Hector Monagas had one major ambition in life. His mother had always been fond of the saying ‘go big or go home.’ And Hector wanted to go big. Really big.

Since as far back as he could remember, he had wanted to be a WWE wrestler when he grew up, like Hulk Hogan, the Rock, and John Cena. At least when those three were the babyfaces, before their heel turns.

To make his dream a reality, he began wrestling at a very young age. He was a natural and great at it.

Eventually, he won State. Then Nationals. He did well in the United World Wrestling rankings and won a continental competition.

At 19, though he had qualified for the Olympic team, a knee injury kept him from competing. At 23, he tested hot, so couldn’t rank. The steroids his doctors prescribed to help with the knee injury were the culprit. He had just taken what the doctors told him to, so he’d heal and be allowed to compete.

It was infuriatingly unfair.

At 24, his girlfriend became pregnant. He did the right thing and married her.

At 26, reality was stifling his dream. He was married with two kids. He worked as an Amazon driver while attending school at night to become a physical therapist. He also helped his father with his landscaping business on weekends and whenever else he had the time.

His father and his father-in-law both told him they were proud of him, proud that he had set his dreams aside to get a real job and take care of his family. Like a good man. Hector had always tried to be a good man.

He hadn’t given up on his dream though. He was trying to make it as an MMA fighter, so he trained at least three times weekly for that.

Bo Nickal, Randy Couture, Dan Severn, and Matt Lindland had started off in the MMA with pure wrestling backgrounds. Ken Shamrock, Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, Bobby Lashley, and a few others had successfully transitioned to the WWE.

Hector took as many fights as he could get. When he could, he’d join in on amateur wrestling events. Only if they weren’t too far of a drive.

Hector never really put much thought into his faith. He was raised Catholic and went to church every Sunday. He wasn’t really involved in the church community, though his wife and parents were.

The older he became, the more he saw society falling apart around him, the more he saw whiners and losers getting their way and winning, all while those doing the right thing took loss after loss, the more he began questioning the meaning of life. The meaning of it all.

It seemed to him that the only guiding force behind anything was apathy.

He came to conclude that there was no God.

It finally clicked in his head after going out with the boys one night and getting blackout drunk. The next day his friends called at various points to laugh and tell him all the foolish things he had done. It seemed like he had fun. He couldn’t remember a thing.

His friends told him that he cheated on his wife. He had always been a horny guy. Being married, he never gave in to his impulses. Until now.

Except he couldn’t remember cheating, so he didn’t count it as cheating. He received no benefit from the act – none of the flirting, excitement, or pleasure. For all intents and purposes, he had never cheated.

He put a lot of thought into that over the next couple weeks. If someone couldn’t remember doing something, it never really happened.

If there was no God, and everyone just ceased to be at death, life never really happened either. Hitler and Mother Teresa had the same exact ending. Stalin and Gandhi. Mao and JFK. Pol Pot and Martin Luther King.

No one was rewarded for being good in life when it ended, and no one was punished for being bad. Everyone just ceased to exist. No memories. Nothing. There was no meaning to any of it. Morality and ethics were shams, cons.

He watched some videos of famous atheists. He needed an anchor. Some reason to give meaning to it all. Some good reason to hang on to morality he just hadn’t thought of yet.

None of the moral atheists had good reasons for being so. It always boiled down to, “I invented some nonsense that works for me and keeps me moral. I just ignore the fact that its every bit as irrational as believing in God or an afterlife.”

The same as when Hector was blackout drunk and couldn’t remember anything the next day, what he did in life just didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

At least when he had gotten blackout drunk, he was still alive the next day. Still a person. He was still something, not nothing.

He knew that when he died there’d be nothing. No remembering anything, no doing anything, no being anything. No being at all. Just nothing.

So, nothing mattered.

Hector loved his wife and kids. He’d never do anything to hurt them.

Occasionally, he’d hear about some guy going nuts, killing his whole family, then killing himself. Like the wrestler Chris Benoit.

