DISAPPEAR [LEVEL UP #3]

Hannah Donimari was supposed to be in bed but with her mother gone for the week and her older brother Hunter left in charge, she'd been feeling rebellious. It was a school night, but she was sitting in her bedroom well past midnight with her nose buried in a book – the thing had been sitting on her dresser for months, the copy dog-eared, and the cover held on with duct tape. It was The Outsiders by SE Hinton and it was the favorite book of the boy she loved more than anything. She wasn't sure if he even knew he'd left it behind months ago. He used to carry the thing everywhere in the pocket of his battered jean jacket and she'd caught him reading those well-thumbed passages more than once.

A flash of light out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she turned to the window. Like usual, the blind was up and all she saw was the inky blackness of the backyard and the blue-black outline of that massive live oak that held the treehouse. She saw that little flash again, a quick spark as though someone was trying to get a lighter to work. She thought maybe it was her brother, bringing some girl home for a little nookie and the thought of him doing that up there in the space that she'd claimed for herself had her going for her slippers and robe before grabbing the flashlight from her nightstand drawer.

The boy was huddled up against the wall, grumbling as he tried to get the shitty lighter to actually work. It sparked but nothing else happened and he threw it without looking, head whipping around when he heard a muffled, "ouch," from the darkness beside him. A moment later, the flashlight shone through the hole and Hannah's head appeared.

"You're not Hunter..."

He didn't reply. Something in the way she said that made him want to disappear more than ever, Clay's words echoing in his head.

"You should be grateful I let you stay here – nobody wants you. Your own mother couldn't even stand the sight of you. She gave you up and we took you in."

She climbed the last rungs, crawling into the space. Her flashlight thumped against the boards, making him flinch. "Lex?"

He grunted softly, lifting his head to look at her. The flashlight reflected in his dark eyes, letting her see the tears that glistened there.

She was going to ask if he was okay, but she already knew the answer – he wasn't. The fact that he was up here didn't make any sense. He always came to her window on the nights things with his father got bad. She scooted a little closer, reaching out her hand to touch his bare arm but he flinched away. She wasn't sure what to make of that, either.

"Don't." His voice broke on that single syllable and he sniffed, wiping the back of his hand under his nose before he broke the silence again, "I'm alright."

Frowning, she looked at the threadbare tee he had on, seeing the holes around the stretched-out neckline. "C'mon, you've gotta be freezing."

It wasn't that cold – he'd been outside wearing less in worse. His skin felt like it was on fire, even his eyes felt hot now that the tears had stopped falling. Sometimes, he got like this. He didn't really know why. It was sort of like the adrenaline he got when he was out there on the open road on that shitty dirt bike that he could barely keep running. Maybe a cousin to adrenaline if that was even a thing.

"Did he hurt you bad?"

He closed his eyes, head back against the wall as he let the pain take over. It was easier than hearing those hateful words rattling around in his brain, shredding everything he'd believed for the last sixteen years of his life. Dropping down into the pain meant he didn't have to search for words, didn't have to struggle to articulate the damage done this time.

"Lex?" This time her hand touched his and he let it happen. She linked her fingers through his and he felt that warmth pressing against his circle before she rested her head against his shoulder with a soft sigh. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm..." he broke off before saying 'alright' again, knowing it would just come off like a lie. He was well aware of the fact that he'd been avoiding her for days, only seeing her in passing in the halls at school – now that she was here, he couldn't remember why he'd done that to himself. Or even why he'd felt like he needed to punish her for everything that had happened. He reached down beside himself, picking up the shitty little candle he'd shoplifted from the CVS when he'd remembered what day it was tomorrow.

"I..." he sighed, bowing his head. "I got you something."

Hannah lifted her head, staring at him in confusion. "You did? Why?"

