Jenny had been in Texas for less than six hours when she decided she hated the place.

It was not Texas itself. Texas had done nothing to her. The hotel was fine, the people at the front desk were polite, and the little Mexican place across the street had given her enough food to feed three people for eleven dollars. Under normal circumstances, she might have been perfectly happy.

The problem was the billboard.

She had seen it on the ride from the airport, twenty feet high beside the highway, advertising Red Dead in giant red letters. Beneath the event logo were two faces, hers and the man she was supposed to fight.

RAZOR BLADE.

Jenny had stared through the window for a good five seconds before turning toward the driver.

“Seriously?”

The driver glanced at her in the mirror. “What?”

“Nothing.”

She looked back at the billboard as it disappeared behind them.

Razor Blade.

It still bothered her.

By the time she reached the hotel, checked in, dropped her bag beside the bed, and kicked off her shoes, Jenny had already built an entire imaginary childhood for him. Private school. Lacrosse. Family vacations somewhere expensive. A father who called everybody “sport.” A mother who sent Christmas cards with matching sweaters.

She knew none of that was necessarily true.

That almost made it funnier.

The photograph was doing most of the work.

Jenny sat on the edge of the bed with her phone in her hand, staring at the promotional graphic again. The name promised a guy who slept under bridges and sharpened knives for recreation. The picture looked like somebody who had complained to a restaurant manager because his sparkling water had arrived with lemon instead of lime.

Then there was the match.

Texas Death Match.

Jenny laughed quietly.

Of course it was.

Professional wrestling had a strange way of taking two people who disliked each other and deciding regular violence was insufficient. A normal match apparently could not settle this. Somebody needed to be beaten down badly enough that getting back to their feet became the entire point.

She understood the rules.

She also understood what people expected from her.

That part bothered her more than Razor Blade did.

Everybody expected Jenny Myst to walk into a room and become Jenny Myst immediately. Say something horrible. Laugh at somebody. Find the softest part of another person's ego and stick her thumb directly into it. She had become good enough at it that people assumed it required no effort.

Sometimes it did.

Tonight she was tired.

Jenny tossed the phone beside her and lay backward across the mattress, staring at the ceiling.

For a few minutes, there was no Razor Blade. No Red Dead. No Texas Death Match. No cameras. No championship implications. No audience waiting to clip whatever cruel thing she said and post it online.

There was just Jennifer.

She closed her eyes.

Her phone buzzed.

She ignored it.

It buzzed again.

“Fuck off.”

A third buzz.

Jenny reached blindly across the bed, found the phone, and looked.

Three messages from production.

They wanted footage.

Naturally.

She typed back that she would give them something tomorrow.

The response came almost immediately.

Need something tonight if possible.

Jenny stared at the message.

“Of course you do.”

Twenty minutes later, she was downstairs.

No makeup team. No elaborate set. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a black hoodie because that was what she had already been wearing. Her hair was tied back. Production had sent one cameraman and one sound guy, both of whom looked apologetic about bothering her.

“Where do you want me?” she asked.

The cameraman shrugged. “Wherever you want.”

Jenny looked around the hotel lobby.

“No.”

Outside was not much better. Cars moved along the access road. A gas station glowed across the street. Somewhere nearby, somebody was playing music too loudly from an open window.

Then Jenny noticed the billboard in the distance.

She smiled.

“Come on.”

They walked.

It took about ten minutes to reach it. Jenny did not speak along the way. The cameraman tried once to ask what she had planned.

“Nothing.”

That answer made him nervous.

Good.

They stopped beneath the billboard.

Up close, it was even more ridiculous.

Jenny stood with her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and looked up at Razor Blade's face.

The cameraman started recording.

She kept looking.

Thirty seconds passed.

“Are we rolling?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Jenny finally looked toward the camera.

“I've spent all day trying to figure you out.”

Her voice was quieter than usual.

“Not because you're complicated. Don't flatter yourself. I'm trying to figure out who looked at you and decided Razor Blade was the answer.”

She glanced upward again.

“Because I don't see it.”

A car passed behind them.

“I see a guy who looks like he got detention once and his parents threatened to sue the school. I see somebody who probably knows what a regatta is. I see a man who looks like his childhood bedroom had a trophy shelf his father had professionally installed.”

Jenny smiled.

“But I don't see a Razor Blade.”

She stepped away from the billboard post.

“And maybe that's unfair. Maybe you had a terrible childhood. Maybe you grew up fighting every day. Maybe everything I'm looking at is wrong.”

A small shrug.