He had always thought those men were truly evil and despicable. He now knew there was no such thing as evil. He began to think those men probably figured out exactly what he had just figured out.

And if you love someone, you never want that person to suffer.

Love was real. He knew that. Evolutionary induced chemical reaction or not, he could feel love. He felt it.

There was no good reason to allow those he loved to continue suffering through life when the end of it was nothing. Just ceasing to be.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

It was far more compassionate and humane to make them cease to be sooner rather than later, not after all the suffering, crushing disappointment, and struggling a continued existence required.

Life took a toll, but there was absolutely no reason to pay it.

So, that night, Hector killed his wife, then killed his son and daughter. He killed them painlessly. He gave them the exact same fate everyone else eventually got, just a little sooner than natural.

As he went to kill himself, his wife’s phone chimed. His sister-in-law, Daniela, texted.

Daniela was hot. He had always wanted to sleep with her. He now regretted killing his wife before having sex one last time. He texted Daniela back, pretending he was his wife, telling her there was an emergency and she needed to come over right away.

Daniela didn’t get it. She couldn’t understand. She whined and cried the whole time, calling Hector a monster, constantly asking him why he was doing this.

She just wouldn’t accept there was absolutely no reason not to. Whether he did or didn’t, it all ended exactly the same. With nothing. He wouldn’t even remember any of this. Same as Daniela.

He thought his need would all be out of his system with Daniela, but she stopped looking so hot after a while, with her bloody face and all the bruises, cuts, and crying. She looked a lot better with makeup, when she was trying. And all the urine and fecal matter was a real turn off.

He thought of Abby, his wife’s friend. She was smoking hot. Her body was tight.

He could never think about it before. Now that he didn’t care about consent or what the other person wanted, he could have a lot of fun before ceasing to exist.

He needed a gun first. His neighbor had a ton of them. It was 6 a.m. on Saturday, but his neighbor was an old man and always got up around 5 a.m. or so.

Hector rang and waited. Mr. Colten came to the door in a bathrobe. “Morning, Hector. Everything okay? Need me to watch the kids or something?”

“No, sir. Mind if I come in for a second?”

Mr. Colten didn’t mind. He was a kind man. It was sad his reward for being a good, decent, kind, and helpful man all his life would be nothing at all. Just ceasing to exist. Same as Jeffery Dahmer and Ted Bundy.

Only two guns weren’t in the safe - a revolver and a normal one. With Mr. Colten dead, there was no way of opening the safe.

Hector had very little knowledge of guns, so he had no idea what the names of each were. He couldn’t find any extra bullets either.

Since he knew things would get messy, Hector packed a few changes of clothing. There was no reason to stop with Abby.

His friend Paul’s girlfriend Maria was always flirty. He was sure she wanted to sleep with him. Paul was a security guard and worked doubles on Saturday.

Trish didn’t live too far away either. He had had a crush on her since seventh grade. Soon, she would finally be his.

He knew it was irrational since he’d be nothing, but the thought of his mom and dad finding out about what he had done and being disappointed with him was something he didn’t want. They were basically on the way to Trish’s house. There was no good reason not to kill them too.

As a bonus, his older sister lived with his parents. He never really got along with her. He did like her kids. He would just tie his sister up and leave her alive so the rest of her time between now and ceasing to exist would be miserable.

Then Hector went on to have the time of his life. It went great until Trish’s house. Things got too loud there. Before he was even finished, cops had surrounded the house and were yelling through bullhorns.

As Hector was pumping himself up to burst through a window with his two guns blasting, going out in a blaze of glory, a bunch of words popped into his vision. He thought he was dead. He thought the words were part of ceasing to exist. They weren’t.

He was being sent to some contest. A strange-looking creature appeared. It said it was a demon. He made a deal with that demon. He’d get a knife if he agreed to kill some people. If he succeeded, he’d get some sort of special reward. He agreed.

