Call It Fate, Call It Karma

If you’re reading this, you know that I’m alive.

After my diagnosis of spinal stenosis, I struggled with that concept. I could barely walk around the house without thinking of all the ways I could slip up and die. My own home became a minefield. Showers were suddenly slippier. The distance between the bed and the floor seemed to grow. Stairs served as jagged traps of death. Nothing was safe.

But there’s nothing like the looming threat of death to really put things into perspective. As miserable as it all was, living along the Colorado mountains in a constant state of fear is what brought me back to SCW. It’s what brought me back to the real world, too—my friends, family, Elizabeth. The worry of having nothing—of being nothing—brought back everything to me.

Eventually, all the good that came to me kind of shrouded those fears. I think I got comfortable. I stopped living like time was a threat. Things started to get taken for granted. Now, everything that happens around me seems like a tragedy. I think I’ve reached a point where I need to be grounded.

Today, I got my wish.

Not long after Taking Hold of the Flame, where I continued my unlikely reign as SCW’s Adrenaline Championship. I wasn’t exactly the ideal picture of adrenaline, but here I was, trying to keep up with people ten-to-twenty years younger than me, no matter how much it took out of me. My latest victim was Autumn Valentine, who earned her moniker of Star of Tomorrow by losing to me today. Better luck tomorrow, kiddo.

Anyway, I got some news after that event. As a man over forty who was diagnosed with something that can properly put him out of commission, I get checked on after every match I have. This has been especially important lately after a string of brutal matches that have really put my broken body to the test. After my Taking Hold of the Flame check-up, SCW’s head trainer Curt Okafor let me know that they wanted me to head to New York to get an MRI and some X-rays done. While Dr. Okafor assured me it was routine, my mentor Elijah Lightwood felt it necessary to accompany me on the trip. I figured he was worried about my health ever since I overdosed in front of him. Fair enough, he wanted to protect his alien investment.

We were flying from California. First class. I made it, Mom. I mean, it was paid for by the company, but still, I made the flight.

“Do you mind if we talk business?” asked Elijah. He sat just across the aisle from me.

“That’s what people do in first class,” I replied.

“How are you feeling since stopping your meds?”

“Oh, so it’s not business then.”

“Your health and safety is my business,” Elijah explained. Pretty convincing, too. “How are you?” 

“Great,” I lied. I mean, things weren’t bad, but I was pretty depressed just generally speaking. Things had been building up for a while. I questioned basically every move I made. “Might have a new recruit for us.”

“You know I don’t like that word. These are human beings. Words like ‘recruit’ and ‘disciple’ reflect badly on our statement.”

Whatever the fuck that is. “Okay, well…I’ve found someone in support of our statement, I think.”

Datura.

She was a perfect candidate. All the potential in the world without the emotional capabilities of fulfilling it. If facing and defeating Syren was a professional high mark in my career, then my victory over Datura was an emotional one. I felt like I was really giving something to her: making her understand that people like me and her could do everything people like Syren can, even if we didn’t have the looks, money, and reputation. What gave us an edge over the privileged was the strength brought by our scars and the determination born from our failures. I had hoped that giving her the opportunity only to yank it away from her would be the last thing she needed to really break through, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Until now, maybe.

I really wanted this one. I guess she reminded me of Cookie if Cookie had opted to forego cupcakes and rainbows in favor of plants and recreational drug use. Maybe if I failed with one, I could fall back on the other. I don’t know.

“You’d like her,” I told Elijah. “She’s kinda vague and strange like you.”

“We’re a home for the vague and strange,” he replied with a sly laugh.

“The rooms have certainly been filling up, haven’t they?” 

“Maybe not as much since your wedding.”

“Of course…Beard,” I sighed. “Troubling business. To be fair, it was a soft-A, but once the media gets hold of something, rumors start to swirl into a giant wave of bullshit. Now nobody’s sure if he’s a dude who just slipped up or if he’s a card-carrying member of the KKK, assuming they hand out cards in those little meetings of theirs. Now he’s attached to us.”

“This is precisely why I questioned the need to go public with what we do,” Elijah butted back in. His teaching voice was on. “The good people on the compound know exactly what we are.”

“Right,” I agreed despite still not really knowing what exactly we were.

“But every time word slips out into the public, it’s twisted until it fits whatever narrative sounds most compelling to the casual listener. ‘Cult, secret society, harem,’ they’ll try to label us. You tried to prevent that with our ‘Positive State’ label, but you see that it doesn’t matter.”

