Poem For The Hangman

By Warren Bishop

International Extreme Wrestling Superstar Paul “The Hangman” Gregory faces life-changing challenges when seriously injured in the ring. As his injuries heal and he moves toward a comeback, he must come to terms with failed friendships and betrayal, as well as new interests and relationships, including a new love interest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warren Bishop
• Release date: Dec 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465919502

Warren Bishop

WARREN BISHOP lives in Muscatine, Iowa. He has published a novel, Poem For The Hangman, on Smashwords. He has also published non-fiction works in Midwest Outdoor's Fin and Feather, Tactical Knives, the Guns Annual, and Suite 101. Bishop took first place, senior division, in the International Air Gun Postal League.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The arena lights blazed across his vision like comets in the night sky as International Extreme Wrestling Superstar, Paul The Hangman Gregory, flew through the air. He fell out of control knowing there was no time to land correctly. He let his shoulders take the impact and the back of his head hit the mat hard. His three hundred forty pound frame pinned his head and neck down while his body tumbled over it flipping him face down. He could only feel the rough canvas on his cheek. He heard, Your neck is broken. His brain screamed and his heart stopped. He fought to move. This can't be true! It just can't!

Tommy, get the paramedics, a voice cut through the fog.

One heartbeat before, he was alive, and then nothing, like a switch thrown disconnecting him from his body. Feet clustered around his unmoving body 13,000 miles from home and The Hangman's career halted. Four thousand rabid I.E.W. fans sat stunned as the emergency crew laid him on a stretcher and rushed him to a waiting ambulance. Life as he had known it ended with a small wet crack reverberating through his skull.

Paul, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry, said Jerry Jones, former power lifter and Big Ten wrestling star, repeating this mantra of regret over and over as the paramedics hustled the stretcher out of the arena.

Paul Gregory, the Hangman, and his partner, Mickey Thug Reynolds, were wrestling Jerry and his tag-team partner, Corey, across Asia, where they were known as the Californians. Jerry and Corey had chiseled blond surfer-boy good looks. They were the good guys; known as baby faces in the trade. Jerry's finishing move, the wipeout, went horribly wrong.

Every good guy needs a bad guy or heel to beat up. Mickey and Paul with their manager, Janie, filled this need. Together, they were Team Devastation, the most infamous duo in I.E.W. and the fans' favorite pair.

The last people Paul saw before leaving on the stretcher were Jerry and Corey. They looked down at Paul outside of the ambulance before he was lifted him in and they closed the door. Fear sat in Paul's belly like a leaden beast clutching his heart with icy dread through the following days and weeks of rehab. Paul's world became two off white acoustical ceiling tiles and concerned Asian faces entering, peering at him, smiling, and leaving. But it was who didn't visit that was more telling. A respirator pump did the work his lungs couldn't and its rhythmic thump counted off the minutes filling the hours of the day.

Jerry and Corey visited frequently before they had to continue the tour. Paul was glad to see friendly faces but the silence, broken only by the thumping respirators created awkward visits relieved only by Jerry's and Corey's awkward exits.

The initial diagnosis was trauma to the spinal cord and broken spiny processes of the 3rd and 4th cervical vertebrae causing pressure and swelling of the spinal cord. Paul was told time and therapy may or may not let him regain use of his body. Until then, respirators and machines would have to do his body's work.

Where were Janie and Mickey? Paul couldn't help but wonder about Janie; they had been together for three years. They entered the ring together Janie bounded around the outside in tight, short figure-hugging outfits while he worked. He talked Janie into managing his and Mickey's team.

On the outside, Janie looked like eye-candy from her platinum blonde hair to her painted toenails but she had a sharp business mind. Her uncle wrestled throughout the South as Billy-Hillbilly so she knew the business inside and out. Paul met Janie at her uncle's wrestling school when he was learning the trade. They had been together every bump by painful bump since and, at times, their passion left him weak and confused.

The fighting started around the time he thought they should tie the knot. Janie was lukewarm to the idea and jumped back and forth between yes and no. Coolness grew between them starting the month before they signed up for the Asian tour. Mickey lurked in the background and fanned the flames of Janie's discontent.

The night before the match, Janie didn't sleep in their bed and when Paul arrived at the arena, Mickey and Janie acted guilty. Images of rage and violence had filled Paul's skull. He should have punched Mickey instead of doing the show but the fans came to see Thug and Hangman, Team Devastation, so they always kept personal business outside the ring.

That night, Paul was supposed to take the wipeout, Jerry's finishing move, then Paul was to kick out from that and nail Jerry with his own signature move, The Hangman, He would hoist Jerry high onto his shoulders in a reverse choke hold while Mickey and Corey went at it outside the ring. But the plan went horribly wrong and now his world had stopped and Janie and Mickey had disappeared.