“Doesn't matter.”

That was the difference tonight.

Jenny did not need his biography.

She did not need to prove that Razor Blade had grown up rich, poor, privileged, neglected, loved, hated, or anything else. She only needed the name because the name told her what he wanted strangers to believe.

Dangerous.

Sharp.

Cold.

Something people should handle carefully.

Jenny understood branding.

She had spent years turning herself into something people remembered.

“But here's what bothers me,” she continued. “You picked a name that asks everybody else to be afraid before you've done anything to them.”

She paused.

“I never needed that.”

The joking edge disappeared.

“At Red Dead, we're having a Texas Death Match. That's not a nickname. That's not a jacket. That's not some cute graphic they put behind us on a poster. One of us is going to hurt the other one until they can't answer the count.”

Jenny looked up once more.

“And you're standing across from me dressed like the final boss of a prep school fundraiser.”

The cameraman snorted.

Jenny looked at him.

He immediately became silent.

She turned back.

“Sorry. Couldn't help myself.”

There she was.

The grin returned.

“You really do look like your name should be Razor Bradley. I bet there's a Chad somewhere who still owes you forty dollars from spring break.”

She walked closer to the camera.

“But jokes stop when the bell rings.”

Her face settled.

“That is the part I need you to understand.”

Jenny had been hurt before. She had been dropped on her head, thrown into things that were not designed to catch human bodies, cut open, embarrassed, and beaten. She knew what it felt like to hear a referee counting while her body tried to convince her that staying down would be easier.

She also knew what came after eight.

Nine.

Then the choice.

People liked to talk about toughness as if it was a personality trait. Jenny thought that was bullshit. Toughness was a decision made when every sensible part of your body begged for the opposite.

Get up.

That was all Red Dead would become eventually.

Get up.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until somebody couldn't.

The truth was, she did not know whether she would win. Nobody ever knew that, no matter how confidently they spoke into cameras. Razor Blade could be better than the photograph suggested. He could be tougher than the name sounded stupid. He could put her down and keep her there. Jenny accepted that because pretending otherwise would make the thing meaningless. Fear was not believing you could lose. Fear was letting that possibility decide what you did next. She would show up anyway. She would fight anyway. If he knocked her down nine times, she would make him watch her stand ten.

Jenny pointed toward Razor Blade's picture.

“So bring whatever this is supposed to be. Bring Razor Blade. Bring the dangerous man. Bring the version of yourself that name promises everybody exists.”

Her hand dropped.

“Because I'm bringing Jennifer.”

No nickname.

No joke.

No mythology.

Just her.

“And Jennifer is really fucking difficult to keep down.”

Jenny turned and started walking toward the hotel.

The cameraman lowered the camera.

“That's it?”

She stopped.

For a moment, she considered giving him something bigger. Some dramatic threat. Blood. Graves. Death. The usual wrestling nonsense people said when they wanted violence to sound poetic.

Instead, Jenny looked back at the billboard.

Razor Blade smiled down from twenty feet above the highway.

She shook her head.

“Yeah.”

Then she started walking again.

“That's enough.”

Behind her, the billboard stayed exactly where it was, promising danger to every passing car.

Jenny never looked back.


Jenny stares at the picture for several seconds.

“Razor Blade.”

Another pause.

“Razor. Fucking. Blade.”

You know, there are certain names in professional wrestling where you hear them and immediately understand what you’re supposed to be dealing with. Undertaker? Okay. Somebody’s probably dying. Bruiser? Probably hurts people. Psycho? Maybe don’t leave your drink unattended around that motherfucker.

But Razor Blade?

Razor Blade sounds dangerous.

Razor Blade sounds like somebody you find leaning against a piss-stained brick wall behind a condemned nightclub at three in the morning, smoking a cigarette that may or may not contain tobacco while explaining why the blood on his boots technically belongs to the state now.

And then this motherfucker walks out.

Jenny points.

Look at him.

That is not Razor Blade.

That is Preston Whitmore III, captain of the lacrosse team at St. Fuckington Preparatory Academy somewhere outside Milwaukee.

This motherfucker looks like his biggest act of rebellion was wearing boat shoes without socks.

You don't look like you've ever held a razor blade. You look like your mother specifically bought you the electric kind because she was worried you'd nick yourself before junior cotillion.

What the fuck are you cutting with this gimmick?

The crust off your sandwiches?

You look like somebody whose father responded to his first DUI by saying, “Now, son, obviously there are going to be consequences,” before quietly calling the family attorney and donating a new scoreboard to the high school.

Razor Blade.