He said nothing for the longest time, feeling the cold of the glass around the candle against his palm. "He..." the words felt stuck, the lump in his throat back again and he felt that irrational prickle of tears, but he forced himself to stare ahead into the darkness until it stopped. "I'm adopted. Told me that my real mom took one look at me an' threw me out like... like yesterday's trash."

"What? No," she shook her head vehemently, "that can't be true."

"It is. He showed me the papers. Shoved 'em right in my face when I called him a liar an' I just-" he shook his head, biting his lip to keep the rest of the words from spilling out.

"We should run away together," Hannah said. It wasn't the first time they'd had this talk. He had a collection of vintage postcards he'd found at the flea market, all these exotic places he wanted to visit. They'd talked about all the adventures they'd have once they finally got out of this godforsaken city. "Just pack up everything and go. Tonight."

"Yeah?" He leaned forward, resting the candle on the floor in front of them. She heard that sharp intake of breath as he moved, felt him tense before he was back against the wall with his eyes closed. "Where we gonna go first?"

"Alaska." She replied, "or maybe up north in Canada. Somewhere we can see the Northern Lights."

"This time of year? Prob'ly too cold." He let himself fall into that old rhythm, letting the anger and self-loathing fade. "How about Bermuda?"

"Get lost in the Triangle, never to be seen again?" Hannah giggled, resting her head against his shoulder again.

"Sometimes think maybe it'd be better to just disappear."

"Don't say that." The warmth was gone, the bubble broken and even though she was still holding his hand, it felt like she was a million miles away. She'd heard something in his words that he hadn't meant to let slip, that he hadn't even realized was there until the traitorous words came slithering out of his mouth.

"I didn't-" he started but she cut him off.

"I'd miss you." The words were heavy, as if they held a thousand meanings and he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around half of them.

"You'd be the only one."

"I'd never throw you out like yesterday's trash."

He pulled his hand back and pressed it against the floor, not wanting her to feel the tremor that had started. He wasn't cold. He wasn't even sure what was happening right now, and it terrified him in the worst way. "We should... it's cold out here. Let's go inside."

"Did I say something wrong?"

He shook his head, crawling towards the hatch. "No. I'm just cold." It was easier to fumble in the dark than to wonder why everything she said made his damned chest ache in the worst possible way. "I just gotta..."

Hannah watched him disappear through the hole before reaching out to pick up the candle that he'd left sitting there. It smelled like the beach, immediately bringing a smile to her face as she remembered the fourth of July last year. He hadn't said it, but in that moment, she knew – it was one of her favorite and best memories, especially because he'd been there with her.

"I love you," she whispered, hearing the creak of the screen door's hinges – of course he hadn't heard her. He never did.


Lex Collins sits on the floor, cross-legged in front of that red wall. There's a half-full bottle of Bud Light Lime next to his knee. His scruffy beard's been trimmed back to almost nothing as though this is a few days' worth of growth after a clean shave. He looks tired. Like usual.

"Don Tirri called me a phony – the 'too long, drifted off' version was that I'm a try-hard, that everything from the shoes on my feet to the hair on my head has been cultivated and coiffed. Takes a fraud to expose one, right? Bullshit calls out bullshit... a new spin on iron sharpens iron. Why not? And the thing is, he's partially right. Sure, he was flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks but managed to get in the vicinity all the same. The real me, the Lex that exists when the cameras aren't rolling... he's not articulate. He's always been better on paper, planned out ahead because in the heat of the moment, the words get stuck. Under the bright lights, he feels like a bug under glass. Feels too much like I'm being judged – so, y'know, fuck you for that. My presentation? The fuck you on about? The shit I uploaded for Eli was a fucking audio file – you think that black screen was a goddamned metaphor? Nah, man. That was just a way to keep myself in check. To keep from slipping too far into the feels – but hey, kudos to you for feeling like you gotta backhand the once-abused dog to see if he remembers where he came from. If it's real, he'll snap. He'll bite – I'm feral, Tirri. That doesn't mean I'm fuckin' rabid. Means I've got a major malfunction where the concept of bein' a social animal comes into play. But you're right, man. I shoulda zigged instead of zagged all those times the man who called himself 'father' sought to torture me for some imagined transgression an' call it a fuckin' life lesson. You're right. I was too dumb, then. Let myself get hurt. Swallowed the pain. Lied about it to anyone who asked – you don't rat on family, especially not when he's a decorated an' highly respected citizen an' you're just that damned bastard mutt he adopted to keep the 'wife' quiet. You got me pegged, man. Dead to rights. I'm as fake's fake can be."

