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Deathbed	By : MadameManga Category: WWF/WWE > General Views: 2322 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the celebrities of WWE/WWF. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 12
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- 14
This story is very loosely inspired by the plot of the opera “The Flying Dutchman”. I’ve cast a number of familiar people in the roles; they are not intended to be seen as their real selves, but as actors playing parts. All recognizable characters are the property of WWE, and no infringement is intended. This story is intended for entertainment purposes only.
Written in 2001.
Deathbed

by Madame Manga
I hid myself from him, burying my face against my father’s shirt, my breath coming in sobbing gasps. Papa held me close, one hand pressing my head into his chest and the other patting my shoulder. I could feel his heart beating furiously against my cheek.
“Honey, Ah’m taking you out of here. Ah don’t care who these people are or what they think they’re doin’. Let’s go to my car.” Loosening his grip on me, he threw aside the left-hand flap of his jacket. “Ah’ve got my Colt, honey, and there’s a shotgun and rifle in the rack. They are not going to stop us, you understand? Papa’s takin’ care of it.”
“Yes, Papa,” I whispered.
“Irene,” said the rider, his voice shaking.
“Por favor, señor,” cried the priest, “do not leave me here!”
“’Course I’ll give you a ride, Padre,” said my father. “Don’t run, now.” He glanced from side to side at Deadman, the family, and the grinning fat man. “Take it easy and walk slow. Get in the back seat.”
“Irene,” the rider repeated.
“It would seem, Undertaker,” said the Bearer of Indictments, “that this young woman is unable to corroborate your contention that she willingly submitted to sexual intercourse with you. In light of that failure, the court now finds—”
“Irene, you have to speak. If you don’t, I’m condemned. You understand that?” I looked around Papa and met Deadman’s eyes. They were all ablaze with acid fire, glowing baleful and green in his twitching face. “Speak now, or I’m done for.”
Desperately, I tried to find my tongue. “I…I…”
“Don’t you say one word, honey,” said Papa, touching the shoulder holster under his jacket. “Listen to me, you foul-mouthed ruffian. You’ve raped my precious daughter. If you speak to her one more time, so help me God, Ah will shoot you dead right where you stand!”
He pulled me to his Range Rover and opened the front passenger door. At his urging I began to get in. The priest dashed over and fumbled with a rear door. When Shane objected, raising his automatic, my father reached into the car and grabbed for his shotgun, giving it a hard jerk to slide the grip and cock the weapon with an ominous ‘shhklick’.
“The verdict of the court will now be rendered,” said the Bearer of Indictments.
“Irene,” gasped the rider, his face going blank with shock. “You can’t go running out on me now! You faithless bitch—”
“Shut your vile mouth!” yelled my father. “You will not speak that way to my daughter!” He leveled the shotgun.
“What are you, woman?” said Deadman through gritted teeth. “Who do you belong to? What was your job? START TALKING!”
“No, Papa!” I seized the end of the shotgun’s barrel. “He d-d-didn’t rape me,” I blurted out, shaking and stuttering with the awful tension. “I…I resisted, but I w-w-wanted him…to m-m-make me…have-have-have s-s-sex with h-him.”
“Oh, thank God!” Deadman took a sagging breath and tilted his face up to the stars.
“Indeed,” said the fat man. “A game of witheld consent? For purposes of titillation?”
“S-s-something like that…” Papa looked at me in horror. I began to hyperventilate and sob, awful noises accompanying every gasping breath.
“And yet you shot the Hellrider with the intention of killing him. Yess?”
“Y-yes. B-because I was afraid the…p-police would…find me here…if he kept me too long!”
“In other words, your witholding of consent was entirely serious.”
“Uh…” My head spun; I reeled from my uncontrollable breathing. “N-no…I…It wasn’t b-because—”
“It is logical to conclude,” said the fat man in his horrible piping voice, “nay, it is a fact, that when a woman shoots a man who has made advances to her, she is unwilling to submit to him. Your feeble attempt to exonerate him of the charges, at his instigation, is prima faciae absurd and points to either coercion or confusion of mind. Ohh yess. This portion of the victim’s testimony is therefore stricken from the record of this trial.”
“No—NO!” I cried. “I’m t-t-telling the truth!”
“You can’t throw that out!” yelled the rider in utter shock. “This is BULLSHIT!”
