photograph that's got you all douchey. Whaddya say?”

A deep sigh.

“You know what, I waited this long. Might as well wait until after deal with the Whoresmen.”

Tom looked around the cottage one more time.

“Although, I think being in here for even a few minutes, I think I’m inoculated against whatever noxious bullshit Fred or Lowell have up their sleeves. Or in their scalp.”

He threw up in his mouth a little bit, not from the obvious stains on the wallpaper or the faint smell of sour milk wafting out of the refrigerator, but at the thought of spiders breaching Lowell Dot Com’s skin. Composing himself, he rose from the sofa and turned again to Zapp.

“I’m gonna get outta here for now. Just one thing. Old Max? He really likes spinach. And not the canned shit either.”

TAL slowly and methodically made his way to door like Niles Crane traversing a minefield littered with excrement and exited the premises.  Old Max bleated.

Zapp scowled towards the door, stared at it like it lost its life savings in Vegas. Tommy took the bait. He chose to gamble. The one vice that Zapp looked down upon. Tommy didn't know Zapp at all, he didn't want to know Zapp period. All Tommy needed to do was ride the wave of success, instead he wanted to sacrifice what they had built together for some compulsive need to delve into historical family drama.  Zapp looked at Old Max.

“Selfish degenerate gamblin’ fuckin’ prick. Him. Not you.”

Old Max bleated.