“Hold on…harem?! Look, just because I surround myself with beautiful and vulnerable women doesn’t mean—”

“Your intentions don’t mean a thing,” Elijah interrupted. “Not in their eyes. That’s why that poor bearded boy will have a black cloud following him for the rest of his life.”

I nodded. Elijah was an older gentleman, so I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the herd of angry black people as a “black cloud” or if he was being metaphorical, but I decided not to push.

“Well, we’re at least better off than Holly, right?” I asked. I felt bad, but there was some relief that Holly and Beard were the ones dealing with the most backlash despite me being very involved with the decision to book Beard for the wedding. I didn’t need anything else on my plate. “We’re not running out of a Barns & Noble’s and we’re not desperately searching for black friends to make ourselves look better.”

“You’re right. All things considered, we’re in a good place,” Elijah said, tenting his fingers in front of his wry smirk that he always seemed to wear. “We also have Oliver as proof of our diversity. He joined before all of this nonsense. You recall the boy, yes?”

I’d met Oliver not long after my brief hiatus in Alaska and managed to snag him as my first successful recruit—for lack of a better word, according to Elijah—for the Positive State.

He seemed to think he was addicted to marijuana, but considered that he might actually just be self-destructive in general when he realized that he ran away from things that he knew would make him happy, like his wife and kids. It was a familiar story, especially to me. Nobody gets in the way of their own happiness better than me.

So, I plucked him straight out of an NA meeting and brought him back to the compound. Not my most saintly moment, but it had worked out pretty well, apparently.

Last time I saw Oliver, he was walking out of Elijah’s “breaking in” room with dried tears caking his cheeks. That was quite some time ago. I’d mostly been focused on Cookie and hadn’t really paid much attention to people like Oliver.

People like Oliver. God, maybe I’m the racist one.

Regardless, he was indeed black, and apparently still thriving in the community. While it wasn’t my intention upon meeting him months prior, he was now a pretty solid trump card for the Positive State and these allegations brought on by Beard and his colorful choice of words.

“Of course I remember,” I said. “He’s been doing well?”

“He has his issues, but yes. There’s a strong desire there to be better. That’s what I look for.”

“Well, there you go,” I said through a fake smile. “We’ve defeated racism.”

We were close enough to heaven that God must have heard me. Apparently, He didn’t have time for that kind of bullshit.

Before I knew it, I was flung from my seat and flailing along the walkway as the plane violently shook. Had I been in coach with all the other poor people, the lack of leg room probably would have kept me in my seat, but if the wealthy were the privileged on the ground, they held no such power in the air. I was vulnerable. Rich and vulnerable.

I grabbed my seat and attempted to pull myself up, but the plane again rocked to its side, flinging me back into Elijah’s lap. I didn’t even have a chance to pull myself out of his jeans before the compartments above our seats flung open to rain down baggage all over the both of us. Me being on top, I took the brunt of it. The plane steadied itself straight and I pushed the bags off of me, trying to get out of Elijah’s lap before it got weird.

“Uhh, sorry, folks,” came the trembling voice of our captain over the speaker. I could hear his panicked breaths through his nervous giggle. “Just a bit of turbulence there. If you bear with us, we should be clearing—OH, JESUS CHRIST!”

Strained grunts filled the airwaves before the intercom cut off abruptly. The ensuing silence felt like it lasted a lifetime, but, in reality, it couldn’t have been longer than a second before the entire plane turned completely, ejecting everyone who made the mistake of not buckling up from their seats, up onto the roof of the plane. If we were at the carnival, it’d be one of the most fun rides ever. Unfortunately, we were over 30,000 feet in the air while cruising above a flyover state full of corn fields and people dreaming of the big city, so it was instead the most frightening experience of my entire life.

Nobody could know how long we were flying upside down. We were too busy saying our last prayers to get out a stopwatch. All I know is that I was clinging to that ceiling long enough to take a look around the rest of the plane.

Everyone was either screaming or sitting in complete silence; you were crying out for help or praying for it. The ones responsible enough to have their seatbelts fastened hung there with their arms swinging around with the momentum of the plane. Blood rushed to their heads as they sank helplessly towards the ceiling littered with bags and loose bodies.

The plane tilted forward, sending peanuts, chips, plastic cups, and droplets of various liquids rolling towards me as I started to slip towards the head of the plane. I looked down and saw the doors to the cockpit fling open. I was going to go straight through, right up against the windshield. It’d crack and suck all of us out into the open air with me leading the charge. How would I die? On impact from the windshield? Having the air sucked out of my lungs until I could no longer breathe, just flying through the air? Or would I survive all the way towards the earth, suffering every terrifying moment before splattering into a messy, hairy paste?

