text: My face exploded across a wall of screens. *Tonight, we honour the life and career of Rattlesnake Rick Houston*. A silent split-second, then the crowd damn near blew the lid off the stadium. Jack Ascot walked out in a suit and talked some smooth shit about what a legend of ‘wrestling entertainment’ I’d become. Managed not to mention how he’d sharked me for every last dime in every contract, or how he’d run me down in a golf cart, batshit drunk and coked to hell in his wife's dressing-gown back in ninety-three. The footage they replayed from the eighties summed up that whole time pretty well, though. Fake hair, fake teeth, fake tan. Everything fake but the scars. The good folks in the crowd just wanted me to come out, strike the old pose, shake Ascot’s hand and gracefully retire, but I didn’t do any of that because I was nine drinks and five shots deep in the darkest corner of a San Antonio dive at seven-thirty pm. Missed the ceremony, missed my last six AA meetings, missed baby Adelaide’s birthday party, again. Rattlesnake Rick was *The Greatest Fighter on the Whole Damn Planet*, but plain old Richard Collins wasn’t. Life hit hard, and it didn’t agree the outcome in advance. It was maybe five-am, sprawled cold and hungover in the dumpster out back, that a piercing light forced my eyes open like revelation. Fierce, white, raining down from on high and making a far-off racket like somebody taught an Apache helicopter to sing opera. I tried, painfully, to peel myself off the wet bags, then felt my stomach fired up into the air about ten feet before the rest of me followed on. ‘Jesus’, I thought. ‘I mean, Jesus. Jesus Goddamn Christ, Jesus’. Might not have been eloquent, but it’s truthfully what I thought at the time. Caught in a beam of white light, I whipped up through the air too fast to make out much beyond stars and a blue glow, and blacked out quick. Came around inside of somewhere with red walls curving upwards from where I lay, in pretzel patterns and with texture like sand - but that low opera-whine still resonated through everything and the light felt artificial. It was either a submarine or a ruined temple or some head-on collision of both. “Rattlesnake Rick of Houston,” a voice said. “An honour it is, to meet the greatest fighter of your planet.” Which was, y’know, weird. The guy who said it had four arms, purple skin, pitch-black eyes and a robe draped with the kind of multicoloured beads new-age folks hung from their doorways in the sixties. “And an honour it is for you, to be chosen,” he said. I felt my arms strapped to some kind of table, or maybe an altar. Panic boiled up in my stomach, and I told myself it was probably a waking nightmare brought on by sleep paralysis. My shoulder still triggered those off sometimes. “For centuries, the Zan’Kil Empire has taken world after world into its embrace,” the guy said, drawing closer to reveal multi-bladed teeth. “But we are not barbarian slaughterers. We offer each planet a chance.” He rasped on for a bit about how every civilisation in the sights of their spacefaring empire got the ‘opportunity’ to pit their toughest champion against the Zan’Kil Crown Prince, and those who won the fight got their people spared. I was fighting down last night’s chili dogs so it didn’t all compute, but I guess they did a scan and somehow figured Rattlesnake Rick actually was The Greatest Fighter on the Whole Damn Planet. I already knew the answer in my churning guts, but I asked him how many times somebody had knocked off a Crown Prince. “There is,” he smiled, “a first time for everything.” I got the feeling this guy was kind of an asshat. They unstrapped me from the table a little while after, five guards with twenty arms between them. Blow to the head. Blacked out again. Bladed teeth in my nightmares. That messed-up smile. That little pony toy, the one I’d forgotten to buy for Adelaide. *** They dragged me to my feet in a long tunnel and left me there to wait, the shape of an archway swimming hazy at the edge of my vision, far-off and blinding orange with whatever alien light was outside. I heard the breaking-wave rush of a distant crowd. That part felt kind of familiar. “If you win, they will not let you live,” said a voice close behind. I near shat my pants to see another four-armer standing there, staring dolefully at the archway. “If you defeat me and your world is spared, tradition demands your own life in return.” The guy I figured for the Crown Prince had about four feet on me, with thick armour and fists the size of beer kegs. “That’s not really the outcome I’m worried about,” I said. “Just so. I too grow weary of smashed innards staining my soul and fingernails,” he said, looking exhausted and sad. “But should I relent on the field and spare you, the ancients would know my blood had turned the pale blue of a sickly Zan-calf, and no longer blushed the fierce, rich mauve of a larger and more vigorous Zan-calf. My own life would be forfeit.” He smeared two thick lines of red warpaint onto his forehead, and it reminded me of El Noche Fuego’s godawful comeback costume from ninety-six. “If I could fairly lose this fight to a worthier warrior, and leave this world in peace, I would do so gladly,” he sighed. A thought fluttered wildly through my brain. “Say I wasn’t really The Greatest Fighter on the Planet,” I blurted. “Say it was all a lie, and your ancients got wind. What would happen?” “They would return you to your home and choose the true greatest warrior, as tradition demands.” That was it. I could tell them it was all staged - show them the backstage docs and trash-mag clippings on my phone if they didn’t believe me. Get home, let this forlorn bastard smash some Navy Seal’s head in, wait for the apocalypse and have a drink, have a lot of drinks, have all the drinks. On Adelaide’s fourth and last birthday. Jesus. Goddamn Christ Jesus. I turned to the Crown Prince. “Got an idea,” I said to him. He really did look kinda like El Noche Fuego in that warpaint. “An idea?” “You want to lose and I can't win a real fight, but this shit-for-brains empire hasn’t clocked onto what ‘wrestling entertainment’ means so we might have a shot at something here. If I pretend to hit you, think you can pretend like it's really painful?” “To counterfeit pain and distress? Yes, a simple task.” “Then keep close and just play along with my instructions, your highness - and when I tell you to stay down, stay down.” I stepped out to the edge of the arena, and the crowd’s roar swelled up around me. Took a little moment to say my goodbyes. Then, for the first time in a long time, I smiled like I did back in those old videos. “This is gonna be one hell of a show.