Joey Crash: Even More Postcards (EXP 23)

April 3rd, 2022 - 9 days until EXP 23

He slammed the cab door shut and turned back to the driver’s window, slipping him a $20 and asking him to stick around. He had just arrived at a two level motel. It was one flat colour of depressing sun washed beige. Joey checked the crumpled paper in his back pocket, Seventeen. The smell of the tarmac welcomed him. For all the little luxuries in his place he’d recently moved in to, there was reliable and comforting about these rundown joints. This time he wasn’t looking for shelter or a quick shower. He’d managed to track down the last known address of his late manager, Mick. Apparently he’d paid for an extended stay in Room Seventeen and with any luck, there will be a small mountain of postcards inside the door that he could give to Sophie, his estranged daughter.

He walks into the lobby, if you can call it that and sees a heavyset man in an open shirt and white vest slouched behind the desk. There’s a radio on that occasionally clicks and whirs with static and a fan that can’t turn fast enough to generate a breeze. There’s no wait for the check-in but Joey imagines he gets most of his business when the moon is out. The lobby itself is simple but old. It would have looked classy around seventy years ago. Wallpaper peeling at the corners and an empty fish tank did not inspire homeliness.

Joey greets the man at the desk, whose name tag is blank. He stirs back into consciousness and offers him rooms with a slur. He spoke like he had a mouthful of ice cream. Maybe he did. Joey inquires about Room 17 and the man acquiesces, offering him what must be a spare set of keys. He then mentioned something about renewing the lease soon and Joey simply says, yeah maybe.

Room 17 must have had a recent lick of paint on the outside. It was the brightest shade of beige and had faded numbers on the door from where numbers had previously been screwed in. He unlocked the door. Piles of mail littered the door. The bed hadn’t been made and the mini fridge was open and cleared out. Yep, this room had all the hallmarks of a deceased Northern Irish alcoholic having lived here. He sorted through the mail on the floor and recovered a handful of postcards that their friend, Jimmy The Pin, had previously sent. He thought back to when Jimmy asked why Mick hadn’t been replying to his postcards. Apparently it was their thing. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Jimmy that Mick was long dead. Each postcard was from a different town too. Mick would have loved all of these. Blackpool, Eastbourne, Brighton, Cornwall… Glasgow? There’s a lot of miles covered here. He didn’t feel comfortable reading any of them but appreciated each postcard he counted as if they were addressed to himself.

He slumped into the backseat of the car where his driver was just finishing up a cigarette. When asked where to next, Joey replied to go all the way back from where they came. It was a long enough journey so he slipped the cabby $50 for the troubles and shifted his hat over his eyes and slumped down into the seat. He thought about a lot of things on the ride back. He thought about the belt and how it made him feel more whole than before. He thought about Guy Manson and his unnerving, robotic perseverance. He thought about the last time he and Sophie spoke face-to-face. They spent the whole evening in this dive bar. Long chats, good chats. Joey ruined everything. He thought he saw the ghost of Mick in that same bar as Sophie was leaving. He thought about Mick’s ghost and the card game they had played. He thought about DOOM and how it was approaching faster than he’d thought. He thought about Duncan His days as champion were flying by. He couldn’t stop thinking the entire journey back.


April 4th, 2022 - 8 days to EXP 23

He strapped the postcards together crudely with elastic bands. There were a couple bends and crease but still fine. A post stamp on the top sealed the deal. Disguised in a baseball cap, aviators and obnoxious turtleneck, Joey sleuthed outside to find the nearest postbox. The trouble with postboxes in America is that they look nothing like the big red postboxes back home. Joey must have circled the same five blocks three times over before he eventually clocked someone else dropping mail into what looked like a bin. It’s ridiculous, he thought to himself, that he’s spent so much time in the US and hadn’t figured this out. But who uses the post anymore?

Just down the road from the postbox, he spotted a tourist trap store with a bunch of Michigan-themed crap adorned above the doorway and invading the pavement. A quick run and an outrageous $8 later, he had a new postcard of his own. It simply said, “MICHIGAN” in a big bubbly letters, each letter had a photo of a different landmark or view. Once he’d finished scribbling his message onto the postcard in tiny letters, he reviewed it.




I get the feeling that I’ve done something wrong. I must have done something to piss someone off. The Developer? That mysterious so-and-so has done nothing except send me a single line email saying, “Congrats - TD” after I won the belt. If that’s meant to inspire their champion then they've got some rethinking to do. Because not only did I have to face a bloodthirsty, sentient toaster last week but now I'm battling an army of giant purple weirdos and teaming up with Duncan Shepard to do it. It’s almost enough to make a disgruntled British veteran wish he'd never come back to professional wrestling.



Champ out.