Jesus Christ.

You look like you say “summering” as a verb.

You look like you've got a grandmother named Bitsy.

You look like you know exactly which fork to use for the salad but would need written instructions to open a can of SpaghettiOs.

There is absolutely nothing dangerous about you.

I've seen sharper fucking pool noodles.

And what really kills me is the jacket.

Because apparently somebody looked at this human Vineyard Vines catalog and thought, You know what would make him intimidating?

Sequins.

Fantastic.

Nothing says hardened street weapon quite like looking like the regional manager of a Liberace-themed steakhouse.

You've got enough sparkly shit glued to your shoulders to blind air traffic control, but I'm supposed to believe you're Razor Blade?

Motherfucker, you look like Cinderella's divorced dad.

And I KNOW how this happened.

At some point you were sitting around trying to invent yourself, because “Chad Who Owns Three Quarter-Zips” wasn't moving merchandise, and somebody said you needed an edge.

And you took that literally.

“What's got an edge?”

Knife?

No.

Too scary.

Sword?

Goodness, no.

Razor Blade?

Jenny snaps her fingers.

Perfect.

Except you skipped the important part where the fucking name is supposed to match the person wearing it.

Calling yourself Razor Blade doesn't magically make you dangerous any more than me calling myself Jenny Private Jet Myst means there's suddenly a Gulfstream waiting outside.

You can't just slap threatening nouns together and expect everybody else to participate in your delusion.

Otherwise tomorrow I'm debuting my new tag team partner:

GUNSHOT CHAINSAW.

He's an accountant from Des Moines named fucking Gary.

And somehow Gary would still frighten me more than you.

Because Razor Blade over here doesn't look like he grew up fighting.

He looks like he grew up fencing.

Not stealing shit and selling it.

The sport.

With lessons.

Tuesday and Thursday after Mandarin tutoring.

Your childhood trauma was probably your parents buying you the silver Lexus instead of the black one.

You've never been jumped behind a bar.

You've been asked to leave a country club because your guest wasn't wearing a collared shirt.

You've never eaten because you had to.

You've eaten because Mother informed Consuela brunch was ready.

This isn't Razor Blade.

This is the villain from a Disney Channel movie about a poor kid trying to save the community ski lodge from being purchased by your fucking father.

And I can already hear the response.

“Jenny, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.”

Absolutely.

Except HE NAMED THE FUCKING BOOK RAZOR BLADE.

If Stephen King releases a novel called The Horrifying Chainsaw Massacre of Blood Mountain and chapter one is about Trevor getting accepted into Northwestern, I'm going to have some fucking questions.

That's you.

You're false advertising with entrance music.

You're a warning label attached to sparkling water.

You're a parental advisory sticker slapped across a Michael Bublé Christmas album.

You are the human equivalent of ordering something called the DEATH INFERNO BURGER and discovering the secret sauce is mayonnaise.

And somehow the longer I look at you, the worse it gets.

The hair.

Oh, the fucking hair.

That is not the haircut of somebody called Razor Blade.

That's the haircut of somebody who walks into a barber shop and says, “Whatever makes my cheekbones pop, Brayden.”

You don't look like you're about to carve somebody up.

You look like you're about to explain why your fraternity's hazing allegations were “completely taken out of context.”

I bet you smell incredible.

That's how little I fear you.

I look at Razor Blade and think,

That man definitely moisturizes.

Probably exfoliates too.

Probably has one of those little refrigerated drawers filled with eye creams and tells people hydration is actually the foundation of good skincare.

Which is wonderful.

Take care of yourself.

But maybe don't do it while calling yourself something commonly found in an evidence bag.

Because you're not Razor Blade.

You're Safety Scissors.

You're Butter Knife.

You're Plastic Spork.

You're the little rounded blade they give preschoolers so nobody accidentally gets a boo-boo during arts and crafts.

Actually—

Jenny studies him again.

No.

I've got it.

You're not Razor Blade.

You're Razor Bradley.

Private school.

Midwest.

Class of 2006.

Father owns dealerships.

Mother organizes charity auctions.

Three varsity letters.

National Honor Society.

Got caught with weed once and somehow the cop apologized to him.

That's you.

So keep the nickname.

Seriously.

Walk around calling yourself Razor Blade.

Put it on shirts.

Tattoo it across your fucking chest.

Have somebody announce it dramatically while you strut through the curtain dressed like the Homecoming King at Disco Hogwarts.

Because eventually that bell is going to ring.

And then you get to discover the difference between somebody who gave himself a dangerous name...