I looked away from the cockpit and back to the chaos. A body hung from the doorway that exited the first class area. He was the only thing standing—or floating, I should say—between me and a cart that had gotten free of a stewardess. For all I knew, he came from coach, but it didn’t matter. Because at that moment, we were all the same. Just human beings flying through the air, straight to our deaths. While we were still here, nobody was better than anybody, and we were all headed to the same fate. Now, I’d say we were all going to the same place, but I know better than to act like I’m not going to hell.

Before I could slip further away, a hand gripped my wrist, stopping me from sliding any further towards the front of the plane. I looked down to see Elijah’s wrinkled hand trying to keep me away from the depths of hell. An oxygen mask covered his face.

“Where is your god now?” I asked him, but I know he didn’t hear me. Nobody heard me. They were all too busy screaming and praying.

But after a moment, the plane began to turn back to its natural position. It set itself straight, letting the debris roll to a stop in the middle of the ceiling. Slowly but surely, everyone and everything returned to its rightful place. On the floor, in the seats, in their designated area according to their ticket. The slow shift saved us from falling straight onto our necks. I glanced around to see people calming down and awkwardly placing themselves against the windows and twisting themselves until their feet fell back on the floor alongside the plane setting itself straight.

I was standing next to my seat, feet on the floor. I was alive. I am alive.

“Sorry again, folks,” the captain’s voice rang out over the speakers again. Trying his best to hide it, he spoke like a man who almost killed a hundred people. “Bit of a rough patch, but things look to have cleared up. Thanks for your patience! Should be landing in New York within the hour.”

I sat back down, looking down at all the leg room I had. It was appreciated. I was blessed, wasn’t I? I turned to see Elijah, who still had an oxygen mask clinging to his face. He gave me a thumbs up while huffing air.

“So, yeah,” I sighed as multiple stewardesses filed through the halls to both clean and check on the wellbeing of their scarred customers, “the Positive State should be fine.”

---

I’d done it more than a handful of times by this point, but I could never really get used to the new normal of sitting in a hospital bed following an MRI. Every single time, it’d take me right back to that small practice outside of Denver that I found myself in after I couldn’t bring myself to stand back up in the ring in the middle of my first match for my own little promotion I was trying to launch.

I swear to God, I remember every detail about that day, both big and small. It’s not like I have much else to do while waiting hours for my results, so I just think of the day that forever changed me.

The wave of tingles rolling down my arms. The false hope when it disappeared, only for it to come right back but spread through the rest of my body. Elizabeth rushing to my side, actually giving a damn about me for some stupid reason even though I hadn’t seen her in years. The bumpy ride in the back of Clyde’s truck as we rolled down the mountain. The suffocating tube they put me in. An excruciating wait for the results. That ridiculous Dr. Ed, who had to have been about a hundred. His stupid jokes. The punchline that was my spinal stenosis.

“You definitely can’t ever wrestle again.”

Then Clyde’s dumbass came in with a big drink and a bag of McDonald’s.

Things could never just be normal, could they? There always had to be a funny doctor, an idiotic sidekick, a bag of fucking McDonald’s, or a life-altering diagnosis. Par for the course. Why me? Was it because of all my sins or was I just born to be the clown?

My doctor walked into the room. Thankfully, it wasn’t that damn Dr. Ed, who was probably dead by this point. He looked too old to still be practicing medicine and that was almost ten years ago. Dude was definitely six feet under by now. For some reason, though, the thought of that made my stomach turn. Why should I even care? I don’t know. Maybe I missed the vulnerability of that day.

“Hello, Mr. Turner,” the doctor—Dr. Gupta—greeted me with some sheets in his arm. He hung them up on an X-ray viewer. Elijah sat in a chair not too far from my bed, looking eager to see how his alien overlord project was holding up. “How did the wait treat you?”

“You get used to it,” I lied. “No big deal.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Gupta replied before taking a seat and rolling it just near the X-ray board. He flicked a switch to light it up. There it was. Three separate images of the degrading bones in my stupid neck. “Just going to show you some things here. If you would do me a favor and follow along.”

This was…different.

Usually I got a thumbs up and sent on my way. With the good doctor looking at me, all I could do was nod.