“He’s drugged you, honey! That’s it—Ah knew it had to be something like that!” Papa dropped the shotgun on the seat, seized my shoulders and looked into my face, pulling down one of my lower eyelids. “He’s fed you something!”
“The verdict of the court will now be rendered,” said the Bearer of Indictments. “By testimony and his own admission, the Hellrider is adjudged guilty of the crime of rape, which constitutes in one act the mortal sins of lust, anger and greed. He is therefore in primary violation of the contract imposed fifty years ago this night, and stands liable to all penalties, sanctions, and disadvantages appertaining thereto.” He clapped his hands. “This court is adjourned.”
“YEAH!” whooped Aitch, leaping into the air and shadow-boxing. “Got you, you son of a bitch!” Stephanie screeched with laughter, embracing Shane, and Vince grabbed Aitch’s hand and pumped it in congratulations.
“NO!” roared Deadman, swinging a fist in a furious gesture. “This ain’t over! That ain’t the truth, and you KNOW it!”
“On the contrary. This verdict cannot be appealed.”
The rider charged at him. When the Bearer dodged behind the hearse he vaulted over the hood and landed in front of him with a crash. Stalking forward, he forced him to retreat. “Like HELL! It’s a goddamn lie! You can’t ignore her testimony! She told you the truth! Irene—!”
“Not at all,” squeaked the fat man. “It is her former silence that is instructive! If she meant to exonerate you, she would have spoken when first asked! You threatened her in the court’s hearing, and she has fabricated an implausible story meant to appease your wrath!”
He paused, his eyes blazing with red fire. “Even if such a story were believable, telling it in such a manner would destroy any impression of its truthfulness. Which it has!”
“I don’t care who you are, you piece of shit,” hissed Deadman, throwing off his coat and grabbing the Bearer by the collar. “I’m gonna pound you into the dirt until you listen—”
“Aid me!” shrieked the fat man, pinwheeling his arms.
The driver’s door of the hearse flew open, and a man stepped out. Huge, muscular, even larger than the rider, and dressed from head to foot in close-fitting red and black. He wore a mask over his face and his hair was long and straggling. He and Deadman stared at each other for a moment.
“I know you,” said the rider. “You were ridin’ a bike the last time I saw you.”
“I was,” said the man in a rasping voice. “Release the Bearer of Indictments.”
“And if I don’t?”
“The verdict has been rendered. You invite the direct wrath of our Lord and Master.”
“Let him come!” shouted the rider, his temples turning red. “Let him come, and I’ll smash his face for him, if he’s even got a face! What did he do to my darlin’ Irene?”
Suddenly he shoved the fat man to the ground, ran around the hearse and came straight at me. “Irene! Tell him again! Tell him—” His eyes blazed green, his flaming hair backlit by the floodlights as he charged; I let out an involuntary scream of panic.
“El Muerto!” quavered the priest. “Santa Maria, protect us!”
Deadman broke off, breathing hard and advancing more slowly as I huddled in my father’s arms. He began again in a quieter tone. “Darlin’…I know I scared you, and I’m sick about it. You know I’m sorry. I’d never hurt you, darlin’—don’t you know that? You gave me everything you had to give, and I’m grateful. I guess I ain’t supposed to say how much. But you got to tell him again how it was!”
His deep voice broke; I almost thought he was going to weep. “Why didn’t you say it straight off? That you an’ me were makin’ real love?”
The priest chose that moment to begin another prayer. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum,” he muttered, quivering in horror at the rider’s approach. “Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.” My father recited the prayer out loud as well, defending me in his arms, his body stiff.
“Irene?” Deadman begged. “Please?”
“She’s a good girl,” said my father between his teeth. I could feel his frantic heart rate and the sweat beneath his shirt. “She’s a baptized Christian, and she’s my daughter. She wouldn’t ever consent to lie down with scum like you.”
“I didn’t ask you, Pop,” said the rider, turning his eyes to Papa. “I asked her.” My father closed his mouth with a snap; he was terrified to an extent I had never seen before. “My darlin’…it ain’t too late. Just tell that you wanted it with me. Nothin’ more than that. I ain’t askin’ for you to say that you feel…”
He compressed his lips; his eyes filled with all the adoration he had shown me, mixed with acid fire. “Didn’t you want it with me, Irene? Just say yes.” I said nothing, mesmerized with both fear and guilt, and yet unable to take my eyes off him. My father’s terror and religious dread was contagious—I had always been closely attuned to his emotions, and the tightness in my throat almost strangled me. The abyss loomed below me and I held like death to the only refuge I still had.
