Page 3 of Pure Silence

Father always told Day that he would pass the mission over to him when it was finally his time to go to Heaven.

Day missed Father.

He was so lonely…

Day put on clean clothes and then went to bed.

The house was safe. The house was quiet. The house was safe. The house was quiet.

But soon enough, Day knew he would have to leave again.

2

GOLDIE

Cassidy “Goldie” Nash had lived for years as a villain.

He’d been spat on, screamed at, pelted with trash, and even had a full beer can chunked at his head. He’d received death threats, been physically attacked, and he’d been refused service at restaurants and bars multiple times.

Such was the life of a professional wrestler.

But that was ages ago when he was called Goldilocks, the fair-haired face who turned heel and stunned an entire generation of fans with his betrayal. To the aspiring athletes he now trained, he was just Cass. A few close friends, especially those who had wrestled with him, still called him Goldie with a smile.

He’d roll his eyes and smile back, but it always ate him up inside.

Goldie missed the roar of the crowd, the smell of sweat and vinyl, and the thrill of a solid match. He’d been at the very pinnacle of his career with his face plastered across every kind of merchandise imaginable. He’d gotten to play a valiant hero in a made for TV sci-fi movie that went on to spawn two sequels, and he’d even had a deal with a popular cereal brand. It was beyond anything he could have ever dreamed of.

Then it was all taken from him.

Over a damn squash match.

Squash matches were supposed to be easy, heavily sided in favor of the professional talent versus a local wrestler. They would always get some independent nobody, referred to as a jobber, and it would be a total wash. Goldie had met some skilled indie wrestlers, and he was never one to look down on anyone because they didn’t have a big contract. After all, he’d been indie once too, but the point of these matches was to hype up the professionals.

A win was guaranteed.

But that night…

Everything was wrong from the start, and he regretted every day not saying something.

If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have lost everything.

What should have been a cheap shot with a chair was a swing from a baseball bat, and he could still hear thecrackwhen it hit the back of his neck.

Goldie finished the match, but he couldn’t shake the numbness that was tingling up and down his arms. He’d felt it before, and he’d always chalked it up to his many years of getting knocked around. This time, however, was different from all the others.

This time, it wasn’t going away.

He went to the doctor a few weeks later when he lost feeling in his hands, and the diagnosis was grim.

Cervical spinal stenosis, three fancy words saying that the hole in his vertebrae that held his spinal cord was too narrow. It was pinching several nerves and putting too much pressure on his spinal cord. A cervical vertebral fusion was the answer, but the cost was Goldie’s career.

If he went back in the ring, he was at risk of being paralyzed from the neck down.

Or worse.

He could die.

Goldie wanted to beat the odds. Plenty of other wrestlers had similar injuries and were able to return to the ring. He had the surgery, did the rehab, put in the work, but even after two years the doctors wouldn’t clear him to wrestle again.