The doctor pointed towards the first slide. “This is your scan from 2013,” he began, circling his finger around one of the discs in my neck. Flashes of that day ran through my head again. There it was, a black and white snapshot that somehow managed to encapsulate all those big and little moments from February 13, 2013. “You can see there, there’s a disc herniation compressing the spinal cord. That is why you felt the tingling and the weakness. It was quite severe.”

“I recall.”

“Then you see here,” Dr. Gupta went on, pointing at the same place on the second X-ray. “2020. Very peculiar. No surgery, no treatments, but significant improvement. A medical miracle, perhaps.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said. I still hadn’t told anyone that this “miracle” seemed to have come from me unknowingly being fed discarded baby fetuses and I figured I’d keep it that way. “A beautiful miracle.”

“And here we are today,” he continued, pointing at the last slide. “As you can see, things have changed.”

No. I didn’t see that at all. All of these things looked the exact fucking same to me. Really, I felt the same as I always did since I started this career. There were always little aches and pains and those just seemed to get worse the older I got. I’m over 40 and a professional fighter. At this point, life is pain.

“How so?” I asked despite feeling like I knew what he was getting at.

“Let me explain,” he said, going on to explain with terms and letters and numbers that didn’t help to clear up anything, to be completely fucking honest. All it did was confuse me even more. That was until he wrapped things up after what felt like an hour of nonsense. “To summarize, your condition has worsened in the last two years.”

And just like that, I was back in the mountains.

Lying on my couch with a biting breeze floating through my open door. I’d just kicked out everyone, including Clyde and Elizabeth. My mansion was devoid of all life, even with me lingering around. I no longer had any meaning or purpose. I was just another piece of furniture. 2020 was seven years away. My “miracle” was seven years away.

Now, my miracle seemed like nothing more than another extended spell of false hope. A two-year lie. Reality had settled in and revealed the truth—and the truth is a fucked up spine.

My mouth had dried up. For all I know, I was sitting there with a dropped jaw for five minutes like a fucking moron right in front of this doctor and Elijah. Finally, I managed to choke out a weak reply. “Oh.”

“I am sure you are quite familiar with cervical spinal stenosis having lived with it for nearly ten years. Very well read, yes?”

I nodded. I understood it about as well as I understood Gleebnorb and the Positive State, which is to say…well, not at all, really. Maybe the basics, I guess.

Spinal stenosis: pain, bad.

Positive State: aliens, good.

“So you know then that living a normal life with this is very much possible, especially in your condition,” Dr. Gupta said. “If your condition continues to worsen and the pain becomes troublesome, there are many options. For now, though, you can continue whatever methods you have been using to manage it.” 

Fighting for money and promoting mental wellness?

“What about my career?” I asked. “What about wrestling?”

“Well, you can see that you are in much better shape than in 2013. Things could have gone very badly for you on that day.”

As if that wasn’t already the worst day of my life. “But what about now?”

The doctor paused to look at me. Was he preparing to tell me something I didn’t want to hear?

“There are still some risks,” he said, causing my heart to drop. “It is my recommendation that this is something you refrain from. While you are not the ticking time bomb you once were, you are still playing with explosives nonetheless. However, I have dealt with enough athletes to know that their drive often gets in the way of medical advice. All I will say is that, as a doctor, it is my opinion that your days in the professional wrestling business are numbered. You can continue to take these risks, but as you know, all it takes is one moment to change a life forever.”

A moment. A moment inside the ring. A moment outside of it. This was a moment. A life changed forever—again.

“I see,” I mumbled.

We all just kind of sat there in silence. If there’s anything I’ve learned from multiple soul-crushing medical diagnoses, it’s that doctors aren’t really there to comfort you. They’re there to tell you the bad news and then leave you to deal with it yourself, which is exactly what Dr. Gupta did.

“I will leave you to discuss this matter with your father,” the doctor said, getting up from his chair.

I didn’t bother correcting him as he left the room. Elijah was close enough with me anyway. My actual father doesn’t even understand the alien inside me, so who am I really closer to?

The legs of Elijah’s chair scraped against the floor as he scooted closer to my bed. He extended a caring hand and placed it on my calf. My eyes were fixated on my feet, just beyond Elijah’s wrinkled fingers. I wondered if one day those feet would be completely inoperative. If it ever reached that point, I would never step foot onto a canvas again. Wrestling rings don’t have wheelchair accessible entrances.

“Dreadful news, my dear boy,” Elijah said, hand still gripping my calf. “I’m terribly sorry.”