“One word,” my demon lover prompted me. “’Yes’.”
I still had the cartridge box pressed against my chest, and I could feel Papa’s crucifix in the opening of his shirt. I put my hand on it just as Deadman reached out to touch me. His fingers hovered above the skin of my cheek; he stared into my eyes, pleading silently, and then brushed his palm softly against my face.
I felt only the contact, but a horrid sizzle hissed in my ear and Deadman jerked back with the hellish light flaring in his eyes. Looking in disbelief at his hand, he displayed a new set of burns, black and smoking with a sickening smell. I dropped the box on the ground and it broke open.
“It appears that you have received your answer, Undertaker,” said the Bearer of Indictments with a furious squeak, struggling dusty and disheveled to his feet with the huge man’s help. “Accept the verdict, and there is still room for negotiation. Resist it further, and there will be nothing for you but the FIRE!” His voice rose to a high-pitched scream on the last word, echoing eerily through the yard and reverberating from every surface.
“Negotiation?” Shane began in an aggrieved tone. “I thought they were just gonna take him an’—”
“Hush,” hissed Aitch. “That’s why I had ya fetch the priest!” The son shut up.
For several minutes, the silence was oppressive. The family stood tensely by the house, the Bearer and his driver waited by the hearse. My father and the priest seemed paralyzed and I was motionless as well, all staring at the rider. He looked only at his burned hand, his desolate eyes glowing with the flame of Satan.
“So you say she’s sent me straight to the pits of Hell,” he finally said in a dead-flat tone. “I’ve broken the terms of my employment, put myself in Satan’s absolute power, and I’ve no more rights than any other condemned soul. You say my mortal sin’s given me over to the Author of Sin. A few more hours, and I’d have been untouchable even by the Devil himself. You say this woman’s destroyed me.”
“That is indeed what I say.” The Bearer of Indictments rubbed his hands. “And now. You admit that my bargaining position is immeasurably superior to yours, Undertaker. But the result of your crimes is not set in stone. Shall we go inside? We must discuss the new terms that our Lord and Master has provided for you.”
He smiled his horrible smile again. “We are inclined to be generous. Ohh yesss. We have been well pleased with your performance, Hellrider. All we require…is your mortal soul.”
“Get the mackerel-snapper,” said Aitch to his in-laws, and they began to advance with their firearms.
“I’ll make a counter-claim,” said the rider, still toneless, his great shoulders sagging. “About the tactics that got used to make me break the terms.” It didn’t sound as if that would gain him anything.
“No…” I whispered, finally finding my voice. It had all been twisted; my own perversion, calculation and ambiguity of mind used against him in a diabolical design. “No…I never meant…”
Aitch bared his teeth at Deadman and Stephanie tried to embrace all her relatives at once, pulling the family into a tight knot. The rider looked at me and them, putting us together in one category. His eyes returned to me. “You deceitful slut. I thought—well, I’m a fool. You told me yourself how treacherous you are.”
His eyes closed. “I see now. For once that fat asshole’s told the whole truth, because you’re Satan’s creature, and you’ve done the job you were sent to do. A flat tire on that left-hand curve?”
My lover slowly shook his head. “No more an accident than Aitch’s was. In the same place they all died—I should have known. All of you are his servants. You were given to me by the Devil, the pack of you, and you’ve destroyed me.”
He turned his back on me, and I collapsed in racking sobs.

Four white crosses on the embankment of a ditch. Four members of a family, hand picked for a purpose. As I had been? Picked for the Hellrider’s service, and for his ultimate downfall? Everyone but Deadman looked at me as I wept, wailing in an agony of regret; Stephanie stopped her ears and a couple of the dog-demons set up a consonant howling. Gradually I subsided, wiping my nose on my sleeve, but the tears kept streaming silently down my face.
“OK, get the priest into the house with the guns,” Aitch ordered his in-laws. They seized him and hustled him away from the Range Rover; my father clutched at me, seeming to need my support. He still shook with terror and didn’t even seem to recall that he was armed. I’d recovered far more quickly than he, because the strangeness of this place and its denizens had become so familiar over the last thirty hours.