The words had started to run together, his cadence slipping into a breathless rush at the end, as if he's trying to force all the words out before they flee like startled birds.

"The real Lex has to drink two or three beers before he can do one of these videos and 90% of the time, can't bring himself to turn the video on – doesn't wanna see his face reflected back on the screen. I'd keep my eyes closed, but that wouldn't do in this business of ours, would it? Nah. We gotta make eye contact. We gotta pace, posture an' preen. I just do the so-called 'bare minimum' because I'm one pair of cool shades an' a shirt with my own face on it away from wrestling with my hands in my pockets – Joe Cool don't give a fuck. Is that what you think? Is that really all you managed to glean from my words? Oh, yeah. I've spent years cultivating this 'don't give a rat's ass' myopic attitude. Bought these Chucks pre-scuffed from a thrift store. Spent an hour on my hair only for it to look like I just rolled out of bed after a bender – an' these dark circles under my eyes? It's stage makeup, right? I mean, we'll just turn a blind eye to the fact that you just got done rebrandin' yourself from 'Big Daddy' to 'Old School Cool' because you're in the age bracket now where calling yourself 'Daddy' before getting in the ring with a twenty-something fresh from wrestle school is less fetish an' more felony."

He snorts in derision, shaking his head.

"You held the metaphorical gun – faced down that binary choice. Pull the trigger, deal with the consequences. Or don't. Your choice is noted, Tirri. You wanted this and I get it, man. I get that sick urge all too well. You failed spectacularly in your last few outings. Should be riding high. Should have the big bank rollin' in from those checks cashed. Instead, you're faced with the reality that you're never gonna be good enough – the time you could pull that off's already well past you. So, you pull the trigger. Hope for the ricochet. Hope the shot finishes off what you were too chickenshit to do yourself because if you go out with a blaze of glory, all blood an' guts in the ring, you can call it a choice. You can call it a redemption story – a new legend to lie into the books. An' fuck me, right? You knew what I'd do the moment I heard the crash of breakin' glass."

He lets out that self-deprecating chuckle.

"Assholes in glass houses shouldn't throw boulders, Tirri. Bad dog, no biscuit. Look at this fuckin' mess. Now there's glass all over the place – careful now. If you get cut, it's your own dumb fault. Remember?"

He does close and avert his eyes, dragging in a slow breath as he runs his hand over his face, like he wants to scrub away the bitterness that coats every word.

"I never said I AM the darkness – I said I CAME FROM darkness – that wasn't a metaphor. Wasn't some philosophical bullshit about hittin' a career rock bottom. I blacked out the night I went out that second story window. My entire fucking life flashed before my eyes before impact, 'fore I landed in a pile of busted glass on the front lawn. Woke up in a hospital bed – illusion shattered, unable to bring myself to tell those goddamned lies again. I didn't trip. I didn't orchestrate it. Wasn't some schoolyard scrap. I didn't insert myself into a dangerous situation. I was seventeen years old, half-asleep. He was half-drunk, hollow-eyed an' somehow I knew it was a bad night even before the..."

He stops talking, shaking his head.