I forced out a pathetic chuckle and shook my head. “Well, it’s the second time I’ve been hit with the news, so…doesn’t hurt as much,” I said.

I couldn’t buy into my own lie, however. Something about saying these things out loud—it just fucking hits you. It took everything I had to not start sobbing like a big, ugly idiot. God damn, was this a bad time to get off my meds.

“This is a safe space,” Elijah said. My gaze drifted from my legs to his face. That droopy, puppy-dog face. Those googly eyes behind wiry glasses. I guess he could sense that I was on the verge of tears. I mean, obviously. Of course he could. He had me pegged the moment he saw me. That’s why I’m where I’m at: under the thumb of an alien overlord I’m sure doesn’t even exist.

The bullshit we accept when we’re desperate to be okay again.

“You can say or do what you feel,” he urged.

If you’re reading this, you know that I’m alive. But as time goes on, I can’t shake the thought that this book is coming to a close.

“Everything’s coming to an end,” I whispered.

Elijah took his hand off my leg and leaned closer. “What’s that?”

Everything is ending. The Positive State. My wrestling career. My relationships. My life.

“I’m crossing the great divide,” I went on. I buried my face into my hands. I thought of everything I’d managed to dodge up to that point. No more. “Ever since the wedding, death’s chased me. Christ, maybe even longer. Now my legs are in danger of being taken from me. The end’s gonna catch up. I can feel it.”

“How do you mean, son?” asked Elijah. I felt him draw closer. “Visions?”

“The fires, the overdose, the plane…these are supernatural experiences. I’m being haunted by the other side. I know I am. And now…this,” I explained. My hands fell from my face and I was greeted by Elijah’s look of concern. Or was it a look of intrigue? “I’m dying. I swear to God, I’m going to die.”

“When you close your eyes, what do you see?”

“Huh?”

“Right now, what do you see?”

“I don’t—”

“Tell me,” he demanded softly.

Like a good little alien, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

A wrestling ring. I’m inside of it and I can’t get up. I’m alone. Terribly alone. No Holly. No Gio. No Cookie. No Sammy or Clammy. And as many times as he saved me, Asher’s not there for me this time.

Then I’m at the lake at the compound. The lake where I was reborn. The water is completely still. I’m sinking underneath without putting up a fight. For the first time, the compound is completely silent. Elijah isn’t there to pull me out. No one is.

I feel Elizabeth’s hand on my arm. Again, I’ve returned to the mountains, on my couch. I turn to look at Liz, but she’s not there. Maybe she never was. My fingers graze across where I felt the hand. It’s warm. A flake of ash drifts onto the back of my hand, seeping into my skin. I look around to see that my mansion is in flames. I did it. I remember it. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do these things.

I opened my eyes. The ceiling of my hospital room was a welcoming sight.

“I see the end of everything,” I tell Elijah. I’m going to cry.

“This is tremendously exciting,” Elijah mutters.

I’m no longer going to cry. I looked back at Elijah. He was Goddamn giddy. Seriously, he could barely contain himself inside his chair.

I raised an eyebrow and just had to ask, “Excuse me?”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked. No, I fucking didn’t. “It’s just like the books say. This is exactly what we’ve been building towards!”

The books. The fucking books. I’d had months to read them. Over a year, actually. The most I’d done is skimmed them and looked at some illustrations of Gleebnorb and other fucked up things, like naked, pregnant gingers and weird amulets. The words, though—they were so damn boring.

I don’t know. Elijah had told me about all these grand plans, but I had mostly turned the whole operation into a mental health movement in hopes of saving my own sanity. What wonders that fucking did, huh?

“Right, of course,” I mumbled, “the books. How could I possibly forget? Anyway, let’s, uh…talk about it. Um…what’s happening?”

Elijah shot up from his seat and started pacing back and forth, his eyes glued to his shuffling feet. I’d not really seen him like this before. It was like he was manic. Just mumbling gibberish while scuffing the floor with his dress shoes.

“We’re finally here,” he went on, not bothering to explain a Goddamn thing to me. Probably because he thought I knew everything. For as well as he knew me, he didn’t seem to grasp the fact that I’m a fucking idiot. “This is why your ability was taken from you.”

“What?”

“Your ability to wrestle—it was taken from you because it’s your time to put your full focus into leading us to the next stage.”

“Hold on, the doctor said I have some time to—”

“We’ve run out of time,” he snapped back, abruptly stopping his pacing to turn to me. “Silly stuff like your career—”

“Elijah, this is my fucking life.”