“I am that damn good,” gloated Aitch. “As for this little lady…” He smiled at me and then looked at his wife, who eagerly pulled guns and boxes of ammunition from the Firebird. “She did good, and it seems she’s just like we are. Do we kill her too, or get some use out of her?” He took a double-barrelled shotgun and loaded it.
“Dear God…I didn’t know…” I moaned. “Why did this happen? No…please…give me another chance! Please, God!”
“Whatever you want, baby,” cooed Stephanie, looking up at him with a worshipful gaze. “You do anything with her you like.” Aitch gave me a slow, salacious grin, his eyes glinting reddish in the floodlights. “I wonder if she knows how to cook…”
“Who cares?” replied Aitch, loosening his tie with an eloquent yank.
“No,” I repeated, my throat gradually unbinding. Some alien oppression had lifted from me, though everything seemed dim in my sight since the rider had given in to the verdict. The tightness was easing, and the Bearer of Indictments was paying no more attention to me. Now that I didn’t matter to his purposes?
My mind clarified with every passing moment. He had done something to me; constricted and limited my speech to the ‘facts’ of my liason with Deadman—which added up to a lie. He’d seen that my father’s presence would make it almost impossible for me to admit my sexual preferences. And so he had orchestrated this trial to give the appearance of impartiality, when it could not have been more unjust.
The Hellrider had been railroaded; perhaps that was why he still had to be bargained with before they could take his soul. I knew exactly what was going to happen to him: my lover’s memories and humanity destroyed, immediately and forever, and it was my fault. Maybe the Bearer of Indictments couldn’t tell a direct falsehood, but like any lawyer worth his salt he could make a lie out of truth and hatred out of love.
A fitting servant of Satan, for the Devil could quote Scripture! Never had the cruel nonsense of Deadman’s redemption seemed more obvious, for what had seemed to be something strong, undying, wonderful, a force of light and warmth miraculously generated between two people devoted to darkness, had turned to ashes in a few moments.
A flash in the void, no more, as it seemed to me at that moment were all faith and hope. Evil and despair were stronger than love. Love could not conquer the darkness. I stared at the rider’s back, everything that had passed between us washing over me. I knew what my unfamiliar emotions were; now that it was too late, I had no shame, no barriers in my mind, and at last I could call everything by its right name. Too late, I was transformed.
Deadman stood by himself, fists clenched at his sides and facing out into the night. “Why?” he raged in a whisper. He didn’t seem to speak to anyone present. “Why? I hadn’t had a woman in fifty years, and I had to be tempted? Why? To put the last nail in the coffin of my hopes? To make sure I wasn’t going to find my phantom redeemer? You’ve tortured me for fifty years! When does it END?”
He stamped on the earth, his voice rising to a cry. “Why did you put her there to wait for me? A woman with blood-red eyes, a woman who smells of death? You knew I couldn’t resist her!” he howled. “Not when she let down her hair like a waterfall of blood and told me she knew about death! Not when she put those eyes on me and wouldn’t look away! A demon temptress who’s killed men and bathed in their blood! The only kind of woman I couldn’t walk away from! WHY?”
Aitch walked up to me with the shotgun and pointed at my purse. “Drop it on the ground.” I brushed the strap from my shoulder and let it fall. He seized me by the arm, wrenching me away from my helpless father.
I braced myself for the sizzle, but there was none; the cartridges lay on the ground and I wasn’t touching Papa’s crucifix. I had no more protection from the undead.
Aitch smiled into my face, took the clip from my hair and put the shotgun on his shoulder. “Come on inside, ma’am.” My hair fell down my back, uncoiling with a soft sound like a whispering voice. “We got us some catching up to do.”
With awful clarity, I realized he wasn’t bound by any contractual conditions—no one was going to put him on trial for what he meant to do to me. His free arm slid around my waist, the muscles hard as iron under his suit jacket.
“You will accompany me, Undertaker,” piped the Bearer of Indictments. “Bring the Hellrider to me,” he ordered his driver. The huge man in red and black walked over and laid a hand on the rider’s shoulder, but for the moment he didn’t move a step, seemingly oblivious.