Paul received a brief letter stating since his accident Team Devastation had decided to explore other options and his services were no longer required. Janie wished him well and said she hoped he would find other representation in the future. In what seemed to be contrived as an afterthought, Janie wrote she and Mickey had decided to hook up. A nurse read the letter to him in Korean-accented English and the whole scene seemed surreal. The reformed team and Janie and Mickey's hook-up didn't last past Osaka, Japan; during a televised interview, Mickey said Janie and Paul had held him back.

Chapter 2

Mickey was a rising star in I.E.W. and when Paul left the hospital after weeks of rehabilitation and made it back to the states, Mickey was in line to be heavyweight champion. Janie and Paul briefly met in Seattle at a Ramada Inn. The meeting upset Paul deeply. Janie just wanted to lash out at someone so for thirty minutes, Paul listened to her rant about his shortcomings as a man and how he had failed her. When Paul mentioned Mickey, Janie burst into tears and left. That was the last time he had seen Janie or been back to Seattle.

After that, Paul went back to the Midwest to complete his therapy and restart his life. He thought maybe another degree would give him focus and free him from the past so he went back to school and reacquainted with an old friend, poetry. Paul had found solace in poems while on the road. He hid his passion from everyone, including Janie. He snatched odd moments to write, placing his road bag next to him so the fledgling poem could be tossed at the first hint he might be discovered. The night of his accident, he scribbled a poem's opening line when Janie and Mickey walked in their cloud of guilt and he quickly tried to hide the evidence in his bag. Now he wanted to make his words live; he wanted to be more than a pretender. He wanted to be a poet.

Grey was the sky. On the day you and I died.

To be as one. You said, joined forever, linked by love.

This you swore, smiling at my naiveté as you took another

To our bed.

That's, aaah… That's, well, it's all I have…right now. Paul could feel all eyes in the classroom. He cleared his throat and looked to where Miss Clara Winters sat swinging her dainty sandaled foot. A smile slowly crossed her face and her lovely blue eyes gazed at him like he was a rare new type of bug that had somehow found its way into her classroom.

Mr… She glanced down at her class roster and made him sweat. He had seen this little scene play out before; first the slow smile, then the sky-blue eyes as cold as a glacier freezing him in place while she pretended to look for his name.

Mr. Gregory? Correct?

Yes.

Mr. Gregory, this class is for serious students. I believe you were to come to class with your completed poem. Correct? asked Miss Winters.

Yes, Miss Winters, but… Paul Gregory stopped. He looked at Clara Winters and couldn't bring himself to say what was on the tip of his tongue. Poetry was Paul's passion but it was torture to share his inner most thoughts and feelings in front of a college room full of ethereal young men just too pretty for words and girls in the first blush of womanhood. This torture was punctuated by Clara Winters, a five-foot-seven dynamo presiding over the poetry class with a stern look of control.

Sit down, Mr. Gregory. When I give an assignment, I expect it to be completed, said Miss Winters.

Paul returned to his seat and let the rest of the period run out while hiding behind his textbook. Go back to college get another degree? It seemed like a good idea at the time, Paul thought with poems about flowers and kittens assailing his ears. Crap, these kids are as unformed as dough; pretty flowers. If that was their passion, where was their fire? Similar thoughts ran through Clara's mind while her foot swung back and forth ticking off the minutes until the class ended.

Poetry was all Clara thought about but that normally wasn't a problem. Most men who signed up for her classes would be hard pressed to set any female heart aflutter. They were more the friend type; willowy, lank locked boys in berets calving on about virgin moons. But Paul Gregory, older than typical college freshman by fifteen years with broad shoulders and a round belly couldn't be so easily dismissed. He reminded Clara of a Santa Claus biker figure with hard brown eyes that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up when their eyes locked during her dissection of his most recent attempts at poetry.

Paul tried to get comfortable in the hard plastic chair to try to ease both his aching hip and his girth which barely fit the undersized chair. He was unaware he was being tried and found wanting in Clara Winters' court.

When class was over, Paul slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door, still stinging from the dressing-down he'd endured once again. Clara's words didn't hurt as much as the way she said them with her red kewpie doll lips framing perfect gleaming white teeth and her blue eyes rooting him to the floor.

Hey, watch where you're going! said a classmate he bumped into on his way out of the classroom. Paul stopped and turned his thick blocky frame like a tank spinning on its treads effortlessly clearing a space around him. He panned the crowd and gave a brief smile that was more of a flash of exposed fang to one of the more willowy young guys in his class. Excuse me? Were you talking to me? Paul asked with a stare like a visual fist ready to crash against the man's unprotected face.

Ah, no. The man backed down.

No? asked Paul, smirking at the crowd of faces.

Paul turned; he plunged through the door ignoring the murmurs. Paul was agitated; he swept through the halls and out to the stock red Harley Davidson electric glide bike he'd had for years. It wasn't