He fulfilled his bargain with the demon by killing the nine people he promised to. Then he killed everyone else in the tutorial area because why not?

After receiving his reward, he found a Profile Reader. He read all the information he could. The contest had something to do with Heaven and Hell and the fate of the whole world.

Holy shit! God is real, thought Hector nervously. That…come on! Seriously? Jesus Christ! They couldn’t bring me here and told me this yesterday? I have the worst goddamned luck!

Forgiveness had to have limits. If He was real, and everything now indicated He was, there’d be no faking with God. A few ‘Hail Marys’ and ‘Our Fathers’ wouldn’t cut it.

Hector didn’t feel bad or guilty for anything he had done. He had a ton of fun doing most of it. He was regretful though. He wished he hadn’t done any of it now. He wanted to be a babyface, not a heel.

But redemption, true redemption, would probably require him to actually feel bad and remorseful, and not just regretful about the consequences.

So, redemption was out.

Like Ma always said – go big or go home. And there’s no going home now.

If I’m gonna be a heel, I’m going big. Really big.

----------------------------------------

I was worried. After using my Sortilege in the Court and Castle areas, I was low on Veil. Way too low. And since I was the lead and using my terminal, neither Bob nor Az’ga could appear to Dan. Only I could.

I didn’t even have enough Veil to use my Sortilege in the Boss area. And since I didn’t want to be murdered by Mystozagan, I prayed to Kobal and our Dark Master that Dan had a heart attack or something before reaching there.

Oh, man, can you imagine the lead tech on the Dan problem not having enough Veil to use his last Sortilege? Mystozagan wouldn’t even have to murder me. I’d die of embarrassment.

Dan couldn’t make it to the Boss area. I had to ensure that.

Thankfully, Bob had plenty enough Veil to keep the ghosts going on Dan. Az’ga had plenty enough to spare too.

All the Veil I had left was needed to appear to Dan. So I could tell him he was a fat with tiny genitals. I knew I was really getting to him with my devastating insults. Just really getting in his head and under his skin.

But gone were the days of spending Veil all willy-nilly as if it grew on trees. Glorious trees that would combust within two seconds if I ever tried to grow one in my layer.

I wish there was some workaround for that. Like fire trees or something. Have you ever heard of a tree made of flame? Or a tree that doesn’t catch fire?

[Continue.]

Ah, figured. Speaking of my layer, I wish we were back there. This floor is bad enough when this building is in Hell. We cranked the heat up as high as it’d go, but it isn’t doing shit. Seriously, all seventeen of my nipples are frozen into such tightly compacted little nuggets of flesh, they may explode.

[Stop whining. You’re doing fine.]

Can we please chop up that table and start a fire?

[No. Continue.]

Jeez. Okay. Just don’t complain about me not finishing the story when I keel over dead. Or if one of my many mighty nipples explodes and takes out one of your eyes.

I guess I’ll just soldier on through.

Like I said, I’m going to have to start lightly reviewing certain parts where nothing much happened or we’ll be here for weeks, and we’d both die of boredom. Don’t worry, I’ll still cover every important detail. Think of this like a training montage in a movie.

[That’s the second time you’ve used this word, movie. You use it as a noun instead of an adjective such as showy, shaky, or flashy. What is its meaning?]

It’s what the mortals of Earth call a recording of a play. Some of these movies have a montage where fabulously inspiring music plays over scenes of the protagonist training for a major battle or a very important athletic event such as an arm-wrestling tournament.

You really need to watch ‘Over the Top.’ If you happen to see my Yelp review, ignore the poor rating I gave it. I absolutely adored it. It’s my favorite.

It’s a travesty that it didn’t win any Oscars. The script was topnotch. Great casting. Great directing. Great soundtrack. I’m not sure what the word means, but it probably had great filmography too.

[Just…please, continue with Dan.]

Your wish is Acesso LaBlacky’s command, Boss.