…and somebody who's actually fucking dangerous.

Jenny smiles.

“See you soon, Razor Bradley.”

Jenny had spent the better part of the morning trying to figure out exactly how she felt about Texas.

Hot, obviously.

Probably dusty.

Big hats. Bigger trucks. People saying things like “all hat, no cattle” without a hint of irony. She had already decided that somebody from production would inevitably suggest putting her in a cowboy hat for promotional pictures, at which point she would inevitably suggest they shove it directly up their ass.

Still, she could deal with Texas.

Hell, considering what she'd signed up for, Texas seemed appropriate.

Red Dead.

Texas Death Match.

Razor Blade.

There was a certain symmetry to the whole thing. Maybe they'd find some miserable little arena outside Dallas where the air conditioning barely worked. Maybe she'd walk past an actual tumbleweed on the way inside. Maybe Razor Blade would arrive riding a fucking horse.

Jenny had already constructed the entire stupid thing in her head by the time she finally bothered opening the itinerary production had emailed her.

She skimmed it.

Flight information.

Hotel.

Transportation.

Venue.

Jenny stopped.

Her thumb moved backward.

She read it again.

Then once more, considerably slower.

Her eyebrows pulled together.

“No.”

She sat forward on the edge of the bed.

There had to be another page.

She scrolled.

There wasn't.

Jenny went back to the event information and stared at the location.

Mexico.

Several seconds passed.

She looked toward absolutely nobody.

Then back at the phone.

Then around the room, as if someone from Red Dead might be hiding behind the curtains waiting to explain themselves.

“Mexico?”

Silence.

Jenny tapped the screen harder than necessary.

TEXAS DEATH MATCH.

Mexico.

She lowered the phone.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

All morning.

All fucking morning she'd been mentally preparing herself for Texas.

She'd spent twenty minutes wondering whether cowboy boots were mandatory. She'd actually Googled how far the venue was from fucking Dallas.

Dallas wasn't even in the right country.

Jenny stood and began pacing.

“Who books a Texas Death Match in Mexico?”

She stopped.

“No, seriously. Who the fuck does that?”

The room offered no answers.

“This is like booking a Philadelphia Street Fight in Toronto.”

She pointed at the phone.

“A Mexican Death Match? Fine. Lucha Death Match? Sure. Mexico City Massacre? Little aggressive, but at least we're geographically fucking coherent.”

She stared at the itinerary again.

“But a Texas Death Match? In Mexico?”

Another pause.

“Does Texas know?”

That thought genuinely concerned her for approximately two seconds.

“Did anybody ask Texas? Because Texas seems like the kind of place that would be weirdly protective about this shit.”

Jenny sat back down.

Suddenly Razor Blade wasn't even the stupidest thing about this match anymore.

That was almost impressive.

She had a man who looked like he attended prep school in Wisconsin calling himself Razor Blade, fighting a woman from nowhere near Texas in a Texas Death Match being held in Mexico.

Professional wrestling had finally achieved complete geographical collapse.

Jenny rubbed both hands over her face.

“Okay.”

She breathed.

“Okay.”

Maybe there was an explanation.

Maybe the promoter was from Texas.

Maybe Razor Blade was from Texas.

Maybe whoever invented the match had once flown over Texas.

Maybe the fucking ring was manufactured in Texas.

There had to be something.

She picked up her phone and typed a message to production.

Jenny: Why are we having a Texas Death Match in Mexico?

The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.

Then disappeared.

Appeared again.

Disappeared.

That was never encouraging.

Finally:

Production: That's the stipulated match type.

Jenny stared at it.

“Oh, thank you.”

She began typing.

Jenny: I understand what the match type is. I am questioning whether anyone involved understands what Mexico is.

She waited.

Typing bubble.

Gone.

Typing bubble.

Gone.

Then nothing.

Jenny nodded slowly.

“Yeah. That's what I fucking thought.”

She tossed the phone onto the bed.

For several seconds she simply sat there, staring into space.

Then she started laughing.

Not because it was especially funny.

Because eventually professional wrestling left you with only two options: laugh or start biting people.

A Texas Death Match.

In Mexico.

Against Razor Blade.

Who looked like Razor Bradley.

Jenny fell backward across the mattress and covered her eyes with one arm.

“Fuck.”

And somehow, against all available logic, the match hadn't even started yet.

5x

FORMER, 1x AND LONGEST REIGNING (101 Days)

FOREVER, AND ALWAYS

3X

2x XWF Bombshell Champion

Sex, Metal, Barbie, CHAOS