"When I opened my eyes, I knew it was over. Everything had changed but there was no such thing as freedom. Not then. That night, Alexander Clarke ceased to exist. They put this empty shell back together, shipped him off to a special foster family in Vermont. The family called him 'Michael' – I never used that name. I didn't talk to anyone for the next year. I was marking x's on the calendar on the wall, counting down the days to December 23rd – my eighteenth birthday. Two therapy sessions a week for a year and a half – 'show me on the doll where he hurt you the worst'. You wanna talk about scars, though. About how they're a thing that happens. Fact of life. Sure, man. All the ones that came after, they were. They were a conscious choice that I was completely in control of and the dumber it was, the more I wanted to do it. The more I needed to prove I was spared for a reason. That maybe this was the thing I was supposed to do – shit on that too. Tell me how twisted up I gotta be to fall into this business simply because getting hit by a stranger for some manufactured reason was familiar enough to the first seventeen years of my life that I didn't feel as empty."

He turns his head back, staring into the camera. His eyes are dead black, bloodshot before he blinks, tears pooling in his lashes, but they don't fall before he tips his head back, resting it against the red-painted wall behind him.

"Do you know how many people told me that it wasn't my fault? Every time I heard those words, I wanted to lash out. I wanted to smash an' rip an' tear like a goddamned animal – I never did. I swallowed them, internalized them until that cancer metastasized years later. It infected every corner of my life. It ruined my marriage. It made me miss several years of my daughter's life. It is what it is, though. You reap what you sow. I deserved that because I was pretending. I was pretending to be okay. To be a normal husband and father and human being when the alien on my head was needing to cover every finger with decoder rings just to make it from dawn to dusk without fucking up. They told me it wasn't my fault – I couldn't bring myself to correct them. It was. That night, it was. I made a mistake. I spoke out of turn, you see. I asked for a reprieve. I asked for leniency because I wanted to take my girlfriend to the homecoming dance – I wanted to be able to do something normal and not feel like an Outsider anymore – like a stranger in a strange land, doing this elaborate dance to hide the truth from prying eyes. So, you're right, Tirri. I lived the lie as long as I could, like the motherfucking phony I am. God, you're so smart, man; so fucking smart to see right through my elaborate web of lies so easy."

He closes his eyes again, taking another slow and measured breath.

"Five years ago. I... left home for a booking and didn't go back. I blew it all up. I moved to New York. I started dating someone else. I reinvented myself as a champion, several times over in several companies. I took all the pain, all the anger, all that sickness deep down in me an' I unleashed it all over everyone I crossed paths with. I won almost every match. I racked up a huge streak in 2016, became a fuckin' GOD in Olympus – things with that girl didn't work out. She left and a part of me still doesn't really understand what the catalyst was. She told me I'd cling too hard to the good memories, like I kept trying to recreate these moments like fireflies in a jar – bright, beautiful – absolutely stifling. Life went on, though. I met someone else. Won some more. While you were off doing whatever it was you were doing after we passed like ships in the night over in SVW... I was finally looking at myself in the mirror. I was finally seeing the ghosts everywhere, like a plank in my eye that once removed, made everything so abundantly clear."

He sighs.

"It is what it is – you know how much I fucking hate that phrase? You know how much that triggers me? It is. What. It. IS. Shit happens. Life sucks: get a helmet – everyone has baggage. So, when I brought mine up, when I mentioned the darkness and MY scars, I wanted Jack to know I understood what it was like to walk around with a ticking time bomb in my head. I wanted JACK to know that out of all the people in this fucked up business, that maybe he'd found someone who wouldn't judge him too harshly for that, for everything that had happened back in Carnage – fuck you for trying to make it something it never was, you blowhard dipshit. Tell me more about how you're just 'keeping it real' while you're 'shooting from the hip' – the last honest motherfucker in this game, so misunderstood, so vilified when he's just doing a public service. Oh, woe is Tirri, the patron Saint of Bullshit, the Last Bastion of Truth in this business."

He reaches out, putting his hand over the camera lens so that everything looks muddy orange before he mutters one last thing in a voice that sounds strained, suddenly hoarse as though he'd been yelling the whole time rather than speaking barely above a whisper.

"Game over, asshole."