Ugly As Sin

ALSO BY JAMES NEWMAN

Holy Rollers

Midnight Rain

The Wicked

The Forum

Revenge Flick!

Animosity

Olden

COLLABORATIONS

Night of the Loving Dead

(with James Futch)

Death Songs from the Naked Man

(with Donn Gash)

Love Bites

(with Donn Gash)

The Church of Dead Languages

(with Jason Brannon)

COLLECTIONS

People Are Strange

Massachusetts • Pennsylvania • Connecticut

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Previously published in limited edition hardcover by Thunderstorm Books.

This edition has been revised and expanded.

Cover art by Mikio Murakami

Cover type design by Yannick Bouchard

Digital layout by K. Allen Wood

Digital Edition Copyright © 2013 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC

Established in 2009

www.shocktotem.com

ISBN
978-0-9882723-5-4

Printed in the United States of America.

PRAISE FOR
UGLY AS SIN

“
Ugly As Sin
is James Newman’s best book yet! I loved every brutal, violent, pulpy page, and I recommend the hell out of it!

—
Jeff Strand
, Author of
Dead Clown Barbecue
,
Faint of Heart
,
and
Gleefully Macabre Tales

“
Ugly As Sin
is a terrific page-turner, a body slam of a book that features tough-guy noir, freakish horrors, and human redemption. James Newman skillfully spins a spiral of suspense that pulls you in and won’t let go.”

—
Brian Pinkerton
, Author of
Killer’s Diary
,
Rough Cut
, and
How I Started the Apocalypse

“
Ugly As Sin
is brutal, fast-paced, grimy fun, a compulsive page-turner with characters you’ll be deeply invested in by story’s end.”

—
Blu Gilliand
,
October Country

“
Ugly As Sin
has about as vicious a premise as I’ve ever come across. It’s not what it first appears to be. It’s worse. Wrapped inside its mystery and ticking-clock hunt is the most jaundiced indictment possible of the corrupted soul of celebrity culture...its feeders and especially its fed.”

—Brian Hodge, Author of
Picking the Bones
and
Whom the
Gods Would Destroy

“James Newman is one of my favorite authors. His novels are always engrossing and entertaining. I can’t recommend his works highly enough.”

—
John Little
, Author of
Miranda
,
The Memory Tree
, and
Ursa Major

This one’s for DAD. Through the years, as you taught me what it means to be a man, I might have thought you were a “heel” at times...but you’ve always been the good guy.

I hope I make you proud. I love you.

They caught him walking out the back door of the Amarillo Civic Center around one a.m. At six foot nine, a hair under three hundred pounds, he was the biggest in the Biz. But a homerun whack to the back of his skull with their aluminum baseball bat was enough to lay the giant down.

Of course, what fun would it have been if they stopped there?

Motherfuckers hit him again, in the ribs.

A third time, across his bum knee, for shits and giggles.

Then everything went black for Nick Bullman, a.k.a. The Widowmaker.

†

“Wake up, asshole.”

A high-pitched titter, like the mating call of some brain-damaged bird, followed by a second voice: “Time to pay the piper!”

“Shit, that smarts,” Nick groaned as he came to.

At least one of his ribs was broken, he knew right away—he could feel it scraping against something soft and vital inside of him with every breath he took. His head throbbed as if an eighteen-wheeler had rammed into it at full speed. Not to mention his left knee. Damn thing hadn’t been the same since Harry Hardcore’s sloppy Figure Four at the Brawler Series last summer. Now it felt as if that same eighteen-wheeler had driven over it, reversed, did it a few more times to add insult to injury.

Once he was fully conscious, Nick went to rub at the back of his head. But he couldn’t move. His captors had cuffed his wrists together behind some sort of steel post. He looked down to see that his ankles were bound as well, with black rubber bungee cords.

The persons responsible for his predicament were fuzzy humanoid shapes at first, looming twenty or thirty feet away from him. They watched Nick struggle and flex and curse their mommas for a minute before they stepped closer...

Two men. About half his age, but a thousand times uglier. The first thing Nick noticed: they wore matching referee shirts. Zebra-striped, zip-up, the Association’s blood-splatter logo on the left breast. Guy on the right, the taller of the two, sported maybe half as many teeth in his mouth as Nick had fingers and toes. Tufts of dirty blond hair stuck out from under his Longhorns baseball cap. On the T-shirt beneath his rumpled ref-wear, Nick recognized a smirking portrait of Rebel Yell, those Confederate Flag-wearing “rednecks” whose gimmick portrayed them as tag-team spokesmen for the downtrodden Southern man. Guy on the left had a few more teeth than his companion, but only one arm—the other ended at his elbow in a pink, misshapen knob. A tangled mop of curly brown hair fell just past his shoulders. The shirt beneath One-Arm’s ref-wear advertised his idolization for the Association’s reigning Heavyweight Champ, Big Bubba Bad-Ass.

Nick sat in one corner of what looked like a homemade wrestling ring. The thick blackness beyond it and a hint of corrugated metal suggested some kind of warehouse. Rust-colored splotches stained the mat beneath his feet. Even the smell was authentic: sweat, baby oil, and soggy spandex.

Nick was almost impressed. To suggest that the men before him were wrestling fans was like saying...well, like saying the matches were choreographed and it was all a soap opera for dudes.

“Here’s the deal, Mr. Widowmaker,” the guy in the Rebel Yell shirt began the festivities. He stood over Nick, arms crossed. “There was a time when people liked you. You seemed like a decent fella. But then I don’t know what happened. You got too big for your britches, betrayed your buddies in the Alliance. I couldn’t believe it when you hit Joe Cobra with that steel chair. You helped Garth Hater take the one-two-three, left your buddies high n’ dry. After all you guys had been through!”

“With friends like you,” spat One-Arm, “who needs enemies.”

“That was ten years ago.” Even as he said it, Nick wondered why he was explaining himself to these freaks. “Ratings had dropped. McDougal wanted to shake things up.”

“You oughta be ashamed o’ yourself,” said Rebel Yell. His tongue raked across his rotten teeth as he spoke, and the sound was like a snake slithering across wet concrete. “Them guys was your
best friends
! Scotty Mojo, Freddy Face, even that wetback, El Diablo. They believed that horseshit about the Corporation brain-washin’ you. Remember when you was gonna give away Freddy’s fiancée? They was tyin’ the knot at
Doomsday XVII
, right before Diablo’s ‘Rage In the Cage’ match with Vesuvius. But you turned on your buddies, and you hit Miss Jessica with the ring-bell?”

One-Arm nodded, his single skinny limb flailing about as if to emphasize his buddy’s point. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Always kickin’ below the belt, cheatin’ to win. It ain’t right!”

“I’m on one of those hidden camera shows, right? Is that what’s going on here?” Nick no longer knew whether to laugh or fear for his life. This felt like a lame beginning to an even lamer storyline, something the Association’s writers had conjured up on the fly but they had neglected to tell him about it. Marks who believed the work was
real
? Thirty, forty years ago maybe. But wasn’t it common knowledge these days that the outcome of every match was predetermined, and even the promoters called what he did for a living “sports entertainment”?

Apparently, these two morons didn’t get out much.

“You think you’re so smart,” said Rebel Yell. “But we got you! Waited on you after the main event, almost didn’t recognize you without your demonistic makeup.”