“Irene…” he groaned, so low I barely heard him. “God, Irene…” He wasn’t calling to me; this was nothing but the last spark from the dying embers of his love. Deadman rolled his head irregularly from side to side, his shoulders heaving as if he were trying to suppress sobs. “You never…wanted me…”
The abyss yawned wide before us. In a moment, darkness would devour both of us and every hope we had ever possessed would be snuffed out forever. Though I knew all effort was futile, I had to rage against the dying of the light. Entirely unprompted, I had to tell him the truth.
With the last of my strength I pulled away from Aitch—I had my voice again, I had some power to move, and without even forming the resolve to descend the precipice, I leaped into the unknown.
“I LOVE YOU!” I screamed. “I LOVE YOU, DEADMAN!”
Aitch’s in-laws, who had taken the guns and were heading up the steps with the priest, suddenly froze.
“I never meant to betray you! I wanted you from the moment I saw you! I’ve wanted you all my life! I love you as I’ve never loved any man!”
“What?” said Papa.
“Huh?” said Stephanie, straightening up and hitting her head on the frame of the Firebird’s door. “Ow! What did she say?”
“I love you. I…love…you!”
It was the truth, the searing, agonizing, perfect truth, bursting from me like a life-force torn from my vitals, and the words seemed to change the very nature of the air. Deadman stood motionless, his back still turned to me. He didn’t even seem to breathe.
“Stop!” screeched the Bearer of Indictments. “Be silent, woman!”
There was more I needed to say, as if a sweet voice whispered a liturgy in my ear. “I will always love you. I will be faithful to you unto death. I swear it before you and in the presence of this company!”
The man in red and black suddenly released Deadman and moved away. The rider staggered as if he’d had a support beam struck out from under him, a hand going to his forehead, then lurched around to look into my eyes.
“NOOO!” squealed the fat man with hideous wrath building in his face. “NOOOO!” He shook his fist at me, his eyes flaming red. “Daughter of Eve, beware! You’ll regret this, human sow! Your pitiful soul—”
“Shut up!” said Deadman, his expression mixing fury and an extraordinary piercing joy.
“Ohh…fuck,” moaned Aitch. He backed away from me as the family stood in shocked silence, the shotgun dropping from his hands. Obviously he knew only too well what had just happened, and the aghast look on his face suddenly slammed it home to me.
I was the Hellrider’s redeemer. I was his salvation—I, a woman who had used her body for any purpose but God’s before she had met her one undying love. I was the woman he had been seeking for nearly fifty years.
A horrible, ululating cry like that of a bird of prey went up from the direction of the hearse. I jumped, and everyone stared at the fat man’s gibbering rage. He danced and shrieked, tearing up his scroll. The bits vanished in puffs of flame.
Screaming to his approaching driver, he opened the door of the hearse and jumped inside; the doors slammed and the hearse reversed down the drive.
The priest broke free from the paralyzed men and stumbled down the steps into the yard. Howling and whining, the dog-demons chased the big black car; Deadman kicked one as it went by.
“Hounds of hell!” he bellowed. “Run back to your master!” Ignoring the family, who milled in confusion around the yard, the rider took three long strides forward, pulled me into his arms and kissed me.
“What the hell is going on?” shrieked Stephanie. “I thought you said we were going to get rid of him! I thought you said you had it all figured out! What the hell happened?”
“Goddammit!” yelled Aitch. “Goddammit!” He caught up the shotgun, leaped into the Firebird and took off after the hearse, making a wide detour around my father’s Range Rover.
His wife screamed and ran a few steps in pursuit, but the car was gone. “Daddy! Tell me what she said! Why did the Bearer leave? We’ve still got the priest—can we—?”
“No good now!” Vince yelled, seizing her by the hand. “Run! ‘Fore he gets us!” They all sprinted up the steps and vanished into the house, but Deadman had no eyes for anyone but me.
“Darlin’,” he whispered, kissing me and holding me close. “Darlin’ Irene…” Was it true? Was I his redeemer? Or was he mine? I felt cleansed, burned free of filth again, mind and body new as if reborn, and I surrendered my lips to him with no thought of anything but redemption and forgiveness.
“I love you, Irene… You wouldn’t let me say it before. I love you.”
“I know, my love,” I replied, tears streaking my cheeks. “I love you so…”

Continued...
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Deathbed