“—will cease to matter,” he finished. He’d given me a lot of freedom since I agreed to help him in his weird alien cause. My medical condition had apparently gotten me collared. “Sort out what you must, but my boy, this is everything we’ve been working towards. To you, it might still be new. A year of growth, a year of learning. To me, it’s everything I’ve been living for since the day I was born. We’re finally here, Cid. If anyone has ever doubted you in this movement, you’re about to show them just what you’re capable of, and I’m absolutely honored to be by your side while you do it.”

I just sat there in silence while he basically ogled me. Not only did I not know what the fuck he was talking about, but I kind of didn’t care. I tried my best to embrace this whole Positive State thing, even when it made no sense. I tried to bed Deanna Frost, for God’s sake—and I was even considering bringing Kimberly Williams into the fold if Elijah really needed a ginger chick for me to fulfill some prophecy.

But that apparently didn’t matter now. Everything was going to plan, according to him. Maybe me and him are just the same. Maybe we’re both just drifting along and making shit up while we hope something clicks and makes sense.

Problem is, it’s just like I said: these stupid diagnoses put things into perspective.

The Positive State is bullshit.

I’d like to believe that the Holly Adams Brand is real. Holly helped me. Or at least I think she did. But the fact that her and Gio have overseen all of the shit I’ve pulled with this and haven’t said anything…I don’t know. Are we really just a gimmick? Are the three of us—like Elijah—just miserable and clinging to something to give us some meaning?

I mean, sure, maybe I can help people. I might’ve helped Cookie. The girl is ready to return to the ring. She may not succeed in the way she wants, but her even trying would be a major victory in itself. She’s ready to try. That’s what’s important. Datura needs the same confidence.

Or maybe they don’t need me. Maybe they need to just be like me and live their lives and just take whatever the hell comes their way.

Cults, overdoses, broken hearts, and a choked spinal canal. But with the bad, I’ve got some good: championships, newfound confidence, and a family. I’ve got some fucking purpose.

Cookie probably got better all on her own. I was just there to cheer her on, really. Datura can probably do the same. Or Holly, Sammy, and Clammy. These are strong people, even if they don’t always seem like it. Stronger than me, probably. If they ever need anyone to remind them of that, then I’ll be there.

But I’m done dragging people into this ridiculous Positive State. Datura has requested to meet with me to figure out if I can help her…and maybe I can, but I don’t know if it can be through the Positive State. I’m done playing games with people, whether that be in this cult-that’s-not-a-cult (but it is) or in SCW.

If I can only go until I can’t anymore, then I’m going out in a blaze of glory. Someone’s going to take this title from me. Someone’s going to be made. Because whoever takes this off of me will be facing Cid Turner at his absolute best. They’ll be facing the same Cid Turner that refused to let a single soul pin his shoulders to the mat. They will have to beat the unbeatable.

No more clocking people in the head with title belts. No more taunting people just because I’m afraid that they’re better than me. No more psychological warfare. No more shortcuts. If I’m going out, then I’m going to make sure everyone knows what people like Chris Cannon, Datura, Bree Lancaster, Syren, or Selena Frost already know: underneath all the bullshit, I’m one of the best ever at what I do. The rest of the world will see that, even if it means I leave the ring—and the business—on a fucking stretcher.

But if I was going to finish my business in SCW, then I owed it to everyone to see the Positive State through to the finish line, which we were apparently heading towards. I didn’t know what awaited me at the end of SCW or the Positive State. All I knew was that I didn’t plan to leave any stone unturned, even if I had my reservations. Not like the last time all of this was taken from me. I was going to write my own ending.

Some habits are hard to break, however. As I was showered with post-diagnosis epiphanies, I also felt the sudden urge to go back to the mountains. You know, to hide again. Be alone. At least this time I wouldn’t have to spend years growing a hermit beard. Or, at the very least, I wanted to just…get away. The honeymoon in Italy wasn’t enough.

But there was the compound. I couldn’t just leave it behind, not to mention all the people there. But if I could bring the compound with me while I hid away…

“Okay,” I sighed. Elijah was still standing at my bedside, having just vowed to stick with me while we showed the world exactly what a positive state is all about. I was ready to give him that much, at least. I was hoping for a compromise, though. While it might not be healthy, I needed to indulge my need to get the fuck away from everything for a bit. “I’ve got a question.”

Elijah stepped closer. I could see his hands shaking at his side. He was really rattled. Eagerly, he said, “Yes?”

“Have you ever considered buying an island?”